MY LORD:--Though Government suffer a religious, or, rather,

anti-religious liberty of the Press, the authors who libel or ridicule

the Christian, particularly the Roman Catholic, religion, are excluded

from all prospect of advancement, or if in place, are not trusted or

liked. Cardinal Caprara, the nuncio of the Pope, proposed last year, in a

long memorial, the same severe restrictions on the discussions or

publications in religious matters as were already ordered in those

concerning politics. But both Bonaparte and his Minister in the affairs

of the Church, Portalis, refused the introduction of what they called a

tyranny on the conscience. Caprara then addressed himself to the

ex-Bishop Talleyrand, who, on this occasion, was more explicit than he

generally is.

"Bonaparte," said he, "rules not only over a fickle, but a gossiping

(bavard) people, whom he has prudently forbidden all conversation and

writing concerning government of the State. They would soon (accustomed

as they are, since the Revolution, to verbal and written debates) be

tired of talking about fine weather or about the opera. To occupy them

and their attention, some ample subject of diversion was necessary, and

religion was surrendered to them at discretion; because, enlightened as

the world now is, even athiests or Christian fanatics can do but little

harm to society. They may spend rivers of ink, but they will be unable

to shed a drop of blood."

"True," answered the Cardinal, "but only to a certain degree. The

licentiousness of the Press, with regard to religious matters, does it

not also furnish infidelity with new arms to injure the faith? And have

not the horrors from which France has just escaped proved the danger and

evil consequences of irreligion, and the necessity of encouraging and

protecting Christianity? By the recall of the clergy, and by the

religious concordat, Bonaparte has shown himself convinced of this

truth."

"So he is," interrupted Talleyrand; "but he abhors intoleration and

persecution" (not in politics). "I shall, however, to please Your

Eminence, lay the particulars of your conversation before him."

Some time afterwards, when Talleyrand and Bonaparte must have agreed

about some new measure to indirectly chastise impious writers, the

Senators Garat, Jaucourt, Roederer, and Demeunier, four of the members of

the senatorial commission of the liberty of the Press, were sent for, and

remained closeted with Napoleon, his Minister Portalis, and Cardinal

Caprara for two hours. What was determined on this occasion has not

transpired, as even the Cardinal, who is not the most discreet person

when provoked, and his religious zeal gets the better of his political

prudence, has remained silent, though seemingly contented.

Two rather insignificant authors, of the name of Varennes and Beaujou,

who published some scandalous libels on Christianity, have since been

taken up, and after some months' imprisonment in the Temple been

condemned to transportation to Cayenne for life,--not as infidels or

atheists, but as conspirators against the State, in consequence of some

unguarded expressions which prejudice or ill-will alone would judge

connected with politics. Nothing is now permitted to be printed against

religion but with the author's name; but on affixing his name, he may

abuse the worship and Gospel as much as he pleases. Since the example of

severity alluded to above, however, this practice is on the decline. Even

Pigault-Lebrun, a popular but immoral novel writer, narrowly escaped

lately a trip to Cayenne for one of his blasphemous publications, and

owes to the protection of Madame Murat exclusively that he was not sent

to keep Varennes and Beaujou company. Some years ago, when Madame Murat

was neither so great nor so rich as at present, he presented her with a

copy of his works, and she had been unfashionable enough not only to

remember the compliment, but wished to return it by nominating him her

private secretary; which, however, the veto of Napoleon prevented.

Of Napoleon Bonaparte's religious sentiments, opinions are not divided in

France. The influence over him of the petty, superstitious Cardinal

Caprara is, therefore, inexplicable. This prelate has forced from him

assent to transactions which had been refused both to his mother and his

brother Joseph, who now often employ the Cardinal with success, where

they either dare not or will not show themselves. It is true His

Eminence is not easily rebuked, but returns to the charge unabashed by

new repulses; and be obtains by teasing more than by persuasion; but a

man by whom Bonaparte suffers, himself to be teased with impunity is no

insignificant favourite, particularly when, like this Cardinal, he unites

cunning with devotion, craft with superstition; and is as accessible to

corruption as tormented by ambition.

As most ecclesiastical promotions passed through his pure and

disinterested hands, Madame Napoleon, Talleyrand, and Portalis, who also

wanted some douceurs for their extraordinary expenses, united together

last spring to remove him from France. Napoleon was cajoled to nominate

him a grand almoner of the Kingdom of Italy, and the Cardinal set out for

Milan. He was, however, artful enough to convince his Sovereign of the

propriety of having his grand almoner by his side; and he is, therefore,

obliged to this intrigue of his enemies that he now disposes of the

benefices in the Kingdom of Italy, as well as those of the French Empire.

During the Pope's residence in this capital, His Holiness often made use

of Cardinal Caprara in his secret negotiations with Bonaparte; and

whatever advantages were obtained by the Roman Pontiff for the Gallican

Church His Eminence almost extorted; for he never desisted, where his

interest or pride were concerned, till he had succeeded. It is said that

one day last January, after having been for hours exceedingly teasing and

troublesome, Bonaparte lost his patience, and was going to treat His

Eminence as he frequently does his relatives, his Ministers, and

counsellors,--that is to say, to kick him from his presence; but suddenly

recollecting himself, he said: "Cardinal, remain here in my closet until

my return, when I shall have more time to listen to what you have to

relate." It was at ten o'clock in the morning, and a day of great

military audience and grand review. In going out he put the key in his

pocket, and told the guards in his antechamber to pay no attention if

they should hear any noise in his closet.

It was dark before the review was over, and Bonaparte had a large party

to dinner. When his guests retired, he went into his wife's

drawing-room, where one of the Pope's chamberlains waited on him with the

information that His Holiness was much alarmed about the safety of

Cardinal Caprara, of whom no account could be obtained, even with the

assistance of the police, to whom application had been made, since His

Eminence had so suddenly disappeared.

"Oh! how absent I am," answered Napoleon, as with surprise; "I entirely

forgot that I left the Cardinal in my closet this morning. I will go

myself and make an apology for my blunder."

His Eminence, quite exhausted, was found fast asleep; but no sooner was

he a little recovered than he interrupted Bonaparte's affected apology

with the repetition of the demand he had made in the morning; and so well

was Napoleon pleased with him, for neglecting his personal inconvenience

only to occupy himself with the affairs of his Sovereign, that he

consented to what was asked, and in laying his hand upon the shoulders of

the prelate, said:

"Faithful Minister! were every Prince as well served as your Sovereign

is by you, many evils might be prevented, and much good effected."

The same evening Duroc brought him, as a present, a snuffbox with

Bonaparte's portrait, set round with diamonds, worth one thousand louis

d'or. The adventures of this day certainly did not lessen His Eminence

in the favour of Napoleon or of Pius VII.

Last November, some not entirely unknown persons intended to amuse

themselves at the Cardinal's expense. At seven o'clock one evening, a

young Abbe presented himself at the Cardinal's house, Hotel de Montmorin,

Rue Plumet, as by appointment of His Eminence, and was, by his secretary,

ushered into the study and asked to wait there. Hardly half an hour

afterwards, two persons, pretending to be agents of the police, arrived

just as the Cardinal's carriage had stopped. They informed him that the

woman introduced into his house in the dress of an Abby was connected

with a gang of thieves and housebreakers, and demanded his permission to

arrest her. He protested that, except the wife of his porter, no woman

in any dress whatever could be in his house, and that, to convince

themselves, they were very welcome to accompany his valet-de-chambre into

every room they wished to see. To the great surprise of his servant, a

very pretty girl was found in the bed of His Eminence's bed-chamber,

which joined his study, who, though the pretended police agents insisted

on her getting up, refused, under pretence that she was there waiting for

her 'bon ami', the Cardinal.

His Eminence was no sooner told of this than he shut the gate of his

house, after sending his secretary to the commissary of police of the

section. In the meantime, both the police agents and the girl entreated

him to let them out, as the whole was merely a badinage; but he remained

inflexible, and they were all three carried by the real police commissary

to prison.

Upon a complaint made by His Eminence to Bonaparte, the Police Minister,

Fouche, received orders to have those who had dared thus to violate the

sacred character of the representative of the Holy Pontiff immediately,

and without further ceremony, transported to Cayenne. The Cardinal

demanded, and obtained, a process verbal of what had occurred, and of the

sentence on the culprits, to be laid before his Sovereign. As Eugene de

Beauharnais interested himself so much for the individuals involved in

this affair as both to implore Bonaparte's pardon and the Cardinal's

interference for them, many were inclined to believe that he was in the

secret, if not the contriver of this unfortunate joke. This supposition

gained credit when, after all his endeavours to save them proved vain, he

sent them seventy-two livres L 3,000--to Rochefort, that they might, on

their arrival at Cayenne, be able to buy a plantation. He procured them

also letters to the Governor, Victor Hughes, recommending that they

should be treated differently from other transported persons.

LETTER VIII.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--I was particularly attentive in observing the countenances and

demeanour of the company at the last levee which Madame Napoleon

Bonaparte held, previous to her departure with her husband to meet the

Pope at Fontainebleau. I had heard from good authority that "to those

whose propensities were known, Duroc's information that the Empress was

visible was accompanied with a kind of admonitory or courtly hint, that

the strictest decency in dress and manners, and a conversation chaste,

and rather of an unusually modest turn, would be highly agreeable to

their Sovereigns, in consideration of the solemn occasion of a Sovereign

Pontiff's arrival in France,--an occurrence that had not happened for

centuries, and probably would not happen for centuries to come." I went

early, and was well rewarded for my punctuality.

There came the Senator Fouche, handing his amiable and chaste spouse,

walking with as much gravity as formerly, when a friar, he marched in a

procession. Then presented themselves the Senators Sieyes and Roederer,

with an air as composed as if the former had still been an Abbe and the

confessor of the latter. Next came Madame Murat, whom three hours before

I had seen in the Bois de Boulogne in all the disgusting display of

fashionable nakedness, now clothed and covered to her chin. She was

followed by the pious Madame Le Clerc, now Princesse Borghese, who was

sighing deeply and loudly. After her came limping the godly Talleyrand,

dragging his pure moiety by his side, both with downcast and edifying

looks. The Christian patriots, Gravina and Lima, Dreyer and Beust,

Dalberg and Cetto, Malsburgh and Pappenheim, with the Catholic

Schimmelpenninck and Mohammed Said Halel Effendi,--all presented

themselves as penitent sinners imploring absolutions, after undergoing

mortifications.

But it would become tedious and merely a repetition, were I to depict

separately the figures and characters of all the personages at this

politico-comical masquerade. Their conversation was, however, more

uniform, more contemptible, and more laughable, than their accoutrements

and grimaces were ridiculous. To judge from what they said, they

belonged no longer to this world; all their thoughts were in heaven, and

they considered themselves either on the borders of eternity or on the

eve of the day of the Last Judgment. The truly devout Madame Napoleon

spoke with rapture of martyrs and miracles, of the Mass and of the

vespers, of Agnuses and relics of Christ her Saviour, and of Pius VII.,

His vicar. Had not her enthusiasm been interrupted by the enthusiastic

commentaries of her mother-in-law, I saw every mouth open ready to cry

out, as soon as she had finished, "Amen! Amen! Amen!"

Napoleon had placed himself between the old Cardinal de Bellois and the

not young Cardinal Bernier, so as to prevent the approach of any profane

sinner or unrepentant infidel. Round him and their clerical chiefs, all

the curates and grand vicars, almoners and chaplains of the Court, and

the capitals of the Princess, Princesses, and grand officers of State,

had formed a kind of cordon. "Had," said the young General Kellerman to

me, "Bonaparte always been encompassed by troops of this description, he

might now have sung hymns as a saint in heaven, but he would never have

reigned as an Emperor upon earth." This indiscreet remark was heard by

Louis Bonaparte, and on the next morning Kellerman received orders to

join the army in Hanover, where he was put under the command of a general

younger than himself. He would have been still more severely punished,

had not his father, the Senator (General Kellerman), been in so great

favour at the Court of St. Cloud, and so much protected by Duroc, who had

made, in 1792, his first campaign under this officer, then

commander-in-chief of the army of the Ardennes.

When this devout assembly separated, which was by courtesy an hour

earlier than usual, I expected every moment to hear a chorus of

horse-laughs, because I clearly perceived that all of them were tired of

their assumed parts, and, with me, inclined to be gay at the expense of

their neighbours. But they all remembered also that they were watched by

spies, and that an imprudent look or an indiscreet word, gaiety instead

of gravity, noise when silence was commanded, might be followed by an

airing in the wilderness of Cayenne. They, therefore, all called out,

"Coachman, to our hotel!" as if to say, "We will to-day, in compliment to

the new-born Christian zeal of our Sovereigns, finish our evening as

piously as we have begun it." But no sooner were they out of sight of

the palace than they hurried to the scenes of dissipation, all

endeavouring, in the debauchery and excesses so natural to them, to

forget their unnatural affectation and hypocrisy.

Well you know the standard of the faith even of the members of the

Bonaparte family. Two days before this Christian circle at Madame

Napoleon's, Madame de Chateaureine, with three other ladies, visited the

Princesse Borghese. Not seeing a favourite parrot they had often

previously admired, they inquired what was become of it.

"Oh, the poor creature!" answered the Princess; "I have disposed of it,

as well as of two of my monkeys. The Emperor has obliged me to engage an

almoner and two chaplains, and it would be too extravagant in me to keep

six useless animals in my hotel. I must now submit to hearing the

disgusting howlings of my almoner instead of the entertaining chat of my

parrot, and to see the awkward bows and kneelings of my chaplains instead

of the amusing capering of my monkeys. Add to this, that I am forced to

transform into a chapel my elegant and tasty boudoir, on the

ground-floor, where I have passed so many delicious tete-a-tetes. Alas!

what a change! what a shocking fashion, that we are now all again to be

Christians!"

LETTER IX.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--Notwithstanding what was inserted in our public prints to the

contrary, the reception Bonaparte experienced from his army of England in

June last year, the first time he presented himself to them as an

Emperor, was far from such as flattered either his vanity or views. For

the first days, some few solitary voices alone accompanied the "Vive

l'Empereur!" of his generals, and of his aides-de-camp. This

indifference, or, as he called it, mutinous spirit, was so much the more

provoking as it was unexpected. He did not, as usual, ascribe it to the

emissaries or gold of England, but to the secret adherents of Pichegru

and Moreau amongst the brigades or divisions that had served under these

unfortunate generals. He ordered, in consequence, his Minister Berthier

to make out a list of all these corps. Having obtained this, he

separated them by ordering some to Italy, others to Holland, and the rest

to the frontiers of Spain and Germany. This act of revenge or jealousy

was regarded, both by the officers and men, as a disgrace and as a doubt

thrown out against their fidelity, and the murmur was loud and general.

In consequence of this, some men were shot, and many more arrested.

Observing, however, that severity had not the desired effect, Bonaparte

suddenly changed his conduct, released the imprisoned, and rewarded with

the crosses of his Legion of Honour every member of the so lately

suspected troops who had ever performed any brilliant or valorous

exploits under the proscribed generals. He even incorporated among his

own bodyguards and guides men who had served in the same capacity under

these rival commanders, and numbers of their children were received in

the Prytanees and military free schools. The enthusiastic exclamation

that soon greeted his ears convinced him that he had struck upon the

right string of his soldiers' hearts. Men who, some few days before,

wanted only the signal of a leader to cut an Emperor they hated to

pieces, would now have contended who should be foremost to shed their

last drop of blood for a chief they adored.

This affected liberality towards the troops who had served under his

rivals roused some slight discontent among those to whom he was chiefly

indebted for his own laurels. But if he knew the danger of reducing to

despair slighted men with arms in their hands, he also was well aware of

the equal danger of enduring licentiousness or audacity among troops who

had, on all occasions, experienced his preference and partiality; and he

gave a sanguinary proof of his opinion on this subject at the grand

parade of the 12th of July, 1804, preparatory to the grand fete of the

14th.

A grenadier of the 21st Regiment (which was known in Italy under the name

of the Terrible), in presetting arms to him, said: "Sire! I have served

under you four campaigns, fought under you in ten battles or engagements;

have received in your service seven wounds, and am not a member of your

Legion of Honour; whilst many who served under Moreau, and are not able

to show a scratch from an enemy, have that distinction."

Bonaparte instantly ordered this man to be shot by his own comrades in

the front of the regiment. The six grenadiers selected to fire, seeming

to hesitate, he commanded the whole corps to lay down their arms, and

after being disbanded, to be sent to the different colonial depots. To

humiliate them still more, the mutinous grenadier was shot by the

gendarmes. When the review was over, "Vive l'Empereur!" resounded from

all parts, and his popularity among the troops has since rather increased

than diminished. Nobody can deny that Bonaparte possesses a great

presence of mind, an undaunted firmness, and a perfect knowledge of the

character of the people over whom he reigns. Could but justice and

humanity be added to his other qualities, but, unfortunately for my

nation, I fear that the answer of General Mortier to a remark of a friend

of mine on this subject is not problematical: "Had," said this Imperial

favourite, "Napoleon Bonaparte been just and humane, he would neither

have vanquished nor reigned."

All these scenes occurred before Bonaparte, seated on a throne, received

the homage, as a Sovereign, of one hundred and fifty thousand warriors,

who now bowed as subjects, after having for years fought for liberty and

equality, and sworn hatred to all monarchical institutions; and who

hitherto had saluted and obeyed him only as the first among equals. What

an inconsistency! The splendour and show that accompanied him

everywhere, the pageantry and courtly pomp that surrounded him, and the

decorations of the stars and ribands of the Legion of Honour, which he

distributed with bombastic speeches among troops--to whom those political

impositions and social cajoleries were novelties--made such an impression

upon them, that had a bridge been then fixed between Calais and Dover,

brave as your countrymen are, I should have trembled for the liberty and

independence of your country. The heads and imagination of the soldiers,

I know from the best authority, were then so exalted that, though they

might have been cut to pieces, they could never have been defeated or

routed. I pity our children when I reflect that their tranquillity and

happiness will, perhaps, depend upon such a corrupt and unprincipled

people of soldiers,--easy tools in the hands of every impostor or

mountebank.

The lively satisfaction which Bonaparte must have felt at the pinnacle of

grandeur where fortune had placed him was not, however, entirely unmixed

with uneasiness and vexation. Except at Berlin, in all the other great

Courts the Emperor of the French was still Monsieur Bonaparte; and your

country, of the subjugation of which he had spoken with such lightness

and such inconsideration, instead of dreading, despised his boasts and

defied his threats. Indeed, never before did the Cabinet of St. James

more opportunely expose the reality of his impotency, the impertinence of

his menaces, and the folly of his parade for the invasion of your

country, than by declaring all the ports containing his invincible armada

in a state of blockade. I have heard from an officer who witnessed his

fury when in May, 1799, he was compelled to retreat from before St. Jean

d'Acre, and who was by his side in the camp at Boulogne when a despatch

informed him of this circumstance, that it was nothing compared to the

violent rage into which he flew upon reading it. For an hour afterwards

not even his brother Joseph dared approach him; and his passion got so

far the better of his policy, that what might still have long been

concealed from the troops was known within the evening to the whole camp.

He dictated to his secretary orders for his Ministers at Vienna, Berlin,

Lisbon, and Madrid, and couriers were sent away with them; but half an

hour afterwards other couriers were despatched after them with other

orders, which were revoked in their turn, when at last Joseph had

succeeded in calming him a little. He passed, however, the whole

following night full dressed and agitated; lying down only for an

instant, but having always in his room Joseph and Duroc, and deliberating

on a thousand methods of destroying the insolent islanders; all equally

violent, but all equally impracticable.

The next morning, when, as usual, he went to see the manoeuvres of his

flotilla, and the embarkation and landing of his troops, he looked so

pale that he almost excited pity. Your cruisers, however, as if they had

been informed of the situation of our hero, approached unusually near, to

evince, as it were, their contempt and, derision. He ordered instantly

all the batteries to fire, and went himself to that which carried its

shot farthest; but that moment six of your vessels, after taking down

their sails, cast anchors, with the greatest sang-froid, just without the

reach of our shot. In an unavailing anger he broke upon the spot six

officers of artillery, and pushed one, Captain d' Ablincourt, down the

precipice under the battery, where he narrowly escaped breaking his neck

as well as his legs; for which injury he was compensated by being made an

officer of the Legion of Honour. Bonaparte then convoked upon the spot a

council of his generals of artillery and of the engineers, and, within an

hour's time, some guns and mortars of still heavier metal and greater

calibre were carried up to replace the others; but, fortunately for the

generals, before a trial could be made of them the tide changed, and your

cruisers sailed.

In returning to breakfast at General Soult's, he observed the

countenances of his soldiers rather inclined to laughter than to wrath;

and he heard some jests, significant enough in the vocabulary of

encampments, and which informed him that contempt was not the sentiment

with which your navy had inspired his troops. The occurrences of these

two days hastened his departure from the coast for Aix-la-Chapelle, where

the cringing of his courtiers consoled him, in part, for the want of

respect or gallantry in your English tars.

LETTER X.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--According to a general belief in our diplomatic circles, it was

the Austrian Ambassador in France, Count von Cobenzl, who principally

influenced the determination of Francis II. to assume the hereditary

title of Emperor of Austria, and to acknowledge Napoleon Emperor of the

French.

Johann Philipp, Count von Cobenzl, enjoys, not only in his own country,

but through all Europe, a great reputation as a statesman, and has for a

number of years been employed by his Court in the most intricate and

delicate political transactions. In 1790 he was sent to Brabant to treat

with the Belgian insurgents; but the States of Brabant refusing to

receive him, he retired to Luxembourg, where he published a proclamation,

in which Leopold II. revoked all those edicts of his predecessor, Joseph

II., which had been the principal cause of the troubles; and

reestablished everything upon the same footing as during the reign of

Maria Theresa. In 1791 he was appointed Ambassador to the Court of St.

Petersburg, where his conduct obtained the approbation of his own Prince

and of the Empress of Russia.

In 1793 the Committee of Public Safety nominated the intriguer, De

Semonville, Ambassador to the Ottoman Porte. His mission was to excite

the Turks against Austria and Russia, and it became of great consequence

to the two Imperial Courts to seize this incendiary of regicides. He was

therefore stopped, on the 25th of July, in the village of Novate, near

the lake of Chiavenne. A rumour was very prevalent at this time that

some papers were found in De Semonville's portfolio implicating Count von

Cobenzl as a correspondent with the revolutionary French generals. The

continued confidence of his Sovereign contradicts, however, this

inculpation, which seems to have been merely the invention of rivalry or

jealousy.

In October, 1795, Count von Cobenzl signed, in the name of the Emperor, a

treaty with England and Russia; and in 1797 he was one of the Imperial

plenipotentiaries sent to Udine to negotiate with Bonaparte, with whom,

on the 17th of October, he signed the Treaty of Campo Formio. In the

same capacity he went afterwards to Rastadt, and when this congress broke

up, he returned again as an Ambassador to St. Petersburg.

After the Peace of Lunwille, when it required to have a man of experience

and talents to oppose to our so deeply able Minister, Talleyrand, the

Cabinet of Vienna removed him from Russia to France, where, with all

other representatives of Princes, he has experienced more of the frowns

and rebukes, than of the dignity and good grace, of our present

Sovereign.

Count von Cobenzl's foible is said to be a passion for women; and it is

reported that our worthy Minister, Talleyrand, has been kind enough to

assist him frequently in his amours. Some adventures of this sort, which

occurred at Rastadt, afforded much amusement at the Count's expense.

Talleyrand, from envy, no doubt, does not allow him the same political

merit as his other political contemporaries, having frequently repeated

that "the official dinners of Count von Cobenzl were greatly preferable

to his official notes."

So well pleased was Bonaparte with this Ambassador when at

Aix-la-Chapelle last year, that, as a singular favour, he permitted him,

with the Marquis de Gallo (the Neapolitan Minister and another

plenipotentiary at Udine), to visit the camps of his army of England on

the coast. It is true that this condescension was, perhaps, as much a

boast, or a threat, as a compliment.

The famous diplomatic note of Talleyrand, which, at Aix-la-Chapelle

proscribed en masse all your diplomatic agents, was only a slight revenge

of Bonaparte's for your mandate of blockade. Rumour states that this

measure was not approved of by Talleyrand, as it would not exclude any of

your Ambassadors from those Courts not immediately under the whip of our

Napoleon. For fear, however, of some more extravagant determination,

Joseph Bonaparte dissuaded him from laying before his brother any

objections or representations. "But what absurdities do I not sign!"

exclaimed the pliant Minister.

Bonaparte, on his arrival at Aix-la-Chapelle, found there, according to

command, most of the members of the foreign diplomatic corps in France,

waiting to present their new credentials to him as Emperor. Charlemagne

had been saluted as such, in the same place, about one thousand years

before,--an inducement for the modern Charlemagne to set all these

Ambassadors travelling some hundred miles, without any other object but

to gratify his impertinent vanity. Every spot where Charlemagne had

walked, sat, slept, talked, eaten or prayed, was visited by him with

great ostentation; always dragging behind him the foreign

representatives, and by his side his wife. To a peasant who presented

him a stone upon which Charlemagne was said to have once kneeled, he gave

nearly half its weight in gold; on a priest who offered him a small

crucifix, before which that Prince was reported to have prayed, he

bestowed an episcopal see; to a manufacturer he ordered one thousand

louis for a portrait of Charlemagne, said to be drawn by his daughter,

but which, in fact, was from the pencil of the daughter of the

manufacturer; a German savant was made a member of the National Institute

for an old diploma, supposed to have been signed by Charlemagne, who many

believed was not able to write; and a German Baron, Krigge, was

registered in the Legion of Honour for a ring presented by this Emperor

to one of his ancestors, though his nobility is well known not to be of

sixty years' standing. But woe to him who dared to suggest any doubt

about what Napoleon believed, or seemed to believe! A German professor,

Richter, more a pedant than a courtier, and more sincere than wise,

addressed a short memorial to Bonaparte, in which he proved, from his

intimacy with antiquity, that most of the pretended relics of Charlemagne

were impositions on the credulous; that the portrait was a drawing of

this century, the diploma written in the last; the crucifix manufactured

within fifty, and the ring, perhaps, within ten years. The night after

Bonaparte had perused this memorial, a police commissary, accompanied by

four gendarmes, entered the professor's bedroom, forced him to dress, and

ushered him into a covered cart, which carried him under escort to the

left bank of the Rhine; where he was left with orders, under pain of

death, never more to enter the territory of the French Empire. This

expeditious and summary justice silenced all other connoisseurs and

antiquarians; and relics of Charlemagne have since poured in in such

numbers from all parts of France, Italy, Germany, and even Denmark, that

we are here in hope to see one day established a Museum Charlemagne, by

the side of the museums Napoleon and Josephine. A ballad, written in

monkish Latin, said to be sung by the daughters and maids of Charlemagne

at his Court on great festivities, was addressed to Duroc, by a Danish

professor, Cranener, who in return was presented, on the part of

Bonaparte, with a diamond ring worth twelve thousand livres--L 500. This

ballad may, perhaps, be the foundation of future Bibliotheque or Lyceum

Charlemagne.

LETTER XI.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--On the arrival of her husband at Aix-la-Chapelle, Madame

Napoleon had lost her money by gambling, without recovering her health by

using the baths and drinking the waters; she was, therefore, as poor as

low-spirited, and as ill-tempered as dissatisfied. Napoleon himself was

neither much in humour to supply her present wants, provide for her

extravagances, or to forgive her ill-nature; he ascribed the inefficacy

of the waters to her excesses, and reproached her for her too great

condescension to many persons who presented themselves at her

drawing-room and in her circle, but who, from their rank in life, were

only fit to be seen as supplicants in her antechambers, and as associates

with her valets or chambermaids.

The fact was that Madame Napoleon knew as well as her husband that these

gentry were not in their place in the company of an Empress; but they

were her creditors, some of them even Jews; and as long as she continued

debtor to them she could not decently--or rather, she dared not prevent

them from being visitors to her. By confiding her situation to her old

friend, Talleyrand, she was, however, soon released from those

troublesome personages. When the Minister was informed of the occasion

of the attendance of these impertinent intruders, he humbly proposed to

Bonaparte not to pay their demands and their due, but to make them

examples of severe justice in transporting them to Cayenne, as the only

sure means to prevent, for the future, people of the same description

from being familiar or audacious.

When, thanks to Talleyrand's interference, these family arrangements were

settled, Madame Napoleon recovered her health with her good-humour; and

her husband, who had begun to forget the English blockade, only to think

of the papal accolade (dubbing), was more tender than ever. I am assured

that, during the fortnight he continued with his wife at Aix-la-Chapelle,

he only shut her up or confined her twice, kicked her three times, and

abused her once a day.

It was during their residence in that capital that Comte de Segur at last

completed the composition of their household, and laid before them the

list of the ladies and gentlemen who had consented to put on their

livery. This De Segur is a kind of amphibious animal, neither a royalist

nor a republican, neither a democrat nor an aristocrat, but a disaffected

subject under a King, a dangerous citizen of a Commonwealth, ridiculing

both the friend of equality and the defender of prerogatives; no exact

definition can be given, from his past conduct and avowed professions, of

his real moral and political character. One thing only is certain;--he

was an ungrateful traitor to Louis XVI., and is a submissive slave under

Napoleon the First.

Though not of an ancient family, Comte de Segur was a nobleman by birth,

and ranked among the ancient French nobility because one of his ancestors

had been a Field-marshal. Being early introduced at Court, he acquired,

with the common corruption, also the pleasing manners of a courtier; and

by his assiduities about the Ministers, Comte de Maurepas and Comte de

Vergennes, he procured from the latter the place of an Ambassador to the

Court of St. Petersburg. With some reading and genius, but with more

boasting and presumption, he classed himself among French men of letters,

and was therefore as such received with distinction by Catharine II., on

whom, and on whose Government, he in return published a libel. He was a

valet under La Fayette, in 1789, as he has since been under every

succeeding King of faction. The partisans of the Revolution pointed him

out as a fit Ambassador from Louis XVI. to the late King of Prussia; and

he went in 1791 to Berlin, in that capacity; but Frederick William II.

refused him admittance to his person, and, after some ineffectual

intrigues with the Illuminati and philosophers at Berlin, he returned to

Paris as he left it; provided, however, with materials for another libel

on the Prussian Monarch, and on the House of Brandenburgh, which he

printed in 1796. Ruined by the Revolution which he had so much admired,

he was imprisoned under Robespierre, and was near starving under the

Directory, having nothing but his literary productions to subsist on. In

1799, Bonaparte made him a legislator, and in 1803, a Counsellor of

State,--a place which he resigned last year for that of a grand master of

the ceremonies at the present Imperial Court. His ancient inveteracy

against your country has made him a favourite with Bonaparte. The

indelicate and scandalous attacks, in 1796 and 1797, against Lord

Malmesbury, in the then official journal, Le Redacteur, were the

offspring of his malignity and pen; and the philippics and abusive notes

in our present official Moniteur, against your Government and country,

are frequently his patriotic progeny, or rather, he often shares with

Talleyrand and Hauterive their paternity.

The Revolution has not made Comte de Segur more happy with regard to his

family, than in his circumstances, which, notwithstanding his brilliant

grand-mastership, are far from being affluent. His amiable wife died of

terror, and brokenhearted from the sufferings she had experienced, and

the atrocities she had witnessed; and when he had enticed his eldest son

to accept the place of a sub-prefect under Bonaparte, his youngest son,

who never approved our present regeneration, challenged his brother to

fight, and, after killing him in a duel, destroyed himself. Comte de

Segur is therefore, at present, neither a husband nor a father, but only

a grand master of ceremonies! What an indemnification!

Madame Napoleon and her husband are both certainly under much obligation

to this nobleman for his care to procure them comparatively decent

persons to decorate their levees and drawing-rooms, who, though they have

no claim either to morality or virtue, either to honour or chastity, are

undoubtedly a great acquisition at the Court of St. Cloud, because none

of them has either been accused of murder, or convicted of plunder; which

is the case with some of the Ministers, and most of the generals,

Senators and counsellors. It is true that they are a mixture of beggared

nobles and enriched valets, of married courtesans and divorced wives,

but, for all that, they can with justice demand the places of honour of

all other Imperial courtiers of both sexes.

When Bonaparte had read over the names of these Court recruits, engaged

and enlisted by De Segur, he said, "Well, this lumber must do until we

can exchange it for better furniture." At that time, young Comte d'

Arberg (of a German family, on the right bank of the Rhine), but whose

mother is one of Madame Bonaparte's Maids of Honour, was travelling for

him in Germany and in Prussia, where, among other negotiations, he was

charged to procure some persons of both sexes, of the most ancient

nobility, to augment Napoleon's suite, and to figure in his livery. More

individuals presented themselves for this honour than he wanted, but they

were all without education and without address: ignorant of the world as

of books; not speaking well their own language, much less understanding

French or Italian; vain of their birth, but not ashamed of their

ignorance, and as proud as poor. This project was therefore relinquished

for the time; but a number of the children of the principal ci-devant

German nobles, who, by the Treaty of Luneville and Ratisbon, had become

subjects of Bonaparte, were, by the advice of Talleyrand, offered places

in French Prytanees, where the Emperor promised to take care of their

future advancement. Madame Bonaparte, at the same time, selected

twenty-five young girls of the same families, whom she also offered to

educate at her expense. Their parents understood too well the meaning of

these generous offers to dare decline their acceptance. These children

are the plants of the Imperial nursery, intended to produce future pages,

chamberlains, equerries, Maids of Honour and ladies in waiting, who for

ancestry may bid defiance to all their equals of every Court in

Christendom. This act of benevolence, as it was called in some German

papers, is also an indirect chastisement of the refractory French

nobility, who either demanded too high prices for their degradation, or

abruptly refused to disgrace the names of their forefathers.

LETTER XII.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--Bonaparte has been as profuse in his disposal of the Imperial

diadem of Germany, as in his promises of the papal tiara of Rome. The

Houses of Austria and Brandenburgh, the Electors of Bavaria and Baden,

have by turns been cajoled into a belief of his exclusive support towards

obtaining it at the first vacancy. Those, however, who have paid

attention to his machinations, and studied his actions; who remember his

pedantic affectation of being considered a modern, or rather a second

Charlemagne; and who have traced his steps through the labyrinth of folly

and wickedness, of meanness and greatness, of art, corruption, and

policy, which have seated him on the present throne, can entertain little

doubt but that he is seriously bent on seizing and adding the sceptre of

Germany to the crowns of France and Italy.

During his stay last autumn at Mentz, all those German Electors who had

spirit and dignity enough to refuse to attend on him there in person were

obliged to send Extraordinary Ambassadors to wait on him, and to

compliment him on their part. Though hardly one corner of the veil that

covered the intrigues going forward there is yet lifted up, enough is

already seen to warn Europe and alarm the world. The secret treaties he

concluded there with most of the petty Princes of Germany, against the

Chief of the German Empire which not only entirely detached them from

their country and its legitimate Sovereign, but made their individual

interests hostile and totally opposite to that of the German

Commonwealth, transforming them also from independent Princes into

vassals of France, both directly increased has already gigantic power,

and indirectly encouraged him to extend it beyond what his most sanguine

expectation had induced him to hope. I do not make this assertion from a

mere supposition in consequence of ulterior occurrences. At a supper

with Madame Talleyrand last March, I heard her husband, in a gay,

unguarded, or perhaps premeditated moment, say, when mentioning his

proposed journey to Italy:

"I prepared myself to pass the Alps last October at Mentz. The first

ground-stone of the throne of Italy was, strange as it may seem, laid on

the banks of the Rhine: with such an extensive foundation, it must be

difficult to shake, and impossible to overturn it."

We were, in the whole, twenty-five persons at table when he spoke thus,

many of whom, he well knew, were intimately acquainted both with the

Austrian and Prussian Ambassadors, who by the bye, both on the next day

sent couriers to their respective Courts.

The French Revolution is neither seen in Germany in that dangerous light

which might naturally be expected from the sufferings in which it has

involved both Princes and subjects, nor are its future effects dreaded

from its past enormities. The cause of this impolitic and anti-patriotic

apathy is to be looked for in the palaces of Sovereigns, and not in the

dwellings of their people. There exists hardly a single German Prince

whose Ministers, courtiers and counsellors are not numbered, and have

long been notorious among the anti-social conspirators, the Illuminati:

most of them are knaves of abilities, who have usurped the easy direction

of ignorance, or forced themselves as guides on weakness or folly, which

bow to their charlatanism as if it was sublimity, and hail their

sophistry and imposture as inspiration.

Among Princes thus encompassed, the Elector of Bavaria must be allowed

the first place. A younger brother of a younger branch, and a colonel in

the service of Louis XVI., he neither acquired by education, nor

inherited from nature, any talent to reign, nor possessed any one quality

that fitted him for a higher situation than the head of a regiment or a

lady's drawing-room. He made himself justly suspected of a moral

corruption, as well as of a natural incapacity, when he announced his

approbation of the Revolution against his benefactor, the late King of

France, who, besides a regiment, had also given him a yearly pension of

one hundred thousand livres. Immediately after his unexpected accession

to the Electorate of Bavaria, he concluded a subsidiary treaty with your

country, and his troops were ordered to combat rebellion, under the

standard of Austrian loyalty. For some months it was believed that the

Elector wished by his conduct to obliterate the memory of the errors,

vices, and principles of the Duc de Deux-Ponts (his former title). But

placing all his confidence in a political adventurer and revolutionary

fanatic, Montgelas, without either consistency or firmness, without being

either bent upon information or anxious about popularity, he threw the

whole burden of State on the shoulders of this dangerous man, who soon

showed the world that his master, by his first treaties, intended only to

pocket your money without serving your cause or interest.

This Montgelas is, on account of his cunning and long standing among

them, worshipped by the gang of German Illuminati as an idol rather than

revered as an apostle. He is their Baal, before whom they hope to oblige

all nations upon earth to prostrate themselves as soon as infidelity has

entirely banished Christianity; for the Illuminati do not expect to reign

till the last Christian is buried under the rubbish of the last altar of

Christ. It is not the fault of Montgelas if such an event has not

already occurred in the Electorate of Bavaria.

Within six months after the Treaty of Lundville, Montgelas began in that

country his political and religious innovations. The nobility and the

clergy were equally attacked; the privileges of the former were invaded,

and the property of the latter confiscated; and had not his zeal carried

him too far, so as to alarm our new nobles, our new men of property, and

new Christians, it is very probable that atheism would have already,

without opposition, reared its head in the midst of Germany, and

proclaimed there the rights of man, and the code of liberty and equality.

The inhabitants of Bavaria are, as you know, all Roman Catholics, and the

most superstitious and ignorant Catholics of Germany. The step is but

short from superstition to infidelity; and ignorance has furnished in

France more sectaries of atheism than perversity. The Illuminati,

brothers and friends of Montgelas, have not been idle in that country.

Their writings have perverted those who had no opportunity to hear their

speeches, or to witness their example; and I am assured by Count von

Beust, who travelled in Bavaria last year, that their progress among the

lower classes is astonishing, considering the short period these

emissaries have laboured. To any one looking on the map of the

Continent, and acquainted with the spirit of our times, this impious

focus of illumination must be ominous.

Among the members of the foreign diplomatic corps, there exists not the

least doubt but that this Montgelas, as well as Bonaparte's Minister at

Munich, Otto, was acquainted with the treacherous part Mehde de la Touche

played against your Minister, Drake; and that it was planned between him

and Talleyrand as the surest means to break off all political connections

between your country and Bavaria. Mr. Drake was personally liked by the

Elector, and was not inattentive either to the plans and views of

Montgelas or to the intrigues of Otto. They were, therefore, both doubly

interested to remove such a troublesome witness.

M. de Montgelas is now a grand officer of Bonaparte's Legion of Honour,

and he is one of the few foreigners nominated the most worthy of such a

distinction. In France he would have been an acquisition either to the

factions of a Murat, of a Brissot, or of a Robespierre; and the Goddess

of Reason, as well as the God of the Theophilanthropists, might have been

sure of counting him among their adorers. At the clubs of the Jacobins

or Cordeliers, in the fraternal societies, or in a revolutionary

tribunal; in the Committee of Public Safety, or in the council chamber of

the Directory, he would equally have made himself notorious and been

equally in his place. A stoic sans-culotte under Du Clots, a stanch

republican under Robespierre, he would now have been the most pliant and

brilliant courtier of Bonaparte.

LETTER XIII.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--No Queen of France ever saw so many foreign Princes and

Princesses in her drawing-rooms as the first Empress of the French did

last year at Mentz; and no Sovereign was ever before so well paid, or

accepted with less difficulty donations and presents for her gracious

protection. Madame Napoleon herself, on her return to this capital last

October, boasted that she was ten millions of livres--richer in diamonds;

two millions of livres richer in pearls, and three million of livres

richer in plate and china, than in the June before, when she quitted it.

She acknowledged that she left behind her some creditors and some money

at Aix-la-Chapelle; but at Mentz she did not want to borrow, nor had she

time to gamble. The gallant ultra Romans provided everything, even to

the utmost extent of her wishes; and she, on her part, could not but

honour those with her company as much as possible, particularly as they

required nothing else for their civilities. Such was the Empress's

expression to her lady in waiting, the handsome Madame Seran, with whom

no confidence, no tale, no story, and no scandal expires; and who was in

a great hurry to inform, the same evening, the tea-party at Madame de

Beauvais's of this good news, complaining at the same time of not having

had the least share in this rich harvest.

Nowhere, indeed, were bribery and corruption carried to a greater extent,

or practised with more effrontery, than at Mentz. Madame Napoleon had as

much her fixed price for every favourable word she spoke, as Talleyrand

had for every line he wrote. Even the attendants of the former, and the

clerks of the latter, demanded, or rather extorted, douceurs from the

exhausted and almost ruined German petitioners; who in the end were

rewarded for all their meanness and for all their expenses with promises

at best; as the new plan of supplementary indemnities was, on the very

day proposed for its final arrangement, postponed by the desire of the

Emperor of the French, until further orders. This provoking delay could

no more be foreseen by the Empress than by the Minister, who, in return

for their presents and money almost overpowered the German Princes with

his protestations of regret at their disappointments. Nor was Madame

Bonaparte less sorry or less civil. She sent her chamberlain, Daubusson

la Feuillad, with regular compliments of condolence to every Prince who

had enjoyed her protection. They returned to their homes, therefore, if

not wealthier, at least happier; flattered by assurances and

condescensions, confiding in hope as in certainties. Within three

months, however, it is supposed that they would willingly have disposed

both of promises and expectations at a loss of fifty per cent.

By the cupidity and selfishness of these and other German Princes, and

their want of patriotism, Talleyrand was become perfectly acquainted with

the value and production of every principality, bishopric, county, abbey,

barony, convent, and even village in the German Empire; and though most

national property in France was disposed of at one or two years'

purchase, he required five years' purchase-money for all the estates and

lands on the other side of the Rhine, of which, under the name of

indemnities, he stripped the lawful owners to gratify the ambition or

avidity of intruders. This high price has cooled the claims of the

bidders, and the plan of the supplementary indemnities is still

suspended, and probably will continue so until our Minister lowers his

terms. A combination is supposed to have been entered into by the chief

demanders of indemnities, by which they have bound themselves to resist

all farther extortions. They do not, however, know the man they have to

deal with; he will, perhaps, find out some to lay claim to their own

private and hereditary property whom he will produce and support, and who

certainly will have the same right to pillage them as they had to the

spoils of others.

It was reported in our fashionable circles last autumn, and smiled at by

Talleyrand, that he promised the Comtesse de L------ an abbey, and the

Baroness de S-----z a convent, for certain personal favours, and that he

offered a bishopric to the Princesse of Hon----- the same terms, but this

lady answered that "she would think of his offers after he had put her

husband in possession of the bishopric." It is not necessary to observe

that both the Countess and the Baroness are yet waiting to enjoy his

liberal donations, and to be indemnified for their prostitution.

Napoleon Bonaparte was attacked by a fit of jealousy at Mentz. The young

nephew of the Elector Arch-Chancellor, Comte de L----ge, was very

assiduous about the Empress, who, herself, at first mistook the motive.

Her confidential secretary, Deschamps, however, afterwards informed her

that this nobleman wanted to purchase the place of a coadjutor to his

uncle, so as to be certain of succeeding him. He obtained, therefore,

several private audiences, no doubt to regulate the price, when Napoleon

put a stop to this secret negotiation by having the Count carried by

gendarmes, with great politeness, to the other side of the Rhine. When

convinced of his error, Bonaparte asked his wife what sum had been

promised for her protection, and immediately gave her an order on his

Minister of the Treasury (Marbois) for the amount. This was an act of

justice, and a reparation worthy of a good and tender husband; but when,

the very next day, he recalled this order, threw it into the fire before

her eyes, and confined her for six hours in her bedroom; because she was

not dressed in time to take a walk with him on the ramparts, one is apt

to believe that military despotism has erased from his bosom all

connubial affection, and that a momentary effusion of kindness and

generosity can but little alleviate the frequent pangs caused by repeated

insults and oppression. Fortunately, Madame Napoleon's disposition is

proof against rudeness as well as against brutality. If what her friend

and consoler, Madame Delucay, reports of her is not exaggerated, her

tranquillity is not much disturbed nor her happiness affected by these

explosions of passionate authority, and she prefers admiring, in

undisturbed solitude, her diamond box to the most beautiful prospects in

the most agreeable company; and she inspects with more pleasure in

confinement, her rich wardrobe, her beautiful china, and her heavy plate,

than she would find satisfaction, surrounded with crowds, in

comtemplating Nature, even in its utmost perfection. "The paradise of

Madame Napoleon," says her friend, "must be of metal, and lighted by the

lustre of brilliants, else she would decline it for a hell and accept

Lucifer himself for a spouse, provided gold flowed in his infernal

domains, though she were even to be scorched by its heat."

LETTER XIV.

LETTER XIV.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--I believe that I have mentioned to you, when in England, that I

was an old acquaintance of Madame Napoleon, and a visitor at the house of

her first husband. When introduced to her after some years' absence,

during which fortune had treated us very differently, she received me

with more civility than I was prepared to expect, and would, perhaps,

have spoken to me more than she did, had not a look of her husband

silenced her. Madame Louis Bonaparte was still more condescending, and

recalled to my memory what I had not forgotten how often she had been

seated, when a child, on my lap, and played on my knees with her doll.

Thus they behaved to me when I saw them for the first time in their

present elevation; I found them afterwards, in their drawing-rooms or at

their routs and parties, more shy and distant. This change did not much

surprise me, as I hardly knew any one that had the slightest pretension

to their acquaintance who had not troubled them for employment or

borrowed their money, at the same time that they complained of their

neglect and their breach of promises. I continued, however, as much as

etiquette and decency required, assiduous, but never familiar: if they

addressed me, I answered with respect, but not with servility; if not, I

bowed in silence when they passed. They might easily perceive that I did

not intend to become an intruder, nor to make the remembrance of what was

past an apology or a reason for applying for present favours. A lady, on

intimate terms with Madame Napoleon, and once our common friend, informed

me, shortly after the untimely end of the lamented Duc d' Enghien, that

she had been asked whether she knew anything that could be done for me,

or whether I would not be flattered by obtaining a place in the

Legislative Body or in the Tribunate? I answered as I thought, that were

I fit for a public life nothing could be more agreeable or suit me

better; but, having hitherto declined all employments that might restrain

that independence to which I had accustomed myself from my youth, I was

now too old to enter upon a new career. I added that, though the

Revolution had reduced my circumstances, it had not entirely ruined me. I

was still independent, because my means were the boundaries of my wants.

A week after this conversation General Murat, the governor of this

capital, and Bonaparte's favourite-brother-in-law, invited me to a

conversation in a note delivered to me by an aide-de-camp, who told me

that he was ordered to wait for my company, or, which was the same, he

had orders not to lose sight of me, as I was his prisoner. Having

nothing with which to reproach myself, and all my written remarks being

deposited with a friend, whom none of the Imperial functionaries could

suspect, I entered a hackney coach without any fear or apprehension; and

we drove to the governor's hotel.

From the manner in which Murat addressed me, I was soon convinced that if

I had been accused of any error or indiscretion, the accusation could not

be very grave in his eyes. He entered with me into his closet and

inquired whether I had any enemies at the police office. I told him not

to my knowledge.

"Is the Police Minister and Senator, Fouche, your friend?" continued he.

"Fouche," said I, "has bought an estate that formerly belonged to me; may

he enjoy it with the same peace of mind as I have lost it. I have never

spoken to him in my life."

"Have you not complained at Madame de la Force's of the execution of the

ci-devant Duc d'Enghien, and agreed with the other members of her coterie

to put on mourning for him?"

"I have never been at the house of that lady since the death of the

Prince, nor more than once in my life."

"Where did you pass the evening last Saturday?"--"At the hotel, and in

the assembly of Princesse Louis Bonaparte."

"Did she see you?"

"I believe that she did, because she returned my salute."

"You have known Her Imperial Highness a long time?"

"From her infancy."

"Well, I congratulate you. You have in her a generous protectress. But

for her you would now have been on the way to Cayenne. Here you see the

list of persons condemned yesterday, upon the report of Fouche, to

transportation. Your name is at the head of them. You were not only

accused of being an agent of the Bourbons, but of having intrigued to

become a member of the Legislature, or the Tribunate, that you might have

so much the better opportunity to serve them. Fortunately for you, the

Emperor remembered that the Princesse Louis had demanded such a favour

for you, and he informed her of the character of her protege. This

brought forward your innocence, because it was discovered that, instead

of asking for, you had declined the offer she had made you through the

Empress. Write the Princess a letter of thanks. You have, indeed, had a

narrow escape, but it has been so far useful to you, that Government is

now aware of your having some secret enemy in power, who is not delicate

about the means of injuring you."

In quitting General Murat, I could not help deploring the fate of a

despot, even while I abhorred his unnatural power. The curses, the

complaints, and reproaches for all the crimes, all the violence, all the

oppression perpetrated in his name, are entirely thrown upon him, while

his situation and occupation do not admit the seeing and hearing

everything and everybody himself. He is often forced, therefore, to

judge according to the report of an impostor; to sanction with his name

the hatred, malignity, or vengeance of culpable individuals; and to

sacrifice innocence to gratify the vile passions of his vilest slave. I

have not so bad an opinion of Bonaparte as to think him capable of

wilfully condemning any person to death or transportation, of whose

innocence he was convinced, provided that person stood not in the way of

his interest and ambition; but suspicion and tyranny are inseparable

companions, and injustice their common progeny. The unfortunate beings

on the long list General Murat showed me were, I dare say, most of them

as innocent as myself, and all certainly condemned unheard. But suppose,

even, that they had been indiscreet enough to put on mourning for a

Prince of the blood of their former Kings, did their imprudence deserve

the same punishment as the deed of the robber, the forger, or the

housebreaker? and, indeed, it was more severe than what our laws inflict

on such criminals, who are only condemned to transportation for some few

years, after a public trial and conviction; while the exile of these

unconvicted, untried, and most probably innocent persons is continued for

life, on charges as unknown to themselves as their destiny and residence

remain to their families and friends. Happy England! where no one is

condemned unheard, and no one dares attempt to make the laws subservient

to his passions or caprice.

As to Fouche's enmity, at which General Murat so plainly hinted, I had

long apprehended it from what others, in similar circumstances with

myself, had suffered. He has, since the Revolution, bought no less, than

sixteen national estates, seven of the former proprietors of which have

suddenly disappeared since his Ministry, probably in the manner he

intended to remove me. This man is one of the most immoral characters

the Revolution has dragged forward from obscurity. It is more difficult

to mention a crime that he has not perpetrated than to discover a good or

just action that he ever performed. He is so notorious a villain that

even the infamous National Convention expelled him from its bosom, and

since his Ministry no man has been found base enough, in my debased

country, to extenuate, much less to defend, his past enormities. In a

nation so greatly corrupted and immoral, this alone is more than negative

evidence.

As a friar before the Revolution he has avowed, in his correspondence

with the National Convention, that he never believed in a God; and as one

of the first public functionaries of a Republic he has officially denied

the existence of virtue. He is, therefore, as unmoved by tears as by

reproaches, and as inaccessible to remorse as hardened against

repentance. With him interest and bribes are everything, and honour and

honesty nothing. The supplicant or the pleader who appears before him

with no other support than the justice of his cause is fortunate indeed

if, after being cast, he is not also confined or ruined, and perhaps

both; while a line from one of the Bonapartes, or a purse of gold,

changes black to white, guilt to innocence, removes the scaffold waiting

for the assassin, and extinguishes the faggots lighted for the parricide.

His authority is so extensive that on the least signal, with one blow,

from the extremities of France to her centre, it crushes the cot and the

palace; and his decisions, against which there is no appeal, are so

destructive that they never leave any traces behind them, and Bonaparte,

Bonaparte alone, can prevent or arrest their effect.

Though a traitor to his former benefactor, the ex-Director Barras, he

possesses now the unlimited confidence of Napoleon Bonaparte, and, as far

as is known, has not yet done anything to forfeit it,--if private acts of

cruelty cannot, in the agent of a tyrant, be called breach of trust or

infidelity. He shares with Talleyrand the fraternity of the vigilant,

immoral, and tormenting secret police; and with Real, and Dubois, the

prefect of police, the reproduction, or rather the invention, of new

tortures and improved racks; the oubliettes, which are wells or pits dug

under the Temple and most other prisons, are the works of his own

infernal genius. They are covered with trap-doors, and any person whom

the rack has mutilated, or not obliged to speak out; whose return to

society is thought dangerous, or whose discretion is suspected; who has

been imprisoned by mistake, or discovered to be innocent; who is

disagreeable to the Bonapartes, their favourites, or the mistresses of

their favourites; who has displeased Fouche, or offended some other

placeman; any who have refused to part with their property for the

recovery of their liberty, are all precipitated into these artificial

abysses there to be forgotten; or worse, to be starved to death, if they

have not been fortunate enough to break their necks and be killed by the

fall.

The property Fouche has acquired by his robberies within these last

twelve years is at the lowest rate valued at fifty million livres--which

must increase yearly; as a man who disposes of the liberty of fifty

millions of people is also, in a great part, master of their wealth.

Except the chiefs of the Governments and their officers of State, there

exists not an inhabitant of France, Italy, Holland, or Switzerland who

can consider himself secure for an instant of not being seized,

imprisoned, plundered, tortured, or exterminated by the orders of Fouche

and by the hands of his agents.

You will no doubt exclaim, "How can Bonaparte employ, how dares he

confide, in such a man?" Fouche is as able as unprincipled, and, with

the most unfeeling and perverse heart, possesses great talents. There is

no infamy he will not stoop to, and no crime, however execrable, that he

will hesitate to commit, if his Sovereign orders it. He is, therefore, a

most useful instrument in the hand of a despot who, notwithstanding what

is said to the contrary in France, and believed abroad, would cease to

rule the day he became just, and the reign of laws and of humanity

banished terror and tyranny.

It is reported that some person, pious or revengeful, presented some time

ago to the devout mother of Napoleon a long memorial containing some

particulars of the crimes and vices of Fouche and Talleyrand, and

required of her, if she wished to prevent the curses of Heaven from

falling on her son, to inform him of them, that he might cease to employ

men so unworthy of him, and so repugnant to a Divinity. Napoleon, after

reading through the memorial, is stated to have answered his mother, who

was always pressing him to dismiss these Ministers: The memorial, Madame,

contains nothing of what I was not previously informed. Louis XVI. did

not select any but those whom he thought the most virtuous and moral of

men for his Ministers and counsellors; and where did their virtues and

morality bring him? If the writer of the memorial will mention two

honest and irreproachable characters, with equal talents and zeal to

serve me, neither Fouche nor Talleyrand shall again be admitted into my

presence.

LETTER XV.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--You have with some reason in England complained of the conduct

of the members of the foreign diplomatic corps in France, when the

pretended correspondence between Mr. Drake and Mehee de la Touche was

published in our official gazette. Had you, however, like myself, been

in a situation to study the characters and appreciate the worth of most

of them, this conduct would have excited no surprise, and pity would have

taken the place both of accusation and reproach. Hardly one of them,

except Count Philipp von Cobenzl, the Austrian Ambassador (and even he is

considerably involved), possesses any property, or has anything else but

his salary to depend upon for subsistence. The least offence to

Bonaparte or Talleyrand would instantly deprive them of their places;

and, unless they were fortunate enough to obtain some other appointment,

reduce them to live in obscurity, and perhaps in want, upon a trifling

pension in their own country.

The day before Mr. Drake's correspondence appeared in the Moniteur, in

March, 1804, Talleyrand gave a grand diplomatic dinner; in the midst of

which, as was previously agreed with Bonaparte, Duroc called him out on

the part of the First Consul. After an absence of near an hour, which

excited great curiosity and some alarm among the diplomatists, he

returned, very thoughtful and seemingly very low-spirited.

"Excuse me, gentlemen," said he, "I have been impolite against my

inclination. The First Consul knew that you honoured me with your

company today, and would therefore not have interrupted me by his orders

had not a discovery of a most extraordinary nature against the law of

nations just been made; a discovery which calls for the immediate

indignation against the Cabinet of St. James, not only of France, but of

every nation that wishes for the preservation of civilized society. After

dinner I shall do myself the honour of communicating to you the

particulars, well convinced that you will all enter with warmth into the

just resentment of the First Consul."

During the repast the bottle went freely round, and as soon as they had

drunk their coffee and liqueurs, Talleyrand rang a bell, and Hauterive

presented himself with a large bundle of papers. The pretended original

letters of Mr. Drake were handed about with the commentaries of the

Minister and his secretary. Their heads heated with wine, it was not

difficult to influence their minds, or to mislead their judgment, and

they exclaimed, as in a chorus, "C'est abominable! Cela fait fremir!"

Talleyrand took advantage of their situation, as well as of their

indiscretion. "I am glad, gentlemen," said he, "and shall not fail to

inform the First Consul of your unanimous sentiments on this disagreeable

subject; but verbal expressions are not sufficient in an affair of such

great consequence. I have orders to demand your written declarations,

which, after what you have already expressed, you cannot hesitate about

sending to me to-night, that they may accompany the denunciation which

the First Consul despatches, within some few hours, to all the Courts on

the Continent. You would much please the First Consul were you to write

as near as possible according to the formula which my secretary has drawn

up. It states nothing either against convenance, or against the customs

of Sovereigns, or etiquettes of Courts, and I am certain is also

perfectly congenial with your individual feelings."

A silence of some moments now followed (as all the diplomatists were

rather taken by surprise with regard to a written declaration), which the

Swedish Ambassador, Baron Ehrensward, interrupted by saying that, "though

he personally might have no objection to sign such a declaration, he must

demand some time to consider whether he had a right to, write in the name

of his Sovereign, without his orders, on a subject still unknown to him."

This remark made the Austrian Ambassador, Count von Cobenzl, propose a

private consultation among the members of the foreign diplomatic corps at

one of their hotels, at which the Russian charge d'affaires, D'Oubril,

who was not at the dinner--party, was invited to assist. They met

accordingly, at the Hotel de Montmorency, Rue de Lille, occupied by Count

von Cobenzl; but they came to no other unanimous determination than that

of answering a written communication of Talleyrand by a written note,

according as every one judged most proper and prudent, and corresponding

with the supposed sentiments of his Sovereign.

As all this official correspondence has been published in England, you

may, upon reading the notes presented by Baron de Dreyer, and Mr.

Livingstone,

[In consequence of this conduct, Livingstone was recalled by his

Government, and lives now in obscurity and disgrace in America. To

console him, however, in his misfortune, Bonaparte, on his departure,

presented him with his portrait, enamelled on the lid of a snuff-box, set

round with diamonds, and valued at one thousand louis d'or.]

the neutral Ambassadors of Denmark and America, form some tolerably just

idea of Talleyrand's formula. Their impolitic servility was blamed even

by the other members of the diplomatic corps.

Livingstone you know, and perhaps have not to learn that, though a stanch

republican in America, he was the most abject courtier in France; and

though a violent defender of liberty and equality on the other side of

the Atlantic, no man bowed lower to usurpation, or revered despotism

more, in Europe. Without talents, and almost without education, he

thinks intrigues negotiations, and conceives that policy and duplicity

are synonymous. He was called here "the courier of Talleyrand," on

account of his voyages to England, and his journeys to Holland, where

this Minister sent him to intrigue, with less ceremony than one of his

secret agents. He acknowledged that no Government was more liberal, and

no nation more free, than the British; but he hated the one as much as he

abused the other; and he did not conceal sentiments that made him always

so welcome to Bonaparte and Talleyrand. Never over nice in the choice of

his companions, Arthur O'Connor, and other Irish traitors and vagabonds,

used his house as their own; so much so that, when he invited other

Ambassadors to dine with him, they, before they accepted the invitation,

made a condition that no outlaws or adventurers should be of the party.

In your youth, Baron de Dreyer was an Ambassador from the Court of

Copenhagen to that of St. James. He has since been in the same capacity

to the Courts of St. Petersburg and Madrid. Born a Norwegian, of a poor

and obscure family, he owes his advancement to his own talents; but

these, though they have procured him rank, have left him without a

fortune. When he came here, in June, 1797, from Spain, he brought a

mistress with him, and several children he had had by her during his

residence in that country. He also kept an English mistress some thirty

years ago in London, by whom he had a son, M. Guillaumeau, who is now his

secretary. Thus encumbered, and thus situated at the age of seventy, it

is no surprise if he strives to die at his post, and that fear to offend

Bonaparte and Talleyrand sometimes gets the better of his prudence.

In Denmark, as well as in all other Continental States, the pensions of

diplomatic invalids are more scanty than those of military ones, and

totally insufficient for a man who, during half a century nearly, has

accustomed himself to a certain style of life, and to expenses requisite

to represent his Prince with dignity. No wonder, therefore, that Baron

de Dreyer prefers Paris to Copenhagen, and that the cunning Talleyrand

takes advantage of this preference.

It was reported here among our foreign diplomatists, that the English

Minister in Denmark complained of the contents of Baron de Dreyer's note

concerning Mr. Drake's correspondence; and that the Danish Prime

Minister, Count von Bernstorff, wrote to him in consequence, by the order

of the Prince Royal, a severe reprimand. This act of political justice

is, however, denied by him, under pretence that the Cabinet of Copenhagen

has laid it down as an invariable rule, never to reprimand, but always to

displace those of its agents with whom it has reason to be discontented.

Should this be the case, no Sovereign in Europe is better served by his

representatives than his Danish Majesty, because no one seldomer changes

or removes them.

While I am speaking of diplomatists, I cannot forbear giving you a short

sketch of one whose weight in the scale of politics entitles him to

particular notice: I mean the Count von Haugwitz, insidiously

complimented by Talleyrand with the title of "The Prince of Neutrality,

the Sully of Prussia." Christian Henry Curce, Count von Haugwitz, who,

until lately, has been the chief director of the political conscience of

His Prussian Majesty, as his Minister of the Foreign Department, was born

in Silesia, and is the son of a nobleman who was a General in the

Austrian service when Frederick the Great made the conquest of that

country. At the death of this King in 1786, Count von Haugwitz occupied

an inferior place in the foreign office, where Count von Herzburg

observed his zeal and assiduity, and recommended him to the notice of the

late King Frederick William II. By the interest of the celebrated

Bishopswerder, he procured, in 1792, the appointment of an Ambassador to

the Court of Vienna, where he succeeded Baron von Jacobi, the present

Prussian Minister in your country. In the autumn of the same year he

went to Ratisbon, to cooperate with the Austrian Ambassador, and to

persuade the Princes of the German Empire to join the coalition against

France. In the month of March, 1794, he was sent to the Hague, where he

negotiated with Lord Malmesbury concerning the affairs of France; shortly

afterwards his nomination as a Minister of State took place, and from

that time his political sentiments seem to have undergone a revolution,

for which it is not easy to account; but, whatever were the causes of his

change of opinions, the Treaty of Basle, concluded between France and

Prussia in 1795, was certainly negotiated under his auspices; and in

August, 1796, he signed, with the French Minister at Berlin, Citizen

Caillard, the first and famous Treaty of Neutrality; and a Prussian

cordon was accordingly drawn, to cause the neutrality of the North to be

observed and protected. Had the Count von Haugwitz of 1795 been the same

as the Count von Haugwitz of 1792, it is probable we should no longer

have heard of either a French Republic or a French Empire; but a

legitimate Monarch of the kingdom of France would have ensured that

security to all other legitimate Sovereigns, the want of which they

themselves, or their children, will feel and mourn in vain, as long as

unlimited usurpations tyrannize over my wretched country. It is to be

hoped, however, that the good sense of the Count will point out to him,

before it is too late, the impolicy of his present connections; and that

he will use his interest with his Prince to persuade him to adopt a line

of conduct suited to the grandeur and dignity of the Prussian Monarchy,

and favourable to the independence of insulted Europe.

When his present Prussian Majesty succeeded to the throne, Count von

Haugwitz continued in office, with increased influence; but he some time

since resigned, in consequence, it is said, of a difference of opinion

with the other Prussian Ministers on the subject of a family alliance,

which Bonaparte had the modesty to propose, between the illustrious house

of Napoleon the First and the royal line of Brandenburgh.

On this occasion his King, to evince his satisfaction with his past

conduct, bestowed on him not only a large pension, but an estate in

Silesia, where he before possessed some property. Bonaparte also, to

express his regret at his retreat, proclaimed His Excellency a grand

officer of the Legion of Honour.

Talleyrand insolently calls the several cordons, or ribands, distributed

by Bonaparte among the Prussian Ministers and Generals, "his

leading-strings." It is to be hoped that Frederick William III. is

sufficiently upon his guard to prevent these strings from strangling the

Prussian Monarchy and the Brandenburgh dynasty.

LETTER XVI.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--Upwards of two months after my visit to General Murat, I was

surprised at the appearance of M. Darjuson, the chamberlain of Princesse

Louis Bonaparte. He told me that he came on the part of Prince Louis,

who honoured me with an invitation to dine with him the day after. Upon

my inquiry whether he knew if the party would be very numerous, he

answered, between forty and fifty; and that it was a kind of farewell

dinner, because the Prince intended shortly to set out for Compiegne to

assume the command of the camp, formed in its vicinity, of the dragoons

and other light troops of the army of England.

The principal personages present at this dinner were Joseph Bonaparte and

his wife, General and Madame Murat, the Ministers Berthier, Talleyrand,

Fouche, Chaptal, and Portalis. The conversation was entirely military,

and chiefly related to the probable conquest or subjugation of Great

Britain, and the probable consequence to mankind in general of such a

great event. No difference of opinion was heard with regard to its

immediate benefit to France and gradual utility to all other nations; but

Berthier seemed to apprehend that, before France could have time to

organize this valuable conquest, she would be obliged to support another

war, with a formidable league, perhaps, of all other European nations.

The issue, however, he said, would be glorious to France, who, by her

achievements, would force all people to acknowledge her their mother

country; and then, first, Europe would constitute but one family.

Chaptal was as certain as everybody else of the destruction of the

tyrants of the seas; but he thought France would never be secure against

the treachery of modern Carthage until she followed the example of Rome

towards ancient Carthage; and therefore, after reducing London to ashes,

it would be proper to disperse round the universe all the inhabitants of

the British Islands, and to re-people them with nations less

evil-disposed and less corrupted. Portalis observed that it was more

easy to conceive than to execute such a vast plan. It would not be an

undertaking of five, of ten, nor of twenty years, to transplant these

nations; that misfortunes and proscription would not only inspire courage

and obstinacy, but desperation.

"No people," continued he, "are more attached to their customs and

countries than islanders in general; and though British subjects are the

greatest travellers, and found everywhere, they all suppose their country

the best, and always wish to return to it and finish their days amidst

their native fogs and smoke. Neither the Saxons, nor the Danes, nor

Norman conquerors transplanted them, but, after reducing them,

incorporated themselves by marriages among the vanquished, and in some

few generations were but one people. It is asserted by all persons who

have lately visited Great Britain, that, though the civilization of the

lower classes is much behind that of the same description in France, the

higher orders, the rich and the fashionable, are, with regard to their,

manners, more French than English, and might easily be cajoled into

obedience and subjection to the sovereignty of a nation whose customs, by

free choice, they have adopted in preference to their own, and whose

language forms a necessary part of their education, and, indeed, of the

education of almost every class in the British Empire. The universality

of the French language is the best ally France has in assisting her to

conquer a universal dominion. He wished, therefore, that when we were in

a situation to dictate in England, instead of proscribing Englishmen we

should proscribe the English language, and advance and reward, in

preference, all those parents whose children were sent to be educated in

France, and all those families who voluntarily adopted in their houses

and societies exclusively the French language."

Murat was afraid that if France did not transplant the most stubborn

Britons, and settle among them French colonies, when once their military

and commercial navy was annihilated, they would turn pirates, and,

perhaps, within half a century, lay all other nations as much under

contribution by their piracies as they now do by their industry; and

that, like the pirates on the coast of Barbary, the instant they had no

connections with other civilized nations, cut the throats of each other,

and agree in nothing but in plundering, and considering all other people

in the, world their natural enemies and purveyors.

To this opinion Talleyrand, by nodding assent, seemed to adhere; but he

added: "Earthquakes are generally dreaded as destructive; but such a

convulsion of nature as would swallow up the British Islands, with all

their inhabitants, would be the greatest blessing Providence ever

conferred on mankind."

Louis Bonaparte then addressed himself to me and to the Marquis de F----.

"Gentlemen," said he, "you have been in England; what is your opinion of

the character of these islanders, and of the probability of their

subjugation?"

I answered that, during the fifteen months I resided in London I was too

much occupied to prevent myself from starving, to meditate about anything

else; that my stomach was my sole meditation as well as anxiety. That,

however, I believed that in England, as everywhere else, a mixture of

good and bad qualities was to be found; but which prevailed, it would be

presumption in me, from my position, to decide. But I did not doubt that

if we cordially hated the English they returned us the compliment with

interest, and, therefore, the contest with them would be a severe one.

The Marquis de F---- imprudently attempted to convince the company that

it was difficult, if not impossible, for our army to land in England,

much more to conquer it, until we were masters of the seas by a superior

navy. He would, perhaps, have been still more indiscreet, had not Madame

Louis interrupted him, and given another turn to the conversation by

inquiring about the fair sex in England, and if it was true that handsome

women were more numerous there than in France? Here again the Marquis,

instead of paying her a compliment, as she perhaps expected, roundly

assured her that for one beauty in France, hundreds might be counted in

England, where gentlemen were, therefore, not so easily satisfied; and

that a woman regarded by them only as an ordinary person would pass for a

first-rate beauty among French beaux, on account of the great scarcity of

them here.

"You must excuse the Marquis, ladies," said I, in my turn; "he has not

been in love in England. There, perhaps, he found the belles less cruel

than in France, where, for the cruelty of one lady, or for her

insensibility of his merit, he revenges himself on the whole sex:

"I apply to M. de Talleyrand," answered the Marquis; "he has been longer

in England than myself."

"I am not a competent judge," retorted the Minister; "Madame de

Talleyrand is here, and has not the honour of being a Frenchwoman; but I

dare say the Marquis will agree with me that in no society in the British

Islands, among a dozen of ladies, has he counted more beauties, or

admired greater accomplishments or more perfection."

To this the Marquis bowed assent, saying that in all his general remarks

the party present, of course, was not included. All the ladies, who were

well acquainted with his absent and blundering conversation, very

good-humouredly laughed, and Madame Murat assured him that if he would

give her the address of the belle in France who had transformed a gallant

Frenchman into a chevalier of British beauty, she would attempt to make

up their difference. "She is no more, Madame," said the Marquis; "she

was, unfortunately, guillotined two days before----" the father of Madame

Louis, he was going to say, when Talleyrand interrupted him with a

significant look, and said, "Before the fall of Robespierre, you mean."

From these and other traits of the Marquis's character, you may see that

he erred more from absence of mind than any premeditation to give

offence. He received, however, the next morning, a lettre de cachet from

Fouche, which exiled him to Blois, and forbade him to return to Paris

without further orders from the Minister of Police. I know, from high

authority, that to the interference of Princesse Louis alone is he

indebted for not being shut up in the Temple, and, perhaps, transported

to our colonies, for having depreciated the power and means of France to

invade England. I am perfectly convinced that none of those who spoke on

the subject of the invasion expressed anything but what they really

thought; and that, of the whole party, none, except Talleyrand, the

Marquis, and myself, entertained the least doubt of the success of the

expedition; so firmly did they rely on the former fortune of Bonaparte,

his boastings, and his assurance.

After dinner I had an opportunity of conversing for ten minutes with

Madame Louis Bonaparte, whom I found extremely amiable, but I fear that

she is not happy. Her husband, though the most stupid, is, however, the

best tempered of the Bonapartes, and seemed very attentive and attached

to her. She was far advanced in her pregnancy, and looked,

notwithstanding, uncommonly well. I have heard that Louis is inclined to

inebriation, and when in that situation is very brutal to his wife, and

very indelicate with other women before her eyes. He intrigues with her

own servants and the number of his illegitimate children is said to be as

many as his years. She asked General Murat to present me and recommend

me to Fouche, which he did with great politeness; and the Minister

assured me that he should be glad to see me at his hotel, which I much

doubt. The last words Madame Louis said to me, in showing me a princely

crown, richly set with diamonds, and given her by her brother-in-law,

Napoleon, were, "Alas! grandeur is not always happiness, nor the most

elevated the most fortunate lot."

LETTER XVII.

PARIS, August, 1805.

My LORD:--The arrival of the Pope in this country was certainly a grand

epoch, not only in the history of the Revolution, but in the annals of

Europe. The debates in the Sacred College for and against this journey,

and for and against his coronation of Bonaparte, are said to have been

long as well as violent, and arranged according to the desires of

Cardinal Fesch only by the means of four millions of livres distributed

apropos among its pious members. Of this money the Cardinals Mattei,

Pamphili, Dugnani, Maury, Pignatelli, Roverella, Somaglia, Pacca,

Brancadoro, Litta, Gabrielli, Spina, Despuig, and Galefli, are said to

have shared the greatest part; and from the most violent

anti-Bonapartists, they instantly became the strenuous adherents of

Napoleon the First, who, of course, cannot be ignorant of their real

worth.

The person entrusted by Bonaparte and Talleyrand to carry on at Rome the

intrigue which sent Pius VII. to cross the Alps was Cardinal Fesch,

brother of Madame Letitia Bonaparte by the side of her mother, who, in a

second marriage, chose a pedlar of the name of Nicolo Fesch, for her

husband.

Joseph, Cardinal Fesch, was born at Ajaccio, in Corsica, on the 8th of

March, 1763, and was in his infancy received as a singing boy (enfant de

choeur) in a convent of his native place. In 1782, whilst he was on a

visit to some of his relations in the Island of Sardinia, being on a

fishing party some distance from shore, he was, with his companions,

captured by an Algerine felucca, and carried a captive to Algiers. Here

he turned Mussulman, and, until 1790, was a zealous believer in, and

professor of, the Alcoran. In that year he found an opportunity to

escape from Algiers, and to return to Ajaccio, when he abjured his

renegacy, exchanged the Alcoran for the Bible, and, in 1791, was made a

constitutional curate, that is to say, a revolutionary Christian priest.

In 1793, when even those were proscribed, he renounced the sacristy of

his Church for the bar of a tavern, where, during 1794 and 1795, he

gained a small capital by the number and liberality of his English

customers. After the victories of his nephew Napoleon in Italy during

the following year, he was advised to reassume the clerical habit, and

after Napoleon's proclamation of a First Consul, he was made Archbishop

of Lyons. In 1802, Pius VII. decorated him with the Roman purple, and he

is now a pillar of the Roman faith, in a fair way of seizing the Roman

tiara. If letters from Rome can be depended upon, Cardinal Fesch, in the

name of the Emperor of the French, informed His Holiness the Pope that he

must either retire to a convent or travel to France, either abdicate his

own sovereignty, or inaugurate Napoleon the First a Sovereign of France.

Without the decision of the Sacred College, effected in the manner

already stated, the majority of the faithful believe that this pontiff

would have preferred obscurity to disgrace.

While Joseph Fesch was a master of a tavern he married the daughter of a

tinker, by whom he had three children. This marriage, according to the

republican regulations, had only been celebrated by the municipality at

Ajaccio; Fesch, therefore, upon again entering the bosom of the Church,

left his municipal wife and children to shift for themselves, considering

himself still, according to the canonical laws, a bachelor. But Madame

Fesch, hearing, in 1801, of her ci-devant husband's promotion to the

Archbishopric of Lyons, wrote to him for some succours, being with her

children reduced to great misery. Madame Letitia Bonaparte answered her

letter, enclosing a draft for six hundred livres--informing her that the

same sum would be paid her every six months, as long as she continued

with her children to reside at Corsica, but that it would cease the

instant she left that island. Either thinking herself not sufficiently

paid for her discretion, or enticed by some enemy of the Bonaparte

family, she arrived secretly at Lyons in October last year, where she

remained unknown until the arrival of the Pope. On the first day His

Holiness gave there his public benediction, she found means to pierce the

crowd, and to approach his person, when Cardinal Fesch was by his side.

Profiting by a moment's silence, she called out loudly, throwing herself

at his feet: "Holy Father! I am the lawful wife of Cardinal Fesch, and

these are our children; he cannot, he dares not, deny this truth. Had he

behaved liberally to me, I should not have disturbed him in his present

grandeur; I supplicate you, Holy Father, not to restore me my husband,

but to force him to provide for his wife and children, according to his

present circumstances."--"Matta--ella e matta, santissimo padre! She is

mad--she is mad, Holy Father," said the Cardinal; and the good pontiff

ordered her to be taken care of, to prevent her from doing herself or the

children any mischief. She was, indeed, taken care of, because nobody

ever since heard what has become either of her or her children; and as

they have not returned to Corsica, probably some snug retreat has been

allotted them in France.

The purple was never disgraced by a greater libertine than Cardinal

Fesch: his amours are numerous, and have often involved him in

disagreeable scrapes. He had, in 1803, an unpleasant adventure at Lyons,

which has since made his stay in that city but short. Having thrown his

handkerchief at the wife of a manufacturer of the name of Girot, she

accepted it, and gave him an appointment at her house, at a time in the

evening when her husband usually went to the play. His Eminence arrived

in disguise, and was received with open arms. But he was hardly seated

by her side before the door of a closet was burst open, and his shoulders

smarted from the lashes inflicted by an offended husband. In vain did he

mention his name and rank; they rather increased than decreased the fury

of Girot, who pretended it was utterly impossible for a Cardinal and

Archbishop to be thus overtaken with the wife of one of his flock; at

last Madame Girot proposed a pecuniary accommodation, which, after some

opposition, was acceded to; and His Eminence signed a bond for one

hundred thousand livres--upon condition that nothing should transpire of

this intrigue--a high price enough for a sound drubbing. On the day when

the bond was due, Girot and his wife were both arrested by the police

commissary, Dubois (a brother of the prefect of police at Paris), accused

of being connected with the coiners, a capital crime at present in this

country. In a search made in their house, bad money to the amount of

three thousand livres was discovered; which they had received the day

before from a man who called himself a merchant from Paris, but who was a

police spy sent to entrap them. After giving up the bond of the

Cardinal, the Emperor graciously remitted the capital punishment, upon

condition that they should be transported for life to Cayenne.

This is the prelate on whom Bonaparte intends to confer the Roman tiara,

and to constitute a successor of St. Peter. It would not be the least

remarkable event in the beginning of the remarkable nineteenth century

were we to witness the papal throne occupied by a man who from a singing

boy became a renegade slave, from a Mussulman a constitutional curate,

from a tavern-keeper an archbishop, from the son of a pedlar the uncle of

an Emperor, and from the husband of the daughter of a tinker, a member of

the Sacred College.

His sister, Madame Letitia Bonaparte, presented him, in 1802, with an

elegant library, for which she had paid six hundred thousand livres--and

his nephew, Napoleon, allows him a yearly pension double that amount.

Besides his dignity as a prelate, His Eminence is Ambassador from France

at Rome, a Knight of the Spanish Order of the Golden Fleece, a grand

officer of the Legion of Honour, and a grand almoner of the Emperor of

the French.

The Archbishop of Paris is now in his ninety-sixth year, and at his death

Cardinal Fesch is to be transferred to the see of this capital, in

expectation of the triple crown and the keys of St. Peter.

LETTER XVIII.

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!!!

LETTER XIX.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--The sensation that the arrival of the Pope in this country

caused among the lower classes of people cannot be expressed, and if

expressed, would not be believed. I am sorry, however, to say that,

instead of improving their morals or increasing their faith, this journey

has shaken both morality and religion to their foundation.

According to our religious notions, as you must know, the Roman pontiff

is the vicar of Christ, and infallible; he can never err. The atheists

of the National Convention and the Theophilanthropists of the Directory

not only denied his demi-divinity, but transformed him into a satyr; and

in pretending to tear the veil of superstition, annihilated all belief in

a God. The ignorant part of our nation, which, as everywhere else,

constitutes the majority, witnessing the impunity and prosperity of

crime, and bestowing on the Almighty the passions of mortals, first

doubted of His omnipotence in not crushing guilt, and afterwards of His

existence in not exterminating the blasphemous from among the living.

Feeling, however, the want of consolation in their misfortunes here, and

hope of a reward hereafter for unmerited sufferings upon earth, they all

hailed as a blessing the restoration of Christianity; and by this

political act Bonaparte gained more adherents than by all his victories

he had procured admirers.

Bonaparte's character, his good and his bad qualities, his talents and

his crimes, are too recent and too notorious to require description.

Should he continue successful, and be attended by fortune to his grave,

future ages may perhaps hail him a hero and a great man; but by his

contemporaries it will always be doubtful whether mankind has not

suffered more from his ambition and cruelties than benefited by his

services. Had he satisfied himself by continuing the Chief Magistrate of

a Commonwealth; or, if he judged that a monarchical Government alone was

suitable to the spirit of this country, had he recalled our legitimate

King, he would have occupied a principal, if not the first, place in the

history of France,--a place much more exalted than he can ever expect to

fill as an Emperor of the French. Let his prosperity be ever so

uninterrupted, he cannot be mentioned but as an usurper, an appellation

never exciting esteem, frequently inspiring contempt, and always odious.

The crime of usurpation is the greatest and most enormous a subject can

perpetrate; but what epithet can there be given to him who, to preserve

an authority unlawfully acquired, asssociates in his guilt a Supreme

Pontiff, whom the multitude is accustomed to reverence as the

representative of their God, but who, by this act of scandal and

sacrilege, descends to a level with the most culpable of men? I have

heard, not only in this city but in villages, where sincerity is more

frequent than corruption, and where hypocrites are as little known as

infidels, these remarks made by the people:

"Can the real vicar of Christ, by his inauguration, commit the double

injustice of depriving the legitimate owner of his rights, and of

bestowing as a sacred donation what belongs to another; and what he has

no power, no authority, to dispose of? Can Pius VII. confer on Napoleon

the First what belongs to Louis XVIII.? Would Jesus Christ, if upon

earth, have acted thus? Would his immediate successors, the Apostles,

not have preferred the suffering of martyrdom to the commission of any

injury? If the present Roman pontiff acts differently from what his

Master and predecessors would have done, can he be the vicar of our

Saviour?"

These and many similar reflections the common people have made, and make

yet. The step from doubt to disbelief is but short, and those brought up

in the Roman Catholic religion, who hesitate about believing Pius VII. to

be the vicar of Christ, will soon remember the precepts of atheists and

freethinkers, and believe that Christ is not the Son of God, and that God

is only the invention of fear.

The fact is, that by the Pope's performance of the coronation of an

Emperor of the French, a religious as well as a political revolution was

effected; and the usurper in power, whatever his creed may be, will

hereafter, without much difficulty, force it on his slaves. You may,

perhaps, object that Pius VII., in his official account to the Sacred

College of his journey to France, speaks with enthusiasm of the

Catholicism of the French people. But did not the Goddess of Reason, did

not Robespierre as a high priest of a Supreme Being, speak as highly of

their sectaries? Read the Moniteur of 1793 and 1794, and you will be

convinced of the truth of this assertion. They, like the Pope, spoke of

what they saw, and they, like him, did not see an individual who was not

instructed how to perform his part, so as to give satisfaction to him

whom he was to please, and to those who employed him. As you have

attended to the history of our Revolution, you have found it in great

part a cruel masquerade, where none but the unfortunate Louis XVI.

appeared in his native and natural character and without a mask.

The countenance of Pius VII. is placid and benign, and a kind of calmness

and tranquillity pervades his address and manners, which are, however,

far from being easy or elegant. The crowds that he must have been

accustomed to see since his present elevation have not lessened a

timidity the consequence of early seclusion. Nothing troubled him more

than the numerous deputations of our Senate, Legislative Body, Tribunate,

National Institute, Tribunals, etc., that teased him on every occasion.

He never was suspected of any vices, but all his virtues are negative;

and his best quality is, not to do good, but to prevent evil. His piety

is sincere and unaffected, and it is not difficult to perceive that he

has been more accustomed to address his God than to converse with men. He

is nowhere so well in his place as before the altar; when imploring the

blessings of Providence on his audience he speaks with confidence, as to

a friend to whom his purity is known, and who is accustomed to listen

favourably to his prayers. He is zealous but not fanatical, but equally

superstitious as devout. His closet was crowded with relics, rosaries,

etc., but there he passed generally eight hours of the twenty-four upon

his knees in prayer and meditation. He often inflicted on himself

mortifications, observed fast-days, and kept his vows with religious

strictness.

None of the promises made him by Cardinal Fesch, in the name of Napoleon

the First, were performed, but all were put off until a general

pacification. He was promised indemnity for Avignon, Bologna, Ferrara,

and Ravenna; the ancient supremacy and pecuniary contributions of the

Gallican Church, and the restoration of certain religious orders, both in

France and Italy; but notwithstanding his own representations, and the

activity of his Cardinal, Caprara, nothing was decided, though nothing

was refused.

By some means or other he was made perfectly acquainted with the crimes

and vices of most of our public functionaries. Talleyrand was surprised

when Cardinal Caprara explained to him the reason why the Pope refused to

admit some persons to his presence, and why he wished others even not to

be of the party when he accepted the invitations of Bonaparte and his

wife to their private societies. Many are, however, of opinion that

Talleyrand, from malignity or revenge, often heightened and confirmed His

Holiness's aversion. This was at least once the case with regard to De

Lalande. When Duroc inquired the cause of the Pope's displeasure against

this astronomer, and hinted that it would be very agreeable to the

Emperor were His Holiness to permit him the honour of prostrating

himself, he was answered that men of talents and learning would always be

welcome to approach his person; that he pitied the errors and prayed for

the conversion of this savant, but was neither displeased nor offended

with him. Talleyrand, when informed of the Pope's answer, accused

Cardinal Caprara of having misinterpreted his master's communications;

and this prelate, in his turn, censured our Minister's bad memory.