Our Ambassador to the United States, General Turreaux, is far from being

contented with our friend, the President Jefferson, whose patriotic

notions have not yet soared to the level of our patriotic transactions.

He refused both to prevent the marriage of Jerome Bonaparte with a female

American citizen, and to detain her after her marriage when her husband

returned to Europe. To our continual representation against the

liberties which the American newspapers take with our Government, with

our Emperor, with our Imperial Family, and with our Imperial Ministers,

the answer has always been, "Prosecute the libeller, and as soon as he is

convicted he will be punished." This tardy and negative justice is so

opposite to our expeditious and summary mode of proceeding, of punishing

first and trying afterwards, that it must be both humiliating and

offensive. In return, when the Americans have complained to Turreaux

against the piracy of our privateers, he has sent them here to seek

redress, where they also will, to their cost, discover that in civil

cases our justice has not the same rapid march as when it is a question

of arresting or transporting suspected persons, or of tormenting,

shooting, or guillotining a pretended spy, or supposed conspirator.

Had the peace of Europe continued, Bernadotte was the person selected by

Bonaparte and Talleyrand as our representative in America; because we

then intended to strike, and not to negotiate. But during the present

embroiled state of Europe, an intriguer was more necessary there than

either a warrior or a politician. A man who has passed through all the

mire of our own Revolution, who has been in the secrets, and an

accomplice of all our factions, is, undoubtedly, a useful instrument

where factions are to be created and directed, where wealth is designed

for pillage, and a State for overthrow. General Turreaux is, therefore,

in his place, and at his proper post, as our Ambassador in America.

The son of a valet of the late Duc de Bouillon, Turreaux called himself

before the Revolution Chevalier de Grambonville, and was, in fact, a

'chevalier d'industrie' (a swindler), who supported himself by gambling

and cheating. An associate of Beurnonville, Barras, and other vile

characters, he with them joined the colours of rebellion, and served

under the former in 1792, in the army of the Moselle, first as a

volunteer, and afterwards as an aide-de-camp. In a speech at the Jacobin

Club at Quesnoy, on the 20th of November, 1792, he made a motion--"That,

throughout the whole republican army, all hats should be prohibited, and

red caps substituted in their place; and that, not only portable

guillotines, but portable Jacobin clubs, should accompany the soldiers of

Liberty and Equality."

A cousin of his was a member of the National Convention, and one of those

called Mountaineers, or sturdy partisans of Marat and Robespierre. It

was to the influence of this cousin, that he was indebted, first for a

commission as an adjutant-general, and afterwards for his promotion to a

general of brigade. In 1793, he was ordered to march, under the command

of Santerre, to La Vendee, where he shared in the defeat of the

republicans at Vihiers. At the engagement near Roches d'Erigne he

commanded, for the first time, a separate column, and the capacity and

abilities which he displayed on that occasion were such as might have

been expected from a man who had passed the first thirty years of his

life in brothels and gambling-houses. So pleasant were his dispositions,

that almost the whole army narrowly escaped having been thrown and pushed

into the River Loire. The battle of Doux was the only one in which he

had a share where the republicans were not routed; but some few days

afterwards, near Coron, all the troops under him were cut to pieces, and

he was himself wounded.

The confidence of his friends, the Jacobins, increased, however, in

proportion to his disasters, and he was, in 1794, after the superior

number of the republican soldiers had forced the remnants of the

Royalists to evacuate what was properly called La Vendee, appointed a

commander-in-chief. He had now an opportunity to display his infamy and

barbarity. Having established his headquarters at Mantes, where he was

safe, amidst the massacres of women and children ordered by his friend

Carriere, he commanded the republican army to enter La Vendee in twelve

columns, preceded by fire and sword; and within four weeks, one of the

most populous departments of France, to the extent and circumference of

sixty leagues, was laid waste-not a house, not a cottage, not a tree was

spared, all was reduced to ashes; and the unfortunate inhabitants, who

had not perished amid the ruin of their dwellings, were shot or stabbed;

while attempting to save themselves from the common conflagration. On

the 22d of January, 1794, he wrote to the Committee of Public Safety of

the National Convention: "Citizen Representatives!--A country of sixty

leagues extent, I have the happiness to inform you, is now a perfect

desert; not a dwelling, not a bush, but is reduced to ashes; and of one

hundred and eighty thousand worthless inhabitants, not a soul breathes

any longer. Men and women, old men and children, have all experienced

the national vengeance, and are no more. It was a pleasure to a true

republican to see upon the bayonets of each of our brave republicans the

children of traitors, or their, heads. According to the lowest

calculation, I have despatched, within three months, two hundred thousand

individuals of both sexes, and of all ages. Vive la Republique!!!" In

the works of Prudhomme and our republican writers, are inserted hundreds

of letters, still more cruelly extravagant, from this ci-devant friend of

Liberty and Equality, and at present faithful subject, and grand officer

of the Legion of Honour, of His Imperial Majesty Napoleon the First.

After the death of Robespierre, Turreaux, then a governor at Belleisle,

was arrested as a terrorist, and shut up at Du Plessis until the general

amnesty released him in 1795. During his imprisonment he amused himself

with writing memoirs of the war of La Vendee, in which he tried to prove

that all his barbarities had been perpetrated for the sake of humanity,

and to save the lives of republicans. He had also the modesty to

announce that, as a military work, his production would be equally

interesting as those of a Folard and Guibert. These memoirs, however,

proved nothing but that he was equally ignorant and wicked, presumptuous

and ferocious.

During the reign of the Directory he was rather discarded, or only

employed as a kind of recruiting officer to hunt young conscripts, but in

1800 Bonaparte gave him a command in the army of reserve; and in 1802,

another in the army of the interior. He then became one of the most

assiduous and cringing courtiers at the Emperor's levies; while in the

Empress's drawing-room he assumed his former air and ton of a chevalier,

in hopes of imposing upon those who did not remember the nickname which

his soldiers gave him ten years before, of Chevalier of the Guillotine.

At a ball of the Bonaparte family to which he was invited, the Emperor

took the fancy to dance with his stepdaughter, Madame Louis. He,

therefore, unhooked his sword, which he handed to a young colonel, D'

Avry, standing by his side. This colonel, who had been a page at the

Court of Louis XVI., knew that it would have been against etiquette, and

even unbecoming of him, to act as a valet to Napoleon while there were

valets in the room; he therefore retreated, looking round for a servant.

"Oh!" said the Emperor, "I see that I am mistaken; here, generals,"

continued he (addressing himself to half a dozen, with whose independent

principles and good breeding he was acquainted), "take this sword during

my dance." They all pushed forward, but Turreaux and La Grange, another

general and intriguer, were foremost; the latter, however, received the

preference. On the next day, D' Avry was ordered upon service to

Cayenne.

Turreaux has acquired, by his patriotic deeds in La Vendee, a fortune of

seven millions of livres. He has the highest opinion of his own

capacity, while a moment's conversation will inform a man of sense that

he is only a conceited fool. As to his political transactions, he has by

his side, as a secretary, a man of the name of Petry, who has received a

diplomatic education, and does not want either subtlety or parts; and on

him, no doubt, is thrown the drudgery of business. During a European

war, Turreaux's post is of little relative consequence; but should

Napoleon live to dictate another general pacification, the United States

will be exposed, on their frontiers, or in their interior, to the same

outrages their commercial navy now experiences on the main.

LETTER XII.

PARIS, September, 1805.

MY LORD:--A general officer, who has just arrived from Italy, has assured

me that, so far from Bonaparte's subjects on the other side of the Alps

being contented and attached to his person and Government, were a

victorious Austrian army to enter the plains of Lombardy a general

insurrection would be the consequence. During these last nine years the

inhabitants have not enjoyed a moment's tranquillity or safety. Every

relation or favourite whom Napoleon wished to provide for, or to enrich,

he has saddled upon them as in free quarters; and since 1796, when they

first had the honour of our Emperor's acquaintance, they have paid more

in taxes, in forced loans, requisitions, and extortions of every

description, than their ancestors or themselves had paid during the one

hundred and ninety-six preceding years.

Such is the public spirit, and such have been the sufferings of the

people in the ci-devant Lombardy; in Piedmont they are still worse off.

Having more national character and more fidelity towards their Sovereign

than their neighbours, they are also more cruelly treated. Their

governor, General De Menou, has caused most of the departments to be

declared under martial law, and without right to claim the protection of

our happy constitution. In every city or town are organized special

tribunals, the progeny of our revolutionary tribunals, against the

sentences of which no appeal can be made, though these sentences are

always capital ones. Before these, suspicion is evidence, and an

imprudent word is subject to the same punishment as a murderous deed.

Murmur is regarded as mutiny, and he who complains is shot as a

conspirator.

There exist only two ways for the wretched Piedmontese to escape these

legal assassinations. They must either desert their country or sacrifice

a part of their property. In the former case, if retaken, they are

condemned as emigrants; and in the latter they incur the risk that those

to whom they have already given a part of their possessions will also

require the remainder, and having obtained it, to enjoy in security the

spoil, will send them to the tribunals and to death. De Menou has a

fixed tariff for his protection, regulated according to the riches of

each person; and the tax-gatherers collect these arbitrary contributions

with the regular ones, so little pains are taken to conceal or to

disguise these robberies.

De Menou, by turns a nobleman and a sans-culotte, a Christian and a

Mussulman, is wicked and profligate, not from the impulse of the moment

or of any sudden gust of passion, but coldly and deliberately. He

calculates with sangfroid the profit and the risk of every infamous

action he proposes to commit, and determines accordingly. He owed some

riches and the rank of the major-general to the bounty of Louis XVI., but

when he considered the immense value of the revolutionary plunder, called

national property, and that those who confiscated could also promote, he

did not hesitate what party to take. A traitor is generally a coward; he

has everywhere experienced defeats; he was defeated by his Royalist

countrymen in 1793, by his Mahometan sectaries in 1800, and by your

countrymen in 1801.

Besides his Turkish wife, De Menou has in the same house with her one

Italian and two French girls, who live openly with him, but who are

obliged to keep themselves by selling their influence and protection,

and, perhaps, sometimes even their personal favours. He has also in his

hotel several gambling-tables, where those who are too bashful to address

themselves to himself or his mistresses may deposit their donations, and

if they are thought sufficient, the hint is taken and their business

done. He never pays any debts and never buys anything for ready money,

and all persons of his suite, or appertaining to his establishment, have

the same privilege. Troublesome creditors are recommended to the care of

the special tribunals, which also find means to reduce the obstinacy of

those refractory merchants or traders who refuse giving any credit. All

the money he extorts or obtains is brought to this capital and laid out

by his agents in purchasing estates, which, from his advanced age and

weak constitution, he has little prospect of long enjoying. He is a

grand officer of Bonaparte's Legion of Honour, and has a long claim to

that distinction, because as early as on the 25th of June, 1790, he made

a motion in the National Assembly to suppress all former Royal Orders in

France, and to create in their place only a national one. Always an

incorrigible flatterer, when Napoleon proclaimed himself Ali the

Mussulman, De Menou professed himself Abdallah the believer in the

Alcoran.

The late vice-president of the Italian Republic, Melzi-Eril, is now in

complete disgrace with his Sovereign, Napoleon the First. If persons of

rank and property would read through the list of those, their equals by

birth and wealth, who, after being seduced by the sophistry of impostors,

dishonoured and exposed themselves by joining in the Revolution, they

might see that none of them have escaped insults, many have suffered

death, and all have been, or are, vile slaves, at the mercy of the whip

of some upstart beggar, and trampled upon by men started up from the mud,

of lowest birth and basest morals. If their revolutionary mania were not

incurable, this truth and this evidence would retain them within their

duty, so corresponding with their real interest, and prevent them from

being any longer borne along by a current of infamy and danger, and

preserve them from being lost upon quicksands or dashed against rocks.

The conduct and fate of the Italian nobleman and Spanish grandee,

Melzi-Eril, has induced me to make these reflections. Wealthy as well as

elevated, he might have passed his life in uninterrupted tranquillity,

enjoying its comforts without experiencing its vicissitudes, with the

esteem of his contemporaries and without reproach from posterity or from

his own conscience. Unfortunately for him, a journey into this country

made him acquainted both with our philosophers and with our philosophical

works; and he had neither natural capacity to distinguish errors from

reality, nor judgment enough to perceive that what appeared improving and

charming in theory, frequently became destructive and improper when

attempted to be put into practice. Returned to his own country, his

acquired half-learning made him wholly dissatisfied with his Government,

with his religion, and with himself. In our Revolution he thought that

he saw the first approach towards the perfection of the human species,

and that it would soon make mankind as good and as regenerated in society

as was promised in books. With our own regenerators he extenuated the

crimes which sullied their work from its first page, and declared them

even necessary to make the conclusion so much the more complete. When,

therefore, Bonaparte, in 1796, entered the capital of Lombardy, Melzi was

among the first of the Italian nobility who hailed him as a deliverer.

The numerous vexations and repeated pillage of our Government, generals,

commissaries, and soldiers, did not abate his zeal nor alter his opinion.

"The faults and sufferings of individuals," he said, "are nothing to the

goodness of the cause, and do not impair the utility of the whole." To

him, everything the Revolution produced was the best; the murder of

thousands and the ruin of millions were, with him, nothing compared with

the benefit the universe would one day derive from the principles and

instruction of our armed and unarmed philosophers. In recompense for so

much complacency, and such great patriotism, Bonaparte appointed him, in

1797, a plenipotentiary from the Cisalpine Republic to the Congress at

Rastadt; and, in 1802, a vice-president of the Italian Republic. As Melzi

was a sincere and disinterested republican fanatic, he did not much

approve of the strides Bonaparte made towards a sovereignty that

annihilated the sovereignty of his sovereign people. In a conference,

however, with Talleyrand, at Lyons, in February, 1802, he was convinced

that this age was not yet ripe for all the improvements our philosophers

intended to confer on it; and that, to prevent it from retrogading to the

point where it was found by our Revolution, it was necessary that it

should be ruled by enlightened men, such as he and Bonaparte, to whom he

advised him by all means never to give the least hint about liberty and

equality. Our Minister ended his fraternal counsel with obliging Melzi

to sign a stipulation for a yearly sum, as a douceur for the place he

occupied.

The sweets of power shortly caused Melzi to forget both the tenets of his

philosophy and his schemes of regeneration. He trusted so much to the

promises of Bonaparte and Talleyrand, that he believed himself destined

to reign for life, and was, therefore, not a little surprised when he was

ordered by Napoleon the First to descend and salute Eugene de Beauharnais

as the deputy Sovereign of the Sovereign King of Italy. He was not

philosopher enough to conceal his chagrin, and bowed with such a bad

grace to the new Viceroy that it was visible he would have preferred

seeing in that situation an Austrian Archduke as a governor-general. To

soften his disappointment, Bonaparte offered to make him a Prince, and

with that rank indemnify him for breaking the promises given at Lyons,

where it is known that the influence of Melzi, more than the intrigues of

Talleyrand, determined the Italian Consulta in the choice of a president.

Immediately after Bonaparte's return to France, Melzi left Milan, and

retired to an estate in Tuscany; from that place he wrote to Talleyrand a

letter full of reproach, and concluded by asking leave to pass the

remainder of his days in Spain among his relatives. An answer was

presented him by an officer of Bonaparte's Gendarmes d'Elite, in which he

was forbidden to quit Italy, and ordered to return with the officer to

Milan, and there occupy his office of Arch-Chancellor to which he had

been nominated. Enraged at such treatment, he endeavoured to kill

himself with a dose of poison, but his attempt did not succeed. His

health was, however, so much injured by it that it is not supposed he can

live long. What, a lesson for reformers and innovators!

LETTER XIII.

PARIS, September, 1805.

MY LORD:--A ridiculous affair lately occasioned a great deal of bustle

among the members of our foreign diplomatic corps. When Bonaparte

demanded for himself and for his wife the title of Imperial Majesty, and

for his brothers and sisters that of Imperial Highness, he also insisted

on the salutation of a Serene Highness being given to his

Arch-Chancellor, Cambaceres, and his Arch-Treasurer, Lebrun. The

political consciences of the independent representatives of independent

Continental Princes immediately took the alarm at the latter innovation,

as the appellation of Serene Highness has never hitherto been bestowed on

persons who had not princely rank. They complained to Talleyrand, they

petitioned Bonaparte, and they even despatched couriers to their

respective Courts. The Minister smiled, the Emperor cursed, and their

own Cabinets deliberated. All routs, all assemblies, all circles, and

all balls were at a stop. Cambaceres applied to his Sovereign to support

his pretensions, as connected with his own dignity; and the diplomatic

corps held forward their dignity as opposing the pretensions of

Cambaceres. In this dilemma Bonaparte ordered all the Ambassadors,

Ministers, envoys, and agents 'en masse' to the castle of the Tuileries.

After hearing, with apparent patience, their arguments in favour of

established etiquette and customs, he remained inflexible, upon the

ground that he, as master, had a right to confer what titles he chose

within his own dominions on his own subjects; and that those foreigners

who refused to submit to his regulations might return to their own

country. This plain explanation neither effecting a conversion nor

making any, impression, he grew warm, and left the refractory

diplomatists with these remarkable words: "Were I to create my Mameluke

Rostan a King, both you and your masters should acknowledge him in that

rank."

After this conference most of Their Excellencies were seized with terror

and fear, and would, perhaps, have subscribed to the commands of our

Emperor had not some of the wisest among them proposed, and obtained the

consent of the rest, to apply, once more to Talleyrand, and purchase by

some douceur his assistance in this great business. The heart of our

Minister is easily softened; and he assented, upon certain conditions, to

lay the whole before his Sovereign in such a manner that Cambaceres

should be made a Prince as well as a Serene Highness.

It is said that Bonaparte was not easily persuaded to this measure, and

did not consent to it before the Minister remarked that his condescension

in this insignificant opposition to his will would proclaim his

moderation and generosity, and empower him to insist on obedience when

matters of the greatest consequence should be in question or disputed.

Thus our regicide, Cambaceres, owes his princely title to the shallow

intrigues of the agents of legitimate Sovereigns. Their nicety in

talking of innovations with regard to him, after they had without

difficulty hailed a sans-culotte an Emperor, and other sans-culottes

Imperial Highnesses, was as absurd as improper. Report, however, states,

what is very probable, that they were merely the duped tools of

Cambaceres's ambition and vanity, and of Talleyrand's corruption and

cupidity.

Cambaceres expected to have been elevated to a Prince on the same day

that he was made a Serene Highness; but Joseph Bonaparte represented to

his brother that too many other princedoms would diminish the respect and

value of the princedoms of the Bonaparte family. Cambaceres knew that

Talleyrand had some reason at that period to be discontented with Joseph,

and, therefore, asked his advice how to get made a Prince against the

wishes of this Grand Elector. After some consideration, the Minister

replied that he was acquainted with one way, which would, with his

support, certainly succeed; but it required a million of livres to set

the wheels in motion, and keep them going afterwards. The hint was

taken, and an agreement signed for one million, payable on the day when

the princely patent should be delivered to the Arch-Chancellor.

Among the mistresses provided by our Minister for the members of the

foreign diplomatic corps, Madame B----s is one of the ablest in the way

of intrigue. She was instructed to alarm her 'bon ami', the Bavarian

Minister, Cetto, who is always bustling and pushing himself forward in

the grand questions of etiquette. A fool rather than a rogue, and an

intriguer while he thinks himself a negotiator, he was happy to have this

occasion to prove his penetrating genius and astonishing information. A

convocation of the diplomatic corps was therefore called, and the

suggestions of Cetto were regarded as an inspiration, and approved, with

a resolution to persevere unanimously. At their first audience with

Talleyrand on this subject, he seemed to incline in their favour; but, as

soon as he observed how much they showed themselves interested about this

trifling punctilio, it occurred to him that they, as well as Cambaceres,

might in some way or other reward the service he intended to perform.

Madame B----s was again sent for; and she once more advised her lover,

who again advised his colleagues. Their scanty purses were opened, and a

subscription entered into for a very valuable diamond, which, with the

millions of the Arch-Chancellor, gave satisfaction to all parties; and

even Joseph Bonaparte was reconciled, upon the consideration that

Cambaceres has no children, and that, therefore, the Prince will expire

with the Grand Officer of State.

Cambaceres, though before the Revolution a nobleman of a Parliamentary

family, was so degraded and despised for his unnatural and beastly

propensities, that to see him in the ranks of rebellion was not

unexpected. Born in Languedoc, his countrymen were the first to suffer

from his revolutionary proceedings, and reproached him as one of the most

active instruments of persecution against the clergy of Toulouse, and as

one of the causes of all the blood that flowed in consequence. A coward

as well as a traitor, after the death of Louis XVI. he never dared ascend

the tribune of the National Convention, but always gave a silent vote to

all the atrocious laws proposed and carried by Marat, Robespierre, and

their accomplices. It was in 1795, when the Reign of Terror had ceased,

that he first displayed his zeal for anarchy, and his hatred to royalty;

his contemptible and disgusting vices were, however, so publicly

reprobated, that even the Directory dared not nominate him a Minister of

Justice, a place for which he intrigued in vain, from 1796 to 1799; when

Bonaparte, either not so scrupulous, or setting himself above the public

opinion, caused him to be called to the Consulate; which, in 1802, was

ensured him for life, but exchanged, in 1804, for the office of an

Arch-Chancellor.

He is now worth thirty millions of livres--all honestly obtained by his

revolutionary industry. Besides a Prince, a Serene Highness, an

Arch-Chancellor, a grand officer of the Legion of Honour, he is also a

Knight of the Prussian Black Eagle! For his brother, who was for a long

time an emigrant clergyman, and whom he then renounced as a fanatic, he

has now procured the Archbishopric of Rouen and a Cardinal's hat. His

Eminence is also a grand officer of the Legion of Honour in France, and a

Pope in petto at Rome.

LETTER XIV.

PARIS, September, 1805.

MY LORD:--No Sovereign Prince has more incurred the hatred of Bonaparte

than the present King of Sweden; and I have heard from good authority

that our Government spares neither bribes nor intrigues to move the tails

of those factions which were dissolved, but not crushed, after the murder

of Gustavus III. The Swedes are generally brave and loyal, but their

history bears witness that they are easily misled; all their grand

achievements are their own, and the consequence of their national spirit

and national valour, while all their disasters have been effected by the

influence of foreign gold and of foreign machinations. Had they not been

the dupes of the plots and views of the Cabinets of Versailles and St.

Petersburg, their country might have been as powerful in the nineteenth

century as it was in the seventeenth.

That Gustavus IV. both knew the danger of Europe, and indicated the

remedy, His Majesty's notes, as soon as he came of age, presented by the

able and loyal Minister Bildt to the Diet of Ratisbon, evince. Had they

been more attended to during 1798 and 1799, Bonaparte would not, perhaps,

have now been so great, but the Continent would have remained more free

and more independent. They were the first causes of our Emperor's

official anger against the Cabinet of Stockholm.

When, however, His Swedish Majesty entered into the Northern league, his

Ambassador, Baron Ehrensward, was for some time treated with no insults

distinct or different from those to which all foreign diplomatic agents

have been accustomed during the present reign; but when he demanded

reparation for the piracies committed during the last war by our

privateers on the commerce of his nation, the tone was changed; and when

his Sovereign, in 1803, was on a visit to his father-in-law, the Elector

of Baden, and there preferred the agreeable company of the unfortunate

Duc d'Enghien to the society of our Minister, Baron Ehrensward never

entered Napoleon's diplomatic circle or Madame Napoleon's drawing-room

without hearing rebukes and experiencing disgusts. One day, when more

than usually attacked, he said, on leaving the apartment, to another

Ambassador, and in the hearing of Duroc, "that it required more real

courage to encounter with dignity and self-command unbecoming

provocations, which the person who gave them knew could not be resented,

than to brave a death which the mouths of cannon vomit or the points of

bayonets inflict." Duroc reported to his master what he heard, and but

for Talleyrand's interference, the Swedish Ambassador would, on the same

night, have been lodged in the Temple. Orders were already given to that

purpose, but were revoked.

This Baron Ehrensward, who is also a general in the service of his

country, has almost from his youth passed his time at Courts; first in

his own country, and afterwards in Spain, where he resided twelve years

as our Ambassador. Frank as a soldier, but also polite as a courtier, he

was not a little surprised at the new etiquette of our new court, and at

the endurance of all the members of the diplomatic corps, of whom hardly

one had spirit enough to remember that he was the representative of one,

at least nominally, independent Prince or State. It must be added that

he was the only foreign diplomatist, with Count Markof, who was not the

choice of our Cabinet, and, therefore, was not in our secrets.

As soon as His Swedish Majesty heard of the unexpected and unlawful

seizure of the Duc d'Enghien, he wrote a letter with his own hand to

Bonaparte, which he sent by his adjutant-general, Tawast; but this

officer arrived too late, and only in time to hear of the execution of

the Prince he intended to save, and the indecent expressions of Napoleon

when acquainted with the object of his mission. Baron Ehrensward was

then recalled, and a Court mourning was proclaimed by Gustavus IV., as

well as by Alexander the First, for the lamented victim of the violated

laws of nations and humanity. This so, enraged our ruler that General

Caulincourt (the same who commanded the expedition which crossed the

Rhine and captured the Duc d' Enghien) was engaged to head and lead fifty

other banditti, who were destined to pass in disguise into Baden, and to

bring the King of Sweden a prisoner to this capital. Fortunately, His

Majesty had some suspicion of the attempt, and removed to a greater

distance from our frontiers than Carlsruhe. So certain was our

Government of the success of this shameful enterprise, that our charge

d'affaires in Sweden was preparing to engage the discontented and

disaffected there for the convocation of a diet and the establishment of

a regency.

According to the report in our diplomatic circle. Bonaparte and

Talleyrand intended nevermore to, release their royal captive when once

in their power; but, after forcing him to resign the throne to his son,

keep him a prisoner for the remainder of his days, which they would have

taken care should not have been long. The Duke of Sudermania was to have

been nominated a regent until the majority of the young King, not yet six

years of age. The Swedish diets were to recover that influence, or,

rather, that licentiousness, to which Gustavus III., by the revolution of

the 19th of August, 1772, put an end. All exiled regicides, or traitors,

were to be recalled, and a revolutionary focus organized in the North,

equally threatening Russia and Denmark. The dreadful consequences of

such an event are incalculable. Thanks to the prudence of His Swedish

Majesty, all these schemes evaporated in air.

Not being able to dethrone a Swedish Monarch, our Cabinet resolved to

partition the Swedish territory, to which effect I am assured that

proposals were last summer made to the Cabinets of St. Petersburg,

Berlin, and Copenhagen. Swedish Finland was stated to have been offered

to Russia, Swedish Pomerania to Prussia, and Scania and Blekinge to

Denmark; but the overture was rejected.

The King of Sweden possesses both talents and information superior to

most of his contemporaries, and he has surrounded himself with

counsellors who, with their experience, make wisdom more firm, more

useful, and more valuable. His chancellor, D'Ehrenheim, unites modesty

with sagacity; he is a most able statesman, an accomplished gentleman,

and the most agreeable of men. He knows the languages, as well as the

constitutions, of every country in Europe, with equal perfection as his

native tongue and national code. Had his Sovereign the same ascendency

over the European politics as Christina had during the negotiation of the

Treaty of Munster, other States would admire, and Sweden be proud of,

another Axel Oxenstiern.

Count Fersen, who also has, and is worthy of, the confidence of his

Prince, is a nobleman, the honour and pride of his rank. A colonel

before the Revolution of the regiment Royal Suedois, in the service of my

country, his principles were so well appreciated that he was entrusted by

Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, when so many were so justly suspected,

and served royalty in distress, at the risk of his own existence. This

was so much the more generous in him as he was a foreigner, of one of the

most ancient families, and one of the richest noblemen in his own

country. To him Louis XVIII. is indebted for his life; and he brought

consolation to the deserted Marie Antoinette even in the dungeon of the

Conciergerie, when a discovery would have been a sentence of death. In

1797, he was appointed by his King plenipotentiary to the Congress of

Rastadt, and arrived there just at the time when Bonaparte, after the

destruction of happiness in Italy, had resolved on the ruin of liberty in

Switzerland, and came there proud of past exploits and big with future

schemes of mischief. His reception from the conquerer of Italy was such

as might have been expected by distinguished loyalty from successful

rebellion. He was told that the Congress of Rastadt was not his place!

and this was true; for what can be common between honour and infamy,

between virtue and vice? On his return to Sweden, Count Fersen was

rewarded with the dignity of a Grand Officer of State.

Of another faithful and trusty counsellor of His Swedish Majesty, Baron

d'Armfeldt, a panegyric would be pronounced in saying that he was the

friend of Gustavus III. From a page to that chevalier of royalty he was

advanced to the rank of general; and during the war with Russia, in 1789

and 1790, he fought and bled by the side of his Prince and benefactor. It

was to him that his King said, when wounded mortally, by the hand of a

regicide, at a masquerade in March, 1792, "Don't be alarmed, my friend.

You know as well as myself that all wounds are not dangerous."

Unfortunately, his were not of that description.

In the will of this great Monarch, Baron d'Armfeldt was nominated one of

the guardians of his present Sovereign, and a governor of the capital;

but the Duke Regent, who was a weak Prince, guided by philosophical

adventurers, by Illuminati and Freemasons, most of whom had imbibed the

French revolutionary maxims, sent him, in a kind of honourable exile, as

an Ambassador to Italy. Shortly afterwards, under pretence of having

discovered a conspiracy, in which the Baron was implicated, he was

outlawed. He then took refuge in Russia, where he was made a general,

and as such distinguished him self under Suwarow during the campaign of

1799. He was then recalled to his country, and restored to all his

former places and dignities, and has never since ceased to merit and

obtain the favour, friendship, and approbation of his King. He is said

to be one of the Swedish general officers intended to serve in union with

the Russian troops expected in Pomerania. Wherever he is employed, I am

convinced that he will fight, vanquish, or perish like a hero. Last

spring he was offered the place of a lieutenant-general in the Austrian

service, which, with regard to salary and emoluments, is greatly superior

to what he enjoys in Sweden; he declined it, however, because, with a

warrior of his stamp, interest is the last consideration.

LETTER XV.

PARIS, September, 1805.

MY LORD:--Believe me, Bonaparte dreads more the liberty of the Press than

all other engines, military or political, used by his rivals or foes for

his destruction. He is aware of the fatal consequences all former

factions suffered from the public exposure of their past crimes and

future views; of the reality of their guilt, and of the fallacy of their

boasts and promises. He does not doubt but that a faithful account of

all the actions and intrigues of his Government, its imposition, fraud,

duplicity, and tyranny, would make a sensible alteration in the public

opinion; and that even those who, from motives of patriotism, from being

tired of our revolutionary convulsions, or wishing for tranquillity, have

been his adherents, might alter their sentiments when they read of

enormities which must indicate insecurity, and prove to every one that he

who waded through rivers of blood to seize power will never hesitate

about the means of preserving it.

There is not a printing-office, from the banks of the Elbe to the Gulf of

Naples, which is not under the direct or indirect inspection of our

police agents; and not a bookseller in Germany, France, Italy, Spain,

Portugal, Holland, or Switzerland, publishes a work which, if contrary to

our policy or our fears, is not either confiscated, or purchased on the

day it, makes its appearance. Besides our regular emissaries, we have

persons travelling from the beginning to the end of the year, to pick up

information of what literary productions are printing; of what authors

are popular; of their political opinions and private circumstances. This

branch of our haute police extends even to your country.

Before the Revolution, we had in this capital only two daily papers, but

from 1789 to 1799 never less than thirty, and frequently sixty journals

were daily printed. After Bonaparte had assumed the consular authority,

they were reduced to ten. But though these were under a very strict

inspection of our Minister of Police, they were regarded still as too

numerous, and have lately been diminished to eight, by the incorporation

of 'Le Clef du Cabinet' and 'Le Bulletin de l'Europe' with the 'Gazette

de France', a paper of which the infamously famous Barrere is the editor.

According to a proposal of Bonaparte, it was lately debated in the

Council of State whether it would not be politic to suppress all daily

prints, with the sole exception of the Moniteur. Fouche and Talleyrand

spoke much in favour of this measure of security. Real, however, is said

to have suggested another plan, which was adopted; and our Government,

instead of prohibiting the appearance of our daily papers, has resolved

by degrees to purchase them all, and to entrust them entirely to the

direction of Barrere, who now is consulted in everything concerning books

or newspapers.

All circulation of foreign papers is prohibited, until they have

previously obtained the stamp of approbation from the grand literary

censor, Barrere. Any person offending against this law is most severely

punished. An American gentlemen, of the name of Campbell, was last

spring sent to the Temple for lending one of your old daily papers to a

person who lodged in the same hotel with him. After an imprisonment of

ten weeks he made some pecuniary sacrifices to obtain his liberty, but

was carried to Havre, under an escort of gendarmes, put on board a

neutral vessel, and forbidden, under pain of death, ever to set his foot

on French ground again. An American vessel was, about the same time,

confiscated at Bordeaux, and the captain and crew imprisoned, because

some English books were found on board, in which Bonaparte, Talleyrand,

Fouche, and some of our great men were rather ill-treated. The crew have

since been liberated, but the captain has been brought here, and is still

in the Temple. The vessel and the cargo have been sold as lawful

captures, though the captain has proved from the names written in the

books that they belonged to a passenger. A young German student in

surgery, who came here to improve himself, has been nine months in the

same state prison, for having with him a book, printed in Germany during

Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt, wherein the chief and the undertaking

are ridiculed. His mother, the widow of a clergyman, hearing of the

misfortune of her son, came here, and has presented to the Emperor and

Empress half a dozen petitions, without any effect whatever, and has

almost ruined herself and her other children by the expenses of the

journey. During a stay of four months she has not yet been able to gain

admittance into the Temple, to visit or see her son, who perhaps expired

in tortures, or died brokenhearted before she came here.

A dozen copies of a funeral sermon on the Duc d'Enghien had found their

way here, and were secretly circulated for some time; but at last the

police heard of it, and every person who was suspected of having read

them was arrested. The number of these unfortunate persons, according to

some, amounted to one hundred and thirty, while others say that they were

only eighty-four, of whom twelve died suddenly in the Temple, and the

remainder were transported to Cayenne; upwards of half of them were

women, some of the ci-devant highest rank among subjects.

A Prussian, of the name of Bulow, was shot as a spy in the camp of

Boulogne, because in his trunk was an English book, with the lives of

Bonaparte and of some of his generals. Every day such and other examples

of the severity of our Government are related; and foreigners who visit

us continue, nevertheless, to be off their guard. They would be less

punished had they with them forged bills than, printed books or

newspapers, in which our Imperial Family and public functionaries are not

treated with due respect. Bonaparte is convinced that in every book

where he is not spoken of with praise, the intent is to blame him; and

such intents or negative guilt never escape with impunity.

As, notwithstanding the endeavours of our Government, we are more fond of

foreign prints, and have more confidence in them than in our own,

official presses have lately been established at Antwerp, at Cologne, and

at Mentz, where the 'Gazette de Leyden', 'Hamburg Correspondenten', and

'Journal de Frankfort' are reprinted; some articles left out, and others

inserted in their room. It was intended to reprint also the 'Courier de

Londres', but our types, and particularly, our paper, would detect the

fraud. I have read one of our own Journal de Frankfort, in which were

extracts from this French paper, printed in your country, which I

strongly suspect are of our own manufacture. I am told that several new

books, written by foreigners, in praise of our present brilliant

Government, are now in the presses of those our frontier towns, and will

soon be laid before the public as foreign productions.

A clerk of a banking-house had lately the imprudence to mention, during

his dinner at the restaurateur's of 'Cadran Vert', on the Boulevards,

some doubt of the veracity of an official article in the 'Moniteur'. As

he left the house he was arrested, carried before Fouche, accused of

being an English agent, and before supper-time he was on the road to

Rochefort on his way to Cayenne. As soon as the banker Tournon was

informed of this expeditious justice, as it is called here, he waited on

Fouche, who threatened even to transport him if he dared to interfere

with the transactions of the police. This banker was himself seized in

the spring of last year by a police agent and some gendarmes, and carried

into exile forty leagues from this capital, where he remained six.

months, until a pecuniary douceur procured him a recall. His crime was

having inquired after General Moreau when in the Temple, and of having

left his card there.

LETTER XVI.

PARIS, September, 1805.

MY LORD:--The Prince Borghese has lately been appointed a captain of the

Imperial Guard of his Imperial brother-in-law, Napoleon the First, and is

now in Germany, making his first campaign. A descendant of a wealthy and

ancient Roman family, but born with a weak understanding, he was easily

deluded into the ranks of the revolutionists of his own country, by a

Parisian Abbe, his instructor and governor, and gallant of the Princesse

Borghese, his mother. He was the first secretary of the first Jacobin

club established at Rome, in the spring of 1798; and in December of the

same year, when the Neapolitan troops invaded the Ecclesiastical States,

he, with his present brother-in-law, another hopeful Roman Prince, Santa

Cruce, headed the Roman sans-culottes in their retreat. To show his love

of equality, he had previously served as a common man in a company of

which the captain was a fellow that sold cats' meat and tripe in the

streets of Rome, and the lieutenant a scullion of his mother's kitchen.

Since Imperial aristocracy is now become the order of the day, he is as

insupportable for his pride and vanity as he, some years ago, was

contemptible for his meanness. He married, in 1803, Madame Leclerc, who,

between the death of a first and a wedding with a second husband--a space

of twelve months--had twice been in a fair way to become a mother. Her

portion was estimated at eighteen millions of livres--a sum sufficient to

palliate many 'faux pas' in the eyes of a husband more sensible and more

delicate than her present Serene Idiot, as she styles the Prince

Borghese.

The lady is the favourite sister of Napoleon, the ablest, but also the

most wicked of the female Bonapartes. She had, almost from her infancy,

passed through all the filth of prostitution, debauchery, and profligacy

before she attained her present elevation; rank, however, has not altered

her morals, but only procured her the means of indulging in new excesses.

Ever since the wedding night the Prince Borghese has been excluded from

her bed; for she declared frankly to him, as well as to her brother, that

she would never endure the approach of a man with a bad breath; though

many who, from the opportunities they have had of judging, certainly

ought to know, pretend that her own breath is not the sweetest in the

world. When her husband had marched towards the Rhine, she asked her

brother, as a favour, to procure the Prince Borghese, after a useless

life, a glorious death. This curious demand of a wife was, made in

Madame Bonaparte's drawing-room, in the presence of fifty persons. "You

are always 'etourdie'," replied Napoleon, smiling.

If Bonaparte, however, overlooks the intrigues of his sisters, he is not

so easily pacified when any reports reach him inculpating the virtues of

his sisters-in-law. Some gallants of Madame Joseph Bonaparte have

already disappeared to return no more, or are wandering in the wilds of

Cayenne; but the Emperor is particularly attentive to everything

concerning the morality of Madame Louis, whose descendants are destined

to continue the Bonaparte dynasty. Two officers, after being cashiered,

were, with two of Madame Louis's maids, shut up last month in the Temple,

and have not since been heard of, upon suspicion that the Princess

preferred their society to that of her husband.

Louis Bonaparte, whose constitution has been much impaired by his

debaucheries, was, last July, advised by his physicians to use the baths

at St. Amand. After his wife had accompanied him as far as Lille, she

went to visit one of her friends, Madame Ney, the wife of General Ney,

who commanded the camp near Montreuil. This lady resided in a castle

called Leek, in the vicinity, where dinners, concerts, balls, and other

festivities celebrated the arrival of the Princess; and to these the

principal officers of the camp were invited. One morning, about an hour

after the company had retired to bed, the whole castle was disturbed and

alarmed by an uproar in the anteroom of Princesse Louis's bedchamber. On

coming to the scene of riot, two officers were found there fighting, and

the Princesse Louis, more than half undressed, came out and called the

sentries on duty to separate the combatants, who were both wounded. This

affair occasioned great scandal; and General Ney, after having put the

officers under arrest, sent a courier to Napoleon at Boulogne, relating

the particulars and demanding His Majesty's orders. It was related and

believed as a fact that the quarrel originated about two of the maids of

the Princess (whose virtue was never suspected), with whom the officers

were intriguing. The Emperor ordered the culprits to be broken and

delivered up to his Minister of Police, who knew how to proceed. The

Princesse Louis also received an invitation to join her sister-in-law,

Madame Murat, then in the camp at Boulogne, and to remain under her care

until her husband's return from St. Amand.

General Murat was then at Paris, and his lady was merely on a visit to

her Imperial brother, who made her responsible for Madame Louis, whom he

severely reprimanded for the misconduct of her maids. The bedrooms of

the two sisters were on the same floor. One night, Princesse Louis

thought she heard the footsteps of a person on the staircase, not like

those of a female, and afterwards the door of Madame Murat's room opened

softly. This occurrence deprived her of all desire to sleep; and

curiosity, or perhaps revenge, excited her to remove her doubts

concerning the virtue of her guardian. In about an hour afterwards, she

stole into Madame Murat's bedroom, by the way of their sitting-room, the

door in the passage being bolted. Passing her hand over the pillow, she

almost pricked herself with the strong beard of a man, and, screaming

out, awoke her sister, who inquired what she could want at such an

unusual hour.

"I believe," replied the Princess, "my room is haunted. I have not shut

my eyes, and intended to ask for a place by your side, but I find it is

already engaged:

"My maid always sleeps with me when my husband is absent," said Madame

Murat.

"It is very rude of your maid to go to bed with her mistress without

first shaving herself," said the Princess, and left the room.

The next morning an explanation took place; the ladies understood each

other, and each, during the remaining part of her husband's absence, had

for consolation a maid for a bedfellow. Madame Murat also convinced the

Emperor that his suspicions with regard to the Princesse Louis were

totally unfounded; and he with some precious presents, indemnified her

for his harsh treatment.

It is reported that the two maids of the Princesse Louis, when before

Fouche, first denied all acquaintance with the officers; but, being

threatened with tortures, they signed a 'proces verbal', acknowledging

their guilt. This valuable and authentic document the Minister sent by

an extra courier to the Emperor, who showed it to his stepdaughter. Her

generosity is proverbial here, and therefore nobody is surprised that she

has given a handsome sum of money to the parents of her maids, who had in

vain applied to see their children; Fouche having told them that affairs

of State still required their confinement. One of them, Mariothe, has

been in the service of the Princess ever since her marriage, and is known

to possess all her confidence; though during that period of four years

she has twice been in a state of pregnancy, through the condescending

attention of her princely master.

LETTER XVII.

PARIS, September, 1805.

MY LORD:--When preparations were made for the departure of our army of

England for Germany, it excited both laughter and murmuring among the

troops. Those who had always regarded the conquest of England as

impracticable in present circumstances, laughed, and those who had in

their imagination shared the wealth of your country, showed themselves

vexed at their disappointment. To keep them in good spirits, the company

of the theatre of the Vaudevilles was ordered from hence to Boulogne, and

several plays, composed for the occasion, were performed, in which the

Germans were represented as defeated, and the English begging for peace

on their knees, which the Emperor of the French grants upon condition

that one hundred guineas ready money should be paid to each of his

soldiers and sailors. Every corps in its turn was admitted gratis to

witness this exhibition of the end of all their labours; and you can form

no idea what effect it produced, though you are not a stranger to our

fickle and inconsiderate character. Ballads, with the same predictions

and the same promises, were written and distributed among the soldiers,

and sung by women sent by Fouche to the coast. As all productions of

this sort were, as usual, liberally rewarded by the Emperor, they poured

in from all parts of his Empire.

Three poets and authors of the theatre of the Vaudevilles, Barrel, Radet,

and Desfontaines, each received two hundred napoleons d'or for their

common production of a ballad, called "Des Adieux d'un Grenadier au Camp

de Boulogne." From this I have extracted the following sample, by which

you may judge of the remainder:

THE GRENADIER'S ADIEU

TO THE CAMP AT BOULOGNE

The drum is beating, we must march, We're summon'd to another field, A

field that to our conq'ring swords Shall soon a laurel harvest yield. If

English folly light the torch Of war in Germany again The loss is

theirs--the gain is ours March! march! commence the bright campaign.

There, only by their glorious deeds Our chiefs and gallant bands are

known; There, often have they met their foes, And victory was all their

own: There, hostile ranks, at our approach, Prostrate beneath our feet

shall bow; There, smiling conquest waits to twine A laurel wreath round

every brow.

Adieu, my pretty turf-built hut * Adieu, my little garden, too! I made, I

deck'd you all myself, And I am loth to part with you: But since my arms

I must resume, And leave your comforts all behind, Upon the hostile

frontier soon My tent shall flutter in the wind.

My pretty fowls and doves, adieu! Adieu, my playful cat, to thee! Who

every morning round me came, And were my little family. But thee, my dog,

I shall not leave No, thou shalt ever follow me, Shalt share my toils,

shaft share my fame For thou art called VICTORY.

But no farewell I bid to you, Ye prams and boats, which, o'er the wave,

Were doom'd to waft to England's shore Our hero chiefs, our soldiers

brave. To you, good gentlemen of Thames, Soon, soon our visit shall be

paid, Soon, soon your merriment be o'er 'T is but a few short hours

delay'd.

* During the long continuance of the French encampment at Boulogne the

troops had formed, as it were, a romantic town of huts. Every but had a

garden surrounding it, kept in neat order and stocked with vegetables and

flowers. They had, besides, fowls, pigeons, and rabbits; and these, with

a cat and a dog, generally formed the little household of every soldier.

As I am writing on the subject of poetical agents, I will also say some

words of our poetical flatterers, though the same persons frequently

occupy both the one office and the other. A man of the name of Richaud,

who has sung previously the glory of Marat and Robespierre, offered to

Bonaparte, on the evening preceding his departure for Strasburg, the

following lines; and was in return presented with a purse full of gold,

and an order to the Minister of the Interior, Champagny, to be employed

in his offices, until better provided for.

STANZAS

ON THE RUMOUR OF A WAR WITH AUSTRIA

Kings who, so often vanquish'd, vainly dare

Menace the victor that has laid you low--

Look now at France--and view your own despair

In the majestic splendour of your foe.

What miserable pride, ye foolish kings,

Still your deluded reason thus misleads?

Provoke the storm--the bolt with lightning wings

Shall fall--but fall on your devoted heads.

And thou, Napoleon, if thy mighty sword

Shall for thy people conquer new renown;

Go--Europe shall attest, thy heart preferr'd

The modest olive to the laurel crown.

But thee, lov'd chief, to new achievements bold

The aroused spirit of the soldier calls;

Speak!--and Vienna cowering shall behold

Our banners waving o'er her prostrate walls.

I received, four days afterwards, at the circle of Madame Joseph

Bonaparte, with all other visitors, a copy of these stanzas. Most of the

foreign Ambassadors were of the party, and had also a share of this

patriotic donation. Count von Cobenzl had prudently absented himself;

otherwise, this delenda of the Austrian Carthage would have been

officially announced to him.

Another poetaster, of the name of Brouet, in a long, dull, disgusting

poem, after comparing Bonaparte with all great men of antiquity, and

proving that he surpasses them all, tells his countrymen that their

Emperor is the deputy Divinity upon earth--the mirror of wisdom, a

demi-god to whom future ages will erect statues, build temples, burn

incense, fall down and adore. A proportionate share of abuse is, of

course, bestowed on your nation. He says:

A Londres on vit briller d'un eclat ephemere Le front tout radieux d'un

ministre influent; Mais pour faire palir l'etoile d'Angleterre, Un SOLEIL

tout nouveau parut au firmament, Et ce soleil du peuple franc Admire de

l'Europe entiere Sur la terre est nomme BONAPARTE LE GRAND.

For this delicate compliment Brouet was made deputy postmaster-general in

Italy, and a Knight of the Legion of Honour. It must be granted that, if

Bonaparte is fond of flattery, he does not receive it gratis, but pays

for it like a real Emperor.

It has lately become the etiquette, not only in our Court circle and

official assemblies, but even in fashionable societies of persons who

are, or wish to become, Bonaparte's public functionaries, to distribute

and have read and applauded these disinterested effusions of our poetical

geniuses. This fashion occasioned lately a curious blunder at a

tea-party in the hotel of Madame de Talleyrand. The same printer who had

been engaged by this lady had also been employed by Chenier, or some

other poet, to print a short satire against several of our literary

ladies, in which Madame de Genlis and Madame de Stael (who has just

arrived here from her exile) were, with others, very severely handled. By

mistake, a bundle of this production was given to the porter of Madame de

Talleyrand, and a copy was handed to each visitor, even to Madame de

Genlis and Madame de Stael, who took them without noticing their

contents. Picard, after reading an act of a new play, was asked by the

lady of the house to read this poetic worship of the Emperor of the

French. After the first two lines he stopped short, looking round him

confused, suspecting a trick had been played upon him. This induced the

audience to read what had been given them, and Madame de Talleyrand with

the rest; who, instead of permitting Picard to continue with another.

scene of his play, as he had adroitly begun, made the most awkward

apology in the world, and by it exposed the ladies still more who were

the objects of the satire; which, an hour afterwards, was exchanged for

the verses intended for the homage of the Emperor, and the cause of the

error was cleared up.

I have read somewhere of a tyrant of antiquity who forced all his

subjects to furnish one room of their houses in the best possible manner,

according to their circumstances, and to have it consecrated for the

reception of his bust, before which, under pain of death, they were

commanded to prostrate themselves, morning, noon, and night. They were

to enter this room, bareheaded and barefooted, to remain there only on

their knees, and to leave it without turning their back towards the

sacred representative of their Prince. All laughing, sneezing, coughing,

speaking, or even whispering, were capitally prohibited; but crying was

not only permitted, but commanded, when His Majesty was offended, angry,

or unwell. Should our system of cringing continue progressively to

increase as it has done these last three years, we, too, shall very soon

have rooms consecrated, and an idol to adore.

LETTER XVIII.

PARIS, September, 1805.

MY LORD:--Portugal has suffered more from the degraded state of Spain,

under the administration of the Prince of Peace, than we have yet gained

by it in France. Engaged by her, in 1793, in a war against its

inclination and interest, it was not only deserted afterwards, but

sacrificed. But for the dictates of the Court of Madrid, supported,

perhaps, by some secret influence of the Court of St. James, the Court of

Lisbon would have preserved its neutrality, and, though not a well-wisher

of the French Republic, never have been counted among her avowed enemies.

In the peace of 1795, and in the subsequent treaty of 1796, which

transformed the family compact of the French and Spanish Bourbons into a

national alliance between France and Spain, there was no question about

Portugal. In 1797, indeed, our Government condescended to receive a

Portuguese plenipotentiary, but merely for the purpose of plundering his

country of some millions of money, and to insult it by shutting up its

representative as a State prisoner in the Temple. Of this violation of

the laws of civilized nations, Spain never complained, nor had Portugal

any means to avenge it. After four years of negotiation, and an

expenditure of thirty millions, the imbecile Spanish premier supported

demands made by our Government, which, if assented to, would have left

Her Most Faithful Majesty without any territory in Europe, and without

any place of refuge in America. Circumstances not permitting your

country to send any but pecuniary succours, Portugal would have become an

easy prey to the united Spanish and French forces, had the marauders

agreed about the partition of the spoil. Their disunion, the consequence

of their avidity, saved it from ruin, but not from pillage. A province

was ceded to Spain, the banks and the navigation of a river to France,

and fifty millions to the private purse of the Bonaparte family.

It might have been supposed that such renunciations, and such offerings,

would have satiated ambition, as well as cupidity; but, though the

Cabinet of Lisbon was in peace with the Cabinet of St. Cloud, the

pretensions and encroachments of the latter left the former no rest.

While pocketing tributes it required commercial monopolies, and when its

commerce was favoured, it demanded seaports to ensure the security of its

trade. Its pretensions rose in proportion to the condescensions of the

State it, oppressed. With the money and the value of the diamonds which

Portugal has paid in loans, in contributions, in requisitions, in

donations, in tributes, and in presents, it might have supported, during

ten years, an army of one hundred thousand men; and could it then have

been worse situated than it has been since, and is still at this moment?

But the manner of extorting, and the individuals employed to extort, were

more humiliating to its dignity and independence than the extortions

themselves were injurious to its resources. The first revolutionary

Ambassador Bonaparte sent thither evinced both his ingratitude and his

contempt.

Few of our many upstart generals have more illiberal sentiments, and more

vulgar and insolent manners, than General Lasnes. The son of a publican

and a smuggler, he was a smuggler himself in his youth, and afterwards a

postilion, a dragoon, a deserter, a coiner, a Jacobin, and a terrorist;

and he has, with all the meanness and brutality of these different

trades, a kind of native impertinence and audacity which shocks and

disgusts. He seems to say, "I am a villain. I know that I am so, and I

am proud of being so. To obtain the rank I possess I have respected no

human laws, and I bid defiance to all Divine vengeance. I might be

murdered or hanged, but it is impossible to degrade me. On a gibbet or

in the palace of a Prince, seized by the executioner or dining with

Sovereigns, I am, I will, and I must, always remain the same. Infamy

cannot debase me, nor is it in the power of grandeur to exalt me."

General, Ambassador, Field-marshal, First Consul, or Emperor, Lasnes will

always be the same polluted, but daring individual; a stranger to remorse

and repentance, as well as to honour and virtue. Where Bonaparte sends a

banditto of such a stamp, he has resolved on destruction.

A kind of temporary disgrace was said to have occasioned Lasnes's first

mission to Portugal. When commander of the consular guard, in 1802, he

had appropriated to himself a sum of money from the regimental chest,

and, as a punishment, was exiled as an Ambassador, as he said himself.

His resentment against Bonaparte he took care to pour out on the Regent

of Portugal. Without inquiring or caring about the etiquette of the

Court of Lisbon, he brought the sans-culotte etiquette of the Court of

the Tuileries with him, and determined to fraternize with a foreign and

legitimate Sovereign, as he had done with his own sans-culotte friend and

First Consul; and, what is the more surprising, he carried his point. The

Prince Regent not only admitted him to the royal table, but stood sponsor

to his child by a wife who had been two years his mistress before he was

divorced from his first spouse, and with whom the Prince's consort, a

Bourbon Princess and a daughter of a King, was also obliged to associate.

Avaricious as well as unprincipled, he pursued, as an Ambassador, his

former business of a smuggler, and, instead of being ashamed of a

discovery, proclaimed it publicly, deserted his post, was not reprimanded

in France, but was, without apology, received back again in Portugal. His

conduct afterwards could not be surprising. He only insisted that some

faithful and able Ministers should be removed, and others appointed in

their place, more complaisant and less honest.

New plans of Bonaparte, however, delivered Portugal from this plague; but

what did it obtain in return?--another grenadier Ambassador, less brutal

but more cunning, as abandoned but more dissimulating.

Gendral Junot is the son of a corn-chandler near the corn-market of this

capital, and was a shopman to his father in 1789. Having committed some

pilfering, he was turned out of the parental dwelling, and therefore

lodged himself as an inmate of the Jacobin Club. In 1792, he entered, as

a soldier, in a regiment of the army marching against the county of Nice;

and, in 1793, he served before Toulon, where he became acquainted with

Bonaparte, whom he, in January, 1794, assisted in despatching the

unfortunate Toulonese; and with whom, also, in the autumn of the same

year, he, therefore, was arrested as a terrorist.

In 1796, when commander-in-chief, Bonaparte made Junot his aide-de-camp;

and in that capacity he accompanied him, in 1798, to Egypt. There, as

well as in Italy, he fought bravely, but had no particular opportunity of

distinguishing himself. He was not one of those select few whom Napoleon

brought with him to Europe in 1799, but returned first to France in 1801,

when he was nominated a general of division and commander of this

capital, a place he resigned last year to General Murat.

His despotic and cruel behaviour while commander of Paris made him not

much regretted. Fouche lost in him, indeed, an able support, but none of

us here ever experienced from him justice, much less protection. As with

all other of our modern public functionaries, without money nothing was

obtained from him. It required as much for not doing any harm as if, in

renouncing his usual vexatious oppressions, he had conferred benefits. He

was much suspected of being, with Fouche, the patron of a gang of street

robbers and housebreakers, who, in the winter of 1803, infested this

capital, and who, when finally discovered, were screened from justice and

suffered to escape punishment.

I will tell you what I personally have seen of him. Happening one

evening to enter the rooms at Frascati, where the gambling-tables are

kept, I observed him, undressed, out of regimentals, in company with at

young man, who afterwards avowed himself an aide-de-camp of this general,

and who was playing with rouleaux of louis d'or, supposed to contain

fifty each, at Rouge et Noir. As long as he lost, which he did several

times, he took up the rouleau on the table, and gave another from his

pocket. At last he won, when he asked the bankers to look at their loss,

and count the money in his rouleau before they paid him. On opening it,

they found it contained one hundred bank-notes of one thousand livres

each--folded in a manner to resemble the form and size of louis d'or. The

bankers refused to pay, and applied to the company whether they were not

in the right to do so, after so many rouleaux had been changed by the

person who now required such an unusual sum in such an unusual manner.

Before any answer could be given, Junot interfered, asking the bankers

whether they knew who he was. Upon their answering in the negative, he

said: "I am General Junot, the commander of Paris, and this officer who

has won the money is my aide-de-camp; and I insist upon your paying him

this instant, if you do not wish to have your bank confiscated and your

persons arrested." They refused to part with money which they protested

was not their own, and most of the individuals present joined them in

their resistance. "You are altogether a set of scoundrels and sharpers,"

interrupted Junot; "your business shall soon be done."

So saying, he seized all the money on the table, and a kind of

boxing-match ensued between him and the bankers, in which he, being a

tall and strong man, got the better of them. The tumult, however,

brought in the guard, whom he ordered, as their chief, to carry to prison

sixteen persons he pointed out. Fortunately, I was not of the number--I

say fortunately, for I have heard that most of them remained in prison

six months before this delicate affair was cleared up and settled. In

the meantime, Junot not only pocketed all the money he pretended was due

to his aide-de-camp, but the whole sum contained in the bank, which was

double that amount. It was believed by every one present that this was

an affair arranged between him and his aide-de-camp beforehand to pillage

the bank. What a commander, what a general, and what an Ambassador!

Fitte, the secretary of our Embassy to Portugal, was formerly an Abbe,

and must be well remembered in your country, where he passed some years

as an emigrant, but was, in fact, a spy of Talleyrand. I am told that,

by his intrigues, he even succeeded in swindling your Ministers out of a

sum of money by some plausible schemes he proposed to them. He is, as

well as all other apostate priests, a very dangerous man, and an immoral

and unprincipled wretch. During the time of Robespierre he is said to

have caused the murder of his elder brother and younger sister; the

former he denounced to appropriate to himself his wealth, and the latter

he accused of fanaticism, because she refused to cohabit with him. He

daily boasts of the great protection and great friendship of Talleyrand.

'Qualis rex, talis grex'.

LETTER XIX.

PARIS, September, 1805.

MY LORD:--In some of the ancient Republics, all citizens who, in time of

danger and trouble, remained neutral, were punished as traitors or

treated as enemies. When, by our Revolution, civilized society and the

European Commonwealth were menaced with a total overthrow, had each

member of it been considered in the same light, and subjected to the same

laws, some individual States might, perhaps, have been less wealthy, but

the whole community would have been more happy and more tranquil, which

would have been much better. It was a great error in the powerful league

of 1793 to admit any neutrality at all; every Government that did not

combat rebellion should have been considered and treated as its ally. The

man who continues neutral, though only a passenger, when hands are wanted

to preserve the vessel from sinking, deserves to be thrown overboard, to

be swallowed up by the waves and to perish the first. Had all other

nations been united and unanimous, during 1793 and 1794, against the

monster, Jacobinism, we should not have heard of either Jacobin

directors, Jacobin consuls, or a Jacobin Emperor. But then, from a petty

regard to a temporary profit, they entered into a truce with a

revolutionary volcano, which, sooner or later, will consume them all; for

I am afraid it is now too late for all human power, with all human means,

to preserve any State, any Government, or any people, from suffering by

the threatening conflagration. Switzerland, Venice, Geneva, Genoa, and

Tuscany have already gathered the poisoned fruits of their neutrality.

Let but Bonaparte establish himself undisturbed in Hanover some years

longer, and you will see the neutral Hanse Towns, neutral Prussia, and

neutral Denmark visited with all the evils of invasion, pillage, and

destruction, and the independence of the nations in the North will be

buried in the rubbish of the liberties of the people of the South of

Europe.

These ideas have frequently occurred to me, on hearing our agents

pronounce, and their dupes repeat: "Oh! the wise Government of Denmark!

Oh, what a wise statesman the Danish Minister, Count von Bernstorff!" I

do not deny that the late Count von Bernstorff was a great politician;

but I assert, also, that his was a greatness more calculated for regular

times than for periods of unusual political convulsion. Like your Pitt,

the Russian Woronzow, and the Austrian Colloredo, he was too honest to

judge soundly and to act rightly, according to the present situation of

affairs. He adhered too much to the old routine, and did not perceive

the immense difference between the Government of a revolutionary ruler

and the Government of a Louis XIII. or a Louis XIV. I am certain, had he

still been alive, he would have repented of his errors, and tried to have

repaired them.

His son, the present Danish Minister, follows his father's plans, and

adheres, in 1805, to a system laid down by him in 1795; while the

alterations that have occurred within these ten years have more affected

the real and relative power and weakness of States than all the

revolutions which have been produced by the insurrections, wars, and

pacifications of the two preceding centuries. He has even gone farther,

in some parts of his administration, than his father ever intended.

Without remembering the political TRUTH, that a weak State which courts

the alliance of a powerful neighbour always becomes a vassal, while

desiring to become an ally, he has attempted to exchange the connections

of Denmark and Russia for new ones with Prussia; and forgotten the

obligations of the Cabinet of Copenhagen to the Cabinet of St.

Petersburg, and the interested policy of the House of Brandenburgh. That,

on the contrary, Russia has always been a generous ally of Denmark, the

flourishing state of the Danish dominions since the beginning of the last

century evinces. Its distance and geographical position prevent all

encroachments from being feared or attempted; while at the same time it

affords protection equally against the rivalry of Sweden and ambition of

Prussia.

The Prince Royal of Denmark is patriotic as well as enlightened, and

would rule with more true policy and lustre were he to follow seldomer

the advice of his counsellors, and oftener the dictates of his own mind.

Count von Schimmelmann, Count von Reventlow, and Count von Bernstorff,

are all good and moral characters; but I fear that their united capacity

taken together will not fill up the vacancy left in the Danish Cabinet by

the death of its late Prime Minister. I have been personally acquainted

with them all three, but I draw my conclusions from the acts of their

administration, not from my own knowledge. Had the late Count von

Bernstorff held the ministerial helm in 1803, a paragraph in the Moniteur

would never have disbanded a Danish army in Holstein; nor would, in 1805,

intriguers have been endured who preached neutrality, after witnessing

repeated violation of the law of nations, not on the remote banks of the

Rhine, but on the Danish frontiers, on the Danish territory, on the banks

of the Elbe.

It certainly was no compliment to His Danish Majesty when our Government

sent Grouvelle as a representative to Copenhagen, a man who owed his

education and information to the Conde branch of the Bourbons, and who

afterwards audaciously and sacrilegiously read the sentence of death on

the chief of that family, on his good and legitimate King, Louis XVI. It

can neither be called dignity nor prudence in the Cabinet of Denmark to

suffer this regicide to serve as a point of rally to sedition and

innovation; to be the official propagator of revolutionary doctrines, and

an official protector of all proselytes and sectaries of this anti-social

faith.

Before the Revolution a secretary to the Prince of Conde, Grouvelle was

trusted and rewarded by His Serene Highness, and in return betrayed his

confidence, and repaid benefactions and generosity with calumny and

persecution, when his patron was obliged to seek safety in emigration

against the assassins of successful rebellion. When the national seals

were put on the estates of the Prince, he appropriated to himself not

only the whole of His Highness's library, but a part of his plate. Even

the wardrobe and the cellar were laid under contributions by this

domestic marauder.

With natural genius and acquired experience, Grouvelle unites impudence

and immorality; and those on whom he fixes for his prey are, therefore,

easily duped, and irremediably undone. He has furnished disciples to all

factions, and to all sects, assassins to the revolutionary tribunals, as

well as victims for the revolutionary guillotine; sans-culottes to

Robespierre, Septembrizers to Marat, republicans to the Directory, spies

to Talleyrand, and slaves to Bonaparte, who, in 1800, nominated him a

tribune, but in 1804 disgraced him, because he wished that the Duc d'

Enghien had rather been secretly poisoned in Baden than publicly

condemned and privately executed in France.

Our present Minister at the Court of Copenhagen, D' Aguesseau, has no

virtues to boast of, but also no crimes to blush for. With inferior

capacity, he is only considered by Talleyrand as an inferior intriguer,

employed in a country ruled by an inferior policy, neither feared nor

esteemed by our Government. His secretary, Desaugiers the elder, is our

real and confidential firebrand in the North, commissioned to keep

burning those materials of combustion which Grouvelle and others of our

incendiaries have lighted and illuminated in Holstein, Denmark, Sweden,

and Norway.

LETTER XX.

PARIS, October, 1805.

MY LORD:--The insatiable avarice of all the members of the Bonaparte

family has already and frequently been mentioned; some of our

philosophers, however, pretend that ambition and vanity exclude from the

mind of Napoleon Bonaparte the passion of covetousness; that he pillages

only to get money to pay his military plunderers, and hoards treasures

only to purchase slaves, or to recompense the associates and instruments

of his authority.

Whether their assertions be just or not, I will not take upon myself to

decide; but to judge from the great number of Imperial and royal palaces,

from the great augmentation of the Imperial and royal domains; from the

immense and valuable quantity of diamonds, jewels, pictures, statues,

libraries, museums, etc., disinterestedness and self-denial are certainly

not among Napoleon's virtues.

In France, he not only disposes of all the former palaces and extensive

demesnes of our King, but has greatly increased them, by national.

property and by lands and estates bought by the Imperial Treasury, or

confiscated by Imperial decrees. In Italy, he has, by an official act,

declared to be the property of his crown, first, the royal palace at

Milan, and a royal villa, which he now calls Villa Bonaparte; second, the

palace of Monza and its dependencies; third, the palace of Mantua, the

palace of The, and the ci-devant ducal palace of Modena; fourth, a palace

situated in the vicinity of Brescia, and another palace in the vicinity

of Bologna; fifth, the ci-devant ducal palaces of Parma and Placenza;

sixth, the beautiful forest of Tesin. Ten millions were, besides,

ordered to be drawn out of the Royal Treasury at Milan to purchase lands

for the formation of a park, pleasure-grounds, etc.

To these are added all the royal palaces and domains of the former Kings

of Sardinia, of the Dukes of Brabant, of the Counts of Flanders, of the

German Electors, Princes, Dukes, Counts, Barons, etc., who, before the

last war, were Sovereigns on the right bank of the Rhine. I have seen a

list, according to which the number of palaces and chateaux appertaining

to Napoleon as Emperor and King, are stated to be seventy-nine; so that

he may change his habitations six times in the month, without occupying

during the same year the same palace, and, nevertheless, always sleep at

home.

In this number are not included the private chateaux and estates of the

Empress, or those of the Princes and Princesses Bonaparte. Madame

Napoleon has purchased, since her husband's consulate, in her own name,

or in the name of her children, nine estates with their chateaux, four

national forests, and six hotels at Paris. Joseph Bonaparte possesses

four estates and chateaux in France, three hotels at Paris and at

Brussels, three chateaux and estates in Italy, and one hotel at Milan,

and another at Turin. Lucien Bonaparte has now remaining only one hotel

at Paris, another at Bonne, and a third at Chambery. He has one estate

in Burgundy, two in Languedoc, and one in the vicinity of this capital.

At Bologna, Ferrara, Florence, and Rome, he has his own hotels, and in

the Papal States he has obtained, in exchange for property in France,

three chateaux with their dependencies. Louis Bonaparte has three hotels

at Paris, one at Cologne, one at Strasburg, and one at Lyons. He has two

estates in Flanders, three in Burgundy, one in Franche-Comte, and another

in Alsace. He has also a chateau four leagues from this city. At Genoa

he has a beautiful hotel, and upon the Genoese territory a large estate.

He has bought three plantations at Martinico, and two at Guadeloupe. To

Jerome Bonaparte has hitherto been presented only an estate in Brabant,

and a hotel in this capital. Some of the former domains of the House of

Orange, in the Batavian Republic, have been purchased by the agents of

our Government, and are said to be intended for him.

But, while Napoleon Bonaparte has thus heaped wealth on his wife and his

brothers, his mother and sisters have not been neglected or left

unprovided for. Madame Bonaparte, his mother, has one hotel at Paris,

one at Turin, one at Milan, and one at Rome. Her estates in France are

four, and in Italy two. Madame Bacciochi, Princess of Piombino and

Lucca, possesses two hotels in this capital, and one palace at Piombino

and another at Lucca. Of her estates in France, she has only retained

two, but she has three in the Kingdom of Italy, and four in her husband's

and her own dominions. The Princess Santa Cruce possesses one hotel at

Rome and four chateaux in the papal territory. At Milan she has, as well

as at Turin and at Paris, hotels given her by her Imperial brother,

together with two estates in France, one in Piedmont, and two in

Lombardy. The Princesse Murat is mistress of two hotels here, one at

Brussels, one at Tours, and one at Bordeaux, together with three estates

on this, and five on the other side of the Alps. The Princesse Borghese

has purchased three plantations at Guadeloupe, and two at Martinico, with

a part of the treasures left her by her first husband, Leclerc. With her

present husband she received two palaces at Rome, and three estates on

the Roman territory; and her Imperial brother has presented her with one

hotel at Paris, one at Cologne, one at Turin, and one at Genoa, together

with three estates in France and five in Italy. For his mother, and for

each of his sisters, Napoleon has also purchased estates, or lands to

form estates, in their native island of Corsica.

The other near or distant relatives of the Emperor and King have also

experienced his bounty. Cardinal Fesch has his hotels at Paris, Milan,

Lyons, Turin, and Rome; with estates both in France and Italy. Seventeen,

either first, second, or third cousins, by his father's or mother's side,

have all obtained estates either in the French Empire, or in the Kingdom

of Italy, as well as all brothers, sisters, or cousins of his own wife,

and the wives of his brothers, or of the husbands of his sisters. Their

exact number cannot well be known, but a gentleman who has long been

collecting materials for some future history of the House of Bonaparte,

and of the French Empire, has already shown me sixty-six names of

individuals of that description, and of both sexes, who all, thanks to

the Imperial liberality, have suddenly and unexpectedly become people of

property.

When you consider that all these immense riches have been seized and

distributed within the short period of five years, it is not hazardous to

say that, in the annals of Europe, another such revolution in property,

as well as in power, is not to be found.

The wealth of the families of all other Sovereigns taken together does

not amount to half the value of what the Bonapartes have acquired and

possess.

Your country, more than any other upon earth, has to be alarmed at this

revolution of property. Richer than any other nation, you have more to

apprehend; besides, it threatens you more, both as our frequent enemies

and as our national rivals; as a barrier against our plans of universal

dominion, and as our superiors in pecuniary resources. May we never live

to see the day when the mandates of Bonaparte or Talleyrand are honoured

at London, as at Amsterdam, Madrid, Milan, and Rome. The misery of ages

to come will then be certain, and posterity will regard as comparative

happiness, the sufferings of their forefathers. It is not probable that

those who have so successfully pillaged all surrounding States will rest

contented until you are involved in the same ruin. Union among

yourselves only can preserve you from perishing in the universal wreck;

by this you will at least gain time, and may hope to profit by probable

changes and unexpected accidents.

LETTER XXI.

PARIS, October, 1805.

MY LORD:--The Counsellor of State and intendant of the Imperial civil

list, Daru, paid for the place of a commissary-general of our army in

Germany the immense sum of six millions of livres--which was divided

between Madame Bonaparte (the mother), Madame Napoleon Bonaparte,

Princesse Louis Bonaparte, Princesse Murat and the Princesse Borghese. By

this you may conclude in what manner we intend to treat the wretched

inhabitants of the other side of the Rhine. This Daru is too good a

calculator and too fond of money to throw away his expenses; he is master

of a great fortune, made entirely by his arithmetical talents, which have

enabled him for years to break all the principal gambling-banks on the

Continent, where he has travelled for no other purpose. On his return

here, he became the terror of all our gamesters, who offered him an

annuity of one hundred thousand livres--not to play; but as this sum

would have been deducted from what is weekly paid to Fouche, this

Minister sent him an order not to approach a gambling-table, under pain

of being transported to Cayenne. He obeyed, but the bankers soon

experienced that he had deputies, and for fear that even from the other

side of the Atlantic he might forward his calculations hither, Fouche

recommended him, for a small douceur, to the office of an intendant of

Bonaparte's civil list, upon condition of never, directly or indirectly,

injuring our gambling-banks. He has kept his promise with regard to

France, but made, last spring, a gambling tour in Italy and Germany,

which, he avows, produced him nine millions of livres. He always points,

but never keeps a bank. He begins to be so well known in many parts of

the Continent, that the instant he arrives all banks are shut up, and

remain so until his departure. This was the case at Florence last April.

He travels always in style, accompanied by two mistresses and four

servants. He is a chevalier of the Legion of Honour.

He will, however, have some difficulty to make a great profit by his

calculations in Germany, as many of the generals are better acquainted

than he with the country, where their extortions and dilapidations have

been felt and lamented for these ten years past. Augereau, Bernadotte,

Ney, Van Damme, and other of our military banditti, have long been the

terror of the Germans and the reproach of France.

In a former letter I have introduced to you our Field-marshal,

Bernadotte, of whom Augereau may justly be called an elder revolutionary

brother--like him, a Parisian by birth, and, like him, serving as a

common soldier before the Revolution. But he has this merit above

Bernadotte, that he began his political career as a police spy, and

finished his first military engagement by desertion into foreign

countries, in most of which, after again enlisting and again deserting,

he was also again taken and again flogged. Italy has, indeed, since he

has been made a general, been more the scene of his devastations than

Germany. Lombardy and Venice will not soon forget the thousands he

butchered, and the millions he plundered; that with hands reeking with

blood, and stained with human gore, he seized the trinkets which devotion

had given to sanctity, to ornament the fingers of an assassin, or

decorate the bosom of a harlot. The outrages he committed during 1796

and 1797, in Italy, are too numerous to find place in any letter, even

were they not disgusting to relate, and too enormous and too improbable

to be believed. He frequently transformed the temples of the divinity

into brothels for prostitution; and virgins who had consecrated

themselves to remain unpolluted servants of a God, he bayoneted into dens

of impurity, infamy, and profligacy; and in these abominations he prided

himself. In August, 1797, on his way to Paris to take command of the

sbirri, who, on the 4th of the following September, hunted away or

imprisoned the representatives of the people of the legislative body, he

paid a prostitute, with whom he had passed the night at Pavia, with a

draft for fifty louis d'or on the municipality of that town, who dared

not dishonour it; but they kept the draft, and in 1799 handed it over to

Gendral Melas, who sent it to Vienna, where I saw the very original.

The general and grand officer of Bonaparte's Legion of Honour, Van Damme,

is another of our military heroes of the same stamp. A barber, and son

of a Flemish barber, he enlisted as a soldier, robbed, and was condemned

to be hanged. The humanity of the judge preserved him from the gallows;

but he was burnt on the shoulders, flogged by the public executioner, and

doomed to serve as a galley-slave for life. The Revolution broke his

fetters, made him a Jacobin, a patriot, and a general; but the first use

he made of his good fortune was to cause the judge, his benefactor, to be

guillotined, and to appropriate to himself the estate of the family. He

was cashiered by Pichegru, and dishonoured by Moreau, for his ferocity

and plunder in Holland and Germany; but Bonaparte restored him to rank

and confidence; and by a douceur of twelve hundred thousand

livres--properly applied and divided between some of the members of the

Bonaparte family, he procured the place of a governor at Lille, and a

commander-in-chief of the ci-devant Flanders. In landed property, in

jewels, in amount in the funds, and in ready money (he always keeps, from

prudence, six hundred thousand livres--in gold), his riches amount to

eight millions of livres. For a ci-devant sans-culotte barber and

galley-slave, you must grant this is a very modest sum.

LETTER XXII.

PARIS, October, 1805.

MY LORD:--You must often have been surprised at the immense wealth which,

from the best and often authentic information, I have informed you our

generals and public functionaries have extorted and possess; but the

catalogue of private rapine committed, without authority, by our

soldiers, officers, commissaries, and generals, is likewise immense, and

surpassing often the exactions of a legal kind that is to say, those

authorized by our Government itself, or by its civil and military

representatives. It comprehends the innumerable requisitions demanded

and enforced, whether as loans, or in provisions or merchandise, or in

money as an equivalent for both; the levies of men, of horses, oxen, and

carriages; corvees of all kinds; the emptying of magazines for the

service of our armies; in short, whatever was required for the

maintenance, a portion of the pay, and divers wants of those armies, from

the time they had posted themselves in Brabant, Holland, Italy,

Switzerland, and on either bank of the Rhine. Add to this the pillage of

public or private warehouses, granaries, and magazines, whether belonging

to individuals, to the State, to societies, to towns, to hospitals, and

even to orphan-houses.

But these and other sorts of requisitions, under the appellation of

subsistence necessary for the armies, and for what was wanted for

accoutring, quartering, or removing them, included also an infinite

consumption for the pleasures, luxuries, whims, and debaucheries of our

civil or military commanders. Most of those articles were delivered in

kind, and what were not used were set up to auction, converted into ready

money, and divided among the plunderers.

In 1797, General Ney had the command in the vicinity of the free and

Imperial city of Wetzlar. He there put in requisition all private stores

of cloths; and after disposing of them by a public sale, retook them upon

another requisition from the purchasers, and sold them a second time.

Leather and linen underwent the same operation. Volumes might be filled

with similar examples, all of public notoriety.

This Gendral Ney, who is now one of the principal commanders under

Bonaparte in Germany, was a bankrupt tobacconist at Strasburg in 1790,

and is the son of an old-clothes man of Sarre Louis, where he was born in

1765. Having entered as a common soldier in the regiment of Alsace, to

escape the pursuit of his creditors, he was there picked up by some

Jacobin emissaries, whom he assisted to seduce the men into an

insurrection, which obliged most of the officers to emigrate. From that

period he began to distinguish himself as an orator of the Jacobin clubs,

and was, therefore, by his associates, promoted by one step to an

adjutant-general. Brave and enterprising, ambitious for advancement, and

greedy after riches, he seized every opportunity to distinguish and

enrich himself; and, as fortune supported his endeavours, he was in a

short time made a general of division, and acquired a property of several

millions. This is his first campaign under Bonaparte, having previously

served only under Pichegru, Moreau, and Le Courbe.

He, with General Richepanse, was one of the first generals supposed to be

attached to their former chief, General Moreau, whom Bonaparte seduced

into his interest. In the autumn of 1802, when the Helvetic Republic

attempted to recover its lost independence, Ney was appointed

commander-in-chief of the French army in Switzerland, and Ambassador from

the First Consul to the Helvetic Government. He there conducted himself

so much to the satisfaction of Bonaparte, that, on the rupture with your

country, he was made commander of the camp near Montreuil; and last year

his wife was received as a Maid of Honour to the Empress of the French.

This Maid of Honour is the daughter of a washer-woman, and was kept by a

man-milliner at Strasburg, at the time that she eloped with Ney. With

him she had made four campaigns as a mistress before the municipality of

Coblentz made her his wife. Her conduct since has corresponded with that

of her husband. When he publicly lived with mistresses, she did not live

privately with her gallants, but the instant the Emperor of the French

told him to save appearances, if he desired a place for his wife at the

Imperial Court, he showed himself the most attentive and faithful of

husbands, and she the most tender and dutiful of wives. Her manners are

not polished, but they are pleasing; and though not handsome in her

person, she is lively; and her conversation is entertaining, and her

society agreeable. The Princesse Louis Bonaparte is particularly fond of

her, more so than Napoleon, perhaps, desires. She has a fault common

with most of our Court ladies: she cannot resist, when opportunity

presents itself, the temptation of gambling, and she is far from being

fortunate. Report says that more than once she has been reduced to

acquit her gambling debts by personal favours.

Another of our generals, and the richest of them all who are now serving

under Bonaparte, is his brother-in-law, Prince Murat. According to some,

he had been a Septembrizer, terrorist, Jacobin, robber, and assassin,

long before he obtained his first commission as an officer, which was

given him by the recommendation of Marat, whom he in return afterwards

wished to immortalize, by the exchange of one letter in his own name, and

by calling himself Marat instead of Murat. Others, however, declare that

his father was an honest cobbler, very superstitious, residing at

Bastide, near Cahors, and destined his son to be a Capuchin friar, and

that he was in his novitiate when the Revolution tempted him to exchange

the frock of the monk for the regimentals of a soldier. In what manner,

or by what achievements, he gained promotion is not certain, but in 1796

he was a chief of brigade, and an aide-de-camp of Bonaparte, with whom he

went to Egypt, and returned thence with him, and who, in 1801, married

him to his sister, Maria Annunciade, in 1803 made him a governor of

Paris, and in 1804 a Prince.

The wealth which Murat has collected, during his military service, and by

his matrimonial campaign, is rated at upwards of fifty millions of

livres. The landed property he possesses in France alone has cost him

forty--two millions--and it is whispered that the estates bought in the

name of his wife, both in France and Italy, are not worth much less. A

brother-in-law of his, who was a smith, he has made a legislator; and an

uncle, who was a tailor, he has placed in the Senate. A cousin of his,

who was a chimneysweeper, is now a tribune; and his niece, who was an

apprentice to a mantua-maker, is now married to one of the Emperor's

chamberlains. He has been very generous to all his relations, and would

not have been ashamed, even, to present his parents at the Imperial

Court, had not the mother, on the first information of his princely rank,

lost her life, and the father his senses, from surprise and joy. The

millions are not few that he has procured his relatives an opportunity to

gain. His brother-in-law, the legislator, is worth three millions of

livres.

It has been asserted before, and I repeat it again:

"It is avarice, and not the mania of innovation, or the jargon of

liberty, that has led, and ever will lead, the Revolution--its promoters,

its accomplices, and its instruments. Wherever they penetrate, plunder

follows; rapine was their first object, of which ferocity has been but

the means. The French Revolution was fostered by robbery and murder; two

nurses that will adhere to her to the last hour of her existence."

General Murat is the trusty executioner of all the Emperor's secret deeds

of vengeance, or public acts of revolutionary justice. It was under his

private responsibility that Pichegru, Moreau, and Georges were guarded;

and he saw Pichegru strangled, Georges guillotined, and Moreau on his way

to his place of exile. After the seizure and trial of the Duc d'

Enghien, some doubts existed with Napoleon whether even the soldiers of

his Italian guard would fire at this Prince. "If they hesitate," said

Murat, who commanded the expedition in the wood of Vincennes, "my pistols

are loaded, and I will blow out his brains."

His wife is the greatest coquette of the Bonaparte family. Murat was, at

first, after his marriage, rather jealous of his brother-in-law, Lucien,

whom he even fought; but Napoleon having assured him, upon his word of

honour, that his suspicions were unfounded, he is now the model of

complaisant and indulgent husbands; but his mistresses are nearly as

numerous as Madame Murat's favourites. He has a young aide-de-camp of

the name of Flahault, a son of Talleyrand, while Bishop of Autun, by the

then Countess de Flahault, whom Madame Murat would not have been sorry to

have had for a consoler at Paris, while her princely spouse was

desolating Germany.

LETTER XXIII.

PARIS, October, 1805.

MY LORD:--Since Bonaparte's departure for Germany, the vigilance of the

police has much increased: our patrols are doubled during the night, and

our spies more numerous and more insolent during the day. Many suspected

persons have also been exiled to some distance from this capital, while

others, for a measure of safety, have been shut up in the Temple, or in

the Castle of Vincennes. These 'lettres de cachet', or mandates of

arrest, are expedited during the Emperor's absence exclusively by his

brother Louis, after a report, or upon a request, of the Minister of

Police, Fouche.

I have mentioned to you before that Louis Bonaparte is both a drunkard

and a libertine. When a young and unprincipled man of such propensities

enjoys an unrestrained authority, it cannot be surprising to hear that he

has abused it. He had not been his brother's military viceroy for

twenty-four hours before one set of our Parisians were amused, while

others were shocked and scandalized, at a tragical intrigue enterprised

by His Imperial Highness.

Happening to see at the opera a very handsome young woman in the boxes,

he despatched one of his aides-de-camp to reconnoitre the ground, and to

find out who she was. All gentlemen attached to his person or household

are also his pimps, and are no novices in forming or executing plans of

seduction. Caulincourt (the officer he employed in this affair) returned

soon, but had succeeded only in one part of the business. He had not

been able to speak to the lady, but was informed that she had only been

married a fortnight to a manufacturer of Lyons, who was seated by her

side, jealous of his wife as a lover of his mistress. He gave at the

same time as his opinion that it would be necessary to employ the police

commissary to arrest the husband when he left the play, under some

pretext or other, while some of the friends of Prince Louis took

advantage of the confusion to seize the wife, and carry her to his hotel.

An order was directly signed by Louis, according to which the police

commissary, Chazot, was to arrest the manufacturer Leboure, of Lyons, and

put him into a post-chaise, under the care of two gendarmes, who were to

see him safe to Lyons, where he was to sign a promise of not returning to

Paris without the permission of Government, being suspected of

stockjobbing (agiotage). Everything succeeded according to the proposal

of Caulincourt, and Louis found Madame Leboure crying in his saloon. It

is said that she promised to surrender her virtue upon condition of only

once more seeing her husband, to be certain that he was not murdered, but

that Louis refused, and obtained by brutal force, and the assistance of

his infamous associates, that conquest over her honour which had not been

yielded to his entreaties or threats. His enjoyment, however, was but of

short continuance; he had no sooner fallen asleep than his poor injured

victim left the bed, and, flying into his anteroom, stabbed herself with

his sword. On the next morning she was found a corpse, weltering in her

blood. In the hope of burying this infamy in secrecy, her corpse was, on

the next evening, when it was dark, put into a sack, and thrown into the

river, where, being afterwards discovered, the police agents gave out

that she had fallen the victim of assassins. But when Madame Leboure was

thus seized at the opera, besides her husband, her parents and a brother

were in her company, and the latter did not lose sight of the carriage in

which his sister was placed till it had entered the hotel of Louis

Bonaparte, where, on the next day, he, with his father, in vain claimed

her. As soon as the husband was informed of the untimely end of his

wife, he wrote a letter to her murderer, and shot himself immediately

afterwards through the head, but his own head was not the place where he

should have sent the bullet; to destroy with it the cause of his

wretchedness would only have been an act of retaliation, in a country

where power forces the law to lie dormant, and where justice is invoked

in vain when the criminal is powerful.

I have said that this intrigue, as it is styled by courtesy in our

fashionable circles, amused one part of the Parisians; and I believe the

word 'amuse' is not improperly employed in this instance. At a dozen

parties where I have been since, this unfortunate adventure has always

been an object of conversation, of witticisms, but not of blame, except

at Madame Fouche's, where Madame Leboure was very much blamed indeed for

having been so overnice, and foolishly scrupulous.

Another intrigue of His Imperial Highness, which did not, indeed, end

tragically, was related last night, at the tea-party of Madame Recamier.

A man of the name of Deroux had lately been condemned by our criminal

tribunal, for forging bills of exchange, to stand in the pillory six

hours, and, after being marked with a hot iron on his shoulders, to work

in the galleys for twenty years. His daughter, a young girl under

fifteen, who lived with her grandmother (having lost her mother), went,

accompanied by the old lady, and presented a petition to Louis, in favour

of her father. Her youth and modesty, more than her beauty, inspired the

unprincipled libertine with a desire of ruining innocence, under the

colour of clemency to guilt. He ordered her to call on his chamberlain,

Darinsson, in an hour, and she should obtain an answer. There, either

seduced by paternal affection, intimidated by threats, or imposed upon by

delusive and engaging promises, she exchanged her virtue for an order of

release for her parent; and so satisfied was Louis with his bargain that

he added her to the number of his regular mistresses.

As soon as Deroux had recovered his liberty, he visited his daughter in

her new situation, where he saw an order of Louis, on the Imperial

Treasury, for twelve thousand livres--destined to pay the upholsterer who

had furnished her apartment. This gave him, no doubt, the idea of making

the Prince pay a higher value for his child, and he forged another order

for sixty thousand livres--so closely resembling it that it was without

suspicion acquitted by the Imperial Treasurer. Possessing this money, he

fabricated a pass, in the name of Louis, as a courier carrying despatches

to the Emperor in Germany, with which he set out, and arrived safe on the

other side of the Rhine. His forgeries were only discovered after he had

written a letter from Frankfort to Louis, acquitting his daughter of all

knowledge of what he had done. In the first moment of anger, her

Imperial lover ordered her to be arrested, but he has since forgiven her,

and taken her back to his favour. This trick of Deroux has pleased

Fouche, who long opposed his release, from a knowledge of his dangerous

talent and vicious character. He had once before released himself with a

forged order from the Minister of Police, whose handwriting he had only

seen for a minute upon his own mandate of imprisonment.

LETTER XXIV.

PARIS, October, 1805.

MY LORD:--Though loudly complained of by the Cabinet of St. Cloud, the

Cabinet of St. Petersburg has conducted itself in these critical times

with prudence without weakness, and with firmness without obstinacy. In

its connections with our Government it has never lost sight of its own

dignity, and, therefore, never endured without resentment those

impertinent innovations in the etiquette of our Court, and in the manner

and language of our Emperor to the representatives of legitimate

Sovereigns. Had similar becoming sentiments directed the councils of all

other Princes and the behaviour of their Ambassadors here, spirited

remonstrances might have moderated the pretensions or passions of upstart

vanity, while a forbearance and silence, equally impolitic and shameful,

have augmented insolence by flattering the pride of an insupportable and

outrageous ambition.

The Emperor of Russia would not have been so well represented here, had

he not been so wisely served and advised in his council chamber at St.

Petersburg. Ignorance and folly commonly select fools for their agents,

while genius and capacity employ men of their own mould, and of their own

cast. It is a remarkable truth that, notwithstanding the frequent

revolutions in Russia, since the death of Peter the First the ministerial

helm has always been in able hands; the progressive and uninterrupted

increase of the real and relative power of the Russian Empire evinces the

reality of this assertion.

The Russian Chancellor, Count Alexander Woronzoff, may be justly called

the chief of political veterans, whether his talents or long services are

considered. Catherine II., though a voluptuous Princess, was a great

Sovereign, and a competent judge of merit; and it was her unbiased choice

that seated Count Woronzoff, while yet young, in her councils. Though

the intrigues of favourites have sometimes removed him, he always retired

with the esteem of his Sovereign, and was recalled without caballing or

cringing to return. He is admired by all who have the honour of

approaching him, as much for his obliging condescension as for his great

information. No petty views, no petty caprices, no petty vengeances find

room in his generous bosom. He is known to have conferred benefactions,

not only on his enemies, but on those who, at the very time, were

meditating his destruction. His opinion is that a patriotic Minister

should regard no others as his enemies but those conspiring against their

country, and acknowledge no friends or favourites incapable of well

serving the State. Prince de Z-------- waited on him one day, and, after

hesitating some time, began to compliment him on his liberal sentiments,

and concluded by asking the place of a governor for his cousin, with whom

he had reason to suppose the Count much offended. "I am happy," said His

Excellency, "to oblige you, and to do my duty at the same time. Here is

a libel he wrote against me, and presented to the Empress, who graciously

has communicated it to me, in answer to my recommendation of him

yesterday to the place you ask for him to-day. Read what I have written

on the libel, and you will be convinced that it will not be my fault if

he is not to-day a governor." In two hours afterwards the nomination was

announced to Prince de Z--------, who was himself at the head of a cabal

against the Minister. In any country such an act would have been

laudable, but where despotism rules with unopposed sway, it is both

honourable and praiseworthy.

Prince Adam Czartorinsky, the assistant of Count Woronzoff, and Minister

of the foreign department, unites, with the vigour of youth, the

experience of age. He has travelled in most countries of Europe, not

solely to figure at Courts, to dance at balls, to look at pictures, or to

collect curiosities, but to study the character of the people, the laws

by which they are governed, and their moral or social influence with

regard to their comforts or misery. He therefore brought back with him a

stock of knowledge not to be acquired from books, but only found in the

world by frequenting different and opposite societies with observation,

penetration, and genius. With manners as polished as his mind is well

informed, he not only, possesses the favour, but the friendship of his

Prince, and, what is still more rare, is worthy of both. All Sovereigns

have favourites, few ever had any friends; because it is more easy to

flatter vanity, than to display a liberal disinterestedness; to bow

meanly than to instruct or to guide with delicacy and dignity; to abuse

the confidence of the Prince than to use it to his honour, and to the

advantage of his Government.

That such a Monarch as an Alexander, and such Ministers as Count

Woronzoff and Prince Czartorinsky, should appoint a Count Markof to a

high and important post, was not unexpected by any one not ignorant of

his merit.

Count Markof was, early in the reign of Catherine II., employed in the

office of the foreign department at St. Petersburg, and was, whilst

young, entrusted with several important negotiations at the Courts of

Berlin and Vienna., when Prussia had proposed the first partition of

Poland. He afterward went on his travels, from which he was recalled to

fill the place of an Ambassador to the late King of Sweden, Gustavus III.

He was succeeded, in 1784, at Stockholm, by Count Muschin Puschin, after

being appointed a Secretary of State in his own country, a post he

occupied with distinction, until the death of Catherine II., when Paul

the First revenged upon him, as well as on most others of the faithful

servants of this Princess, his discontent with his mother. He was then

exiled to his estates, where he retired with the esteem of all those who

had known him. In 1801, immediately after his accession to the throne,

Alexander invited Count Markof to his Court and Council, and the trusty

but difficult task of representing a legitimate Sovereign at the Court of

our upstart usurper was conferred on him. I imagine that I see the great

surprise of this nobleman, when, for the first time, he entered the

audience-chamber of our little great man, and saw him fretting, staring,

swearing, abusing to right and to left, for one smile conferring twenty

frowns, and for one civil word making use of fifty hard expressions,

marching in the diplomatic audience as at the head of his troops, and

commanding foreign Ambassadors as his French soldiers. I have heard that

the report of Count Markof to his Court, describing this new and rare

show, is a chef-d'oeuvre of wit, equally amusing and instructive. He is

said to have requested of his Cabinet new and particular orders how to

act--whether as the representative of an independent Sovereign, or, as

most of the other members of the foreign diplomatic corps in France, like

a valet of the First Consul; and that, in the latter case, he implored as

a favour, an immediate recall; preferring, had he no other choice left,

sooner to work in the mines at Siberia than to wear, in France the

disgraceful fetters of a Bonaparte. His subsequent dignified conduct

proves the answer of his Court.

Talleyrand's craft and dissimulation could not delude the sagacity of

Count Markof, who was, therefore, soon less liked by the Minister than by

the First Consul. All kind of low, vulgar, and revolutionary chicanery

was made use of to vex or to provoke the Russian Ambassador. Sometimes

he was reproached with having emigrants in his service; another time

protection was refused to one of his secretaries, under pretence that he

was a Sardinian subject. Russian travellers were insulted, and detained

on the most frivolous pretences. Two Russian noblemen were even arrested

on our side of the Rhine, because Talleyrand had forgotten to sign his

name to their passes, which were otherwise in order. The fact was that

our Minister suspected them of carrying some papers which he wanted to

see, and, therefore, wrote his name with an ink of such a composition

that, after a certain number of days, everything written with it

disappeared. Their effects and papers were strictly searched by an agent

preceding them from this capital, but nothing was found, our Minister

being misinformed by his spies.

When Count Markof left Sweden, he carried with him an actress of the

French theatre at Stockholm, Madame Hus, an Alsatian by birth, but who

had quitted her country twelve years before the Revolution, and could,

therefore, never be included among emigrants. She had continued as a

mistress with this nobleman, is the mother of several children by him,

and an agreeable companion to him, who has never been married. As I have

often said, Talleyrand is much obliged to any foreign diplomatic agent

who allows him to be the indirect provider or procurer of his mistresses.

After in vain tempting Count Markof with new objects, he introduced to

the acquaintance of Madame Hus some of his female emissaries. Their

manoeuvres, their insinuations, and even their presents were all thrown

away. The lady remained the faithful friend, and therefore refused with

indignation to degrade herself into a spy on her lover. Our Minister

then first discovered that, not only was Madame Hus an emigrant, but had

been a great benefactress and constant companion of emigrants at St.

Petersburg, and, of course, deserved to be watched, if not punished.

Count Markof is reported to have said to Talleyrand on this grave

subject, in the presence of two other foreign Ambassadors:

"Apropos! what shall I do to prevent my poor Madame Hus from being shot

as an emigrant, and my poor children from becoming prematurely orphans?"

"Monsieur," said our diplomatic oracle, "she should have petitioned the

First Consul for a permission to return, to France before she entered it;

but out of regard for you, if she is prudent, she will not, I daresay, be

troubled by our Government."