PARIS, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--The Italian subjects of Napoleon the First were far from
displaying the same zeal and the same gratitude for his paternal care and
kindness in taking upon himself the trouble of governing them, as we good
Parisians have done. Notwithstanding that a brigade of our police agents
and spies, drilled for years to applaud and to excite enthusiasm,
proceeded as his advanced guard to raise the public spirit, the reception
at Milan was cold and everything else but cordial and pleasing. The
absence of duty did not escape his observation and resentment. Convinced,
in his own mind, of the great blessing, prosperity, and liberty his
victories and sovereignty have conferred on the inhabitants of the other
side of the Alps, he ascribed their present passive or mutinous behaviour
to the effect of foreign emissaries from Courts envious of his glory and
jealous of his authority.
He suspected particularly England and Russia of having selected this
occasion of a solemnity that would complete his grandeur to humble his
just pride. He also had some idea within himself that even Austria might
indirectly have dared to influence the sentiments and conduct of her
ci-devant subjects of Lombardy; but his own high opinion of the awe which
his very name inspired at Vienna dispersed these thoughts, and his wrath
fell entirely on the audacity of Pitt and Markof. Strict orders were
therefore issued to the prefects and commissaries of police to watch
vigilantly all foreigners and strangers, who might have arrived, or who
should arrive, to witness the ceremony of the coronation, and to arrest
instantly any one who should give the least reason to suppose that he was
an enemy instead of an admirer of His Imperial and Royal Majesty. He
also commanded the prefects of his palace not to permit any persons to
approach his sacred person, of whose morality and politics they had not
previously obtained a good account.
These great measures of security were not entirely unnecessary.
Individual vengeance and individual patriotism sharpened their daggers,
and, to use Senator Roederer’s language, “were near transforming the most
glorious day of rejoicing into a day of universal mourning.”
All our writers on the Revolution agree that in France, within the first
twelve years after we had reconquered our lost liberty, more conspiracies
have been denounced than during the six centuries of the most brilliant
epoch of ancient and free Rome. These facts and avowals are speaking
evidences of the eternal tranquillity of our unfortunate country, of our
affection to our rulers, and of the unanimity with which all the changes
of Government have been, notwithstanding our printed votes, received and
approved.
The frequency of conspiracies not only shows the discontent of the
governed, but the insecurity and instability of the governors. This
truth has not escaped Napoleon, who has, therefore, ordered an
expeditious and secret justice to despatch instantly the conspirators,
and to bury the conspiracy in oblivion, except when any grand coup d’etat
is to be struck; or, to excite the passions of hatred, any proofs can be
found, or must be fabricated, involving an inimical or rival foreign
Government in an odious plot. Since the farce which Mehee de la Touche
exhibited, you have, therefore, not read in the Moniteur either of the
danger our Emperor has incurred several times since from the machinations
of implacable or fanatical foes, or of the alarm these have caused his
partisans. They have, indeed, been hinted at in some speeches of our
public functionaries, and in some paragraphs of our public prints, but
their particulars will remain concealed from historians, unless some one
of those composing our Court, our fashionable, or our political circles,
has taken the trouble of noting them down; but even to these they are but
imperfectly or incorrectly known.
Could the veracity of a Fouche, a Real, a Talleyrand, or a Duroc (the
only members of this new secret and invisible tribunal for expediting
conspirators) be depended upon, they would be the most authentic
annalists of these and other interesting secret occurrences.
What I intend relating to you on this subject are circumstances such as
they have been reported in our best informed societies by our most
inquisitive companions. Truth is certainly the foundation of these
anecdotes; but their parts may be extenuated, diminished, altered, or
exaggerated. Defective or incomplete as they are, I hope you will not
judge them unworthy of a page in a letter, considering the grand
personage they concern, and the mystery with which he and his Government
encompass themselves, or in which they wrap up everything not agreeable
concerning them.
A woman is said to have been at the head of the first plot against
Napoleon since his proclamation as an Emperor of the French. She called
herself Charlotte Encore; but her real name is not known. In 1803 she
lived and had furnished a house at Abbeville, where she passed for a
young widow of property, subsisting on her rents. About the same time
several other strangers settled there; but though she visited the
principal inhabitants, she never publicly had any connection with the
newcomers.
In the summer of 1803, a girl at Amiens--some say a real enthusiast of
Bonaparte’s, but, according to others, engaged by Madame Bonaparte to
perform the part she did demanded, upon her knees, in a kind of paroxysm
of joy, the happiness of embracing him, in doing which she fainted, or
pretended to faint away, and a pension of three thousand livres--was
settled on her for her affection.
Madame Encore, at Abbeville, to judge of her discourse and conversation,
was also an ardent friend and well-wisher of the Emperor; and when, in
July, 1804, he passed through Abbeville, on his journey to the coast,
she, also, threw herself at his feet, and declared that she would die
content if allowed the honour of embracing him. To this he was going to
assent, when Duroc stepped between them, seized her by the arm, and
dragged her to an adjoining room, whither Bonaparte, near fainting from
the sudden alarm his friend’s interference had occasioned, followed him,
trembling. In the right sleeve of Madame Encore’s gown was found a
stiletto, the point of which was poisoned. She was the same day
transported to this capital, under the inspection of Duroc, and
imprisoned in the Temple. In her examination she denied having
accomplices, and she expired on the rack without telling even her name.
The sub-prefect at Abbeville, the once famous Andre Dumont, was ordered
to disseminate a report that she was shut up as insane in a madhouse.
In the strict search made by the police in the house occupied by her, no
papers or any, other indications were discovered that involved other
persons, or disclosed who she was, or what induced her to attempt such a
rash action. Before the secret tribunal she is reported to have said,
“that being convinced of Bonaparte’s being one of the greatest criminals
that ever breathed upon the earth, she took upon herself the office of a
volunteer executioner; having, with every other good or loyal person, a
right to punish him whom the law could not, or dared not, reach.” When,
however, some repairs were made in the house at Abbeville by a new
tenant, a bundle of papers was found, which proved that a M.
Franquonville, and about thirty, other individuals (many, of whom were
the late newcomers there), had for six months been watching an
opportunity to seize Bonaparte in his journeys between Abbeville and
Montreuil, and to carry him to some part of the coast, where a vessel was
ready to sail for England with him. Had he, however, made resistance, he
would have been shot in France, and his assassins have saved themselves
in the vessel.
The numerous escort that always, since he was an Emperor, accompanied
him, and particularly his concealment of the days of his journeys,
prevented the execution of this plot; and Madame Encore, therefore, took
upon her to sacrifice herself for what she thought the welfare of her
country. How Duroc suspected or discovered her intent is not known; some
say that an anonymous letter informed him of it, while others assert
that, in throwing herself at Bonaparte’s feet, this prefect observed the
steel through the sleeve of her muslin gown. Most of her associates were
secretly executed; some, however, were carried to Boulogne and shot at
the head of the army of England as English spies.