1800.
Police on police--False information--Dexterity of Fouché--Police
agents deceived--Money ill applied--Inutility of political police--
Bonaparte's opinion--General considerations--My appointment to the
Prefecture of police.
Before taking up his quarters in the Tuileries the First Consul
organised his secret police, which was intended, at the same time, to be
the rival or check upon Fouché's police. Duroc and Moncey were at
first the Director of this police; afterwards Davoust and Junot. Madame
Bonaparte called this business a vile system of espionage. My remarks
on the inutility of the measure were made in vain. Bonaparte had the
weakness at once to fear Fouché and to think him necessary. Fouché,
whose talents at this trade are too well known to need my approbation,
soon discovered this secret institution, and the names of all the
subaltern agents employed by the chief agents. It is difficult to form
an idea of the nonsense, absurdity, and falsehood contained in the
bulletins drawn up by the noble and ignoble agents of the police. I do
not mean to enter into details on this nauseating subject; and I shall
only trespass on the reader's patience by relating, though it be in
anticipation, one fact which concerns myself, and which will prove that
spies and their wretched reports cannot be too much distrusted.
During the second year of the Consulate we were established at
Malmaison. Junot had a very large sum at his disposal for the secret
police of the capital. He gave 3000 francs of it to a wretched
manufacturer of bulletins; the remainder was expended on the police of
his stable and his table. In reading one of these daily bulletins I saw
the following lines:
"M. de Bourrienne went last night to Paris. He entered an hotel of
the Faubourg St. Germain, Rue de Varenne, and there, in the course
of a very animated discussion, he gave it to be understood that the
First Consul wished to make himself King."
As it happens, I never had opened my mouth, either respecting what
Bonaparte had said to me before we went to Egypt or respecting his other
frequent conversations with me of the same nature, during this period of
his Consulship. I may here observe, too, that I never quitted, nor ever
could quit Malmaison for a moment. At any time, by night or day, I was
subject to be called for by the First Consul, and, as very often was the
case, it so happened that on the night in question he had dictated to me
notes and instructions until three o'clock in the morning.
Junot came every day to Malmaison at eleven o'clock in the morning. I
called him that day into my cabinet, when I happened to be alone. "Have
you not read your bulletin?" said I, "Yes, I have."--"Nay, that is
impossible."--"Why?"--"Because, if you had, you would have suppressed
an absurd story which relates to me."--"Ah!" he replied, "I am sorry on
your account, but I can depend on my agent, and I will not alter a word
of his report." I then told him all that had taken place on that night;
but he was obstinate, and went away unconvinced.
Every morning I placed all the papers which the First Consul had to read
on his table, and among the first was Junot's report. The First Consul
entered and read it; on coming to the passage concerning me he began to
smile.
"Have you read this bulletin?"--"Yes, General."--"What an ass that Junot
is! It is a long time since I have known that."--"How he allows himself
to be entrapped! Is he still here?"--"I believe so. I have just seen
him, and made observations to him, all in good part, but he would
hear nothing."--"Tell him to come here." When Junot appeared Bonaparte
began--"Imbecile that you are! how could you send me such reports as
these? Do you not read them? How shall I be sure that you will not
compromise other persons equally unjustly? I want positive facts, not
inventions. It is some time since your agent displeased me; dismiss
him directly." Junot wanted to justify himself, but Bonaparte cut him
short--"Enough!--It is settled!"
I related what had passed to Fouché, who told me that, wishing to amuse
himself at Junot's expense, whose police agents only picked up what they
heard related in coffeehouses, gaming-houses, and the Bourse, he had
given currency to this absurd story, which Junot had credited and
reported, as he did many other foolish tales. Fouché often caught the
police of the Palace in the snares he laid for them, and thus increased
his own credit.
This circumstance, and others of the same nature, induced the First
Consul to attach less importance than at first he had to his secret
police, which seldom reported anything but false and silly stories. That
wretched police! During the time I was with him it embittered his life,
and often exasperated him against his wife, his relations, and friends.
--[Bourrienne, it must be remembered, was a sufferer from the
vigilance of this police.]--
Rapp, who was as frank as he was brave, tells us in his Memoirs (p.
233) that when Napoleon, during his retreat from Moscow, while before
Smolenski, heard of the attempt of Mallet, he could not get over the
adventure of the Police Minister, Savary, and the Prefect of Police,
Pasquier. "Napoleon," says Rapp, "was not surprised that these wretches
(he means the agents of the police) who crowd the salons and the
taverns, who insinuate themselves everywhere and obstruct everything,
should not have found out the plot, but he could not understand the
weakness of the Duc de Rovigo. The very police which professed to
divine everything had let themselves be taken by surprise." The police
possessed no foresight or faculty of prevention. Every silly thing that
transpired was reported either from malice or stupidity. What was heard
was misunderstood or distorted in the recital, so that the only result
of the plan was mischief and confusion.
The police as a political engine is a dangerous thing. It foments and
encourages more false conspiracies than it discovers or defeats real
ones. Napoleon has related "that M. de la Rochefoucauld formed at Paris
a conspiracy in favour of the King, then at Mittau, the first act of
which was to be the death of the Chief of the Government. The plot being
discovered, a trusty person belonging to the police was ordered to
join it and become one of the most active agents. He brought letters
of recommendation from an old gentleman in Lorraine who had held a
distinguished rank in the army of Condé." After this, what more can be
wanted? A hundred examples could not better show the vileness of such
a system. Napoleon, when fallen, himself thus disclosed the scandalous
means employed by his Government.
Napoleon on one occasion, in the Isle of Elba, said to an officer who
was conversing with him about France, "You believe, then, that the
police agents foresee everything and know everything? They invent more
than they discover. Mine, I believe, was better than that they have got
now, and yet it was often only by mere chance, the imprudence of the
parties implicated, or the treachery of some of them, that something was
discovered after a week or fortnight's exertion." Napoleon, in directing
this officer to transmit letters to him under the cover of a commercial
correspondence, to quiet his apprehensions that the correspondence might
be discovered, said, "Do you think, then, that all letters are opened
at the post office? They would never be able to do so. I have often
endeavoured to discover what the correspondence was that passed under
mercantile forms, but I never succeeded. The post office, like the
police, catches only fools."
Since I am on the subject of political police, that leprosy of modern
society, perhaps I may be allowed to overstep the order of time, and
advert to its state even in the present day.
The Minister of Police, to give his prince a favourable idea of his
activity, contrives great conspiracies, which he is pretty sure to
discover in time, because he is their originator. The inferior agents,
to find favour in the eyes of the Minister, contrive small plots. It
would be difficult to mention a conspiracy which has been discovered,
except when the police agents took part in it, or were its promoters.
It is difficult to conceive how those agents can feed a little intrigue,
the result at first, perhaps, of some petty ill-humour and discontent
which, thanks to their skill, soon becomes a great affair. How many
conspiracies have escaped the boasted activity and vigilance of the
police when none of its agents were parties. I may instance Babeuf's
conspiracy, the attempt at the camp at Grenelle, the 18th Brumaire, the
infernal machine, Mallet, the 20th of March, the affair of Grenoble, and
many others.
The political police, the result of the troubles of the Revolution, has
survived them. The civil police for the security of property, health,
and order, is only made a secondary object, and has been, therefore,
neglected. There are times in which it is thought of more consequence to
discover whether a citizen goes to mass or confession than to defeat the
designs of a band of robbers. Such a state of things is unfortunate for
a country; and the money expended on a system of superintendence over
persons alleged to be suspected, in domestic inquisitions, in the
corruption of the friends, relations, and servants of the man marked out
for destruction might be much better employed. The espionage of opinion,
created, as I have said, by the revolutionary troubles, is suspicious,
restless, officious, inquisitorial, vexatious, and tyrannical.
Indifferent to crimes and real offences, it is totally absorbed in the
inquisition of thoughts. Who has not heard it said in company, to some
one speaking warmly, "Be moderate, M------ is supposed to belong to the
police." This police enthralled Bonaparte himself in its snares, and
held him a long time under the influence of its power.
I have taken the liberty thus to speak of a scourge of society of which
I have been a victim. What I here state may be relied on. I shall not
speak of the week during which I had to discharge the functions of
Prefect of Police, namely, from the 13th to the 20th of March, 1815.
It may well be supposed that though I had not held in abhorrence the
infamous system which I have described, the important nature of the
circumstances and the short period of my administration must have
prevented me from making complete use of the means placed at my
disposal. The dictates of discretion, which I consider myself bound to
obey, forbid me giving proofs of what I advance. What it was necessary
to do I accomplished without employing violent or vexatious means; and
I can take on myself to assert that no one has cause to complain of me.
Were I to publish the list of the persons I had orders to arrest, those
of them who are yet living would be astonished that the only knowledge
they had of my being the Prefect of Police was from the Moniteur. I
obtained by mild measures, by persuasion, and reasoning what I could
never have got by violence. I am not divulging any secrets of office,
but I believe I am rendering a service to the public in pointing out
what I have often observed while an unwilling confidant in the shameful
manoeuvres of that political institution.
The word ideologue was often in Bonaparte's mouth; and in using it he
endeavoured to throw ridicule on those men whom he fancied to have a
tendency towards the doctrine of indefinite perfectibility. He esteemed
them for their morality, yet he looked on them as dreamers seeking for
the type of a universal constitution, and considering the character of
man in the abstract only. The ideologues, according to him, looked for
power in institutions; and that he called metaphysics. He had no idea
of power except in direct force. All benevolent men who speculate on the
amelioration of human society were regarded by Bonaparte as dangerous,
because their maxims and principles were diametrically opposed to the
harsh and arbitrary system he had adopted. He said that their hearts
were better than their heads, and, far from wandering with them in
abstractions, he always said that men were only to be governed by fear
and interest. The free expression of opinion through the press has been
always regarded by those who are not led away by interest or power as
useful to society. But Bonaparte held the liberty of the press in the
greatest horror; and so violent was his passion when anything was urged
in its favour that he seemed to labour under a nervous attack. Great man
as he was, he was sorely afraid of little paragraphs.
--[Joseph Bonaparte fairly enough remarks on this that such writings
had done great harm in those extraordinary times (Erreurs, tome i,
p. 259). Metternich, writing in 1827 with distrust of the
proceedings of Louis XVIII., quotes, with approval, Napoleon's
sentiments on this point. "Napoleon, who could not have been
wanting in the feeling of power, said to me, 'You see me master of
France; well, I would not undertake to govern her for three months
with liberty of the press. Louis XVIII., apparently thinking
himself stronger than Napoleon, is not content with allowing the
press its freedom, but has embodied its liberty in the charter"
(Metternich, tome iv, p. 391.)]--