THE ROYALIST PLOT
From domestic comedy, France turned rapidly in the early months of
1804 to a sombre tragedy--the tragedy of the Georges Cadoudal plot and
the execution of the Duc d'Enghien.
There were varied reasons why the exiled French Bourbons should
compass the overthrow of Napoleon. Every month that they delayed
action lessened their chances of success. They had long clung to the
hope that his Concordat with the Pope and other anti-revolutionary
measures betokened his intention to recall their dynasty. But in
February, 1803, the Comte de Provence received overtures which showed
that Bonaparte had never thought of playing the part of General Monk.
The exiled prince, then residing at Warsaw, was courteously but most
firmly urged by the First Consul to renounce both for himself and for
the other members of his House all claims to the throne of France, in
return for which he would receive a pension of two million francs a
year. The notion of sinking to the level of a pensionary of the French
Republic touched Bourbon pride to the quick and provoked this spirited
reply:
"As a descendant of St. Louis, I shall endeavour to imitate his
example by respecting myself even in captivity. As successor to
Francis I., I shall at least aspire to say with him: 'We have lost
everything but our honour."'
To this declaration the Comte d'Artois, his son, the Duc de Berri,
Louis Philippe of Orleans, his two sons, and the two Condés gave their
ardent assent; and the same loyal response came from the young Condé,
the Duc d'Enghien, dated Ettenheim, March 22nd, 1803. Little did men
think when they read this last defiance to Napoleon that within a year
its author would be flung into a grave in the moat of the Castle of
Vincennes.
Scarcely had the echoes of the Bourbon retorts died away than the
outbreak of war between England and France raised the hopes of the
French royalist exiles in London; and their nimble fancy pictured the
French army and nation as ready to fling themselves at the feet of
Louis XVIII. The future monarch did not share these illusions. In the
chilly solitudes of Warsaw he discerned matters in their true light,
and prepared to wait until the vaulting ambition of Napoleon should
league Europe against him. Indeed, when the plans of the forward wing
in London were explained to him, with a view of enlisting his support,
he deftly waved aside the embarrassing overtures by quoting the lines:
"Et pour être approuvés
De semblables projets veulent être achevés,"
a cautious reply which led his brother, then at Edinburgh, scornfully
to contemn his _feebleness_ as unworthy of any further confidences.[281]
In truth, the Comte d'Artois, destined one day to be Charles X. of
France, was not fashioned by nature for a Fabian policy of delay: not
even the misfortunes of exile could instill into the watertight
compartments of his brain the most elementary notions of prudence.
Daring, however, attracts daring; and this prince had gathered around
him in our land the most desperate of the French royalists, whose hopes,
hatreds, schemes, and unending requests for British money may be scanned
by the curious in some thirty large volumes of letters bequeathed by
their factotum the Comte de Puisaye, to the British Museum.
Unfortunately this correspondence throws little light on the details of
the plot which is fitly called by the name of Georges Cadoudal.
This daring Breton was, in fact, the only man of action on whom the
Bourbon princes could firmly rely for an enterprise that demanded a
cool head, cunning in the choice of means, and a remorseless hand.
Pichegru it is true, lived near London, but saw little of the
_émigrés_, except the venerable Condé. Dumouriez also was in the great
city, but his name was too generally scorned in France for his
treachery in 1793 to warrant his being used. But there were plenty of
swashbucklers who could prepare the ground in France, or, if fortune
favoured, might strike the blow themselves; and a small committee of
French royalists, which had the support of that furious royalist, Mr.
Windham, M.P., began even before the close of 1802 to discuss plans
for the "removal" of Bonaparte. Two of their tools, Picot and Le
Bourgeois by name, plunged blindly into a plot, and were arrested soon
after they set foot in France. Their boyish credulity seems to have
suggested to the French authorities the sending of an agent so as to
entrap not only French _émigrés_, but also English officials and
Jacobinical generals.
The _agent provocateur_ has at all times been a favourite tool of
continental Governments: but rarely has a more finished specimen of
the class been seen than Méhée de la Touche. After plying the trade of
an assassin in the September massacres of 1792, and of a Jacobin spy
during the Terror, he had been included by Bonaparte among the Jacobin
scapegoats who expiated the Chouan outrage of Nivôse. Pining in the
weariness of exile, he heard from his wife that he might be pardoned
if he would perform some service for the Consular Government. At once
he consented, and it was agreed that he should feign royalism, should
worm himself into the secrets of the _émigrés_ at London, and act as
intermediary between them and the discontented republicans of Paris.
The man who seems to have planned this scheme was the ex-Minister of
Police. Fouché had lately been deprived by Bonaparte of the
inquisitorial powers which he so unscrupulously used. His duties were
divided between Régnier, the Grand Judge and Minister of Justice, and
Réal, a Councillor of State, who watched over the internal security of
France. These men had none of the ability of Fouché, nor did they know
at the outset what Méhée was doing in London. It may, therefore, be
assumed that Méhée was one of Fouché's creatures, whom he used to
discredit his successor, and that Bonaparte welcomed this means of
quickening the zeal of the official police, while he also wove his
meshes round plotting _émigrés_, English officials, and French
generals.[282]
Among these last there was almost chronic discontent, and Bonaparte
claimed to have found out a plot whereby twelve of them should divide
France into as many portions, leaving to him only Paris and its
environs. If so, he never made any use of his discovery. In fact, out
of this group of malcontents, Moreau, Bernadotte, Augereau, Macdonald,
and others, he feared only the hostility of the first. The victor of
Hohenlinden lived in sullen privacy near to Paris, refusing to present
himself at the Consular Court, and showing his contempt for those who
donned a courtier's uniform. He openly mocked at the Concordat; and
when the Legion of Honour was instituted, he bestowed a collar of
honour upon his dog. So keen was Napoleon's resentment at this
raillery that he even proposed to send him a challenge to a duel in
the Bois de Boulogne.[283] The challenge, of course, was not sent; a
show of reconciliation was assumed between the two warriors; but
Napoleon retained a covert dislike of the man whose brusque
republicanism was applauded by a large portion of the army and by the
_frondeurs_ of Paris.
The ruin of Moreau, and the confusion alike of French royalists and
of the British Ministry, could now be assured by the encouragement of
a Jacobin-Royalist conspiracy, in which English officials should be
implicated. Moreau was notoriously incapable in the sphere of
political intrigue: the royalist coteries in London presented just the
material on which the _agent provocateur_ delights to work; and some
British officials could, doubtless, with equal ease be drawn into the
toils. Méhée de la Touche has left a highly spiced account of his
adventures; but it must, of course, be received with distrust.[284]
Proceeding first to Guernsey, he gained the confidence of the
Governor, General Doyle; and, fortified by recommendations from him,
he presented himself to the _émigrés_ at London, and had an interview
with Lord Hawkesbury and the Under-Secretaries of State, Messrs.
Hammond and Yorke. He found it easy to inflame the imagination of the
French exiles, who clutched at the proposed union between the
irreconcilables, the extreme royalists, and the extreme republicans;
and it was forthwith arranged that Napoleon's power, which rested on
the support of the peasants, in fact of the body of France, should be
crushed by an enveloping move of the tips of the wings.
Méhée's narrative contains few details and dates, such as enable one
to test his assertions. But I have examined the Puisaye Papers,[285]
and also the Foreign and Home Office archives, and have found proofs
of the complicity of our Government, which it will be well to present
here connectedly. Taken singly they are inconclusive, but collectively
their importance is considerable. In our Foreign Office Records
(France, No 70) there is a letter, dated London, August 30th, 1803,
from the Baron de Roll, the factotum of the exiled Bourbons, to Mr.
Hammond, our Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, asking
him to call on the Comte d'Artois at his residence, No. 46, Baker
Street. That the deliberations at that house were not wholly peaceful
appears from a long secret memorandum of October 24th, 1803, in which
the Comte d'Artois reviews the career of "that _miserable adventurer_"
(Bonaparte), so as to prove that his present position is precarious
and tottering. He concludes by naming those who desired his
overthrow--Moreau, Reynier, Bernadotte, Simon, Masséna, Lannes, and
Férino: Sieyès, Carnot, Chénier, Fouché, Barras, Tallien, Rewbel,
Lamarque, and Jean de Bry. Others would not attack him "corps à
corps," but disliked his supremacy. These two papers prove that our
Government was aware of the Bourbon plot. Another document, dated
London, November 18th, 1803, proves its active complicity. It is a
list of the French royalist officers "who had set out or were ready to
set out." All were in our pay, two at six shillings, five at four
shillings, and nine at two shillings a day. It would be indelicate to
reveal the names, but among them occurs that of Joachim P.J. Cadoudal.
The list is drawn up and signed by Frieding--a name that was
frequently used by Pichegru as an _alias_. In his handwriting also is
a list of "royalist officers for whom I demand a year's pay in
advance"--five generals, thirteen _chefs de légion_, seventeen _chefs
de bataillon_, and nineteen captains. The pay claimed amounts to
£3,110 15_s._[286] That some, at least, of our Admiralty officials
also aided Cadoudal is proved by a "most secret" letter, dated
Admiralty Office, July 31st, 1803, from E. N[epean] to Admiral Montagu
in the Downs, charging him to help the bearer, Captain Wright, in the
execution of "a very important service," and to provide for him "one
of the best of the hired cutters or luggers under your orders."
Another "most secret" Admiralty letter, of January 9th, 1804, orders a
frigate or large sloop to be got ready to convey secretly "an officer
of rank and consideration" (probably Pichegru) to the French coast.
Wright carried over the conspirators in several parties, until chance
threw him into Napoleon's power and consigned him to an ignominious
death, probably suicide.
Finally, there is the letter of Mr. Arbuthnot, Parliamentary Secretary
at the Foreign Office (dated March 12th, 1804), to Sir Arthur Paget,
in which he refers to the "sad result of all our fine projects for the
re-establishment of the Bourbons: ... we are, of course, greatly
apprehensive for poor Moreau's safety."[287]
In face of this damning evidence the ministerial denials of complicity
must be swept aside.[288] It is possible, however, that the plot was
connived at, not by the more respectable chiefs, but by young and
hot-headed officials. Even in the summer of 1803 that Cabinet was
already tottering under the attacks of the Whigs and the followers of
Pitt. The blandly respectable Addington and Hawkesbury with his
"vacant grin"[289] were evidently no match for Napoleon; and
Arbuthnot himself dubs Addington "a poor wretch universally despised
and laught at," and pronounces the Cabinet "the most inefficient that
ever curst a country." I judge, therefore, that our official aid to
the conspirators was limited to the Under-Secretaries of the Foreign,
War, and Admiralty Offices. Moreover, the royalist plans, _as revealed
to our officials_, mainly concerned a rising in Normandy and Brittany.
Our Government would not have paid the salaries of fifty-four royalist
officers--many of them of good old French families--if it had been
only a question of stabbing Napoleon. The lists of those officers were
drawn up here in November, 1803, that is, three months after Georges
Cadoudal had set out for Normandy and Paris to collect his
desperadoes; and it seems most probable that the officers of the
"royal army" were expected merely to clinch Cadoudal's enterprise by
rekindling the flame of revolt in the north and west. French agents
were trying to do the same in Ireland, and a plot for the murder of
George III. was thought to have been connived at by the French
authorities. But, when all is said, the British Government must stand
accused of one of the most heinous of crimes. The whole truth was not
known at Paris; but it was surmised; and the surmise was sufficient to
envenom the whole course of the struggle between England and Napoleon.
Having now established the responsibility of British officials in
this, the most famous plot of the century, we return to describe the
progress of the conspiracy and the arts employed by Napoleon to defeat
it. His tool, Méhée de la Touche, after entrapping French royalists
and some of our own officials in London, proceeded to the Continent in
order to inveigle some of our envoys. He achieved a brilliant success.
He called at Munich, in order, as he speciously alleged, to arrange
with our ambassador there the preparations for the royalist plot. The
British envoy, who bore the honoured name of Francis Drake, was a
zealous intriguer closely in touch with the _émigrés_: he was
completely won over by the arts of Méhée: he gave the spy money,
supplied him with a code of false names, and even intrusted him with a
recipe for sympathetic ink. Thus furnished, Méhée proceeded to Paris,
sent his briber a few harmless bulletins, took his information to the
police, and, _at Napoleon's dictation_, gave him news that seriously
misled our Government and Nelson.[290]
The same trick was tried on Stuart, our ambassador at Vienna, who had
a tempting offer from a French agent to furnish news from every French
despatch to or from Vienna. Stuart had closed with the offer, when
suddenly the man was seized at the instance of the French ambassador,
and his papers were searched.[291] In this case there were none that
compromised Stuart, and his career was not cut short in the
ignominious manner that befell Drake, over whom there may be inscribed
as epitaph the warning which Talleyrand gave to young aspirants--"et
surtout pas trop de zèle."
Thus, while the royalists were conspiring the overthrow of Napoleon,
he through his agents was countermining their clumsy approach to his
citadel, and prepared to blow them sky high when their mines were
crowded for the final rush. The royalist plans matured slowly owing to
changes which need not be noticed. Georges Cadoudal quitted London,
and landed at Biville, a smuggler's haunt not far from Dieppe, on
August 23rd, 1803. Thence he made his way to Paris, and spent some
months in striving to enlist trusty recruits. It has been stated that
the plot never aimed at assassination, but at the overpowering of the
First Consul's escort, and the seizure of his person, during one of
his journeys. Then he was to be forcibly transferred to the northern
coast on relays of horses, and hurried over to England.[292] But,
though the plotters threw the veil of decency over their enterprise by
calling it kidnapping, they undoubtedly meant murder. Among Drake's
papers there is a hint that the royalist emissaries were _at first_ to
speak only of the seizure and deportation of the First Consul.
Whatever may have been their precise aims, they were certainly known
to Napoleon and his police. On November 1st, 1803, he wrote to
Régnier:
"You must not be in a hurry about the arrests: when the author
[Méhée] has given in all the information, we will draw up a plan
with him, and will see what is to be done. I wish him to write to
Drake, and, in order to make him trustful, inform him that, before
the great blow can be dealt, he believes he [Méhée] can promise to
have seized on the table of the First Consul, in his secret room,
notes written in his own hand relating to his great expedition,
and every other important document."
Napoleon revelled in the details of his plan for hoisting the
engineers with their own petards.[293] But he knew full well that the
plot, when fully ripe, would yield far more than the capture of a few
Chouans. He must wait until Moreau was implicated. The man selected by
the _émigrés_ to sound Moreau was Pichegru, and this choice was the
sole instance of common sense displayed by them. It was Pichegru who
had marked out the future fortune of Moreau in the campaign of 1793,
and yet he had seemed to be the victim of that general's gross
ingratitude at Fructidor. Who then so fitted as he to approach the
victor of Hohenlinden? Through a priest named David and General
Lajolais, an interview was arranged; and shortly after Pichegru's
arrival in France, these warriors furtively clasped hands in the
capital which had so often resounded with their praises (January,
1804). They met three or four times, and cleared away some of the
misunderstandings of the past. But he would have nothing to do with
Georges, and when Pichegru mooted the overthrow of Bonaparte and the
restoration of the Bourbons, he firmly warned him: "Do with Bonaparte
what you will, but do not ask me to put a Bourbon in his place."
From this resolve Moreau never receded. But his calculating reserve did
not save him. Already several suspects had been imprisoned in Normandy.
At Napoleon's suggestion five of them were condemned to death, in the
hope of extorting a confession; and the last a man named Querelle,
gratified his gaolers by revealing (February 14th) not only the lodging
of Georges in Paris, but the intention of other conspirators, among whom
was a French prince, to land at Biville. The plot was now coming to a
head, and so was the counter-plot. On the next day Moreau was arrested
by order of Napoleon, who feigned the utmost grief and surprise at
seeing the victor of Hohenlinden mixed up with royalist assassins in the
pay of England.[294]
Elated by this success, and hoping to catch the Comte d'Artois
himself, Napoleon forthwith despatched to that cliff one of his most
crafty and devoted servants, Savary, who commanded the _gendarmerie
d'élite._ Tricked out in suitable disguises, and informed by a
smuggler as to the royalist signals, Savary eagerly awaited the royal
quarry, and when Captain Wright's vessel hove in sight, he used his
utmost arts to imitate the signals that invited a landing. But the
crew were not to be lured to shore; and after fruitless endeavours he
returned to Paris--in time to take part in the murder of the Duc
d'Enghien.
Meanwhile the police were on the tracks of Pichegru and Georges. On
the last day of February the general was seized in bed in the house of
a treacherous friend: but not until the gates of Paris had been
closed, and domiciliary visits made, was Georges taken, and then only
after a desperate affray (March 9th). The arrest of the two Polignacs
and the Marquis de Rivière speedily followed.
Hitherto Napoleon had completely outwitted his foes. He knew well
enough that he was in no danger.
"I have run no real risks," he wrote to Melzi, "for the police had
its eyes on all these machinations, and I have the consolation of
not finding reason to complain of a single man among all those I
have placed in this huge administration, Moreau stands alone."
[295]
But now, at the moment of victory, when France was swelling with rage
against royalist assassins, English gold, and Moreau's treachery, the
First Consul was hurried into an enterprise which gained him an
imperial crown and flecked the purple with innocent blood.
There was living at Ettenheim, in Baden, not far from the Rhine, a
young prince of the House of Condé, the Duc d'Enghien. Since the
disbanding of the corps of Condé he had been tranquilly enjoying the
society of the Princess Charlotte de Rohan, to whom he had been
secretly married. Her charms, the attractions of the chase, the
society of a small circle of French _émigrés_, and an occasional
secret visit to the theatre at Strassburg, formed the chief diversions
to an otherwise monotonous life, until he was fired with the hope of a
speedy declaration of war by Austria and Russia against Napoleon.
Report accused him of having indiscreetly ventured in disguise far
into France; but he indignantly denied it. His other letters also
prove that he was not an accomplice of the Cadoudal-Pichegru
conspiracy. But Napoleon's spies gave information which seemed to
implicate him in that enterprise. Chief among them was Méhée, who, at
the close of February, hovered about Ettenheim and heard that the duke
was often absent for many days at a time.
Napoleon received this news on March 1st, and ordered the closest
investigation to be made. One of his spies reported that the young
duke associated with General Dumouriez. In reality the general was in
London, and the spy had substituted the name of a harmless old
gentleman called Thumery. When Napoleon saw the name of Dumouriez with
that of the young duke his rage knew no bounds. "Am I a dog to be
beaten to death in the street? Why was I not warned that they were
assembling at Ettenheim? Are my murderers sacred beings? They attack my
very person. I'll give them war for war." And he overwhelmed with
reproaches both Réal and Talleyrand for neglecting to warn him of these
traitors and assassins clustering on the banks of the Rhine. The seizure
of Georges Cadoudal and the examination of one of his servants helped to
confirm Napoleon's surmise that he was the victim of a plot of which the
duke and Dumouriez were the real contrivers, while Georges was their
tool. Cadoudal's servant stated that there often came to his master's
house a mysterious man, at whose entry not only Georges but also the
Polignacs and Rivière always arose. This convinced Napoleon that the Duc
d'Enghien was directing the plot, and he determined to have the duke and
Dumouriez seized. That they were on German soil was naught to him.
Talleyrand promised that he could soon prevail on the Elector to
overlook this violation of his territory, and the question was then
discussed in an informal council. Talleyrand, Réal, and Fouché advised
the severest measures. Lebrun spoke of the outcry which such a violation
of neutral territory would arouse, but bent before the determination of
the First Consul; and the regicide Cambacérès alone offered a firm
opposition to an outrage which must embroil France with Germany and
Russia. Despite this protest, Napoleon issued his orders and then
repaired to the pleasing solitudes of La Malmaison, where he remained in
almost complete seclusion. The execution of the orders was now left to
Generals Ordener and Caulaincourt, who arranged the raid into Baden; to
Murat, who was now Governor of Paris; and to the devoted and
unquestioning Savary and Réal.
The seizure of the duke was craftily effected. Troops and gendarmes
were quietly mustered at Strassburg: spies were sent forward to survey
the ground; and as the dawn of the 15th of March was lighting up the
eastern sky, thirty Frenchmen encircled Enghien's abode. His hot blood
prompted him to fight, but on the advice of a friend he quietly
surrendered, was haled away to Strassburg, and thence to the castle of
Vincennes on the south-east of Paris. There everything was ready for
his reception on the evening of March 20th. The pall of secrecy was
spread over the preparations. The name of Plessis was assigned to the
victim, and Harel, the governor of the castle, was left ignorant of
his rank.[296]
Above all, he was to be tried by a court-martial of officers, a form
of judgment which was summary and without appeal; whereas the ordinary
courts of justice must be slow and open to the public gaze. It was
true that the Senate had just suspended trial by jury in the case of
attempts against the First Consul's life--a device adopted in view of
the Moreau prosecution. But the certainty of a conviction was not
enough: Napoleon determined to strike terror into his enemies, such as
a swift and secret blow always inspires. He had resolved on a trial by
court-martial when he still believed Enghien to be an accomplice of
Dumouriez; and when, late on Saturday, March 17th, that mistake was
explained, his purpose remained unshaken--unshaken too by the high
mass of Easter Sunday, March 18th, which he heard in state at the
Chapel of the Tuileries. On the return journey to Malmaison Josephine
confessed to Madame de Rémusat her fears that Bonaparte's will was
unalterably fixed: "I have done what I could, but I fear his mind is
made up." She and Joseph approached him once more in the park while
Talleyrand was at his side. "I fear that cripple," she said, as they
came near, and Joseph drew the Minister aside. All was in vain. "Go
away; you are a child; you don't understand public duties." This was
Josephine's final repulse.
On March 20th Napoleon drew up the form of questions to be put to the
prisoner. He now shifted the ground of accusation. Out of eleven
questions only the last three referred to the duke's connection with
the Cadoudal plot.[297] For in the meantime he had found in the
duke's papers proofs of his having offered his services to the
British Government for the present war,[298] his hopes of
participation in a future Continental war, but nothing that could
implicate him in the Cadoudal plot. The papers were certainly
disappointing; and that is doubtless the reason why, after examining
them on March 19th, he charged Réal "to take secret cognizance of
these papers, along with Desmarest. One must prevent any talk on the
more or less of charges contained in these papers." The same fact
doubtless led to their abstraction along with the _dossier_ of the
proceedings of the court-martial.[299]
The task of summoning the officers who were to form the court-martial
was imposed on Murat. But when this bluff, hearty soldier received
this order, he exclaimed: "What! are they trying to soil my uniform! I
will not allow it! Let him appoint them himself if he wants to." But a
second and more imperious mandate compelled him to perform this
hateful duty. The seven senior officers of the garrison of Paris now
summoned were ordered not to separate until judgment was passed.[300]
At their head was General Hulin, who had shown such daring in the
assault on the Bastille; and thus one of the early heroes of the
Revolution had the evening of his days shrouded over with the horrors
of a midnight murder. Finally, the First Consul charged Savary, who
had just returned to Paris from Biville, furious at being baulked of
his prey, to proceed to Vincennes with a band of his gendarmes for the
carrying out of the sentence.
The seven officers as yet knew nothing of the nature of their mission,
or of martial law. "We had not," wrote Hulin long afterwards, "the least
idea about trials; and, worst of all, the reporter and clerk had
scarcely any more experience."[301] The examination of the prisoner was
curt in the extreme. He was asked his name, date and place of birth,
whether he had borne arms against France and was in the pay of England.
To the last questions he answered decisively in the affirmative, adding
that he wished to take part in the new war against France.
His replies were the same as he made in his preliminary examination,
which he closed with the written and urgent request for a personal
interview with Napoleon. To this request the court proposed to accede;
but Savary, who had posted himself behind Hulin's chair, at once
declared this step to be _inopportune_. The judges had only one chance
of escape from their predicament, namely, to induce the duke to
invalidate his evidence: this he firmly refused to do, and when Hulin
warned him of the danger of his position, he replied that he knew it,
and wished to have an interview with the First Consul.
The court then passed sentence, and, "in accordance with article
(blank) of the law (blank) to the following effect (blank) condemned
him to suffer death." Ashamed, as it would seem, of this clumsy
condemnation, Hulin was writing to Bonaparte to request for the
condemned man the personal interview which he craved, when Savary took
the pen from his hands, with the words: "Your work is done: the rest
is my business."[302] The duke was forthwith led out into the moat of
the castle, where a few torches shed their light on the final scene of
this sombre tragedy: he asked for a priest, but this was denied him:
he then bowed his head in prayer, lifted those noble features towards
the soldiers, begged them not to miss their aim, and fell, shot
through the heart. Hard by was a grave, which, in accordance with
orders received on the previous day, the governor had caused to be
made ready; into this the body was thrown pell-mell, and the earth
closed over the remains of the last scion of the warlike House of
Condé.
Twelve years later loving hands disinterred the bones and placed them
in the chapel of the castle. But even then the world knew not all the
enormity of the crime. It was reserved for clumsy apologists like
Savary to provoke replies and further investigations. The various
excuses which throw the blame on Talleyrand, and on everyone but the
chief actor, are sufficiently disposed of by the ex-Emperor's will. In
that document Napoleon brushed away the excuses which had previously
been offered to the credulity or malice of his courtiers, and took on
himself the responsibility for the execution:
"I caused the Duc d'Enghien to be arrested and judged, because it
was necessary for the safety, the interest, and the honour of the
French people when the Comte d'Artois, by his own confession, was
supporting sixty assassins at Paris. In similar circumstances I
would act in the same way again."[303]
The execution of the Duc d'Enghien is one of the most important
incidents of this period, so crowded with momentous events. The
sensation of horror which it caused can be gauged by the mental agony
of Madame de Rémusat and of others who had hitherto looked on
Bonaparte as the hero of the age and the saviour of the country. His
mother hotly upbraided him, saying it was an atrocious act, the stain
of which could never be wiped out, and that he had yielded to the
advice of enemies' eager to tarnish his fame.[304] Napoleon said
nothing, but shut himself up in his cabinet, revolving these terrible
words, which doubtless bore fruit in the bitter reproaches later to be
heaped upon Talleyrand for his share in the tragedy. Many royalists
who had begun to rally to his side now showed their indignation at the
deed. Chateaubriand, who was about to proceed as the envoy of France
to the Republic of Valais, at once offered his resignation and assumed
an attitude of covert defiance. And that was the conduct of all
royalists who were not dazzled by the glamour of success or cajoled by
Napoleon's favours. Many of his friends ventured to show their horror
of this Corsican vendetta; and a _mot_ which was plausibly, but it
seems wrongly, attributed to Fouché, well sums up the general opinion
of that callous society: "It was worse than a crime--it was a
blunder."
Scarcely had Paris recovered from this sensation when, on April 6th,
Pichegru was found strangled in prison; and men silently but almost
unanimously hailed it as the work of Napoleon's Mamelukes. This
judgment, however natural after the Enghien affair, seems to be
incorrect. It is true the corpse bore marks which scarcely tallied with
suicide: but Georges Cadoudal, whose cell was hard by, heard no sound of
a scuffle; and it is unlikely that so strong a man as Pichegru would
easily have succumbed to assailants. It is therefore more probable that
the conqueror of Holland, shattered by his misfortunes and too proud to
undergo a public trial, cut short a life which already was doomed. Never
have plotters failed more ignominiously and played more completely into
the hands of their enemy. A _mot_ of the Boulevards wittily sums up the
results of their puny efforts: "They came to France to give her a king,
and they gave her an Emperor."
* * * * *