Meanwhile events had proceeded apace at Paris. On April 26th Joseph Bonaparte made a last effort to bend his brother's will, but only gained the grudging concession that Napoleon would never consent to the British retention of Malta for a longer time than three or four years. As this would have enabled him to postpone the rupture long enough to mature his oriental plans, it was rejected by Lord Whitworth, who insisted on ten years as the minimum. The evident determination of the British Government speedily to terminate the affair, one way or the other, threw Napoleon into a paroxysm of passion; and at the diplomatic reception of May 1st, from which Lord Whitworth discreetly absented himself, he vehemently inveighed against its conduct. Fretted by the absence of our ambassador, for whom this sally had been intended, he returned to St. Cloud, and there dictated this curious epistle to Talleyrand:

"I desire that your conference [with Lord Whitworth] shall not degenerate into a conversation. Show yourself cold, reserved, and even somewhat proud. If the [British] note contains the word ultimatum make him feel that this word implies war; if it does not contain this word, make him insert it, remarking to him that we must know where we are, that we are tired of this state of anxiety.... Soften down a little at the end of the conference, and invite him to return before writing to his Court."

But this careful rehearsal was to avail nothing; our stolid ambassador was not to be cajoled, and on May 2nd, that is, seven days after his presenting our ultimatum, he sent for his passports. He did not, however, set out immediately. Yielding to an urgent request, he delayed his departure in order to hear the French reply to the British ultimatum.[255] It notified sarcastically that Lampedusa was not in the First Consul's power to bestow, that any change with reference to Malta must be referred by Great Britain to the Great Powers for their concurrence, and that Holland would be evacuated as soon as the terms of the Treaty of Amiens were complied with. Another proposal was that Malta should be transferred to Russia—the very step which was proposed at Amiens and was rejected by the Czar: on that account Lord Whitworth now refused it as being merely a device to gain time. The sending of his passports having been delayed, he received one more despatch from Downing Street, which allowed that our retention of Malta for ten years should form a secret article—a device which would spare the First Consul's susceptibilities on the point of honour. Even so, however, Napoleon refused to consider a longer tenure than two or three years. And in this he was undoubtedly encouraged by the recent despatch from St. Petersburg, wherein the Czar promised his mediation in a sense favourable to France. This unfortunate occurrence completed the discomfiture of the peace party at the Consular Court, and in a long and heated discussion in a council held at St. Cloud on May 11th all but Joseph Bonaparte and Talleyrand voted for the rejection of the British demands.

On the next day Lord Whitworth left Paris. During his journey to Calais he received one more proposal, that France should hold the peninsula of Otranto for ten years if Great Britain retained Malta for that period; but if this suggestion was made in good faith, which is doubtful, its effect was destroyed by a rambling diatribe which Talleyrand, at his master's orders, sent shortly afterwards.[256] In any case it was looked upon by our ambassador as a last attempt to gain time for the concentration of the French naval forces. He crossed the Straits of Dover on May 17th, the day before the British declaration of war was issued.

On May 22nd, 1803, appeared at Paris the startling order that, as British frigates had captured two French merchantmen on the Breton coast, all Englishmen between eighteen and sixty years of age who were in France should be detained as prisoners of war. The pretext for this unheard-of action, which condemned some 10,000 Britons to prolonged detention, was that the two French ships were seized prior to the declaration of war. This is false: they were seized on May 18th, that is, on the day on which the British Government declared war, three days after an embargo had been laid on British vessels in French ports, and seven days after the First Consul had directed his envoy at Florence to lay an embargo on English ships in the ports of Tuscany.[257] It is therefore obvious that Napoleon's barbarous decree merely marked his disappointment at the failure of his efforts to gain time and to deal the first stroke. How sorely his temper was tried by the late events is clear from the recital of the Duchesse d'Abrantes, who relates that her husband, when ordered to seize English residents, found the First Consul in a fury, his eyes flashing fire; and when Junot expressed his reluctance to carry out this decree, Napoleon passionately exclaimed: "Do not trust too far to my friendship: as soon as I conceive doubt as to yours, mine is gone."

Few persons in England now cherished any doubts as to the First Consul's hatred of the nation which stood between him and his oriental designs. Ministers alone knew the extent of those plans: but every ploughboy could feel the malice of an act which cooped up innocent travellers on the flimsiest of pretexts. National ardour, and, alas, national hatred were deeply stirred.[258] The Whigs, who had paraded the clemency of Napoleon, were at once helpless, and found themselves reduced to impotence for wellnigh a generation; and the Tories, who seemed the exponents of a national policy, were left in power until the stream of democracy, dammed up by war in 1793 and again in 1803, asserted its full force in the later movement for reform.

Yet the opinion often expressed by pamphleteers, that the war of 1803 was undertaken to compel France to abandon her republican principles, is devoid of a shred of evidence in its favour. After 1802 there were no French republican principles to be combated; they had already been jettisoned; and, since Bonaparte had crushed the Jacobins, his personal claims were favourably regarded at Whitehall, Addington even assuring the French envoy that he would welcome the establishment of hereditary succession in the First Consul's family.[259] But while Bonaparte's own conduct served to refute the notion that the war of 1803 was a war of principles, his masterful policy in Europe and the Levant convinced every well-informed man that peace was impossible; and the rupture was accompanied by acts and insults to the "nation of shopkeepers" that could be avenged only by torrents of blood. Diatribes against perfidious Albion filled the French Press and overflowed into splenetic pamphlets, one of which bade odious England tremble under the consciousness of her bad faith and the expectation of swift and condign chastisement. Such was the spirit in which these nations rushed to arms; and the conflict was scarcely to cease until Napoleon was flung out into the solitudes of the southern Atlantic.

The importance of the rupture of the Peace of Amiens will be realized if we briefly survey Bonaparte's position after that treaty was signed. He had regained for his adopted country a colonial empire and had given away not a single French island. France was raised to a position of assured strength far preferable to the perilous heights attained later on at Tilsit. In Australia there was a prospect that the tricolour would wave over areas as great and settlements as prosperous as those of New South Wales and the infant town of Sydney. From the Ile de France and the Cape of Good Hope as convenient bases of operations, British India could easily be assailed; and a Franco-Mahratta alliance promised to yield a victory over the troops of the East India Company. In Europe the imminent collapse of the Turkish Empire invited a partition, whence France might hope to gain Egypt and the Morea. The Ionian Isles were ready to accept French annexation; and, if England withdrew her troops from Malta, the fate of the weak Order of St. John could scarcely be a matter of doubt.

For the fulfilment of these bright hopes one thing alone was needed, a policy of peace and naval preparation. As yet Napoleon's navy was comparatively weak. In March, 1803, he had only forty-three line-of-battle ships, ten of which were on distant stations; but he had ordered twenty-three more to be built—ten of them in Holland; and, with the harbours of France, Holland, Flanders, and Northern Italy at his disposal, he might hope, at the close of 1804, to confront the flag of St. George with a superiority of force. That was the time which his secret instructions to Decaen marked out for the outbreak of the war that would yield to the tricolour a world-wide supremacy.

These schemes miscarried owing to the impetuosity of their contriver. Hustled out of the arena of European politics, and threatened with French supremacy in the other Continents, England forthwith drew the sword; and her action, cutting athwart the far-reaching web of the Napoleonic intrigues, forced France to forego her oceanic plans, to muster her forces on the Straits of Dover, and thereby to yield to the English race the supremacy in Louisiana, India, and Australia, leaving also the destinies of Egypt to be decided in a later age. Viewed from the standpoint of racial expansion, the renewal of war in 1803 is the greatest event of the century.

[Since this chapter was printed, articles on the same subject have appeared in the "Revue Historique" (March-June, 1901) by M. Philippson, which take almost the same view as that here presented. I cannot, however, agree with the learned writer that Napoleon wanted war. I think he did not, until his navy was ready; but it was not in him to give way.]

NOTE TO THE FIFTH EDITION

M. Coquelle, in a work which has been translated into English by Mr. Gordon D. Knox (G. Bell and Sons, Ltd.), has shown clearly that the non-evacuation of Holland by Napoleon's troops and the subjection of that Republic to French influence formed the chief causes of war. I refer my readers to that work for details of the negotiations in their final stages.

* * * * *



CHAPTER XVIII

EUROPE AND THE BONAPARTES

The disappointment felt by Napoleon at England's interruption of his designs may be measured, first by his efforts to postpone the rupture, and thereafter by the fierce energy which he threw into the war. As has been previously noted, the Czar had responded to the First Consul's appeal for mediation in notes which seemed to the British Cabinet unjustly favourable to the French case. Napoleon now offered to recognize the arbitration of the Czar on the questions in dispute, and suggested that meanwhile Malta should be handed over to Russia to be held in pledge: he on his part offered to evacuate Hanover, Switzerland, and Holland, if the British would suspend hostilities, to grant an indemnity to the King of Sardinia, to allow Britain to occupy Lampedusa, and fully to assure "the independence of Europe," if France retained her present frontiers. But when the Russian envoy, Markoff, urged him to crown these proposals by allowing Britain to hold Malta for a certain time, thereafter to be agreed upon, he firmly refused to do so on his own initiative, for that would soil his honour: but he would view with resignation its cession to Britain if that proved to be the award of Alexander. Accordingly Markoff wrote to his colleague at London, assuring him that the peace of the world was now once again assured by the noble action of the First Consul.[260]

Were these proposals prompted by a sincere desire to assure a lasting peace, or were they put forward as a device to gain time for the completion of the French naval preparations? Evidently they were completely distrusted by the British Government, and with some reason. They were nearly identical with the terms formulated in the British ultimatum, which Napoleon had rejected. Moreover, our Foreign Office had by this time come to suspect Alexander. On June 23rd Lord Hawkesbury wrote that it might be most damaging to British interests to place Malta "at the hazard of the Czar's arbitration"; and he informed the Russian ambassador, Count Vorontzoff, that the aim of the French had obviously been merely to gain time, that their explanations were loose and unsatisfactory, and their demands inadmissible, and that Great Britain could not acknowledge the present territories of the French Republic as permanent while Malta was placed in arbitration. In fact, our Government feared that, when Malta had been placed in Alexander's hands, Napoleon would lure him into oriental adventures and renew the plans of an advance on India. Their fears were well founded.

Napoleon's preoccupation was always for the East: on February 21st, 1803, he had charged his Minister of Marine to send arms and ammunition to the Suliotes and Maniotes then revolting against the Sultan; and at midsummer French agents were at Ragusa to prepare for a landing at the mouth of the River Cattaro.[261] With Turkey rent by revolt, Malta placed as a pledge in Russian keeping, and Alexander drawn into the current of Napoleon's designs, what might not be accomplished? Evidently the First Consul could expect more from this course of events than from barren strifes with Nelson's ships in the Straits of Dover. For us, such a peace was far more risky than war. And yet, if the Czar's offer were too stiffly repelled, public opinion would everywhere be alienated, and in that has always lain half the strength of England's policy.[262] Ministers therefore declared that, while they could not accept Russia's arbitration without appeal, they would accede to her mediation if it concerned all the causes of the present war. This reasonable proposal was accepted by the Czar, but received from Napoleon a firm refusal. He at once wrote to Talleyrand, August 23rd, 1803, directing that the Russian proposals should be made known to Haugwitz, the Prussian Foreign Minister:

"Make him see all the absurdity of it: tell him that England will never get from me any other treaty than that of Amiens: that I will never suffer her to have anything in the Mediterranean; that I will not treat with her about the Continent; that I am resolved to evacuate Holland and Switzerland; but that I will never stipulate this in an article."

As for Russia, he continued, she talked much about the integrity of Turkey, but was violating it by the occupation of the Ionian Isles and her constant intrigues in Wallachia. These facts were correct: but the manner in which he stated them clearly revealed his annoyance that the Czar would not wholly espouse the French cause. Talleyrand's views on this question may be seen in his letter to Bonaparte, when he assures his chief that he has now reaped from his noble advance to the Russian Emperor the sole possible advantage—"that of proving to Europe by a grand act of frankness your love of peace and to throw upon England the whole blame for the war." It is not often that a diplomatist so clearly reveals the secrets of his chief's policy.[263]

The motives of Alexander were less questionable. His chief desire at that time was to improve the lot of his people. War would disarrange these noble designs: France would inevitably overrun the weaker Continental States: England would retaliate by enforcing her severe maritime code; and the whole world would be rent in twain by this strife of the elements.

These gloomy forebodings were soon to be realized. Holland was the first to suffer. And yet one effort was made to spare her the horrors of war. Filled with commiseration for her past sufferings, the British Government at once offered to respect her neutrality, provided that the French troops would evacuate her fortresses and exact no succour either in ships, men, or money.[264] But such forbearance was scarcely to be expected from Napoleon, who not only had a French division in that land, supported at its expense, but also relied on its maritime resources.[265] The proposal was at once set aside at Paris. Napoleon's decision to drag the Batavian Republic into the war arose, however, from no spasm of the war fever; it was calmly stated in the secret instructions issued to General Decaen in the preceding January. "It is now considered impossible that we could have war with England, without dragging Holland into it." Holland was accordingly once more ground between the upper and the nether millstone, between the Sea Power and the Land Power, pouring out for Napoleon its resources in men and money, and losing to the masters of the sea its ships, foreign commerce, and colonies.

Equally hard was the treatment of Naples. In spite of the Czar's plea that its neutrality might be respected, this kingdom was at once occupied by St. Cyr with troops that held the chief positions on the "heel" of Italy. This infraction of the Treaty of Florence was to be justified by a proclamation asserting that, as England had retained Malta, the balance of power required that France should hold these positions as long as England held Malta.[266] This action punished the King and Queen of Naples for their supposed subservience to English policy; and, while lightening the burdens of the French exchequer, it compelled England to keep a large fleet in the Mediterranean for the protection of Egypt, and thereby weakened her defensive powers in the Straits of Dover. To distract his foes, and compel them to extend their lines, was ever Napoleon's aim both in military and naval strategy; and the occupation of Taranto, together with the naval activity at Toulon and Genoa, left it doubtful whether the great captain determined to strike at London or to resume his eastern adventures. His previous moves all seemed to point towards Egypt and India; and the Admiralty instructions of May 18th, 1803, to Nelson, reveal the expectation of our Government that the real blow would fall on the Morea and Egypt. Six weeks later our admiral reported the activity of French intrigues in the Morea, which was doubtless intended to be their halfway house to Egypt—"when sooner or later, farewell India."[267] Proofs of Napoleon's designs on the Morea were found by Captain Keats of H.M.S. "Superb" on a French vessel that he captured, a French corporal having on him a secret letter from an agent at Corfu, dated May 23rd, 1803. It ended thus:

"I have every reason to believe that we shall soon have a revolution in the Morea, as we desire. I have close relations with Crepacchi, and we are in daily correspondence with all the chiefs of the Morea: we have even provided them with munitions of war."[268]

On the whole, however, it seems probable that Napoleon's chief aim now was London and not Egypt; but his demonstrations eastwards were so skilfully maintained as to convince both the English Government and Nelson that his real aim was Egypt or Malta. For this project the French corps d'armee in the "heel" of Italy held a commanding position. Ships alone were wanting; and these he sought to compel the King of Naples to furnish. As early as April 20th, 1803, our charge d'affaires at Naples, Mr. a Court, reported that Napoleon was pressing on that Government a French alliance, on the ground that:

"The interests of the two countries are the same: it is the intention of France to shut every port to the English, from Holland to the Turkish dominions, to prevent the exportation of her merchandise, and to give a mortal blow to her commerce, for there she is most vulnerable. Our joint forces may wrest from her hands the island of Malta. The Sicilian navy may convoy and protect the French troops in the prosecution of such a plan, and the most happy result may be augured to their united exertions."

Possibly the King and his spirited but whimsical consort, Queen Charlotte, might have bent before the threats which accompanied this alluring offer; but at the head of the Neapolitan administration was an Englishman, General Acton, whose talents and force of will commanded their respect and confidence. To the threats of the French ambassador he answered that France was strong and Naples was weak; force might overthrow the dynasty; but nothing would induce it to violate its neutrality towards England. So unwonted a defiance aroused Napoleon to a characteristic revenge. When his troops were quartered on Southern Italy, and were draining the Neapolitan resources, the Queen wrote appealing to his clemency on behalf of her much burdened people. In reply he assured her of his desire to be agreeable to her: but how could he look on Naples as a neutral State, when its chief Minister was an Englishman? This was "the real reason that justified all the measures taken towards Naples."[269] The brutality and falseness of this reply had no other effect than to embitter Queen Charlotte's hatred against the arbiter of the world's destinies, before whom she and her consort refused to bow, even when, three years later, they were forced to seek shelter behind the girdle of the inviolate sea.



Hanover also fell into Napoleon's hands. Mortier with 25,000 French troops speedily overran that land and compelled the Duke of Cambridge to a capitulation. The occupation of the Electorate not only relieved the French exchequer of the support of a considerable corps; it also served to hold in check the Prussian Court, always preoccupied about Hanover; and it barred the entrance of the Elbe and Weser to British ships, an aim long cherished by Napoleon. To this we retorted by blockading the mouths of those rivers, an act which must have been expected by Napoleon, and which enabled him to declaim against British maritime tyranny. In truth, the beginnings of the Continental System were now clearly discernible. The shores of the Continent from the south of Italy to the mouth of the Elbe were practically closed to English ships, while by a decree of July 15th any vessel whatsoever that had cleared from a British port was to be excluded from all harbours of the French Republic. Thus all commercial nations were compelled, slowly but inevitably, to side with the master of the land or the mistress of the seas.

In vain did the King of Prussia represent to Napoleon that Hanover was not British territory, and that the neutrality of Germany was infringed and its interests damaged by the French occupation of Hanover and Cuxhaven. His protest was met by an offer from Napoleon to evacuate Hanover, Taranto and Otranto, only at the time when England should "evacuate Malta and the Mediterranean"; and though the special Prussian envoy, Lombard, reported to his master that Napoleon was "truth, loyalty, and friendship personified," yet he received not a word that betokened real regard for the susceptibilities of Frederick William III. or the commerce of his people.[270] For the present, neither King nor Czar ventured on further remonstrances; but the First Consul had sown seeds of discord which were to bear fruit in the Third Coalition.

Having quartered 60,000 French troops on Naples and Hanover, Napoleon could face with equanimity the costs of the war. Gigantic as they were, they could be met from the purchase money of Louisiana, the taxation and voluntary gifts of the French dominions, the subsidies of the Italian and Ligurian Republics, and a contribution which he now exacted from Spain.

Even before the outbreak of hostilities he had significantly reminded Charles IV. that the Spanish marine was deteriorating, and her arsenals and dockyards were idle: "But England is not asleep; she is ever on the watch and will never rest until she has seized on the colonies and commerce of the world."[271] For the present, however, the loss of Trinidad and the sale of Louisiana rankled too deeply to admit of Spain entering into another conflict, whence, as before, Napoleon would doubtless gain the glory and leave to her the burden of territorial sacrifices. In spite of his shameless relations to the Queen of Spain, Godoy, the Spanish Minister, was not devoid of patriotism; and he strove to evade the obligations which the treaty of 1796 imposed on Spain in case of an Anglo-French conflict. He embodied the militia of the north of Spain and doubtless would have defied Bonaparte's demands, had Russia and Prussia shown any disposition to resist French aggressions. But those Powers were as yet wholly devoted to private interests; and when Napoleon threatened Charles IV. and Godoy with an inroad of 80,000 French troops unless the Spanish militia were dissolved and 72,000,000 francs were paid every year into the French exchequer, the Court of Madrid speedily gave way. Its surrender was further assured by the thinly veiled threat that further resistance would lead to the exposure of the liaison between Godoy and the Queen. Spain therefore engaged to pay the required sum—more than double the amount stipulated in 1796—to further the interests of French commerce and to bring pressure to bear on Portugal. At the close of the year the Court of Lisbon, yielding to the threats of France and Spain, consented to purchase its neutrality by the payment of a million francs a month to the master of the Continent.[272]

Meanwhile the First Consul was throwing his untiring energies into the enterprise of crushing his redoubtable foe. He pushed on the naval preparations at all the dockyards of France, Holland, and North Italy; the great mole that was to shelter the roadstead at Cherbourg was hurried forward, and the coast from the Seine to the Rhine became "a coast of iron and bronze"—to use Marmont's picturesque phrase—while every harbour swarmed with small craft destined for an invasion. Troops were withdrawn from the Rhenish frontiers and encamped along the shores of Picardy; others were stationed in reserve at St. Omer, Montreuil, Bruges, and Utrecht; while smaller camps were formed at Ghent, Compiegne, and St. Malo. The banks of the Elbe, Weser, Scheldt, Somme, and Seine—even as far up as Paris itself—rang with the blows of shipwrights labouring to strengthen the flotilla of flat-bottomed vessels designed for the invasion of England. Troops, to the number of 50,000 at Boulogne under Soult, 30,000 at Etaples, and as many at Bruges, commanded by Ney and Davoust respectively, were organized anew, and by constant drill and exposure to the elements formed the tough nucleus of the future Grand Army, before which the choicest troops of Czar and Kaiser were to be scattered in headlong rout. To all these many-sided exertions of organization and drill, of improving harbours and coast fortifications, of ship-building, testing, embarking, and disembarking, the First Consul now and again applied the spur of his personal supervision; for while the warlike enthusiasm which he had aroused against perfidious Albion of itself achieved wonders, yet work was never so strenuous and exploits so daring as under the eyes of the great captain himself. He therefore paid frequent visits to the north coast, surveying with critical eyes the works at Boulogne, Calais, Dunkirk,

Ostend, and Antwerp. The last-named port engaged his special attention. Its position at the head of the navigable estuary of the Scheldt, exactly opposite the Thames, marked it out as the natural rival of London; he now encouraged its commerce and ordered the construction of a dockyard fitted to contain twenty-five battleships and a proportionate number of frigates and sloops. Antwerp was to become the great commercial and naval emporium of the North Sea. The time seemed to favour the design; Hamburg and Bremen were blockaded, and London for a space was menaced by the growing power of the First Consul, who seemed destined to restore to the Flemish port the prosperity which the savagery of Alva had swept away with such profit to Elizabethan London. But grand as were Napoleon's enterprises at Antwerp, they fell far short of his ulterior designs. He told Las Cases at St. Helena that the dockyard and magazines were to have been protected by a gigantic fortress built on the opposite side of the River Scheldt, and that Antwerp was to have been "a loaded pistol held at the head of England."

In both lands warlike ardour rose to the highest pitch. French towns and Departments freely offered gifts of gunboats and battleships. And in England public men vied with one another in their eagerness to equip and maintain volunteer regiments. Wordsworth, who had formerly sung the praises of the French Revolution, thus voiced the national defiance:

"No parleying now! In Britain is one breath; We all are with you now from shore to shore; Ye men of Kent, 'tis victory or death."

In one respect England enjoyed a notable advantage. Having declared war before Napoleon's plans were matured, she held the command of the seas, even against the naval resources of France, Holland, and North Italy. The first months of the war witnessed the surrender of St. Lucia and Tobago to our fleets; and before the close of the year Berbice, Demerara, Essequibo, together with < nearly the whole of the French St. Domingo force, had capitulated to the Union Jack. Our naval supremacy in the Channel now told with full effect. Frigates were ever on the watch in the Straits to chase any French vessels that left port. But our chief efforts were to blockade the enemy's ships. Despite constant ill-health and frequent gales, Nelson clung to Toulon. Admiral Cornwallis cruised off Brest with a fleet generally exceeding fifteen sail of the line and several smaller vessels: six frigates and smaller craft protected the coast of Ireland; six line-of-battle ships and twenty-three lesser vessels were kept in the Downs under Lord Keith as a central reserve force, to which the news of all events transpiring on the enemy's coast was speedily conveyed by despatch boats; the newly invented semaphore telegraphs were also systematically used between the Isle of Wight and Deal to convey news along the coast and to London. Martello towers were erected along the coast from Harwich to Pevensey Bay, at the points where a landing was easy. Numerous inventors also came forward with plans for destroying the French flotilla, but none was found to be serviceable except the rockets of Colonel Congreve, which inflicted some damage at Boulogne and elsewhere. Such were the dispositions of our chief naval forces: they comprised 469 ships of war, and over 700 armed boats, of all sizes.[273]

Our regular troops and militia mustered 180,000 strong; while the volunteers, including 120,000 men armed with pikes or similar weapons, numbered 410,000. Of course little could be hoped from these last in a conflict with French veterans; and even the regulars, in the absence of any great generals—for Wellesley was then in India—might have offered but a poor resistance to Napoleon's military machine. Preparations were, however, made for a desperate resistance. Plans were quietly framed for the transfer of the Queen and the royal family to Worcester, along with the public treasure, which was to be lodged in the cathedral; while the artillery and stores from Woolwich arsenal were to be conveyed into the Midlands by the Grand Junction Canal.[274]

The scheme of coast-defence which General Dundas had drawn up in 1796 was now again set in action. It included, not only the disposition of the armed forces, but plans for the systematic removal of all provisions, stores, animals, and fodder from the districts threatened by the invader; and it is clear that the country was far better prepared than French writers have been willing to admit. Indeed, so great was the expense of these defensive preparations that, when Nelson's return from the West Indies disconcerted the enemy's plans, Fox merged the statesman in the partisan by the curious assertion that the invasion scare had been got up by the Pitt Ministry for party purposes.[275] Few persons shared that opinion. The nation was animated by a patriotism such as had never yet stirred the sluggish veins of Georgian England. The Jacobinism, which Dundas in 1796 had lamented as paralyzing the nation's energy, had wholly vanished; and the fatality which dogged the steps of Napoleon was already discernible. The mingled hatred and fear which he inspired outside France was beginning to solidify the national resistance: after uniting rich and poor, English and Scots in a firm phalanx in the United Kingdom, the national principle was in turn to vivify Spain, Russia, and Germany, and thus to assure his overthrow.

Reserving for consideration in another chapter the later developments of the naval war, it will be convenient now to turn to important events in the history of the Bonaparte family.

The loves and intrigues of the Bonapartes have furnished material enough to fill several volumes devoted to light gossip, and naturally so. Given an ambitious family, styled parvenus by the ungenerous, shooting aloft swiftly as the flames of Vesuvius, ardent as its inner fires, and stubborn as its hardened lava—given also an imperious brother determined to marry his younger brothers and sisters, not as they willed, but as he willed—and it is clear that materials are at hand sufficient to make the fortunes of a dozen comediettas.

To the marriage of Pauline Bonaparte only the briefest reference need here be made. The wild humour of her blood showed itself before her first marriage; and after the death of her husband, General Leclerc, in San Domingo, she privately espoused Prince Borghese before the legal time of mourning had expired, an indiscretion which much annoyed Napoleon (August, 1803). Ultimately this brilliant, frivolous creature resided in the splendid mansion which now forms the British embassy in Paris. The case of Louis Bonaparte was somewhat different. Nurtured as he had been in his early years by Napoleon, he had rewarded him by contracting a dutiful match with Hortense Beauharnais (January, 1802); but that union was to be marred by a grotesquely horrible jealousy which the young husband soon conceived for his powerful brother.

For the present, however, the chief trouble was caused by Lucien, whose address had saved matters at the few critical minutes of Brumaire. Gifted with a strong vein of literary feeling and oratorical fire he united in his person the obstinacy of a Bonaparte, the headstrong feelings of a poet, and the dogmatism of a Corsican republican. His presumptuous conduct had already embroiled him with the First Consul, who deprived him of his Ministry and sent him as ambassador to Madrid.[276] He further sinned, first by hurrying on peace with Portugal—it is said for a handsome present from Lisbon—and later by refusing to marry the widow of the King of Etruria. In this he persisted, despite the urgent representations of Napoleon and Joseph: "You know very well that I am a republican, and that a queen is not what suits me, an ugly queen too!"—" What a pity your answer was not cut short, it would have been quite Roman," sneered Joseph at his younger brother, once the Brutus of the Jacobin clubs. But Lucien was proof against all the splendours of the royal match; he was madly in love with a Madame Jouberthon, the deserted wife of a Paris stockbroker; and in order to checkmate all Napoleon's attempts to force on a hated union, he had secretly married the lady of his choice at the village of Plessis-Chamant, hard by his country house (October 26th, 1803).

The letter which divulged the news of this affair reached the First Consul at St. Cloud on an interesting occasion.[277] It was during a so-called family concert, to which only the choicest spirits had been invited, whence also, to Josephine's chagrin, Napoleon had excluded Madame Tallien and several other old friends, whose reputation would have tainted the air of religion and morality now pervading the Consular Court. While this select company was enjoying the strains of the chamber music, and Napoleon alone was dozing, Lucien's missive was handed in by the faithful if indiscreet Duroc. A change came over the scene. At once Napoleon started up, called out "Stop the music: stop," and began with nervous strides and agitated gestures to pace the hall, exclaiming "Treason! it is treason!" Round-eyed, open-mouthed wonder seized on the disconcerted musicians, the company rose in confusion, and Josephine, following her spouse, besought him to say what had happened. "What has happened—why—Lucien has married his—mistress."[278]

The secret cause for this climax of fashionable comedy is to be sought in reasons of state. The establishment of hereditary power was then being secretly and anxiously discussed. Napoleon had no heirs: Joseph's children were girls: Lucien's first marriage also had naught but female issue: the succession must therefore devolve on Lucien's children by a second marriage. But a natural son had already been born to him by Madame Jouberthon; and his marriage now promised to make this bastard the heir to the future French imperial throne. That was the reason why Napoleon paced the hall at St. Cloud, "waving his arms like a semaphore," and exclaiming "treason!" Failing the birth of sons to the two elder brothers, Lucien's marriage seriously endangered the foundation of a Napoleonic dynasty; besides, the whole affair would yield excellent sport to the royalists of the Boulevard St. Germain, the snarling Jacobins of the back streets, and the newspaper writers of hated Albion.

In vain were negotiations set on foot to make Lucien divorce his wife. The attempt only produced exasperation, Joseph himself finally accusing Napoleon of bad faith in the course of this affair. In the following springtime Lucien shook off the dust of France from his feet, and declared in a last letter to Joseph that he departed, hating Napoleon. The moral to this curious story was well pointed by Joseph Bonaparte: "Destiny seems to blind us, and intends, by means of our own faults, to restore France some day to her former rulers." [279]

At the very time of the scene at St. Cloud, fortune was preparing for the First Consul another matrimonial trouble. His youngest brother, Jerome, then aged nineteen years, had shown much aptitude for the French navy, and was serving on the American station, when a quarrel with the admiral sent him flying in disgust to the shore. There, at Baltimore, he fell in love with Miss Paterson, the daughter of a well-to-do merchant, and sought her hand in marriage. In vain did the French consul remind him that, were he five years older, he would still need the consent of his mother. The headstrong nature of his race brooked no opposition, and he secretly espoused the young lady at her father's residence.

Napoleon's ire fell like a blasting wind on the young couple; but after waiting some time, in hopes that the storm would blow over, they ventured to come to Europe. Thereupon Napoleon wrote to Madame Mere in these terms:

"Jerome has arrived at Lisbon with the woman with whom he lives.... I have given orders that Miss Paterson is to be sent back to America.... If he shows no inclination to wash away the dishonour with which he has stained my name, by forsaking his country's flag on land and sea for the sake of a wretched woman, I will cast him off for ever."[280]

The sequel will show that Jerome was made of softer stuff than Lucien; and, strange to say, his compliance with Napoleon's dynastic designs provided that family with the only legitimate male heirs that were destined to sustain its wavering hopes to the end of the century.

* * * * *



CHAPTER XIX

THE ROYALIST PLOT

From domestic comedy, France turned rapidly in the early months of 1804 to a sombre tragedy—the tragedy of the Georges Cadoudal plot and the execution of the Duc d'Enghien.

There were varied reasons why the exiled French Bourbons should compass the overthrow of Napoleon. Every month that they delayed action lessened their chances of success. They had long clung to the hope that his Concordat with the Pope and other anti-revolutionary measures betokened his intention to recall their dynasty. But in February, 1803, the Comte de Provence received overtures which showed that Bonaparte had never thought of playing the part of General Monk. The exiled prince, then residing at Warsaw, was courteously but most firmly urged by the First Consul to renounce both for himself and for the other members of his House all claims to the throne of France, in return for which he would receive a pension of two million francs a year. The notion of sinking to the level of a pensionary of the French Republic touched Bourbon pride to the quick and provoked this spirited reply:

"As a descendant of St. Louis, I shall endeavour to imitate his example by respecting myself even in captivity. As successor to Francis I., I shall at least aspire to say with him: 'We have lost everything but our honour."'

To this declaration the Comte d'Artois, his son, the Duc de Berri, Louis Philippe of Orleans, his two sons, and the two Condes gave their ardent assent; and the same loyal response came from the young Conde, the Duc d'Enghien, dated Ettenheim, March 22nd, 1803. Little did men think when they read this last defiance to Napoleon that within a year its author would be flung into a grave in the moat of the Castle of Vincennes.

Scarcely had the echoes of the Bourbon retorts died away than the outbreak of war between England and France raised the hopes of the French royalist exiles in London; and their nimble fancy pictured the French army and nation as ready to fling themselves at the feet of Louis XVIII. The future monarch did not share these illusions. In the chilly solitudes of Warsaw he discerned matters in their true light, and prepared to wait until the vaulting ambition of Napoleon should league Europe against him. Indeed, when the plans of the forward wing in London were explained to him, with a view of enlisting his support, he deftly waved aside the embarrassing overtures by quoting the lines:

"Et pour etre approuves De semblables projets veulent etre acheves,"

a cautious reply which led his brother, then at Edinburgh, scornfully to contemn his feebleness as unworthy of any further confidences.[281] In truth, the Comte d'Artois, destined one day to be Charles X. of France, was not fashioned by nature for a Fabian policy of delay: not even the misfortunes of exile could instill into the watertight compartments of his brain the most elementary notions of prudence. Daring, however, attracts daring; and this prince had gathered around him in our land the most desperate of the French royalists, whose hopes, hatreds, schemes, and unending requests for British money may be scanned by the curious in some thirty large volumes of letters bequeathed by their factotum the Comte de Puisaye, to the British Museum. Unfortunately this correspondence throws little light on the details of the plot which is fitly called by the name of Georges Cadoudal.

This daring Breton was, in fact, the only man of action on whom the Bourbon princes could firmly rely for an enterprise that demanded a cool head, cunning in the choice of means, and a remorseless hand. Pichegru it is true, lived near London, but saw little of the emigres, except the venerable Conde. Dumouriez also was in the great city, but his name was too generally scorned in France for his treachery in 1793 to warrant his being used. But there were plenty of swashbucklers who could prepare the ground in France, or, if fortune favoured, might strike the blow themselves; and a small committee of French royalists, which had the support of that furious royalist, Mr. Windham, M.P., began even before the close of 1802 to discuss plans for the "removal" of Bonaparte. Two of their tools, Picot and Le Bourgeois by name, plunged blindly into a plot, and were arrested soon after they set foot in France. Their boyish credulity seems to have suggested to the French authorities the sending of an agent so as to entrap not only French emigres, but also English officials and Jacobinical generals.

The agent provocateur has at all times been a favourite tool of continental Governments: but rarely has a more finished specimen of the class been seen than Mehee de la Touche. After plying the trade of an assassin in the September massacres of 1792, and of a Jacobin spy during the Terror, he had been included by Bonaparte among the Jacobin scapegoats who expiated the Chouan outrage of Nivose. Pining in the weariness of exile, he heard from his wife that he might be pardoned if he would perform some service for the Consular Government. At once he consented, and it was agreed that he should feign royalism, should worm himself into the secrets of the emigres at London, and act as intermediary between them and the discontented republicans of Paris.

The man who seems to have planned this scheme was the ex-Minister of Police. Fouche had lately been deprived by Bonaparte of the inquisitorial powers which he so unscrupulously used. His duties were divided between Regnier, the Grand Judge and Minister of Justice, and Real, a Councillor of State, who watched over the internal security of France. These men had none of the ability of Fouche, nor did they know at the outset what Mehee was doing in London. It may, therefore, be assumed that Mehee was one of Fouche's creatures, whom he used to discredit his successor, and that Bonaparte welcomed this means of quickening the zeal of the official police, while he also wove his meshes round plotting emigres, English officials, and French generals.[282]

Among these last there was almost chronic discontent, and Bonaparte claimed to have found out a plot whereby twelve of them should divide France into as many portions, leaving to him only Paris and its environs. If so, he never made any use of his discovery. In fact, out of this group of malcontents, Moreau, Bernadotte, Augereau, Macdonald, and others, he feared only the hostility of the first. The victor of Hohenlinden lived in sullen privacy near to Paris, refusing to present himself at the Consular Court, and showing his contempt for those who donned a courtier's uniform. He openly mocked at the Concordat; and when the Legion of Honour was instituted, he bestowed a collar of honour upon his dog. So keen was Napoleon's resentment at this raillery that he even proposed to send him a challenge to a duel in the Bois de Boulogne.[283] The challenge, of course, was not sent; a show of reconciliation was assumed between the two warriors; but Napoleon retained a covert dislike of the man whose brusque republicanism was applauded by a large portion of the army and by the frondeurs of Paris.

The ruin of Moreau, and the confusion alike of French royalists and of the British Ministry, could now be assured by the encouragement of a Jacobin-Royalist conspiracy, in which English officials should be implicated. Moreau was notoriously incapable in the sphere of political intrigue: the royalist coteries in London presented just the material on which the agent provocateur delights to work; and some British officials could, doubtless, with equal ease be drawn into the toils. Mehee de la Touche has left a highly spiced account of his adventures; but it must, of course, be received with distrust.[284]

Proceeding first to Guernsey, he gained the confidence of the Governor, General Doyle; and, fortified by recommendations from him, he presented himself to the emigres at London, and had an interview with Lord Hawkesbury and the Under-Secretaries of State, Messrs. Hammond and Yorke. He found it easy to inflame the imagination of the French exiles, who clutched at the proposed union between the irreconcilables, the extreme royalists, and the extreme republicans; and it was forthwith arranged that Napoleon's power, which rested on the support of the peasants, in fact of the body of France, should be crushed by an enveloping move of the tips of the wings.

Mehee's narrative contains few details and dates, such as enable one to test his assertions. But I have examined the Puisaye Papers,[285] and also the Foreign and Home Office archives, and have found proofs of the complicity of our Government, which it will be well to present here connectedly. Taken singly they are inconclusive, but collectively their importance is considerable. In our Foreign Office Records (France, No 70) there is a letter, dated London, August 30th, 1803, from the Baron de Roll, the factotum of the exiled Bourbons, to Mr. Hammond, our Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, asking him to call on the Comte d'Artois at his residence, No. 46, Baker Street. That the deliberations at that house were not wholly peaceful appears from a long secret memorandum of October 24th, 1803, in which the Comte d'Artois reviews the career of "that miserable adventurer" (Bonaparte), so as to prove that his present position is precarious and tottering. He concludes by naming those who desired his overthrow—Moreau, Reynier, Bernadotte, Simon, Massena, Lannes, and Ferino: Sieyes, Carnot, Chenier, Fouche, Barras, Tallien, Rewbel, Lamarque, and Jean de Bry. Others would not attack him "corps a corps," but disliked his supremacy. These two papers prove that our Government was aware of the Bourbon plot. Another document, dated London, November 18th, 1803, proves its active complicity. It is a list of the French royalist officers "who had set out or were ready to set out." All were in our pay, two at six shillings, five at four shillings, and nine at two shillings a day. It would be indelicate to reveal the names, but among them occurs that of Joachim P.J. Cadoudal. The list is drawn up and signed by Frieding—a name that was frequently used by Pichegru as an alias. In his handwriting also is a list of "royalist officers for whom I demand a year's pay in advance"—five generals, thirteen chefs de legion, seventeen chefs de bataillon, and nineteen captains. The pay claimed amounts to L3,110 15s.[286] That some, at least, of our Admiralty officials also aided Cadoudal is proved by a "most secret" letter, dated Admiralty Office, July 31st, 1803, from E. N[epean] to Admiral Montagu in the Downs, charging him to help the bearer, Captain Wright, in the execution of "a very important service," and to provide for him "one of the best of the hired cutters or luggers under your orders." Another "most secret" Admiralty letter, of January 9th, 1804, orders a frigate or large sloop to be got ready to convey secretly "an officer of rank and consideration" (probably Pichegru) to the French coast. Wright carried over the conspirators in several parties, until chance threw him into Napoleon's power and consigned him to an ignominious death, probably suicide.

Finally, there is the letter of Mr. Arbuthnot, Parliamentary Secretary at the Foreign Office (dated March 12th, 1804), to Sir Arthur Paget, in which he refers to the "sad result of all our fine projects for the re-establishment of the Bourbons: ... we are, of course, greatly apprehensive for poor Moreau's safety."[287]

In face of this damning evidence the ministerial denials of complicity must be swept aside.[288] It is possible, however, that the plot was connived at, not by the more respectable chiefs, but by young and hot-headed officials. Even in the summer of 1803 that Cabinet was already tottering under the attacks of the Whigs and the followers of Pitt. The blandly respectable Addington and Hawkesbury with his "vacant grin"[289] were evidently no match for Napoleon; and Arbuthnot himself dubs Addington "a poor wretch universally despised and laught at," and pronounces the Cabinet "the most inefficient that ever curst a country." I judge, therefore, that our official aid to the conspirators was limited to the Under-Secretaries of the Foreign, War, and Admiralty Offices. Moreover, the royalist plans, as revealed to our officials, mainly concerned a rising in Normandy and Brittany. Our Government would not have paid the salaries of fifty-four royalist officers—many of them of good old French families—if it had been only a question of stabbing Napoleon. The lists of those officers were drawn up here in November, 1803, that is, three months after Georges Cadoudal had set out for Normandy and Paris to collect his desperadoes; and it seems most probable that the officers of the "royal army" were expected merely to clinch Cadoudal's enterprise by rekindling the flame of revolt in the north and west. French agents were trying to do the same in Ireland, and a plot for the murder of George III. was thought to have been connived at by the French authorities. But, when all is said, the British Government must stand accused of one of the most heinous of crimes. The whole truth was not known at Paris; but it was surmised; and the surmise was sufficient to envenom the whole course of the struggle between England and Napoleon.

Having now established the responsibility of British officials in this, the most famous plot of the century, we return to describe the progress of the conspiracy and the arts employed by Napoleon to defeat it. His tool, Mehee de la Touche, after entrapping French royalists and some of our own officials in London, proceeded to the Continent in order to inveigle some of our envoys. He achieved a brilliant success. He called at Munich, in order, as he speciously alleged, to arrange with our ambassador there the preparations for the royalist plot. The British envoy, who bore the honoured name of Francis Drake, was a zealous intriguer closely in touch with the emigres: he was completely won over by the arts of Mehee: he gave the spy money, supplied him with a code of false names, and even intrusted him with a recipe for sympathetic ink. Thus furnished, Mehee proceeded to Paris, sent his briber a few harmless bulletins, took his information to the police, and, at Napoleon's dictation, gave him news that seriously misled our Government and Nelson.[290]

The same trick was tried on Stuart, our ambassador at Vienna, who had a tempting offer from a French agent to furnish news from every French despatch to or from Vienna. Stuart had closed with the offer, when suddenly the man was seized at the instance of the French ambassador, and his papers were searched.[291] In this case there were none that compromised Stuart, and his career was not cut short in the ignominious manner that befell Drake, over whom there may be inscribed as epitaph the warning which Talleyrand gave to young aspirants—"et surtout pas trop de zele."

Thus, while the royalists were conspiring the overthrow of Napoleon, he through his agents was countermining their clumsy approach to his citadel, and prepared to blow them sky high when their mines were crowded for the final rush. The royalist plans matured slowly owing to changes which need not be noticed. Georges Cadoudal quitted London, and landed at Biville, a smuggler's haunt not far from Dieppe, on August 23rd, 1803. Thence he made his way to Paris, and spent some months in striving to enlist trusty recruits. It has been stated that the plot never aimed at assassination, but at the overpowering of the First Consul's escort, and the seizure of his person, during one of his journeys. Then he was to be forcibly transferred to the northern coast on relays of horses, and hurried over to England.[292] But, though the plotters threw the veil of decency over their enterprise by calling it kidnapping, they undoubtedly meant murder. Among Drake's papers there is a hint that the royalist emissaries were at first to speak only of the seizure and deportation of the First Consul.

Whatever may have been their precise aims, they were certainly known to Napoleon and his police. On November 1st, 1803, he wrote to Regnier:

"You must not be in a hurry about the arrests: when the author [Mehee] has given in all the information, we will draw up a plan with him, and will see what is to be done. I wish him to write to Drake, and, in order to make him trustful, inform him that, before the great blow can be dealt, he believes he [Mehee] can promise to have seized on the table of the First Consul, in his secret room, notes written in his own hand relating to his great expedition, and every other important document."

Napoleon revelled in the details of his plan for hoisting the engineers with their own petards.[293] But he knew full well that the plot, when fully ripe, would yield far more than the capture of a few Chouans. He must wait until Moreau was implicated. The man selected by the emigres to sound Moreau was Pichegru, and this choice was the sole instance of common sense displayed by them. It was Pichegru who had marked out the future fortune of Moreau in the campaign of 1793, and yet he had seemed to be the victim of that general's gross ingratitude at Fructidor. Who then so fitted as he to approach the victor of Hohenlinden? Through a priest named David and General Lajolais, an interview was arranged; and shortly after Pichegru's arrival in France, these warriors furtively clasped hands in the capital which had so often resounded with their praises (January, 1804). They met three or four times, and cleared away some of the misunderstandings of the past. But he would have nothing to do with Georges, and when Pichegru mooted the overthrow of Bonaparte and the restoration of the Bourbons, he firmly warned him: "Do with Bonaparte what you will, but do not ask me to put a Bourbon in his place."

From this resolve Moreau never receded. But his calculating reserve did not save him. Already several suspects had been imprisoned in Normandy. At Napoleon's suggestion five of them were condemned to death, in the hope of extorting a confession; and the last a man named Querelle, gratified his gaolers by revealing (February 14th) not only the lodging of Georges in Paris, but the intention of other conspirators, among whom was a French prince, to land at Biville. The plot was now coming to a head, and so was the counter-plot. On the next day Moreau was arrested by order of Napoleon, who feigned the utmost grief and surprise at seeing the victor of Hohenlinden mixed up with royalist assassins in the pay of England.[294]

Elated by this success, and hoping to catch the Comte d'Artois himself, Napoleon forthwith despatched to that cliff one of his most crafty and devoted servants, Savary, who commanded the gendarmerie d'elite. Tricked out in suitable disguises, and informed by a smuggler as to the royalist signals, Savary eagerly awaited the royal quarry, and when Captain Wright's vessel hove in sight, he used his utmost arts to imitate the signals that invited a landing. But the crew were not to be lured to shore; and after fruitless endeavours he returned to Paris—in time to take part in the murder of the Duc d'Enghien.

Meanwhile the police were on the tracks of Pichegru and Georges. On the last day of February the general was seized in bed in the house of a treacherous friend: but not until the gates of Paris had been closed, and domiciliary visits made, was Georges taken, and then only after a desperate affray (March 9th). The arrest of the two Polignacs and the Marquis de Riviere speedily followed.

Hitherto Napoleon had completely outwitted his foes. He knew well enough that he was in no danger.

"I have run no real risks," he wrote to Melzi, "for the police had its eyes on all these machinations, and I have the consolation of not finding reason to complain of a single man among all those I have placed in this huge administration, Moreau stands alone." [295]

But now, at the moment of victory, when France was swelling with rage against royalist assassins, English gold, and Moreau's treachery, the First Consul was hurried into an enterprise which gained him an imperial crown and flecked the purple with innocent blood.

There was living at Ettenheim, in Baden, not far from the Rhine, a young prince of the House of Conde, the Duc d'Enghien. Since the disbanding of the corps of Conde he had been tranquilly enjoying the society of the Princess Charlotte de Rohan, to whom he had been secretly married. Her charms, the attractions of the chase, the society of a small circle of French emigres, and an occasional secret visit to the theatre at Strassburg, formed the chief diversions to an otherwise monotonous life, until he was fired with the hope of a speedy declaration of war by Austria and Russia against Napoleon. Report accused him of having indiscreetly ventured in disguise far into France; but he indignantly denied it. His other letters also prove that he was not an accomplice of the Cadoudal-Pichegru conspiracy. But Napoleon's spies gave information which seemed to implicate him in that enterprise. Chief among them was Mehee, who, at the close of February, hovered about Ettenheim and heard that the duke was often absent for many days at a time.

Napoleon received this news on March 1st, and ordered the closest investigation to be made. One of his spies reported that the young duke associated with General Dumouriez. In reality the general was in London, and the spy had substituted the name of a harmless old gentleman called Thumery. When Napoleon saw the name of Dumouriez with that of the young duke his rage knew no bounds. "Am I a dog to be beaten to death in the street? Why was I not warned that they were assembling at Ettenheim? Are my murderers sacred beings? They attack my very person. I'll give them war for war." And he overwhelmed with reproaches both Real and Talleyrand for neglecting to warn him of these traitors and assassins clustering on the banks of the Rhine. The seizure of Georges Cadoudal and the examination of one of his servants helped to confirm Napoleon's surmise that he was the victim of a plot of which the duke and Dumouriez were the real contrivers, while Georges was their tool. Cadoudal's servant stated that there often came to his master's house a mysterious man, at whose entry not only Georges but also the Polignacs and Riviere always arose. This convinced Napoleon that the Duc d'Enghien was directing the plot, and he determined to have the duke and Dumouriez seized. That they were on German soil was naught to him. Talleyrand promised that he could soon prevail on the Elector to overlook this violation of his territory, and the question was then discussed in an informal council. Talleyrand, Real, and Fouche advised the severest measures. Lebrun spoke of the outcry which such a violation of neutral territory would arouse, but bent before the determination of the First Consul; and the regicide Cambaceres alone offered a firm opposition to an outrage which must embroil France with Germany and Russia. Despite this protest, Napoleon issued his orders and then repaired to the pleasing solitudes of La Malmaison, where he remained in almost complete seclusion. The execution of the orders was now left to Generals Ordener and Caulaincourt, who arranged the raid into Baden; to Murat, who was now Governor of Paris; and to the devoted and unquestioning Savary and Real.

The seizure of the duke was craftily effected. Troops and gendarmes were quietly mustered at Strassburg: spies were sent forward to survey the ground; and as the dawn of the 15th of March was lighting up the eastern sky, thirty Frenchmen encircled Enghien's abode. His hot blood prompted him to fight, but on the advice of a friend he quietly surrendered, was haled away to Strassburg, and thence to the castle of Vincennes on the south-east of Paris. There everything was ready for his reception on the evening of March 20th. The pall of secrecy was spread over the preparations. The name of Plessis was assigned to the victim, and Harel, the governor of the castle, was left ignorant of his rank.[296]

Above all, he was to be tried by a court-martial of officers, a form of judgment which was summary and without appeal; whereas the ordinary courts of justice must be slow and open to the public gaze. It was true that the Senate had just suspended trial by jury in the case of attempts against the First Consul's life—a device adopted in view of the Moreau prosecution. But the certainty of a conviction was not enough: Napoleon determined to strike terror into his enemies, such as a swift and secret blow always inspires. He had resolved on a trial by court-martial when he still believed Enghien to be an accomplice of Dumouriez; and when, late on Saturday, March 17th, that mistake was explained, his purpose remained unshaken—unshaken too by the high mass of Easter Sunday, March 18th, which he heard in state at the Chapel of the Tuileries. On the return journey to Malmaison Josephine confessed to Madame de Remusat her fears that Bonaparte's will was unalterably fixed: "I have done what I could, but I fear his mind is made up." She and Joseph approached him once more in the park while Talleyrand was at his side. "I fear that cripple," she said, as they came near, and Joseph drew the Minister aside. All was in vain. "Go away; you are a child; you don't understand public duties." This was Josephine's final repulse.

On March 20th Napoleon drew up the form of questions to be put to the prisoner. He now shifted the ground of accusation. Out of eleven questions only the last three referred to the duke's connection with the Cadoudal plot.[297] For in the meantime he had found in the duke's papers proofs of his having offered his services to the British Government for the present war,[298] his hopes of participation in a future Continental war, but nothing that could implicate him in the Cadoudal plot. The papers were certainly disappointing; and that is doubtless the reason why, after examining them on March 19th, he charged Real "to take secret cognizance of these papers, along with Desmarest. One must prevent any talk on the more or less of charges contained in these papers." The same fact doubtless led to their abstraction along with the dossier of the proceedings of the court-martial.[299]

The task of summoning the officers who were to form the court-martial was imposed on Murat. But when this bluff, hearty soldier received this order, he exclaimed: "What! are they trying to soil my uniform! I will not allow it! Let him appoint them himself if he wants to." But a second and more imperious mandate compelled him to perform this hateful duty. The seven senior officers of the garrison of Paris now summoned were ordered not to separate until judgment was passed.[300] At their head was General Hulin, who had shown such daring in the assault on the Bastille; and thus one of the early heroes of the Revolution had the evening of his days shrouded over with the horrors of a midnight murder. Finally, the First Consul charged Savary, who had just returned to Paris from Biville, furious at being baulked of his prey, to proceed to Vincennes with a band of his gendarmes for the carrying out of the sentence.

The seven officers as yet knew nothing of the nature of their mission, or of martial law. "We had not," wrote Hulin long afterwards, "the least idea about trials; and, worst of all, the reporter and clerk had scarcely any more experience."[301] The examination of the prisoner was curt in the extreme. He was asked his name, date and place of birth, whether he had borne arms against France and was in the pay of England. To the last questions he answered decisively in the affirmative, adding that he wished to take part in the new war against France.

His replies were the same as he made in his preliminary examination, which he closed with the written and urgent request for a personal interview with Napoleon. To this request the court proposed to accede; but Savary, who had posted himself behind Hulin's chair, at once declared this step to be inopportune. The judges had only one chance of escape from their predicament, namely, to induce the duke to invalidate his evidence: this he firmly refused to do, and when Hulin warned him of the danger of his position, he replied that he knew it, and wished to have an interview with the First Consul.

The court then passed sentence, and, "in accordance with article (blank) of the law (blank) to the following effect (blank) condemned him to suffer death." Ashamed, as it would seem, of this clumsy condemnation, Hulin was writing to Bonaparte to request for the condemned man the personal interview which he craved, when Savary took the pen from his hands, with the words: "Your work is done: the rest is my business."[302] The duke was forthwith led out into the moat of the castle, where a few torches shed their light on the final scene of this sombre tragedy: he asked for a priest, but this was denied him: he then bowed his head in prayer, lifted those noble features towards the soldiers, begged them not to miss their aim, and fell, shot through the heart. Hard by was a grave, which, in accordance with orders received on the previous day, the governor had caused to be made ready; into this the body was thrown pell-mell, and the earth closed over the remains of the last scion of the warlike House of Conde.

Twelve years later loving hands disinterred the bones and placed them in the chapel of the castle. But even then the world knew not all the enormity of the crime. It was reserved for clumsy apologists like Savary to provoke replies and further investigations. The various excuses which throw the blame on Talleyrand, and on everyone but the chief actor, are sufficiently disposed of by the ex-Emperor's will. In that document Napoleon brushed away the excuses which had previously been offered to the credulity or malice of his courtiers, and took on himself the responsibility for the execution:

"I caused the Duc d'Enghien to be arrested and judged, because it was necessary for the safety, the interest, and the honour of the French people when the Comte d'Artois, by his own confession, was supporting sixty assassins at Paris. In similar circumstances I would act in the same way again."[303]

The execution of the Duc d'Enghien is one of the most important incidents of this period, so crowded with momentous events. The sensation of horror which it caused can be gauged by the mental agony of Madame de Remusat and of others who had hitherto looked on Bonaparte as the hero of the age and the saviour of the country. His mother hotly upbraided him, saying it was an atrocious act, the stain of which could never be wiped out, and that he had yielded to the advice of enemies' eager to tarnish his fame.[304] Napoleon said nothing, but shut himself up in his cabinet, revolving these terrible words, which doubtless bore fruit in the bitter reproaches later to be heaped upon Talleyrand for his share in the tragedy. Many royalists who had begun to rally to his side now showed their indignation at the deed. Chateaubriand, who was about to proceed as the envoy of France to the Republic of Valais, at once offered his resignation and assumed an attitude of covert defiance. And that was the conduct of all royalists who were not dazzled by the glamour of success or cajoled by Napoleon's favours. Many of his friends ventured to show their horror of this Corsican vendetta; and a mot which was plausibly, but it seems wrongly, attributed to Fouche, well sums up the general opinion of that callous society: "It was worse than a crime—it was a blunder."

Scarcely had Paris recovered from this sensation when, on April 6th, Pichegru was found strangled in prison; and men silently but almost unanimously hailed it as the work of Napoleon's Mamelukes. This judgment, however natural after the Enghien affair, seems to be incorrect. It is true the corpse bore marks which scarcely tallied with suicide: but Georges Cadoudal, whose cell was hard by, heard no sound of a scuffle; and it is unlikely that so strong a man as Pichegru would easily have succumbed to assailants. It is therefore more probable that the conqueror of Holland, shattered by his misfortunes and too proud to undergo a public trial, cut short a life which already was doomed. Never have plotters failed more ignominiously and played more completely into the hands of their enemy. A mot of the Boulevards wittily sums up the results of their puny efforts: "They came to France to give her a king, and they gave her an Emperor."

* * * * *



CHAPTER XX

THE DAWN OF THE EMPIRE

For some time the question of a Napoleonic dynasty had been freely discussed; and the First Consul himself had latterly confessed his intentions to Joseph in words that reveal his super-human confidence and his caution: "I always intended to end the Revolution by the establishment of heredity: but I thought that such a step could not be taken before the lapse of five or six years." Events, however, bore him along on a favouring tide. Hatred of England, fear of Jacobin excesses, indignation at the royalist schemes against his life, and finally even the execution of Enghien, helped on the establishment of the Empire. Though moderate men of all parties condemned the murder, the remnants of the Jacobin party hailed it with joy. Up to this time they had a lingering fear that the First Consul was about to play the part of Monk. The pomp of the Tuileries and the hated Concordat seemed to their crooked minds but the prelude to a recall of the Bourbons, whereupon priestcraft, tithes, and feudalism would be the order of the day. Now at last the tragedy of Vincennes threw a lurid light into the recesses of Napoleon's ambition; and they exclaimed, "He is one of us." It must thenceforth be war to the knife between the Bourbons and Bonaparte; and his rule would therefore be the best guarantee for the perpetual ownership of the lands confiscated during the Revolution.[305]

To a materialized society that great event had come to be little more than a big land investment syndicate, of which Bonaparte was now to be the sole and perpetual director. This is the inner meaning of the references to the Social Contract which figure so oddly among the petitions for hereditary rule. The Jacobins, except a few conscientious stalwarts, were especially alert in the feat of making extremes meet. Fouche, who now wriggled back into favour and office, appealed to the Senate, only seven days after the execution, to establish hereditary power as the only means of ending the plots against Napoleon's life; for, as the opportunist Jacobins argued, if the hereditary system were adopted, conspiracies to murder would be meaningless, when, even if they struck down one man, they must fail to shatter the system that guaranteed the Revolution.

The cue having been thus dextrously given, appeals and petitions for hereditary rule began to pour in from all parts of France. The grand work of the reorganization of France certainly furnished a solid claim on the nation's gratitude. The recent promulgation of the Civil Code and the revival of material prosperity redounded to Napoleon's glory; and with equal truth and wit he could claim the diadem as a fit reward for having revived many interests while none had been displaced. Such a remark and such an exploit proclaim the born ruler of men. But the Senate overstepped all bounds of decency when it thus addressed him: "You are founding a new era: but you ought to make it last for ever: splendour is nothing without duration." The Greeks who fawned on Persian satraps did not more unman themselves than these pensioned sycophants, who had lived through the days of 1789 but knew them not. This fulsome adulation would be unworthy of notice did it not convey the most signal proof of the danger which republics incur when men lose sight of the higher aims of life and wallow among its sordid interests.[306]



After the severe drilling of the last four years, the Chambers voted nearly unanimously in favour of a Napoleonic dynasty. The Corps Legislatif was not in session, and it was not convoked. The Senate, after hearing Fouche's unmistakable hints, named a commission of its members to report on hereditary rule, and then waited on events. These were decided mainly in private meetings of the Council of State, where the proposal met with some opposition from Cambaceres, Merlin, and Thibaudeau. But of what avail are private remonstrances when in open session opponents are dumb and supporters vie in adulation? In the Tribunate, on April 23rd, an obscure member named Curee proposed the adoption of the hereditary principle. One man alone dared openly to combat the proposal, the great Carnot; and the opposition of Curee to Carnot might have recalled to the minds of those abject champions of popular liberty the verse that glitters amidst the literary rubbish of the Roman Empire:

"Victrix causa deis placuit, sed victa Catoni."

The Tribunate named a commission to report; it was favourable to the Bonapartes. The Senate voted in the same sense, three Senators alone, among them Gregoire, Bishop of Blois, voting against it. Sieyes and Lanjuinais were absent; but the well-salaried lord of the manor of Crosne must have read with amused contempt the resolution of this body, which he had designed to be the guardian of the republican constitution:

"The French have conquered liberty: they wish to preserve their conquest: they wish for repose after victory. They will owe this glorious repose to the hereditary rule of a single man, who, raised above all, is to defend public liberty, maintain equality, and lower his fasces before the sovereignty of the people that proclaims him."

In this way did France reduce to practice the dogma of Rousseau with regard to the occasional and temporary need of a dictator.[307]

When the commonalty are so obsequious, any title can be taken by the one necessary man. Napoleon at first affected to doubt whether the title of Stadtholder would not be more seemly than that of Emperor; and in one of the many conferences held on this topic, Miot de Melito advocated the retention of the term Consul for its grand republican simplicity. But it was soon seen that the term Emperor was the only one which satisfied Napoleon's ambition and French love of splendour. Accordingly a senatus consultum of May 18th, 1804, formally decreed to him the title of Emperor of the French. As for his former colleagues, Cambaceres and Lebrun, they were stultified with the titles of Arch-chancellor and Arch-treasurer of the Empire: his brother Joseph received the title of Grand Elector, borrowed from the Holy Roman Empire, and oddly applied to an hereditary empire where the chief had been appointed: Louis was dubbed Constable: two other grand dignities, those of Arch-chancellor of State and High Admiral, were not as yet filled, but were reserved for Napoleon's relatives by marriage, Eugene Beauharnais and Murat. These six grand dignitaries of the new Empire were to be irresponsible and irremovable, and, along with the Emperor, they formed the Grand Council of the Empire.

On lesser individuals the rays of the imperial diadem cast a fainter glow. Napoleon's uncle, Cardinal Fesch, became Grand Almoner; Berthier, Grand Master of the Hounds; Talleyrand, Grand Chamberlain; Duroc, Grand Marshal of the Palace; and Caulaincourt, Master of the Horse, the acceptance of which title seemed to the world to convict him of full complicity in the schemes for the murder of the Duc d'Enghien. For the rest, the Emperor's mother was to be styled Madame Mere; his sisters became Imperial Highnesses, with their several establishments of ladies-in-waiting; and Paris fluttered with excitement at each successive step upwards of expectant nobles, regicides, generals, and stockjobbers towards the central galaxy of the Corsican family, which, ten years before, had subsisted on the alms of the Republic one and indivisible.

It remained to gain over the army. The means used were profuse, in proportion as the task was arduous. The following generals were distinguished as Marshals of the Empire (May 19th): Berthier, Murat, Massena, Augereau, Lannes, Jourdan, Ney, Soult, Brune, Davoust, Bessieres, Moncey, Mortier, and Bernadotte; two marshal's batons were held in reserve as a reward for future service, and four aged generals, Lefebvre, Serrurier, Perignon, and Kellerman (the hero of Valmy), received the title of honorary marshals. In one of his conversations with Roederer, the Emperor frankly avowed his reasons for showering these honours on his military chiefs; it was in order to assure the imperial dignity to himself; for how could they object to this, when they themselves received honours so lofty?[308] The confession affords a curious instance of Napoleon's unbounded trust in the most elementary, not to say the meanest, motives of human conduct. Suitable rewards were bestowed on officers of the second rank. But it was at once remarked that determined and outspoken republicans like Suchet, Gouvion St. Cyr, and Macdonald, whose talents and exploits far outstripped those of many of the marshals, were excluded from their ranks. St. Cyr was at Taranto, and Macdonald, after an enforced diplomatic mission to Copenhagen, was received on his recall with much coolness.[309] Other generals who had given umbrage at the Tuileries were more effectively broken in by a term of diplomatic banishment. Lannes at Lisbon and Brune at Constantinople learnt a little diplomacy and some complaisance to the head of the State, and were taken back to Napoleon's favour. Bernadotte, though ever suspected of Jacobinism and feared for the forceful ambition that sprang from the blending of Gascon and Moorish blood in his veins, was now also treated with the consideration due to one who had married Joseph Bonaparte's sister-in-law: he received at Napoleon's hands the house in Paris which had formerly belonged to Moreau: the exile's estate of Grosbois, near Paris, went to reward the ever faithful Berthier. Augereau, half cured of his Jacobinism by the disfavour of the Directory, was now drilling a small French force and Irish volunteers at Brest. But the Grand Army, which comprised the pick of the French forces, was intrusted to the command of men on whom Napoleon could absolutely rely, Davoust, Soult, and Ney; and, in that splendid force, hatred of England and pride in Napoleon's prowess now overwhelmed all political considerations.

These arrangements attest the marvellous foresight and care which Napoleon brought to bear on all affairs: even if the discontented generals and troops had protested against the adoption of the Empire and the prosecution of Moreau, they must have been easily overpowered. In some places, as at Metz, the troops and populace fretted against the Empire and its pretentious pomp; but the action of the commanders soon restored order. And thus it came to pass that even the soldiery that still cherished the Republic raised not a musket while the Empire was founded, and Moreau was accused of high treason.

The record of the French revolutionary generals is in the main a gloomy one. If in 1795 it had been prophesied that all those generals who bore the tricolour to victory would vanish or bow their heads before a Corsican, the prophet would speedily have closed his croakings for ever. Yet the reality was even worse. Marceau and Hoche died in the Rhineland: Kleber and Desaix fell on the same day, by assassination and in battle: Richepanse, Leclerc, and many other brave officers rotted away in San Domingo: Pichegru died a violent death in prison: Carnot was retiring into voluntary exile: Massena and Macdonald were vegetating in inglorious ease: others were fast descending to the rank of flunkeys; and Moreau was on his trial for high treason.

Even the populace, dazzled with glitter and drunk with sensations, suffered some qualms at seeing the victor of Hohenlinden placed in the dock; and the grief of the scanty survivors of the Army of the Rhine portended trouble if the forms of justice were too much strained. Trial by jury had been recently dispensed with in cases that concerned the life of Napoleon. Consequently the prisoner, along with Georges and his confederates, could be safely arraigned before judges in open court; and in that respect the trial contrasted with the midnight court-martial of Vincennes. Yet in no State trial have judges been subjected to more official pressure for the purpose of assuring a conviction.[310] The cross examination of numerous witnesses proved that Moreau had persistently refused his help to the plot; and the utmost that could be urged against him was that he desired Napoleon's overthrow, had three interviews with Pichegru, and did not reveal the plot to the authorities. That is to say, he was guilty of passively conniving at the success of a plot which a "good citizen" ought to have denounced.

For these reasons the judges sentenced him to two years' imprisonment. This judgment excessively annoyed Napoleon, who desired to use his imperial prerogative of pardon on Moreau's life, not on a mere term of imprisonment; and with a show of clemency that veiled a hidden irritation, he now released him provided that he retired to the United States.[311] To that land of free men the victor of Hohenlinden retired with a dignity which almost threw a veil over his past incapacity and folly; and, for the present at least, men could say that the end of his political career was nobler than Pompey's, while Napoleon's conduct towards his rival lacked the clemency which graced the triumph of Caesar.

As for the actual conspirators, twenty of them were sentenced to death on June 10th, among them being the elder of the two Polignacs, the Marquis de Riviere, and Georges Cadoudal. Urgent efforts were made on behalf of the nobles by Josephine and "Madame Mere"; and Napoleon grudgingly commuted their sentence to imprisonment. But the plebeian, Georges Cadoudal, suffered death for the cause that had enlisted all the fierce energies of his youth and manhood. With him perished the bravest of Bretons and the last man of action of the royalists. Thenceforth Napoleon was not troubled by Bourbon plotters; and doubtless the skill with which his agents had nursed this silly plot and sought to entangle all waverers did far more than the strokes of the guillotine to procure his future immunity. Men trembled before a union of immeasurable power with unfathomable craft such as recalled the days of the Emperor Tiberius.

Indeed, Napoleon might now almost say that his chief foes were the members of his own household. The question of hereditary succession had already reawakened and intensified all the fierce passions of the Emperor's relatives. Josephine saw in it the fatal eclipse of a divorce sweeping towards the dazzling field of her new life, and Napoleon is known to have thrice almost decided on this step. She no longer had any hopes of bearing a child; and she is reported by the compiler of the Fouche "Memoirs" to have clutched at that absurd device, a supposititious child, which Fouche had taken care to ridicule in advance. Whatever be the truth of this rumour, she certainly used all her powers over Napoleon and over her daughter Hortense, the spouse of Louis Bonaparte, to have their son recognized as first in the line of direct succession. But this proposal, which shelved both Joseph and Louis, was not only hotly resented by the eldest brother, who claimed to be successor designate, it also aroused the flames of jealousy in Louis himself. It was notorious that he suspected Napoleon of an incestuous passion for Hortense, of which his fondness for the little Charles Napoleon was maliciously urged as proof; and the proposal, when made with trembling eagerness by Josephine, was hurled back by Louis with brutal violence. To the clamour of Louis and Joseph the Emperor and Josephine seemed reluctantly to yield.

New arrangements were accordingly proposed. Lucien and Jerome having, for the present at least, put themselves out of court by their unsatisfactory marriages, Napoleon appeared to accept a reconciliation with Joseph and Louis, and to place them in the order of succession, as the Senate recommended. But he still reserved the right of adopting the son of Louis and of thus favouring his chances of priority. Indeed, it must be admitted that the Emperor at this difficult crisis showed conjugal tact and affection, for which he has received scant justice at the hands of Josephine's champions. "How could I divorce this good wife," he said to Roederer, "because I am becoming great?" But fate seemed to decree the divorce, which, despite the reasonings of his brothers, he resolutely thrust aside; for the little boy on whose life the Empress built so many fond hopes was to be cut off by an early death in the year 1807.

Then there were frequent disputes between Napoleon and Joseph. Both of them had the Corsican's instinct in favour of primogeniture; and hitherto Napoleon had in many ways deferred to his elder brother. Now, however, he showed clearly that he would brook not the slightest interference in affairs of State. And truly, if we except Joseph's diplomatic services, he showed no commanding gifts such as could raise him aloft along with the bewildering rush of Napoleon's fortunes. The one was an irrepressible genius, the other was a man of culture and talent, whose chief bent was towards literature, amours, and the art of dolce far niente, except when his pride was touched: then he was capable of bursts of passion which seemed to impose even on his masterful second brother. Lucien, Louis, and even the youthful Jerome, had the same intractable pride which rose defiant even against Napoleon. He was determined that his brothers should now take a subordinate rank, while they regarded the dynasty as largely due to their exertions at or after Brumaire, and claimed a proportionate reward. Napoleon, however, saw that a dynasty could not thus be founded. As he frankly said to Roederer, a dynasty could only take firm root in France among heirs brought up in a palace: "I have never looked on my brothers as the natural heirs to power: I only consider them as men fit to ward off the evils of a minority."

Joseph deeply resented this conduct. He was a Prince of the Empire, and a Grand Elector; but he speedily found out that this meant nothing more than occasionally presiding at the Senate, and accordingly indulged in little acts of opposition that enraged the autocrat. In his desire to get his brother away from Paris, the Emperor had already recommended him to take up the profession of arms; for he could not include him in the succession, and place famous marshals under him if he knew nothing of an army. Joseph perforce accepted the command of a regiment, and at thirty-six years of age began to learn drill near Boulogne.[312] This piece of burlesque was one day to prove infinitely regrettable. After the disaster of Vittoria, Napoleon doubtless wished that Joseph had for ever had free play in the tribune of the Senate rather than have dabbled in military affairs. But in the spring and summer of 1804 the Emperor noted his every word; so that, when he ventured to suggest that Josephine should not be crowned at the coming coronation, Napoleon's wrath blazed forth. Why should Joseph speak of his rights and his interests? Who had won power? Who deserved to enjoy power? Power was his (Napoleon's) mistress, and he dared Joseph to touch her. The Senate or Council of State might oppose him for ten years, without his becoming a tyrant: "To make me a tyrant one thing alone is necessary—a movement of my family."[313]