PARIS, October, 1805.
MY LORD:--The defeat of the Austrians has excited great satisfaction
among our courtiers and public functionaries; but the mass of the
inhabitants here are too miserable to feel for anything else but their
own sufferings. They know very well that every victory rivets their
fetters, that no disasters can make them more heavy, and no triumph
lighter. Totally indifferent about external occurrences, as well as
about internal oppressions, they strive to forget both the past and the
present, and to be indifferent as to the future; they would be glad could
they cease to feel that they exist. The police officers were now, with
their gendarmes, bayoneting them into illuminations for Bonaparte’s
successes, as they dragooned them last year into rejoicings for his
coronation. I never observed before so much apathy; and in more than one
place I heard the people say, “Oh! how much better we should be with
fewer victories and more tranquillity, with less splendour and more
security, with an honest peace instead of a brilliant war.” But in a
country groaning under a military government, the opinions of the people
are counted for nothing.
At Madame Joseph Bonaparte’s circle, however, the countenances were not
so gloomy. There a real or affected joy seemed to enliven the usual
dullness of these parties; some actors were repeating patriotic verses in
honour of the victor; while others were singing airs or vaudevilles, to
inspire our warriors with as much hatred towards your nation as gratitude
towards our Emperor. It is certainly neither philosophical nor
philanthropical not to exclude the vilest of all passions, HATRED, on
such a happy occasion. Martin, in the dress of a conscript, sang six
long couplets against the tyrants of the seas; of which I was only able
to retain the following one:
Je deteste le peuple anglais, Je deteste son ministere; J’aime l’Empereur
des Francais, J’aime la paix, je hais la guerre; Mais puisqu’il faut la
soutenir Contre une Nation Sauvage, Mon plus doux, mon plus grand desir
Est de montrer tout mon courage.
But what arrested my attention, more than anything else which occurred in
this circle on that evening, was a printed paper mysteriously handed
about, and of which, thanks to the civility of a Counsellor of State, I
at last got a sight. It was a list of those persons, of different
countries, whom the Emperor of the French has fixed upon, to replace all
the ancient dynasties of Europe within twenty years to come. From the
names of these individuals, some of whom are known to me, I could
perceive that Bonaparte had more difficulty to select proper Emperors,
Kings, and Electors, than he would have had, some years ago, to choose
directors or consuls. Our inconsistency is, however, evident even here;
I did not read a name that is not found in the annals of Jacobinism and
republicanism. We have, at the same time, taken care not to forget
ourselves in this new distribution of supremacy. France is to furnish
the stock of the new dynasties for Austria, England, Spain, Denmark, and
Sweden. What would you think, were you to awake one morning the subject
of King Arthur O’Connor the First? You would, I dare say, be even more
surprised than I am in being the subject of Napoleon Bonaparte the First.
You know, I suppose, that O’Connor is a general of division, and a
commander of the Legion of Honour,--the bosom friend of Talleyrand, and
courting, at this moment, a young lady, a relation of our Empress, whose
portion may one day be an Empire. But I am told that, notwithstanding
Talleyrand’s recommendations, and the approbation of Her Majesty, the
lady prefers a colonel, her own countryman, to the Irish general. Should,
however, our Emperor announce his determination, she would be obliged to
marry as he commands, were he even to give her his groom, or his horse,
for a spouse.
You can form no idea how wretched and despised all the Irish rebels are
here. O’Connor alone is an exception; and this he owes to Talleyrand, to
General Valence, and to Madame de Genlis; but even he is looked on with a
sneer, and, if he ever was respected in England, must endure with
poignancy the contempt to which he is frequently exposed in France. When
I was in your country I often heard it said that the Irish were generally
considered as a debased and perfidious people, extremely addicted to
profligacy and drunkenness, and, when once drunk, more cruelly ferocious
than even our Jacobins. I thought it then, and I still believe it, a
national prejudice, because I am convinced that the vices or virtues of
all civilized nations are relatively the same; but those Irish rebels we
have seen here, and who must be, like our Jacobins, the very dregs of
their country, have conducted themselves so as to inspire not only
mistrust but abhorrence. It is also an undeniable truth that they were
greatly disappointed by our former and present Government. They expected
to enjoy liberty and equality, and a pension for their treachery; but our
police commissaries caught them at their landing, our gendarmes escorted
them as criminals to their place of destination, and there they received
just enough to prevent them from starving. If they complained they were
put in irons, and if they attempted to escape they were sent to the
galleys as malefactors or shot as spies. Despair, therefore, no doubt
induced many to perpetrate acts of which they were accused, and to rob,
swindle, and murder, because they were punished as thieves and assassins.
But, some of them, who have been treated in the most friendly,
hospitable, and generous manner in this capital, have proved themselves
ungrateful, as well as infamous. A lady of my acquaintance, of a once
large fortune, had nothing left but some furniture, and her subsistence
depended upon what she got by letting furnished lodgings. Mischance
brought three young Irishmen to her house, who pretended to be in daily
expectation of remittances from their country, and of a pension from
Bonaparte. During six months she not only lodged and supported them, but
embarrassed herself to procure them linen and a decent apparel. At last
she was informed that each of, them had been allowed sixty livres--in the
month, and that arrears had been paid them for nine months. Their debt
to her was above three thousand livres--but the day after she asked for
payment they decamped, and one of them persuaded her daughter, a girl of
fourteen, to elope with him, and to assist him in robbing her mother of
all her plate.--He has, indeed, been since arrested and sentenced to the
galleys for eight years; but this punishment neither restored the
daughter her virtue nor the mother her property. The other two denied
their debts, and, as she had no other evidence but her own scraps of
accounts, they could not be forced to pay; their obdurate effrontery and
infamy, however, excited such an indignation in the judges, that they
delivered them over as swindlers to the Tribunal Correctional; and the
Minister of Police ordered them to be transported as rogues and vagabonds
to the colonies. The daughter died shortly after, in consequence of a
miscarriage, and the mother did not survive her more than a month, and
ended her days in the Hotel Dieu, one of our common hospitals. Thus,
these depraved young men ruined and murdered their benefactress and her
child; and displayed, before they were thirty, such a consummate villainy
as few wretches grown hoary in vice have perpetrated. This act of
scandalous notoriety injured the Irish reputation very much in this
country; for here, as in many other places, inconsiderate people are apt
to judge a whole nation according to the behaviour of some few of its
outcasts.