Prussian Ministers, or a high notion of his own influence over them, if
he was serious in this overture. For my part, I am rather inclined to
think that it was merely thrown out to discover whether Frederick William
III. had entered into any engagement contrary to the interest of
Napoleon the First; or to allure His Prussian Majesty into a negotiation
which would suspend, or at least interfere with, those supposed to be
then on the carpet with Austria, Russia, or perhaps even with England.
The late Batavian Government had, ever since the beginning of the present
war with England, incurred the displeasure of Bonaparte. When it
apprehended a rupture from the turn which the discussion respecting the
occupation of Malta assumed, the Dutch Ambassadors at St. Petersburg and
Berlin were ordered to demand the interference of these two Cabinets for
the preservation of the neutrality of Holland, which your country had
promised to acknowledge, if respected by France. No sooner was Bonaparte
informed of this step, than he marched troops into the heart of the
Batavian Republic, and occupied its principal forts, ports, and arsenals.
When, some time afterwards, Count Markof received instructions from his
Court, according to the desire of the Batavian Directory, and demanded,
in consequence, an audience from Bonaparte, a map was laid before him,
indicating the position of the French troops in Holland, and plans of the
intended encampment of our army of England on the coast of Flanders and
France; and he was asked whether he thought it probable that our
Government would assent to a neutrality so injurious to its offensive
operations against Great Britain.
"But," said the Russian Ambassador, "the independence of Holland has been
admitted by you in formal treaties."
"So has the cession of Malta by England," interrupted Bonaparte, with
impatience.
"True," replied Markof, "but you are now at war with England for this
point; while Holland, against which you have no complaint, has not only
been invaded by your troops, but, contrary both to its inclination and
interest, involved in a war with you, by which it has much to lose and
nothing to gain."
"I have no account to render to anybody for my transactions, and I desire
to hear nothing more on this subject," said Bonaparte, retiring furious,
and leaving Markof to meditate on our Sovereign's singular principles of
political justice and of 'jus pentium'.
From that period Bonaparte resolved on another change of the executive
power of the Batavian Republic. But it was more easy to displace one set
of men for another than to find proper ones to occupy a situation in
which, if they do their duty as patriots, they must offend France; and if
they are our tools, instead of the independent governors of their
country, they must excite a discontent among their fellow citizens,
disgracing themselves as individuals, and exposing themselves as chief
magistrates to the fate of the De Witts, should ever fortune forsake our
arms or desert Bonaparte.
No country has of late been less productive of great men than Holland.
The Van Tromps, the Russel, and the William III. all died without
leaving any posterity behind them; and the race of Batavian heroes seems
to have expired with them, as that of patriots with the De, Witts and
Barneveldt. Since the beginning of the last century we read, indeed, of
some able statesmen, as most, if not all, the former grand pensionaries
have been; but the name of no warrior of any great eminence is recorded.
This scarcity, of native genius and valour has not a little contributed
to the present humbled, disgraced, and oppressed state of wretched
Batavia.
Admiral de Winter certainly neither wants courage nor genius, but his
private character has a great resemblance to that of General Moreau.
Nature has destined him to obey, and not to govern. He may direct as
ably and as valiantly the manoeuvres of a fleet as Moreau does those of
an army, but neither the one nor the other at the head of his nation
would render himself respected, his country flourishing, or his
countrymen happy and tranquil.
Destined from his youth for the navy, Admiral de Winter entered into the
naval service of his country before he was fourteen, and was a second
lieutenant when the Batavian patriots, in rebellion against the
Stadtholder, were, in 1787, reduced to submission by the Duke of
Brunswick, the commander of the Prussian army that invaded Holland. His
parents and family being of the anti-Orange party, he emigrated to
France, where he was made an officer in the legion of Batavian refugees.
During the campaign of 1793 and 1794, he so much distinguished himself
under that competent judge of merit, Pichegru, that this commander
obtained for him the commission of a general of brigade in the service of
the French; which, after the conquest of Holland in January, 1795, was
exchanged for the rank of a vice-admiral of the Batavian Republic. His
exploits as commander of the Dutch fleet, during the battle of the 11th
of October, 1797, with your fleet, under Lord Duncan, I have heard
applauded even in your presence, when in your country. Too honest to be
seduced, and too brave to be intimidated, he is said to have incurred
Bonaparte's hatred by resisting both his offers and his threats, and
declining to sell his own liberty as well as to betray the liberty of his
fellow subjects. When, in 1800, Bonaparte proposed to him the presidency
and consulate of the United States, for life, on condition that he should
sign a treaty, which made him a vassal of France, he refused, with
dignity and with firmness, and preferred retirement to a supremacy so
dishonestly acquired, and so dishonourably occupied.
General Daendels, another Batavian revolutionist of some notoriety, from
an attorney became a lieutenant-colonel, and served as a spy under
Dumouriez in the winter of 1792 and in the spring of 1793. Under
Pichegru he was made a general, and exhibited those talents in the field
which are said to have before been displayed in the forum. In June,
1795, he was made a lieutenant-general of the Batavian Republic, and he
was the commander-in-chief of the Dutch troops combating in 1799 your
army under the Duke of York. In this place he did not much distinguish
himself, and the issue of the contest was entirely owing to our troops
and to our generals.
After the Peace of Amiens, observing that Bonaparte intended to
annihilate instead of establishing universal liberty, Daendels gave in
his resignation and retired to obscurity, not wishing to be an instrument
of tyranny, after having so long fought for freedom. Had he possessed
the patriotism of a Brutus or a Cato, he would have bled or died for his
cause and country sooner than have deserted them both; or had the
ambition and love of glory of a Caesar held a place in his bosom, he
would have attempted to be the chief of his country, and by generosity
and clemency atone, if possible, for the loss of liberty. Upon the line
of baseness,--the deserter is placed next to the traitor.
Dumonceau, another Batavian general of some publicity, is not by birth a
citizen of the United States, but was born at Brussels in 1758, and was
by profession a stonemason when, in 1789, he joined, as a volunteer, the
Belgian insurgents. After their dispersion in 1790 he took refuge and
served in France, and was made an officer in the corps of Belgians,
formed after the declaration of war against Austria in 1792. Here he
frequently distinguished himself, and was, therefore, advanced to the
rank of a general; but the Dutch general officers being better paid than
those of the French Republic, he was, with the permission of our
Directory, received, in 1795, as a lieutenant-general of the Batavian
Republic. He has often evinced bravery, but seldom great capacity. His
natural talents are considered as but indifferent, and his education is
worse.
These are the only three military characters who might, with any prospect
of success, have tried to play the part of a Napoleon Bonaparte in
Holland.
LETTER XXXII.
PARIS, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--Not to give umbrage to the Cabinet of Berlin, Bonaparte
communicated to it the necessity he was under of altering the form of
Government in Holland, and, if report be true, even condescended to ask
advice concerning a chief magistrate for that country. The young Prince
of Orange, brother-in-law of His Prussian Majesty, naturally presented
himself; but, after some time, Talleyrand's agents discovered that great
pecuniary sacrifices could not be expected from that quarter, and perhaps
less submission to France experienced than from the former governors. An
eye was then cast on the Elector of Bavaria, whose past patriotism, as
well as that of his Ministers, was a full guarantee for future obedience.
Had he consented to such an arrangement, Austria might have aggrandized
herself on the Inn, Prussia in Franconia, and France in Italy; and the
present bone of contest would have been chiefly removed.
This intrigue, for it was nothing else, was carried on by the Cabinet of
St. Cloud in March, 1804, about the time that Germany was invaded and the
Duc d'Enghien seized. This explains to you the reason why the Russian
note, delivered to the Diet of Ratisbon on the 8th of the following May,
was left without any support, except the ineffectual one from the King of
Sweden. How any Cabinet could be dupe enough to think Bonaparte serious,
or the Elector of Bavaria so weak as to enter into his schemes, is
difficult to be conceived, had not Europe witnessed still greater
credulity on one side, and still greater effrontery on the other.
In the meantime Bonaparte grew every day more discontented with the
Batavian Directory, and more irritated against the members who composed
it. Against his regulations for excluding the commerce and productions
of your country, they resented with spirit instead of obeying them
without murmur as was required. He is said to have discovered, after his
own soldiers had forced the custom-house officers to obey his orders,
that, while in their proclamations the directors publicly prohibited the
introduction of British goods, some of them were secret insurers of this
forbidden merchandise, introduced by fraud and by smuggling; and that
while they officially wished for the success of the French arms and
destruction of England, they withdrew by stealth what property they had
in the French funds, to place it in the English. This refractory and, as
Bonaparte called it, mercantile spirit, so enraged him, that he had
already signed an order for arresting and transferring en masse his high
allies, the Batavian directors, to his Temple, when the representations
of Talleyrand moderated his fury, and caused the order to be recalled,
which Fouche was ready to execute.
Had Jerome Bonaparte not offended his brother by his transatlantic
marriage, he would long ago have been the Prince Stadtholder of Holland;
but his disobedience was so far useful to the Cabinet of St. Cloud as it
gave it an opportunity of intriguing with, or deluding, other Cabinets
that might have any pretensions to interfere in the regulation of the
Batavian Government. By the choice finally made, you may judge how
difficult it was to find a suitable subject to represent it, and that
this representation is intended only to be temporary.
Schimmelpenninck, the present grand pensionary of the Batavian Republic,
was destined by his education for the bar, but by his natural parts to
await in quiet obscurity the end of a dull existence. With some
property, little information, and a tolerably good share of common sense,
he might have lived and died respected, and even regretted, without any
pretension, or perhaps even ambition, to shine. The anti-Orange faction,
to which his parents and family appertained, pushed him forward, and
elected him, in 1795, a member of the First Batavian National Convention,
where, according to the spirit of the times, his speeches were rather
those of a demagogue than those of a Republican. Liberty, Equality, and
Fraternity were the constant themes of his political declamations,
infidelity his religious profession, and the examples of immorality, his
social lessons; so rapid and dangerous are the strides with which
seduction frequently advances on weak minds.
In 1800 he was appointed an Ambassador to Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles
Maurice Talleyrand. The latter used him as a stockbroker, and the former
for anything he thought proper; and he was the humble and submissive
valet of both. More ignorant than malicious, and a greater fool than a
rogue, he was more laughed at and despised than trusted or abused.
His patience being equal to his phlegm, nothing either moved or
confounded him; and he was, as Talleyrand remarked, "a model of an
Ambassador, according to which he and Bonaparte wished that all other
independent Princes and States would choose their representatives to the
French Government."
When our Minister and his Sovereign were discussing the difficulty of
properly filling up the vacancy, of the Dutch Government, judged
necessary by both, the former mentioned Schimmelpenninck with a smile;
and serious as Bonaparte commonly is, he could not help laughing. "I
should have been less astonished," said he, "had you proposed my
Mameluke, Rostan."
This rebuke did not deter Talleyrand (who had settled his terms with
Schimmelpenninck) from continuing to point out the advantage which France
would derive from this nomination. "Because no man could easier be
directed when in office, and no man easier turned out of office when
disagreeable or unnecessary. Both as a Batavian plenipotentiary at
Amiens, and as Batavian Ambassador in England, he had proved himself as
obedient and submissive to France as when in the same capacity at Paris."
By returning often to the charge, with these and other remarks,
Talleyrand at last accustomed Bonaparte to the idea, which had once
appeared so humiliating, of writing to a man so much inferior in
everything, "Great and dear Friend!" and therefore said to the Minister:
"Well! let us then make him a grand pensionary and a locum tenens for
five years; or until Jerome, when he repents, returns to his duty, and is
pardoned."
"Is he, then, not to be a grand pensionary for life?" asked Talleyrand;
"whether for one month or for life, he would be equally obedient to
resign when, commanded; but the latter would be more popular in Holland,
where they were tired of so many changes."
"Let them complain, if they dare," replied Bonaparte. "Schimmelpenninck
is their chief magistrate only for five years, if so long; but you may
add that they may reelect him."
It was not before Talleyrand had compared the pecuniary proposal made to
his agents by foreign Princes with those of Schimmelpenninck to himself,
that the latter obtained the preference. The exact amount of the
purchase-money for the supreme magistracy in Holland is not well known to
any but the contracting parties. Some pretended that the whole was paid
down beforehand, being advanced by a society of merchants at Amsterdam,
the friends or relatives of the grand pensionary; others, that it is to
be paid by annual instalments of two millions of livres--for a certain
number of years. Certain it is, that this high office was sold and
bought; and that, had it been given for life, its value would have been
proportionately enhanced; which was the reason that Talleyrand
endeavoured to have it thus established.
Talleyrand well knew the precarious state of Schimmelpenninck's grandeur;
that it not only depended upon the whim of Napoleon, but had long been
intended as an hereditary sovereignty for Jerome. Another Dutchman asked
him not to ruin his friend and his family for what he was well aware
could never be called a sinecure place, and was so precarious in its
tenure. "Foolish vanity," answered the Minister, "can never pay enough
for the gratification of its desires. All the Schimmelpennincks in the
world do not possess property enough to recompense me for the sovereign
honours which I have procured for one of their name and family, were he
deposed within twenty-four hours. What treasures can indemnify me for
connecting such a name and such a personage with the great name of the
First Emperor of the French?"
I have only twice in my life been in Schimmelpenninck's company, and I
thought him both timid and reserved; but from what little he said, I
could not possibly judge of his character and capacity. His portrait and
its accompaniments have been presented to me; such as delivered to you by
one of his countrymen, a Mr. M---- (formerly an Ambassador also), who was
both his schoolfellow and his comrade at the university. I shall add the
following traits, in his own words as near as possible:
"More vain than ambitious, Schimmelpenninck from his youth, and,
particularly, from his entrance into public life, tried every means to
make a noise, but found none to make a reputation. He caressed in
succession all the systems of the French Revolution, without adopting one
for himself. All the Kings of faction received in their turns his homage
and felicitations. It was impossible to mention to him a man of any
notoriety, of whom he did not become immediately a partisan. The virtues
or the vices, the merit or defects, of the individual were of no
consideration; according to his judgment it was sufficient to be famous.
Yet with all the extravagances of a head filled with paradoxes, and of a
heart spoiled by modern philosophy, added to a habit of licentiousness,
he had no idea of becoming an instrument for the destruction of liberty
in his own country, much less of becoming its tyrant, in submitting to be
the slave of France. It was but lately that he took the fancy, after so
long admiring all other great men of our age, to be at any rate one of
their number, and of being admired as a great man in his turn. On this
account many accuse him of hypocrisy, but no one deserves that
appellation less, his vanity and exaltation never permitting him to
dissimulate; and no presumption, therefore, was less disguised than his,
to those who studied the man. Without acquired ability, without natural
genius, or political capacity, destitute of discretion and address, as
confident and obstinate as ignorant, he is only elevated to fall and to
rise no more."
Madame Schimmelpenninck, I was informed, is as amiable and accomplished
as her husband is awkward and deficient; though well acquainted with his
infidelities and profligacy, she is too virtuous to listen to revenge,
and too generous not to forgive. She is, besides, said to be a lady of
uncommon abilities, and of greater information than she chooses to
display. She has never been the worshipper of Bonaparte, or the friend
of Talleyrand; she loved her country, and detested its tyrants. Had she
been created a grand pensionary, she would certainly have swayed with
more glory than her husband; and been hailed by contemporaries, as well
as posterity, if not a heroine, at least a patriot,--a title which in our
times, though often prostituted, so few have any claim to, and which,
therefore, is so much the more valuable.
When it was known at Paris that Schimmelpenninck had set out for his new
sovereignty, no less than sixteen girls of the Palais Royal demanded
passes for Holland. Being questioned by Fouche as to their business in
that country, they answered that they intended to visit their friend, the
grand pensionary, in his new dominions. Fouche communicated to
Talleyrand both their demands and their business, and asked his advice.
He replied:
"Send two, and those of whose vigilance and intelligence you are sure.
Refuse, by all means, the other fourteen. Schimmelpenninck's time is
precious, and were they at the Hague, he would neglect everything for
them. If they are fond of travelling, and are handsome and adroit,
advise them to set out for London or for St. Petersburg; and if they
consent, order them to my office, and they shall be supplied, if approved
of, both with instructions, and with their travelling expenses."
Fouche answered his colleague that "they were in every respect the very
reverse of his description; they seemed to have passed their lives in the
lowest stage of infamy, and they could neither read nor write." You have
therefore, no reason to fear that these belles will be sent to
disseminate corruption in your happy island.
LETTER XXXIII.
PARIS, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--The Italian subjects of Napoleon the First were far from
displaying the same zeal and the same gratitude for his paternal care and
kindness in taking upon himself the trouble of governing them, as we good
Parisians have done. Notwithstanding that a brigade of our police agents
and spies, drilled for years to applaud and to excite enthusiasm,
proceeded as his advanced guard to raise the public spirit, the reception
at Milan was cold and everything else but cordial and pleasing. The
absence of duty did not escape his observation and resentment. Convinced,
in his own mind, of the great blessing, prosperity, and liberty his
victories and sovereignty have conferred on the inhabitants of the other
side of the Alps, he ascribed their present passive or mutinous behaviour
to the effect of foreign emissaries from Courts envious of his glory and
jealous of his authority.
He suspected particularly England and Russia of having selected this
occasion of a solemnity that would complete his grandeur to humble his
just pride. He also had some idea within himself that even Austria might
indirectly have dared to influence the sentiments and conduct of her
ci-devant subjects of Lombardy; but his own high opinion of the awe which
his very name inspired at Vienna dispersed these thoughts, and his wrath
fell entirely on the audacity of Pitt and Markof. Strict orders were
therefore issued to the prefects and commissaries of police to watch
vigilantly all foreigners and strangers, who might have arrived, or who
should arrive, to witness the ceremony of the coronation, and to arrest
instantly any one who should give the least reason to suppose that he was
an enemy instead of an admirer of His Imperial and Royal Majesty. He
also commanded the prefects of his palace not to permit any persons to
approach his sacred person, of whose morality and politics they had not
previously obtained a good account.
These great measures of security were not entirely unnecessary.
Individual vengeance and individual patriotism sharpened their daggers,
and, to use Senator Roederer's language, "were near transforming the most
glorious day of rejoicing into a day of universal mourning."
All our writers on the Revolution agree that in France, within the first
twelve years after we had reconquered our lost liberty, more conspiracies
have been denounced than during the six centuries of the most brilliant
epoch of ancient and free Rome. These facts and avowals are speaking
evidences of the eternal tranquillity of our unfortunate country, of our
affection to our rulers, and of the unanimity with which all the changes
of Government have been, notwithstanding our printed votes, received and
approved.
The frequency of conspiracies not only shows the discontent of the
governed, but the insecurity and instability of the governors. This
truth has not escaped Napoleon, who has, therefore, ordered an
expeditious and secret justice to despatch instantly the conspirators,
and to bury the conspiracy in oblivion, except when any grand coup d'etat
is to be struck; or, to excite the passions of hatred, any proofs can be
found, or must be fabricated, involving an inimical or rival foreign
Government in an odious plot. Since the farce which Mehee de la Touche
exhibited, you have, therefore, not read in the Moniteur either of the
danger our Emperor has incurred several times since from the machinations
of implacable or fanatical foes, or of the alarm these have caused his
partisans. They have, indeed, been hinted at in some speeches of our
public functionaries, and in some paragraphs of our public prints, but
their particulars will remain concealed from historians, unless some one
of those composing our Court, our fashionable, or our political circles,
has taken the trouble of noting them down; but even to these they are but
imperfectly or incorrectly known.
Could the veracity of a Fouche, a Real, a Talleyrand, or a Duroc (the
only members of this new secret and invisible tribunal for expediting
conspirators) be depended upon, they would be the most authentic
annalists of these and other interesting secret occurrences.
What I intend relating to you on this subject are circumstances such as
they have been reported in our best informed societies by our most
inquisitive companions. Truth is certainly the foundation of these
anecdotes; but their parts may be extenuated, diminished, altered, or
exaggerated. Defective or incomplete as they are, I hope you will not
judge them unworthy of a page in a letter, considering the grand
personage they concern, and the mystery with which he and his Government
encompass themselves, or in which they wrap up everything not agreeable
concerning them.
A woman is said to have been at the head of the first plot against
Napoleon since his proclamation as an Emperor of the French. She called
herself Charlotte Encore; but her real name is not known. In 1803 she
lived and had furnished a house at Abbeville, where she passed for a
young widow of property, subsisting on her rents. About the same time
several other strangers settled there; but though she visited the
principal inhabitants, she never publicly had any connection with the
newcomers.
In the summer of 1803, a girl at Amiens--some say a real enthusiast of
Bonaparte's, but, according to others, engaged by Madame Bonaparte to
perform the part she did demanded, upon her knees, in a kind of paroxysm
of joy, the happiness of embracing him, in doing which she fainted, or
pretended to faint away, and a pension of three thousand livres--was
settled on her for her affection.
Madame Encore, at Abbeville, to judge of her discourse and conversation,
was also an ardent friend and well-wisher of the Emperor; and when, in
July, 1804, he passed through Abbeville, on his journey to the coast,
she, also, threw herself at his feet, and declared that she would die
content if allowed the honour of embracing him. To this he was going to
assent, when Duroc stepped between them, seized her by the arm, and
dragged her to an adjoining room, whither Bonaparte, near fainting from
the sudden alarm his friend's interference had occasioned, followed him,
trembling. In the right sleeve of Madame Encore's gown was found a
stiletto, the point of which was poisoned. She was the same day
transported to this capital, under the inspection of Duroc, and
imprisoned in the Temple. In her examination she denied having
accomplices, and she expired on the rack without telling even her name.
The sub-prefect at Abbeville, the once famous Andre Dumont, was ordered
to disseminate a report that she was shut up as insane in a madhouse.
In the strict search made by the police in the house occupied by her, no
papers or any, other indications were discovered that involved other
persons, or disclosed who she was, or what induced her to attempt such a
rash action. Before the secret tribunal she is reported to have said,
"that being convinced of Bonaparte's being one of the greatest criminals
that ever breathed upon the earth, she took upon herself the office of a
volunteer executioner; having, with every other good or loyal person, a
right to punish him whom the law could not, or dared not, reach." When,
however, some repairs were made in the house at Abbeville by a new
tenant, a bundle of papers was found, which proved that a M.
Franquonville, and about thirty, other individuals (many, of whom were
the late newcomers there), had for six months been watching an
opportunity to seize Bonaparte in his journeys between Abbeville and
Montreuil, and to carry him to some part of the coast, where a vessel was
ready to sail for England with him. Had he, however, made resistance, he
would have been shot in France, and his assassins have saved themselves
in the vessel.
The numerous escort that always, since he was an Emperor, accompanied
him, and particularly his concealment of the days of his journeys,
prevented the execution of this plot; and Madame Encore, therefore, took
upon her to sacrifice herself for what she thought the welfare of her
country. How Duroc suspected or discovered her intent is not known; some
say that an anonymous letter informed him of it, while others assert
that, in throwing herself at Bonaparte's feet, this prefect observed the
steel through the sleeve of her muslin gown. Most of her associates were
secretly executed; some, however, were carried to Boulogne and shot at
the head of the army of England as English spies.
LETTER XXXIV.
PARIS, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--After the discovery of Charlotte Encore's attempt, Bonaparte,
who hitherto had flattered himself that he possessed the good wishes, if
not the affection, of his female subjects, made a regulation according to
which no women who had not previously given in their names to the
prefects of his palaces, and obtained previous permission, can approach
his person or throw themselves at his feet, without incurring his
displeasure, and even arrest. Of this Imperial decree, ladies, both of
the capital and of the provinces, when he travels, are officially
informed. Notwithstanding this precaution, he was a second time last
spring, at Lyons, near falling the victim of the vengeance or malice of a
woman.
In his journey to be crowned King of Italy, he occupied his uncle's
episcopal palace at Lyons during the forty-eight hours he remained there.
Most of the persons of both sexes composing the household of Cardinal
Fesch were from his own country, Corsica; among these was one of the name
of Pauline Riotti, who inspected the economy of the kitchens. It is
Bonaparte's custom to take a dish of chocolate in the forenoon, which
she, on the morning of his departure, against her custom, but under
pretence of knowing the taste of the family, desired to prepare. One of
the cooks observed that she mixed it with something from her pocket, but,
without saying a word to her that indicated suspicion, he warned
Bonaparte, in a note, delivered to a page, to be upon his guard. When
the chamberlain carried in the chocolate, Napoleon ordered the person who
had prepared it to be brought before him. This being told Pauline, she
fainted away, after having first drunk the remaining contents of the
chocolate pot. Her convulsions soon indicated that she was poisoned,
and, notwithstanding the endeavours of Bonaparte's physician, Corvisart,
she expired within an hour; protesting that her crime was an act of
revenge against Napoleon, who had seduced her, when young, under a
promise of marriage; but who, since his elevation, had not only neglected
her, but reduced her to despair by refusing an honest support for herself
and her child, sufficient to preserve her from the degradation of
servitude. Cardinal Fesch received a severe reprimand for admitting
among his domestics individuals with whose former lives he was not better
acquainted, and the same day he dismissed every Corsican in his service.
The cook was, with the reward of a pension, made a member of the Legion
of Honour, and it was given out by Corvisart that Pauline died insane.
Within three weeks after this occurrence, Bonaparte was, at Milan, again
exposed to an imminent danger. According to his commands, the vigilance
of the police had been very strict, and even severe. All strangers who
could not give the most satisfactory account of themselves, had either
been sent out of the country, or were imprisoned. He never went out
unless strongly attended, and during his audiences the most trusty
officers always surrounded him; these precautions increased in proportion
as the day of his coronation approached. On the morning of that day,
about nine o'clock, when full dressed in his Imperial and royal robes,
and all the grand officers of State by his side, a paper was delivered to
him by his chamberlain, Talleyrand, a nephew of the Minister. The
instant he had read it, he flew into the arms of Berthier, exclaiming:
"My friend, I am betrayed; are you among the number of conspirators?
Jourdan, Lasnes, Mortier, Bessieres, St. Cyr, are you also forsaking your
friend and benefactor?" They all instantly encompassed him, begging that
he would calm himself; that they all were what they always had been,
dutiful and faithful subjects. "But read this paper from my prefect,
Salmatoris; he says that if I move a step I may cease to live, as the
assassins are near me, as well as before me."
The commander of his guard then entered with fifty grenadiers, their
bayonets fixed, carrying with them a prisoner, who pointed out four
individuals not far from Bonaparte's person, two of whom were Italian
officers of the Royal Italian Guard, and two were dressed in Swiss
uniforms. They were all immediately seized, and at their feet were found
three daggers. One of those in Swiss regimentals exclaimed, before he
was taken: "Tremble, tyrant of my country! Thousands of the descendants
of William Tell have, with me, sworn your destruction. You, escape this
day, but the just vengeance of outraged humanity follows you like your
shade. Depend upon it an untimely end is irremediably reserved you." So
saying, he pierced his heart and fell a corpse into the arms of the
grenadiers who came to arrest him.
This incident suspended the procession to the cathedral for an hour, when
Berthier announced that the conspirators were punished. Bonaparte
evinced on this occasion the same absence of mind and of courage as on
the 9th of November, 1799, when Arena and other deputies drew their
daggers against him at St. Cloud. As this scene did not redound much to
the honour of the Emperor and King, all mention of the conspiracy was
severely prohibited, and the deputations ready to congratulate him on his
escape were dispersed to attend their other duties.
The conspirators are stated to have been four young men, who had lost
their parents and fortunes by the Revolutions effected by Bonaparte in
Italy and Switzerland, and who had sworn fidelity to each other, and to
avenge their individual wrongs with the injuries of their countries at
the same time. They were all prepared and resigned to die, expecting to
be cut to pieces the moment Bonaparte fell by their hands; but one of the
Italians, rather superstitious, had, before he went to the drawing-room,
confessed and received absolution from a priest, whom he knew to be an
enemy of Bonaparte; but the priest, in hope of reward, disclosed the
conspiracy to the master of ceremonies, Salmatoris. The three surviving
conspirators are said to have been literally torn to pieces by the
engines of torture, and the priest was shot for having given absolution
to an assassin, and for having concealed his knowledge of the plot an
hour after he was acquainted with it. Even Salmatoris had some
difficulty to avoid being disgraced for having written a terrifying note,
which had exposed the Emperor's weakness, and shown that his life was
dearer to him at the head of Empires than when only at the head of
armies.
My narrative of this event I have from an officer present, whose veracity
I can guarantee. He also informed me that, in consequence of it, all the
officers of the Swiss brigades in the French service that were quartered
or encamped in Italy were, to the number of near fifty, dismissed at
once. Of the Italian guards, every officer who was known to have
suffered any losses by the new order of things in his country, was
ordered to resign, if he would not enter into the regiments of the line.
Whatever the police agents did to prevent it, and in spite of some unjust
and cruel chastisement, Bonaparte continued, during his stay in Italy, an
object of ridicule in conversation, as well as in pamphlets and
caricatures. One of these represented him in the ragged garb of a
sans-culotte, pale and trembling on his knees, with bewildered looks and
his hair standing upright on his head like pointed horns, tearing the map
of the world to pieces, and, to save his life, offering each of his
generals a slice, who in return regarded him with looks of contempt mixed
with pity.
I have just heard of a new plot, or rather a league against Bonaparte's
ambition. At its head the Generals Jourdan, Macdonald, Le Courbe, and
Dessolles are placed, though many less victorious generals and officers,
civil as well as military, are reported to be its members. Their object
is not to remove or displace Bonaparte as an Emperor of the French; on
the contrary, they offer their lives to strengthen his authority and to
resist his enemies; but they ask and advise him to renounce, for himself,
for his relations, and for France, all possessions on the Italian side of
the Alps, as the only means to establish a permanent peace, and to avoid
a war with other States, whose safety is endangered by our great
encroachments. A mutinous kind of address to this effect has been sent
to the camp of Boulogne and to all other encampments of our troops, that
those generals and other military persons there, who chose, might both
see the object and the intent of the associates. It is reported that
Bonaparte ordered it to be burnt by the hands of the common executioner
at Boulogne; that sixteen officers there who had subscribed their names
in appropriation of the address were broken, and dismissed with disgrace;
that Jourdan is deprived of his command in Italy, and ordered to render
an account of his conduct to the Emperor. Dessolles is also said to be
dismissed, and with Macdonald, Le Courbe, and eighty-four others of His
Majesty's subjects, whose names appeared under the remonstrance (or
petition, as some call it), exiled to different departments of this
country, where they are to expect their Sovereign's further
determination, and, in the meantime, remain under the inspection and
responsibility of his constituted authorities and commissaries of police.
As it is as dangerous to inquire as to converse on this and other
subjects, which the mysterious policy of our Government condemns to
silence or oblivion, I have not yet been able to gather any more or
better information concerning this league, or unconstitutional opposition
to the executive power; but as I am intimate with one of the actors,
should he have an opportunity, he will certainly write to me at full
length, and be very explicit.
LETTER XXXV.
PARIS, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--I believe I have before remarked that, under the Government of
Bonaparte, causes relatively the most insignificant have frequently
produced effects of the greatest consequence. A capricious or whimsical
character, swaying with unlimited power, is certainly the most dangerous
guardian of the prerogatives of sovereignty, as well as of the rights and
liberties of the people. That Bonaparte is as vain and fickle as a
coquette, as obstinate as a mule, and equally audacious and unrelenting,
every one who has witnessed his actions or meditated on his transactions
must be convinced. The least opposition irritates his pride, and he
determines and commands, in a moment of impatience or vivacity, what may
cause the misery of millions for ages, and, perhaps, his own repentance
for years.
When Bonaparte was officially informed by his Ambassador at Vienna, the
young La Rochefoucauld, that the Emperor of Germany had declined being
one of his grand officers of the Legion of Honour, he flew into a rage,
and used against this Prince the most gross, vulgar, and unbecoming
language. I have heard it said that he went so far as to say, "Well,
Francis II. is tired of reigning. I hope to have strength enough to
carry a third crown. He who dares refuse to be and continue my equal,
shall soon, as a vassal, think himself honoured with the regard which, as
a master, I may condescend, from compassion, to bestow on him." Though
forty-eight hours had elapsed after this furious sally before he met with
the Austrian Ambassador, Count Von Cobenzl, his passion was still so
furious, that, observing his grossness and violence, all the members of
the diplomatic corps trembled, both for this their respected member, and
for the honour of our nation thus represented.
When the diplomatic audience was over, he said to Talleyrand, in a
commanding and harsh tone of voice, in the presence of all his
aides-de-camp and generals:
"Write this afternoon, by an extraordinary courier, to my Minister at
Genoa, Salicetti, to prepare the Doge and the people for the immediate
incorporation of the Ligurian Republic with my Empire. Should Austria
dare to murmur, I shall, within three months, also incorporate the
ci-devant Republic of Venice with my Kingdom of Italy!"
"But--but--Sire!" uttered the Minister, trembling.
"There exists no 'but,' and I will listen to no 'but,'" interrupted His
Majesty. "Obey my orders without further discussions. Should Austria
dare to arm, I shall, before next Christmas, make Vienna the headquarters
of a fiftieth military division. In an hour I expect you with the
despatches ready for Salicetti."
This Salicetti is a Corsican of a respectable family, born at Bastia, in
1758, and it was he who, during the siege of Toulon in 1793, introduced
his countryman, Napoleon Bonaparte, his present Sovereign, to the
acquaintance of Barras, an occurrence which has since produced
consequences so terribly notorious.
Before the Revolution an advocate of the superior council of Corsica, he
was elected a member to the First National Assembly, where, on the 30th
of November, 1789, he pressed the decree which declared the Island of
Corsica an integral part of the French monarchy. In 1792, he was sent by
his fellow citizens as a deputy to the National Convention, where he
joined the terrorist faction, and voted for the death of his King. In
May, 1793, he was in Corsica, and violently opposed the partisans of
General Paoli. Obliged to make his escape in August from that island, to
save himself, he joined the army of General Carteaux, then marching
against the Marseilles insurgents, whence he was sent by the National
Convention with Barras, Gasparin, Robespierre the younger, and Ricrod, as
a representative of the people, to the army before Toulon, where, as well
as at Marseilles, he shared in all the atrocities committed by his
colleagues and by Bonaparte; for which, after the death of the
Robespierres, he was arrested with him as a terrorist.
He had not known Bonaparte much in Corsica, but, finding him and his
family in great distress, with all other Corsican refugees, and observing
his adroitness as a captain of artillery, he recommended him to Barras,
and upon their representation to the Committee of Public Safety, he was
promoted to a chef de brigade, or colonel. In 1796, when Barras gave
Bonaparte the command of the army of Italy, Salicetti was appointed a
Commissary of Government to the same army, and in that capacity behaved
with the greatest insolence towards all the Princes of Italy, and most so
towards the Duke of Modena, with whom he and Bonaparte signed a treaty of
neutrality, for which they received a large sum in ready money; but
shortly afterwards the duchy was again invaded, and an attempt made to
surprise and seize the Duke. In 1797 he was chosen a member of the
Council of Five Hundred, where he always continued a supporter of violent
measures.
When, in 1799, his former protege, Bonaparte, was proclaimed a First
Consul, Salicetti desired to be placed in the Conservative Senate; but
his familiarity displeased Napoleon, who made him first a commercial
agent, and afterwards a Minister to the Ligurian Republic, so as to keep
him at a distance. During his several missions, he has amassed a
fortune, calculated, at the lowest, of six millions of livres.
The order Salicetti received to prepare the incorporation of Genoa with
France, would not, without the presence of our troops, have been very
easy to execute, particularly as he, six months before, had prevailed on
the Doge and the Senate to resign all sovereignty to Lucien Bonaparte,
under the title of a Grand Duke of Genoa.
The cause of Napoleon's change of opinion with regard to his brother
Lucien, was that the latter would not separate from a wife he loved, but
preferred domestic happiness to external splendour frequently accompanied
with internal misery. So that this act of incorporation of the Ligurian
Republic, in fact, originated, notwithstanding the great and deep
calculations of our profound politicians and political schemers, in
nothing else but in the keeping of a wife, and in the refusal of a
riband.
That corruption, seduction, and menaces seconded the intrigues and
bayonets which convinced the Ligurian Government of the honour and
advantage of becoming subjects of Bonaparte, I have not the least doubt;
but that the Doge, Girolamo Durazzo, and the senators Morchio, Maglione,
Travega, Maghella, Roggieri, Taddei, Balby, and Langlade sold the
independence of their country for ten millions of livres--though it has
been positively asserted, I can hardly believe; and, indeed, money was as
little necessary as resistance would have been unavailing, all the forts
and strong positions being in the occupation of our troops. A general
officer present when the Doge of Genoa, at the head of the Ligurian
deputation, offered Bonaparte their homage at Milan, and exchanged
liberty for bondage, assured me that this ci-devant chief magistrate
spoke with a faltering voice and with tears in his eyes, and that
indignation was read on the countenance of every member of the deputation
thus forced to prostitute their rights as citizens, and to vilify their
sentiments as patriots.
When Salicetti, with his secretary, Milhaud, had arranged this honourable
affair, they set out from Genoa to announce to Bonaparte, at Milan, their
success. Not above a league from the former city their carriage was
stopped, their persons stripped, and their papers and effects seized by a
gang, called in the country the gang of PATRIOTIC ROBBERS, commanded by
Mulieno. This chief is a descendant of a good Genoese family, proscribed
by France, and the men under him are all above the common class of
people. They never commit any murders, nor do they rob any but
Frenchmen, or Italians known to be adherents of the French party. Their
spoils they distribute among those of their countrymen who, like
themselves, have suffered from the revolutions in Italy within these last
nine years. They usually send the amount destined to relieve these
persons to the curates of the several parishes, signifying in what manner
it is to be employed. Their conduct has procured them many friends among
the low and the poor, and, though frequently pursued by our gendarmes,
they have hitherto always escaped. The papers captured by them on this
occasion from Salicetti are said to be of a most curious nature, and
throw great light on Bonaparte's future views of Italy. The original act
of consent of the Ligurian Government to the incorporation with France
was also in this number. It is reported that they were deposited with
the Austrian Minister at Genoa, who found means to forward them to his
Court; and it is supposed that their contents did not a little to hasten
the present movements of the Emperor of Germany.
Another gang, known under the appellation of the PATRIOTIC AVENGERS, also
desolates the Ligurian Republic. They never rob, but always murder those
whom they consider as enemies of their country. Many of our officers,
and even our sentries on duty, have been wounded or killed by them; and,
after dark, therefore, no Frenchman dares walk out unattended. Their
chief is supposed to be a ci-devant Abbe, Sagati, considered a political
as well as a religious fanatic. In consequence of the deeds of these
patriotic avengers, Bonaparte's first act, as a Sovereign of Liguria, was
the establishment of special military commissions, and a law prohibiting,
under pain of death, every person from carrying arms who could not show a
written permission of our commissary of police. Robbers and assassins
are, unfortunately, common to all nations, and all people of all ages;
but those of the above description are only the production and progeny of
revolutionary and troublesome times. They pride themselves, instead of
violating the laws, on supplying their inefficacy and counteracting their
partiality.
LETTER XXXVI.
PARIS, September, 1805.
MY LORD:--Bonaparte is now the knight of more Royal Orders than any other
Sovereign in Europe, and were he to put them on all at once, their
ribands would form stuff enough for a light summer coat of as many
different colours as the rainbow. The Kings of Spain, of Naples, of
Prussia, of Portugal, and of Etruria have admitted him a
knight-companion, as well as the Electors of Bavaria, Hesse, and Baden,
and the Pope of Rome. In return he has appointed these Princes his grand
officers of HIS Legion of Honour, the highest rank of his newly
instituted Imperial Order. It is even said that some of these Sovereigns
have been honoured by him with the grand star and broad riband of the
Order of His Iron Crown of the Kingdom of Italy.
Before Napoleon's departure for Milan last spring, Talleyrand intimated
to the members of the foreign diplomatic corps here, that their presence
would be agreeable to the Emperor of the French at his coronation at
Milan as a King of Italy. In the preceding summer a similar hint, or
order, had been given by him for a diplomatic trip to Aix-la-Chapelle,
and all Their Excellencies set a-packing instantly; but some legitimate
Sovereigns, having since discovered that it was indecent for their
representatives to be crowding the suite of an insolently and proudly
travelling usurper, under different pretences declined the honour of an
invitation and journey to Italy. It would, besides, have been pleasant
enough to have witnessed the Ambassadors of Austria and Prussia, whose
Sovereigns had not acknowledged Bonaparte's right to his assumed title of
King of Italy, indirectly approving it by figuring at the solemnity which
inaugurated him as such. Of this inconsistency and impropriety
Talleyrand was well aware; but audacity on one side, and endurance and
submission on the other, had so often disregarded these considerations
before, that he saw no indelicacy or impertinence in the proposal. His
master had, however, the gratification to see at his levee, and in his
wife's drawing-room, the Ambassadors of Spain, Naples, Portugal, and
Bavaria, who laid at the Imperial and royal feet the Order decorations of
their own Princes, to the nor little entertainment of His Imperial and
Royal Majesty, and to the great edification of his dutiful subjects on
the other side of the Alps.
The expenses of Bonaparte's journey to Milan, and his coronation there
(including also those of his attendants from France), amounted to no less
a sum than fifteen millions of livres--of which one hundred and fifty
thousand livres--was laid out in fireworks, double that sum in
decorations of the Royal Palace and the cathedral, and three millions of
livres--in presents to different generals, grand officers, deputations,
etc. The poor also shared his bounty; medals to the value of fifty
thousand livres--were thrown out among them on the day of the ceremony,
besides an equal sum given by Madame Napoleon to the hospitals and
orphan-houses. These last have a kind of hereditary or family claim on
the purse of our Sovereign; their parents were the victims of the
Emperor's first step towards glory and grandeur.
Another three millions of livres was expended for the march of troops
from France to form pleasure camps in Italy, and four millions more was
requisite for the forming and support of these encampments during two
months, and the Emperor distributed among the officers and men composing
them two million livres' worth of rings, watches, snuff-boxes, portraits
set with diamonds, stars, and other trinkets, as evidences of His
Majesty's satisfaction with their behaviour, presence, and performances.
These troops were under the command of Bonaparte's Field-marshal,
Jourdan, a general often mentioned in the military annals of our
revolutionary war. During the latter part of the American war, he served
under General Rochambeau as a common soldier, and obtained in 1783, after
the peace, his discharge. He then turned a pedlar, in which situation
the Revolution found him. He had also married, for her fortune, a lame
daughter of a tailor, who brought him a fortune of two thousand
livres--from whom he has since been divorced, leaving her to shift for
herself as she can, in a small milliner's shop at Limoges, where her
husband was born in 1763.
Jourdan was among the first members and pillars of the Jacobin Club
organized in his native town, which procured him rapid promotion in the
National Guards, of whom, in 1792, he was already a colonel. His known
love of liberty and equality induced the Committee of Public Safety, in
1793, to appoint him to the chief command of the armies of Ardennes and
of the North, instead of Lamarche and Houchard. On the 17th of October
the same year, he gained the victory of Wattignies, which obliged the
united forces of Austria, Prussia, and Germany to raise the siege of
Maubeuge. The jealous Republican Government, in reward, deposed him and
appointed Pichegru his successor, which was the origin of that enmity and
malignity with which Jourdan pursued this unfortunate general, even to
his grave. He never forgave Pichegru the acceptance of a command which
he could not decline without risking his life; and when he should have
avenged his disgrace on the real causes of it, he chose to resent it on
him who, like himself, was merely an instrument, or a slave, in the hands
and under the whip of a tyrannical power.
After the imprisonment of General Hoche, in March, 1794, Jourdan
succeeded him as chief of the army of the Moselle. In June he joined,
with thirty thousand men, the right wing of the army of the North,
forming a new one, under the name of the army of the Sambre and Meuse. On
the 16th of the same month he gained a complete victory over the Prince
of Coburg, who tried to raise the siege of Charleroy. This battle, which
was fought near Trasegnies, is, nevertheless, commonly called the battle
of Fleurus. After Charleroy had surrendered on the 25th, Jourdan and his
army were ordered to act under the direction of General Pichegru, who had
drawn the plan of that brilliant campaign. Always envious of this
general, Jourdan did everything to retard his progress, and at last
intrigued so well that the army of the Sambre and the Meuse was separated
from that of the North.
With the former of these armies Jourdan pursued the retreating
confederates, and, after driving them from different stands and
positions, he repulsed them to the banks of the Rhine, which river they
were obliged to pass. Here ended his successes this year, successes that
were not obtained without great loss on our side.
Jourdan began the campaigns of 1795 and 1796 with equal brilliancy, and
ended them with equal disgrace. After penetrating into Germany with
troops as numerous as well-disciplined, he was defeated at the end of
them by Archduke Charles, and retreated always with such precipitation,
and in such confusion, that it looked more like the flight of a
disorderly rabble than the retreat of regular troops; and had not Moreau,
in 1796, kept the enemy in awe, few of Jourdan's officers or men would
again have seen France; for the inhabitants of Franconia rose on these
marauders, and cut them to pieces, wherever they could surprise or waylay
them.
In 1797, as a member of the Council of Five Hundred, he headed the
Jacobin faction against the moderate party, of which Pichegru was a
chief; and he had the cowardly vengeance of base rivalry to pride himself
upon having procured the transportation of that patriotic general to
Cayenne. In 1799, he again assumed the command of the army of Alsace and
of Switzerland; but he crossed the Rhine and penetrated into Suabia only
to be again routed by the Archduke Charles, and to repass this river in
disorder. Under the necessity of resigning as a general-in-chief, he
returned to the Council of Five Hundred, more violent than ever, and
provoked there the most oppressive measures against his fellow citizens.
Previous to the revolution effected by Bonaparte in November of that
year, he had entered with Garreau and Santerre into a conspiracy, the
object of which was to restore the Reign of Terror, and to prevent which
Bonaparte said he made those changes which placed him at the head of
Government. The words were even printed in the papers of that period,
which Bonaparte on the 10th of November addressed to the then deputy of
Mayenne, Prevost: "If the plot entered into by Jourdan and others, and of
which they have not blushed to propose to me the execution, had not been
defeated, they would have surrounded the place of your sitting, and to
crush all future opposition, ordered a number of deputies to be
massacred. That done, they were to establish the sanguinary despotism of
the Reign of Terror." But whether such was Jourdan's project, or whether
it was merely given out to be such by the consular faction, to extenuate
their own usurpation, he certainly had connected himself with the most
guilty and contemptible of the former terrorists, and drew upon himself
by such conduct the hatred and blame even of those whose opinion had long
been suspended on his account.
General Jourdan was among those terrorists whom the Consular Government
condemned to transportation; but after several interviews with Bonaparte
he was not only pardoned, but made a Counsellor of State of the military
section; and afterwards, in 1801, an administrator-general of Piedmont,
where he was replaced by General Menou in 1803, being himself entrusted
with the command in Italy. This place he has preserved until last month,
when he was ordered to resign it to Massena, with whom he had a quarrel,
and would have fought him in a duel, had not the Viceroy, Eugene de
Beauharnais, put him under arrest and ordered him back hither, where he
is daily expected. If Massena's report to Bonaparte be true, the army of
Italy was very far from being as orderly and numerous as Jourdan's
assertions would have induced us to believe. But this accusation of a
rival must be listened to with caution; because, should Massena meet with
repulse, he will no doubt make use of it as an apology; and should he be
victorious, hold it out as a claim for more honour and praise.
The same doubts which still continue of Jourdan's political opinions
remain also with regard to his military capacity. But the unanimous
declaration of those who have served under his orders as a general must
silence both his blind admirers and unjust slanderers. They all allow
him some military ability; he combines and prepares in the Cabinet a plan
of defence and attack, with method and intelligence, but he does not
possess the quick coup d'oeil, and that promptitude which perceives, and
rectifies accordingly, an error on the field of battle. If, on the day
of action, some accident, or some manoeuvre, occurs, which has not been
foreseen by him, his dull and heavy genius does not enable him to alter
instantly his dispositions, or to remedy errors, misfortunes, or
improvidences. This kind of talent, and this kind of absence of talent,
explain equally the causes of his advantages, as well as the origin of
his frequent disasters. Nobody denies him courage, but, with most of our
other republican generals, he has never been careful of the lives of the
troops under him. I have heard an officer of superior talents and rank
assert, in the presence of Carnot, that the number of wounded and killed
under Jourdan, when victorious, frequently surpassed the number of
enemies he had defeated. I fear it is too true that we are as much, if
not more, indebted for our successes to the superior number as to the
superior valour of our troops.
Jourdan is, with regard to fortune, one of our poorest republican
generals who have headed armies. He has not, during all his campaigns,
collected more than a capital of eight millions of livres--a mere trifle
compared to the fifty millions of Massena, the sixty millions of Le
Clerc, the forty millions of Murat, and the thirty-six millions of
Augereau; not to mention the hundred millions of Bonaparte. It is also
true that Jourdan is a gambler and a debauchee, fond of cards, dice, and
women; and that in Italy, except two hours in twenty-four allotted to
business, he passed the remainder of his time either at the
gaming-tables, or in the boudoirs of his seraglio--I say seraglio,
because he kept, in the extensive house joining his palace as governor
and commander, ten women-three French, three Italians, two Germans, two
Irish or English girls. He supported them all in style; but they were
his slaves, and he was their sultan, whose official mutes (his
aides-de-camp) both watched them, and, if necessary, chastised them.
LETTER XXXVII.
PARIS, September, 1805.
MY LORD:--I can truly defy the world to produce a corps of such a
heterogeneous composition as our Conservative Senate, when I except the
members composing Bonaparte's Legion of Honour. Some of our Senators
have been tailors, apothecaries, merchants, chemists, quacks, physicians,
barbers, bankers, soldiers, drummers, dukes, shopkeepers, mountebanks,
Abbes, generals, savans, friars, Ambassadors, counsellors, or presidents
of Parliament, admirals, barristers, Bishops, sailors, attorneys,
authors, Barons, spies, painters, professors, Ministers, sans-culottes,
atheists, stonemasons, robbers, mathematicians, philosophers, regicides,
and a long et cetera. Any person reading through the official list of
the members of the Senate, and who is acquainted with their former
situations in life, may be convinced of this truth. Should he even be
ignorant of them, let him but inquire, with the list in his hand, in any
of our fashionable or political circles; he will meet with but few
persons who are not able or willing to remove his doubts, or to gratify
his curiosity. There are not many of them whom it is possible to
elevate, but those are still more numerous whom it is impossible to
degrade. Their past lives, vices, errors, or crimes, have settled their
characters and reputation; and they must live and die in 'statu quo',
either as fools or as knaves, and perhaps as both.
I do not mean to say that they are all criminals or all equally criminal,
if insurrection against lawful authority and obedience to usurped tyranny
are not to be considered as crimes; but there are few indeed who can lay
their hands on their bosoms and say, 'vitam expendere vero'. Some of
them, as a Lagrange, Berthollet, Chaptal, Laplace, Francois de
Neuf-Chateau, Tronchet, Monge, Lacepede, and Bougainville, are certainly
men of talents; but others, as a Porcher, Resnier, Vimar, Auber, Perk,
Sera, Vernier, Vien, Villetard, Tascher, Rigal, Baciocchi, Beviere,
Beauharnais, De Luynea (a ci-devant duke, known under the name of Le Gros
Cochon), nature never destined but to figure among those half-idiots and
half-imbeciles who are, as it were, intermedial between the brute and
human creation.
Sieges, Cabanis, Garron Coulon, Lecouteul, Canteleu, Lenoin Laroche,
Volney, Gregoire, Emmery, Joucourt, Boissy d'Anglas, Fouche, and Roederer
form another class,--some of them regicides, others assassins and
plunderers, but all intriguers whose machinations date from the beginning
of the Revolution. They are all men of parts, of more or less knowledge,
and of great presumption. As to their morality, it is on a level with
their religion and loyalty. They betrayed their King, and had denied
their God already in 1789.
After these come some others, who again have neither talents to boast of
nor crimes of which they have to be ashamed. They have but little
pretension to genius, none to consistency, and their honesty equals their
capacity. They joined our political revolution as they might have done a
religious procession. It was at that time a fashion; and they applauded
our revolutionary innovations as they would have done the introduction of
a new opera, of a new tragedy, of a new comedy, or of a new farce. To
this fraternity appertain a ci-devant Comte de Stult-Tracy,
Dubois--Dubay, Kellerman, Lambrechts, Lemercier, Pleville--Le Pelley,
Clement de Ris, Peregeaux, Berthelemy, Vaubois, Nrignon, D'Agier, Abrial,
De Belloy, Delannoy, Aboville, and St. Martin La Motte.
Such are the characteristics of men whose 'senatus consultum' bestows an
Emperor on France, a King on Italy, makes of principalities departments
of a Republic, and transforms Republics into provinces or principalities.
To show the absurdly fickle and ridiculously absurd appellations of our
shamefully perverted institutions, this Senate was called the
Conservative Senate; that is to say, it was to preserve the republican
consular constitution in its integrity, both against the; encroachments
of the executive and legislative power, both against the manoeuvres of
the factions, the plots of the royalists or monarchists, and the clamours
of a populace of levellers. But during the five years that these honest
wiseacres have been preserving, everything has perished--the Republic,
the Consuls, free discussions, free election, the political liberty, and
the liberty of the Press; all--all are found nowhere but in old, useless,
and rejected codes. They have, however, in a truly patriotic manner
taken care of their own dear selves. Their salaries are more than
doubled since 1799.
Besides mock Senators, mock praetors, mock quaestors, other 'nomina
libertatis' are revived, so as to make the loss of the reality so much
the more galling. We have also two curious commissions; one called "the
Senatorial Commission of Personal Liberty," and the other "the Senatorial
Commission of the Liberty of the Press." The imprisonment without cause,
and transportation without trial, of thousands of persons of both sexes
weekly, show the grand advantages which arise from the former of these
commissions; and the contents of our new books and daily prints evince
the utility and liberality of the latter.
But from the past conduct of these our Senators, members of these
commissions, one may easily conclude what is to be expected in future
from their justice and patriotism. Lenoin Laroche, at the head of the
one, was formerly an advocate of some practice, but attended more to
politics than to the business of his clients, and was, therefore, at the
end of the session of the first assembly (of which he was a member),
forced, for subsistence, to become the editor of an insignificant
journal. Here he preached licentiousness, under the name of Liberty, and
the agrarian law in recommending Equality. A prudent courtier of all
systems in fashion, and of all factions in power, he escaped
proscription, though not accusation of having shared in the national
robberies. A short time in the summer of 1797, after the dismissal of
Cochon, he acted as a Minister of Police; and in 1798 the Jacobins
elected him a member of the Council of Ancients, where he, with other
deputies, sold himself to Bonaparte, and was, in return, rewarded with a
place in the Senate. Under monarchy he was a republican, and under a
Republic he extolled monarchical institutions. He wished to be singular,
and to be rich. Among so many shocking originals, however, he was not
distinguished; and among so many philosophical marauders, he had no
opportunity to pillage above two millions of livres. This friend of
liberty is now one of the most despotic Senators, and this lover of
equality never answers when spoken to, if not addressed as "His
Excellency," or "Monseigneur."
Boissy d' Anglas, another member of this commission, was before the
Revolution a steward to Louis XVIII. when Monsieur; and, in 1789, was
chosen a deputy of the first assembly, where he joined the factions, and
in his speeches and writings defended all the enormities that dishonoured
the beginning as well as the end of the Revolution. A member afterwards
of the National Convention, he was sent in mission to Lyons, where,
instead of healing the wounds of the inhabitants, he inflicted new ones.
When, on the 15th of March, 1796, in the Council of Five Hundred, he
pronounced the oath of hatred to royalty, he added, that this oath was in
his heart, otherwise no power upon earth could have forced him to take
it; and he is now a sworn subject of Napoleon the First! He pronounced
the panegyric of Robespierre, and the apotheosis of Marat. "The soul,"
said he, "was moved and elevated in hearing Robespierre speak of the
Supreme Being with philosophical ideas, embellished by eloquence;" and he
signed the removal of the ashes of Marat to the temple consecrated to
humanity! In September, 1797, he was, as a royalist, condemned to
transportation by the Directory; but in 1799 Bonaparte recalled him, made
him first a tribune and afterwards a Senator.
Boissy d' Anglas, though an apologist of robbers and assassins, has
neither murdered nor plundered; but, though he has not enriched himself,
he has assisted in ruining all his former protectors, benefactors, and
friends.
Sers, a third member of this commission, was, before the Revolution, a
bankrupt merchant at Bordeaux, but in 1791 was a municipal officer of the
same city, and sent as a deputy to the National Assembly, where he
attempted to rise from the clouds that encompassed his heavy genius by a
motion for pulling down all the statues of Kings all over France. He
seconded another motion of Bonaparte's prefect, Jean Debrie, to decree a
corps of tyrannicides, destined to murder all Emperors, Kings, and
Princes. At the club of the Jacobins, at Bordeaux, he prided himself on
having caused the arrest and death of three hundred aristocrats; and
boasted that he never went out without a dagger to despatch, by a summary
justice, those who had escaped the laws. After meeting with well-merited
contempt, and living for some time in the greatest obscurity, by a
handsome present to Madame Bonaparte, in 1799, he obtained the favour of
Napoleon, who dragged him forward to be placed among other ornaments of
his Senate. Sers has just cunning enough to be taken for a man of sense
when with fools; when with men of sense, he reassumes the place allotted
him by Nature. Without education, as well as without parts, he for a
long time confounded brutal scurrility with oratory, and thought himself
eloquent when he was only insolent or impertinent. His ideas of liberty
are such that, when he was a municipal officer, he signed a mandate of
arrest against sixty-four individuals of both sexes, who were at a ball,
because they had refused to invite to it one of his nieces.
Abrial, Emmery, Vernier, and Lemercier are the other four members of that
commission; of these, two are old intriguers, two are nullities, and all
four are slaves.
Of the seven members of the senatorial commission for preserving the
liberty of the Press, Garat and Roederer are the principal. The former
is a pedant, while pretending to be a philosopher; and he signed the
sentence of his good King's death, while declaring himself a royalist. A
mere valet to Robespierre, his fawning procured him opportunities to
enrich himself with the spoil of those whom his calumnies and plots
caused to be massacred or guillotined. When, as a Minister of Justice,
he informed Louis XVI. of his condemnation, he did it with such an
affected and atrocious indifference that he even shocked his accomplices,
whose nature had not much of tenderness. As a member of the first
assembly, as a Minister under the convention, and as a deputy of the
Council of Five Hundred, he always opposed the liberty of the Press. "The
laws, you say" (exclaimed he, in the Council), "punish libellers; so they
do thieves and housebreakers; but would you, therefore, leave your doors
unbolted? Is not the character, the honour, and the tranquillity of a
citizen preferable to his treasures? and, by the liberty of the Press,
you leave them at the mercy of every scribbler who can write or think.
The wound inflicted may heal, but the scar will always remain. Were you,
therefore, determined to decree the motion for this dangerous and
impolitic liberty, I make this amendment, that conviction of having
written a libel carries with it capital punishment, and that a label be
fastened on the breast of the libeller, when carried to execution, with
this inscription: 'A social murderer,' or 'A murderer of characters!'"
Roederer has belonged to all religious or antireligious sects, and to all
political or anti-social factions, these last twenty years; but, after
approving, applauding, and serving them, he has deserted them, sold them,
or betrayed them. Before the Revolution, a Counseller of Parliament at
Metz, he was a spy of the Court on his colleagues; and, since the
Revolution, he served the Jacobins as a spy on the Court. Immoral and
unprincipled to the highest degree, his profligacy and duplicity are only
equalled by his perversity and cruelty. It was he who, on the 10th of
August, 1792, betrayed the King and the Royal Family into the hands of
their assassins, and who himself made a merit of this infamous act. After
he had been repulsed by all, even by the most sanguinary of our parties
and partisans, by a Brissot, a Marat, a Robespierre, a Tallien, and a
Barras, Bonaparte adopted him first as a Counsellor of State, and
afterwards as a Senator. His own and only daughter died in a
miscarriage, the consequence of an incestuous commerce with her unnatural
parent; and his only, son is disinherited by him for resenting his
father's baseness in debauching a young girl whom the son had engaged to
marry.
With the usual consistency of my revolutionary countrymen, he has, at one
period, asserted that the liberty of the Press was necessary for the
preservation both of men and things, for the protection of governors as
well as of the governed, and that it was the best support of a
constitutional Government. At another time he wrote that, as it was
impossible to fix the limits between the liberty and the licentiousness
of the Press, the latter destroyed the benefits of the former; that the
liberty of the Press was useful only against a Government which one
wished to overturn, but dangerous to a Government which one wished to
preserve. To show his indifference about his own character, as well as
about the opinion of the public, these opposite declarations were
inserted in one of our daily papers, and both were signed "Roederer."
In 1789, he was indebted above one million two hundred thousand
livres--and he now possesses national property purchased for seven
millions of livres--and he avows himself to be worth three millions more
in money placed in our public funds. He often says, laughingly, that he
is under great obligations to Robespierre, whose guillotine acquitted in
one day all his debts. All his creditors, after being denounced for
their aristocracy, were murdered en masse by this instrument of death.
Of all the old beaux and superannuated libertines whose company I have
had the misfortune of not being able to avoid, Roederer is the most
affected, silly, and disgusting. His wrinkled face, and effeminate and
childish air; his assiduities about every woman of beauty or fashion; his
confidence in his own merit, and his presumption in his own power, wear
such a curious contrast with his trembling hands, running eyes, and
enervated person, that I have frequently been ready to laugh at him in
his face, had not indignation silenced all other feeling. A
light-coloured wig covers a bald head; his cheeks and eyelids are
painted, and his teeth false; and I have seen a woman faint away from the
effect of his breath, notwithstanding that he infects with his musk and
perfumes a whole house only with his presence. When on the ground floor
you may smell him in the attic.
LETTER XXXVIII.
PARIS, September, 1805.
MY LORD:--The reciprocal jealousy and even interest of Austria, France,
and Russia have hitherto prevented the tottering Turkish Empire from
being partitioned, like Poland, or seized, like Italy; to serve as
indemnities, like the German empire; or to be shared, as reward to the
allies, like the Empire of Mysore.
When we consider the anarchy that prevails, both in the Government and
among the subjects, as well in the capital as in the provinces of the
Ottoman Porte; when we reflect on the mutiny and cowardice of its armies
and navy, the ignorance and incapacity of its officers and military and
naval commanders, it is surprising, indeed, as I have heard Talleyrand
often declare, that more foreign political intrigues should be carried on
at Constantinople alone than in all other capitals of Europe taken
together. These intrigues, however, instead of doing honour to the,
sagacity and patriotism of the members of the Divan, expose only their
corruption and imbecility; and, instead of indicating a dread of the
strength of the Sublime Sultan, show a knowledge of his weakness, of
which the gold of the most wealthy, and the craft of the most subtle, by
turns are striving to profit.
Beyond a doubt the enmity of the Ottoman Porte can do more mischief than
its friendship can do service. Its neutrality is always useful, while
its alliance becomes frequently a burden, and its support of no
advantage. It is, therefore, more from a view of preventing evils than
from expectation of profit, that all other Powers plot, cabal, and bribe.
The map of the Turkish Empire explains what maybe though absurd or
nugatory in this assertion.
As soon as a war with Austria was resolved on by the Brissot faction in
1792, emissaries were despatched to Constantinople to engage the Divan to
invade the provinces of Austria and Russia, thereby to create a diversion
in favour of this country. Our Ambassador in Turkey at that time, Comte
de Choiseul-Gouffier, though an admirer of the Revolution, was not a
republican, and, therefore, secretly counteracted what he officially
seemed to wish to effect. The Imperial Court succeeded, therefore, in
establishing a neutrality of the Ottoman Porte, but Comte de Choiseul was
proscribed by the Convention. As academician, he was, however, at St.
Petersburg, liberally recompensed by Catherine II. for the services the
Ambassador had performed at Constantinople.
In May, 1793, the Committee of Public Safety determined to expedite
another embassy to the Grand. Seignior, at the head of which was the
famous intriguer, De Semonville, whose revolutionary diplomacy had,
within three years, alarmed the Courts of Madrid, Naples, and Turin, as
well as the republican Government of Genoa. His career towards Turkey
was stopped in the Grisons Republic, on the 25th of July following, where
he, with sixteen other persons of his suite, was arrested, and sent a
prisoner, first to Milan, and afterwards to Mantua. He carried with him
presents of immense value, which were all seized by the Austrians. Among
them were four superb coaches, highly finished, varnished, and gilt; what
is iron or brass in common carriages was here gold or silver-gilt. Two
large chests were filled with stuff of gold brocade, India gold muslins,
and shawls and laces of very great value. Eighty thousand louis d'or in
ready money; a service of gold plate of twenty covers, which formerly
belonged to the Kings of France; two small boxes full of diamonds and
brilliants, the intrinsic worth of which was estimated at forty-eight
millions of livres--and a great number of jewels; among others, the crown
diamond, called here the Regents', and in your country the Pitt Diamond,
fell, with other riches, into the hands of the captors. Notwithstanding
this loss and this disappointment, we contrived in vain to purchase the
hostility of the Turks against our enemies, though with the sacrifice of
no less a sum (according to the report of Saint Just, in June, 1794,)
than seventy millions of livres: These official statements prove the
means which our so often extolled economical and moral republican
Governments have employed in their negotiations.
After the invasion of Egypt, in time of peace, by Bonaparte, the Sultan
became at last convinced of the sincerity of our professions of
friendship, which he returned with a declaration of war. The
preliminaries of peace with your country, in October, 1801, were,
however, soon followed with a renewal of our former friendly intercourse
with the Ottoman Porte. The voyage of Sebastiani into Egypt and Syria, in
the autumn of 1802, showed that our tenderness for the inhabitants of
these countries had not diminished, and that we soon intended to bestow
on them new hugs of fraternity. Your pretensions to Malta impeded our
prospects in the East, and your obstinacy obliged us to postpone our so
well planned schemes of encroachments. It was then that Bonaparte first
selected for his representative to the Grand Seignior, General Brune,
commonly called by Moreau, Macdonald, and other competent judges of
military merit, an intriguer at the head of armies, and a warrior in time
of peace when seated in the Council chamber.
This Brune was, before the Revolution, a journeyman printer, and married
to a washerwoman, whose industry and labour alone prevented him from
starving, for he was as vicious as idle. The money he gained when he
chose to work was generally squandered away in brothels, among
prostitutes. To supply his excesses he had even recourse to dishonest
means, and was shut up in the prison of Bicetre for robbing his master of
types and of paper.
In the beginning of the Revolution, his very crimes made him an
acceptable associate of Marat, who, with the money advanced by the
Orleans faction, bought him a printing-office, and he printed the so
dreadfully well-known journal, called 'L'Amie du Peuple'. From the
principles of this atrocious paper, and from those of his sanguinary
patron, he formed his own political creed. He distinguished himself
frequently at the clubs of the Cordeliers, and of the Jacobins, by his
extravagant motions, and by provoking laws of proscription against a
wealth he did not possess, and against a rank he would have dishonoured,
but did not see without envy. On the 30th of June, 1791, he said, in the
former of these clubs:
"We hear everywhere complaints of poverty; were not our eyes so often
disgusted with the sight of unnatural riches, our hearts would not so
often be shocked at the unnatural sufferings of humanity. The blessings
of our Revolution will never be felt by the world, until we in France are
on a level, with regard to rank as well as to fortune. I, for my part,
know too well the dignity of human nature ever to bow to a superior; but,
brothers and friends, it is not enough that we are all politically equal,
we must also be all equally rich or equally poor--we must either all
strive to become men of property, or reduce men of property to become
sans-culottes. Believe me, the aristocracy of property is more dangerous
than the aristocracy of prerogative or fanaticism, because it is more
common. Here is a list sent to 'L' Amie du People', but of which
prudence yet prohibits the publication. It contains the names of all the
men of property of Paris, and of the Department of the Seine, the amount
of their fortunes, and a proposal how to reduce and divide it among our
patriots. Of its great utility in the moment when we have been striking
our grand blows, nobody dares doubt; I, therefore, move that a brotherly
letter be sent to every society of our brothers and friends in the
provinces, inviting each of them to compose one of similar contents and
of similar tendency, in their own districts, with what remarks they think
proper to affix, and to forward them to us, to be deposited, in the
mother club, after taking copies of them for the archives of their own
society."
His motion was decreed.
Two days afterwards, he again ascended the tribune. "You approved," said
he, "of the measures I lately proposed against the aristocracy of
property; I will now tell you of another aristocracy which we must also
crush--I mean that of religion, and of the clergy. Their supports are
folly, cowardice, and ignorance. All priests are to be proscribed as
criminals, and despised as impostors or idiots; and all altars must be
reduced to dust as unnecessary. To prepare the public mind for such
events, we must enlighten it; which can only be done by disseminating
extracts from 'L' Amie du People', and other philosophical publications.
I have here some ballads of my own composition, which have been sung in
my quarter; where all superstitious persons have already trembled, and
all fanatics are raving. If you think proper, I will, for a mere trifle,
print twenty thousand copies of them, to be distributed and disseminated
gratis all over France."
After some discussion, the treasurer of the club was ordered to advance
Citizen Brune the sum required, and the secretary to transmit the ballads
to the fraternal societies in the provinces.
Brune put on his first regimentals as an aide-decamp to General Santerre
in December, 1792, after having given proofs of his military prowess the
preceding September, in the massacre of the prisoners in the Abbey. In
1793 he was appointed a colonel in the revolutionary army, which, during
the Reign of Terror, laid waste the departments of the Gironde, where he
was often seen commanding his corps, with a human head fixed on his
sword. On the day when he entered Bordeaux with his troops, a new-born
child occupied the same place, to the great horror of the inhabitants.
During this brilliant expedition he laid the first foundation of his
present fortune, having pillaged in a most unmerciful manner, and
arrested or shot every suspected person who could not, or would not,
exchange property for life. On his return to Paris, his patriotism was
recompensed with a commission of a general of brigade. On the death of
Robespierre, he was arrested as a terrorist, but, after some months'
imprisonment, again released.
In October, 1795, he assisted Napoleon Bonaparte in the massacre of the
Parisians, and obtained for it, from the director Barras, the rank of a
general of division. Though occupying, in time of war, such a high
military rank, he had hitherto never seen an enemy, or witnessed an
engagement.
After Bonaparte had planned the invasion and pillage of Switzerland,
Brune was charged to execute this unjust outrage against the law of
nations. His capacity to intrigue procured him this distinction, and he
did honour to the choice of his employers. You have no doubt read that,
after lulling the Government of Berne into security by repeated proposals
of accommodation, he attacked the Swiss and Bernese troops during a
truce, and obtained by treachery successes which his valour did not
promise him. The pillage, robberies, and devastations in Helvetia added
several more millions to his previously great riches.
It was after his campaign in Holland, during the autumn of 1799, that he
first began to claim some military glory. He owed, however, his
successes to the superior number of his troops, and to the talents of the
generals and officers serving under him. Being made a Counsellor of
State by Bonaparte, he was entrusted with the command of the army against
the Chouans. Here he again seduced by his promises, and duped by his
intrigues, acted infamously--but was successful.
LETTER XXXIX.
PARIS, September, 1805.
MY LORD:--Three months before Brune set out on his embassy to
Constantinople, Talleyrand and Fouche were collecting together all the
desperadoes of our Revolution, and all the Italian, Corsican, Greek, and
Arabian renegadoes and vagabonds in our country, to form him a set of
attendants agreeable to the real object of his mission.
You know too much of our national character and of my own veracity to
think it improbable, when I assure you that most of our great men in
place are as vain as presumptuous, and that sometimes vanity and
presumption get the better of their discretion and prudence. What I am
going to tell you I did not hear myself, but it was reported to me by a
female friend, as estimable for her virtues as admired for her
accomplishments. She is often honoured with invitations to Talleyrand's
familiar parties, composed chiefly of persons whose fortunes are as
independent as their principles, who, though not approving the
Revolution, neither joined its opposers nor opposed its adherents,
preferring tranquillity and obscurity to agitation and celebrity. Their
number is not much above half a dozen, and the Minister calls them the
only honest people in France with whom he thinks himself safe.
When it was reported here that two hundred persons of Brune's suite had
embarked at Marseilles and eighty-four at Genoa, and when it was besides
known that nearly fifty individuals accompanied him in his outset, this
unusual occurrence caused much conversation and many speculations in all
our coteries and fashionable circles. About that time my friend dined
with Talleyrand, and, by chance, also mentioned this grand embassy,
observing, at the same time, that it was too much honour done to the
Ottoman Porte, and too much money thrown away upon splendour, to honour
such an imbecile and tottering Government.
"How people talk," interrupted Talleyrand, "about what they do not
comprehend. Generous as Bonaparte is, he does not throw away his
expenses; perhaps within twelve months all these renegadoes or
adventurers, whom you all consider as valets of Brune, will be
three-tailed Pachas or Beys, leading friends of liberty, who shall have
gloriously broken their fetters as slaves of a Selim to become the
subjects of a Napoleon. The Eastern Empire has, indeed, long expired,
but it may suddenly be revived."
"Austria and Russia," replied my friend, "would never suffer it, and
England would sooner ruin her navy and exhaust her Treasury than permit
such a revolution."
"So they have tried to do," retorted Talleyrand, "to bring about a
counter revolution in France. But though only a moment is requisite to
erect the standard of revolt, ages often are necessary to conquer and
seize it. Turkey has long been ripe for a revolution. It wanted only
chiefs and directors. In time of war, ten thousand Frenchmen landed in
the Dardanelles would be masters of Constantinople, and perhaps of the
Empire. In time of peace, four hundred bold and well-informed men may
produce the same effect. Besides, with some temporary cession of a
couple of provinces to each of the Imperial Courts, and with the
temporary present of an island to Great Britain, everything may be
settled 'pro tempore', and a Joseph Bonaparte be permitted to reign at
Constantinople, as a Napoleon does at Paris."
That the Minister made use of this language I can take upon me to affirm;
but whether purposely or unintentionally, whether to give a high opinion
of his plans or to impose upon his company, I will not and cannot assert.
On the subject of this numerous suite of Brune, Markof is said to have
obtained several conferences with Talleyrand and several audiences of
Bonaparte, in which representations, as just as energetic, were made,
which, however, did not alter the intent of our Government or increase
the favour of the Russian Ambassador at the Court of St. Cloud. But it
proved that our schemes of subversion are suspected, and that our agents
of overthrow would be watched and their manoeuvres inspected.
Count Italinski, the Russian Ambassador to the Ottoman Porte, is one of
those noblemen who unite rank and fortune, talents and modesty, honour
and patriotism, wealth and liberality. His personal character and his
individual virtues made him, therefore, more esteemed and revered by the
members of the Divan, than the high station he occupied, and the powerful
Prince he represented, made him feared or respected. His warnings had
created prejudices against Brune which he found difficult to remove. To
revenge himself in his old way, our Ambassador inserted several
paragraphs in the Moniteur and in our other papers, in which Count
Italinski was libelled, and his transactions or views calumniated.
After his first audience with the Grand Seignior, Brune complained
bitterly, of not having learned the Turkish language, and of being under
the necessity, therefore, of using interpreters, to whom he ascribed the
renewed obstacles he encountered in every step he took, while his hotel
was continually surrounded with spies, and the persons of his suite
followed everywhere like criminals when they went out. Even the valuable
presents he carried with him, amounting in value to twenty-four millions
of livres--were but indifferently received, the acceptors, seeming to
suspect the object and the honesty of the donor.
In proportion as our politics became embroiled with those of Russia, the
post of Brune became of more importance; but the obstacles thrown in his
way augmented daily, and he was forced to avow that Russia and England
had greater influence and more credit than the French Republic and its
chief. When Bonaparte was proclaimed an Emperor of the French, Brune
expected that his acknowledgment as such at Constantinople would be a
mere matter of course and announced officially on the day he presented a
copy of his new credentials. Here again he was disappointed, and
therefore demanded his recall from a place where there was no
probability, under the present circumstances, of either exciting the
subjects to revolt, of deluding the Prince into submission, or seducing
Ministers who, in pocketing his bribes, forgot for what they were given.
It was then that Bonaparte sent Joubert with a letter in his own
handwriting, to be delivered into the hands of the Grand Seignior
himself. This Joubert is a foundling, and, was from his youth destined
and educated to be one of the secret agents of our secret diplomacy. You
already, perhaps, have heard that our Government selects yearly a number
of young foundlings or orphans, whom it causes to be brought up in
foreign countries at its expense, so as to learn the language as natives
of the nation, where, when grown up, they are chiefly to be employed.
Joubert had been educated under the inspection of our consuls at Smyrna,
and, when he assumes the dress of a Turk, from his accent and manners
even the Mussulmans mistake him for one of their own creed and of their
country. He was introduced to Bonaparte in 1797, and accompanied him to
Egypt, where his services were of the greatest utility to the army. He
is now a kind of undersecretary in the office of our secret diplomacy,
and a member of the Legion of Honour. Should ever Joseph Bonaparte be an
Emperor or Sultan of the East, Joubert will certainly be his Grand
Vizier. There is another Joubert (with whom you must not confound him),
who was; also a kind of Dragoman at Constantinople some years ago, and
who is still somewhere on a secret mission in the East Indies.
Joubert's arrival at Constantinople excited both curiosity among the
people and suspicion among the Ministry. There is no example in the
Ottoman history of a chief of a Christian nation having written to the
Sultan by a private messenger, or of His Highness having condescended to
receive the letter from the bearer, or to converse with him. The Grand
Vizier demanded a copy of Bonaparte's letter, before an audience could be
granted. This was refused by Joubert; and as Brune threatened to quit
the capital of Turkey if any longer delay were experienced, the letter
was delivered in a garden near Constantinople, where the Sultan met
Bonaparte's agent, as if by chance, who, it seems, lost all courage and
presence of mind, and did not utter four words, to which no answer was
given.
This impertinent intrigue, and this novel diplomacy, therefore, totally
miscarried, to the great shame and greater disappointment of the schemers
and contrivers. I must, however, do Talleyrand the justice to say that
he never approved of it, and even foretold the issue to his intimate
friends. It was entirely the whim and invention of Bonaparte himself,
upon a suggestion of Brune, who was far from being so well acquainted
with the spirit and policy of the Divan as he had been with the genius
and plots of Jacobinism. Not rebuked, however, Joubert was ordered away
a second time with a second letter, and, after an absence of four months,
returned again as he went, less satisfied with the second than with his
first journey.
In these trips to Turkey, he had always for travelling companions some of
our emissaries to Austria, Hungary, and in particular to Servia, where
the insurgents were assisted by our councils, and even guided by some of
our officers. The principal aide-de-camp of Czerni George, the Servian
chieftain, is one Saint Martin, formerly a captain in our artillery,
afterwards an officer of engineers in the Russian service, and finally a
volunteer in the army of Conde. He and three other officers of artillery
were, under fictitious names, sent by our Government, during the spring
of last year, to the camp of the insurgents. They pretended to be of the
Grecian religion, and formerly Russian officers, and were immediately
employed. Saint Martin has gained great influence over Czerni George,
and directs both his political councils and military operations. Besides
the individuals left behind by Joubert; it is said that upwards of one
hundred persons of Brune's suite have been ordered for the same
destination. You see how great the activity of our Government is, and
that nothing is thought unworthy of its vigilance or its machinations. In
the staff of Paswan Oglou, six of my countrymen have been serving ever
since 1796, always in the pay of our Government.
It was much against the inclination and interest of our Emperor that his
Ambassador at Constantinople should leave the field of battle there to
the representatives of Russia, Austria, and England. But his dignity was
at stake. After many threats to deprive the Sultan of the honour of his
presence, and even after setting out once for some leagues on his return,
Brune, observing that these marches and countermarches excited more mirth
than terror, at last fixed a day, when, finally, either Bonaparte must be
acknowledged by the Divan as an Emperor of the French, or his departure
would take place. On that day he, indeed, began his retreat, but, under
different pretexts, be again stopped, sent couriers to his secretaries,
waited for their return, and sent new couriers again,--but all in vain,
the Divan continued refractory.
At his first audience after his return, the reception Bonaparte gave him
was not very cordial. He demanded active employment, in case of a
continental war, either in Italy or in Germany, but received neither.
When our army of England was already on its march towards the Rhine, and
Bonaparte returned here, Brune was ordered to take command on the coast,
and to organize there an army of observation, destined to succour Holland
in case of an invasion, or to invade England should a favourable occasion
present itself. The fact is, he was charged to intrigue rather than to
fight; and were Napoleon able to force upon Austria another Peace of
Luneville, Brune would probably be the plenipotentiary that would ask
your acceptance of another Peace of Amiens. It is here a general belief
that his present command signifies another pacific overture from
Bonaparte before your Parliament meets, or, at least, before the New
Year. Remember that our hero is more to be dreaded as a Philip than as
an Alexander.
General Brune has bought landed property for nine millions of livres--and
has, in different funds, placed ready money to the same amount. His own
and his wife's diamonds are valued by him at three millions; and when he
has any parties to dinner, he exhibits them with great complaisance as
presents forced upon him during his campaign in Switzerland and Holland,
for the protection he gave the inhabitants. He is now so vain of his
wealth and proud of his rank, that he not only disregards all former
acquaintances, but denies his own brothers and sisters,--telling them
frankly that the Fieldmarshal Brune can have no shoemaker for a brother,
nor a sister married to a chandler; that he knows of no parents, and of
no relatives, being the maker of his own fortune, and of what he is; that
his children will look no further back for ancestry than their father.
One of his first cousins, a postilion, who insisted, rather obstinately,
on his family alliance, was recommended by Brune to his friend Fouche,
who sent him on a voyage of discovery to Cayenne, from which he probably
will not return very soon.
LETTER XL.
PARIS, September, 1805.
My LORD:--Madame de C------n is now one of our most fashionable ladies.
Once in the week she has a grand tea-party; once in a fortnight a grand
dinner; and once in the month a grand ball. Foreign gentlemen are
particularly well received at her house, which, of course, is much
frequented by them. As you intend to visit this country after a peace,
it may be of some service to you not to be unacquainted with the portrait
of a lady whose invitation to see the original you may depend upon the
day after your arrival.
Madame de C----n is the widow of the great and useless traveller, Comte
de C----n, to whom his relatives pretend that she was never married. Upon
his death-bed he acknowledged her, however, for his wife, and left her
mistress of a fortune of three hundred thousand livres a year. The first
four years of her widowhood she passed in lawsuits before the tribunals,
where the plaintiffs could not prove that she was unmarried, nor she
herself that she was married. But Madame Napoleon Bonaparte, for a small
douceur, speaking in her favour, the consciences of the juries, and the
understanding of the judges, were all convinced at once that she had been
the lawful wife, and was the lawful heiress, of Comte de C----n, who had
no children, or nearer relatives than third cousins.
Comte de C----n was travelling in the East Indies when the Revolution
broke out. His occupation there was a very innocent one; he drew
countenances, being one of the most enthusiastic sectaries of Lavater,
and modestly called himself the first physiognomist in the world. Indeed,
he had been at least the most laborious one; for he left behind him a
collection of six thousand two hundred portraits, drawn by himself in the
four quarters of the world, during a period of thirty years.
He never engaged a servant, nor dealt with a tradesman, whose physiognomy
had not been examined by him. In his travels he preferred the worst
accommodation in a house where he approved of the countenance of the
host, to the best where the traits or lines of the landlord's face were
irregular, or did not coincide with his ideas of physiognomical
propriety. The cut of a face, its expression, the length of the nose,
the width or smallness of the mouth, the form of the eyelids or of the
ears, the colour or thickness of the hair, with the shape and tout
ensemble of the head, were always minutely considered and discussed
before he entered into any agreement, on any subject, with any individual
whatever. Whatever recommendations, or whatever attestations were
produced, if they did not correspond with his own physiognomical remarks
and calculations, they were disregarded; while a person whose physiognomy
pleased him required no other introduction to obtain his confidence.
Whether he thought himself wiser than his forefathers, he certainly did
not grow richer than they were. Charlatans who imposed upon his
credulity and impostors who flattered his mania, servants who robbed him
and mistresses who deceived him, proved that if his knowledge of
physiognomy was great, it was by no means infallible. At his death, of
the fortune left him by his parents only the half remained.
His friends often amused themselves at the expense of his foibles. When
he prepared for a journey to the East, one of them recommended him a
servant, upon whose fidelity he could depend. After examining with
minute scrupulosity the head of the person, he wrote: "My friend, I
accept your valuable present. From calculations, which never deceive me,
Manville (the servant's name) possesses, with the fidelity of a dog, the
intrepidity of the lion. Chastity itself is painted on his front,
modesty in his looks, temperance on his cheek, and his mouth and nose
bespeak honesty itself." Shortly after the Count had landed at
Pondicherry, Mauville, who was a girl, died, in a condition which showed
that chastity had not been the divinity to whom she had chiefly
sacrificed. In her trunk were found several trinkets belonging to her
master, which she honestly had appropriated to herself. His
miscalculation on this subject the Count could not but avow; he added,
however, that it was the entire fault of his friend, who had duped him
with regard to the sex.
Madame de C----n was, on account of her physiognomy, purchased by her
late husband, then travelling in Turkey, from a merchant of Circassian
slaves, when she was under seven years of age, and sent for her education
to a relative of the Count, an Abbess of a convent in Languedoc. On his
return from Turkey, some years afterwards, he took her under his own
care, and she accompanied him all over Asia, and returned first to France
in 1796, where her husband's name was upon the list of emigrants, though
he had not been in Europe for ten years before the Revolution.
However, by some pecuniary arrangements with Barras, he recovered his
property, which he did not long enjoy, for he died in 1798. The suitors
of Madame de C----n, mistress of a large fortune, with some remnants of
beauty and elegance of manners, have been numerous, and among them
several Senators and generals, and even the Minister Chaptal. But she
has politely declined all their offers, preferring her liberty and the
undisturbed right of following her own inclination to the inconvenient
ties of Hymen. A gentleman, whom she calls, and who passes for, her
brother, Chevalier de M de T----, a Knight of Malta, assists her in doing
the honours of her house, and is considered as her favourite lover;
though report and the scandalous chronicle say that she bestows her
favours on every person who wishes to bestow on her his name, and that,
therefore, her gallants are at least as numerous as her suitors.
Such is the true statement of the past, as well as the present, with
regard to Madame de C----n. She relates, however, a different story. She
says that she is the daughter of the Marquis de M de T-----, of a
Languedoc family; that she sailed, when a child, with her mother in a
felucca from Nice to Malta, there to visit her brother; was captured by
an Algerine pilot, separated from her mother, and carried to
Constantinople by a merchant of slaves; there she was purchased by Comte
de C----n, who restored her to her family, and whom, therefore,
notwithstanding the difference of their ages, she married from gratitude.
This pretty, romantic story is ordered in our Court circles to be
officially believed; and, of course, is believed by nobody, not even by
the Emperor and Empress themselves, who would not give her the place of a
lady-in-waiting, though her request was accompanied with a valuable
diamond to the latter. The present was kept, but the offer declined.
All the members of the Bonaparte family, female as well as male, honour
her house with their visits and with the acceptance of her invitations;
and it is, therefore, among our fashionables, the 'haut ton' to be of the
society and circle of Madame de C----n.
Last February, Madame de P----t (the wife of Comte de P----t, a relative,
by her husband's side, of Madame de C----n, and who by the Revolution
lost all their property, and now live with her as companions) was brought
to bed of a son; the child was baptized by the Cardinal de Belloy, and
Madame Joseph and Prince Louis Bonaparte stood sponsors. This occurrence
was celebrated with great pomp, and a fete was given to nearly one
hundred and fifty per sons of both sexes,--as usual, a mixture of
ci-devant nobles and of ci-devant sans-culottes; of rank and meanness; of
upstart wealth and beggared dignity.
What that day struck me most was the audacity of the Senator Villetard in
teasing and insulting the old Cardinal de Belloy with his impertinent
conversation and affected piety. This Villetard was, before the
Revolution, a journeyman barber, and was released in 1789 by the mob from
the prison of the Chatelet, where he was confined for theft. In 1791 his
patriotism was so well known in the Department of Yonne, that he was
deputed by the Jacobins there to the Jacobins of the capital with an
address, encouraging and advising the deposition of Louis XVI.; and in
1792 he was chosen a member of the National Convention, where the most
sanguinary and most violent of the factions were always certain to reckon
him in the number of their adherents.
In December, 1797, when an insurrection, prepared by Joseph Bonaparte at
Rome, deprived the late revered pontiff both of his sovereignty and
liberty, Villetard was sent by the Jacobin and atheistical party of the
Directory to Loretto, to seize and carry off the celebrated Madonna. In
the execution of this commission he displayed a conduct worthy the
littleness of his genius and the criminality of his mind. The wooden
image of the Holy Virgin, a black gown said to have appertained to her,
together with three broken china plates, which the Roman Catholic
faithful have for ages believed to have been used by her, were presented
by him to the Directory, with a cruelly scandalous show, accompanied by a
horribly blasphemous letter. He passed the next night, after he had
perpetrated this sacrilege, with two prostitutes, in the chapel of the
Holy Virgin; and, on the next morning, placed one of them, naked, on the
pedestal where the statue of the Virgin had formerly stood, and ordered
all the devotees at Loretto, and two leagues round, to prostrate
themselves before her. This shocking command occasioned the premature
death of fifteen ladies, two of whom, who were nuns, died on the spot on
beholding the horrid outrage; and many more were deprived of their
reason. How barbarously unfeeling must that wretch be who, in bereaving
the religious, the pious, and the conscientious of their consolation and
hope, adds the tormenting reproach of apostasy, by forcing virtue upon
its knees to bow before what it knows to be guilt and infamy.
A traitor to his associates as to his God, it was he who, in November,
1799, presented at St. Cloud the decree which excluded all those who
opposed Bonaparte's authority from the Council of Five Hundred, and
appointed the two committees which made him a First Consul. In reward
for this act of treachery, he was nominated to a place in the
Conservative Senate. He has now ranked himself among our modern saints,
goes regularly to Mass and confesses; has made a brother of his, who was
a drummer, an Abbe; and his assiduity about the Cardinal was probably
with a view to obtain advancement for this edifying priest.
The Cardinal de Belloy is now ninety-six years of age, being born in
1709, and has been a Bishop for fifty-three years, but, during the
Revolution, was proscribed, with all other prelates. He remained,
however, in France, where his age saved him from the guillotine, but not
from being reduced to the greatest want. A descendant of a noble family,
and possessing an unpolluted character, Bonaparte fixed upon him as one
of the pillars for the reestablishment of the Catholic worship, made him
an Archbishop of Paris, and procured him the rank of a Cardinal from
Rome. But he is now in his second childhood, entirely directed by his
grand vicaries, Malaret, De Mons, and Legeas, who are in the pay of, and
absolutely devoted to, Bonaparte. An innocent instrument in their hands,
of those impious compliments pronounced by him to the Emperor and the
Empress, he did not, perhaps, even understand the meaning. From such a
man the vile and artful Villetard might extort any promise. I observed,
however, with pleasure, that he was watched by the grand vicar, Malaret,
who seldom loses sight of His Eminence.
These two so opposite characters--I mean De Belloy and Villetard--are
already speaking evidences of the composition of the society at Madame de
C----n's. But I will tell you something still more striking. This lady
is famous for her elegant services of plate, as much as for her delicate
taste in entertaining her parties. After the supper on this night,
eleven silver and four gold plates, besides numerous silver and gold
spoons, forks, etc., were missed. She informed Fouche of her loss, who
had her house surrounded by spies, with orders not to let any servant
pass without undergoing a strict search. The first gentleman who called
for his carriage was His Excellency the Counsellor of State and grand
officer of the Legion of Honour, Treilhard. His servants were stopped
and the cause explained. They willingly, and against the protest of
their master, suffered themselves to be searched. Nothing was found upon
them; but the police agents, observing the full-dress hat of their master
rather bulky under his arm, took the liberty to look into it, where they
found one of Madame de C----n's gold plates and two of her spoons. His
Excellency immediately ordered his servants to be arrested, for having
concealed their theft there. Fouche, however, when called out, advised
his friend to forgive them for misplacing them, as the less said on the
subject the better. When Madame de C----n heard of this discovery, she
asked Fouche to recall his order or to alter it. "A repetition of such
misplacings in the hats or in the pockets of the masters," said she,
"would injure the reputation of my house and company." She never
recovered the remainder of her loss, and that she might not be exposed in
future to the same occurrences, she bought two services of china the
following day, to be used when she had mixed society.
Treilhard had, before the Revolution, the reputation of being an honest
man and an able advocate; but has since joined the criminals of all
factions, being an accomplice in their guilt and a sharer of their
spoils. In the convention, he voted for the death of Louis XVI. and
pursued without mercy the unfortunate Marie Antoinette to the scaffold.
During his missions in the departments, wherever he went the guillotine
was erected and blood flowed in streams. He was, nevertheless, accused
by Robespierre of moderatism. At Lille, in 1797, and at Rastadt, in
1798, he negotiated as a plenipotentiary with the representatives of
Princes, and in 1799 corresponded as a director with Emperors and Kings,
to whom he wrote as his great and dear friends. He is now a Counsellor
of State, in the section of legislation, and enjoys a fortune of several
millions of livres, arising from estates in the country, and from leases
in the capital. As this accident at Madame de C----n's soon became
public, his friends gave out that he had of late been exceedingly absent,
and, from absence of mind, puts everything he can lay hold of into his
pocket. He is not a favourite with Madame Bonaparte, and she asked her
husband to dismiss and disgrace him for an act so disgraceful to a grand
officer of the Legion of Honour, but was answered, "Were I to turn away
all the thieves and rogues that encompass me I should soon cease to
reign. I despise them, but I must employ them."
It is whispered that the police have discovered another of Madame de C
n's lost gold plates at a pawnbroker's, where it had been pledged by the
wife of another Counsellor of State, Francois de Nantes.
This I give you merely as a report! though the fact is, that Madame
Francois is very fond of gambling, but very unfortunate; and she, with
other of our fashionable ladies, has more than once resorted to her
charms for the payment of her gambling debts.
MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF ST. CLOUD
Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London
BOOK 2.
LETTER I.
PARIS, September, 1805.
MY LORD:--Since my return here, I have never neglected to present myself
before our Sovereign, on his days of grand reviews and grand diplomatic
audiences. I never saw him more condescending, more agreeable, or, at
least, less offensive, than on the day of his last levee, before he set
out to be inaugurated a King of Italy; nor worse tempered, more petulant,
agitated, abrupt, and rude than at his first grand audience after his
arrival from Milan, when this ceremony had been performed. I am not the
only one who has made this remark; he did not disguise either his good or
ill-humour; and it was only requisite to have eyes and ears to see and be
disgusted at the difference of behaviour.