libel on England, entitled, The Liberty of the Seas. He seems to have
confidently expected that this work would produce a great effect. He
printed three thousand copies, and, in order to defray the expense of
publication, sold one of his farms for the sum of ten thousand francs.
The book came out; but nobody bought it, in consequence, if Barère is
to be believed, of the villainy of Mr. Pitt, who bribed the Directory
to order the Reviewers not to notice so formidable an attack on the
maritime greatness of perfidious Albion.
Barère had been about three years at Bordeaux when he received
intelligence that the mob of the town designed him the honour of a visit
on the ninth of Thermidor, and would probably administer to him what
he had, in his defence of his friend Lebon, described as substantial
justice under forms a little harsh. It was necessary for him to disguise
himself in clothes such as were worn by the carpenters of the dock. In
this garb, with a bundle of wood shavings under his arm, he made his
escape into the vineyards which surround the city, lurked during some
days in a peasant’s but, and, when the dreaded anniversary was over,
stole back into the city. A few months later he was again in danger.
He now thought that he should be nowhere so safe as in the
{513}neighbourhood of Paris. He quitted Bordeaux, hastened undetected
through those towns where four years before his life had been in extreme
danger, passed through the capital in the morning twilight, when none
were in the streets except shop-boys taking down the shutters, and
arrived safe at the pleasant village of St. Ouen on the Seine. Here he
remained in seclusion during some months. In the mean time Bonaparte
returned from Egypt, placed himself at the head of a coalition of
discontented parties, covered his designs with the authority of the
Elders, drove the Five Hundred out of their hall at the point of the
bayonet, and became absolute monarch of France under the name of First
Consul.
Barère assures us that these events almost broke his heart; that he
could not bear to see France again subject to a master; and that, if the
representatives had been worthy of that honourable name, they would have
arrested the ambitious general who insulted them.
These feelings, however, did not prevent him from soliciting the
protection of the new government, and from sending to the First Consul a
handsome copy of the essay on The Liberty of the Seas.
The policy of Bonaparte was to cover all the past with a general
oblivion. He belonged half to the Revolution and half to the reaction.
He was an upstart and a sovereign; and had therefore something in
common with the Jacobin, and something in common with the Royalist.
All, whether Jacobins or Royalists, who were disposed to support his
government, were readily received--all, whether Jacobins or Royalists,
who showed hostility to his government, were put down and punished. Men
who had borne a part in the worst crimes in the Reign of Terror, and men
who had fought in the army of Coudé, were to be found close together,
{514}both in his antechambers and in his dungeons. He decorated Louché
and Maury with the same cross. He sent Arena and George Cadoudal to the
same scaffold. From a Government acting on such principles Barère easily
obtained the indulgence which the Directory had constantly refused to
grant. The sentence passed by the Convention was remitted; and he was
allowed to reside in Paris. His pardon, it is true, was not granted in
the most honourable form; and he remained, during some time, under the
special supervision of the police. He hastened, however, to pay his
court at the Luxemburg palace, where Bonaparte then resided, and was
honoured with a few dry and careless words by the master of France.
Here begins a new chapter of Barère’s history. What passed between him
and the Consular government cannot, of course, be so accurately known to
us as the speeches and reports which he made in the Convention. It is,
however, not difficult, from notorious facts, and from the admissions
scattered over these lying Memoirs, to form a tolerably accurate notion
of what took place. Bonaparte wanted to buy Barère: Barère wanted to
sell himself to Bonaparte. The only question was one of price; and there
was an immense interval between what was offered and what was demanded.
Bonaparte, whose vehemence of will, fixedness of purpose, and reliance
on his own genius were not only great but extravagant, looked with
scorn on the most effeminate and dependent of human minds. He was quite
capable of perpetrating crimes under the influence either of ambition or
of revenge: but he had no touch of that accursed monomania, that craving
for blood and tears, which raged in some of the Jacobin chiefs. To
{515}proscribe the Terrorists would have been wholly inconsistent with
his policy; but, of all the classes of men whom his comprehensive system
included, he liked them the least; and Barère was the worst of them.
This wretch had been branded with infamy, first by the Convention, and
then by the Council of Five Hundred. The inhabitants of four or five
great cities had attempted to tear him limb from limb. Nor were his
vices redeemed by eminent talents for administration or legislation. It
would be unwise to place in any honourable or important post a man so
wicked, so odious, and so little qualified to discharge high political
duties. At the same time, there was a way in which it seemed likely that
he might be of use to the government. The First Consul, as he afterwards
acknowledged, greatly overrated Barère’s powers as a writer. The effect
which the Reports of the Committee of Public Safety had produced by the
camp fires of the Republican armies had been great. Napoleon himself,
when a young soldier, had been delighted by those compositions,
which had much in common with the rhapsodies of his favourite poet,
Macpherson. The taste, indeed, of the great warrior and statesman
was never very pure. His bulletins, his general orders, and his
proclamations, are sometimes, it is true, masterpieces in their kind;
but we too often detect, even in his best writing, traces of Fingal, and
of the Carmagnoles. It is not strange, therefore, that he should have
been desirous to secure the aid of Barère’s pen. Nor was this the only
kind of assistance which the old member of the Committee of Public
Safety might render to the Consular government. He was likely to find
admission into the gloomy dens in which those Jacobins whose constancy
was to be overcome by no reverse, or {516}whose crimes admitted of no
expiation, hid themselves from the curses of mankind. No enterprise was
too bold or too atrocious for minds crazed by fanaticism, and familiar
with misery and death. The government was anxious to have information of
what passed in their secret councils; and no man was better qualified to
furnish such information than Barère.
For these reasons the First Consul was disposed to employ Barère as a
writer and as a spy. But Barère--was it possible that he would submit
to such a degradation? Bad as he was, he had played a great part. He had
belonged to that class of criminals who filled the world with the renown
of their crimes; he had been one of a cabinet which had ruled France
with absolute power, and made war on all Europe with signal success.
Nay, he had been, though not the most powerful, yet, with the single
exception of Robespierre, the most conspicuous member of that cabinet.
His name had been a household word at Moscow and at Philadelphia, at
Edinburgh and at Cadiz. The blood of the queen of France, the blood of
the greatest orators and philosophers of France was on his hands. He
had spoken; and it had been decreed that the plough should pass over the
great city of Lyons. He had spoken again; and it had been decreed that
the streets of Toulon should be razed to the ground. When depravity is
placed so high as his, the hatred which it inspires is mingled with awe.
His place was with great tyrants, with Critias and Sylla, with Eccelino
and Borgia; not with hirelings, scribblers, and police runners.
“Virtue, I grant you, is an empty boast;
But shall the dignity of vice he lost?”
So sang Pope; and so felt Barère. When it was proposed {517}to him to
publish a journal in defence of the Consular government, rage and shame
inspired him for the first and last time with something like courage.
He had filled as large a space in the eyes of mankind as Mr. Pitt or
General Washington; and he was coolly invited to descend at once to the
level of Mr. Lewis Goldsmith. He saw, too, with agonies of envy, that a
wide distinction was made between himself and the other statesmen of
the Revolution who were summoned to the aid of the government. Those
statesmen were required, indeed, to make large sacrifices of principle;
but they were not called on to sacrifice what, in the opinion of the
vulgar, constitutes personal dignity. They were made tribunes and
legislators, ambassadors and counsellors of state, ministers, senators,
and consuls. They might reasonably expect to rise with the rising
fortunes of their master; and, in truth, many of them were destined
to wear the badge of his Legion of Honour and of his order of the Iron
Crown; to be archchancellors and arch-treasurers, counts, dukes, and
princes. Barère, only six years before, had been far more powerful, far
more widely renowned, than any of them; and now, while they were thought
worthy to represent the majesty of France at foreign courts, while they
received crowds of suitors in gilded ante-chambers, he was to pass his
life in measuring paragraphs, and scolding correctors of the press. It
was too much. Those lips which had never before been able to fashion
themselves to a No, now murmured expostulation and refusal. “I could
not”--these are his own words--“abase myself to such a point as to serve
the First Consul merely in the capacity of a journalist, while so many
insignificant, low, and servile people, such as the Treilhards,
the Roderers, the Lebruns, the Marets, and {518}others whom it is
superfluous to name, held the first place in this government of
upstarts.”
This outbreak of spirit was of short duration. Napoleon was inexorable.
It is said indeed that he was, for a moment, half inclined to admit
Barère into the Council of State; but the members of that body
remonstrated in the strongest terms, and declared that such a nomination
would be a disgrace to them all. This plan was therefore relinquished.
Thenceforth Barère’s only chance of obtaining the patronage of the
government was to subdue his pride, to forget that there had been a time
when, with three words he might have had the heads of the three
consuls, and to betake himself, humbly and industriously, to the task of
composing lampoons on England and panegyrics on Bonaparte.
It has been often asserted, we know not on what grounds, that Barère was
employed by the government not only as a writer, but as a censor of
the writings of other men. This imputation he vehemently denies in his
Memoirs; but our readers will probably agree with us in thinking that
his denial leaves the question exactly where it was.
Thus much is certain, that he was not restrained from exercising the
office of censor by any scruple of conscience or honour; for he did
accept an office, compared with which that of censor, odious as it is,
may be called an august and beneficent magistracy. He began to have what
are delicately called relations with the police. We are not sure that
we have formed, or that we can convey an exact notion of the nature of
Barère’s new calling. It is a calling unknown in our country. It has
indeed often happened in England that a plot has been revealed to the
government by one of the {519}conspirators. The informer has sometimes
been directed to carry it fair towards his accomplices, and to let the
evil design come to full maturity. As soon as his work is done, he
is generally snatched from the public gaze, and sent to some obscure
village or to some remote colony. The use of spies, even to this extent,
is in the highest degree unpopular in England; but a political spy by
profession is a creature from which our island is as free as it is from
wolves. In France the race is well known, and was never more numerous,
more greedy, more cunning, or more savage, than under the government of
Bonaparte.
Our idea of a gentleman in relations with the Consular and Imperial
police may perhaps be incorrect. Such as it is, we will try to convey it
to our readers. We image to ourselves a well-dressed person, with a
soft voice and affable manners. His opinions are those of the society
in which he finds himself, but a little stronger. He often complains,
in the language of honest indignation, that what passes in private
conversation finds its way strangely to the government, and cautions his
associates to take care what they say when they are not sure of their
company. As for himself, he owns that he is indiscreet. He can never
refrain from speaking his mind; and that is the reason that he is not
prefect of a department.
In a gallery of the Palais Royal he overhears two friends talking
earnestly about the king and the Count of Artois. He follows them into a
coffee-house, sits at the table next to them, calls for his half-dish,
and his small glass of cognac, takes up a journal, and seems occupied
with the news. His neighbours go on talking without restraint, and in
the style of persons warmly attached to the exiled family. They depart;
and he, {520}follows them half round the boulevards till he fairly
tracks them to their apartments, and learns their names from the
porters. From that day every letter addressed to either of them is sent
from the post-office to the police, and opened. Their correspondents
become known to the government, and are carefully watched. Six or eight
honest families, in different parts of France, find themselves at once
under the frown of power without being able to guess what offence they
have given. One person is dismissed from a public office; another
learns with dismay that his promising son has been turned out of the
Polytechnic school.
Next, the indefatigable servant of the state falls in with an old
republican, who has not changed with the times, who regrets the red cap
and the tree of liberty, who has not unlearned the Thee and Thou, and
who still subscribes his letters with “Health and Fraternity.” Into the
ears of this sturdy politician our friend pours forth a long series
of complaints. What evil times! What a change since the days when the
Mountain governed France! What is the First Consul but a king under a
new name? What is this Legion of Honour but a new aristocracy? The old
superstition is reviving with the old tyranny. There is a treaty with
the Pope, and a provision for the clergy. Emigrant nobles are returning
in crowds, and are better received at the Tuileries than the men of the
10th of August. This cannot last. What is life without liberty? What
terrors has death to the true patriot? The old Jacobin catches fire,
bestows and receives the fraternal hug, and hints that there will soon
be great news, and that the breed of Harmodius and Brutus is not quite
extinct. The next day he is close prisoner, and all his papers are in
the hands of the government. {521}To this vocation, a vocation compared
with which the life of a beggar, of a pickpocket, of a pimp, is
honourable, did Barère now descend. It was his constant practice, as
often as he enrolled himself in a new party, to pay his footing with the
heads of old friends. He was at first a Royalist; and he made atonement
by watering the tree of liberty with the blood of Louis. He was then a
Girondist; and he made atonement by murdering Vergniaud and Gensonnô.
He fawned on Robespierre up to the eighth of Thermidor; and he made
atonement by moving, on the ninth, that Robespierre should be beheaded
without a trial. He was now enlisted in the service of the new monarchy;
and he proceeded to atone for his republican heresies by sending
republican throats to the guillotine.
Among his most intimate associates was a Gascon named Demerville, who
had been employed in an office of high trust under the Committee of
Public Safety. This man was fanatically attached to the Jacobin system
of politics, and, in conjunction with other enthusiasts of the same
class, formed a design against the First Consul. A hint of this design
escaped him in conversation with Barère. Barère carried the intelligence
to Lannes, who commanded the Consular Guards. Demerville was arrested,
tried, and beheaded; and among the witnesses who appeared against him
was his friend Barère.
The account which Barère has given of these transactions is studiously
confused and grossly dishonest. We think, however, that we can discern,
through much falsehood and much artful obscurity, some truths which he
labours to conceal. It is clear to us that the government suspected him
of what the Italians call a double treason. It was natural that such a
suspicion {522}should attach to him. He had, in times not very remote,
zealously preached the Jacobin doctrine, that He who smites a tyrant
deserves higher praise than he who saves a citizen. Was it possible
that the member of the Committee of Public Safety, the king-killer, the
queen-killer, could in earnest mean to deliver his old confederates, his
bosom friends, to the executioner, solely because they had planned an
act which, if there were any truth in his own Carmagnoles, was in the
highest decree virtuous and glorious? Was it not more probable that he
was really concerned in the plot, and that the information which he gave
was merely intended to lull or to mislead the police? Accordingly,
spies were set on the spy. He was ordered to quit Paris, and not to come
within twenty leagues till he received further orders. Nay, he ran no
small risk of being sent, with some of his old friends, to Madagascar.
He made his peace, however, with the government so far, that he was not
only permitted, during some years, to live unmolested, but was employed
in the lowest sort of political drudgery. In the summer of 1803, while
he was preparing to visit the south of France, he received a letter
which deserves to be inserted. It was from Duroc, who is well known to
have enjoyed a large share of Napoleon’s confidence and favour.
“_The First Consul having been informed that Citizen Barère is about to
set out for the country, desires that He will stay at Paris.
“Citizen Barère will every week draw up a report on the state of publie
opinion on the proceedings of the government, and generally on every
thing which, in his judgment, it will be interesting to the First Consul
to learn.
“He may write with perfect freedom.
“He will deliver his reports under seal into General Duroc’s own hand,
and General Duroc will deliver them to the First Consul. {523}But it
is absolutely necessary that nobody should suspect that this species of
communication takes place; and, should any such suspicion get abroad,
the First Consul will cease to receive the reports of Citizen Barère.
“It will also be proper that Citizen Barère should frequently insert in
the journals articles tending to animate the public mind, particularly
against the English._”
During some years Barère continued to discharge the functions
assigned to him by his master. Secret reports, filled with the talk
of coffee-houses, were carried by him every week to the Tuileries. His
friends assure us that he took especial pains to do all the harm in his
power to the returned emigrants. It was not his fault if Napoleon was
not apprised of every murmur and every sarcasm which old marquesses who
had lost their estates, and old clergymen who had lost their benefices,
uttered against the imperial system. M. Hippolyte Carnot, we grieve to
say, is so much blinded by party spirit that he seems to reckon this
dirty wickedness among his hero’s titles to public esteem.
Barère was, at the same time, an indefatigable journalist and
pamphleteer. He set up a paper directed against England, and called the
_Memorial Antibritannique_.
He planned a work entitled, “France made great and illustrious by
Napoleon.” When the Imperial government was established, the old
regicide made himself conspicuous even among the crowd of flatterers by
the peculiar fulsomeness of his adulation. He translated into French
a contemptible volume of Italian verses, entitled, “The Poetic Crown,
composed on the glorious accession of Napoleon the First, by the
Shepherds of Arcadia.” He commenced a new series of Carmagnoles very
different from those which had charmed the Mountain. The title of
Emperor of the {524}French, he said, was mean; Napoleon ought to
be Emperor of Europe. King of Italy was too humble an appellation;
Napoleon’s style ought to be King of Kings.
But Barère laboured to small purpose in both his vocations. Neither as
a writer nor as a spy was he of much use. He complains bitterly that
his paper did not sell. While the _Journal des Débats_, then flourishing
under the able management of Geoffroy, had a circulation of at least
twenty thousand copies, the _Mémorial Antibritanuique_ never, in its
most prosperous times, had more than fifteen hundred subscribers; and
these subscribers were, with scarcely an exception, persons residing far
from Paris, probably Gascons, among whom the name of Barère had not yet
lost its influence.
A writer who cannot find readers generally attributes the public neglect
to any cause rather than to the true one; and Barère was no exception to
the general rule. His old hatred to Paris revived in all its fury.
That city, he says, has no sympathy with France. No Parisian cares to
subscribe to a journal which dwells on the real wants and interests of
the country. To a Parisian nothing is so ridiculous as patriotism. The
higher classes of the capital have always been devoted to England.
A corporal from London is better received among them than a French
general. A journal, therefore, which attacks England has no chance of
their support.
A much better explanation of the failure of the _Mémorial_ was given by
Bonaparte at St. Helena. “Barère,” said he to Barry O’Meara, “had
the reputation of being a man of talent: but I did not find him so. I
employed him to write; but he did not display ability. {525}He used many
flowers of rhetoric, but no solid argument; nothing but _coglionere_
wrapped up in high-sounding language.”
The truth is that, though Barère was a man of quick parts, and could do
with ease what he could do at all, he had never been a good writer. In
the day of his power he had been in the habit of haranguing an excitable
audience on exciting topics. The faults of his style passed uncensured;
for it was a time of literary as well as of civil lawlessness, and a
patriot was licensed to violate the ordinary rules of composition as
well as the ordinary rules of jurisprudence and of social morality. But
there had now been a literary as well as a civil reaction. As there was
again a throne and a court, a magistracy, a chivalry, and a hierarchy,
so was there a revival of classical taste. Honour was again paid to
the prose of Pascal and Massillon, and to the verse of Racine and
La Fontaine. The oratory which had delighted the galleries of the
Convention was not only as much out of date as the language of
Villehardouin and Joinville, but was associated in the public mind
with images of horror. All the peculiarities of the Anacreon of the
guillotine, his words unknown to the Dictionary of the Academy, his
conceits and his jokes, his Gascon idioms and his Gascon hyperboles, had
become as odious as the cant of the Puritans was in England after the
Restoration.