first astronomer of Europe, and hailed as the high priest of atheists; he
is said to be the author of a shockingly blasphemous work called "The
Bible of a People who acknowledge no God." He implored the ferocious
Robespierre to honour the heavens by bestowing, on a new planet pretended
to be discovered, his ci-devant Christian-name, Maximilian. In a letter
of congratulation to Bonaparte, on the occasion of his present elevation,
he also implored him to honour the God of the Christians by styling
himself Jesus Christ the First, Emperor of the French, instead of
Napoleon the First. But it was not his known impiety that made
Talleyrand wish to exclude him from insulting with his presence a
Christian pontiff. In the summer of 1799, when the Minister was in a
momentary disgrace, De Lalande was at the head of those who imputed to
his treachery, corruptions, and machinations all the evils France then
suffered, both from external enemies and internal factions. If
Talleyrand has justly been reproached for soon forgetting good offices
and services done him, nobody ever denied that he has the best
recollection in the world of offences or attacks, and that he is as
revengeful as unforgiving.
The only one of our great men whom Pius VII. remained obstinate and
inflexible in not receiving, was the Senator and Minister of Police,
Fouche. As His Holiness was not so particular with regard to other
persons who, like Fouche, were both apostate priests and regicide
subjects, the following is reported to be the cause of his aversion and
obduracy:
In November, 1793, the remains of a wretch of the name of
Challiers--justly called, for his atrocities, the Murat of Lyons--were
ordered by Fouche, then a representative of the people in that city, to
be produced and publicly worshipped; and, under his particular auspices,
a grand fete was performed to the memory of this republican martyr, who
had been executed as an assassin. As part of this impious ceremony, an
ass, covered with a Bishop's vestments, having on his head a mitre, and
the volumes of Holy Writ tied to his tail, paraded the streets. The
remains of Challiers were then burnt, and the ashes distributed among his
adorers; while the books were also consumed, and the ashes scattered in
the wind. Fouche proposed, after giving the ass some water to drink in a
sacred chalice, to terminate the festivity of the day by murdering all
the prisoners, amounting to seven thousand five hundred; but a sudden
storm prevented the execution of this diabolical proposition, and
dispersed the sacrilegious congregation.
LETTER XX.
PARIS, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--Though all the Bonapartes were great favourites with Pius VII.,
Madame Letitia, their mother, had a visible preference. In her
apartments he seemed most pleased to meet the family parties, as they
were called, because to them, except the Bonapartes, none but a few
select favourites were invited,--a distinction as much wished for and
envied as any other Court honour. After the Pope had fixed the evening
he would appear among them, Duroc made out a list, under the dictates of
Napoleon, of the chosen few destined to partake of the blessing of His
Holiness's presence; this list was merely pro form, or as a compliment,
laid before him; and after his tacit approbation, the individuals were
informed, from the first chamberlain's office, that they would be
honoured with admittance at such an hour, to such a company, and in such
an apartment. The dress in which they were to appear was also
prescribed. The parties usually met at six o'clock in the evening. On
the Pope's entrance all persons, of both sexes, kneeled to receive his
blessing. Tea, ice, liqueurs, and confectionery were then served. In
the place of honour were three elevated elbow-chairs, and His Holiness
was seated between the Emperor and Empress, and seldom spoke to any one
to whom Napoleon did not previously address the word. The exploits of
Bonaparte, particularly his campaigns in Egypt, were the chief subjects
of conversation. Before eight o'clock the Pope always retired,
distributing his blessing to the kneeling audience, as on his entry. When
he was gone, card-tables were brought in, and play was permitted. Duroc
received his master's orders how to distribute the places at the
different tables, what games were to be played, and the amount of the
sums to be staked. These were usually trifling and small compared to
what is daily risked in our fashionable circles.
Often, after the Pope had returned to his own rooms, Madame Letitia
Bonaparte was admitted to assist at his private prayers. This lady,
whose intrigues and gallantry are proverbial in Corsica, has, now that
she is old (as is generally the case), turned devotee, and is surrounded
by hypocrites and impostors, who, under the mask of sanctity, deceive and
plunder her. Her antechambers are always full of priests; and her closet
and bedroom are crowded with relics, which she collected during her
journey to Italy last year. She might, if she chose, establish a
Catholic museum, and furnish it with a more curious collection, in its
sort, than any of our other museums contain. Of all the saints in our
calendar, there is not one of any notoriety who has not supplied her with
a finger, a toe, or some other part; or with a piece of a shirt, a
handkerchief, a sandal, or a winding-sheet. Even a bit of a pair of
breeches, said to have belonged to Saint Mathurin, whom many think was a
sans-cullotte, obtains her adoration on certain occasions. As none of
her children have yet arrived at the same height of faith as herself, she
has, in her will, bequeathed to the Pope all her relics, together with
eight hundred and seventy-nine Prayer-books, and four hundred and
forty-six Bibles, either in manuscript or of different editions. Her
favourite breviary, used only on great solemnities, was presented to her
by Cardinal Maury at Rome, and belonged, as it is said, formerly to Saint
Francois, whose commentary, written with his own hand, fills the margins;
though many, who with me adore him as a saint, doubt whether he could
either read or write.
Not long ago she made, as she thought, an exceedingly valuable
acquisition. A priest arrived direct from the Holy City of Jerusalem,
well recommended by the inhabitants of the convents there, with whom he
pretended to have passed his youth. After prostrating himself before the
Pope, he waited on Madame Letitia Bonaparte. He told her that he had
brought with him from Syria the famous relic, the shoulder-bone of Saint
John the Baptist; but that, being in want of money for his voyage, he
borrowed upon it from a Grecian Bishop in Montenegro two hundred louis
d'or. This sum, and one hundred louis d'or besides, was immediately
given him; and within three months, for a large sum in addition to those
advanced, this precious relic was in Madame Letitia's possession.
Notwithstanding this lady's care not to engage in her service any person
of either sex who cannot produce, not a certificate of civism from the
municipality as was formerly the case, but a certificate of Christianity,
and a billet of confession signed by the curate of the parish, she had
often been robbed, and the robbers had made particularly free with those
relics which were set in gold or in diamonds. She accused her daughter,
the Princesse Borghese, who often rallies the devotion of her mamma, and
who is more an amateur of the living than of the dead, of having played
her these tricks. The Princess informed Napoleon of her mother's losses,
as well as of her own innocence, and asked him to apply to the police to
find out the thief, who no doubt was one of the pious rogues who almost
devoured their mother.
On the next day Napoleon invited Madame Letitia to dinner, and Fouche had
orders to make a strict search, during her absence, among the persons
composing her household. Though he, on this occasion, did not find what
he was looking for, he made a discovery which very much mortified Madame
Letitia.
Her first chambermaid, Rosina Gaglini, possessed both her esteem and
confidence, and had been sent for purposely from Ajaccio, in Corsica, on
account of her general renown for great piety, and a report that she was
an exclusive favourite with the Virgin Mary, by whose interference she
had even performed, it was said, some miracles; such as restoring stolen
goods, runaway cattle, lost children, and procuring prizes in the
lottery. Rosina was as relic-mad as her mistress; and as she had no
means to procure them otherwise, she determined to partake of her lady's
by cutting off a small part of each relic of Madame Letitia's principal
saints. These precious 'morceaux' she placed in a box upon which she
kneeled to say her prayers during the day; and which, for a
mortification, served her as a pillow during the night. Upon each of the
sacred bits she had affixed a label with the name of the saint it
belonged to, which occasioned the disclosure. When Madame Letitia heard
of this pious theft, she insisted on having the culprit immediately and
severely punished; and though the Princesse Borghese, as the innocent
cause of poor Rosina's misfortune, interfered, and Rosina herself
promised never more to plunder saints, she was without mercy turned away,
and even denied money sufficient to carry her back to Corsica. Had she
made free with Madame Letitia's plate or wardrobe, there is no doubt but
that she had been forgiven; but to presume to share with her those sacred
supports on her way to Paradise was a more unpardonable act with a
devotee than to steal from a lover the portrait of an adored mistress.
In the meantime the police were upon the alert to discover the person
whom they suspected of having stolen the relics for the diamonds, and not
the diamonds for the relics. Among our fashionable and new saints,
surprising as you may think it, Madame de Genlis holds a distinguished
place; and she, too, is an amateur and collector of relics in proportion
to her means; and with her were found those missed by Madame Letitia.
Being asked to give up the name of him from whom she had purchased them,
she mentioned Abbe Saladin, the pretended priest from Jerusalem. He, in
his turn, was questioned, and by his answers gave rise to suspicion that
he himself was the thief. The person of whom he pretended to have bought
them was not to be found, nor was any one of such a description
remembered to have been seen anywhere. On being carried to prison, he
claimed the protection of Madame Letitia, and produced a letter in which
this lady had promised him a bishopric either in France or in Italy. When
she was informed of his situation, she applied to her son Napoleon for
his liberty, urging that a priest who from Jerusalem had brought with him
to Europe such an extraordinary relic as the shoulder of Saint John,
could not be culpable.
Abbe Saladin had been examined by Real, who concluded, from the accent
and perfection with which he spoke the French language, that he was some
French adventurer who had imposed on the credulity and superstition of
Madame Letitia; and, therefore, threatened him with the rack if he did
not confess the truth. He continued, however, in his story, and was
going to be released upon an order from the Emperor, when a gendarme
recognized him as a person who, eight years before, had, under the name
of Lanoue, been condemned for theft and forgery to the galleys, whence he
had made his escape. Finding himself discovered, he avowed everything.
He said he had served in Egypt, in the guides of Bonaparte, but deserted
to the Turks and turned Mussulman, but afterwards returned to the bosom
of the Church at Jerusalem. There he persuaded the friars that he had
been a priest, and obtained the certificates which introduced him to the
Pope and to the Emperor's mother; from whom he had received twelve
thousand livres for part of the jaw bone of a whale, which he had sold
her for the shoulder-bone of a saint. As the police believe the
certificates he has produced to be also forged, he is detained in prison
until an answer arrives from our Consul in Syria.
Madame Letitia did not resign without tears the relic he had sold her;
and there is reason to believe that many other pieces of her collections,
worshipped by her as remains of saints, are equally genuine as this
shoulder-bone of Saint John.
LETTER XXI.
PARIS, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--That the population of this capital has, since the Revolution,
decreased near two hundred thousand souls, is not to be lamented. This
focus of corruption and profligacy is still too populous, though the
inhabitants do not amount to six hundred thousand; for I am well
persuaded that more crimes and excesses of every description are
committed here in one year than are perpetrated in the same period of
time in all other European capitals put together. From not reading in
our newspapers, as we do in yours, of the robberies, murders, and frauds
discovered and punished, you may, perhaps, be inclined to suppose my
assertion erroneous or exaggerated; but it is the policy of our present
Government to labour as much as possible in the dark; that is to say, to
prevent, where it can be done, all publicity of anything directly or
indirectly tending to inculpate it of oppression, tyranny, or even
negligence; and to conceal the immorality of the people so nearly
connected with its own immoral power. It is true that many vices and
crimes here, as well as everywhere else, are unavoidable, and the natural
consequences of corruption, and might be promulgated, therefore, without
attaching any reproach to our rulers; but they are so accustomed to the
mystery adherent to tyranny, that even the most unimportant lawsuit,
uninteresting intrigue, elopement, or divorce, are never allowed to be
mentioned in our journals, without a previous permission from the prefect
of police, who very seldom grants it.
Most of the enormities now deplored in this country are the consequence
of moral and religious licentiousness, that have succeeded to political
anarchy, or rather were produced by it, and survive it. Add to this the
numerous examples of the impunity of guilt, prosperity of infamy, misery
of honesty, and sufferings of virtue, and you will not think it
surprising that, notwithstanding half a million of spies, our roads and
streets are covered with robbers and assassins, and our scaffolds with
victims.
The undeniable TRUTH that this city alone is watched by one hundred
thousand spies (so that, when in company with six persons, one has reason
to dread the presence of one spy), proclaims at once the morality of the
governors and that of the governed: were the former just, and the latter
good, this mass of vileness would never be employed; or, if employed,
wickedness would expire for want of fuel, and the hydra of tyranny perish
by its own pestilential breath.
According to the official registers published by Manuel in 1792, the
number of spies all over France during the reign of Louis XVI. was
nineteen thousand three hundred (five thousand less than under Louis
XV.); and of this number six thousand were distributed in Paris, and in a
circle of four leagues around it, including Versailles. You will
undoubtedly ask me, even allowing for our extension of territory, what
can be the cause of this disproportionate increase of distrust and
depravity? I will explain it as far as my abilities admit, according to
the opinions of others compared with my own remarks.
When factions usurped the supremacy of the Kings, vigilance augmented
with insecurity; and almost everybody who was not an opposer, who refused
being an accomplice, or feared to be a victim, was obliged to serve as an
informer and vilify himself by becoming a spy. The rapidity with which
parties followed and destroyed each other made the criminals as numerous
as the sufferings of honour and loyalty innumerable; and I am sorry to
say few persons exist in my degraded country, whose firmness and
constancy were proof against repeated torments and trials, and who, to
preserve their lives, did not renounce their principles and probity.
Under the reign of Robespierre and of the Committee of Public Safety,
every member of Government, of the clubs, of the tribunals, and of the
communes, had his private spies; but no regular register was kept of
their exact number. Under the Directory a Police Minister was nominated,
and a police office established. According to the declaration of the
Police Minister, Cochon, in 1797, the spies, who were then regularly
paid, amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand; and of these, thirty
thousand did duty in this capital. How many there were in 1799, when
Fouche, for the first time, was appointed a chief of the department of
police, is not known, but suppose them doubled within two years; their
increase since is nevertheless immense, considering that France has
enjoyed upwards of four years' uninterrupted Continental peace, and has
not been exposed to any internal convulsions during the same period.
You may, perhaps, object that France is not rich enough to keep up as
numerous an army of spies as of soldiers; because the expense of the
former must be triple the amount of the latter. Were all these spies,
now called police agents, or agents of the secret police, paid regular
salaries, your objection would stand, but most of them have no other
reward than the protection of the police; being employed in
gambling--houses, in coffee--houses, in taverns, at the theatres, in the
public gardens, in the hotels, in lottery offices, at pawnbrokers', in
brothels, and in bathing-houses, where the proprietors or masters of
these establishments pay them. They receive nothing from the police, but
when they are enabled to make any great discoveries, those who have been
robbed or defrauded, and to whom they have been serviceable, are, indeed,
obliged to present them with some douceur, fixed by the police at the
rate of the value recovered; but such occurrences are merely accidental.
To these are to be added all individuals of either sex who by the law are
obliged to obtain from the police licenses to exercise their trade, as
pedlars, tinkers, masters of puppet-shows, wild beasts, etc. These, on
receiving their passes, inscribe themselves, and take the oaths as spies;
and are forced to send in their regular reports of what they hear or see.
Prostitutes, who, all over this country, are under the necessity of
paying for regular licenses, are obliged also to give information, from
time to time, to the nearest police commissary of what they observe or
what they know respecting their visitors, neighbours, etc. The number of
unfortunate women of this description who had taken out licenses during
the year 12, or from September, 1803, to September, 1804, is officially
known to have amounted to two hundred and twenty thousand, of whom forty
thousand were employed by the armies.
It is no secret that Napoleon Bonaparte has his secret spies upon his
wife, his brothers, his sisters, his Ministers, Senators, and other
public functionaries, and also upon his public spies. These are all
under his own immediate control and that of Duroc, who does the duty of
his private Police Minister, and in whom he confides more than even in
the members of his own family. In imitation of their master, each of the
other Bonapartes, and each of the Ministers, have their individual spies,
and are watched in their turn by the spies of their secretaries, clerks,
etc. This infamous custom of espionage goes ad infinitum, and appertains
almost to the establishment and to the suite of each man in place, who
does not think himself secure a moment if he remains in ignorance of the
transactions of his rivals, as well as of those of his equals and
superiors.
Fouche and Talleyrand are reported to have disagreed before Bonaparte on
some subject or other, which is frequently the case. The former,
offended at some doubts thrown out about his intelligence, said to the
latter:
"I am so well served that I can tell you the name of every man or woman
you have conversed with, both yesterday and today; where you saw them,
and how long you remained with them or they with you."
"If such commonplace espionage evinces any merit," retorted Talleyrand,
"I am even here your superior; because I know not only what has already
passed with you and in your house, but what is to pass hereafter. I can
inform you of every dish you had for your dinners this week, who provided
these dinners, and who is expected to provide your meats to-morrow and
the day after. I can whisper you, in confidence, who slept with Madame
Fouche last night, and who has an appointment with her to-night."
Here Bonaparte interrupted them, in his usual dignified language: "Hold
both your tongues; you are both great rogues, but I am at a loss to
decide which is the greatest."
Without uttering a single syllable, Talleyrand made a profound reverence
to Fouche. Bonaparte smiled, and advised them to live upon good terms if
they were desirous of keeping their places.
A man of the name of Ducroux, who, under Robespierre, had from a barber
been made a general, and afterwards broken for his ignorance, was engaged
by Bonaparte as a private spy upon Fouche, who employed him in the same
capacity upon Bonaparte. His reports were always written, and delivered
in person into the hands both of the Emperor and of his Minister. One
morning he, by mistake, gave to Bonaparte the report of him instead of
that intended for him. Bonaparte began to read: "Yesterday, at nine
o'clock, the Emperor acted the complete part of a madman; he swore,
stamped, kicked, foamed, roared--", here poor Ducroux threw himself at
Bonaparte's feet, and called for mercy for the terrible blunder he had
committed.
"For whom," asked Bonaparte, "did you intend this treasonable
correspondence? I suppose it is composed for some English or Russian
agent, for Pitt or for Marcoff. How long have you conspired with my
enemies, and where are your accomplices?"
"For God's sake, hear me, Sire," prayed Ducroux. "Your Majesty's enemies
have always been mine. The report is for one of your best friends; but
were I to mention his name, he will ruin me."
"Speak out, or you die!" vociferated Bonaparte.
"Well,'Sire, it is for Fouche--for nobody else but Fouche."
Bonaparte then rang the bell for Duroc, whom he ordered to see Ducroux
shut up in a dungeon, and afterwards to send for Fouche. The Minister
denied all knowledge of Ducroux, who, after undergoing several tortures,
expiated his blunder upon the rack.
LETTER XXII.
PARIS, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--The Pope, during his stay here, rose regularly every morning at
five o'clock, and went to bed every night before ten. The first hours of
the day he passed in prayers, breakfasted after the Mass was over,
transacted business till one, and dined at two. Between three and four
he took--his siesta, or nap; afterwards he attended the vespers, and when
they were over he passed an hour with the Bonapartes, or admitted to his
presence some members of the clergy. The day was concluded, as it was
begun, with some hours of devotion.
Had Pius VII. possessed the character of a Pius VI., he would never have
crossed the Alps; or had he been gifted with the spirit and talents of
Sextus V. or Leo X., he would never have entered France to crown
Bonaparte, without previously stipulating for himself that he should be
put in possession of the sovereignty of Italy. You can form no idea what
great stress was laid on this act of His Holiness by the Bonaparte
family, and what sacrifices were destined to be made had any serious and
obstinate resistance been apprehended. Threats were, indeed, employed
personally against the Pope, and bribes distributed to the refractory
members of the Sacred College; but it was no secret, either here or at
Milan, that Cardinal Fesch had carte blanche with regard to the
restoration of all provinces seized, since the war, from the Holy See, or
full territorial indemnities in their place, at the expense of Naples and
Tuscany; and, indeed, whatever the Roman pontiff has lost in Italy has
been taken from him by Bonaparte alone, and the apparent generosity which
policy and ambition required would, therefore, have merely been an act of
justice. Confiding foolishly in the honour and rectitude of Napoleon,
without any other security than the assertion of Fesch, Pius VII., within
a fortnight's stay in France, found the great difference between the
promises held out to him when residing as a Sovereign at Rome, and their
accomplishment when he had so far forgotten himself and his sacred
dignity as to inhabit as a guest the castle of the Tuileries.
Pius VII. mentioned, the day after his arrival at Fontainebleau, that it
would be a gratification to his own subjects were he enabled to
communicate to them the restoration of the former ecclesiastical domains,
as a free gift of the Emperor of the French, at their first conference,
as they would then be as well convinced of Napoleon's good faith as he
was himself. In answer, His Holiness was informed that the Emperor was
unprepared to discuss political subjects, being totally occupied with the
thoughts how to entertain worthily his high visitor, and to acknowledge
becomingly the great honour done and the great happiness conferred on him
by such a visit. As soon as the ceremony of the coronation was over,
everything, he hoped, would be arranged to the reciprocal satisfaction of
both parties.
About the middle of last December, Bonaparte was again asked to fix a day
when the points of negotiation between him and the Pope could be
discussed and settled. Cardinal Caprara, who made this demand, was
referred to Talleyrand, who denied having yet any instructions, though in
daily expectation of them. Thus the time went on until February, when
Bonaparte informed the Pope of his determination to assume the crown of
Italy, and of some new changes necessary, in consequence on the other
side of the Alps.
Either seduced by caresses, or blinded by his unaccountable partiality
for Bonaparte, Pius VII., if left to himself, would not only have
renounced all his former claims, but probably have made new sacrifices to
this idol of his infatuation. Fortunately, his counsellors were wiser
and less deluded, otherwise the remaining patrimony of Saint Peter might
now have constituted a part of Napoleon's inheritance, in Italy. "Am I
not, Holy Father!" exclaimed the Emperor frequently, "your son, the work
of your hand? And if the pages of history assign me any glory, must it
not be shared with you--or rather, do you not share it with me? Anything
that impedes my successes, or makes the continuance of my power uncertain
or hazardous, reflects on you and is dangerous to you. With me you will
shine or be obscured, rise or fall. Could you, therefore, hesitate (were
I to demonstrate to you the necessity of such a measure) to remove the
Papal See to Avignon, where it formerly was and continued for centuries,
and to enlarge the limits of my kingdom of Italy with the Ecclesiastical
States? Can you believe my throne at Milan safe as long as it is not the
sole throne of Italy? Do you expect to govern at Rome when I cease to
reign at Milan? No, Holy Father! the pontiff who placed the crown on my
head, should it be shaken, will fall to rise no more." If what Cardinal
Caprara said can be depended upon, Bonaparte frequently used to
intimidate or flatter the Pope in this manner.
The representations of Cardinal Caprara changed Napoleon's first
intention of being again crowned by the Pope as a King of Italy. His
crafty Eminence observed that, according to the Emperor's own
declaration, it was not intended that the crowns of France and Italy
should continue united. But were he to cede one supremacy confirmed by
the sacred hands of a pontiff, the partisans of the Bourbons, or the
factions in France, would then take advantage to diminish in the opinion
of the people his right and the sacredness of His Holiness, and perhaps
make even the crown of the French Empire unstable. He did not deny that
Charlemagne was crowned by a pontiff in Italy, but this ceremony was
performed at Rome, where that Prince was proclaimed an Emperor of the
Holy Roman and German Empires, as well as a King of Lombardy and Italy.
Might not circumstances turn out so favourably for Napoleon the First
that he also might be inaugurated an Emperor of the Germans as well as of
the French? This last compliment, or prophecy, as Bonaparte's courtiers
call it (what a prophet a Caprara!), had the desired effect, as it
flattered equally Napoleon's ambition and vanity. For fear, however, of
Talleyrand and other anti-Catholic counsellors, who wanted him to
consider the Pope merely as his first almoner, and to treat him as all
other persons of his household, His Eminence sent His Holiness as soon as
possible packing for Rome. Though I am neither a cardinal nor a prophet,
should you and I live twenty years longer, and the other Continental
Sovereigns not alter their present incomprehensible conduct, I can,
without any risk, predict that we shall see Rome salute the second
Charlemagne an Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, if before that time
death does not put a period to his encroachments and gigantic plans.
LETTER XXIII.
PARIS, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--No Sovereigns have, since the Revolution, displayed more
grandeur of soul, and evinced more firmness of character, than the
present King and Queen of Naples. Encompassed by a revolutionary volcano
more dangerous than the physical one, though disturbed at home and
defeated abroad, they have neither been disgraced nor dishonoured. They
have, indeed, with all other Italian Princes, suffered territorial and
pecuniary losses; but these were not yielded through cowardice or
treachery, but enforced by an absolute necessity, the consequence of the
desertion or inefficacy of allies.
But Their Sicilian Majesties have been careful, as much as they were
able, to exclude from their councils both German Illuminati and Italian
philosophers. Their principal Minister, Chevalier Acton, has proved
himself worthy of the confidence with which his Sovereigns have honoured
him, and of the hatred with which he has been honoured by all
revolutionists--the natural and irreconcilable enemies of all legitimate
sovereignty.
Chevalier Acton is the son of an Irish physician, who first was
established at Besancon in France, and afterwards at Leghorn in Italy. He
is indebted for his present elevation to his own merit and to the
penetration of the Queen of Sardinia, who discovered in him, when young,
those qualities which have since distinguished him as a faithful
counsellor and an able Minister. As loyal as wise, he was, from 1789, an
enemy to the French Revolution. He easily foresaw that the specious
promise of regeneration held out by impostors or fools to delude the
ignorant, the credulous and the weak, would end in that universal
corruption and general overthrow which we since have witnessed, and the
effects of which our grandchildren will mourn.
When our Republic, in April, 1792, declared war against Austria, and
when, in the September following, the dominions of His Sardinian Majesty
were invaded by our troops, the neutrality of Naples continued, and was
acknowledged by our Government. On the 16th of December following, our
fleet from Toulon, however, cast anchor in the Bay of Naples, and a
grenadier of the name of Belleville was landed as an Ambassador of the
French Republic, and threatened a bombardment in case the demands he
presented in a note were not acceded to within twenty-four hours. Being
attacked in time of peace, and taken by surprise, the Court of Naples was
unable to make any resistance, and Chevalier Acton informed our grenadier
Ambassador that this note had been laid before his Sovereign, who had
ordered him to sign an agreement in consequence.
When in February, 1793, the King of Naples was obliged, for his own
safety, to join the league against France, Acton concluded a treaty with
your country, and informed the Sublime Porte of the machinations of our
Committee of Public Safety in sending De Semonville as an Ambassador to
Constantinople, which, perhaps, prevented the Divan from attacking
Austria, and occasioned the capture and imprisonment of our emissary.
Whenever our Government has, by the success of our arms, been enabled to
dictate to Naples, the removal of Acton has been insisted upon; but
though he has ceased to transact business ostensibly as a Minister, his
influence has always, and deservedly, continued unimpaired, and he still
enjoys the just confidence and esteem of his Prince.
But is His Sicilian Majesty equally well represented at the Cabinet of
St. Cloud as served in his own capital? I have told you before that
Bonaparte is extremely particular in his acceptance of foreign diplomatic
agents, and admits none near his person whom he does not believe to be
well inclined to him.
Marquis de Gallo, the Ambassador of the King of the Two Sicilies to the
Emperor of the French, is no novice in the diplomatic career. His
Sovereign has employed him for these fifteen years in the most delicate
negotiations, and nominated him in May, 1795, a Minister of the Foreign
Department, and a successor of Chevalier Acton, an honour which he
declined. In the summer and autumn, 1797, Marquis de Gallo assisted at
the conferences at Udine, and signed, with the Austrian
plenipotentiaries, the Peace of Campo Formio, on the 17th of October,
1797.
During 1798, 1799, and 1800 he resided as Neapolitan Ambassador at
Vienna, and was again entrusted by his Sovereign with several important
transactions with Austria and Russia. After a peace had been agreed to
between France and the Two Sicilies, in March, 1801, and the Court of
Naples had every reason to fear, and of course to please, the Court of
St. Cloud, he obtained his present appointment, and is one of the few
foreign Ambassadors here who has escaped both Bonaparte's private
admonitions in the diplomatic circle and public lectures in Madame
Bonaparte's drawing-room.
This escape is so much the more fortunate and singular as our Government
is far from being content with the mutinous spirit (as Bonaparte calls
it) of the Government of Naples, which, considering its precarious and
enfeebled state, with a French army in the heart of the kingdom, has
resisted our attempts and insults with a courage and dignity that demand
our admiration.
It is said that the Marquis de Gallo is not entirely free from some
taints of modern philosophy, and that he, therefore, does not consider
the consequences of our innovations so fatal as most loyal men judge
them; nor thinks a sans-culotte Emperor more dangerous to civilized
society than a sans-culotte sovereign people.
It is evident from the names and rank of its partisans that the
Revolution of Naples in 1799 was different in many respects from that of
every other country in Europe; for, although the political convulsions
seem to have originated among the middle classes of the community, the
extremes of society were everywhere else made to act against each other;
the rabble being the first to triumph, and the nobles to succumb. But
here, on the contrary, the lazzaroni, composed of the lowest portion of
the population of a luxurious capital, appear to have been the most
strenuous, and, indeed, almost the only supporters of royalty; while the
great families, instead of being indignant at novelties which levelled
them, in point of political rights, with the meanest subject, eagerly
embraced the opportunity of altering that form of Government which alone
made them great. It is, however, but justice to say that, though Marquis
de Gallo gained the good graces of Bonaparte and of France in 1797, he
was never, directly or indirectly, inculpated in the revolutionary
transactions of his countrymen in 1799, when he resided at Vienna; and
indeed, after all, it is not improbable that he disguises his real
sentiments the better to, serve his country, and by that means has
imposed on Bonaparte and acquired his favour.
The address and manners of a courtier are allowed Marquis de Gallo by all
who know him, though few admit that he possesses any talents as a
statesman. He is said to have read a great deal, to possess a good
memory and no bad judgment; but that, notwithstanding this, all his
knowledge is superficial.
LETTER XXIV.
PARIS, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--You have perhaps heard that Napoleon Bonaparte, with all his
brothers and sisters, was last Christmas married by the Pope according to
the Roman Catholic rite, being previously only united according to the
municipal laws of the French Republic, which consider marriage only as a
civil contract. During the last two months of His Holiness's residence
here, hardly a day passed that he was not petitioned to perform the same
ceremony for our conscientious grand functionaries and courtiers, which
he, however, according to the Emperor's desire, declined. But his
Cardinals were not under the same restrictions, and to an attentive
observer who has watched the progress of the Revolution and not lost
sight of its actors, nothing could appear more ridiculous, nothing could
inspire more contempt of our versatility and inconsistency, than to
remark among the foremost to demand the nuptial benediction, a
Talleyrand, a Fouche, a Real, an Augereau, a Chaptal, a Reubel, a Lasnes,
a Bessieres, a Thuriot, a Treilhard, a Merlin, with a hundred other
equally notorious revolutionists, who were, twelve or fifteen years ago,
not only the first to declaim against religious ceremonies as ridiculous,
but against religion itself as useless, whose motives produced, and whose
votes sanctioned, those decrees of the legislature which proscribed the
worship, together with its priests and sectaries. But then the fashion of
barefaced infidelity was as much the order of the day as that of external
sanctity is at present. I leave to casuists the decision whether to the
morals of the people, naked atheism, exposed with all its deformities, is
more or less hurtful than concealed atheism, covered with the garb of
piety; but for my part I think the noonday murderer less guilty and much
less detestable than the midnight assassin who stabs in the dark.
A hundred anecdotes are daily related of our new saints and fashionable
devotees. They would be laughable were they not scandalous, and
contemptible did they not add duplicity to our other vices.
Bonaparte and his wife go now every morning to hear Mass, and on every
Sunday or holiday they regularly attend at vespers, when, of course, all
those who wish to be distinguished for their piety or rewarded for their
flattery never neglect to be present. In the evening of last Christmas
Day, the Imperial chapel was, as usual, early crowded in expectation of
Their Majesties, when the chamberlain, Salmatoris, entered, and said to
the captain of the guard, loud enough to be heard by the audience, "The
Emperor and the Empress have just resolved not to come here to-night, His
Majesty being engaged by some unexpected business, and the Empress not
wishing to come without her consort." In ten minutes the chapel was
emptied of every person but the guards, the priests, and three old women
who had nowhere else to pass an hour. At the arrival of our Sovereigns,
they were astonished at the unusual vacancy, and indignantly regarded
each other. After vespers were over, one of Bonaparte's spies informed
him of the cause, when, instead of punishing the despicable and
hypocritical courtiers, or showing them any signs of his displeasure, he
ordered Salmatoris under arrest, who would have experienced a complete
disgrace had not his friend Duroc interfered and made his peace.
At another time, on a Sunday, Fouche entered the chapel in the midst of
the service, and whispered to Bonaparte, who immediately beckoned to his
lord-in-waiting and to Duroc. These both left the Imperial chapel, and
returning in a few minutes at the head of five grenadiers, entered the
grand gallery, generally frequented by the most scrupulous devotees, and
seized every book. The cause of this domiciliary visit was an anonymous
communication received by the Minister of Police, stating that libels
against the Imperial family, bound in the form of Prayer-books, had been
placed there. No such libels were, however, found; but of one hundred
and sixty pretended breviaries, twenty-eight were volumes of novels,
sixteen were poems, and eleven were indecent books. It is not necessary
to add that the proprietors of these edifying works never reclaimed them.
The opinions are divided here, whether this curious discovery originated
in the malice of Fouche, or whether Talleyrand took this method of duping
his rival, and at the same time of gratifying his own malignity. Certain
it is that Fouche was severely reprimanded for the transaction, and that
Bonaparte was highly offended at the disclosure.
The common people, and the middle classes, are neither so ostentatiously
devout, nor so basely perverse. They go to church as to the play, to
gape at others, or to be stared at themselves; to pass the time, and to
admire the show; and they do not conceal that such is the object of their
attendance. Their indifference about futurity equals their ignorance of
religious duties. Our revolutionary charlatans have as much brutalized
their understanding as corrupted their hearts. They heard the Grand Mass
said by the Pope with the same feelings as they formerly heard
Robespierre proclaim himself a high priest of a Supreme Being; and they
looked at the Imperial processions with the same insensibility as they
once saw the daily caravans of victims passing for execution.
Even in Bonaparte's own guard, and among the officers of his household
troops, several examples of rigour were necessary before they would go to
any place of worship, or suffer in their corps any almoners; but now,
after being drilled into a belief of Christianity, they march to the Mass
as to a parade or to a review. With any other people, Bonaparte would
not so easily have changed in two years the customs of twelve, and forced
military men to kneel before priests, whom they but the other day were
encouraged to hunt and massacre like wild beasts.
On the day of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin, a company of gendarmes
d'Elite, headed by their officers, received publicly, and by orders, the
sacrament; when the Abbe Frelaud approached Lieutenant Ledoux, he fell
into convulsions, and was carried into the sacristy. After being a
little recovered, he looked round him, as if afraid that some one would
injure him, and said to the Grand Vicar Clauset, who inquired the cause
of his accident and terror: "Good God! that man who gave me, on the 2d of
September, 1792, in the convent of the Carenes, the five wounds from
which I still suffer, is now an officer, and was about to receive the
sacrament from my hands." When this occurrence was reported to
Bonaparte, Ledoux was dismissed; but Abbe Frelaud was transported, and
the Grand Vicar Clauset sent to the Temple, for the scandal their
indiscretion had caused. This act was certainly as unjust towards him
who was bayoneted at the altar, as towards those who served the altar
under the protection of the bayonets.
LETTER XXV.
PARIS, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--Although the seizure of Sir George Rumbold might in your
country, as well as everywhere else, inspire indignation, it could
nowhere justly excite surprise. We had crossed the Rhine seven months
before to seize the Duc d'Enghien; and when any prey invited, the passing
of the Elbe was only a natural consequence of the former outrage, of
audacity on our part, and of endurance or indifference on the part of
other Continental States. Talleyrand's note at Aix-la-Chapelle had also
informed Europe that we had adopted a new and military diplomacy, and, in
confounding power with right, would respect no privileges at variance
with our ambition, interest or, suspicions, nor any independence it was
thought useful or convenient for us to invade.
It was reported here, at the time, that Bonaparte was much offended with
General Frere, who commanded this political expedition, for permitting
Sir George's servant to accompany his master, as Fouche and Real had
already tortures prepared and racks waiting, and after forcing your agent
to speak out, would have announced his sudden death, either by his own
hands or by a coup-de-sang, before any Prussian note could require his
release. The known morality of our Government must have removed all
doubts of the veracity of this assertion; a man might, besides, from the
fatigues of a long journey, or from other causes, expire suddenly; but
the exit of two, in the same circumstances, would have been thought at
least extraordinary, even by our friends, and suspicious by our enemies.
The official declaration of Rheinhard (our Minister to the Circle of
Lower Saxony) to the Senate at Hamburg, in which he disavowed all
knowledge on the subject of the capture of Sir George Rumbold, occasioned
his disgrace. This man, a subject of the Elector of Wurtemberg by birth,
is one of the negative accomplices of the criminals of France who, since
the Revolution, have desolated Europe. He began in 1792 his diplomatic
career, under Chauvelin and Talleyrand, in London, and has since been the
tool of every faction in power. In 1796 he was appointed a Minister to
the Hanse Towns, and, without knowing why, he was hailed as the point of
rally to all the philosophers, philanthropists, Illuminati and other
revolutionary amateurs, with which the North of Germany, Poland, Denmark,
and Sweden then abounded.
A citizen of Hamburg--or rather, of the world--of the name of Seveking,
bestowed on him the hand of a sister; and though he is not accused of
avarice, some of the contributions extorted by our Government from the
neutral Hanse Towns are said to have been left behind in his coffers
instead of being forwarded to this capital. Either on this account, or
for some other reason, he was recalled from Hamburg in January, 1797, and
remained unemployed until the latter part of 1798, when he was sent as
Minister to Tuscany.
When, in the summer of 1799, Talleyrand was forced by the Jacobins to
resign his place as a Minister of the Foreign Department, he had the
adroitness to procure Rheinhard to be nominated his successor, so that,
though no longer nominally the Minister, he still continued to influence
the decisions of our Government as much as if still in office, because,
though not without parts, Rheinhard has neither energy of character nor
consistency of conduct. He is so much accustomed, and wants so much to
be governed, that in 1796, at Hamburg, even the then emigrants, Madame de
Genlis and General Valence, directed him, when he was not ruled or
dictated to by his wife or brother-in-law.
In 1800 Bonaparte sent him as a representative to the Helvetian Republic,
and in 1802, again to Hamburg, where he was last winter superseded by
Bourrienne, and ordered to an inferior station at the: Electoral Court at
Dresden. Rheinhard will never become one of those daring diplomatic
banditti whom revolutionary Governments always employ in preference. He
has some moral principles, and, though not religious, is rather
scrupulous. He would certainly sooner resign than undertake to remove by
poison, or by the steel of a bravo, a rival of his own or a person
obnoxious to his employers. He would never, indeed, betray the secrets
of his Government if he understood they intended to rob a despatch or to
atop a messenger; but no allurements whatever would induce him to head
the parties perpetrating these acts of our modern diplomacy.
Our present Minister at Hamburg (Bourrienne) is far from being so nice. A
revolutionist from the beginning of the Revolution, he shared, with the
partisans of La Fayette, imprisonment under Robespierre, and escaped
death only by emigration. Recalled afterwards by his friend, the late
Director (Barras), he acted as a kind of secretary to him until 1796,
when Bonaparte demanded him, having known him at the military college.
During all Bonaparte's campaigns in Italy, Egypt, and Syria, he was his
sole and confidential secretary--a situation which he lost in 1802, when
Talleyrand denounced his corruption and cupidity because he had rivalled
him in speculating in the funds and profiting by the information which
his place afforded him. He was then made a Counsellor of State, but in
1803 he was involved in the fraudulent bankruptcy of one of our principal
houses to the amount of a million of livres--and, from his correspondence
with it, some reasons appeared for the suspicion that he frequently had
committed a breach of confidence against his master, who, after erasing
his name from among the Counsellors of State, had him conveyed a prisoner
to the Temple, where he remained six months. A small volume, called Le
Livre Rouge of the Consular Court, made its appearance about that time,
and contained some articles which gave Bonaparte reason to suppose that
Bourrienne was its author. On being questioned by the Grand Judge
Regnier and the Minister Fouce, before whom he was carried, he avowed
that he had written it, but denied that he had any intention of making it
public. As to its having found its way to the press during his
confinement, that could only be ascribed to the ill-will or treachery of
those police agents who inspected his papers and put their seals upon
them. "Tell Bonaparte," said he, "that, had I been inclined to injure
him in the public opinion, I should not have stooped to such trifles as
Le Livre Rouge, while I have deposited with a friend his original orders,
letters, and other curious documents as materials for an edifying history
of our military hospitals during the campaigns of Italy and Syria all
authentic testimonies of his humanity for the wounded and dying French
soldiers."
After the answers of this interrogatory had been laid before Bonaparte,
his brother Joseph was sent to the Temple to negotiate with Bourrienne,
who was offered his liberty and a prefecture if he would give up all the
original papers that, as a private secretary, he had had opportunity to
collect.
"These papers," answered Bourrienne, "are my only security against your
brother's wrath and his assassins. Were I weak enough to deliver them up
to-day, to-morrow, probably, I should no longer be counted among the
living; but I have now taken my measures so effectually that, were I
murdered to-day, these originals would be printed to-morrow. If Napoleon
does not confide in my word of honour, he may trust to an assurance of
discretion, with which my own interest is nearly connected. If he
suspects me of having wronged him, he is convinced also of the eminent
services I have rendered him, sufficient surely to outweigh his present
suspicion. Let him again employ me in any post worthy of him and of me,
and he shall soon see how much I will endeavour to regain his
confidence."
Shortly afterwards Bourrienne was released, and a pension, equal to the
salary of a Counsellor of State; was granted him until some suitable
place became vacant. On Champagny's being appointed a Minister of the
Home Department, the embassy at Vienna was demanded by Bourrienne, but
refused, as previously promised to La Rochefoucauld, our late Minister at
Dresden. When Rheinhard, in a kind of disgrace, was transferred to that
relatively insignificant post, Bourrienne was ordered, with extensive
instructions, to Hamburg. The Senate soon found the difference between a
timid and honest Minister, and an unprincipled and crafty intriguer. New
loans were immediately required from Hanover; but hardly were these
acquitted, than fresh extortions were insisted on. In some secret
conferences Bourrienne is, however, said to have hinted that some
douceurs were expected for alleviating the rigour of his instructions.
This hint has, no doubt, been taken, because he suddenly altered his
conduct, and instead of hunting the purses of the Germans, pursued the
persons of his emigrated countrymen; and, in a memorial, demanded the
expulsion of all Frenchmen who were not registered and protected by him,
under pretence that every one of them who declined the honour of being a
subject of Bonaparte, must be a traitor against the French Government and
his country.
Bourrienne is now stated to have connected himself with several
stock-jobbers, both in Germany, Holland, and England; and already to have
pocketed considerable sums by such connections. It is, however, not to
be forgotten that several houses have been ruined in this capital by the
profits allowed him, who always refused to share their losses, but,
whatever were the consequences, enforced to its full amount the payment
of that value which he chose to set on his communications.
A place in France would, no doubt, have been preferable to Bourrienne,
particularly one near the person of Bonaparte. But if nothing else
prevented the accomplishment of his wishes, his long familiarity with all
the Bonapartes, whom he always treated as equals, and even now (with the
exception of Napoleon) does not think his superiors, will long remain an
insurmountable barrier.
I cannot comprehend how Bonaparte (who is certainly no bad judge of men)
could so long confide in Bourrienne, who, with the usual presumption of
my countrymen, is continually boasting, to a degree that borders on
indiscretion, and, by an artful questioner, may easily be lead to
overstep those bounds. Most of the particulars of his quarrel with
Napoleon I heard him relate himself, as a proof of his great consequence,
in a company of forty individuals, many of whom were unknown to him. On
the first discovery which Bonaparte made of Bourrienne's infidelity,
Talleyrand complimented him upon not having suffered from it. "Do you
not see," answered Bonaparte, "that it is also one of the extraordinary
gifts of my extraordinary good fortune?
"Even traitors are unable to betray me. Plots respect me as much as
bullets." I need not tell you that Fortune is the sole divinity
sincerely worshipped by Napoleon.
LETTER XXVI.
PARIS, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--Joseph Bonaparte leads a much more retired life, and sees less
company, than any of his brothers or sisters. Except the members of his
own family, he but seldom invites any guests, nor has Madame Joseph those
regular assemblies and circles which Madame Napoleon and Madame Louis
Bonaparte have. His hospitality is, however, greater at his countryseat
Morfontaine than at his hotel here. Those whom he likes, or does not
mistrust (who, by the bye, are very few), may visit him without much
formality in the country, and prolong their stay, according to their own
inclination or discretion; but they must come without their servants, or
send them away on their arrival.
As soon as an agreeable visitor presents himself, it is the etiquette of
the house to consider him as an inmate; but to allow him at the same time
a perfect liberty to dispose of his hours and his person as suits his
convenience or caprice. In this extensive and superb mansion a suite of
apartments is assigned him, with a valet-de--chambre, a lackey, a
coachman, a groom, and a jockey, all under his own exclusive command. He
has allotted him a chariot, a gig, and riding horses, if he prefers such
an exercise. A catalogue is given him of the library of the chateau; and
every morning he is informed what persons compose the company at
breakfast, dinner, and supper, and of the hours of these different
repasts. A bill of fare is at the same time presented to him, and he is
asked to point out those dishes to which he gives the preference, and to
declare whether he chooses to join the company or to be served in his own
rooms.
During the summer season, players from the different theatres of Paris
are paid to perform three times in the week; and each guest, according to
the period of his arrival, is asked, in his turn, to command either a
comedy or a tragedy, a farce or a ballet. Twice in the week concerts are
executed by the first performers of the opera-bouffe; and twice in the
week invitations to tea-parties are sent to some of the neighbours, or
accepted from them.
Besides four billiard-tables, there are other gambling-tables for Rouge
et Noir, Trente et Quarante, Faro, La Roulette, Birribi, and other games
of hazard. The bankers are young men from Corsica, to whom Joseph, who
advances the money, allows all the gain, while he alone suffers the loss.
Those who are inclined may play from morning till night, and from night
till morning, without interruption, as no one interferes. Should Joseph
hear that any person has been too severely treated by Fortune, or
suspects that he has not much cash remaining, some rouleaux of napoleons
d'or are placed on the table of his dressing-room, which he may use or
leave untouched, as he judges proper.
The hours of Joseph Bonaparte are neither so late as yours in England,
nor so early as they were formerly in France. Breakfast is ready served
at ten o'clock, dinner at four, and supper at nine. Before midnight he
retires to bed with his family, but visitors do as they like and follow
their own usual hours, and their servants are obliged to wait for them.
When any business calls Joseph away, either to preside in the Senate
here, or to travel in the provinces, he notifies the visitors, telling
them at the same time not to displace themselves on account of his
absence, but wait till his return, as they would not observe any
difference in the economy of his house, of which Madame Joseph always
does the honours, or, in her absence, some lady appointed by her.
Last year, when Joseph first assumed a military rank, he passed nearly
four months with the army of England on the coast or in Brabant. On his
return, all his visitors were gone, except a young poet of the name of
Montaigne, who does not want genius, but who is rather too fond of the
bottle. Joseph is considered the best gourmet or connoisseur in liquors
and wines of this capital, and Montaigne found his Champagne and burgundy
so excellent that he never once went to bed that he was not heartily
intoxicated. But the best of the story is that he employed his mornings
in composing a poem holding out to abhorrence the disgusting vice of
drunkenness, and presented it to Joseph, requesting permission to
dedicate it to him when published. To those who have read it, or only
seen extracts from it, the compilation appears far from being
contemptible, but Joseph still keeps the copy, though he has made the
author a present of one hundred napoleons d'or, and procured him a place
of an amanuensis in the chancellory of the Senate, having resolved never
to accept any dedication, but wishing also not to hurt the feelings of
the author by a refusal.
In a chateau where so many visitors of licentious and depraved morals
meet, of both sexes, and where such an unlimited liberty reigns,
intrigues must occur, and have of course not seldom furnished materials
for the scandalous chronicle. Even Madame Joseph herself has either been
gallant or calumniated. Report says that to the nocturnal assiduities of
Eugene de Beauharnais and of Colonel la Fond-Blaniac she is exclusively
indebted to the honour of maternity, and that these two rivals even
fought a duel concerning the right of paternity. Eugene de Beauharnais
never was a great favourite with Joseph Bonaparte, whose reserved manners
and prudence form too great a contrast to his noisy and blundering way to
accord with each other. Before he set out for Italy, it was well known
in our fashionable circles that he had been interdicted the house of his
uncle, and that no reconciliation took place, notwithstanding the
endeavours of Madame Napoleon. To humble him still more, Joseph even
nominated la Fond-Blaniac an equerry to his wife, who, therefore, easily
consoled herself for the departure of her dear nephew.
The husband of Madame Miot (one of Madame Joseph's ladies-in-waiting) was
not so patient, nor such a philosopher as Joseph Bonaparte. Some
charitable person having reported in the company of a 'bonne amie' of
Miot, that his wife did not pass her nights in solitude, but that she
sought consolation among the many gallants and disengaged visitors at
Morfontaine, he determined to surprise her. It was past eleven o'clock
at night when his arrival was announced to Joseph, who had just retired
to his closet. Madame Miot had been in bed ever since nine, ill of a
migraine, and her husband was too affectionate not to be the first to
inform her of his presence, without permitting anybody previously to
disturb her. With great reluctance, Madame Miot's maid delivered the key
of her rooms, while she accompanied him with a light. In the antechamber
he found a hat and a greatcoat, and in the closet adjoining the bedroom,
a coat, a waistcoat, and a pair of breeches, with drawers, stockings, and
slippers. Though the maid kept coughing all the time, Madame Miot and
her gallant did not awake from their slumber, till the enraged husband
began to use the bludgeon of the lover, which had also been left in the
closet. A battle then ensued, in which the lover retaliated so
vigorously, that the husband called out "Murder! murder!" with all his
might. The chateau was instantly in an uproar, and the apartments
crowded with half-dressed and half-naked lovers. Joseph Bonaparte alone
was able to separate the combatants; and inquiring the cause of the riot,
assured them that he would suffer no scandal and no intrigues in his
house, without seriously resenting it. An explanation being made, Madame
Miot was looked for but in vain; and the maid declared that, being warned
by a letter from Paris of her husband's jealousy and determination to
surprise her, her mistress had reposed herself in her room; while, to
punish the ungenerous suspicions of her husband, she had persuaded
Captain d' Horteuil to occupy her place in her own bed. The maid had no
sooner finished her deposition, than her mistress made her appearance and
upbraided her husband severely, in which she was cordially joined by the
spectators. She inquired if, on seeing the dress of a gentleman, he had
also discovered the attire of a female; and she appealed to Captain d'
Horteuil whether he had not the two preceding nights also slept in her
bed. To this he, of course, assented; adding that, had M. Miot attacked
him the first night, he would not then perhaps have been so roughly
handled as now; for then he was prepared for a visit, which this night
was rather unexpected. This connubial farce ended by Miot begging pardon
of his wife and her gallant; the former of whom, after much entreaty by
Joseph, at last consented to share with him her bed. But being
disfigured with two black eyes and suffering from several bruises, and
also ashamed of his unfashionable behaviour, he continued invisible for
ten days afterwards, and returned to this city as he had left it, by
stealth.
This Niot was a spy under Robespierre, and is a Counsellor of State under
Bonaparte. Without bread, as well as without a home, he was, from the
beginning of the Revolution, one of the most ardent patriots, and the
first republican Minister in Tuscany. After the Sovereign of that
country had, in 1793, joined the League, Miot returned to France, and
was, for his want of address to negotiate as a Minister, shut up to
perform the part of a spy in the Luxembourg, then transformed into a
prison for suspected persons. Thanks to his patriotism, upwards of two
hundred individuals of both sexes were denounced, transferred to the
Conciergerie prison, and afterwards guillotined. After that, until 1799,
he continued so despised that no faction would accept him for an
accomplice; but in the November of that year, after Bonaparte had
declared himself a First Consul, Miot was appointed a tribune, an office
from which he was advanced, in 1802, to be a Counsellor of State. As Miot
squanders away his salary with harlots and in gambling-houses, and is
pursued by creditors he neither will nor can pay, it was merely from
charity that his wife was received among the other ladies of Madame
Joseph Bonaparte's household.
LETTER XXVII.
PARIS, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--Notwithstanding the ties of consanguinity, honour, duty,
interest, and gratitude, which bound the Spanish Bourbons to the cause of
the Bourbons of France, no monarch has rendered more service to the cause
of rebellion, and done more harm to the cause of royalty, than the King
of Spain.
But here, again, you must understand me. When I speak of Princes whose
talents are known not to be brilliant, whose intellects are known to be
feeble, and whose good intentions are rendered null by a want of firmness
of character or consistency of conduct; while I deplore their weakness
and the consequent misfortunes of their contemporaries, I lay all the
blame on their wicked or ignorant counsellors; because, if no Ministers
were fools or traitors, no Sovereigns would tremble on their thrones, and
no subjects dare to shake their foundation. Had Providence blessed
Charles IV. of Spain with the judgment in selecting his Ministers, and
the constancy of persevering in his choice, possessed by your George
III.; had the helm of Spain been in the firm and able hands of a
Grenville, a Windham, and a Pitt, the Cabinet of Madrid would never have
been oppressed by the yoke of the Cabinet of St. Cloud, nor paid a heavy
tribute for its bondage, degrading as well as ruinous.
"This is the age of upstarts," said Talleyrand to his cousin, Prince de
Chalais, who reproached him for an unbecoming servility to low and vile
personages; "and I prefer bowing to them to being trampled upon and
crushed by them." Indeed, as far as I remember, nowhere in history are
hitherto recorded so many low persons who, from obscurity and meanness,
have suddenly and at once attained rank and notoriety. Where do we read
of such a numerous crew of upstart Emperors, Kings, grand pensionaries,
directors, Imperial Highnesses, Princes, Field-marshals, generals,
Senators, Ministers, governors, Cardinals, etc., as we now witness
figuring upon the theatre of Europe, and who chiefly decide on the
destiny of nations? Among these, several are certainly to be found whose
superior parts have made them worthy to pierce the crowd and to shake off
their native mud; but others again, and by far the greatest number of
these 'novi homines', owe their present elevation to shameless intrigues
or atrocious crimes.
The Prime Minister--or rather, the viceroy of Spain, the Prince of
Peace--belongs to the latter class. From a man in the ranks of the
guards he was promoted to a general-in-chief, and from a harp player in
antechambers to a president of the councils of a Prince; and that within
the short period of six years. Such a fortune is not common; but to be
absolutely without capacity as well as virtue, genius as well as good
breeding, and, nevertheless, to continue in an elevation so little
merited, and in a place formerly so subject to changes and so unstable,
is a fortune that no upstart ever before experienced in Spain.
An intrigue of his elder brother with the present Queen, then Princess of
Asturia, which was discovered by the King, introduced him first at Court
as a harp player, and, when his brother was exiled, he was entrusted with
the correspondence of the Princess with her gallant. After she had
ascended the throne, he thought it more profitable to be the lover than
the messenger, and contrived, therefore, to supplant his brother in the
royal favour. Promotions and riches were consequently heaped upon him,
and, what is surprising, the more undisguised the partiality of the Queen
was, the greater the attachment of the King displayed itself; and it has
ever since been an emulation between the royal couple who should the most
forget and vilify birth and supremacy by associating this man not only in
the courtly pleasures, but in the functions of Sovereignty. Had he been
gifted with sound understanding, or possessed any share of delicacy,
generosity, or discretion, he would, while he profited by their imprudent
condescension, have prevented them from exposing their weaknesses and
frailties to a discussion and ridicule among courtiers, and from becoming
objects of humiliation and scandal among the people. He would have
warned them of the danger which at all times attends the publicity of
foibles and vices of Princes, but particularly in the present times of
trouble and innovations. He would have told them: "Make me great and
wealthy, but not at the expense of your own grandeur or of the loyalty of
your people. Do not treat an humble subject as an equal, nor suffer Your
Majesties, whom Providence destined to govern a high-spirited nation, to
be openly ruled by one born to obey. I am too dutiful not to lay aside
my private vanity when the happiness of my King and the tranquillity of
my fellow subjects are at stake. I am already too high. In descending a
little, I shall not only rise in the eyes of my contemporaries, but in
the opinion of posterity. Every step I am advancing undermines your
throne. In retreating a little, if I do not strengthen, I can never
injure it." But I beg your pardon for this digression, and for putting
the language of dignified reason into the mouth of a man as corrupt as he
is imbecile.
Do not suppose, because the Prince of Peace is no friend of my nation,
that I am his enemy. No! Had he shown himself a true patriot, a friend
of his own country, and of his too liberal Prince, or even of monarchy in
general, or of anybody else but himself--although I might have
disapproved of his policy, if he has any--I would never have lashed the
individual for the acts of the Minister. But you must have observed,
with me, that never before his administration was the Cabinet of Madrid
worse conducted at home or more despised abroad; the Spanish Monarch more
humbled or Spanish subjects more wretched; the Spanish power more
dishonoured or the Spanish resources worse employed. Never, before the
treaty with France of 1796, concluded by this wiseacre (which made him a
Prince of Peace, and our Government the Sovereign of Spain), was the
Spanish monarchy reduced to such a lamentable dilemma as to be forced
into an expensive war without a cause, and into a disgraceful peace, not
only unprofitable, but absolutely disadvantageous. Never before were its
treasures distributed among its oppressors to support their tyranny, nor
its military and naval forces employed to fight the battles of rebellion.
The loyal subjects of Spain have only one hope left. The delicate state
of his present Majesty's health does not promise a much longer
continuance of his reign, and the Prince of Asturia is too well informed
to endure the guidance of the most ignorant Minister that ever was
admitted into the Cabinet and confidence of a Sovereign. It is more than
probable that under a new reign the misfortunes of the Prince of Peace
will inspire as much compassion as his rapid advancement has excited
astonishment and indignation.
A Cabinet thus badly directed cannot be expected to have representatives
abroad either of abilities or patriotism. The Admiral and General
Gravina, who but lately left this capital as an Ambassador from the Court
of Spain to assume the command of a Spanish fleet, is more valiant than
wise, and more an enemy of your country than a friend of his own. He is
a profound admirer of Bonaparte's virtues and successes, and was, during
his residence, one of the most ostentatiously awkward courtiers of
Napoleon the First. It is said that he has the modesty and loyalty to
wish to become a Spanish Bonaparte, and that he promises to restore by
his genius and exploits the lost lustre of the Spanish monarchy. When
this was reported to Talleyrand, he smiled with contempt; but when it was
told to Bonaparte, he stamped with rage at the impudence of the Spaniard
in daring to associate his name of acquired and established greatness
with his own impertinent schemes of absurdities and impossibilities.
In the summer of 1793, Gravina commanded a division of the Spanish fleet
in the Mediterranean, of which Admiral Langara was the
commander-in-chief. At the capitulation of Toulon, after the combined
English and Spanish forces had taken possession of it, when Rear-Admiral
Goodall was declared governor, Gravina was made the commandant of the
troops. At the head of these he often fought bravely in different
sorties, and on the 1st of October was wounded at the re-capture of Fort
Pharon. He complains still of having suffered insults or neglect from
the English, and even of having been exposed unnecessarily to the fire
and sword of the enemy merely because he was a patriot as well as an
envied or suspected ally. His inveteracy against your country takes its
date, no doubt, from the siege of Toulon, or perhaps, from its
evacuation.
When, in May, 1794, our troops were advancing towards Collioure, he was
sent with a squadron to bring it succours, but he arrived too late, and
could not save that important place. He was not more successful at the
beginning of the campaign of 1795 at Rosa, where he had only time to
carry away the artillery before the enemy entered. In August, that year,
during the absence of Admiral Massaredo, he assumed ad interim the
command of the Spanish fleet in the Mediterranean; but in the December
following he was disgraced, arrested, and shut up as a State prisoner.
During the embassy of Lucien Bonaparte to the Court of Madrid, in the
autumn of 1800, Gravina was by his influence restored to favour; and
after the death of the late Spanish Ambassador to the Cabinet of St.
Cloud, Chevalier d' Azara, by the special desire of Napoleon, was
nominated both his successor and a representative of the King of Etruria.
Among the members of our diplomatic corps, he was considered somewhat of
a Spanish gasconader and a bully. He more frequently boasted of his
wounds and battles than of his negotiations or conferences, though he
pretended, indeed, to shine as much in the Cabinet as in the field.
In his suite were two Spanish women, one about forty, and the other about
twenty years of age. Nobody knew what to make of them, as they were
treated neither as wives, mistresses, nor servants; and they avowed
themselves to be no relations. After a residence here of some weeks, he
was, by superior orders, waylaid one night at the opera, by a young and
beautiful dancing girl of the name of Barrois, who engaged him to take
her into keeping. He hesitated, indeed, for some time; at last, however,
love got the better of his scruples, and he furnished for her an elegant
apartment on the new Boulevard. On the day he carried her there, he was
accompanied by the chaplain of the Spanish Legation; and told her that,
previous to any further intimacy, she must be married to him, as his
religious principles did not permit him to cohabit with a woman who was
not his wife. At the same time he laid before her an agreement to sign,
by which she bound herself never to claim him as a husband before her
turn--that is to say, until sixteen other women, to whom he had been
previously married, were dead. She made no opposition, either to the
marriage or to the conditions annexed to it. This girl had a sweetheart
of the name of Valere, an actor at one of the little theatres on the
Boulevards, to whom she communicated her adventure. He advised her to be
scrupulous in her turn, and to ask a copy of the agreement. After some
difficulty this was obtained. In it no mention was made of her
maintenance, nor in what manner her children were to be regarded, should
she have any. Valere had, therefore, another agreement drawn up, in
which all these points were arranged, according to his own interested
views. Gravina refused to subscribe to what he plainly perceived were
only extortions; and the girl, in her turn, not only declined any further
connection with him, but threatened to publish the act of polygamy.
Before they had done discussing this subject, the door was suddenly
opened and the two Spanish ladies presented themselves. After severely
upbraiding Gravina, who was struck mute by surprise, they announced to
the girl that whatever promise or contract of marriage she had obtained
from him was of no value, as, before they came with him to France, he had
bound himself, before a public notary at Madrid, not to form any more
connections, nor to marry any other woman, without their written consent.
One of these ladies declared that she had been married to Gravina
twenty-two years, and was his oldest wife but one; the other said that
she had been married to him six years. They insisted upon his following
them, which he did, after putting a purse of gold into Barrois's hand.
When Valere heard from his mistress this occurrence, he advised her to
make the most money she could of the Spaniard's curious scruples. A
letter was, therefore, written to him, demanding one hundred thousand
livres--as the price of secrecy and withholding the particulars of this
business from the knowledge of the tribunals and the police; and an
answer was required within twenty-four hours. The same night Gravina
offered one thousand Louis, which were accepted, and the papers returned;
but the next day Valere went to his hotel, Rue de Provence, where he
presented himself as a brother of Barrois. He stated that he still
possessed authenticated copies of the papers returned, and that he must
have either the full sum first asked by his sister, or an annuity of
twelve thousand livres settled upon her. Instead of an answer, Gravina
ordered him to be turned out of the house. An attorney then waited on
His Excellency, on the part of the brother and the sister, and repeated
their threats and their demands, adding that he would write a memorial
both to the Emperor of the French and to the King of Spain, were justice
refused to his principals any longer.
Gravina was well aware that this affair, though more laughable than
criminal, would hurt both his character and credit if it were known in
France; he therefore consented to pay seventy-six thousand livres more,
upon a formal renunciation by the party of all future claims. Not having
money sufficient by him, he went to borrow it from a banker, whose clerk
was one of Talleyrand's secret agents. Our Minister, therefore, ordered
every step of Gravina to be watched; but he soon discovered that, instead
of wanting this money for a political intrigue, it was necessary to
extricate him out of an amorous scrape. Hearing, however, in what a
scandalous manner the Ambassador had been duped and imposed upon, he
reported it to Bonaparte, who gave Fouche orders to have Valere, Barrois,
and the attorney immediately transported to Cayenne, and to restore
Gravina his money. The former part of this order the Minister of Police
executed the more willingly, as it was according to his plan that Barrois
had pitched upon Gravina for a lover. She had been intended by him as a
spy on His Excellency, but had deceived him by her reports--a crime for
which transportation was a usual punishment.
Notwithstanding the care of our Government to conceal and bury this
affair in oblivion, it furnished matter both for conversation in our
fashionable circles, and subjects for our caricaturists. But these
artists were soon seized by the police, who found it more easy to
chastise genius than to silence tongues. The declaration of war by Spain
against your country was a lucky opportunity for Gravina to quit with
honour a Court where he was an object of ridicule, to assume the command
of a fleet which might one day make him an object of terror. When he
took leave of Bonaparte, he was told to return to France victorious, or
never to return any more; and Talleyrand warned him as a friend,
"whenever he returned to his post in France to leave his marriage mania
behind him in Spain. Here," said he, "you may, without ridicule,
intrigue with a hundred women, but you run a great risk by marrying even
one."
I have been in company with Gravina, and after what I heard him say, so
far from judging him superstitious, I thought him really impious. But
infidelity and bigotry are frequently next-door neighbours.
LETTER XXVIII.
PARIS, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--It cannot have escaped the observation of the most superficial
traveller of rank, that, at the Court of St. Cloud, want of morals is not
atoned for by good breeding or good manners. The hideousness of vice,
the pretensions of ambition, the vanity of rank, the pride of favour, and
the shame of venality do not wear here that delicate veil, that gloss of
virtue, which, in other Courts, lessens the deformity of corruption and
the scandal of depravity. Duplicity and hypocrisy are here very common
indeed, more so than dissimulation anywhere else; but barefaced knaves
and impostors must always make indifferent courtiers. Here the Minister
tells you, I must have such a sum for a place; and the chamberlain tells
you, Count down so much for my protection. The Princess requires a
necklace of such a value for interesting herself for your advancement;
and the lady-in-waiting demands a diamond of such worth on the day of
your promotion. This tariff of favours and of infamy descends 'ad
infinitum'. The secretary for signing, and the clerk for writing your
commission; the cashier for delivering it, and the messenger for
informing you of it, have all their fixed prices. Have you a lawsuit,
the judge announces to you that so much has been offered by your
opponent, and so much is expected from you, if you desire to win your
cause. When you are the defendant against the Crown, the attorney or
solicitor-general lets you know that such a douceur is requisite to
procure such an issue. Even in criminal proceedings, not only honour,
but life, may be saved by pecuniary sacrifices.
A man of the name of Martin, by profession a stock-jobber, killed, in
1803, his own wife; and for twelve thousand livres--he was acquitted, and
recovered his liberty. In November last year, in a quarrel with his own
brother, he stabbed him through the heart, and for another sum of twelve
thousand livres he was acquitted, and released before last Christmas.
This wretch is now in prison again, on suspicion of having poisoned his
own daughter, with whom he had an incestuous intercourse, and he boasts
publicly of soon being liberated. Another person, Louis de Saurac, the
younger son of Baron de Saurac, who together with his eldest son had
emigrated, forged a will in the name of his parent, whom he pretended to
be dead, which left him the sole heir of all the disposable property, to
the exclusion of two sisters. After the nation had shared its part as
heir of all emigrants, Louis took possession of the remainder. In 1802,
both his father and brother accepted the general amnesty, and returned to
France. To their great surprise, they heard that this Louis had, by his
ill-treatment, forced his sisters into servitude, refusing them even the
common necessaries of life. After upbraiding him for his want of duty,
the father desired, according to the law, the restitution of the unsold
part of his estates. On the day fixed for settling the accounts and
entering into his rights, Baron de Saurac was arrested as a conspirator
and imprisoned in the Temple. He had been denounced as having served in
the army of Conde, and as being a secret agent of Louis XVIII. To
disprove the first part of the charge, he produced certificates from
America, where he had passed the time of his emigration, and even upon
the rack he denied the latter. During his arrest, the eldest son
discovered that Louis had become the owner of their possessions, by means
of the will he had forged in the name of his father; and that it was he
who had been unnatural enough to denounce the author of his days. With
the wreck of their fortune in St. Domingo, he procured his father's
release; who, being acquainted with the perversity of his younger son,
addressed himself to the department to be reinstated in his property.
This was opposed by Louis, who defended his title to the estate by the
revolutionary maxim which had passed into a law, enacting that all
emigrants should be considered as politically dead. Hitherto Baron de
Saurac had, from affection, declined to mention the forged will; but
shocked by his son's obduracy, and being reduced to distress, his
counsellor produced this document, which not only went to deprive Louis
of his property, but exposed him to a criminal prosecution.
This unnatural son, who was not yet twenty-five, had imbibed all the
revolutionary morals of his contemporaries, and was well acquainted with
the moral characters of his revolutionary countrymen. He addressed
himself, therefore, to Merlin of Douai, Bonaparte's Imperial
attorney-general and commander of his Legion of Honour; who, for a bribe
of fifty thousand livres--obtained for him, after he had been defeated in
every other court, a judgment in his favour, in the tribunal of
cassation, under the sophistical conclusion that all emigrants, being,
according to law, considered as politically dead, a will in the name of
any one of them was merely a pious fraud to preserve the property in the
family.
This Merlin is the son of a labourer of Anchin, and was a servant of the
Abbey of the same name. One of the monks, observing in him some
application, charitably sent him to be educated at Douai, after having
bestowed on him some previous education. Not satisfied with this
generous act, he engaged the other monks, as well as the chapter of
Cambray, to subscribe for his expenses of admission as an attorney by the
Parliament of Douai, in which situation the Revolution found him. By his
dissimulation and assumed modesty, he continued to dupe his benefactors;
who, by their influence, obtained for him the nomination as
representative of the people to our First National Assembly. They soon,
however, had reason to repent of their generosity. He joined the Orleans
faction and became one of the most persevering, violent, and cruel
persecutors of the privileged classes, particularly of the clergy, to
whom he was indebted for everything. In 1792 he was elected a member of
the National Convention, where he voted for the death of his King. It was
he who proposed a law (justly called, by Prudhomme, the production of the
deliberate homicide Merlin) against suspected persons; which was decreed
on the 17th of September, 1793, and caused the imprisonment or
proscription of two hundred thousand families. This decree procured him
the appellation of Merlin Suspects and of Merlin Potence. In 1795 he was
appointed a Minister of Police, and soon afterwards a Minister of
Justice. After the revolution in favour of the Jacobins of the 4th of
September, 1797, he was made a director, a place which he was obliged by
the same Jacobins to resign, in June, 1799. Bonaparte expressed, at
first, the most sovereign contempt for this Merlin, but on account of one
of his sons, who was his aide-de-camp, he was appointed by him, when
First Consul, his attorney-general.
As nothing paints better the true features of a Government than the
morality or vices of its functionaries, I will finish this man's portrait
with the following characteristic touches.
Merlin de Douai has been successively the counsel of the late Duc d'
Orleans, the friend of Danton, of Chabot, and of Hebert, the admirer of
Murat, and the servant of Robespierre. An accomplice of Rewbell, Barras,
and la Reveilliere, an author of the law of suspected persons, an
advocate of the Septembrizers, and an ardent apostle of the St.
Guillotine. Cunning as a fog and ferocious as a tiger, he has outlived
all the factions with which he has been connected. It has been his
policy to keep in continual fermentation rivalships, jealousies,
inquietudes, revenge and all other odious passions; establishing, by such
means, his influence on the terror of some, the ambition of others, and
the credulity of them all. Had I, when Merlin proposed his law
concerning suspected persons, in the name of liberty and equality, been
free and his equal, I should have said to him, "Monster, this, your
atrocious law, is your sentence of death; it has brought thousands of
innocent persons to an untimely end; you shall die by my hands as a
victim, if the tribunals do not condemn you to the scaffold as an
executioner or as a criminal."
Merlin has bought national property to the amount of fifteen million of
livress--and he is supposed to possess money nearly to the same amount,
in your or our funds. For a man born a beggar, and educated by charity,
this fortune, together with the liberal salaries he enjoys, might seem
sufficient without selling justice, protecting guilt, and oppressing or
persecuting innocence.
LETTER XXIX.
Paris, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--The household troops of Napoleon the First are by thousands
more numerous than those even of Louis XIV. were. Grenadiers on foot and
on horseback, riflemen on foot and on horseback, heavy and light
artillery, dragoons and hussars, mamelukes and sailors, artificers and
pontoneers, gendarmes, gendarmes d'Alite, Velites and veterans, with
Italian grenadiers, riflemen, dragoons, etc., etc., compose all together
a not inconsiderable army.
Though it frequently happens that the pay of the other troops is in
arrears, those appertaining to Bonaparte's household are as regularly
paid as his Senators, Counsellors of State, and other public
functionaries. All the men are picked, and all the officers as much as
possible of birth, or at least of education. In the midst of this
voluptuous and seductive capital, they are kept very strict, and the
least negligence or infraction of military discipline is more severely
punished than if committed in garrison or in an encampment. They are
both better clothed, accoutred, and paid, than the troops of the line,
and have everywhere the precedency of them. All the officers, and many
of the soldiers, are members of Bonaparte's Legion of Honour, and carry
arms of honour distributed to them by Imperial favour, or for military
exploits. None of them are quartered upon the citizens; each corps has
its own spacious barracks, hospitals, drilling-ground, riding or
fencing-houses, gardens, bathing-houses, billiard-table, and even
libraries. A chapel has lately been constructed near each barrack, and
almoners are already appointed. In the meantime, they attend regularly
at Mass, either in the Imperial Chapel or in the parish churches.
Bonaparte discourages much all marriages among the military in general,
but particularly among those of his household troops. That they may not,
however, be entirely deprived of the society of women, he allows five to
each company, with the same salaries as the men, under the name of
washerwomen.
With a vain and fickle people, fond of shows and innovations, nothing in
a military despotism has a greater political utility, gives greater
satisfaction, and leaves behind a more useful terror and awe, than
Bonaparte's grand military reviews. In the beginning of his consulate,
they regularly occurred three times in the month; after his victory of
Marengo, they were reduced to once in a fortnight, and since he has been
proclaimed Emperor, to once only in the month. This ostentatious
exhibition of usurped power is always closed with a diplomatic review of
the representatives of lawful Princes, who introduce on those occasions
their fellow-subjects to another subject, who successfully has seized,
and continues to usurp, the authority of his own Sovereign. What an
example for ambition! what a lesson to treachery!
Besides the household troops, this capital and its vicinity have, for
these three years past, never contained less than from fifteen to twenty
thousand men of the regiments of the line, belonging to what is called
the first military division of the Army of the Interior. These troops
are selected from among the brigades that served under Bonaparte in Italy
and Egypt with the greatest eclat, and constitute a kind of depot for
recruiting his household troops with tried and trusty men. They are also
regularly paid, and generally better accoutred than their comrades
encamped on the coast, or quartered in Italy or Holland.
But a standing army, upon which all revolutionary rulers can depend, and
that always will continue their faithful support, unique in its sort and
composition, exists in the bosom as well as in the extremities of this
country. I mean, one hundred and twenty thousand invalids, mostly young
men under thirty, forced by conscription against their will into the
field, quartered and taken care of by our Government, and all possessed
with the absurd prejudice that, as they have been maimed in fighting the
battles of rebellion, the restoration of legitimate sovereignty would to
them be an epoch of destruction, or at least of misery and want; and this
prejudice is kept alive by emissaries employed on purpose to mislead
them. Of these, eight thousand are lodged and provided for in this city;
ten thousand at Versailles, and the remainder in Piedmont, Brabant, and
in the conquered departments on the left bank of the Abine; countries
where the inhabitants are discontented and disaffected, and require,
therefore, to be watched, and to have a better spirit infused.
Those whose wounds permit it are also employed to do garrison duty in
fortified places not exposed to an attack by enemies, and to assist in
the different arsenals and laboratories, foundries, and depots of
military or naval stores. Others are attached to the police offices, and
some as gendarmes, to arrest suspected or guilty individuals; or as
garnissaires, to enforce the payment of contributions from the unwilling
or distressed. When the period for the payment of taxes is expired, two
of these janissaires present themselves at the house of the persons in
arrears, with a billet signed by the director of the contributions and
countersigned by the police commissary. If the money is not immediately
paid, with half a crown to each of them besides, they remain quartered in
the house, where they are to be boarded and to receive half a crown a day
each until an order from those who sent them informs them that what was
due to the state has been acquitted. After their entrance into a house,
and during their stay, no furniture or effects whatever can be removed or
disposed of, nor can the master or mistress go out-of-doors without being
accompanied by one of them.
In the houses appropriated to our invalids, the inmates are very well
treated, and Government takes great care to make them satisfied with
their lot. The officers have large halls, billiards, and reading-room to
meet in; and the common men are admitted into apartments adjoining
libraries, from-which they can borrow what books they contain, and read
them at leisure. This is certainly a very good and even a humane
institution, though these libraries chiefly contain military histories or
novels.
As to the morals of these young invalids, they may be well conceived when
you remember the morality of our Revolution; and that they, without any
religious notions or restraints, were not only permitted, but encouraged
to partake of the debauchery and licentiousness which were carried to
such an extreme in our armies and encampments. In an age when the
passions are strongest, and often blind reason and silence conscience,
they have not the means nor the permission to marry; in their vicinity it
is, therefore, more difficult to discover one honest woman or a dutiful
wife, than hundreds of harlots and of adulteresses. Notwithstanding that
many of them have been accused before the tribunals of seductions, rape,
and violence against the sex, not one has been punished for what the
morality of our Government consider merely as bagatelles. Even in cases
where husbands, brothers, and lovers have been killed by them while
defending or avenging the honour of their wives, sisters, and mistresses,
our tribunals have been ordered by our grand judge, according to the
commands of the Emperor, not to proceed. As most of them have no
occupation, the vice of idleness augments the mass of their corruption;
for men of their principles, when they have nothing to do, never do
anything good.
I do not know if my countrywomen feel themselves honoured by or obliged
to Bonaparte, for leaving their virtue and honour unprotected, except by
their own prudence and strength; but of this I am certain, that all our
other troops, as well as the invalids, may live on free quarters with the
sex without fearing the consequences; provided they keep at a distance
from the females of our Imperial Family, and of those of our grand
officers of State and principal functionaries. The wives and the
daughters of the latter have, however, sometimes declined the advantage
of these exclusive privileges.
A horse grenadier of Bonaparte's Imperial Guard, of the name of Rabais,
notorious for his amours and debauchery, was accused before the Imperial
Judge Thuriot, at one and the same time by several husbands and fathers,
of having seduced the affections of their wives and of their daughters.
As usual, Thuriot refused to listen to their complaints; at the same time
insultingly advising them to retake their wives and children, and for the
future to be more careful of them. Triumphing, as it were, in his
injustice, he inconsiderately mentioned the circumstance to his own wife,
observing that he never knew so many charges of the same sort exhibited
against one man.
Madame Thuriot, who had been a servant-maid to her husband before he made
her his wife, instead of being disgusted at the recital, secretly
determined to see this Rabais. An intrigue was then begun, and carried
on for four months, if not with discretion, at least without discovery;
but the lady's own imprudence at last betrayed her, or I should say,
rather, her jealousy. But for this she might still have been admired
among our modest women, and Thuriot among fortunate husbands and happy
fathers; for the lady, for the first time since her marriage, proved, to
the great joy and pride of her husband, in the family way. Suspecting,
however, the fidelity of her paramour, she watched his motions so closely
that she discovered an intrigue between him and the chaste spouse of a
rich banker; but the consequence of this discovery was the detection of
her own crime.
On the discovery of this disgrace, Thuriot obtained an audience of
Bonaparte, in which he exposed his misfortune, and demanded punishment on
his wife's gallant. As, however, he also acknowledged that his own
indiscretion was an indirect cause of their connection, he received the
same advice which he had given to other unfortunate husbands: to retake,
and for the future guard better, his dear moiety.
Thuriot had, however, an early opportunity of wreaking his vengeance on
this gallant Rabais. It seems his prowess had reached the ears of Madame
Baciocchi, the eldest sister of Bonaparte. This lady has a children
mania, which is very troublesome to her husband, disagreeable to her
relations, and injurious to herself. She never beholds any lady,
particularly any of her family, in the way which women wish to be who
love their lords, but she is absolutely frantic. Now, Thuriot's worthy
friend Fouche had discovered, by his spies, that Rabais paid frequent and
secret visits to the hotel Baciocchi, and that Madame Baciocchi was the
object of these visits. Thuriot, on this discovery, instantly denounced
him to Bonaparte.
Had Rabais ruined all the women of this capital, he would not only have
been forgiven, but applauded by Napoleon, and his counsellors and
courtiers; but to dare to approach, or only to cast his eyes on one of
our Imperial Highnesses, was a crime nothing could extenuate or avenge,
but the most exemplary punishment. He was therefore arrested, sent to
the Temple, and has never since been heard of; so that his female friends
are still in the cruel uncertainty whether he has died on the rack, been
buried alive in the oubliettes, or is wandering an exile in the wilds of
Cayenne.
In examining his trunk, among the curious effects discovered by the
police were eighteen portraits and one hundred billets-doux, with
medallions, rings, bracelets, tresses of hair, etc., as numerous. Two of
the portraits occasioned much scandal, and more gossiping. They were
those of two of our most devout and most respectable Court ladies, Maids
of Honour to our Empress, Madame Ney and Madame Lasnes; who never miss an
opportunity of going to church, who have received the private blessing of
the Pope, and who regularly confess to some Bishop or other once in a
fortnight. Madame Napoleon cleared them, however, of all suspicion, by
declaring publicly in her drawing-room that these portraits had come into
the possession of Rabais by the infidelity of their maids; who had
confessed their faults, and, therefore, had been charitably pardoned.
Whether the opinions of Generals Ney and Lasnes coincide with Madame
Napoleon's assertion is uncertain; but Lasnes has been often heard to say
that, from the instant his wife began to confess, he was convinced she
was inclined to dishonour him; so that nothing surprised him.
One of the medallions in Rabais's collection contained on one side the
portrait of Thuriot, and on the other that of his wife; both set with
diamonds, and presented to her by him on their last wedding day. For the
supposed theft of this medallion, two of Thuriot's servants were in
prison, when the arrest of Rabais explained the manner in which it had
been lost. This so enraged him that he beat and kicked his wife so
heartily that for some time even her life was in danger, and Thuriot lost
all hopes of being a father.
Before the Revolution, Thuriot had been, for fraud and forgery, struck
off the roll as an advocate, and therefore joined it as a patriot. In
1791, he was chosen a deputy to the National Assembly, and in 1792 to the
National Convention. He always showed himself one of the most ungenerous
enemies of the clergy, of monarchy, and of his King, for whose death he
voted. On the 25th of May, 1792, in declaiming against Christianity and
priesthood, he wished them both, for the welfare of mankind, at the
bottom of the sea; and on the 18th of December the same year, he declared
in the Jacobin Club that, if the National Convention evinced any signs of
clemency towards Louis XVI., he would go himself to the Temple and blow
out the brains of this unfortunate King. He defended in the tribune the
massacres of the prisoners, affirming that the tree of liberty could
never flourish without being inundated with the blood of aristocrats and
other enemies of the Revolution. He has been convicted by rival factions
of the most shameful robberies, and his infamy and depravity were so
notorious that neither Murat, Brissot, Robespierre, nor the Directory
would or could employ him. After the Revolution of the 9th of November,
1799, Bonaparte gave him the office of judge of the criminal tribunal,
and in 1804 made him a Commander of his Legion of Honour. He is now one
of our Emperor's most faithful subjects and most sincere Christians. Such
is now his tender conscientiousness, that he was among those who were the
first to be married again by some Cardinal to their present wives, to
whom they had formerly been united only by the municipality. This new
marriage, however, took place before Madame Thuriot had introduced
herself to the acquaintance of the Imperial Grenadier Rabais.
LETTER XXX.
PARIS, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--Regarding me as a connoisseur, though I have no pretensions but
that of being an amateur, Lucien Bonaparte, shortly before his disgrace,
invited me to pass some days with him in the country, and to assist him
in arranging his very valuable collection of pictures--next our public
ones, the most curious and most valuable in Europe, and, of course, in
the world. I found here, as at Joseph Bonaparte's, the same splendour,
the same etiquette, and the same liberty, which latter was much enhanced
by the really engaging and unassuming manners and conversation of the
host. At Joseph's, even in the midst of abundance and of liberty, in
seeing the person or meditating on the character of the host, you feel
both your inferiority of fortune and the humiliation of dependence, and
that you visit a master instead of a friend, who indirectly tells you,
"Eat, drink, and rejoice as long and as much as you like; but remember
that if you are happy, it is to my generosity you are indebted, and if
unhappy, that I do not care a pin about you." With Lucien it is the very
reverse. His conduct seems to indicate that by your company you confer
an obligation on him, and he is studious to remove, on all occasions,
that distance which fortune has placed between him and his guests; and as
he cannot compliment them upon being wealthier than himself, he seizes
with delicacy every opportunity to chew that he acknowledges their
superiority in talents and in genius as more than an equivalent for the
absence of riches.
He is, nevertheless, himself a young man of uncommon parts, and, as far
as I could judge from my short intercourse with the reserved Joseph and
with the haughty Napoleon, he is abler and better informed than either,
and much more open and sincere. His manners are also more elegant, and
his language more polished, which is the more creditable to him when it
is remembered how much his education has been neglected, how vitiated the
Revolution made him, and that but lately his principal associates were,
like himself, from among the vilest and most vulgar of the rabble. It is
not necessary to be a keen observer to remark in Napoleon the upstart
soldier, and in Joseph the former low member of the law; but I defy the
most refined courtier to see in Lucien anything indicating a ci-devant
sans-culotte. He has, besides, other qualities (and those more
estimable) which will place him much above his elder brothers in the
opinion of posterity. He is extremely compassionate and liberal to the
truly distressed, serviceable to those whom he knows are not his friends,
and forgiving and obliging even to those who have proved and avowed
themselves his enemies. These are virtues commonly very scarce, and
hitherto never displayed by any other member of the Bonaparte family.
An acquaintance of yours, and--a friend of mine, Count de T-----, at his
return here from emigration, found, of his whole former fortune,
producing once eighty thousand livres--in the year, only four farms
unsold, and these were advertised for sale. A man who had once been his
servant, but was then a groom to Lucien, offered to present a memorial
for him to his master, to prevent the disposal of the only support which
remained to subsist himself, with a wife and four children. Lucien asked
Napoleon to prohibit the sale, and to restore the Count the farms, and
obtained his consent; but Fouche, whose cousin wanted them, having
purchased other national property in the neighbourhood, prevailed upon
Napoleon to forget his promise, and the farms were sold. As soon as
Lucien heard of it he sent for the Count, delivered into his hands an
annuity of six thousand livres--for the life of himself, his wife, and
his children, as an indemnity for the inefficacy of his endeavours to
serve him, as he expressed himself. Had the Count recovered the farms,
they would not have given him a clear profit of half the amount, all
taxes paid.
A young author of the name of Gauvan, irritated by the loss of parents
and fortune by the Revolution, attacked, during 1799, in the public
prints, as well as in pamphlets, every Revolutionist who had obtained
notoriety or popularity. He was particularly vehement against Lucien,
and laid before the public all his crimes and all his errors, and
asserted, as facts, atrocities which were either calumnies or merely
rumours. When, after Napoleon's assumption of the Consulate, Lucien was
appointed a Minister of the Interior, he sent for Gauvan, and said to
him, "Great misfortunes have early made you wretched and unjust, and you
have frequently revenged yourself on those who could not prevent them,
among whom I am one. You do not want capacity, nor, I believe, probity.
Here is a commission which makes you a Director of Contributions in the
Departments of the Rhine and Moselle, an office with a salary of twelve
thousand livres but producing double that sum. If you meet with any
difficulties, write to me; I am your friend. Take those one hundred
louis d'or for the expenses of your journey. Adieu!" This anecdote I
have read in Gauvan's own handwriting, in a letter to his sister. He
died in 1802; but Mademoiselle Gauvan, who is not yet fifteen, has a
pension of three thousand livres a year--from Lucien, who, has never seen
her.
Lucien Bonaparte has another good quality: he is consistent in his
political principles. Either from conviction or delusion he is still a
Republican, and does not conceal that, had he suspected Napoleon of any
intent to reestablish monarchy, much less tyranny, he would have joined
those deputies who, on the 9th of November, 1799, in the sitting at St.
Cloud, demanded a decree of outlawry against him. If the present quarrel
between these two brothers were sifted to the bottom, perhaps it would be
found to originate more from Lucien's Republicanism than from his
marriage.
I know, with all France and Europe, that Lucien's youth has been very
culpable; that he has committed many indiscretions, much injustice, many
imprudences, many errors, and, I fear, even some crimes. I know that he
has been the most profligate among the profligate, the most debauched
among libertines, the most merciless among the plunderers, and the most
perverse among rebels. I know that he is accused of being a
Septembrizer; of having murdered one wife and poisoned another; of having
been a spy, a denouncer, a persecutor of innocent persons in the Reign of
Terror. I know that he is accused of having fought his brothers-in-law;
of having ill-used his mother, and of an incestuous commerce with his own
sisters.
I have read and heard of these and other enormous accusations, and far be
it from me to defend, extenuate, or even deny them. But suppose all this
infamy to be real, to be proved, to be authenticated, which it never has
been, and, to its whole extent, I am persuaded, never can be--what are
the cruel and depraved acts of which Lucien has been accused to the
enormities and barbarities of which Napoleon is convicted? Is the
poisoning a wife more criminal than the poisoning a whole hospital of
wounded soldiers; or the assisting to kill some confined persons,
suspected of being enemies, more atrocious than the massacre in cold
blood of thousands of disarmed prisoners? Is incest with a sister more
shocking to humanity than the well-known unnatural pathic but I will not
continue the disgusting comparison. As long as Napoleon is unable to
acquit himself of such barbarities and monstrous crimes, he has no right
to pronounce Lucien unworthy to be called his brother; nor have
Frenchmen, as long as they obey the former as a Sovereign, or the
Continent, as long as it salutes him as such, any reason to despise the
latter for crimes which lose their enormity when compared to the horrid
perpetrations of his Imperial brother.
An elderly lady, a relation of Lucien's wife, and a person in whose
veracity and morality I have the greatest confidence, and for whom he
always had evinced more regard than even for his own mother, has repeated
to me many of their conversations. She assures me that Lucien deplores
frequently the want of a good and religious education, and the tempting
examples of perversity he met with almost at his entrance upon the
revolutionary scene. He says that he determined to get rich 'per fas aut
nefas', because he observed that money was everything, and that most
persons plotted and laboured for power merely to be enabled to gather
treasure, though, after they had obtained both, much above their desert
and expectation, instead of being satiated or even satisfied, they
bustled and intrigued for more, until success made them unguarded and
prosperity indiscreet, and they became with their wealth the easy prey of
rival factions. Such was the case of Danton, of Fabre d'Eglantine, of
Chabot, of Chaumette, of Stebert, and other contemptible wretches,
butchered by Robespierre and his partisans--victims in their turn to men
as unjust and sanguinary as themselves. He had, therefore, laid out a
different plan of conduct for himself. He had fixed upon fifty millions
of livres--as the maximum he should wish for, and when that sum was in
his possession, he resolved to resign all pretensions to rank and
employment, and to enjoy 'otium cum dignitate'. He had kept to his
determination, and so regulated his income that; with the expenses, pomp,
and retinue of a Prince, he is enabled to make more persons happy and
comfortable than his extortions have ruined or even embarrassed. He now
lives like a philosopher, and endeavours to forget the past, to delight
in the present, and to be indifferent about futurity. He chose,
therefore, for a wife, a lady whom he loved and esteemed, in preference
to one whose birth would have been a continual reproach to the meanness
of his own origin.
You must, with me, admire the modesty of a citizen sans-culotte, who,
without a shilling in the world, fixes upon fifty millions as a reward
for his revolutionary achievements, and with which he would be satisfied
to sit down and begin his singular course of singular philosophy. But
his success is more extraordinary that his pretensions were extravagant.
This immense sum was amassed by him in the short period of four years,
chiefly by bribes from foreign Courts, and by selling his protections in
France.
But most of the other Bonapartes have made as great and as rapid fortunes
as Lucien, and yet, instead of being generous, contented, or even
philosophers, they are still profiting by every occasion to increase
their ill-gotten treasures, and no distress was ever relieved, no talents
encouraged, or virtues recompensed by them. The mind of their garrets
lodges with them in their palaces, while Lucien seems to ascend as near
as possible to a level with his circumstances. I have myself found him
beneficent without ostentation.
Among his numerous pictures, I observed four that had formerly belonged
to my father's, and afterwards to my own cabinet. I inquired how much he
had paid for them, without giving the least hint that they had been my
property, and were plundered from me by the nation. He had, indeed, paid
their full value. In a fortnight after I had quitted him, these, with
six other pictures, were deposited in my room, with a very polite note,
begging my acceptance of them, and assuring me that he had but the day
before heard from his picture dealer that they had belonged to me. He
added that he would never retake them, unless he received an assurance
from me that I parted with them without reluctance, and at the same time
affixed their price. I returned them, as I knew they were desired by him
for his collection, but he continued obstinate. I told him, therefore,
that, as I was acquainted with his inclination to perform a generous
action, I would, instead of payment for the pictures, indicate a person
deserving his assistance. I mentioned the old Duchesse de ------, who is
seventy-four years of age and blind; and, after possessing in her youth
an income of eight hundred thousand livres--is now, in her old age,
almost destitute. He did for this worthy lady more than I expected; but
happening, in his visits to relieve my friend, to cast his eye on the
daughter of the landlady where she lodged, he found means to prevail on
the simplicity of the poor girl, and seduced her. So much do I know
personally of Lucien Bonaparte, who certainly is a composition of good
and bad qualities, but which of them predominate I will not take upon me
to decide. This I can affirm--Lucien is not the worst member of the
Bonaparte family.
LETTER XXXI.
PARIS, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--As long as Austria ranks among independent nations, Bonaparte
will take care not to offend or alarm the ambition and interest of
Prussia by incorporating the Batavian Republic with the other provinces
of his Empire. Until that period, the Dutch must continue (as they have
been these last ten years) under the appellation of allies, oppressed
like subjects and plundered like foes. Their mock sovereignty will
continue to weigh heavier on them than real servitude does on their
Belgic and Flemish neighbours, because Frederick the Great pointed out to
his successors the Elbe and the Tegel as the natural borders of the
Prussian monarchy, whenever the right bank of the Rhine should form the
natural frontiers of the kingdom of France.
That during the present summer a project for a partition treaty of
Holland has by the Cabinet of St. Cloud been laid before the Cabinet of
Berlin is a fact, though disseminated only as a rumour by the secret
agents of Talleyrand. Their object was on this, as on all previous
occasions when any names, rights, or liberties of people were intended to
be erased from among the annals of independence, to sound the ground, and
to prepare by such rumours the mind of the public for another outrage and
another overthrow. But Prussia, as well as France, knows the value of a
military and commercial navy, and that to obtain it good harbours and
navigable rivers are necessary, and therefore, as well as from principles
of justice, perhaps, declined the acceptance of a plunder, which, though
tempting, was contrary to the policy of the House of Brandenburgh.
According to a copy circulated among the members of our diplomatic corps,
this partition treaty excluded Prussia from all the Batavian seaports
except Delfzig, and those of the river Ems, but gave her extensive
territories on the side of Guelderland, and a rich country in Friesland.
Had it been acceded to by the Court of Berlin, with the annexed condition
of a defensive and offensive alliance with the Court of St. Cloud, the
Prussian monarchy would, within half a century, have been swallowed up in
the same gulf with the Batavian Commonwealth and the Republic of Poland;
and by some future scheme of some future Bonaparte or Talleyrand, be
divided in its turn, and serve as a pledge of reconciliation or
inducement of connection between some future rulers of the French and
Russian Empires.