Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 25, No. 2, August 13, 1927

She Visits Napoleon

She was the victim of an unhappy marriage, but much beloved by her people, and first appeared at her old castle at Neuhaus after the Thirty Years’ War, when the annual feast held in her memory was temporarily discontinued.

There are many records of her appearance during the next century — always followed by death or misfortune. On August 26, 1678, the Margrave Erdmann Philip of Bayreuth was riding from the race track back to the palace when his horse fell and threw him. The prince died a few hours later. A few days before, the White Lady had been seen by several people, seated in his armchair.

Strangely enough one of the people to whom she appeared was Napoleon. Some time in 1805 his headquarters happened to be at Schönbrunn, where he was directing the movements preceding the “Drei Kaiser Schlacht” of Austerlitz.

“In the middle of the night,” says the record, “he was suddenly awakened by a terrific shaking of his bed, and found that a lady, dressed in white and looking very angry, was trying to overturn the bed.

“Springing up, the emperor fled from the room, thinking that his visitor must be a lunatic who had strayed into it by mistake. Outside the door, however, the Mameluke. Rutau, was sleeping soundly. When the two men went back into the bedchamber they found it empty.

“Napoleon then decided that he had had a very vivid nightmare. When he spoke of the affair the next day, however, to his astonishment he learned that Berthier, who had been sleeping in a room some distance from his own, had had exactly the same visitor!

“Four years later, in 1809, Bonaparte again made Schönbrunn his headquarters after the battle of Wagram. This time he gave orders for his bed to be prepared in another room, thinking that the one he had formerly occupied was haunted.

“The precaution proved useless.

“Once more he was awakened in the middle of the night by the White Lady, and this time her manner was even more menacing than it had been before.

“ ‘Who are you?’ demanded Napoleon. ‘And what do you want of me?’

“ ‘Who I am,’ the apparition replied in French, ‘is known only to Heaven, whose messenger I am. I have to tell you that unless you desist from your efforts against Germany, you and yours will be utterly destroyed one day.’ ”

With these words she vanished.

Corroborative Appearances

The Viscomte d’Arlincourt tells of several appearances of the White Lady. On one occasion Katherine, the wife of King William of Wurtemberg, and a sister of the Emperor Nicholas, was lying in bed ill, when the door of the room flew open as if with a sudden gust of wind. The queen demanded hastily that it be shut again, as the draft annoyed her.

Her lady-in-waiting, who was reading to her, got up immediately to obey the command. When she had closed the door and turned to go back to her place by the bedside she distinctly saw the White Lady sitting in her chair. Two days later, January 9, 1819, the queen died suddenly, although she was not generally supposed to be seriously ill.

The White Lady is also supposed to have been seen kneeling by the bed of the dying Margravine Amelia of Baden, the mother of Alexander I of Russia, at the Palace of Bruchsal, which was once the residence of two Prince Bishops in succession.

In 1840 the White Lady appeared before the death of Frederick William III.

Mrs. Hugh Fraser, in her book, “A Diplomatist’s Wife in Many Lands” tells this particularly gruesome story of yet another appearance of the famous ghost of the Hohenzollern family:

“In July, 1857, Frederick William IV, of Prussia, and his queen were visiting the King and Queen of Saxony at the Royal Palace at Pillnitz. That night, between midnight and one o’clock, the sentry on guard outside the castle distinguished, through the dead silence around him, the distant sound of heavy, measured footsteps, as of soldiers marching toward him across the graveled space in front of his sentry box.

Her Latest Bow

“Presently he could make out the outlines of a company of some kind, advancing at the same slow, even pace. Then, to his horror, he saw five figures — a woman in white, followed by four headless men carrying a long, heavy object on their shoulders. They passed by him, entered a small side door of the palace and disappeared.

“For a few minutes the sentry stood paralyzed with terror, scarcely knowing whether he was sane or mad. Then the side door was pushed open again, and from it issued the same phantom procession.

“The headless men with their burden this time, however, preceded the White Lady, who followed a few feet behind them.

“They brushed by the sentry who saw that they were carrying an open coffin, in which was the body of a man dressed in a general’s uniform, covered with orders and decorations. Among them he recognized the Order of the Black Eagle.

“But the body, like those of its bearers, was headless and a royal crown filled the space between the shoulders.