On the morning of December 22, 1872, the corpse of José Asla was found in the moats of the Château de Nantes, where the swollen waters of the Loire had spilled over. His pockets had been turned out. An examination revealed sixteen head wounds, several of them mortal. The surgeons concluded, however, that these blows had not caused his death: Asla had been cast into the water while still alive, succumbing to asphyxiation by drowning. It remained to be discovered who had brought him to such an end.
The previous evening, Asla—a Spanish refugee whom the newspapers also styled “the commandant”—had departed the lodging of a compatriot to walk to the railway station. He expected to meet his son there, arriving on the train from Bordeaux. Three men shadowed him at a distance to the station, then posted themselves to watch for his return. After a quarter of an hour, they saw him walking back alone. Yturmendi stepped forward, inquiring whether his son had arrived; in the same motion, he brought a heavy cudgel down upon Asla’s skull. At the Nantes assizes, the prisoners offered a political justification, claiming Asla had betrayed the Carlist cause in Spain. The judicial chronicle retains instead the motive of theft, dwelling upon the coveting of his watch. The jury condemned the three men to distinct punishments: death for Yturmendi, hard labor for life for Lauriano, and ten years’ penal servitude for Bilbao.
Silhouettes in the Rain
The first clues arose not from a confession, but from the street itself. On the evening of December 21, witnesses had observed a motionless knot of men in the Rue Basse-du-Château. Despite the falling rain, they seemed to wait. Several wore berets, as did the Spanish refugees residing in Nantes. Suspicion soon settled upon Lauriano and Yturmendi. During Asla’s funeral, Yturmendi had been seized with a violent trembling that did not escape the notice of those present.
The three accused—Lauriano San Vincente, Yturmendi, and Salvador Bilbao—were Carlist refugees interned in Nantes. They were acquainted with Asla and had spent evenings in his company. The proceedings thus did not present them as wandering strangers bent on a chance robbery: they moved within the very same circles of exile, where news, grievances, and bread were shared among compatriots.
Pedro Gonzalès, one of their roommates, resolved to speak. He called upon Cardozo de Bethencourt, a Spanish merchant established in Nantes, and declared that he knew the murderers of the commandant. The chronicle situates this disclosure within a timeline incompatible with the murder itself, which occurred during the night of December 21–22; the precise date of this deposition cannot therefore be regarded as certain. Yet Gonzalès provided details that the judicial inquiry subsequently substantiated. According to his testimony, on the night of the twenty-first, Lauriano returned at about half past ten to their lodgings in the Rue de la Juiverie. Five compatriots were already abed, among them Gonzalès, Yturmendi, and Bilbao.
Lauriano approached one of the pallets and urged Yturmendi to rise and accompany him to the station. “Is it for the business?” the latter asked. Lauriano replied that it was. Yturmendi then roused Bilbao, bidding him come out for a walk. They would require a log, he added; seizing a heavy piece of firewood from the hearth, the three men took to the streets.
At half past eleven, they returned. Yturmendi, in great agitation, told Lauriano he was going to wash the blood from his face and hands, then rid himself of his smock, a purse, and a watch cord. They then addressed the other men in the room, who feigned to wake. Lauriano and Yturmendi announced that they had just slain Asla to rid themselves of a man “capable of anything.” They warned that anyone who spoke would share his fate.
An Ambush and a Robbery
Asla’s body was recovered the following morning from the moat. The post-mortem examination noted sixteen head wounds, several mortal, but concluded that none of them had directly terminated his life: thrown living into the water, Asla had perished of submersion and suffocation. His upturned pockets attested that the homicide had been accompanied by robbery. Wide pools of blood marked the street bordering the moat and stained the stone parapet.
The three men attempted at first to deny everything. Soon, however, according to the press, they admitted their complicity, each casting upon his fellows the heaviest share of guilt. The piece of wood retrieved from the ditches bore bloodstains, but the medical examiners judged that it could not account for all the lacerations; a knife must also have been employed. Traces of blood were likewise detected on Yturmendi’s garments. Material evidence could not alone establish who had dealt each blow, yet it confirmed an assault executed by multiple hands.
The spot chosen was singularly suited to an ambush. The lane narrowed between an embankment and the Rue Prémion; the parapet of the moats and the masonry of the Duchesse-Anne staircase offered recesses where several men might lie concealed. The band had waited near the house of Orgaz, then shadowed Asla to the station. There they took up positions to watch for his return, catching sight of him as he walked back alone a quarter of an hour later. What the town had glimpsed merely as dark shapes under the rain emerged, before the court, as a premeditated trap.
The account records that Lauriano had spent the earlier part of the evening at Orgaz’s home, in Asla’s company. Alone among the three, he knew the commandant intended to go to the station to meet the Bordeaux train. The conspirators were aware that Asla carried a watch and believed him to possess considerable funds. During the assault, Lauriano possessed himself of this watch, along with a purse and a coin pouch. The chronicle states that it was subsequently hidden by each of the accused in turn, yet it was never recovered. The paper notes separately that another watch, stolen from an unknown victim, was found in their room. According to the Gazette, Yturmendi had previously committed a similar theft at Port-Saint-Père.
The Plea of Treason
At the trial, Lauriano attempted to portray the attack as an act of political retribution. He contended that Asla had betrayed the Carlist cause in Spain and that they had merely sought to execute justice upon him. The judicial record indicates that the charges he leveled against Asla were baseless, and that his earliest statements contradicted this narrative. The chronicle presents theft as the true motive that impelled the accused to murder a man whom they bore no personal hatred, and who enjoyed the high esteem of his countrymen.
A distinction must be maintained between these two strains of testimony. The claim of treason belonged strictly to Lauriano’s line of defense; the ambush and the robbery were substantiated by sworn depositions, recovered items, and the confessions recorded by the press. The report in the Gazette constitutes neither the complete dossier of the preliminary examination nor a verbatim transcript of the pleadings. It provides, nevertheless, a circumstantial account of the charges and convictions, together with the principal facts accepted as established by the chronicler.
The three men had methodically organized their vigil and chosen the precise instant when Asla would return solitary from the station. The watch reduces the crime to base robbery and murder, yet the testimony of Gonzalès lays bare another reality: in that cramped room, before setting out, a single whispered word was enough for the confederates to know the night’s work was determined. Yturmendi asks the question; Lauriano confirms; Bilbao is shaken awake. The men slip into the night carrying a cudgel. When they return, the water and the blood must be washed away, the plunder hidden, and their roommates terrorized into silence.
Three Judgments
The Court of Assizes of Loire-Inférieure sat in judgment upon the three men. The report notes that the proceedings fully sustained the indictment. The jury returned a verdict of guilty, and the court delivered three distinct sentences: Yturmendi was condemned to death; Lauriano to penal servitude for life; Bilbao to ten years of the same hard labor. The Gazette reported that Yturmendi’s execution would take place upon one of the public squares of Nantes. The record does not permit us to affirm here whether the sentence was carried out, nor on what date.
The tribunal could not restore José Asla to his waiting son. It could only confront the prisoners with Gonzalès’s accusations and the physical traces of their deed, apportioning their guilt through their respective penalties. Lauriano appealed to high politics; the court chronicle notes that the material facts pointed inexorably to theft. The verdict sat in judgment not upon the political ideals of Carlism, but upon three men brought to account for murder.
Beside the moats, Asla’s watch had vanished along with his purse. The trial record identified it as the lure that sealed the victim’s fate, while another timepiece, plundered from an unknown stranger, came to light among their possessions. The Gazette concludes with the sentences, not with the station. Asla had set out into the rain to embrace his son; a few hours later, his battered body was drawn from the water.