Dishonorable Discharge

It was as if the proudest Daughters of the American Revolution had suddenly been told that their ancestors were all spies in the pay of George III. "It doesn't make the slightest difference whether a great family took part in the Crusades or not," said aristocratic Count Emmanuel de Las Cases. "It is still a great family." But very few French aristocrats were able last week to put so brave a front on the matter. The fact was that the patrician pedigrees of 250 aristocratic families had just had a great fall.

In the year 1839, the Orleans "Citizen King," Louis Philippe, anxious to curry favor with his nation's snootier aristocrats, who generally held a low opinion of him, offered to display the armorial bearings of anyone able to provide proof of an ancestor who had fought in the Crusades. Within a year Versailles was overflowing with applicants, all of whom bore ancient documents to attest their claims.

It was a curious fact that virtually all of the newer documents were records of loans made by the Lombard bankers of Italy to Crusaders passing through-and all were unearthed by the same genealogist, one Henri Courtois. But if these facts caused any doubts to arise, they were promptly quelled by the further fact that the greatest medievalist in France, Director Leon Lacabane of the Ecole des Chartes, authenticated each one.

Two years ago a young medievalist named Robert-Henri Bautier found occasion to examine some of Genealogist Courtois' documents more closely. With government help, he turned microscopes and ultraviolet rays on the moldy old parchments, only to discover that the ink and the writing on them was of a date far later than the parchments themselves. Wanting to be sure, Bautier enlisted the aid of police, archivists and other scholars, and set out in search of further knowledge of Genealogist Courtois. Last week, in the silent, august chamber of L'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Scholar Bautier announced his findings: Henri Courtois, a onetime notary's clerk and one of the shadiest characters of the 19th century, had done a land-office business in the faking of ancient documents,*exacting a fee of 40,000 gold francs ($10,000) apiece for his services. All 250 of the documents which he had produced for submission to King Louis Philippe were forgeries.

NOBILITY MARKET CRASHES headlined one Parisian newspaper. "It's only normal," said Robert-Henri Bautier as cries of anguish from France's patricians poured in from every side, "that they refuse to believe us."

*One graduate of Courtois' fake-factory, a celebrated forger named Vrain-Lucas, later went into business for himself, and managed to convince some of France's finest scholars of the authenticity of hasty notes from Cleopatra to Caesar, Alexander to Aristotle and Lazarus to St. Peter, despite the fact that they were written in Old French.

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