PARIS, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--I promised you not to pronounce in haste on persons and events
passing under my eyes; thirty-one months have quickly passed away since I
became an attentive spectator of the extraordinary transactions, and of
the extraordinary characters of the extraordinary Court and Cabinet of
St. Cloud. If my talents to delineate equal my zeal to inquire and my
industry to examine; if I am as able a painter as I have been an
indefatigable observer, you will be satisfied, and with your approbation
at once sanction and reward my labours.
With most Princes, the supple courtier and the fawning favourite have
greater influence than the profound statesman and subtle Minister; and
the determinations of Cabinets are, therefore, frequently prepared in
drawing-rooms, and discussed in the closet. The politician and the
counsellor are frequently applauded or censured for transactions which
the intrigues of antechambers conceived, and which cupidity and favour
gave power to promulgate.
It is very generally imagined, but falsely, that Napoleon Bonaparte
governs, or rather tyrannizes, by himself, according to his own capacity,
caprices, or interest; that all his acts, all his changes, are the sole
consequence of his own exclusive, unprejudiced will, as well as unlimited
authority; that both his greatness and his littleness, his successes and
his crimes, originate entirely with himself; that the fortunate hero who
marched triumphant over the Alps, and the dastardly murderer that
disgraced human nature at Jaffa, because the same person, owed victory to
himself alone, and by himself alone commanded massacre; that the same
genius, unbiased and unsupported, crushed factions, erected a throne, and
reconstructed racks; that the same mind restored and protected
Christianity, and proscribed and assassinated a D’Enghien.
All these contradictions, all these virtues and vices, may be found in
the same person; but Bonaparte, individually or isolated, has no claim to
them. Except on some sudden occasions that call for immediate decision,
no Sovereign rules less by himself than Bonaparte; because no Sovereign
is more surrounded by favourites and counsellors, by needy adventurers
and crafty intriguers.
What Sovereign has more relatives to enrich, or services to recompense;
more evils to repair, more jealousies to dread, more dangers to fear,
more clamours to silence; or stands more in need of information and
advice? Let it be remembered that he, who now governs empires and
nations, ten years ago commanded only a battery; and five years ago was
only a military chieftain. The difference is as immense, indeed, between
the sceptre of a Monarch and the sword of a general, as between the wise
legislator who protects the lives and property of his contemporaries, and
the hireling robber who wades through rivers of blood to obtain plunder
at the expense and misery of generations. The lower classes of all
countries have produced persons who have distinguished themselves as
warriors; but what subject has yet usurped a throne, and by his eminence
and achievements, without infringing on the laws and liberties of his
country, proved himself worthy to reign? Besides, the education which
Bonaparte received was entirely military; and a man (let his innate
abilities be ever so surprising or excellent) who, during the first
thirty years of his life, has made either military or political tactics
or exploits his only study, certainly cannot excel equally in the Cabinet
and in the camp. It would be as foolish to believe, as absurd to expect,
a perfection almost beyond the reach of any man; and of Bonaparte more
than of any one else. A man who, like him, is the continual slave of his
own passions, can neither be a good nor a just, an independent nor
immaculate master.
Among the courtiers who, ever since Bonaparte was made First Consul, have
maintained a great ascendency over him, is the present Grand Marshal of
his Court, the general of division, Duroc. With some parts, but greater
presumption, this young man is destined by his master to occupy the most
confidential places near his person; and to his care are entrusted the
most difficult and secret missions at foreign Courts. When he is absent
from France, the liberty of the Continent is in danger; and when in the
Tuileries, or at St. Cloud, Bonaparte thinks himself always safe.
Gerard Christophe Michel Duroc was born at Ponta-Mousson, in the
department of Meurthe, on the 25th of October, 1772, of poor but honest
parents. His father kept a petty chandler’s shop; but by the interest
and generosity of Abbe Duroc, a distant relation, he was so well educated
that, in March, 1792, he became a sub-lieutenant of the artillery. In
1796 he served in Italy, as a captain, under General Andreossy, by whom
he was recommended to General l’Espinasse, then commander of the
artillery of the army of Italy, who made him an aide-de-camp. In that
situation Bonaparte remarked his activity, and was pleased with his
manners, and therefore attached him as an aide-de-camp to himself. Duroc
soon became a favourite with his chief, and, notwithstanding the
intrigues of his rivals, he has continued to be so to this day.
It has been asserted, by his enemies no doubt, that by implicit obedience
to his general’s orders, by an unresisting complacency, and by executing,
without hesitation, the most cruel mandates of his superior, he has fixed
himself so firmly in his good opinion that he is irremovable. It has
also been stated that it was Duroc who commanded the drowning and burying
alive of the wounded French soldiers in Italy, in 1797; and that it was
he who inspected their poisoning in Syria, in 1799, where he was wounded
during the siege of St. Jean d’ Acre. He was among the few officers whom
Bonaparte selected for his companions when he quitted the army of Egypt,
and landed with him in France in October, 1799.
Hitherto Duroc had only shown himself as a brave soldier and obedient
officer; but after the revolution which made Bonaparte a First Consul, he
entered upon another career. He was then, for the first time, employed
in a diplomatic mission to Berlin, where he so far insinuated himself
into the good graces of their Prussian Majesties that the King admitted
him to the royal table, and on the parade at Potsdam presented him to his
generals and officers as an aide-de-camp ‘du plus grand homme que je
connais; whilst the Queen gave him a scarf knitted by her own fair hands.
The fortunate result of Duroc’s intrigues in Prussia, in 1799, encouraged
Bonaparte to despatch him, in 1801, to Russia; where Alexander I.
received him with that noble condescension so natural, to this great and
good Prince. He succeeded at St. Petersburg in arranging the political
and commercial difficulties and disagreements between France and Russia;
but his proposal for a defensive alliance was declined.
An anecdote is related of his political campaign in the North, upon the
barren banks of the Neva, which, in causing much entertainment to the
inhabitants of the fertile banks of the Seine, has not a little
displeased the military diplomatist.
Among Talleyrand’s female agents sent to cajole Paul I. during the latter
part of his reign, was a Madame Bonoeil, whose real name is De F-----.
When this unfortunate Prince was no more, most of the French male and
female intriguers in Russia thought it necessary to shift their quarters,
and to expect, on the territory of neutral Prussia, farther instructions
from Paris, where and how to proceed. Madame Bonoeil had removed to
Konigsberg. In the second week of May, 1801, when Duroc passed through
that town for St. Petersburg, he visited this lady, according to the
orders of Bonaparte, and obtained from her a list of the names of the
principal persons who were inclined to be serviceable to France, and
might be trusted by him upon the present occasion. By inattention or
mistake she had misspelled the name of one of the most trusty and active
adherents of Bonaparte; and Duroc, therefore, instead of addressing
himself to the Polish Count de S--------lz, went to the Polish Count de
S-----tz. This latter was as much flattered as surprised, upon seeing an
aide-de-camp and envoy of the First Consul of France enter his
apartments, seldom visited before but by usurers, gamesters, and
creditors; and, on hearing the object of this visit, began to think
either the envoy mad or himself dreaming. Understanding, however, that
money would be of little consideration, if the point desired by the First
Consul could be carried, he determined to take advantage of this
fortunate hit, and invited Duroc to sup with him the same evening; when
he promised him he should meet with persons who could do his business,
provided his pecuniary resources were as ample as he had stated.
This Count de S-----tz was one of the most extravagant and profligate
subjects that Russia had acquired by the partition of Poland. After
squandering away his own patrimony, he had ruined his mother and two
sisters, and subsisted now entirely by gambling and borrowing. Among his
associates, in similar circumstances with himself, was a Chevalier de
Gausac, a French adventurer, pretending to be an emigrant from the
vicinity of Toulouse. To him was communicated what had happened in the
morning, and his advice was asked how to act in the evening. It was soon
settled that De Gausac should be transformed into a Russian Count de
W-----, a nephew and confidential secretary of the Chancellor of the same
name; and that one Caumartin, another French adventurer, who taught
fencing at St. Petersburg, should act the part of Prince de M-----, an
aide-de-camp of the Emperor; and that all three together should strip
Duroc, and share the spoil. At the appointed hour Bonaparte’s agent
arrived, and was completely the dupe of these adventurers, who plundered
him of twelve hundred thousand livres. Though not many days passed
before he discovered the imposition, prudence prevented him from
denouncing the impostors; and this blunder would have remained a secret
between himself, Bonaparte, and Talleyrand, had not the unusual expenses
of Caumartin excited the suspicion of the Russian Police Minister, who
soon discovered the source from which they had flowed. De Gausac had the
imprudence to return to this capital last spring, and is now shut up in
the Temple, where he probably will be forgotten.
As this loss was more ascribed to the negligence of Madame Bonoeil than
to the mismanagement of Duroc, or his want of penetration, his reception
at the Tuileries, though not so gracious as on his return from Berlin,
nineteen months before, was, however, such as convinced him that if he
had not increased, he had at the same time not lessened, the confidence
of his master; and, indeed, shortly afterwards, Bonaparte created him
first prefect of his palace, and procured him for a wife the only
daughter of a rich Spanish banker. Rumour, however, says that Bonaparte
was not quite disinterested when he commanded and concluded this match,
and that the fortune of Madame Duroc has paid for the expensive supper of
her husband with Count de S-----tz at St. Petersburg.