Hyacinthe Simon Deutz was born in Cologne in 1802. A convert from
Judaism, Deutz was recommended to the
Duchess de Berri
by Pope Gregory VII
as a suitable person for a secret mission. Identified by the French
authorities as an agent of the Duchess de Berri, he secured his freedom by
betraying her. After the failure of her abortive uprising in La Vendée,
the Duchess went into hiding in the city of Nantes. Deutz visited her, in
the guise of delivering dispatches, and reported the Duchess' hiding place
to Dumas' friend
General Dermoncourt,
who promptly arrested her.
In his memoir,
Vendée et Madame,
which were probably ghost-written by
Dumas, General Dermoncourt writes of Deutz, "I will forgo the repugnance
which a military man naturally feels to mention a being of this
description, whom I should never pass in the street without bestowing a
horsewhipping upon him, did I not think my horse would be degraded by being
afterwards flogged with the same whip."
Many years later, Dumas recounted the betrayal and arrest of the Duchess de
Berri in his novel
Louves de Machecoul.
