The Count of Monte Cristo

The 1815 Nîmes Bonapartist Massacres

Upon entering Nîmes, Bertuccio waded through blood amid the notorious massacres carried out by the royalist brigands Trestaillon, Truphemy, and Graffan, who slaughtered suspected Bonapartists. While Bertuccio himself—a simple Corsican fisherman—had nothing to fear and even found the chaos favorable for smuggling, he was terrified for his uniformed brother. Arriving at the inn, he learned that his brother had been murdered the previous evening at the very door where he sought shelter, and no one dared name the killers.

Bertuccio’s Failed Appeal to Magistrate Villefort

Desperate for justice, Bertuccio sought out the king’s attorney, identifying him as Villefort—a royalist from Marseilles who had reportedly been among the first to warn the government of Napoleon’s escape from Elba. Bertuccio formally demanded an investigation into his brother’s assassination and appealed for a small pension for his widowed sister-in-law. Villefort callously refused, dismissing the killing as either a duel among unruly soldiers or a natural act of political reprisal, and had Bertuccio ejected.

Villefort’s Refusal and Bertuccio’s Vendetta Oath

Bertuccio leaned close to the stone-faced magistrate and whispered a Corsican oath of vendetta: “I will kill you.” He declared that Villefort’s “last hour” would come at their next meeting, then walked out before Villefort could react. The shaken magistrate immediately sought protection, refused to go out unattended, and eventually secured a transfer to Versailles. Bertuccio, however, refused to be deterred by distance, keeping within half a day of Villefort’s carriage on foot, though constrained by the need to provide for his sister-in-law and avoid capture.