Paris, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--The amiable and accomplished Amelia Frederique, Princess
Dowager of the late Electoral Prince, Charles Louis of Baden, born a
Princess of Hesse-Darmstadt, has procured the Electoral House of Baden
the singular honour of giving consorts to three reigning and Sovereign
Princes,--to an Emperor of Russia, to a King of Sweden, and to the
Elector of Bavaria. Such a distinction, and such alliances, called the
attention of those at the head of our Revolution; who, after attempting
in vain to blow up hereditary thrones by the aid of sans-culotte
incendiaries, seated sans-culottes upon thrones, that they might degrade
what was not yet ripe for destruction.
Charles Frederick, the reigning Elector of Baden, is now near fourscore
years of age. At this period of life if any passions remain, avarice is
more common than ambition; because treasures may be hoarded without
bustle, while activity is absolutely necessary to push forward to the
goal of distinction. Having bestowed a new King on Tuscany, Bonaparte
and Talleyrand also resolved to confer new Electors on Germany. A more
advantageous fraternity could not be established between the innovators
here and their opposers in other countries, than by incorporating the
grandfather-in-law of so many Sovereigns with their own revolutionary
brotherhood; to humble him by a new rank, and to disgrace him by
indemnities obtained from their hands. An intrigue between our Minister,
Talleyrand, and the Baden Minister, Edelsheim, transformed the oldest
Margrave of Germany into its youngest Elector, and extended his dominions
by the spoils obtained at the expense of the rightful owners. The
invasion of the Baden territory in time of peace, and the seizure of the
Duc d’Enghien, though under the protection of the laws of nations and
hospitality, must have soon convinced Baron Edelsheim what return his
friend Talleyrand expected, and that Bonaparte thought he had a natural
right to insult by his attacks those he had dishonoured by his
connections.
The Minister, Baron Edelsheim, is half an illuminato, half a philosopher,
half a politician, and half a revolutionist. He was, long before he was
admitted into the council chamber of his Prince, half an atheist, half an
intriguer, and half a spy, in the pay of Frederick the Great of Prussia.
His entry upon the stage at Berlin, and particularly the first parts he
was destined to act, was curious and extraordinary; whether he acquitted
himself better in this capacity than he has since in his political one is
not known. He was afterwards sent to this capital to execute a
commission, of which he acquitted himself very ill; exposing himself
rashly, without profit or service to his employer. Frederick II.,
dreading the tediousness of a proposed congress at Augsburg, wished to
send a private emissary to sound the King of France. For this purpose he
chose Edelsheim as a person least liable to suspicion. The project of
Frederick was to idemnify the King of Poland for his first losses by
robbing the ecclesiastical Princes of Germany. This, Louis XV. totally
rejected; and Edelsheim returned with his answer to the Prussian Monarch,
then at Freyburg. From thence he afterwards departed for London, made
his communications, and was once again sent back to Paris, on pretence
that he had left some of his travelling trunks there; and the Bailli de
Foulay, the Ambassador of the Knights of Malta, being persuaded that the
Cabinet of Versailles was effectually desirous of peace, was, as he had
been before, the mediator. The Bailli was deceived. The Duc de
Choiseul, the then Prime Minister, indecently enough threw Edelsheim into
the Bastille, in order to search or seize his papers, which, however,
were secured elsewhere. Edelsheim was released on the morrow, but
obliged to depart the kingdom by the way of Turin, as related by
Frederick II. in his “History of the Seven Years’ War.” On his return he
was disgraced, and continued so until 1778; when he again was used as
emissary to various Courts of Germany. In 1786 the Elector of Baden sent
him to Berlin, on the ascension of Frederick William II., as a
complimentary envoy. This Monarch, when he saw him, could not forbear
laughing at the high wisdom of the Court that selected such a personage
for such an embassy, and of his own sagacity in accepting it. He quitted
the capital of Prussia as he came there, with an opinion of himself that
the royal smiles of contempt had neither altered nor diminished.
You see, by this account, that Edelsheim has long been a partisan of the
pillage of Germany called indemnities; and long habituated to affronts,
as well as to plots. To all his other half qualities, half modesty can
hardly be added, when he calls himself, or suffers himself to be called,
“the Talleyrand of Carlsrhue.” He accompanied his Prince last year to
Mentz; where this old Sovereign was not treated by Bonaparte in the most
decorous or decent manner, being obliged to wait for hours in his
antechamber, and afterwards stand during the levees, or in the
drawing-rooms of Napoleon or of his wife, without the offer of a chair,
or an invitation to sit down. It was here where, by a secret treaty,
Bonaparte became the Sovereign of Baden, if sovereignty consists in the
disposal of the financial and military resources of a State; and they
were agreed to be assigned over to him whenever he should deem it proper
or necessary to invade the German Empire, in return for his protection
against the Emperor of Germany, who can have no more interest than intent
to attack a country so distant from his hereditary dominions, and whose
Sovereign is, besides, the grandfather of the consort of his nearest and
best ally.
Talleyrand often amused himself at Mentz with playing on the vanity and
affected consequence of Edelsheim, who was delighted if at any time our
Minister took him aside, or whispered to him as in confidence. One
morning, at the assembly of the Elector Arch-Chancellor, where Edelsheim
was creeping and cringing about him as usual, he laid hold of his arm and
walked with him to the upper part of the room. In a quarter of an hour
they both joined the company, Edelsheim unusually puffed up with vanity.
“I will lay and bet, gentlemen,” said Talleyrand, “that you cannot, with
all your united wits, guess the grand subject of my conversation with the
good Baron Edelsheim.” Without waiting for an answer, he continued: “As
the Baron is a much older and more experienced traveller than myself, I
asked him which, of all the countries he had visited, could boast the
prettiest and kindest women. His reply was really very instructive, and
it would be a great pity if justice were not done to his merit by its
publicity.”
Here the Baron, red as a turkey-cock and trembling with anger,
interrupted. “His Excellency,” said he, “is to-night in a humour to
joke; what we spoke of had nothing to do with women.”
“Nor with men, either,” retorted Talleyrand, going away.
This anecdote, Baron Dahlberg, the Minister of the Elector of Baden to
our Court, had the ingenuity to relate at Madame Chapui’s as an evidence
of Edelsheim’s intimacy with Talleyrand; only he left out the latter
part, and forgot to mention the bad grace with which this impertinence of
Talleyrand was received; but this defect of memory Count von Beust, the
envoy of the Elector Arch-Chancellor, kindly supplied.
Baron Edelsheim is a great amateur of knighthoods. On days of great
festivities his face is, as it were, illuminated with the lustre of his
stars; and the crosses on his coat conceal almost its original colour.
Every petty Prince of Germany has dubbed him a chevalier; but Emperors
and Kings have not been so unanimous in distinguishing his desert, or in
satisfying his desires.
At Mentz no Prince or Minister fawned more assiduously upon Bonaparte
than this hero of chivalry. It could not escape notice, but need not
have alarmed our great man, as was the case. The prefect of the palace
was ordered to give authentic information concerning Edelsheim’s moral
and political character. He applied to the police commissary, who,
within twenty hours, signed a declaration affirming that Edelsheim was
the most inoffensive and least dangerous of all imbecile creatures that
ever entered the Cabinet of a Prince; that he had never drawn a sword,
worn a dagger, or fired a pistol in his life; that the inquiries about
his real character were sneered at in every part of the Electorate, as
nowhere they allowed him common sense, much less a character; all blamed
his presumption, but none defended his capacity.
After the perusal of this report, Bonaparte asked Talleyrand: “What can
Edelsheim mean by his troublesome assiduities? Does he want any
indemnities, or does he wish me to make him a German Prince? Can he have
the impudence to hope that I shall appoint him a tribune, a legislator,
or a Senator in France, or that I shall give him a place in my Council of
State?”
“No such thing,” answered the Minister; “did not Your Majesty condescend
to notice at the last fete that this eclipsed moon was encompassed in a
firmanent of stars. You would, Sire, make him the happiest of mortals
were you to nominate him a member of your Legion of Honour.”
“Does he want nothing else?” said Napoleon, as if relieved at once of an
oppressive burden. “Write to my chancellor of the Legion of Honour,
Lacepede, to send him a patent, and do you inform him of this favour.”
It is reported at Carlsruhe, the capital of Baden, that Baron Edelsheim
has composed his own epitaph, in which he claims immortality, because
under his Ministry the Margravate of Baden was elevated into an
Electorate!!!