PARIS, October, 1805.
MY LORD:--The Legion of Honour, though only proclaimed upon Bonaparte’s
assumption of the Imperial rank, dates from the first year of his
consulate. To prepare the public mind for a progressive elevation of
himself, and for consequential distinctions among all classes of his
subjects, he distributed among the military, arms of honour, to which
were attached precedence and privileges granted by him, and, therefore,
liable to cease with his power or life. The number of these arms
increased in proportion to the approach of the period fixed for the
change of his title and the erection of his throne. When he judged them
numerous enough to support his changes, he made all these wearers of arms
of honour knights. Never before were so many chevaliers created en
masse; they amounted to no less than twenty-two thousand four hundred,
distributed in the different corps of different armies, but principally
in the army of England. To these were afterwards joined five thousand
nine hundred civil functionaries, men of letters, artists, etc. To
remove, however, all ideas of equality, even among the members of the
Legion of Honour, they were divided into four classes--grand officers,
commanders, officers, and simple legionaries.
Every one who has observed Bonaparte’s incessant endeavours to intrude
himself among the Sovereigns of Europe, was convinced that he would
cajole, or force, as many of them as he could into his revolutionary
knighthood; but I heard men, who are not ignorant of the selfishness and
corruption of our times, deny the possibility of any independent Prince
suffering his name to be registered among criminals of every description,
from the thief who picked the pockets of his fellow citizens in the
street, down to the regicide who sat in judgment and condemned his King;
from the plunderers who have laid waste provinces, republics, and
kingdoms, down to the assassins who shot, drowned, or guillotined their
countrymen en masse. For my part, I never had but one opinion, and,
unfortunately, it has turned out a just one. I always was convinced that
those Princes who received other presents from Bonaparte could have no
plausible excuse to decline his ribands, crosses, and stars. But who
could have presumed to think that, in return for these blood-stained
baubles, they would have sacrificed those honourable and dignified
ornaments which, for ages past, have been the exclusive distinction of
what birth had exalted, virtue made eminent, talents conspicuous, honour
illustrious, or valour meritorious? Who would have dared to say that the
Prussian Eagle and the Spanish Golden Fleece should thus be prostituted,
thus polluted? I do not mean by this remark to throw any blame on the
conferring those and other orders on Napoleon Bonaparte, or even on his
brothers; I know it is usual, between legitimate Sovereigns in alliance,
sometimes to exchange their knighthoods; but to debase royal orders so
much as to present them to a Cambaceres, a Talleyrand, a Fouche, a
Bernadotte, a Fesch, and other vile and criminal wretches, I do not deny
to have excited my astonishment as well as my indignation. What
honest--I do not say what noble--subjects of Prussia, or of Spain, will
hereafter think themselves rewarded for their loyalty, industry,
patriotism, or zeal, when they remember that their Sovereigns have
nothing to give but what the rebel has obtained, the robber worn, the
murderer vilified, and the regicide debased?
The number of grand officers of the Legion of Honour does not yet amount
to more than eighty, according to a list circulated at Milan last spring,
of which I have seen a copy. Of these grand officers, three had been
shoemakers, two tailors, four bakers, four barbers, six friars, eight
abbes, six officers, three pedlers, three chandlers, seven drummers,
sixteen soldiers, and eight regicides; four were lawful Kings, and the
six others, Electors or Princes of the most ancient houses in Europe. I
have looked over our, own official list, and, as far as I know, the
calculation is exact, both with regard to the number and to the quality.
This new institution of knighthood produced a singular effect on my vain
and giddy, countrymen, who, for twelve years before, had scarcely seen a
star or a riband, except those of foreign Ambassadors, who were
frequently insulted when wearing them. It became now the fashion to be a
knight, and those who really were not so, put pinks, or rather blooms, or
flowers of a darker red, in their buttonholes, so as to resemble, and to
be taken at a distance for, the red ribands of the members of the Legion
of Honour.
A man of the name of Villeaume, an engraver by profession, took advantage
of this knightly fashion and mania, and sold for four louis d’or, not
only the stars, but pretended letters of knighthood, said to be procured
by his connection with persons of the household of the Emperor. In a
month’s time, according to a register kept by him, he had made twelve
hundred and fifty knights. When his fraud was discovered, he was already
out of the way, safe with his money; and, notwithstanding the researches
of the police, has not since been taken.
A person calling himself Baron von Rinken, a subject and an agent of one
of the many Princes of Hohenlohe, according to his own assertion, arrived
here with real letters and patents of knighthood, which he offered for
sale for three hundred livres. The stars of this Order were as large as
the star of the grand officers of the Legion of Honour, and nearly
resembled it; but the ribands were of a different colour. He had already
disposed of a dozen of these stars, when he was taken up by the police
and shut up in the Temple, where he still remains. Four other agents of
inferior petty German Princes have also been arrested for offering the
Orders of their Sovereigns for sale.
A Captain Rouvais, who received six wounds in his campaign under Pichegru
in 1794, wore the star of the Legion of Honour without being nominated a
knight. He has been tried by a military commission, deprived of his
pension, and condemned to four years’ imprisonment in irons. He proved
that he had presented fourteen petitions to Bonaparte for obtaining this
mark of distinction, but in vain; while hundreds of others, who had
hardly seen an enemy, or, at the most, made but one campaign, or been
once wounded, had succeeded in their demands. As soon as sentence had
been pronounced against him, he took a small pistol from his pocket, and
shot himself through the head, saying, “Some one else will soon do the
same for Bonaparte.”
A cobbler, of the name of Matthieu, either in a fit of madness or from
hatred to the new order of things, decorated himself with the large
riband of the Legion of Honour, and had an old star fastened on his coat.
Thus accoutred, he went into the Palais Royal, in the middle of the day,
got upon a chair, and began to speak to his audience of the absurdity of
true republicans not being on a level, even under an Emperor, and putting
on, like him, all his ridiculous ornaments. “We are here,” said he,
“either all grand officers, or there exist no grand officers at all; we
have all fought and paid for liberty, and for the Revolution, as much as
Bonaparte, and have, therefore, the same right and claim with him.” Here
a police agent and some gendarmes interrupted his eloquence by taking him
into custody. When Fouche asked him what he meant by such rebellious
behaviour, he replied that it was only a trial to see whether destiny had
intended him to become an Emperor or to remain a cobbler. On the next
day he was shot as a conspirator. I saw the unfortunate man in the
Palais Royal; his eyes looked wild, and his words were often incoherent.
He was certainly a subject more deserving a place in a madhouse than in a
tomb.
Cambaceres has been severely reprimanded by the Emperor for showing too
much partiality for the Royal Prussian Black Eagle, by wearing it in
preference to the Imperial Legion of Honour. He was given to understand
that, except for four days in the year, the Imperial etiquette did not
permit any subjects to display their knighthood of the Prussian Order. In
Madame Bonaparte’s last drawing-room, before His Imperial Majesty set out
for the Rhine, he was ornamented with the Spanish, Neapolitan, Prussian,
and Portuguese orders, together with those of the French Legion of Honour
and of the Italian Iron Crown. I have seen the Emperor Paul, who was
also an amateur of ribands and stars, but never with so many at once. I
have just heard that the Grand Master of Malta has presented Napoleon
with the Grand Cross of the Maltese Order. This is certainly a negative
compliment to him, who, in July, 1798, officially declared to his then
sectaries, the Turks and Mussulmans, “that the Grand Master, Commanders,
Knights, and Order of Malta existed no more.”
I have heard it related for a certainty among our fashionable ladies,
that the Empress of the French also intends to institute a new order of
female knighthood, not of honour, but of confidence; of which all our
Court ladies, all the wives of our generals, public functionaries, etc.,
are to be members. The Imperial Princesses of the Bonaparte family are
to be hereditary grand officers, together with as many foreign Empresses,
Queens, Princesses, Countesses, and Baronesses as can be bayoneted into
this revolutionary sisterhood. Had the Continent remained tranquil, it
would already have been officially announced by a Senatus Consultum. I
should suppose that Madame Bonaparte, with her splendid Court and
brilliant retinue of German Princes and Electors at Strasburg, need only
say the word to find hundreds of princely recruits for her knighthood in
petto. Her mantle, as a Grand Mistress of the Order of CONFIDENCE, has
been already embroidered at Lyons, and those who have seen it assert that
it is truly superb. The diamonds of the star on the mantle are valued at
six hundred thousand livres.