PARIS, September, 1805.
MY LORD:--Hanover has been a mine of gold to our Government, to its
generals, to its commissaries, and to its favourites. According to the
boasts of Talleyrand, and the avowal of Berthier, we have drawn from it
within two years more wealth than has been paid in contributions to the
Electors of Hanover for this century past, and more than half a century
of peace can restore to that unfortunate country. It is reported here
that each person employed in a situation to make his fortune in the
Continental States of the King of England (a name given here to Hanover
in courtesy to Bonaparte) was laid under contribution, and expected to
make certain douceurs to Madame Bonaparte; and it is said that she has
received from Mortier three hundred thousand livres, and from Bernadotte
two hundred and fifty thousand livres, besides other large sums from our
military commissaries, treasurers, and other agents in the Electorate.
General Mortier is one of the few favourite officers of Bonaparte who
have distinguished themselves under his rivals, Pichegru and Moreau,
without ever serving under him. Edward Adolph Casimer Mortier is the son
of a shopkeeper, and was born at Cambray in 1768. He was a shopman with
his father until 1791, when he obtained a commission, first as a
lieutenant of carabiniers, and afterwards as captain of the first
battalion of volunteers of the Department of the North. His first sight
of an enemy was on the 30th of April, 1792, near Quievrain, where he had
a horse killed under him. He was present in the battles of Jemappes, of
Nerwinde, and of Pellenberg. At the battle of Houdscoote he
distinguished himself so much as to be promoted to an adjutant general.
He was wounded at the battle of Fleures, and again at the passage of the
Rhine, in 1795, under General Moreau. During 1796 and 1797 he continued
to serve in Germany, but in 1798 and 1799 he headed a division in
Switzerland from which Bonaparte recalled him in 1800, to command the
troops in the capital and its environs. His address to Bonaparte,
announcing the votes of the troops under him respecting the consulate for
life and the elevation to the Imperial throne, contain such mean and
abject flattery that, for a true soldier, it must have required more
self-command and more courage to pronounce them than to brave the fire of
a hundred cannons; but these very addresses, contemptible as their
contents are, procured him the Field-marshal’s staff. Mortier well knew
his man, and that his cringing in antechambers would be better rewarded
than his services in the field. I was not present when Mortier spoke so
shamefully, but I have heard from persons who witnessed this farce, that
he had his eyes fixed on the ground the whole time, as if to say, “I
grant that I speak as a despicable being, and I grant that I am so; but
what shall I do, tormented as I am by ambition to figure among the great,
and to riot among the wealthy? Have compassion on my weakness, or, if
you have not, I will console myself with the idea that my meanness is
only of the duration of half an hour, while its recompense-my rank-will
be permanent.”
Mortier married, in 1799, the daughter of the landlord of the Belle
Sauvage inn at Coblentz, who was pregnant by him, or by some other guest
of her father. She is pretty, but not handsome, and she takes advantage
of her husband’s complaisance to console herself both for his absence and
infidelities. When she was delivered of her last child, Mortier
positively declared that he had not slept with her for twelve months, and
the babe has, indeed, less resemblance to him than to his valet de
chambre. The child was baptised with great splendour; the Emperor and
the Empress were the sponsors, and it was christened by Cardinal Fesch.
Bonaparte presented Madame Mortier on this occasion with a diamond
necklace valued at one hundred and fifty thousand livres.
During his different campaigns, and particularly during his glorious
campaign in Hanover, he has collected property to the amount of seven
millions of livres, laid out in estates and lands. He is considered by
other generals as a brave captain, but an indifferent chief; and among
our fashionables and our courtiers he is held up as a model of connubial
fidelity--satisfying himself with keeping three mistresses only.
There was no truth in the report that his recall from Hanover was in
consequence of any disgrace; on the contrary, it was a new proof of
Bonaparte’s confidence and attachment. He was recalled to take the
command of the artillery of Bonaparte’s, household troops the moment
Pichegru, George, and Moreau were arrested, and when the Imperial tide
had been resolved on. More resistance against this innovation was at
that time expected than experienced.
Bernadotte, who succeeded Mortier in the command of our army in Hanover,
is a man of a different stamp. His father was a chair-man, and he was
born at Paris in 1763. In 1779 he enlisted in the regiment called La
Vieille Harine, where the Revolution found him a sergeant. This regiment
was then quartered at Toulon, and the emissaries of anarchy and
licentiousness engaged him as one of their agents. His activity soon
destroyed all discipline, and the troops, instead of attending to their
military duty, followed him to the debates and discussions of the Jacobin
clubs. Being arrested and ordered to be tried for his mutinous,
scandalous behaviour, an insurrection liberated him, and forced his
accusers to save their lives by flight. In April, 1790, he headed the
banditti who murdered the Governor of the Fort St. Jean at Marseilles,
and who afterwards occasioned the Civil War in Comtat Venaigin, where he
served under Jourdan, known by the name of Coup-tell, or cut-throat, who
made him a colonel and his aide-de-camp. In 1794, he was employed, as a
general of brigade, in the army of the Sambre and Meuse; and during the
campaigns of 1795 and 1796, he served under another Jourdan, the general,
without much distinction,--except that he was accused by him of being the
cause of all the disasters of the last campaign, by the complete rout he
suffered near Neumark on the 23d of August, 1796. His division was
ordered to Italy in 1797, where, against the laws of nations, he arrested
M. d’ Antraigues, who was attached to the Russian legation. When the
Russian Ambassador tried to dissuade him from committing this injustice,
and this violation of the rights of privileged persons, he replied:
“There is no question here of any other right or justice than the right
and justice of power, and I am here the strongest. M. d’Antraigues is
our enemy; were he victorious, he would cause us all to be shot. I
repeat, I am here the strongest, ‘et nous verrons’.”
After the Peace of Campo Formio, Bernadotte was sent as an Ambassador to
the Court of Vienna, accompanied by a numerous escort of Jacobin
propagators. Having procured the liberty of Austrian patriots, whose
lives, forfeit to the law, the lenity of the Cabinet of Vienna had
spared, he thought that he might attempt anything; and, therefore, on the
anniversary day of the fete for the levy en masse of the inhabitants of
the capital, he insulted the feelings of the loyal, and excited the
discontented to rebellion, by placing over the door and in the windows of
his house the tri-coloured flag. This outrage the Emperor was unable to
prevent his subjects from resenting. Bernadotte’s house was invaded, his
furniture broken to pieces, and he was forced to save himself at the
house of the Spanish Ambassador. As a satisfaction for this attack,
provoked by his own insolence, he demanded the immediate dismissal of the
Austrian Minister, Baron Thugut, and threatened, in case of refusal, to
leave Vienna, which he did on the next day. So disgraceful was his
conduct regarded, even by the Directory, that this event made but little
impression, and no alteration in the continuance of their intercourse
with the Austrian Government.
In 1799, he was for some weeks a Minister of the war department, from
which his incapacity caused him to be dismissed. When Bonaparte intended
to seize the reins of State, he consulted Bernadotte, who spoke as an
implacable Jacobin until a douceur of three hundred thousand
livres--calmed him a little, and convinced him that the Jacobins were not
infallible or their government the best of all possible governments. In
1801, he was made the commander-in-chief in the Western Department, where
he exercised the greatest barbarities against the inhabitants, whom he
accused of being still chouans and royalists.
With Augereau and Massena, Bernadotte is a merciless plunderer. In the
summer, 1796, he summoned the magistrates of the free and neutral city of
Nuremberg to bring him, under pain of military execution, within
twenty-four hours, two millions of livres. With much difficulty this sum
was collected. The day after he had received it, he insisted upon
another sum to the same amount within another twenty-four hours, menacing
in case of disobedience to give the city up to a general pillage by his
troops. Fortunately, a column of Austrians advanced and delivered them
from the execution of his threats. The troops under him were, both in
Italy and in Germany, the terror of the inhabitants, and when defeated
were, from their pillage and murder, hunted like wild beasts. Bernadotte
has by these means within ten years become master of a fortune of ten
millions of livres.
Many have considered Bernadotte a revolutionary fanatic, but they are in
the wrong. Money engaged him in the cause of the Revolution, where the
first crimes he had perpetrated fixed him. The many massacres under
Jourdan the cut-throat, committed by him in the Court at Venaigin, no
doubt display a most sanguinary character. A lady, however, in whose
house in La Vendee he was quartered six months, has assured me that, to
judge from his conversation, he is not naturally cruel, but that his
imagination is continually tormented with the fear of gibbets which he
knows that his crimes have merited, and that, therefore, when he stabs
others, he thinks it commanded by the necessity of preventing others from
stabbing him. Were he sure of impunity, he would, perhaps, show humanity
as well as justice. Bernadotte is not, only a grand officer of the
Legion of Honour, but a knight of the Royal Prussian Order of the Black
Eagle.