The Life of Napoleon I Part 23

CHAPTER XIX

THE ROYALIST PLOT

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

There were varied reasons why the exiled French Bourbons should compa.s.s the overthrow of Napoleon. Every month that they delayed action lessened their chances of success. They had long clung to the hope that his Concordat with the Pope and other anti-revolutionary measures betokened his intention to recall their dynasty. But in February, 1803, the Comte de Provence received overtures which showed that Bonaparte had never thought of playing the part of General Monk.

The exiled prince, then residing at Warsaw, was courteously but most firmly urged by the First Consul to renounce both for himself and for the other members of his House all claims to the throne of France, in return for which he would receive a pension of two million francs a year. The notion of sinking to the level of a pensionary of the French Republic touched Bourbon pride to the quick and provoked this spirited reply:

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

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

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

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

a cautious reply which led his brother, then at Edinburgh, scornfully to contemn his _feebleness_ as unworthy of any further confidences.[281]

In truth, the Comte d'Artois, destined one day to be Charles X. of France, was not fas.h.i.+oned by nature for a Fabian policy of delay: not even the misfortunes of exile could instill into the watertight compartments of his brain the most elementary notions of prudence.

Daring, however, attracts daring; and this prince had gathered around him in our land the most desperate of the French royalists, whose hopes, hatreds, schemes, and unending requests for British money may be scanned by the curious in some thirty large volumes of letters bequeathed by their factotum the Comte de Puisaye, to the British Museum.

Unfortunately this correspondence throws little light on the details of the plot which is fitly called by the name of Georges Cadoudal.

This daring Breton was, in fact, the only man of action on whom the Bourbon princes could firmly rely for an enterprise that demanded a cool head, cunning in the choice of means, and a remorseless hand.

Pichegru it is true, lived near London, but saw little of the _emigres_, except the venerable Conde. Dumouriez also was in the great city, but his name was too generally scorned in France for his treachery in 1793 to warrant his being used. But there were plenty of swashbucklers who could prepare the ground in France, or, if fortune favoured, might strike the blow themselves; and a small committee of French royalists, which had the support of that furious royalist, Mr.

Windham, M.P., began even before the close of 1802 to discuss plans for the "removal" of Bonaparte. Two of their tools, Picot and Le Bourgeois by name, plunged blindly into a plot, and were arrested soon after they set foot in France. Their boyish credulity seems to have suggested to the French authorities the sending of an agent so as to entrap not only French _emigres_, but also English officials and Jacobinical generals.

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

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

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

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

Proceeding first to Guernsey, he gained the confidence of the Governor, General Doyle; and, fortified by recommendations from him, he presented himself to the _emigres_ at London, and had an interview with Lord Hawkesbury and the Under-Secretaries of State, Messrs.

Hammond and Yorke. He found it easy to inflame the imagination of the French exiles, who clutched at the proposed union between the irreconcilables, the extreme royalists, and the extreme republicans; and it was forthwith arranged that Napoleon's power, which rested on the support of the peasants, in fact of the body of France, should be crushed by an enveloping move of the tips of the wings.

Mehee's narrative contains few details and dates, such as enable one to test his a.s.sertions. But I have examined the Puisaye Papers,[285]

and also the Foreign and Home Office archives, and have found proofs of the complicity of our Government, which it will be well to present here connectedly. Taken singly they are inconclusive, but collectively their importance is considerable. In our Foreign Office Records (France, No 70) there is a letter, dated London, August 30th, 1803, from the Baron de Roll, the factotum of the exiled Bourbons, to Mr.

Hammond, our Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, asking him to call on the Comte d'Artois at his residence, No. 46, Baker Street. That the deliberations at that house were not wholly peaceful appears from a long secret memorandum of October 24th, 1803, in which the Comte d'Artois reviews the career of "that _miserable adventurer_"

(Bonaparte), so as to prove that his present position is precarious and tottering. He concludes by naming those who desired his overthrow--Moreau, Reynier, Bernadotte, Simon, Ma.s.sena, Lannes, and Ferino: Sieyes, Carnot, Chenier, Fouche, Barras, Tallien, Rewbel, Lamarque, and Jean de Bry. Others would not attack him "corps a corps," but disliked his supremacy. These two papers prove that our Government was aware of the Bourbon plot. Another doc.u.ment, dated London, November 18th, 1803, proves its active complicity. It is a list of the French royalist officers "who had set out or were ready to set out." All were in our pay, two at six s.h.i.+llings, five at four s.h.i.+llings, and nine at two s.h.i.+llings a day. It would be indelicate to reveal the names, but among them occurs that of Joachim P.J. Cadoudal.

The list is drawn up and signed by Frieding--a name that was frequently used by Pichegru as an _alias_. In his handwriting also is a list of "royalist officers for whom I demand a year's pay in advance"--five generals, thirteen _chefs de legion_, seventeen _chefs de bataillon_, and nineteen captains. The pay claimed amounts to 3,110 15_s._[286] That some, at least, of our Admiralty officials also aided Cadoudal is proved by a "most secret" letter, dated Admiralty Office, July 31st, 1803, from E. N[epean] to Admiral Montagu in the Downs, charging him to help the bearer, Captain Wright, in the execution of "a very important service," and to provide for him "one of the best of the hired cutters or luggers under your orders."

Another "most secret" Admiralty letter, of January 9th, 1804, orders a frigate or large sloop to be got ready to convey secretly "an officer of rank and consideration" (probably Pichegru) to the French coast.

Wright carried over the conspirators in several parties, until chance threw him into Napoleon's power and consigned him to an ignominious death, probably suicide.

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

In face of this d.a.m.ning evidence the ministerial denials of complicity must be swept aside.[288] It is possible, however, that the plot was connived at, not by the more respectable chiefs, but by young and hot-headed officials. Even in the summer of 1803 that Cabinet was already tottering under the attacks of the Whigs and the followers of Pitt. The blandly respectable Addington and Hawkesbury with his "vacant grin"[289] were evidently no match for Napoleon; and Arbuthnot himself dubs Addington "a poor wretch universally despised and laught at," and p.r.o.nounces the Cabinet "the most inefficient that ever curst a country." I judge, therefore, that our official aid to the conspirators was limited to the Under-Secretaries of the Foreign, War, and Admiralty Offices. Moreover, the royalist plans, _as revealed to our officials_, mainly concerned a rising in Normandy and Brittany.

Our Government would not have paid the salaries of fifty-four royalist officers--many of them of good old French families--if it had been only a question of stabbing Napoleon. The lists of those officers were drawn up here in November, 1803, that is, three months after Georges Cadoudal had set out for Normandy and Paris to collect his desperadoes; and it seems most probable that the officers of the "royal army" were expected merely to clinch Cadoudal's enterprise by rekindling the flame of revolt in the north and west. French agents were trying to do the same in Ireland, and a plot for the murder of George III. was thought to have been connived at by the French authorities. But, when all is said, the British Government must stand accused of one of the most heinous of crimes. The whole truth was not known at Paris; but it was surmised; and the surmise was sufficient to envenom the whole course of the struggle between England and Napoleon.

Having now established the responsibility of British officials in this, the most famous plot of the century, we return to describe the progress of the conspiracy and the arts employed by Napoleon to defeat it. His tool, Mehee de la Touche, after entrapping French royalists and some of our own officials in London, proceeded to the Continent in order to inveigle some of our envoys. He achieved a brilliant success.

He called at Munich, in order, as he speciously alleged, to arrange with our amba.s.sador there the preparations for the royalist plot. The British envoy, who bore the honoured name of Francis Drake, was a zealous intriguer closely in touch with the _emigres_: he was completely won over by the arts of Mehee: he gave the spy money, supplied him with a code of false names, and even intrusted him with a recipe for sympathetic ink. Thus furnished, Mehee proceeded to Paris, sent his briber a few harmless bulletins, took his information to the police, and, _at Napoleon's dictation_, gave him news that seriously misled our Government and Nelson.[290]

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

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

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

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

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

From this resolve Moreau never receded. But his calculating reserve did not save him. Already several suspects had been imprisoned in Normandy.

At Napoleon's suggestion five of them were condemned to death, in the hope of extorting a confession; and the last a man named Querelle, gratified his gaolers by revealing (February 14th) not only the lodging of Georges in Paris, but the intention of other conspirators, among whom was a French prince, to land at Biville. The plot was now coming to a head, and so was the counter-plot. On the next day Moreau was arrested by order of Napoleon, who feigned the utmost grief and surprise at seeing the victor of Hohenlinden mixed up with royalist a.s.sa.s.sins in the pay of England.[294]

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

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

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

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

[295]

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

There was living at Ettenheim, in Baden, not far from the Rhine, a young prince of the House of Conde, the Duc d'Enghien. Since the disbanding of the corps of Conde he had been tranquilly enjoying the society of the Princess Charlotte de Rohan, to whom he had been secretly married. Her charms, the attractions of the chase, the society of a small circle of French _emigres_, and an occasional secret visit to the theatre at Stra.s.sburg, formed the chief diversions to an otherwise monotonous life, until he was fired with the hope of a speedy declaration of war by Austria and Russia against Napoleon.

Report accused him of having indiscreetly ventured in disguise far into France; but he indignantly denied it. His other letters also prove that he was not an accomplice of the Cadoudal-Pichegru conspiracy. But Napoleon's spies gave information which seemed to implicate him in that enterprise. Chief among them was Mehee, who, at the close of February, hovered about Ettenheim and heard that the duke was often absent for many days at a time.

Napoleon received this news on March 1st, and ordered the closest investigation to be made. One of his spies reported that the young duke a.s.sociated with General Dumouriez. In reality the general was in London, and the spy had subst.i.tuted the name of a harmless old gentleman called Thumery. When Napoleon saw the name of Dumouriez with that of the young duke his rage knew no bounds. "Am I a dog to be beaten to death in the street? Why was I not warned that they were a.s.sembling at Ettenheim? Are my murderers sacred beings? They attack my very person. I'll give them war for war." And he overwhelmed with reproaches both Real and Talleyrand for neglecting to warn him of these traitors and a.s.sa.s.sins cl.u.s.tering on the banks of the Rhine. The seizure of Georges Cadoudal and the examination of one of his servants helped to confirm Napoleon's surmise that he was the victim of a plot of which the duke and Dumouriez were the real contrivers, while Georges was their tool. Cadoudal's servant stated that there often came to his master's house a mysterious man, at whose entry not only Georges but also the Polignacs and Riviere always arose. This convinced Napoleon that the Duc d'Enghien was directing the plot, and he determined to have the duke and Dumouriez seized. That they were on German soil was naught to him.

Talleyrand promised that he could soon prevail on the Elector to overlook this violation of his territory, and the question was then discussed in an informal council. Talleyrand, Real, and Fouche advised the severest measures. Lebrun spoke of the outcry which such a violation of neutral territory would arouse, but bent before the determination of the First Consul; and the regicide Cambaceres alone offered a firm opposition to an outrage which must embroil France with Germany and Russia. Despite this protest, Napoleon issued his orders and then repaired to the pleasing solitudes of La Malmaison, where he remained in almost complete seclusion. The execution of the orders was now left to Generals Ordener and Caulaincourt, who arranged the raid into Baden; to Murat, who was now Governor of Paris; and to the devoted and unquestioning Savary and Real.

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

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

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

The task of summoning the officers who were to form the court-martial was imposed on Murat. But when this bluff, hearty soldier received this order, he exclaimed: "What! are they trying to soil my uniform! I will not allow it! Let him appoint them himself if he wants to." But a second and more imperious mandate compelled him to perform this hateful duty. The seven senior officers of the garrison of Paris now summoned were ordered not to separate until judgment was pa.s.sed.[300]

At their head was General Hulin, who had shown such daring in the a.s.sault on the Bastille; and thus one of the early heroes of the Revolution had the evening of his days shrouded over with the horrors of a midnight murder. Finally, the First Consul charged Savary, who had just returned to Paris from Biville, furious at being baulked of his prey, to proceed to Vincennes with a band of his gendarmes for the carrying out of the sentence.

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

To the last questions he answered decisively in the affirmative, adding that he wished to take part in the new war against France.