1811
Arrest of La Sahla--My visit to him--His confinement at Vincennes--
Subsequent history of La Sahla--His second journey to France--
Detonating powder--Plot hatched against me by the Prince of Eckmuhl
--Friendly offices of the Due de Rovigo--Bugbears of the police--
Savary, Minister of Police.
I had been in Paris about two months when a young man of the name of La
Sahla was arrested on the suspicion of having come from Saxony to attempt
the life of the Emperor. La Sahla informed the Duo de Rovigo, then
Minister of the Police, that he wished to see me, assigning as a reason
for this the reputation I had left behind me in Germany. The Emperor, I
presume, had no objection to the interview, for I received an invitation
to visit the prisoner. I accordingly repaired to the branch office of
the Minister of the Police, in the Rue des St. Peres, where I was
introduced to a young man between seventeen and eighteen years of age.
My conversation with the young man, whose uncle was, I believe, Minister
to the King of Saxony, interested me greatly in his behalf; I determined,
if possible, to save La Sahla, and I succeeded. I proceeded immediately
to the Duo de Rovigo, and I convinced him that under the circumstances of
the case it was important to make it be believed that the young man was
insane. I observed that if he were brought before a court he would
repeat all that he had stated to me, and probably enter into disclosures
which might instigate fresh attempts at assassination. Perhaps an
avenger of La Sahla might rise up amongst the students of Leipzig, at
which university he had spent his youth. These reasons, together with
others, had the success I hoped for. The Emperor afterwards acknowledged
the prudent course which had been adopted respecting La Sahla; when
speaking at St. Helena of the conspiracies against his life he said,
"I carefully concealed all that I could."
In conformity with my advice La Sahla was sent to Vincennes, where he
remained until the end of March 1814, He was then removed to the castle
of Saumur, from which he was liberated at the beginning of April. I had
heard nothing of him for three years, when one day, shortly after the
Restoration, whilst sitting at breakfast with my family at my house in
the Rue Hauteville, I heard an extraordinary noise in the antechamber,
and before I had time to ascertain its cause I found myself in the arms.
of a young man, who embraced me with extraordinary ardour. It was La
Sahla. He was in a transport of gratitude and joy at his liberation, and
at the accomplishment of the events which he had wished to accelerate by
assassination. La Sahla returned to Saxony and I saw no more of him, but
while I was in Hamburg in 1815, whither I was seat by Louis XVIII., I
learned that on the 5th of June a violent explosion was heard in the
Chamber of Representatives at Paris, which was at first supposed to be a
clap of thunder, but was soon ascertained to have been occasioned by a
young Samson having fallen with a packet of detonating powder in his
pocket.
On receiving this intelligence I imagined, I know not why, that this
young Saxon was La Sahla, and that he had probably intended to blow up
Napoleon and even the Legislative Body; but I have since ascertained that
I was under a mistake as to his intentions. My knowledge of La Sahla's
candour induces me to believe the truth of his declarations to the
police; and if there be any inaccuracies in the report of these
declarations I do not hesitate to attribute them to the police itself,
of which Fouche was the head at the period in question.
It is the latter part of the report which induced me to observe above,
that if there were any inaccuracies in the statement they were more
likely to proceed from Fouche's police than the false representations of
young La Sahla. It is difficult to give credit without proof to such
accusations. However, I decide nothing; but I consider it my duty to
express doubts of the truth of these charges brought against the two
Prussian ministers, of whom the Prince of Wittgenstein, a man of
undoubted honour, has always spoken to me in the best of terms.
There is nothing to prove that La Sahla returned to France the second
time with the same intentions as before. This project, however, is a
mystery to me, and his detonating powder gives rise to many conjectures.
I had scarcely left Hamburg when the Prince of Eckmuhl (Marshal Davoust)
was appointed Governor-General of that place on the union of the Hanse
Towns with the Empire. From that period I was constantly occupied in
contending against the persecutions and denunciations which he racked his
imagination to invent. I cannot help attributing to those persecutions
the Emperor's coolness towards me on my arrival in Paris. But as
Davoust's calumnies were devoid of proof, he resorted to a scheme by
which a certain appearance of probability might supply the place of
truth. When I arrived in Paris, at the commencement of 1811, I was
informed by an excellent friend I had left at Hamburg, M. Bouvier, an
emigrant, and one of the hostages of Louis XVI., that in a few days I
would receive a letter which would commit me, and likewise M. de
Talleyrand and General Rapp. I had never had any connection on matters
of business, with either of these individuals, for whom I entertained the
most sincere attachment. They, like myself, were not in the good graces
of Marshal Davoust, who could not pardon the one for his incontestable
superiority of talent, and the other for his blunt honesty. On the
receipt of M. Bouvier's letter I carried it to the Due de Rovigo, whose
situation made him perfectly aware of the intrigues which had been
carried on against me since I had left Hamburg by one whose ambition
aspired to the Viceroyalty of Poland. On that, as on many other similar
occasions, the Duc de Rovigo advocated my cause with Napoleon. We agreed
that it would be best to await the arrival of the letter which M. Bouvier
had announced. Three weeks elapsed, and the letter did not appear. The
Duc de Rovigo, therefore, told me that I must have been misinformed.
However, I was certain that M. Bouvier would not have sent me the
information on slight grounds, and I therefore supposed that the project
had only been delayed. I was not wrong in my conjecture, for at length
the letter arrived. To what a depth of infamy men can descend! The.
letter was from a man whom I had known at Hamburg, whom I had obliged,
whom I had employed as a spy. His epistle was a miracle of impudence.
After relating some extraordinary transactions which he said had taken
place between us, and which all bore the stamp of falsehood, he requested
me to send him by return of post the sum of 60,000 francs on account of
what I had promised him for some business he executed in England by the
direction of M. de Talleyrand, General Rapp, and myself. Such miserable
wretches are often caught in the snares they spread for others. This was
the case in the present instance, for the fellow had committed, the
blunder of fixing upon the year 1802 as the period of this pretended
business in England, that is to say, two years before my appointment as
Minister-Plenipotentiary to the Hanse Towns. This anachronism was not
the only one I discovered in the letter.
I took a copy of the letter, and immediately carried the original to the
Duc de Rovigo, as had been agreed between us. When I waited on the
Minister he was just preparing to go to the Emperor. He took with him
the letter which I brought, and also the letter which announced its
arrival. As the Duc de Rovigo entered the audience-chamber Napoleon
advanced to meet him, and apostrophised him thus: "Well, I have learned
fine things of your Bourrienne, whom you are always defending." The fact
was, the Emperor had already received a copy of the letter, which had
been opened at the Hamburg post-office. The Due de Rovigo told the
Emperor that he had long known what his Majesty had communicated to him.
He then entered into a full explanation of the intrigue, of which it was
wished to render me the victim, and proved to him the more easily the
falsehood of my accusers by reminding him that in 1802 I was not in
Hamburg, but was still in his service at home.
It may be supposed that I was too much interested in knowing what had
passed at the Tuileries not to return to the Duc de Rovigo the same day.
I learned from him the particulars which I have already related. He
added that he had observed to the Emperor that there was no connection
between Rapp and M. Talleyrand which could warrant the suspicion of their
being concerned in the affair in question. "When Napoleon saw the matter
in its true light," said Savary, "when I proved to him the palpable
existence of the odious machination, he could not find terms to express
his indignation. 'What baseness, what horrible villainy!' he exclaimed;
and gave me orders to arrest and bring to Paris the infamous writer of
the letter; and you may rely upon it his orders shall be promptly
obeyed."
Savary, as he had said, instantly despatched orders for the arrest of the
writer, whom he directed to be sent to France. On his arrival he was
interrogated respecting the letter. He declared that he had written it
at the instigation and under the dictation of Marshal Davoust, for doing
which he received a small sum of money as a reward. He also confessed
that when the letter was put into the post the Prince of Eckmuhl ordered
the Director of the Post to open it, take a copy, then seal it again, and
send it to its address--that is to say, to me--and the copy to the
Emperor. The writer of the letter was banished to Marseilles, or to the
Island of Hyeres, but the individual who dictated it continued a Marshal,
a Prince, and a Governor-General, and still looked forward to the
Viceroyalty of Poland! Such was the discriminating justice of the
Empire; and Davoust continued his endeavours to revenge himself by other
calumnies for my not having considered him a man of talent. I must do
the Duc de Rovigo the justice to say that, though his fidelity to
Napoleon was as it always had been, boundless, yet whilst he executed the
Emperor's orders he endeavoured to make him acquainted with the truth, as
was proved by his conduct in the case I have just mentioned. He was much
distressed by the sort of terror which his appointment had excited in the
public, and he acknowledged to me that he intended to restore confidence
by a more mild system than that of his predecessor. I had observed
formerly that Savary did not coincide in the opinion I had always
entertained of Fouche, but when once the Due de Rovigo endeavoured to
penetrate the labyrinth of police, counter-police, inspections and
hierarchies of espionage, he found they were all bugbears which Fouche
had created to alarm the Emperor, as gardeners put up scarecrows among
the fruit-trees to frighten away the sparrows. Thus, thanks to the
artifices of Fouche, the eagle was frightened as easily as the sparrows,
until the period when the Emperor, convinced that Fouche was maintaining
a correspondence with England through the agency of Ouvrard, dismissed
him.
I saw with pleasure that Savary, the Minister of Police, wished to
simplify the working of his administration, and to gradually diminish
whatever was annoying in it, but, whatever might be his intentions, he
was not always free to act. I acknowledge that when I read his Memoirs I
saw with great impatience that in many matters he had voluntarily assumed
responsibilities for acts which a word from him might have attributed to
their real author. However this may be, what much pleased me in Savary
was the wish he showed to learn the real truth in order to tell it to
Napoleon. He received from the Emperor more than one severe rebuff.
This came from the fact that since the immense aggrandisement of the
Empire the ostensible Ministers, instead of rising in credit, had seen
their functions diminish by degrees. Thus proposals for appointments to
the higher grades of the army came from the cabinet of Berthier, and not
from that of the Minister-of-War. Everything which concerned any part of
the government of the Interior or of the Exterior, except for the
administration of War and perhaps for that of Finance, had its centre in
the cabinet of M. Maret, certainly an honest man, but whose facility in
saying "All is right," so much helped to make all wrong.
The home trade, manufactures, and particularly several of the Parisian
firms were in a state of distress the more hurtful as it contrasted so
singularly with the splendour of the Imperial Court since the marriage of
Napoleon with Maria Louisa. In this state of affairs a chorus of
complaints reached the ears of the Duc de Rovigo every day. I must say
that Savary was never kinder to me than since my disgrace; he nourished
my hope of getting Napoleon to overcome the prejudices against me with
which the spirit of vengeance had inspired him, and I know for certain
that Savary returned to the charge more than once to manage this. The
Emperor listened without anger, did not blame him for the closeness of
our intimacy, and even said to him some obliging but insignificant words
about me. This gave time for new machinations against me, and to fill
him with fresh doubts when he had almost overcome his former, ideas.