was elected to the Papacy in 1800. He signed the Concordat with
Bonaparte in 1801, crowned him Emperor in Paris in 1804, but
excommunicated him in 1809, after the invasion of the Papal States.
Napoleon had him kidnapped and taken to Savona, and thence to
Fontainebleau, where Pope Pius was kept in captivity until 1814. On
returning to his States he had the generosity to give an asylum to the
members of his persecutor's family.--T.
[546] Ercole Cardinal Consalvi (1757-1824), Secretary of State to
Pius VII., and one of the greatest statesmen of the century. He too
signed the famous Concordat, and he too was imprisoned for some time by
Napoleon. He represented the Pope at the Congress of Vienna in 1814.--T.
[547] Charles Emanuel IV., King of Sardinia (1751-1819), succeeded
his father Victor Amedeus III. in 1796, was obliged to surrender his
continental possessions to the French Republic in 1798, and retired to
Sardinia. In 1802 he abdicated and was succeeded by his brother Victor
Emanuel I. He ended his days in Rome as a Jesuit. Charles Emanuel IV.
became Heir in Line of the House of Stuart on the death of the Cardinal
of York (Henry IX.) in 1807, and appears in the Jacobite Calendars as
Charles IV. King of England.--T.
[548] The Abbé Nicolas Silvestre Guillon (1760-1847) had been chaplain,
reader, and librarian to the Princesse de Lamballe. He hid himself
under the Terror and reappeared in 1801 to publish his _Recherches sur
le Concordat_, which caused him to be confined in the Temple for four
months. On returning from Rome he became Professor of Rhetoric at the
new University. In 1810 he was appointed to the Faculty of Theology in
Paris, and for thirty years professed sacred eloquence in that faculty,
of which he ultimately became the dean. He became chaplain to the
Orleans Family in 1818, and in 1831 Louis-Philippe named him for the
See of Beauvais, which, owing to a technical misdemeanour, he was not
allowed to accept. Having confessed his error, he was in the course of
the next year installed as Bishop of Morocco _in partibus._--T.
[549] Marie Thérèse Princesse de Lamballe, _née_ Princesse de
Savoie-Carignan (1749-1792), was murdered at the prison of the Force in
September 1792.--T.
[550] Antoine François Philippe Dubois-Descours, Marquis de La
Maisonfort (1778-1827), had returned from the Emigration at the
commencement of the Consulate, and was arrested and confined in the
island of Elba, whence he escaped to Rome. Under the Restoration,
he sat for a time in Parliament and represented France as Minister
Plenipotentiary at Florence.--B.
[551] Louis François Bertin (1766-1841), usually known as Bertin the
Elder, to distinguish him from his brother Pierre Louis Bertin de Vaux,
together with whom he bought the _Journal des Débats_ in 1799, and
immeasurably improved the property. He was deprived of it in 1811, but
revived the paper in 1814, and vigorously supported the Restoration
until 1830, when he allied himself to Louis-Philippe and the new
monarchy.--T.
[552] Pierre Joseph Briot (1771-1827) opposed Bonaparte in the Council
of the Five Hundred, but nevertheless obtained his appointment as
Government Commissary-General in Elba through the influence of Lucien
Bonaparte. On Napoleon's coronation as Emperor, Briot went to Italy,
and held various offices under Joseph and Joachim Murat, Kings of
Naples. He refused to accept titles or decorations from either of these
monarchs, which is probably the reason why Chateaubriand speaks of him
as "the Republican" Briot.--B.
[553] The Princesse Pauline Borghèse (1780-1825), _née_ Bonaparte,
was Napoleon's second sister. She married General Leclerc in 1797,
and shortly after his death married Prince Camille Borghèse (1803),
from whom she soon separated, leaving Italy to reside at the Château
de Neuilly. She enjoyed the title of Duchess of Guastalla from 1806
to 1814. In the latter year, she devoted herself wholly to Napoleon,
accompanying him to Elba, and placing her diamonds at his disposal.
In her later years, she became reconciled to her husband and lived
with him at Florence. Pauline Borghèse was one of the most beautiful
of women of her time. She sat to Canova for a nude Venus, and was
doubtless in no way shy of "making her toilet" before Chateaubriand.--T.
[554]
"I perish last and most wretched of all!"--T.
[555]
"My days do not warrant the price of a sigh."--T.
[556] Madame de Sévigné's seat in Brittany.--B.
[557] This house stood near the Trinità-del-Monte, and was known by the
name of the Villa Margherita.--B.
[558] Jean Baptiste Louis Georges Seroux d'Agincourt (1730-1814),
a distinguished antiquarian and archæologist. He had been a
farmer-general under Louis XV., and amassed a huge fortune, which
he devoted to study and the cultivation of the arts. After visiting
England, Holland, Germany, and Italy, he settled in Rome, in 1778,
where he became intimate with the Cardinal de Bernis and Azara, the
Spanish Ambassador and art-patron, and compiled his great work, the
_Histoire de l'Art par les Monuments, depuis le IVe siècle
jusqu'au XVIe_, in 6 volumes folio, with 336 plates.--T.
[559] ISAIAS XXII. 18.--T.
[560] Barbara Juliana Baroness Krüdener (1764-1824), _née_ von
Vietinghoff-Scheel, a famous Russian mystic, was married, when fourteen
years of age, to Baron Krüdener, Russian Ambassador in Berlin. After
leading a very dissipated life, and publishing her well-known novel,
_Valérie, ou Lettres de Gustave de Linar à Ernest de G._ (1803),
she suddenly, in 1807, withdrew from the world, gave way to exalted
devotion, and pretended to have received from Heaven a mission for the
regeneration of Christianity. She travelled through Germany, visiting
the prisons, preaching in the open air, and converting men by the
thousand. In 1814, she came into contact with the foreign sovereigns
then in Paris, exercised a great ascendant over the Emperor Alexander,
foretold to him the return of Napoleon from Elba and his ultimate
fall, and inspired him with the idea of the Holy Alliance. She next
resumed her travels through Switzerland and the various States of
Germany, but her extraordinary influence began to be dreaded, and she
was expelled wherever she went. In 1822, she took refuge in the Crimea,
where she founded an institution for sinners and criminals, and died at
Karasu-Bazar on Christmas Day 1824.--T.
[561] Joseph Michaud (1767-1839), author of the _Printemps d'un
proscrit_ and a History of the Crusades, and a member of the French
Academy. In 1795, he was condemned to death for professing Royalist
opinions in his paper, the _Quotidienne_, but succeeded in evading
execution of the sentence, which was revoked in 1796. He was appointed
Press Censor under the Restoration.--T.
[562] The Comte Guillaume de La Luzerne, who in 1787 married Madame de
Beaumont's elder sister, Mademoiselle Victoire de Montmorin, was the
nephew of the Comte de La Luzerne, the ambassador, and son of César
Henri de La Luzerne, Minister of Marine under Louis XVI. Chateaubriand
appears to have confused the two.--B.
[563] The Saint-Germains, husband (Germain Couhaillon) and wife, had
been for thirty-eight years in the service of the Montmorin family.
Chateaubriand afterwards took them into his own service, which they
never left.--B.
[564] Auguste de Montmorin (_d._ 1793), a naval officer, had perished
in a storm when returning from the Mauritius.--B.
[565] Annibale della Genga, Pope Leo XII. (1760-1829), succeeded Pope
Pius VII. in 1823.--T.
[566] This tomb, which faces that of the Cardinal de Bernis at San
Luigi dei Francesi, was erected by Chateaubriand himself at a cost of
some nine thousand francs.--B.
[567] And not in 1827, as is given in all the earlier editions of the
Memoirs. Chateaubriand spent the whole of the year 1827 in Paris. It
was not until 1828, under the Mortignac Ministry, that he was appointed
to the Embassy in Rome.--B.
[568] _Greek Anthology_, VII. 346.--B.
[569] M. de Fontanes' friendship goes much too far: Madame de Beaumont
knew me better; she no doubt felt that, if she had left me her fortune,
I should not have accepted it.--_Author's Note._
[570] Madame de Beaumont left her books to Chateaubriand in her will,
dated Paris, 15 May 1802.--B.
[571] The words italicized are in English.--T.
[572] Baron Matthieu de Staël, Madame de Staël's second son, who died
while still very young.--T.
[573] In 1802, for her opposition to Bonaparte.--T.
[574] Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand Baron von Humboldt
(1767-1835), the eminent Prussian diplomatist and philologist, and the
friend and correspondent of all the literary eminences of his time.--T.
[575] JOHN XI. 44.--T.
[576] The _Lettre à M. de Fontanes_, on the Roman Campagna, is dated to
January 1804, and first appeared in the Mercure de France, in its issue
of March 1804.--B.
[577] Rome, December 1803.--B.
[578] Cf. ROUSSEAU'S _Confessions._--T.
[579] _Gen._ III. 22.--T.
[580] Jean Henri Joachim Hostein Vicomte Lainé (1767-1835) displayed
considerable independence in the Legislative Body, of which he was a
member for the Department of the Gironde. Under the Restoration, he
was Minister of the Interior from 1816 to 1818. In 1823, he was made
a viscount and a peer of France. He had become a member of the French
Academy in 1818, although he had never produced any literary work,
properly speaking.--T.
[581] _Martyrs_, V.--B.
[582] Antonio Canova (1757-1822), the famous sculptor. In 1819 he was
sent to Paris as a special ambassador from the Pope.--T.
[583] Now the Hôtel de France et de Lorraine, at No. 5, Rue de
Beaune.--B.
[584] Not the 20th, as the previous editions and the manuscript of the
Memoirs have it. This was clearly a slip of the pen. The execution of
the Duc d'Enghien took place, not on the 20th, but on the 21st of March
1804.--B.
[585] Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne (1769-1834), private
secretary to Napoleon I. and Minister of State under Louis XVIII. The
Revolution of 1830 and the consequent loss of his fortune caused him
to lose his reason, and he died in a madhouse. His Memoirs, written by
himself and revised by M. de Villemarest were published in ten volumes,
1829-1831.--T.
[586] _Mémoires de M. de Bourrienne_, vol. V. p. 348.--B.
[587] Here again the manuscript gives the 20th of March in error.--B.
[588] Chateaubriand's letter of resignation ran as follows:
"CITIZEN MINISTER,
"The doctors have just stated that Madame de Chateaubriand's
state of health is such as to raise fears for her life. As
it is absolutely impossible for me to leave my wife in these
circumstances, or to expose her to the danger of a journey,
I beg Your Excellency to approve that I return to you the
credentials and instructions which you have sent me for the
Valais. I also trust to your extreme kindness to persuade the
First Consul to accept _the painful reasons_ which prevent me
to-day from undertaking the mission with which he was pleased
to honour me. As I do not know whether my position requires
me to take any other steps, I venture to appeal to your usual
indulgence, Citizen Minister, for orders and advice; I shall
receive these with the gratitude which I shall not cease to
feel for your past kindnesses.
"I have the honour to greet you respectfully,
"CHATEAUBRIAND.
"HÔTEL DE FRANCE, RUE DE BEAUNE, PARIS.
"1 _Germinal Year XII_ [22 _March_ 1804]."--B.
[589] Moreau had been arrested on the 15th of February; Pichegru on the
28th of February; and Georges Cadoudal on the 9th of March 1804.--B.
[590] Jean Claude Clausel de Coussergues (1759-1846), a distinguished
magistrate and orator. Under the Restoration, he became a deputy and
a member of the Court of Appeal. He resigned after the Revolution of
1830.--B.
[591] _Prov._ VI. 17.--T.
[592] JOHN VIII. 43.--T.
[593] Talleyrand's letter did not arrive until ten days after the
letter of resignation, and was thus worded:
"12 _Germinal_ [2 _April_ 1804].
"CITIZEN,
"I have brought to the notice of the First Consul the motives
which prevent you from accepting the Legation in the Valais,
to which you had been appointed.
"The Citizen Consul had been pleased to give you a proof of
confidence. The same feelings of good-will have caused him
to learn with regret the reasons which do not permit you to
fulfill that mission.
"I must also express to you the great interest which I
attached to the new relations which I should have had to
maintain with you; and to this regret, which is personal to
myself, I add that of seeing my department deprived of your
talents and services."--B.
BOOK III[594]
Death of the Duc d'Enghien--The year 1804--General Hulin--The Duc de
Rovigo--M. de Talleyrand--Part played by each--Bonaparte, his sophistry
and remorse--Conclusions to be drawn from the whole story--Enmities
engendered by the death of the Duc D'Enghien--An article in the
_Mercure_--Change in the life of Bonaparte.
Like the migratory birds, I am seized in the month of October with a
restlessness which would oblige me to change my clime, were I still
strong on the wing and swift as the hours: the clouds flitting across
the sky make me long to flee. In order to cheat this instinct, I made
for Chantilly. I have wandered on the lawn, where old keepers crawl
along the border of the woods. Some crows, flying in front of me over
broom, coppice and glades, have led me to the Commelle Ponds. Death
has breathed upon the friends who used to accompany me to the castle
of Queen Blanche[595]: the sites of these solitudes were but a sad
horizon, half-opened for a moment on the side of my past. In the days
of René, I should have found mysteries of life in the little stream of
the Thève: it steals hidden among horse-tails and mosses; reeds screen
it from sight; it dies in the ponds which it feeds with its youth, ever
expiring, ever renewed: those ripples used to charm me when I bore
within myself the desert with the phantoms which smiled to me, for all
their melancholy, and which I decked with flowers.
Walking back along the hedges, now scarcely traced, I was surprised by
the rain; I took shelter beneath a beech: its last leaves were falling
like my years; its top was stripping itself like my head; its trunk
was marked with a red circle, to be cut down like myself. Now that
I have returned to my inn, with a harvest of autumn plants and in a
mood little suited for joy, I will tell you of the death of M. le Duc
d'Enghien while within sight of the ruins of Chantilly.
*
[Sidenote: Protest of Louis XVIII.]
This death at first froze all hearts with terror; men dreaded a return
of the reign of Robespierre. Paris thought it was seeing again one
of those days which men do not see more than once, the day of the
execution of Louis XVI. Bonaparte's servants, friends and family were
struck with consternation. Abroad, though the language of diplomacy
promptly stifled the popular feeling, the latter none the less stirred
the hearts of the crowd. In the exiled family of the Bourbons, the
blow struck through and through: Louis XVIII. returned to the King of
Spain[596] the Order of the Golden Fleece, with which Bonaparte had
just been decorated; it was accompanied by a letter which did honour to
the royal mind:
"SIR AND DEAR COUSIN,
"There can be nothing in common between me and the great
criminal whom audacity and fortune have placed on a throne
which he has had the barbarity to stain with the blood of a
Bourbon, the Duc d'Enghien. Religion may prompt me to forgive
an assassin; but the tyrant of my people must always be my
enemy. Providence, for inexplicable reasons, can condemn me
to end my days in exile; but never shall my contemporaries
nor posterity be able to say that I showed myself in time of
adversity unworthy to occupy, till my last breath, the throne
of my ancestors."
We must not forget another name connected with that of the Duc
d'Enghien: Gustavus Adolphus[597], since dethroned and exiled, was the
only one of the kings then reigning who dared to raise a voice to save
the young French Prince. He dispatched an aide-de-camp from Carlsruhe
bearing a letter for Bonaparte; the letter arrived too late: the last
of the Condés was no more. Gustavus Adolphus returned the ribbon of the
Black Eagle to the King of Prussia[598], as Louis XVIII. had returned
the Golden Fleece to the King of Spain. Gustavus declared to the heir
of Frederic the Great that, "according to the laws of chivalry, he
could not consent to be the brother-in-arms of the butcher of the Duc
d'Enghien[599]." There is an inexpressibly bitter irony in these almost
mad memories of chivalry, everywhere extinct, save in the heart of an
unhappy king for a murdered friend; honour to the noble sympathies of
misfortune, which stand aloof, not understood, in a world unknown to
men!
Alas, we had undergone too many different tyrannies; our characters,
broken by a succession of hardships and oppressions, lacked sufficient
energy to allow our grief long to wear mourning for the death of
young Condé: gradually the tears dried up; fear overflowed with
congratulations on the dangers from which the First Consul had just
escaped; it wept with gratitude at having been saved by a so sacred
immolation. Nero[600], at Seneca's[601] dictation, wrote to the Senate
a letter of apology for the murder of Agrippina[602]; the Senators,
delighted, heaped blessings upon the magnanimous son who had not feared
to pluck out his heart by so salutary an act of parricide! Society soon
returned to its pleasures; it was afraid of its mourning: after the
Terror, the victims who had been spared danced, forced themselves to
appear happy and, fearing lest they should be suspected guilty of the
crime of memory, displayed the same gaiety as when they went to the
scaffold.
[Sidenote: The Duc D'Enghien's arrest.]
The Duc d'Enghien was not arrested point-blank and without
precautions: Bonaparte had had a report drawn up of the number of
Bourbons in Europe. In a council to which Messieurs de Talleyrand and
Fouché were summoned, it was recognised that the Duc d'Angoulême was at
Warsaw, with Louis XVIII.; the Comte d'Artois and the Duc de Berry in
London, with the Princes de Condé and de Bourbon. The youngest of the
Condés was at Ettenheim, in the Duchy of Baden. It was found that two
English agents, Messrs. Taylor and Drake, had conducted intrigues in
that quarter. On the 16th of June 1803 the Duc de Bourbon[603] warned
his grandson against a possible arrest by means of a note addressed
to him from London, which is still preserved. Bonaparte summoned the
two Consuls, his colleagues, to his side. He first bitterly reproached
M. Réal[604] for having left him in ignorance of what was being
planned against him. He patiently listened to the objections. The
one to express himself with the greatest vigour was Cambacérès[605].
Bonaparte thanked him and took no further notice. This is what I have
seen in the Memoirs of Cambacérès, which one of his nephews, M. de
Cambacérès, a peer of France, has permitted me to consult with an
obligingness of which I retain a grateful recollection. The bomb once
thrown does not return: it goes where the engineer flings it, and
falls. To execute Bonaparte's orders, it was necessary to violate the
territory of Germany, and the territory was violated forthwith. The
Duc d'Enghien was arrested at Ettenheim. With him were found, instead
of General Dumouriez, only the Marquis de Thumery and some other
Emigrants of little note: this ought to have shown the mistake. The Duc
d'Enghien was taken to Strasburg. The beginning of the catastrophe of
Vincennes has been narrated by the Prince himself: he has left a little
road-journal from Ettenheim to Strasburg; the hero of the tragedy steps
before the curtain to recite this prologue:
"Thursday 15 March, at Ettenheim, my house surrounded," says
the Prince, "by a detachment of dragoons and some pickets of
gendarmes, total about two hundred men, two generals, the
colonel of the dragoons, Colonel Chariot of the Strasburg
Gendarmerie, at five o'clock[606]. At half-past five, doors
broken in, taken to the Mill, near the Tile-works. My papers
taken away, sealed up. Taken in a cart, between two lines of
fusiliers, to the Rhine. Put on board a boat for Rhisnau.
Landed and marched on foot as far as Pfortsheim. Breakfasted
at the inn. Got into a carriage with Colonel Chariot, the
quarter-master of the gendarmes, a gendarme on the box and
Grunstein. Arrived at Strasburg, at Colonel Chariot's,
about half-past five. Transferred half an hour after, in a
hackney-coach, to the citadel.
. . . . . . . .
"Sunday 18, they come to fetch me at half-past one in the
morning. They do not give me time to dress. I embrace my
unhappy companions, my servants. I leave alone with two
officers of gendarmes and two gendarmes. Colonel Chariot
told me that we were going to the general of division,
who has received orders from Paris. Instead of that, I
find a carriage with six post-horses in the Church Square.
Lieutenant Petermann gets in beside me, Blitersdorff the
quarter-master on the box, two gendarmes inside, the other
out."
Here the ship-wrecked man, on the point of being engulfed, interrupts
his log.
The carriage arrived at about four o'clock in the evening at one of the
barriers of the capital, where the Strasburg road ends, and instead
of driving into Paris, followed the outer boulevard and stopped at
Vincennes Castle. The Prince alighted from the carriage in the inner
court-yard and was taken to a room of the fortress, where he was locked
in and went to sleep. As the Prince was approaching Paris, Bonaparte
affected an air of calmness which was not natural.
On the 18th of March, which was Palm Sunday, he went to the Malmaison.
Madame Bonaparte[607], who, with all her family, was informed of the
Prince's arrest, spoke to him of this arrest. Bonaparte replied:
"You don't understand politics."
Colonel Savary[608] had become one of Bonaparte's intimates. Why?
Because he had seen the First Consul weep at Marengo. Exceptional
men should distrust their tears, which place them beneath the yoke
of vulgar men. Tears are one of those weaknesses which enable an
eyewitness to make himself master of a great man's resolutions.
[Sidenote: He is taken to Vincennes.]
They say that the First Consul himself had all the orders for Vincennes
drawn up. One of these orders provided that, if the expected sentence
was a death sentence, it was to be executed on the spot.
I believe this version, although I cannot vouch for its truth, since
those orders are missing. Madame de Rémusat[609], who was playing chess
with the First Consul at the Malmaison on the evening of the 20th of
March, heard him mutter some verses on the clemency of Augustus[610];
she thought that Bonaparte was coming to himself again and that the
Prince was saved[611]. No, destiny had pronounced its oracle!
When Savary reappeared at Malmaison, Madame Bonaparte divined the whole
misfortune. The First Consul had locked himself up alone for many
hours. And then the wind blew, and all was ended.
*
An order of Bonaparte, dated 29 Ventôse, Year XII[612], had decreed
that a military commission, consisting of seven members appointed by
General the Governor of Paris[613] should meet at Vincennes to try
"the _ci-devant_ Duc d'Enghien, accused of bearing arms against the
Republic," etc.
In fulfilment of this decree, Joachim Murat on the same day, 29
Ventôse, appointed the seven officers who were to form the said
commission, namely:
General Hulin[614], commanding the Foot Grenadiers of the Consular
Guard, president;
Colonel Guitton, commanding the 1st Regiment of Cuirassiers;
Colonel Bazancourt, commanding the 4th Regiment of Light Infantry;
Colonel Ravier, commanding the 18th Regiment of Infantry of the Line;
Colonel Barrois, commanding the 96th Regiment of Infantry of the Line;
Colonel Rabbe, commanding the 2nd Regiment of the Municipal Guard of
Paris;
Citizen Dautancourt, Major of the Gendarmerie d'Élite, with the
functions of captain-judge-advocate.
Captain Dautancourt, Major Jacquin of the Légion d'Élite, two foot
gendarmes of the same corps, Lerva and Tharsis, and Citizen Noirot, a
lieutenant in the same corps, went to the Duc d'Enghien's and awoke
him: he had but four hours to wait before returning to his sleep. The
judge-advocate, assisted by Molin, a captain in the 18th Regiment,
chosen as registrar by the aforesaid judge-advocate, examined the
Prince.
[Sidenote: And examined.]
_Asked_: His surname, Christian names, age, and birthplace?
_Answered_: That his name was Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon, Duc
d'Enghien, born 2 August 1772 at Chantilly.
_Asked_: Where he had resided since he left France?
_Answered_: That, after accompanying his relations, Condé's Corps
having been formed, he had served through the whole war, and that,
before that, he had been through the campaign of 1792, in Brabant, with
Bourbon's Corps.
_Asked_: If he had not gone to England, and if that Power did not still
allow him a salary?
_Answered_: That he had never been there; that England still allowed
him his pay, which was all he had to live upon.
_Asked_: What rank he filled in Condé's Army?
_Answered_: Commander of the Advance Guard in 1796; before that
campaign, as a volunteer at his grandfather's headquarters; and, ever
since 1796, Commander of the Advance Guard.
_Asked_: If he knew General Pichegru, and if he had had relations with
him?
_Answered_: "I have never seen him, to my knowledge. I have had no
relations with him. I know that he wished to see me. I am glad that I
never knew him, because of the base methods which he is said to have
wished to employ, if true."
_Asked_: If he knew ex-General Dumouriez, and if he had had relations
with him?
_Answered_: "Not with him either."
*
"Whence," continues the report, "were drawn up these presents, which
have been signed by the Duc d'Enghien, Major Jacquin, Lieutenant
Noirot, the two gendarmes, and captain-judge-advocate.
"Before signing this present report the Duc d'Enghien said:
"'I earnestly make a request to be granted a private audience of the
First Consul. My name, my rank, my way of thinking and the horror of my
situation make me hope that he will not refuse my request.'"
At two o'clock on the morning of the 21st of March, the Duc d'Enghien
was taken to the room in which the commission sat, and repeated what
he had said in examination by the judge-advocate. He persisted in his
declaration: he added that he was willing to make war, and that he
wished for service in the new war of England against France.
"Asked whether he had anything to put forward in the plea of his
defense; answered that he had nothing more to say.
"The president ordered the prisoner to withdraw; the council
deliberated with closed doors; the president took the votes, commencing
with the junior in rank; next, the president having given his opinion
last, the Duc d'Enghien was unanimously declared guilty, and the
Court applied Article ... of the law of the... thus worded.... and
in consequence condemned him to the penalty of death. Ordered, on
the demand of the captain-judge-advocate, that the present sentence,
after being read to the condemned man, shall be executed directly, in
presence of the different detachments of the corps of the garrison.
"Given, concluded, and tried at one sitting, at Vincennes, on the day,
month and year as above, as witness our hands."
*
The grave having been "dug, filled up, and closed," ten years of
forgetfulness, of general assent and of unexampled glory sat down upon
it; the grass sprang up to the sound of the salvoes which proclaimed
victories, by the light of the illuminations which shed their lustre
over the pontifical coronation, the marriage of the daughter of the
Cæsars[615], and the birth of the King of Rome[616]. Only some rare
sympathizers rambled in the wood, hazarding a furtive glance at the
bottom of the moat in the direction of the lamentable spot, while a few
prisoners watched them from the top of the donjon in which they were
confined. Then came the Restoration: the earth of the tomb was stirred,
and with it men's consciences; each then thought it his duty to explain
himself.
[Illustration: Duc D'Enghien.]
M. Dupin the Elder[617] published his Discussion; M. Hulin, the
president of the military commission, spoke; M. le Duc de Rovigo
entered into the controversy by accusing M. de Talleyrand; a third
party replied on behalf of M. de Talleyrand; and Napoleon raised his
mighty voice on the rock of St. Helena.
These documents must be reproduced and studied, in order to assign to
each the part due to him and the place which he should occupy in this
drama. It is night, and we are at Chantilly; it was night when the Duc
d'Enghien was at Vincennes.
[Sidenote: M. Dupin's pamphlet.]
When M. Dupin published his pamphlet he sent it to me with the
following letter:
"PARIS, 10 _November_ 1823.
"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,
"Pray accept a copy of my publication relative to the murder
of the Duc d'Enghien.
"It would have appeared long ago, had I not desired above all
to respect the wish of Monseigneur le Duc de Bourbon, who,
having been informed of my work, had communicated to me his
desire that this deplorable affair might not be disinterred.
"But Providence having permitted others to take the
initiative, it has become necessary to make the truth known,
and after assuring myself that it was no longer insisted that
I should remain silent, I have spoken with frankness and
sincerity.
"I have the honour to be, with profound respect,
"monsieur le vicomte,
"Your Excellency's most humble and obedient servant,
"DUPIN."
M. Dupin, whom I congratulated and thanked, revealed in his covering
letter an unknown and touching instance of the noble and merciful
virtues of the victim's father. M. Dupin commences his pamphlet thus:
"The death of the unfortunate Duc d'Enghien is one of the
most afflicting events that ever befel the French nation: it
dishonoured the consular government.
"A young prince, in the flower of his age, surprised by
treachery on foreign soil, where he was sleeping in peace
under the protection of the Law of Nations; dragged violently
to France; indicted before pretended judges, who could in
no case be his; accused of imaginary crimes; denied the
assistance of counsel; examined and sentenced behind closed
doors; put to death at night in the moat of the castle which
was used as a State prison; so many virtues unheeded, such
fond hopes destroyed, will ever stamp this catastrophe as one
of the most revolting acts that an absolute government ever
ventured to commit.
"If no form was respected; if the judges were incompetent;
if they did not even take the trouble to mention in their
judgment the date and text of the laws upon which they
affected to ground their condemnation; if the unhappy Duc
d'Enghien was shot in pursuance of a sentence _signed in
blank._... and only made regular after execution! then we
have to do not only with the innocent victim of judicial
error; the thing assumes its true name: it is an odious
murder."
This eloquent exordium brings M. Dupin to the examination of the
documents. He first proves the illegality of the arrest: the Duc
d'Enghien was not arrested in France; he was in no way a prisoner of
war, since he had not been taken with arms in his hands; he was not a
prisoner in the civil sense, for no extradition had been demanded; it
was a violent seizure of the person, comparable to the captures made
by the pirates of Tunis and Algiers, an inroad of robbers, _incursio
latronum._
The jurist proceeds to discuss the incompetency of the military
commission: cognizance of alleged plots hatched against the State has
never been conferred upon military commissions.
Next follows the analysis of the judgment.
*
"The examination," continues M. Dupin, "took place on the 29
Ventôse at midnight. On the 30 Ventôse, at two o'clock in the
morning, the Duc d'Enghien was brought before the military
commission.
"On the minutes of the judgment we read, 'This day, the 30
Ventôse, Year XII of the Republic, _at two o'clock in the
morning._' The words, 'at two o'clock in the morning,' which
were only inserted because it was in fact that time, are
obliterated on the minutes without being replaced by any
other indication.
"Not a single witness was heard or produced against the
prisoner.
"The accused 'was declared guilty!' Guilty of what? The
judgment does not say.
"Every judgment that pronounces a penalty is bound to contain
a reference to the law by virtue of which such penalty is
inflicted.
[Sidenote: A scathing indictment.]
"Well, in this case, none of these forms has been fulfilled:
nothing in the official report bears witness that the
commissioners had _a copy of the law_ before them; nothing
shows that the president _read the text_ of the law before
applying it. Far from it: the judgment in its material form
affords the proof that the commissioners convicted without
knowing either the date or the tenor of the law; for, in
the minutes of the judgment, they have _left in blank_ the
date of the law, the number of the article, and the place
in which the precise words should have been quoted. And yet
it was on the minutes of a sentence framed in this state of
imperfection that the noblest blood was shed by butchers!
"The deliberation must be secret, but the judgment must be
pronounced in public: again, it is the law that speaks. Now
the judgment of the 30 Ventôse certainly says, 'The council
deliberated _with closed doors_;' but it does not mention
that the doors were opened again, or intimate that the result
of the deliberation was pronounced in a public sitting. Even
had it said so, who would believe it? A public sitting at two
o'clock in the morning, in the donjon of Vincennes, while
all the issues of the castle were being guarded by gendarmes
d'élite! But the fact is that they did not even take the
precaution to resort to a lie: the judgment is silent on this
point.
"This judgment is signed by the president and the six other
commissioners, including the judge-advocate; but observe
that the minutes _are not signed by the registrar_, whose
concurrence, however, is necessary to give them authenticity.
"The sentence concludes with this terrible formula:
'_shall be executed_ FORTHWITH, _under the care of the
captain-judge-advocate._'
"FORTHWITH! Cruel word, the work of the judges! FORTHWITH!
And an express law, that of the 15 Brumaire, Year VI, granted
the right of appeal for a new trial against any military
judgment!"
Passing to the execution, M. Dupin continues as follows:
"Examined at night and tried at night, the Duc d'Enghien
was also killed at night. This horrible sacrifice was to be
consummated in the dark, in order that it might be said that
all laws had been infringed, all, even those which prescribed
that executions shall take place in public."
The jurist comes to the irregularities in the preliminaries:
"Article 19 of the law of the 13 Brumaire, Year V, declares
that, after closing the examination, the judge-advocate shall
tell the prisoner to 'choose a friend as his defender.' The
prisoner shall have 'the power to choose that defender' among
every class of citizen present on the spot; if he declares
that he is unable to make that choice, the judge-advocate
shall make it for him.
"Ah, no doubt the Prince had no _friends_[618] among those
who surrounded him; this fact was cruelly declared to him by
one of the abettors of that horrible scene!... Alas, why were
we not present! Why was the prince not allowed to make an
appeal to the bar of Paris! There he would have found friends
of his unhappiness, defenders of his misfortune. ... It was
apparently with a view to making the judgment presentable
in the eyes of the public that a new edition was drawn up
at leisure.... The tardy substitution of a second form of
judgment, in appearance more regular than the first (although
equally unjust), in no way detracts from the heinousness of
having put the Duc d'Enghien to death by virtue of a rough
draft of a judgment, hastily signed, and not even signed by
all the requisite parties."
*
Such is M. Dupin's luminous pamphlet. Nevertheless I do not know
that, in an act of the nature of that which the author examines, the
greater or lesser regularity holds an important place: whether the
Duc d'Enghien was strangled in a post-chaise between Strasburg and
Paris or killed in the wood of Vincennes makes no difference. But is
it not providential to see men, after long years, some showing the
irregularity of a murder in which they had taken no part, others
hastening, unasked, to the bar of public accusal? What, then have they
heard? What voice from on high has summoned them to appear?
*
After the great jurist, here comes a blind veteran: he has commanded
the Grenadiers of the Old Guard; what that means brave men know. His
last wound he received from Malet[619], whose powerless lead remained
lost in a face which had never turned from the fire. "Afflicted with
blindness, withdrawn from the world, consoled only by the care of his
family," to use his own words, the judge of the Duc d'Enghien appears
to issue from his tomb at the call of the sovereign judge; he pleads
his cause[620] without self-delusion or excuses:
[Sidenote: General Hulin's pamphlet.]
"Let there be no mistake," he says, "as to my intentions. I
am not writing through fear, since my person is under the
protection of laws emanating from the Throne itself, and
since, under the government of a righteous king, I have
nothing to dread from violence or lawlessness.... I write to
tell the truth, even in what may be to my own detriment! So I
do not pretend to justify even the form or the substance of
the judgment; but I wish to show under what a powerful union
of circumstances it was delivered; I wish to remove from
myself and my colleagues the suspicion of having acted as
party men. If we are still to receive blame, I wish also that
men should say of us:
"'They were very unfortunate.'"
*
General Hulin asserts that he was appointed president of a military
commission without knowing its object; that when he arrived at
Vincennes he was no wiser; that the other members of the commission
knew as little; that M. Harel[621], the governor of the castle, told
him, on being asked, that he knew nothing himself, adding:
"What can I do? I am nobody here now. Everything is done without my
orders or participation: another man is in command here."
It was ten o'clock at night when General Hulin was relieved from
his uncertainty by the communication of the documents. The hearing
was opened at midnight, when the examination of the prisoner by the
judge-advocate had been finished.
"The reading of the documents," says the president of the
commission, "gave rise to an incident. We observed that, at
the end of his examination before the judge-advocate, the
Prince, before signing, _wrote with his own hand some lines
in which he expressed a wish to have an explanation with the
First Consul._ One of the members proposed that this request
should be forwarded to the Government. The commission agreed;
but at the same moment General --------, who had come and
placed himself behind my chair, pointed out to us that this
request was 'inopportune.' Moreover, we found no provision in
the law authorizing us to suspend judgment. The commission
therefore proceeded, reserving to itself the right to satisfy
the prisoner's wishes after the trial."
*
So far General Hulin. Now, in a pamphlet by the Duc de Rovigo we read
the following passage:
"There were, indeed, so many people that, as I arrived among
the last, I found it difficult to make my way to the back of
the president's chair, where I ultimately placed myself."
And so it was the Duc de Rovigo who had "placed himself behind the
chair" of the president? But had he, or any other not forming one
of the commission, the right to interfere in the proceedings of the
commission, and to point out that a request was "inopportune"?
Let us hear the commander of the Grenadiers of the Old Guard speak of
the courage of the young son of the Condés; he was a judge of it:
[Sidenote: The Duc D'Enghien's courage.]
"I proceeded to examine the prisoner; I must say that
he stood up to us with a noble confidence, spurned the
accusation that he had been directly or indirectly implicated
in a plot to assassinate the First Consul; but also admitted
that he had borne arms against France, saying, with a courage
and a pride which did not for a moment permit us, in his
own interest, to shake him on this point, 'that he had
supported the rights of his family, and that a Condé could
never re-enter France without arms in his hands. My birth and
convictions,' he added, 'make me for ever the enemy of your
government.'
"His resolute confessions distressed his judges to the
utmost. Ten times did we give him the opportunity to revise
his statements, but throughout he persisted unshaken:
"'I perceive,' he said at intervals, 'the honourable
intentions of the members of the commission; but I cannot
avail myself of the terms they offer me.'
"And on being warned that military commissions judged without
appeal:
"'I know that,' he replied, 'and I am quite aware of the
danger which I am running; I only wish to have an interview
with the First Consul.'"
Does the whole of our history contain a more pathetic page? New
France sitting in judgment upon Old France, doing homage to her,
presenting arms to her, saluting her colours, even while condemning
her; the tribunal set up in the fortress in which the great Condé,
when a prisoner, cultivated flowers; the General of the Grenadiers
of Bonaparte's Guard seated face to face with the last descendant of
the victor of Rocroi, feeling himself moved with admiration before
the prisoner left without a defender and abandoned by the world,
questioning him while the sound of the gravedigger digging the grave
mingled with the young soldier's firm replies! A few days after the
execution, General Hulin exclaimed:
"Oh, the brave young man! What courage! I should like to die like that!"
General Hulin, after speaking of the "minutes" and of the "second
edition" of the judgment, says:
"As to the second edition, the only true one, as it did not
convey the order _for immediate execution, but only for the
immediate reading of the judgment_ to the condemned man,
the immediate execution could not have been the act of the
commission, but only of those who took upon themselves the
responsibility of hastening the fatal execution.
"Alas, our thoughts were engaged elsewhere! The judgment was
scarcely signed when I began to write a letter in which, with
the unanimous consent of the commission, I wrote to inform
the First Consul of the desire which the Prince had expressed
to have an interview with him, and also to entreat him to
remit a penalty which the difficulty of our position did not
permit us to elude.
"At that moment a man, who had never left the council-hall,
and whom I would name at once did I not consider that, even
when defending myself, I ought not to become an accuser,
approached me and asked:
"'What are you doing there?'
"'I am writing to the First Consul,' I replied, 'to convey to
him the wishes of the council and of the condemned man.'
"'Your business is done,' said he, taking the pen; 'this is
now my affair.'
"I protest that I thought, as did several of my colleagues,
that he meant to say, 'This is my affair, to inform the First
Consul.' Taken in this sense, the reply left us the hope that
the information would be none the less conveyed. And how
could it have occurred to us that there was any one among us
_that had orders to neglect the formalities prescribed by
law?_"
The whole secret of this mournful catastrophe lies in this deposition.
The veteran who, in daily expectation of dying on the battlefield, had
learned from death the language of truth, concludes with these final
words:
"I was talking of what had just happened, in the lobby
adjoining the hall in which we had deliberated. Separate
conversations were going forward; I was waiting for my
carriage, which had not been allowed to drive into the inner
court-yard, nor had those of the other members, thus delaying
my departure and theirs. We were closed in, none of us having
means to communicate with the outside, when an explosion was
heard: a terrible noise that resounded at the bottom of our
souls and froze them with terror and affright.
"Yes, I swear, in the name of all my colleagues, that this
execution was not authorized by us: our judgment stated
that a copy of it should be sent to the Minister for War,
to the Chief Judge the Minister for Justice, and to the
General-in-Chief the Governor of Paris.
"The order of execution could be given regularly only by
the last-named; the copies had not yet been dispatched;
they could not be finished before a portion of the day had
elapsed. On my return to Paris I should have gone in search
of the Governor, the First Consul, anybody! And suddenly
a dreadful sound comes to reveal to us that the Prince no
longer lives!
"We did not know whether he who so cruelly hastened on
this fatal execution _had orders: if he had none, he alone
was responsible; if he had orders, the commission, knowing
nothing of those orders, the commission, forcibly and
illegally detained_, the commission, whose last wish was for
the Prince's safety, could neither foresee nor prevent their
effect. It cannot be accused of the result.
"The lapse of twenty years has not allayed the bitterness of
my regret!... Let me be accused of ignorance, of error, I
acquiesce; let me be reproached with an obedience from which
to-day, under similar circumstances, I should certainly know
how to escape; with my attachment to a man whom I thought
destined to promote the happiness of my country; with my
loyalty to a government which I then considered lawful, and
which had received my oath; but let some allowance be made to
me, and also to my colleagues, for the fatal circumstances
under which we were summoned to decide."
A weak defense, but you repent, general: peace be with you! If your
sentence became the marching-orders of the last of the Condés, you will
join the last conscript of our old mother-land in the advance-guard
of the dead. The young soldier will gladly share his couch with the
grenadier of the Old Guard: the France of Freiburg[622] and the France
of Marengo will sleep together.
[Sidenote: Enter the Duc de Rovigo.]
M. le Duc de Rovigo, beating his breast, takes his place in the
procession that comes to confess at the tomb. I had long been under the
power of the Minister of Police; he fell under the influence which
he supposed to be restored to me on the return of the Legitimacy:
he communicated a portion of his Memoirs to me. Men in his position
speak with wonderful candour of what they have done; they have no
idea of what they are saying against themselves: accusing themselves
without perceiving it, they do not suspect the existence of an opinion
differing from theirs, both as regards the functions which they had
undertaken and the line of conduct which they have observed. If
they have been wanting in loyalty, they do not think that they have
broken their oath; if they have taken upon themselves parts which are
repugnant to other characters, they believe that they have done great
services. Their ingenuousness does not justify them, but it excuses
them.
M. le Duc de Rovigo consulted me on the chapters in which he treats of
the death of the Duc d'Enghien: he wished to know my mind, precisely
because he knew how I had acted; I valued this mark of his esteem and,
repaying frankness with frankness, I advised him to publish nothing:
"Leave all this," said I, "to die out; in France, oblivion is not slow
in coming. You imagine that you will clear Napoleon of a reproach, and
throw back the fault upon M. de Talleyrand; but you do not sufficiently
exonerate the former, nor do you sufficiently accuse the latter. You
lay yourself open to attack from your enemies; they will not fail to
reply to you. Why need you remind the public that you were in command
of the Gendarmerie d'Élite at Vincennes? They were not aware of the
direct part which you played in this fatal deed, and now you tell them
of it. Throw the manuscript into the fire, general: I speak in your own
interest."
Steeped in the maxims of the imperial government, the Duc de Rovigo
thought that those maxims could be as well applied to the legitimate
throne; he felt convinced that his pamphlet[623] would reopen the doors
of the Tuileries to him.
It is partly by the light of this publication that posterity will trace
the outlines of the phantoms of grief. I offered to hide the suspect
who had come to ask shelter of me during the night; he did not accept
the protection of my house.
M. de Rovigo tells the story of the departure of M. de
Caulaincourt[624], whom he does not mention by name: he speaks of the
kidnapping at Ettenheim, the prisoner's passing through Strasburg, and
his arrival at Vincennes. After an expedition on the coast of Normandy,
General Savary had returned to the Malmaison. He was summoned, at
five o'clock in the evening of the 19th of March 1804, to the closet
of the First Consul, who handed him a sealed letter to be carried to
General Murat, the Governor of Paris. He flew to the general, crossing
with the Minister of Foreign Relations on his way, and received the
order to take the Gendarmerie d'Élite and go to Vincennes. He went
there at eight o'clock in the evening, in time to see the members of
the commission arrive. He soon made his way into the hall where the
Prince was being tried, at one o'clock in the morning of the 21st,
and took a seat behind the president. He gives the Duc d'Enghien's
replies in about the same terms as they are given in the report of
the one sitting. He told me that the Prince, after making his final
explanations, with a quick movement took off his cap, laid it on the
table and, with the air of a man resigning his life, said to the
president:
[Sidenote: His pitiful defense.]
"I have nothing more to say, sir."
M. de Rovigo insists upon it that this sitting was in no way secret:
"The doors of the hall," he declares, "were open and free to any who
cared to attend _at that hour._"
M. Dupin had already pointed out the confusion of this argument. In
this connection M. Achille Roche[625], who appears to write for M. de
Talleyrand, exclaims:
"The sitting was in no way secret! At midnight! Held in the inhabited
portion of the castle, in the inhabited portion of a prison! Who, then,
was present at this sitting? Gaolers, soldiers, executioners!"
*
No one was in a position to give more exact details concerning the
moment and place of the thunder-clap than M. le Duc de Rovigo; let us
hear what he says:
"After sentence had been pronounced, I withdrew with the officers of
my corps, who like myself had been present during the proceedings,
and joined the troops stationed on the esplanade of the castle. The
officer who commanded the infantry of my legion came and told me, with
deep emotion, that a piquet of men was required of him to execute the
sentence of the military commission:
"'Give it,' I replied.
"'But where am I to post it?'
"'Where you may be sure to hurt nobody.'
"For already the roads were full of inhabitants of the populous
environs of Paris on their way to attend the different markets.
"After carefully examining the ground, the officer chose the moat as
the place where there was least danger of any one being hurt. M. le Duc
d'Enghien was taken there by the stairs of the entrance-tower, on the
park side, and there heard the sentence pronounced, which was put into
effect."
*
Below this paragraph, the author of the memorial appends the following
footnote:
"Between the passing of the sentence and its execution, a grave was
dug, which gave rise to the report that it had been prepared prior to
the judgment."
Unfortunately, we meet here with deplorable inaccuracies:
"M. de Rovigo contends," says M. Achille Roche, M. de
Talleyrand's apologist, "that he obeyed orders! Who conveyed
to him the order for the execution? It appears that it was
a certain M. Delga, killed at Wagram. But whether it be M.
Delga or not, if M. Savary is mistaken in mentioning M. Delga
to us, no one, doubtless, to-day, will lay claim to the fame
conferred upon that officer. M. de Rovigo is accused of
having hastened the execution; it was not he, he replies: a
man who is now dead told him that orders had been given to
hasten it."
The Duc de Rovigo is not well inspired on the subject of the execution,
which he describes as taking place in daylight; that would, besides,
have altered nothing in the fact, and would simply mean the absence of
a torch at the punishment.
"At the hour of sunrise, in the open air," asks the general, "what
need was there for a lantern to see a man _at six paces!_ Not that
the sun," he adds, "was altogether bright and clear; a fine rain had
fallen all night, and a damp mist still retarded, in some degree, its
appearance. The execution took place at six o'clock in the morning:
this fact is witnessed by irrefutable documents."
*
[Sidenote: The execution.]
But the general neither produces these documents nor tells us where to
find them. The course of the trial shows that the Duc d'Enghien was
tried at two o'clock in the morning and shot forthwith. Those words,
"two o'clock in morning," which originally appeared on the first
minutes of the sentence, were subsequently erased from the minutes.
The official report of the exhumation proves, by the depositions of
three witnesses, Madame Bon, the Sieur Godard and the Sieur Bounelet
(the latter had helped to dig the grave), that the death penalty was
effected at night. M. Dupin the Elder records the circumstance of a
lantern fastened over the Duc d'Enghien's heart to serve as a mark, or
held, with the same object, in the Prince's firm hand. Stories were
told of a heavy stone taken from the grave with which the victim's head
was crushed in. Lastly, the Duc de Rovigo is supposed to have boasted
of possessing some of the spoils of the sacrifice; I myself have
believed in these rumours; but the legal documents prove that they were
unfounded.
From the official report, dated Wednesday the 20th of March 1816,
of the physicians and surgeons entrusted with the exhumation of the
corpse, it has been certified that the skull was broken, that "the
upper jaw, separated entirely from the facial bones, contained twelve
teeth; that the lower jaw, fractured in the middle, was divided in two,
and showed only three teeth."
The body was lying flat upon its abdomen, the head being lower than the
feet; there was a gold chain around the vertebrae of the neck.
The second official report of the exhumation (of the same date, 20
March 1816), "the general report," states that with the remains of the
skeleton were found a purse in morocco-leather containing eleven pieces
of gold, seventy pieces of gold enclosed in sealed rolls, some hair,
shreds of clothing, remnants of his cap bearing marks of the bullets by
which it had been pierced.
M. de Rovigo therefore took none of the spoils; the earth which had
held them has restored them, and has borne witness to the general's
honesty; no lantern was fastened over the Prince's heart, its
fragments would have been found, as were those of the perforated cap;
no heavy stone was taken from the grave; the fire of the piquet _at six
paces_ was enough to blow the head to pieces, to "separate the upper
jaw from the facial bones," and so on.
To complete this mockery of human vanities were needed only the similar
immolation of Murat, the Governor of Paris, the death of Bonaparte in
captivity, and the inscription engraved upon the Duc d'Enghien's coffin:
"Here lies the _body_ of the most high and mighty Prince of the Blood,
Peer of France, _died_ at Vincennes, 21 March 1804; aged 31 years, 7
months and 19 days."
The "body" was mere bare and shattered bones; the "high and mighty
Prince," the broken fragments of a soldier's carcase; not a word to
recall the catastrophe, not a word of blame or grief in this epitaph
carved by a sorrowing family; a prodigious result of the respect which
the century shows to the works and susceptibilities of the Revolution!
In the same way, no time was lost in removing all traces of the
mortuary chapel of the Duc de Berry.
What a sum total of annihilation! Bourbons, who returned to so little
purpose to your palaces, you have busied yourselves with naught save
exhumations and funerals: your time of life was passed. God has willed
it so! The ancient glory of France perished beneath the eyes of the
shade of the Great Condé, in a moat at Vincennes: perhaps at the very
place where Louis IX., "to whom men resorted as to a saint.... seated
himself at the foot of an oak, and where all who had any business with
him came without ceremony and without hindrance from any usher or
others; and whenever he heard anything that could be amended in the
speeches of those who pleaded for others he most graciously corrected
it himself, and all the people who had a cause to bring before him
stood round him[626]."
The Duc d'Enghien asked leave to speak to Bonaparte: "he had a cause
to bring before him;" he was not heard! Who, standing at the edge
of the ravelin, looked down into the moat upon those muskets, those
soldiers dimly lighted by a lantern in the mist and gloom, as in night
everlasting? Where was the light placed? Did the Duc d'Enghien stand
over his open grave? Was he obliged to step across it to place himself
at the distance of "six paces" specified by the Duc de Rovigo.
There exists a letter written by M. le Duc d'Enghien, at the age of
nine, to his father the Duc de Bourbon; he says:
"All the Enguiens[627] are _lucky_; the one[628] of the Battle of
Cerizoles, the one who won the Battle of Rocroi[629]: I hope to be so
too."
Is it true that the victim was refused a priest? Is it true that he
only with difficulty found a hand willing to convey to a woman a last
pledge of affection? What did the executioners care for sentiments of
religion or love? They were there to kill, the Duc d'Enghien to die.
The Duc d'Enghien had been secretly married, through the offices of
a priest, to the Princesse Charlotte de Rohan[630]: in those days of
a roving mother-land, a man, by the very reason of his elevation,
was impeded by a thousand political obstacles; to enjoy that which
society accords to all, he was obliged to hide himself. This lawful
marriage, to-day no more a secret, enhances the splendour of a tragic
doom; it substitutes the glory for the clemency of Heaven: religion
perpetuates the pomp of misfortune when, after the catastrophe has been
accomplished, the cross rises on the deserted spot.
*
[Sidenote: The Duc de Talleyrand.]
M. de Talleyrand, according to M. de Rovigo's pamphlet, had presented
a vindicatory memorial to Louis XVIII.; this memorial, which I have
not seen, should have thrown light upon everything, and threw light
upon nothing. In 1820, when I was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary
to Berlin, I discovered in the archives of the embassy a letter from
"the Citizen Laforest[631]," addressed to "the Citizen Talleyrand,"
on the subject of the Duc d'Enghien. This strongly-worded letter does
its author the more credit in that he did not fear to compromise his
career, without earning the reward of public opinion, since the step he
had taken was to remain unknown: a noble act of self-denial on the part
of a man who, through his very obscurity, had relegated to obscurity
the good which he had done.
M. de Talleyrand took his lesson, and kept silence; at least, I found
nothing from him in the same archives concerning the death of the
Prince. The Minister of Foreign Relations had nevertheless, on the 2
Ventôse, informed the Minister of the Elector of Baden "that the First
Consul had thought it necessary to order some detachments to proceed
to Offenburg and Ettenheim, there to seize the instigators of the
scandalous conspiracies which, by their character, place without the
pale of the Law of Nations all those who have manifestly taken part in
them."
A passage from Generals Gourgaud[632], Montholon[633], and D. Ward,
brings Bonaparte upon the scene:
"My Minister," says the latter, "strongly represented to
me the need for seizing the Duc d'Enghien, although he was
upon neutral territory. But I continued to hesitate, and the
Prince de Bénévent twice brought me the order for his arrest
for signature. Nevertheless I consented to sign it only after
convincing myself of the urgency of this act."
According to the _Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène_[634], the following words
must have dropped from Bonaparte:
"The Duc d'Enghien bore himself before the tribunal with
great gallantry. On his arrival at Strasburg, he wrote me a
letter; this letter was handed to Talleyrand, who kept it
until the execution."
*
I have no great belief in this letter: Napoleon probably turned into a
letter the request made by the Duc d'Enghien to speak to the conqueror
of Italy, or rather the few lines expressing this request which, before
signing the examination undergone before the judge-advocate, the Prince
had written with his own hand. Nevertheless, the fact that this letter
was not to be found should not lead us too vigorously to conclude that
it was never written:
"I know," says the Duc de Rovigo, "that in the early days
of the Restoration, in 1814, one of M. de Talleyrand's
secretaries was incessantly making researches in the archives
under the gallery of the Museum. I have this fact from the
man who received the order to pass him in. The same thing was
done at the repository of the War Office for the documents of
the trial of M. le Duc d'Enghien, of which only the sentence
remained."
[Sidenote: Talleyrand's complicity.]
The fact is true; all the diplomatic papers, and notably the
correspondence of M. de Talleyrand with the "Emperor" and the "First
Consul," were transferred from the archives of the Museum to the house
in the Rue Saint-Florentin[635]; part of them were destroyed; the
remainder were put into a stove, to which they forgot to set light;
this was all that the Minister's prudence could do against the Prince's
indifference. The documents that were not burned were recovered; some
one thought it was right to preserve them: I have held in my hands
and read with my eyes a letter from M. de Talleyrand, dated 8 March
1804, and treating of the arrest, not yet carried out, of M. le Duc
d'Enghien. The Minister invites the First Consul to deal vigorously
with his enemies. I was not permitted to keep the letter, and I have
retained only these two passages in my memory:
"If justice obliges us to punish vigorously, policy exacts
that we should punish without exception.................... I
will suggest to the First Consul M. de Caulaincourt, to whom
he might give his orders, and who would execute them with as
much discretion as fidelity."
Will this report of the Prince de Talleyrand one day be published in
full? I do not know; but what I do know is that it was in existence no
more than two years ago.
There was a meeting of the Council for the arrest of the Duc d'Enghien.
Cambacérès, in his unpublished Memoirs, declares, and I believe him,
that he opposed the arrest; but, while recording what he said, he does
not say what the others replied.
For the rest, the _Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène_ denies the entreaties
for mercy to which Bonaparte is said to have been exposed. The
pretended scene of Joséphine on her knees asking for pardon for the Duc
d'Enghien, clinging to the skirt of her husband's coat and allowing
that inexorable husband to drag her about, is one of those melodramatic
inventions with which our latter-day fabulists compose veracious
history. Joséphine did not know, on the evening of the 19th of March,
that the Duc d'Enghien was to be judged; she only knew that he had
been arrested. She had promised Madame de Rémusat to interest herself
in the Prince's fate. As this lady was returning to the Malmaison
with Joséphine on the evening of the 19th, it was noticed that the
future Empress, instead of being preoccupied solely with the perils of
the prisoner of Vincennes, frequently put her head to the window of
the carriage to look out at a general riding in her suite: a woman's
coquetry had carried elsewhere the thought which might have saved the
Duc d'Enghien's life. It was not until the 21st of March that Bonaparte
said to his wife:
"The Duc d'Enghien has been shot."
These Memoirs of Madame de Rémusat, whom I have known, contained
extremely curious details on the inner life of the imperial Court. The
author burnt them during the Hundred Days[636], and afterwards wrote
them anew: they are now no more than memories reproduced by memories;
their colour has faded; but Bonaparte is throughout exposed to the
light and judged with impartiality.
Men attached to Napoleon say that he knew of the death of the Duc
d'Enghien only after the Prince's execution: this story would
seem to derive some value from the anecdote related by the Duc de
Rovigo concerning Réal's going to Vincennes, if the anecdote were
true[637]. Once the death had taken place through the intrigues of
the revolutionary party, Bonaparte recognised the accomplished fact,
so as not to irritate men whom he thought powerful: this ingenious
explanation is not admissible.
*
[Sidenote: Bonaparte's responsibility.]
Now, to resume these facts, here is what they have proved to me:
Bonaparte wished the Duc d'Enghien's death; no one had made that death
a condition of his mounting the throne. To suppose this condition is
one of the subtleties of the politicians who claim to find occult
causes for everything. Nevertheless it is probable that certain
compromised persons did not without a certain pleasure see the First
Consul sever himself for good from the Bourbons. The Vincennes sentence
was an instance of Bonaparte's violent temperament, an outburst of cold
anger fed by the reports of his Minister.
M. de Caulaincourt is guilty only of having executed the order for the
arrest.
Murat has to reproach himself only with conveying general orders and
with not having had the strength to withdraw: he was not at Vincennes
during the trial.
The Duc de Rovigo found himself charged with the execution; he probably
had secret orders: General Hulin hints as much. What man would have
dared to take upon himself to order the execution _forthwith_ of a
sentence of death upon the Duc d'Enghien, if he had not acted on an
imperative mandate?
As to M. de Talleyrand, priest and nobleman, he inspired and prepared
the murder by persistently alarming Bonaparte: he feared the return
of the Legitimacy. It would be possible, by collecting what Napoleon
said at St. Helena and the letters written by the Bishop of Autun,
to prove that the latter took a very great part in the death of
the Duc d'Enghien. It would be vain to object that the Minister's
light-heartedness, character, and education ought to make him averse
to violence, that his corruption ought to take away his energy; it
would remain none the less a fact that he persuaded the Consul to the
fatal arrest. This arrest of the Duc d'Enghien on the 15th of March was
not unknown to M. de Talleyrand: he was in daily communication with
Bonaparte and conferred with him; during the interval that elapsed
between the arrest and the execution, did M. de Talleyrand, he, the
instigating Minister, repent, did he say a single word to the First
Consul in favour of the unhappy Prince? It is natural to believe that
he applauded the execution of the sentence.
The military commission sentenced the Duc d'Enghien, but with sorrow
and repentance.
This, conscientiously, impartially and strictly considered, is the
exact part played by each. My fate has been too closely connected with
this catastrophe that I should not endeavour to throw light upon its
dark places and to lay bare its details. If Bonaparte had not killed
the Duc d'Enghien, if he had brought me closer and closer to him (and
his inclination prompted him to do so), what would have been the result
for me? My literary career would have been ended; I should at one
jump have entered the political career, in which I have proved what I
could have done by the Spanish War; and I should have become rich and
powerful. France might have been the gainer by my association with the
Emperor; I should have been the loser. Possibly I might have succeeded
in maintaining some ideas of liberty and moderation in the great man's
head; but my life, ranking among those which are called happy, would
have been deprived of that which has constituted its character and its
honour: poverty, strife and independence.
*
Lastly, the principal accused rises after all the others; he brings
up the rear of the blood-stained penitents. Suppose that a judge
were to have brought up before him "the man named Bonaparte," as
the captain-judge-advocate had brought up before him "the man named
d'Enghien;" suppose that the minutes of the later examination copied
upon the former had been preserved to us; compare and read:
_Asked_: His surname and Christian names?
_Answered_: That his name was Napoleon Bonaparte.
_Asked_: Where he had resided since he had left France?
_Answered_: At the Pyramids, in Berlin, Madrid, Vienna, Moscow, St
Helena.
_Asked_: What rank he filled in the army?
_Answered_: Commander in the advance-guard of the armies of God. No
other reply issues from the prisoner's lips.
*
[Sidenote: Bonaparte defended.]
The different actors in the tragedy mutually accused each other:
Bonaparte alone throws the blame for it upon nobody; he preserves his
greatness beneath the weight of malediction; he does not bow his head
but stands erect; he exclaims with the stoic, "Pain, I will never admit
that thou art an evil!" But that which, in his pride, he refuses to
admit to the living he is constrained to confess to the dead. This
Prometheus, with the vulture at his breast, who stole the fire from
heaven, thought himself superior to all things, and he is compelled to
reply to the Duc d'Enghien, whom he has made into dust before his time:
the skeleton, the trophy over which he stumbled, questions him and
dominates him by a providential dispensation.
Personal attendance and the army, the ante-room and the tent had their
representatives at St. Helena: a servant, estimable for his fidelity to
the master he had chosen, had come to place himself near Napoleon as
an echo at his service. Simplicity repeated the fable, while giving it
an accent of sincerity. Bonaparte was "Destiny;" like the latter, he
deceived men's fascinated minds in _outward form_, but at the bottom of
his impostures this inexorable truth was heard to resound: "I am!" And
the universe felt its weight.
The author of the most credited work on St. Helena sets forth the
theory which Napoleon invented for the murderer's benefit; the
voluntary exile accepts as Gospel truth an homicidal talk, with
pretensions to profundity, which would only explain Napoleon's life as
he wished to arrange it, and as he contended that it should be written.
He left instructions for his neophytes: M. le Comte de Las Cases[638]
learnt his lesson without being aware of it; the stupendous captive,
wandering along solitary paths, drew his credulous worshipper after him
by means of lies, even as Hercules hung men to his mouth by chains of
gold.
*
"The first time," says the honest chamberlain, "that I heard
Napoleon pronounce the name of the Duc d'Enghien, I turned red with
embarrassment. Fortunately I was walking behind him in a narrow path;
otherwise, he would certainly have observed my confusion. Nevertheless,
when the Emperor for the first time developed the whole of this
incident, with all its details and accessories; when he set forth
his various motives with his close, luminous, persuasive reasoning,
I must confess that the matter seemed to me gradually to assume a
new aspect.... The Emperor often resumed this subject, which gave me
an opportunity of observing in him certain very pronounced shades of
character. I was able on this occasion, and repeatedly, most distinctly
to see in him the private individual struggling with the public man,
and the natural sentiments of his heart contending against those of
his pride and of the dignity of his position. In the confidence of
intimacy, he did not show himself indifferent to the unfortunate
Prince's fate; but so soon as it became a question of the public, it
was quite a different thing. One day, after talking with me of the
untimely end and of the youth of this ill-fated man, he concluded by
saying:
"'And I have since learnt, my dear fellow, that he was rather in my
favour; I have been told that he spoke of me with some admiration; such
is retributive justice here below!'
"And the last words were spoken with so much feeling, all the features
of his face displayed such harmony with the words that, if he whom
Napoleon was pitying had at that moment been in his power, I am quite
sure that, whatever his intentions or his acts, he would have been
eagerly pardoned.... The Emperor used to consider this matter from two
very different points of view: that of common law, or the established
rules of justice, and that of the law of nature, or acts of violence...."
[Sidenote: By the Comte de Las Cases.]
"To us, in the intimacy of private conversation, the Emperor
would say that the blame in France might be ascribed to an
excess of zeal in those around him, or to private objects or
mysterious intrigues. He said that he had been precipitately
urged in this affair; that they had as it were taken his mind
unawares, hastened his measures, anticipated their result....
"'Without doubt,' he said, 'if I had been informed in time
of certain particulars concerning the Prince's opinions and
disposition; more still, if I had seen the letter which
he wrote to me and which, God knows for what reason, was
not handed to me until after he was no more, I should most
certainly have pardoned him.'
"It was easy for us to see that it was the Emperor's heart
and nature alone which dictated these words, and that they
were intended only for us; for he would have felt humiliated
to think that any one could for an instant believe that he
was trying to shift the burden from his own shoulders, or
condescending to justify himself; his fear in this respect,
or his susceptibility, was such that, in speaking of it to
strangers, or dictating on this matter for the public, he
confined himself to saying that, if he had known of the
Prince's letter, he would perhaps have pardoned him, in
view of the great political advantages which he could have
derived from it; and when, writing with his own hand his last
thoughts, which he concludes will be recorded in the present
age and reach posterity, he states, with reference to this
subject, which he regards as one of the most delicate for his
memory, that, if it were to be done over again, he would do
it again."
This passage, in so far as the writer is concerned, possesses all the
characteristics of the most perfect sincerity; this shines through
to the very phrase in which M. le Comte de Las Cases declared that
Bonaparte would have eagerly pardoned a man who was not guilty. But
the theories of the master are subtleties by aid of which an effort
is made to reconcile the irreconcilable. In making the distinction
between "common law or established justice, and natural law or the
errors of violence," Napoleon seemed to be content with a piece of
sophistry which in reality did not content him! He was unable to
subject his conscience as he had subjected the world. A weakness
natural to superior men and to little men, when they have committed
a fault, is to wish to represent it as a work of genius, a vast
combination beyond the understanding of the vulgar. Pride says those
things, and folly believes them. Bonaparte doubtless regarded as the
mark of the ruling mind the sentence which he delivered in his great
man's compunction: "My dear fellow, such is retributive justice here
below!" O truly philosophical emotion! What impartiality! How well
it justifies, by laying it to the charge of destiny, the evil which
has sprung from ourselves! A man nowadays thinks it an all-sufficient
excuse to exclaim, "After all, it was my nature, it was the infirmity
of mankind." When he has killed his father he repeats, "I am made
like that!" And the crowd stands open-mouthed, and they examine the
mighty man's bumps, and they recognise that he was "made like that."
And what care I that you are made like that! Must I submit to this
manner of being? The world would be a fine chaos if all the men who are
"made like that" were to take it into their heads to force themselves
one upon the other. Those who are unable to wipe out their errors
deify them: they make a dogma of their evil-doing, they turn acts of
sacrilege into religion, and they would think themselves apostates were
they to renounce the cult of their iniquities.
*
There is a serious lesson to be drawn from Bonaparte's life. Two
actions, both bad, began and caused his fall: the death of the Duc
d'Enghien and the war with Spain. It was vain for him to ride over them
with his glory: they remained there to ruin him. He perished on the
very side in which he thought himself strong, profound, invincible,
when he violated the moral law while neglecting and scorning his real
strength, that is, his superior qualities of order and equity. So long
as he confined himself to attacking anarchy and foreigners hostile to
France, he was victorious; he found himself robbed of his vigour so
soon as he entered upon the paths of corruption: the shaving of the
locks by Delilah is nothing other than the loss of virtue. Every crime
bears within itself a radical incapacity and a germ of misfortune: let
us then practise good to be happy, and let us be just to be able.
In proof of this truth, observe that, at the very moment of the
Prince's death, commenced the dissent which, growing in proportion
to ill-fortune, decided the fall of the ordainer of the tragedy of
Vincennes. The Russian Cabinet, in reference to the arrest of the Duc
d'Enghien, addressed vigorous representantions against the violation
of the territory of the Empire: Bonaparte felt the blow, and replied in
the _Moniteur_ with a fulminating article bringing up the death of Paul
I[639]. A funeral service had been celebrated in St. Petersburg for
young Condé. On the cenotaph was read:
"To the Duc d'Enghien _quem devoravit bellua Corsica._"
The two mighty adversaries subsequently became reconciled in
appearance; but the mutual wound which policy had inflicted and
insult-enlarged remained in their hearts. Napoleon did not think
himself revenged until he came to sleep in Moscow; Alexander[640] was
not satisfied before he entered Paris.
[Sidenote: European indignation.]
The hatred of the Cabinet of Berlin arose from the same origin: I have
spoken of the noble letter of M. de Laforest, in which he told M. de
Talleyrand of the effect which the murder of the Duc d'Enghien had
produced at the Court of Potsdam. Madame de Staël was in Prussia when
the news from Vincennes arrived:
"I was living in Berlin," he said, "on the Spree Quay, and
my apartment was on the ground floor. At eight o'clock
one morning, they woke me to tell me that Prince Louis
Ferdinand[641] was under my windows on horse-back, and asked
me to come and speak to him....
"'Do you know,' he asked, 'that the Duc d'Enghien has been
kidnapped on Baden territory, handed over to a military
commission, and shot within four-and-twenty hours after his
arrival in Paris?'
"'What nonsense!' I replied. 'Do you not see that this can
only be a rumour spread by the enemies of France?'
"In fact, I admit that my hatred of Bonaparte, strong as it
was, did not go so far as to make me credit the possibility
of his committing so great a crime.
"'As you doubt what I tell you,' replied Prince Louis, 'I
will send you the _Moniteur_, in which you can read the
sentence.'
"With these words he left me, and the expression of his
face was the presage of vengeance or death. A quarter of an
hour later, I had in my hands the _Moniteur_ of the 21st of
March (30 Pluviôse), which contained a sentence of death
passed by the military commission, sitting at Vincennes,
upon 'the man called Louis d'Enghien!' It was thus that
Frenchmen described the descendant of heroes who were the
glory of their country! Even if one were to abjure all the
prejudices in favour of illustrious birth which the return of
monarchical forms would necessarily recall, was it possible
thus to blaspheme the memories of the Battle of Lens[642]
and of Rocroi? This Bonaparte, who has won so many battles,
does not even know how to respect them; for him there is
neither past nor future; his imperious and scornful soul will
recognise nothing for opinion to hold sacred; he admits only
respect for the force in power. Prince Louis wrote to me,
beginning his note with these words: 'The man called Louis
of Prussia begs Madame de Staël,' etc. He felt the insult
offered to the Blood Royal whence he sprang, to the memory of
the heroes among whom he was longing to enroll himself. How,
after this horrible deed, could a single king in Europe ally
himself with such a man? Necessity, you will say. There is a
sanctuary in the soul to which its empire may not penetrate;
were this not so, what would virtue be upon this earth? A
liberal amusement, suited only to the peaceful leisure of
private men[643]."
This resentment on the part of the Prince, for which he was to pay with
his life, was still lasting when the Prussian Campaign opened in 1806.
Frederic William, in his manifesto of the 9th of October, said:
"The Germans have not revenged the death of the Duc d'Enghien; but the
memory of that crime will never fade among them."
These historical particulars, rarely observed, deserved to be so;
for they explain enmities of which one would be puzzled to discover
the primary cause elsewhere, and at the same time they disclose the
steps by which Providence leads a man's destiny from the crime to the
expiation.
*
Happy, at least, my life, which was not troubled by fear, nor attacked
by contagion, nor carried away by examples! The satisfaction which I
experience to-day at what I did then is my warrant that my conscience
is no illusion. More content than all those potentates, than all those
nations fallen at the feet of the glorious soldier, I turn again
with pardonable pride to this page, which I have retained as my only
belonging and which I owe only to myself. In 1807, with my heart still
moved by the murder which I have just related, I wrote the following
lines; they caused the _Mercure_ to be suppressed, and jeopardized my
liberty once more:
[Sidenote: I utter my protest.]
"When, amid the silence of abjection, no sound is heard
save that of the chains of the slave and the voice of the
informer; when all tremble before the tyrant, and when
it is as dangerous to incur his favour as to deserve his
displeasure, the historian appears, entrusted with the
vengeance of the nations. Nero prospers in vain, Tacitus
already is born within the Empire; he grows up unknown beside
the ashes of Germanicus, and already a just Providence has
surrendered to an obscure child the glory of the master of
the world. If the historian's part is fine, it is often
dangerous; but there are altars such as that of honour which,
although deserted, demand further sacrifices: the god is
not annihilated because the temple is empty. Wherever there
remains a chance for fortune, there is no heroism in trying
it; magnanimous actions are those of which adversity and
death are the foreseen result After all, what do reverses
matter, if our name, pronounced by posterity, makes one
generous heart beat two thousand years after our life[644]?"
The death of the Duc d'Enghien, by introducing a new principle into
Bonaparte's conduct, marred the correctness of his intelligence: he
was obliged to adopt as a shield maxims of which he had not the whole
force at his disposal, for his glory and his genius incessantly blunted
them. He was looked upon with suspicion, with fear; men lost confidence
in him and in his destiny; he was constrained to see, if not to seek
out, men whom he would never have seen, and who, through his action,
considered themselves to have become his equals: the contagion of
their defilement was overtaking him. His great qualities remained the
same, but his good dispositions became impaired and no longer upheld
his great qualities: under the influence of the corruption of that
original stain his nature deteriorated. God commanded his angels to
disturb the harmonies of that world, to change its laws, to tilt it on
its poles. As Milton says:
They with labour push'd
Oblique the centric Globe: some say, the Sun
Was bid turn reins from th' equinoctial road
Like distant breadth. . . . .
. . . . . . . .
Boreas and Cæcias and Argestes loud
And Thrascias rend the woods, and seas upturn[645].
Will the ashes of Bonaparte be exhumed, as were those of the Duc
d'Enghien? If I had been the master, the latter victim would still
be sleeping unhonoured in the moat of Vincennes Castle. That
"excommunicated one" would have been left, like Raymond of Toulouse,
in an open coffin; no man's hand would have dared to conceal beneath
a plank the sight of the witness to the incomprehensible judgments
and angers of God. The abandoned skeleton of the Duc d'Enghien and
Napoleon's deserted tomb at St Helena would be the counterpart of each
other: there would be nothing more commemorative than those remains,
face to face, at opposite ends of the earth.
At least the Duc d'Enghien did not remain on foreign soil, like the
exiled of kings: the latter took care to restore the former to his
country, a little harshly, it is true; but will it be for ever? France
(how much dust winnowed by the breath of the Revolution bears witness
to it) is not faithful to the bones of the dead. Old Condé, in his
will, declares "that he is not sure which country he will be inhabiting
on the day of his death." O Bossuet, what would you not have added to
the masterpiece of your eloquence, if, when you were speaking over the
grave of the Great Condé, you had been able to foresee the future!
*
It was at this very spot, at Chantilly, that the Duc d'Enghien
was born: "Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon, born 2 August 1772, at
Chantilly," says the sentence of death. It was on this lawn that
he played in childhood; the traces of his footsteps have become
obliterated. And the victor of Friburg, of Nördlingen, of Lens, of
Senef, where has he gone with his "victorious and now feeble hands"?
And his descendants, the Condé of Johannisberg and of Bentheim[646],
and his son, and his grandson, where are they? That castle, those
gardens, those fountains "which were silent neither by day nor by
night:" what has become of them? Mutilated statues, lions with a claw
or a jaw restored; trophies of arms sculptured in a crumbling wall;
escutcheons with obliterated fleurs-de-lis; foundations of razed
turrets; a few marble coursers above the empty stables no longer
livened by the neighing of the steed of Rocroi; near a riding-school,
a high unfinished gate: that is what remains of the memories of
an heroic race; a will tied with a rope changed the owners of the
inheritance[647].
The whole forest has repeatedly fallen under the axe. Persons of bygone
times have run over those once resounding chases, mute to-day. What was
their age, what their passions, when they stopped at the foot of those
oaks? O my useless Memoirs, I should not now be able to say to you:
Qu'à Chantilly Condé vous lise quelquefois;
Qu'Enghien en soit touché[648]!
Obscure men that we are, what are we beside those famous men? We shall
disappear never to return; you, sweet William, who lie upon my table
beside this paper, whose belated little flower I have gathered among
the heather will blossom again; but we, we shall not come to life again
with the perfumed solitary which has diverted my thoughts.
[594] This book was written at Chantilly in November 1838.--T.
[595] Blanche of Castile, Queen of France (1187-1252), daughter of
Alphonsus IX. King of Castile, wife of Louis VIII. King of France, and
mother of St. Louis IX. A hunting-lodge, at Chantilly, stands on the
site of the old Castle of Queen Blanche, near the Commelle Ponds.--T.
[596] Charles IV. King of Spain (1748-1819). On the 18th of March
1808, forced by the revolt of Aranjuez, he abdicated in favour of his
son Ferdinand. Napoleon compelled him to withdraw this abdication and
to make a fresh one in favour of himself (5 May 1808), after which
Napoleon's brother Joseph was placed on the throne of Spain. Charles
IV. was sent to Compiègne and Marseilles, and died in Rome in 1819. On
the fall of Joseph, in 1813, Charles's son Ferdinand VII. ascended the
throne.--T.
[597] Gustavus IV. (1778-1837) was the last Legitimist King of Sweden.
A revolt of the nobles in 1809 compelled him to abdicate, and his
uncle, the Duke of Sudermania, was proclaimed King with the title of
Charles XIII., ultimately adopting General Bernadotte as his heir.
Gustavus spent the remaining years of his life in Germany, Holland, and
Switzerland, under the names of Count of Holstein-Gottorp and Colonel
Gustawson. He died at Saint-Gall in 1837.--T.
[598] Frederic William III. King of Prussia (1770-1840), son of
Frederic William II. and grand-nephew to Frederic the Great. He
was married to the beautiful Queen Louisa, daughter of the Duke of
Mecklenburg-Strelitz.--T.
[599] Bonaparte had the Black Eagle.--_Authors Note._
[600] Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus Nero, later Nero Claudius Cæsar
Drusus Germanicus, Roman Emperor (37-68), son of Domitius Ahenobarbus
and Agrippina, by whose uncle and third husband, the Emperor Claudius,
he was adopted, succeeding him, to the exclusion of the natural heir,
Britannicus, in 54.--T.
[601] Lucius Annæus Seneca (3-65), the Stoic philosopher, was Nero's
tutor and principal minister. He is accused, not only of writing the
apology for the murder of Agrippina, but of approving the poisoning of
Britannicus in 55.--T.
[602] Julia Agrippina (_circa_ 15-59 or 60), daughter of the Emperor
Germanicus and of Agrippina, grand-daughter of Augustus. She poisoned
Claudius to secure the Empire for Nero, her son by her first husband,
and was herself murdered by Nero's orders in 59.--T.
[603] The Duc de Bourbon was the Due d'Enghien's father, not his
grandfather. The grandfather was the Prince de Condé, the writer of the
letter in question. Chateaubriand's mistake is due to a slip of the
pen, which we occasionally find in more than one other historian of the
period.--B.
[604] Pierre François Comte Réal (1765-1834) was an attorney at the
Châtelet at the outbreak of the Revolution. He attached himself to
Danton and became Public Accuser and Solicitor to the Commune of Paris.
He was imprisoned by Robespierre and released on the 9 Thermidor.
Bonaparte made him a State Councillor and appointed him a deputy at the
Ministry of Police. In 1804 Réal discovered the conspiracy of Georges
Cadoudal. He was made Prefect of Police during the Hundred Days, and
was exiled under the Second Restoration. He returned to Paris in
1818.--T.
[605] Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès (1753-1824), an eminent jurist
and a moderate revolutionary, who voted for the reprieve at the trial
of Louis XVI. He was Minister of Justice under the Directory. Bonaparte
chose him as Second Consul in 1799, with Lebrun as Third Consul. When
Napoleon became Emperor he appointed Cambacérès Arch-chancellor and
created him a Prince of the Empire and Duke of Parma. Cambacérès is
responsible for the greater portion of the Code civil. He was exiled by
the Bourbons and recalled in 1818.--T.
[606] In the morning.--_Author's Note._
[607] Madame Joséphine Bonaparte (1763-1814), _née_ Tascher de La
Pagerie, and widow of Alexandre Vicomte de Beauharnais, who was
guillotined in 1794. She married Bonaparte in 1796, was crowned Empress
in 1804, and was divorced in 1809.--T.
[608] Anne Jean Marie René Savary, Duc de Rovigo (1774-1833), was in
1804 Colonel of the Gendarmerie d'Élite, in which capacity he was
charged with the execution of the sentence on the Duc d'Enghien. At the
battle of Marengo (14 June 1800) he was aide-de-camp to General Desaix,
and was by his side when that general was shot through the heart. He
became a general of brigade in 1803, a general of division in 1805, a
duke in 1808, and succeeded Fouché as Minister of Police in 1810. He
followed the Emperor on to the _Bellérophon_ in 1815, but was separated
from him and kept a prisoner for seven months in Malta, where he drew
up the plan of his Memoirs (published in 1828). On the Restoration,
he was sentenced to death in his absence. He returned to France in
1819 in order to obtain the quashing of the sentence. A pamphlet
which he subsequently wrote upon the death of the Duc d'Enghien,
accusing Talleyrand of complicity, brought about his disgrace, and he
was obliged to retire to Rome. He returned once more to France after
the Revolution of 1830, and in 1831 received from Louis-Philippe the
command-in-chief of the Army of Algiers, which he retained till his
death in 1833.--T.
[609] Claire Élisabeth Jeanne Comtesse de Rémusat (1780-1821), _née_
Gravier de Vergennes, wife of the Comte de Rémusat, Chamberlain to
Napoleon and Superintendent of Theatres, and lady-in-waiting to the
Empress Joséphine. She was the author of an _Essai sur l'éducation des
femmes_ (1823) and of some excellent Memoirs (1880).--T.
[610] Cf. CORNEILLE, _Cinna_, Act II. Sc. I.--T.
[611] Cf. _Mémoires de Madame de Rémusat_, vol. I.--B.
[612] 20 March 1804.--B.
[613] Murat.--_Author's Note._
[614] Lieutenant-General Pierre Auguste Comte Hulin (1758-1841) was
one of the foremost among the conquerors of the Bastille on the 14th
of July 1789, and at the end of the same year was made Commander of
the National Guard of Paris. He accompanied Bonaparte to Italy as
Adjutant-General, was appointed Commander of Milan in 1797 and 1798,
and in 1803 became a general of division and Commander of the Consular
Guard. He took part in the several German campaigns, and was selected
for the command of the places around Vienna and of Berlin (1806). He
was at the head of the armed forces in Paris when the Malet conspiracy
broke out in 1812, and caused the plot to fail, having his lower
jaw shattered by Malet with a pistol-shot. Hulin lost the command
of the City of Paris on the return of the Bourbons, and was obliged
to leave France in 1816. He returned in 1819, and ended his days in
retirement.--T.
[615] Marie Louise Empress of the French (1791-1847), daughter of
Francis I. Emperor of Austria, and married to Napoleon in 1810. She
left him after his first abdication, protested against his restoration
and, in reward for her docility, received the Duchy of Parma at
the hands of the Congress of Vienna. There she spent the remainder
of her days, living with the Count von Niepperg, whom she married
morganatically after Napoleon's death.--T.
[616] Francis Charles Joseph Napoleon Duke of Reichstadt (1811-1832),
son of Napoleon and Marie Louise, was proclaimed King of Rome at his
birth. On his father's abdication there was an idea of proclaiming
him Emperor, as Napoleon II.; but this was speedily abandoned and he
was brought up at the Court of his maternal grandfather, who in 1818
gave him the title of Duke of Reichstadt, together with a regiment of
cavalry.--T.
[617] André Marie Jean Jacques Dupin (1783-1865), known as Dupin the
Elder, was a deputy from 1827 to 1848, a member of the Constituent
Assembly of 1848 and of the Legislative Assembly of 1849, a senator of
the Second Empire (1857), and Attorney-General to the Court of Appeal
from 1830 to 1852. He resigned the latter post in order to dissociate
himself from the decrees confiscating the possessions of the Orleans
Family; but resumed it five years later when summoned to the Imperial
Senate. He had been a member of the French Academy since 1832. The
pamphlet to which Chateaubriand refers was published in 1823, and
entitled, _Pièces judiciaires et historiques relatives au procès du
duc dEnghien, avec le Journal de ce prince depuis l'instant de son
arrestation; précédées de la Discussion des actes de la commission
militaire instituée en l'an XII, par le gouvernement consulaire, pour
juger le duc d'Enghien, par l'auteur de l'opuscule intitulé: "De la
Libre Défense des accusés._"--B.
[618] An allusion to the abominable reply said to have been made to M.
le Duc d'Enghien.--_Author's Note._
The Duke is reported to have cried, "Shoot straight, my friends," to
the soldiers about to fire their volley.
"You have no friends here," replied the officer in command!--T.
[619] General Claude François de Malet (1754-1812) played a
distinguished part in the campaigns of the Revolution, became a general
of brigade in 1799, and was appointed Governor of Pavia by Masséna
in 1805. His republicanism, however, made him suspect in the eyes of
Napoleon, who had him imprisoned in Paris in 1808. Availing himself
of the facilities awarded him by his transfer to a mad-house, he
organized a conspiracy against the Empire, involving Generals Guidal
and Lahorie in the plot. He escaped from prison on the night of the
23rd of October 1812, rapidly visited the Paris barracks, spreading the
news of Napoleon's death, and was on the point of succeeding, when the
resistance of General Hulin, who was at the head of the Staff, caused
the whole plot to fail. Malet was brought before a military commission
and shot on the 29th of October 1812.--T
[620] General Hulin's pamphlet, published in 1823, is entitled,
_Explications offertes aux hommes impartiaux par M. le Comte Hulin, au
sujet de la Commission militaire institute en l'an XII pour juger le
duc d'Enghien._--B.
[621] Jacques Harel (_b._ 1755) had received the command of Vincennes
Castle in 1800 as his reward for his services in betraying his
fellow-conspirators in a plot to kill the First Consul. The story is
told at length in the Memoirs of M. de Bourrienne.--B.
[622] Freiburg-in-Breisgau (Baden), where the great Condé defeated the
Imperial forces in 1644.--T.
[623] Savary's pamphlet appeared in the same year as General Hulin's
and M. Dupin's, and was entitled, _Extrait des Mémoires du duc de
Rovigo, concernant le catastrophe de M. le duc d'Enghien._--B.
[624] Armand Augustin Louis Marquis de Caulaincourt, Duc de Vicence
(1773-1827), had in his youth been a page to the Prince de Condé. He
took part in nearly all the wars of the Revolution, and was made Master
of the Horse by Napoleon when the latter assumed the imperial crown, a
general of division, a duke (1805), and Ambassador to Russia (1807).
In 1813, he became Foreign Minister, and represented France at the
Congress of Châtillon in 1814.--T.
[625] Achille Roche (1801-1834), a publicist and secretary to
Benjamin Constant. The work from which Chateaubriand quotes is a
pamphlet entitled, _De Messieurs le duc de Rovigo et le prince de
Talleyrand._--B.
[626] JOINVILLE, _Memoirs of Louis IX., King of France_, Part I.--T.
[627] Misspelt as printed: _Enguiens_ for Enghien, proper names not
taking the plural in French.--T.
[628] François de Bourbon-Vendôme, Comte d'Enghien (1519-1545), brother
of Anthony de Bourbon, King of Navarre, defeated the Imperial forces at
Cérisoles in 1544--T.
[629] The Great Condé was Duc d'Enghien when he defeated the Spaniards
at Rocroi in 1643.--T.
[630] The Princesse Charlotte de Rohan-Rochefort. The Prince de Condé
refused to acknowledge the marriage, although he himself had married a
Rohan. After the death of the Duc d'Enghien, the Duc de Bourbon tardily
offered to acknowledge his son's marriage, but the Princess refused the
offer. Nevertheless she visited the Duchesse de Bourbon in the early
days of the Restoration, when the latter addressed her as "my daughter"
(_Cf._ MURET, _Histoire de l'armée de Condé_). The Duchess of Madrid
(_de jure_ Queen of Spain and France), _née_ Princesse Marie Berthe de
Rohan, and married to the Duke of Madrid in 1894, is a member of the
same (Rochefort) branch of the Rohan family. Their motto is, _Roi ne
puis, prince ne daigne, Rohan suis._--T.
[631] Antoine René Charles Mathurin Comte de Laforest (1756-1846)
entered the diplomatic service under Louis XVI. He was Consul-General
in the United States, Secretary of Legation to Joseph Bonaparte at the
Congress of Lunéville, and Chargé-d'affaires Extraordinary at Munich
and Ratisbon. He was Ambassador in Berlin from 1805 to 1808, and in
Madrid from 1808 to 1813. Napoleon created him a count in 1808. On
the fall of the Empire, in 1814, he directed the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs for six weeks _ad interim_, and was charged by the King to
prepare the Treaty of Paris. Under the Second Restoration, he was sent
as Minister Plenipotentiary to various Powers. He was made a peer of
France in 1819, and a minister of State and privy councillor in 1825.
He lost his places and dignities at the Revolution of 1830.--B.
[632] Gaspard Baron Gourgaud (1783-1852), a distinguished artillery
officer who had twice saved Napoleon's life, at Moscow and Brienne. He
accompanied Napoleon to St. Helena, where he remained until 1817, and
where he wrote the _Campagne de 1815_, published in 1818, which was
the cause of his being struck off the roll of the French army by Louis
XVIII. Louis-Philippe reinstated him and made him his aide-de-camp,
and in 1840 he accompanied the Prince de Joinville to St. Helena to
bring back the remains of Napoleon. On his return, he was raised
to the peerage. Gourgaud is part-author, together with Montholon,
of the _Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de France sous Napoléon_
(1823-1825), from which the above quotation is taken.--T.
[633] Charles Tristan Comte de Montholon (1782-1853), Gourgaud's
collaborator, was one of Napoleon's bravest and most reckless officers.
He too accompanied Napoleon to St Helena, remained with him to the day
of his death, and was one of his executors and the depositary of his
manuscripts, which were subsequently published in eight volumes under
the title given in the preceding note. In 1840, Montholon took part
in Louis Napoleon's futile descent at Boulogne, and suffered a short
confinement.--T.
[634] LAS CASES, _Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène_ (8 volumes, 1822-1824).--T.
[635] Talleyrand's residence.--T.
[636] Lest they should compromise her friends. See M. Paul de Rémusat's
Preface to the Memoirs.--T.
[637] This is the anecdote:
"After the execution of the sentence," says the Duc de Rovigo, "I took
the road back to Paris. I was approaching the barriers, when I met
M. Réal going to Vincennes in the dress of a councillor of State. I
stopped him to ask him where he was going:
"'To Vincennes,' he replied; 'I received orders yesterday to repair
there to examine the Duc d'Enghien.'
"I told him what had just happened, and he appeared as much astonished
at what I had told him as I at what he had told me. I began to ponder.
My meeting with the Minister of Foreign Relations at General Murat's
recurred to my mind, and I began to doubt whether the death of the Duc
d'Enghien was the work of the First Consul."--B.
[638] Emmanuel Augustin Dieudonné Comte de Las Cases (1766-1842) was
a lieutenant in the navy when he emigrated in 1789 and joined Condé's
Army. He returned to France after the 18 Brumaire, and devoted himself
for several years to literary work, until in 1809 he enlisted as a
volunteer to assist in repelling the English, who were threatening
a descent upon Flushing. He attracted the notice of Napoleon, who
made him one of his chamberlains, and he was one of the four men who
followed Napoleon into exile. He remained eighteen months at St.
Helena, gathering the talk that fell from Napoleon's lips into his
famous _Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène_; but losing favour with Sir Hudson
Lowe, he was removed from Napoleon's service, taken to the Cape of
Good Hope, and thence to Europe, where he was kept for some time in
confinement. Las Cases was not allowed to return to France until after
the Emperor's death. In 1830 he was returned for the Seine to the
Chamber of Deputies, where he sat in the Opposition.--T.
[639] Paul I. Emperor of Russia (1754-1801), son of Catherine II. and
Peter III. On the death of Catherine in 1796, he placed himself at the
head of the second coalition against France; but in 1799, suddenly
smitten with a passionate admiration for Bonaparte, he contracted an
alliance with him, and paved the way for the treaties of Lunéville and
Amiens. He was strangled by some of his nobles on the 23rd of March
1801.--T.
[640] Alexander I. Emperor of Russia (1777-1825), was at war with
Napoleon from 1805 to 1807, and in alliance with him from 1807 to
1812, when war broke out anew. The retreat from Moscow took place in
the latter year, and Alexander entered Paris at the head of the allied
forces on the 31st of March 1814.--T.
[641] Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia (1772-1806), son of Prince
Ferdinand, brother to Frederic the Great, was killed in 1806 at the
Battle of Saalfeld.--T.
[642] The Great Condé defeated the Imperial forces at Lens in 1648.--T.
[643] MADAME DE STAËL, _Dix années d'exil._--B.
[644] These lines are taken from the article, published by
Chateaubriand in the _Mercure_ of 4 July 1807, on M. Alexandre de
Laborde's _Voyage pittoresque et historique en Espagne._--B.
[645] MILTON, _Paradise Lost_, X., 670-673, 698-699.--T.
[646] The Prince de Condé co-operated with the Prince de Soubise in
winning the Battle of Johannisberg, during the Seven Years' War, in
1762, and performed prodigies of valour to no purpose at Bentheim in
1799.--T.
[647] The Duc de Bourbon was found hanged or strangled in his apartment
a few days after the Revolution of 1830. He left Chantilly and the
greater part of his fortune to the late Duc d'Aumale, fourth son of
Louis Philippe.--T.
[648] BOILEAU, _Ep. VII. A.M. Racine_:
"May Condé sometimes at Chantilly read you;
And may Enghien be touched."
--T.
BOOK IV[649]