intelligence that the mob of the town designed him the honor of a visit
on the ninth of Thermidor, and would probably administer to him what he
had, in his defence of his friend Lebon, described as substantial
justice under forms a little harsh. It was necessary for him to disguise
himself in clothes such as were worn by the carpenters of the dock. In
this garb, with a bundle of wood shavings under his arm, he made his
escape into the vineyards which surround the city, lurked during some
days in a peasant's hut, and, when the dreaded anniversary was over,
stole back into the city. A few months later he was again in danger. He
now thought that he should be nowhere so safe as in the neighborhood of
Paris. He quitted Bordeaux, hastened undetected through those towns
where four years before his life had been in extreme danger, passed
through the capital in the morning twilight, when none were in the
streets except shopboys taking down the shutters, and arrived safe at
the pleasant village of St. Ouen on the Seine. Here he remained in
seclusion during some months. In the meantime Bonaparte returned from
Egypt, placed himself at the head of a coalition of discontented
parties, covered his designs with the authority of the Elders, drove the
Five Hundred out of their hall at the point of the bayonet, and became
absolute monarch of France under the name of First Consul.
Barere assures us that these events almost broke his heart; that he
could not bear to see France again subject to a master; and that, if the
representatives had been worthy of that honorable name, they would have
arrested the ambitious general who insulted them. These feelings,
however, did not prevent him from soliciting the protection of the new
government, and from sending to the First Consul a handsome copy of the
essay on the Liberty of the Seas.
The policy of Bonaparte was to cover all the past with a general
oblivion. He belonged half to the Revolution and half to the reaction.
He was an upstart and a sovereign; and had therefore something in common
with the Jacobin, and something in common with the Royalist. All,
whether Jacobins or Royalists, who were disposed to support his
government, were readily received; all, whether Jacobins or Royalists,
who showed hostility to his government, were put down and punished. Men
who had borne a part in the worst crimes of the Reign of Terror, and men
who had fought in the army of Conde, were to be found close together,
both in his antechambers and in his dungeons. He decorated Fouche and
Maury with the same cross. He sent Arena and Georges Cadoudal to the
same scaffold. From a government acting on such principles Barere easily
obtained the indulgence which the Directory had constantly refused to
grant. The sentence passed by the Convention was remitted; and he was
allowed to reside at Paris. His pardon, it is true, was not granted in
the most honorable form; and he remained, during some time, under the
special supervision of the police. He hastened, however, to pay his
court at the Luxemburg palace, where Bonaparte then resided, and was
honored with a few dry and careless words by the master of France.
Here begins a new chapter of Barere's history. What passed between him
and the Consular government cannot, of course, be so accurately known to
us as the speeches and reports which he made in the Convention. It is,
however, not difficult, from notorious facts, and from the admissions
scattered over these lying Memoirs, to form a tolerably accurate notion
of what took place. Bonaparte wanted to buy Barere; Barere wanted to
sell himself to Bonaparte. The only question was one of price; and there
was an immense interval between what was offered and what was demanded.
Bonaparte, whose vehemence of will, fixedness of purpose, and reliance
on his own genius were not only great but extravagant, looked with scorn
on the most effeminate and dependent of human minds. He was quite
capable of perpetrating crimes under the influence either of ambition or
of revenge; but he had no touch of that accursed monomania, that craving
for blood and tears, which raged in some of the Jacobin chiefs. To
proscribe the Terrorists would have been wholly inconsistent with his
policy; but, of all the classes of men whom his comprehensive system
included, he liked them the least; and Barere was the worst of them.
This wretch had been branded with infamy, first by the Convention, and
then by the Council of Five Hundred. The inhabitants of four or five
great cities had attempted to tear him limb from limb. Nor were his
vices redeemed by eminent talents for administration or legislation. It
would be unwise to place in any honorable or important post a man so
wicked, so odious, and so little qualified to discharge high political
duties. At the same time, there was a way in which it seemed likely that
he might be of use to the government. The First Consul, as he afterwards
acknowledged, greatly overrated Barere's powers as a writer. The effect
which the Reports of the Committee of Public Safety had produced by the
camp fires of the Republican armies had been great. Napoleon himself,
when a young soldier, had been delighted by those compositions, which
had much in common with the rhapsodies of his favorite poet, Macpherson.
The taste, indeed, of the great warrior and statesman was never very
pure. His bulletins, his general orders, and his proclamations, are
sometimes, it is true, masterpieces in their kind; but we too often
detect, even in his best writing, traces of Fingal, and of the
Carmagnoles. It is not strange, therefore, that he should have been
desirous to secure the aid of Barere's pen. Nor was this the only kind
of assistance which the old member of the Committee of Public Safety
might render to the Consular government. He was likely to find admission
into the gloomy dens in which those Jacobins whose constancy was to be
overcome by no reverse, or whose crimes admitted of no expiation, hid
themselves from the curses of mankind. No enterprise was too bold or too
atrocious for minds crazed by fanaticism, and familiar with misery and
death. The government was anxious to have information of what passed in
their secret councils; and no man was better qualified to furnish such
information than Barere.
For these reasons the First Consul was disposed to employ Barere as a
writer and as a spy. But Barere--was it possible that he would submit to
such a degradation? Bad as he was, he had played a great part. He had
belonged to that class of criminals who filled the world with the renown
of their crimes; he had been one of a cabinet which had ruled France
with absolute power, and made war on all Europe with signal success.
Nay, he had been, though not the most powerful, yet, with the single
exception of Robespierre, the most conspicuous member of that cabinet.
His name had been a household word at Moscow and at Philadelphia, at
Edinburgh and at Cadiz. The blood of the Queen of France, the blood of
the greatest orators and philosophers of France, was on his hands. He
had spoken; and it had been decreed that the plough should pass over the
great city of Lyons. He had spoken again; and it had been decreed that
the streets of Toulon should be razed to the ground. When depravity is
placed so high as his, the hatred which it inspires is mingled with awe.
His place was with great tyrants, with Critias and Sylla, with Eccelino
and Borgia; not with hireling scribblers and police runners.
"Virtue, I grant you, is an empty boast;
But shall the dignity of vice be lost?"
So sang Pope; and so felt Barere. When it was proposed to him to publish
a journal in defence of the Consular government, rage and shame inspired
him for the first and last time with something like courage. He had
filled as large a space in the eyes of mankind as Mr. Pitt or General
Washington; and he was coolly invited to descend at once to the level of
Mr. Lewis Goldsmith. He saw, too, with agonies of envy, that a wide
distinction was made between himself and the other statesmen of the
Revolution who were summoned to the aid of the government. Those
statesmen were required, indeed, to make large sacrifices of principles;
but they were not called on to sacrifice what, in the opinion of the
vulgar, constitutes personal dignity. They were made tribunes and
legislators, ambassadors and counsellors of state, ministers, senators,
and consuls. They might reasonably expect to rise with the rising
fortunes of their master; and, in truth, many of them were destined to
wear the badge of his Legion of Honor and of his order of the Iron
Crown; to be arch-chancellors and arch-treasurers, counts, dukes, and
princes. Barere, only six years before, had been far more powerful, far
more widely renowned, than any of them; and now, while they were thought
worthy to represent the majesty of France at foreign courts, while they
received crowds of suitors in gilded antechambers, he was to pass his
life in measuring paragraphs, and scolding correctors of the press. It
was too much. Those lips which had never before been able to fashion
themselves to a No, now murmured expostulation and refusal. "I could
not"--these are his own words--"abase myself to such a point as to serve
the First Consul merely in the capacity of a journalist, while so many
insignificant, low, and servile people, such as the Treilhards, the
Roederers, the Lebruns, the Marets, and others, whom it is superfluous
to name, held the first place in this government of upstarts."
This outbreak of spirit was of short duration. Napoleon was inexorable.
It is said indeed that he was, for a moment, half inclined to admit
Barere into the Council of State; but the members of that body
remonstrated in the strongest terms, and declared that such a nomination
would be a disgrace to them all. This plan was therefore relinquished.
Thenceforth Barere's only chance of obtaining the patronage of the
government was to subdue his pride, to forget that there had been a time
when, with three words, he might have had the heads of the three
consuls, and to betake himself, humbly and industriously, to the task of
composing lampoons on England and panegyrics on Bonaparte.
It has been often asserted, we know not on what grounds, that Barere was
employed by the government not only as a writer, but as a censor of the
writings of other men. This imputation he vehemently denies in his
Memoirs; but our readers will probably agree with us in thinking that
his denial leaves the question exactly where it was.
Thus much is certain, that he was not restrained from exercising the
office of censor by any scruple of conscience or honor; for he did
accept an office, compared with which that of censor, odious as it is,
may be called an august and beneficent magistracy. He began to have what
are delicately called relations with the police. We are not sure that we
have formed, or that we can convey, an exact notion of the nature of
Barere's new calling. It is a calling unknown in our country. It has
indeed often happened in England that a plot has been revealed to the
government by one of the conspirators. The informer has sometimes been
directed to carry it fair towards his accomplices, and to let the evil
design come to full maturity. As soon as his work is done, he is
generally snatched from the public gaze, and sent to some obscure
village or to some remote colony. The use of spies, even to this extent,
is in the highest degree unpopular in England; but a political spy by
profession is a creature from which our island is as free as it is from
wolves. In France the race is well known, and was never more numerous,
more greedy, more cunning, or more savage, than under the government of
Bonaparte.
Our idea of a gentleman in relations with the Consular and Imperial
police may perhaps be incorrect. Such as it is, we will try to convey it
to our readers. We image to ourselves a well-dressed person, with a soft
voice and affable manners. His opinions are those of the society in
which he finds himself, but a little stronger. He often complains, in
the language of honest indignation, that what passes in private
conversation finds its way strangely to the government, and cautions his
associates to take care what they say when they are not sure of their
company. As for himself, he owns that he is indiscreet. He can never
refrain from speaking his mind; and that is the reason that he is not
prefect of a department.
In a gallery of the Palais Royal he overhears two friends talking
earnestly about the king and the Count of Artois. He follows them into a
coffee-house, sits at the table next to them, calls for his half-dish
and his small glass of cognac, takes up a journal, and seems occupied
with the news. His neighbors go on talking without restraint, and in the
style of persons warmly attached to the exiled family. They depart; and
he follows them half round the boulevards till he fairly tracks them to
their apartments, and learns their names from the porters. From that day
every letter addressed to either of them is sent from the post office to
the police, and opened. Their correspondents become known to the
government, and are carefully watched. Six or eight honest families, in
different parts of France, find themselves at once under the frown of
power without being able to guess what offence they have given. One
person is dismissed from a public office; another learns with dismay
that his promising son has been turned out of the Polytechnic School.
Next, the indefatigable servant of the state falls in with an old
republican, who has not changed with the times, who regrets the red cap
and the tree of liberty, who has not unlearned the Thee and Thou, and
who still subscribes his letters with "Health and Fraternity." Into the
ears of this sturdy politician our friend pours forth a long series of
complaints. What evil times! What a change since the days when the
Mountain governed France! What is the First Consul but a king under a
new name? What is this Legion of Honor but a new aristocracy? The old
superstition is reviving with the old tyranny. There is a treaty with
the Pope, and a provision for the clergy. Emigrant nobles are returning
in crowds, and are better received at the Tuileries than the men of the
tenth of August. This cannot last. What is life without liberty? What
terrors has death to the true patriot? The old Jacobin catches fire,
bestows and receives the fraternal hug, and hints that there will soon
be great news, and that the breed of Harmodius and Brutus is not quite
extinct. The next day he is close prisoner, and all his papers are in
the hands of the government.
To this vocation--a vocation compared with which the life of a beggar,
of a pickpocket, of a pimp, is honorable--did Barere now descend. It was
his constant practice, as often as he enrolled himself in a new party,
to pay his footing with the heads of old friends. He was at first a
Royalist; and he made atonement by watering the tree of liberty with the
blood of Louis. He was then a Girondist; and he made atonement by
murdering Vergniaud and Gensonne. He fawned on Robespierre up to the
eighth of Thermidor; and he made atonement by moving, on the ninth,
that Robespierre should be beheaded without a trial. He was now enlisted
in the service of the new monarchy; and he proceeded to atone for his
republican heresies by sending republican throats to the guillotine.
Among his most intimate associates was a Gascon named Demerville, who
had been employed in an office of high trust under the Committee of
Public Safety. This man was fanatically attached to the Jacobin system
of politics, and, in conjunction with other enthusiasts of the same
class, formed a design against the First Consul. A hint of this design
escaped him in conversation with Barere. Barere carried the intelligence
to Lannes, who commanded the Consular Guards. Demerville was arrested,
tried, and beheaded; and among the witnesses who appeared against him
was his friend Barere.
The account which Barere has given of these transactions is studiously
confused and grossly dishonest. We think, however, that we can discern,
through much falsehood and much artful obscurity, some truths which he
labors to conceal. It is clear to us that the government suspected him
of what the Italians call a double treason. It was natural that such a
suspicion should attach to him. He had, in times not very remote,
zealously preached the Jacobin doctrine, that he who smites a tyrant
deserves higher praise than he who saves a citizen. Was it possible that
the member of the Committee of Public Safety, the king-killer, the
queen-killer, could in earnest mean to deliver his old confederates, his
bosom friends, to the executioner, solely because they had planned an
act which, if there were any truth in his own Carmagnoles, was in the
highest degree virtuous and glorious? Was it not more probable that he
was really concerned in the plot, and that the information which he gave
was merely intended to lull or to mislead the police? Accordingly spies
were set on the spy. He was ordered to quit Paris, and not to come
within twenty leagues till he received further orders. Nay, he ran no
small risk of being sent, with some of his old friends, to Madagascar.
He made his peace, however, with the government so far, that he was not
only permitted, during some years, to live unmolested, but was employed
in the lowest sort of political drudgery. In the summer of 1803, while
he was preparing to visit the south of France, he received a letter
which deserves to be inserted. It was from Duroc, who is well known to
have enjoyed a large share of Napoleon's confidence and favor.
"The First Consul, having been informed that Citizen Barere is about
to set out for the country, desires that he will stay at Paris.
"Citizen Barere will every week draw up a report on the state of
public opinion on the proceedings of the government, and generally
on everything which, in his judgment, it will be interesting to the
First Consul to learn.
"He may write with perfect freedom.
"He will deliver his reports under seal into General Duroc's own
hand, and General Duroc will deliver them to the First Consul. But
it is absolutely necessary that nobody should suspect that this
species of communication takes place; and, should any such suspicion
get abroad, the First Consul will cease to receive the reports of
Citizen Barere.
"It will also be proper that Citizen Barere should frequently insert
in the journals articles tending to animate the public mind,
particularly against the English."
During some years Barere continued to discharge the functions assigned
to him by his master. Secret reports, filled with the talk of
coffee-houses, were carried by him every week to the Tuileries. His
friends assure us that he took especial pains to do all the harm in his
power to the returned emigrants. It was not his fault if Napoleon was
not apprised of every murmur and every sarcasm which old marquises who
had lost their estates, and old clergymen who had lost their benefices,
uttered against the Imperial system. M. Hippolyte Carnot, we grieve to
say, is so much blinded by party spirit that he seems to reckon this
dirty wickedness among his hero's titles to public esteem.
Barere was, at the same time, an indefatigable journalist and
pamphleteer. He set up a paper directed against England, and called the
Memorial Antibritannique. He planned a work, entitled France made Great
and Illustrious by Napoleon. When the Imperial government was
established the old regicide made himself conspicuous even among the
crowd of flatterers by the peculiar fulsomeness of his adulation. He
translated into French a contemptible volume of Italian verses, entitled
The Poetic Crown, composed on the Glorious Accession of Napoleon the
First, by the Shepherds of Arcadia. He commenced a new series of
Carmagnoles very different from those which had charmed the Mountain.
The title of Emperor of the French, he said, was mean; Napoleon ought to
be Emperor of Europe. King of Italy was too humble an appellation;
Napoleon's style ought to be King of Kings.
But Barere labored to small purpose in both his vocations. Neither as a
writer nor as a spy was he of much use. He complains bitterly that his
paper did not sell. While the Journal des Debats, then flourishing under
the able management of Geoffroy, had a circulation of at least twenty
thousand copies, the Memorial Antibritannique never, in its most
prosperous times, had more than fifteen hundred subscribers; and these
subscribers were, with scarcely an exception, persons residing far from
Paris, probably Gascons, among whom the name of Barere had not yet lost
its influence.
A writer who cannot find readers generally attributes the public neglect
to any cause rather than to the true one; and Barere was no exception to
the general rule. His old hatred to Paris revived in all its fury. That
city, he says, has no sympathy with France. No Parisian cares to
subscribe to a journal which dwells on the real wants and interests of
the country. To a Parisian nothing is so ridiculous as patriotism. The
higher classes of the capital have always been devoted to England. A
corporal from London is better received among them than a French
general. A journal, therefore, which attacks England has no chance of
their support.
A much better explanation of the failure of the Memorial was given by
Bonaparte at St. Helena. "Barere," said he to Barry O'Meara, "had the
reputation of being a man of talent: but I did not find him so. I
employed him to write; but he did not display ability, he used many
flowers of rhetoric, but no solid argument; nothing but _coglionerie_
wrapped up in high-sounding language."
The truth is that, though Barere was a man of quick parts, and could do
with ease what he could do at all, he had never been a good writer. In
the day of his power he had been in the habit of haranguing an excitable
audience on exciting topics. The faults of his style passed uncensured;
for it was a time of literary as well as of civil lawlessness, and a
patriot was licensed to violate the ordinary rules of composition as
well as the ordinary rules of jurisprudence and of social morality. But
there had now been a literary as well as a civil reaction. As there was
again a throne and a court, a magistracy, a chivalry, and a hierarchy,
so was there a revival of classical taste. Honor was again paid to the
prose of Pascal and Massillon, and to the verse of Racine and La
Fontaine. The oratory which had delighted the galleries of the
Convention was not only as much out of date as the language of
Villehardouin and Joinville, but was associated in the public mind with
images of horror. All the peculiarities of the Anacreon of the
guillotine, his words unknown to the Dictionary of the Academy, his
conceits and his jokes, his Gascon idioms and his Gascon hyperboles, had
become as odious as the cant of the Puritans was in England after the
Restoration.