BOOK III[594

Death of the Duc d'Enghien--The year 1804--General Hulin--The Duc de Rovigo--M. de Talleyrand--Part played by each--Bonaparte, his sophistry and remorse--Conclusions to be drawn from the whole story--Enmities engendered by the death of the Duc D'Enghien--An article in the _Mercure_--Change in the life of Bonaparte.

Like the migratory birds, I am seized in the month of October with a restlessness which would oblige me to change my clime, were I still strong on the wing and swift as the hours: the clouds flitting across the sky make me long to flee. In order to cheat this instinct, I made for Chantilly. I have wandered on the lawn, where old keepers crawl along the border of the woods. Some crows, flying in front of me over broom, coppice and glades, have led me to the Commelle Ponds. Death has breathed upon the friends who used to accompany me to the castle of Queen Blanche[595]: the sites of these solitudes were but a sad horizon, half-opened for a moment on the side of my past. In the days of René, I should have found mysteries of life in the little stream of the Thève: it steals hidden among horse-tails and mosses; reeds screen it from sight; it dies in the ponds which it feeds with its youth, ever expiring, ever renewed: those ripples used to charm me when I bore within myself the desert with the phantoms which smiled to me, for all their melancholy, and which I decked with flowers.

Walking back along the hedges, now scarcely traced, I was surprised by the rain; I took shelter beneath a beech: its last leaves were falling like my years; its top was stripping itself like my head; its trunk was marked with a red circle, to be cut down like myself. Now that I have returned to my inn, with a harvest of autumn plants and in a mood little suited for joy, I will tell you of the death of M. le Duc d'Enghien while within sight of the ruins of Chantilly.

*

[Sidenote: Protest of Louis XVIII.]

This death at first froze all hearts with terror; men dreaded a return of the reign of Robespierre. Paris thought it was seeing again one of those days which men do not see more than once, the day of the execution of Louis XVI. Bonaparte's servants, friends and family were struck with consternation. Abroad, though the language of diplomacy promptly stifled the popular feeling, the latter none the less stirred the hearts of the crowd. In the exiled family of the Bourbons, the blow struck through and through: Louis XVIII. returned to the King of Spain[596] the Order of the Golden Fleece, with which Bonaparte had just been decorated; it was accompanied by a letter which did honour to the royal mind:

"SIR AND DEAR COUSIN,

"There can be nothing in common between me and the great criminal whom audacity and fortune have placed on a throne which he has had the barbarity to stain with the blood of a Bourbon, the Duc d'Enghien. Religion may prompt me to forgive an assassin; but the tyrant of my people must always be my enemy. Providence, for inexplicable reasons, can condemn me to end my days in exile; but never shall my contemporaries nor posterity be able to say that I showed myself in time of adversity unworthy to occupy, till my last breath, the throne of my ancestors."

We must not forget another name connected with that of the Duc d'Enghien: Gustavus Adolphus[597], since dethroned and exiled, was the only one of the kings then reigning who dared to raise a voice to save the young French Prince. He dispatched an aide-de-camp from Carlsruhe bearing a letter for Bonaparte; the letter arrived too late: the last of the Condés was no more. Gustavus Adolphus returned the ribbon of the Black Eagle to the King of Prussia[598], as Louis XVIII. had returned the Golden Fleece to the King of Spain. Gustavus declared to the heir of Frederic the Great that, "according to the laws of chivalry, he could not consent to be the brother-in-arms of the butcher of the Duc d'Enghien[599]." There is an inexpressibly bitter irony in these almost mad memories of chivalry, everywhere extinct, save in the heart of an unhappy king for a murdered friend; honour to the noble sympathies of misfortune, which stand aloof, not understood, in a world unknown to men!

Alas, we had undergone too many different tyrannies; our characters, broken by a succession of hardships and oppressions, lacked sufficient energy to allow our grief long to wear mourning for the death of young Condé: gradually the tears dried up; fear overflowed with congratulations on the dangers from which the First Consul had just escaped; it wept with gratitude at having been saved by a so sacred immolation. Nero[600], at Seneca's[601] dictation, wrote to the Senate a letter of apology for the murder of Agrippina[602]; the Senators, delighted, heaped blessings upon the magnanimous son who had not feared to pluck out his heart by so salutary an act of parricide! Society soon returned to its pleasures; it was afraid of its mourning: after the Terror, the victims who had been spared danced, forced themselves to appear happy and, fearing lest they should be suspected guilty of the crime of memory, displayed the same gaiety as when they went to the scaffold.

[Sidenote: The Duc D'Enghien's arrest.]

The Duc d'Enghien was not arrested point-blank and without precautions: Bonaparte had had a report drawn up of the number of Bourbons in Europe. In a council to which Messieurs de Talleyrand and Fouché were summoned, it was recognised that the Duc d'Angoulême was at Warsaw, with Louis XVIII.; the Comte d'Artois and the Duc de Berry in London, with the Princes de Condé and de Bourbon. The youngest of the Condés was at Ettenheim, in the Duchy of Baden. It was found that two English agents, Messrs. Taylor and Drake, had conducted intrigues in that quarter. On the 16th of June 1803 the Duc de Bourbon[603] warned his grandson against a possible arrest by means of a note addressed to him from London, which is still preserved. Bonaparte summoned the two Consuls, his colleagues, to his side. He first bitterly reproached M. Réal[604] for having left him in ignorance of what was being planned against him. He patiently listened to the objections. The one to express himself with the greatest vigour was Cambacérès[605]. Bonaparte thanked him and took no further notice. This is what I have seen in the Memoirs of Cambacérès, which one of his nephews, M. de Cambacérès, a peer of France, has permitted me to consult with an obligingness of which I retain a grateful recollection. The bomb once thrown does not return: it goes where the engineer flings it, and falls. To execute Bonaparte's orders, it was necessary to violate the territory of Germany, and the territory was violated forthwith. The Duc d'Enghien was arrested at Ettenheim. With him were found, instead of General Dumouriez, only the Marquis de Thumery and some other Emigrants of little note: this ought to have shown the mistake. The Duc d'Enghien was taken to Strasburg. The beginning of the catastrophe of Vincennes has been narrated by the Prince himself: he has left a little road-journal from Ettenheim to Strasburg; the hero of the tragedy steps before the curtain to recite this prologue:

"Thursday 15 March, at Ettenheim, my house surrounded," says the Prince, "by a detachment of dragoons and some pickets of gendarmes, total about two hundred men, two generals, the colonel of the dragoons, Colonel Chariot of the Strasburg Gendarmerie, at five o'clock[606]. At half-past five, doors broken in, taken to the Mill, near the Tile-works. My papers taken away, sealed up. Taken in a cart, between two lines of fusiliers, to the Rhine. Put on board a boat for Rhisnau. Landed and marched on foot as far as Pfortsheim. Breakfasted at the inn. Got into a carriage with Colonel Chariot, the quarter-master of the gendarmes, a gendarme on the box and Grunstein. Arrived at Strasburg, at Colonel Chariot's, about half-past five. Transferred half an hour after, in a hackney-coach, to the citadel.

. . . . . . . .

"Sunday 18, they come to fetch me at half-past one in the morning. They do not give me time to dress. I embrace my unhappy companions, my servants. I leave alone with two officers of gendarmes and two gendarmes. Colonel Chariot told me that we were going to the general of division, who has received orders from Paris. Instead of that, I find a carriage with six post-horses in the Church Square. Lieutenant Petermann gets in beside me, Blitersdorff the quarter-master on the box, two gendarmes inside, the other out."

Here the ship-wrecked man, on the point of being engulfed, interrupts his log.

The carriage arrived at about four o'clock in the evening at one of the barriers of the capital, where the Strasburg road ends, and instead of driving into Paris, followed the outer boulevard and stopped at Vincennes Castle. The Prince alighted from the carriage in the inner court-yard and was taken to a room of the fortress, where he was locked in and went to sleep. As the Prince was approaching Paris, Bonaparte affected an air of calmness which was not natural.

On the 18th of March, which was Palm Sunday, he went to the Malmaison. Madame Bonaparte[607], who, with all her family, was informed of the Prince's arrest, spoke to him of this arrest. Bonaparte replied:

"You don't understand politics."

Colonel Savary[608] had become one of Bonaparte's intimates. Why? Because he had seen the First Consul weep at Marengo. Exceptional men should distrust their tears, which place them beneath the yoke of vulgar men. Tears are one of those weaknesses which enable an eyewitness to make himself master of a great man's resolutions.

[Sidenote: He is taken to Vincennes.]

They say that the First Consul himself had all the orders for Vincennes drawn up. One of these orders provided that, if the expected sentence was a death sentence, it was to be executed on the spot.

I believe this version, although I cannot vouch for its truth, since those orders are missing. Madame de Rémusat[609], who was playing chess with the First Consul at the Malmaison on the evening of the 20th of March, heard him mutter some verses on the clemency of Augustus[610]; she thought that Bonaparte was coming to himself again and that the Prince was saved[611]. No, destiny had pronounced its oracle!

When Savary reappeared at Malmaison, Madame Bonaparte divined the whole misfortune. The First Consul had locked himself up alone for many hours. And then the wind blew, and all was ended.

*

An order of Bonaparte, dated 29 Ventôse, Year XII[612], had decreed that a military commission, consisting of seven members appointed by General the Governor of Paris[613] should meet at Vincennes to try "the _ci-devant_ Duc d'Enghien, accused of bearing arms against the Republic," etc.

In fulfilment of this decree, Joachim Murat on the same day, 29 Ventôse, appointed the seven officers who were to form the said commission, namely:

General Hulin[614], commanding the Foot Grenadiers of the Consular Guard, president;

Colonel Guitton, commanding the 1st Regiment of Cuirassiers;

Colonel Bazancourt, commanding the 4th Regiment of Light Infantry;

Colonel Ravier, commanding the 18th Regiment of Infantry of the Line;

Colonel Barrois, commanding the 96th Regiment of Infantry of the Line;

Colonel Rabbe, commanding the 2nd Regiment of the Municipal Guard of Paris;

Citizen Dautancourt, Major of the Gendarmerie d'Élite, with the functions of captain-judge-advocate.

Captain Dautancourt, Major Jacquin of the Légion d'Élite, two foot gendarmes of the same corps, Lerva and Tharsis, and Citizen Noirot, a lieutenant in the same corps, went to the Duc d'Enghien's and awoke him: he had but four hours to wait before returning to his sleep. The judge-advocate, assisted by Molin, a captain in the 18th Regiment, chosen as registrar by the aforesaid judge-advocate, examined the Prince.

[Sidenote: And examined.]

_Asked_: His surname, Christian names, age, and birthplace?

_Answered_: That his name was Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon, Duc d'Enghien, born 2 August 1772 at Chantilly.

_Asked_: Where he had resided since he left France?

_Answered_: That, after accompanying his relations, Condé's Corps having been formed, he had served through the whole war, and that, before that, he had been through the campaign of 1792, in Brabant, with Bourbon's Corps.

_Asked_: If he had not gone to England, and if that Power did not still allow him a salary?

_Answered_: That he had never been there; that England still allowed him his pay, which was all he had to live upon.

_Asked_: What rank he filled in Condé's Army?

_Answered_: Commander of the Advance Guard in 1796; before that campaign, as a volunteer at his grandfather's headquarters; and, ever since 1796, Commander of the Advance Guard.

_Asked_: If he knew General Pichegru, and if he had had relations with him?

_Answered_: "I have never seen him, to my knowledge. I have had no relations with him. I know that he wished to see me. I am glad that I never knew him, because of the base methods which he is said to have wished to employ, if true."

_Asked_: If he knew ex-General Dumouriez, and if he had had relations with him?

_Answered_: "Not with him either."

*

"Whence," continues the report, "were drawn up these presents, which have been signed by the Duc d'Enghien, Major Jacquin, Lieutenant Noirot, the two gendarmes, and captain-judge-advocate.

"Before signing this present report the Duc d'Enghien said:

"'I earnestly make a request to be granted a private audience of the First Consul. My name, my rank, my way of thinking and the horror of my situation make me hope that he will not refuse my request.'"

At two o'clock on the morning of the 21st of March, the Duc d'Enghien was taken to the room in which the commission sat, and repeated what he had said in examination by the judge-advocate. He persisted in his declaration: he added that he was willing to make war, and that he wished for service in the new war of England against France.

"Asked whether he had anything to put forward in the plea of his defense; answered that he had nothing more to say.

"The president ordered the prisoner to withdraw; the council deliberated with closed doors; the president took the votes, commencing with the junior in rank; next, the president having given his opinion last, the Duc d'Enghien was unanimously declared guilty, and the Court applied Article ... of the law of the... thus worded.... and in consequence condemned him to the penalty of death. Ordered, on the demand of the captain-judge-advocate, that the present sentence, after being read to the condemned man, shall be executed directly, in presence of the different detachments of the corps of the garrison.

"Given, concluded, and tried at one sitting, at Vincennes, on the day, month and year as above, as witness our hands."

*

The grave having been "dug, filled up, and closed," ten years of forgetfulness, of general assent and of unexampled glory sat down upon it; the grass sprang up to the sound of the salvoes which proclaimed victories, by the light of the illuminations which shed their lustre over the pontifical coronation, the marriage of the daughter of the Cæsars[615], and the birth of the King of Rome[616]. Only some rare sympathizers rambled in the wood, hazarding a furtive glance at the bottom of the moat in the direction of the lamentable spot, while a few prisoners watched them from the top of the donjon in which they were confined. Then came the Restoration: the earth of the tomb was stirred, and with it men's consciences; each then thought it his duty to explain himself.

M. Dupin the Elder[617] published his Discussion; M. Hulin, the president of the military commission, spoke; M. le Duc de Rovigo entered into the controversy by accusing M. de Talleyrand; a third party replied on behalf of M. de Talleyrand; and Napoleon raised his mighty voice on the rock of St. Helena.

These documents must be reproduced and studied, in order to assign to each the part due to him and the place which he should occupy in this drama. It is night, and we are at Chantilly; it was night when the Duc d'Enghien was at Vincennes.

[Sidenote: M. Dupin's pamphlet.]

When M. Dupin published his pamphlet he sent it to me with the following letter:

"PARIS, 10 _November_ 1823.

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"Pray accept a copy of my publication relative to the murder of the Duc d'Enghien.

"It would have appeared long ago, had I not desired above all to respect the wish of Monseigneur le Duc de Bourbon, who, having been informed of my work, had communicated to me his desire that this deplorable affair might not be disinterred.

"But Providence having permitted others to take the initiative, it has become necessary to make the truth known, and after assuring myself that it was no longer insisted that I should remain silent, I have spoken with frankness and sincerity.

"I have the honour to be, with profound respect,

"monsieur le vicomte,

"Your Excellency's most humble and obedient servant,

"DUPIN."

M. Dupin, whom I congratulated and thanked, revealed in his covering letter an unknown and touching instance of the noble and merciful virtues of the victim's father. M. Dupin commences his pamphlet thus:

"The death of the unfortunate Duc d'Enghien is one of the most afflicting events that ever befel the French nation: it dishonoured the consular government.

"A young prince, in the flower of his age, surprised by treachery on foreign soil, where he was sleeping in peace under the protection of the Law of Nations; dragged violently to France; indicted before pretended judges, who could in no case be his; accused of imaginary crimes; denied the assistance of counsel; examined and sentenced behind closed doors; put to death at night in the moat of the castle which was used as a State prison; so many virtues unheeded, such fond hopes destroyed, will ever stamp this catastrophe as one of the most revolting acts that an absolute government ever ventured to commit.

"If no form was respected; if the judges were incompetent; if they did not even take the trouble to mention in their judgment the date and text of the laws upon which they affected to ground their condemnation; if the unhappy Duc d'Enghien was shot in pursuance of a sentence _signed in blank._... and only made regular after execution! then we have to do not only with the innocent victim of judicial error; the thing assumes its true name: it is an odious murder."

This eloquent exordium brings M. Dupin to the examination of the documents. He first proves the illegality of the arrest: the Duc d'Enghien was not arrested in France; he was in no way a prisoner of war, since he had not been taken with arms in his hands; he was not a prisoner in the civil sense, for no extradition had been demanded; it was a violent seizure of the person, comparable to the captures made by the pirates of Tunis and Algiers, an inroad of robbers, _incursio latronum._

The jurist proceeds to discuss the incompetency of the military commission: cognizance of alleged plots hatched against the State has never been conferred upon military commissions.

Next follows the analysis of the judgment.

*

"The examination," continues M. Dupin, "took place on the 29 Ventôse at midnight. On the 30 Ventôse, at two o'clock in the morning, the Duc d'Enghien was brought before the military commission.

"On the minutes of the judgment we read, 'This day, the 30 Ventôse, Year XII of the Republic, _at two o'clock in the morning._' The words, 'at two o'clock in the morning,' which were only inserted because it was in fact that time, are obliterated on the minutes without being replaced by any other indication.

"Not a single witness was heard or produced against the prisoner.

"The accused 'was declared guilty!' Guilty of what? The judgment does not say.

"Every judgment that pronounces a penalty is bound to contain a reference to the law by virtue of which such penalty is inflicted.

[Sidenote: A scathing indictment.]

"Well, in this case, none of these forms has been fulfilled: nothing in the official report bears witness that the commissioners had _a copy of the law_ before them; nothing shows that the president _read the text_ of the law before applying it. Far from it: the judgment in its material form affords the proof that the commissioners convicted without knowing either the date or the tenor of the law; for, in the minutes of the judgment, they have _left in blank_ the date of the law, the number of the article, and the place in which the precise words should have been quoted. And yet it was on the minutes of a sentence framed in this state of imperfection that the noblest blood was shed by butchers!

"The deliberation must be secret, but the judgment must be pronounced in public: again, it is the law that speaks. Now the judgment of the 30 Ventôse certainly says, 'The council deliberated _with closed doors_;' but it does not mention that the doors were opened again, or intimate that the result of the deliberation was pronounced in a public sitting. Even had it said so, who would believe it? A public sitting at two o'clock in the morning, in the donjon of Vincennes, while all the issues of the castle were being guarded by gendarmes d'élite! But the fact is that they did not even take the precaution to resort to a lie: the judgment is silent on this point.

"This judgment is signed by the president and the six other commissioners, including the judge-advocate; but observe that the minutes _are not signed by the registrar_, whose concurrence, however, is necessary to give them authenticity.

"The sentence concludes with this terrible formula: '_shall be executed_ FORTHWITH, _under the care of the captain-judge-advocate._'

"FORTHWITH! Cruel word, the work of the judges! FORTHWITH! And an express law, that of the 15 Brumaire, Year VI, granted the right of appeal for a new trial against any military judgment!"

Passing to the execution, M. Dupin continues as follows:

"Examined at night and tried at night, the Duc d'Enghien was also killed at night. This horrible sacrifice was to be consummated in the dark, in order that it might be said that all laws had been infringed, all, even those which prescribed that executions shall take place in public."

The jurist comes to the irregularities in the preliminaries:

"Article 19 of the law of the 13 Brumaire, Year V, declares that, after closing the examination, the judge-advocate shall tell the prisoner to 'choose a friend as his defender.' The prisoner shall have 'the power to choose that defender' among every class of citizen present on the spot; if he declares that he is unable to make that choice, the judge-advocate shall make it for him.

"Ah, no doubt the Prince had no _friends_[618] among those who surrounded him; this fact was cruelly declared to him by one of the abettors of that horrible scene!... Alas, why were we not present! Why was the prince not allowed to make an appeal to the bar of Paris! There he would have found friends of his unhappiness, defenders of his misfortune. ... It was apparently with a view to making the judgment presentable in the eyes of the public that a new edition was drawn up at leisure.... The tardy substitution of a second form of judgment, in appearance more regular than the first (although equally unjust), in no way detracts from the heinousness of having put the Duc d'Enghien to death by virtue of a rough draft of a judgment, hastily signed, and not even signed by all the requisite parties."

*

Such is M. Dupin's luminous pamphlet. Nevertheless I do not know that, in an act of the nature of that which the author examines, the greater or lesser regularity holds an important place: whether the Duc d'Enghien was strangled in a post-chaise between Strasburg and Paris or killed in the wood of Vincennes makes no difference. But is it not providential to see men, after long years, some showing the irregularity of a murder in which they had taken no part, others hastening, unasked, to the bar of public accusal? What, then have they heard? What voice from on high has summoned them to appear?

*

After the great jurist, here comes a blind veteran: he has commanded the Grenadiers of the Old Guard; what that means brave men know. His last wound he received from Malet[619], whose powerless lead remained lost in a face which had never turned from the fire. "Afflicted with blindness, withdrawn from the world, consoled only by the care of his family," to use his own words, the judge of the Duc d'Enghien appears to issue from his tomb at the call of the sovereign judge; he pleads his cause[620] without self-delusion or excuses:

[Sidenote: General Hulin's pamphlet.]

"Let there be no mistake," he says, "as to my intentions. I am not writing through fear, since my person is under the protection of laws emanating from the Throne itself, and since, under the government of a righteous king, I have nothing to dread from violence or lawlessness.... I write to tell the truth, even in what may be to my own detriment! So I do not pretend to justify even the form or the substance of the judgment; but I wish to show under what a powerful union of circumstances it was delivered; I wish to remove from myself and my colleagues the suspicion of having acted as party men. If we are still to receive blame, I wish also that men should say of us:

"'They were very unfortunate.'"

*

General Hulin asserts that he was appointed president of a military commission without knowing its object; that when he arrived at Vincennes he was no wiser; that the other members of the commission knew as little; that M. Harel[621], the governor of the castle, told him, on being asked, that he knew nothing himself, adding:

"What can I do? I am nobody here now. Everything is done without my orders or participation: another man is in command here."

It was ten o'clock at night when General Hulin was relieved from his uncertainty by the communication of the documents. The hearing was opened at midnight, when the examination of the prisoner by the judge-advocate had been finished.

"The reading of the documents," says the president of the commission, "gave rise to an incident. We observed that, at the end of his examination before the judge-advocate, the Prince, before signing, _wrote with his own hand some lines in which he expressed a wish to have an explanation with the First Consul._ One of the members proposed that this request should be forwarded to the Government. The commission agreed; but at the same moment General --------, who had come and placed himself behind my chair, pointed out to us that this request was 'inopportune.' Moreover, we found no provision in the law authorizing us to suspend judgment. The commission therefore proceeded, reserving to itself the right to satisfy the prisoner's wishes after the trial."

*

So far General Hulin. Now, in a pamphlet by the Duc de Rovigo we read the following passage:

"There were, indeed, so many people that, as I arrived among the last, I found it difficult to make my way to the back of the president's chair, where I ultimately placed myself."

And so it was the Duc de Rovigo who had "placed himself behind the chair" of the president? But had he, or any other not forming one of the commission, the right to interfere in the proceedings of the commission, and to point out that a request was "inopportune"?

Let us hear the commander of the Grenadiers of the Old Guard speak of the courage of the young son of the Condés; he was a judge of it:

[Sidenote: The Duc D'Enghien's courage.]

"I proceeded to examine the prisoner; I must say that he stood up to us with a noble confidence, spurned the accusation that he had been directly or indirectly implicated in a plot to assassinate the First Consul; but also admitted that he had borne arms against France, saying, with a courage and a pride which did not for a moment permit us, in his own interest, to shake him on this point, 'that he had supported the rights of his family, and that a Condé could never re-enter France without arms in his hands. My birth and convictions,' he added, 'make me for ever the enemy of your government.'

"His resolute confessions distressed his judges to the utmost. Ten times did we give him the opportunity to revise his statements, but throughout he persisted unshaken:

"'I perceive,' he said at intervals, 'the honourable intentions of the members of the commission; but I cannot avail myself of the terms they offer me.'

"And on being warned that military commissions judged without appeal:

"'I know that,' he replied, 'and I am quite aware of the danger which I am running; I only wish to have an interview with the First Consul.'"

Does the whole of our history contain a more pathetic page? New France sitting in judgment upon Old France, doing homage to her, presenting arms to her, saluting her colours, even while condemning her; the tribunal set up in the fortress in which the great Condé, when a prisoner, cultivated flowers; the General of the Grenadiers of Bonaparte's Guard seated face to face with the last descendant of the victor of Rocroi, feeling himself moved with admiration before the prisoner left without a defender and abandoned by the world, questioning him while the sound of the gravedigger digging the grave mingled with the young soldier's firm replies! A few days after the execution, General Hulin exclaimed:

"Oh, the brave young man! What courage! I should like to die like that!"

General Hulin, after speaking of the "minutes" and of the "second edition" of the judgment, says:

"As to the second edition, the only true one, as it did not convey the order _for immediate execution, but only for the immediate reading of the judgment_ to the condemned man, the immediate execution could not have been the act of the commission, but only of those who took upon themselves the responsibility of hastening the fatal execution.

"Alas, our thoughts were engaged elsewhere! The judgment was scarcely signed when I began to write a letter in which, with the unanimous consent of the commission, I wrote to inform the First Consul of the desire which the Prince had expressed to have an interview with him, and also to entreat him to remit a penalty which the difficulty of our position did not permit us to elude.

"At that moment a man, who had never left the council-hall, and whom I would name at once did I not consider that, even when defending myself, I ought not to become an accuser, approached me and asked:

"'What are you doing there?'

"'I am writing to the First Consul,' I replied, 'to convey to him the wishes of the council and of the condemned man.'

"'Your business is done,' said he, taking the pen; 'this is now my affair.'

"I protest that I thought, as did several of my colleagues, that he meant to say, 'This is my affair, to inform the First Consul.' Taken in this sense, the reply left us the hope that the information would be none the less conveyed. And how could it have occurred to us that there was any one among us _that had orders to neglect the formalities prescribed by law?_"

The whole secret of this mournful catastrophe lies in this deposition. The veteran who, in daily expectation of dying on the battlefield, had learned from death the language of truth, concludes with these final words:

"I was talking of what had just happened, in the lobby adjoining the hall in which we had deliberated. Separate conversations were going forward; I was waiting for my carriage, which had not been allowed to drive into the inner court-yard, nor had those of the other members, thus delaying my departure and theirs. We were closed in, none of us having means to communicate with the outside, when an explosion was heard: a terrible noise that resounded at the bottom of our souls and froze them with terror and affright.

"Yes, I swear, in the name of all my colleagues, that this execution was not authorized by us: our judgment stated that a copy of it should be sent to the Minister for War, to the Chief Judge the Minister for Justice, and to the General-in-Chief the Governor of Paris.

"The order of execution could be given regularly only by the last-named; the copies had not yet been dispatched; they could not be finished before a portion of the day had elapsed. On my return to Paris I should have gone in search of the Governor, the First Consul, anybody! And suddenly a dreadful sound comes to reveal to us that the Prince no longer lives!

"We did not know whether he who so cruelly hastened on this fatal execution _had orders: if he had none, he alone was responsible; if he had orders, the commission, knowing nothing of those orders, the commission, forcibly and illegally detained_, the commission, whose last wish was for the Prince's safety, could neither foresee nor prevent their effect. It cannot be accused of the result.

"The lapse of twenty years has not allayed the bitterness of my regret!... Let me be accused of ignorance, of error, I acquiesce; let me be reproached with an obedience from which to-day, under similar circumstances, I should certainly know how to escape; with my attachment to a man whom I thought destined to promote the happiness of my country; with my loyalty to a government which I then considered lawful, and which had received my oath; but let some allowance be made to me, and also to my colleagues, for the fatal circumstances under which we were summoned to decide."

A weak defense, but you repent, general: peace be with you! If your sentence became the marching-orders of the last of the Condés, you will join the last conscript of our old mother-land in the advance-guard of the dead. The young soldier will gladly share his couch with the grenadier of the Old Guard: the France of Freiburg[622] and the France of Marengo will sleep together.

[Sidenote: Enter the Duc de Rovigo.]

M. le Duc de Rovigo, beating his breast, takes his place in the procession that comes to confess at the tomb. I had long been under the power of the Minister of Police; he fell under the influence which he supposed to be restored to me on the return of the Legitimacy: he communicated a portion of his Memoirs to me. Men in his position speak with wonderful candour of what they have done; they have no idea of what they are saying against themselves: accusing themselves without perceiving it, they do not suspect the existence of an opinion differing from theirs, both as regards the functions which they had undertaken and the line of conduct which they have observed. If they have been wanting in loyalty, they do not think that they have broken their oath; if they have taken upon themselves parts which are repugnant to other characters, they believe that they have done great services. Their ingenuousness does not justify them, but it excuses them.

M. le Duc de Rovigo consulted me on the chapters in which he treats of the death of the Duc d'Enghien: he wished to know my mind, precisely because he knew how I had acted; I valued this mark of his esteem and, repaying frankness with frankness, I advised him to publish nothing:

"Leave all this," said I, "to die out; in France, oblivion is not slow in coming. You imagine that you will clear Napoleon of a reproach, and throw back the fault upon M. de Talleyrand; but you do not sufficiently exonerate the former, nor do you sufficiently accuse the latter. You lay yourself open to attack from your enemies; they will not fail to reply to you. Why need you remind the public that you were in command of the Gendarmerie d'Élite at Vincennes? They were not aware of the direct part which you played in this fatal deed, and now you tell them of it. Throw the manuscript into the fire, general: I speak in your own interest."

Steeped in the maxims of the imperial government, the Duc de Rovigo thought that those maxims could be as well applied to the legitimate throne; he felt convinced that his pamphlet[623] would reopen the doors of the Tuileries to him.

It is partly by the light of this publication that posterity will trace the outlines of the phantoms of grief. I offered to hide the suspect who had come to ask shelter of me during the night; he did not accept the protection of my house.

M. de Rovigo tells the story of the departure of M. de Caulaincourt[624], whom he does not mention by name: he speaks of the kidnapping at Ettenheim, the prisoner's passing through Strasburg, and his arrival at Vincennes. After an expedition on the coast of Normandy, General Savary had returned to the Malmaison. He was summoned, at five o'clock in the evening of the 19th of March 1804, to the closet of the First Consul, who handed him a sealed letter to be carried to General Murat, the Governor of Paris. He flew to the general, crossing with the Minister of Foreign Relations on his way, and received the order to take the Gendarmerie d'Élite and go to Vincennes. He went there at eight o'clock in the evening, in time to see the members of the commission arrive. He soon made his way into the hall where the Prince was being tried, at one o'clock in the morning of the 21st, and took a seat behind the president. He gives the Duc d'Enghien's replies in about the same terms as they are given in the report of the one sitting. He told me that the Prince, after making his final explanations, with a quick movement took off his cap, laid it on the table and, with the air of a man resigning his life, said to the president:

[Sidenote: His pitiful defense.]

"I have nothing more to say, sir."

M. de Rovigo insists upon it that this sitting was in no way secret:

"The doors of the hall," he declares, "were open and free to any who cared to attend _at that hour._"

M. Dupin had already pointed out the confusion of this argument. In this connection M. Achille Roche[625], who appears to write for M. de Talleyrand, exclaims:

"The sitting was in no way secret! At midnight! Held in the inhabited portion of the castle, in the inhabited portion of a prison! Who, then, was present at this sitting? Gaolers, soldiers, executioners!"

*

No one was in a position to give more exact details concerning the moment and place of the thunder-clap than M. le Duc de Rovigo; let us hear what he says:

"After sentence had been pronounced, I withdrew with the officers of my corps, who like myself had been present during the proceedings, and joined the troops stationed on the esplanade of the castle. The officer who commanded the infantry of my legion came and told me, with deep emotion, that a piquet of men was required of him to execute the sentence of the military commission:

"'Give it,' I replied.

"'But where am I to post it?'

"'Where you may be sure to hurt nobody.'

"For already the roads were full of inhabitants of the populous environs of Paris on their way to attend the different markets.

"After carefully examining the ground, the officer chose the moat as the place where there was least danger of any one being hurt. M. le Duc d'Enghien was taken there by the stairs of the entrance-tower, on the park side, and there heard the sentence pronounced, which was put into effect."

*

Below this paragraph, the author of the memorial appends the following footnote:

"Between the passing of the sentence and its execution, a grave was dug, which gave rise to the report that it had been prepared prior to the judgment."

Unfortunately, we meet here with deplorable inaccuracies:

"M. de Rovigo contends," says M. Achille Roche, M. de Talleyrand's apologist, "that he obeyed orders! Who conveyed to him the order for the execution? It appears that it was a certain M. Delga, killed at Wagram. But whether it be M. Delga or not, if M. Savary is mistaken in mentioning M. Delga to us, no one, doubtless, to-day, will lay claim to the fame conferred upon that officer. M. de Rovigo is accused of having hastened the execution; it was not he, he replies: a man who is now dead told him that orders had been given to hasten it."

The Duc de Rovigo is not well inspired on the subject of the execution, which he describes as taking place in daylight; that would, besides, have altered nothing in the fact, and would simply mean the absence of a torch at the punishment.

"At the hour of sunrise, in the open air," asks the general, "what need was there for a lantern to see a man _at six paces!_ Not that the sun," he adds, "was altogether bright and clear; a fine rain had fallen all night, and a damp mist still retarded, in some degree, its appearance. The execution took place at six o'clock in the morning: this fact is witnessed by irrefutable documents."

*

[Sidenote: The execution.]

But the general neither produces these documents nor tells us where to find them. The course of the trial shows that the Duc d'Enghien was tried at two o'clock in the morning and shot forthwith. Those words, "two o'clock in morning," which originally appeared on the first minutes of the sentence, were subsequently erased from the minutes. The official report of the exhumation proves, by the depositions of three witnesses, Madame Bon, the Sieur Godard and the Sieur Bounelet (the latter had helped to dig the grave), that the death penalty was effected at night. M. Dupin the Elder records the circumstance of a lantern fastened over the Duc d'Enghien's heart to serve as a mark, or held, with the same object, in the Prince's firm hand. Stories were told of a heavy stone taken from the grave with which the victim's head was crushed in. Lastly, the Duc de Rovigo is supposed to have boasted of possessing some of the spoils of the sacrifice; I myself have believed in these rumours; but the legal documents prove that they were unfounded.

From the official report, dated Wednesday the 20th of March 1816, of the physicians and surgeons entrusted with the exhumation of the corpse, it has been certified that the skull was broken, that "the upper jaw, separated entirely from the facial bones, contained twelve teeth; that the lower jaw, fractured in the middle, was divided in two, and showed only three teeth."

The body was lying flat upon its abdomen, the head being lower than the feet; there was a gold chain around the vertebrae of the neck.

The second official report of the exhumation (of the same date, 20 March 1816), "the general report," states that with the remains of the skeleton were found a purse in morocco-leather containing eleven pieces of gold, seventy pieces of gold enclosed in sealed rolls, some hair, shreds of clothing, remnants of his cap bearing marks of the bullets by which it had been pierced.

M. de Rovigo therefore took none of the spoils; the earth which had held them has restored them, and has borne witness to the general's honesty; no lantern was fastened over the Prince's heart, its fragments would have been found, as were those of the perforated cap; no heavy stone was taken from the grave; the fire of the piquet _at six paces_ was enough to blow the head to pieces, to "separate the upper jaw from the facial bones," and so on.

To complete this mockery of human vanities were needed only the similar immolation of Murat, the Governor of Paris, the death of Bonaparte in captivity, and the inscription engraved upon the Duc d'Enghien's coffin:

"Here lies the _body_ of the most high and mighty Prince of the Blood, Peer of France, _died_ at Vincennes, 21 March 1804; aged 31 years, 7 months and 19 days."

The "body" was mere bare and shattered bones; the "high and mighty Prince," the broken fragments of a soldier's carcase; not a word to recall the catastrophe, not a word of blame or grief in this epitaph carved by a sorrowing family; a prodigious result of the respect which the century shows to the works and susceptibilities of the Revolution! In the same way, no time was lost in removing all traces of the mortuary chapel of the Duc de Berry.

What a sum total of annihilation! Bourbons, who returned to so little purpose to your palaces, you have busied yourselves with naught save exhumations and funerals: your time of life was passed. God has willed it so! The ancient glory of France perished beneath the eyes of the shade of the Great Condé, in a moat at Vincennes: perhaps at the very place where Louis IX., "to whom men resorted as to a saint.... seated himself at the foot of an oak, and where all who had any business with him came without ceremony and without hindrance from any usher or others; and whenever he heard anything that could be amended in the speeches of those who pleaded for others he most graciously corrected it himself, and all the people who had a cause to bring before him stood round him[626]."

The Duc d'Enghien asked leave to speak to Bonaparte: "he had a cause to bring before him;" he was not heard! Who, standing at the edge of the ravelin, looked down into the moat upon those muskets, those soldiers dimly lighted by a lantern in the mist and gloom, as in night everlasting? Where was the light placed? Did the Duc d'Enghien stand over his open grave? Was he obliged to step across it to place himself at the distance of "six paces" specified by the Duc de Rovigo.

There exists a letter written by M. le Duc d'Enghien, at the age of nine, to his father the Duc de Bourbon; he says:

"All the Enguiens[627] are _lucky_; the one[628] of the Battle of Cerizoles, the one who won the Battle of Rocroi[629]: I hope to be so too."

Is it true that the victim was refused a priest? Is it true that he only with difficulty found a hand willing to convey to a woman a last pledge of affection? What did the executioners care for sentiments of religion or love? They were there to kill, the Duc d'Enghien to die.

The Duc d'Enghien had been secretly married, through the offices of a priest, to the Princesse Charlotte de Rohan[630]: in those days of a roving mother-land, a man, by the very reason of his elevation, was impeded by a thousand political obstacles; to enjoy that which society accords to all, he was obliged to hide himself. This lawful marriage, to-day no more a secret, enhances the splendour of a tragic doom; it substitutes the glory for the clemency of Heaven: religion perpetuates the pomp of misfortune when, after the catastrophe has been accomplished, the cross rises on the deserted spot.

*

[Sidenote: The Duc de Talleyrand.]

M. de Talleyrand, according to M. de Rovigo's pamphlet, had presented a vindicatory memorial to Louis XVIII.; this memorial, which I have not seen, should have thrown light upon everything, and threw light upon nothing. In 1820, when I was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to Berlin, I discovered in the archives of the embassy a letter from "the Citizen Laforest[631]," addressed to "the Citizen Talleyrand," on the subject of the Duc d'Enghien. This strongly-worded letter does its author the more credit in that he did not fear to compromise his career, without earning the reward of public opinion, since the step he had taken was to remain unknown: a noble act of self-denial on the part of a man who, through his very obscurity, had relegated to obscurity the good which he had done.

M. de Talleyrand took his lesson, and kept silence; at least, I found nothing from him in the same archives concerning the death of the Prince. The Minister of Foreign Relations had nevertheless, on the 2 Ventôse, informed the Minister of the Elector of Baden "that the First Consul had thought it necessary to order some detachments to proceed to Offenburg and Ettenheim, there to seize the instigators of the scandalous conspiracies which, by their character, place without the pale of the Law of Nations all those who have manifestly taken part in them."

A passage from Generals Gourgaud[632], Montholon[633], and D. Ward, brings Bonaparte upon the scene:

"My Minister," says the latter, "strongly represented to me the need for seizing the Duc d'Enghien, although he was upon neutral territory. But I continued to hesitate, and the Prince de Bénévent twice brought me the order for his arrest for signature. Nevertheless I consented to sign it only after convincing myself of the urgency of this act."

According to the _Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène_[634], the following words must have dropped from Bonaparte:

"The Duc d'Enghien bore himself before the tribunal with great gallantry. On his arrival at Strasburg, he wrote me a letter; this letter was handed to Talleyrand, who kept it until the execution."

*

I have no great belief in this letter: Napoleon probably turned into a letter the request made by the Duc d'Enghien to speak to the conqueror of Italy, or rather the few lines expressing this request which, before signing the examination undergone before the judge-advocate, the Prince had written with his own hand. Nevertheless, the fact that this letter was not to be found should not lead us too vigorously to conclude that it was never written:

"I know," says the Duc de Rovigo, "that in the early days of the Restoration, in 1814, one of M. de Talleyrand's secretaries was incessantly making researches in the archives under the gallery of the Museum. I have this fact from the man who received the order to pass him in. The same thing was done at the repository of the War Office for the documents of the trial of M. le Duc d'Enghien, of which only the sentence remained."

[Sidenote: Talleyrand's complicity.]

The fact is true; all the diplomatic papers, and notably the correspondence of M. de Talleyrand with the "Emperor" and the "First Consul," were transferred from the archives of the Museum to the house in the Rue Saint-Florentin[635]; part of them were destroyed; the remainder were put into a stove, to which they forgot to set light; this was all that the Minister's prudence could do against the Prince's indifference. The documents that were not burned were recovered; some one thought it was right to preserve them: I have held in my hands and read with my eyes a letter from M. de Talleyrand, dated 8 March 1804, and treating of the arrest, not yet carried out, of M. le Duc d'Enghien. The Minister invites the First Consul to deal vigorously with his enemies. I was not permitted to keep the letter, and I have retained only these two passages in my memory:

"If justice obliges us to punish vigorously, policy exacts that we should punish without exception.................... I will suggest to the First Consul M. de Caulaincourt, to whom he might give his orders, and who would execute them with as much discretion as fidelity."

Will this report of the Prince de Talleyrand one day be published in full? I do not know; but what I do know is that it was in existence no more than two years ago.

There was a meeting of the Council for the arrest of the Duc d'Enghien. Cambacérès, in his unpublished Memoirs, declares, and I believe him, that he opposed the arrest; but, while recording what he said, he does not say what the others replied.

For the rest, the _Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène_ denies the entreaties for mercy to which Bonaparte is said to have been exposed. The pretended scene of Joséphine on her knees asking for pardon for the Duc d'Enghien, clinging to the skirt of her husband's coat and allowing that inexorable husband to drag her about, is one of those melodramatic inventions with which our latter-day fabulists compose veracious history. Joséphine did not know, on the evening of the 19th of March, that the Duc d'Enghien was to be judged; she only knew that he had been arrested. She had promised Madame de Rémusat to interest herself in the Prince's fate. As this lady was returning to the Malmaison with Joséphine on the evening of the 19th, it was noticed that the future Empress, instead of being preoccupied solely with the perils of the prisoner of Vincennes, frequently put her head to the window of the carriage to look out at a general riding in her suite: a woman's coquetry had carried elsewhere the thought which might have saved the Duc d'Enghien's life. It was not until the 21st of March that Bonaparte said to his wife:

"The Duc d'Enghien has been shot."

These Memoirs of Madame de Rémusat, whom I have known, contained extremely curious details on the inner life of the imperial Court. The author burnt them during the Hundred Days[636], and afterwards wrote them anew: they are now no more than memories reproduced by memories; their colour has faded; but Bonaparte is throughout exposed to the light and judged with impartiality.

Men attached to Napoleon say that he knew of the death of the Duc d'Enghien only after the Prince's execution: this story would seem to derive some value from the anecdote related by the Duc de Rovigo concerning Réal's going to Vincennes, if the anecdote were true[637]. Once the death had taken place through the intrigues of the revolutionary party, Bonaparte recognised the accomplished fact, so as not to irritate men whom he thought powerful: this ingenious explanation is not admissible.

*

[Sidenote: Bonaparte's responsibility.]

Now, to resume these facts, here is what they have proved to me: Bonaparte wished the Duc d'Enghien's death; no one had made that death a condition of his mounting the throne. To suppose this condition is one of the subtleties of the politicians who claim to find occult causes for everything. Nevertheless it is probable that certain compromised persons did not without a certain pleasure see the First Consul sever himself for good from the Bourbons. The Vincennes sentence was an instance of Bonaparte's violent temperament, an outburst of cold anger fed by the reports of his Minister.

M. de Caulaincourt is guilty only of having executed the order for the arrest.

Murat has to reproach himself only with conveying general orders and with not having had the strength to withdraw: he was not at Vincennes during the trial.

The Duc de Rovigo found himself charged with the execution; he probably had secret orders: General Hulin hints as much. What man would have dared to take upon himself to order the execution _forthwith_ of a sentence of death upon the Duc d'Enghien, if he had not acted on an imperative mandate?

As to M. de Talleyrand, priest and nobleman, he inspired and prepared the murder by persistently alarming Bonaparte: he feared the return of the Legitimacy. It would be possible, by collecting what Napoleon said at St. Helena and the letters written by the Bishop of Autun, to prove that the latter took a very great part in the death of the Duc d'Enghien. It would be vain to object that the Minister's light-heartedness, character, and education ought to make him averse to violence, that his corruption ought to take away his energy; it would remain none the less a fact that he persuaded the Consul to the fatal arrest. This arrest of the Duc d'Enghien on the 15th of March was not unknown to M. de Talleyrand: he was in daily communication with Bonaparte and conferred with him; during the interval that elapsed between the arrest and the execution, did M. de Talleyrand, he, the instigating Minister, repent, did he say a single word to the First Consul in favour of the unhappy Prince? It is natural to believe that he applauded the execution of the sentence.

The military commission sentenced the Duc d'Enghien, but with sorrow and repentance.

This, conscientiously, impartially and strictly considered, is the exact part played by each. My fate has been too closely connected with this catastrophe that I should not endeavour to throw light upon its dark places and to lay bare its details. If Bonaparte had not killed the Duc d'Enghien, if he had brought me closer and closer to him (and his inclination prompted him to do so), what would have been the result for me? My literary career would have been ended; I should at one jump have entered the political career, in which I have proved what I could have done by the Spanish War; and I should have become rich and powerful. France might have been the gainer by my association with the Emperor; I should have been the loser. Possibly I might have succeeded in maintaining some ideas of liberty and moderation in the great man's head; but my life, ranking among those which are called happy, would have been deprived of that which has constituted its character and its honour: poverty, strife and independence.

*

Lastly, the principal accused rises after all the others; he brings up the rear of the blood-stained penitents. Suppose that a judge were to have brought up before him "the man named Bonaparte," as the captain-judge-advocate had brought up before him "the man named d'Enghien;" suppose that the minutes of the later examination copied upon the former had been preserved to us; compare and read:

_Asked_: His surname and Christian names?

_Answered_: That his name was Napoleon Bonaparte.

_Asked_: Where he had resided since he had left France?

_Answered_: At the Pyramids, in Berlin, Madrid, Vienna, Moscow, St Helena.

_Asked_: What rank he filled in the army?

_Answered_: Commander in the advance-guard of the armies of God. No other reply issues from the prisoner's lips.

*

[Sidenote: Bonaparte defended.]

The different actors in the tragedy mutually accused each other: Bonaparte alone throws the blame for it upon nobody; he preserves his greatness beneath the weight of malediction; he does not bow his head but stands erect; he exclaims with the stoic, "Pain, I will never admit that thou art an evil!" But that which, in his pride, he refuses to admit to the living he is constrained to confess to the dead. This Prometheus, with the vulture at his breast, who stole the fire from heaven, thought himself superior to all things, and he is compelled to reply to the Duc d'Enghien, whom he has made into dust before his time: the skeleton, the trophy over which he stumbled, questions him and dominates him by a providential dispensation.

Personal attendance and the army, the ante-room and the tent had their representatives at St. Helena: a servant, estimable for his fidelity to the master he had chosen, had come to place himself near Napoleon as an echo at his service. Simplicity repeated the fable, while giving it an accent of sincerity. Bonaparte was "Destiny;" like the latter, he deceived men's fascinated minds in _outward form_, but at the bottom of his impostures this inexorable truth was heard to resound: "I am!" And the universe felt its weight.

The author of the most credited work on St. Helena sets forth the theory which Napoleon invented for the murderer's benefit; the voluntary exile accepts as Gospel truth an homicidal talk, with pretensions to profundity, which would only explain Napoleon's life as he wished to arrange it, and as he contended that it should be written. He left instructions for his neophytes: M. le Comte de Las Cases[638] learnt his lesson without being aware of it; the stupendous captive, wandering along solitary paths, drew his credulous worshipper after him by means of lies, even as Hercules hung men to his mouth by chains of gold.

*

"The first time," says the honest chamberlain, "that I heard Napoleon pronounce the name of the Duc d'Enghien, I turned red with embarrassment. Fortunately I was walking behind him in a narrow path; otherwise, he would certainly have observed my confusion. Nevertheless, when the Emperor for the first time developed the whole of this incident, with all its details and accessories; when he set forth his various motives with his close, luminous, persuasive reasoning, I must confess that the matter seemed to me gradually to assume a new aspect.... The Emperor often resumed this subject, which gave me an opportunity of observing in him certain very pronounced shades of character. I was able on this occasion, and repeatedly, most distinctly to see in him the private individual struggling with the public man, and the natural sentiments of his heart contending against those of his pride and of the dignity of his position. In the confidence of intimacy, he did not show himself indifferent to the unfortunate Prince's fate; but so soon as it became a question of the public, it was quite a different thing. One day, after talking with me of the untimely end and of the youth of this ill-fated man, he concluded by saying:

"'And I have since learnt, my dear fellow, that he was rather in my favour; I have been told that he spoke of me with some admiration; such is retributive justice here below!'

"And the last words were spoken with so much feeling, all the features of his face displayed such harmony with the words that, if he whom Napoleon was pitying had at that moment been in his power, I am quite sure that, whatever his intentions or his acts, he would have been eagerly pardoned.... The Emperor used to consider this matter from two very different points of view: that of common law, or the established rules of justice, and that of the law of nature, or acts of violence...."

[Sidenote: By the Comte de Las Cases.]

"To us, in the intimacy of private conversation, the Emperor would say that the blame in France might be ascribed to an excess of zeal in those around him, or to private objects or mysterious intrigues. He said that he had been precipitately urged in this affair; that they had as it were taken his mind unawares, hastened his measures, anticipated their result....

"'Without doubt,' he said, 'if I had been informed in time of certain particulars concerning the Prince's opinions and disposition; more still, if I had seen the letter which he wrote to me and which, God knows for what reason, was not handed to me until after he was no more, I should most certainly have pardoned him.'

"It was easy for us to see that it was the Emperor's heart and nature alone which dictated these words, and that they were intended only for us; for he would have felt humiliated to think that any one could for an instant believe that he was trying to shift the burden from his own shoulders, or condescending to justify himself; his fear in this respect, or his susceptibility, was such that, in speaking of it to strangers, or dictating on this matter for the public, he confined himself to saying that, if he had known of the Prince's letter, he would perhaps have pardoned him, in view of the great political advantages which he could have derived from it; and when, writing with his own hand his last thoughts, which he concludes will be recorded in the present age and reach posterity, he states, with reference to this subject, which he regards as one of the most delicate for his memory, that, if it were to be done over again, he would do it again."

This passage, in so far as the writer is concerned, possesses all the characteristics of the most perfect sincerity; this shines through to the very phrase in which M. le Comte de Las Cases declared that Bonaparte would have eagerly pardoned a man who was not guilty. But the theories of the master are subtleties by aid of which an effort is made to reconcile the irreconcilable. In making the distinction between "common law or established justice, and natural law or the errors of violence," Napoleon seemed to be content with a piece of sophistry which in reality did not content him! He was unable to subject his conscience as he had subjected the world. A weakness natural to superior men and to little men, when they have committed a fault, is to wish to represent it as a work of genius, a vast combination beyond the understanding of the vulgar. Pride says those things, and folly believes them. Bonaparte doubtless regarded as the mark of the ruling mind the sentence which he delivered in his great man's compunction: "My dear fellow, such is retributive justice here below!" O truly philosophical emotion! What impartiality! How well it justifies, by laying it to the charge of destiny, the evil which has sprung from ourselves! A man nowadays thinks it an all-sufficient excuse to exclaim, "After all, it was my nature, it was the infirmity of mankind." When he has killed his father he repeats, "I am made like that!" And the crowd stands open-mouthed, and they examine the mighty man's bumps, and they recognise that he was "made like that." And what care I that you are made like that! Must I submit to this manner of being? The world would be a fine chaos if all the men who are "made like that" were to take it into their heads to force themselves one upon the other. Those who are unable to wipe out their errors deify them: they make a dogma of their evil-doing, they turn acts of sacrilege into religion, and they would think themselves apostates were they to renounce the cult of their iniquities.

*

There is a serious lesson to be drawn from Bonaparte's life. Two actions, both bad, began and caused his fall: the death of the Duc d'Enghien and the war with Spain. It was vain for him to ride over them with his glory: they remained there to ruin him. He perished on the very side in which he thought himself strong, profound, invincible, when he violated the moral law while neglecting and scorning his real strength, that is, his superior qualities of order and equity. So long as he confined himself to attacking anarchy and foreigners hostile to France, he was victorious; he found himself robbed of his vigour so soon as he entered upon the paths of corruption: the shaving of the locks by Delilah is nothing other than the loss of virtue. Every crime bears within itself a radical incapacity and a germ of misfortune: let us then practise good to be happy, and let us be just to be able.

In proof of this truth, observe that, at the very moment of the Prince's death, commenced the dissent which, growing in proportion to ill-fortune, decided the fall of the ordainer of the tragedy of Vincennes. The Russian Cabinet, in reference to the arrest of the Duc d'Enghien, addressed vigorous representantions against the violation of the territory of the Empire: Bonaparte felt the blow, and replied in the _Moniteur_ with a fulminating article bringing up the death of Paul I[639]. A funeral service had been celebrated in St. Petersburg for young Condé. On the cenotaph was read:

"To the Duc d'Enghien _quem devoravit bellua Corsica._"

The two mighty adversaries subsequently became reconciled in appearance; but the mutual wound which policy had inflicted and insult-enlarged remained in their hearts. Napoleon did not think himself revenged until he came to sleep in Moscow; Alexander[640] was not satisfied before he entered Paris.

[Sidenote: European indignation.]

The hatred of the Cabinet of Berlin arose from the same origin: I have spoken of the noble letter of M. de Laforest, in which he told M. de Talleyrand of the effect which the murder of the Duc d'Enghien had produced at the Court of Potsdam. Madame de Staël was in Prussia when the news from Vincennes arrived:

"I was living in Berlin," he said, "on the Spree Quay, and my apartment was on the ground floor. At eight o'clock one morning, they woke me to tell me that Prince Louis Ferdinand[641] was under my windows on horse-back, and asked me to come and speak to him....

"'Do you know,' he asked, 'that the Duc d'Enghien has been kidnapped on Baden territory, handed over to a military commission, and shot within four-and-twenty hours after his arrival in Paris?'

"'What nonsense!' I replied. 'Do you not see that this can only be a rumour spread by the enemies of France?'

"In fact, I admit that my hatred of Bonaparte, strong as it was, did not go so far as to make me credit the possibility of his committing so great a crime.

"'As you doubt what I tell you,' replied Prince Louis, 'I will send you the _Moniteur_, in which you can read the sentence.'

"With these words he left me, and the expression of his face was the presage of vengeance or death. A quarter of an hour later, I had in my hands the _Moniteur_ of the 21st of March (30 Pluviôse), which contained a sentence of death passed by the military commission, sitting at Vincennes, upon 'the man called Louis d'Enghien!' It was thus that Frenchmen described the descendant of heroes who were the glory of their country! Even if one were to abjure all the prejudices in favour of illustrious birth which the return of monarchical forms would necessarily recall, was it possible thus to blaspheme the memories of the Battle of Lens[642] and of Rocroi? This Bonaparte, who has won so many battles, does not even know how to respect them; for him there is neither past nor future; his imperious and scornful soul will recognise nothing for opinion to hold sacred; he admits only respect for the force in power. Prince Louis wrote to me, beginning his note with these words: 'The man called Louis of Prussia begs Madame de Staël,' etc. He felt the insult offered to the Blood Royal whence he sprang, to the memory of the heroes among whom he was longing to enroll himself. How, after this horrible deed, could a single king in Europe ally himself with such a man? Necessity, you will say. There is a sanctuary in the soul to which its empire may not penetrate; were this not so, what would virtue be upon this earth? A liberal amusement, suited only to the peaceful leisure of private men[643]."

This resentment on the part of the Prince, for which he was to pay with his life, was still lasting when the Prussian Campaign opened in 1806. Frederic William, in his manifesto of the 9th of October, said:

"The Germans have not revenged the death of the Duc d'Enghien; but the memory of that crime will never fade among them."

These historical particulars, rarely observed, deserved to be so; for they explain enmities of which one would be puzzled to discover the primary cause elsewhere, and at the same time they disclose the steps by which Providence leads a man's destiny from the crime to the expiation.

*

Happy, at least, my life, which was not troubled by fear, nor attacked by contagion, nor carried away by examples! The satisfaction which I experience to-day at what I did then is my warrant that my conscience is no illusion. More content than all those potentates, than all those nations fallen at the feet of the glorious soldier, I turn again with pardonable pride to this page, which I have retained as my only belonging and which I owe only to myself. In 1807, with my heart still moved by the murder which I have just related, I wrote the following lines; they caused the _Mercure_ to be suppressed, and jeopardized my liberty once more:

[Sidenote: I utter my protest.]

"When, amid the silence of abjection, no sound is heard save that of the chains of the slave and the voice of the informer; when all tremble before the tyrant, and when it is as dangerous to incur his favour as to deserve his displeasure, the historian appears, entrusted with the vengeance of the nations. Nero prospers in vain, Tacitus already is born within the Empire; he grows up unknown beside the ashes of Germanicus, and already a just Providence has surrendered to an obscure child the glory of the master of the world. If the historian's part is fine, it is often dangerous; but there are altars such as that of honour which, although deserted, demand further sacrifices: the god is not annihilated because the temple is empty. Wherever there remains a chance for fortune, there is no heroism in trying it; magnanimous actions are those of which adversity and death are the foreseen result After all, what do reverses matter, if our name, pronounced by posterity, makes one generous heart beat two thousand years after our life[644]?"

The death of the Duc d'Enghien, by introducing a new principle into Bonaparte's conduct, marred the correctness of his intelligence: he was obliged to adopt as a shield maxims of which he had not the whole force at his disposal, for his glory and his genius incessantly blunted them. He was looked upon with suspicion, with fear; men lost confidence in him and in his destiny; he was constrained to see, if not to seek out, men whom he would never have seen, and who, through his action, considered themselves to have become his equals: the contagion of their defilement was overtaking him. His great qualities remained the same, but his good dispositions became impaired and no longer upheld his great qualities: under the influence of the corruption of that original stain his nature deteriorated. God commanded his angels to disturb the harmonies of that world, to change its laws, to tilt it on its poles. As Milton says:

They with labour push'd Oblique the centric Globe: some say, the Sun Was bid turn reins from th' equinoctial road Like distant breadth. . . . . . . . . . . . . Boreas and Cæcias and Argestes loud And Thrascias rend the woods, and seas upturn[645].

Will the ashes of Bonaparte be exhumed, as were those of the Duc d'Enghien? If I had been the master, the latter victim would still be sleeping unhonoured in the moat of Vincennes Castle. That "excommunicated one" would have been left, like Raymond of Toulouse, in an open coffin; no man's hand would have dared to conceal beneath a plank the sight of the witness to the incomprehensible judgments and angers of God. The abandoned skeleton of the Duc d'Enghien and Napoleon's deserted tomb at St Helena would be the counterpart of each other: there would be nothing more commemorative than those remains, face to face, at opposite ends of the earth.

At least the Duc d'Enghien did not remain on foreign soil, like the exiled of kings: the latter took care to restore the former to his country, a little harshly, it is true; but will it be for ever? France (how much dust winnowed by the breath of the Revolution bears witness to it) is not faithful to the bones of the dead. Old Condé, in his will, declares "that he is not sure which country he will be inhabiting on the day of his death." O Bossuet, what would you not have added to the masterpiece of your eloquence, if, when you were speaking over the grave of the Great Condé, you had been able to foresee the future!

*

It was at this very spot, at Chantilly, that the Duc d'Enghien was born: "Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon, born 2 August 1772, at Chantilly," says the sentence of death. It was on this lawn that he played in childhood; the traces of his footsteps have become obliterated. And the victor of Friburg, of Nördlingen, of Lens, of Senef, where has he gone with his "victorious and now feeble hands"? And his descendants, the Condé of Johannisberg and of Bentheim[646], and his son, and his grandson, where are they? That castle, those gardens, those fountains "which were silent neither by day nor by night:" what has become of them? Mutilated statues, lions with a claw or a jaw restored; trophies of arms sculptured in a crumbling wall; escutcheons with obliterated fleurs-de-lis; foundations of razed turrets; a few marble coursers above the empty stables no longer livened by the neighing of the steed of Rocroi; near a riding-school, a high unfinished gate: that is what remains of the memories of an heroic race; a will tied with a rope changed the owners of the inheritance[647].

The whole forest has repeatedly fallen under the axe. Persons of bygone times have run over those once resounding chases, mute to-day. What was their age, what their passions, when they stopped at the foot of those oaks? O my useless Memoirs, I should not now be able to say to you:

Qu'à Chantilly Condé vous lise quelquefois; Qu'Enghien en soit touché[648]!

Obscure men that we are, what are we beside those famous men? We shall disappear never to return; you, sweet William, who lie upon my table beside this paper, whose belated little flower I have gathered among the heather will blossom again; but we, we shall not come to life again with the perfumed solitary which has diverted my thoughts.

[594] This book was written at Chantilly in November 1838.--T.

[595] Blanche of Castile, Queen of France (1187-1252), daughter of Alphonsus IX. King of Castile, wife of Louis VIII. King of France, and mother of St. Louis IX. A hunting-lodge, at Chantilly, stands on the site of the old Castle of Queen Blanche, near the Commelle Ponds.--T.

[596] Charles IV. King of Spain (1748-1819). On the 18th of March 1808, forced by the revolt of Aranjuez, he abdicated in favour of his son Ferdinand. Napoleon compelled him to withdraw this abdication and to make a fresh one in favour of himself (5 May 1808), after which Napoleon's brother Joseph was placed on the throne of Spain. Charles IV. was sent to Compiègne and Marseilles, and died in Rome in 1819. On the fall of Joseph, in 1813, Charles's son Ferdinand VII. ascended the throne.--T.

[597] Gustavus IV. (1778-1837) was the last Legitimist King of Sweden. A revolt of the nobles in 1809 compelled him to abdicate, and his uncle, the Duke of Sudermania, was proclaimed King with the title of Charles XIII., ultimately adopting General Bernadotte as his heir. Gustavus spent the remaining years of his life in Germany, Holland, and Switzerland, under the names of Count of Holstein-Gottorp and Colonel Gustawson. He died at Saint-Gall in 1837.--T.

[598] Frederic William III. King of Prussia (1770-1840), son of Frederic William II. and grand-nephew to Frederic the Great. He was married to the beautiful Queen Louisa, daughter of the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.--T.

[599] Bonaparte had the Black Eagle.--_Authors Note._

[600] Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus Nero, later Nero Claudius Cæsar Drusus Germanicus, Roman Emperor (37-68), son of Domitius Ahenobarbus and Agrippina, by whose uncle and third husband, the Emperor Claudius, he was adopted, succeeding him, to the exclusion of the natural heir, Britannicus, in 54.--T.

[601] Lucius Annæus Seneca (3-65), the Stoic philosopher, was Nero's tutor and principal minister. He is accused, not only of writing the apology for the murder of Agrippina, but of approving the poisoning of Britannicus in 55.--T.

[602] Julia Agrippina (_circa_ 15-59 or 60), daughter of the Emperor Germanicus and of Agrippina, grand-daughter of Augustus. She poisoned Claudius to secure the Empire for Nero, her son by her first husband, and was herself murdered by Nero's orders in 59.--T.

[603] The Duc de Bourbon was the Due d'Enghien's father, not his grandfather. The grandfather was the Prince de Condé, the writer of the letter in question. Chateaubriand's mistake is due to a slip of the pen, which we occasionally find in more than one other historian of the period.--B.

[604] Pierre François Comte Réal (1765-1834) was an attorney at the Châtelet at the outbreak of the Revolution. He attached himself to Danton and became Public Accuser and Solicitor to the Commune of Paris. He was imprisoned by Robespierre and released on the 9 Thermidor. Bonaparte made him a State Councillor and appointed him a deputy at the Ministry of Police. In 1804 Réal discovered the conspiracy of Georges Cadoudal. He was made Prefect of Police during the Hundred Days, and was exiled under the Second Restoration. He returned to Paris in 1818.--T.

[605] Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès (1753-1824), an eminent jurist and a moderate revolutionary, who voted for the reprieve at the trial of Louis XVI. He was Minister of Justice under the Directory. Bonaparte chose him as Second Consul in 1799, with Lebrun as Third Consul. When Napoleon became Emperor he appointed Cambacérès Arch-chancellor and created him a Prince of the Empire and Duke of Parma. Cambacérès is responsible for the greater portion of the Code civil. He was exiled by the Bourbons and recalled in 1818.--T.

[606] In the morning.--_Author's Note._

[607] Madame Joséphine Bonaparte (1763-1814), _née_ Tascher de La Pagerie, and widow of Alexandre Vicomte de Beauharnais, who was guillotined in 1794. She married Bonaparte in 1796, was crowned Empress in 1804, and was divorced in 1809.--T.

[608] Anne Jean Marie René Savary, Duc de Rovigo (1774-1833), was in 1804 Colonel of the Gendarmerie d'Élite, in which capacity he was charged with the execution of the sentence on the Duc d'Enghien. At the battle of Marengo (14 June 1800) he was aide-de-camp to General Desaix, and was by his side when that general was shot through the heart. He became a general of brigade in 1803, a general of division in 1805, a duke in 1808, and succeeded Fouché as Minister of Police in 1810. He followed the Emperor on to the _Bellérophon_ in 1815, but was separated from him and kept a prisoner for seven months in Malta, where he drew up the plan of his Memoirs (published in 1828). On the Restoration, he was sentenced to death in his absence. He returned to France in 1819 in order to obtain the quashing of the sentence. A pamphlet which he subsequently wrote upon the death of the Duc d'Enghien, accusing Talleyrand of complicity, brought about his disgrace, and he was obliged to retire to Rome. He returned once more to France after the Revolution of 1830, and in 1831 received from Louis-Philippe the command-in-chief of the Army of Algiers, which he retained till his death in 1833.--T.

[609] Claire Élisabeth Jeanne Comtesse de Rémusat (1780-1821), _née_ Gravier de Vergennes, wife of the Comte de Rémusat, Chamberlain to Napoleon and Superintendent of Theatres, and lady-in-waiting to the Empress Joséphine. She was the author of an _Essai sur l'éducation des femmes_ (1823) and of some excellent Memoirs (1880).--T.

[610] Cf. CORNEILLE, _Cinna_, Act II. Sc. I.--T.

[611] Cf. _Mémoires de Madame de Rémusat_, vol. I.--B.

[612] 20 March 1804.--B.

[613] Murat.--_Author's Note._

[614] Lieutenant-General Pierre Auguste Comte Hulin (1758-1841) was one of the foremost among the conquerors of the Bastille on the 14th of July 1789, and at the end of the same year was made Commander of the National Guard of Paris. He accompanied Bonaparte to Italy as Adjutant-General, was appointed Commander of Milan in 1797 and 1798, and in 1803 became a general of division and Commander of the Consular Guard. He took part in the several German campaigns, and was selected for the command of the places around Vienna and of Berlin (1806). He was at the head of the armed forces in Paris when the Malet conspiracy broke out in 1812, and caused the plot to fail, having his lower jaw shattered by Malet with a pistol-shot. Hulin lost the command of the City of Paris on the return of the Bourbons, and was obliged to leave France in 1816. He returned in 1819, and ended his days in retirement.--T.

[615] Marie Louise Empress of the French (1791-1847), daughter of Francis I. Emperor of Austria, and married to Napoleon in 1810. She left him after his first abdication, protested against his restoration and, in reward for her docility, received the Duchy of Parma at the hands of the Congress of Vienna. There she spent the remainder of her days, living with the Count von Niepperg, whom she married morganatically after Napoleon's death.--T.

[616] Francis Charles Joseph Napoleon Duke of Reichstadt (1811-1832), son of Napoleon and Marie Louise, was proclaimed King of Rome at his birth. On his father's abdication there was an idea of proclaiming him Emperor, as Napoleon II.; but this was speedily abandoned and he was brought up at the Court of his maternal grandfather, who in 1818 gave him the title of Duke of Reichstadt, together with a regiment of cavalry.--T.

[617] André Marie Jean Jacques Dupin (1783-1865), known as Dupin the Elder, was a deputy from 1827 to 1848, a member of the Constituent Assembly of 1848 and of the Legislative Assembly of 1849, a senator of the Second Empire (1857), and Attorney-General to the Court of Appeal from 1830 to 1852. He resigned the latter post in order to dissociate himself from the decrees confiscating the possessions of the Orleans Family; but resumed it five years later when summoned to the Imperial Senate. He had been a member of the French Academy since 1832. The pamphlet to which Chateaubriand refers was published in 1823, and entitled, _Pièces judiciaires et historiques relatives au procès du duc dEnghien, avec le Journal de ce prince depuis l'instant de son arrestation; précédées de la Discussion des actes de la commission militaire instituée en l'an XII, par le gouvernement consulaire, pour juger le duc d'Enghien, par l'auteur de l'opuscule intitulé: "De la Libre Défense des accusés._"--B.

[618] An allusion to the abominable reply said to have been made to M. le Duc d'Enghien.--_Author's Note._

The Duke is reported to have cried, "Shoot straight, my friends," to the soldiers about to fire their volley.

"You have no friends here," replied the officer in command!--T.

[619] General Claude François de Malet (1754-1812) played a distinguished part in the campaigns of the Revolution, became a general of brigade in 1799, and was appointed Governor of Pavia by Masséna in 1805. His republicanism, however, made him suspect in the eyes of Napoleon, who had him imprisoned in Paris in 1808. Availing himself of the facilities awarded him by his transfer to a mad-house, he organized a conspiracy against the Empire, involving Generals Guidal and Lahorie in the plot. He escaped from prison on the night of the 23rd of October 1812, rapidly visited the Paris barracks, spreading the news of Napoleon's death, and was on the point of succeeding, when the resistance of General Hulin, who was at the head of the Staff, caused the whole plot to fail. Malet was brought before a military commission and shot on the 29th of October 1812.--T

[620] General Hulin's pamphlet, published in 1823, is entitled, _Explications offertes aux hommes impartiaux par M. le Comte Hulin, au sujet de la Commission militaire institute en l'an XII pour juger le duc d'Enghien._--B.

[621] Jacques Harel (_b._ 1755) had received the command of Vincennes Castle in 1800 as his reward for his services in betraying his fellow-conspirators in a plot to kill the First Consul. The story is told at length in the Memoirs of M. de Bourrienne.--B.

[622] Freiburg-in-Breisgau (Baden), where the great Condé defeated the Imperial forces in 1644.--T.

[623] Savary's pamphlet appeared in the same year as General Hulin's and M. Dupin's, and was entitled, _Extrait des Mémoires du duc de Rovigo, concernant le catastrophe de M. le duc d'Enghien._--B.

[624] Armand Augustin Louis Marquis de Caulaincourt, Duc de Vicence (1773-1827), had in his youth been a page to the Prince de Condé. He took part in nearly all the wars of the Revolution, and was made Master of the Horse by Napoleon when the latter assumed the imperial crown, a general of division, a duke (1805), and Ambassador to Russia (1807). In 1813, he became Foreign Minister, and represented France at the Congress of Châtillon in 1814.--T.

[625] Achille Roche (1801-1834), a publicist and secretary to Benjamin Constant. The work from which Chateaubriand quotes is a pamphlet entitled, _De Messieurs le duc de Rovigo et le prince de Talleyrand._--B.

[626] JOINVILLE, _Memoirs of Louis IX., King of France_, Part I.--T.

[627] Misspelt as printed: _Enguiens_ for Enghien, proper names not taking the plural in French.--T.

[628] François de Bourbon-Vendôme, Comte d'Enghien (1519-1545), brother of Anthony de Bourbon, King of Navarre, defeated the Imperial forces at Cérisoles in 1544--T.

[629] The Great Condé was Duc d'Enghien when he defeated the Spaniards at Rocroi in 1643.--T.

[630] The Princesse Charlotte de Rohan-Rochefort. The Prince de Condé refused to acknowledge the marriage, although he himself had married a Rohan. After the death of the Duc d'Enghien, the Duc de Bourbon tardily offered to acknowledge his son's marriage, but the Princess refused the offer. Nevertheless she visited the Duchesse de Bourbon in the early days of the Restoration, when the latter addressed her as "my daughter" (_Cf._ MURET, _Histoire de l'armée de Condé_). The Duchess of Madrid (_de jure_ Queen of Spain and France), _née_ Princesse Marie Berthe de Rohan, and married to the Duke of Madrid in 1894, is a member of the same (Rochefort) branch of the Rohan family. Their motto is, _Roi ne puis, prince ne daigne, Rohan suis._--T.

[631] Antoine René Charles Mathurin Comte de Laforest (1756-1846) entered the diplomatic service under Louis XVI. He was Consul-General in the United States, Secretary of Legation to Joseph Bonaparte at the Congress of Lunéville, and Chargé-d'affaires Extraordinary at Munich and Ratisbon. He was Ambassador in Berlin from 1805 to 1808, and in Madrid from 1808 to 1813. Napoleon created him a count in 1808. On the fall of the Empire, in 1814, he directed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for six weeks _ad interim_, and was charged by the King to prepare the Treaty of Paris. Under the Second Restoration, he was sent as Minister Plenipotentiary to various Powers. He was made a peer of France in 1819, and a minister of State and privy councillor in 1825. He lost his places and dignities at the Revolution of 1830.--B.

[632] Gaspard Baron Gourgaud (1783-1852), a distinguished artillery officer who had twice saved Napoleon's life, at Moscow and Brienne. He accompanied Napoleon to St. Helena, where he remained until 1817, and where he wrote the _Campagne de 1815_, published in 1818, which was the cause of his being struck off the roll of the French army by Louis XVIII. Louis-Philippe reinstated him and made him his aide-de-camp, and in 1840 he accompanied the Prince de Joinville to St. Helena to bring back the remains of Napoleon. On his return, he was raised to the peerage. Gourgaud is part-author, together with Montholon, of the _Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de France sous Napoléon_ (1823-1825), from which the above quotation is taken.--T.

[633] Charles Tristan Comte de Montholon (1782-1853), Gourgaud's collaborator, was one of Napoleon's bravest and most reckless officers. He too accompanied Napoleon to St Helena, remained with him to the day of his death, and was one of his executors and the depositary of his manuscripts, which were subsequently published in eight volumes under the title given in the preceding note. In 1840, Montholon took part in Louis Napoleon's futile descent at Boulogne, and suffered a short confinement.--T.

[634] LAS CASES, _Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène_ (8 volumes, 1822-1824).--T.

[635] Talleyrand's residence.--T.

[636] Lest they should compromise her friends. See M. Paul de Rémusat's Preface to the Memoirs.--T.

[637] This is the anecdote:

"After the execution of the sentence," says the Duc de Rovigo, "I took the road back to Paris. I was approaching the barriers, when I met M. Réal going to Vincennes in the dress of a councillor of State. I stopped him to ask him where he was going:

"'To Vincennes,' he replied; 'I received orders yesterday to repair there to examine the Duc d'Enghien.'

"I told him what had just happened, and he appeared as much astonished at what I had told him as I at what he had told me. I began to ponder. My meeting with the Minister of Foreign Relations at General Murat's recurred to my mind, and I began to doubt whether the death of the Duc d'Enghien was the work of the First Consul."--B.

[638] Emmanuel Augustin Dieudonné Comte de Las Cases (1766-1842) was a lieutenant in the navy when he emigrated in 1789 and joined Condé's Army. He returned to France after the 18 Brumaire, and devoted himself for several years to literary work, until in 1809 he enlisted as a volunteer to assist in repelling the English, who were threatening a descent upon Flushing. He attracted the notice of Napoleon, who made him one of his chamberlains, and he was one of the four men who followed Napoleon into exile. He remained eighteen months at St. Helena, gathering the talk that fell from Napoleon's lips into his famous _Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène_; but losing favour with Sir Hudson Lowe, he was removed from Napoleon's service, taken to the Cape of Good Hope, and thence to Europe, where he was kept for some time in confinement. Las Cases was not allowed to return to France until after the Emperor's death. In 1830 he was returned for the Seine to the Chamber of Deputies, where he sat in the Opposition.--T.

[639] Paul I. Emperor of Russia (1754-1801), son of Catherine II. and Peter III. On the death of Catherine in 1796, he placed himself at the head of the second coalition against France; but in 1799, suddenly smitten with a passionate admiration for Bonaparte, he contracted an alliance with him, and paved the way for the treaties of Lunéville and Amiens. He was strangled by some of his nobles on the 23rd of March 1801.--T.

[640] Alexander I. Emperor of Russia (1777-1825), was at war with Napoleon from 1805 to 1807, and in alliance with him from 1807 to 1812, when war broke out anew. The retreat from Moscow took place in the latter year, and Alexander entered Paris at the head of the allied forces on the 31st of March 1814.--T.

[641] Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia (1772-1806), son of Prince Ferdinand, brother to Frederic the Great, was killed in 1806 at the Battle of Saalfeld.--T.

[642] The Great Condé defeated the Imperial forces at Lens in 1648.--T.

[643] MADAME DE STAËL, _Dix années d'exil._--B.

[644] These lines are taken from the article, published by Chateaubriand in the _Mercure_ of 4 July 1807, on M. Alexandre de Laborde's _Voyage pittoresque et historique en Espagne._--B.

[645] MILTON, _Paradise Lost_, X., 670-673, 698-699.--T.

[646] The Prince de Condé co-operated with the Prince de Soubise in winning the Battle of Johannisberg, during the Seven Years' War, in 1762, and performed prodigies of valour to no purpose at Bentheim in 1799.--T.

[647] The Duc de Bourbon was found hanged or strangled in his apartment a few days after the Revolution of 1830. He left Chantilly and the greater part of his fortune to the late Duc d'Aumale, fourth son of Louis Philippe.--T.

[648] BOILEAU, _Ep. VII. A.M. Racine_:

"May Condé sometimes at Chantilly read you; And may Enghien be touched." --T.