Chapter 18

Recommencement of the War--French seize Hanover and Naples--the English seize various French colonies--Scheme of invading England resumed--Moreau--Pichegru--Georges Cadoudal--Captain Wright--Murder of the Duke d'Enghien--Napoleon Emperor of France--King of Italy--Genoa united to the Empire.

The war was re-opened vigorously on both sides. The English fleets rapidly reconquered various colonies surrendered back to France by the treaty of Amiens, and assisted in compelling the dwindled army which Leclerc had commanded to evacuate St. Domingo. Buonaparte, on the other hand, despised utterly the distinction between the British Empire and Hanover--a possession indeed of the same prince, but totally unconnected with the English Constitution, and, as belonging to the Germanic Empire, entitled, if it chose, to remain neutral--and having first marched an army into Holland, ordered Mortier, its chief, to advance without ceremony and seize the Electorate. At the same time, and with the same pretext, French troops poured into the South of Italy, and occupied Naples.

General Mortier's appearance on the Hanoverian frontier was such as to satisfy the Duke of Cambridge, governor for the Elector, that resistance was hopeless. He entered into a negotiation (May, 1803), by which the territory was to be surrendered, provided his army were permitted to retire unbroken behind the Elbe, pledging themselves not to take the field again against France during this war. But the ministers of George III. advised him not to ratify this treaty. Mortier demanded of General Walmsloden, commander-in-chief of the Hanoverian army, to surrender his arms--or abide the consequences of being attacked beyond the Elbe--and that fine body of men was accordingly disarmed and disbanded. The cavalry, being ordered to dismount and yield their horses to the French, there ensued a scene which moved the sympathy of the invading soldiery themselves. The strong attachment between the German dragoon and his horse is well known; and this parting was more like that of dear kindred than of man and beast.

The emperor, whose duty it was, as head of the German body, to reclaim against this invasion of its territory, was obliged to put up with the Consul's explanation, viz. that he had no wish to make the conquest of Hanover, but merely to hold it until England should see the necessity of fulfilling the Maltese article in the treaty of Amiens. Prussia, alarmed by the near neigbourhood of Mortier, hardly dared to remonstrate. Denmark alone showed any symptom of active resentment. She marched 30,000 men into her German provinces; but finding that Austria and Prussia were resolved to be quiescent, was fain to offer explanations, and recall her troops. The French General, meantime, scourged Hanover by his exactions, and even, without the shadow of a pretext, levied heavy contributions in Bremen, Hamburg, and the other Hansetowns in the vicinity of the Electorate.

These successes enabled Napoleon to feed great bodies of his army at the expense of others, and to cripple the commerce of England, by shutting up her communication with many of the best markets on the continent. But he now recurred to his favourite scheme, that of invading the island itself, and so striking the fatal blow at the heart of his last and greatest enemy. Troops to the amount of 160,000, were mustered in camps along the French and Dutch coasts, and vast flotillas, meant to convey them across the Channel, were formed, and constantly manoeuvred in various ports, that of Boulogne being the chief station.

The spirit of England, on the other hand, was effectually stirred. Her fleets, to the amount of not less than 500 ships of war, traversed the seas in all directions, blockaded the harbours of the countries in which the power of the Consul was predominant, and from time to time made inroads into the French ports, cutting out and destroying the shipping, and crippling the flotillas. At home the army, both regular and irregular, was recruited and strengthened to an unexampled extent. Camps were formed along the English coasts opposite to France, and the King in person was continually to be seen in the middle of them. By night beacons blazed on every hill-top throughout the island; and the high resolution of the citizen-soldiery was attested, on numberless occasions of false alarm, by the alacrity with which they marched on the points of supposed danger.[47] There never was a time in which the national enthusiasm was more ardent and concentrated; and the return of Pitt to the prime-ministry (March, 1804) was considered as the last and best pledge that the councils of the sovereign were to exhibit vigour commensurate with the nature of the crisis. The regular army in Britain amounted, ere long, to 100,000; the militia to 80,000; and of volunteer troops there were not less than 350,000 in arms.

Soult, Ney, Davoust, and Victor were in command of the army designed to invade England, and the Chief Consul personally repaired to Boulogne, and inspected both the troops and the flotilla. He constantly gave out that it was his fixed purpose to make his attempt by means of the flotilla alone; but while he thus endeavoured to inspire his enemy with false security (for Nelson had declared this scheme of a boat invasion to be _mad_, and staked his whole reputation on its miserable and immediate failure, if attempted), the Consul was in fact providing indefatigably a fleet of men-of-war, designed to protect and cover the voyage. These ships were preparing in different ports of France and Spain, to the number of fifty; Buonaparte intended them to steal out to sea individually or in small squadrons, rendezvous at Martinico, and, returning thence in a body, sweep the Channel free of the English for such a space of time at least as might suffice for the execution of his great purpose. These designs, however, were from day to day thwarted by the watchful zeal of Nelson and the other English admirals; who observed Brest, Toulon, Genoa, and the harbours of Spain so closely, that no squadron, nor hardly a single vessel, could force a passage to the Atlantic.

Napoleon persisted to the end of his life in asserting his belief that the invasion of England was prevented merely by a few unforeseen accidents, and that, had his generals passed the sea, they must have been successful. The accidents to which he attributed so much influence, were, it is to be supposed, the presence and zeal of Nelson, Pellew, Cornwallis, and their respective fleets of observation. As for the results of the expedition, if the Channel had once been crossed--Napoleon never seemed to doubt that a single great battle would have sufficed to place London in his hands. Once arrived in the capital, he would, he said, have summoned a convention, restored the mass of the English people to their proper share of political power,--in a word, banished the King, and revolutionised England on the model of France: the meaning of all which is--reduced this island to be a province of the French empire, and yet bestowed upon its people all those rights and liberties of which he had already removed the last shadow, wherever his own power was established on the continent.

There can be little doubt that Napoleon egregiously underrated the resistance which would have been opposed to his army, had it effected the voyage in safety, by the spirit of the British people, and the great natural difficulties of the country through which the invaders must have marched. Nevertheless, it is not to be denied that, had the attempt been made instantly on the rupture of the peace, the chances of success might have been considerable--of success, temporary and short-lived indeed, but still sufficient to inflict a terrible injury upon this country--to bathe her soil in blood--to give her capital to the flames--and not impossibly to shake some of her institutions. The enemy himself was, in all likelihood, unprepared to make the attempt, until England had had time to make adequate preparation for its encounter. It was otherwise ordered of God's providence, than that the last bulwark of liberty should have to sustain the shock of battle at its own gates.

The invasion of England was the great object of attention throughout Europe during the autumn and winter of 1803. Early in the succeeding year Paris itself became the theatre of a series of transactions which for a time engrossed the public mind.

Even before Buonaparte proclaimed himself Consul for life, it appears that, throughout a considerable part of the French army, strong symptoms of jealousy had been excited by the rapidity of his advance to sovereign power. After the monarchy of France was in effect re-established in him and his dynasty, by the decrees of the 2nd and 4th of August, 1802, this spirit of dissatisfaction showed itself much more openly; and ere long it was generally believed that the republican party in the army looked up to Moreau as their head, and awaited only some favourable opportunity for rising in arms against Napoleon's tyranny. Moreau was known to have treated both the Concordat and the Legion of Honour with undisguised contempt; and Buonaparte's strictures on his conduct of the campaign of 1801 were not likely to have nourished feelings of personal goodwill in the bosom of him whom all considered as second only to the Chief Consul himself in military genius. It has already been intimated that the army of the Rhine had been all along suspected of regarding Napoleon with little favour. He had never been their general; neither they nor their chiefs had partaken in the plunder of Italy, or in the glory of the battles by which it was won. It was from their ranks that the unhappy expedition under Leclerc had been chiefly furnished, and they considered their employment in that unwholesome climate as dictated, more by the Consul's doubts of their fidelity to himself, than his high appreciation of their discipline and gallantry. How far Pichegru, while corresponding with the Bourbons as head of the army of the Rhine, had intrigued among his own soldiery, no evidence has as yet appeared. But after Pichegru's banishment, Moreau possessed the chief sway over the minds of one great division of the armed force of the Republic.

Carnot, meantime, and other genuine republicans in the legislative bodies, had been occupied with the endeavour, since they could not prevent Napoleon from sitting on the throne of France, to organise at least something like a constitutional opposition (such as exists in the Parliament of England) whereby the measures of his government might be, to a certain extent, controlled and modified. The creation of the Legion of Honour, the decree enabling Buonaparte to appoint his successor, and other leading measures, had accordingly been carried through far less triumphantly than could be agreeable to the self-love of the autocrat.

On the other hand, the return of so many emigrants--(a great part of whom, not receiving back the property promised to them, were disappointed and aggrieved anew)--could not fail to strengthen the influence of the royalists in the private society of Paris; and by degrees, as has often happened in the history of parties, the leaders of the republicans and those of the Bourbonists came together, sinking for the time the peculiar principles of either side, in the common feeling of hatred to Napoleon.

Pichegru returned from his exile at Cayenne, and after spending some time in England, where he, no doubt, communicated with the Bourbon princes, and with some members of Mr. Addington's government, passed over secretly into France. Georges Cadoudal and other Chouan chiefs were busy in stirring up their old adherents, and communicated with Pichegru on his arrival in Paris.

Suddenly, on the 12th of February, Paris was surprised with the announcement, that a new conspiracy against the life of the Chief Consul had been discovered by the confession of an accomplice; that 150 men had meant to assemble at Malmaison in the uniform of the consular guard, and seize Buonaparte while hunting; that Georges, the Chouan, had escaped by a quarter of an hour--but that Mairn, La Jollais, and other leaders of the conspiracy had been taken; finally, that Moreau had held various conferences with Georges, La Jollais and Pichegru, and that he also was under arrest.

It is said that Georges Cadoudal had once actually penetrated into the chamber of Napoleon at the Tuileries, and been prevented by the merest accident from assassinating him: others of the conspirators had approached his person very nearly on pretext of presenting petitions. Buonaparte attributed his escape chiefly to the irregular mode of living which his multifarious occupations involved; he seldom dined two days following at the same hour, hardly ever stirred out of the palace except with his attendants about him for some review or public ceremony, and perhaps never appeared unguarded except where his appearance must have been totally unexpected. The officer who betrayed Cadoudal and his associates, was, it seems, a violent republican, and as such desired the downfall of the Consul; but he had also served under Napoleon, and learning at a late hour that the life of his old leader was to be sacrificed, remonstrated vehemently, and rather than be accessary to such extremities, gave the necessary information at the Tuileries. Moreau was forthwith arrested; but Pichegru lurked undiscovered in the heart of Paris until the 28th; six gens-d'armes then came upon his privacy so abruptly that he could not use either his dagger or pistols, though both were on his table. He wrestled for a moment, and then attempted to move compassion--but was immediately fettered. Shortly after Cadoudal himself, who had for days traversed Paris in cabriolets, not knowing where to lay his head, was detected while attempting to pass one of the barriers. Captain Wright, an English naval officer, who had distinguished himself under Sir Sydney Smith at Acre, and from whose vessel Pichegru was known to have disembarked on the coast of France, happened about the same time to encounter a French ship of much superior strength, and become a prisoner of war. On pretext that this gentleman had acted as an accomplice in a scheme of assassination, he also was immediately placed in solitary confinement in a dungeon of the Temple.

It was now openly circulated that England and the exiled Bourbons had been detected in a base plot for murdering the Chief Consul; that the proof of their guilt was in the hands of the government, and would soon be made public. The Duke de Berri himself, it was added, had been prepared to land on the west coast of France, whenever Pichegru or Cadoudal should inform him that the time was come; while another of the royal exiles lay watching the event, and in readiness to profit by it, on the other side, immediately behind the Rhine.

The name of this last prince, the heir of Conde, well known for the brilliant gallantry of his conduct while commanding the van of his grandfather's little army of exiles, and beloved for many traits of amiable and generous character, had hardly been mentioned in connection with these rumours, ere the inhabitants of Paris heard, in one breath, with surprise and horror, that the Duke d'Enghien had been arrested at Ettenheim, and tried and executed within sight of their own houses at Vincennes. This story will ever form the darkest chapter in the history of Napoleon.

The duke had his residence at a castle in the Duchy of Baden, where, attended by a few noble friends, the partakers of his exile, he was chiefly occupied with the diversions of the chase. On the evening of the 14th of March, a troop of French soldiers and gens-d'armes, under Colonel Ordonner (who derived his orders from Caulaincourt) suddenly passed the frontier into the independent territory of Baden, surrounded the Castle of Ettenheim, rushed into the apartment of the prince, and seized him and all his company. He would have used his arms, but his attendants, representing the overpowering number of the assailants, persuaded him to yield without resistance. He was forthwith conveyed to the citadel of Strasburg, and separated from all his friends except one aide-de-camp, the Baron de St. Jaques, and allowed no communication with any one else. After being here confined three days, he was called up at midnight on the 18th and informed that he must prepare for a journey. He desired to have the assistance of his valet-de-chambre, and was refused: they permitted him to pack up _two_ shirts, and the journey immediately begun.

The duke reached Paris early on the 20th; and after lying a few hours in the Temple, was removed to the neighbouring Castle of Vincennes, used for ages as a state prison. Being much fatigued he fell asleep, but was presently roused, and his examination forthwith commenced. Weary and wholly unprepared as he must have been, the unfortunate prince conducted himself throughout in such a manner as to command the respect of his inquisitors. He at once avowed his name and his services in the army of Conde, but utterly denied all knowledge of Pichegru and his designs. To this the whole of his evidence (and there was no evidence but his own) amounted; and having given it; he earnestly demanded an audience of the Consul. "My name," said he, "my rank, my sentiments, and the peculiar distress of my situation, lead me to hope that this request will not be refused."

At midnight the duke was again called from his bed, to attend the court which had been constituted for his trial. It consisted of eight military officers, appointed by Murat, Napoleon's brother-in-law, then governor of Paris. General Hullin, president of the military commission, commanded him to listen to the charges on which he was to be tried: of having fought against France; of being in the pay of England; and of plotting with England against the internal and external safety of the Republic. The Duke was again examined, and the second interrogatory was a mere repetition of the first, with this addition, that the prisoner avowed his readiness to take part again in the hostilities against France, if the opportunity should present itself. No other evidence whatever was adduced, except the written report of a spy of the police, who testified that the duke received many emigrants at his table at Ettenheim, and occasionally left the castle for several days together, without the spy's being able to trace where he was: a circumstance sufficiently explained by the duke's custom of hunting in the Black Forest.

General Hullin, in his account of the proceedings,[48] says, "He uniformly maintained that 'he had only sustained the rights of his family, and that a Conde could never enter France but with arms in his hands. My birth,' said he, 'and my opinions must ever render me inflexible on this point.'"--"The firmness of his answers," continues Hullin, "reduced the judges to despair. Ten times we gave him an opening to retract his declarations, but he persisted in them immovably. 'I see,' he said, 'the honourable intentions of the commissioners, but I cannot resort to the means of safety which they indicate.' Being informed that the military commission judged without appeal, 'I know it,' answered he, 'nor do I disguise to myself the danger which I incur. My only desire is to have an interview with the First Consul.'"

The irregularities of all this procedure were monstrous. In the first place, the duke owed no allegiance to the existing government of France. 2ndly, The seizure of his person was wholly illegal; it took place by means of a violation of an independent territory: an outrage for which it is impossible to offer the smallest excuse. 3rdly, Had the arrest been ever so regular, the trial of a prisoner accused of a political conspiracy was totally beyond the jurisdiction of a court-martial. 4thly, It was against the laws of France to hold any trial at midnight. 5thly, The interrogatory was not read over to the prisoner, which the law imperatively demanded; and, 6thly, No defender was assigned to him--an indulgence which the French code refuses not to the meanest or most atrocious criminal, by what tribunal soever he may be tried.

But to proceed--The judges were moved by the conduct of the prisoner, and inclined to listen to his request of an audience of the Chief Consul. But Savary, then minister of police, had by this time introduced himself into the chamber, and watched the course of procedure from behind the chair of the president. He now leaned forward, and whispered into Hullin's ear, "this would be inopportune."--These significant words were obeyed. The court pronounced the duke guilty of the capital crimes of having fought against the Republic; of having intrigued with England; of having maintained intelligence with Strasburg, with the view of seizing that place; and of having conspired against the life of the Chief Consul. The prisoner, being remanded to his confinement, the report was instantly forwarded to Buonaparte, with a request that his further pleasure might be made known.

The court remained sitting until their messenger returned: he brought back their own letter with these words inscribed on it, "Condemned to death." The prisoner being called in again, heard his sentence with perfect composure. He requested the attendance of a confessor, and was answered,--"Would you die like a monk?" Without noticing this brutality he knelt for a moment, as in prayer, and rising, said, "Let us go."

He was immediately led down a winding stair by torch-light; and, conceiving that he was descending into some subterraneous dungeon, said to one of the soldiers of the escort, "Am I to be immured in an _oubliette_?" "Monseigneur," the man replied, sobbing, "be tranquil on that point." They emerged from a postern into the ditch of the castle, where a party of gens-d'armes d'elite were drawn up, Savary, their master, standing on the parapet over them. It was now six o'clock in the morning, and the gray light of the dawn was mingled with the gleam of torches. The prince refused to have his eyes bandaged--the word was given, and he fell. The body, dressed as it was, was immediately thrown into a grave--which had been prepared beforehand; at least, so say all the witnesses, except M. Savary.

To resume our notice of the mere informalities of the procedure:--1. The sentence was altogether unsupported by the evidence, except as to the mere fact of D'Enghien's having borne arms against France; but this could be no crime in him: he owed no allegiance to the French government; on the contrary, he and all his family had been expressly excepted from every act of amnesty to emigrants, and thereby constituted _aliens_. 2. The execution took place immediately after the sentence was pronounced; this is contrary to the laws of all civilised nations, and in direct contradiction to an article in the French code then in force, which gave twenty-four hours to every prisoner convicted by a court-martial, that he might, if he chose, appeal from their sentence. But, 3rdly, the publications (long afterwards extorted) of Savary and Hullin, prove that the court, perplexed with the difficulty of making their sentence appear to have any conformity with the charge and the evidence, drew up in fact, two different _sentences_: one before the duke was executed, which bore the article, "immediate execution"; the other a more careful document, intended alone to meet the public eye, in which not a word about immediate execution occurs. The duke was _not_ executed, therefore, at six in the morning of the 21st of March, upon that sentence which was made public at the time, as the authority for his death.

Every circumstance in the dismal tale, from the quantity of linen packed up at Strasburg, to the preparation of the grave in the ditch of Vincennes, attests the fact that the fate of the unfortunate young man (for he was but 32 years old when he fell) had been determined on, to the minutest particular, long before he was summoned to a mock trial, before an incompetent tribunal. If ever man was murdered, it was the Duke d'Enghien.

Such was the fate of the gallant and generous youth, who, by his fiery courage, won the battle of Bertsheim; and who, when his followers, to whom the republicans had so often refused quarter, seemed disposed to retaliate in the hour of victory, threw himself between them and their discomfited countrymen, exclaiming, "They are French--they are unfortunate; I place them under the guardianship of your honour."

The horror with which this remorseless tragedy was heard of in Paris, soon spread throughout all Europe; and from that day the name of Buonaparte was irremediably associated with the ideas of sullen revenge and tyrannic cruelty. The massacre of Jaffa had been perpetrated in a remote land, and many listened with incredulity to a tale told by the avowed enemies of the homicide. But this bloody deed was done at home, and almost in the sight of all Paris. Of the fact there could be no doubt; and of the pretexts set forth by the organs of the French government, there were few men of any party who affected not to perceive the futility. Hitherto Napoleon had been the fortunate heir of a revolution, in whose civil excesses he had scarcely participated--henceforth he was the legitimate representative and symbol of all its atrocities.

In so far as Buonaparte had the power to suppress all mention of this catastrophe, it was, at the time, suppressed. But in after days, at St. Helena, when dictating the apology of his life to the companions of his exile, he not only spoke openly of the death of the Duke d'Enghien, but appears to have dwelt upon it often and long. Well aware that this was generally regarded as the darkest trait in his history, he displayed a feverish anxiety to explain it away. But the Sultan Akber wore a signet, inscribed, "I never knew any one that lost his way in a straight road;" and he that is conscious of innocence can have no temptation to multiply the lines of his defence. Buonaparte, according to the mood of the moment, or the companion whom he addressed, adopted different methods of vindicating himself. They were inconsistent as well as diverse; and even Las Cases seems to have blushed for his hero when he recorded them.

At one time Napoleon represents himself as having been taken by surprise: his ministers come on him when he is alone, at midnight, and inform him that the Bourbons have conspired to assassinate him--that the proofs are in their hands--that the Duke d'Enghien has already been more than once in Paris, and is lying close to the frontier, expecting the signal to return and head the conspirators in person.--In the first flush of indignation he gives the order for arresting the duke--every artifice is adopted to prevent him from interfering afterwards--everything is arranged by Talleyrand--the duke addresses a letter to him from Strasburg--that letter Talleyrand suppresses until the tragedy is over--had it been delivered in time, the life of the unhappy prince had been saved.

Unfortunately for Buonaparte, eight days elapsed between the order for the arrest and the order for the execution, a much longer period than was ever necessary for restoring the composure of his strong understanding. Further, the Duke d'Enghien kept a diary during his imprisonment, in which the minutest incidents are carefully recorded; it contains no hint of the letter to Napoleon; and the Baron de St. Jaques, who never quitted his master's chamber while he remained at Strasburg, bears distinct testimony that no such letter was written there. Moreover, neither Talleyrand nor any other individual in the world, except Buonaparte, could have had the slightest motive for desiring the death of D'Enghien. On the contrary, every motive that has weight with mankind in general, must have swayed the other way with Talleyrand; a member of one of the noblest families in France; a man unstained by participation in any of the butcheries of the revolution; and, above all, a man whose consummate skill has through life steadily pursued one object, namely, his own personal interest, and who must have been mad to perpetrate a gratuitous murder. And, lastly, Talleyrand was minister for foreign affairs. A letter written at Strasburg could by no accident have been forwarded through his department in the government; and, in fact, there is perfect proof that the whole business was done by the police, whose chief, Savary, communicated directly with the Chief Consul, and the military, who acted under the orders either of Buonaparte's aide-de-camp, Caulaincourt (afterwards Duke of Vicenza), or of his brother-in-law, Murat, the governor of Paris. It is needless to observe, that Napoleon's accusation of Talleyrand dates _after_ that politician had exerted all his talents and influence in the work of procuring his own downfall, and the restoration of the House of Bourbon. But in truth whether Talleyrand, or Savary, or Caulaincourt, had the chief hand in the death of the Duke d'Enghien, is a controversy about which posterity will feel little interest. It is obvious to all men, that not one of them durst have stirred a finger to bring about a catastrophe of such fearful importance, without the express orders of Napoleon.

At other times the exile of St. Helena told a shorter and a plainer tale. "I was assailed," said he, "on all hands by the enemies whom the Bourbons had raised up against me: threatened with air-guns, infernal machines, and stratagems of every kind. There was no tribunal to which I could appeal for protection; therefore I had a right to protect myself. By putting to death one of those whose followers threatened my life, I was entitled to strike a salutary terror into all the rest."

The princes of the House of Bourbon, so far from stimulating assassins to take off the usurper of their throne, never failed, when such schemes were suggested, to denounce them as atrocities hateful in the sight of God and man. As to this part of their conduct, the proofs are abundant, clear, and irrefragable. But it is very possible that Buonaparte entertained the foul suspicion on which he justifies his violence. And indeed it is only by supposing him to have sincerely believed that the Bourbons were plotting against his life, that we can at all account for the shedding of D'Enghien's blood.--Unless Josephine spake untruly, or her conversation has been wilfully misrepresented, she strenuously exerted her influence to procure mercy for the royal victim; and so, unquestionably, did his venerable mother. But it demanded neither affection for Napoleon's person, nor regard for his interest, nor compassion for the youth and innocence of the Duke d'Enghien, to perceive the imprudence, as well as wickedness, of the proceeding. The remark of the callous _Fouche_ had passed into a proverb, "It was worse than a crime--it was a blunder."

A few days after the execution of the Duke d'Enghien (on the morning of the 7th of April) General Pichegru was found dead in prison: a black handkerchief was tied round his neck, and tightened by the twisting of a short stick, like a tourniquet. It could not appear probable that he should have terminated his own life by such means; and, accordingly, the rumour spread that he had been taken off in the night by some of the satellites of Savary; or, according to others, by some Mamelukes whom Napoleon had brought with him from the East, and now retained near his person, as an interior body-guard of the palace. This is a mystery which has never been penetrated. The recent fate of D'Enghien had prepared men to receive any story of this dark nature; and it was argued that Buonaparte had feared to bring Pichegru, a bold and dauntless man, into an open court, where he might have said many things well calculated to injure the Consul in public opinion.[49]

The other prisoners were now brought to trial. There was not a shadow of evidence against General Moreau, except the fact, admitted by himself, that he had been twice in company with Pichegru since his return to Paris. He in vain protested that he had rejected the proposals of Pichegru, to take part in a royalist insurrection; and, as for the murderous designs of Georges Cadoudal, that he had never even heard of them. He was sentenced to two years' confinement: but, on the intercession of his wife with Josephine, or rather on finding that a great part of the soldiery considered so eminent a commander as hardly used, the Chief Consul ere long, commuted this punishment for two years of exile.

Moreau was innocent; by his side, on the day of trial, appeared men who would have scorned to be so. Georges Cadoudal appeared in court with the miniature of Louis XVI. suspended round his neck, and gloried in the avowal of his resolution to make war personally on the usurper of the throne. The presiding judge, Thuriot, had been one of those who condemned the king to death. Georges punned on his name, and addressed him as "Monsieur Tue-Roi."[50] When called up for sentence, the judge missed the miniature, and asked him what he had done with it? "And you," answered the prisoner, "what have you done with the original?"--a retort which nothing could prevent the audience from applauding. Georges and eighteen more were condemned to death; and he, and eleven besides, suffered the penalty with heroic firmness. Of the rest, among whom were two sons of the noble house of Polignac, some were permitted to escape on condition of perpetual banishment: others had their punishment commuted to imprisonment.

With what indignation the death of the Duke d'Enghien had been heard of throughout Europe, now began to appear. The Emperor of Russia and the Kings of Sweden and Denmark put their courts into mourning, and made severe remonstrances through their diplomatic agents; and the correspondence which ensued laid the train for another general burst of war. Austria was humbled for the time, and durst not speak out: Prussia could hardly be expected to break her long neutrality on such an occasion: but wherever the story went, it prepared the minds of princes as of subjects, to take advantage of the first favourable opportunity for rising against the tyranny of France.

A conspiracy suppressed never fails to strengthen the power it was meant to destroy: and Buonaparte, after the tragedies of D'Enghien and Pichegru, beheld the French royalists reduced everywhere to the silence and the inaction of terror. Well understanding the national temper, he gave orders that henceforth the name of the exiled family should be as much as possible kept out of view; and accordingly after this time it was hardly ever alluded to in the productions of the enslaved press of Paris. The adherents of the Bourbons were compelled to content themselves with muttering their resentment in private saloons, where, however, the Chief Consul commonly had spies--who reported to him, or to his Savarys and Fouches, the jests and the caricatures in which the depressed and hopeless party endeavoured to find some consolation.

In order to check the hostile feeling excited among the sovereigns of the continent by the murder of the Bourbon Prince, the French government were now indefatigable in their efforts to connect the conspiracy of Georges Cadoudal with the cabinet of England. The agents of the police transformed themselves into numberless disguises, with the view of drawing the British ministers resident at various courts of Germany into some correspondence capable of being misrepresented, so as to suit the purpose of their master. Mr. Drake, envoy at Munich, and Mr. Spencer Smith, at Stuttgard, were deceived in this fashion; and some letters of theirs, egregiously misinterpreted, furnished Buonaparte with a pretext for complaining, to the sovereigns to whom they were accredited, that they had stained the honour of the diplomatic body by leaguing themselves with the schemes of the Chouan conspirators. The subservient princes were forced to dismiss these gentlemen from their residences; but the English ministry made such explanations in open Parliament as effectually vindicated the name of their country. Lord Elgin, British ambassador at Constantinople, had been one of those travellers detained at the out-breaking of the war, and was now resident on his parole in the south of France. He was, on some frivolous pretext, confined in a solitary castle among the Pyrenees; and there every device was practised to induce him to, at least, receive letters calculated, if discovered in his possession, to compromise him. But this nobleman, sagaciously penetrating the design, baffled it by his reserve. Being liberated from confinement shortly after, he communicated what had happened to a friend, a member of the French Senate, who traced the matter home to some of Fouche's creatures, and congratulated Lord Elgin on having avoided very narrowly the fate of Pichegru.

Sir George Rumbold, the British minister at Hamburg, escaped that consummation still more narrowly. During the night of the 23rd October a party of French soldiers passed the Elbe, as Ordonner and his gang had crossed the Rhine on the 14th of March, and boldly seized Rumbold within the territory of an independent and friendly state. He was hurried to Paris, and confined in the fated dungeons of the Temple: but none of his papers afforded any plausible pretext for resisting the powerful remonstrance which the King of Prussia thought fit to make against an outrage perpetrated almost within sight of his dominions; and, after a few days, Sir George was set at liberty.

Meantime, while all the princes of Europe regarded with indignation (though few of them, indeed, cared to express the feeling openly) the cruel tragedies which had been acted in France, the death of Pichegru had suppressed effectually the hopes of the royalists in that country, and the exile of Moreau deprived the republicans of the only leader under whom there was any likelihood of their taking arms against the Chief Consul. He resolved to profit by the favourable moment for completing a purpose which he had long meditated; and, on the 30th of April, little more than a month after the Duke d'Enghien died, one Curee was employed to move, in the Tribunate, "that it was time to bid adieu to political illusions--that victory had brought back tranquillity--the finances of the country had been restored, and the laws renovated--and that it was a matter of duty to secure those blessings to the nation in future, by rendering the supreme power hereditary in the person and family of Napoleon."--"Such," he said, "was the universal desire of the army and of the people. The title of Emperor, in his opinion, was that by which Napoleon should be hailed, as best corresponding to the dignity of the nation."

This motion was carried in the Tribunate, with one dissenting voice, that of Carnot; who, in a speech of great eloquence, resisted the principle of hereditary monarchy altogether. He admitted the merits in war and in policy of the Chief Consul--he was at present the Dictator of the Republic, and, as such, had saved it.--"Fabius, Camillus, Cincinnatus were dictators also. Why should not Buonaparte, like them, lay down despotic power, after the holding of it had ceased to be necessary to the general good? Let the services of a citizen be what they might, was there to be no limit to the gratitude of the nation? But at all events, even granting that Buonaparte himself could not be too highly rewarded, or too largely trusted, why commit the fortunes of posterity to chance? Why forget that Vespasian was the father of Domitian, Germanicus of Caligula, Marcus Aurelius of Commodus?" In effect Carnot, colleague as he had been of Robespierre, and stained as he was with the blood of Louis XVI., was a sincere republican; and, after his own fashion, a sincere patriot. He was alone in the Tribunate--the rest of whose members prolonged, during three whole days, a series of fulsome harangues, every one of which terminated in the same implicit agreement to the proposal of Curee.

The legislative body, without hesitation, adopted it; and a senatus-consultum forthwith appeared, by which Napoleon Buonaparte was declared Emperor of the French: the empire to descend in the male line of his body: in case of having no son, Napoleon might adopt any son or grandson of his brothers as his heir: in default of such adoption, Joseph and Louis Buonaparte were named as the next heirs of the crown (Lucien and Jerome being passed over, as they had both given offence to Napoleon by their marriages). The members of Napoleon's family were declared princes of the blood of France.

This decree was sent down to the departments: and the people received it with indifference. The Prefects reported on the 1st of December, that between three and four millions of citizens had subscribed their assent to the proposed measure, while not many more than three thousand voted in opposition to it. This result indicated, as these functionaries chose to say, the unanimous approbation of the French people. That nation, however, consisted at the time of more than thirty millions!

But Napoleon did not wait for this authority, such as it proved to be. On the 18th of May (more than six months ere the report reached him) he openly assumed the imperial title and dignity. On the same day he nominated his late colleagues in the Consulate, Cambaceres and Le Brun, the former to be Arch-Chancellor, the latter Arch-Treasurer of the Empire. The offices of High-Constable, Grand Admiral, &c., were revived and bestowed on his brothers, and others of his immediate connections. Seventeen generals (viz. Berthier, Murat, Moncey, Jourdan, Massena, Augereau, Bernadotte, Soult, Brune, Lannes, Mortier, Ney, Davoust, Bessieres, Kellerman, Lefebre, Perignon, Serrurier) were named Marshals of the Empire; Duroc, Grand Marshal of the Palace; Caulaincourt, Master of the Horse; Berthier, Grand Huntsman; and Count Segur, a nobleman of the ancient regime, Master of the Ceremonies. It was in vain attempted to excite popular enthusiasm. "It appeared," says an eye-witness, "as if the shades of D'Enghien and Pichegru had hovered over the scene, and spread coldness on all that was meant for the manifestation of joy."

It was not so with the soldiery. Napoleon, with his empress, visited the camps at Boulogne, and was received with the excess of military applause and devotion. He made a progress to Aix-la-Chapelle, and along the Rhenish frontier, flattered and extolled at every station. Except Russia, Sweden, and England, every crown in Europe sent to congratulate him on his enrolment in the body of hereditary monarchs. Nay, not a few of the smaller German potentates came in person, to swell, on this great occasion, the state and magnificence of the new imperial court.

In assuming the title of Emperor, not of King, it escaped not observation, that Napoleon's object was to carry back the minds of the French to a period antecedent to the rule of the recently dethroned dynasty--to the days of Charlemagne, who, with the monarchy of France, combined both a wider dominion and a loftier style. As that great conqueror had caused himself to be crowned by Pope Leo, so Napoleon now determined that his own inauguration should take place under the auspices of Pius VII.; nay, that the more to illustrate his power, the head of the Catholic church should repair to Paris for this purpose. It may be doubted whether, in this measure, he regarded more the mere gratification of his pride or the chance of conferring a character of greater solemnity on the installation of the new dynasty, in the eyes of the Catholic population of France. On the 5th of November, however, the unresisting Pope left Rome, and, having been received throughout his progress with every mark of respect and veneration, arrived in Paris to bear his part in the great pageant. On the 2nd of December Buonaparte and Josephine appeared, amidst all that was splendid and illustrious in their capital, and were crowned in Notre-Dame. The Pope blessed them and consecrated the diadems; but these were not placed on their heads by his hand. That office, in either case, Napoleon himself performed. Throughout the ceremonial his aspect was thoughtful: it was on a stern and gloomy brow that he with his own hands planted the symbol of successful ambition and uneasy power, and the shouts of the deputies present, carefully selected for the purpose, sounded faint and hollow amidst the silence of the people.

As a necessary sequel to these proceedings in Paris, the senators of the Italian republic now sent in their humble petition, that their president might be pleased to do them also the favour to be crowned as their king at Milan. The Emperor proceeded to that city accordingly, and in like fashion, on the 26th of May, 1805, placed on his own head the old iron crown of the Lombard kings, uttering the words which, according to tradition, they were accustomed to use on such occasions, "_God hath given it me. Beware who touches it._"--Napoleon henceforth styled himself Emperor of the French and King of Italy, but announced that the two crowns should not be held by the same person after his death.

It was not, however, for mere purposes of ceremonial that he had once more passed the Alps. The Ligurian republic sent the Doge to Milan to congratulate the King of Italy, and also to offer their territories for the formation of another department of the French empire. But this was a step of his ambition which led to serious results.

Meanwhile Eugene Beauharnois, son to Josephine, was left Viceroy at Milan, and the imperial pair returned to Paris.

[Footnote 47: To this period belong Sir W. Scott's song to the Edinburgh Volunteers:--

"If ever breath of British gale Shall fan the tricolor, Or footstep of invader rude, With rapine foul and red with blood, Pollute our happy shore-- Then farewell home! and farewell friends! Adieu each tender tie! Resolved, we mingle in the tide Where charging squadron furious ride, To conquer or to die," &c.

And various sonnets of Mr. Wordsworth; such as--

"It is not to be thought of that the flood Of British freedom," &c.

"Vanguard of liberty! ye men of Kent, Ye children of a soil that doth advance Its haughty brow against the coast of France, Now is the time to prove your hardiment!" &c. ]

[Footnote 48: This account was published _more than twenty years afterwards_, in consequence of a pamphlet by Savary (Duke of Rovigo).]

[Footnote 49: About a year afterwards Captain Wright was found dead in his dungeon in the Temple, with his throat cut from ear to ear. This mystery has hitherto remained in equal darkness; but Buonaparte was far from Paris at the period of Wright's death, and, under all the circumstances of the case, there seems to be no reason for supposing that he could have had any concern in that tragedy.]

[Footnote 50: _i.e._ Kill-king.]