Met Fate Of Draga

Career of a London Adventuress Who Became a Queen in Brazil. 

How She Established a Government In the Unexplored Wilds and Was Finally Slain. 

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A tragedy almost parallel in its details to the slaughter in Belgrade took place on this hemisphere a few years ago, a king and queen being surprised in their palace by conspirators and hacked to pieces with machetes. The world paid little attention to it at the time, for international politics was not affected, and now the tragedy is forgotten except in the Andean republics of South America, where the story of the rise and fall of King Jacques and Queen Leontine is told along with the other marvelous tales which make up the romantic history of those lands since the days of the Incas. 

Leontine Cassilis was born in that part of London known as Wapping and grew up as girls in her surroundings in London are too apt to. Her real name is a matter of dispute, but it was something as prosaic as Mary Jane. Up to the age of seventeen she lived a life of squalor and misery, a girl of the slums. But as she grew older she developed remarkable beauty and an intelligence and ambition which made her disgusted with her surroundings. Adopting the name of Leontine, she went to Paris, where she soon became notorious. 

A wealthy Bolivian, General Belzu, became infatuated with her on a trip to Paris and carried her back with him to his native country, where he proposed to make himself president and take Leontine for his wife. His wife, indeed, she declared herself to be, and possibly was. She urged the general on in his schemes of ambition and soon Bolivia was in the throes of a civil war. The former 'Arriet of the London slums was now a political power and dreamed not only of seizing the supreme authority in Bolivia through her putative husband, but of conquests beyond the borders of the republic. She aimed at a great South American federation, over which she should rule in fact if not in name. 

Mariana Melgarejo, afterward so celebrated as dictator of Bolivia, was the principal opponent of Leontine and General Belzu. Melgarejo proclaimed himself president, but Belzu raised an army and drove him from the capital. Leontine, for a brief period, was installed in the presidential palace and had the guards turn out to salute her when she passed. But Melgarejo gathered an army and on the slopes of silver bearing Potosi gave battle to the army which Belzu sent against him. He won, and, marching on the capital, took it. Breaking into the palace, he shot Belzu with his own hand and established himself as dictator. Leontine, in splendid fury, swore revenge. Melgarejo laughed at her. 

A French adventurer, one Jacques Cassilis, had, more than any other one man, aided Melgarejo to become dictator. Upon Jacques Cassilis Leontine turned the power of her witchery. She skillfully fomented strife between him and the dictator. She persuaded him that he had been treated with base ingratitude, and finally she bound him body and soul to her schemes for power and revenge. Jacques married the woman, and then, with a handful of followers, they escaped from La Paz, the Bolivian capital, and went into the wilderness Iying between the head waters of the river Madeira and the upper Tapajoz. There they proposed to found a nation which should, in time, be strong enough for them to return with an army and destroy Melgarejo.

Wild as the scheme was they came within an ace of succeeding in it. The region where the adventurers went lies mostly in Brazil, and to this day on the most modern maps across a large portion of it is printed the word "unexplored." Leonttne and Jacques found their future kingdom inhabited by fierce tribes, which were almost constantly at war with each other. To further their own ends, the adventurers, following the example of Pizarro and Cortes, skillfully played off one tribe against another until in the end all parties, war worn and weary, acknowledged Jacques as their king and Leontine as their queen. 

Then the adventurers set about consolidating their power. They built a city and a palace and established an army. Arms were procured from the outside world, and Jacques turned his savage hordes into soldiers. The gathering of rubber and the cultivation of tropical products were encouraged, and for three years Queen Leontine and King Jacques ruled over their kingdom, forging a thunderbolt with which to destroy the dictator, Melgarejo. Mountains and dense tropical forests formed a barrier between them and Bolivia, which the dictator did not dare to try to penetrate with his army, and unexplored wildernesses protected them from Brazil on the other side. Jacques and Leontine were crowned with barbaric splendor and established a court with all the trappings of royalty. Adventurers were welcomed and given employment, and the kingdom grew in prosperity and power. The girl of the London slums, the 'Arriet of Wapping, was a real queen and planned a royal revenge for the murder of her first husband. King Jacques sought the recognition of foreign governments and might have got it, too, but one night a band of conspirators, composed of officers of the army, broke into the palace, killing all who opposed them, until they had penetrated to the royal apartments. Then was enacted a tragedy of which that of Belgrade was a replica. The bodies of Queen Leontine and King Jacques were hacked to pieces with machetes and thrown from the palace windows. 

The plot had been hatched by agents of Melgarejo, but he did not live long to enjoy his triumph. There was an uprising of the Indians, who marched on La Paz and, fighting the dictator in the streets of the city, killed him. 

After the murder of Queen Leontine and King Jacques their kingdom relapsed into savagery and remains to this day a wilderness only partially explored.