UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 

 (l <a "-'.rv-.i ..> - &*e&is&** f *immmammmmm 
 
 S^'^ 
 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 University of California. 
 
 Class 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^/MC 
 

 t- .>* 
 
 &0KOj 
 
 
 
 ?0&< 
 
 
THE 
 
 LAST DAYS of the CONSULATE 
 
 FROM THE FRENCH OF M. FA URIEL, 
 
 MEMBER OF THE ACADEMY OF INSCRIPTIONS, AND PROFESSOR OF FOREIGN LITERATURE 
 AT THE SORBONNS 
 
 EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, 
 
 BY 
 
 M. L. LALANNE. 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 oe 
 
 A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON, 
 
 714, BROADWAY. 
 1886. 
 
^> 
 
 <&> 
 
 
 y00 
 
 $0 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PACK 
 
 INTRODUCTION V 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE EVENTS WHICH PRECEDED 
 AND FORESHADOWED THE DESTRUCTION OF THE 
 REPUBLIC DATING FROM THE l8TH BRUM AIRE . I 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 NOTES ON THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS OF THE ENGLISH 
 
 CONSPIRACY PRIOR TO THE ARREST OF MOREAU . 59 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE DUC D'ENGHIEN ARREST OF MOREAU, PICHEGRU, 
 
 GEORGES CADOUDAL, ETC 1 38 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 AN HISTORICAL PICTURE OF THE TRIAL OF GEORGES 
 
 CADOUDAL AND MOREAU 150 
 
 217190 
 
iv Contents. 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 I. LETTER FROM GENERAL MOREAU TO THE MINISTER 
 
 OF WAR (BERTHIER) 323 
 
 II. LETTER FROM NAPOLEON TO THE GRAND JUDGE 
 CONCERNING THE PARDON OF ARMAND DE POLIGNAC 325 
 
 III. THE SUBSEQUENT FATE OF THE PARDONED OR 
 ACQUITTED PRISONERS . . , . .326 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The manuscript which I have been fortunately 
 enabled to present to the public has a singular 
 history. 
 
 Some years ago, Madame Tangier, the niece of 
 M. Arago, deputed me to offer Condorcet's papers, 
 which had come into her possession on the decease 
 of her uncle, tc the library of the Institute. Those 
 papers had been given by Madame O'Connor, 
 the only daughter of the famous Girondist, to M. 
 Arago, when he was preparing an edition of Condor- 
 cet's works and composing his panegyric. In the 
 process of classifying and arranging the numerous 
 and very interesting packets, I met with an anony- 
 mous manuscript, without any general title, and 
 whose subject bore no relation to the papers with which 
 it was tied up. This manuscript, consisting of several 
 copy-books, octavo size, together with separate sheets, 
 notes, fragments, and extracts from newspapers of the 
 year 1804, was divided into four chapters. The first 
 was entitled " Historical sketch of the events which 
 preceded and foreshadowed the destruction of the 
 Republic, dating from the 1st Brumaire ;" the second, 
 " Notes on the principal events of the English con- 
 spiracy prior to the arrest of Moreau ;" the fourth, 
 which was the most extensive, and, unfortunately, 
 
yi Introduction. 
 
 unfinished, "An historical picture of the trial of Georges 
 and Moreau." I may mention, that Georges Cadoudal 
 was known among the royalist party by his Christian 
 name only ; his letters and orders were signed General 
 Georges. The third chapter was missing ; a few frag- 
 ments and notes indicated that it had never been 
 written, and that it was to have treated of the death of 
 the Due d'Enghien, the royalist plot, and the creation 
 of the Empire. The mention of Admiral Bruix, who 
 died on the 25th of March, 1805, as still living, enabled 
 me to assign a date to the manuscript. Here, then, 
 was a history, not constructed, like so many histories, 
 after the facts, either from distant and sometimes 
 unfaithful recollections, or from second-hand docu- 
 ments ; but a history written at the very moment of 
 the occurrences which it recorded. 
 
 The reading of this manuscript made a vivid im- 
 pression upon me. The generous sentiments that 
 pervaded it, the vigour of style, the elevation of ideas, 
 the correctness of views which it revealed, struck me 
 all the more forcibly, because I did not know of the 
 existence of any analogous document of the same 
 epoch, one in which the freedom of the press and 
 individual liberty no longer existed, liberty of the 
 tribunal was about to be suppressed, and when " the 
 Great Nation * was reduced to the rare and too often 
 lying communications which the Government deigned 
 to make through the medium of newspapers entirely 
 in its own hands. 
 
 I have said that the work was anonymous. Nothing 
 in its contents enabled me to discover its author, who 
 never appeared upon the scene ; it was, however, 
 evident that he belonged to that elite section of 
 
Introduction. vii 
 
 Parisian society who would, perhaps, have been im- 
 pelled by their dislike and weariness of the Directory 
 to accept the 18th Brumaire, if, as he says, "Bona- 
 parte had been prudent enough to take away from 
 the French only that portion of liberty whose loss 
 ihey were not capable of feeling or regretting," but 
 who could not be resigned to see most of the precious 
 things that had been won by the Revolution perish 
 with the Republic, and who were enabled to preserve, 
 and at a later period to revive the liberal traditions of 
 the generation of '89. The handwriting was small, 
 regular, and elegant ; among other characteristic 
 marks, the formation of the letter / rendered it easily 
 recognizable. Notwithstanding all my researches 
 among manuscripts, I had never met with this par- 
 ticular handwriting anywhere, and I had almost 
 relinquished the hope of clearing up the mystery, 
 when an entirely unforeseen circumstance dispelled 
 it. 
 
 In 1883, after the death of the learned orientalist, 
 M. Mohl, and that of his wife, (Miss Clarke,) the library 
 of the Institute was put in possession of the papers of 
 an intimate friend of theirs, whom Sainte-Beuve 1 
 called "one of the most original masters of the present 
 time, an eminent critic, most ingenious and sagacious," 
 and of whom M. Renan 2 wrote that he was "indis- 
 putably the man of our age who has put in circu- 
 lation most ideas, inaugurated most branches of study, 
 and traced out most new results in the order of 
 historical investigation." I speak of Claude Fauriel, 
 born at Saint-Etienne in 1772, died in 1844, member 
 
 1 "Portraits Contemporains," 1846, vol. ii. pp. 512 and 536. 
 2 Revue des Deux Mondes, 15th December, 1855, p. 1389. 
 
viii Introduction. 
 
 of the Academy of Inscriptions, and professor of 
 foreign literature at the Sorbonne. 
 
 Being charged with the arrangement of this mass 
 of correspondence, notes, drafts, and fragments, I had 
 already examined a score of boxes without having 
 my attention arrested by anything, 3 when I came 
 upon a page dating from the writer's youth, and in a 
 band entirely different from that of the documents 
 which I had already inspected. Jt was the draft 
 of a letter which he had addressed to his friend 
 Villers in 1803. At the first glance I recognized 
 so striking a resemblance, or, I should say, sucli 
 complete identity with the writing of the manuscript, 
 that doubt was not possible. Letter and manu- 
 script came from the same hand, from the hand of 
 Fauriel. 
 
 Then arose the questions, how did this manuscript 
 come to be among the papers of the Condorcct 
 family? how had Fauriel, whose life seemed to have 
 been devoted solely to the study of the history and 
 literature of the past, 4 been led to write this narrative 
 of contemporary events ? lastly, why had he not 
 finished and published it ? I am about to offer a brief 
 explanation of these points. 
 
 For many years an unbroken intimacy had subsisted 
 between Fauriel and Madame de Condorcet. At 
 
 3 My attention had, however, been awakened by an obser- 
 vation of M. St. Charavay, the skilful expert in autographs, to 
 whom I had shown the manuscript. After a long examination 
 he thought he recognized in it something of Fauriel's hand- 
 writing. 
 
 4 His principal publications, " Chants populaires de la Grece 
 moderne,*' 1824; "Histoire de la Gaule Meridionale," 1836; 
 " Histoire de la Croisade con t re les Albigeois," 1837 ; " Histoire 
 de la Literature Proveneale,'' 1846. 
 
Introduction. ix 
 
 the death of the latter, in September, 1822, 5 
 they were still living in the same house, and their 
 books and papers were in common like their exist- 
 ence. The manuscript, either because it was for- 
 gotten, or for some other cause, remained in the 
 hands of Madame O'Connor, Condorcet's daughter, 
 and by that circuitous route reached the library of 
 the Institute. 
 
 Fauriel, an ardent student, but a slow writer, 
 "always recoiled/' as M. Renan says, "from the 
 painful toil of composition/' 6 
 
 Only the indignation aroused in him by the 
 melancholy spectacle of violence, baseness, and false- 
 hood daily before his eyes, could tear him away 
 from his favourite tasks ; the irresistible longing to 
 exhale his profound grief for lost liberty was needed 
 to do that. 7 
 
 He was also impelled by the remembrance of what 
 
 6 On the 1 2th of September, 1822, M. Guizot wrote to Fauriel 
 in reference to the death of Madame de Condorcet, " My poor 
 friend, I did not hear until yesterday of the blow that has fallen 
 upon you. 1 went to look for you at your own house, and at 
 Cousin's. I was far from anticipating this misfortune ; for some 
 days past, on the contrary, I was easy, so that we did not send 
 each day for news. My wife shares all my feelings, and wishes 
 me to assure you that she does so. Adieu, my dear friend, I 
 embrace you with a very sad heart." 
 
 6 "Do not wear yourself out," wrote M. Guizot to him on the 
 15th of August, 1 8 18, "in incessantly beginning over again what 
 is very well done. You pass your li f e in sacrificing action tc 
 the hope of perfection, and the result is that while you satisfy 
 yourself in seeking after the better, nobody profits by the good 
 which you have found." 
 
 7 I find the following passage in a letter addressed to him in 
 1800, by his friend Dr. Panset, "What! your grief is not yet 
 subdued ! Your regrets are still as keen as ever, and you 
 cannot accustom yourself to the things of this world. . . . You 
 have not yet attained to the calm that is lent by despair. . . . 
 All is a continuity among men, as it is in the laws of nature, 
 
x Introduction. 
 
 he had witnessed during more than two years. After 
 having been a sub-lieutenant in the army of the 
 Eastern Pyrenees, and secretary to Dugommier 
 (1793), he became, through I know not what influence, 
 secretary to Fouche, the Minister of Police. He 
 resigned his post in May, 1802, notwithstanding the 
 urgent entreaty of his patron. 8 He had flattered 
 himself with the hope that the regime which he so 
 heartily detested would not last long ; he must have 
 discovered his mistake very quickly ; discouragement 
 ensued, and he returned to his cherished studies in 
 history and literature, no longer caring to finish awork 
 which, he felt, was foredoomed not to see the light. 
 Besides, had he finished it, he would have taken good 
 care not to publish it under the Restoration. The 
 royalists would have applauded his virulent attacks 
 upon Bonaparte, and he, having always remained 
 faithful to his republican convictions, 1 would never 
 have consented to furnish arms to the enemies of the 
 Revolution. The patriots, on the other hand, would 
 have been much displeased at his warm defence of 
 Moreau, who had made so miserable an end. It 
 must also be added that after the death of Madame 
 de Condorcet the manuscript was no longer in his 
 possession, and that he may have thought it was 
 lost. 
 
 When he began to draw up this narrative, Fauriel 
 was, as he says himself, so circumstanced, " that he 
 
 and when great injustices are practised with impunity in our 
 wretched species, I defy you to say whether the culprit or the 
 witness is to be condemned the most." This letter and those 
 of M. Guizot are preserved in the library of the Institute. 
 
 8 "You are mad," he said; "this is the very time to stay 
 where you are. We are coming in." " Sainte-Beuve," p. 492. 
 
 1 See " Sainte-Beuve," p. 489. 
 
Introdtictioji. xi 
 
 could not know everything, and to inform himself of 
 the truth was perhaps the greatest of all dangers 
 next to telling it." While seeking the most exact 
 information possible, he had to avoid the slightest 
 imprudence which, with the network of espionage in 
 which Parisian society was surrounded by the Im- 
 perial regime, would inevitably have brought the 
 police upon him ; thus he had confided his project 
 and communicated his manuscript to only a few 
 trustworthy persons whose opinion might be of use 
 to him. Among these confidants I think I may 
 include in the very first line with Madame de Con- 
 dorcet, Madame de Stael, 2 and Benjamin Constant, 3 
 whose joint political relations and literary tastes made 
 it easy for them to supply him with valuable informa- 
 tion and give him useful advice. He received very 
 numerous remarks from them, both verbally and in 
 writing, which he has jotted down on the margin ; 
 sometimes there are additions confirmatory of the 
 statements in the text, or indications of facts omitted 
 or requiring development ; 4 sometimes corrections of 
 
 2 Madame de Condorcet's circle was as hostile to the Con- 
 sular Government as that of Madame de Stael. "All that," 
 said Bonaparte, at the end of a discussion with Admiral 
 Truquet, " does to talk of at Madame de Condorcet's or Mailla- 
 garat's." " Memoires sur le Consulat," 1827, p. 34. 
 
 3 On certain pages of the fourth chapter there are some notes 
 written in pencil, and traced over in ink, which are not in Fauriel's 
 hand. The large, loose writing resembles, and most probably 
 is, that of Benjamin Constant. 
 
 * These indications are in many instances very brief ; one, 
 which I have not retained, contains only these words, " Queen 
 Matilda's Tapestry," and I had some trouble to make out their 
 meaning. " Queen Matilda's Tapestry " was the name of a play 
 {piece de circo?tstance), written to order for the Government, 
 apropos of the famous project of the invasion of England. Its 
 authors were Barre*, Radot, and Desfontaines, and it was acted 
 from the 23rd Nivose to the 23rd Germinal, year XII., that is 
 to say, for two months and a half. 
 
xii Introduction. 
 
 style, but very rarely rectifications. I have repro- 
 duced only the most important of the annotations, 
 and have taken care to distinguish them from my 
 own by the words, " marginal note " 
 
 Whoever his confidants were, they kept his secret 
 so faithfully that not one of the friends who 
 survived him appear to have heard of this work, 
 which exhibits his ability in quite a new light ; not 
 a word of allusion to it occurs in the numerous 
 letters of his correspondents which I have had in my 
 hands. 
 
 The first chapter, " Historical sketch of t^e events 
 which pre:eded and foreshadowed the destruction of 
 the Republic, dating from the 18th Brumaire," is 
 a document of great merit. I do not think that 
 so firm a hand has yet depicted the political 
 situation of France, the disposition of men's minds 
 after " that famous day, of which almost all those 
 who had co-operated in it repented themselves on 
 the morrow," and the tortuous manoeuvres of Bona- 
 parte to attain that supreme power which, from this 
 time forth, Fauriel's sagacity had foreseen would be 
 fatal to liberty, " without securing to France the sole 
 good of an enslaved people, repose." I wish parti- 
 cularly to point out the picture of the sitting of the 
 Senate in which the prolongation of the Consulate 
 to twenty years was voted, whereupon Bonaparte, in 
 order to elude that vote, had recourse to a plebis- 
 citum to get himself named Consul for life, " knowing 
 how easy it is to make the exercise of the national 
 sovereignty by an already enslaved people only a 
 further resource for tyranny, and an additional 
 mockery of liberty." A profound truth, which we 
 
Introdtiction. xin 
 
 too, like our fathers, have learned at our own ex- 
 pense. 
 
 The second chapter, very modestly entitled "Notes 
 on the principal events of the English conspiracy 
 prior to the arrest of Moreau," contains a number of 
 highly interesting facts and views. After having 
 related the results of the rupture with England, 
 Fauriel describes in a very striking manner the state 
 of the parties into which the nation was divided ; 
 the Royalists, the Jacobins, " who thought they loved 
 and recognized liberty because they were ready to 
 revolt against tyranny," and finally, the Republicans, 
 who, like the others, were without leaders, but who 
 might have found support in the Senate and the 
 army. Valuable details of the organization of the 
 police are succeeded by a narrative (rather too diffuse, 
 perhaps,) of the exploits of a miserable schemer, 
 named Mehee, who, in concert with Bonaparte, 
 contrived to mystify both the English Government 
 and the Royalist party in an extraordinary way. 
 Then the author relates the origin and development 
 of the conspiracy of Georges Cadoudal and Pichegru, 
 and the manoeuvres of the police to compromise 
 Moreau, the only man whose influence and popularity 
 the First Consul had to dread ' 
 
 1 Bonaparte hastened to apprise the generals in command of 
 the different corps of Moieau's arrest. On the 29th Pluviose, 
 he writes to General Soult that Moreau "had decided on 
 making Pichegru come to Paris, where he had seen him four 
 times, and also Georges." These four visits to Georges are 
 reduced to two in a letter written on the same clay to General 
 Davoust (" Correspondance de Napoleon I.," vol. ix. pp.305, 
 321). Every word in the letter to Soult is a falsehood. Not 
 only had Moreau nothing to do with Pichegru's return, but he 
 was so little known to Georges that the latter, when they were 
 
xiv Introduction. 
 
 In the last pages of this chapter, when he is just 
 about to begin a narrative in which " the striking 
 scenes, the unlooked-for catastrophes which abound in 
 history will not be wanting," Fauriel dwells upon the 
 difficulties of writing contemporary history, the 
 'many obstacles to the just discernment of truth, 
 that present themselves, and he concludes with 
 the following sentence, which depicts the sincerity of 
 the historian : " After all possible care has been taken 
 to preserve myself from errors, only one duty will 
 remain for me to fulfil, that will be to make known 
 the motives or the feeling by which my judgment 
 on the facts shall have been dictated, so that those 
 who will not have shared my feelings and my ideas 
 may see the cause of my errors, and deduce, as they 
 think fit, other consequences from the same facts." 
 
 I have previously said that the third chapter was 
 not written, and I ask leave to add a few words to the 
 pages which I have had to put together in order to 
 connect the preceding with the following chapter. 
 The archives of the Prefecture of Police, from whence [ 
 have derived several interesting particulars, 6 would, no 
 doubt, have supplied more than one concerning the 
 Due d'Enghien, had not the two boxes containing the 
 documents relating to it, been taken away, by order, 
 thirty years ago, in spite of the strong opposition of 
 the keeper of the archives, who was well aware that 
 he should never see them again. One sad detail was 
 imparted to us. There still remained among the 
 
 confined in the Temple, begged a gendarme to point out the 
 general to him. 
 
 6 I beg to offer my best thanks to M. Charpentier in the first 
 place, and secondly to M. Abel Peyret, his successor, for the 
 assistance which they rendered me in my researches. 
 
Introduction. xv 
 
 papers a ring which the unhappy prince had entrusted 
 to one of the persons present at his execution, to be 
 transmitted, with a lock of his hair and a letter, to the 
 Princesse de Rohan. 7 
 
 The remembrance of this assassination hung heavily 
 over the whole life of Napoleon. He said, on seeing 
 General Hull in, who had presided at the court- 
 martial, " His presence annoys me. I don't like what 
 he recalls to me." Afterwards at St. Helena, he con- 
 stantly reverted to the topic, now trying to excuse 
 himself, and again declaring, as he did in his will, that 
 "under similar circumstances he would do the same 
 again," and this time he was certainly sincere, because 
 he had never formerly concealed that the death of 
 the prince and the trial of Moreau " had served him 
 in the accomplishment of the work he had planned 
 long before ;" but where he did not tell the truth 
 was in uttering the following sentence, recorded 
 in the "Memorial de Sainte-Helene :" "Ac for the 
 different oppositions (sic) with which I met, and the 
 numerous solicitations that were addressed to me, as 
 report said at the time, nothing is more false. These 
 things have been invented only to render me more 
 odious." 
 
 Nothing is more false ! % I find the following in a 
 report by a peace officer named Chabanety, from 
 which I have given an extract elsewhere. 
 
 " Politicians are endeavouring to interpret the 
 motives of Senator Lucien's journey. They quote 
 
 f " Savary, who was present at the execution, showed these 
 three articles to Madame Bonaparte. I do not know whether 
 the last behests of the unfortunate prince were fulfilled." 
 ' Memoires de Madame de Rdmusat," vol. i. p. 33. 
 
 8 See Madame de Rdmusat on the intervention of Josephine. 
 
xvi Introduction. 
 
 as its decisive cause an anecdote concerning the 
 senator and his brother the First Consul. When the 
 Commission of Vincennes reported against the Due 
 d'Enghien, Lucien went to the First Consul, and asked 
 him how he meant to decide upon the fate of the 
 young man ? ' As policy decides,' was the answer of 
 the First Consul. Lucien, regarding these words as 
 a sentence of death, instantly drew out of his pocket 
 a valuable watch, flung it on the ground, and trod it 
 to pieces, saying to the First Consul, 'Very well, one 
 day you will be broken to pieces like that.'" On the 
 1st of April, 1804, eleven days after this scene, only 
 a part of which the police-agent relates to us, Lucien, 
 being exiled, quitted Paris to establish himself at 
 Rome. 1 
 
 From the beginning of the trial to which the name 
 of Moreau lent so much importance both at home 
 and abroad, the Government took the utmost pains to 
 keep back from the public as much as possible of what 
 was passing in the court. The people had to be satis- 
 fied with what they could learn from the mutilated 
 and perverted reports sent by authority to the news- 
 papers, which were not permitted to insert any 
 others. 2 
 
 The sentence was no sooner pronounced than an 
 order was issued by Dubois, Prefect of Police, for- 
 bidding the sale or distribution of any writings re- 
 lating to the condemned persons. Hence we may 
 
 1 See " Lucien et les Memoires," by M. Young, on the subject 
 of his departure from Paris. 
 
 2 From letters preserved at the archives of the Pre r ccture of 
 Police, it was Citizen Bouchesiche, the head of the fifth division, 
 who was employed to make these communications to the news- 
 papers. 
 
Introdziction . xv ii 
 
 understand how great is the interest of the fourth 
 and last chapters, in which Fauriel, in relating 
 the proceedings at some of the sittings, brings to 
 light certain odious deeds which seem to have passed 
 into oblivion, and which M. Thiers, actuated by his 
 excessive indulgence for the men and things of the 
 Empire, has not thought proper to mention. Un- 
 fortunately he has not been content with keeping 
 silence upon the iniquities committed in the instruc- 
 tion, 3 and the cruelties inflicted not only upon the 
 accused, but upon witnesses, in order to extract 
 avowals or revelations from them. 4 
 
 In consequence of his having neglected to consult 
 the official publications, he has departed so widely 
 from the truth in a certain passage that I cannot 
 refrain from reconstructing it. The reader will peruse 
 the dramatic scene in which Louis Picot, the servant 
 of Georges, aroused the indignation of the spectators 
 by displaying his hands mutilated by torture, and the 
 " Proces " contains the address of his advocate, who 
 exclaimed, without fear of contradiction or challenge, 
 
 3 The following may be added to the facts pointed out by 
 Fauriel. Caron, one of the accused, who was acquitted, had 
 been placed in a dungeon at the Abbaye twenty feet under- 
 ground. " They have made me suffer," he said to the judges, 
 " all that it is possible to suffer" (" Proces," vol. iv. p. 218). I 
 have found a touching letter from the woman Verdot to the 
 Prefect of Police, in the box laoelled Repertoire de Pieces Di- 
 verses, among the Cadoudal documents. She tells him that she 
 is in the second month of pregnancy, fed on bread and water, 
 without sufficient clothing, and unable to rest in consequence of 
 the cold. She prays only that she may be released from the 
 *' secret 5 ' detention. She fell so ill that she could not be brought 
 to trial; besides, she would have been acquitted like her 
 husband. 
 
 4 See "Proces," vol. vii. p. 216. 
 
xviii Introduction. 
 
 "Who could ever believe that among a people, for- 
 merly jealous of its rights to the point of fury, the 
 personal liberty of citizens should have fallen into 
 such contempt, that Picot has been subjected to 
 treatment such as even in Rome was inflicted only 
 upon the meanest slaves?" Now, M. Thiers says: 
 " At first, Picot would not say anything, but after- 
 wards he was by degrees induced to speak. ... He 
 was questioned anew, and by putting much gentle- 
 ness into it, they ended by bringing him to an entire 
 openness." Let not, however, these cruelties be im- 
 puted as the advocate imputed them with an 
 intention easily understood to the zeal of some 
 subordinate agent. 6 No, they were commanded by 
 the supreme heads of justice, an i the responsibility 
 for them attaches to a still more exalted person 
 " What you have ordered with respect to the accu 
 man, Picot, has been executed," writes Thcuriot, the 
 instructing judge, to Real, the assistant of the Grand 
 Judge. " He has borne it all with criminal resignal 
 He is hardened in crime and fanaticism. I have left 
 him to-day to his sufferings and his solitude. I will 
 have the work begun again to-morrow. He has 
 Georges' secret, and he must give it up" 6 I should 
 have supposed that Fauriel was carried away too far 
 by his o' x 'n feelings when he says that the strange 
 declaration made by Bouvet de Lozier, in circum- 
 stances still more strange, was torn from him by tor- 
 
 5 " Who knows to what an extent the daring of a few sub- 
 ordinates may be carried in the darkness of the prisons?" 
 " Proces." 
 
 6 See Cretineau-Joly, " Histoire de la Vendee Militaire," 
 1842, vol. iv. p. 185. 
 
Introduction . xi x 
 
 ture, if I had not found the following characteristic 
 sentence in a report addressed to Bonaparte, by Dubois: 
 " Bouvet de Lozier has persisted in his declarations, 
 but it is certain that he will be brought to positive 
 avowals.-" ' By what means ? The gentle processes 
 adopted in Picot\s case enable us to guess. 
 
 Among other facts of which M.Thiers has neglected 
 to speak, there is one that I am absolutely obliged to 
 refer to, in order to give its true complexion to the 
 prosecution instituted against Moreau. The accusa- 
 tion of conspiracy allowed Bonaparte to gratify his 
 private malice and to strike at generals who had had 
 ' the easy misfortune to displease him," and against 
 whom, otherwise, not the smallest grievance could be 
 found. General Souham 8 and his wife were arrested, 
 " suspected," says the warrant for their arrest, " of con- 
 spiracy against the State with Generals Pichegn', 
 Moreau, and the brigand Georges." Generals Ramel 9 
 and Liebert met with the same fate, and in the trial 
 there was no more question of them than of the 
 officers attached to Moreau's person, and imprisoned 
 almost as soon as he l The most ill-treated among 
 them was young Normant, 2 whose intelligence and 
 
 7 Archives of the Prefecture of Police, box labelled Surveil- 
 lance dcs barrieres. Liasse des interrogate* ires pour le P.C. 
 
 8 He commanded a division of the army of Brest ; he was 
 made, or allowed, to come to Paris, and arrested at the 
 barrier. 
 
 9 General Ramel was assassinated at Toulouse, in 1815. He 
 was treated with the utmost severity. He had received a severe 
 wound at St. Domingo, which was still unhealed, and he was 
 obliged to write to the Prefect of Police to complain that it had 
 not been dressed for thirty-six hours. 
 
 1 Among others, Captain de la Chasse de Perigny, his aide- 
 de-camp. 
 
 2 J. F. Gaspard Normant, born at Nantes in 1774; he had 
 been a deputy to the Council of the Five Hundred. 
 
 a 2 
 
xx Introdtution. 
 
 loyalty are lauded by Faur'el. On the day of his 
 arrest (26th Pluviose) Dubois wrote to the First 
 Consul, " His papers have been examined with the 
 greatest care, and contain only newspapers and memo- 
 randa relating to the armies of the Rhine and Italy. 
 He has declared that he has no intimate relations 
 except with Generals Moreau, Bemadotte, and Mac- 
 donald. At the moment of his arrest he indulged 
 in violent language against the Government and 
 its actions. He uttered a pompous eulogy of Moreau, 
 and said that it was an honour to him to share what 
 he called his proscription." 
 
 The violent language and the pompous eulogy were 
 net forgiven. When Normant recovered his liberty 
 after a detention of more than four months, he was 
 struck off the roll of the army, and that of the Legion 
 of Honour, of which he was an officer. 
 
 On one point, however, Fauriel and M. Thiers are 
 in unison ; it is when they speak of the agitation, the 
 trouble, and the consternation which reigned in Pars 
 during the pursuit of the conspirators. Bonaparte, 
 who knew so well how to 
 
 " Faire taire la loi dans le bruit des alarmes," 
 
 left nothing undone to spread terror amid the popula- 
 tion. The continual movement of troops inside the 
 city, closed gates, sentinels posted along the walls 
 at distances of fifty feet, and shooting "brigands," who 
 were probably inoffensive citizens, arrests, searches, 
 and domiciliary visits made everywhere, at all hours, 
 and upon the slightest accusations, recalled the worst 
 days of the Terror to the inhabitants of Paris. At 
 the moment of the trial, the ferment, especially in the 
 
Introduction. xxi 
 
 army, was intense. The Prefect of Police received 
 threatening or ironical letters every day ; placards in 
 manuscript were posted every night. 3 One bore the 
 anagram of Bonaparte, " Nabot a peur" Another, 
 " Rope of honour awarded to the brave men who have 
 distinguished themselves by the arrest of Georges ;" a 
 third, ** Moreau innocent ; the friend of the people, 
 and the father of the soldiers in chains ! Bonaparte, 
 a foreigner, a Corsican, become a usurper and tyrant. 
 Frenchmen, judge ! " A third, probably seized in a 
 barrack, was a pen-and-ink drawing representing the 
 head of Bonaparte, crowned, and resting upon four 
 lion's claws ; by his side a lamp-post with its halter. 
 Lastly, on the back of an eight of hearts was written 
 in big letters, " Soldiers who have served under 
 Moreau, you are cowards if you let him mount the 
 scaffold." 4 
 
 One last feature of the transaction. No sooner was 
 Moreau arrested, than Bonaparte's creatures went 
 about everywhere repeating that his complicity with 
 Georges was proved and his condemnation certain. 
 The instruction and the proceedings at the trial 
 having by degrees dispelled this hope, they endea- 
 voured to reconstruct it on the non-revelation of 
 
 3 These letters and placards are preserved in the box labelled 
 SignalemenU. 
 
 * I will add here a small particular hitherto completely un- 
 known, and just communicated to me by a friend. " In 1826, 
 some men were talking together in a studio of the influence of 
 politics upon costume, of the Bolivar and Murillo hats, and the 
 Quiroga cloaks. ' Do you know, my young friends,' said old 
 Chery, a pupil of Kien, ' do you know why the lappel of your 
 coats is separated from the collar by that cut-out. three-pointed 
 space forming an M ? That dates from Moreau's trial. His 
 partisans brought this detail of costume, which they had made 
 a rallying-sign, into fashion.' " 
 
xxii Introduction. 
 
 conspiracy. " Savary," says Madame de Remusat 
 (vol. i. p. 305), "having questioned my husband on 
 this subject, and the latter having answered that non- 
 revelation was not a crime which would involve the 
 death penalty, Savary said, ' In that case, the Grand 
 Judge has made us commit a great blunder ; it would 
 have been better to resort to a military commission.'" 
 That was indeed a more safe and docile instrument 
 than a tribunal, even though carefully selected. Savary 
 knew it well, he, who had but just quitted the bloody 
 ditch at Vincennes. 
 
 This final chapter, in which so many moving scenes 
 are depicted, was not finished. The manuscript 
 breaks off in the middle of a sentence, after Moreau's 
 speech before the court. I have had to go on with 
 the narrative of this lamentable tragedy to its close, 
 and the documents of which I have availed myself 
 will not, I think, be devoid of interest for the 
 reader. 
 
 I believe that I have not exaggerated the impor- 
 tance and the value of this work, which will, I hope, 
 add to the reputation of Fauriel. It is pervaded by 
 the tone of history in the highest acceptation of that 
 word. In vain wouid the reader seek for a single 
 scandalous anecdote in its pages, and yet, how many 
 must the former secretary of Fouche" have heard, con- 
 cerning the personages whom he brings upon the 
 scene ! But, on the other hand, we frequently come 
 upon the expression of those strong dislikes so dear to 
 Alkestis. What singularly happy phrases are those 
 in which he speaks of " Bonaparte's intrepidity to 
 piaise," of " his skill in using 'men, who seemed to 
 degrade themselves for the first time," and of Josephine 
 
Introduction. xxiii 
 
 as having " preserved of the virtues of her sex, that of 
 compassion for the woes of others." What a flagella- 
 tion is there in his reference to the servility of Fon- 
 tanes, and of Cambaceres, " the man most fitting to 
 carry gravity into baseness." His portrait of Fouche, 
 of that man who, according to M. Thiers, was 
 " neither good nor bad," is worthy of the pen of 
 our best writers. I will also instance the dramatic 
 picture of certain scenes of the trial, and the page 
 of another order of merit in which he describes 
 the funeral of Pichegru, in whose suicide he, in 
 common with almost all his contemporaries, refused 
 to believe. 
 
 The task of annotation which I have executed was 
 an onerous one. I have endeavoured as much as 
 possible to compare and complete the dicta of the 
 historian by means either of the journals and rare 
 documents of the time, or of others taken from the 
 archives of the Prefecture of Police. The Memoirs 
 of Madame dc Remusat have been of great use to me. 
 The two writers, living at the same time, but moving 
 in different social spheres and belonging to different 
 schools of opinion, are in such complete accord on 
 certain facts, 5 that Fauriel's book will henceforth 
 serve in its turn as a confirmation of the Memoirs, 
 and a commentary upon them. 
 
 A last word. The manuscript, as I have said, did 
 
 5 Fauriel speaks of " the air of exultation and triumph with 
 which Bonaparte established himself in the apartments of the 
 unfortunate Louis XVI." We read in Madame de Remusat's 
 " Memoires," vol. i. p. 170, " I heard from his wife that on the 
 day when he thought fit to establish himself in the Tuileries, 
 he said to her, laughing, ' Come, my little Creole, come and 
 put yourself into the bed of your masters.'" 
 
xx iv Introduction. 
 
 not bear any general title. That which I have adopted, 
 " The Last Days of the Consulate," appears to me 
 to convey a sufficiently exact idea of the subject- 
 matter of the work in a concise form. 
 
 L. L. 
 
THE 
 
 LAST DAYS OF THE CONSULATE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A SKETCH OF THE EVENTS WHICH PRECEDED AND 
 FORESHADOWED THE DESTRUCTION OF THE 
 REPUBLIC, DATING FROM THE l8TH BRUMAIRE. 
 
 Before I enter into the details of those events which 
 I purpose to narrate, I think it well to give a brief 
 summary of preceding circumstances, whose con- 
 sequence and complement they were. In order to 
 do this I must revert to the 18th Brumaire, year VIII., 
 when, by a sudden change of position and role, 
 Bonaparte passed from the headship of the army to 
 that of the nation. As, however, I can only give a 
 sketch of a picture which would need to be vast and 
 various were it to portray all the truth, I shall limit 
 myself to such features of the whole as particularly 
 suit my purpose. I am not qualified or disposed to 
 write a history of the government of Bonaparte, 
 considered as a whole, and for its entire duration ; 
 but I shall endeavour to point out the rapid progress 
 of his elevation from the consulate to the empire ; 
 and I shall try to detach from the general aspect 
 of his conduct the most manifest tokens and the 
 
 B 
 
2 The Last Days of the Consulate, 
 
 most curious phases of his project. This was to 
 annihilate the Republic, and force the French Revo- 
 lution back to a point at which there should remain 
 nought but the recollection of its misfortunes and its 
 crimes. 
 
 The power upon which Bonaparte seized on the 
 1 8th Brumaire, although it was speedily placed, to all 
 appearance, under regular and constitutional forms, 
 was, in reality, and by the very nature of the circum- 
 stances amid which it had arisen, a power without 
 limits and without counterpoise. It was acknow- 
 ledged, by those who had conspired to establish it, to 
 be a sort of dictatorship ; but a dictatorship all the 
 more dangerous to liberty on account of the care that 
 had been taken to disguise its nature and to conceal 
 its name ; because there existed only one man held 
 capable of undertaking it, and that man was, or might 
 believe himself to be, master of the army, which had 
 now become one of the powers of the State, and was 
 indeed the greatest of them all, since the others had 
 failed to do their duty and broken their pled 
 The danger culminated in the fact that the French 
 had so much cause for displeasure with the Directory 
 and the two Legislative Councils, that they were 
 ready to yield a joyful submission to any govern- 
 ment which, while securing them repose, would have 
 been sufficiently prudent to deprive them of only that 
 portion of liberty whose loss they were incapable of 
 feeling or regretting. On what a pinnacle of fame in 
 the memory of nations might that man have stood 
 who, invested with unlimited power at a period when 
 it had become so easy to usurp (at least temporarily) 
 the rights of a great people, had made it his pride and 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 3 
 
 glory to respect them ; who had taken no advantage of 
 the exhaustion and the woes of his fellow-citizens 
 save to teach them to be free. 1 
 
 Let us return to Bonaparte. We may safely pre- 
 sume that his first thought on attaining supreme 
 power was, if not to transmit it as an inheritance to 
 his family, at least to keep it securely in his own 
 hands during his lifetime, and to render it independent 
 of all those forms which were regarded by the opinion, 
 that prevailed at that time as securities for public 
 liberty. 
 
 The first individual act of his policy was to write to 
 the King of England, to the Emperor of Austria, and 
 to the Tsar of Russia the only European sovereigns 
 who were as yet in arms against France making 
 proposals of peace to them. His secret intention was 
 to procure their assent by offering them conditions 
 equally favourable to their interests and his own 
 views. In order to get hold of them for the purposes 
 of his personal ambition, he would have sacrificed 
 those results of the French Revolution, which they 
 regarded with the greatest aversion and alarm. 
 
 His offers and insinuations succeeded with the 
 Russian Tsar, Paul ; 2 they were set aside with prudent 
 
 1 [Marginal note]. " Point out that, although at first his views 
 upon the use which he might make of his position were not fixed, 
 ami could not be, they were from the first moment opposed 
 to the Republic." 
 
 - [Marg. note]. " He insinuated in his letter that the throne of 
 France would be restored to the Bourbons, because the example 
 of the dethronement of one king might readily become dangerous 
 to the others. As for himself, he gave it to be understood a 
 throne in Italy would suffice for him. Thenceforth the Bourbons 
 seemed to keep themselves more quiet in their several retreats.'* 
 
 The Moiiiteur, which had been 'jince the 7th Nivose the 
 only official journal, gives on the 26th (1) the letter of Talleyrand, 
 "Minister of Exterior Relations" (as the Foreign Affairs' 
 
 B 2 
 
4 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 reserve by the Cabinet of Vienna, and disdainfully 
 rejected by the Cabinet of St. James's ; so that instead 
 of coming into the immediate enjoyment of the kind 
 of authority to which he aspired, and obtaining the 
 assent and favour of the foreign powers against the 
 French, he was obliged to arouse all the remaining 
 strength and energy of the latter against the former. 
 The necessity for continuing the war involved the 
 double vexation to Bonaparte of delay in carrying 
 out his plans, and the exposure of them to various 
 hazards. His hopes were, however, speedily en- 
 couraged by the rapidity and the decisive importance 
 of his own victories in Italy, and those of Moreau in 
 Germany, in the campaign of the year VIII., so that 
 he began to prepare for their complete fulfilment. 
 
 On the momentous 18th Brumaire itself, suspicion, 
 uneasiness, and dark presentiments of the character 
 and intentions of Bonaparte had not been wanting. 
 The alternate insolence and weakness which he dis- 
 played during the day, the ridiculous assurance with 
 which he proclaimed himself the God of Fortune and 
 Victory in the presence of the Council of the Elders, 
 who were entirely devoted to him, 3 his agitation 
 
 Minister was then called) to Lord Granville, Secretary of State 
 for Foreign Affairs of Great Britain, forwarding to him Bona- 
 parte's letter to George III.; (2) Bonaparte's letter ; (3) Lord 
 Granville's reply to Talleyrand; (4) the diplomatic note in 
 answer to Bonaparte's letter. The text of these documents is 
 preceded in the official journal by a sentence which is somewhat 
 strangely worded: "The following documents," says the Moni- 
 teur, " whose authority we do not guarantee, are extracted from 
 the English journal The Morning Chronicle." 
 
 Bonaparte's letters to George III. and the Emperor of 
 Austria are published in vol vi., pp. 46 and 47, of the " Cor- 
 respondance de Napoldon " The letter to the Tsar is not given. 
 
 3 [Marg. note.] u This to be rectihed. The Council of the 
 Elders included men who were frightened at what was happen- 
 ing, and foresaw all that would result from it." 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 5 
 
 and pallor when a few members of the Council of 
 Five Hundred vainly but clamourously opposed him, 
 the haste with which he signed, two days later, the 
 decree for the transportation of fifty of those same 
 representatives of the French nation whom he had 
 expelled by force of arms, were so many rays of light 
 thrown upon the secret recesses of his soul. The 
 man who had conducted himself in such a way as 
 this could hardly continue to appear heroic in the 
 vulgar sense of that term, and certainly was not the 
 man whom France, and perhaps humanity itself, were 
 awaiting, that he might ameliorate and ennoble them. 
 The first circumstance tending to enlighten obser- 
 vant minds upon the kind of ambition entertained by 
 Bonaparte, and upon the nature of his intentions, 
 occurred shortly after the 18th Brumaire, and deserves 
 remembrance. I allude to the transfer of the seat 
 of the Consular Government and the residence of the 
 First Consul from the Palace of the Luxembourg to 
 that of the Tuileries. 4 
 
 4 The following appears in the Publiciste of the first Ventose, 
 year VIII., under the heading of, 
 
 " Paris, the 30th Pluviose. 
 
 "The acceptance of the Constitution was proclaimed 
 yesterday in 1'aris. The Government was installed at the 
 Tuileries to-day with great pomp. Close upon 3000 men of 
 the different arms were paraded ; the magnificent uniform of 
 the Consul's Guard, commanded by General Murat, was espe- 
 cially remarked. The cortege^ composed of about forty car- 
 riages, was formed at the Palace of the Luxembourg, and set 
 out a: one o'clock precisely. The fine weather enabled an 
 immense crowd to circulate in the streets, on the quays, around 
 the Tuileries, and especially on the bridge formerly called 
 'Royal.' The procession was headed by a picket of heavy 
 cavalry. After this came the carriage of the Councillors of 
 State, then a military band, the staff of the seventeenth military 
 division, and all the general officers at present in Paris, the 
 ministers' carriages, the Consul's carriage drawn by ten white 
 
6 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 So much trouble was taken to turn so ordinary an 
 occurrence as a change of abode into a pompous 
 ceremony, that it seemed to reveal something more 
 than Bonaparte's liking for an ostentatious display of 
 his person and his power. Some special features ot 
 the occasion prevented all this parade about an occur- 
 rence which did not call for any, from being simply 
 and solely ridiculous. It was remarked that Bona- 
 parte had been careful to have certain inscriptions 
 the walls and in the immediate vicinity of the Tuilerics 
 erased ; these inscriptions & commemorated the terrible 
 day on which the old palace of the kings had been 
 besieged and invaded by the popular fury, and the 
 throne of the Capets, long dishonoured by their vices, 
 and ill-defended by the arms of the last of them, 
 had been riotously overthrown. The observers were 
 struck by the air of exultation and triumph with which 
 he installed himself in the apartments of the unfortu- 
 nate Louis XVI., a place of abode which a First 
 Magistrate of the French Republic, sufficiently worthy 
 of that title to feel no ambition for any other, could 
 hardly have chosen without reluctance, and, perhaps, 
 without impropriety. 
 
 I shall not, however, insist farther upon an indica- 
 tion which may seem to be no more than a prescnti- 
 
 horses, the st ff of the Consular Guard, the Mounted Guard, 
 &c." The Motiitcur does not give these details. The short 
 article which records the ceremony ends as follows: "The 
 public displayed their satisfaction by loud applause ; hope and 
 joy shone in every face." (Afoniteuroi the ist Ventose, p. 602, 
 col. 3-) 
 
 6 A very characteristic inscription on the wall of one of the 
 guard-rooms in the courtyard ot the Tuilcries was forgotten on 
 this occasion, and suffered to remain. The words were visible 
 to the Cortege as it passed : " Royalty has been abolished in 
 France and shall never be revived." 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 7 
 
 ment, or a recollection transformed by enmity into 
 presentiment, but pass on to one which was more 
 positive and more important. Towards the close of 
 year VIII. a pamphlet entitled "A Parallel between 
 Cromwell and Bonaparte" appeared and attracted 
 great attention. 6 The Protector of England was 
 represented by the writer as too completely Bona- 
 parte's inferior in military and political genius to be 
 worthy of comparison with him. A similar judgment 
 was carelessly passed upon General Monk. Only 
 the Roman Dictator was held worthy of such 
 honour, not as a statesman, but as a warrior. The 
 conclusion drawn by this strange parallel was that 
 nothing could so greatly conduce to the welfare and 
 glory of the French nation as the making of the con- 
 sulate hereditary in the family of Bonaparte. 
 
 In Paris this pamphlet was distributed to the 
 members of the various governmental offices ; it was 
 addressed to all the civil functionaries of the depart- 
 ments, and, if I am not mistaken, to the military 
 
 6 The following is the exact title of .his pamphlet, which 
 Bourrienne and Fouche, as well as Fauriel, declare to have 
 heen written by Fontanes : " Parallele entre Cesar, Cromwell. 
 Monck, ct Bonaparte, traduit de l'Anglais." Barbicr and 
 Querard erroneously attribute it to Lacretelle. 
 
 ' Immediately alter the appearance of this pamphlet," says 
 Bourrienne, "the prefects nearest to Paris sent copies of it to 
 the First Consul, with complaints of the ill effects which it was 
 producing." (" Memoires," vol. iv.. pp. 216 219.) The prefects 
 who were at the greatest distance did the same ; for instance, 
 Count d'Eymar, Prefect of Leman. See his correspondence, 
 published by M. Gustave Revilliod in his very interesting 
 volume, " Portraits et Croquis " (Part I., p. 380 and following), 
 Geneva, 1882. 
 
 An animated scene took place between Bonaparte and 
 Admiral Truguet, with reference to this pamphlet, at a sitting 
 of the Council of State, after the ''attempt" of Nivose. (See 
 Bourrienne's " Mdmoires," vol. iv., p. 209.) 
 
8 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 authorities as well. These distributions were made 
 in profusion and without any mystery. 
 
 There was but one authority in France powerful 
 enough to risk such a proceeding with impunity ; 
 that was the same authority which governed the 
 Republic. The pamphlet in question had been written 
 at the instigation of Bonaparte, 7 through the inter- 
 vention of his brother Lucien, then Minister of the 
 Interior ; and it was the work of Fontanes, who was at 
 that time merely the secret agent of Lucien Bonaparte. 
 
 From these data it was easy to discern the motive 
 and to appreciate the spirit of the " Parallel." How, 
 indeed, should Cromwell be a great man to the 
 thinking of Bonaparte ; Cromwell, who had con- 
 tented himself with playing a great 'part under a title 
 unknown until he bore it, and exercising a power more 
 than royal with external forms of austere simplicity? 9 
 Monk must have appeared contemptible to him, not 
 so much because he betrayed his party, as because 
 he employed greater resources and more skilful in- 
 trigue to restore their lost throne to the Stuarts, than 
 would have sufficed to seat himself securely on it. 
 
 Besides, there was still a class of persons who 
 persisted in imputing to Bonaparte an intention of 
 following in the footsteps of Monk ; therefore the 
 expression of his contempt for that English general 
 was neither gratuitous nor superfluous. As for the 
 
 " According to Fouche, Bonaparte himself revised it. 
 
 8 [Marg. note.] " It'was the leading part {premier role) of his 
 time." 
 
 9 [Marg. note.] "He had promoted this belief, and the 
 indirect warning that resulted from the share which he had 
 taken in this pamphlet ought to have undeceived the foreign 
 powers, perhaps even more effectually than it ought to have 
 alarmed France." 
 
The L ast Days of the Consulate. 9 
 
 Roman Dictator, his only shortcoming in the eyes of 
 the French Consul was the failure of his project of 
 reigning over the Romans. 
 
 At this epoch the French believed themselves still 
 free ; or, to speak more correctly, they were still able 
 to ignore the excess of the danger which threatened 
 their liberty. Fontanes' pamphlet was received with 
 much surprise and some uneasiness. Only the few 
 who were acquainted with its origin were capable of 
 perceiving all that it foreboded for the future. The 
 many could only regard it as the production of either 
 an indiscreet flatterer or an astute enemy of the First 
 Consul. Bonaparte did not think proper to insist 
 upon this first revelation of his most private and 
 cherished thoughts. He at once made Fouche vehe- 
 mently repudiate the pamphlet whose publication and 
 distribution in every part of the Republic he had 
 secretly authorized. Had not the period been one 
 at which a tendency toward servitude was already 
 developing itself in the nation, the ambitious man 
 who ventured to utter so serious a threat against 
 public liberty beforehand would have had less chance 
 of carrying it into effect. Bonaparte found his advan- 
 tage in it ; those whose duty it was to resist him 
 became accustomed to the consciousness of their 
 powerlessness and weakness, and the more clearly 
 the nature of his enterprises was proved, the less did 
 they dream of opposing them. 
 
 The continental peace, that glorious and necessary 
 result of the latest victories of Moreau, 1 was signed at 
 
 1 It was said everywhere that " Bonaparte had triumphed for 
 himself alone, and Moreau for peace." (Fouch^'s " Mdmoires," 
 vol. i., p. 226.) 
 
io TJie Last Days of the Consulate, 
 
 LuneVille at the beginning of year IX. 2 From that 
 moment Bonaparte no longer concealed his intention 
 to propose that a change should be made in the 
 constitution of the State, although he did not as yet 
 avow either the motive or the precise object of that 
 change. Certain persons who were in his confidence 
 to some extent two or three of his ministers among 
 the number allowed what they knew of his mind on 
 this point to leak out, sometimes of set purpose, but 
 occasionally by inadvertence. But whether they 
 were really deceived about his views, or whether they 
 feigned to believe them pure and noble, in order to 
 secure a colourable pretext for seconding them a 
 question that cannot be decided at all events, tli 
 persons complacently hinted that at last the French 
 people were about to be endowed with a constitution 
 worthy of them and of the genius of their chief. 
 These hints, which were at first faint and mysterious, 
 developed into a popular rumour, which found loud 
 utterance when the 14th of July was approaching. 3 
 Bonaparte, who was not ready to justify the rumour, 
 had it indirectly contradicted, or, at least, allowed a 
 contradiction to be promulgated. 
 
 Nearly two years had gone by, and still Bonaparte 
 was, or appeared to be, only the elective and tem- 
 porary head of a great Republic. This was because 
 the event on which he had chiefly founded his plan 
 and his hopes had not yet occurred. Peace with 
 England had not been made, and to that peace the 
 nation attached the greatest value, because the revival 
 
 - 9th of February, 1801. 
 
 a It will be remembered that a national fete, in celebration of 
 the taking of the Bastille, had been instituted. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 1 1 
 
 of commerce and industry largely depended upon it, 
 and it would afford the soundest security for peace 
 on the Continent. The First Consul had, therefore, 
 deferred the entire manifestation of his views until 
 the hour at which this much-desired peace should b 
 proclaimed, being convinced that the title of " pacifi 
 cator " being his, it would authorize any other titles 
 that he might wish to add to it, and that the French 
 people would be too happy to regain repose at the 
 cost of all the sacrifices and all the efforts they had 
 made to acquire liberty. 
 
 The preliminaries of peace with England were 
 signed in London at the beginning of year X. 4 Bona- 
 parte, who wished to make it appear as the fruit of his 
 own genius and wisdom solely, began, nevertheless, 
 to bear himself like a man who, regarding it as the 
 indispensable and simple effect of the weariness that 
 ensues upon every war, and which had especially 
 followed the war of the Revolution, was well disposed 
 to turn the excess of that weariness to advantage in 
 the accomplishment of his designs. From the date 
 of the signature of the preliminary treaty in London, 
 he believed himself to be sufficiently powerful and 
 popular to venture upon an avowal of his preten- 
 sions, and to let his ambition soar unchecked. Acts 
 which were the preludes to a completely new order 
 of things succeeded each other without interruption 
 in the course of year X., and the hypocrisy with which 
 Bonaparte had hitherto dissembled his purpose was 
 no longer available except in the choice of means 
 and pretexts. A sketch of his conduct during that 
 
 4 On the night of the ist of October, 1801. (See ''Thiers," 
 book xi.) 
 
12 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 year is essential to my design ; and I may say that I 
 should not regard such a sketch as useless, if it 
 did no more than prepare the imagination for the 
 strange events of year XII, the particular subject of 
 this history. 
 
 The first important result of the preliminary treaty 
 of London was the Congress held at Lyons for the 
 organization of the Italian Republic. 5 It is for the 
 Italians who were summoned to the Congress, and in 
 a position to observe the intrigues which determined 
 its issue, to supply a history of it. I refer to it at 
 this place merely as an event which already threatened 
 the projected peace between England and France 
 before it had been concluded, and would have renewed 
 the continental war at once had Europe been less 
 thoroughly drained of both men and money. I shall 
 also relate an incident most characteristic of Bona- 
 parte, and which throws a light upon the subse- 
 quent facts to which the Cisalpine Congress was 
 the prelude. 
 
 The members of this Congress knew nothing about 
 the form of the Constitution that was about to be 
 given to their country ; but they foresaw that power 
 would be concentrated in a single chief, 6 and the 
 selection of that chief was the principal subject of 
 curiosity and intrigue. Their opinion and their 
 votes were unequally divided among a very small 
 number of their fellow-citizens, for not one of 
 them supposed that the idea of choosing a man 
 from a foreign country to govern them could pos- 
 
 6 The Congress met in January, 1802. (See "Thiers," 
 book xiv.) 
 
 6 [Marg. note.] " They foresaw this from the events that were 
 occurring in France, and the spirit prevalent there at the period." 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. i 3 
 
 sibly be entertained. The Consulta had nomi- 
 nated a committee of thirty members to prepare the 
 deliberations in which it was about to engage, and 
 also to proceed to immediate communications with 
 the First Consul or with Talleyrand, the promoter and 
 agent of his purpose in this great affair. 
 
 When they came to the nomination of the President 
 of the Italian Republic, it was agreed that the Com- 
 mittee of Thirty should designate the man whom 
 they considered most capable of filling that post by 
 secret votes. This designation was not to have any 
 definitive and necessary result ; it was only to be 
 tentatively made, so as to ascertain what were the 
 different ideas that might exist in the Consulta, 
 with a view to find farther means of reconciling 
 them. The Italians did not detect a snare in this 
 measure, although it had been suggested and advised 
 by Talleyrand. 
 
 Melzi 7 obtained all the votes of the Committee 
 except his own and one or two others, for his col- 
 league was a man who was actually his enemy, and 
 who wanted to be his rival. 8 Bonaparte did not 
 obtain a single vote ; this proved beyond a doubt 
 that he had not solicited votes, but it also apprized 
 him that if he wanted them he had better set about 
 
 7 The Duke of Melzi-Erile, of Spanish origin, but long resi- 
 dent at Milan, had there displayed partiality to the French, and 
 had been Minister Plenipotentiary of the Cisalpine Republic at 
 the Congress of Rastadt. He was a great friend of Madame 
 de Stael, at whose bouse Fauriel saw him frequently. He 
 figures in her novel "Delphine" under the name of " Ser- 
 bellane." 
 
 8 Probably Marescalchi, who was then Minister of the Cisal- 
 pine Republic at Paris. He became Minister of Exterior Rela- 
 tions, with orders to reside near Bonaparte, when the latter 
 procured his own nomination as President. 
 
14 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 procuring them. On learning the result of the voting, 
 he instructed Talleyrand to declare to the members 
 of the Committee, through Marescalchi, that the only 
 means of safety for the Italian Republic was to make 
 the First Consul of the French Republic its President, 
 and to give them to understand that any other choice 
 would be superfluous. This declaration produced its 
 effect. 9 Thus, then did those councils to which 
 unhappy Italy looked for the laying of the founda- 
 tions of new and vigorous freedom, result in nothing 
 but the imposition of a chief whom she did not desire, 
 and the advent of a master resolved to govern her 
 as his conquest. 
 
 Bonaparte returned to Paris to receive congratula- 
 tions which were, as usual, loud and demonstrative in 
 proportion to their insincerity. His first act was to 
 order the press to assure the French nation through 
 the columns of all the newspapers that his new title 
 did not in any way compromise the tranquillity of 
 France, and to assert that he could not hive refu 
 assent to the wish of the Italian Republic, without 
 displaying a lack of magnanimity and even of 
 prudence. 
 
 He lost no time in reverting from the attention 
 due to Italy to the greater care which he owed to 
 the affairs of France ; nor had he, indeed, been di- 
 verted from the latter for a moment. He had only 
 to pass from meditation to action. 
 
 A sort of party of opposition had been formed in 
 the Tribunate. This party, which had perhaps 
 lacked discretion and prudence to a certain extent, 
 
 9 The election of Bonaparte was voted by acclamation on the 
 25th of January (15th Pluviose), 1802. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 15 
 
 had not been deficient in either talent or courage. It 
 had voted the rejection of several laws which were 
 destined to form part of the Civil Code, and it had 
 succeeded in getting some of these rejected by the 
 Legislative Body, in which, also, there existed a 
 corresponding party of opposition. 1 No more than 
 this was needed to irritate and give umbrage to 
 Bonaparte ; but he had had a motive more serious 
 and more real than any of those which he then avowed 
 for suppressing every kind of opposition in both the 
 Tribunate and the Legislative Body, that is to say, 
 for suppressing in the cne liberty of speech, and in 
 the other liberty of silence. 2 He foresaw that men 
 who ventured to protest against so trifling a remnant 
 of feudal barbarity as the right of escheatage [droit 
 cVauhainc) would not be disposed to approve of the 
 system he was concocting in his brain ; at least, he 
 did them the honour to fear them. 3 
 
 It had been settled by the Constitution that the 
 Tribunate and the Legislative Body should be 
 annually renewed by one-fifth ; but the mode of 
 out-going for the members who were successively to 
 form this fifth in the five first years had not been laid 
 down ; no one having supposed that any method 
 more simple and equitable than the lot could exist. 
 
 1 [Marg. note.] "This was a party of outspoken opposition." 
 
 2 [Marg. note.] " Make it more clear that the Tribunate would 
 all the same have been weeded by Bonaparte, even if he had 
 chosen to govern under the title of Consul only ; the freedom 
 of the speeches delivered there, and the nature of the prin- 
 ciples to which the discussions referred, were sufficient motives 
 (even independently of his ulterior purposes) for the expulsion 
 of these importunate orators." 
 
 3 The Legislative Body had no right except that of voting 
 secretly, without discussion, upon the lavvs which were presented 
 to it. 
 
1 6 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 The period had now come when the first part a 
 renewal was to take place in the two bodies. But 
 Bonaparte, 4 unwilling to await at the hands of chance 
 an advantage that might be secured by his own fore- 
 sight, demanded from the Senate a measure by which 
 his interest should be placed beyond the reach of the 
 caprices of fate, and the Senate hesitated to obey him 
 only just so far and so long as sufficed to prove that 
 their obedience was an act of cowardice and a violation 
 of principle. By a Senatus-consultum of the 22nd 
 Ventose, the Senate decided that the recomposition 
 of the Tribunate and the Legislative Body for 
 year X. should be effected, not immediately and 
 simply by the out-going of one-fifth of their members, 
 but byaspecial re-election of the remaining four-fifths. 
 In this fashion did the dignity of the Senate limit 
 itself to giving a subtle turn to the fulfilment of a 
 despotic order, and to arbitrarily depriving a certain 
 number of men of their functions, without being 
 obliged to pronounce their names. A few days after- 
 wards, a new Senatus-consultum, which was only the 
 complement and application of the first, was issued, 
 and it was not without perplexity and difficulty that 
 twenty men were found in the Tribunate, and sixty 
 in the Legislative Body, worthy of the honour of being 
 reputed dangerous to the designs of Bonaparte. A 
 singularity wo- thy ol mention is that those acts of 
 the Senate took place at a moment when men's 
 minds were much occupied with the strange Con- 
 stitution recently given to the Italian Republic. 
 Now, in that Constitution a shapeless mixture of 
 European and Asiatic ideas, of principles of liberty 
 1 On the advice of Cambaceres. (See " Thiers," book xiii.) 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 1 7 
 
 and despotic institutions the case analogous to that 
 which the Senate had just settled in so subtle and 
 complicated a manner, had been submitted to the 
 decision of the lot. It matters little whether this 
 article in the Constitution of the Italian Republic 
 was an oversight of Bonaparte or the fruit of mature 
 consideration. 
 
 It would be useless to pause here, and comment 
 upon the advantages that accrued to Bonaparte from 
 the Senatus-consultum of the 22nd Ventose. It 
 suffices to remember that it was at this period, and 
 by this means, that he introduced into the Tribunate 
 and into the Legislative Body most of the men who 
 have since brought about, or accepted acts in the 
 name of the French nation, that have been fatal to its 
 liberty and glory, without securing repose, the sole 
 benefit an enslaved people can enjoy. He also de- 
 rived from this the indirect but equally real advan- 
 tage of having made the authority charged with the 
 maintenance of the Constitution commit one more 
 arbitrary action. 
 
 At length the day for which Bonaparte had waited 
 with so much impatience arrived : the peace with 
 England was signed at Amiens on the 4th Germinal. 5 
 He devoted the days immediately following the 
 publication of the treaty to receiving the congratu- 
 lations of all the authorities, but soon turned his 
 attention to the solid profit to be derived from an 
 event from which he intended to reap much more 
 than adulation, however lavish. 
 
 He began by holding some private conferences with 
 those members of the three great bodies of the State 
 5 27th of March, 1802. 
 
 C 
 
1 8 The Last Days of the Consulate 
 
 who were most devoted to him. On the conclusion 
 of those conferences, on the 1 6th Germinal, he com- 
 municated the treaty of Amiens to the Legislative 
 Bodyand the Tribunate, to be discussed and sanctioned 
 as a law of the Republic. It is easy to imagine how 
 diligently the orators who desired to please the hero- 
 pacificator strove on that occasion to touch up, refiv 
 and vary the language of praise and enthusiasm, and 
 how boldly they dealt in adulation under the appear 
 ance of zeal for the national glory and prosperity. 
 Chabot de l'Allier 6 proposed that the Tribunate, in 
 virtue of a constitutional prerogative of that body, 
 should express their desire that a conspicuous token 
 of the national gratitude might be bestowed upon 
 General Bonaparte. 
 
 The circumstances under which this motion was 
 proposed lent it a specious pretext ; but it was illegal 
 and even senseless, for the reason that it was indefinite, 
 and had no special aim or bearing. The Tribunate 
 had once before used its right of expressing its will in 
 connection with the great interests of the country, and 
 Bonaparte was on that occasion the object of the 
 motion. But the Tribunes had expressed their 
 wishes without any vagueness whatever. The pro-^ 
 posal was purely and simply that the First Consul 
 should be granted the Chateau of Saint Cloud a 
 national recompense. 7 Thingsassumedquiteadifferent 
 
 6 Georges Antoine Chabot, member of the Convention (1795), 
 afterwards of the Council of Five Hundred, of the Tribunate, 
 and of the Court of Cassation ; born at Montlueon in 1758 ; died 
 in 1819. 
 
 7 The following is what occurred : The Chateau of Saint Cloud 
 being the nearest to Paris of all the royal residences, the in- 
 habitants of that commune had been induced to present a 
 petition to the Tribunate, that it might be offered to Bonaparte ; 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 1 9 
 
 aspect on the 16th Floreal, when, proposing for the 
 second time that a conspicuous token of the national 
 gratitude should be bestowed upon Bonaparte, the 
 Tribunate modestly abstained from all prevision or 
 speculation upon the nature of that token. This was 
 enough to lead even those who, not being aware of the 
 real btate of things, would have been more disposed 
 to accept appearances for truth, to discern that the 
 motion made at the Tribunate, and the declaration 
 which resulted from it, far from being spontaneous, 
 formed part of a plan previously concerted with the 
 only man who had the will and the power to weave 
 webs of the sort, and that it was desirable (or the pro- 
 gress and success of that plan that the complimentary 
 wish (vceu) of the Tribunate should be expressed as 
 vaguely as possible. 
 
 The motion of Chabot de l'Allier was unanimously 
 adopted, s and without any speechifying. No one 
 seized the occasion to dilate upon the motives of the 
 motion, or to indulge in laudation of its subject. The 
 very thing that ought to have caused its rejection 
 its indefiniteness no doubt principally contributed 
 to its acceptance. Those members of the Tribunate 
 
 but he declared to the commission charged to report upon the 
 petition, that he would neither accept any gift on the part of 
 the people during the term of his office, nor for a year after the 
 cessation of his functions. (See ' Memoire sur le Consulat," 
 17991804, by a former Counsellor of State [ThibcaudeauJ, 
 pp. 5 and 6. Paris, 1827.) 
 
 8 Chabot, who was a great friend of Cambaceres, was at that 
 time President of the Tribunate. After a motion by Liasson, 
 demanding that a deputation should be sent to congratulate 
 the Government upon the subject of the treaty, he left the 
 President's chair, ascended the tribune, and proposed the 
 motion for a great manifestation of the national gratitude 
 towards the First Consul. 
 
 C 2 
 
20 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 who no longer had the courage to do their duty, 
 although they still possessed the sense of it, conceived 
 that the nation would have no right to impute an 
 attack upon public liberty to them, because they 
 could feign unconsciousness that any such project was 
 involved in their action. 
 
 According to the Constitution, the Conservative 
 Senate was the authority to whom it belonged to 
 deliberate upon the vote of the Tribunate, in so far 
 at least as it was constitutional and legitimate to 
 deliberate upon an indefinite proposal ; for to inter- 
 pret and to specify it was to make it the Senate's 
 own ; to do the will of the Senate itself under the 
 appearance of doing that of another State body. 
 Meanwhile Bonaparte had taken all the necessary 
 measures to forestall any diverse interpretations of 
 the meaning of the Tribunes and the Senate. He 
 had given such members of the latter as were the 
 most submissive to him, to understand that the best 
 way to carry out the wish that had been formally 
 expressed would be by making him Consul for life. 
 The men who were in his confidence were already too 
 much debased by their zeal for tyranny, even before 
 it became all-powerful, to be in a position to promise 
 much more than their individual suffrages. On such 
 an occasion as this, and in order to get the better of 
 the public common sense, he required men who 
 either really did degrade themselves for the first time, 
 or appeared to do so. Consequently he had the 
 senators whom he distrusted beset in every way. 
 Fouche distinguished himself especially by the eager- 
 ness of his efforts to procure votes for him, or at least 
 to secure the silence of such senators as he feared 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 21 
 
 to find faithful to their duty. Indirect threats, ful- 
 some flattery, adroit promises, reiterated representa- 
 tions of the uselessness of all efforts to maintain 
 certain results of the Revolution, all these devices 
 were employed to secure the assent of some of the 
 members of the Republican minority of the Senate 
 to that scheme of Bonaparte's of which the Tribunate 
 was the mouthpiece. 9 
 
 All these insidious precautions were not without 
 their utility ; and the temporary Consul might flatter 
 himself with every appearance of reason that he would 
 soon be perpetual Consul, or even more than that. 
 The day marked out for the final development of this 
 momentous intrigue arrived ; it was the 18th Floreal ; l 
 for it is well to remark that only a few hours inter- 
 vened 2 between the vote of the Tribunate and the 
 delibeiation of the Senate. During the few minutes 
 which preceded the opening of that too memorable 
 sitting, the different tones of private conversations, 
 and the various expressions of countenance, would 
 have sufficed to reveal the contrast of thoughts and 
 
 9 [Marg. note.] " It must be made plain that Bonaparte's plan 
 had been so arranged that 
 
 u I. The Republican senators should propose the re-election 
 of the First Consul for ten or twenty years. 
 
 " 2. That others, who were bolder, should propose that he 
 should hold the Consulship for life. 
 
 " 3. That the most imprudent should propose hereditary power 
 under some vague denomination. 
 
 k< The plan was not carried into execution without encounter- 
 ing some difficulties. From this point of view the famous 
 sitting of the Senate must be narrated." 
 
 1 8th of May. 
 
 2 [Marg. note] " The interval was an entire day.'' In fact it 
 was on the day following the vote on Chabot's motion, the 7th 
 of May, that the deputation was received at the Tuileries, and 
 the sitting of the Senate took place on the 8th. 
 
22 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 feelings, and to forecast the opposition in the coming 
 votes, if not in the impending speeches. The courage 
 of the senators who were faithful to the cause of the 
 country sustained them to the point of allowing their 
 grief to appear, but not their indignation. Those 
 who could still blush for the pledge which they had 
 just given to tyranny endeavoured to disguise their 
 distress and shame. The calmest among them were 
 the men who knew that no fresh baseness on their 
 part would astonish anybody. 
 
 Lacepede opened the sitting with a report in the 
 name of a commission which was supposed to have 
 examined the proposal of the Tribunes ; but the tone 
 of this report was so timid, and its conclusions were 
 so vague, that it left almost all to be said by the 
 senators who were devoted to the First Consul. 
 Tronchet, 3 the advocate, spoke first, and gave it as 
 his opinion that, of all the ways in which the desire of 
 the Tribunes might be interpreted and accomplished, 
 the most proper and effectual would be the conferring 
 of the First Consulship on Bonaparte for life; but 
 under the audacity and the temerity of this speech, 
 the speaker's embarrassment and uneasiness were to be 
 detected. 4 General Lespinasse b supported Tronchct's 
 opinion in the re.-olute manner of a man who has 
 made up his mind to be unboundedly and unscru- 
 pulously servile, and modified it only by the adroit 
 
 3 Tronchet had been one of the defenders of Louis XVI. 
 He was nominated to the Conservative Senate in February, 
 1801. 
 
 *[Marg. note] "Thus it was the first part of the plan that 
 had failed. Make this more clear." 
 
 5 He was a general of artillery, and in December, 1799, had 
 been nominated member of the Conservative Senate. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 23 
 
 insinuation that if there were any expedient 
 preferable to that of nominating Bonaparte Consul 
 for life, it would be proclaiming him Hereditary 
 Consul. 
 
 B >th these speeches fell rather flat. The senators 
 who were resolved not to oppose the will of Bona- 
 parte, but who needed to be encouraged to forget 
 their duties by authorities and examples, wanted 
 to have the proposal of a measure which meant the 
 doing away with the Republic expressly approved by 
 one of their colleagues of the Republican minority. 
 By a singular and unforeseen accident this encourage- 
 ment was not afforded them. 
 
 A certain senator, reckoned among the opposition, 
 and highly esteemed for his uprightness, had been 
 induced, I know not under what influence, to support 
 the proposal of the Consulship for life, and he came 
 down to the Senate on the 18th Floreal with a written 
 speech to that effect. But having avowed his purpose 
 to one of his colleagues a few minutes before the 
 sitting, he was met with such strong remonstrance 
 that he blushed for his weakness, flung his speech into 
 the fire, and promised his vote to the cause of the 
 Republic. 
 
 In the midst of this suspense and uncertainty, 
 Garat stood up to speak against the proposal of the 
 Consulship for life. He defended the interests of 
 liberty with sufficient eloquence to abash and alarm 
 those who were tacitly resigned to betray them, or 
 who had formally pledged themselves to do so. He 
 also adroitly contrived to appear more anxious and 
 zealous for the honour and glory of Bonaparte, while 
 thwarting his schemes, than those who were ready to 
 
 TIB] 
 
24 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 sacrifice the public liberties to him. His speech 
 produced a rapid and profound impression. He 
 limited himself to proposing a sort of medium between 
 the maintenance of the Constitution and the preten- 
 sions of Bonaparte, viz. that the legal duration of the 
 First Consul's functions should be doubled. All parties 
 in the Senate not one of them being strong enough 
 to urge its own opinion with effective force accepted 
 a measure which reconciled their conscientious 
 scruples with their weakness and their fears. A (c\v 
 of the senators who were devoted to Bonaparte 
 actually congratulated Garat on having pleaded the 
 cause of liberty so eloquently, and thanked him foi 
 having saved them from acting the cowardly and 
 culpable part they had promised to act. 
 
 The Senate immediately applied itself to drawing 
 up the form of the re-election of Bonaparte, and the 
 farther that recompense was from the prize to which 
 he aspired, the more ic was necessary to magnify and 
 multiply the motives and the pretexts for it. The 
 Senatus-consultum of the 1 8th Floreal is one of the 
 most curious documents that can be cited among the 
 many which we ewe to Bonaparte's intrepid endu- 
 rance of outrageous laudation. He was praised in this 
 strange preamble for having accelerated the progress 
 of knowledge, consoled humanity, and added the 
 benefits of order and safety to those of liberty. He 
 was declared to be triumphant in Europe, in Africa, 
 and in Asia. 6 The latter would be inconceivable 
 unless we suppose that the authors of these deplor- 
 
 6 The following is the phrase : " Considering that the Supreme 
 Magistrate, after having so many times led the Republican 
 legions to victory, delivered Italy, triumphed in Europe, in 
 Africa, in Asia." (The Moniteur of the 2ist Floreal, year X.) 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate . 25 
 
 able specimens of base adulation might have been at 
 that time unaware of the fact that the only two 
 exploits of Bonaparte in Asia, which were incontest- 
 ably his own, were the poisoning of eight hundred 
 plague-stricken French soldiers before the walls 
 of Saint Jean d'Acre, 7 and the massacre of four 
 thousand Turkish prisoners at Jaffa. 
 
 The Senate repaired in a body to the Tuileries to 
 present the Senatus-consultum, which had just been 
 given. Bonaparte, however, was already aware, before 
 the arrival of the senators, that they had been suffi- 
 ciently audacious to do his will in part only, and he 
 was so incensed that the Senate narrowly escaped 
 being sent away without audience of him. 8 
 
 7 M. Thiers says : " There was an ambulance at Jaffa for our 
 plague-stricken soldiers. To take them away was impossible ; 
 to leave them where they were was to expose them to inevitable 
 death, either from disease, hunger, or the cruelty of the enemy. 
 Bonaparte said to Dr. Desgenettes that it would be more 
 humane to administer opium to them than to leave them alive ; 
 but the doctor made him the much- belauded reply, ' My business 
 is to cure, and not to kill them.' Opium was not administered to 
 them, and this circumstance gave rise to a disgraceful calumny, 
 now entirely discredited." 
 
 M. Thiers was imperfectly informed. In 1802, Dr. Des- 
 genettes published, by desire of the First Consul, a w Medical 
 History of the Army of the East," in which he naturally could 
 not mention this fact. A second edition appeared in 1830. He 
 states in his preface that the second edition is similar to the 
 first, with the exception that it contains some notes which could 
 not have been published before 1821 (the date of Napoleon's 
 death). In one of these notes (p. 245) he relates the incident 
 of Bonaparte's proposal to him to terminate the sufferings of the 
 plague-stricken men by opium. " I simply answered," he says, 
 " ' My duty is to preserve them."' Bonaparte replied that he 
 should find others who would better appreciate his intentions. 
 He did, in fact, find some such convenient instrument, for Des- 
 genettes learned on his return from Jaffa that '* from twenty-five 
 to thirty of the plague-stricken patients had been given a strong 
 dose of laudanum. A few of these vomited the poison, were 
 relieved, and recovered, to relate all that had taken place.'' 
 
 8 " No one who had not seen, as I did, the way in which 
 
26 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 He controlled himself sufficiently, nevertheless, to 
 listen to the address and the decree of the senators, 
 without manifesting his mortification and rage other- 
 wise than by incoherent and half-choked words, 
 whose accent would have contradicted their sense 
 had that been more intelligible. 
 
 In the night of that same day Bonaparte summoned 
 a secret council at the Tuilcrics, composed of his own 
 relatives and four other men, who derived the privi- 
 lege of being his confidants and enforced accomplices 
 from the nominal importance of their functions. The 
 object of this consultation was to devise means where- 
 by to repair the defeat he had sustained, and to punish 
 the Senate by doing, in spite of that body, what 
 the\- imagined they had prevented. A resolution was 
 formed to submit the question of the life-consulship 
 to the votes of the people. This step was, it is said, 
 especially advised by Lucien. 1 Bonaparte, however, 
 could not have r quired to be encouraged with respect 
 to the success of any such step as this ; it needed 
 much less sagacity and experience than he posse 
 to be aware how easy it is to make the exercise of the 
 national sovereignty by an already enslaved people 
 a resource the more for tyranny and a flout the more 
 for freedom. It was not very long since, (when he 
 wanted to express his contempt for the votes of the 
 people,) he had asserted that nothing would be easier 
 than to make them decree the equal division of land. 
 On the following day (19th Floreal) the First 
 
 the First Consul showed his constraint and annoyance, could 
 possibly have believed it ; his ' familiars ' were in consternation." 
 (' Mcmoires de Fouche, vol. i., p. 267.) 
 
 9 [Marg. note.] "The expression of this to be revised." 
 
 1 According to M. Thiers, by Cambacc'res. 
 
The Last Days of the Constila'c. 27 
 
 Consul returned a formal answer to the Senate, 2 
 thanking them for the distinguished mark of con- 
 fidence and esteem that he had just received from 
 them, and declaring at the same time that his respect 
 for the national sovereignty forbade him to accept 
 the prolongation of his magistracy from any other 
 authority than that of the French nation itself, and 
 that consequently he was about to submit the 
 que-tion whether he was or was not to be Consul, not 
 indeed for five years beyond the term of his con- 
 stitutional tenure of that office, but for the rest of his 
 life, to the votes of the people. 
 
 It was impossible for him to display the nature of 
 his grievances against the Senate with effrontery 
 more pure and simple than this. Because that great 
 body in the State had not treated his wishes with such 
 servile and absolute acquiescence as he had hoped for, 
 he affected to regard its action as illegitimate. It is 
 not out of place to recall to memory that the " Act " 
 which summoned the French nation to vote upon the 
 life-consulship bore the name of Cambaceres, s that 
 is to say, of the man who best knew how to combine 
 gravity with baseness, and who thought by this means 
 to save Bonaparte's modesty from the impropriety of 
 
 2 [Marg. note.] " The answer was inserted in the Moniteur, 
 and the senators might have read it before it was communicated 
 to the Senate." 
 
 3 M.Thiers reports Cambaceres' words as follows: u If the 
 First Consul himself did such a thing, the proprieties would be 
 too much offended. But I, as Second Consul, and quite dis- 
 interested in the matter, may give the impulse. Let the General 
 set out publicly for Malmaison, 1 will remain alone at Paris; 
 I will convoke the Council of State, and get the new proposition, 
 which is to be submitted to the acceptance of the nation, drawn 
 up." (Vol. xiv.) 
 
28 llic L ist Days of the Consulate, 
 
 soliciting the favour or the justice of the people in his 
 own name. 
 
 The members of the Legislative Body and the 
 Tribunate set the example of eagerness in voting 
 upon the life-consulship. If our grandsons, better 
 and more fortunate than ourselves, ever have a 
 country, they will mention with honour the names of 
 the representatives who were the only ones to vote in 
 this great crisis against a tyranny whose weight was 
 felt, and whose growth was foreseen by all. The 
 number of those names will lay no tax upon memory ; 
 it amounts to exae'ly four. 4 
 
 On the 24th Floreal a deputation of Tribunes and 
 members of the Legislative Body waited upon the 
 First Consul, to present to him the result of their 
 votes. I do not think anything in the history of 
 Bonaparte will hereafter appear more fantastic than 
 the custom of the great bodies of the State pompously 
 presenting themselves to render an account of the 
 execution of each successive demand of his ; thus 
 lending the appearance of spontaneous zeal to obe- 
 dience which was the result of fear. 
 
 The ceremony of the presentation of the registers 
 of the Tribunate and the Legislative Body differed to 
 some extent from ail the others of the same kind. 
 Chabot de l'Allicr was the spokesman of the deputa- 
 tion from the Tribunate. We have seen what rote he 
 had accepted in this affair ; but whatever was the 
 cause, whether he was enlightened by his own reflec- 
 tions upon the errors and weakness of his conduct, or 
 whether he learned them from the revolt of public 
 
 4 In the Tribunate, Carnot only voted agauist the life 
 consulship. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 29 
 
 opinion against the ambitious manoeuvres of Bona- 
 parte, he appeared, on the 24th Floreal, to be anxious 
 to repair or to justify the blind or servile acquiescence 
 of his vote at the Tuileries one week previously in 
 the very presence of the First Consul himself. His 
 speech was almost entirely confined to an emphatic 
 exposition of the conditions on which Bonaparte would 
 be worthy to have been elected by the people as their 
 first perpetual magistrate. He represented to the 
 First Consul what was expected of him, and what his 
 own renown demanded, i.e. that in his conduct he 
 should conform to those principles which had been 
 established by the Revolution ; that he should do no 
 act contrary to the public liberty ; that he should 
 banish from his presence those who flattered in order 
 to ruin him, surrcund himself with honourable men, 
 who, having made the Revolution, had an interest in 
 maintaining it, and respect the independence of the 
 authorities who were to co-operate with himself in 
 making the laws. These ideas were so clearly set 
 forth, that the sentiment which inspired them could 
 not seem to be equivocal, and the speaker's tone of 
 voice, as he became by degrees more and more 
 animated and impassioned until he reached the close 
 of his discourse, gave it the character of a Republican 
 exhortation, indirect indeeJ, but precise and inten- 
 tional.' 
 
 5 Here are a few passages of this speech. After he had 
 spoken of the striking homage rendered to the sovereignty of 
 the people by the vote upon the life-consulship about to be 
 asked from them, Chahot added : " Bonaparte's ideas are too 
 grand and too generous to allow of his ever departing from the 
 liberal principles that have made the Revolution and founded 
 the Republic. He loves true glory too well ever to tarnish the 
 great fume he has acquired by any abuse of power. In 
 
30 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 Bonaparte, who was unprepared for either such a 
 tone or such language on the part of a man who had 
 previously been so subservient, was visibly discon- 
 certed, and his answer savoured of the mingled anger 
 and trouble that agitated him ; it was brusque, 
 common-place, and ill-delivered ; just the sort of 
 utterance to which he is given on occasions when he 
 is not sufficiently master of himself to assume a 
 proud and r< solute tone. Nevertheless Chabot's 
 harangue produced no other effect than this. He 
 displayed as much courage in vainly palliating the 
 services that he had just rendered to tyranny, as 
 he would have needed to embolden him to refuse 
 them. 
 
 Early in Prairial, addresses of congratulation to 
 Bonaparte on his presumed elevation to the perpetual 
 consulship began to pour in from all parts of France. 
 Among the most unmistakable signs by which 
 posterity will recognize how far these addresses were 
 from being the simple and frank expression of a 
 general opnion, I am disposed to reckon the absurd 
 inflation of language, sentiment, and ideas which 
 characterizes almost all of them. In some of these 
 
 accepting the honour of being the First Magistrate of the French, 
 he contracts great obligations, and he will fulfil them all. The 
 nation which calls him to govern it. is free and generous 
 will respect, he will establish its liberty. Bonaparte, in short, 
 will be always himself. He will desire that his memory shall 
 be handed a own glorious and irreproachable to our most di~ 
 posterity, and never shall it be said of Bonaparte that he 
 a few years too many / " 
 
 Bonaparte's reply to this sharp lesson must have been ? very 
 awkward one, for the Moniteur confines itself to the remark, 
 " Of the answer of the First Consul, only the following sentences 
 have been preserved," and then follow eight lines of common- 
 place, in which the word " liberty " does not occur. {Monittur 
 of the 25th Floreal, year X., p. 959.) 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 3 1 
 
 productions the expression of tenderness and admira- 
 tion for despotism is carried to a pitch that is either 
 burlesque or purely ironical. " Why," exclaims a 
 magistrate, whose name I wish I could quote, " ivhy 
 is it not possible to propose this question to us, shall the 
 First Consul be eternal ? " " May the First Consul," 
 said General Mouncey, " pass into immortality only 
 after all the present age ! May his satisfaction, 
 his desires, and our affection avail to enlarge the 
 boundary of human existence ! " When a man 
 invested with supreme power is habitually flattered 
 in this fashion by an intelligent nation, apt to 
 will grow easily tired of admiring even great things, 
 be may- we not conclude that he is already or soon 
 a tyrant ? 
 
 Nearly three months elapsed between the day on 
 which the people began to vote on the life-consul- 
 ship, and that of the sending up of the votes to the 
 Senate to be scrutinized. Bonaparte devoted the 
 interval to various measures of administration, and to 
 the carrying into effect of several projects of law. 
 The most remarkable among the latter was the re- 
 newal of the slave-trade, which was discussed by the 
 Legislative Body at the end of Floreal. 6 
 
 It was reserved for that epoch to justify such a 
 measure by reasons more odious than the measure 
 itself. I am not in reality straying from my subject 
 by entering at this point upon a brief recapitulation 
 of the gravest and strongest arguments that were 
 brought forward by the Consular Government in the 
 so-called discussion of that law. It is my design to 
 
 1 The law bywhxh slavery was maintained in the colonies 
 was passed on the 20th of May, 1802. 
 
32 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 make manifest, with the utmost plainness, what was 
 the real spirit of the period that followed Bona- 
 parte's entrance into the Consulate of the Republic 
 and preceded his accession to the Empire, and how 
 can I more fitly do this than by quoting the political 
 maxims and principles of the epoch in question ? 
 The following is a summary of the reasoning by 
 which Bonaparte had the project of re-establishing 
 the slave-trade argued before the Legislative Body. 7 
 I must here state that although I put them in stronger 
 and plainer words, I have neither altered the substance 
 nor exaggerated the expression of them. 
 
 "The ancient peoples, whom we admire, who loved 
 liberty and enjoyed it, nevertheless had slaves ; it is not, 
 then incompatible with liberty that modern peoples 
 should deal in black slaves. The ancients kept their 
 slaves about them, and were, consequently, either the 
 authors or the obligatory witnesses of the ill-treatment 
 inflicted upon them ; we moderns relegate our blacks 
 to distant isles, whence their cries cannot reach so far 
 as Europe ; we are. therefore, more humane than the 
 ancients. The commercial prosperity of France 
 renders it necessary that a certain quantity of the 
 produce of the country, in wine and cereals, should be 
 sent to the Antilles for consumption by the blacks ; 
 now these negroes, were they free, would prefer 
 manioc to wheat, and the juice of the sugar-cane to 
 our wines ; it is, therefore, indispensable that they 
 should be slaves. Lastly, the Africans have skins of 
 another colour than ours ; they have customs [mtrurs) 
 and opinions which differ from ours, therefore we 
 
 7 Admiral Bruix. It must be borne in mind, as an extenu- 
 ating circumstance for him, that he was born at St. Domingo. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 33 
 
 have a right to purchase them on the coast of Senegal 
 in order to send them to fertilize with their sweat 
 the soil of the islands of America, which is more 
 productive and more burning than our own." 3 The 
 Councillor of State who undertook to present these 
 arguments to the Legislative Body is now an admiral 
 of the Emperor's fleet. His name is Bruix. 9 
 
 Montesquieu, who regarded with aversion the 
 reasons so long advanced by Europe to justify 
 negro slavery in America, and disdained to offer any 
 serious refutation of them, has contented himself with 
 depicting them from the simplest and most salient 
 point of view in a chapter of his " Esprit des Lois," 
 which was certainly an inspiration of the genius of 
 humanity by the genius of irony. Some of the 
 arguments of this speech by Bruix might have been 
 taken from Montesquieu's chapter; others might be 
 added to it. 
 
 Almost simultaneously with the enunciation of 
 this doctrine in the palace of the Legislative Body, a 
 forcible illustration and application of it was supplied 
 by Captain-General Leclerc in the regions for which 
 
 8 The following sentences of the speech prove that Fauriel's 
 account of it is perfectly trustworthy : ''That one portion of the 
 human race is condemned by nature, or by social institutions, 
 to servile toil and slavery, is a fact to be lamented. Sparta 
 with its helots, Rome with its slaves, knew, cherished, aye, 
 adored liberty. The difference of colour, of custom, and of life 
 are, however, the excuse for the domination of the whites. It 
 is necessary for property and power to be in the hands of the 
 less numerous whites ; it is necessary that the more numerous 
 blacks should be slaves." (Moniteur of the third Prairial, 
 year X., p. 1003. Sitting of the Legislative Body of the 
 30th Flor^al.) 
 
 9 Admiral Bruix died in Paris on the 18th of March, 1802. 
 We know, therefore, that this chapter of history was written 
 before that date. 
 
 D 
 
34 T%e Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 it was intended. He sent to Havannah for a large 
 number of the strong, fierce dogs known as Cuban 
 bloodhounds, to act as his auxiliaries in the conquest 
 of St. Domingo, and issued a military order that the 
 animals truly a new order of combatants were not 
 to be fed with anything to which they were accus- 
 tomed, so that their appetite for the flesh of the 
 negroes, whom they were destined to hunt, might be 
 in full and unappeased voracity. 
 
 But already, some months before the re-establish- 
 ment of the slave-trade, other institutions, dictated 
 by the same spirit, and indicating even more directly 
 the intention of founding an absolute government 
 Upon the ruins of the Republic, had been created, and 
 other laWs passed The religious Concordat of the 
 26th Messulor, year IX, had been sanctioned as a 
 law of the State in Germinal, year X. The pretext 
 of this convention was there-establishment of religion 
 as necessary for the moral welfare of the people ; but 
 it was plain to all that Bonaparte's real motive was 
 to make such pretensions, pomp, and influence 
 as he meant to leave to Catholicism serve his own 
 policy, while he retained every means of keeping 
 it in subjection to him, and, if need arose, of being 
 revenged upon it. 1 
 
 This motive had not escaped the perception of the 
 heads of the Catholic party ; but it was of great 
 importance to them to be enabled to exchange the 
 
 1 One day Bonaparte said to Bourrienne, "In every countiy 
 religion is useful to government ; it must be employed in act- 
 ing upon men. I was a Mahometan in Egypt ; I am a Catholic 
 in France. It is as necessary for police purposes that the re- 
 ligion of a State should be entirely in the hands of its ruler.* 1 
 ( k Meinoires de Bourrienne," vol. iv., p. 279.) 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 35 
 
 miseries of persecution, its perilous honours, and the 
 barren esteem which they enjoyed through its means, 
 for a peaceful and well-endowed existence. To com- 
 pensate for the shame of serving as instruments in 
 the hands of a power which despised them, they 
 might hope once more to cultivate the ignorance and 
 the prejudices of the people to an extent even beyond 
 the requirements of the Government that had 
 restored them. 
 
 A few days after the legislative sanction of the 
 Concordat, the institution of what is called The 
 Legion of Honour " 2 was proposed and adopted. The 
 object of this institution tended even more plainly 
 than the re-establishment of Catholicism to accom- 
 plish the secret designs of Bonaparte, and the pretext 
 assigned to it was even more impudent. It was taken 
 from a clause in the Constitution, by which a recom- 
 pense to the army was guaranteed in the name of the 
 French nation. Such a " legion " was simply a first 
 order of chivalry, a first body interposed between the 
 French people and Bonaparte, according to the too- 
 famous principle that a monarch is a being of a 
 mysterious nature, who, not being sufficiently dis- 
 tinguished from the people whom he governs by his 
 duties towards them, and his necessary influence upon 
 their destinies, ought to be still farther separated from 
 them by classes of men whose special function it h to 
 connect him with the nation by a kind of honorary 
 gradation. 
 
 2 On the 20th Flore'al, year X. (9th of May, 1802), a law, voted 
 upon the proposition of the Consuls by the Legislative Body 
 and the Tribunate, instituted the order of the Legion of Honour. 
 It was opposed in the Tribunate by 38 votes against 56, and 
 in the Legislative Body by no votes against 166. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 A singular incident of the establishment of the 
 Legion of Honour was the selection of Rcedercr, at 
 that time a Councillor of State, for the duty of 
 explaining and justifying it before the Legislative 
 Body. To him it fell to proclaim the necessity for 
 reawakening among Frenchmen that sentiment of 
 honour which had so long been regarded as the main- 
 spring of their great deeds and their chief national 
 characteristic ; to him who, at an epoch of the 
 Revolution at which every idea appeared false or 
 culpable, for the sole reason that it existed prior to 
 the Revolution, had proclaimed that it was necessary 
 "to dishonour honour" as an old feudal sentiment ! 
 
 I must not omit to record that the project of the 
 Legion of Honour was opposed at the Tribunate by 
 Chauvelin 3 and Savoie Rollin. The speech of the 
 latter, a cultivated man and a steady friend of liberty, 
 raised such strong objections to the project, and 
 demonstrated so clearly that it was either useless or 
 dangerous, that Lucien Bonaparte, then a member of 
 the Tribunate, was obliged, in the interests of the 
 success of Bonaparte's legislative plans, to reply in 
 abusive terms, and to remove the impression left upon 
 the minds of the Tribunes by threatening hints. 
 The project was adopted by the Legislative Body by 
 a majority of 166 to 1 10. 
 
 Such an opposition was remarkable at a time when 
 despotism had already taken so many measures to 
 ensure the execution of its will ; when each man 
 
 3 Francis Bernard, Marquis de Chauvelin, born in 1766, 
 died in 1832; Savoie Rollin, formerly Advocate-General to 
 the Parliament of Grenoble. Both afterwards became members 
 of the Legion of Honour. Chauvelin spoke last, and was 
 answered by Lucien Bonaparte. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. $7 
 
 believed himself to be enjoined by prudence to act 
 against his convictions. Such was the supineness of 
 the period, that we may regard this incident as an 
 eloquent and severe censure of the intentions by 
 which Bonaparte was inspired. This was the last 
 effort of the national representation against the en- 
 croachments of arbitrary and absolute power. 
 
 To have re-established Catholicism in a position 
 which made it a dependent and interested political 
 auxiliary, to have formed within the nation a body 
 distinguished by a purely honorific title, that is to say, 
 without any civil or military function, was to have done 
 much towards preparing the foundation of an heredi- 
 tary monarchy. The place of the throne had been, so 
 to speak, marked out ; there remained only to erect it. 
 A great deal of hypocrisy was still displayed in the 
 language used to justify these two institutions the 
 Concordat and the Legion of Honour ; but it had 
 become easy for the least penetrating or the least 
 suspicious minds to recognize that Bonaparte had 
 been preparing himself long beforehand to reign 
 as a despot, and that, being incapable of investing 
 his despotism with any really original forms, 
 he aspired by every effort to restore the supreme 
 power under its oldest names and with its most 
 insolent symbols. He would therefore bring all the 
 ancient errors to the support of his views and projects. 
 Hence, perhaps, the largest and most profound of 
 his general ideas was to arrest the progress of 
 national education, and to force it back into a circle 
 n which it would be limited to satisfying merely 
 superficial curiosity, but in which men could learn 
 nothing incompatible with respect for arbitrary power. 
 
38 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 The overthrow of the system of Public Education 
 established by the National Convention, (on this 
 Bonaparte was resolved from the first.) was accom- 
 plished at the very moment when, notwithstanding 
 certain imperfections existing in itself, and a crowd of 
 obstacles created by circumstances, it was beginning 
 to produce decidedly beneficial results. Several intel- 
 ligent men, by their more or less :;trong and just ob- 
 jections against the vices of that system, seconded the 
 enmity which Bonaparte bore to its advantages only. 
 Fourcroy, who had charge of the department of 
 Public Education in the Ministry of the Interior, 
 yielding to the vanity of surpassing his predecessors, 
 submitted a very methodical and extensive system of 
 national instruction to the First Consul. Bonaparte, 
 not deigning to entangle his genius in the labyrinth of 
 divisions and subdivisions involved in this plan, roughly 
 informed its author that so much variety and such com- 
 plicated apparatus was unnecessary in public educa- 
 tion, and did not at all accord with the simplicity of 
 his own views. " A Utile Latin and Mathematics," he 
 said to Fourcroy, *' is all that is wanted." The plan 
 was reformed and curtailed upon this general idea, 
 and brought up for discussion at the Tribunate at the 
 end of Germinal. It was adopted with great praise, 
 and the strongest and most remarkable objection 
 offered to it was that education ought to be ex- 
 clusively entrusted to priests and at need to monks, 
 whom it would be advantageous to restore for that 
 purpose. To record this objection without naming 
 its author would be to represent as odious a thing 
 which was only ridiculous. The speaker was Carrion 
 Nizas, a person endowed by nature with the singular 
 
The Last Days' of the Consulate. 39 
 
 privilege of exciting no emotion but laughter, and 
 producing the effect of a jester while appearing as 
 the apologist of crime. 4 
 
 Such were the principal laws by which Bonaparte 
 had indicated his policy, and prepared the way for 
 the success of his ulterior designs, at the moment 
 when the registers which were supposed to contain 
 the votes of the people of France upon the life- 
 consulship reached the hands of the Government. 
 On the 10th Thermidor, those registers were 
 despatched to the Conservative Senate, with a 
 message signed by Cambaceres, and five days after- 
 wards the Senate solemnly repaired to the Tuileries, 
 there to render an account of the reckoning it had 
 made of the votes of the nation. A circumstance, 
 which was by no means due to chance, contributed 
 to lend a greater air of solemnity to the admission of 
 the senators to the First Consul's presence. They 
 presented themselves in the midst of a diplomatic 
 audience, which was interrupted in order that the 
 First Consul might receive them, and Bonaparte, in 
 the face, so to speak, of all Europe, represented by 
 the various ambassadors, heard himself proclaimed 
 Perpetual First Consul, in virtue of three million five 
 hundred and sixty-eight thousand votes. The act of 
 the Senate was couched in the following terms : 
 
 u The people of France name, and the Senate 
 
 4 The Marquis de Carrion-Nizas, born at Montpellier in 1767, 
 was an officer of cavalry, and was imprisoned in 1793. He 
 became a member of the Tribunate, and his servility to Bona- 
 parte excited the anger of the public. His tragedy of '" Pierre le 
 Grand " was hissed off the stage on the 19th of May, 1804. The 
 affair made a great sensation. (See the Journal de i'aris of 
 Floreal, p. xii.) 
 
40 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 proclaims Napoleon Bonaparte First Consul for Life." 
 It also set forth, that in memory of the great event a 
 statue of peace, holding the laurel of victory in one 
 hand, and the decree of the Senate in the other, should 
 be erected. In this extraordinary scene, where 
 adulation and slavishness were made to pass for the 
 expression of the national will, Bonaparte, instead of 
 feigning the emotion, the surprise, or the modesty of 
 a man dragged out of himself, so to speak, and whose 
 plans of retirement from public affairs were upset 
 by all this honour, had the honesty to demean 
 himself like one who did but reap the fruit of his 
 own bold scheming. 6 In his reply to the address of 
 the Senate he plainly declared himself to be pledged 
 by his new title to preserve the equality, the liberty, 
 and the prosperity of France from the caprices of fate 
 and the uncertainties of the future ; 6 he announced that 
 
 6 [Marg. note.] "Many tyrants are represented in history as 
 accepting bespoken and prearranged offerings of esteem and 
 affection. But all. with a sort of modesty, let themselves be 
 entreated to accept." 
 
 6 The following is the complete phrase : " By our efforts, by 
 your co-operation, citizen senators, by that of all the authorities, 
 by the confidence and the will of this immense nation, the 
 liberty, the equality, and the prosperity of France will be placed 
 in security from the caprices of fate and the uncertainties of 
 the future. The best of people snail be the happiest, as it is 
 the most worthy of being, and its felicity will contribute to that 
 of the whole of Europe." 
 
 To give an idea of the delusions which certain Legislators were 
 still under respecting the liberal intentions of Bonaparte, it will 
 suffice to recall the following resolution, which was passed by 
 the Tribunate at its sitting of the 29th Floreal, year XI I. li The 
 Tribunate adopts the resolution that when it proceeds to do 
 homage to the Emperor, its President shall express to him its 
 desire that the happy epoch of the hitherto unknown alliance 
 of Empirt with liberty should be eternized* by a medal." 
 (journal de Paris, 8th Prairial, year XII., p. 1623.) 
 
 * This expression is an awkward one, but so remarkable that 
 the translator has thought it better to reproduce it exactly. 
 
The L ast Days of the Consulate. 4 1 
 
 he would accomplish this aim and duty by wise and 
 prudent institutions. It was easy for any who had ob- 
 served the manner in which he had hitherto protected 
 liberty and equality to understand what he meant by 
 talking of placing them in safety from the caprices of 
 fate. The true sense of those words was this : " In 
 order to fulfil the great task which the people im- 
 pose upon me by naming me First Consul for Life, I 
 am about to make myself their hereditary sovereign." 
 I have postponed until now a remark which 
 ought not to be omitted from this sketch, but I 
 desire to call attention to the coincidence of various 
 intrigues which already revealed the project of an 
 imperial dynasty with all the measures taken to 
 elicit and collect the suffrages of the French nation 
 upon the life-consulship. Rcederer and Saint Jean 
 d'Angely put forward the proposal to make the 
 supreme power hereditary in the family of the First 
 Consul, plainly and without any disguise in their re- 
 spective journals, and as it was well known that both 
 professed a too respectful devotion for tyranny even 
 to dare to back it up without orders, it was reason- 
 ably concluded that they were but the echoes of him 
 whose advisers they appeared to be. A short pam- 
 phlet, signed by an officer, and in which Bonaparte 
 was urged to make himself Emperor of the Gauls 
 (without the Salic law) was profusely distributed, 
 and especially in places where the police had plenty 
 of eyes and arms at their service. 7 I have already 
 said that in the famous discussion of the desire of the 
 
 7 [Marg. note.] "To inform myself whether the name with 
 which this leaflet was signed was not, as is most probable, an 
 imaginary narne. ; ' 
 
 I have been unable, notwithstanding all my researches, to find 
 this leaflet. 
 
42 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 Tribunate by the Senate, there had been some indica- 
 tion of a preconcerted plan to hand over hereditary 
 power then and there to Bonaparte, without having 
 recourse to illusory and momentary restrictions. The 
 ambition of Bonaparte was not awakened by those 
 servile and culpable manoeuvres ; it was only abetted 
 and obeyed. It remained, then, to be decided 
 whether he distinctly intended to pass at a bound 
 from temporary magistrature to absolute monarchy, 
 without resting and fortifying himself for a moment 
 in an intermediate dignity, such as that of the 
 consulship for life. All the indications and all the 
 appearances authorize us to presume that his plan 
 was in fact to attain his end without delay or turning 
 aside, and that he had only been induced to take an 
 oblique path by the weakness and defection of his 
 agents in the Senate on the occasion of the dis- 
 cussion upon the motion in the Tribunate. 
 
 The first exercise of the Perpetual Consul's new 
 authority was his addressing to the Senate, on the 
 16th Thermidor, a project of Senatus-consultum 
 which in several of its fundamental dispositions 
 annulled the Constitution, and which was entitled 
 "Organic Senatus-consultum of the Constitution." 
 By sending this Act fully drawn up to the senators, 
 he gave them to understand that thenceforth he did 
 not mean to leave them the initiative in his enterprises, 
 nor even to admit them in the quality of consultative 
 accomplices, but simply as passive instruments. This 
 was an avowal that he no longer apprehended any 
 limit to the obedience of some, or any serious 
 obstacle in the opposition of others. 8 
 
 8 [Marg. note] "An essential circumstance has been omitted 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate, 43 
 
 It forms no part of my plan to examine the 
 Senatus-consultum of the 16th Thermidor in detail, 
 or to show how widely the Perpetual Consul 
 had extended the boundaries of his power by 
 that Act, and what means of farther extension 
 were included in it. 9 I shall confine myself to 
 one point, which seems to me very simple, and 
 sufficient to demonstrate the hypocrisy, the inso- 
 lence, and the irony that characterized Bona- 
 parte's appeal to the national will. The Senatus- 
 consultum in question was in reality nothing but a 
 kind of special constitution of the consular authority 
 in perpetuity. It had in reality been drawn up long 
 before the official return of the votes given by the 
 nation was sent in, but this eager haste to regu- 
 late and determine the prerogatives of a dignity 
 before a title to it could be shown, might simply arise 
 from an easy certainty of obtaining that title, or 
 readiness to take it for granted. What is more 
 remarkable and more curious is, that while the 
 response of the people of France to the question that 
 had just been so solemnly put to them must have 
 been supposed to be still unknown ; while Bonaparte 
 must necessarily, for the sake of propriety and pru- 
 dence, have concealed his certainty of being pro- 
 claimed Consul for life, on pain of revealing too 
 clearly to what it was he owed that security ; at this 
 
 here. It is that on the day when this Act was sent to the Senate, 
 the avenues, the courtyard, and the anterooms of the Luxem- 
 bourg were filled with grenadiers. Up to that time all com- 
 munications between the Senate and the First Consul ha 1 been 
 made simply by State messages, and without armed force." 
 
 9 [Marg. note.] "Say here, that by this Act the First 
 Consul made himself President of the Senate." 
 
44 The Last Days of the Co us u fate. 
 
 moment he decided that Cambaceres and Le Brun 
 should also be consuls for life, and conferred upon 
 them by his own will that very same dignity which 
 he, Bonaparte, had declared he could not hold legiti- 
 mately in his proper person except by the sovereign 
 authority of the French nation. By introducing to 
 a share in the national favour, at his own sole pleasure, 
 two individuals whose notion of their own merits was 
 too just to allow them to lay any claim to it, he not 
 only afforded a fresh proof of his contempt for the 
 nation, but a sufficiently plain indication that the 
 title of Consul for life, although he had seemed 
 ardently to covet it, was not that on which his lofty 
 ambition was definitely fixed. 
 
 The 29th Thermidor 1 was the day settled for 
 the presentation of the congratulations of the 
 authorities, from the Legislative Body down to the 
 Commissaries of Police, on Bonaparte's promotion to 
 the Life-Consulship. This arrangement was not made 
 by chance ; the day was the anniversary of the 
 Consul's birth. There was an attempt made to convert 
 it into a national festival, and it deserves to be noted 
 in history as that on which homage, to which no 
 national or even political pretext could be assigned, 
 and which was addressed to his person rather than 
 his dignity, was lavished upon Bonaparte. From 
 that day forth the loftiest projects of his ambition 
 always appeared to be subordinate to the most 
 puerile whims of his vanity. 
 
 Bonaparte had expended much greater resources, 
 
 The 15th of August. On the subject of the date of Bona- 
 parte's birth, see the discussion by M. Th. Lung in " Bonaparte 
 et son Temps, 1 ' vol. i., ch. 3. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate* 45 
 
 and allowed himself far more time in getting himself 
 made Consul for life, than he proposed to devote to 
 becoming hereditary chief of the nation. He flattered 
 himself, not without reason, that he should be able to 
 accomplish his full purpose in the course of year XI. 
 Early in Brumaire of that year 2 he visited the 
 department of Seine Inferieure and some parts of 
 the neighbouring- departments. I cannot positively 
 affirm, but I believe, that the only object of this 
 journey was that which is indicated by its most posi- 
 tive and evident, or indeed, I may say, its only result. 
 Madame Bonaparte was admitted, or condemned, to 
 share with her husband all the homage and all the 
 addresses which awaited him at the various stages 
 of his progress. 3 On the return of the illustrious 
 
 2 " The First Consul set out this morning (5th Brumaire)," says 
 the Monitciiroi the 6th, " accompanied by Madame Bonaparte." 
 
 3 The Moniteur of the 13th Brumaire contains the following : 
 "All these constituted bodies (at Rouen) were presented to 
 Madame Bonaparte, and expressed to her, with the tact peculiar 
 to the French nation, the feelings by which they are animated. 
 They were received with the kindness and amiability that 
 distinguish the person to whom their compliments were paid. 
 The wives of the public functionaries were presented to Madame 
 Bonaparte." The same number gives the speeches made to 
 her by the prefect, the mayor, the archbishop, and all the legal 
 officials. The opening passage of the prefect's speech deserves 
 to be quoted. It is as follows: "We have just presented our 
 homage to the Chief of the State, and you see that not one of 
 us could resist the emotion that is produced by the presence of 
 a great man. The mind is affrighted by the distance that 
 divides him from other mortals ; but the heart is reassured by 
 finding at his side a consort adorned by all the gentle and tender 
 virtues." It is worthy of remark, that of the ten speeches whose 
 text is given by the Moniteur, four were addressed to Bonaparte, 
 and six to his wife, who must have been equally surprised and 
 touched by the utterances of the Cure of Havre : " It is indeed 
 a bright day for the Cure of Havre and his clergy, that permits 
 them to pay the tribute of their admiration to your virtues." 
 (The Monitcur of the 21st Brumaire, p. 202.) It is well to add 
 
46 The Last Days of the Consulate, 
 
 couple, after their rehearsal of the airs of royal 
 majesty, the Senate and the other great bodies, still 
 (by a remaining fragment of the illusions of the 
 Republic) held to be formed of representatives of the 
 French people, did not venture to refuse that homage 
 to the wife of the Chief of the State which he had so 
 delicately and ingeniously made easy to them by first 
 seeking it within the wails of Rouen. Those who even 
 then refused to believe that the First Consul's intention 
 was to make himself an hereditary monarch, be 
 to suspect him when they saw what pains he took to 
 have his wife treated like a queen, since only a political 
 motive could be sought for in conduct which no one 
 could possibly impute to weakness or to mistaken 
 conjugal tenderness. 
 
 I shall relate here only one of the numerous 
 particulars of Bonaparte's journey to Rouen, because 
 it appears to me to throw a strong light upon his 
 character. He went to visit the battle-field of Ivry, 
 and gave orders for the erection of a pyramid in 
 honour of Henry IV., with an inscription dictated by 
 himself, in which praises of the magnanimous Henry 
 were mixed up with insults to his descendants. I 
 leave it to all those who combine good feeling with 
 good breeding to pass judgment on this idea of Bona- 
 parte, this converting of a monument to the best of 
 the Bourbons into a manifesto of his own self-interested 
 enmity towards the fallen inheritors of his throne, 
 
 that on the ist'Bvumaire, year XI., the Consuls had issued a 
 decree that the wife of the First Consul should have four ladies 
 with her, to do the honours of the palace. These four ladies 
 were respectively, Mdme. de Talhouet, Mdme. dc Lueay, 
 Mdme. Lauriston, and Mdmc.de Rdmusat. (See " Memoires 
 dc Mdme. de Rcmusat," ch. i.) 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 47 
 
 and lending solemnity to the insults which he lavished 
 upon the living, by inscribing them upon the tomb of 
 the dead. 
 
 In the course of Ventose of this same year all was 
 ready, every circumstance seemed favourable to the 
 complete manifestation and full accomplishment of the 
 designs of Bonaparte. The scheme of the institutions 
 and measures which he conceived to be useful or 
 necessary to his ulterior power was perfecting itself 
 from day to day. At the beginning of Frimaire he 
 had handed over the police service of the theatres to 
 his prefects of police, in order to get into his hands 
 every possible means of repressing or corrupting 
 public opinion in the only kind of assembly at which 
 it could still manifest itself. 
 
 Shortly afterwards he had organized " senatoreries" 4 
 with funded endowments, and these were destined to 
 form another gradation between the people and their 
 future monarch. After this he had re-formed the 
 National Institute on the plan of the former 
 Academies, for the purpose of exerting a more 
 positive influence over it than the king had exercised 
 over the Academies under the old regime. 
 
 One special object of this re-formation was his 
 express intention of abolishing a class in that learned 
 body which was entitled, " The Class of Moral and 
 Political Sciences." Lastly, on the occasion of money 
 being minted, in the course of Ventose, he had caused 
 an act to be passed for the substitution of his own 
 effigy for the emblem of the Republic on one face of 
 the new coins. 
 
 This was, if not the most striking of all the in- 
 
 4 These were created on the 4th of January, 1803. 
 
48 The Last Days of the Consulate* 
 
 dications of his great scheme, that which appealed 
 most directly to the popular comprehension ; for it 
 was from the multiplication of the effigies of their 
 kings upon the precious metals, which they coveted so 
 ardently, and earned so hardly, that the people derived 
 their clearest idea of the existence of those kings and 
 of their power. 5 
 
 The re-establishment of several monarchical sym- 
 bols in succession, of former customs of the court. 
 of various external marks of the former inequality 
 in rank, served to point out the aim and reveal the 
 motive of this legislation, which was so appropriate to 
 his plans for the future. 
 
 The principles of liberty were attacked with 
 increasing impudence and contempt from day 
 to day, in the newspapers and by hired pam- 
 phleteers. The authors of those shameless apolo 
 for a despotism already all-powerful, but which 
 aspired to the names and the forms held sacred 
 by old prejudices, never relaxed in their efforts 
 to inspire hatred and contempt for the Bourbons ; 
 thus following the example that had been first 
 set them by Bonaparte, who took care to renew 
 it on all occasions. The police hunted up any men 
 who still dared to write in favour of the dethroned 
 princes, with the utmost zeal, and prosecuted them 
 with unrelenting severity. 
 
 It is, however, believed that about the same time 
 proposals were made to the princes on the part of the 
 
 5 The draft of the act on th? new coinage was presented to 
 the Legislative Body on the 19th Ventose, year XI. Clause xvi. 
 enacts that the head of the First Consul, with the legend 
 " Bonaparte, First Consul,'' should be placed on one of the faces 
 of the coins. 
 
The, Last Days of the Consulate. 49 
 
 First Consul that they should settle down in certain 
 distant lands, which should be assigned to them as 
 their own property. 6 It was even proposed to 
 make over Louisiana to them, and the King- of 
 Prussia undertook to convey the offer on behalf of 
 Bonaparte. Whether this method of negotiation was 
 seriously contemplated or not, it is very easy to 
 perceive Bonaparte's motive in proposing it, and the 
 nature of the advantage he would have derived from 
 its success. By re-establishing the rank and order of 
 things from which the Bourbons had fallen, he was 
 necessarily about to give a more serious and more 
 legitimate character to their pretensions than they 
 could have while they were in opposition to the 
 Republic, and, the situation of Europe being one in 
 which both violence and uncertainty prevailed, those 
 pretensions might furnish pretexts for a fresh war 
 against France. Bonaparte would therefore have 
 done a merely wise and prudent thing by esta- 
 blishing the Bourbon princes in one of the far-off 
 possessions of France, while the act would have had 
 the appearance of magnanimity. But the reasons 
 which led him to make them such offers were precisely 
 those which ensured their refusal of them. Let me 
 return to the position of the Republic. It was just 
 this : day by day the rumours of its destruction 
 increased in consistency, and were more widely be- 
 lieved. Already, it was less a question of creating 
 new things than of calling those things that had 
 been created by their right names. 
 
 Two unforeseen events occurred to interrupt the 
 
 6 [Marg. note.] " This is a fact, and it is even true that hints 
 were given on the subject at Lundville." 
 
50 The Last Days of tJie Consulate . 
 
 prosperity of Bonaparte, and to suspend the execution 
 of his projects. The first was the news of the dis- 
 asters which befell the French army at St Domingo, 
 and the death of Leclerc. 7 His personal sorrow on 
 this occasion might well be softened by the con- 
 dolence of the great bodies of the State, and the great 
 display that was made of mourning for the individual 
 of whom he had spoken as our brother-in-law? As 
 for the loss of a portion of the picked troops of the 
 French army, which, although it had not happened, 
 was foreseen to be inevitable, that misfortune might 
 be alleviated by the reflection that those picked troops 
 had been carefully selected among the soldiers who 
 had been victorious under Moreau only. 
 
 There were, however, three causes which rendered 
 it impossible for Bonaparte to regard the disastrous 
 issue of the expedition to St. Domingo a sa slight 
 or dubious defeat. These were, that he had thrown 
 away nearly 25,000,000 of francs on the preparations 
 for it ; that he had imprudently lavished insults 
 and threats upon a race cf men who had avenged 
 themselves ; and that he had in vain restored a 
 code of inhuman laws upon a territory which seemed 
 to have escaped from his possession for ever. 
 
 Nevertheless it is evident that the reverses ex- 
 perienced at St. Domingo did not suspend the 
 cherished designs of Bonaparte for long, if indeed 
 they postponed them for a single moment. A mure 
 serious obstacle shortly arose in the message of the 
 
 7 General Leclerc died on the 3rd of November, 1802, at 
 St. Domingo, whither his wife, Pauline Bonaparte, had accom- 
 panied him. 
 
 8 [Marg. note.] ' He thought that merely to give him that 
 name was to render him illustrious." 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 5 1 
 
 King of England to the House of Commons, on the 
 8th of March, 1803 (17th Ventose, year XL), an- 
 nouncing the rupture of a peace which was not yet 
 a year old. 
 
 England, of all the European powers, had suffered 
 the least by the war of the Revolution, and lost the 
 least in those resources of all kinds which every war 
 must of necessity consume. England possessed more 
 ample means than any other country of renewing the 
 strife so recently terminated, and was the most dis- 
 posed to do so from the special character of its 
 government ; nevertheless it will certainly be regarded 
 by future historians as a strange phenomenon in 
 politics that so active a war, one in which so m?ny 
 men had perished and so much wealth had been com- 
 sumed a war, too, whose issue had fulfilled the in- 
 tentions of the enemies of France could have begun 
 again after so short a truce, and one that had not 
 even been very complete. 
 
 Nothing is so striking in the consideration of this 
 war, or rather, renewed war, as the evident con- 
 trast between the motives put forward as leading 
 ones, and the gravity of those which were alleged 
 to be merely accessory or subordinate. The two 
 Governments appeared to be disputing with each 
 other about a barren rock in the Mediterranean, 
 but they were actually disputing the privilege of 
 exercising each in its own way and in opposite 
 directions, a sort of preponderance in the interests, 
 the affairs, and even in certain respects in the 
 civilization of Europe. 
 
 Bonaparte had not waited, in order to find fault 
 with England, until the Government of Great Britain 
 E 2 
 
52 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 refused to fulfil the clause of the Treaty of Amiens 
 concerning the restitution of Malta. From the 
 earliest days of the peace he. had regarded the free- 
 dom of English opinion and judgment upon him as a 
 continuation of hostility. It was not enough for 
 him to be delivered from the English fleet and its 
 admirals, unless he were at the same time relieved 
 of the English press and its journalists. He found 
 it excessively inconvenient to have to wage a new 
 kind of war against these swarming foes, a war in 
 which he had to turn journalist himself. lie had 
 given expression to his displeasure with what he 
 called u the licence " of English newspapers and 
 parliamentary debates. He had even been so 
 foolish as to tender indirect advice to the British 
 Government to repress that licence, and had carried 
 his anger and folly to the point of upbraiding the 
 King of England and his ministers for tolerating it, 
 while he had set them an example which they would 
 do well to follow, by suppressing certain writings 
 insulting to the Government of Great Britain that 
 had been printed in France without his orders or his 
 knowledge. 
 
 It will be remembered that he had instituted 
 judicial proceedings, through his ambassador, against 
 one Peltier, a French " ^mi^re " who lived in London 
 on the profits of an anti-French newspaper." This pro- 
 
 9 Jean Gabriel Peltier, born at Nantes, died in Paris in March, 
 1825. His Royalist writings, and his contributions to the Actes 
 (Us Afiotres, forced him to leave France after the 10th of August. 
 He retired to London, where he continued to publish pamphlets 
 and newspapers against the French Government. Among these 
 were I.c Courtier d Europe, Le C< urrier de Londres, and 
 VA mbigu, Variitcs atroces et amusantes. It was probably for the 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 53 
 
 secution had aroused a great public scandal, and had 
 injuriously affected the honour and glory of Bona- 
 parte, without affording him the hardly heroic and 
 indeed scarcely prudent satisfaction of revenge upon 
 a person to whose malignant assertions he merely 
 gave importance by taking any notice of them. 
 However, the fact was that the mere existence and 
 vicinity of a country in which every individual might 
 assume the right to judge his (Bonaparte's) character 
 and conduct as he pleased, with impunity, and whose 
 united voice echoed throughout the whole world, 
 formed a perpetual source of exasperation to him, 
 and was an irremovable obstacle. 
 
 From this it may be supposed how deep and bitter 
 was his resentment against the Government of that 
 country, when it set itself to oppose the designs which 
 he had formed, and declared war at the exact moment 
 when he was about to cull the last and sweetest 
 fruits of the brief peace. 
 
 At this point it becomes necessary to a correct 
 understanding of the respective grievances of the 
 British Cabinet and the First Consul, that I should 
 briefly summarize the foreign policy of the latter, and 
 his views upon those countries in which he exercised 
 influence that was the combined result of the various 
 chances of the Revolution. 
 
 Bonaparte had formed the project of uniting and 
 concentrating in his own hands, not only all the 
 
 latter journal, which began in 1803, that Peltier was prosecuted 
 before an English court by the Consular Government. This 
 ill-advised proceeding, which made a great sensation, aroused 
 public opinion in England against Bonaparte. Peltier was 
 sentenced to pay only small damages and the costs, and the 
 amount was immediately covered by a public subscription. 
 
54 The Last Days of tfie Consulate. 
 
 authority of the French Republic from within, but 
 also all its influence upon neighbouring countries, and 
 from the execution of that project there necessarily 
 resulted a state of things very strange in itself, and 
 in relation to the common notion of the political 
 balance of Europe. 1 
 
 Several state-, all independent of each other, and 
 each governed by its own laws, were to form the 
 various portions of one and the same empire, under 
 the rule of one and the same hereditary and absolute 
 chief, who should have a special right over, and a 
 particular title in each of these different districts of 
 his dominion. This would be a shadow or revival of 
 the empire of Charlemagne. It is not surprising 
 that from an early date, Bonaparte should 1 
 adopted Charlemagne as one of his favourite hen 
 his pride had long been pleasantly fostered by the 
 parallel drawn between himself and the great 
 mediaeval monarch. No parallel was more fre- 
 quently repeated by his flatterers, under circum- 
 stances in which it was more easy to discern its 
 motives than to foresee its consequent 
 
 It is true that Bonaparte could not have hoped to 
 secure a realm so vast as that which owned the sway 
 of Pepin's son ; but the glory of founding one of 
 his own, in spite of the interests and opinions of now 
 
 : [Marg. note.] w Bring out this general idea, that in his opera- 
 tions upon the interior of France, the foreign powers had several 
 reasons for being well pleased with Bonaparte ; for he had 
 crushed one of those results of the Revolution from which they 
 had most to fear. Also that he had not begun to displease them 
 until he revealed his pretensions outside of France, by his im- 
 prudently displayed ambition in the direction of certain foreign 
 countries." 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 5 5 
 
 existing Europe, must have more than compensated 
 him for an inferiority of that kind. 
 
 If this scheme, whose execution, although in the 
 initiatory stage only, had begun to encounter some 
 obstacles, and had even undergone several important 
 modifications already, proved finally successful in 
 Bonaparte's hands, an entirely new spectacle would 
 be witnessed in history. An empire which, with- 
 out being founded upon either the real consent of 
 the nations composing it or even upon conquest, 
 would carry the world back to those barbarous 
 times when peoples, separate in interests, customs, 
 and laws, became the common property of a con- 
 queror, who was as many times over a despot as he 
 numbered states bearing his yoke. It would seem 
 that no political project could be more contrary to 
 the present spirit of European civilization than this 
 one. For a long time past, the various powers, while 
 aggrandizing themselves, had tended only to unite 
 greater masses of men under one and the same system 
 of administration and law. The actual effect of 
 conquests in Europe is to diminish the political 
 barriers by which the population of Europe is divided, 
 and the sum of national interests are placed in oppo- 
 sition or discord. The project of Bonaparte would of 
 necessity have a contrary influence, and would restore 
 to despotism those mighty resources which the pro- 
 gress of reason and education had led us to believe 
 as well as to hope had been wrested from its grasp 
 for ever. 
 
 Bonaparte, in forming this plan, which appears to 
 be vast, but is only insensate, could not indeed 
 reckon upon the approbation, or even the indifference, 
 
56 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 of the kings of Europe ; but he counted upon their 
 recent losses, and the discredit with their respec- 
 tive peoples into which the ill-success of their league 
 against France had brought them. He had more 
 direct and positive ground for confidence in his 
 alliance with Paul I., in whom he had found a support 
 for his plans and perhaps an accomplice in them. 
 Besides, he also had a chance of success and a 
 resource to employ with those powers who were 
 interested in opposing the execution of his designs, 
 and possessed the means of attempting to do so ; 
 this was, to propose that they should imitate his 
 example, and to guarantee them the possession of 
 such territories as suited them and upon which they 
 might seize unopposed. This chance was certainly 
 very vague, and its success implied the overcoming of 
 a great many difficulties. But the idea would not be 
 tiie first scandalous one that certain Governments 
 have borrowed from Bonaparte, nor the first injustice 
 in which they have been encouraged by his example. 
 The island of Elba 2 was the first territory annexed 
 to France by the will of Bonaparte, and without any 
 pretext except the actual occupation of the island. 
 This was the signal for a much more important 
 transaction of the same kind, and the prelude to it. 
 I allude to the annexation of Piedmont, which was 
 proclaimed by a Senatus-consultum of the 24th 
 Fructidor,year X., twelve days after that of the island 
 of Elba. Although Bonaparte experienced no diffi- 
 culty in dispossessing the King of Sardinia of the 
 richest and most considerable portion of his states, 
 neither Austria nor England having insisted upon 
 
 2 The Senatus-consultum proclaiming this annexation is dated 
 the 26th of August, 1S02. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 57 
 
 the interests of that sovereign in the conditions of the 
 peace nevertheless it was easy to foresee that the 
 union of Piedmont with France, after the completion 
 of all the treaties and without the guarantee of any 
 could not fail to figure among the causes or the 
 pretexts of war, in case of the renewal of war with 
 any power whatever, even with those powers who 
 had betrayed the interests of the King of Sardinia. 
 
 In the unions of territories that had taken place 
 under the Convention, the vote of the united peoples 
 was the title by which the Republic legalized the 
 extension of its frontiers. History must admit that 
 in the majority of cases that vote was obtained either 
 by force or by more or less transparent intrigue ; yet 
 there was a spirit of justice and magnanimity in the 
 principle which regarded the will of the people as the 
 only legitimate ground for aggrandizement of terri- 
 tory, that could not fail to strike even those whose 
 interests and prejudices had to suffer from its appli- 
 cation. Bonaparte, who did not desire to aggrandize 
 the Republic, but merely wanted to multiply his own 
 domains, held that he needed no title more specious 
 than the decrees of the Senate to justify the two 
 operations to which I have just referred ; and this at 
 a time when no one could pretend to regard the 
 Senate as anything but the special instrument of 
 one arbitrary will. But if he did not call for the 
 suffrages of the inhabitants of Piedmont, in order 
 to authorize them to declare themselves French, 
 he at least solicited their thanks after he had 
 spontaneously done them that favour. It was 
 not enough for him to receive addresses full 
 of exaggerated expressions of thanks from all 
 the towns in Piedmont, which had been got up 
 
58 The Last Days of the Consulate, 
 
 by the zeal of General Jourdan, 3 the then adminis- 
 trator of that country. Deputies from each of the 
 Transalpine Departments came to thank him formally 
 for the union of their country with France. His reply 
 to the address of these deputies was not published 
 in the newspapers ; but it contained one phrase that 
 was remarkable, inasmuch as it revealed the kind of 
 ideas and cares which at that time filled his mind. 
 
 He may have only wished to moderate the surprise 
 that the annexation of Piedmont to France must 
 needs create in Europe, or he may have intended to 
 give a glimpse of the scheme of which this step was 
 only the prelude ; however that may have been, 
 he told the Picdmontese deputies that as their 
 country had formerly made a part of France, the re- 
 membrance of this fact should make the reunion, 
 which was in every way so glorious and desirable for 
 them, quite simple and natural. 
 
 It was true that Piedmont had formerly made a 
 part, not precisely of France, but of the I^mpire of 
 Charlemagne ; and Bonaparte made this significant 
 observation at the moment when the creation of an 
 " Empire of the Gauls " was most talked of; for this 
 was one of the denominations by which it was pro- 
 posed to designate his realm, when he had destroyed 
 the Republic. Hardly had Piedmont been declared 
 a part of France, ere Bonaparte proceeded to deal 
 with the affairs of Switzerland. 
 
 s Jourdan was a member of the Legislntive Body on the 18th 
 Brumaire. He was excluded from it as an of>f>osant on the very 
 clay of the coup d'etat, and detained for some time in the depart- 
 ment of Charente- Inlnieure. Several months after, on the 24th 
 of July, 1800, he accepted the post of Minister-Extraordinary in 
 Piedmont. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 59 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 NOTES ON THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS OF THE 
 ENGLISH CONSPIRACY PRIOR TO THE ARREST 
 OF MOREAU. 
 
 At the beginning of year XII., preparations for 
 war with England were going on as actively as ever ; 
 the newspapers dealt in reiterated denunciations 
 of the Modern Carthage ; everything was being 
 made ready for the invasion, and if any relaxation of 
 activity at all was apparent or suspected, it might 
 naturally be attributed to the obstacles presented by 
 the season. Bonaparte had caused a medal to com- 
 memorate his " descent " to be struck by Denon ; 
 this work represented a Hercules strangling a Triton 
 whom he had flung down at his feet, and bore on the 
 opposite side the effigy of the First Consul. This 
 is probably the very first medal ever struck as the 
 presage and prophecy of a future event ; medals are 
 generally supposed to be commemorative of past 
 achievement. The common talk among the persons 
 about Bonaparte was of the objects of art which 
 England possessed, and of which among them 
 were held worthy of being added to the art-treasures 
 of France. Grave discussions were entered into in 
 detail, upon the measures which were to be taken 
 
60 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 for governing England as a conquest, and the 
 official journal, which could only repeat the words, or 
 at least express the ideas, of the chief of the State 
 upon that point, had more than once affected to 
 compute all that so civilized a country as England, 
 invaded by an enemy such as France, could lo.^e. 
 Thus, if by any chance the English had been disposed 
 to regard Bonaparte's descent upon their coasts as 
 dangerous to their liberty only, they would have 
 learned from the mouth of their enemy himself that 
 it was their property and their social existence they 
 must be ready to defend. 1 
 
 But while threats of every kind were thus hurled 
 at England, and the future ruin of the British Empire 
 was foretold in every variety of tone, the present ills 
 and inconveniences of war made themselves sensibly 
 felt. One half of a merchant-fleet that had not had 
 time to get into port before the rupture between the 
 two countries became known, had been captured by 
 the English. The result of this catastrophe, and of 
 the sudden interruption of the circulation of capital, 
 was a number of bankruptcies, the amount being 
 estimated for Paris only at more than eighty millions 
 (francs). Industry had been suddenly arrested in 
 its enterprises, and commerce in its speculations. 
 Agriculture experienced losses proportionate with 
 those of commerce and industry on account of the 
 too low price of grain. 
 
 1 Bonaparte had a newspaper, the Argus, in his pay in 
 London, and he continually had extracts from it inserted in the 
 French journals. See, among others, in the Journal <U Paris 
 of the i oth and 17th Vend&niaire, year XII., pp. v$ and 103, 
 the article entitled, " Des Suites probables de la Descente en 
 Angletcnv." 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 61 
 
 The only very strong and sincere public feeling 
 was that which these losses excited. There was 
 some vague uneasiness respecting both the acknow- 
 ledged and the secret plans of Bonaparte. People 
 murmured secretly at his ambition and his pro- 
 jects, and ridiculed the proposed " descent ;" for 
 everybody was privately incredulous of the success 
 of that enterprise ; even the journalists who day 
 after day proclaimed the approaching destruction 
 of "Carthage," and the generals who were already 
 talking, with a rapacity which they assumed in order 
 to flatter the chief of the State, of the immense spoils 
 that were to be the reward of their coming conquest. 
 Otherwise the public mind seemed calm. According 
 to the Government, the whole nation was pervaded by 
 but one idea, and animated by one single feeling, 
 dominant in every class ; the desire of vengeance upon 
 perfidious England for the scandalous violation of 
 the treaties. According to the majority of those who 
 spoke of public affairs, the Government was ex- 
 clusively occupied with one single object, that of 
 securing the success of the expedition against 
 England. 
 
 Nevertheless, this was not the case. Behind the 
 stir and bustle of the military preparations against 
 England, Bonaparte concealed preparations of another 
 kind, 2 whose results were to be more speedy and more 
 certain. Under the silence of the nation, so like that 
 apathy in which the evils of servitude are still felt, 
 
 2 [Marg. note.] "The idea with which Bonaparte was 
 occupied, was that of changing the government into an absolute 
 monarchy. He was resolved, having missed his aim in year 
 XL, in his journey to Belgium, to make no more delay " 
 
62 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 but not its shame, certain party manoeuvres were 
 hidden. These were not very formidable in them- 
 selves, but they became so when aided by an external 
 and superior force which gave them an artificial 
 impulse in the first instance, in- order to lay hold 
 upon them more readily afterwards. 
 
 At this point it becomes necessary to give a brief 
 explanation of the pretensions, the personal capacities, 
 and the respective situation of the different parties. 3 
 The Royalist party, to which it would seem that Bona- 
 parte's project (by that time well known) to reconstruct 
 the throne upon the ruins of the Republic must needs 
 give fresh strength, and, so to speak, an entirely new 
 life, was, on the contrary, becoming weaker and 
 weaker. The division that had taken place at an 
 early period between Louis XVIII. and the Count 
 d'Artois had become confirmed. That which the 
 one did at Warsaw the other censured in London, and 
 each of the princes had a Council which, though 
 entertaining the same views, were perpetually dis- 
 agreeing upon the means to be adopted ; so that both 
 were in the habit of hiding their respective plans and 
 proceedings from each other as closely as possible, 
 and of employing agents in France who held no inter- 
 communication and pursued different methods. The 
 party of Louis XVIII. was naturally the stronger, not 
 only on account of the (at least nominal) superiority 
 of that prince's dignity, but (and especially) because 
 
 3 [Marg. note.] " It is indispensable to observe two circum- 
 stances which were calculated to give all the authority possible 
 to the parties existing at this period relatively to their capacity, 
 (i) The state of war with England. (2) The certain knowledge 
 of the First Consul's plan for changing the form of the 
 government." 
 
ERSf 
 
 OF 
 
 he Last Days of the Consulate. 63 
 
 the French Royalists were generally agreed in attri- 
 buting to him more moderate views upon the terms 
 of his return to France. Nevertheless, the renewal 
 of the war in year XI. had restored some apparent 
 importance to the Count d'Artois and his council. 
 At the first rumour of the rupture he had hastened 
 from Edinburgh to London, and offered his services to 
 the English Government with as much petulance and 
 pretension as though he had been accustomed to 
 serve it. The mere fact that the Count d'Artois was 
 in contact with the English Government would give 
 some preponderance to his party over that of Louis 
 XVII I., at least while England continued to be the 
 only power at war with France ; because the latter 
 prince could only act from Warsaw ; that is to say, 
 from the headquarters of a power that rendered 
 Bonaparte an insincere homage, it is true, but homage 
 so marked and frequent that it was quite as useful 
 to him as if it had been genuine. 
 
 This division between the two heads of the Royalist 
 party was not the only one that existed. A third 
 party had been formed, at the expense of the two 
 others, in favour of the Duke d'Enghien. This young 
 prince, who united greatness of mind and nobility of 
 character to several brilliant qualities, had become the 
 idol of many royalists, who, while persevering in a 
 hitherto unfortunate cause, imputed all its humiliations 
 and reverses to the want of capacity, character, and 
 courage in Louis XVIII. and his brother, and thought 
 its success would be certain under another chief. 
 This party was increasing daily, and gaining deserters 
 from the other two parties, who agreed in regarding 
 Louis XVIII. as too weak, and the Count d'Artois 
 
64 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 as too ridiculous, because he kept up the petulant 
 presumption that only success could justify, while his 
 position was that of a beaten and fallen man. This is 
 a fact attested by the correspondence of the French 
 Royalists who had remained out of France, and by 
 the plain utterances of many who had long since 
 returned to their country. 
 
 As for the Orleans family, if they had then, or 
 have now, any partisans, which I greatly doubt, 
 those partisans were not, and are not, to be found 
 among true royalists. 
 
 At the beginning of year XII., the royalists of 
 Warsaw and those of London each had their 
 separate and independent agents in London. The 
 agents of Louis XVIII. were very few in number, 
 and at the head of them was Baron de la 
 Rochefoucauld, and, I think, a M. de Roquefcuille. 
 They formed a committee whose operations were 
 restricted to correspondence with Louis XVIII. on 
 the actual and possible state of France. Hut the 
 members of this committee had not, according to all 
 appearances, either the relations, the credit, or the 
 character that could have made conspirators of them. 
 Certain persons even went so far as to doubt the 
 sincerity of the zeal of the men who composed it for 
 the cause of Louis XVIII. 
 
 The party of the Count d'Artois in France was 
 much better organized, more numerous, and stronger. 
 Georges 4 had landed in France near the end of year 
 
 4 Georges Cadoudal, generally designated by his Christian 
 name, one of the most famous of the Chouan chiefs, was the 
 son of a miller in the neighbourhood of Auray. After having 
 accepted the pacification (9th of February, 1800), he went to 
 Paris, where he saw Bonaparte. On the 14th Ventose, year 
 
The Last Days of the Co7isulate. 65 
 
 X., with a certain number of agents, and these were 
 quickly followed by others. It is too soon to speak 
 of this party so as to convey an idea of its real 
 strength ; it suffices at this point to record its 
 existence. 
 
 A second party, which seemed to have recovered 
 some of its activity at about the same period, was 
 that one generally called the Jacobin party, and 
 entirely composed of men who, although their con- 
 duct in the most deplorable events of the Revolution 
 had been widely different, were all agreed, if not in 
 their ideas upon the Revolution, at least in the in- 
 tensity of their feelings with respect to it. These 
 men had been deprived of place and credit, firstly, 
 by the events that ensued upon the 9th Thermidor, 
 then by the Directory, and lastly by the Revolution 
 of the 18th Brumaire ; they had no real influence, 
 and w<re objects of general odium ; but they 
 were still strong in numbers, and in the obstinacy 
 that always goes with exaltation of feeling in igno- 
 rant minds, and they had not renounced all hope, 
 ii not of recovering their former weight, at least of 
 witnessing a change in the order of things that had 
 been established in France by the 18th Brumaire. 
 
 The Jacobins had been the first to attack the hero 
 of that day, and they did not confine themselves to 
 
 VIII., Bonaparte wrote to General Brune : "I saw Georges this 
 morning. He appears to me to be a big Breton, whom it will, 
 perhaps, be possible to make use of for the interests of the 
 country.'' Georges Cadoudal, however, refused his offers, and 
 retired to England. He came back from thence, it is said, to 
 prepare for the execution of the attempt on the 3rd Nivose, and 
 afterwards returned. He landed in France with Pichegru, in 
 August, 1803, and was not arrested until the 9th of the following 
 March. He will be referred to farther on. 
 
 F 
 
66 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 predicting that he would infallibly become a tyrant, 
 having every imaginable means of doing so placed 
 within his reach, but from the very first hour of his 
 power they regarded him as a tyrant. The first 
 pamphlets, the first satirical songs against Bona- 
 parte were written by them, and the first arbitrary 
 acts of the Consular Government, the first deeds of 
 dubious justice by which its severity was revealed, fell 
 upon that party.' 
 
 The Jacobins were more and more persecuted, and 
 had become weaker in proportion, but the party 
 could not be regarded as destroyed. They had two 
 or three presses in their possession, and they printed 
 pamphlets which were sometimes distributed to the 
 public by clandestine means, but more frequently 
 circulated among themselves only. It seems to me 
 worthy of remark that their experience of events, far 
 from having cooled the ardour of their ideas and 
 sentiments, had but confirmed them in their passionate 
 love of liberty. In Bonaparte's Government they re- 
 cognized the best justification of their political prin- 
 ciples and sentiments. They knew that they loved 
 and recognized liberty, by the strength of the instinct 
 which led them to revolt against tyranny. They had 
 several committees, at which those assembled who 
 still cherished the project of a complete restoration of 
 their party, or who believed that some concert 
 between them was necessary to preserve them from 
 the machinations of a power which hated them, and 
 had on several occasions treated them with severity 
 as arbitrary as it was cruel. But these councils were 
 
 * [Mar. note.] " Sentence of transportation upon D'Arena 
 and Ceracche', 3rd Niv6se.' > 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 67 
 
 summoned much more for the purpose of communi- 
 cating the well founded fear with which the Govern* 
 ment inspired the Jacobins, than the vain hopes of 
 seeing it overthrown in which they sometimes in- 
 dulged. 
 
 I have now to speak of a third party, almost as 
 widely divided from the other two, and much more 
 numerous than both put together. I allude to the 
 Republican party, and here I must avoid the obscurity 
 and vagueness that attend on the employment of ill- 
 defined words, especially of those which have fallen 
 into popular misuse. 
 
 In what sense can it be said that there was a Re- 
 publican party at the period in question ? What is 
 to be understood by a Republican party ? 
 
 At this period, the spirit of the Government was 
 assuredly no more republican than was that of the 
 Sublime Porte ; but its language was still republican 
 in certain respects, and the institutions of the country 
 were republican in form, if not in action and result. 
 In a word, France was held to be a republic, and its 
 constitution, said to have been accepted by more than 
 three millions of votes, was republican in its forms, 
 even after the temporary First Consul had become 
 First Consul for life. 
 
 It would seem that in speaking of a Republican 
 party at that period, one must needs refer to the whole 
 nation itself; but it is not in this sense that I mean to 
 speak of a Republican party ; for the nation, as a 
 whole, had only a vague presentiment of Bonaparte's 
 intentions, and a still more vague notion of the 
 consequences that might result from them to the 
 tranquillity of France and Europe. 
 
 F 2 
 
68 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 I mean by "a Republican Party" only the sum- 
 total of those who, foreseeing ruin, desired to prevent 
 it, whether they had or had not capacity or cou- 
 rage to do so. I will add that I comprehend under 
 that head, all those who regarded liberty as possible 
 in France, who believed that the existence of a 
 national representation voting laws and taxes might 
 suffice for all the need and all the love of liberty 
 which the nation still retained, and be compatible 
 with a single magistracy invested with the executive 
 power for life, but not hereditary. In short, all who 
 regarded the constitution of year VIII., notwith- 
 standing the violation and alteration it had under- 
 gone, as a guarantee of such an amount of liberty 
 as was possible after the ills and excesses of the 
 Revolution. 
 
 That which made the great difference between this 
 party and the two preceding parties, was at the same 
 time that which seemed to constitute its superiority 
 in strength, and its advantage of position. It had a 
 centre, a rallying-point, so to speak a representation, 
 in one of the authorities of the state ; in precisely 
 that authority indeed which had been created to 
 secure the maintenance of the republican consti- 
 tution. It will be seen, and I hope to make it 
 plain, that this advantage was a pure illusion, but 
 that very illusion forms a portion of the data upon 
 which a sound judgment of subsequent events may 
 be formed, and their causes estimated. 
 
 Almost all the men who had been placed in 
 authority after the revolution of the 18th Brumaire, 
 were reputed friends of liberty and the Republic 
 Almost all those who had co-operated upon that 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 69 
 
 famous day had repented on the morrow, for they 
 were enlightened by Bonaparte's first words after 
 the victory as to what its consequences would 
 be. A party of decided opposition was very soon 
 formed in the Senate, the Tribunate, and the Legis- 
 lative Body. I have already alluded to what was 
 done by the Tribunate and the Legislative Body in 
 order to frustrate this opposition. A different method 
 of producing a similar effect was adopted in the case 
 of the Senate. By the Senatus-consultum of the 
 2 1st Thermidor, year X., Bonaparte reserved to 
 himself the right of convoking the Senate ; he had 
 thus made himself its natural and perpetual president, 
 and he had added to it a certain number of members 
 selected among his own family and his own syco- 
 phants. The Senate, having already lost its constitu- 
 tional strength by passing acts that were in reality 
 attacks upon the constitution, could no longer oppose 
 an effectual barrier to the encroachments of the 
 arbitrary power which had got hold of every- 
 thing, including the Senate itself. The opposition 
 which had existed in that body since its origin, 
 although aK.ays in a minority, was, nevertheless, 
 tolerably strong. It had numbered twenty members 
 at a time when the Senate was composed of only 
 about fifty ; but fear, feebleness, and corruption had 
 speedily reduced it to fourteen or fifteen. When 
 the life-consulship was carried, the opposition had 
 dwindled to seven or eight, and we shall find it 
 afterwards still smaller in number and more in- 
 significant. 
 
 However, weak as it was, this party made Bona- 
 parte very anxious and uneasy, and his apprehensions 
 
JO The Last D ays of the Consulate. 
 
 might have proved well founded if only eight or ten 
 men could have screwed up their courage to the 
 point of interrupting the flattery and subservience 
 by which Bonaparte's enterprises were aided, by a 
 solemn protest, and the simultaneous resignation of 
 their seats. 
 
 The foregoing brief sketch of the various parties 
 then in declared or secret opposition to Bonaparte's 
 plans, will have made it evident that none of them 
 were very formidable, not only for want of resolution 
 and capacity, but still more for reasons presently to 
 be disclosed. 
 
 The principal cause of the weakness of these parties 
 was the lack of a leader who would have had the 
 national feeling in his favour. It was indispensable 
 to their success to have a standpoint in the nation 
 or in the army ; now, the nation, although discon- 
 tented, could not take any real interest in projects 
 whose object was either the restoration of its former 
 rulers, or the preservation of liberty which it was pre- 
 pared to resign ; hence it had not enough energy to 
 favour any particular party. The army had retained 
 more of its former character, but among its famous 
 generals, some were degraded by their own cupidity, 
 and the favours and bribes of Bonaparte ; while 
 others, harassed by his suspicions and the vigilance 
 of the police, lived far away from the army ; for 
 their influence over it might have assumed a form 
 that would have subverted Bonaparte's designs. 
 
 Among the latter, and occupying a place apart, 
 was Morcau. From him it seemed that the Republic 
 might have much to hope, for not only had he won 
 more battles than any other general, but he had also 
 displayed more of the virtues of a citizen. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 7 1 
 
 The position of Moreau, in open dissension with 
 Bonaparte, rendered him peculiarly fit to be the 
 head of a party, had it been in him to assume such a 
 character. I will endeavour to explain why this was 
 so, by referring to previous events, but I shall confine 
 myself to such matters only as throw a light upon the 
 occurrences which I propose to narrate. 
 
 The origin of the dissension between Moreau and 
 Bonaparte must be sought for so far back as the middle 
 of year IX. It appears the reluctance with which 
 Moreau consented to detach 20,000 men from his own 
 troops, who were then occupying the heart of Germany, 
 for the support of Bonaparte in hisexpedition into Italy, 
 was resented by the latter. In Germinal of the same 
 year 6 the official journal (in which, even at that early 
 period, no article concerning affairs of state was 
 inserted without either posiiive orders from Bonaparte 
 or his authorization) stated that the pay of Moreau's 
 troops had been furnished by the public exchequer 
 from the date of his assuming the command in 
 year VIII. This was a gross falsehood, and Moreau 
 replied to it on the 29th Floreal, by a letter addressed 
 to the Minister of War, in which he rendered an 
 account of the state of the funds which had main- 
 tained his troops, and their origin. By this it was 
 shown that Moreau had received about eighteen 
 millions (francs) from the Treasury, and that he had 
 levied war-contributions to the extent of forty-four 
 millions in Germany. 7 
 
 6 See the Moniteur of the 12th and 13th Germinal, pp. 809 
 and 819. 
 
 7 He gave an account of the expenditure of 36,000,000 out 
 of the latter sum, and stated that he had reserved to himseh 
 the use to be made of the 7,000,000 of surplus. 
 
 By Moreau's own admission, the greater portion of the latter 
 
72 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 When Moreau re-entered France with the army 
 whose victories had secured peace, precautions were 
 taken for the dispersion of its various corps ; for 
 Bonaparte held Moreau as dangerous as he might 
 have proved had ambition been his ruling passion. 
 On the general's return to his own home he became 
 an object of unremitting suspicion to Bonaparte and 
 the police. His manner of talking, whether in jest or 
 in earnest, made it sometimes evident to the point of 
 indiscretion that he did not rate Bonaparte very high. 
 He lived with his family amid a rather frivolous society, 
 at a time when it might have been less dangerous 
 to be famous and held in esteem by the nation, 
 this would have been little worthy of a man who 
 had just done such great things for the country. I Ie 
 was not, however, wanting in pride on occasion, 8 
 
 sum had been distributed to the troops as gratuities. These gra- 
 tuities had enriched no one : those granted to the generals did 
 not exceed $0,000 francs. Moreau sent a copy of his letter to 
 the Minister of War to each of the newspapers ; but an order 
 from the Ministry of War, or probably irom the Ministry of 
 Police, forbidding them to publish it, reached them at the same 
 time.* While the newspapers were silenced by this prohibition, 
 certain persons who had constant access to Bonaparte, and 
 willingly acted as echoes of his words, went about repeating 
 with an air of mystery well calculated to give weight to their 
 assertion that Moreau had laid hands on one-eighth of the 
 war-contributions for his own profit. 
 
 8 [Marg. note.] " He said things which indicated much good 
 sense and sound political principles. He sometimes even 
 talked of the principles on which he would govern France, or 
 believed the country ought to be governed. The Government 
 was extremely jealous of him ; spies were set upon all his 
 actions, and the meanness of jealousy was carried to the extent 
 of soliciting the cessation of certain social gatherings which he 
 was in the habit of attending, and whither a number ot ioreigners 
 who were eager to see and know him resorted." 
 
 * Moreau had it printed, and Fauriel possessed a copy. For 
 the text, see Appendix. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 73 
 
 and when he was in society where he thought that 
 the services he had rendered to the Republic would 
 be properly appreciated, he sometimes spoke as a 
 man who felt that he had given peace to France, 
 that same peace whose fruits were all usurped by 
 another. He had few friends among the generals 
 who had served under him, and who had been the 
 companions of his victories ; some were suspected, 
 like himself, the others were sent to posts at a 
 distance. 
 
 Such being the state of things, it is not at all ex- 
 traordinary that the various parties looked upon 
 Moreau as a man who was very likely to become an 
 active enemy of Bonaparte and his projects, and were 
 disposed to make attempts to gain him over to their 
 respective views, so as to avail themselves of his 
 renown for the execution of their plans. 
 
 Moreau was, however, prohibited by the nature of 
 his opinions and by his character from entering into 
 relations, or sympathizing, either with the Jacobins 
 who regarded him as a royalist, or as ready at any 
 moment to join the Royalist party, or with the pure 
 royalists who did not put upon him the affront of 
 considering him as belonging to them. A con- 
 scious indecision in his opinions and in his political 
 feelings probably contributed to make them look 
 upon him as a possible conquest to their cause, 
 and to lead them to think that after having won 
 so many battles for the Republic, he might at last 
 resolve to try and win one for the restoration of the 
 Bourbons, and thus expiate the others. 
 
 It is, however, quite certain that Moreau had 
 never entered into relations, or taken any step 
 
74 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 whatsoever, which could authorize the royalists to 
 entertain any hopes of the kind. Such an alliance 
 was not in the nature of things, as I shall show 
 more conclusively when I explain what was done 
 to bring it about, to what influence those efforts 
 were due, and what results ensued. 
 
 The truth is that the men with whom Morcau 
 sympathized in politics were only five or six who 
 formed a portion of the minority of the Senate, and 
 that he had communications with only two or three 
 of these Their confidences were confined to barren 
 aspirations towards a better state of things than that 
 actually existing, and equally barren regrets for the 
 latter : this they regarded as shameful and fatal for 
 France, and, nevertheless, it was only the prelude 
 to a still more deplorable condition. Neither Moreau 
 nor this handful of men had any settled plan of oppo- 
 sition to all that Bonaparte was preparing to do, or 
 for the undoing of what he had already accomplished ; 
 they had neither means nor courage for the task, 
 and, if I am not much mistaken, he who had won 
 battles did not display less weakness and irreso- 
 lution in the course of those communications than 
 others. Bonaparte could not have regarded them as 
 conspiracies had he not felt that his projects and 
 his conduct were legitimate sources of. conspiracy. 
 Moreau found all his pleasure in the repose and 
 indolence of domestic life ; he avoided every ap- 
 pearance of action, and was in fact as harmless as he 
 seemed. He was regarded with universal favour, 
 and so great was the general apathy and cowardice, 
 the people seemed to be pleased with him for dis- 
 guising from himself the state of the Republic, 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 75 
 
 and appearing unconscious of Bonaparte's fears and 
 suspicions, however vain they were. 
 
 Such, then, as I have described it. was the state of 
 parties at the period of which I am writing ; their 
 natural state, if I may use that term. It may fairly 
 be concluded that those parties were not very 
 formidable to Bonaparte's designs. No man dared 
 to act for himself, each man was waiting until another 
 should take action, and give him a chance of pro- 
 fiting by it. Nothing can be more favourable to the 
 consolidation of despotism than a state of things in 
 which various factions, all opposed in opinion, are 
 known to be enemies of the despot, without having 
 sufficient means to attack him. Despotism obtains 
 an easy victory over them, and its fruits are the same 
 as though the victory had been difficult and the 
 struggle uncertain. 
 
 Bonaparte was perfectly well aware of the state of 
 the factions. He was very anxious to suppress and 
 abolish them entirely. He was on the point of re- 
 creating the throne of the Bourbons (this should 
 be constantly borne in mind), and it was of real 
 importance to him at this moment to strike at 
 those who would have no more of the ancient 
 things, and also at those who wanted to have 
 both the ancient things and the former persons 
 restored. 
 
 It is, however, difficult for a Government which de- 
 sires to combine a reputation for justice with the pro- 
 fits of tyranny, to destroy enemies who have not the 
 courage of their enmity, who merely meet in secret to 
 utter irresolute protests, and vain hopes for a success 
 which they dare not put to the hazard. Such enemies 
 
y6 The Last Days of tJie Consulate. 
 
 are nevertheless very troublesome, to a suspicious and 
 jealous Government that is meditating changes to its 
 own advantage; in the first place, because it is in the 
 nature of things that the fears of such a Government 
 should outrun its danger, and, secondly, because a 
 party which has not enough strength in itself to be 
 formidable, may gain it through an unexpected in- 
 cident, in a complicated condition of affairs, and when 
 appearances are uncertain. 
 
 In such a position, what was Bonaparte to do ? I 
 will relate what he did. 
 
 He endeavoured to urge those enemies whom he 
 knew, because he had had them carefully watched, to 
 action ; to inspire them with resolution and audacity 
 which they did not naturally possess ; so that he 
 might be able to come down upon them with more 
 show and publicity, and to punish them with a 
 greater parade of justice : that is to say, to punish 
 the offences to which they had been prompted as if 
 those offences were spontaneous. 
 
 I am aware that such an assertion must appear 
 very strange, and I believe it to be a novelty in the 
 history of tyranny. It will date from the French 
 Revolution, and assuredly it will not be one of the 
 least strange results of that Revolution. History 
 records the deeds of tyrants who oppress their 
 enemies, without aiming at any other honours and 
 advantages than those of getting rid of them. The 
 French Revolution will furnish examples, at different 
 periods, of oppressors who incite those whom they 
 desire to destroy to the commission of crime, in order 
 that they may destroy them with all the forms intended 
 for the preservation of innocence from the undue 
 exercise of strength. 
 
The Last Days of the Consjtlate. yy 
 
 However strange the assertion that I have just 
 made may appear, it seems to me that it will be 
 proved by the subsequent facts. But it is indis- 
 pensable, before I go farther, to allude to a kind of 
 authority equally new in the annals of mankind, 
 that authority which was the instrument of the de- 
 signs whose fulfilment we shall shortly see : I mean 
 the police. 1 
 
 The police was a creation of the Directory, and 
 of Merlin's especially. 2 At that time the factions 
 were much more active and energetic than they have 
 since been, because their resources included freedom 
 of speech, of the press, and up to a certain point, 
 freedom of political meetings. The Directory soon 
 became arbitrary because it was weak and despised, 
 and it regarded the police as its best defence 
 against its enemies. The police grew and expanded 
 in proportion as the Directory lost ground in public 
 esteem and respect. I believe that the Ministry of 
 Police employed seven or eight hundred spies under 
 Bourguignon, the last Minister of Police but one? 
 The iSth Brumaire rendered much of this vigilance 
 
 1 [Marg note.] "The police must be spoken of in general, 
 and what it may and ought to be in the Government, stated. 
 That is, an authority which can arrest, transport, and hand 
 over to military commissions, those who are the object of its 
 suspicions. It must be pointed out and insisted upon that the 
 police is by its nature the most liable of all powers to become 
 the organ and special instrument of the personal objects of 
 Governments." 
 
 2 The Ministry of Police was created on the ist of January, 
 1796. Camus was the first titular minister, but he held office 
 only three days. Merlin (of Donai), who was then Minister of 
 Justice, succeeded him, and resigned his functions in April, when 
 he had completely organized the service. 
 
 3 Bourguignon Dumolard, of Dauphine, was Minister of 
 Police from the 23rd of June to the 20th of July, 1799. He was 
 replaced by Fouchfi. 
 
7 8 The Last Days of the Consulate, 
 
 unnecessary, on account of the national assent to 
 the decision of that day, which gave the Govern- 
 ment it created the strength that was needed to 
 prevent it from resorting to arbitrary means. The 
 number of spies was reduced, and greater importance 
 was attached to that portion of the duties of the 
 Ministry which consisted of the suppression and 
 punishment of actual disorder than to the divination 
 of intended disturbances. Most of the dealings of 
 the Ministry of Police with individuals were acts 
 of reparation for the proscriptions that had taken 
 place under the Directory/ or at still earlier dates. 5 
 
 The first indication of the falsehood and perfidy 
 of the police system occurred on the occasion of 
 "the pacification of La Vendee," when men who had 
 been only half-conquered by force of arms were 
 finally crushed by stratagem, and those sam? men, 
 entrapped into fancied security by a perfidious 
 device of the Government, were arbitrarily ar- 
 rested. 6 The attempted assassination of Bonaparte 
 on the 3rd Nivose, year IX., confirmed the police in 
 its new characteristics. The enemies whom Bona- 
 parte had made for himself by the Senatus-consul- 
 tum of the 15th Nivose, 7 those among the chief 
 
 4 [Marg. note.] " These observations are true only in so far 
 as the Ministiy of Police in particular is concerned, but not of 
 the police in general ; for its action was divided among numerous 
 agents who were independent of each other. For instance, while 
 proscribed persons were recalled by the Ministry of Police, 
 the vilest intrigues were going on at the Ministry of the Interior." 
 
 6 [Marg. note.] " By degrees, the police became inspired with 
 the spirit of Bonaparte, which, ere it completely possessed that 
 service, had invaded other men, and other authorities. " 
 
 6 An allusion to the execution of M. de Frotte, in January, 
 1800. See M. Thiers. 
 
 7 On the 15th Nivose, a Senatus-consultum rectified the 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate, 79 
 
 authorities who revealed themselves successively by 
 their opposition to him ; his dread of being assas- 
 sinated, evinced as it was by innumerable precautions 
 such as the former kings of France would have dis- 
 dained to adopt and blushed to admit to be needful 
 - all these circumstances made the spy system neces- 
 sary, and obliged it to be more adroit, to maintain a 
 more numerous force, and to select its chief from 
 classes less open to the suspicion of plying so shameful 
 a trade. The bodies of special police were multiplied 
 and reinforced. Several of the Ministries had each 
 its special police-force. 
 
 The First Consul had his own, and that which had 
 happened under the Directory occurred again under 
 Bonaparte. With each injustice that he perpetrated, 
 according as he declined in public esteem, the police 
 became more suspicious, active, and aggressive. No 
 longer content with setting snares to entrap the 
 enemies of the Government into betraying their 
 intentions and their projects, the police plotted to 
 induce them to commit actions which laid them 
 open to punishment, and those men who had 
 been their pretended accomplices acted when ne- 
 cessary as informers before the courts of law, 
 having previously played that part for the Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 I will cite a few facts which I believe to be hardly, 
 if at all, known, and it will be easy to judge from 
 them what the police under Bonaparte was, even 
 in the beginning, and what it was capable of being 
 made in his hands. 
 
 decree by which Bonaparte had condemned 130 persons to 
 transportation as "Terrorists." 
 
80 TJie Last Days of the Co7isulate. 
 
 Shortly after the 18th Brumaire, Bonaparte, who 
 was already irritated by the opposition which had 
 begun to manifest itself in public opinion and feel- 
 ing, bethought him of a means whereby he might 
 secure the power of punishing that opposition at his 
 pleasure. He employed his brother Lucien to get 
 a pamphlet written, in which he was decried, his 
 government attacked in unmeasured terms, and his 
 character aspersed by the grossest calumny and 
 abuse. All the persons believed to entertain the 
 sentiments manifested in this pamphlet, and to be 
 desirous of disseminating them, were named. Now, 
 side by side with the tarnished names of a few dema- 
 gogues who had neither place nor influence, were 
 those of some men who held high office and bore 
 themselves with independence. It is said that 
 Fontanes was asked by Lucien to write this pamphlet. 
 He was known to be so vile that such a pro; 
 might be made to him, but he was not vile enough to 
 accept it. 
 
 To the best of my belief, it was a journalist named 
 Isidore Langlois 8 who did the dirty job. Langlois 
 had been expatriated in Fructidor. year V., and was 
 employed, at this time, by Lucien, in his office, where 
 he acted as a spy for Fouche. I will name him 
 because he is dead ; and because a stain the more 
 upon his already dishonoured name* cannot do him 
 
 8 Isidore Langlois, born at Rouen on the 18th of June, 1770, 
 editor of the Mcssager du Soir, and one of the journalists pro- 
 scribed after the 8th Fructidor. He was recalled after the 18th 
 Brumaire. I have not been able to find the pamphlet which 
 Fauriel attributes to him. 
 
 9 u General Hoche. having been insulted by him in the 
 Mcssager, retaliated by a truly military revenge/' says the 
 " Biographie Moderne,'' 1807, Leipzig, vol. iii. p. 68. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 81 
 
 a real injustice, even though it were an error, which I 
 do not think it is. 
 
 Another circumstance, one which is an unknown 
 incident of a well-known event the attempt of the 3rd 
 Nivose and the measures which ensued upon it may 
 give an idea of the manner in which Bonaparte used 
 the police administration for his own purposes. 
 When the list for transportation of thirty-five so-called 
 ringleaders was made, the police and Bonaparte 
 himself were well aware that the strongest presump- 
 tion respecting the authors of the plot attached to 
 the Vendeans, but none to the Jacobins. 1 But Bona- 
 parte saw that the occurrence would furnish a favour- 
 able opportunity for undermining a party whom he 
 dreaded, and whom he might persecute with impunity 
 because they were odious to the nation. 
 
 A list of men belonging to the Jacobin party 
 
 who were reputed to be especially dangerous, was 
 
 then drawn up, and so hurriedly was this done 
 
 that it included the names of some who were dead 
 
 and others who were absent from Paris. When the 
 
 available ones on the list had been transported, and 
 
 before the police had laid hold of the real clue to the 
 
 conspiracy, which terminated in the Royalist party, 
 
 certain enemies of Fouche wanted to force him to 
 
 declare, in the presence of the Consul and at the 
 
 Council of State, that as the men who had just been 
 
 sent out of the country, were held guilty of the out- 
 
 1 " Some instinct," said Fouche to Bourrienne, in 1805, " told 
 me that the 'infernal machine ' was the doing of the Royalists, 
 I said so, privately, to Bonaparte ; he, lam certain, was equally 
 convinced of the fact himself; but nevertheless he persisted 
 in proscribing a hundred men." (" Memoires de Bourrienne." 
 vol. vi. p. 293. Thiers gives very full details of the attempt, 
 and its consequences. Book viii.) 
 
S2 The Last Days of the Consulate, 
 
 rage of the 3rd Nivose, no other persons could be 
 prosecuted on the same charge. The First Consul, 
 having no longer any interest in disguising the real 
 motive for the transportation of the unfortunate 
 Jacobins, took the trouble of replying personally to 
 this interpellation addressed to Fouche, and informed 
 his hearers that the police were to be in nowise 
 hindered in their search for the originators of the 
 plot ; because the men who had been transported as 
 such deserved that punishment, and their exile was a 
 measure of public safety, even supposing they were 
 not guilty of the crime imputed to them. 
 
 The dismissal of Fouche from the post of 
 Minister of Police led to a transitory notion that at 
 length that office was about to be reduced in im- 
 portance, and the methods by which it worked to 
 fall into disuse by the Government. As a matter 
 of fact, Rcgnier's 2 administration was quiet and 
 easy enough. Several minor acts of an arbitrary 
 kind were indeed done by him, but none of the bold 
 and glaring sort that had been perpetrated under 
 Fouche. This change may possibly have arisen 
 from the different characters of the two ministers, or 
 it may be accounted for cither by the union of the 
 Ministry of Police with that of Justice, or by Bona- 
 parte's preoccupation with the renewal of the war with 
 England, which so absorbed him that his attention 
 was diverted from the factions. 
 
 All the previous achievements of the police were, 
 
 however, destined to be surpassed by the audacity 
 
 and refinement of perfidy which was developed within 
 
 an interval of six months. What I have already said 
 
 * He was Grand Judge. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 8$ 
 
 has only indicated what the police might become ; it 
 is for facts to Speak now 
 
 I must again refer to a former period, in order to 
 trace out the origin of the conspiracy in which 
 Moreau is held to have been an accomplice, and to 
 explain many deeds of Bonaparte's to which it served 
 as a pretext. 
 
 Bonaparte's first manifestation of an intention to 
 ruin Moreau dates back to year X. A certain Abbe 
 David, 3 whom we shall soon find figuring among 
 conspirators of a new kind, had been intimate with 
 Pichegru, Moreau, and several other generals of the 
 army of the Rhine ; and he had been employed 
 there after having undergone many metamorphoses 
 in the course of the Revolution ; for he had always 
 been ready with opinions and conduct to suit each 
 change of circumstances. After a long absence, 
 caused by Pichegru's defection in year V., David 
 returned to Paris, subsequently to the 1 8th Brumaire, 
 and had passed nearly two years there without 
 
 3 P. David, cure of Pompadour, and afterwards of Uzerche, 
 embraced the cause of the Revolution, was Secretary-General 
 of the Department of the Pyrenees Orientales after the 8th 
 Brumaire, and afterwards (in 1801) Vicar-General to the Bishop 
 of Limoges. Having come to Paris, he endeavoured to effect a 
 reconciliation between Moreau and Pichegru, was arrested at 
 Calais (22 November, 1802 1, transferred to the Temple, brought 
 to trial with Moreau, and acquitted In 1796, he had published, 
 at Hamburg, the " Histoire Chronologique des Operations de 
 l'Annee du Nord et de celle de Sambre et Meuse, depuis Ger- 
 minal an II. jusqu'au merae mois de Fan III., tiree des livres 
 d'ordre de ces deux armees." It will appear, farther on, that 
 Fauriel treats him as a mere buffoon, and with good reason, 
 judging by the pamphlet which this former cure published in 
 Paris in 1817 (Le Normant), under the title, " Seconde epitre 
 de M. l'Abbe Siccard, ou Histoire en vers burlesques ci'une 
 partie des folies et des crimes du corse empereur depuis son 
 entree en Egypte jusqu'a sa deportation a Sainte Helene." 
 
 G 2 
 
84 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 having seen Moreau. At last, on the 6th Prat rial, lie 
 asked for an interview with the general, in order 
 to ascertain how he was disposed towards Pichegru, 
 and to avow his intention of endeavouring to effect 
 a reconciliation between them. Moreau received 
 David's overtures coldly, conveying by his manner 
 that he entertained no personal enmity towards 
 Pichegru, but that he regarded him as utterly lost in 
 the estimation of the French by his betrayal of his 
 country in year V. 
 
 While he was thus opening negotiations with 
 Moreau, David imparted his proceedings to several 
 generals, among whom were Macdonald and Dejean, 
 and also to senator Barthclemi. They all approved 
 of the proposed reconciliation, and the two generals 
 even undertook to procure permission from Bonaparte 
 for Pichegru to return. Their petition was absolutely 
 rejected, but in such a way as to imply that the 
 refusal was rather the effect of circumstances which 
 prevented its being granted at the time, than absolute 
 and irrevocable under others which might arise. 
 
 David immediately wrote to Pichegru, who was in 
 London, informing him of what was going on. He 
 announced his intention of effecting a reconciliation 
 between Pichegru and Moreau, and confidently 
 assured the former that the latter would make no 
 opposition to his re-entering France, but would 
 even assist him in doing so, if he had the power. 
 This assurance had been conveyed in two or three 
 letters addressed to him by Moreau, and in those 
 letters, the general, while freely expressing his un- 
 favourable opinion of Pichegru's conduct, had been 
 careful to convey his personal goodwill towards him. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 85 
 
 The police were in full possession of all David's 
 overtures to Moreau, and all Moreau's answers to 
 David, and this fact might have cast some suspicion 
 on the intentions of the latter. Moreau did indeed 
 feel some uneasiness respecting them, only that 
 David's indiscretion was sufficient to exculpate him 
 from charges of a more serious and disgraceful kind. 
 He lived in a boarding-house in Paris, where he saw 
 a number of people of all sorts, and of the most 
 various ways of thinking, every day, and he boasted 
 over and over again in their presence of his project 
 for the reconciliation of Pichegru and Moreau ; more- 
 over, it is said that he added a mysterious insinuation, 
 which, if not an act of treachery, was at least an 
 egregious blunder on the part of a man accustomed 
 to political intrigues, and who was not ignorant of 
 Moreau's position with respect to the Consular 
 Government. He had talked of Moreau's reconcilia- 
 tion, not only with Pichegru, but with a great per- 
 sonage whom he did not name, but who could be 
 no other than Bonaparte. 
 
 At the beginning of year XL the Abbe David 
 resolved upon going to London, either because he 
 had some personal matters to look after there, or for 
 the purpose of discussing the affair of the reconcilia- 
 tion with Pichegru in person. He made no secret of 
 this journey ; according to custom he asked for a 
 passport at the Prefecture of Police : this he obtained, 
 and forthwith set out. He encountered neither oppo- 
 sition nor obstacle until he reached Calais, on the 1st 
 Frimaire ; but there he was arrested, with preparations 
 and precautions which proved that orders to that 
 effect had been sent in advance of him. His papers 
 
86 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 were minutely examined, and among them were 
 found the copy of a note written to Moreau, and a 
 letter from Moreau himself relating to Pichegru, and 
 containing, so to speak, his profession of faith with 
 respect to him. The papers were carried off and 
 sent to the Grand Judge, who might just as well 
 have had them seized, and the man in whose posses- 
 sion they were, arrested at Paris. The designs of the 
 Government in regard to Moreau were, however, 
 much more effectually served by the arrest of David 
 at Calais, almost upon the frontier of England, 
 and in the course of a journey whose object was a 
 visit to Pichegru for the purpose of bringing him and 
 Moreau together. The joy displayed by Bonaparte's 
 partisans on learning the arrest of David, and the 
 seizure of Moreau's letters, and the threatening hints 
 that they let fall, proved sufficiently what kind of 
 advantage it was proposed to take of the occurrence. 
 They had counted on the imprudence of Moreau, on 
 his tenderness towards a former friend, which might 
 easily be represented as criminal. They found 
 widely different testimony to Moreau's sentiments. 
 It was proved under his own hand, that while he bore 
 no personal resentment to Pichegru, he had not for- 
 gotten his treachery to his country. Moreau remained 
 perfectly quiet amid all the noise that the Govern- 
 ment made about this occurrence, and the stir 
 subsided by degrees. David, who had been brought 
 to Paris and questioned very roughly and with 
 threats, was released at the end of a few months ; 
 so, this plan of encompassing Moreau's ruin having 
 proved abortive, in spite of its fair promise, other 
 means had to be sought. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 8j 
 
 We shall see by what a roundabout way the 
 Government thought they had at last ensured 
 success. 
 
 I have now to speak of a man who had already 
 acquired notoriety in the course of the Revolution by 
 the violence of his opinions, and afterwards increased 
 his celebrity by conduct of a kind which the meanest 
 men, those who had the very least claim to public 
 esteem, had hitherto carefully concealed when guilty 
 of it. 
 
 This man was Mehee ; 4 and Mehee, who had not 
 
 * Jean CI. Hipp. Mehee de la Fouche, born at Meaux about 
 1769, died at Paris in poverty in 1826 ; he was the son of a 
 professor of medicine at Val de Grace The following is a 
 sketch of his life before Fauriel brings him under notice A 
 secret agent of the revolutionists in Poland and Russia, he was 
 hunted out of those countries and returned to Paris in 1792, 
 just in time to be made Recording Secretary to the Commune 
 called that of the 10th of August, and is said by his enemies 
 to have taken part in the September massacres. He was im- 
 prisoned for some time under the Terror, and after the 9th 
 Thermidor he published various pamphlets against the Jacobins. 
 He was Secretary to the War Department, and afterwards to that 
 of Exterior Relations (1795 ! 796), and it was probably in the 
 first of those posts that he had been enabled to render certain 
 services to Bonaparte. After the 18th Bruinaire he was 
 entrusted with the editorship of the Journal des Hontmes Litres. 
 
 He has related with impudent frankness, supporting his 
 statements by several original documents, the schemes to 
 which he resorted to entrap the Royalist party and the English 
 Ministry. His book, published at the expense of the French 
 Government, is entitled, " Alliance des Jacobins de France 
 avec le Minhtere Anglais " The Jacobins are represented by 
 citizen Mehee, and the English Ministry by Messrs. Hammond 
 and Yorke and Lords Pelham and Hawkesburv. He gives as 
 a sequel Drake's " Stratagems, Correspondence, and Plans of 
 Campaign,'' &c. The book was printed at the Republican 
 Printing Office in Paris, in Germinal, year XII., and sent by 
 the Minister of Exterior Relations, with a report from the Grand 
 Judge, to the members of the diplomatic body. The originals 
 of the letters written by Drake which were contained in the 
 book were addressed to the Elector of Bavaria, at whose court 
 
SS The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 yet fallen from the height to which he had been 
 raised among the demagogues,, regarded Bonaparte 
 as a kindred spirit. The two were united by- 
 agreement of opinion, more than by any other bond. 
 Mehee, who had been the most powerful of the two, 
 up to the 13th Vendemiaire, had given all the aid and 
 assistance to Bonaparte which the less fortunate of 
 two friends is entitled to expect from the other. He 
 had been secretary to the famous Commune of Paris 
 during the revolutionary turmoil, and under the 
 Directory he was appointed Historiographer of the 
 French Republic. I do not know what he ever did 
 towards fulfilling the obligations of that post, but we 
 shall soon see what manner of man the Directory had 
 selected as an historian. His chief occupation under 
 the Directory was the management of the Journal des 
 Homines Litres, which Fouche bought and continued, 
 under his own management, until close on the 18th 
 Brumaire. M^h^e was retained as the editor of 
 that journal, and was thus brought into immediate 
 contact and indirect connection with Bonaparte. 
 This was a perilous position. At that period the 
 press had already been subjected to numerous 
 restrictions, and to an oppressive inquisition which 
 made its semi-freedom at once dangerous and diffi- 
 cult. The number of newspapers had been reduced, 
 by a consular decree, from fifty or sixty to twelve,* 
 
 Drake represented England. ( Journal de Paris, 29th of March, 
 1805, p. 1198.) 
 
 I >n the 17th of January, 1800, a decree of the Consul had 
 reduced the number of newspapers, not to twelve, but to thirteen 
 (including the Monsieur). The following is a list of those which 
 escaped suppression, for awhile at least: Le Monitcur l/m- 
 versel, Lc Journal des Dibats, Le Journal dc Paris. Le Bien 
 Jnjorme, Le Publiciste, L Ami des Lois, La CleJ du Cabinet, Le 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 89 
 
 and these twelve privileged newspapers were liable 
 to the habitual censorship of the police. Never- 
 theless the last remains of the formerly existing 
 licence of the press still sufficed to give it a show 
 of freedom, and for some months after the 18th 
 Brumaire most of the journalists who had been 
 permitted to survive more or less boldly and per- 
 suasively supported the opposition to Bonaparte 
 that was manifested in Paris and among the autho- 
 rities, in proportion as he lost his reputation for 
 heroism and the love of liberty. 
 
 Mehee was among this number, and, notwithstanding 
 the reiterated rebukes of Fouche, who was to a certain 
 extent responsible in the eyes of the Consul for all 
 that was displeasing to him in the Journal des Homines 
 Libres, he frequently gave offence to Bonaparte, either 
 through malice or because it is impossible to avoid 
 displeasing an all-powerful man who will not suffer 
 anybody except himself to enjoy freedom of thought. 
 He talked in the same spirit that his journal dis- 
 played ; he even wrote a pamphlet against an elaborate- 
 note in which Senator Garat sought to prove that the 
 great personages who had risen to power by their renown 
 in arms had been at the same time friends of liberty. 
 
 In the summer of year IX., Meh^e told a story of 
 Talleyrand's ridiculous humouring of the First Consul, 
 under the form of an eastern apologue. It was to the 
 following effect. Bonaparte wanted to shoot in a place 
 where there was no game, and Talleyrand, having 
 bought several dozens of rabbits, had them turned 
 
 Citoyen Francais, La Gazette de France, Le Journal des Homines 
 Libres, Le Journal du Soir, Le Journal des Dejenseurs de la 
 Patrie, La Decade Philosophique. 
 
90 TJic Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 loose on the ground the day before. The rabbits proved 
 to be so tame that they could be killed only by kicks. 
 
 This, and some other articles, led to the suppression 
 of the journal, and shortly afterwards to Mehee's 
 banishment to Dijon, without any apparent cause 
 except what had passed respecting the newspaper, and 
 the manner in which Mehee had presumed to speak of 
 his former comrade, now the sole and supreme head 
 of the Republic. 6 
 
 Fouche', who was regarded as Mehee's patron, 
 and who ought to have protested against the First 
 Consul's anger, was forced to act as its instru- 
 ment; he it was who convened to Mehee the order 
 to withdraw to Dijon, and induced him to obey it. 
 This exile was of short duration; in five or six weeks 
 Mehee obtained his recall, and returned to Paris. I fe 
 was, however, again arrested and sent to Oberon, 7 
 either because he persisted in the conduct, or rather 
 in the speeches, that had led to his banishment to 
 Dijon, or for other reasons unknown to me. It i 
 well to state here that his transportation was effected 
 in so rough and arbitrary a manner that it is almost 
 impossible to believe there was any connivance be- 
 tween Mehee and the police in order to attain a 
 secret object. 
 
 Mehee was transported to Oberon, whither several 
 victims of the Senatus-consultum of the 15th Nh 
 had also been sent, with some other men of the same 
 
 * Bonaparte said to Fouche, in an altercation with him, 
 "There's one, Mehee, allowed to write a newspaper : a man who 
 was in the affair of September ; I have it all signed by his hand. 
 These are the sort of people you patronize ! "' (" Memoire sur le 
 Consulat," p. 102.) 
 
 7 [Marg. note.] '* Again Fouche was the instrument of his 
 exile to Oberon." 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 91 
 
 party who had unluckily displeased Bonaparte. At 
 this point the facts become more singular, more 
 important, more equivocal. I shall not conceal such 
 suspicions as are well founded, but I will only state 
 for fact what I entirely believe. 
 
 So far as I can ascertain, Mehee remained at 
 Oberon for more than a year. During that interval 
 Fouche had left the Ministry ot Police; 8 but, as I 
 shall shortly have occasion to relate more precisely, 
 he had not withdrawn from affairs of the sort; and 
 his abiding influence, together with his continued 
 offices about the First Consul, enabled him to use 
 interest for Mehee and solicit his recall Mehee's 
 wife beset him with entreaties which he could not 
 reject, on behalf of one whom he ought to have 
 protected more effectually against the excesses of 
 arbitrary power. 
 
 Mehee escaped from Oberon on the 16th Frimaire, 
 year XI., and from this point the facts begin to 
 assume an equivocal and mysterious character. In 
 the first place, evasion was a difficult feat, for the 
 island was closely guarded, and it was an especially 
 difficult feat in the case of Mehee. Then it was in 
 Paris that Mehee took refuge ; ! that is to say, under 
 the eyes of the power that had persecuted him, and 
 might persecute him with greater rigour than ever, 
 after an evasion which could only be regarded as an 
 aggravation of his offences against it. 
 
 8 As we have already remarked, the Ministry of Police of 
 which Fouche was the head was suppressed on the 14th of 
 September, 1802. 
 
 1 [Marg. note.] " He asked everywhere in Paris for" letters 
 of introduction. One of his friends requested a very well- 
 known Irishman to give him a letter, but was refused." 
 
92 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 I leave these considerations to the sagacity of 
 the impartial reader. But it is a more remark- 
 able fact, and one which I regard as quite certain, 
 that shortly before the date given by Mehec as that 
 of his escape from Oberon, his wife said openly that 
 through the intercession of Fouche he had obtained 
 permission to retire to Holland or England. At 
 any rate, when we find M6hee, a few days after his 
 arrival in Paris, forming a plan for going to England 
 in order to mystify the French princes and ihnigrcs, 
 it is impossible to refrain from suspecting the spon- 
 taneity of such a project. It is not necessary that 
 our curiosity to know the whole truth concerning 
 so singular a circumstance should be satisfied, in 
 order to enable the reader to form a sound judgment 
 upon the subsequent results. Considering the manner 
 in which Mehec's expedition was turned to account, I 
 regard the suggestion as but a trifling aggravation 
 of the transaction. 
 
 After a delay of a few days at Guernsey, where 
 he confided his plan in the first instance, and made 
 his first offers of service, to the governor of the 
 island," Mehee reached London, towards the end of 
 Pluviose, year XI., 3 bearing letters from the Governor 
 of Guernsey for the English Ministry, who had already 
 been informed by General Doyle of the inten tions of 
 the traveller. It was therefore to the English Govern- 
 ment that he first presented himself, and with it he 
 endeavoured to effect the negotiation which he had 
 in view. 
 
 He represented himself as an enemy of Bonaparte, 
 
 - General Doyle. See '* Alliance des Jacobins," p. io. 
 3 In February, 1803. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 93 
 
 eager to be revenged upon him for a long course 
 of oppression, by every sort of means and at any cost. 
 It happened, by a chance that was very favourable to 
 Mehee, and of which he probably knew nothing, that 
 Bonaparte's conduct towards him had been related in 
 London in some detail, and had been much talked of. 
 
 It does not appear that the English Government 
 entertained any doubt whatever of the dispositions 
 and the sincerity of a man who seemed to be ani- 
 mated with a desire for vengeance, who certainly 
 had motives for that desire, and who assuied them 
 that he had the means of gratifying it. Never- 
 theless, he was heard with coldness and reserve, and 
 even neglected; 4 for the peace which still subsisted 
 between the two nations rendered such services as 
 he offered less valuable at that period. It was not 
 until after the rupture that there was any eagerness 
 to welcome him, or sign of a disposition to do justice 
 to his hitherto neglected overtures. 5 
 
 It forms no part of my plan to trace out the 
 incidents and the progress of this unprecedented 
 scheme. Indeed I could not narrate them other- 
 wise than according to Mehee's own recital, and I 
 regard it as necessarily untrustworthy in many par- 
 ticulars. I shall restrict myself to the chief results 
 
 4 See " Alliance des Jacobins," pp. 18 and following. 
 
 5 [Marg. note.] " It is rather remarkable, that at the moment 
 when the English Ministry seemed to accept the proposals of 
 Mehee, he received a visit from one Baude. who had newly 
 arrived from France. Was not this man an envoy of Mehee's 
 employers, sent to communicate to him private advices and 
 instructions relative to the rupture?" 
 
 Mehee alleges (p. 31) that Baude, " who had done him at Paris 
 an infinity of small services, was charged to make inquiry into 
 the processes of certain English manufactures." 
 
94 The Last Days of the Con sit late. 
 
 of this extraordinary affair, and to circumstances 
 which, on the one hand, throw a light on the sub- 
 sequent events, and, on the other, are authenticated 
 by those very occurrences. 
 
 The basis of the plan which Mehee presented 
 to the English Government was simple enough, and 
 might even appear specious to persons who have 
 always been ill-informed upon the true state of things, 
 and the real condition of men's minds, in France. 
 He alleged that there existed a Jacobin Committee, 
 having relations with members of that party in 
 every part of the Republic, and also among the 
 troops, through an influential general who was 
 devoted to it. The proposed aim of this committee 
 was the overthrow of the Government of Bonaparte, 
 and the re-establishment of the Republic. Mehee 
 announced himself as being in intimate relations 
 with this committee, and standing high in its 
 favour, and he proposed to come to France- in order 
 to avail hirmclf of these advantages for a double 
 purpose ; firstly, that of inducing as many as he could 
 of the members of the Jacobin Committee to adopt 
 Royalist opinions and act with the Royalist ; arty, 
 and, secondly, to get up a movement and foment dis- 
 turbances which the English or the princes might 
 immediately turn to their advantage by certain 
 means pre-arranged with that object. This, then, 
 was the plan, which it was agreed that Mehee 
 should carry out in France; with the addition that 
 he was to pass through Munich on his round- 
 about journey, and there to see the resident English 
 Minister, to take private instructions from him, 
 and arrange in fuller detail certain measures for 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 95 
 
 the execution of the general plan that had been 
 laid in London. 
 
 Careful though Mehee is to put forward this project, 
 and the negotiation that ensued upon it, as the joint 
 action of himself and the English Government, he 
 names M. Bertrand de Molleville as the single and 
 direct negotiator in the matter. Now, M.de Molleville, 
 considering his well-known relations with the French 
 princes in England, must be regarded as their agent 
 with the English Cabinet, and not as the direct 
 agent of the latter. Moreover, the general instruc- 
 tions given to Mehee through this gentleman and 
 under his direction, are very vague, and do not posi- 
 tively define any object except the overthrow of the 
 then existing government of France, leaving to the 
 nation the choice of a substitute. I am bound to 
 mention these two circumstances, because they 
 furnish a ready and natural answer to most of the 
 imputations against the English Government with 
 which all France was soon to ring. 
 
 According to Mehee's statement, he intended to 
 confine himself to negotiating with the English 
 Government, and to conceal the result from the 
 French princes. This was a condition rigidly im- 
 posed by the English Government, and he had been 
 strongly recommended to observe it by M. Bertrand 
 de Molleville. 
 
 Whether such a stipulation had or had not been 
 made, it is at once evident that it could not suit 
 Mehee, and that he must needs disregard it, in order 
 to complete the execution of the plan either made 
 by himself, or traced out for him at Paris. In fact 
 he proceeded to place himself in communication 
 
96 The Last Days of the Consulate, 
 
 with certain agents of the Count d'Artois ; he had 
 a conference with the Bishop of Arras, 6 a friend of 
 that prince ; and procured a recommendation to 
 Louis XVIII. through M. de Merve. His purpose 
 in opening communications with that prince, was 
 to interest him by the double expedient of reveal- 
 ing the secret of the English Ministry, and em- 
 ploying the means that they were to supply to 
 forward his private ends, and also by complaining to 
 Louis XVIII. of the reception which he (Mehee) 
 had met with from the agents of the Count d'Artois, 
 and of the Bishop and his advice. 
 
 The result of Mehee's conferences with Villot, 
 Bishop of Arras, and Henry Lariviere was a strange 
 one. 
 
 It seems that they came to no agreement, and he 
 entered into no engagement with them ; there was 
 indeed a sort of rupture, or at least an unpleasant- 
 ness between him and the Bishop of Arras. But 
 the communication of some of his ideas to them, the 
 overtures he allowed to escape him, when talking 
 of the state of things in France in general, and 
 the views and resources of the party of whom he 
 claimed to be the motive power in particular, ap- 
 peared to make an impression on all his hearers, 
 and it is impossible to doubt that Mehee's object was 
 to inspire them with false notions, which, at a 
 moment when the renewal of the war had revived 
 the hopes of the princes and their party, would 
 
 6 [Marg. note.] M A. A. A. Joyaut, of Arras, born at Tc'nac, 
 Morbihan, in 1778, had a share in the plot of Xitfose ; managed 
 to escape to London, Irom whence he returned with Georges ; 
 was arrested and tried with him, sentenced to death and 
 executed." 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 97 
 
 not be confined to idle speculation, but must neces- 
 sarily become the basis of decisive action. 
 
 Now we come to the first act in the forthcoming 
 drama of conspiracy. War being decided upon by the 
 Governments of England and France, the French 
 princes, willing for their own objects to assist 
 the former by employing all the means of hostility 
 they possessed, began to send emissaries into the 
 places that had formerly been the scene of the 
 Vendean war, there to prepare people and things 
 for a fresh outbreak, and to Paris, to observe 
 the state of affairs, to verify what they had been 
 told by Mehee, and other French agents of the same 
 character, or, more probably, to act according to 
 the circumstances as they arose, and to observa- 
 tions made on the spot. 
 
 The first batch of these emissaries arrived between 
 the 1st and the 10th Fructidor, year XI. It was 
 composed of seven or eight individuals, including 
 Georges Cadoudal, Joyaut, and a person named Que- 
 relle, 7 who took an active part in the subsequent events. 
 
 7 Querelle or Querclla, born at Vannes, had served under 
 Georges. He was amnestied in 1800, went to England and 
 returned with him, charged with a mission to the princes in the 
 western provinces. A letter which he was foolish enough to 
 write to his brother, asking him to undertake this mission in his 
 stead, put the police, " whose eyes were everywhere." savs the 
 Alimiteur, on the alert. He was arrested in Paris in Vende- 
 miaire, year XII. Two months later, Picot and Lebourgeois 
 (two other agents of the princes) were arrested at Pont Andemer. 
 All three were brought before a military commission, at the 
 beginning of Pluviose, and condemned to death. Picot and 
 Lebourgeois were shot ; Querelle saved his life at the last 
 moment by giving information to the police at Rdal which 
 betrayed that Georges and Pichegru were in Paris, and led to 
 the arrest of their accomplices. He was kept in prison, but they 
 took care not to produce him at the trial, although called upon 
 to do so by several of the accused. 
 
 H 
 
98 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 It would be too much to say that these men would 
 not have gone to France if Meh^e had not given 
 their chiefs in London false notions which led to 
 its being decided that they were to do so ; for, 
 strictly speaking, the renewal of the war accounted 
 for their descent upon French soil. But when we 
 closely follow the thread of the intrigue which Mehee 
 went to London to weave, we feel how difficult it is 
 to believe that his conduct did not largely influence 
 the resolution of the Council of the Count d'Artois 
 to send Georges Cadoudal to France. Besides, 
 Mehee positively acknowledges this in his pub- 
 lished narrative of what he calls his diplomatic 
 transactions in England ; but while in that narrative 
 he only admits it, he vaunted it openly in words, 
 before a score of persons, with effrontery which might 
 almost be called ferocity, considering that at the time 
 he did so, the men for whom, as he boasted, he 
 had laid a fatal snare, were virtually condemned to 
 the scaffold already. 
 
 Whatever we may think of this circumstance, it 
 should not be either omitted, or held of no account, 
 in following the course of events. The little band 
 with Georges at their head disembarked and dispersed 
 in different directions. Georges Cadoudal and a few 
 others took the Paris road, and Querellc, who seems 
 to have been sent on a special mission to a town 
 in one of the western Departments, instead of 
 hastening thither, stopped at a place where he had 
 nothing to do, and wrote from thence to a brother 
 of his who resided in the locality where his mission 
 lay, begging him to fulfil the latter on his behalf. 
 So indiscreet an action as that of charging a person 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate, 99 
 
 who probably ought not to have been taken into 
 his confidence at all, with a mission of a nature to 
 incur a severe penalty, is almost incredible, especially 
 when we have the added fact that Querelle sent 
 by post the letter which he wrote to his brother. 
 That letter was seized by the police, and although as 
 a matter of fact it was not the first means by which 
 the police were apprised of the arrival of Georges in 
 France, it might have been. 8 A by no means 
 gratuitous suspicion arises in our minds ; the 
 suspicion that Querelle had been gained over to the 
 police before his arrival in France. At any rate, 
 whether this suspicion be or be not well founded, 
 matters nothing as regards the nature and the order 
 of subsequent events. 
 
 I must now return to Mehe?, and follow him to the 
 Continent, where we shall see him carrying his project 
 relative to England into execution. 
 
 Mehee arrived at Akona at the beginning of 
 Vendemiaire, year XII. 9 He asserts that it was from 
 thence he took the French Government into his con- 
 fidence. 1 Whether this be so or not, we must bear in 
 
 8 [Marg. note.] a The police might have learned the arrival 
 of Georges: lbt, through Menee, who was still in London ; 2nd, 
 through one of their spies in London ; 3rd, through Lajolais, 
 who was in correspondence with Pichegru ; 4th, through their 
 agents among the Chouans in the places where Querelle 
 stayed." 
 
 ,J See " Mehee." pp. 18 and following. 
 
 1 A. L. La Chevardiere, who had been a chief clerk in the 
 treasury, in the department of the " Caissede l'Extraordinaire," 
 was entrusted with a mission to La Vendee after the 10th of 
 August, and on his return became an assiduous member of the 
 Jacobin Club, where, on one occasion, Robespierre defended 
 him. After the 18th Fructido , he became successively Secretary- 
 General of Police, Consul at Palermo, and Member of the 
 Administration of the Department of the Seine; he was after- 
 
 II 2 
 
ioo TJic Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 mind that thenceforward all his proceedings were 
 known to, and held to be sanctioned by the French 
 Government. 
 
 On his arrival at Altona he at once went to La 
 Chevardiere, the French Consul at that port, being 
 resolved to make him the medium of the revelations 
 which he had to make to the French Government, and 
 to share, if I am not mistaken, between the Minister of 
 Exterior Relations and the Minister of Police. It was 
 a stroke of luck for Meh^e to meet with La Chevar- 
 diere whether he was really about to open a correspon- 
 dence of a spontaneous kind with Bonaparte, or to 
 give an account of a prearranged mission. La Che- 
 vardiere was very well known to Mehee, for they had 
 stood together in the ranks of the revolutionists at a 
 time when that word was synonymous with assassins. 
 Having fallen into poverty and contempt, La Chevar- 
 diere conceived the idea of at least escaping from the 
 former by denouncing certain intrigues of the Jaco- 
 bins, in which he was both an actor and a confidant, 
 to the First Consul. Donadieu 2 was the chief pro- 
 moter of those schemes. La Chevardiere was not dis- 
 appointed ; he made his disclosures to the First Con- 
 sul in person, and the consulship at Altona, where 
 Mehee found him, was the reward of his conduct. The 
 
 wards sentenced to transportation after the 18th Brumaire. but 
 this did not prevent his being sent to Hamburg in 1802, as 
 Commiss ry of Commercial Relations. He was born in Paris 
 in 1766, a..d died there in 1828. 
 
 - This was the General Donadieu who acted so mercilessly 
 in the suppression of Dipier's conspiracy in 18 16. At that 
 period he was adjutant-general. He was arrested with Four- 
 nier, who was chief of brigade. I think both these officers 
 belonged to the Army of the West, which was deeply hostile to 
 Bonaparte. (See " Memoires sur le Consulat," p. 322.) 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 101 
 
 meeting of those two men must have been like that of 
 the often-quoted Roman augurs. 
 
 Mehee's next proceeding, after he had written to the 
 French Government, was to write, according to the 
 intention he had formed while still in London, to 
 Louis XVIII. at Warsaw, offering him the same ser- 
 vices that he had already offered to the French 
 princes in England, and to the English Government, 
 with this characteristic circumstance in addition that 
 he affected to sacrifice both the English ministers and 
 the French princes to Louis XVIII. in so far as his 
 interests might require. He sent the letter of intro- 
 duction that he had contrived to procure, to the 
 Duke de Gramont, 3 who was the Pretender's chief 
 confidant, and not doubting that he should obtain an 
 answer through the perfidious cunning of his own 
 letter, and the recommendation he had secured, he 
 gave an address at which he proposed to await its 
 arrival 4 
 
 Having done all this, he left Hamburg, and set out 
 for Munich, where Mr. Drake, who hai received in- 
 structions concerning him, was expecting him. 
 
 In three or four days after his arrival at Munich, 
 Mehee had communicated his plans to Drake, and 
 received orders, instructions, and money for the set- 
 ting in motion (for the advantage of England) of that 
 famous Jacobin Committee on whose existence he had 
 based all the delusions which he had imposed upon 
 the English agents. He forthwith took his departure, 
 
 6 Ant. G. H. Ag^nor, Duke de Gramont, Lieut. -General and 
 Peer of France ; born 17th of August, 1775, died in Paris, 28th 
 of August, 1836. 
 
 * See " Mehee," p. 83. 
 
J02 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 and reached Paris early in Brumaire. Then ensued 
 the correspondence with Mr. Drake, by which 
 Europe may well have been astonished and scandal- 
 ized in more senses than one. It is not necessary to 
 enter into the details of this correspondence, suffice it 
 to remark, and to remember, that no sooner was a 
 letter of Drake's received, than it was communicated 
 to Bonaparte, who prescribed the sense in which each 
 answer was to be made, or at least had each answer 
 submitted to him by the Grand Judge. 
 
 The object of this correspondence was to keep up 
 and strengthen Drake's erroneous view of Mcli 
 real intentions, by communicating to him information 
 respecting the designs of the First Consul and the 
 police intrigues at Paris. 
 
 This information was conveyed, sometimes in 
 Mehee's own correspondence, sometimes in reports, 
 also of MdheVs production, but which were sup- 
 posed by Diake to proceed from the Jacobin Com- 
 mittee, and to form a st\ arate correspondence from 
 that of Mehee, one, indeed, actuated by other views. 
 But the main object of this stiange correspondence 
 was to obtain (by means of the half-confidence made 
 to Mr. Drake respecting all that- was going on in 
 Paris) real information upon the relations which were 
 supposed to exist between him and the men against 
 whom the police were about to act, and who were to 
 be punished for having fallen into the trap set for them. 
 
 I must now deal with the things that were done 
 from within, and by the direct operation of the police, 
 vrhtle Mehee was organizing schemes from without 
 which were to have a double result ; they were in- 
 tended to second the intrigues of the internal con- 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 103 
 
 spiracies, and to be added at need to the number of 
 pretexts for the general menace of reform of govern- 
 ment. It must be borne in mind that the police, or 
 rather, Bonaparte, whose instrument that power was, 
 had not been satisfied with the results of the arrest 
 of David. 
 
 The occurrence, far from having injured Moreau in 
 the public esteem, had served him, because the failure 
 of the attack upon him, the importance that had 
 been attached to it, the deliberate system on which it 
 had been conducted, t'.e trouble that had been 
 taken to ensure its success, were all positive proofs 
 in the eyes of even the hast suspicious and the 
 Last discerning that Bonaparte would not rest 
 satisfied with a barren enmity to Moreau. Besides, 
 the destined hour of the establishment of the Em- 
 pire was approaching, and each day it became more 
 and more urgent to destroy either the renown or 
 the person of the man whom Bonaparte and the 
 public were alike agreed in regarding as the centre 
 of all the attempts that might be made by the 
 nation or by the army, if not to save the Republic, 
 at least to preserve some remnants of liberty. 
 
 It was necessary to entrap Moreau. Since he 
 did not seek out a co-conspirator, the only means of 
 inveigling him was to get the notion put into his 
 head by men who seemed well disposed to do so, 
 and who appeared to find it easy. Before I re- 
 count what I know to have been done with this pur- 
 pose, it is necessary to premise that I am far from 
 knowing all that was done. I shall adhere to the 
 order of dates in so far as that order is compatible 
 with the political sequence of events. 
 
104 The Last Days of the Consulate, 
 
 Hardly had the sensation caused by the arrest of 
 Pavid subsided, and that scheming, foolish man been 
 set at liberty, when Moreau was approached by a more 
 dangerous person. 6 This was Lajolais. 6 He had been 
 intimately acquainted with Pichegru, had commanded 
 a division under him, and having been denounced by 
 Moreau as an accomplice in his treason, was kept in 
 prison until the beginning of year VIII., that is to 
 say, eighteen whole months. 
 
 Tins man, who had neither place nor name, over- 
 whelmed with old debts, obliged to contract new- 
 ones, but too well known to find dupes so ready or 
 so numerous as he needed, possessed only hap- 
 hazard means of subsistence, and was forced to hide 
 in disreputable dens from the horde of creditors who 
 hunted him on all sides. According to his own 
 statement, judgments had been obtained against him 
 for 80,000 livres, and that sum fell far short of the 
 amount of his debts. His wife was a handsome 
 woman, and he did not shrink from making a hideous 
 profit by her charms, freely taking money or patron- 
 age from her admirers. She was arrested at Stras- 
 burg, in February, 1804, four days prior to the arrest 
 
 s Fred. Lajolais was born in 1761 at Weissenbourg, where his 
 father held the post of "king's lieutenant." He was denounced 
 by Moreau, arrested as an accomplice of Pichegru, under whom 
 be had served, and acquitted (January. i8co) by a court-martial at 
 Strasburg. After having vainly petitioned to be allowed to 
 re-enter the service, he became one of the emissaries of the 
 Royalist party, was arrested on the 25th Pluviose. year XI I., 
 and condemned to death on the 1st of June following ; but his 
 sentence was commuted to four months' imprisonment in the 
 fort of Joux 
 
 6 A marginal note written in pencil on folio 30 of this manu- 
 script, and which is not in Faunel's own hand, says, " Chabaud 
 Latour told every one who was disposed to listen to him that 
 Lajolais began his military career by stealing blankets." 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 105 
 
 of Pichegru, and the newspapers, in announcing the 
 fact, described her as a former mistress of the 
 General. 
 
 Such was the man who presented himself to 
 Moreau at Grosbois, towards the end of Prairial or 
 the beginning of Messidor, year XII., having lost 
 sight of him during an interval of six years. Moreau 
 must have been not a little surprised to receive 
 a visit from a man who owed him nothing but resent- 
 ment for his long detention in prison, and still more 
 surprised when he learned that the object of that 
 visit was to solicit his interest at a moment when 
 it was a fact notorious to everybody that he was in 
 disgrace with the Government But the most remark- 
 able circumstance of this strange visit was that 
 Lajolais was the bearer of a note from Pichegru to 
 Moreau, in which the former recommended to him 
 this same Lajolais, who had formerly had relations 
 with both of them, and to whom it seemed that 
 Pichegru owed especial consideration as the victim of 
 those former relations. 
 
 It is not superfluous to remark that Pichegru 
 could not have sent Lajolais a letter of recommenda- 
 tion to Moreau unless he had been asked for one. 
 The interview between the General and Lajolais was of 
 a trivial kind. Moreau spoke of his want of influence, 
 and expressed his regret for the fact under the par- 
 ticular circumstances. This was a piece of ordinary 
 civility, very naturally shown to a man whose miserable 
 condition had been at least in part brought about by 
 the speaker. A few days later, Lajolais saw Moreau in 
 Paris three or four times in succession. On these 
 occasions there was special mention of Pichegru, his 
 
106 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 position in England, the probabilities of his being 
 able to return to France, and lastly, of Moreau's 
 feelings with regard to him. Moreau confirmed what 
 was already generally known from all that had 
 transpired of the correspondence between himself and 
 David a year before, and Lajolais finally expressed a 
 desire to repair to England by way of Alsace, in order 
 to see Pichegru, and give an authoritative confirma- 
 tion to what he already knew concerning Moreau's 
 good-will towards him. He asked Moreau to lend 
 him twenty-five louis for the expenses of this journey, 
 but the General refused the loan. 
 
 It is beyond a doubt that Lajolais was the instru- 
 ment of the police in all the ensuing course of this 
 intrigue, and even in its most remarkable incidents ; 
 that is a fact which could not be hidden from any 
 one. Nevertheless, I shall not take it upon myself to 
 fix the precise date of his transaction with the police ; 
 it will be enough for me to mark the moment when 
 the relations he had entered into were proved by the 
 facts that resulted from them. 
 
 In Messidor, year XL, Lajolais retired to Alsace, 
 and there passed six months, during which nothing 
 was said or heard about him in Paris. 
 
 Simultaneously with the suspicious visits of Lajolais 
 to Moreau, snares were being set for the General in 
 another direction. The famous Neuchatel bookseller, 
 Fauche Borel, 7 so well known for the part he played 
 
 7 He was printer to the King of Prussia at Neuchatel 
 (Switzerland), and he was the first to open negotiations with 
 Pichegru on behalf of the Prince de Conde (1795). Having 
 come to Paris in 1803, he was arrested there, but after eighteen 
 months' imprisonment he was transported across the frontier 
 (Fauriel afterwards asserts that he escaped), and became printer 
 to the Court of Berlin in 1805. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 107 
 
 in the schemes that were concocted by the emigres 
 against the French Republic, and especially for his 
 share in the negotiations between the Prince de Conde 
 and Pichegru in year V., was imprisoned in the 
 Temple at the period with which we are now con- 
 cerned. It does not often happen that a man, how- 
 ever decided his sentiments and confirmed his habits 
 may be, continues to concoct in prison the schemes 
 that have lodged him there. This, nevertheless, 
 was what Fauche Borel did. Under the eyes and 
 in the grasp of the police, he busied himself with 
 designs and plans against the French Government, 
 whose object was to assist and favour the plans that 
 were being concerted at the same time in London. 
 His ideas on this subject found their way beyond the 
 gates and walls of the Temple. He had a nephew, 
 one Vitel, of whom he made a messenger, and it was 
 to Moreau that Fauche Borel, the prisoner of the 
 Temple, conveyed his hints and his hopes. Moreau 
 regarded the latter as ridiculous dreams. If he 
 had been endowed with keener penetration, he would 
 have perceived that Borel could only act through the 
 influence of that very same authority which held him 
 in bondage. s Fauche Borel escaped from the Temple 
 shortly before the conspirators were tried. 
 
 All these attempts to practise on Moreau, all these 
 snares set for him, which indicated the plans that 
 were formed against him, and were so many forecasts 
 of his approaching destiny, failed with a man who, to 
 secure his greater tranquillity, disguised from himself 
 
 8 [Marg note in pencil, not in Fauriel's handwriting - .] 
 * Or at least with the knowledge." Another note in the same 
 hand adds, " I believe that he acted in good faith.'' 
 
io8 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 all the chances of success that might have awaited 
 him had he possessed resolution, and cherished am- 
 bition which he might have reconciled, if not with the 
 best state of things possible in his country, at all 
 events with a state of things more congenial to 
 the public mind than that under which he was 
 an object of suspicion and menace. But events 
 which he was far from foreseeing were looming 
 in the near future, and by means still less expected, 
 he was speedily to find himself condemned to play a 
 part in them. 
 
 In the middle of Fiimaire, year XII., a second batch 
 of emissaries of the princes landed in France. The 
 police, who were no doubt well informed on the point, 
 reported the arrival of eight persons, of whom one of 
 the sons of the Due de Polignac, and Coster Saint 
 Victor were the most important. Saint Victor had 
 been a marked man since the year XIV., being 
 accused of complicity in the affair of the 3rd Nivose, 
 and during all the course of the trial in which he 
 afterwards figured, he displayed nobility and firmness 
 of character which ought to have moved just men of 
 every shade of opinion to pity for his fate. He was 
 vindicated before his execution from the stain of 
 having contributed to the vile attempt of the 3rd 
 Nivose, that is to say, he was cleared from the charge, 
 which told most heavily against him, with regard to 
 the second accusation under which he had fallen. It 
 is probable that the arrival of these men in France 
 was not unconnected with the project which had led 
 to the despatch of Georges Cadoudal to France, with 
 five or six companions under his orders, three months 
 before ; but as a reinforcement of a party of eight 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 109 
 
 men who had preceded them, eight other men could 
 barely be regarded as very formidable. 
 
 What is most singular in the matter is that almost 
 all of them repaired to Paris, although the real forces 
 of their party, those which they might have used to 
 attain their ends, were not there, and Paris was the 
 stronghold of the enemy whose eyes and hands they 
 had to dread. This is accounted for by the erroneous 
 notion of the true state of things that they enter- 
 tained, by the hopes they cherished that another 
 party besides their own was on the point of uniting 
 both with the Consular Government ; they went to 
 Paris as it were to await the moment at which the 
 combined parties should seize the fruit of victory, and 
 if necessary to lend them aid to secure it. All their 
 delusions were the direct results of the falsehoods 
 with which Mehee had beguiled the emigres and the 
 principal agents of the Count d'Artois in London. 
 
 In no other way can the actions of the emissaries 
 of the princes be explained, and I do not think a 
 doubt can remain in any mind that the interpretation 
 I give here is the true one. 
 
 These fourteen or fifteen men were necessarily 
 placed in a most unfavourable and perilous position. 
 The actual needs of life obliged them to come in 
 contact with a number of persons, to take up their 
 abode in different places, and to interchange com- 
 munications from considerable distances. They were 
 at the mercy of innumerable accidents, and more 
 especially were they in danger of falling into the 
 hands of the agents who were employed by the police 
 in what they called the Chouan party. It was more 
 particularly essential for Georges Cadoudal to hide 
 
1 10 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 himself, and of this he was fully aware. He took 
 every possible precaution against discovery ; he had 
 lodgings in several places, many secure retreats, and 
 the secret of these hiding-places was known to only 
 one or two confidants among those who were held to 
 be his agents or his accomplices. The others had 
 merely vague and speculative notions of his where- 
 abouts. 
 
 In order to form a sound judgment upon the sub- 
 sequent events, we ought carefully to consider the 
 exact situation of the men in question under the 
 circumstances to which I have just referred. Sup- 
 posing them to be banded together for a common 
 purpose, and that the essential point of their purpose 
 was the assassination of the First Consul, their posi- 
 tion was not such as to render it impossible for them 
 to succeed. The opportunity of making such an 
 attempt might frequently present itself to men whose 
 interest it was to be on the wa^ch for such chances, 
 and it might present itself efficaciously to men 
 resolved upon the self-sacrifice indispensable in such 
 a case. Nevertheless, it appears certain that neither 
 at the period in question nor at a later date, had 
 any of these men made an attempt to approach 
 the First Consul with the intention of assassinat- 
 ing him. The reason of this is plain ; had they 
 succeeded in any such attempt, they would have 
 ruined themselves, without being sure of having 
 served their party or done anything to advance their 
 object, which was the re-establishment of royalty for 
 the advantage of the Bourbons. That was what they 
 wanted, or rather it was what they were induced to 
 wish for, by the perfidious persuasion of a man 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate, 1 1 1 
 
 who was plotting to deceive them. But they w r ere 
 well aware that in this they could not succeed un- 
 aided ; they awaited an auxiliary, and that auxiliary 
 was no other than the Jacobin Committee, whose 
 aid Mehee had promised the princes, the English 
 Ministry, and Drake, and which existed only in the 
 imagination of Mehee and the French Government. 
 
 It is of great importance at this point to note the 
 fact that in the month of Frimaire the police were 
 informed that Georges, and several companions who 
 were to second any projects which he might have 
 formed, were in Paris. There is reason to believe 
 that the police were not in possession of the number 
 and the names of those who had landed in France 
 with him, nor of the hiding-places of any of them. 
 They certainly did not know where Georges Cadoudal 
 was. The Ministry of Police might have had him 
 sought for and taken, but its designs were wider and 
 deeper. 
 
 I have already said that Mehee returned to Paris about 
 the beginning of Brumaire. It will be remembered 
 that he had written from Altona to Louis XVIIL, 
 offering him his services, 9 and that he had received a 
 letter which was probably an answer, but might have 
 been intended for one of Louis's Warsaw agents 
 at Paris, and, in that case (the least probable of 
 the two), would only have been entrusted to Mehde. 
 This circumstance, which is not important, remains in 
 uncertainty, because those persons who have had an 
 opportunity of seeing the letter in question have not 
 seen the address ; it was carefully cut off. 
 
 9 See " Mehee," p. 83. He has not given the letter of Louis 
 XVIII. 
 
i 12 The Last Days of the Consulate, 
 
 This letter, which fell, as it was meant to fall, into 
 the hands of Bonaparte, was of a nature to merit 
 his serious attention, and to make him uneasy. It 
 was in the handwriting of Louis XVI 1 1., and as it 
 was addressed to a man supposed to be zealous in 
 his service, and able to do great things towards 
 advancing his restoration, the prince explained in the 
 plainest manner his views' of the general conditions 
 on which his restoration to the throne of his fathers 
 was to be effected. He undertook to establish a 
 national representation by the side of that throne, 
 and to guarantee civil liberty. Certain other con- 
 cessions, less important than these two, but also 
 worthy of remark, were, if I am not mistaken, also 
 mentioned. 1 
 
 We must remember that at the moment when Bona- 
 parte read this letter he was as yet only First Consul 
 of the Republic, but profoundly occupied with his 
 scheme for the establishment of the Empire. In his 
 known antipathy to the idea of a national representa- 
 tion, it is more than likely that he had often thought 
 of the manner in which he might do away with both 
 the name and the situation which it signifies, and 
 nothing was better calculated to provoke his anger 
 than the disposition of Louis XVIII. to make greater 
 concessions for the sake of his royalty, than he (Bona- 
 parte) was prepared to make for the prize of elevation 
 to Empire. 
 
 He showed the letter to Fouche, either of deliberate 
 
 1 [Marg. note.] "These conditions also confirmed the sale of 
 the national property {biens nationaux) in the most formal 
 manner, and undertook to make the legalization of it one of the 
 first acts of the new monarchy.'' 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 1 1 3 
 
 purpose, or because he happened to be at hand. I 
 do not know whether Fouche had taken any part in 
 the previous intrigues ; but he was to have the direc- 
 tion of all those that ensued, and it was his idea to 
 unite them and form them, so to speak, into one vast 
 net into which the real or supposed enemies of Bona- 
 parte might be driven at pleasure. 
 
 To comprehend Fouche's conduct on this occasion, 
 it is necessary to have some idea of his character, and 
 to be acquainted with certain previous particulars. 
 
 This man, who was to accumulate upon his own 
 head every sort of scandal, and to distinguish himself 
 in the most opposite excesses of the revolution ; he 
 who, as a. proconsul in the departments, had com- 
 mitted so many ferocious deeds, and had applauded 
 those which he had only witnessed with almost de- 
 lirious enthusiasm ; who declared that the smoking 
 ruins of Lyons furnished the kind of spectacle that 
 Republics need, will perhaps furnish posterity with 
 the most striking example of the facility with which 
 the ministers of a liberty that is cruel and extravagant 
 can become the servile agents of degrading des- 
 potism. Fouche was greedy of the kind of power that 
 is exercised directly upon persons ; simple in his tastes 
 and of domestic habits, capable of appearing to be 
 genuinely animated by the best feelings, and of enter- 
 taining the wisest opinions when left to himself, but 
 ready to sacrifice every opinion and feeling so soon 
 as the saving of his own credit and influence was in 
 question ; a combination of falsity and indiscretion, of 
 cleverness and ignorance. Like all those who in their 
 passage through the crises of the Revolution were 
 inspired by purely selfish and personal motives, he 
 
1 14 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 had acquired a habit of regarding the abstract 
 principles of truth and justice as stupid inventions 
 which could impose only upon fools. The influence 
 of Barras placed him at the head of the Ministry 
 of Police under the Directory, and he kept himself 
 there by the zeal with which he contributed to the 
 events of the 18th Brumaire (although he was not 
 called upon to do so by anybody), and especially by 
 his boundless devotion to the interests of Bonaparte, 
 and the care with which he promoted his authority 
 and aided all his designs. 
 
 Fouchc held no serious and convinced opinions in 
 politics ; his instinct and his speculations led him 
 naturally towards the ideas of the demagogues ; but 
 the temptations of fortune and a life which, if not 
 very estimable, was at least stirring, offered him 
 sufficient compensation for the service of a despot. 
 He has always served Bonaparte without liking him, 
 and he has always been afraid of him, for no other 
 reason than because he knows the innermost recesses 
 of his mind and character ; he knows of what ruthless 
 determination he is capable, whether it be exercised 
 for the augmentation of his power or the gratification 
 of an impulse of revenge. 
 
 When he was dismissed in year X., he appeared to 
 be absorbed into the mere honorary nonentity of the 
 Senate, but the fact is that he continued to act as 
 the instrument of Bonaparte's curiosity. At stated 
 intervals he brought him police reports, and for this 
 he received 12,000 francs per month. 2 That sum, 
 
 * [Marg. note, not in the handwriting of Fauriel.] " I believe 
 he did not contribute at all to the 18th Brumaire, but merely 
 went over with alacrity to the winning side." 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate, 115 
 
 and the degree of influence which it gave him, were 
 far from sufficient for his ambition, but it at least 
 recalled the lost delights of his ministerial office, and 
 his retirement was of a nature to enable him to 
 cherish the hope that those lost delights might yet 
 be restored. 
 
 Armed with the letter of Louis XVIII., Fouche 
 conceived a design which will be regarded by posterity 
 as eminently characteristic of the man who formed it, 
 the government that adopted and utilized it, and the 
 period in which it was propounded. He resolved 
 to give a real existence, one which should be so 
 much the more entirely under his governance in that 
 it was his own work, to that Jacobin Committee, the 
 ally of the Royalists, which had been so seriously 
 taken into consideration by the French princes in 
 London, the English Government, and Louis XVIII., 
 that their conduct had been determined, or at least 
 modified, by their belief in it, but which existed solely 
 in the brain of Mehee. We shall be able to form a 
 sound judgment of what he intended by this device 
 by the attempts which were made with various 
 degrees of success. 
 
 His first proceeding was to place the letter of 
 Louis XVIII. in the hands of a personage who 
 was known to have retained revolutionary opinions 
 and Jacobin sentiments under the Consular regime. 
 This individual was instructed by Fouche to present 
 himself with the letter as if it had been addressed 
 to it, to a certain Royalist committee which had 
 been discovered, or " suspected,'' through informa- 
 tion derived directly from Mehee or some other 
 person. This was the same committee to which I 
 
 I 2 
 
1 1 6 1 he Last Days of the Consulate, 
 
 have already referred as having Baron de la Roche- 
 foucauld as president, and M. de Roqucfcuille, one of 
 its members, as secretary. It had been called the 
 Warsaw Committee, because it was supposed to 
 be faithfully devoted to the plans and interests of 
 Louis XVIII. 
 
 This man was instructed to negotiate an alliance 
 between his own party (the Jacobins) and the royal 
 party of Warsaw, represented by the three or four 
 persons of whom Baron de la Rochefoucauld and M. 
 de Roquefeuille were two. To what extent Fouchc's 
 emissary managed to get into the confidence of the 
 Warsaw party, I do not know ; but it is certain that 
 his mission was believed in, and that he was accepted, 
 on the faith of the letter, in the character of an agent 
 of Louis XVIII. It is equally certain that, acting 
 at the instigation of Fouchc's agent, the royal Jacobin 
 committee agreed to select Morcau as it-; general, and 
 to have proposals to that effect made to him. I may 
 indeed confidently affirm that such proposals were 
 made to him. It needed only a little ordinary 
 prudence to perceive that they must be either in- 
 sensate or highly suspicious, and Aloreau had, in this 
 respect, more than ordinary prudence. 
 
 Besides, he had received information which it must 
 be supposed would be enough to put him on his 
 guard against any trap that might be set for him by 
 persons already known to him. 
 
 After this first operation, especially directed against 
 Moreau, other Jacobin emissaries were employed to 
 set in motion all the sincere men still remaining in 
 the party to which the agents were supposed to belong, 
 and to unite themselves, if possible, with the opposi- 
 tion minority in the Senate, by showing them how 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 117 
 
 easily a combined effort against Bonaparte might 
 bring about a change in the state of things. In 
 order to facilitate this coalition, which would enable 
 Bonaparte to deal as he should think fit with the only 
 persons among the authorities of the period who 
 continued to give him umbrage, the pretended Jaco- 
 bins were artful enough to affect willingness to grant 
 all the concessions which the moderate Republicans 
 might require from them after their combined attack 
 upon the Government. 
 
 These devices were not altogether useless. A con- 
 siderable number of true friends of the Republic, 
 but of different shades of opinion, took for the natural 
 action of a real and active party what was in truth 
 only a sequence of the machinations of Fouche. Men 
 who had hitherto been wanting neither in wisdom 
 nor in caution, were very near failing in both on this 
 occasion ; others, equally honest and sincere, but 
 more ardent and more easily duped, were fully 
 assured for several days that Bonaparte was about 
 to be attacked in the midst of the preparations for 
 his accession to empire. But, of all the members of 
 the Senate to whom the insinuations prompted by 
 Fouche were addressed, not one lent an ear to them. 
 Either they had received information which had put 
 them on their guard, or they were resolved to abstain 
 from any line of action that would require energy and 
 courage ; at any rate they discarded Fouche s emis- 
 saries, and remained perfectly quiet. It is not in- 
 appropriate to name the most zealous of those agents 
 an individual who seemed fully to enter into the 
 views of his employer. This was one Thureau,* who 
 3 I have not been able to discover whither he was sent. 
 
1 1 8 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 was afterwards rewarded with a consulship in the 
 United States of America. 
 
 Almost at the same time, Fouche sent to Warsaw 
 another agent, who, profiting by all the information 
 within Fouche s reach at that time, and probably by 
 that which he must have obtained from the Warsaw 
 Committee in Paris, was instructed to collect all the 
 particulars of the " exterior " plots, of which the police 
 held the thread, and were indeed themselves willing to 
 concoct. This mission was a sort of pendant to that 
 of Mehec, or an imitation of it ; it is probable that it 
 had no very brilliant result, but, nevertheless, the 
 emissary was rewarded for having desired, if not done 
 much. This lucky instrument of unscrupulous em- 
 ployers is at present Commissary-General of Police 
 at a seaboard station, and he was Fouches private 
 secretary during his first term of office. 4 
 
 I now approach the most significant event of all 
 those that preceded the conspiracy whose origin and 
 development I am endeavouring to explain, and lent 
 it that appearance of gravity which Bonaparte has 
 turned to advantage for the accomplishment of his 
 purpose, although not to so much advantage as he 
 hoped in the first instance. 
 
 It is time for me to speak of a man of whom I 
 shall have much to say hereafter ; of him whose sin- 
 gular destiny it was to bestow celebrity upon the 
 role of a powerless agent of the fugitive princes, who 
 were held in but scant honour ; and to cast discredit 
 upon that of a general of the great army of a great 
 
 4 I have not been able to discover this person's name. Fauriel, 
 who was also one of Fouches secretaries for several months, 
 must have known him well. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 119 
 
 Republic, whose troops he had often led to victory ; 
 in a word, of Pichegru. 
 
 He was at this time residing in London, with the 
 Count d'Artois, and was, it appears, but ill-satisfied 
 with that prince, and with the role assigned to him- 
 self. It also appears that he was sincerely desirous 
 of returning to France, and that the soundings which 
 had been made in the direction of Bonaparte with 
 this intention were not made without his knowledge 
 and consent. He affected a haughty and ill-humoured 
 demeanour towards the princes and their favourite 
 agents ; this probably arose from the fact that his 
 new party resented his not having always belonged 
 to it, or not having served it more effectually, con- 
 sidering the ample power to do so that he possessed at 
 a time when he was already devoted to the Bourbons. 
 He was in London while Mehee was carrying on there 
 what has since been called his " diplomatic negotia- 
 tion." It is probable that he was less affected than 
 those with whose cause he had allied himself, having 
 betrayed that of the Republic by all the persuasions 
 which Mehee used to lead the princes into some rash 
 enterprise against Bonaparte's Government. At least, 
 his name has not been mentioned among the names 
 of the credulous persons whom Mehee boasted of 
 having cajoled during his stay in London. 
 
 Pichegru was, however, the man whom the police 
 were most anxious to entrap into the plot which they 
 were promoting and watching at the same time ; in 
 the first place because the very name of Pichegru, of 
 a man who had not betrayed I 7 ranee until after he 
 had won the highest renown in arms for the country, 
 would give the imposing air of conspiracy to what 
 
1 20 The Last Days of the Consulate, 
 
 would otherwise pass for a mere wretched piece of 
 scheming ; and secondly, Pichegru was the only man 
 through whom Moreau could be compromised with the 
 party of which Georges Cadoudal was the chief. All 
 the other snares that had been laid for Moreau had 
 failed to produce any result through which it would be 
 possible to ruin him without an absolute departure 
 from all the forms of justice ; this, then, was the only 
 resource remaining to be employed against him. It 
 presented the best chances of success, and its results 
 would be the gravest: According to the notion of 
 Cadoudal generally entertained at that period, the 
 Government and the police were fully authorized in 
 believing that the slightest appearance of an associa- 
 tion between General Moreau and the Chouan leader 
 would enable them to secure, if not the destruction, 
 at least the dishonour, of the conqueror of Hohcn- 
 linden, and even this was worth the trouble of an 
 experiment. 
 
 If the Count d'Artois and his Council really enter- 
 tained hopes of being seconded in their attacks upon 
 Bonaparte by a party organized in the interior of 
 France, and regarded by them as either their ally or 
 their unconscious auxiliary, it would have been per- 
 fectly natural for the prince and his advisers to 
 endeavour to inspire Pichegru with the same hopes, 
 and to induce him to ensure their realization by asso- 
 ciating himself with the project that had been formed. 
 Pichegru 's conduct leads us to suppose that they suc- 
 ceeded in this. I say " to suppose," for I am entirely 
 ignorant of what the ideas and intentions of Pichegru 
 had been, prior to the circumstance I am about to 
 relate. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 121 
 
 It will be remembered that Lajolais had retired 
 to Alsace almost immediately after his visits to 
 Moreau. (The intention of those visits I have de- 
 clined to define, because I have not sufficient data to 
 enable me to do so with fairness.) Four or five 
 months passed away, and nobody had heard anything 
 about him, or, probably, speculated at all upon what 
 he was doing. He returned to Paris at the end of 
 Brumaire or beginning of Frimaire, year XII. It 
 matters little to the purpose of my narrative to know 
 whether he had or had not any relations with the 
 police previous to this journey; I entertain no 
 doubt of the fact that he then opened communi- 
 cations with that authority, or rather with Fouche, 
 who was the animating spirit of all its proceedings. 
 He was instructed to go at once to London, there to 
 see Pichegru, to represent to him in flaming colours 
 the chances of a conspiracy, into which Moreau was 
 disposed to enter with him (Pichegru), being more 
 sincerely and effectually reconciled with him than 
 ever. He was to add that the enmity of Moreau and 
 the nation to Bonaparte was greatly increased, and 
 quite ready to break out, that the parties in opposi- 
 tion to him were reinforced daily, and there was more 
 reason than ever to believe that the party of Louis 
 XVIII. would, by adroitly availing itself of this op- 
 portunity, carry off the fruits of success. 
 
 It is needless to observe that the most important 
 part of his instructions was an injunction to admit, as 
 Pichegru's accomplice, all that he had done at the 
 instigation of the police, of course colouring his ad- 
 missions so as to remove the appearance of a prepared 
 statement ; it was also a matter of course that he was 
 
122 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 to assume the character of Moreau's deputy, and the 
 bearer of his intentions and projects to Pichegru. A 
 more remarkable feature of this singular supposed 
 embassy, of which Moreau was the assumed instigator, 
 was that the man to whom the role of the general's 
 emissary was assigned had not seen him for five 
 months, that the date at which he was understood to 
 have received his commission was necessarily that of 
 their last interview, and lastly, that Lajolais, returning 
 to Paris after five months, for the purpose of fulfilling 
 a commission in England for Moreau, did not sec him 
 in passing through. I have thought it all the more 
 important to take note of these circumstances because 
 the French Government made no allusion to them in 
 the official report of the subsequent events when the 
 convenient time to reveal them had arrived, and even 
 propounded supposititious circumstances which were 
 in contradiction with the above incontrovertible par- 
 ticulars. 
 
 Having apprised Pichegru of his intended visit 
 to England, Lajolais left Paris, furnished with the 
 instructions which I have endeavoured to place before 
 the reader in their plain and simple sense, passing 
 through Germany, the only route possible at that 
 time for a journey which was intended to have all 
 the appearance of being mysterious and clandestine. 
 He arrived in London between the 20th and the 25th 
 Frimaire. A month later, Pichegru, Lajolais, and 
 three or four other unimportant persons landed on 
 the coast near Havre. 5 There they separated and 
 
 6 According to the Listc des Brigands, published on the 16th 
 Ventose, in the Moniteur, they landed at the foot of the cliff at 
 Rivelle. 
 
The Last Days of the Constdale. 123 
 
 went their way to Paris by different routes. Lajolais 
 arrived in Paris on the 1st Pluviose. Pichegru, whom 
 Georges Cadoudal had gone to meet, arrived on the 
 next day, and went to lodge at Chaillot in a house 
 which had been hired for Bouvet Lozier 6 by Marie 
 Adelaide Turgot, a member of the Turgot family, of 
 whom more will be heard when we come to the narra- 
 tive of the trial. Cadoudal was concealed in the same 
 house. This circumstance of Georges going to meet 
 Pichegru calls for remark. It cannot be called in 
 question, although it was steadily denied by both 
 Georges and Pichegru, 7 against the incontrovertible 
 evidence of its truth. 
 
 It was a great thing for the police that Pichegru 
 was in Paris, and especially that he was with 
 Cadoudal and other men, whom the public would 
 certainly not credit with any harmless purpose. 
 Still this was not enough for what the police wanted, 
 and the Government considered necessary. The 
 essence of the design, the real depth of the contri- 
 vance, was the bringing of Moreau into relations not 
 only with Pichegru (which might have been sufficient 
 if more had proved impossible), but with Georges, 
 which was far more important. The former was not 
 difficult indeed it was almost inevitable, considering 
 the impression which had been given to Pichegru of 
 the ideas and intentions of Moreau, and the assurances 
 
 6 A. H. Bouvet de Lozier, born in Paris in 1769. He was 
 tried with Cadoudal, and sentenced to death, but the sentence 
 was commuted to imprisonment, followed by transportation. 
 
 7 See the examination of Pichegru by Real and Dubois on 
 the 8th Ventose. " Did you see Georges in Paris? " " Not at 
 all." ''Did you go a part of the way from the farm of La 
 Pelerie to Paris with Georges?" "No." Recueil des inter- 
 roatoires subis par le General Moreau, et quclqucs-uns de ses 
 co-accuses. Paris, de I ' imprimerie imperiale, an Xll. 
 
124 1 he Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 sent by Moreau to Pichegru that he was not his 
 enemy, but, on the contrary, took a lively interest 
 in the general's fortunes. The latter was far from 
 being impossible, because, although there was no 
 absolute community of design and feeling between 
 Pichegru and Cadoudal, it was likely enough that 
 they might be drawn together sufficiently to act in 
 concert in some particular matter. 
 
 Again, Lajolais was the very person who could 
 best secure the carrying out of the views of the police. 
 The great difficulty had been surmounted ; Pichegru 
 was in Paris. 
 
 At this point I must enter into some details which 
 may appear trifling in themselves, but are neverthe- 
 less indispensable, because they furnish a key to 
 later and much more interesting events, which can- 
 not be justly appreciated without a knowledge of 
 their primary source and progressive development. 
 I shall endeavour to say no more than is necessary 
 to a true comprehension and a just judgment of facts 
 which can never fail to arouse the curiosity of 
 mankind, and will in the future serve to instruct 
 nations ; if the latter be not condemned to vegetate 
 in hopeless degradation, mere toys in the hands 
 of those who govern them for their passions or their 
 pleasure. 
 
 The stirring scenes, the unexpected catastrophes 
 that fill the pages of history will not be wanting in 
 the course of this narrative ; it is for me to connect 
 those scenes and those catastrophes with their secret 
 causes and motives, in so far as it is in my power 
 to do so. The position I occupied was one in which 
 I could not gain a knowledge of everything, and the 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 125 
 
 time rendered the investigation of the truth the 
 greatest of all dangers next to that of telling it. 
 
 On the 3rd Pluviose, two days after his return to 
 Paris from England, Lajolais paid a visit to Moreau 
 for the purpose of announcing Pichegru's arrival in 
 France and his intention of coming to Paris, without, 
 we may be sure, giving any hint of the kind or degree 
 of influence which he had exercised on this strange 
 determination of the general's. He requested Moreau 
 to make an appointment for seeing Pichegru, and it 
 is evident that Moreau can neither have heard the 
 unexpected news of his arrival without misgiving, nor 
 been unconscious of the sort of impropriety that 
 was involved in an arrangement for their meeting. 
 It was not necessary to be weak and timid in order 
 to feel this ; ordinary prudence suggested it. On 
 the other hand, he could not bring himself to refuse 
 to see one who had been his master in the art of 
 war. his friend, and to whom he had sent repeated 
 assurances of reconciliation within the past year. 
 The more hazardous Pichegru's position was, the 
 greater risk of proscription he ran, the more impera- 
 tively did honour and generosity forbid Moreau's 
 acting in a way which could only be interpreted as 
 preconcerted perfidy, or at the least, cowardly selfish- 
 ness. 
 
 Moreau did, therefore, make the appointment for 
 which Lajolais asked, but he did so with ill-disguised 
 reluctance, and postponed the meeting for three days 
 on the pretext of a shooting-party. Now this was a 
 reasonable enough pretext for a man i.n Moreau's 
 state of mind, but it would have been inconceivable 
 if offered by one who was expecting a co-conspirator 
 
126 TJic Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 in the person in question. It was arranged that 
 Moreau and Pichegru should meet on the Boulevard 
 de la Madeleine, between seven and eight o'clock in 
 the evening, on the 6th Pluviose. There happened 
 to be a full moon that day. The appointment was 
 requested for Pichegru only. It may be, however, 
 that during this visit from Lajolais, Moreau learned 
 that Cadoudal was in Paris, a secret hitherto known 
 only to the police. 
 
 During the interval that elapsed between the 3rd 
 and the 6th Pluviose, Lajolais took certain steps 
 which furnished the two principal incidents of the 
 approaching conspiracy. 
 
 On the 4th, the day after his interview with Moreau, 
 he made a visit to Rolland. The motives for this 
 seem natural and simple enough, but they are not 
 quite so easy to define as they seem to be. 8 
 
 Rolland had necessarily been brought in contact 
 with Pichegru during the general's command, and had, 
 it appears, entertained both affection and esteem for 
 him. Rolland then held a high post in the adminis- 
 trative service of the French army, and still occupied 
 it at the time of which I am writing. He had also 
 been acquainted with Moreau and Lajolais, who served 
 with Pichegru and under his command. He occa- 
 sionally saw the former, and had kept up tolerably 
 intimate relations with the latter. Just before he 
 
 8 Henri Odille Pierre Jean Rolland, born at Dieppe in 1759. 
 At the period of the Revolution he became commissary-general 
 of the military transport service, and thus he was brought into 
 personal relations with Pichegru and Moreau. He was arrested 
 on the 25th Pluviose, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment 
 in a fortress. " It was generally believed," says " La Biographie 
 Moderne " (vol. iii. p. 207), " that the revelations which he made 
 saved him." 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 127 
 
 left Paris for England, Lajolais called on Rolland and 
 confided his project to him, but in general and vague 
 terms. It seemed, therefore, only natural that he 
 should come to him on his return, and inform him 
 of the result of his journey ; that is to say, of the 
 arrival of Pichegru in France. The interview was 
 strictly confined to this confidence on the part of 
 Lajolais, and to expressions of goodwill towards 
 Pichegru on the part of Rolland. (See " Recueil des 
 Interrogatoires," p. 44 and following.) 
 
 On the 1 6th Pluviose famous and eventful day 
 the interview between Pichegru and Moreau took place. 
 On the one hand Lajolais went to Moreau's abode to 
 bring him to the spot agreed upon, and on the other, 
 Bouvet Lozier made sure of the attendance of 
 Pichegru, who was lodging with him at the time. 
 But Pichegru did not present himself alone ; another 
 person was with him, no other than Georges Cadou- 
 dal. 
 
 On his way to the appointed place of meeting, and 
 when he was quite near to the spot, Moreau, actuated 
 either by the general uneasiness which he naturally 
 felt, or disturbed by a vague presentiment of the 
 chances that might occur in such a case, asked 
 Lajolais whether Pichegru would really be alone, as 
 he (Moreau) expected him to be. Lajolais, who 
 could not possibly ignore the fact, and who had 
 indeed taken all the necessary steps to secure the 
 presence of Georges, was obliged to acknowledge 
 the truth. A moment after, Georges, Moreau, and 
 Pichegru met, but Moreau crossed over to the opposite 
 side of the boulevard immediately on receiving the 
 answer of Lajolais, and the arranged interview did 
 
128 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 not take place. That evening, Moreau saw neither 
 Cadoudal nor Pichegru himself. 
 
 It is probable that all those who had expecte 1 to 
 find Moreau at the place agreed on, and to confer 
 with him, were taken aback by an occurrence which 
 routed their expectations so completely, and under 
 their own eyes. But, of the whole party, Lajolais, 
 who had given a pledge to the police which the 
 accident of Moreau's question had rendered it im- 
 possible for him to redeem, must have been the most 
 thoroughly disconcerted. He adopted a course 
 which plunged him still deeper into infamy. 
 Instead of telling the police the pure and simple 
 truth of what had just occurred, and acknowledging 
 that his plan had failed, he described things as they 
 ought to have been, and as they were on the point 
 of being. The police did then really believe that 
 Moreau had seen Georges at the same time as 
 Pichegru, and this important and singular error, by 
 which that authority was, so to speak, caught in its 
 own net, supplies the key to several subsequent 
 incidents on which I shall dwell hereafter. 
 
 From that moment the police regarded them- 
 selves as fully triumphant and sure of success, and 
 though they waited for fresh incidents, they did so 
 rather for the sake of having more details to enhance 
 the sensation which they were about to create, than 
 because they feared the evidence to be produced 
 would be insufficient to crush the enemies whom 
 they had brought, as they believed, to the desired 
 point. Many things were done between the 5th and 
 1 2th Pluviose in preparation for a prosecution in 
 elaborate form of the "conspiracy" whose principals, 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 129 
 
 accomplices, and agents had been brought together 
 by so specious a contrivance ; but at present I shall 
 narrate only those circumstances which were intended 
 to be used against Moreau. 
 
 At length, on the 13th Pluviose, Moreau and 
 Pichegru met for the first time since the year V. of 
 the Republic ; after many strange events, in which 
 they had taken widely different parts. Pichegru 
 visited Moreau, accompanied by Lajolais and Cou- 
 chery, the brother of oneCouchery 9 who had been ex- 
 patriated after the 18th Fructidor, and had afterwards 
 lived in London in intimate association with Pichegru, 
 to whom since the year V. he appears to have been 
 entirely subservient. I have grounds for believing 
 that Pichegru's visit was entirely unexpected by 
 Moreau. It was brief, commonplace, limited to 
 expressions of friendship, and greatly embarrassed 
 by mutual uneasiness and constraint. Moreau, who 
 could not be free from suspicion respecting the 
 character of Lajolais, signified to that individual that 
 he must not intrude into his presence for the future. 
 
 Lajolais, being thus cut off from communication 
 with Moreau, had to fall back upon Rolland ; he went 
 at once to the latter, and besought him in the name 
 of their common friendship for Pichegru to beg 
 Moreau to afford a refuge to the illustrious general. 
 Rolland, who had been quite sincere up to this time 
 
 9 J. B. Couchery, member of the Council of Five Hundred 
 (1795), condemned to expatriation after the 18th Fructidor, 
 retired to Germany, and was recalled by the consuls in Decem- 
 ber, 1799 ; but he hastened to rejoin Pichegru in London, where 
 he edited a French newspaper for a long time. His brother 
 Victor, who is in question here, was arrested on the 28th of 
 March, tried with Georges, and sentenced to two years' im- 
 prisonment. 
 
 K 
 
1 30 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 in his interest in Pichegru and in all that he had done, 
 or rather had seemed disposed to do, and who had 
 no suspicion whatever of what was going on, carried 
 Pichegru's request to Moreau. It was refused, with 
 expressions of regret, probably sincere, and from 
 motives which were much more grave than Moreau 
 then believed them to be. (See u Recueil des Inter- 
 rogatoires," p. 57.) 
 
 If Pichegru had taken refuge in Moreau's house, 
 it is likely that he would have been arrested there, 
 and the police would have made the prearran 
 demonstration on the spot. Lajolais, finding that 
 Moreau persisted in holding aloof, and feeling that 
 he could no longer use Rolland as a means of per- 
 suading him to take the bait that was set for him, 
 requested Rolland himself to receive Pichegru. 
 Rolland consented, and Pichegru took up his abode 
 with him on the 15th Pluviose. 
 
 Whatever may have been the ideas and the 
 apprehensions of Pichegru, there was no change 
 in his personal motives for seeing Moreau, or even 
 in those which might relate to hostile projects 
 against the Government. Nothing had yet occurred 
 to enlighten him as to the deception that Lajolais 
 had practised upon him respecting the state of 
 things in France, and the chances of an uprising 
 favourable to the Bourbons. The day after his 
 arrival at Rolland's house, he requested Rolland 
 to go to Moreau and ask him to make a second 
 appointment. Moreau could not absolutely refuse 
 to hold any communication with Pichegru, but he 
 was afraid to receive him, so he sent Fresnieres, his 
 secretary, to Rolland's, to learn from Pichegru's own 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 131 
 
 lips what it was he wished to say, and to repeat it to 
 him. Fresnieres acted on his instructions ; he went 
 to Rolland's house and saw Pichegru ; but the latter, 
 either because he did not choose to confide in a 
 third person, or because he wanted to have a de- 
 cided explanation with Moreau, bade the secretary 
 take him at once to the general. Thus was brought 
 about the second and last interview between Piche- 
 gru and Moreau. It is necessary to observe that 
 Lajolais accompanied Pichegru on this occasion 
 also ; but as he dared not enter Moreau's house after 
 the express prohibition he had received, he waited 
 outside in the street for Pichegru. Hence the 
 police could make use of him only as a witness to 
 the fact of Pichegru's visit to Moreau, but not as 
 a reporter of the conversation between the two 
 generals. 
 
 And now, who is there that can tell us what passed 
 at that interview ? Of the two persons between whom 
 it took place, one has died without having related a 
 single word of their conversation to anybody, without 
 having done anything beyond revealing, in a vague 
 and general way, that he was displeased with Moreau, 
 whom he suspected on that occasion of motives of 
 personal ambition, of which he had hitherto held 
 him guiltless. And to whom was that revelation 
 made ? To one single man, who, as we shall 
 presently see, suddenly changed his character and 
 his rdle, and, in the interest of his own safety, 
 betrayed the two men for whom he had acted as a 
 go-between, without having any private object to 
 gain, and even against the express desire of one of 
 them. As for the other personage (Moreau), now 
 
 K 2 
 
132 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 living in exile in a distant land, he has said what was 
 fitting and necessary for his judicial justification, to 
 which nothing was wanting, but not for the integrity 
 of history, which has to judge men and actions from 
 a far more general and less strict point of view than 
 a tribunal of justice. And besides, even were the 
 truth known with more precision than it can be from 
 the judicial interrogation of a man in the situation of 
 Moreau, could it be told while the oppressors are still 
 in all the plenitude of the power that they have used 
 against him ? It is one of the drawbacks of contem- 
 porary history that the interests of humanity itself 
 require the truth to be told with adroit reservations 
 only, which afford greater advantages to the tyranny 
 of a man, and more pretexts for the misfortunes of 
 an epoch, than either would have were the negative 
 evidence of silence on events which everybody has 
 witnessed afforded to the world. 
 
 At all events, I shall not say anything contrary to 
 what I believe to be the truth concerning the circum- 
 stances to which I am now referring. Moreau has 
 become sufficiently great to hear the voice of posterity 
 already ; and nothing, it seems to me, can add to the 
 enmity of his oppressor, or furnish the latter with arms 
 against him which he has not already employed. 
 
 From all the direct information that it has been 
 possible for me to obtain, and from all the deduc- 
 tions I have drawn from the collected and compared 
 facts, I have arrived at the conclusion that in this 
 last conversation between Moreau and Pichegru, 
 the latter made overtures relating to the possibility 
 of a plot for the overthrow of Bonaparte, and the 
 restoration of the Bourbons, and the chances of its 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 133 
 
 success. I believe, too, that Moreau's answers were 
 vague and equivocal upon the first point, but clear 
 and positive upon the second. I have no doubt he 
 explained to Pichegru the absurdity of such a design 
 under the circumstances. 
 
 Pichegru, who had come to this interview full of 
 the hopes with which he had been inspired by the 
 persons whose sole object had been to lay a fatal 
 snare for Moreau, was necessarily dissatisfied with 
 him. He could only regard Moreau as one who, 
 without being positively resolved upon conspiring 
 for the Republic, would not have rejected the 
 chance of doing so if it had been presented to 
 him, all ready made by other people ; but who 
 was nevertheless resolved not to conspire for the 
 Bourbons. 
 
 It was from the angry mood in which Pichegru 
 returned to Rolland's house, and from some broken 
 sentences on the subject of the conference he had 
 just held with Moreau, that Rolland first clearly 
 perceived what was the real object that had 
 brought the general to Paris. 1 His first thought 
 was how to get rid of a guest so dangerous, and yet 
 one whom he was bound to treat with consideration. 
 He made a pretext of a journey in the discharge of 
 his duties as a military inspector ; and, on the 27th 
 Pluviose, Pichegru, who had passed only two nights 
 in Rolland's house, was obliged to seek afresh refuge. 
 This he either asked of Lajolais, or accepted from 
 him. 
 
 1 [Marg. note.] "He was not really much frightened until the 
 return from Moreau's. It was only then that he sought for 
 pretexts to get rid of Pichegru." 
 
134 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 Before leaving Holland's house, however, Pichegru 
 begged his reluctant host to go to Moreau on his 
 behalf, and ask for his 4< last word " upon the over- 
 tures of the preceding day. Holland complied 
 unwillingly as it appears, and Moreau was so 
 indiscreet as to answer him very much as he ha 1 
 answered Pichegru ; but probably stating more pre- 
 cisely and clearly that he would not make common 
 cause with the agents of the Bourbons, for the sake 
 of the Bourbons, and that, if any change in the actual 
 state of things was to be brought about, that change 
 ought to be dictated by public opinion. Now what 
 Moreau thought, and even what he had expressed to 
 Pichegru, was that public opinion was not favourable 
 to the Bourbons. I think it well to repeat literally at 
 this point, the answer made by Moreau to Holland, 
 just as it was repeated to the police by the latter, and 
 inserted in the act of accusation against Moreau. 
 
 " I cannot put myself at the head of any move- 
 ment," Moreau is reported to have said, "if Pichegru 
 takes action in another sense (and in that case I have- 
 said to him it would be necessary the Consuls and 
 the Governor of Paris should disappear). I think I 
 have a strong enough party in the Senate to obtain 
 authority. I will make use of it immediately to put 
 his people in safety (a convert), and afterwards public 
 opinion will dictate what it will be well to do." (See 
 the " Proces," vol. ii.) In all this there is an appearance 
 of keeping as close as possible to Moreau's own 
 words, and they express the mind of the general on 
 the matter with sufficient exactness. 
 
 One peculiarity which it is equally easy and im- 
 portant to remark, is that all Holland's proceedings 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 135 
 
 with regard to Pichegru, and their results, were 
 necessarily known to Lajolais, who continued to be 
 the confidant of Pichegru and Rolland after he had 
 been discarded by Moreau ; this is equivalent to 
 saying that the police were fully informed of them. 
 The last interview between Moreau and Rolland took 
 place on the 18th Pluviose ; this was the last fact re- 
 lating to the conspiracy, and it immediately preceded 
 the exposure made by the police. 
 
 From that moment, the events which I have to 
 relate changed their character and aspect. All those 
 events are the result of a series of intrigues whose 
 existence, motives, and chief incidents cannot be held 
 in doubt by any person who is even tolerably well 
 informed with regard to the afTairs of France at the 
 period with which I am dealing. But the details, and 
 the complete sequence and order of those intrigues 
 could not be supplied without greater and more 
 various knowledge than I have been enabled to obtain. 
 Of the facts that I should have required to ascertain, 
 some remain concealed in foreign countries, from 
 whence it is hard for them to reach France, so as 
 to correct the accounts which the Government has 
 published ; others are hidden in the breasts of men so 
 base that it may be doubted whether they dare to tell 
 themselves the truth about themselves ; several are 
 buried in the lairs of the police, that strange, blind, 
 and passion-led authority, for whom all with which it 
 has to deal changes its nature, and violence and in- 
 justice of every kind, provided they are necessary to 
 attain the aim that is sought by the supreme power, 
 are merely plain and binding duties. 
 
 Many of these facts are hidden in the depths of 
 
136 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 Bonaparte's own soul, and some of them will never 
 be known, because it was so easy for him to share 
 his confidence among several agents and several 
 accomplices. Lastly, there are others which are 
 withheld by the prudent or pusillanimous silence of 
 a very small number of persons, who have been 
 enabled to detect some of those formidable secrets of 
 the abuse of power (which might serve as instruction 
 and warning to future generations), either by chance, 
 or through the indiscretion of the agents of the 
 supreme authority. Amid so many obstacles to 
 the thorough investigation of the truth, I am aware 
 that I have allowed a portion to escape me, and I 
 cannot answer for the strict exactness of my narrative 
 in all respects. The only thing that I can unhesitat- 
 ingly vouch for, is the truth of the principal circum- 
 stances and the accuracy of the point of view from 
 which I have examined the facts. 
 
 I am now about to take a new departure. Of the 
 events which I shall have to lay before the reader, 
 some have been avowed with unheard-of audacity, 
 and others published with ostentation perhaps equally 
 remarkable. 
 
 To almost all of them, the whole of Paris or 
 France itself bears witness. Not indeed that several 
 details of these same events are not also enshrouded 
 in mystery ; but, on the one hand, that mystery is not 
 of a kind that remains mysterious ; and on the other 
 it does not hinder the formation of a sound estimate 
 of the true nature of events. I have little to fear for 
 the rest of my task, beyond the errors of my own 
 judgment. I shall take all possible pains to guard 
 against such errors, and my first care in every case 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 137 
 
 shall be to state the reason or the feeling that dictates 
 my judgment, so that those who do not share my 
 feelings and my ideas may perceive the cause of my 
 errors, and deduce at their pleasure other consequences 
 from the same facts. 
 
138 The Last Days of iJie Consulate. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 the duc d'enghien arrest of moreau, 
 pichegru, georges cadoudal, etc. 
 
 Note by the Editor. 
 
 The third chapter, which was to have contained an 
 account of the arrest of Moreau, Pichegru, &c, the 
 " instruction " of their trial, and the execution of the 
 Due d'Enghien, was never written. That Fauriel 
 intended to write it is evident from the number of 
 notes which he had collected, and the dozen or so of 
 loose pages : these we must take for what they are 
 mere memoranda of the facts and ideas with which he 
 proposed to deal in detail. I shall not attempt to 
 fill up this hiatus in the work, but will utilize a few of 
 Fauriel's notes by giving a brief summary of events, 
 so as to form a link between the preceding and the 
 following chapters, beginning with the fragment that 
 relates to the Due d'Enghien. 1 
 
 Extract from Fauriel's Notes. 
 
 Whatever may be the pretexts assigned for the 
 arrest and execution of the Due d'Enghien, it is diffi- 
 cult to resist the conviction that other reasons besides 
 
 1 See, on this subject, the Memoirs of Madame de Remusat, 
 English version, published by Messrs. Sampson Low and Co. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 139 
 
 those put forward to account for the deed really 
 actuated it. 
 
 Did the First Consul intend to frighten the Bour- 
 bons effectually and for ever ? It is proved by the 
 facts that he has only revived the almost extinct 
 interest in their favour. 
 
 He did not regard the prince's projects as forming 
 a portion of those of the Paris conspirators, for, in 
 that case, he ought to have had him tried with them. 
 
 He could not consider those projects more culpable 
 than the designs of Georges Cadoudal and his accom- 
 plices, and therefore cause them to be judged in a 
 more sudden and severe manner. 
 
 The accomplices of the Due d'Hnghien, many of 
 whom were well known to have entertained former 
 relations with the enemies of the State, were not 
 brought to trial. Some of them were set at liberty, 
 the duke's secretary among the number. Several are 
 hoping to be set free. This trial has been talked of; 
 why has it not taken place ? 
 
 It follows necessarily that there was some private 
 motive for an action that must inevitably attract so 
 much attention, and might have such grave conse- 
 quences. 
 
 What that motive was it is important and perhaps 
 easy to discover. A project for restoring the throne 
 was already known to exist, and was on the point of 
 being declared. The knowledge of this project might 
 have various results. 
 
 1. To revive the rumours in general circulation 
 after the 18th Brumaire, to the effect that the First 
 Consul was acting in favour of the Bourbons. 
 
 2. To disturb those among the persons devoted to 
 
140 The Last Days of the Consulate, 
 
 the First Consul who were personally interested in 
 keeping out the Bourbons, and to paralyze their 
 action under circumstances which rendered it ex- 
 tremely necessary. 
 
 A guarantee had therefore to be given to those 
 persons that nothing was being done for the 
 benefit of their enemy, and an overt act of violence 
 against the Bourbons might be regarded in that 
 light. 
 
 Moreau, who was then a prisoner, had iormerly re- 
 frained on several occasions from capturing the young 
 prince, when he could have done so, from admiration 
 of his courage. The Due d'Enghien arrived in Paris 
 at one o'clock in the morning, Murat and Savary 
 having waited for him at the barrier. Savary accom- 
 panied him to Vincennes, and gave the signal to the 
 firing-party ; services for which he received from 
 Fouche* eighty thousand francs at least. Great was 
 the public surprise and horror when the sentence 
 upon the Due d'Enghien was cried in the streets of 
 Paris, where his arrest was hardly known. The First 
 Consul was, it is said, startled by the effect of this 
 news on the public mind. 
 
 The Moniteur gave the sentence without an- 
 nouncing its execution. It was during the night of 
 the 30th Ventose that the prince was shot. 
 
 Madame Bonaparte implored pardon for the Duke, 
 and was treated with gross indignity. M. Louis 
 Bonaparte also interceded for him with his brother, 
 and was repulsed in a similar way. 
 
 Editor's Note. 
 All was now ready, owing to the intrigues with 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate, 141 
 
 which he had been surrounded, for the final ruin of the 
 great soldier whose fame and popularity excited the 
 jealousy of Bonaparte; the only person who could 
 have successfully raised an obstacle to Moreau's am- 
 bitious designs, by rallying the malcontents, who were 
 very numerous both in the army and elsewhere, around 
 himself. 2 
 
 On the nth Pluviose (1st February, 1804), Real was 
 appointed assistant (or adjunct) to the Grand Judge, 
 Regnier, 3 and specially charged with the " instruc- 
 tion " and prosecution of all the cases relating to 
 the tranquillity and internal safety of the Republic. 
 Severe police measures had just been added to those 
 that already existed, 4 and numerous arrests spread 
 anger and consternation throughout Paris, where 
 people called to mind the odious deeds that had 
 followed the attempt of Nivose. This was a means 
 of preparing the public for the unexpected blow about 
 to be struck. 
 
 Early in the morning on the 25th Pluviose, an 
 officer of the "Legion d'Klite," accompanied by a de- 
 tachment, presented himself at Moreau's residence 
 
 2 Josephine said to a Councillor of State, " The generals 
 declare that they have not fought against the Bourbons in order 
 to substitute Bonaparte for them " (" Mdmoires sur le Consulat," 
 p. 242.) 
 
 3 Fouche' called him " le gros juge." 
 
 4 On the 4th Pluviose a police order had enjoined all the 
 health officers who had rendered aid to the wounded to declare 
 the same immediately to the police. This declaration was to 
 contain the name, abode, and profession of the wounded person, 
 the cause of his wounds, their gravity, and the circumstance of 
 their infliction. 
 
 A similar order was issued by M. Gisquet, Prefect of Police, 
 after the insurrection of the 5th and 6th June, 1832 ; but it was 
 received with such an outcry that it had to be immediately with- 
 drawn. 
 
142 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 in the Rue d'Anjou, Saint-Honord, 1 and after having 
 carefully examined his papers and seized them, set out 
 in search of the general, who had gone to Gros Bois, his 
 country place. The party fell in with him near Charen- 
 ton, when he was shown the order for his arrest signed 
 by the Grand Judge, and immediately taken to the 
 Temple. At the same time his servants and aides-de- 
 camp were arrested ; among the latter was a very 
 distinguished officer, Le Normand, of whom Fauriel 
 will speak hereafter. 6 Fresnieres, his secretary, who 
 had been present during the examination of the 
 papers, with Moreau's brother and mother-in-law, was 
 not at first molested in any way, but a warrant was 
 afterwards issued against him ; he had, however, 
 reached a place of safety. 7 
 
 On the same evening the general underwent an 
 examination before the Grand Judge, and was guilty 
 of the unworthy and foolish weakness, for which he 
 has been justly reproached, of denying facts that were 
 easy to prove to demonstration. 
 
 On the following day (27th Pluviose) the Parisians 
 
 5 At No. 122. It was the proximity of this house to the 
 Boulevard de la Madeleine which led tothelatter being selected 
 as the place of meeting for Moreau and Pichegru. 
 
 6 He had begun to compose the history of his campaigns 
 His manuscript was probably seized and destroyed. See the 
 
 proccs-verbal of his arrest. (" Proces," vol. iii p. 57.) 
 
 7 Bonaparte who probably had some personal grievance to 
 avenge, had Generals Liehert and Souham arrested, and placed 
 au secret, as accused of conspiracy. It is needless to say that 
 none of the persons arrested at the same time with Moreau 
 figured at the trial. So soon as the arrest of her husband 
 became known, Madame Moreau received a great number of 
 visits. The police seized the list of names of those who called 
 upon her. It was Couchery who informed Pichegru of Moreau's 
 arrest. "He made a gesture of astonishment and grief,' but 
 said nothing." (" Proces," vol. ii. p. 444.) 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 143 
 
 found the walls placarded with an order of the day 
 by the Governor of Paris, whose enmity to Moreau 
 was all known. 8 Borrowing his inspiration from the 
 denunciation of Hippolitus by Theseus, he announced 
 to the troops under his command that fifty brigands, 9 
 the impure remnant of the civil war, 1 with Georges 
 and General Pichegru at their head, had penetrated 
 even to the capital, and he added this false assertion : 
 " Their arrival has been brought about by a person 
 who is still numbered in our ranks ; by General 
 Moreau, who was placed yesterday in the hands of 
 the national justice." 2 
 
 The same day 3 the Government communicated the 
 
 8 During the trial, Joyant, on being accused of having seen 
 Fresnieres, and written to him making certain proposals, denied 
 the fact, and Thuriot was obliged to acknowledge that the asser- 
 tion was one made simply by Lajolais. " For the rest," said the 
 president, "it was not made a charge against him." (See 
 '* Proces," vol. v. p. 378.) 
 
 9 See " Memoires de Madame de Remusat," vol. i. p. 303. 
 
 1 " Reste impur des brigands dont j'ai purge la terre.-' He 
 had probably heard this line a few days previously at the 
 Theatre Francais, where " Phedre " had been played, and the 
 word " brigands," which was in the mouths of all the Govern- 
 ment agents, may have struck him. This expression pleased 
 the Procurator- General so much that he repeated it in his 
 speech. (" Proces," vol. vi. p. 275.) 
 
 a " On account of the terms in which this order of the day is 
 couched," says Fauriel in a note, "it was attributed to the First 
 Consul himself." It was published in the newspapers on the 
 day after it was placarded, but not inserted in the Mo?iiteur 
 until the 2nd Ventose. 
 
 In the same number addresses of congratulation to the First 
 Consul on his having escaped the conspiracy from the com- 
 manders of various corps, from the clergy, the towns, &c., began 
 to appear. General Soult's address was the first. He speaks 
 in it of "the monsters who would dare to lay a sacrilegious hand 
 upon the august person of the First Consul." 
 
 3 " The First Consul," says a note by Fauriel, " had sum- 
 moned the presidents of the three great authorities to the 
 Tuileries on the preceding evening, in order to tell them the 
 
144 The Last Days of the Consulate, 
 
 report of the Grand Judge upon the conspiracy to the 
 Legislative Body and to the Tribunate. 4 The reading 
 of this document, in which Moreau was grossly 
 aspersed, at the Tribunate, produced an indignant 
 protest from the general's brother, who was one of its 
 members. 
 
 Moreau, whose capture could never have been in 
 the least difficult, was in the power of his enemies, 
 and the greater number of the confederates were in 
 the hands of the police ; but the most dreaded of 
 them all, Pichegru and Cadoudal, were still at liberty, 
 notwithstanding the zeal with which the police pro- 
 secuted their search, and the reiterated appeals that 
 were made to the citizens. On the 1st Ventose (12th 
 February) the Grand Judge had a proclamation 
 placarded all over Paris, in which he called upon all, 
 in the name of their dearest intertsts, to denounce 
 the foreign suspects, and especially to beware how 
 they afforded an as>lum "to monsters to whom the 
 whole earth ought to refuse it." A week later, 
 Pichegru, having been betrayed by a person named 
 Leblanc, who went to Murat and denounced the 
 general, receiving one hundred thousand francs as his 
 reward, was roused out of his sleep at two o'clock in 
 the morning, at his lodging in the Rue de Chabanais, 
 and arrested after a vigorous resistance. 6 
 
 news, and either to inspire or dictate the conduct which they 
 were to observe under the circumstances, that is to say, at the 
 sittings of their respective bodies, which were to take place on 
 the morrow, and at which they were to receive the official com- 
 munication of the Grand Judge." 
 
 4 It was drawn up by Lebrun, Third Consul. 
 
 5 Moreau had another brother, a naval lieutenant. Bonaparte 
 sent him orders to retire to Morlaix, and stay there with his 
 family. 
 
 '" Correspondence," vol. ix. p. 342. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 145 
 
 But Cadoudal again escaped. " They were much 
 troubled," says Madame de Remusat, "by the 
 address with which he eluded all pursuit." 
 
 On the 9th Ventose a law was passed by which 
 it was enacted that "all persons who harboured 
 Georges or any one of his accomplices shall be treated 
 as equal with those brigands if they do not make 
 declaration of the fact." " At the same time the 
 measures that were taken to prevent them from 
 getting out of Paris, reminded us," says Fauriel, " by 
 the silence and consternation of the people, and by the 
 active movements of the armed force, of the sad days 
 of '93." 7 "Sentinels," we learn from the Journal de 
 Paris, " have been placed all along the walls of Paris, 
 and no person can pass the gates, day or night. In 
 the daytime, police officers, adjutants, and gendarmes 
 verify passports and reconnoitre every individual who 
 goes out, so as to make sure that the brigands shall 
 not fly from Paris and escape the punishment that 
 awaits them. The citizens must hasten to denounce 
 the houses in which they may suspect them to be 
 hidden." 
 
 In publishing the law for the punishment of all who 
 should harbour Georges and his accomplices, the 
 Government had forgotten to give their names and 
 description. This omission was repaired by the 
 Moniteur in the number of the 16th Ventose, 8 in which 
 the Grand Judge caused to be inserted a "List of the 
 
 7 For all these measures see several letters of Bonaparte's in 
 vol. ix. ot his " Correspondence." 
 
 8 "The journal," says Fauriel in a note, "was kept back for 
 several hours in order that this note might be inserted on the 
 day named." It was at the same time placarded all over Paris, 
 and distributed everywhere. 
 
 L 
 
1 46 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 Brigands employed by the British Ministry to attempt 
 the life of the First Consul." That list comprised fifty- 
 nine persons ; 1st, the twenty-nine men who were 
 landed from an English cutter (Wright, captain) at 
 the foot of the cliff of Bivelle in August and December, 
 1 803, and on the 16th of January, 1804; 2ndly, thirty- 
 eight "accomplices" who were landed in Brittany, 
 or resident in France. Among the latter Moreau 
 figured. Out of this number of fifty-nine, there were 
 thirty-three not arrested, and thirty-one who were 
 described. 9 
 
 At seven o'clock in the evening of the 18th Ven- 
 t6se (9th March), two days after this publication, 
 Georges Cadoudal, who was in a cabriolet with the 
 younger Leridan, 1 was arrested near the Odeon 
 Theatre, after having killed the peace officer 
 who seized the horses' bridles with one pistol shot, 
 and severely wounded with a second another police 
 agent who attempted to seize him. The rest of 
 the confederates fell for the most part into the hands 
 of the police. We shall meet with them in the 
 following chapter. On the eve of this capture, at which 
 the Government rejoiced so much that the MoniUur 
 inserted it at the head of its number of the 29th Ven- 
 tose, Moreau had again fallen into a trap set for him by 
 Real. Fauriel reveals the origin (hitherto unknown) 
 of his ill-judged action, which was rendered excu- 
 sable only by the excessively rigorous captivity to 
 which he was subjected. He complained of this strict- 
 ness at the trial. 
 
 9 An extremely minute description is given of Cadoudal as 
 "chief of the brigands." 
 
 1 Leridan did not figure on the list of brigands. He was 
 condemned to only two years' imprisonment. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate, 147 
 
 "On the 17th Ventose," says Fauriel, " Moreau 
 wrote to the First Consul. For several days there 
 was anxiety about this letter, which was said by 
 the general's enemies to be derogatory to the 
 dignity of his character. It was known that the 
 First Consul had ordered it to be included in the 
 documents to be used at the trial. Hence it was con- 
 cluded that Bonaparte was not well pleased with the 
 letter, and therefore, that Moreau had not degraded 
 himself by it. 2 
 
 The story of this letter of Moreau's is connected 
 with the incident (insignificant in itself) of Madame 
 Recamier's visit to Real. She was summoned by 
 him to receive a reprimand for the freedom of her 
 remarks upon the arrest of Moreau, and upon other 
 circumstances of the conspiracy. Real's real object 
 in this proceeding was to inspire Moreau through 
 his wife, who was acquainted with Madame Recamier, 
 with the idea of writing to the First Consul. 
 
 In order to prejudice the public against Moreau, 
 various pamphlets, in which attempts were made 
 to cast doubts upon the loyalty of the general, were 
 published. 3 
 
 2 When Fauriel wrote this he was not aware of the tenor of 
 the letter, which was not made known to the public until the trial. 
 At a later stage of his narrative he speaks of it as " a letter 
 written imprudently, and in a moment of weakness." 
 
 3 The most important of these pamphlets are " Moreau et 
 Pichegru," written by Rcederer, by order of Bonaparte (see 
 Rcederer's works, vol. iii. p. 373, and following), and the 
 " Me'moire concernant latrahison de Pichegru, ; ' by Mcntgaillard. 
 We may judge of it by the following note in the Journal de Paris 
 (20th Ventose) : "A draughtsman has drawn the portrait of 
 Georges jro?n the description published by the Gra?id Judge, and 
 an engraving has been made, which is on sale to-day, at the 
 Rue du Coq, Saint Honore." 
 
 L 2 
 
148 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 The print, which represented the u sixty brigands," 
 with Moreau in the midst of them, and which was 
 certainly done by order of the Government, was 
 fully worthy of the " List of Brigands." This 
 print was sold or seen everywhere ; it was simply 
 the list in the Mouitcur translated for the use of 
 those who could not read. Portraits of Moreau 
 were no longer to be seen ; they were replaced by 
 the print in question. 
 
 A last word. If Fauricl's narrative could leave 
 any doubt of the provocative part which the police 
 played in the getting up of this plot, such a doubt 
 would be removed by the following passage from 
 Bourrienne's " M^moires." During two days which 
 he passed with Fouche at his country place, Pont- 
 Carre, the ex-Ministcr of Police, "who was often 
 very indiscreet," reposed some odd confidences in 
 him. " I derived from them," says Bourrienne, " and 
 from putting together all that he told me, positive 
 proof that he was acting for himself alone, and, 
 without precisely saying to me in so many words : 
 ' I have made up the conspiracy of Georges, Piche- 
 gru, and Moreau, in order to get back to the 
 Ministry, and to console myself for not having dis- 
 covered the plot of the 3rd Nivose,' he fully confirmed 
 me in the correctness of the ideas which I have 
 expressed in speaking of the schemes of the 
 early part of 1 804. He congratulated himself un- 
 reservedly on having tricked R^gnier, and con- 
 strained Bonaparte to recall him, and the proof 
 that he had moved the springs which brought the 
 confederates together, or rather, transformed malcon- 
 tents into confederates, was that he said to me : 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 149 
 
 'Informed as I was, if I had remained at the 
 Ministry of Police, it is probable that I should have 
 prevented the conspiracy, but Bonaparte had still to 
 fear the rivalry of Moreau ; he would not have been 
 Emperor ; and as for us, we should be still in dread 
 of the return of the Bourbons. That, thank God, we 
 no longer fear.' " 4 
 
 Let us now return to Fauriel's narrative. 
 
 4 " Memoires de Bourrienne," vol. vi. p. 295. 
 
150 The Last Days of the Consttlate. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 AN HISTORICAL PICTURE OF THE TRIAL OF GEORGES 
 CADOUDAL AND MOREAU. 
 
 Three whole months had elapsed since the rising 
 of the rumour of the conspiracy against the Consular 
 Government, which, in fact, had no existence since the 
 day on which Moreau had been arrested as an accomplice 
 of Georges Cadoudal ; yetneither Moreau, Georges, nor 
 the others who were also accused were yet brought to 
 trial. 1 In the midst of the strange variety of events 
 that accompanied the establishment of the Empire on 
 the ruins of the Republic, the public mind had been 
 hardly at all distracted from what was going on in the 
 Temple prison, and from the approaching trial of 
 Moreau. The general curiosity was indeed height- 
 ened by the additional anxiety respecting Moreau's 
 fate with which the still recent remembrance of the 
 death of the Due d'Enghien 2 inspired the people. 
 
 1 On the 18th of May, 1804, an organic Senatus-consultum 
 had conferred the title of Emperor on the First Consul, under 
 the name of Napoleon the First, and made the imperial dignity 
 hereditary in his family. 
 
 8 [Marg. note] ** 22nd March, 1804. ' Keen and recent recol- 
 lections foreboded, so to speak, the issue of this trial, and 
 the gloomy character of those presages was all the more likely 
 to heighten public curiosity. Servile and cowardly epochs have 
 the singular property of lending a certain attraction to public 
 ills that is not troubled by the fear of personal danger near at 
 hand, or by any sense of the duty of preventing or opposing 
 those public ills.' * 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 151 
 
 This uneasiness manifested itself from the moment of 
 the General's arrest. Bonaparte had murdered the 
 most interesting scion of the ancient families of 
 the kings of France, as a prelude to the formation of 
 the Empire. What a presage was this of the fate of 
 the most illustrious among generals, who had won the 
 victories of the Republic and Liberty, but was now in 
 the hands of his enemy, the new-made Emperor ! The 
 nation had just seen how Bonaparte had ascended 
 the throne ; by what pretext, by what means, with 
 what sentiments ; and it was a remarkable circum- 
 stance that his first acts in the capacity of Emperor 
 were about to decide the fate of the man whom he 
 most feared. 3 
 
 Bonaparte himself, in the midst of the solicitude 
 which his resolution with respect to the Due d'Enghien 
 must have caused him, of the disturbance which 
 ensued, in the first instance, upon the carrying out 
 of that resolution ; of the intrigues which he had 
 to set on foot through the medium of his agents, 
 and even while he quaffed the first intoxicating 
 draughts of imperial splendour and enjoyment, had 
 never for one moment lost sight of the " brigands,'* 
 
 3 [Marg. note.] "The public were again and above all frightened 
 by the Senatus-consultum of the 8th Ventose, by the list of the 
 i6th,and by the violent measures which had been resorted to in 
 the arrest of a great number of the accused." 
 
 On the 8th Ventose a Senatus-consultum was given by which 
 the functions of the jury were suppressed for two years in cases 
 of the crimes of treason and attempts against the person of the 
 First Consul, and against the internal and external safety of the 
 Republic, and the accused, who were to be defended by counsel, 
 were to be tried before a court composed of six judges. 
 According to a note by Fauriel, the latter clause was inserted 
 with the special intention of preventing Garat from undertaking 
 Moreau's case. 
 
152 The Last Days of the Co7isulate. 
 
 whom he accused of having made a plot to assassinate 
 him. 
 
 The Criminal Tribunal, and all the agents, both 
 superior and subaltern, were unremittingly occupied 
 by the proceedings against these " brigands." Every 
 other interest appeared to be suspended ; every other 
 thought to be laid aside It soon became easy to 
 judge of the onerous and fatiguing nature of the task 
 that had been imposed upon them. 
 
 The proceedings against the conspirators were by 
 this time very far advanced. Twenty-three had al- 
 ready been arrested, and those who played, or were 
 made to appear to play the chief parts were among 
 the number. The others were taken at different 
 times in the course of Germinal. Between the day of 
 Moreau's arrest, and that on which the indictment 
 [acte d' accusation) appeared, there is an exact interval 
 of three months, devoted to arranging measures for 
 convicting the accused of the offences imputed to 
 them, and preparing them to be delivered up to the 
 judges. I shall proceed to group together the cir- 
 cumstances that afford an idea of the " instruction " 
 of this great trial, of all the measures taken by the 
 police and the Tribunal in the preparation of it, and 
 of the incidents which bore upon it. Afterwards I 
 shall sketch the history of the trial itself, and narrate 
 the most remarkable circumstances which followed 
 the rendering of the judgment and the execution of 
 it ; taking care that all these portions of one same 
 event shall throw light on each other. 
 
 The number of persons to whom the judicial informa- 
 tions attached was forty-eight, but fourteen of these 
 (among whom were several women) were persons 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate, 153 
 
 who could not be classed among conspirators with- 
 out manifest absurdity. They were members of the 
 lower classes of society, against whom no other 
 accusation could be brought than that they afforded 
 an asylum to accused persons, on the usual terms 
 for similar accommodation, or otherwise rendered 
 them service according to custom, as to any ordinary 
 employers. There were even some among them who 
 had made useful declarations to the police of their 
 own accord. I shall have very little to say of those 
 persons. It is an almost inevitable injustice of 
 history to forget the misfortunes of obscure indi- 
 viduals, or to pass them over lightly. 
 
 The thirty-four others (if we except Moreau, whom 
 it will always be necessary to consider separately) 
 presented certain characteristics which were calculated 
 to give a specious appearance to the accusation 
 against them. Almost all had borne arms against 
 the Republic in the civil wars of Brittany. Several 
 had held commands amongst the insurgents, and the 
 most celebrated of their chiefs, he who had displayed 
 the highest capacity, the staunchest perseverance, the 
 most dauntless courage, was there. Some, whose 
 lack of education condemned them to vegetate in the 
 lowest ranks of society, seemed ill-calculated to play 
 the part of conspirators, but the recollections of a 
 civil war in which all who had a share in it were in- 
 flamed by fierce fanaticism, might make them appear 
 to some extent formidable. Some others among these 
 accused persons, without having taken a direct part 
 in the civil war, were bound by strong ties to those in 
 whose interest that war was made. Almost all were 
 united to the cause, not only by common opinions, 
 
154 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 but by common bonds, and to the service of the French 
 princes, who were now refugees in various parts of 
 Europe. All were not proscribed in France, but 
 almost all, notwithstanding the half-pardon which was 
 finally obtained of necessity for the various insurgent 
 parties, belonged to a class subjected to the unrelaxed 
 vigilance of the police, who had many times acted 
 treacherously towards them, and always had to dread 
 violent reprisals from them. 
 
 If, then, it had only been a question of pronouncing 
 upon the fate of these men, the Government would 
 have been free from either solicitude or embarrass- 
 ment. The name of Geo; <ioudal, at this period 
 and prior to the trial in which he was to acquire a 
 more honourable renown than he had yet won, 
 awakened none but unfavourable ideas. He was 
 regarded by national prejudice as a mere brigand, and 
 the same view was taken of the men who were a 
 dated with him. They might have been brought 
 before a court-martial without exciting the surprise 
 of the public, and condemned without arousing any 
 indignation or scandal ; such an action, whether just 
 or unjust, politic or atrocious, would only have excited 
 idle curiosity for a few days, and then been forgotten ; 
 for one of the great misfortunes of a nation accus- 
 tomed to violence and arbitrary rule is that it loses 
 the faculty of bearing in mind the crimes from which 
 it suffers. 
 
 It was, then, the intention of associating Moreau 
 with Georges Cadoudal that gave rise to all the soli- 
 citude, and animated all the precautions of the 
 Government. The greatest of the generals of the 
 Republic was to be presented to the country as the 
 
The Last D.iys of the Consulate. 155 
 
 chief of a band whom they made sure of being able 
 to pass off as base and savage cut-throats. This 
 gives, and it only can give, the key to the mode of 
 " instruction " of the famous trial, and reveals the 
 real motive of all the measures that were taken to 
 secure the desired result. 
 
 Immediately upon. the arrest of one of the men 
 inscribed upon the famous lists of " brigands," within 
 the walls or in the environs of Paris, he was taken to 
 the Prefecture of Police, before being conveyed to 
 prison, unless, indeed, his personal importance or 
 some particular motives procured him the honour of 
 being first interrogated by the Director-general of 
 Police, Real. But the greater part of the preliminary 
 examinations took place before the Prefect of Police, 
 Dubois. 4 Here I must say a passing word concerning 
 this chief of the Paris police. 
 
 Few men were more capable of discharging the 
 functions of that post to the liking of Bonaparte ; in- 
 solent, vain, and fool'sh,he was always ready to exer- 
 cise his deputed despotism upon anybody, provided 
 the order came to him direct from the chief of the 
 state (on that condition he insisted), for he claimed 
 to be a lofty and independent power in his sphere, 
 and he frequently formed a sort of opposition to the 
 
 4 Louis Pierre Toseph Dubois, born in 1758, advocate to the 
 parliament, was in succession procurator to the Chatelet, pre- 
 sident of the Criminal Tribunal, Prefect of Police (24th March, 
 1802), and Councillor of State for life. He was replaced at the 
 Prefecture by Pasquier (December, 1810), and sat in the cham- 
 ber of the Hundred Days. He died in 1854. u La Biographic 
 Moderne" passes a more favourable judgment upon him than 
 that of Fauriel. It says, " He displayed in that delicate and 
 difficult post the wisdom of a good administrator, and the im- 
 partiality of a just judge." 
 
156 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 ministry of " high police." Bonaparte's policy was 
 constantly to excite his dislike and jealousy of 
 Fouche, who has always regarded him with contempt 
 as a man incapable of handling the secret springs of 
 the police, elated by the scraps of arbitrary power 
 that he was permitted to grasp, and whose greatest 
 merit is that he can flatter <and serve the daily 
 suspicions and fidgety anxieties of the despot in chief, 
 without being capable of inspiring or serving him 
 under extraordinary and difficult circumstances. It 
 would be impossible, without entering into multiplied 
 and repulsive details, to give a just idea of the den 
 called the Hotel de la Prefecture, in which this under- 
 ling minister of police reigns. There we find a com- 
 bination of all that is most hideous in the aspect and 
 \\\ the vices of prison-life ; a respectable man rarely 
 comes out of it without having been shocked by some 
 spectacle debasing to humanity, and a vicious man 
 without being more fit and ready for crime, because 
 of the scorn and brutality with which all who are 
 suspected of criminality are treated there. 
 
 It was to this place and before these men that not 
 only the persons accused of conspiracy, but the 
 greater number of those who were arrested on suspicion 
 of having had any sort of relations with them, were 
 taken immediately upon their arrest. I cannot pre- 
 tend to furnish an exact statement of the conduct of 
 the police to the accused, nor to describe in detail all 
 the measures which were used to make them acknow- 
 ledge their crimes ; but, judging of what was done by 
 what it was impossible to conceal, notwithstanding the 
 strong interest that the Government had in keeping 
 everything secret, and all the means of concealment 
 
The Last Days of ths Consulate. 157 
 
 at its disposal, there is room for surprise and dismay. 
 The facts that are placed beyond doubt, even to the 
 least well-informed, are more than sufficient to fix and 
 justify the judgment of the historian. 
 
 Threats of instant violent death, and promises of 
 money, favour, and especially of life, were lavished in 
 turn, and where threats and promises proved vain, 
 torture was employed. 5 
 
 The answers extracted by fear or pain to insidious 
 questions put according to a prearranged plan, were 
 recorded to serve as a basis for the judicial pro- 
 ceedings. On more than one bccason those answers 
 were altered with daring impudence or astute 
 treachery. Particulars which rendered them more 
 useful for the purposes of the police were added to 
 the avowals wrung from the accused ; and when 
 nothing positively favourable to their designs 
 could be obtained, only what was damaging was 
 recorded. 
 
 The conspirators who, instead of being taken to 
 the Prefecture of Police and examined in the first 
 instance by Dubois, were brought before the Director- 
 general of Police to be examined by him, were not 
 treated with any more consideration. It is necessary 
 
 5 It was not only when the "instruction" of this plot was 
 drawn up that torture was employed to extract avowals from the 
 accused. Among the documents relative to the attempt of the 
 3rd Nivose there is a letter from Saint- Rejant to his sister, in 
 which the following passage occurs : " I can assure you that 
 since I have been arrested 1 have suffered martyrdom, and that 
 1 have said nothing against my comrades or against the party, 
 although I have been put to the secret question twice. You 
 do not know what this kind of torture is, I will tell you that 
 verbally." This letter was read at the trial, but it did not elicit 
 any protest or observation on the part of the president of the 
 tribunal. (See " Proce's de Saint-Rejan," vol. i. pp. 230, 231.) 
 
158 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 that these general assertions should be supported by 
 some detail of facts, not only for the satisfaction of the 
 reader, but, also, and even more, for the proper under- 
 standing of the subsequent facts and the course of the 
 trial. 
 
 It will be remembered that not only Moreau's 
 aides-de-camp, but also officers whose connection 
 with him had been merely that of subalterns or 
 friends, were imprisoned simultaneously with him. 
 Among the latter was one Le Normand, a brigade- 
 major, much esteemed in the army for his valour, and re- 
 markable for combining a taste for philosophic studies 
 with a sound knowledge of the art of war. His vivacity 
 of temperament gave a touch of lightness and even 
 flightiness to his character. 
 
 He had been first aide-de-camp to Moreau, and 
 there had been more intimacy between them than 
 was necessarily implied by their relative positions. 
 However, after a certain period a coolness had arisen, 
 and even a decided division, owing, to all appearance, 
 to their reciprocal dislike of each other's political 
 opinions. 
 
 Moreau seemed to think that Le Normand's attach- 
 ment to the Republic was neither strong enough nor 
 fervent enough, and Le Normand felt the same 
 doubt of Moreau ; nevertheless, mutual esteem pre- 
 vented them from allowing their grievances to 
 influence their opinions of each other, and their dis- 
 sension only made them do each other more scrupu- 
 lous justice. Real wished to reserve the privilege of 
 questioning one whom he believed to be Moreau's 
 enemy, and the honour of making a profit out of his 
 enmity, to himself. 
 
The Last Days of I he Consulate. 159 
 
 After he had said several things with the object of 
 exciting the resentment of the young officer, Real 
 concluded by offering him a purse which contained 
 one hundred thousand crowns, and the patent of a 
 general of division, on condition that he would reveal 
 all that he was presumed to know of Moreau's secrets. 
 Le Normand received this offer as it deserved to be 
 received, and Real had to bear the mortification of 
 having set a trap for the loyal young officer in vain. 
 By the impudence of this attempt upon a gentleman 
 whose high sense of honour and probity was well 
 and widely known, and who could not under any 
 pretext whatever be involved in Moreau's fate, we 
 may judge to what lengths the police ventured to go 
 with men who were regarded by the public as 
 brigands, to whom when they offered life they offered 
 something that they really had to give, and could dis- 
 pose of without remorse and almost without scandal. 
 
 Georges Cadoudal's servant, Picot, 6 a Breton 
 villager, a coarse, fanatical, and violent man, was a 
 special object of the intemperate zeal with which 
 proofs of the conspiracy were sought. On the day of 
 Picot's arrest, Georges was still free, and notwith- 
 standing the mass of evidence that had put the 
 police on his track, in spite of the number and 
 activity of the agents in their employ, they still 
 trembled lest he should escape them. 7 In this state 
 
 6 Louis Picot, a Chouan captain, born at Tosselin in 1776. 
 He went to England after the peace of Amiens, returned to 
 France with Georges Cadoudal, was arrested on the 18th 
 Pluviose, condemned to death, and executed. The dramatic 
 scene that occurred at his examination before the tribunal is 
 related in a later portion of the narrative. 
 
 One of the chiefs of the Vendean insurrection, the famous 
 Abbe Bernier, who had become Bishop of Orleans, had under- 
 
160 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 of things, the servant was an important person ; he 
 could throw a light upon the retreat of his master. 
 At first he was offered a considerable sum of money, 
 which was counted out before him, and he was pro- 
 mised leave to go whithersoever he desired. These 
 overtures having failed, he was garroted, and sub- 
 jected to tortures as severe as could be inflicted upon 
 him, considering that the practice had long fallen into 
 disuse, and that the instruments ingeniously devised 
 for the administration of torture were not forthcoming. 
 The unhappy man could not resist the pain, and he 
 made revelations in which falsehood and truth were 
 mingled, because they were such as the police desired 
 and suggested. 
 
 In the course of several successive examinations, he 
 declared that the plan of the conspirators was either 
 to assassinate Bonaparte or to carry him off; that 
 they had drawn lots to decide which of them should 
 attack him first ; and that uniforms had been made 
 for them with that object. He gave information 
 upon the landing of Cadoudal and his companions, 
 and the route which they had followed in making for 
 Paris. They did not fail to make him speak, of 
 Moreau. He answered, or rather was made to answer, 
 that he had often heard the conspirators speak of 
 that general, and regret that the princes had given 
 him to them as an auxiliary. We shall see that 
 the police were anxious to suggest this particular 
 
 taken to recruit these agents among the former Chcuans. On 
 the 30th Pluviose Bonaparte writes to Murat, 4i The Bishop of 
 Orleans will send you one Piquartier, of La Vende*e. You will 
 employ him as a secret agent, and give him a reasonable monthly 
 salary. He ought to bring you a daily report." (" Correspond- 
 ence," vol. ix. p. 322.) 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 161 
 
 declaration to several of the accused ; and the cause 
 and motive of that suggestion will be readily per- 
 ceived. 
 
 One peculiarity which history will record, but with- 
 out surprise, is, that of all the accused who came from 
 England, and who from this sole circumstance had 
 more of the appearance of conspirators, those whose 
 characters had been developed by culture and 
 education, and who consequently had a truer and 
 deeper sense of the fidelity which a man owes to a 
 party when once he has joined it, were almost the 
 only ones who remained impervious alike to threats 
 and torture, and wore out the ardour of the police 
 without gratifying their curiosity. The more 
 rough and ignorant men among the number were 
 almost all weak, and the most cowardly were in 
 general those who were settled in France, and were, 
 so to speak, unconscious auxiliaries of the con- 
 federates. 
 
 Jean Merille, Victor Deville, Rubin de la Grimau- 
 diere, Louis Marie Burhan, Nicolas Datry, 8 who had 
 
 8 Jean MeVille, called Beauregard, born at Saint- Front, had 
 been engaged in the Chouan affair and the attempt of the 3rd 
 Nivose. He returned to Paris at the same time as Georges, 
 was arrested on the 18th Pluviose, condemned to death, and 
 executed. He was twenty-eight years old. Victor Deville, 
 called Tamerlan, son of a labourer at Thiberville, near Bernay ; 
 he left the republican ranks for those of the Vendeans, and after 
 the pacification he became the chief of a band of highwaymen. 
 He managed to evade pursuit, went to London, returned to 
 Paris with Georges, was arrested on the nth Germinal, con- 
 demned to death, and executed. Jean Marie Joseph Rubin de 
 la Grimaudiere, born at Pire' in 1777, served in Conde's army, 
 and afterwards in that of La Vendee. He came from Rennes 
 to join Georges in Paris, was arrested, and acquitted. L. G. M. 
 Burhan-Malabry, born at Questemberg in Morbihan. He had 
 served under Georges. He was implicated in the attempt of 
 
 M 
 
162 The Last Days of the Co?isulate. 
 
 all held the rank of officers among the insurgents 
 during the civil wars of the West, and were still in 
 the prime of life, being arrested and examined at 
 different periods, agreed in their steadfast denial of any 
 project resembling a conspiracy and all complicity on 
 their own part in any such design. It appears that 
 they were treated with great severity and sternly 
 threatened. It is due to them that I should name 
 them, and say a word of their conduct, were it only 
 because three among them were condemned to death, 
 and executed. I shall, however, make no long pause 
 except in the case of those whose replies, declarations, 
 and conduct furnish important data to the history of 
 the case. 
 
 Georges Cadoudal was interrogated by the police 
 with more form and keener curiosity than any of the 
 confederates, and the public were vehemently in- 
 terested in his examination. He was questioned 
 twice over during the night by the Prefect of the 
 Police, and that while the shock of his arrest was 
 fresh upon him, in the midst of the tumult it had occa- 
 sioned, of the cruel joy with which it was regarded by 
 those into whose hands he had fallen, and of the threats 
 and insults considered legitimate, when inflicted 
 upon a man who had hitherto been branded with the 
 ignominious title of 1 ' brigand." Amid all these causes 
 of confusion and bewilderment, which might so pardon- 
 ably have led to acts of weakness or want of reflection, 
 
 the 3rd Nivose, detained a year at Bicetre, then sent to Rennes, 
 whence he returned to Paris at the same time as Georges, was 
 arrested, condemned to death, and executed. He was twenty- 
 nine years old. N. Datry, born at Verdun, took part in the 
 affair of Quiberon, entered the Portuguese service, and after- 
 wards rejoined the insurgents of Morbihan. He was arrested 
 with Malabry and Joyant, tried, and acquitted. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 163 
 
 he preserved a steadfast courage, and nothing more 
 than he chose to say was extracted from him ; he 
 uttered nothing different from or contradictory of what 
 he had resolved to declare, when he had meditated 
 upon his situation and resolved to accept his inevitable 
 fate with an undaunted heart. 
 
 Georges Cadoudal stated that he had come to 
 France there to prepare the means of overthrowing 
 Bonaparte's Government and restoring the Bourbons 
 to their former place ; that those means were not 
 yet available ; that the premeditated attack would 
 not be begun until the arrival of a French prince 
 who was to come from England, and was to be 
 summoned when the time came. He denied all 
 complicity in the plot of the 3rd Nivose, and declared 
 that he would name none of the persons with whom 
 he had consorted or who had afforded him asylum. 
 
 The answers of Georges to questions concerning 
 the object which he proposed to effect by coming 
 to Paris, and on the real s r ate of his project at 
 the moment of his arrest, are extremely remarkable, 
 inasmuch as they give a precise and true idea of 
 this famous conspiracy, so far as the intention of the 
 conspirators is concerned. 
 
 The replies of Joyant, the aide-de-camp of Georges, 
 were in agreement with his own. Joyant made the 
 same general avowal, but also refused to make any 
 revelations respecting persons who might have been 
 compromised by them. 
 
 The result of the examination of the Marquis de 
 Riviere was similar. 9 The marquis was a gentleman 
 
 9 Charles Francois Riffardeau, Marquis de Riviere, born at 
 M 2 
 
164 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 of mild manners, cultivated mind, noble character 
 and extreme loyalty to the opinions which he held. 
 His position as the favourite and aide-de-camp of the 
 Count d'Artois, his well-known devotion to the 
 royalist cause, his reputation as a man of ability 
 and one who was incapable of change of opinion, pro- 
 cured him the honour of being questioned by Real on 
 two separate occasions. 
 
 No other acknowledgment was obtained from him 
 than that of an intention to ascertain for himself 
 whether the state of the public mind and of things 
 in general in France was or was not favourable to 
 the hope of a Bourbon restoration. In vain did 
 Real endeavour to make him give up the names of 
 any who might be endangered, and to make him 
 declare that his party counted upon the assistance of 
 Moreau. 
 
 The declarations of the brothers Polignac may 
 be placed in the same class with the preceding 
 in a general sense, but they present certain peculi- 
 arities which lend them a distinct aspect, and prove 
 that the brothers endeavoured to reconcile the feelincr 
 of honour and even truth with the fear inspired 
 by the police. They were both questioned by Real, 
 and each, on being interrogated as to the part in 
 the conspiracy which he believed Moreau to have 
 taken, allowed it to be understood that he regarded 
 
 La Ferte (Cher) in 1765. He was officer in the French guards, 
 emigrated, served in Conde's army, and afterwards entered the 
 service of the Comte d'Artois, who entrusted him with several 
 missions in La Vendee. He arrived in Paris with Pichegru and 
 Georges, was arrested (4th March), and condemned to death. 
 The penalty was commuted to transportation after a term of 
 imprisonment at Joux. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate, 165 
 
 the general as an auxiliary, without, however, 
 knowing how far his fidelity might be trusted. We 
 shall soon see that the elder brother pushed this 
 declaration still farther, and turned a constructive 
 falsehood into a positive one. He yielded altogether 
 to the perfidious instigations of the police, being soon 
 weary of the feeble effort which he seems to have 
 made at first, to tell nothing but the truth in speaking 
 of others, and to speak only of himself. 
 
 One of the conspirators whom the police had 
 pursued most unrelentingly was Coster Saint-Victor. 
 He had lain ever since the 3rd Nivose under imputa- 
 tion of having been concerned in the villainous 
 attempt of that day, and this charge would be sure 
 to have a fatal effect upon his present situation. He 
 appeared before Dubois, who threatened to have him 
 shot if he did not acknowledge himself guilty of all 
 that was imputed to him ; that is to say, of having 
 taken part in the affair of the 3rd Nivose, and of being 
 one of the "brigands" who had recently come from 
 England to assassinate the First Consul. The 
 dignity, the courage, the stamp of truth that marked 
 all his replies, struck even Dubois himself. Not 
 only did he deny that he had taken any part what- 
 ever in the attempt of the 3rd Nivose, but he also 
 repudiated the charge of any kind of complicity with 
 a more recent project of attack upon the Government. 
 His innocence in reference to the first accusation 
 would have been amply demonstrated to any other 
 authority except the police ; as for the second, 
 although it was more probable, there is not a 
 shred of evidence that it was more just or better 
 founded. 
 
1 66 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 Real's curiosity, or probably his vanity, led him to 
 endeavour to extract a confession from a man who 
 had humiliated power and strength in the person of 
 Dubois, as courage and nobility of mind when arrayed 
 against them can humiliate. The chief was not 
 more fortunate than the subordinate. Saint-Victor 
 came out of his hands with his secret, if he had one, 
 safe, and having given additional proofs of his noble- 
 minded pride, the sincerity of his political opinions, 
 and the impossibility of his lending himself to an 
 assassination plot. 
 
 This unfortunate young man, who belonged to a 
 highly respectable family in the Depaitmcnt of the 
 Vosgcs, and was endowed with all the advantages of 
 nature and education, had hastened to the West 
 immediately on the breaking out of the civil war. 
 There he had distinguished himself by his courage, 
 the zeal with which he had served the royal cause, 
 and his deep regret for the cruelties of that war, and 
 the mere brigandage into which it degenerated. From 
 that time forth until the day of his arrest, his life 
 had been a succession of misfortunes and persecution. 
 I shall have occasion to speak of him again. He 
 was one of those who created the greatest interest, 
 and whose guilt was the least clearly proven 
 among the conspirators, and he suffered the extreme 
 penalty. 1 
 
 [Marg. note.] " If he had perished, either naturally or by 
 the hands of the police, only the day before, his memory would 
 have been held merely that of a brigand. Condemned, how- 
 ever, to appear before a tribunal and to be assassinated with the 
 formalities of justice, he died honoured, reputed innocent, and 
 he will be remembered with regret, if our sorrow for the more 
 illustrious names and memories leave us leisure to mourn the 
 less." 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 167 
 
 If all the accused had imitated almost all those of 
 whom I have spoken, the police would have been 
 obliged either to withdraw their assertions respecting 
 the conspiracy, or to have the conspirators secretly 
 shot. We shall see not only that they were not 
 reduced to this alternative, but to what extent they 
 had reason to think the result of their proceedings was 
 sufficiently complete to bear broad daylight, and also to 
 hope that the accused might be sent for trial without 
 any chance of escape ; for hitherto the declarations of 
 the two Polignacs were too vague to afford the cer- 
 tainty of this. 
 
 A first triumph was obtained over Bouvet Lozier, 2 
 one of the men on whom the police had not counted 
 beforehand. He had been rather intimate with 
 Georges, Pichegru, and Lajolais ; a good and suffi- 
 cient reason for his being one of the first arrested. 
 
 Lozier was brought before the Prefect of Police, 
 and subjected to two successive examinations, both 
 very minute and prolonged. The questions put to him 
 proved to demonstration that they were founded upon 
 former revelations, some of which were independent 
 of those that Lajolais could have made, and in fact 
 had made. All his answers were frankly and posi- 
 tively negative, and given in a tone of irritation, 
 which bespoke anger and impatience rather than 
 firmness and constancy. 
 
 He was taken to the Temple on the 20th Pluviose, 
 and seemed to be forgotten there for three days ; but 
 
 2 [Marg. note.] "Bouvet was an fmigre ; he bore the title of 
 Adjutant-general of the Army of the Princes. He had been an 
 officer before the Revolution." He was arrested on the 19th 
 Pluviose at No. 36, Rue Saint Sauveur. 
 
1 68 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 at dawn on the fourth day he was found half-strangled, 
 and retaining barely sufficient strength to ask that he 
 might be brought before the Grand Judge, in order to 
 make an important declaration. He was immediately 
 taken to the Hotel de la Police, and there he dictated 
 the strangest declaration that ever was made by a 
 man in a situation like his. 3 His words were taken 
 down in writing. 
 
 " A man who comes forth from the gates of the 
 grave," thus he began, "who is still overcast by 
 the shadow of death, calls for vengeance upon 
 those who by their treachery have flung him and 
 his party into the abyss in which they lie." The 
 rest of the declaration was a plain and full com- 
 mentary upon this emphatic and mysterious text. 
 
 Bouvet's party was the party of the French 
 princes, which was working in Paris for the overthrow 
 of Bonaparte's Government, and the restoration of the 
 Bourbons. The perfidious traitor who had ruined 
 this party, and on whom Bouvet Lozicr in his despair 
 invoked vengeance, was Moreau ; Moreau who had 
 promised his support to the cause of the Bourbons, 
 and who, when the adherents of that cause came to 
 act in concert with him, retracted the promise he 
 had given, the promise which had drawn them to Paris, 
 and designed to employ them solely for the purposes 
 of his own personal ambition. 4 
 
 Details, imprudently solicited or accepted by the 
 police, without consideration of whether it would 
 
 8 [Marg. note.] "His hands were horribly swollen when he 
 appeared before Regnier." He made his declaration at mid- 
 night, on the 22nd Pluviose. (See " Proces," vol. ii. p. 158.) 
 
 4 "The accusation that I bring against him," adds liouvet, 
 " is perhaps supported only by half-proofs." 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 169 
 
 afterwards be possible to keep up any appearance of 
 probability, were brought to the support of this man's 
 declaration. Not only was the meeting on the 
 Boulevard de la Madeleine represented to have 
 actually taken place, but another in the Champs Ely- 
 sees was alleged. Very likely a meeting was desired 
 by Pichegru or Georges, and promised by Lajolais, 
 but it never was granted by Moreau. 
 
 This impudent declaration eloquently proved that 
 the torture had been more skilfully and effectually 
 applied in the dark solitude of a prison than at the 
 Prefecture of Police, and that Bouvct Lozier had 
 added to the infamy of his statements the gross false- 
 hood of imputing the outrage by which they had been 
 wrung from him to a mad act on his own part. 
 
 Six days after this declaration, Bouvet underwent 
 a third examination before Real. The object of this 
 interrogation was to commit Bouvet more deeply to 
 his allegations against Moreau, to make him say that 
 the French prince who was to take the command in 
 chief of the royalist party immediately upon its 
 organization, being dissatisfied with the insufficiency 
 of the resources of that party, had resolved, in con- 
 sideration of that insufficiency, to accept the support 
 of Moreau, or to solicit it ; and that the hopes of the 
 prince were chiefly founded upon the promises and 
 the influence of the republican general. So well 
 pleased was Real with the compliance of Bouvet 
 Lozier that he ventured to put questions to him 
 on purpose to verify the accuracy of Lajolais' reports, 
 and confirm his strict obedience to the instructions of 
 the police. 
 
 At the same time that Real was oblaining these 
 
170 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 advantages, he was contending with Rolland, whose 
 revelations would be of much greater importance 
 than those of Bouvet Lozier. The latter could do 
 Moreau no harm, except by reporting or inventing 
 statements which he had not himself heard from the 
 general's lips ; but the former had it in his power to 
 ruin Moreau by merely repeating what he had heard 
 him say, leaving it to the police to interpret and touch 
 up his statements. 
 
 Of all those who were accused of conspiracy and 
 fell into the hands of the police and the tribunal, 
 Rolland was the most utterly and openly condemned 
 by public opinion. It has been almost universally 
 believed that he had sold beforehand to the police all 
 the secrets which he might find out from Picbegru 
 and Moreau by acting as their go-between. J think 
 this notion was unfounded, and there are, unfortu- 
 nately, degrees enough in baseness to admit of the 
 general judgment being unjust to Rolland. 
 
 All the facts seem to prove that he could not have 
 been denounced to the police except by Lajolais. He 
 was arrested in the middle of the night, and brought 
 before Real ; the " high police " only being in posses- 
 sion of the information on which he might be effica- 
 ciously questioned. He acknowledged that he had 
 given Pichegru shelter for two nights, asserting that 
 he did not know him, and believed his intention was 
 to proceed immediately to Germany ; but he denied 
 everything concerning his relations with Moreau. 
 
 He was removed, immediately after his examination 
 by Real, to one of the smallest and most unwhole- 
 some cells at St. Pelagie, and there he remained until 
 the 20th Ventose, subjected to hardships which would 
 
The Last Days of the Constilaie. 171 
 
 have amply proved, if the fact had needed proof, that 
 his examination had highly displeased the police. On 
 the 29th he was again questioned by Real, who had 
 found time in the interval to concoct the plan of this 
 new experiment. The Councillor of State and Chief 
 of Police began by giving Rolland to understand that 
 he had received information which would enable him 
 to test the truth of his replies, and went on to 
 question him with the object of obtaining an acknow- 
 ledgment that he had for a long time been abetting 
 the efforts that were made to bring Pichegru back to 
 France ; that with this design he had formed rela- 
 tions with Lajolais, and he was informed by him of 
 Moreau's interest in the return of Pichegru, of a nego- 
 tiation that had been set on foot, and a journey made 
 to London by Lajolais at Moreau's desire. Rolland's 
 replies to all these questions were evasive or negative. 
 But at length Real approached the events that had 
 followed Lajolais' return, Pichegru's conferences with 
 Moreau, the account of the result of those conferences 
 which the former had doubtless given him, and the 
 mediation between the two generals with which he 
 was entrusted ; and in order to deepen the impression 
 made by his questions, he entered into the most 
 minute details of Pichegru's short sojourn at Rolland's 
 house. 
 
 " And now," said Real, " you had better be careful 
 lest by keeping silence you should deprive the police 
 of knowledge which it is important for them to have ; 
 for you will only force me to think you an accom- 
 plice of the conspirators, and not merely their confi- 
 dant. I strongly advise you, therefore, to state plainly 
 to me not only what Pichegru told you of his inter- 
 
172 The Last Djys of the Consulate. 
 
 view with Morcau, but also what Morcau himself said 
 to you when you went to him on behalf of Pichegru." 
 In order to induce Rolland to do this with less hesita- 
 tion, Real repeated the substance of the conversation 
 with Morcau. 
 
 It was then that Rolland discovered to what an 
 extent he had been betrayed by Lajolais ; but being 
 more alarmed than incensed by such conduct, he 
 imitated it, and became, all of a sudden, so far as in 
 him lay, the fellow-villain of him whose infamy he 
 cursed. Abandoning all reserve, all half-confessions, 
 all round-about ways, he told out plainly everything 
 that had passed between Pichegru, Morcau, and 
 himself. Coming to the famous conversation that 
 he had held with Moreau on behalf of Pichegru, he 
 spoke as follows : 6 
 
 "In the day (after he had had a conversation wi'.h 
 richegru on the preceding evening) I had to go and 
 make the famous overture, which I could no longer 
 evade, to Moreau. I hoped, I do not know why, that 
 the general would get me out of my difficulty. This 
 is as nearly as possible the answer he made me : ' I 
 cannot put myself at the head of any movement for 
 the Bourbons. They have all behaved z o ill, that such 
 an attempt would not succeed. If Pichegru brings 
 about an action in another sense and in that case I 
 have told him it would be necessary that the Consuls 
 and the Governor of Paris should disappear I think 
 I have a sufficiently strong party in the Senate to 
 obtain authority. I should immediately use it to 
 
 * Fauriel has transcribed only the first six words of this 
 declaration, which we give from the text of the report of the 
 trial. (See " Proces," vol. ii. p. 483.) 
 
The Last Days of I lie Consulate. 173 
 
 place all his people in safety, and afterwards to do 
 whatever public opinion dictated ; but I will not pledge 
 myself to anything in writing.' " 
 
 I have faithfully quoted this portion of Rolland's 
 declaration, because it furnished the most serious im- 
 putation brought against Moreau; because I believe 
 it truly represents what actually did occur, and also 
 because it explains several important parts of the plot 
 laid by the police against Moreau. 
 
 Rolland had no sooner made this declaration than 
 he was transferred from St. Pelagie to the Abbaye. 
 He was acquainted with the prison gate-keepers, and 
 the severity with which he had hitherto been treated 
 was so completely relaxed that he could hardly have 
 been more comfortable in his own home. The next 
 day the indulgence of the police was extended to 
 allowing him to go to his house, "to put his affairs 
 in order," he said. This proved how well pleased the 
 police were with Rolland's baseness, but it would have 
 been prudent to dissemble their gratitude to him a 
 little more adroitly. 
 
 Couchery, the young man who accompanied 
 Lajolais in his most suspicious expeditions, and aided 
 Pichegru in his most perilous proceedings, and who 
 could therefore add fresh details to the information in 
 the possession of the police, or confirm those they 
 already had by direct testimony, was not arrested 
 until a late stage of the affair. He was taken on 
 the 8th Germinal, and brought before Real. At his 
 first examination he acknowledged his relations with 
 Pichegru, and stated that he had visited him at 
 Chaillot, where Georges had found an asylum. He 
 also named the confederates whom he had seen with 
 
1 74 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 these two chiefs. He spoke of the interviews that 
 had taken place between Moreau and Pichegru, and 
 especially of the meeting on the Boulevard de la 
 Madeleine, as if Georges had been present at them. 
 These first avowals, whatever they were, might have 
 been suggested by fear and cowardice only ; but two 
 days later he presented to Real an elaborate and 
 detailed declaration which had been required from 
 him on a fixed day, and the tenour of this document 
 was such as to raise a suspicion of more than fear 
 and weakness on his part. He related all he knew 
 concerning Lajolais' journey to London, and all he 
 knew of Piche^ru's actions both as a witness of them 
 and from information obtained from others ; he 
 also gave it to be understood indirectly that Geoi 
 Cadoudal had maintained relations with Moreau. 
 Proceeding then to reason upon the facts which he 
 had just stated, and interpreting the intentions of the 
 persons whose actions he had just revealed, he 
 declared himself " inclined to believe" that the recon- 
 ciliation of Pichegru with Moreau was noc uncon- 
 nected with the projects of Cadoudal, but was only a 
 preliminary. There was more uncertainty or greater 
 hypocrisy in his opinion upon the secret views of 
 Moreau, but he furnished a wide and ready field to 
 the interpretations and instructions of the police ; and 
 in the state to which they had already brought things 
 they did not want Couchery's declarations to be 
 impudent ; it was enough that they were damaging 
 and treacherous. 
 
 Rusillion was another of the confederates with 
 whom the police had every reason to be pleased. 6 
 
 F. L. Rusillion, a major in the Swiss army, was born at 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 175 
 
 He was born in Switzerland, and bad been a captain 
 in the regiment whose services were formerly sold to 
 France. The revolution caused him to retire to his 
 own country, where he was largely mixed up with 
 the schemes and interests of the French emigres. 
 Switzerland had been subdued by the French troops, 
 Rusillion was arrested, brought to Paris and impri- 
 soned in the Temple, where he remained three whole 
 years. Being set a liberty he returned to Switzer- 
 land, where he was, to all appearances, subjected to 
 fresh persecution ; he then retired to England, and 
 renewed his former acquaintance with Pichegru and 
 the Comte d'Artois. He had determined to accom- 
 pany the general on his expedition to France, as a 
 proof of his devotion to the prince. 
 
 On the very day of his arrest he made a declara- 
 tion before the Prefect of Police, which was simple to 
 the point of silliness. He stated that, to his great 
 regret, he had joined with Pichegru and some others 
 to accomplish the overthrow of the French Govern- 
 ment ; that he had been told Moreau was acting in 
 concert with Georges and Pichegru with the same 
 purpose ; but that in the conferences which took 
 place between those three chiefs, Moreau, while per- 
 sisting in the overthrow of Bonaparte, wanted to 
 effect it for his own advantage, and, as Lajolais had 
 assured him in London, for the advantage of the 
 Bourbons. To account for these frank accusations 
 against himself and his real or pretended accomplices, 
 
 Yverdon in 1748. He landed with Pichegru at Reville, was 
 arrested on the 15th Ventose, tried with Georges, and con- 
 demned to death. The penalty was, however, commuted, and 
 in the following year he was set at liberty. 
 
176 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 Rusillion represented his conduct as an act of ven- 
 geance for the injustice of the French Government 
 towards him. 7 In short, his declaration was a parody 
 of the revelation of Bouvet Lozier. 
 
 Of all the accused who had not sold themselves 
 beforehand, Rusillion seems to have offered least 
 resistance to the curiosity of the police. I have 
 indeed failed to discover that he hesitated to betray 
 his companions for one moment. It is surprising that 
 such an associate should have been chosen by 
 Pichegru. 
 
 Rochelle, 8 who had left a lawyer's office for the 
 ranks of the Republican army, and passed from them 
 into a legion of French dmign's, had been arrested 
 with Rusillion, and on being questioned by Dubois, 
 he denied all connection with the persons whom the 
 police were pursuing. Real then examined him, but 
 failed to elicit more than a repetition of these denials. 
 When, however, he was handed over to the "instruct- 
 ing judge," a few days afterwards, and confronted 
 with Lajolais, he acknowledged the conspiracy, and 
 declared he had been informed by Lajolais that 
 Moreau was at the head of it. 
 
 After all these avowals and declarations, Leridan's * 
 
 7 See "Proces," vol. ii. p. 191. 
 
 8 E. F. Rochelle, born in Paris in 1768. After several cam- 
 paigns in Conde's army he returned to France, and from the 
 insurrection of the 13th Yendemiaire he was aide-de-camp to 
 General Damian. He was obliged to fly, but returned to France 
 in 1798, was arrested, escaped, got away to England, and came 
 back with Pichegru. He was arrested on the 15th Ventose and 
 condemned to death, but the penalty was commuted. 
 
 9 Leridan was born at Vannes in 1778. On the evening of 
 the 1 8th Ventose he took Georges out with him in a cabriolet, 
 and on that occasion Georges was arrested. He escaped for 
 the moment, but was arrested shortly afterwards, and as he was 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 177 
 
 still deserve to be quoted, as having formed the 
 basis of the hopes and calculations of the police. 
 We have seen that Leridan, who was to Georges 
 what Couchery was to Pichegru, was arrested with 
 Georges. 1 He acknowledged before the Prefect of 
 Police all that he had done for Georges, and the 
 most remarkable point in his statement was concerning 
 a journey into Brittany, with a purpose which was, 
 no doubt, connected with Cadoudal's hopes for the 
 ultimate success of his designs against Bonaparte's 
 Government, founded as those hopes were upon a 
 region so well accustomed to revolt and civil 
 war. 
 
 I have not yet said anything of the conduct of 
 Lajolais in presence of the police, or of the manner 
 in which he played the part of conspirator in a con- 
 spiracy whose most useful and subservient instrument 
 he had been. The reader may perhaps be surprised 
 that his name should appear so late, that he should 
 come after the others who served as material, 
 for the edifice built up by the police ; but we have 
 seen what he did, and irom that we know what 
 answers he must have made to Real's questions. 
 Many were his equivocations, evasions, and devices 
 to secure some means of defence, while making 
 himself out to be the accomplice of those whom he 
 had but betrayed. He appeared six or seven times 
 in succession before Real, who had not even ordinary 
 readiness enough to put his question so that the 
 
 condemned to only two years' imprisonment, he was believed to 
 be in complicity with the police. 
 
 1 We have already explained that the chapter in which an 
 account of the arrest of Moreau, Georges, &c, was to have been 
 given, was left unwritten by Fauriel. 
 
 N 
 
178 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 answers might seem to have been disputed and pro- 
 voked. Lajolais was so over-subservient as to 
 allow statements which were not only false, but were 
 also of no importance to the police to be inserted in his 
 declarations. After having divulged all Pichegru's 
 secrets, all his relations with Moreau, and mixed up 
 with the facts everything that suited the purpose of 
 the police, he pretended that his conduct towards 
 Pichegru and Moreau had been dictated by no other 
 motive than that of reconciling those two great men 
 with each other and with the Government. 
 
 I have briefly summarized the declarations of only 
 sixteen out of the thirty-three persons who were 
 accused of conspiracy, and for this I have had two 
 reasons. Firstly, I wished to avoid, so far as I 
 possibly could, relating the substance of the famous 
 trial, and therefore had to limit myself to recording the 
 conduct of the most important of the accused persons, 
 and the meaning and spirit of the declarations which 
 formed the basis of the act of accusation, and sup- 
 plied the chief incidents and characteristic features 
 of the trial. Again, other confederates whose con- 
 duct and avowals furnished less important matter to 
 the history of the trial did not make those confessions 
 before the police, but before the instructing judge, 
 and up to the present I have confined myself to giving 
 an idea of the violence and threats to which the 
 police resorted on taking the initiative in the pro- 
 secution. 
 
 These resources, however considerable they ap- 
 peared, were not sufficient to enable the police to 
 dispense with treachery and cunning. In proof of 
 this assertion I shall cite only two instances, not 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. i 79 
 
 exactly as the most remarkable, but as the most 
 undeniable, and because the police failed, notwith- 
 standing all the precautions they employed, to keep 
 them from a scandalous publicity. 
 
 One of the accused was a person named Monnier, 
 a schoolmaster at Aumale, a little town in Normandy. 
 His wife had also been arrested on the same charges, 
 i.e. that of having given lodging for some time to 
 three of the confederates, Louis Ducorps, his brother 
 Noel Ducorps, and Raoul Gaillard, an intimate 
 associate of Cadoudal, and that of having sheltered 
 Georges himself and five or six of his companions 
 for one night alter their landing in France. 
 
 Monnier's wife had a young girl named Payen as 
 a servant, and this girl witnessed the arrival of 
 Georges Cadoudal and his associates at Monnier's 
 house. Shortly afterwards she was sent away from 
 Aumale to Paris by her employers, and taken into 
 the service of Verdet, one of the accused, who was 
 also charged with having afforded a refuge to 
 Georges. 
 
 Monnier and his wife are arrested on the 12th 
 Pluviose they could not have been denounced by 
 any person except Querelle the woman is dragged 
 away from six small children and an infant of a week 
 old, and ill and terrified, she is thrust into the Aumale 
 prison. There a woman volunteers to give her not 
 only all the care that her condition requires, but the 
 consolation for which her motherly heart craves. 
 The woman enters into her sufferings, shares them, 
 arouses her apprehensions about the hospitality which 
 she had shown to suspected persons, and pretending 
 a hypocritical zeal for her safety, she proposes to 
 
 N 2 
 
i8o The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 prevent the dangerous revelations which might be 
 made in Paris by the girl formerly in the employ- 
 ment of the Monniers, and who had already been 
 arrested. She then writes a letter on behalf of 
 Monnier's wife to the girl Payen, in which she 
 instructs her how to reply to the questions which 
 will be put to her, and this letter is so contrived that 
 the individuals whose names the girl is charged not 
 to reveal are pointed out clearly though indirectly. 
 Instead of reaching Payen, the letter goes into the 
 hands of the police ; for the woman who is so 
 solicitous for the safety of the poor creature whom 
 she is nursing, is no other than an agent of the 
 police, expressly employed to suggest the idea of 
 this letter and to get it written. 
 
 The police are not satisfied with having received 
 the desired document ; they answer it in the name of 
 the girl Payen, who.can neither read nor write, and 
 has not the least notion of what is taking place, and 
 the letter of the police is framed so as to induce their 
 victim to send a second, confirming the preceding 
 one. 
 
 Monnier and his wife, reckoning on the efficiency 
 of their correspondence, and not doubting that the 
 girl Payen would scrupulously carry out the system 
 of denial dictated by it, pursued the <ame course 
 themselves for a long time, and made no admissions 
 until their own letters were produced and presented 
 to them. 
 
 The second instance which I have promised to cite, 
 although it was not more treacherous, was productive 
 of graver consequence ; and the police looked for 
 more valuable results from it. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate, 181 
 
 It will be remembered that Michel Roger, 2 the inti- 
 mate friend of Coster Saint- Victor, was arrested with 
 him. These friends were of the same age, they 
 came from the same place, and they had embraced 
 the same cause with equal ardour. While Coster 
 Saint-Victor commanded a legion of rebels in the 
 district of Vitre, Roger commanded Cadoudal's 
 cavalry in Morbihan. Roger, like Coster, had refused 
 to make any kind of communication to the police, 
 and they had been obliged to take him to the Temple 
 without having extracted anything from him that 
 would send one of the accused to the scaffold. Shortly 
 after, gendarmes were placed on guard over him, and 
 relieved each hour. The prisoner with the ready in- 
 discretion of a talkative Frenchman, not to be re- 
 pressed even by a prison and suspicious company, 
 got into conversation with his guards, and discussed 
 the conspiracy, the rumours that had arisen con- 
 cerning the intentions of Georges, and the part 
 taken by Moreau. Such talk as this was evidently 
 a mere indiscretion of Roger's ; it could not possibly 
 have been more; but the gendarmes treated it as 
 a serious communication, and hastened to impart 
 it to their officer. He instantly carried it to Thu- 
 riot, 3 who was then at work upon the " instruction " 
 
 2 Michel Roger, called Loiseau, born at Toul. After having 
 served in the corps of the emigres, and in the Austrian army, he 
 retired to England, took part in the Breton insurrection in 1799, 
 under the orders of Georges Cadoudal, returned to England, and 
 came back to France before the attempt of the 3rd Nivose. 
 He once more went to England, but was brought back to Paris 
 by Georges, where he was arrested with Coster Saint-Victor on 
 the 19th Pluviose, at the Rue Saintonge, was condemned to 
 death, and executed. 
 
 3 Jacques Alex. Thuriot de la Rosierc, Advocate to the Parlia- 
 ment, had been a member of the Legislative body, and also of 
 
1 82 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 of the trial. The four gendarmes deposed in succes- 
 sion that they had heard Roger speak of Moreau, 
 Pichegru, and Georges as the leaders of the conspiracy, 
 and say that the former was to take the command 
 of the army of Boulogne and to lead it upon Paris. 
 The four gendarmes who were guilty of this infamous 
 action had only obeyed orders.* 
 
 We have now seen how the principal confederates 
 behaved and answered when examined before the 
 police. There was another class over which the 
 police exerted a like influence, although it consisted 
 of persons who were only accused of having furnished 
 the conspirators with lodging, arms, or clothing, or 
 done them other services of a similar kind. The 
 number of the accused was fourteen, six of these being 
 women. They almost all lived by letting lodgings, 
 and were poor, uneducated people, to whom the title of 
 conspirators could only have been applied in ridicule. 
 
 Not one of these persons refused to give the 
 police the information which was required, and there 
 is little doubt that they broke no faith by doing so, 
 for it is impossible to imagine that they were in the 
 confidence of the conspirators. It is hardly proved 
 that they even knew the names of the latter, and in 
 any case their evidence could not be of any great 
 importance, as it could only prove what was already 
 proved, i.e. the presence of the conspirators in Paris, 
 the visits they exchanged, and the precautions taken 
 
 the Convention. He was then a judge of t\ie Tribunal of the 
 Seine, and although he had been instructor and reporter in the 
 case of Georges and the others accused, he nevertheless sat 
 upon the trial and took part in the judgment. We shall see 
 hereafter what bitterness he displayed against Moreau. 
 4 This matter is afterwards referred to. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 1 8 
 
 j 
 
 by some of them to conceal themselves. It had no 
 bearing on the conspiracy or its objects. 
 
 The man who had brought the principal conspira- 
 tors to the dwellings in which they had found shelter 
 was Charles d'Hozier, 5 formerly page to Louis XVL 
 After he had lost his position and his fortune, he 
 joined the party of revolt in the west. 6 He acknow- 
 ledged having done all that was stated in procuring 
 lodging for his accomplices, but was careful to deny 
 that he had acted thus with any intention of conspiring 
 or favouring conspirators. 7 
 
 Nevertheless, neither the insignificance of this 
 class of accused persons, nor the non-importance of 
 their testimony for the purposes of the police, served 
 to protect them from threats, ill-treatment, and tor- 
 ture. The accused were not safe from the treachery 
 of the police, even within the prison walls. Men 
 who passed for captives like themselves were shut up 
 with them to make them talk, and report what they 
 
 5 Charles d'Hozier, born in Paris in 1775. He was page of 
 the royal stables from 1789 until the 10th of August, 1792.- He 
 had set up a livery stable and coaching establishment in Paris, 
 which enabled him to render more than one service to Cadoudal. 
 He was arrested, tried, and condemned to death, but the penalty 
 was commuted to imprisonment, followed by transportation. 
 
 6 [Marg. note.] "He had been a volunteer for a long time, 
 and had afterwards been second in command of the legion of 
 La Guerche. He was employed at the pacification to effect the 
 disbandment of the legion of Mardelles, and settled at Rennes 
 with Generals Brune and Hedouville to superintend the execu- 
 tion of the treaty. In 1801, being molested at Rennes, he came 
 to Paris." 
 
 7 [Marg. note.] "He acknowledged, however, although 
 vaguely, that he had heard a project for overthrowing the 
 Government, but without violence (just as the same thing had 
 been done on the 18th Brumaire), discussed at Georges' abode. 
 It was not until after the arrest of Georges and Pichegru that 
 he thought they might be among the chiefs." 
 
184 The Last Days of the Consul Ate, 
 
 said. Several were watched, night and day, by gen- 
 darmes, in the same way as the principal conspirators. 
 We have already seen the purpose that was served by 
 this measure, and we shall soon see that it formed a 
 part of a plan more deeply laid and sagacious than 
 appears at first sight. 
 
 Even the women were not exempt from the harshest 
 treatment, and some of them were subjected to the 
 grossest insult, in order to verify suspicions equally 
 base and baseless. 8 
 
 Such, then, were the chief results of the initiative 
 taken by the police in the procedure against the con- 
 spirators. The examinations conducted, the declara- 
 tions collected by the police, and the various docu- 
 ments in their possession were the exclusive and 
 necessary materials for the judicial " instruction " which 
 was to follow. 
 
 On the 15th Ventosc, the Grand Judge, who was at 
 once Minister of Police and Justice, sent the docu- 
 ments that had been collected up to that date to the 
 tribunal. These documents were largely supplemented 
 afterwards, but the most essential, the papers which 
 really constituted the treasure of the police, were 
 comprised in the first batch. 1 
 
 On the following day the president Of the tribunal * 
 appointed the " judge of instruction," who was to pro- 
 
 8 [Marg. note.] "A law of the nth Germinal enacts that no 
 woman can be tried on a charge carrying capital punishment 
 unless it has been ascertained whether she is pregnant or 
 not." 
 
 1 [Marg. note.] " These documents were the result of all the 
 preceding measures of the police." 
 
 1 Hemart. He had been procurator to the parliament of 
 Paris, and was appointed president of the Criminal Tribunal of 
 the Seine after the iSth Brumaire. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 185 
 
 ceed to examine the accused. The honour of this 
 important task devolved upon Thuriot, and he was 
 well worthy of it. Among the twelve members of 
 which the tribunal of the Seine was composed, he was 
 no doubt not the only one base enough to make the 
 judicial prosecution that he had to conduct subserve 
 the passions and the plans of the Government, but he 
 was the only one who had been a member of the 
 National Convention ; and this circumstance gave 
 him a special aptitude for the commission with which 
 he was charged. In fact, Thuriot had constantly sat 
 with the party of the Mountain ; he had shared its 
 principles and its extravagance until the period of the 
 9th Thermidor, when he joined the ranks of those 
 who undertook to revenge upon his creatures after 
 his death the cruelty and tyranny for which they 
 had applauded Robespierre in his prosperity. In 
 common with every other member of that famous 
 assembly, Thuriot had been inspired by the spirit 
 which characterized it, by that fierce hatred of royalism, 
 that detestation of kings and their partisans, which 
 is, unhappily, quite compatible with love of tyranny 
 and ignorance of liberty. To hand over partisans of 
 Louis XVIII. to Thuriot for him to prosecute was 
 simply to place personal enemies in his power, and it 
 might safely be taken for granted that he would ask 
 no other reward for the services which he was ex- 
 pected to render to despotism than the pleasure of 
 having acted as its instrument. 
 
 The part of instructing judge was difficult, but it 
 was at least very simple, and strictly defined. 
 
 The accused were to be led to confirm the avowals 
 that had been obtained from them by the police ; 
 
1 86 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 the persons concerned in the declarations or admis- 
 sions were to be confronted with those who had made 
 the latter ; evidence relative to the facts of the accu- 
 sation was to be heard, and the witnesses were to be 
 confronted with the accused. 
 
 The first of these three operations gave rise to some 
 anxiety. Would not men who had made admissions 
 under the surprise and shock of their arrest, and who 
 had only yielded to the fear of the first moment, have 
 repented, in the leisure and reflection of prison hours, 
 of having endangered the lives of their companions in 
 danger and evil fortune by their cowardice ? And, 
 again, was there not cause for apprehension when the 
 accused and the witnesses should be brought face to 
 face ? Would those who had betrayed their comrades 
 fail and blush when they found themselves in the 
 presence of their victims? All these misgivings 
 proved to be unfounded, because the instructing 
 judge was enabled to use the same means of forcing 
 the witnesses to stand by their testimony as the police 
 had employed in obtaining it. 
 
 Almost all the conspirators made the same figure 
 before the instructing judge as they had made before 
 the police. A few attempted some slight modifica- 
 tions of their admissions, which merely showed that 
 they were impotently ashamed of what they had 
 done. Others hesitated to identify, in their presence, 
 certain individuals whom they had boldly denounced 
 as their own accomplices ; but Thuriot paid no sort 
 of attention to shades of hesitation, and utterly dis- 
 regarded any appearance of remorse or attempt at 
 retraction. 3 
 
 * [Marg. note.] " The only important denial that was made 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 1S7 
 
 Others demanded the rectification of several false 
 and inaccurate statements which had been slipped into 
 their depositions made before the police ; but Thunot 
 eluded the majority of these demands, sometimes by 
 cunning, sometimes by impudence. 
 
 Looking at the summary result of the instruction, 
 and relatively to its real object, which was to preserve 
 the fruit of the measures and exertions of the police 
 in its integrity, we can judge that not only was that 
 object accomplished, but also that the appearances of 
 the trial became still more favourable in the hands of 
 Thunot than they had been in those of the police. 
 
 Armand Polignac, who had spoken of Moreau in 
 his examination before Real in an uncertain and 
 evasive way, stated to Thuriot that he knew a very 
 serious conference had taken place at Chaillot be- 
 tween Moreau, Georges, and Pichegru, and that this 
 conference had resulted only in unsatisfactory uncer- 
 tainty. He also declared he had heard it said that 
 Moreau appeared to have private interests, and not 
 to be firmly faithful to the cause of the princes. 
 
 Rusillion added to all he had already alleged, 
 that from information which he had received he had 
 always regarded Moreau as the man to be chiefly 
 counted on, and who was really counted on, because 
 he seemed to have an imposing force at his disposal, 
 and to possess great ascendency over the authorities. 
 
 The occasions on which Moreau was confronted 
 with Lajolais, Rolland, and Couchery, were of the 
 greatest importance in the interests of the police. 
 
 It was not until the 9th Germinal that Moreau 
 
 in the course of the proceedings was that of the declaration of 
 the four gendarmes by Roger." 
 
1 88 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 was made acquainted with Rolland's examination ; 
 on the 2^nd of the same month he was in forme \ of 
 Couchery's, and eight days later Lajolais' replies 
 were communicated to him. Thus it was not until 
 nearly two months after his arrest that Morcau had 
 a real knowledge of his position and the charges 
 against him. 
 
 Dating from the first of these communications, 
 Moreau, who had previously denied everything, 
 acknowledged a portion of the facts contained in 
 the examination of his denouncers, and was obliged 
 to refute and explain the remainder. He denied that 
 he had even given Lajolais any mission for England. 
 He admitted not only that he had received Pichegru 
 on one occasion at his own dwelling, but that he had 
 been questioned by him concerning the chances 
 which the re-establishment of monarchical forms in 
 France offered for the return of the Bourbons. He 
 alleged that in reply he had pointed out to Pichegru 
 that an attack directed against the Government in 
 general, and especially an attack made for the 
 advantage of the Bourbons, would be madness. 4 lie 
 explained his famous conversation with Rolland by 
 saying, that Rolland having asked him whether he 
 had pretensions to authority in his own person, he 
 had replied that any such pretension on his part 
 could be nothing but folly ; that he had no influence 
 whatsoever, leading a quiet life as he did, far from the 
 members of the great bodies of the State ; and that 
 for him, Moreau, to have any pretensions, the whole 
 Bonaparte family, the Consuls, the Consuls' Guard, 
 
 4 [Marg. note.] " He made this answer on the 9th Germinal 
 Pichegru was not dead." 
 
The L ast Days of the Consulate. 1 89 
 
 the Governor of Paris, &c , would have to dis- 
 appear. 
 
 Such was the substance of Moreau's answers upon 
 the matters comprised in the examinations of Rolland 
 and Lajolais. His denials and his interpretations 
 were correct upon many of the points, but on the 
 latter it is likely that Rolland's statement was more 
 near the truth than the explanation of it put forward 
 by Moreau. 
 
 Many reflections might be made upon Moreau's 
 having acknowledged almost all the facts on which 
 the charges brought against him bore ; I shall, how- 
 ever, place only two before the reader. Was it mag- 
 nanimous to admit that Pichegru had made over- 
 tures to him to join in a conspiracy? Was it more 
 prudent to place a subtle interpretation upon his 
 conversation with Rolland than to deny it strongly ? 
 As the doubt between the veracity of Rolland and 
 that of Moreau bears upon the fact itself, would not 
 the general have had more advantage than in a 
 supposition where the matter in dispute was merely 
 the terms of a phrase ? In the state of things set up 
 by Moreau's answer, Rolland did not indeed cease to 
 be an infamous man, but Moreau's conduct assumed 
 an equivocal aspect. 
 
 As for Lajolais and Rolland, I have learned nothing 
 which leads me to think that they experienced any 
 difficulty in maintaining their respective attitudes in 
 presence of Moreau. The former persisted in his 
 falsehoods, mingled with truth ; the latter in the 
 almost exact truth. The one persevered in his 
 infamy because he had resolved beforehand on 
 being infamous ; the latter thought, perhaps, that 
 
190 The Last Days of the Conszriate. 
 
 the part of an informer was relieved from some Oi its 
 shame by the genuineness of the information. 
 
 While the instructing judge was proceeding with 
 the judicial informations against the accused who 
 were at this time safely under lock and key, the 
 police did not relax their search for those who had 
 hitherto escaped them. Three subordinate agents 
 of the conspiracy, named respectively Lemercier, 5 
 Lelan, and Cadoudal, were arrested in the vicinity of 
 Rennes, at the beginning of Germinal, when on 
 their way to a place of safety, after the alarm of the 
 arrests In Paris. Lemercier was a journeyman 
 printer, the two others were farmers. They were 
 transferred to the Temple, and placed in the hands 
 of Thuriot, without having passed through those of 
 Dubois and Rdal. By dint of threats, and terrifying 
 them by the prospect of being immediately shot, 
 Thuriot forced from them some statements dictated 
 by himself, which, although they played no great 
 part in the instruction of the trial, supplied certain 
 corroborative details. They denounced some of the 
 confederates who had taken part in the second land- 
 ing, and they asserted that during their own stay in 
 England they had received regular pay, and on their 
 departure an extra gratuity, together with pistols and 
 poniards ; the pay and the gratuities being attributed 
 to the English Government. 
 
 Louis Ducorps, 6 also a farmer, who had acted as 
 
 6 Guillaume Lemercier, born at Bignan, took part in the 
 Chouan war, and 'lived in England for a short time after the 
 pacification in 1800. He was arrested with J. B. Cadoudal near 
 Saint Aubin du Cormier. Both these persons, with Lelan, who 
 was arrested one day later, were condemned to death, and 
 executed. 
 
 * L. Ducorps, born at Saint-Piat (Eure et Loire) in 1758. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 191 
 
 guide to several of the conspirators who had lodged at 
 Monnier's house, when they left that refuge to resume 
 their journey, either from Aumale to Paris, or from 
 Paris towards the coast, and had fled when Monnier 
 and his wife were arrested, was taken on the 22nd 
 Germinal at a village near Chartres. He made some 
 unimportant and untrue declarations under torture, 
 as well as acknowledging the services he really had 
 rendered to some of the conspirators. 
 
 I now come to the hearing of the witnesses, who 
 may be divided into three classes. 
 
 The first consisted of those who could testify to the 
 facts of the action of the police and their pursuit of 
 the conspirators, such as the arrest of each, with its 
 particular incidents. 
 
 The second consisted of those who could reveal 
 facts which fixed the intention of conspiring, and 
 acts done in accordance with that intention, upon the 
 accused. 
 
 The third consisted of those who could tell what 
 were the means adopted by the confederates to escape 
 from the pursuit of the police, the places of refuge 
 which they had found, and the relations that they 
 had kept up either between themselves or with 
 persons who were strangers to their association and 
 its purposes. On the first point the witnesses could 
 not fail, and the circumstances to which their evidence 
 
 After the insurrection of Sancerrois, in which he took an active 
 part, with the rank of captain, he was arrested and sentenced to 
 ten years' imprisonment, escaped, and retired to Orleans. He 
 acted as guide to Pichegru, Georges, &c., on their landing. 
 After their arrest he escaped to Saint-Piat, was arrested there, 
 and tried with the other confederates, sentenced to death, and 
 executed. He is not to be mistaken for Noel Ducorps, who was 
 acquitted. 
 
192 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 was directed were capable of being exactly defined. 
 It was, for instance, very easy to prove legally that 
 Georges Cadoudal had killed one man and wounded 
 another on the occasion of his arrest. 
 
 The second point, which was t!ie most important to 
 establish, was also the most difficult. Testimony 
 bearing upon facts directly relative to the intention 
 and the acts of the conspiracy was almost necessarily 
 deficient ; and therefore the police took so much 
 trouble, and resorted to such strange means in order 
 to elicit admissions from the accused. They could 
 find only four witnesses who really belonged to that 
 class, and we shall easily be able to estimate their 
 quality. 
 
 The reader will remember the four spies 7 belong- 
 ing to a class generally despised even among spies, 
 on whose information Picot and Le Bourgeois 8 had 
 been condemned to death. Besides, their evidence, 
 which had nothing whatever to do with the conspiracy 
 actually in question, bore only upon one of the 
 accused persons, Roger, called Loiseau, the friend of 
 
 7 These four spies were two tailors, named Bouille and Mar- 
 chand, the wile of Bouille, and a feather-seller named Desjardins. 
 They had gone to London in year X., and settled there ; but 
 after they had revealed the projects of Picot and Le Bourgeois 
 to Andreossi.the French ambassador, they at once left England 
 and came to Paris, where they repeated their denunciation. 
 See the declarations of these persons, in the third volume of the 
 u Proces." 
 
 8 T. Picot, born at Rouen, a soldier in the Chasseurs de la 
 Montagne, deserted in order to join the royalist army, and 
 served successively under Scdpeaux and Frotte. who made him 
 chief of division. After the pacification (1800), he was arrested 
 at Rouen with Le Bourgeois and Querel. The three men were 
 sentenced to death by a court-martial. Picot and Le Bourgeois 
 were shot. Querel, as already stated, saved his life by becoming 
 an informer. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 193 
 
 Coster Saint- Victor; and according to that evidence, 
 supposing it to be trustworthy and judicially admis- 
 sible, Roger might indeed be held an accomplice of 
 Picot and Le Bourgeois, but not of Georges. 
 
 Witnesses of the third class were very numerous. 
 Men obliged to change their place of abode frequently, 
 to disperse in twos and threes, and to communicate 
 by means of persons who were either neutral or 
 ignorant of their secrets, were liable to being exposed 
 by a number of witnesses in proportion to the diffi- 
 culty and the necessity of their changes of domicile. 
 
 It was, however, in the nature of things that all the 
 men who had given shelter to the conspirators, who 
 had served as messengers for the correspondence 
 between them, who had, in short, rendered them 
 services of any kind, might be considered accomplices 
 of the conspirators, if the police, and even justice, 
 pleased to regard them in that light. 
 
 The police, nevertheless, selected from among the 
 numerous class of those who had given shelter or 
 otherwise rendered service to the conspirators only 
 fourteen persons, who were treated as accomplices, and 
 were to be brought to trial as such. The police could 
 just as readily and reasonably have indicted a 
 hundred of this class, but they attached no great im- 
 portance to it It was enough that they had at their 
 disposal a certain number who could give a greater 
 appearance of truth to the general accusation by 
 varying its shades. The police plan was to get a 
 greater advantage out of the others by making them 
 appear as witnesses. As the nature of their testi- 
 mony did not bear upon the fact of the conspiracy, it 
 >;vas not to be hoped that it could furnish direct proof 
 
 O 
 
194 The Last Days of the Consulate, 
 
 against the conspirators ; but their mere numbers lent 
 an imposing appearance to the trial in the eyes of the 
 multitude, always more ready to count witnesses than 
 to weigh evidence. 9 
 
 These witnesses were treated as severely by the 
 police as the confederates themselves. Like the latter, 
 they were interrogated with threats and treachery, 1 
 almost all were thrown into prison, and several under- 
 went tortures, either in prison or at the Prefecture, as 
 severe as those by which the accused had been forced 
 into admissions to the destruction of themselvc 
 their accomplices. Even women, although it was an all 
 but generally accepted principle of jurisprudence not 
 to call women as witnesses, were cruelly tormented 
 in order to force from them statements which the 
 police believed could be obtained, but which they 
 WOttid not make spontaneously. A girl,' 2 only fifteen 
 years of age, and who could not possibly have had 
 anything important to reveal, was not exempted from 
 treatment which at the present day it is against the 
 principles of justice to inflict upon criminals convicted 
 of a capital offence. I have heard the number of 
 witnesses of the third class who were subjected to 
 
 * One hundred and thirty-nine witnesses for the prosec ition 
 were examined on the trial. 
 
 1 The ninety-second witness, the girl Boubet, a dressmaker, 
 deposes: u I was so severely treated that 1 quite lost my head. 
 They threatened me, they said, ' You are going to be shot, 
 guillotined ' " ( u Proces," vol. v. p. 314). 
 
 2 Denise Lemoine, seamstress, called as a witness, says in 
 her deposition, " I shall have something to say it is that I 
 have suffered a great deal, sir, from their having put chains on 
 my feet me, a girl of fifteen." Said the president, ''You can 
 make your complaints. Write to the procurator-general " 
 (who was present, and said nothing !). See " Proces," vol. vi. 
 p. 245. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 195 
 
 torture put down at fourteen, and although I am 
 not in possession of any positive information on 
 this point, I am convinced the statement is not 
 exaggerated. 
 
 All the proceedings, the confronting of the accused 
 with each other and with the witnesses, took place in 
 one of the large rooms of the Temple, in presence of 
 a not numerous public, composed of gendarmes on 
 duty, a small group of spectators who had obtained 
 permission to gratify their curiosity from the police, 
 the instructing judge, or the Temple gate-keeper, and 
 a band of police agents whose business it was to listen 
 to and report all that was said around them. The 
 police either distrusted their own accomplices in the 
 very act of their procedure against the accused, or 
 they wanted to make out fresh grievances against the 
 latter at the moment when they already regarded them 
 as condemned. After this fashion, then, was the article 
 of the penal law, which enacts that the instruction of 
 a criminal trial shall be public, like the pleadings at 
 the trial itself and the sentence which follows them, 
 carried out in this notorious instance. 
 
 It now becomes as necessary as it is easy briefly to 
 retrace the chief details of the proceedings of the 
 police and of the judicial information in this matter, 
 and the grounds upon which the Government based 
 their hope of getting out of an affair with the honours 
 of justice which they had planned and prepared with 
 all the devices of cunning and all the excesses of 
 violence. 
 
 Their business was now to prove two distinct 
 theories : that there existed a conspiracy for the pur- 
 pose of restoring the French monarchy to the Bour- 
 
 2 
 
196 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 bons, and that Moreau was implicated in that con- 
 spiracy. As proof of the first fact they had to offer the 
 avowals of one of the chiefs oftheconspiracy,and those 
 of five or six of his principal agents or confidants. 
 
 For proof of the second they counted on the infor- 
 mation extracted from the three or four men who had 
 been either witnesses of the relations between Moreau 
 and Pichegru, or go-betweens in them. 
 
 From the first moment of his arrest Pichegru's con- 
 duct had, however, opposed an obstacle to the schemes 
 and experiments of the police which they had vainly 
 endeavoured to surmount. The absolute and total 
 denials of the general were of necessity exceedingly 
 embarrassing, for not only might they endanger 
 the revelations of Lajolais and the avowals of. 
 Rolland, carrying as they did at least equal weight 
 with the latter ; but they weakened Moreau's own 
 admissions to a certain extent. Pichegru, denying 
 obstinately and without exception all that had passed, 
 undoubtedly injured more or less the effect which 
 the police expected to be created by such community 
 and uniformity as existed between the admissions of 
 Moreau, Lajolais, and Rolland. The police had, there- 
 fore, from the first moment, left no means untried of 
 obtaining answers favourable to their purpose from 
 Pichegru. 
 
 On the very evening of his arrest the general en- 
 joyed the special distinction of being questioned by 
 Real and Dubois jointly, either because chance had 
 brought them together on the occasion, or because 
 Bonaparte had given orders to that effect, so as to 
 render the examination of so important a confederate 
 the more imposing. The questions put to him were 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 197 
 
 insidious and menacing by turns ; they represented to 
 him that it was to the honour of a man who had 
 played a glorious part in the army and in the State to 
 tell the truth respecting the facts on which he was 
 questioned. 
 
 He met everything by absolute denial or jesting 
 evasion. 
 
 " With whom did you return from England to 
 France ? " asked the questioner. 
 
 " All alone," replied the general. 
 
 " By what way ? " added Real. 
 
 " By the way of a ship." 
 
 He contented himself with answering every question 
 touching directly upon the facts upon which the 
 police wanted to get admissions from him, " It is 
 false," roughly, firmly, and in a tone of mingled inso- 
 lence and contempt. He denied that a reconciliation 
 had taken place between himself and Moreau, that he 
 had seen him, or commissioned any person to speak 
 to the general on his behalf. Lastly, he refused to 
 sign the deposition, alleging that the questions 
 and answers were falsely and treacherously misrepre- 
 sented. It was true that in the question which Real 
 put to Pichegru concerning his reconciliation with 
 Moreau he had made the former say distinctly that 
 the latter repented of having lent his aid to the 18th 
 Fructidor, and that he no longer regarded certain 
 events in the same light. This was a very perfidious 
 insinuation against Moreau, which the police could 
 not fail to turn to their own purpose. 
 
 He was again examined by Real on the following 
 day, and this second interrogatory had no more 
 favourable result than the first. 
 
198 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 He was made aware (but not until the 10th Ger- 
 minal) of the avowals of Rolland, the statement of 
 the perfidious Lajolais, and the equivocal and treach- 
 erous declaration of Couchery ; then he was con- 
 fronted with those three persons, and subsequently 
 with several others among the accused who had spoken 
 of him. He persisted in his refusal to explain himself 
 upon the facts alluded to in their examinations ; he 
 scorned even to give them the lie, and would never con- 
 sent to sign any report of his confrontation with them. 
 
 Torture was inflicted upon him in the secrecy and 
 silence of his prison ; certain details of that torture 
 have been related in which it is difficult to beli< 
 even on the part of the man for whose interest it was 
 resorted to. But Pichegru's tormentors failed to ex- 
 tract from him any avowal whatever, good, bad, or 
 indifferent. Jn short, from the moment of his arrest 
 Pichegru acted like a man who felt himself lost, who 
 would not dispute his life with the police, or give them 
 the advantage of appearing to have immolated him 
 with all the solemnity of judicial form. 
 
 Bonaparte was furious at this obstinate refusal to 
 make the avowals which so many others had made ; 
 and he was also disturbed by it, because, as I have 
 already said, Pichegru's conduct, without essentially 
 endangering the result of all the preparatory judicial 
 and police measures, might nevertheless be an ob- 
 stacle in the trials, produce an impression contrary 
 to that required by the Government, and multiply or 
 strengthen the chances of failure. 
 
 Such was the state of things on the 15th Germinal. 
 On the morning of the 1 6th, Paris rang with the news 
 of Pichegru's suicide in prison. This intelligence was 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 199 
 
 first announced to Thuriot at the Temple, and in- 
 stantly transmitted by him to the public accuser, 
 Andre Gerard. That official immediately summoned 
 the judges of the two sections of the tribunal, communi- 
 cated the information he had just received, and required 
 them to take measures to verify the fact, establish the 
 identity of the suicide with Pichegru, and collect all 
 the attainable information relative to the event. The 
 tribunal nominated a commission of five persons, whom 
 it charged with the execution of the requisition of the 
 public accuser. The commissioners proceeded to the 
 Temple, were conducted to the room inhabited by 
 Pichegru, saw his corpse stretched upon a bed, and 
 gave orders that it should be immediately examined 
 by five surgeons and a physician nominated by them. 
 These six persons came before the commission of 
 the tribunal, and having formally described the 
 corpse examined by them, solemnly declared that 
 they had observed upon it all the signs o( strangu- 
 lation, and found upon, it the instruments by means 
 of which that strangulation had been effected. 
 
 They found a black silk cravat knotted round 
 the neck ; this had been gradually tightened by 
 means of a stick which turned in it ; the cheek 
 on the side on which the st'ck had been turned 
 was stained with blood, and one end of the stick 
 was fixed upon the cheekbone, so as to bring the 
 exact amount of pressure necessary to effect the 
 strangulation to bear upon the cravat. Added to 
 these particulars were other signs, certain to exist 
 in a strangled corpse. After they had received this 
 report, which attested that there was at the Temple 
 an individual who had died by strangulation, the 
 
200 The Last Days of the Cons ic late. 
 
 judges caused it to be certified by six witnesses that 
 the individual in question was Pichegru. 
 
 Two of the objects of the Judges' Commission 
 were secured by this ; they now had only to collect 
 information upon the event that had occurred. 
 There was little to learn in addition to the facts 
 of the report. Pichegru's gaoler declared that he had 
 taken away the key, and on re-entering the room 
 in the morning had found the prisoner dead. 5 
 This circumstance, more than any other in the 
 report, was calculated to produce the belief that 
 Pichegru had strangled himself. 
 
 Finally, the commissioners gave orders that Piche- 
 gru's body should be removed from the Temple to 
 the tribunal ; and the same day, at six o'clock in the 
 evening, they made their report of all the operations 
 which had been entrusted to them, and of the result 
 of their investigations. The commissioners required 
 that the body should be opened by the same surgeons 
 who had examined it. 
 
 On the morrow, the 17th Germinal, the tribunal 
 reassembled for the execution of the judgment of 
 the previous day, and separated to await the report 
 of the surgeons. Their report was made in the 
 presence of two judges and the deputy of the Govcrn- 
 
 3 This gaoler, named Papou, deposed that he had gone into 
 the general's room at seven o'clock, and that u not seeing him 
 move, and fearing lest some accident had befallen him, he went 
 on the instant to inform citizen Fauconnier, the gatekeeper at 
 the Temple.'' ('" Recueil des Pieces Authentiques Relatives au 
 Suicide de l'ex-General Pichegru," p. 17.) The account given 
 by M. Thiers is incorrect. He says, "Towards daybreak, the 
 gaolers on duty, hearing some stir in his room, entered, 
 and found him suffocated, his face red, as if he had been struck 
 with apoplexy." 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 201 
 
 ment commissary. The tribunal resumed its sitting 
 to hear an anatomical and physiological report of the 
 operation which had just been completed. But the 
 conclusion of this report was as strange as its contents 
 were disgusting. 4 It deserves to be quoted here : 
 "We have observed that the oesophagus was perfectly 
 healthy throughout all its length, so far as the part 
 of the neck where the strangulation has been effected ; 
 therefore we continue to believe that Charles Pichegru, 
 ex-general, has committed suicide by the means 
 which we have indicated in the report of yesterday." 
 This conclusion of the report clearly conveys its 
 motive, but I am not aware of what means were 
 employed to induce six surgeons solemnly to declare 
 before a tribunal a fact which it was absurd for them 
 to attest, unless they were prepared to add either that 
 they had been witnesses to the fact, or that it 
 was physically easier for Pichegru to strangle himself 
 than to be strangled by others. 
 
 Immediately after the reading of this report, the 
 Government commissary rose and delivered a set 
 speech. I will quote a few passages from it : 
 
 " Citizen magistrates," said he, addressing the 
 judges, "the publicity which you have given to all 
 the operations necessary to establish the fact of the 
 suicide of Charles Pichegru, ex-general, fittingly 
 concludes the proceedings prescribed by you in this 
 matter. 
 
 " You have not to arraign the memory of a man 
 who was accused of being guilty of great crimes. 
 
 "The instruction of the affair in which he was 
 
 4 It is evident that Fauriel had never read a report upon an 
 autopsy. 
 
202 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 implicated is going on ; it will soon become public, 
 and the stage it had reached at the moment when 
 Pichegru destroyed himself will add a strong moral 
 proof to the legal proofs that establish the facts. 
 
 "Malignity, intrigue, party spirit, enmity, and 
 malevolence will then attempt to pervert public 
 opinion in vain. 
 
 " Contemporaries will say, and posterity will 
 repeat, 
 
 " A Frenchman having become profoundly guilty 
 towards his country, saw no midway between 
 voluntary death and the scaffold ; he committed 
 suicide.' " 
 
 These pompous assertions were terminated by a 
 requisition for the interment of Pichegru's body, and 
 for the printing and distribution of the report of the 
 surgeons and physicians which had just been read. 
 The tribunal immediately gave orders accordingly. 
 Towards evening on the same day a hearse, accom- 
 panied by three or four persons, arrived at the cemetery 
 of Saint Catherine, near the Jardin des Plantes. The 
 hearse was not observed by anybody, or, if it attracted 
 a passing glance, was taken for that of some poor 
 person who had not even wherewithal to insure the 
 attendance of a few friends at his grave. This humble 
 funeral was Pichegru's ; his coffin was placed in the 
 earth in the presence of two of the doorkeepers of the 
 Criminal Tribunal his coffin, who, ten years before, 
 would have been accompanied to his resting-place 
 with every mark of honour and testimony of respect 
 in the name of the whole nation. 
 
 Such was the end of General Pichegru, a man 
 whose renown had for a brief space filled the whole 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 203 
 
 of Europe. He was born in 1 761, in the small town 
 of Arbois, in the department of the Jura. Although 
 his family was poor and obscure, he had no reason to 
 complain of fate, for he was carefully educated. At 
 an early age he displayed a passionate taste for study, 
 and a decided talent for the exact sciences. At 
 twenty, he was mathematical and philosophical tutor 
 in a school kept by the Minimes, or Friars Minor, at 
 Brienne. It was at their school at Arbois that he 
 had been educated. At twenty-two he entered a 
 regiment of artillery as a private, and was made 
 Serjeant- major in 1789. This was not, in the opinion 
 of all those who knew him, the limit of his capacity, 
 but it was that of the chances of a low-born man in 
 the artillery. 
 
 He adopted the principles and the sentiments of 
 the French Revolution at its outset with eagerness, 
 and, so far as can be known, with sincerity. It was 
 on the recommendation of the Besancon " Societe 
 Populaire," when he was its president, that he was 
 nominated chief of a battalion of the volunteers of 
 Gard, with which he joined the army of the Rhine. 
 He very soon made his mark, even more by his 
 talents and firmness of character than by his valour : 
 for the latter was at that time too common a quality 
 in the army of the Republic to convey a title to 
 distinction. 
 
 He was present at the disaster of Weissembourg, 
 one of the most signal reverses ever experienced by a 
 French army ; a defeat which marks the awakening 
 of that heroic spirit among the soldiers of the Republic 
 which enabled the determination to conquer to sur- 
 mount the want of means. baint-Just was then, in 
 
204 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 his capacity of delegate from the Committee of Public 
 Safety, the " Supreme Superintendent " of the army of 
 the Rhine. Saint-Just, whose sincere and earnest wish 
 it was that the French Republic should resemble that 
 of Sparta, who would probably have been regarded 
 as a sage in Lacedemonia but died on the scaffold in 
 France, was looked upon as a scoundrel by the more 
 violent, and as a madman by the more indulgent. 
 He raised Pichegru to the command-in-chief of the 
 army. The secondary motives of this selection were 
 Pichegru's abilities ; the chief motives were his obscure 
 birth, and the privilege of having served in the lov 
 ranks of the army. 
 
 Pichegru, acting in concert with Hoche, who then 
 commanded the army of the Moselle, drove the 
 enemy out of all that portion of French territory 
 which they occupied in the neighbourhood of the 
 Rhine, and forced them back under the walls of 
 Mayence. The victories of that campaign were 
 perhaps due rather to Pichegru's force of character 
 than to his military talents, and to a repetition of 
 partial advantages, rather than to those great deeds 
 of war which became frequent one might, indeed, say 
 habitual only when the soldiers of the French army 
 were able to combine the experience of a prolonged 
 military training with civic enthusiasm, and to add 
 the confidence born of many glorious recollections to 
 both. 
 
 In the following campaign Pichegru was appointed 
 to the command of the army of the Nord and that of 
 Sambre and Meuse. The campaign, rendered famous 
 by the conquest of Holland in the great frost, lent 
 fresh lustre to Pichegru's renown. The next year he 
 
The Last Days of the Conszdate, 205 
 
 returned to the army of the Rhine, and, strange to 
 say, it was at the moment when he was publicly 
 receiving the testimonies of the national gratitude, 
 and reaping all the fruits of glory, that he entered 
 upon a negotiation with the Prince de Conde, which 
 unmistakably indicated treason to the Republic that 
 is to say, to the party which had hitherto profited by 
 his services and still reckoned upon their continuance. 
 It is an ungrateful and vain task to endeavour to 
 explain the motives of the deviation of men, taken as 
 individuals, from the general rules of human prudence 
 and conduct, and to reconcile exceptional indivi- 
 dualities with some abstract type of human nature. 
 If, nevertheless, we persist in trying to discern what 
 possible motives to betray the Republic Pichegru can 
 have had, we must bear in mind the circumstances 
 under which he resumed the command of the army 
 of the Rhine. He came from Paris, where he had 
 witnessed the scandalous days of Prairial, year III. 
 It was in those days that the National Convention 
 was besieged and for a time dissolved by the mob, 
 who loudly demanded bread and the Constitution 
 f '93> while it was abandoned by one-half the 
 population of Paris to the insults and threats of the 
 other half. During the whole of the Revolution there 
 was no period at which the strength and the presence 
 of Government was so completely withdrawn for a 
 season, and when it was so difficult to foresee what 
 was to become of France. The gratuitous assassina- 
 tion of Ferrand, the deputy from the Hautes Pyrenees, 
 by the insurgents, and the threats of general pillage, 
 aroused the Parisians from their apathy. They set 
 themselves in motion to defend, not the Govern- 
 
206 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 ment, but their shops and their lives. Pichegru was 
 then appointed commandant of the Parisian army ; 
 his name effectively reinforced the party of the 
 Convention ; the insurrection was put down, and 
 that National Convention which had disappeared at 
 the moment of danger, its voice having been silenced 
 at last by the threats of the insurgents, having 
 gained the victory by chance and with assistance that 
 was not accorded with either the zeal or the esteem 
 of the public, resumed its functions. The first act 
 that followed the victory of the Convention was its 
 sending to trial which meant the scaffold twelve of 
 its own members, who all stabbed themselves with 
 the same weapon before the tribunal which had orders 
 to treat them as the authors of the rebellion. Thus 
 ended this strange insurrection ; its real ringleaders 
 have remained unknown, its apparent object was the 
 revival of the Reign of Terror, its success was at first 
 complete, but it led to no result. 
 
 Such was the scene that Pichegru had witnessed 
 on returning from the army of the Rhine ; a strange 
 one, which implied a Government absolutely dis- 
 credited, and a nation wearied and disgusted in the 
 extreme ; very shortly afterwards the first negotiations 
 of Pichegru with the Prince de Conde took place. 
 Efforts have been made at sundry times to cast doubt 
 and uncertainty upon this act of treason ; but since 
 those who were the Prince de Conde's agents in the 
 affair have published the account of it in the 
 ' Memoire de Montgaillard," since persons devoted 
 to Pichegru being employed to arrange and decipher 
 documents relating to that negotiation have ac- 
 knowledged that they burned the papers by which 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 207 
 
 Pichegru was compromised, and since the general's 
 subsequent conduct has confirmed the previous 
 discoveries made about him, it is totally impossible 
 to justify Pichegru. We may still wish to excuse 
 his intentions and his views, but the attempt cannot 
 serve his memory, so long as it is held as a principle of 
 private and social morality that a breach of promised 
 and pledged faith cannot be justified by any intention. 
 
 The relations of Pichegru with the Prince de Conde 
 were early suspected. He was recalled from the 
 army, appointed to the embassy to Sweden, which 
 he refused, and lived in profound retirement at 
 Arbois with his family until his nomination to the 
 Legislative body in year V. There he became the 
 head of a party which desired the restoration of 
 Louis XVIII. or at least behaved as if that were its 
 object and was included in the proscription of the 
 18th Fructidor, year V.; a proscription which was 
 rendered fatal by the extreme measures that resulted 
 from it, and the part taken by the army at a period 
 when Bonaparte was already the hero of the day. 
 
 Pichegru, having been transported to Guiana, made 
 his escape with seven of his companions in misfortune, 
 and went to England, where he resided in the vicinity 
 of the princes. We have just seen what were the 
 results of that proceeding ; if anything can lighten 
 the stain upon his conduct and his name, it is un- 
 doubtedly the inflexible firmness of his conduct when 
 he was in the hands of the French police, and the 
 tragic and mysterious interest of his death. 
 
 Publicity of the fullest and most solemn kind was 
 given to the acts of the tribunal. But if that pub- 
 licity was intended, as there is no doubt it was, to 
 
2o8 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 prevent or to appease the popular suspicions and 
 rumours respecting Pichegru's end, a more ill-judged 
 and ineffectual precaution never was taken. 
 
 Everybody in Paris talked of the death of Pichegru, 
 and most people did not attempt to justify their 
 suspicions by any special reasons. To believe that 
 the death of Pichegru was the doing of the Govern- 
 ment, they only needed to remember how capable of 
 crime the latter was, and to recall the still recent 
 fate of the Due d'Enghicn. 
 
 Others, who desired to make their suspicions 
 appear more just or more intelligent, explained them 
 by various arguments. The greater number were 
 agreed that it was impossible for a man to strangle 
 himself in the manner in which it was proclaimed 
 that Pichegru had committed the deed, because the 
 strength to press and twist a stick passed into the 
 cravat so strongly as would be necessary to produce 
 strangulation, must necessarily fail the suicide before 
 the fatal point had been reached. This was the 
 opinion of all men of science.' 
 
 Several persons, debating the matter with greater 
 depth and subtlety, found motives for their incredu- 
 lity in the very nature of the measures that had been 
 taken to prevent or remove it. " Since when," they 
 asked, " has it become necessary to resort to so much 
 form and detail to prove an event so simple as a sui- 
 
 * That may have been so at the period when Fauriel wrote, 
 but at the present time the evidence that has been collected in 
 France, and also in foreign countries, is so conclusive that no 
 doubt can be entertained of the possibility of a suicide effected 
 as that of Pichegru was. See, among others, the facts narrated 
 under the head of u Strangulation " in the " Dictionnaire Ency- 
 clopedique des Sciences Medicales," vol. xii. p. 339. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate, 209 
 
 cide ? and since when is it competent for a criminal 
 tribunal to make a declaration respecting an oc- 
 currence which, in the ordinary course of things, would 
 be sufficiently established by a police report ? How 
 does it happen that the judges assemble in greater 
 number and with more solemnity, toordain the autopsy 
 of a corpse, than to try a living man accused of a 
 capital crime ? Why do not those judges, since their 
 intention and purpose was to verify the suicide of 
 Pichegru, collect the only kind of proof admissible 
 in such a case, that supplied by the depositions of 
 witnesses taken on the scene of the event ? From 
 whence do they derive the impudence or the folly 
 that enables them to admit the declaration of a phy- 
 sician and five surgeons, who, being called in to view 
 the corpse of a man, declare that the man has strangled 
 himself? Is it not evident that such a statement can 
 only be made by corrupt, or wrung from timid men ? 
 Is it not still more clear that it could not be made 
 the grounds of a judicial decision by any tribunal 
 that was not composed of incompetent, corrupt, or 
 intimidated judges ?" 
 
 Again, there were others who called to mind that 
 reports of Pichegru's death had been circulated a fort- 
 night previously afterwards he was said to be ill ; and 
 persons who remembered these rumours observed that 
 it was one of the familiar features of Bonaparte's policy 
 to prepare the public mind for events which he pre- 
 sumed would impress it deeply by news of an analo- 
 gous or somewhat similar kind, so as to blunt the 
 edge of the popular astonishment beforehand. 
 
 A general, if erroneous, view of the matter, taken 
 by those who laid claim to a knowledge of the spirit 
 
 P 
 
2 1 o The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 of the time, and the ways of Bonaparte, was that 
 Pichegru had been made away with in order to 
 accelerate the progress of the trial. It was essential 
 to get rid of a troublesome and obstinate man, whose 
 sturdy and persistant denials might change the pre- 
 assumed course of the discussion. 
 
 Whatever these reasonings and suppositions were 
 worth, they were to be heard everywhere ; all the 
 police reports for several successive days were full of 
 the public talk concerning the "assassination," not 
 the suicide, of Pichegru. 
 
 A caricature 6 was privately circulated, in which 
 Pichegru was represented lying on his bed with a 
 long cravat round his neck, and Regnier, the Grand 
 Judge, with Real, the Director-General of Police, 
 pulling at cither end of it, the countenance of each 
 being distorted as hideously as was that of the 
 unhappy victim of their murderous strength. That 
 so horrible an incident should be turned into ridicule 
 in such a way is sufficiently significant of the tone of 
 the public mind at the moment. 
 
 Bonaparte, who was as much enraged by these 
 suspicions as if they had been founded upon truth, at 
 last lost patience, and resolved to silence them On 
 
 the 24th Germinal he dictated to Murat an order of 
 
 1 
 
 6 This caricature is not to be found in the precious collection 
 of historical prints bequeathed to the National Library by 
 M Henin. Caricatures against Bonaparte and his Government, 
 done in France, or rather, in Paris, are not numerous. To that 
 mentioned by Fauriel we may add one to which Thibaudeau 
 alludes, and which was privately circulated after the re-establish- 
 ment of public worship. The First Consul was represented 
 drowning himself in a holy-water font, surrounded by bishops, 
 who pushed him down with their crosiers. " Memoires sur le 
 Consular.," p. 165. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 211 
 
 the day which will remain recorded in history as 
 one of the most curious documents, not only of that 
 epoch, but in the annals of arbitrary power. The 
 following is the substance of it : '*' The Governor of 
 Paris directs the adjutants, officers, and sub-officers 
 of the garrison and the National Guard, whosoever 
 they may be. to disabuse the minds of the citizens 
 respecting the false rumours for which malevolent 
 persons are endeavouring to obtain credence. They 
 do not hesitate to state any falsehood. Now they 
 assert that the death of Pichegru is not the result of 
 suicide ; again, they assert that each night a great 
 number of prisoners are shot. 7 The Criminal Tribunal 
 is using the utmost activity in the procedure under 
 instruction. The arrests which have taken place 
 since that of Moreau have but confirmed his culpa- 
 bility more strongly. Up to the present moment 
 all that the Grand Judge has said, and nothing but 
 what the Grand Judge has said, has been proved. 
 Although he knows that anything, more or less, that 
 may be advanced will make no impression upon 
 the citizens, the Governor of Paris thinks it well to 
 recommend the officers and sub-officers of the 
 National Guard who are distributed about the dif- 
 ferent quarters of the city, not to allow the public to 
 be misled. The adherence of all classes of the people 
 is an essential element in the confidence and attach - 
 
 7 This rumour was not without some foundation. More than 
 a month previously, on the 18th Ventose, Bom parte, in writing 
 to General Davoust. gave him the news of Cadoudars arrest in 
 a postscript, and added, " The barriers are closely guarded by 
 sentinels at fifty paces. Some brigands presented themselves, and 
 were either taken or shot." '' Correspondance de Napoleon I.," 
 vol. ix. p. 351. 
 
 P 2 
 
212 The Last Days of the Consulate, 
 
 ment which the First Consul has a right to expect 
 from the French." 8 
 
 It is no uncommon thing to find Governments 
 opposing the force of arms to that of opinion, but 
 it was reserved for Bonaparte to invoke the former 
 against the latter with such frankness as this. The 
 proclamation produced but little effect, and it offended 
 the majority of the Ministers. Public rumour ceased, 
 indeed, to deal with the death oi Pichegru, not from 
 the fear of forcible intervention, but because public 
 attention, having been occupied by the incident for 
 two whole weeks, was tired of it. Very likely the 
 subject would have been dropped even sooner, but 
 for the precautions of the Government, which revived 
 the flagging interest it had excited. 
 
 Popular rumour then died away ; but it was suc- 
 ceeded by whispers even more strange than those 
 which they replaced, and these whispers, being con- 
 fined within a narrower circle, produced a deeper and 
 more lasting impression. It was no longer vaguely 
 presumed that Bonaparte had caused Pichegru to be 
 assassinated, but it was asserted that the actual agent 
 of the assassination had been discovered. The 
 person named was Roustan, one of his Mamelukes, 
 to whom Bonaparte had granted a reprieve from 
 capital punishment for sedition at Cairo. Ever since 
 that time Roustan had been attached to his personal 
 service, and was entirely devoted to him. Bonaparte 
 appeared to place great reliance upon this man's 
 fidelity. Soon afterwards, it was said that Roustan 
 
 8 See the Journal de Paris of the 25th Germinal, year XII., 
 p. 1318. This order of the day was not inserted in the Moni- 
 tcur. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 213 
 
 was aided in his task by two other Mamelukes, and 
 that the three were introduced into the Temple, and 
 gained access to Pichegru's room under the following 
 circumstances : 
 
 Pichegru was guarded day and night by three 
 gendarmes, who were relieved hour by hour. It was 
 alleged that the three Mamelukes got into his 
 room in the middle of the night, in the disguise 
 of gendarmes, and, throwing themselves upon him 
 simultaneously, left him in the state in which he was 
 found on the following morning. 
 
 I cannot vouch for the truth of these rumours, 
 although I am persuaded that Pichegru did not 
 strangle himself with his own hands. 9 Other reports 
 were circulated, which were much more unlikely, and 
 indeed, to my thinking, absurd. It was said that 
 when Pichegru's body was examined by the persons 
 appointed, a note in the handwriting of Bonaparte 
 was found in the hair. Different versions of the 
 contents of this note were given. Some said it was 
 an invitation to Pichegru to come to Paris ; others, 
 that it was a promise of pardon or favour under 
 condition of his making certain avowals, which were 
 required from him to complete the proofs of the 
 conspiracy in which he had dabbled. I need not 
 dwell any longer on these rumours. I have not 
 recorded them here as being worthy of any credence, 
 but only that I might give an idea of the opinion 
 that was at that time entertained of the character of 
 
 9 So widespread was the belief in the assassination of Piche- 
 gru, that, several years afterwards, on Madame de Remusat's 
 asking M. de Tallyrand what he thought of " that death," he 
 replied, " It happened very suddenly, and in the nick of time.'' 
 u Memoires," vol. i. p. 349. 
 
214 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 Bonaparte. It is a fact, as strange as it is certain, 
 that the rumours of the manner in which Pichegru 
 had been assassinated, and the papers found on his 
 dead body, were not only well known, but held to be 
 Well founded by several of the judges who took such 
 immense pains to persuade the public that Pioegru 
 had killed himself. 
 
 The judicial instruction in Moreau's case was 
 brought to a conclusion on the I ith Floreal, and had 
 lasted nearly two months. This was not too long, 
 considering the number of the accused and the 
 witnesses, and also the difficulty of securing the 
 success of the prosecution before the tribunal and 
 the public. The whole of the days and a portion of 
 the nights were devoted to this instruction by 
 Thuriot, who gave an account to the Director General 
 of Police of the stage at which each sitting had left 
 the affair, of the advantages that he had gained, and 
 the obstacles that he had encountered ; and the 
 measures necessary for bringing the trial to the 
 desired point were discussed with the Superior Police, 
 who supplied daily all the fresh information which 
 could strengthen the hands of justice in dealing with 
 the accused. 
 
 On the i ith or 12th Floroal, Thuriot placed all the 
 documents of the "instruction" in the hands of the 
 Govern ment commissary, who was to draw up the 
 act of accusation. This indictment was completed 
 on the 25th of the same month, and so brief an 
 interval being allotted to so onerous and difficult a 
 task, one in which it was necessary to say nothing 
 that might afford an insight into the hopes and the 
 action of the authorities in the matter, would seem to 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 2 1 5 
 
 prove that Bonaparte was impatient for the termina 
 tion of the affair. He wanted, in fact, to be left in 
 peace to enjoy the sweets of empire, without any 
 trouble or care, after he had removed the last thorn 
 of the Republic from his crown. 
 
 The act of accusation was published almost 
 simultaneously with the Senatus-consultum of the 
 28th Floreal, by which the Republican Government 
 was changed into an hereditary royalty. 
 
 The accused had only six or eight days in which 
 to make themselves acquainted with the act of 
 accusation, and to decide upon their line of defence. 
 Short as the interval was for them, it seemed long 
 to the impatient public, who were as eager to witness 
 the struggle of the accused with the enmity and the 
 might of the Government, as if there had been the 
 least security that innocence and truth would come 
 out winners in the end. 
 
 At length, on the 8th Prairial, the proceedings were 
 opened, and the accused, to the number of forty-eight, 
 assembled on those same benches on which so many 
 unfortunate men and women had sat to hear the 
 doom of death pronounced upon them in the time of 
 the Revolution. This was, I believe, the largest 
 number of accused persons that had ever appeared 
 before a tribunal as accomplices in the same enter- 
 prise since the Revolution ; and never, perhaps, did a 
 medley of men, so different in renown, opinions, and 
 interests, appear before the Revolutionary Tribunal 
 itself. The conqueror of Hohenlinden by the side of 
 the most obstinate chief of the insurgents of La 
 Vendee, agents of the French Government, side by 
 side with confidants of the emigre's princes, poor 
 
216 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 tavern-keepers, and women of the lowest ranks of 
 society, mixed up with men who had taken an 
 active part in the strife of factions and in civil war ; 
 there was something in this to rouse the dullest 
 imagination. Other recollections of the same epoch 
 were also awakened. At the Revolutionary Tribunal 
 a jury sat by the side of judges ; on this occasion 
 there was no jury, but twice as many judges as usual 
 in even the gravest cases. Judges and accused 
 were alike in the presence of spectators ; but with 
 this difference the first-comers were admitted to 
 the Revolutionary Tribunal in any number that 
 the space could hold. Here, one-half the spectators 
 had been admitted by tickets issued by the police, or 
 by the principal officers of the court. The space 
 apportioned to those whose only claim was that of 
 first-comers was very limited, and care was taken to 
 prevent its being filled, on the pretext that the public 
 must not be inconvenienced, while soldiers and gen- 
 darmes, the former disguised, the latter employed 
 openly, and police spies, each adroitly placed for the 
 purpose, watched each word, gesture, and movement 
 that might betray the secret sentiments of the spec- 
 tators. The same differences, the same contrasts, 
 were to be noticed outside the court. The Revolu- 
 tionary Tribunal used to be guarded only by detach- 
 ments of the National Guard, ill-armed with pikes ; 
 but here was an imposing array of military. Strong 
 detachments of cavalry and infantry were placed at 
 all the avenues, and seemed to besiege the judqes 
 as well as the prisoners. By the irony of fate, most 
 of the soldiers who composed these detachments were 
 placed, some on guard over a general who had led 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate, 2 1 7 
 
 them to victory, others on guard over those same 
 rebels with whom they had been confronted during 
 the prolonged struggle of the civil war in the West. 
 
 Now, as formerly, detached groups in the vicinity 
 of the court, and especially in front of the principal 
 entrance, waited with silent curiosity until news 
 should be brought to them of what was going on 
 inside. The people did not venture to express their 
 ideas and feelings, their presentiments and suspicions, 
 and were afraid even to appear too eager to learn 
 what they were burning to know, dreading above all 
 that their words might be overheard by the spies who 
 were gliding about everywhere, to pick up every 
 expression or murmur of discontent. 
 
 Meanwhile the drama was proceeding. The 
 greater number of the prisoners were really calm ; 
 they all appeared so. 
 
 After each of the accused persons had stated his 
 name, age, and quality, according to the prescribed 
 rules, the clerk of the court began to read the act of 
 accusation or indictment. The reading of this was 
 important, as it necessarily indicated the disposition 
 of the Government which had prescribed its plan and 
 dictated its spirit. 
 
 Gerard, the Public Accuser, began by a succinct 
 narrative of the origin, the formation, and the object 
 of the present conspiracy. He traced it back to 
 Pichegru's negotiation with the Prince de Conde in 
 year IV. (1795), and represented the whole course of 
 the general's conduct, from the moment of that 
 negotiation down to the affair of the 18th 
 Fructidor, as pursued in conformity with a treason- 
 able plan for the restoration of the Bourbons to 
 
2 1 3 The Last Days of the Cons?i/ate. 
 
 the throne. From the silence maintained by 
 Moreau for four months upon the correspondence 
 that proved Pichegru's treason, Gerard drew the 
 conclusion that Moreau was guilty towards the 
 Government, and he made that silence a ground 
 for the insinuation that Moreau was no stranger to 
 the treason which he had afterwards denounced. 
 
 He then reverted toPichegru's escape from Cayenne, 
 dwelt on his appearing in London among the French 
 princes, and the British Government, as the soul and 
 the arm of their common enterpri mst the 
 
 Republic, as having undertaken to carry out, in the 
 service of those two allies, a more widespread and 
 ably-concerted plot against the French Government 
 than any of those which had hitherto proved abortive. 
 This plot had been concocted immediately after the 
 Peace of Amiens. 
 
 The part to be played by Pichegru was no longer 
 doubtful ; but it was necessary to the success of his 
 designs that he should have a French general, popular 
 both in the army and among the people, at his disposal. 
 He knew Moreau's character, and cast his eyes upon 
 him. He employed David to negotiate hs reconcilia- 
 tion with Moreau ; David undertook to do this, and 
 succeeded. He was arrested at Calais, while convey- 
 ing favourable assurances from Moreau to Pichegru 
 in England. 
 
 At this stage the Public Accuser introduced the 
 infamous Lajolais, as sent directly by Pichegru to 
 Moreau from London to Paris 1 to replace David, and 
 
 1 [Marg. note ] " He is represented not only as the am- 
 bassador of Pichegru, but of the princes and the British 
 Cabinet." 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 219 
 
 assume his rote, and as having shortly after set off 
 for London, charged with a decisive and favourable 
 answer from Moreau. 
 
 From that moment, according to the assertions of 
 the Public Accuser, the plan was concocted, its exe- 
 cution was fixed, and the three landings which took 
 place on the coast at Dieppe were represented as 
 the immediate and direct consequence of this embassy 
 of Lajolais. 
 
 Such was the prelude, and, so to speak, the general 
 sketch of the act of accusation. Perhaps there was 
 not among the spectators a single individual capable 
 of appreciating the extent and excess of impudence 
 and falsehood that pervaded both the facts alleged, 
 and the deductions, respecting the intentions of the 
 accused, drawn from them. Any one who knew how 
 little pretext for such assertions could possibly be 
 afforded by Moreau's letters ; any one aware that 
 Lajolais had never come from London to Paris as the 
 envoy of Pichegrn, but had been sent from Paris to 
 London in order to bring Pichegrn to the former city ; 
 any one, in short, who was capable of perceiving how 
 utterly absurd and contiadictory it was to begin by 
 representing Moreau in the light of an accomplice of 
 Pichegru's first treason, and to proceed by supposing 
 that a reconciliation between them was necessary to 
 enable the two generals to understand one another, 
 would have felt a well-founded fear of the fate that 
 was prepared for the accused. 2 A Government which 
 
 2 [Marg. note.] ** Never did any historian, having; the archives 
 of facts at his disposal, and being free to combine them without 
 offending antagonistic passions or contending interests, arrange 
 them in such strict sequence, or with greater pretension to cer- 
 
220 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 founded such an accusation 0:1 such audacious lying 
 was certainly resolved beforehand to reap all the 
 fruit of its falsehood. The details of the act of accu- 
 sation did but form the development of this general 
 sketch, subjected to divisions, and reduced to a 
 formula which gave it the appearance befitting a 
 judicial accusation. 
 
 The act of accusation turned upon three principal 
 points. The first was the establishment beyond a 
 doubt of the fact that a conspiracy had been formed 
 against the life of the Chief Consul and against the 
 internal and external safety of the State. The second 
 was the proving that the animating soul of that 
 conspiiacy was the English Government. The third 
 was the obligation to show that each of the accused 
 persons then before the tribunal was really and 
 truly one of the originators of the conspiracy, or an 
 accomplice in it, or had been guilty of breaking 
 the law of the 9th Ventose, which had been passed 
 to secure the capture of the conspirators immediately 
 upon the discovery of the conspiracy. 
 
 " The proofs of the existence of the conspiracy," 
 said the Public Accuser, dealing with the first point, 
 " are so clear that it is impossible they can fail to 
 carry conviction to every mind." 
 
 These proofs were the avowals of the accused that 
 is to say, almost all those who, without naming 
 accomplices, accusing, or compromising anybody 
 except themselves, had acknowledged that they had 
 come to Paris, not precisely to overturn the consular 
 Government and restore the throne of the Bourbons, 
 
 tainty, than the fundamental assertions of the act of accusation 
 displayed." 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 2 2 1 
 
 but to see whether the means of effecting such an 
 overthrow and such a restoration existed, and, in that 
 case, to collect and organize those means. The 
 avowals of Georges Cadoudal and Charles de Riviere 
 only were such as to entitle them to be fairly and 
 clearly placed in this category. The Polignacs, not- 
 withstanding their reserve and equivocation in 
 speaking of some among the accused, had plainly 
 named several. 
 
 Those persons who had made the other admissions 
 had, for the most part, yielded to torture or threats, 
 and the nature and consequences of their avowals 
 compared to the former, sufficiently indicated the 
 difference of the intentions and feelings that actuated 
 them. By the former, none were accused but those 
 who made them ; and, indeed, only their intentions, not 
 their actions, were accused ; the latter were charges 
 against accomplices. The only distinction to be 
 drawn was between those persons who, yielding 
 adroitly and prudently to the threats and insinua- 
 tions of the police, acknowledged that they had co- 
 operated in the projects of the conspirators without 
 knowing their intentions ; and those who, when 
 denouncing the others, were either frightened by 
 threats or seduced by promises into reserving no 
 means of defence to themselves, but unreservedly 
 declared themselves accomplices of the conspirators 
 both in fact and intention. Among the former are 
 Rolland, Couchery, and Lajolais, so far as his position 
 as an accused person is concerned, and without 
 regard to his role of informer-in-chief. Among the 
 others, Bouvet Lozier, Rusillion, Louis Picot, and 
 Louis Ducorps hold distinguished places. " Who," 
 
222 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 asks the Public Accuser, winding up his statement 
 of the bearing and sense of these avowals, " who can 
 doubt the fact of a conspiracy which is admitted 
 by those very persons whose interest lies in contest- 
 ing it?" 
 
 After having insisted upon this proof of the exis- 
 tence of the conspiracy, drawn from the avowals of 
 the prisoners, the Public Accuser undertook to de- 
 monstrate that the first step in the execution of the 
 conspirators' plan must be the assassination of the 
 First Consul "This is a point," said he, "upon 
 which common sense forbids any division of opi- 
 nion." 
 
 Nevertheless, amply evident as the point in ques- 
 tion appeared to him, the Public Accuser conde- 
 scended to adduce a proof of it; that proof was 
 the already-related declaration of the four police 
 spies employed in London, on which, it will be re- 
 membered, Picot and Le Bourgeois were condemned. 
 Deville and Roger, who were also compromised by 
 their declarations, were among the accused ; hence 
 the evidence of the connection between the two 
 conspiracies. To say more of this would be to bring 
 the power of evidence itself into doubt and discussion. 
 Thus ended the first j art of the indictment. 
 
 It did not seem at all more difficult to prove 
 that the English Government was the animating spirit 
 of the conspiracy. The real or supposed influence 
 of the English Government in the excesses of the 
 French Revolution was the, first proof or the first 
 presumption furnished in favour of this second 
 fundamental assertion. The English Cabinet was 
 accused of having arranged the attempt of the 3rd 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 223 
 
 Nivose, of having sent Picot and Le Bourgeois to 
 France. The proofs of its influence in this fresh 
 conspiracy were : regular payments made to the 
 conspirators in England, the furnishing them with 
 arms and poniards, gunpowder and gold, and their 
 transport to France in vessels under the orders 
 of the Government. Again, there were the instruc- 
 tions given to Mehee, the assent accorded to his plans 
 in a word, the whole of the singular scheme that 
 I have already narrated. Of this the Public Accuser 
 gave a detailed account, and quoted the greater part 
 of Mr. Drake's correspondence, from the moment at 
 which the strange mystification was attempted, until 
 it was rudely dispelled. 
 
 "What candid-minded person," he asked, " can 
 possibly raise a doubt, in the presence of documents 
 so plain and implicit, that the British Cabinet is the 
 soul of the conspiracy ? ". . . "It has not distributed 
 poniards to assassinate the First Consul," he con- 
 tinued, "only because it feels strongly the irresistible 
 power of his glory and his virtues, even among 
 foreign nations." 
 
 Having reached this point in his discourse, the 
 Public Accuser had only to relate the facts con- 
 cerning each of the accused individually. This 
 was the most important, and in a sense the most 
 judicial, portion of the act of accusation ; it demanded 
 the greatest circumspection and adroitness, because 
 it was so necessary not to put forward too strongly 
 such details as might easily be shown to be untrue in 
 the progress of the pleadings, and not to place the 
 accused who had turned informers in too anta- 
 gonistic an attitude towards the accused who were 
 
224 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 predestined victims ; nevertheless, this portion of 
 the accusation was perhaps the most remarkable for 
 lying-, equally impudent and clumsy. 
 
 It divided the conspirators into three classes: 
 
 1. Conspirators properly so called. 
 
 2. Their auxiliaries and accomplices. 
 
 3. Those who had neglected to make the declara- 
 tion prescribed by the law of the 9U1 Ventose to all 
 persons who might have given lodging to any of the 
 conspirators. 3 
 
 In dealing with each of the accused comprised in 
 either one or other of these three classes, especially 
 the first, the Public Accuser heaped together, without 
 selection or order, all the facts that he had been able 
 to collect, whether they related to the conspiracy or 
 not. By the tone of each clause in the indictment, 
 it was possible, and even easy, to discern who were the 
 accused that had made avowals, who had respectively 
 obtained a promise of pardon as the price of their 
 surrender, or resisted both and the tortures inflicted 
 by the police as well. 
 
 When the facts to be stated concerned the latter, 
 they were seasoned with abusive declamation and 
 gross insults. 
 
 When the turn of those who had confessed 
 came, although the expressions of the act of accusa- 
 tion were severe and menacing, some little phrase 
 would be allowed to escape, as if by accident, which 
 indicated the kind of excuse that the accused might 
 
 [Marg. note.] " It must be pointed out that this law was 
 absurd, because none of the confederates were either named or 
 designated by it. It should have come after the List ' of the 
 16th." 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 225 
 
 claim, and the motives for indulgence that spoke 
 in his favour. There was hardly an exception made 
 for Lajolais. Prudence forbade it ; the closer his 
 relations with the police had been, the more severe 
 and crushing the language addressed to him by 
 justice was bound to be. 
 
 The clause relating to Moreau was the most 
 laboured of all, and almost as violent as that which 
 dealt with Georges Cadoudal. As for Pichegru, he 
 was only mentioned, so to speak, incidentally, in this 
 list of criminals. He was described as an infamous 
 man, "who, as if crime sometimes administered justice 
 to itself, beholding only the picture of his treason 
 and the overwhelming proofs of his misdeeds," had 
 killed himself in the Temple. This sentence, which 
 was neither the most violent nor the most absurd in 
 the long judicial diatribe, may give an idea of the 
 moderation, the calm, the style of eloquence, and the 
 veracity of its author. 
 
 The reading of the indictment lasted nearly five 
 hours, and occupied almost the whole of the first 
 sitting. On the following day the court was seated 
 and the hearing began at nine o'clock a.m. The 
 proceedings opened with a formal protest against 
 the competency of the tribunal, or their acceptance 
 of it, on the part of the accused, and to this act of 
 the drama a particular circumstance lent special 
 interest. 
 
 The " instruction " of the case had been carried out 
 entirely under the denomination of " Special Criminal 
 Tribunal." The act of accusation had been drawn up 
 by the Government officer who belonged to that form 
 of tribunal. This document had been signed on the 
 
 Q 
 
226 The Last Days of the Consulate, 
 
 25th Floreal, and three days afterwards a Senatus- 
 consultum had appeared, by which not only the form 
 of Government was changed, but also that of the 
 tribunals, and cognizance of offences against the 
 safety of the Government was vested in a High 
 National Court composed of functionaries selected 
 from the chief dignities of the State. 
 
 Gauthier, who acted as counsel for Coster Saint- 
 Victor, was the first to demand the right of plea of 
 exception {dedinatoire), and he made a long speech 
 in support of its justice. He endeavoured to bring for- 
 ward the principle that any matter which has to be 
 decided by a tribunal always belongs to a tribunal 
 actually established by law. He dwelt upon the 
 contradiction that would exist if the tribunal were to 
 admit some of the dispositions made by the Scnatus- 
 consultum of the 28th, by taking the title allotted 
 to it by that Senatus-consultum, and to reject the 
 others ; and also upon the fact which though not 
 legally proved by the defence, was not denied by the 
 Imperial Procurator that the act of accusation had 
 not been signified to the accused until after the pro- 
 mulgation of the decree of the 28th Floreal. 
 
 Georges Cadoudal, Charles de Riviere, Joyant, and 
 nineteen others, among whom, to the general surprise, 
 was Lajolais, also demanded, through their counsel, 
 to be brought before the high imperial court, for the 
 reasons aforesaid. 
 
 Moreau and the other accused persons stated that 
 they preferred to refer the question of competence to 
 the judgment of the tribunal. 
 
 The demand for a plea of exception was founded 
 upon reasons which appeared just to most people, and 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 227 
 
 which were by no means easy for the judges tc 
 refute. But it was evident that it was perfectly 
 useless to put forward any such pleas. The tribunal 
 might be reduced to proving its own competency by 
 sheer sophistry, but it was not free to repudiate that 
 quality when the supreme influence that directed had 
 chosen it. Thus the accused persons who put forward 
 the declinatory plea, did so only in order to assert 
 their rights, and leave no resource untried ; but not in 
 the hope of getting their demand heard, and being 
 handed over to other judges The tribunal declared 
 its own competence by a judgment whose terms were 
 more than equivocal, but which produced very little 
 sensation, because it was quite evident that there 
 could be no chance of a change favourable to the 
 accused, since any judges before whom they might 
 be sent would inevitably be selected by the ruling 
 authority. 
 
 This preliminary disposed of, the trial began. 
 Georges was put forward first, a preference easily 
 accounted for. Thirty-six witnesses had been ordered 
 by the President to attend. The first twelve who were 
 heard deposed to all the circumstances of his arrest, 
 to the murder of one of the police agents who arrested 
 him, and the wounding of the other. At the con- 
 clusion of the examination of each witness, the 
 President, turning to Georges, questioned him in his 
 turn, invariably beginning with the circumstances of 
 his arrest, and ending with the gist of the conspiracy. 
 To all these questions Georges replied with the calm- 
 ness, composure, and presence of mind of an abso- 
 lutely indifferent person, steadily denying in the most 
 decided and positive tone everything that could com- 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 promise any one whomsoever, and repeating what 
 he had already acknowledged, viz. that he had come 
 to France to see whether there was any means of 
 restoring the monarchy in favour of the Bourbons ; 
 that he had not yet collected those means, or laid 
 down any plan ; that he had not been ready to act, and 
 did not even know whether circumstances would have 
 required or permitted him to do so. Each time that 
 the President angrily reiterated his questions in the 
 tone of one who hopes to conquer obstinate silence 
 by rude importunity and this he did frequently 
 Georges simply repeated his denials with the same 
 patient and unruffled calmness. 4 
 
 A great deal was said about his complicity in the 
 plot of the 3rd Nivose. The only proof that was 
 offered was a note couched in vague and mysterious 
 terms, but which might possibly be interpreted as an 
 order or an intimation relative to that occasion. He 
 denied having written this note, offered to prove by 
 witnesses who were in the hands of the police that at the 
 date which it bore he was at the distance of 1 30 leagues 
 from Paris, that the note must have reached Saint- 
 Rdjant 5 in four days, although it was said to have 
 
 * [Marg. note.] " He renewed his profession of loyalty and 
 fidelity to royalism." 
 
 3 Pierre Robinaut Saint-Rejant (or Saint- Regent), who con- 
 cealed himself under the various names of Pierrot, Sever, Sollier, 
 Pierre Martin, was executed, with his accomplice Carbon, on the 
 1st Floreal, year IX.. as the author of the attempt of the 3rd 
 Nivose. Now, the following is the text of the note found at his 
 abode : " My dear Soyer, I have news of you from two friends. 
 As for you, you have not yet learned to write. Alas ! the fifteen 
 days are passed ; events announce themselves in a frightful 
 manner ; if these events continue, I know not what will become 
 of us all. In you alone is all our confidence and all our hope. 
 Your friends beg your remembrance of them, and recommend 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 229 
 
 been addressed by a man hiding- in a village in Brit- 
 tany to a man hiding in the capital. He accused the 
 police of having fabricated this note, and the only 
 result of the President's importunate insistance on the 
 point was that the very common belief that Georges 
 really was the instigator and head of the affair of 
 Nivose was considerably shaken. The objection was 
 raised that he had acknowledged to the police having 
 sent Saint-Rejant to Paris, if not to carry out the 
 plot of the 3rd Nivose, at least to attack the First 
 Consul ; but this proved to be a greater indiscretion 
 than the previous one. It gave Georges an opportu- 
 nity of making known that he had been tortured, that 
 the police had endeavoured to terrify him, that he had 
 been made to sign declarations which he had not 
 previously read, and that no questions had been put 
 to him before the " instructing " judges of a nature to 
 enable him to correct the wording of that first declara- 
 tion. 6 He denied that he had sent Leridan to Brittany 
 
 their fate to you. Adieu. Your sincere friend, Gedeon. 29th 
 December, 1800." 
 
 M. Thiers states that under Saint-Rejant's bed there was 
 found "a letter to Georges, in which he related (with some 
 disguise) the principal circumstances of the crime, and justified 
 himself to his chief for his non-success." This letter was en- 
 closed in an envelope, and addressed "Au Citoyen Antoine, 
 Chef d'un Bureau de Finance, a Paris," and began with the 
 sentence, " My dear friend, I declare to you that I have decided 
 not to quit this country." It was submitted to two experts, 
 Oudart and Legros, who pronounced it to have been written 
 neither by Limoelan, nor Saint-Rejant. This Limoelan, who 
 was called Beaumont and Pour le A'of, was said to be one of the 
 accomplices in the attempt of the 3rd Nivose. He managed to 
 escape from Paris, and, according to a report made by General 
 Moncey, he appears to have shot himself at Lageneux (Ain), on 
 the 24th Nivose, year XII. See \X\q Journal de Paris of 25th 
 Germinal, year XII., p. 1250. 
 
 6 Louis Bonaparte had the curiosity to go and see Georges 
 
230 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 with 300 louisfor Saint-IIilaire. The examination of 
 Georges and the witnesses lasted three hours, and the 
 proceedings were resumed after a short interval by the 
 President's interrogation of Bouvet Lozier concerning 
 the persons who had inhabited the house let by him 
 at Chaillot. At this point a difficulty arose, which 
 had not been sufficiently foreseen and provided against 
 by those who had got up the trial and settled the plan 
 of it, and which caused in the end a partial failure of 
 their project. Several of the confederates who had 
 told the police all they knew, and sometimes more 
 than they knew, and who had adhered to their state- 
 ments in the silence, solitude, snares, and threats amid 
 which the proceedings had been " instructed " at the 
 Temple, had by no means so much assurance and 
 audacity when they found themselves in the presence 
 of the public, their victims, and their judges. Bouvet 
 hesitated about naming Georges, Pichegru, Poiignac 
 (Armand), and other accomplices as having lived in 
 the house at Chaillot. The same admissions which 
 had been wrung from him in the first instance by 
 dreadful tortures, had from the beginning of his 
 examination to be extracted by severe moral pressure. 
 It was much worse when Madame de Saint- Leger, with 
 whom he had been on terms of intimate friendship 
 and confidence, was called as a witness on his behalf. 
 Madame de Saint-L^ger had hired the house for 
 him, and knowing well for whom it was really 
 intended, she nevertheless courageously persisted 
 
 at the Temple. He went accompanied by a brilliant staff, and 
 found the prisoner, as Bourrienne tells us, "lying on his bed, 
 his hands pressed on his chest, and closely linked by hand- 
 cuffs.'' 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 23 1 
 
 in denying that it had been hired for any other 
 person or persons except Bouvet, or that it had been 
 inhabited by any others, to her knowledge. When 
 the President, desirous to obtain by any means from 
 Madame de Saint-Leger the confession that she knew 
 who the persons were that had lived in the house at 
 Chaillot, met her denials with appeals to declarations 
 which she had been forced, by threats and violence, 
 to sign, but had not made, and asked her whether it 
 was not the presence of Bouvet Lozier that prevented 
 her from speaking and acknowledging the truth, she 
 replied, " I do not know whether Bouvet Lozier is 
 here ; I no longer recognize him." 7 This answer was 
 at once the accusation, the judgment, and the con- 
 demnation of Lozier at the bar of public opinion. It 
 made a deep impression upon the spectators ; and 
 perhaps that voice of a woman, who, threatened and 
 tortured almost as mercilessly as he had been, had 
 nevertheless steadily refused to make the avowals 
 that were required from her, awakened some shame 
 and remorse in Bouvet's breast. As a matter of fact, 
 when the President asked him whether he still persisted 
 in his strange declaration of the 24th Pluviose, he 
 modified it in a manner which completely annulled it. 
 He declared that when he had made his first declara- 
 tion, he believed Moreau to have given his adhesion 
 to the plan of conspiracy on behalf of the princes, but 
 that since then he had found, on reading the documents 
 of the trial, that supposition was proved to be false. 
 
 7 The shorthand report makes her say, (l I do not know 
 whether he is here, I do not see him." The sense is the same, 
 for a moment before, the President, while questioning Madame 
 de Saint-Leger, had bidden Bouvet Lozier be silent. 
 
232 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 His declaration of the 24th was again read to him, 
 and to each assertion he replied that it was from 
 Georges he had learned the fact stated. Every such 
 statement Georges met with a positive denial, uttered 
 in a tone of such calmness and politeness as were 
 truly remarkable towards a man who had acted the 
 part of which Bouvet stood convicted. 
 
 In the course of his reading of the declaration, the 
 President came to one of the most important pas- 
 sages : 
 
 " A general who has served under Moreau, Lajolais, 
 I believe, is sent by him to the princes in London. 
 Lajolais agrees in Moreau's name, and on his behalf, 
 to the principal parts of the proposed plan." Here 
 the President paused, to ask Bouvet who it was that 
 had spoken to him of Lajolais. " Georges," replied 
 Bouvet immediately, just as he had replied to all the 
 preceding questions concerning this same declaration, 
 and Lajolais was then summoned to answer upon the 
 point. The President could not presume that there 
 would be any objection to his addressing such a 
 question to a man in the position of Lajolais. He 
 was mistaken. The shame that had seized upon 
 Bouvet, and was as perceptible in his mien as in 
 his answers, had, so to speak, become contagious, 
 and had even touched Lajolais, for he replied 
 to the President that he had never had any com- 
 mission on behalf of Moreau, nor communication of 
 any kind of plan. 
 
 When they came to that part of the declaration at 
 which the rendezvous on the Boulevard de la Made- 
 leine between Pichegru and Georges on the one part, 
 and Moreau on the other, was set forth in such a 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate, 233 
 
 way as to allow it to be believed that the proposed 
 meeting had really taken place, Bouvet rectified 
 all that was false or equivocating in the statement, 
 and said that he had not seen Moreau on the boule- 
 vard. 
 
 Thus did the nets, which the police thought they 
 had made so strong and so secure, break with the 
 very first strain upon them ; thus were the cruelty 
 and perfidy of the police towards the accused, and 
 the secret object of this scandalous procedure, un- 
 masked in a totally unforeseen manner. 
 
 The foregoing were the chief incidents of the 
 first part of the trial. Other witnesses were then 
 heard, and other prisoners examined ; namely, 
 Rusillion, Rochelle, Armand Polignac, and his brother 
 Jules. 
 
 Rusillion persisted in his plan of absolute submis- 
 sion to the police, and made no attempt to escape 
 from the infamy of his first declaration by any state- 
 ment. His examination lasted only a few minutes. 
 It was perfectly plain that he had been promised his 
 own life on condition of the good-will with which he 
 should help to furnish means for depriving other 
 persons of theirs. 
 
 Rochelle was questioned at greater length, and the 
 confirmation of his former statements had to be got 
 at through half-retractations, and by dint of much 
 pressing ; but nothing remarkable was elicited ; the 
 part he had to play was only a relatively useful 
 one. 
 
 The examination of Armand Polignac was more 
 interesting, because his declarations were more grave 
 in themselves, and also because his rank among the 
 
234 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 partisans of the French princes gave him a highef 
 degree of importance. He retracted the statement in 
 his first examination that he had come over from 
 England to France with seven persons, of whom two, 
 Coster Saint-Victor and Deville, were now accused ; 
 he confirmed his former statement that he had come 
 to France with the vague purpose of verifying what 
 means there might exist of restoring the monarch)'. 
 He explained that the very serious interview which 
 he knew to have taken place at Chaillot between 
 Morcau, Pichegru, and Georges, was only hearsay, 
 and that he could not vouch for the fact. He ex- 
 plained in the same way all his statements con- 
 cerning the relations between Moreau and Pichegru. 
 What he could not put down as having come to him 
 through public rumour, he declared he had had from 
 Pichegru. 
 
 Thus the death of that unfortunate general was not 
 only useful to the judges and the police, but it also 
 furnished a refuge and a resource to those among the 
 accused who, not daring to retract the avowals they 
 had made to the police, or to confirm them in the 
 face of accomplices who might justly reproach them 
 with base treachery, conveniently cast accusations 
 upon a man who had nothing more to fear either 
 from the police or from human justice. This was 
 a kind of expedient to which several of the accused 
 had resorted in the course of the famous trial, in so 
 far as the small number of accomplices who were 
 executed before the judgment was delivered, permitted. 
 There were only two. 3 
 
 The impression left upon the minds of the 
 8 Picot and Le Bourgeois. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate, 235 
 
 spectators by this sitting, and the only one which 
 spread itself abroad, was, while not as yet very deep 
 or decided, distinctly adverse to the views and 
 hopes of the Government. From that stage of the 
 proceedings, public opinion was sensibly altered 
 with regard to Georges Cadoudal. The nation 
 shrank with pain and repugnance from regarding 
 as a brigand this man, who from the hour of 
 his arrest had adopted a consistent course, which 
 he followed to the last moment of his life; who 
 had acknowledged, with the utmost sincerity, just 
 so much of his own conduct as it was necessary 
 to avow in order to authorize those into whose 
 hands he had fallen to put him to death with 
 judicial honours ; who had guarded with constant 
 and scrupulous care against compromising any 
 persons by his answers, even those whom he might 
 have named without adding anything to their peril ; 
 who made all honest men feel, by his very reserve, 
 which he well knew would not be taken into account 
 on his behalf, what treachery and base deceit the 
 Consular Government had employed against him. 
 People began to feel a reasonable surprise that men 
 who had made avowals at the cost of infamy should 
 retract them at the risk of life. It was easy to draw 
 the conclusion that confessions which were retracted at 
 the latter price could only have been extracted by 
 subornation and torture. The public mind was finally 
 made up on this point by the facts which came out 
 on the trial in reference to the cruelties that had been 
 practised upon both accused andwitnessesbythe police, 
 and the impudent falsification of the declarations of 
 both. In short, the police and the Government had 
 
236 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 no reason to be satisfied with this first result of their 
 manoeuvres ; nor were they at all satisfied. From 
 that moment, nothing but the trial was talked of in 
 Paris. It formed the subject of conversation in every 
 place, among all classes ; and it was discussed, not 
 only with eager curiosity, but with a seriousness 
 which had long been a lost habit. The period of this 
 trial is perhaps the only period since the iSth 
 Brumaire to which no recollection of the puns, jests, 
 and coarse sayings that are the sole vengeance of a 
 cowardly and servile multitude against tyrannical 
 power, is attached. 
 
 The proceedings of the following day, the 10th 
 Prairial, promised to be more interesting than those 
 of the preceding. 
 
 On this occasion the first to be examined was 
 Charles d'Hozier, one of the conspirators who lived 
 at Paris, and had been, according to all appearances, 
 specially entrusted with the care of procuring 
 lodging for those who came directly from England. 
 It will be remembered that Charles d'Hozier had 
 acknowledged not only to the police, but also 
 before the instructing judge, all the services that he 
 had rendered to several of the conspirators, always, 
 however, observing the precaution (necessary for 
 his defence) of declaring that he knew nothing 
 of their intentions and plans. In the course of his 
 examination by the President, nothing was more 
 clearly demonstrated than the untruth of several 
 charges made against him in the act of accusation, 
 his protests against the dishonesty with which the 
 police had drawn up their report of his answers, and 
 his desire to withdraw certain admissions damaging to 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 2 
 
 0/ 
 
 those individuals whom he now declared he had 
 named without knowing them. Charles d'Hozier 
 was also the first who stated openly before the 
 spectators that torture had been inflicted upon the 
 accused. 9 
 
 This was singular conduct on the part of a man 
 who had hidden from the police nothing that it was 
 in his power to impart to them, and was even sus- 
 pected of having had an understanding with them 
 prior to his arrest. 
 
 Among the many incidents of the trial which 
 give an idea of the way in which the President 
 questioned the accused, and of how little pains he 
 took to disguise the foregone resolution to find 
 them guilty, there is one concerning Charles 
 d'Hozier which I consider worth noticing, especially 
 as I think it almost escaped observation at the 
 time. 
 
 One of the points in the special accusation against 
 D'Hozier was that not only had he procured lodging 
 for several of the conspirators, but he had set up an 
 establishment of public vehicles, no doubt with the 
 primary purpose, said the indictment, of facilitating 
 transport and communications for the enemies of 
 France ! 
 
 It was abundantly proved in the course of the trial 
 that the establishment in question, which had been 
 opened two years before the date of the alleged 
 conspiracy, was neither more nor less than a private 
 
 9 "I observe," said D'Hozier, "that Picot again alleged in 
 prison that he had told many things which he did not know, 
 because he had been tortured at the Prefecture of Police." See 
 " Proces," vol. iv. pp. 238, 239. 
 
2 33 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 enterprise, undertaken with the same motives and 
 conducted in the same way as every other business of 
 a similar kind. The President, unwilling to admit 
 that he was beaten by the evidence which established 
 this fact all the more strongly that the witnesses were 
 witnesses for the prosecution, and called by himself, 
 turned to D'Hozier and said: "You might have a 
 double object in setting up your establishment of 
 vehicles, and availing yourself of it until the arrival 
 of those who were to come from England." " In that 
 case I evinced a great deal of foresight," replied 
 D'Hozier, with as little irony as it was possible to 
 employ in answer to such a remark. 1 
 
 The proceedings with regard to Charles de Riviere* 
 occupied less time, but were still more remarkable. 
 
 There was great curiosity to see how this man 
 would sustain his role of intelligent, intrepid, polished, 
 highly-bred royalist, and favourite of the Count 
 d'Artois, in the presence of the judges and the public. 
 He persisted in refusing to make any kind of decla- 
 ration or answer that could compromise anybody 
 whomsoever among the accused, and in repeating 
 what he had stated at his first examination that he 
 had come to France to ascertain whether the public 
 mind was favourable to the princes, and in that case to 
 induce them to profit by the opportunity. But, either 
 because he was emboldened by the public sentiment in 
 favour of the accused, which became more and more 
 marked, or because he thought and desired only to 
 defend himself or, again, because he was inspired 
 by a desire to tell the truth, he was the first 
 among the accused who impressed their hearers with 
 1 See " Proces," vol. iv. p. 253. 3 See Ibid. p. 259. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 239 
 
 the strangeness of the destiny that had brought these 
 men before a tribunal, for an attempt to re-establish 
 monarchy, at the very moment when that monarchy 
 had just been re-established, and had brought them 
 there by the hand of the man in whose person it was 
 re-established. They were accused of having con- 
 spired against a Republic, and it was in the name of 
 an absolute Emperor that they were threatened with 
 the scaffold. Charles de Riviere especially sought to 
 make it understood that the agents of the Bourbons 
 could not have determined (and, in fact, had not 
 determined) to come over to France to ascertain 
 what it would be possible to do there for those 
 same Bourbons, had it not been for the plain indica- 
 tions, recognized by the whole of Europe, that the 
 Consular Government was about to be transformed 
 into a monarchy. 
 
 This method of defence produced so much the 
 more effect upon the attentive spectators, that it was 
 very dangerous for the accused. From the exami- 
 nation of a man who defined himself with nobility 
 and dignity, and by remarks full of a lofty policy, 
 the President passed on to that of a very different 
 person, a man whose obscurity might have saved him 
 from the death to which his method of answering 
 doomed him, if he had boldly repeated before the 
 judges the avowals which had been wrung from his 
 terror by the police. 
 
 This man was Louis Ducorps It will be remem- 
 bered that he was a person of very little education, 
 who had been a gardener before he became a soldier 
 in the rebel ranks of La Vendee. It will also be 
 remembered that the principal charge against him was 
 
240 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 that he had acted as guide to some of the chief con- 
 spirators, from Aumale to Paris, and again from Aumale 
 towards the sea-coast. His confession, without being 
 of the highest importance, had nevertheless appeared 
 precious to the police, who seemed to have obtained 
 it only by dint of threats and torture, and after great 
 resistance on his part. I cannot say v\ hat were the 
 feelings of this man when he found himselt constrained 
 to confirm before his accomplices the declarations 
 which he had made to his tormentors, for I might be 
 mistaken in my interpretation of them ; but it was 
 plainly to be seen that he was full of a concentrated 
 indignation, which now burst out in his rough and 
 insolent answers to the President, and again ex- 
 pressed itself in a silence more insolent still. "I stated 
 many things that I did not know," he said to the 
 President on one occasion, when he was reminded of 
 an admission made in his first declaration. " If I 
 said that, it was because I was made to say it," he 
 exclaimed on another occasion, when the gravest of 
 his preceding assertions was in question that, indeed, 
 from which it appeared that he had heard the 
 conspirators who had gone to Aumale talking of 
 their project for overturning the French Government. 
 In short, his examination was a succession of absolute 
 or attempted retractations, so that the President was 
 provoked into exclaiming incautiously, " You were 
 much more frank before the instructing judge ! " 
 He might have added, before the police. 
 
 This scene was the prelude to another, which left a 
 much more painful and profound impression upon the 
 minds of all, and was retarded for only a few minutes 
 by the examination of Lcridan and Lemercier re- 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 241 
 
 spectively. Lemercier's examination was without 
 interest, and it had no influence upon the result. 
 Suffice it to say of Leridan (the young man whom 
 we have seen playing the part of subordinate confi- 
 dant to Georges, and rendering him several services 
 which implied trust, without, however, implying that 
 Georges made him acquainted with his designs) 
 that his plan of defence was, not to deny the services 
 he had rendered to Georges and to Joyant, but to ex- 
 plain them, on grounds which would prevent the latter 
 from appearing to be conspirators. His remorse went 
 no farther than this. 
 
 At last it came to Louis Picot's turn to be 
 examined by the President. The terrible incident 
 by which this stage of the trial was marked, and 
 which was destined to leave its impression upon the 
 whole of it, was totally unexpected. 
 
 The police had been very unskilful in their 
 manner of suggesting the answers to be made by 
 Picot to the questions put to him by them, and also 
 in the drawing up of their report. Picot had been 
 forced to tell things about Georges that were true, 
 but of which he could not have been personally 
 informed, because they were connected with a period 
 at which he had no sort of relations with Georges. 
 Picot was only a rough, plain man, and devoted by a 
 sort of instinct to the cause of the rebels of the West. 
 It is probable that he had some vague knowledge of 
 the project which had drawn Cadoudal to Paris, but 
 it was out of all likelihood that he was in his 
 confidence with regard to its details, incidents, and 
 plan. Now, he had been made to talk to the police 
 as one who had heard the conspirators conferring 
 
 R 
 
242 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 together upon the most secret incidents and the most 
 delicate intricacies of their position and designs. 
 Declarations, in which there was nothing true, except 
 the interest of the police in making them pass for 
 truth, were also suggested to him. 
 
 Subsequently to his having made these statements, 
 Picot had seen Georges, 3 the master whom he had 
 betrayed, and several others among his accomplices 
 whose lives he had endangered, either by what was 
 true, or by what was erroneous, or invented in his 
 declarations. Repentance, shame, and remorse found 
 ready entrance into a nature which was equally 
 violent and weak. 
 
 From his first answers to the President's questions, 
 it was easy to see that Picot was not disposed to 
 confirm his previous statements. '* Do you know 
 what you said at the time of your arrest ? " asked the 
 President. " I know nothing," he replied. " You 
 said, ' I like a king better than Bonaparte, who has 
 taken his place. I have been arrested because this 
 poniard was to kill him.' " " Why should I kill a man 
 whom I do not know?" said the accused. u You 
 added that you were willing to die for your religion 
 and your king." "I may have said. so; that would 
 be my duty." After some other indifferent questions 
 the President continued : " Do you know what per- 
 sons went to see Georges at Chaillot ? " " No." 
 " You have lost your memory, then ? " u Yes." 
 
 8 When the "instruction" was completed, the accused, 
 who were imprisoned in the Temple, were allowed to meet and 
 communicate with each other. It was then that Georges 
 urged discretion and prudence upon his companions in 
 the forthcoming trial. (Bourrienne, ' Mdmoires,'' vol. vi, 
 pp. 46, 47.) 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 243 
 
 " You will not make any statement ? " The accused 
 kept silence for a moment, and the tumult of his 
 feelings was depicted on his face. The President 
 then read to him that part of his declaration in 
 which he named the conspirators who had landed at 
 different times in Brittany or Normandy, and in 
 which he spoke of a landing by a further party, of 
 which the Duke de Berry was to be one. " I know 
 nothing of all that," said Picot. " You knew it when 
 you stated it," thundered the President. 
 
 Thereupon Picot, with the passionate gesture and 
 accent of a man driven beyond all self-restraint, 
 declared that he had been offered 1500 louis 
 at the Prefecture of Police if he would give his 
 master's address ; that he had protested he did not 
 know it ; that he had then been garotted and his 
 fingers crushed in a gunlock ; and torture by fire had 
 afterwards been infl cted on him. He invoked the 
 testimony of the officers of the Guard at the Prefecture, 
 who had assisted the police agent in his functions as 
 tormentor, and he stretched out his hands towards 
 the judges and the public, crying in a terrible voice, 
 " Look at the marks ! " There were, on his hands, 
 only too surely, the marks of the torture he had 
 undergone three months before. 
 
 At these accents and gestures a universal shudder 
 of horror ran through the spectators. There were 
 some who shuddered only because a corner of the veil 
 that had hitherto hidden the violence of the police 
 and the crimes against which humanity had cried for 
 fifty years, and which had been forbidden by the law 
 for fifteen, had been lifted. These were certain of 
 the judges, and also of those base creatures whom the 
 
 R 2 
 
244 The Last Days of the Consulate, 
 
 police had posted in the court to report upon the 
 movements of the spectators and the court. 
 
 All that the President could do to palliate the ter- 
 rible effect of this furious outburst, he did. He said, 
 speaking with as much assurance and composure as 
 he could command : " A man who proposes to assas- 
 sinate the Chief of the State may well speak in that 
 fashion." He had the boldness, 4 still, to prolong his 
 
 * The report sent to the newspapers made no mention, as 
 may be supposed, of this dramatic incident, which occurred on 
 the loth Prairial, the third day of the trial. It is, however, 
 related in the " Proces recueilld par les Stdnographes," as 
 follows (see vol. iv. p. 335) : 
 
 " Picot. When I was arrested at the Prefecture of Police, 
 they began by offering me 1500 louis and my liberty. They 
 counted out the money on the table for me to go away, any- 
 where I pleased, and tell them the address of Georges, my 
 master. I said that I did not know it. Citizen Bertrand sent 
 the officer of the Guard to bring a gunlock and a turnscrew to 
 crush my fingers. He had me tied, and he squeezed my ringers 
 as hard as he could. 
 
 " The Pk ESI dent. This is a new system that you are adopt- 
 ing. You are putting your master's lesson in the place of the 
 truth. 
 
 " PICOT. It is the truth; the officers of the Guard can tell 
 you so. 
 
 "The President. Not only did you make the declaration 
 of which I speak to you at the Prefecture of Police, but you made 
 the same before Real, the Councillor of State ; you persisted 
 before the Judge of Instruction. 
 
 14 Picot. I was afraid, after what I had suffered, that they 
 would begin again. I had been scorched at the fire, and my 
 fingers had been crushed." 
 
 This was not the first time that the consular police (I do not 
 venture to say consular justice) revived, in a criminal "instruc- 
 tion," the "preparatory question " abolished in 1780. At the 
 trial for the attempt of the 3rd Nivose, Saint-Re'jant's counsel 
 said, alluding to a letter which the accused had been made to 
 write in prison, " I will not speak of the tortures which have 
 been inflicted on each, because he has not spoken of them him- 
 self; but that letterwas extorted from him by culpable treachery." 
 Journal des Debats, 15th Germinal, year IX., p. 2. See also 
 the letter of Saint-Rejant to his sisters, in which he speaks of 
 the torture that had been inflicted upon him. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 245 
 
 examination of Picot, who, having nothing to gain or 
 lose after what he had said, continued to reply to the 
 questions that were put to him with the utmost dis- 
 respect. Over and over again he accused Thuriot of 
 having falsified several of his statements during the 
 instruction, and of having deceived him by promising 
 to correct several inaccuracies which he had noted 
 and complained of in his various examinations. 
 These accusations, which might not have been 
 entirely false, nor yet more than half true, had 
 the kind of authority for the spectators that attaches 
 to the words of a man who is condemned to death. 
 Their imagination was strongly excited by the scene 
 that had just taken place. 
 
 The court adjourned for an hour after the exami- 
 nation of Picot. This was no long interval of rest 
 for the judges, who were resolved to obey the Govern- 
 ment, after the assault they had sustained ; it was 
 sufficient to enable the spectators to give vent to 
 their feelings in murmurs and eager talk. 
 
 The witnesses called to depose against Couchery 
 appeared, and the long declaration that the police 
 had suggested to him was, in its turn, put to the test 
 of a man's shame and remorse. No sooner had Cou- 
 chery begun to speak than it was evident he intended 
 to repair, so far as he could without endangering 
 himself, the injury that his statements and the posi- 
 tive inaccuracies or ambiguous assertions which had 
 rendered him highly valuable to the police, must 
 have inflicted upon several of the accused. 
 
 The President, who was again alarmed by the 
 boldness with which the prisoners were retracting 
 their statements, at the peril of their lives, endeavoured 
 
246 The Last Days of the Constilate. 
 
 to stop Couchery by giving him to understand how 
 much to his interest it would be to adhere to h : 3 
 previous statements 
 
 When he came to the capital point of his declara- 
 tion, where he confessed to having seen Lajolais at 
 Paris in the course of the summer of year XL, 
 at which time Lajolais informed him that he had 
 come on behalf of Pichegru to ascertain whether 
 Moreau continued to be of the same " disposition " as 
 when David saw him, the President, as if to forestall 
 any denial or explanation of this assertion, was so im- 
 pudent, or so indiscreet, as to say to Couchery, " This 
 is indeed the truth ; you will not say the contrary." 
 Couchery, who was ta"ken aback by this timely warn- 
 ing, would probably have confirmed the statement 
 thus recalled to him, had not a strange and unex- 
 pected incident occurred. He was forced by Lajolais 
 to explain the statement, and so to rectify it that it 
 ceased to be grave and mysterious, and became quite 
 simple and insignificant. He called upon Couchery 
 to declare that the "disposition" of Moreau with regard 
 to Pichegru, of which he desired to be assured, was 
 only his friendly "disposition." In vain did the 
 President try to parry this blow, by reminding Lajo- 
 lais that when he was confronted with Couchery he 
 had not made any observation. Lajolais contented 
 himself with observing, pertinently, that his explana- 
 tion, although tardy, was none the less legitimate. 
 Nor did he stop there ; he declared that he had not 
 come from London to Paris to communicate with 
 Moreau on Pichegru's behalf; thus, the role of ambas- 
 sador, travelling between London and Paris, which 
 
1 
 
 Vie Last Days of the Consulate. 247 
 
 gave a suspicious look to the mutual relations of the 
 two generals, was suddenly reduced to its actual un- 
 importance. The conduct of Lajolais in denying in 
 public the falsehoods which he had authorized the 
 police to put down to his account,, was truly incon- 
 ceivable. He proclaimed his own infamy, and he 
 unmasked the perfidy and the secret manoeuvres of 
 the police, without any sort or semblance of advan- 
 tage to himself. 
 
 The President, overwhelmed by all these occur- 
 rences, which he had been unable to foresee, and knew 
 not how to remedy, and anxiously desirous to prop 
 up the edifice of the police, which was fast falling 
 to pieces on all sides, resorted to the most daring 
 effrontery, for want of skill. Each statement retracted 
 by Lajolais revealed an intentional falsehood recorded 
 by the police, and added a fresh proof of the justifi- 
 cation of Moreau ; this the President had to stop, 
 and he could devise no better means of doing so than 
 reminding Lajolais that Moreau had denounced him, 
 and had made him undergo eight months' imprison- 
 ment, to the ruin of his prospects and fortune. In a 
 case in which such an impropriety and outrage upon 
 justice had been the only one, this manner of calling 
 a man's resentment to the aid of his baseness, when 
 the latter had unexpectedly revoked its utterances, 
 would have sufficed to stigmatize the judge who 
 resorted to it in the case in question it was hardly 
 remarked. 
 
 Thus, from examination to examination, and from 
 accused to accused, did the President approach 
 Moreau and prepare to attack him. The plan of the 
 
248 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 trial had been to place him, as it were, in the centre 
 of the conspirators, 5 and to come down upon him 
 with all the proofs, all the declarations, all the avowals 
 of the accused who had spoken before him. This 
 plan seemed to be cleverly devised ; we have seen how 
 badly it worked. I shall now try to follow it to the 
 point at which the facts, as we have seen them occur, 
 will be completely confirmed by the result of those 
 measures that had been taken to conceal the truth for 
 ever. 
 
 Rolland's turn was now come ; this was the signal 
 that the victor of Hohenlinden was about to speak, and 
 every heart beat with anxiety, curiosity, and interest. 
 
 Since the first day of the trial all eyes had been 
 fixed on Moreau, and the calm serenity of his aspect 
 bad not been for a moment disturbed. The great 
 majority of the spectators had bestowed upon him 
 every mark of honour and interest which their respec- 
 tive positions allowed. Some of his friends, generals 
 who had seen him on the field of battle, were among 
 the crowd, and they had the courage to salute him with 
 gestures of admiration and sympathy. Even the very 
 men who were alleged to be his accomplices, and 
 betrayed by him, the men to whose party his fame 
 had been so fatal, all testified by their looks, by their 
 quick attention to every incident that concerned him, 
 a touching interest in his fate (on the part of some 
 of them this was a sublime sentiment), which not the 
 certainty of their own ruin could deaden or destroy. 
 
 s This was exactly what was done by the Government in 
 the prints that were sold in the streets. The portrait 
 of Moreau figured in the middle of the picture, surrounded 
 by portraits of the principal persons among the alleged con- 
 spirators. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 249 
 
 Rolland was examined. He repeated, without 
 variation, modification, or equivocation, all the most 
 grave and important portions of the declaration that 
 he had made before R&l. He repeated these in 
 identical terms, and conducted himself in all things 
 like a man entirely untouched by the contagious 
 remorse that had seized upon the others, and who, 
 having made up his mind to commit an infamous action, 
 had no notion of risking the loss of its fruits. " Have 
 you anything to say in answer to this declaration of 
 Rolland's?" said the President to Moreau. "Yes," 
 replied the latter, in a tone which implied the most 
 profound contempt for Rolland, " I have to say that 
 Rolland could hardly have induced me to do what 
 I had refused to Pichegru." 
 
 Then the President began to question Moreau upon 
 his last interview with Pichegru, and upon that which 
 he had with Rolland, which was the consequence, and, 
 so to speak, the complement of the former. For his 
 justification Moreau repeated the explanation which 
 he had already given in his former examination and 
 in his letter to Bonaparte, with certain details and 
 amplifications that did not change their substance, 
 and with firmness that lent them additional weight 
 in the opinion of the spectators. 
 
 A few minutes after, Lajolais reappeared upon the 
 scene, and put the climax to the embarrassment of the 
 judges and the singularity of his own behaviour, both 
 by the amplifications and the retractations we have al- 
 ready seen him make, or evince a disposition to make. 
 
 " You have stated," began the President, " that you 
 knew from the Abbe David of the reconciliation of 
 Pichegru and Moreau." " I did not know of it from 
 
250 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 the Abbe David," replied Lajolais. " Who told you 
 of it, then ? " " Fifty people in Paris." This was a 
 retractation which, without being very serious in 
 reality, was inconvenient for the President, because it 
 was unforeseen. Still Lajolais did not deserve the 
 indignation of the judges who were so devoted to the 
 Government simply for this, for he was merely cor- 
 recting a slip made in his first examination before 
 the police, or rather, a slip of the police themselves. 
 David was there, and he could have stated, in the 
 presence of the spectators and the judges, that at the 
 time when Lajolais claimed to have heard from him 
 of the reconciliation between Moreau and Pichegni, 
 he (David) was shut up in the Temple. 
 
 When the President came to the remarkable 
 passage in the declaration of Lajolais, in which he 
 said that Moreau had expressed to him his desire 
 to have an interview with Pichegru, and that he had 
 undertaken to bring it about, Lajolais denied that 
 Moreau had told him that he wished to have an 
 interview with Pichegru. He substituted the state- 
 ment that Moreau had only said it would give him 
 pleasure to see General Pichegru, and to know that 
 he was out of England. " Bear in mind," said the 
 President, "that this declaration is entirely your own, 
 and that you were not called upon to make it." 
 Lajolais replied, " I did not write it." He meant to 
 say that it had been dictated to him ; for, as a matter 
 of fact, it was written by his hand. 
 
 The retractation made by Lajolais in this instance 
 was so serious, and bore so strongly upon the root of 
 the matter, that the President was bound to do all in 
 his power to elude or ignore it ; while Moreau was 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 251 
 
 equally entitled to establish its truth, and have it 
 recorded in his favour. 
 
 The President then warned Lajolais, as plainly as 
 he could before the public, of the gravity and peril of 
 such a statement. " I am about to repeat to you what 
 you said : it was quite certainly you who said it ; 
 pay attention to what you said," he repeated several 
 times, as if to give Lajolais time to revert to his first 
 imposture. 
 
 Thus beset by the importunity of the Presi- 
 dent, and embarrassed by his self-contradiction, 
 Lajolais pretended that, being an Alsatian, and 
 speaking French badly, he had not realized the full 
 force of the expressions he had used, and that they 
 were not to be taken literally. " You know the 
 French language very well," answered the President, 
 and being resolved, no doubt, to put a stop to subse- 
 quent interpretations, he began again to read the de- 
 clarations. Lajolais, however, appeared to be deter- 
 mined to deprive the police of all the advantages they 
 had obtained from him, and to betray them to his 
 fellow-prisoners, after he had betrayed the latter to 
 the police. " I am going to state the meaning of 
 what I said," he asserted emphatically. The Presi- 
 dent wanted to interrupt him, and again prevent him 
 from speaking ; "but the interference of one of the 
 counsels for the defence, although received by the 
 President with ill-humour and rudeness that clearly 
 revealed his vexation, 6 enabled Lajolais to explain 
 definitely that he had improperly used the word 
 
 6 This counsel for the defence was Bellart, one of Moreau's. 
 Under the Restoration he became Procurator-General, and 
 conducted the trial of Marshal Ney. He died in 1826. 
 
252 The Last Days of the Consulate, 
 
 " interview " to designate the wish which Moreau had 
 expressed to see General Pichegru again. 
 
 The interview of Moreau with Pichegru and 
 Georges on the Boulevard de la Madeleine which had 
 been chiefly brought about by Lajolais, and first 
 revealed to the police by him, and which had come 
 to nought in the very presence of the parties con- 
 cerned, through an incident already related, was 
 also denied, to the great scandal of the judges and 
 the profound astonishment of the spectators, who, 
 for want of knowing what had passed, could not 
 make out what was true in the first declaration of 
 Lajolais, or reconcile it with what was equally true 
 in his retractation. All this portion of the pro- 
 ceedings must necessarily have seemed mysterious 
 the evidence and the deposition being at the same 
 time quite true and quite opposite, because the brief 
 incidents that would have reconciled them were 
 not admitted by any of those who were aware 
 of them, and could not be guessed by those who were 
 not. 
 
 It was not only his depositions against Moreau 
 that Lajolais modified in a way which simply did 
 away with them, and unmasked the atrocious scheme 
 of which they had formed a part; he reverted also 
 to such confessions as were dangerous only to Georges 
 and his party, thus seeking to repair partly, at the 
 peril of his life, the harm he had done them at the 
 expense of his honour. 
 
 During the rest of that hearing Moreau had no 
 longer to answer questions upon the fact of the 
 actual conspiracy ; it was his political conduct in year 
 V., at the time of Pichegru's treason, that was now 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 253 
 
 brought up. The President's questions placed him 
 in fact in the following dilemma : " Tichegru either 
 was a traitor in year V., or he has been falsely 
 accused of treachery. If you believed him innocent, 
 why did you then accuse him ? If you believed 
 him really guilty, why were you reconciled with him ?" 
 
 This was the argument that the Government had 
 caused to be used against Moreau from the time of 
 the general's arrest in all the pamphlets they had 
 ordered and paid for ; this was the argument inces- 
 santly repeated by the partisans and creatures of 
 Moreau's oppressor. It was not extraordinary that 
 it should be advanced by the President of the 
 tribunal. 
 
 It is easy to realize how bitter it must have been 
 to Moreau, and how strange he must have felt it, to 
 hear himself reproached with wrong-doing, which, 
 supposing it to have been as real as some of his 
 enemies appeared to believe it, the Directory only 
 that is to say the Government that> he had helped to 
 overturn had any right to resent. His first impulse 
 on finding himself called upon to justify his conduct 
 at that period was to express his indignation at the 
 pains that had been taken to rake the dust of the 
 Directory in order to find charges against him, and 
 to exclaim that since the period in question he had 
 won thirty battles for the Republic and saved two of 
 its armies ! This was the natural and legitimate 
 impulse of a man who knew well that his greatest 
 crime was that he had served his country without 
 personal ambition, and was reputed to be well able to 
 serve it again. All the spectators who were capable 
 of sympathy were moved to admiration, and deeply 
 
254 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 affected by this exclamation of Moreau's. His justi- 
 fication of the contrast of his conduct towards 
 Pichcgru in year V. and in year XII. impro 
 all present. He said that he might have been 
 mistaken, and even probably had been mistaken, 
 when in year V. he accused Pichegru of treason, 
 since his accomplices, who were tried on the same 
 charge by a court martial, had been acquitted. " l( 
 he be placed among the number of the proscribed of 
 Fructidor,' why, since they have all returned to their 
 country, and several of them arc in favour with the 
 present Government, should Pichcgru be excluded 
 from the same justice or the same indulgence ? if 
 he is to be considered as having borne arms against 
 France, he is not more guilty than all the chiefs of 
 Conde's army, whom I found everywhere about Paris, 
 on my return, just after I had been fighting them." 
 
 Morcuu knew well, indeed better than anybody, 
 that Pichcgru really had betrayed the cause of the 
 Republic in year V. ; but there was magnanimity in 
 appearing to cast a doubt upon his crime in the 
 presence of that same tribunal which had declared 
 that Pichcgru had died by his own hand ; for this 
 method of treating the matter was not necessary to 
 Moreau's defence. As for his famous answer to 
 Rolland : " that it would be necessary for the Consuls 
 and the Governor of Paris to disappear," on which 
 the President insisted so pertinaciously, he was 
 content with merely denying it, in the sense that was 
 imputed to it, on the grounds of its absurdity. "The 
 question is not whether it is absurd, but whether you 
 said it," observed the President. "As in the ten 
 years that I commanded armies," replied Moreau 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 255 
 
 proudly, " I have never done anything absurd, it will 
 be believed that I have not done this." 
 
 His noble manner of checking the question that 
 was so urgently put to him was at the same time a 
 sort of appeal to the confidence and the love of that 
 section of the public which in some degree repre- 
 sented the nation at this strange spectacle. A loud 
 murmur arose; this was the expression of their admi- 
 ration by those who felt how prudent they ought to 
 be in the manifestation of interest in Moreau. Some 
 who were more imprudent or more courageous 
 indulged in applause, but they were promptly 
 silenced by the order of the judge, and by cries of 
 " Silence ! " by the ushers. 
 
 At length the letter which Moreau had written on 
 the 17th Ventose to Bonaparte, then First Consul, 
 was brought forward, and the President endeavoured 
 to lead the general into a discussion of the half-admis- 
 sions contained in that letter, imprudently written in 
 a moment of weakness. " I do not imagine," answered 
 Moreau, " that a document which is justificatory 
 can be produced against me as a charge. The First 
 Consul is too magnanimous to have given up my 
 letter to the tribunal, if he had seen anything in it 
 capable of procuring my condemnation." 
 
 Everybody felt the force and the neatness of this 
 sarcastic remark. The President, who was tired out 
 by his zealous efforts and repeated failures, at length 
 forgot himself so far as to reproach Moreau with 
 having failed to denounce Pichegru ! He had already 
 addressed a similar reproach to Rolland ; but in his 
 case the taunt was only an ingratitude, in that of 
 Moreau it was an indiscretion, all the more imprudent 
 
256 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 and clumsy because its direct tendency was to 
 increase the public displeasure, already aroused by 
 the preceding disclosures. 7 
 
 We have now seen how little events had corre- 
 sponded, during this highly important sitting of the 
 tribunal, to the hopes of those for and by whom this 
 monstrous scheme had been concocted. What fol- 
 lowed was still more to the honour and glory of 
 Moreau, and displayed him under an aspect of nobi- 
 lity, dignity, and courage which was perhaps his 
 salvation. Had he succumbed in the struggle, it 
 would have adorned his illustrious memory and 
 placed his death among the number of the great 
 crimes by which tyranny has established itself and 
 reigned upon earth. 
 
 On the following day, nth Priarial the fourth 
 sitting the President opened the proceedings by 
 referring to two clauses of the law of the 3rd Bru- 
 mairc, by which the spectators of a trial before 
 judges were forbidden to give any outward signs of 
 approbation or disapprobation. A precaution of this 
 kind, taken to prevent the renewal of the applause, 
 which had been bestowed upon Moreau at the pre- 
 ceding sitting, was an indirect announcement that 
 the President was about to return to the charge 
 against the general ; also that in the interval between 
 the two sittings he had received fresh orders from the 
 Government to insist upon the questions which had 
 already been put to him, and also instructions to 
 repeat them to better purpose. 
 
 [Man?, not-.] "Add what must have been Bonnparte's 
 anger at the sensation created by the revelation of the use of 
 torture by the police." 
 
1 Jie Last Days of the Consulate. 257 
 
 In fact, he did immediately revert to all the charges 
 he had already brought against Moreau, striving to 
 put them more forcibly and speciously than before. 8 
 The result was even less satisfactory than on the pre- 
 vious occasion. Moreau's answers were given with 
 more pride, dignity, and appropriateness. He ven- 
 tured to lift a corner of the veil which hid the 
 manoeuvres of the police, whose aim and object had 
 been his arrest ; he made it plain that Pichegru had 
 not come from London spontaneously, that it had 
 been sought to draw him to Paris, and to make use 
 of him as a go-between, so as to attach him without 
 his knowledge to the cause of the Bourbons. He 
 held Rolland up to public contempt as necessarily 
 either sold Deforehand to the police, or willing to 
 purchase his own life at the peril of the lives of 
 others. 
 
 He revealed the partiality 9 with which Rolland 
 had been treated during his detention, entirely con- 
 trary to law and custom. He remarked that the 
 questions which had been put to Rolland resembled 
 an advocate's pleading rather than a judicial inter- 
 rogation, and he called attention to the most impor- 
 tant and curious circumstance of the examination ; 
 this was Real's urgency in apprising and even proving 
 
 8 When the President asked him how much his pay amounted 
 to, he answered, "40,000 francs," adding, " Do not, I beg, pat 
 my services and my pay in the balance." See " Proces," vol. v. 
 p. 7. 
 
 9 " M. Rolland only," said Moreau, " did not come to the 
 Temple; he was sent to the Abbaye to stay with one of his 
 intimate friends ; there he saw whomsoever he wished to see 
 he was at liberty to do so. I saw nobody but the gaolers. It 
 is certain that between M. Rolland's imprisonment and mine 
 there has been a great difference." See " Proces," vol. v. p. 26. 
 
 S 
 
258 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 to him that his relations with Pichegru and with 
 Georges were known to the police through a witness 
 whom he did not suspect. Moreau demanded that 
 this invisible witness, this mysterious personage from 
 whom the police derived their first information, should 
 be brought before the tribunal and the men whom he 
 had accused ; but the President merely replied that 
 the tribunal never heard police agents as witnesses. 
 
 This unexpected appeal, which went to the bottom 
 of the devices of the police, was a very remarkable 
 incident in the trial, and it forced the Government to 
 take a scandalous step, of which I shall have to speak 
 presently. 
 
 After Moreau had been examined by the President, 
 came the turn of David, that priestly adventurer 
 whom the police had tried to pass off as the primary 
 agent of the reconciliation between Pichegru and 
 Moreau, and consequently as one of the chief authors 
 of the conspiracy, whose moving principle, and, so 
 to speak, first act, was that reconciliation. David 
 defended himself with the presence of mind of a man 
 who was well versed in revolutionary intrigues, with 
 the confidence of one who thoroughly felt the ab- 
 surdity of the project of giving him a part in the 
 present conspiracy, and in a tone of decision which 
 conveyed some of the anger and insolence of an irri- 
 tated person. His defence maybe simply and briefly 
 summed up thus 1 there was nothing secret in anything 
 that he had done to bring the two generals together, 
 and there were at least three persons who had had 
 more to do with those proceedings than Moreau 
 himself, and had taken a greater interest in their 
 success. One of the three sat in the " Conservative 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 259 
 
 Senate," the second was a member of the Ministry, 
 and the third was chief of the staff of a force stationed 
 at Brest, and intended, as was said at the time, for a 
 descent upon the coast of Ireland. 1 
 
 The rest of the sitting was devoted to taking 
 evidence upon the cases of several among the accused 
 who were regarded, with a good deal of probability, 
 as direct agents of Georges Cadoudal. They were, 
 however, very obscure persons, and the charges 
 brought against them, even if they had been per- 
 fectly well founded, which was not the case, were not 
 sufficient to lead to their condemnation. Of the 
 number were Herve, 2 Le Noble, Rubin Lagriman- 
 diere, Deville, and Armand Gaillard, v/ho all agreed 
 in steadfastly denying the facts that were imputed to 
 them, and sustaining before the judges the character 
 they had ass. med and the part they had played 
 before the police. 
 
 Two of the accused deserve, however, a special 
 mention They are Roger and Coster Saint-Victor. 
 
 We must bear in mind that in addition to compli- 
 city with the conspirators on trial, Roger was accused 
 of being the author of the " infernal machine " of the 
 3rd Nivose. The police considered that they had a 
 superabundance of proof of these two accusations ; 
 they had four witnesses for each fact. 
 
 The first four witnesses appeared together, to attest 
 that, being in London, they had there known the two 
 men, Picot and Le Bourgeois, who were condemned 
 
 1 Barthelemy, General Dejean, and General Donzelot. 
 
 2 Herve, born at Rennes in 1743, had been a shoemaker in 
 the Queen's own regiment before the Revolution. He took 
 part in the civil war in Brittany, fled to England, and was at 
 Quiberon. He was acquitted. 
 
 S 2 
 
260 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 to death with Querclle by court-martial, and whose 
 death had been the signal for the police to raise a 
 cry and make their concerted movement against the 
 present conspirators. From Picot and Le Bourgeois, 
 who were shot in consequence of being denounced 
 by the police, they alleged that they had learned the 
 fact of Roger's having made the machine of the 3rd 
 Nivose, and that he was to make a second, to be used 
 for the same purpose as the first. Of all the scan- 
 dalous incidents in this strange trial, none was more 
 scandalous than this appearance of four persons 
 whose character as spies was of the vilest kind if there 
 be any distinction to draw between men of this 
 sort before a tribunal whose President listened 
 to their depositions with an air of solemnity, and 
 received them with eagerness, while they denounced 
 one of the accused on the testimony of two men who 
 were dead, sold by them to the police, and immolated 
 almost in the dark. And then, to put the finishing 
 touch to this exhibition of blind ignorance of public 
 opinion, or contempt alike for it and for justice, the 
 accusation founded upon so odious a pretext had 
 nothing to do with the offence for which Roger was 
 being tried. Tne indignation of the spectators at 
 this scandalous perversion of law and justice was 
 evident, and would have made itself loudly heard, 
 only that their fear was a still stronger feeling. It 
 was not two hours since the President had stated 
 that the tribunal was not permitted to receive the 
 depositions of police agents. 
 
 Roger met these accusations by a single plea in 
 defence. He declared that he had a declaration 
 (affidavit) to produce, drawn up by a notary, which 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 261 
 
 proved that on the 28th Nivose, year IX., he was at 
 Rennes ; and that on the 2nd of the same month, the 
 day before the explosion of the infernal machine at 
 Paris, he was likewise at Rennes, where he had seen 
 and conversed with the Prefect and the general com. 
 manding in the department. He informed the 
 judges that the document in question was in the 
 hands of the Director-General of Police. A few days 
 afterwards the judges condemned Roger, without 
 having taken any record of his plea, or demanded 
 cognizance of the justificatory proof which had been 
 notified to them. 
 
 With respect to the proof of Roger's direct com- 
 plicity in the present conspiracy, it must be remem- 
 bered that a deposition had been made by four 
 gendarmes placed as a guard over him, and that the 
 Instructing Judge had drawn up this deposition in 
 such a way as to make it appear that Roger had 
 confided to them his connection with the conspirators, 
 the part he had taken in their designs, and that he 
 had named Moreau, Pichegru, and Georges as the 
 chiefs of the conspiracy. These four gendarmes were 
 called to support their deposition ; the two first 
 modified and extenuated their statements so much 
 that they reduced them to almost total insignificance. 
 Nothing, indeed, was proved by them except the 
 treachery by which the depositions had been obtained, 
 and the faithlessness with which they had been 
 reported. 
 
 But the examination of the third gendarme brought 
 about a very strange scene and some unlooked-for 
 disclosures. When this man had repeated his declara- 
 tion in terms nearly equivalent to those employed in 
 
262 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 the written deposition, Roger cried out loudly, and 
 with passionate anger, " The accusations of this 
 man are false ; two days ago he came to beg my 
 pardon for them." Thereupon a vehement altercation 
 between Roger and Leroy, the gendarme, arose, with 
 the result that Leroy was proved to have in truth 
 asked forgiveness from Roger for having transformed 
 what had been nothing but an insignificant conversa- 
 tion, got up by the persons who repeated it, into a 
 serious and positive confidence. The man acknow- 
 ledged, in the face of the judges and the public, what 
 in his repentance he had already told Roger, namely, 
 that he had found his deposition falsified in the Act 
 of accusation. The fourth gendarme corrected his 
 statements just as the other three had done, so that 
 all the proofs arrayed against Roger were reduced 
 to nothing, and the police found their treachery 
 exposed, with great risk of losing the fruit of it as 
 well. 
 
 The examination of Coster Saint- Victor by the 
 President turned almost entirely upon his alleged 
 complicity with the authors of the attempt of the 
 3rd Nivose. As for his complicity in the present con- 
 spiracv, that was supported by evidence so futile that 
 had he been tried before an honest jury, it could never 
 have been proved against him, but it was treated 
 as if it established capital charges by a tribunal which 
 had become the instrument of an oppressive power, 
 and was as treacherous as it was absolute. The 
 defence of this unfortunate young man served only to 
 prove his innocence, and to bring out the fatality of 
 his destiny. The whole of his criminality, or at least 
 all that was proved of it, consisted in his having wished 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 263 
 
 to save Saint-Rejant, who had been condemned as 
 one of the chief culprits in the affair of the 3rd Nivose. 
 He hardly knew this man, and was not his accomplice. 
 In order to give him warning of his danger, and 
 of the police proceedings against him, Saint- Victor 
 addressed himself to a woman who had given shelter 
 to Saint-Rejant, and whose own interest it was that 
 be should not fail into the hands of the police. All 
 that Saint-Victor did, from a simple motive of 
 generosity and zeal for royalism, was imputed to him 
 as a proof of direct complicity with Saint-Rejant. 
 The woman to whom he had given warning of Saint- 
 Rejant's danger was arrested, with her young daughter, 
 and a declaration which implicated Saint-Victor in 
 the attempt of Saint-Rejant was torn from her by 
 threats. Seized with remorse for what she had done, 
 or driven wild by terror, this woman lost her reason, 
 and on returning to her home, on being dismissed by 
 the police, she threw herself out of a window, and was 
 killed on the spot. This tragic incident had occurred 
 three years previously, and it was the daughter of the 
 wretched woman who now repeated the statements 
 against Saint- Victor which had been proved to 
 demonstration to be false, and had reduced her 
 mother to despair, madness, and suicide. 
 
 With each answer made by the unfortunate Saint- 
 Victor, the general interest in him waxed warmer. 
 His demeanour was calm and self-possessed ; he 
 repelled the charges brought against him with firm- 
 ness combined with decorum, and the forms of respect 
 for the judges. 3 Only once did he yield to the in- 
 
 3 " I appeal not only to the Royalists whom I have com- 
 manded, but to the Republicans whom I have fought, and I 
 
264 TJie Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 dignation that filled his soul ; this was when he heard 
 the four spies who had done to death Picot and Le 
 Bourgeois, use those two victims as the medium of 
 accusation against Roger, who had been his friend 
 from childhood. 
 
 It was remarked that during this and the preceding 
 hearing, some of the judges had addressed special 
 questions to several of the accused. The nature and 
 spirit of these questions proved that the tribunal was 
 at this point divided into two opposite parties. It 
 was very likely that each of these had partially 
 penetrated the secret of the matter before them, and 
 at least vaguely discerned how much of this con- 
 spiracy really appertained to the interests, the enmity, 
 and the projects of the conspirators, and what the 
 Government had done to expand and direct those 
 projects, to guide them, and by astute contrivance 
 turn them to its own profit. The one party ventured 
 to ask questions which tended to confirm their 
 suspicions of the secret part which the Government 
 had taken in the conspiracy ; the other, on the con- 
 trary, being eager to find those guilty whom the 
 Government desired to condemn, so directed their 
 questions as to lead the accused into admitting certain 
 particulars which would compromise them, but which 
 the police had failed to prove in the course of the 
 trial, notwithstanding the carefully arranged evidence. 
 This disposition was particularly noticeable with 
 respect to Moreau ; it was evident, when the point to 
 
 know no one who will reproach me with having behaved ill. 
 Look at me ; I hue not the face of an assassin ; I have not the 
 bearing of a man who has to reproach himself with any crime." 
 " Proces," vol. v. p. 209. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate, 265 
 
 be cleared up was the first rendezvous of Pichegru 
 and Georges with Moreau on the Boulevard de la 
 Madeleine, and the famous conference of the latter 
 with Rolland. Bourguignon distinguished himself 
 especially by the skill with which he put captious 
 questions to Moreau/ I name him because, of all the 
 judges of the tribunal, he was the best able to 
 divine the mystery of iniquity in which he was 
 called upon to act as a judge. It was not two years 
 since he had carried off a prize, offered by the 
 National Institute, for the best essay upon the 
 advantages of the jury system and its better or- 
 ganization. 5 
 
 Such were the most marked peculiarities of this 
 sitting. I have not mentioned some very positive 
 retractations made by witnesses, because they related 
 to facts of little importance in themselves, and were 
 of a kind to which the spectators had become 
 accustomed very early in the trial, indeed from the 
 first day. 
 
 Accordingly as these things took place within the 
 narrow precincts of the tribunal, they were reported 
 throughout Paris ; and public curiosity, kept constantly 
 on the alert by the fresh revelations that were made 
 daily, was entirely absorbed in the news of the 
 trial. Day by day the general interest in Moreau 
 became keener, deeper, and more plainly manifested. 
 
 * Bourguignon-Dumolard, born at Grenoble on the 20th of 
 March, 1760. He was Minister of Police from the 23rd of June 
 until the 20th of July, 1799, and was replaced by Fouche. He 
 afterwards became a judge of the Criminal Tribunal in Paris, 
 and then a judge of the Special Tribunal. He was the author 
 of several works on law. 
 
 5 His three * Memoires sur les Moyens de perfectionner en 
 France l'lnstitution du Jury " appeared between 1802 and 1803. 
 
266 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 The approaches to the tribunal were more and more 
 crowded, and the people devoured with silent avidity 
 all the details that were more freely circulated 
 where the retailers could escape the eyes of the 
 police. 
 
 On the other hand, the police neglected no means 
 either of preventing the details of the trial getting 
 out to the public, or of lessening the effect of what 
 they could not succeed in concealing. The first 
 measure that had been taken fiom the opening of 
 the proceedings was the issuing of a prohibition to 
 all the journals to publish any reports except those 
 furnished by the police authorities. Then an agent 
 was placed in the body of the court with orders to 
 take notes of the pleadings and the progress of the 
 trial ; these notes were submitted to the Director- 
 General of Police, and a copy was forwarded to 
 each newspaper, so that the twelve or fifteen which 
 had survived the 1 8th Brumaire all contained the 
 same account of the same event. It is hardly neces- 
 sary to say that in these uniform bulletins, drawn up 
 by authority of the Superior Police and under their 
 eyes, the facts were distorted in the strangest way ; 
 that the most scandalous incidents of the trial were 
 either travestied with the utmost impudence, or passed 
 over in silence; that the accused were treated with 
 irony and insolence in proportion to the interest with 
 which they had inspired the public, some by their 
 innocence, others by their courage and firmness. So 
 far was this faithlessness carried, that several of the 
 accused were forced to address complaints and pro- 
 tests to the tribunal, of course vainly, and with the 
 sole effect of recording the extent of the scandal that 
 
The Last -Days of the Consulate. 267 
 
 gave rise to them, and the irresponsible power of its 
 authors. The President replied coldly that justice 
 had nothing to do with the newspapers, and could not 
 undertake to rectify their errors. 
 
 These precautions, however, could only impose upon 
 the distant parts of the country ; the effect they pro- 
 duced upon the Parisians was to strengthen their incre- 
 dulity, and to lend additional credit to the testimony 
 of those who had been present at the trial, and who 
 reported what they saw and heard there, adding their 
 uspicions and conjectures concerning all that they 
 could only surmise from appearances. 
 
 The greater the uneasiness and uncertainty that 
 prevailed respecting the fate of Moreau, the stronger 
 was the general desire to divine it, and the more it 
 occupied the public mind. No one doubted that the 
 Government had the power to condemn him, but it 
 was the opinion of many that they would, not push 
 things to that extremity, after all that had come to 
 light of the intriguer which had preceded and followed 
 his arrest. Others, on the contrary, believed him to 
 be all the more inevitably lost because of the clear- 
 ness with which his innocence was coming out ; pre- 
 suming, from the character of his oppressor, that he 
 would consider it more to his convenience to con- 
 summate an injustice which had become evident, than 
 to allow his victim to live in the enjoyment of the 
 respect and honour which persecution will always 
 secure to those who suffer from it, even on the part 
 of the most perverted and corrupt. 6 
 
 6 [Marg. note.] ''The part taken by Murat in this matter, 
 and the sort of personal interest which he had in the condem- 
 nation of Moreau, deserve to be recorded. He attended several 
 
268 The Last Days of tlie Consulate. 
 
 Another rumour was in brisk circulation about this 
 time, and occupied the public mind all the more 
 because it did not, like the former ones, arise from 
 private sources, but was purposely spread and kept 
 up by the agents of the supreme authority. This 
 rumour announced that the Emperor would pardon 
 Moreau, if he should be condemned, and its purpose 
 was, no doubt, to lessen the interest of the public in 
 his fate, by dispelling the idea of his danger. 
 
 The family^ and friends of Moreau had, however, 
 cause for keen and constant anxiety ; for theirs 
 was founded not only upon a more immediate 
 and personal interest in Moreau,. but upon a more 
 positive knowledge of his position and the real inten- 
 tions of his enemies. The result of the few attempts 
 which they had ventured to make on his behalf must 
 have increased rather than allayed their fears. All 
 that had been learned of the leanings of the judges 
 showed that the majority of them sided with the 
 Government. Appearances pointed to the intention 
 of forming a party to save Moreau by main force ; 
 but those appearances, which a few days later assumed 
 a more serious form, as I shall have occasion to 
 relate, were rather indicative of the gravity of the 
 danger than a remedy for it. Things were in this 
 
 sittings of the tribunal, and slept, it is said, at the Palais on 
 the night of the judgment. Had he not a quarrel with Le- 
 courbc or Dcssoles ? A fresh note, which is not in the same 
 handwriting, adds that Murat's quarrel was with Macdonald. 
 " He refused to tight ; he did more, he went and told Bona- 
 parte.'' 
 
 Lecourbc, who had served under Moreau in the campaign 
 of 1800. took a decided stand in the affair, and on several days 
 accompanied the general's wife to the court. General Dcssoles 
 had also served under Moreau. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 269 
 
 position when Moreau's wife resolved, although with 
 great reluctance, to make a visit to Madame Bona- 
 parte, who for the last ten days had been called " Her 
 Imperial Majesty." She clearly foresaw that her visit 
 would be useless, resolved, as she was, to say nothing 
 unworthy of the noble character which her heroic 
 husband had displayed before the judges, to speak 
 only of justice, and not to invoke mercy. 
 
 The new Empress, who preserved the womanly 
 virtue of compassion for the misfortunes of others, 
 received Madame Moreau with much affability, and 
 many demonstrations of kindness. She expressed 
 her regret that a step which, as she gave her visitor 
 to understand, might have been efficacious, had it 
 been taken earlier, had been put off for so long. 
 This was the sole result of the visit. Madame 
 Moreau did not speak to Bonaparte ; but, if I remem- 
 ber rightly, she received an answer through a third 
 person to the effect that it was too late for any one 
 to come and talk to him about Moreau. He was 
 talked to about Moreau, however ; that is quite certain. 
 There were persons who, whether impelled to do so by 
 secret interest in Moreau, or by sincere zeal for the 
 new Emperor, leading them to fear the chances of a 
 trial which seemed to be of ill augury to him, ven- 
 tured to counsel him to interrupt the proceedings, 
 send Moreau to his home before his innocence was 
 more incontrovertibly established, and pardon all 
 the other "conspirators," especially Georges Cadou- 
 dal, precisely because he was the one among them 
 whose condemnation he might most easily procure, 
 without appearing to commit an injustice. 
 
 Bonaparte answered only by feigning to doubt that 
 
270 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 it would be possible, or at least proper, to take 
 persons out of the hands of the judges after they had 
 once been committed into them. Nevertheless, he 
 did n<>t absolutely reject the idea of granting a 
 pardon to Moreau, should he be condemned ; but 
 with respect to Georges and his accomplices, he 
 kept silence. 
 
 In the midst of all these rumours, well or ill founded, 
 the Criminal Tribunal was proceeding rapidly with 
 the trial of the conspirators. On the 12th Prairial 
 fourteen prisoners were examined. Among this 
 number was Joyant, aide-de-camp to Georges, and 
 the man to whom the police attached most importance 
 next to him. Every movement of Joyant had been 
 watched by spies, and his former relations with Fres- 
 nieres, Moreau's secretary, had been the occasion of 
 some of the grievances imputed to the latter. 
 
 Joy ant's conduct before the judges seemed to be 
 modelled on that of Georges Cadoudal. He was 
 accused q( having joined in the plot of the 3rd 
 Nivose, and most of the questions put to him turned 
 upon this charge. He confined his reply to a formal 
 denial of the offence, and declared that he would not 
 answer in detail to any of the charges brought against 
 him with respect to it, until he had been apprised 
 that a special indictment had been drawn up against 
 him on that point. As regarded his complicity in the 
 present conspiracy, it was proved that he had at his 
 disposal considerable sums of money, and that he had 
 distributed portions of those sums among certain 
 persons who were political " suspects," while he had 
 sent other portions into Brittany to men noted by 
 the police as enemies of the Government, who still 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 271 
 
 cherished a hope of renewing the civil war in the west 
 in favour of the Bourbons. He steadily refused to 
 name any of the persons wi*h whom he had been 
 connected, even in matters altogether apart from a 
 " conspiracy," and he was one of those among the 
 accused who dwelt, with the utmost irony, and in the 
 most formal manner, upon the singularity of their 
 being prosecuted for having wished to overturn the 
 Republican Government, by a man who had himself 
 just destroyed it, and made himself hereditary emperor 
 of the nation. 
 
 Datry and Burban, who had been arrested with 
 Joyant, denied everything, as he had done, and the 
 proofs of their complicity were not so strong. It was 
 proved in the course of the examination that they 
 had been horribly ill-used when they were arrested at 
 a house in which they were hiding, and that they 
 had offered no resistance to the violence with which 
 they were assailed. 7 
 
 Three others, who had been arrested together, were 
 examined in succession. The most important fact in 
 the admissions that had been extracted from them 
 by threats and torture, was that the money found 
 
 7 On the 4th Germinal an inspector and a commissary of 
 police, accompanied by six gendarmes, went to the Rue Jean- 
 Robert (now included in the Rue des Grevilliers)to search a house 
 occupied by a married couple named Dabuisson. They had 
 searched the premises in vain from top to bottom, when they 
 came by chance on a hiding-place in which Joyant, Datry, and 
 Burban were concealed. In order to make ihem come out, the 
 gendarmes fired several pistol-shots, which attracted an immense 
 crowd. The incidents of this arrest gave rise to a long discus- 
 sion. Dabuisson, his wife, and Spin, a carpenter, who had 
 contrived the hiding-place, were arrested and tried ; but they 
 were acquitted. See " Proces," vol. i. p. 275 ; vol. iii. p. 282 ; 
 vol vi. p. 184. 
 
272 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 upon them had been distributed amon^ them by 
 the English Government when they left England for 
 France. They retracted this statement before the 
 judges, or rather, they corrected the duplicity with 
 which the police had drawn up the report of their 
 answers, by declaring that they had not received 
 money from the English Government, and that they 
 did not know whether the money given to them did, 
 or did not, come from that source. 
 
 Historical impartiality obliges me to pause at the 
 examination of two prisoners who had played only 
 a subordinate part among those connected with 
 Georges, and who were probably not even in that 
 chief's secret. These were Troche and his son. (They 
 were subsequently acquitted.) The latter had gone to 
 England with an agent of Georges, and he returned 
 shortly afterwards with all the accused who had 
 iormed the first landing party discovered by the 
 police. As he was born on the coast of Normandy, 
 and possessed information respecting persons and 
 localities, he had been very useful in the landing, and 
 so soon as the passengers had been safely deposited 
 upon land, the young .man's father came to his aid in 
 procuring for them every kind of service that could 
 be required by persons who wanted to get into Paris 
 without being found out by the public authorities. 
 
 The proceedings of the party who had landed first, 
 from the moment they set foot on the shore to that of 
 their arrival in the suburbs of Paris, were substantiated 
 by proofs which would have sufficed to procure their 
 conviction by a jury ; and all the circumstances of the 
 journey revealed hostile intentions towards the Govern- 
 ment on the part of the travellers. The precautions 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 273 
 
 taken for disembarking by night at a desert place on 
 the coast, the concealment on reaching land, the 
 continuance of the journey by night only, the halt at 
 refuges secured beforehand, and the assumption of 
 false names, all indicated men to whom it was of the 
 utmost moment to escape the vigilance of the police. 
 The names of these men, their political character, 
 their well-known devotion to the cause of the Bour- 
 bons, the conjuncture which they had chosen for 
 coming to France, formed a series of presumptions 
 against them of great gravity and probability, 
 approaching to certainty. It is true that these pre- 
 sumptions rested only upon six or seven of the 
 accused, among whom Georges, Joyant, and Armand 
 Polignac were the only ones who were, so to speak, 
 suspected beforehand by the Government. But it 
 was also proved that Georges had come to Pichegru 
 immediately on the latter's landing, and that cir- 
 cumstance confirmed the hostile character of the 
 intentions of those who had landed first. The least 
 suspicious of Governments might have regarded such 
 a coincidence of events as the preliminary movement 
 of a conspiracy, provided always that those events 
 had not been either provoked or seconded by the 
 Government itself, with a secret object, and by a 
 system of profound and astute perfidy. The part of 
 the proceeding which established the facts now in 
 question, and the result of the discussion that took 
 place before the judges, did then prove clearly that 
 Georges and several of those who were accused with 
 him had come to France with the intention of 
 attacking the Consular Government, or at least the 
 Government of Bonaparte, under whatsoever name it 
 
 T 
 
274 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 might be perpetuated, and the proofs did not even 
 require to be confirmed by the vague and general 
 avowal of their designs made by Georges and some 
 of their accomplices. 
 
 No surprise will be excited by the certainty of the 
 information in the possession of the police with 
 respect to everything concerning the landing, Georges 
 Cadoudal's journey to Paris, and the apparent 
 concert between that journey and Pichegru's, if we 
 bear in mind that Querelle was among the first 
 landing party, and that Pichegru was accompanied by 
 Lajolais. It is not so easy to understand why the 
 police should have resorted to cruelty and treachery 
 at a stage of the proceedings in which neither 
 was necessaiy. The trial exposed the snare that had 
 been laid for the woman Monnier. One Hyvonnet 
 had, without knowing Georges, given him and a 
 few of his companions shelter for two nights. 
 He was tortured in order to force a confession of 
 complicity from him. The police were punished for 
 this violation of humanity and law : it was not kept 
 secret. 
 
 When the President had concluded his examination 
 of Hyvonnet, Picot, who had nothing more to gain 
 or lose, and who knew that Hyvonnet had been 
 tortured, cried out, " Let that man tell how he has 
 been questioned ; let him show his hands ! " 8 
 
 8 " Let him tell what he was made to suffer before he recog- 
 nized anybody. . . 1 will have him tell in what manner he was 
 questioned." (" Proces," vol. vi p. 1 12.) In the report sent to 
 the newspapers we read, M Picot invited the President to make 
 the witness explain the means which, as he asserts, were em- 
 ployed to bring him to the avowals he makes to-day. The 
 incident had no result." {Journal de Paris> 14th Prairial, year 
 ML, p. 1668.) 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 275 
 
 On the 13th, the whole day was taken up with the 
 examination of the accused. I shall not try to give 
 an idea of that sitting, at which the most obscure 
 among the accused were dealt with. There was 
 nothing to prove that any of them had any knowledge 
 of the intentions of the principal persons ; it was, 
 indeed, proved that most of them knew those persons 
 under false names only. So that there would have been, 
 nothing remarkable in the events of the day, had it 
 not been for the complaints of brutal treatment made 
 by the accused. Horror was felt by all when Denise 
 Lamoine, a girl of fifteen, against whom there was not 
 the slightest evidence of complicity, and whose sole 
 part in the trial was that of a witness, revealed before 
 the judges, the prisoners, and the public, that she had 
 been thrown into a dungeon, and laden with chains. 
 She was hardly able to stand, and her feet were still 
 sore from the pressure of the irons. One dramatic 
 incident marked this sitting ; it was the presence of 
 Captain Wright," the commander of the vessel in which 
 Georges and Pichegru had come to France. By a 
 
 9 John Wesley Wright's life was an adventurous one. He 
 had been taken with the famous Commodore Sidney Smith at 
 the mouth of the Seine in April, 1796, and confined with him in 
 the Temple The two prisoners made their escape, and John 
 Wesley Wright went to serve under Smith in Egypt. In 1803 
 and 1804 successively he landed Georges, Pichegru, and other 
 confederates at the foot of the cliff of Bivelle. About the 10th of 
 May, 1804, three weeks before the opening of the trial, he was 
 taken, after a sharp right with the corvette which he com- 
 manded, off the coast of Morbihan, and recognized at Vannes 
 by Brigadier-General Jullien, who had seen him in Egypt. He 
 was sent to Paris. When he appeared before the tribunal, he 
 was again a prisoner in the Temple, and as he was wounded, the 
 President ordered him to sit during his examination. His end 
 was tragic. The capitulation of Mack affected him so deeply 
 that he cut his throat on the 27th of October, 1805. See the 
 Moniieur of the 30th Floreal, year XII. 
 
276 The Last Days of the Consulate* 
 
 strange chance his ship had been wrecked on the 
 coast of France during the " instruction " of the case 
 against the accused. He was taken prisoner, identi- 
 fied, and sent to Paris. It was thought that his 
 presence would produce a great effect, and serve to 
 prove the complicity of the British Government with 
 men who had been brought to France in an English 
 ship, and by an officer of the English fleet. Wright 
 declared with pride and decision, which the President 
 did not even try to overbear, that he was bound to 
 give an account of his conduct to his own Government 
 only, and that to all questions put to him he would 
 answer nothing, claiming the observance of the laws 
 of war towards prisoners. The only thing he said 
 and this he certainly was not asked to say was that 
 the police had threatened to have him brought before 
 a court martial and shot, if he refused to make the 
 admissions required of him. 
 
 At this stage, the trial presents itself under a new 
 aspect. All the accusations had been heard and 
 discussed, and the manner in which this had been 
 done, the violence and falsehood to which the police 
 had resorted in order to make the conspiracy, which 
 they pretended to have merely discovered, appear 
 more widespread and dangerous, promised the accused 
 but little latitude for their defence. 
 
 The next stage in the proceedings was the hearing 
 of witnesses for the defence. Twtlve were heard at 
 the sitting of the 14th. The only evidence for the 
 defence worth quoting was that of the Abbe Sicard 
 in favour of the Abbe David, his intimate friend. He 
 deposed before the judges that he had been acquainted 
 with all the steps taken by David to bring about the 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 277 
 
 reconciliation of Moreau with Pichegru, and with all 
 the correspondence which had ensued upon the 
 project, and that in all he had known and read, he 
 had never discerned any intention beyond that of 
 bringing together again two men who had long been 
 friends, but without founding any hope or any political 
 scheme upon their reconciliation. The other witnesses, 
 who spoke in favour of some of the obscure prisoners 
 only, gave information of importance. 
 
 Perhaps it would not have been extraordinary that 
 the principal persons among the accused, men who 
 had been proclaimed to be "brigands" beforehand, 
 should have found no witnesses in their favour ; 
 perhaps, also, it was to be presumed that men 
 who did not deceive themselves as to their fate, 
 and felt that their salvation depended less upon 
 the convictions of their judges than upon the will 
 of their enemy, would have scorned the vain resource 
 of demanding that witnesses who could not save 
 them from a condemnation which was a foregone 
 conclusion, should be heard in their favour. But this 
 was not so ; it seemed as though these men regarded 
 it as a duty to resort to all the forms by which the lives 
 of accused persons are protected only to make their 
 death appear more tragic. Almost all of them called 
 witnesses for the defence, on more or less grave facts 
 among those with which they were charged, and by a 
 striking singularity the most notable of the accused 
 called men who were high in dignity and in favour 
 with Bonaparte as witnesses for them. 1 
 
 Georges invoked the testimony of Fouche and one 
 
 1 [Marg. note.] " One of them was the chief weaver of this 
 web. r I- ouche is meant. 
 
278 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 of the principal agents of the Ministry of Police, to 
 prove that Picot, who had been shot with Le Bour- 
 geois, and was represented as an emissary of 
 Cadoudal's, had undertaken to assassinate him, and 
 had obtained pardon the first time on that condition 
 only. David had summoned Barthelemy the senator 
 and Generals Donzelot, Dejean, and Macdonald to 
 depose to the correspondence maintained by him 
 with Pichegru, with which they were acquainted. 
 In short, thirty witnesses for the defence were sum- 
 moned to appear before the tribunal, or rather, were 
 named by the accused to be summoned. 
 
 Not one of them appeared. Some presented 
 themselves at the tribunal several days in succession, 
 and could not get themselves admitted to make 
 their depositions. Some were distinctly refused on 
 the part of the President, others were dismissed 
 under pretexts which left no doubt about the pre- 
 determination not to hear them. The scandal was 
 greater and more audacious in the case of those 
 witnesses who filled Government posts. They were 
 forbidden by the Emperor, or on his behalf, to obey 
 the summons sent to them. Some did not attempt 
 to assign any pretext for this outrage upon justice 
 and humanity. Others excused themselves for not 
 responding to the summons of the tribunal. 
 Barthelemy was among the latter ; the letter which 
 he wrote on the subject was read aloud in court. 
 He contented himself by saying with simplicity 
 {uaivct(?) y upon which I shall not offer any comment, 
 that the obligation he was under of going to 
 the court at Saini Cloud prevented his attending the 
 court. Thus did this man, whose mean cowardice 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 279 
 
 condemned him to a continual sacrifice of his 
 affections and his political opinions, expiate the crime 
 against Bonaparte of having interested himself in the 
 fate of General Pichegru at a time when no one could 
 have foreseen that the general would be inscribed 
 upon a list of "brigands" and assassinated in a 
 dungeon by those who had placed his name upon 
 that list. 
 
 Moreau also intended to call personages highly 
 placed in the imperial Constitution as witnesses on 
 his behalf. Above all his intention was to have it 
 clearly proved that previously to the 18th Brumairc 
 the members of the Directory had proposed to him 
 that he should place himself at the head of a party 
 which desired reform in things and persons, and 
 should accept a post equivalent to that of Dictator. 
 It is evident that such a means of justification was 
 too indirect and too distant to be of real utility to 
 Moreau ; it would not even have proved his 
 refusal of the dictatorship to be inspired by love 
 of his country and of public liberty, since a short 
 time afterwards he had consented to act as the 
 subordinate auxiliary of Bonaparte when he over- 
 turned the Constitution of year III. But the inci- 
 dent which Moreau wanted to bring about would at 
 least have been curious. 
 
 It is asserted that Moreau's family had Sieyes 
 personally asked whether he would consent to appear 
 before the tribunal, to declare that he had proposed 
 a dictatorship to Moreau, and that the latter had 
 refused. Sieyes answered that he would not attest 
 any such fact. The fact was, however, wc'l esta- 
 blished, and it is difficult to conceive that Sieyes 
 
280 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 should have preferred to deny the truth, instead of 
 simply waiting for the imperial order that would 
 save him from the obligation of telling it. This 
 political occasion is the only one on which Sieves 
 emerges into sight, after the famous day on which he 
 supported with his utmost eloquence the Senatus- 
 consultum by which one hundred and thirty persons 
 were condemned to transportation as authors of the 
 attempt of the 3rd Nivose. 
 
 The precautions for the abridgement of the evidence 
 of witnesses for the defence were so effectual, that the 
 hearing of it occupied a few minutes only, and now 
 the moment had come for Gerard, the " Proeureur 
 Imperial," to speak, and state his conclusions. 
 
 That was a solemn moment for the accused, for the 
 public, and for the judges. The imperial functionary 
 opened his speech with political remarks and a 
 diatribe against the House ot Bourbon, enunciated 
 with inflated pomposity which would have been 
 merely ridiculous in the mouth of a rhetorician, but 
 was odious in that of a magistrate whose duty it 
 was to present the facts in all the simplicity and 
 precision of truth. He placed in magnificent con- 
 trast the destiny of the ancient reigning dynasty of 
 France, with that of the new imperial dynasty, 
 pointing to the fall of the one as the result of its cor- 
 ruption and decrepitude, magnifying the creation of 
 the other as the fruit of the heroism of its founder, 
 and the result of the exercise of the national 
 will. With even greater violence than in the act of 
 accusation he imputed the present conspiracy to the 
 English Government, adding only that the real aim 
 of that Government in conspiring against France 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 281 
 
 had been entirely to destroy and devastate the 
 country, so that it should no longer be a rival to 
 the commerce and a counterpoise to the ambition 
 of England, and that the restoration of the Bourbons 
 was but a pretext for its machinations. 
 
 He took it for granted that the judges were so 
 convinced of the reality of the conspiracy, that he 
 was absolutely bound not to dwell upon the proofs 
 of it, for fear, as he said, of appearing to think that 
 they could have a doubt, or that the evidence 
 presented anything of the nature of a problem. 
 
 Instead of discussing in detail the part which each 
 of the accused had taken in the conspiracy, he 
 was satisfied with dividing them into classes, and 
 examining the kind and degree of offence committed 
 by each class. In the act of accusation he had 
 defined only three classes, this time he instituted a 
 new subdivision, and made out five classes of con- 
 spirators. 
 
 The substance of his speech was of a similar kind. 
 No fresh proofs of the conspiracy were added to the 
 first ; he did not appear to have tried to present the 
 former in a new light. He merely gave a more 
 positive tone to his assertions, and made his 
 language stronger and more precise; the effect 
 was that the pretence of the whole affair was made 
 more glaring than before, and its falsehood more 
 revolting. For, instead of modifying those assertions 
 of the act of accusation which had been manifestly 
 disproved in the course of the trial, he repeated 
 them with additional emphasis. For example, it 
 was still Lajolais who, going several times to London 
 in the capacity of Moreau's ambassador, had 
 
282 The Last Days of the Consitlate. 
 
 arranged for the arrival of Georges Cadoudal in 
 France ; it was still Moreau who had sought Pichegru 
 in London by deputy. Not only did he persist 
 in saying that Moreau and Georges had met upon 
 the Boulevard de la Madeleine, but he again affirmed, 
 more positively than ever, that they had conferred 
 together, and depicted the effect which their con- 
 ference had produced upon their minds. In short 
 it had been of no avail to any of the accused, that 
 they had cleared themselves, more or less com- 
 pletely, from the charges brought against them ; the 
 accusations were, so to speak, cast in a mould 
 of iron, and could be neither revoked, modified, 
 or re-formed upon better information and more 
 favourable appearances. Lastly, the Procureur 
 displayed the utmost confidence in the mental 
 attitude of the judges, placing before them the 
 decision which they were about to form as an act 
 whose political consequences would secure the 
 destiny and the welfare, not only of France, but of 
 Europe. "Attentive Europe," said he, M will recog- 
 nize in it a monument of wisdom which history 
 will transmit to posterity." After that, he con- 
 cluded by demanding the penalty of death against 
 all the accused, with the exception of four of the 
 most obscure ; to those the police could afford to 
 allow justice or clemency to be shown. 
 
 This summing-up produced a terrible impression 
 upon the spectators, and that impression spread 
 rapidly throughout Paris. It was believed, rightly, 
 that the Government had spoken by the voice 
 of tl e Procureur, and it was supposed that this 
 preliminary utterance gave the measure of the 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 2%$ 
 
 imperial wrath against the accused. There was 
 some foundation for this feeling, but the public did 
 not reflect that the Emperor was demanding so many 
 victims in order to get the credit of clemency 
 towards some of them ; nor was it known that 
 several of the judges were resolved to be guided by 
 the voice of conscience only. 
 
 The time had now come for the counsel for the 
 accused to speak in their defence. The advocates 
 were fatigued by the length of the proceedings ; they 
 had hardly had time to prepare their defence, having 
 expended so much in endeavouring to procure 
 materials, which they were refused, and they were 
 taken by surprise by the summing-up of the Pro- 
 cureur Imperial, by which a much greater number of 
 the accused were threatened than they had expected. 
 Under these circumstances, the counsel for the 
 defence Dominanget, who was to defend Georges, 
 acting as their spokesman requested that the sitting 
 might be adjourned until the following day so as to 
 give them time to recruit their energies and prepare 
 their argument. They were granted a delay of two 
 hours, but were then obliged to speak. 
 
 Under such circumstances, the part played by the 
 counsel for the defence was at once brilliant and 
 perilous. They became to some extent direct 
 actors in this event, and, in that capacity, objects of 
 keen curiosity to the public. It was felt only too 
 surely that their efforts would not avail to save the 
 life of the accused ; but to prove their innocence, and 
 to confer the tragic honours of oppression upon their 
 fate was to do much. 
 
 The pleadings for the defence lasted for nearly six 
 
284 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 whole days, from the 14th to the 19th Prairial. This 
 was not much time to be given to the defence of 
 so large a number of accused persons, but it was a 
 great deal in the eyes of the Government ; for the 
 prolongation of the case meant proportional un- 
 certainty of the result. A few words will suffice to 
 give a general idea of the plan of defence with which 
 the advocates met the indictment. The counsel for 
 the most important of the accused, those towards 
 whom the intentions of the Government were quite 
 unmistakable, denied the reality of the conspiracy, 
 and applied themselves to proving that the offence 
 imputed to their clients did not combine those 
 characteristics which distinguish a conspiracy 
 against a Government from all other crime. They 
 endeavoured to show that the projects of the most 
 deeply incriminated prisoners amounted simply to 
 a thought, a mere idea, lacking several of the 
 conditions necessary to put it in action, and that it 
 had not been manifested by any act, or by any event 
 making it recognizable t and rendering it liable to a 
 judicial demonstration. 
 
 The counsel for the subordinate accomplices of the 
 principals, persons who had furnished them with lodg- 
 ing or rendered them services of other kinds, tried to 
 prove that even on the hypothesis of the certainty of 
 the conspiracy, their clients were not accomplices in 
 it ; that the relations which were construed into a 
 crime were not of a nature to lead to the supposition 
 that they were in the confidence of the conspirators ; 
 that there was no proof of the existence of any such 
 confidence, and that the utmost offence with which 
 this class of the accused could be charged was 
 
The Last Days of the Cons?itate. 285 
 
 having allowed themselves to be deceived by persons 
 who had secured their services under assumed 
 names. 
 
 It was a more difficult matter to defend those 
 prisoners who, either from timidity or venality, had 
 been led into making avowals to the police by which 
 their fellows were compromised. However, as these 
 men, while accusing and declaring their own com- 
 plicity with others, had been careful to assign pre- 
 texts and motives for it which were susceptible of a 
 favourable interpretation and left room for justifica- 
 tion, their advocates were enabled to develope and 
 make use of the means they had themselves furnished 
 in their statements to the police. 
 
 Some of the advocates whose clients were not very 
 seriously compromised, urged that the hardships of a 
 prolonged imprisonment, and the losses incurred as a 
 consequence of arrest, constituted a more than sufficient 
 punishment for an offence which, they presumed, 
 could not be seriously regarded as complicity in a 
 conspiracy. 
 
 Such was the general plan on which the defence 
 was conducted. But in the carrying out of it, each 
 advocate availed himself of peculiarities and special 
 circumstances ; some of these are worthy of mention. 
 Almost all, even those who had most reason to 
 believe that they had proved the innocence of their 
 clients, felt that to have justified was not to have saved 
 them, and made a solemn appeal to the clemency of 
 the Emperor. Some quoted the example of Caesar, 
 others that of Augustus, and one even reminded his 
 hearers that Marcus Aurelius, having acquired 
 positive proofs of a plot formed against his life, made 
 
286 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 friends for himself of the conspirators by pardoning 
 them all. Some of those who listened to these 
 historical parallels regarded them merely as flights of 
 oratory ; others, gifted with greater keenness and 
 penetration, discerned in them covert satire and an 
 intention to contrast the conduct of Bonaparte with 
 that of the great personages to which he was com- 
 pared. 
 
 Another equally remarkable feature of the defence 
 was the praise bestowed upon Moreau by most of the 
 counsel for the accused.* By some he was compared 
 to Catinat ; but they did not venture to say openly 
 that he was more unfortunate ; for Catinat had only 
 been subjected to the ingratitude of Louis XIV., 
 while Moreau had incurred the enmity and jealousy 
 of an upstart emperor. 
 
 Another went so far as to compare him to Scipio, and 
 declared that he was no less unjustly accused, but had 
 defended himself better. Lastly, a third, bolder than 
 the foregoing, described him as a new Aristides who 
 had wearied a certain person with the renown of his 
 great worth. In the heat ol the public interest in the 
 fate of Moreau, no one thought of examining the extent 
 to which these comparisons were just ; it seemed that 
 his danger had suddenly made him the equal of the 
 most illustrious victims of injustice and tyranny. 
 
 There were other features of the defence which 
 deserve mention. Several of the advocates indulged 
 in tirades against the English Government, equally 
 violent and uncalled for. On this point, indeed, they 
 
 2 Lajolais protested on the 15th Prairial against the " pane- 
 gyric " on Moreau pronounced by his (Lajolais') counsel. See 
 " Proces," vol. vi. p. 324. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 287 
 
 seemed to aim at rivalling the Procureur Imperial, or 
 those demagogic orators of 1793, who thought nobody- 
 could truly love the French Republic without making 
 a profession of enmity and execration towards Eng- 
 land, or at least the rulers of England. That the 
 counsel for the defence in this case should have 
 adopted this line was all the more singular, because 
 they could not accuse the English Government of 
 all the crimes which they imputed to it, without 
 giving Bonaparte, by the fact, a great advantage in 
 his proofs of the conspiracy. 
 
 Some of the counsel had the courage to complain 
 indirectly of the ill-treatment and torture to which 
 several of the accused and witnesses also had been 
 subjected. Others revealed those facts by a studied 
 reticence which could not fail to produce an effect 
 upon the hearers, whose indignation was already 
 aroused. The subordinate agents of the police were 
 roughly handled ; scorn and hate were apparently 
 heaped on their devoted heads, but really fell on 
 those of men whom nobody dared to name. 
 
 Others, with no less courage, plainly avowed their 
 regret and misgiving at having to defend their clients 
 before the judges, directly, and not before a jury. 
 
 I will add that in general the counsel for the 
 defence did honour to themselves in this grave con- 
 juncture by their zeal and courage. Tn general also 
 they brought forward valid and natural arguments 
 for the accused, which if advanced to a jury, 
 before an independent tribunal accustomed to 
 respect the letter of the law, would have entirely 
 disposed of the greater part of the accusations, and 
 weighed what was just and grave in the remainder. 
 
288 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 Several displayed both sagacity and talent. All 
 wished to be eloquent, and that ambition, naturally 
 appertaining to the profession that defends the 
 life and honour of citizens, was all the more 
 legitimate on so solemn an occasion. Only a few, 
 however, rose to anything that could be called real 
 eloquence ; most of them made a ridiculous use 
 of certain formulae which are more frequently 
 mistaken for eloquence- at the bar than elsewhere. 
 To none of them did it occur that the position in 
 which they were placed rendered eloquence im- 
 possible, even had they possessed that gift ; for 
 its primary condition is that the speaker shall be 
 able to speak his whole mind, and free to manifest all 
 his impressions. Now these advocates were obliged 
 above all, in defending the accused to praise the 
 accusers, and to clear their clients of the crimes that 
 were imputed to them, without revealing those that 
 had been committed against them. Moreover, apart 
 from this latter consideration, their defence never could 
 be complete or absolutely satisfactory. No one, in 
 short, could doubt that the chief persons among the 
 accused had entertained a project for the overthrow 
 of Bonaparte, if they had not formed any real con- 
 spiracy, and the only means of fully exculpating them 
 was by telling and proving all that had been done by 
 Bonaparte's police to encourage and expand this 
 project, so as to lend it a formidable appearance, 
 without incurring any risk of its being carried into 
 execution. 
 
 The version of the speeches for the defence 
 was flagrantly falsified in the police reports both 
 in the letter and the spirit. Especial care was 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 289 
 
 taken to turn the proofs of the innocence of the 
 accused into ridicule. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to observe that this method 
 of defence was met with strenuous opposition 
 on the part of the President of the tribunal. 
 There were, in fact, very few among the counsel 
 who were not called to order on the pretext that 
 they were wanting in respect towards the judges 
 or the Government, and who were not threatened 
 with being prevented from defending their clients. 
 Cotterel, Lajolais' counsel, who had charge of 
 Roger's case also, was one of those who especially 
 provoked the wrath of the President and the Pro- 
 cureur Imperial. He was silenced before he had 
 concluded his argument in either of the cases. 
 Speaking of the two Polignacs, in his defence of 
 Lajolais, he said that they prided themselves upon 
 the confidence of Artois. Lajolais himself tremoled at 
 the boldness of his defender, and hastened to refute 
 his statements, so important was it for his safety 
 that he should be feebly defended. The second time, 
 he went so far as to say that Roger had always 
 " walked in the paths of honour," without, however, 
 asserting that he had not been mistaken in the line 
 he had adopted. These two assertions formed the 
 pretext for the President's severity towards him. The 
 truth is, that the judges devoted to the Government 
 had been offended by the general tone of this 
 advocate's speeches ; it was he who compared Moreau 
 to Aristides. 
 
 A still more unseemly incident took place in the 
 course of the defence of Coster Saint- Victor, when 
 Gauthier, pointing out the trivial nature of the alleged 
 
 U 
 
290 The Last Days of the Consulate, 
 
 proofs of the conspiracy, went so far as to predict 
 that a conviction based upon such feeble testi- 
 mony, would not be upheld by the opinion of either 
 the nation or posterity. Thereupon the Procureur 
 Imperial, interrupting the counsel and addressing the 
 judges, severely denounced the defenders of the 
 accused in general, and Gauthier in particular. He 
 represented the conduct of the advocates throughout 
 the whole course of the trial as a scandalous offence 
 against the dignity of the tribunal, and even 
 against that of the Government. He taunted the 
 counsel for the defence with ignorance and inex- 
 perience in a most insulting manner, and concluded 
 by rem'nding the tribunal that it possessed a right, 
 and was bound by an obligation, to silence advocates 
 who violated the respect due to the magistrates 
 
 So stern an admonition could not be ineffectual. 
 Silence was imposed upon Saint-Victor's counsel, 
 who pulled off his cap and gown in the presence of 
 the audience, and, addressing his client, took him to 
 witness of the violence that was done to him, and, 
 relinquishing the case, wished the unfortunate young 
 man, who seemed to be pursued by an evil destiny, a 
 more eloquent or a more fortunate defender. 
 
 I shall deal with the defence of Moreau separately, 
 on account of the difference of his position, and in 
 order to give a distinct view of the circumstances 
 that concern him personally. Moreau formed, as it 
 were, the Gordian knot of the trial ; all the exertions 
 and the whole solicitude of the Government bore upon 
 him. 
 
 It was known that all the other accused persons 
 must perish or be saved, according to the good 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 291 
 
 pleasure of the Government, and that it would be a 
 mere matter of a little more or a little less of 
 arbitrary violence in their condemnation. They had 
 no party, and they inspired no more than the barren 
 kind of pity produced by mingled wrong and misfor- 
 tune. Moreau's plight was not so sad ; he had the 
 ardent good wishes of the entire nation for him, and 
 the strenuous efforts of his family and some friends. 
 He also had the good fortune of finding that the 
 enemies of Bonaparte and the imperial Government 
 still believed that the Republic might be restored, 
 if only a propitious opportunity of atta<. king this 
 man, who had destroyed it, were seized. No oppor- 
 tunity could seem more propitious than the present. 
 
 The chance was certainly a hazardous one, because 
 there is a vast distance between enmity wrathfully 
 muttering in the shade, and that kind of sturdy 
 resolution that comes out and dares a great danger. 
 Certain favourable conjunctures had, however,rendered 
 Moreau's position an object of dread to Bonaparte. 
 Several elements combined to authorize the hope 
 that Moreau could not be sent to the scaffold, with- 
 out an attempt being made to save him, and any 
 attempt of the kind might be turned into a decided 
 attack upon Bonaparte. 
 
 Men who had figured in the deeds of the Revolu- 
 tion, among them some from Moreau's own part of 
 the country, had formed little coteries, and discussed 
 the means of snatching Moreau out of the hands of 
 Bonaparte. But those means reduced themselves to 
 the possibility of the men in question mingling with a 
 movement, in the case of its being initiated by others, 
 which it was not in their own power to incite. 
 
 U 2 
 
292 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 Only a portion of the army could do this, and Moreau 
 had friends zealous enough for his defence, and 
 sufficiently inimical to Bonaparte, to endeavour to 
 stir up a party for him in the army without his own 
 knowledge. The result of their exertions was perhaps 
 more favourable than could have been hoped ; several 
 officers, stimulated by public opinion, pledged them- 
 selves to risk all for his cause. And some of the 
 number were able to serve him the more efficiently, 
 because their position removed all suspicion of con- 
 nivance, and nevertheless permitted them to approach 
 him. A considerable body of men, among the soldiery 
 stationed in the environs of Paris, seemed to be 
 entirely devoted to Moreau, and had offered to rcc< 
 him among them if he could escape, and to conduct 
 him with speed to a nucleus of the troops then dis- 
 persed along the. coast. Communications had pre- 
 viously been established, and sufficient .security 
 that the corps would declare for Moreau had been 
 obtained. 
 
 It would be rash to predict what would have been 
 the result of the execution of this plan. But let us 
 reflect that the men who had formed it were well 
 known to the country and to the army, that the 
 popular ferment was at its height, the troops still 
 in astonishment at the contrast between the destinies 
 of their two generals, one of whom, in having himself 
 proclaimed Emperor, had just sacrificed the other to 
 his jealousy and his safety ; let us remember that 
 nothing had yet been done to make the soldiers 
 forget that it was in the defence of the Republic 
 they had taken up arms, shed their blood, and 
 won renown ; that the Emperor and all the pomp with 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 293 
 
 which he had surrounded himself was of hardly twenty 
 days' date, too short a term to render him imposing, 
 even to the French ; lastly, that no one had forgotten 
 the assassination of the young Due d'Enghien ; 
 that not only was Napoleon I. as yet unrecognized 
 by foreign powers, but that it was probable he 
 never would be recognized by the most influential 
 among them, and that already storm-clouds seemed 
 to be gathering upon the horizon of the new 
 Empire. Recalling those facts, it will be difficult 
 not to fancy that Moreau, suddenly appearing 
 from his prison at the head of an army, would 
 have produced a commotion strong enough to 
 overturn or seriously shake the throne of Bona- 
 parte. 
 
 A circumstance which I believe to be authentic, 
 and which is not the least singular feature of this 
 event, will show how great was the readiness to form 
 a party for Moreau. Certain of the persons most 
 strongly interested in the general, and who best under- 
 stood the great advantage that might be taken of his 
 position for the deliverance of France from Bonaparte, 
 found means of getting at Georges in his prison, and 
 speaking to him at a moment when they could not 
 be overheard. They ventured to make some sugges- 
 tions of the possibility and the chances of a conspiracy 
 more real and more fortunate than his own. " Save 
 Moreau and act with him," was the unhesitating 
 reply of Georges, and to that answer he added the offer 
 of a considerable sum in case the resolution to attempt 
 something should be come to. That was the money 
 which the police knew Georges had in his possession 
 when he landed, but which had escaped them, notwith- 
 
294 TJie Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 standing all the efforts they made to seize a prey 
 which they prized next to the capture of his person. 
 The strange confidence went no farther. I am at a 
 loss what judgment to pronounce upon the conduct 
 of those who risked the making of such suggestions ; 
 but if Georges' answer be authentic, it does honour 
 to the strength and truth of his nature. No 
 ordinary man would have interested himself in an 
 enterprise which could not save him, on behalf of 
 political views which were not his own, lying as he 
 was in a prison to which the failure of a personal 
 conspiracy had consigned him, only because the 
 proposed cause was one that had more of loyalty and 
 less of shame. Whatever may have been the pro- 
 bability of success for all these attempts in favour of 
 Moreau and liberty, those who had made them 
 found means to convey the information to Moreau. 
 An exact and detailed account was given him of the 
 interest that was inspired by his misfortunes, and the 
 hatred with which his oppressor was regarded ; he 
 was apprised of the increasing ferment of public 
 opinion, and told that a great conflagration might at 
 any moment be produced by a spark. The officers 
 who had agreed to devote themselves to securing his 
 safety, and to make common cause with him, were 
 named ; the corps, quartered close to Paris, who 
 undertook to escort him rapidly to the camp where 
 the chiefs were only waiting for him to place 
 himself at their head, to declare in his favour, 
 was designated. Lastly, he was informed of the 
 measures that had been taken to secure his escape 
 from prison, and told what he would have to do to 
 second those measures, which, he was assured, were 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 295 
 
 easy and certain. Moreau refused his assent to this 
 plan. I will not venture to characterize that refusal. 
 But when we consider how many great deeds have 
 been done under less happy auspices for an end less 
 worthy and less glorious, and from motives less 
 urgent, we cannot but accuse Moreau of weakness, 
 and an excess of prudence. However, after such 
 a decision, no course remained to his friends except 
 that of saving him, in spite of himself, so to speak ; 
 and this course tended rather to their own ruin than 
 to his rescue. 
 
 While these things were passing, unknown to the 
 police, they were continuing to take every possible 
 measure to secure the fulfilment of the Emperor's 
 desire, and vainly trying to keep their efforts secret. 
 They had not foreseen the general ferment, and they 
 knew not how to repress it. 
 
 The evident interest felt in Moreau by the counsel 
 for his fellow-prisoners, the spontaneous homage 
 rendered to him, made It easy to imagine with what 
 zeal his own advocate would plead so fair a cause. If, 
 hitherto, men who for the most part were reputed to 
 be fierce " brigands" had aroused so much courage in 
 their advocates, and so much interest in the public, 
 what would a general do who had adorned the 
 Republic with so many victories, and whose virtues, 
 even the doubtful ones, were exaggerated, since he 
 had become the object of hatred to an all-powerful 
 enemy ? I do not know whether the police had taken 
 steps* to secure respectful language and silence upon 
 as much of their perfidy and cruelty as they had 
 been able to discover on the part of the counsel for 
 the accused in general, but they certainly did not 
 
296 The Last Days of the Consulate, 
 
 neglect that precaution in the case of Moreau's 
 defender. 3 
 
 A day or two before he was to open the defence, 
 the Grand Judge summoned him to his presence, and 
 gave him to understand that the Government relied 
 sufficiently upon his prudence and discretion to 
 apprehend nothing on his part that could hurt its 
 dignity. Bonnet replied that while he would neglect 
 nothing that could clear General Moreau, he did not 
 think he should have anything to say that could offend 
 the Government. 
 
 On the 1 6th Prairial, the third day of the defence, 
 the turn of Moreau's counsel came. The court was 
 more crowded on that day than it had yet been, and 
 the spectators patiently endured the stifling heat, 
 in their intense interest in what was about to 
 happen. 
 
 All eyes were fixed on Moreau, and he could not 
 turn his own in any direction without remarking 
 friends among the crowd, who were endeavouring 
 to attract his attention.* Some of his brothers-in- 
 
 * Louis Ferdinand Bonnet, one of the most highly-esteemed 
 lawyers of his time. He was born at Paris in 1760, and died 
 in 1839, as Counsellor to the Court of Cassation. 
 
 4 Among these was General Lecourbe, who, as we have al- 
 ready said, accompanied Moreau's wife to the court on several 
 occasions. He gave rise one day to an affecting scene, which 
 Bourrienne, who attended the trial assiduously, narrates as fol- 
 lows : " I seem still to see General Lecourbe, that faithful friend 
 of Moreau's, coming suddenly into the court, accompanied by a 
 small child. He stooped, lifted the little fellow in his arms, and 
 cried in a loud but agitated voice, * Soldiers, behold the son 
 of your general.' At this unexpected appeal every man in the 
 crowd who was a soldier rose spontaneously, and presented 
 aims to him, while a murmur of applause arose from the entire 
 assembly. 
 
 "Assuredly, if Moreau had said a word at that moment, 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 297 
 
 arms, who had shared his victories, ventured to salute 
 him by gestures, and this action was immediately 
 reported as a crime to him who had the power to 
 punish it. Even among his fellow-prisoners there 
 were several who, gazing fixedly at Moreau, seemed 
 to forget their own proper peril, and to be spectators 
 only of the solemn scene. It was particularly 
 remarked that Georges Cadoudal, whose calmness 
 had been totally undisturbed while the tribunal was 
 occupied with himself, looked at Moreau with anxiety 
 and emotion. 
 
 An incident by which all the spectators were 
 struck, will give an idea of the extent to which 
 enthusiasm and regard for Moreau were carried. 
 Two gendarmes standing upright at either side of 
 him, with uncovered heads, and with an air of pro- 
 found respect, the President ordered them to put on 
 their hats and sit down. They pretended not to have 
 heard him ; he reiterated the order, with no more 
 success than before. Moreau, at length, perceiving 
 the President's intention, requested the two gen- 
 darmes to be seated ; they still refused. He then 
 ordered them to sit down, and they obeyed. It 
 seems to me that posterity will regard this act of 
 respect for Moreau, the prisoner about to be judged 
 as a brigand by a tribunal devoted to his oppressor, as 
 the greatest of his victories. 
 
 Such was the mood of the spectators ; all were 
 
 the tribunal would have been invaded and dispersed, and 
 the prisoners set free, so great was the enthusiasm in his favour. 
 Moreau kept silence, and he alone appeared to take no part in 
 this movement." (" Memoires," vol. vi. p. 125.) It is related 
 of Georges that he said on this occasion, " If I were Mjreau, I 
 would sleep to-night at the Tuileries." 
 
298 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 waiting with manifest impatience for the moment at 
 which Moreau's advocate should take his place at the 
 bar, when suddenly Moreau himself demanded to be 
 heard. 5 He said, "I shall pray you to permit me 
 to say something in preparation for my defence." 
 f You can speak afterwards," said the President. 
 * What I have to say," replied Moreau, "must precede 
 my counsel's argument ;" and he spoke as follows : 
 
 u In presenting myself before you, I ask to be heard. 
 for a short time, in my own person. My confidence 
 in the defenders whom I have chosen is complete ; I 
 have unreservedly laid upon them the charge of 
 defending my innocence. It is by their voice that 
 I desire to address justice, but I feel the need of 
 speaking with my own to you, and to the nation. 
 
 " Unfortunate circumstances, whether brought about 
 by chance or produced by enmity, may cast a shadow 
 upon some moments of the life of the worthiest of 
 men. A criminal may cleverly contrive to div rt 
 suspicion and proof of his crimes. The whole of 
 a life is always the surest testimony against or 
 in favour of an accused person. It is, then, my 
 entire life that I oppose to the accusers who pursue 
 me. It has been sufficiently public to be well known ; 
 I shall only recall certain epochs of it, and the witnea 
 whom I shall invoke are the French people, and the 
 peoples whom France has conquered. 
 
 5 Fauriel adds in parenthesis, " Give here the entire 
 speech." But he has not transcribed it, and we give the text, 
 not according to the newspapers, which mutilated it shame- 
 fully, but according to the " Proces," vol. vii. pp. 374- 382. in 
 which there is a paragraph (the last) omitted in the publication 
 that appeared at the same time under the title, " Discours pro- 
 nonce par le Gene ml Moreau an Tribunal Criminel Special du 
 Departement de la Seine." Paris (chez Lebour). 
 
The Last Days of the* Consulate. 299 
 
 " I was intended for the profession of the law 6 at 
 the beginning of the Revolution which was to found the 
 liberty of the French people. That event changed 
 the purpose of my life ; I devoted myself to arms. 
 I did not go and take my place among the soldiers 
 of freedom from ambition j I embraced the military 
 profession from respect for the rights of nations ; I 
 became a soldier because I was a citizen. 
 
 " I bore that character with the colours ; I have 
 always preserved it. The more I love J liberty, the 
 more submissive to discipline I was. 
 
 " I rose rapidly enough, but always from rank to 
 rank, never overstepping any, always by serving the 
 country, never by flattering the committees. When I 
 had attained the command-in-chief, when our vic- 
 tories sent us forward into the midst of nations who 
 were our enemies, I was no less careful to make the 
 character of the French people respected, than I was to 
 make their arms dreaded. War under my command 
 was a scourge upon the battlefields only. The 
 nations and the powers with whom we waged war 
 have more than once borne that testimony to me, in 
 the midst of their ravaged territories. This conduct 
 was, in my belief, as well calculated as our victories 
 to make conquests for France. 
 
 "Even at the time when opposite maxims seemed 
 to prevail in the committees of the Government, this 
 line of action did not expose me to either calumny or 
 persecution. No shadow had ever fallen upon the 
 
 6 He was ' prevot de droit" at Rennes when the Revolution 
 broke out, and, owing to the influence he had acquired over the 
 students, he played an important part in the disturbances in 
 that town from the period of M. de Brienne's Ministry. 
 
300 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 military glory which I had won, until that too famous 
 day, the 18th Fructidor. 
 
 " The persons who brought about the events of 
 that day with so much rapidity, reproached me with 
 having been too slow to denounce a man whom I could 
 only regard as a brother- in-arms until the moment 
 when the evidence of facts and proofs made it plain to 
 me that he was justly accused, and not only by unjust 
 suspicion. The Directory, which alone was sufficiently 
 well acquainted with my conduct to judge it fairly, 
 and could not, as everybody knows, be disposed to 
 regard me with indulgence, loudly declared how 
 entirely irreproachable it held me to be. It gave me 
 employment; the post was not brilliant; it sjoii 
 became so r 
 
 " I venture to believe that the nation has not 
 forgotten how well worthy of it I have proved myself ; 
 it has not forgotten with what ready self-devo- 
 tion I fought in Italy in subordinate posts ; it has 
 not forgotten how I was restored to the command- 
 in-chicf by the reverses of our arms, and re-made 
 general, so to speak, by our misfortunes. The nation 
 remembers how twice over I reconstructed an army 
 of the remnants of those that had been dispersed, 9 
 and how, after I had twice over put it into a condi- 
 tion to hold its own against the Russians and the 
 Austrians, I twice over laid down the command to 
 take one which was a greater trust. 1 
 
 7 The Directory appointed him Inspector-General in 1798, then 
 sent him to Italy in 1799, to reinforce ScheYer, an incapable 
 person, who. being overwhelmed by reverses, ended by handing 
 over the command to Moreau. 
 
 8 Alter joubert's defeat and death at Novi. He had served 
 under joubert 
 
 1 The command-in-chief of the army of the Rhine. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 301 
 
 " I was not at that period of my life more repub- 
 lican than at every other, but I appeared a more 
 prominent republican. The attention and the con- 
 fidence of those to whom it belonged to give fresh 
 movement and new direction to the Republic, tended 
 towards me in a more special way. It is well known 
 that it was proposed to me to put myself at the head 
 of an enterprise closely resembling that of the 1 8th 
 Brumaire. 2 My ambition, if I had much, might 
 asily have concealed itself under the appearance, or 
 even openly boasted of the reality, of love of country. 
 
 "The proposal was made to me by men who were 
 celebrated in the Revolution for their patriotism, and 
 in our national assemblies for their talents. I refused 
 it ; I believed myself called to command armies ; but 
 not to command the Republic. 
 
 ' That was enough to prove, it seems to me, that 
 if I had an ambition, it was not directed towards 
 authority and power : soon afterwards I proved this 
 better still 
 
 "The 1 8th Brumaire came, and I was in Paris. 
 There was nothing to alarm my conscience in that 
 Revolution which was brought about by others than 
 
 2 This is a suitable place to give an idea of the accuracy with 
 which the journals still permitted to exist by Bonaparte, and 
 entirely subservient to him, kept the public informed of the 
 details of this trial. Le Publiciste gives Moreau's speech in its 
 number of the 18th Prairial (7th June), but after the words " at 
 the head of an enterprise '' {journee) it suppresses those which 
 were characteristic, '' nearly resembling that of the 18th Bru- 
 maire," thus rendering the phrase incomprehensible. It sup- 
 presses all the succeeding paragraphs, down to the last but one, 
 beginning with " to trace out this course for me." The second 
 part of the speech is thus made unintelligible, and the readers 
 of Le Publiciste could not understand the profound sensation 
 which it had created. . 
 
302 The Last Days of the Constilaie. 
 
 me. It was directed by a man who was surrounded 
 by a nimbus of fame ; I might hope for happy results 
 from it. I entered into it to second it, while other 
 parties were pressing me to put myself at their head 
 to oppose it. In Paris I received the orders of 
 General Bonaparte. By having them executed, I 
 assisted to raise him to that high degree of power 
 which circumstances rendered necessary. 
 
 " When, some time afterwards, he offered me the 
 command-in-chief of the army of the Rhine, I 
 accepted it from him with as much zeal as from the 
 hand of the Republic itself. My m'litary succt 
 were never more rapid, more numerous, more decisive 
 than at the period when their lustre was shed upon 
 that Government which accuses me. 
 
 " On returning from the scenes of all these achieve- 
 ments the greatest was the having effectually 
 secured the peace of the Continent the triumphant 
 soldier was greeted with acclamations that are a 
 national recompense. 
 
 " What a moment to choose for conspiring, if such 
 a design had ever entered my mind ! 
 
 "The attachment of troops to the chiefs who have 
 led them to victory is well known. Would an 
 ambitious man, a conspirator, have let slip the oppor- 
 tunity, when he was at the head of an army of one 
 hundred thousand men, who had been so often 
 victorious, and when he was returning to the midst of 
 a nation still disturbed and always trembling for its 
 principles and their duration ? 
 
 " My only thought was to disband the troops, and 
 I retired into the repose of civil life. 
 
 "In that repose, which was not devoid of glory, I 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 303 
 
 enjoyed my honours, no doubt those honours of 
 which no human power can deprive me : the remem- 
 brance of my deeds, the testimony of my conscience, 
 the esteem of my fellow-countrymen and foreigners 
 alike, and, if I may say so, the sweet and soothing 
 foretaste of the judgment of posterity. 
 
 " I was in the enjoyment of a fortune which was 
 large, only because my desires were not extravagant, 
 and which was no reproach to my conscience. I had 
 my retired pension also ; assuredly, I was content 
 with my lot, I, who had never envied the lot of any. 
 My family and some friends all the more precious 
 because, as they had nothing to hope from my credit 
 and my fortune, they could but be attached to myself 
 alone these possessions filled my whole mind, and 
 neither desires nor ambition found any entrance into 
 it. Would it be accessible to criminal projects ? 
 
 "This state of mind was so well known to be mine; 
 it was so amply vouched for by the distance which I 
 maintained from all the aims of ambition, that from 
 the battle of Hohenlinden until my arrest, my enemies 
 have never been able to find, nor have they sought, 
 any other crime whereof to accuse me, except the free- 
 dom of my speech. Well, it has often been favour- 
 able to the actions of the Government ; and if some- 
 times it has not been so, was I to think that such 
 liberty was a crime, in a country which had so often 
 affirmed by decree that thought, speech, and the press 
 are free, and had enjoyed a great deal of liberty even 
 under its kings? 
 
 * I was born with a very frank disposition, and I 
 have never been able to rid myself of that attribute of 
 France, in which I was born, either in the camp, where 
 
304 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 it flourished more than before, or in the Revolution 
 which has always proclaimed it a virtue in the man 
 and a duty of the citizen. But do those who conspire 
 blame what they disapprove quite so loudly ? Such 
 candour is hardly reconcilable with the plots and 
 mysteries of politics. 
 
 "If I had chosen to concoct and carry out plans 
 of conspiracy, I would have dissembled my feelings, 
 and endeavoured to get every post which would have 
 replaced me amid the forces of the nation. 
 
 " I never possessed political genius to indicate 
 such a course to me, but there were well-known 
 examples which had been rendered conspicuous 
 by success, and I had but to consider them. I know 
 very well that Monk 3 did not go away to a distance 
 from the troops when he planned his conspiracy, and 
 that Cassius and Brutus drew near to Caesar pre- 
 viously to stabbing him. 
 
 " And now, magistrates, I have nothing more to 
 say to you. Such has been my character, such has 
 been my whole life. In the presence of God and 
 man I affirm the innocence and integrity of my con- 
 duct ; you know what is your duty ; France is listen- 
 ing to you, Europe is observing you, and posterity 
 awaits you. 
 
 " I am accused of being a brigand and a conspirator. 
 The generous gentleman who has undertaken my 
 defence will, I hope, convince you presently that such 
 an accusation is ill-founded." * 
 
 Moreau's address, delivered in a calm and dignified 
 
 He names Monk, no doubt in allusion to the already-men- 
 tioned pamphlet by Fontanes. 
 
 As we have already said, this paragraph is not inserted in 
 the " Proces." 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 305 
 
 tone, produced an effect which it would be difficult to 
 describe, and left a deep impression, to which it was 
 no longer possible to add anything, on every mind. 
 This profession of republican sentiments, when the 
 Republic had just been invaded, like an hereditary 
 property, by the man who was pursuing it ... . 
 
 (By the Editor.) 
 
 The last page of Fauriel's manuscript ends with 
 this unfinished sentence. For the second time the 
 task of supplying what he has left unsaid devolves on 
 me. Before I proceed with the narrative of this 
 dramatic trial, so ably depicted by him, with its 
 moving incidents, and in its flagrant iniquity, I must 
 ask permission to go back for a while, and borrow 
 a few touches which will lend additional effect to 
 Fauriel's picture, from unpublished documents which 
 I have met with in the course of my researches. 
 
 In the archives of the Prefecture of Police there 
 are a number of boxes, inscribed "Affaire Cadoudal," 
 and containing the documents relating to that part of 
 the " instruction " which was entrusted to the police. 
 In one of these boxes I found the confidential reports 
 of the agents who were sent by the Prefect to attend 
 the court each day, and report to him upon the 
 aspect, impressions, and talk of the public. One of 
 the most interesting of these reports they were, 
 I need hardly say, entirely distinct from those 
 upon which the lying accounts sent daily to the 
 papers were founded is that of the first sitting 
 of the tribunal on the 8th Prairial. The agent 
 writes : 
 
 X 
 
306 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 " The public manifested extreme curiosity to see 
 the accused, who were ranged on four benches, and in 
 the order laid down in the act of accusation. 
 
 "At the sight of Georges there was a consider- 
 able sensation, and some sounds of indignation were 
 uttered. 
 
 "There was also noticeable eagerness to see 
 Moreau, but when he appeared, or when he answered 
 to his name, nothing unusual occurred. He answered 
 very low ; he could not be heard, indeed, and silence 
 was observed then, as it was whet) the other con- 
 federates were called. 
 
 " The four ranks of prisoners, all separated from 
 one another by a gendarme, presented an imposing 
 appearance, and this first sitting was orderly. 
 
 "Among the accused some were scrupulously well 
 dressed, and all, wit.i the exception of five or six 
 (more especially among those who had harboured the 
 brigands), showed a great deal of coolness ; in the 
 faces of some the carelessness of a criminal whose 
 mind is made up was to be read. Georges, in 
 particular, wore such an expression. 
 
 " Rusillion's face wore a constant smile. 
 
 "The Polignacs, too, saluted some persons who sat 
 opposite to them, with a cheerful, smiling air. 
 
 "D'Hozier looked hard, bold, not in the least dis- 
 concerted 
 
 " Francois de' Riviere was conspicuous for his im- 
 pudence of air, of manner, and of look. 
 
 " Picot answered to his name with the utmost bold- 
 ness ; he looked like a determined ruffian all through 
 the sitting. 
 
 " Roger Loiseau, who affected an exaggerated 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 307 
 
 neatness in his dress, wore an equally offensive air of 
 insolence. 
 
 ".But Coster Saint-Victor surpassed all the others 
 in this respect. He held his head up, his look was 
 as firm and cruel as that of a bird of prey, he bit 
 the back of his nails while the act of accusation was 
 being read, and at each imputation he would smile 
 contemptuously, and with a negative or affirmative 
 shake of head would seem to say, ' That is true,' or, 
 1 That is not true.' 
 
 "An insolent smile also sat upon the fa e of the 
 girl Hizay, while the act of accusation in her case 
 was being read. 
 
 "Almost the same might be said of Pierre Jean 
 Cadoudal. 
 
 "These persons looked at one another and smiled, 
 when the charges in which several of them were 
 jointly implicated were read. 
 
 " A foreign captain of a ship was brought in and 
 placed on a seat in front of one of the benches occu- 
 pied by the witnesses ; he wore anchor buttons and 
 a black cockade ; this individual was said to be 
 Thomas Wright." 
 
 The natural prejudice against men who had been 
 stigmatized as " brigands " subsided by degrees 
 during the progress of the trial ; so that in reference 
 to the examination of Coster Saint-Victor, whose 
 intrepidity never faltered for a moment, although 
 he felt himself doomed to certain death, the agent 
 does not hesitate to say : "He has much impressed 
 the publ-ic by his candour and his courage in acknow- 
 ledging his unalterable attachment to the Count 
 d'Artois and the cause of the princes. He has borne 
 
 x 2 
 
308 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 all the charges brought against him by the witnesses 
 and others without accusing anybody." 5 
 
 He has to record, a few days later, that the defender 
 of the Polignacs " made the hearers and even some of 
 the judges shed tears, and that there arose in the court 
 a prolonged murmur of approbation of the two 
 prisoners whom he defended with great ability." 
 
 At the sitting of the ioth, when Picot revealed the 
 fact that he had been tortured, "that," says the agent, 
 * made some impression upon the public. One heard 
 the words 'this is horrible' in the crowd. A witness 
 deposing against Picot said, when his being or not 
 being armed was in question, It was I who discovered 
 his powder-flask.' A voice in the crowd said, 'That 
 witness wants to get into the Legion of Honour.' 
 
 "Lastly, when Picot's declarations, against which 
 he protested to-day, were read, it was said by tl.c 
 spectators that they were too well written, and ren- 
 dered in terms too well chosen to be those of a mere 
 servant." It might have been added, of one who 
 could neither read nor write ! 
 
 It was on the morning of the 14th that the speeches 
 for the defence began, and that the advocates were 
 called to the tribune ; for it was really from a 
 tribune that they delivered their addresses on behalf 
 of their clients. In Paris the anxiety was extreme, 
 
 s His attitude must have been very irritating to the judges on 
 more than one occasion. We gather this from certain details 
 of this report that are not given by the stenographers. On one 
 occasion a judge said, " Prevent the accused (Coster) from 
 prompting Merille in his answers." After the deposition of the 
 girl Jourdan. the President said to Coster, " You ought not to 
 have spyglasses." He replied impudently, " I use them on the 
 witnesses." 
 
 6 It is known that the cross of the legion was given to one of 
 those who arrested Georges. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 309 
 
 and we find in the following note, written on the 
 same day by a peace officer named Chahonety, an 
 echo of the rumours that were circulating everywhere. 
 
 " People who trouble themselves to reason base 
 their prophecies of the condemnation of the greater 
 number of the accused, upon two major political 
 points. The facts put forward are: (1) The death of 
 the Due d'Enghien ; (2) The conduct of the Russian 
 ambassador. 7 
 
 " They say that the French imperial Government, 
 not choosing to yield to any foreign influence, 8 would 
 rigorously carry out the project of totally destroying 
 the Bourbons and their satellites." The Russian 
 ambassador's " conduct was certainly calculated to 
 exasperate Bonaparte. According to the same note, 
 he presented himself in black clothes at a reception, 
 and, the Emperor having asked him for whom he was 
 in mourning, received this firm and startling answer: 
 " For the Due d'Enghien, Sire, by command of my 
 Court." 
 
 I will now resume the narrative at the point at 
 which Fauriel left it, on the 16th Prairial, after Moreau 
 had spoken, and endeavour, by means of the reports of 
 the police agents, to give an account of the final 
 sittings of the court. 9 
 
 The general had no sooner done speaking than he 
 
 7 Count Markofif. 
 
 8 u An hour after Moreau's arrest became known," says a 
 report written at the moment, " the ambassadors sent extra- 
 ordinary despatches to their courts. The Emperor, and espe- 
 cially the Archduke Charles used their influence with the First 
 Consul on behalf of Moreau." 
 
 9 His speech, according to the report of an agent, was printed 
 the same day ; and on the morrow, between the two sittings, it 
 was distributed gratis in the court. 
 
310 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 was applauded by a great stamping of feet ; for no 
 one ventured to clap hands, since an arrest had been 
 made on one of the preceding days ; ! and Bonnet, 
 his defender, was immediately summoned to the 
 tribune. He spoke at greater length than any of the 
 others, and his close and powerful argument produced 
 a sensible impression upon the hearers. We can see 
 from the following passages that the envoy of the 
 Prefecture of Police shared that impression, and 
 conveyed it with sincerity. 
 
 " Bonnet having quoted a passage in the examina- 
 tion of Rolland by the Instructing Judge, in which 
 the judge said to Rolland that if he did not state all 
 he knew respecting the accomplices in the conspiracy, 
 he would be regarded as their adherent, instead of 
 their confidant, the reading of this passage made an 
 impression on the public. They were of the opinion 
 of Moreau's counsel, who declared that the judge's 
 manner of interrogating Rolland had forced the latter 
 to answer against Moreau. In the case of his 
 charging him, he (Rolland) would be regarded as a 
 confidant only ; in the contrary case he would be an 
 accomplice." 
 
 When Bonnet asked whether there were many of the 
 accused who, like Roliand, had obtained permission 
 to go out of the prison ? rt the Procureur General 
 having made some observations, murmurs and ex- 
 clamations arose among the crowd, and were repeated 
 when he thought fit to check the advocate for de- 
 scribing the Government of the Directory as ' detest- 
 On the ioth Prairial. After a scornful answer from Moreau, 
 "applause," says a report, 'arose among the spectators, and 
 Madame Martignac was immediately arrested lor having 
 applauded, and taken before Real." 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 3 1 1 
 
 able." The following made an impression : " 'General 
 Moreau who is for nothing in the affair. For 
 nothing ? No, I am wrong. General Moreau who 
 is for nothing but a refusal." In the discussion 
 upon the point of the non-denunciation, "the orator 
 produced the profoundest impression upon his hearers. 
 Extreme attention was given to this induction." 
 Lastly, the advocate's summary caused " a very 
 remarkable sensation. It was quite evident that a 
 deep impression had been made upon the public by 
 the defence." 
 
 The counsel for the defence were very indignant 
 with the President and the Procureur General, who 
 constantly addressed admonitions to them that were 
 as ill-received by the spectators as by themselves. 
 " Some of them were quite disheartened in pleading 
 the causes committed to their charge ; others gave it 
 to be understood that after the trial was over, most of 
 them would appear no more at the tribunal." 
 
 The accused were not all so fortunate as to have 
 defenders so skilful and so eloquent as Bonnet ; more 
 than one of the advocates broke down completely, 
 not only in ability, but in tact and judgment ; and on 
 reading the report of the speeches for the defence, 
 we see that the agent has appraised them correctly. 
 The counsel for J. P. Cadoudal "raised a laugh 
 several times by saying that his client, who was a 
 gardener, had gone to England only to learn the art 
 of English garden-making, that he was a fool, &c. ' 
 u Monnier and his wife were defended by a man 
 whose name I do not know (Boyeldieu), but who wore 
 every one out by his prolixity and his endless repe- 
 titions. He caused a laugh several times." Collier 
 
312 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 who defended Denant and his wife, " pleads in so 
 pitiable a fashion that all the other counsel express 
 their surprise by a murmur, and the public manifest 
 their astonishment plainly." 
 
 The speeches for the defence came to a conclusion 
 on the 19th Prairial. In the afternoon of the same 
 day the accused were heard in their turn, and there 
 was an affecting contest of generosity between the 
 Polignacs, each brother trying to save the life of the 
 other at the cost of his own. The hearing of the 
 accused also occupied a short time on the following 
 morning. But it was only eight o'clock in the 
 morning when the judges retired to the Council 
 Chamber. They resumed the sitting at four o'clock 
 in the morning on Sunday, the 21st. The accused 
 were brought up, and the President read the judgment 
 aloud to them. 
 
 Twenty were sentenced to death. The following 
 is a list of their names ; the eight last mentioned did 
 not suffer the capital penalty. 
 
 Georges Cadoudal. Merille. 
 
 Louis Ducorps. 
 
 Louis Picot. 
 
 Roger, called Loiseau. 
 
 Coster Saint-Victor. 
 
 Deville. 
 
 Joyant. 
 
 Burban. 
 
 Lemercier. 
 
 Lelan. 
 
 P. J. Cadoudal. 
 
 Five were sentenced to two years' imprisonment. 
 These were : 
 
 Bouvet de Lozier. 
 
 Rusillion.. 
 
 Rochelle. 
 
 Armand de Polignac. 
 
 Charles d'Hozier. 
 
 De Riviere. 
 
 Lajolais. 
 
 Armand Gaillard. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 3 1 
 
 General Moreau. 
 Jules de Polignac. 
 Leridan. 
 
 Rolland. 
 
 The girl Hizay. 3 
 
 Five were sent back to be brought before the 
 Police Correctionnelle. These were : Denand and 
 his wife ; Dubuisson and his wife ; Vernet. 
 
 The others, sixteen in number, were acquitted. 
 
 The deliberation of the judges lasted for twenty 
 hours. The cause was their long and animated 
 discussion of Moreau's case. By a first vote the 
 judges had pronounced his acquittal, but they were 
 forced to withdraw that vote by a flagrant illegality. 
 One of the judges, a brother of General Lecourbe, 
 has revealed to us what then took place in the Council 
 Chamber. He drew up a statement immediately, 
 for his own satisfaction, but he published it on the 
 22nd of April, 1814, the day before the entry of Louis 
 XVIII. into Paris. 3 
 
 We extract the following passages : 
 
 "On the 21st Prairial, year XII., at noon, the court, 
 taking the cases of the accused in their order, began 
 to discuss the case of General Moreau. 
 
 " M. Thuriot, the Instructing Judge and reporter, 
 spoke first. He dwelt at great length upon the facts 
 charged against Moreau, and ended by declaring him 
 
 2 The words of the sentence are, " Considering that, although 
 they are guilty of having taken part in the conspiracy, the in- 
 struction and the discussions of the trial show that circum- 
 stances which rendered them excusable existed, &c." 
 
 3 " Opinion sur la conspiration de Moreau, Pichegru, et autres, 
 sur la non-culpabilite de Moreau, et proces-verbal de ce qui 
 s'est passe a la chambre de conseil, entre les juges, relative- 
 ment a ce general, par M. Lecourbe, juge en la cour de justice 
 ctiminclle de Paris. 23rd Avril, 18 14." This pamphlet is very 
 scarce. 
 
314 The Last Days of the Consulate . 
 
 to be guilty, and that he was for condemning- him to 
 death, according to Article 612 of the 'Code des 
 Delits et des Peines,' being, he added, convinced that 
 the convict would not be put to death, but would 
 receive a pardon. 
 
 " M. Damenve pronounced an opposite opinion, 
 lie fully stated its grounds, and said : ' I have rot been 
 able to collect myself sufficiently to discuss before 
 you all the facts for the prosecution and the e'efenre ; 
 but, voting on my oath, in my soul and conscicnc e I 
 believe General Moreau to be innocent, and I am for 
 an acquittal.' 
 
 " M. Clavier, having read a paper in which he fully 
 stated the grounds of his opinion, declared himself of 
 the same mind as M. Damenve. 4 
 
 "M. Granger, who coughed, and spoke very slowly, 
 relied on a great number of the facts which had been 
 acknowledged to be cither false or inaccurate (facts, 
 indeed, relinquished by even the Procunur General 
 and the reporter) to prove Moreau guilt}-, and he 
 urged the capital sentence. 
 
 " M. Selves, whose turn it then was to speak, rose, 
 left the room for a while, and came back to ^\xo. a 
 verbal opinion. He arrived at the same conclusion 
 as Granger and Thuriot. 
 
 "M. Laguillaumie, having stated the grounds of his 
 opinion, declared that he did not consider the general 
 guilty, and he voted with Clavier and Damenve. 
 
 " M. Lecourbc, with equal explicitness, declared 
 that he was for the acquittal of General Moreau. 
 
 * It was probably then that Clavier exclaimed, "And we ? who 
 will give us a pardon ?" Clavier, a very learned Greek scholar, 
 was Paul Louis Courrier's father-in-law. 
 
The Last Days of the Constitute. 315 
 
 "M. Bourguignon voted with Thuriot, Granger, and 
 Selves. He was especially anxious to controvert the 
 reasons which were assigned by those who took the 
 opposite view ; but his arguments came from his 
 head and not from his heart. 
 
 " M. Rigault voted with Lecourbe, Laguillaumie, 
 Clavier, and Damenve, after he had very ably stated 
 his reasons. 
 
 "M. Desmaisons said, " In my soul and con- 
 science I believe General Moreau to be not guilty, 
 and I am for acquitting him." 5 
 
 M. Martineau voted with the above mentioned who 
 were for the acquittal of General Moreau. 
 
 " Lastly, M. Hemart, First President, voted guilty, 
 with Thuriot, Bourguignon, Selves, and Granger. He 
 afterwards put forward a number of considerations of 
 a political kind and affecting public order, to bring 
 over the majority who had voted 'not guilty' to his 
 opinion, if possible. 
 
 " Several judges then claimed to be heard M. Le- 
 courbe observed that there were seven votes against 
 five, and therefore General Moreau was acquitted ; 
 the matter was at an end, and they must now pro- 
 ceed to discuss the culpability of the next person 
 according to the order of the indictment. There- 
 upon arose a great commotion. President Hemart 
 threatened to break up the discussion ; he refused 
 to close the debate, and forbade M. Lecourbe to 
 speak. The latter then summoned Fremyn, the 
 clerk, to draw up the judgment, and declared him 
 
 5 Desmaisons was Corvisart's brother-in-law, and very in- 
 timate with Bourrienne. See the " Memoires" of the latter for 
 the service which Bonaparte wanted him to do him with Des- 
 maisons. 
 
3 16 The Last Days of t lie Consulate. 
 
 responsible for his refusal to fulfil the law. More 
 discussion, and fresh clamour. Hemart again 
 threatened to break up the discussion, and retire, 
 and again forbade Lecourbe, Regand, and those who 
 were for the majority to speak. He called on the 
 reporter ; the judges in the majority kept quiet, in the 
 fear lest some unfortunate event might occur, and 
 consented to listen to Thuriot. The latter applied 
 himself to blackening the picture, and Hemart helped 
 him. They spoke alternately; they did not venture 
 to say, \ It is our will that you should condemn him ; 
 you are in a position which forces you to a condemna- 
 tion ;' but they gave this clearly to be understood. 
 Believing themselves to be organs and confidants of 
 the Government, they endeavoured to inspire their 
 colleagues with the hopes and fear.; which they them- 
 selves experienced ; they threatened, they actually 
 announced, that a civil war would be kindled in 
 France, which would mean the overthrow of the exist- 
 ing Government by the acquittal of General Morcau. 
 Thuriot added : ' You desire to set Moreau at 
 liberty ; but he will not be freed ; you will force the 
 Government to make a coup a" Mat, for this is a 
 political rather than a judicial matter, and great 
 sacrifices are sometimes necessary to the safety of the 
 State.' Granger repeated the latter sentiment in a 
 more forcible form, giving it to be understood that 
 in such a case even an innocent person ought to be 
 condemned y 
 
 " It was nearly eight o'clock in the evening ; the 
 judges dined in the inner room of the Council Cham- 
 bers, resuming the discussion after dinner. There had 
 been, however, during dinner much coming and 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 317 
 
 going, private colloquies, and resort to the President's 
 cabinet." 
 
 "At length, after much debate, a second discussion 
 took place, and a compromise was effected, by which 
 a majority of eight votes sentenced Moreau to two 
 years' imprisonment." 
 
 Lecourbe adds the following note : 
 
 " It is well to observe that, during the deliberation 
 before and after supper, there were several officers 
 in the President's cabinet, adjoining the Council 
 Chamber, and especially General Savary ; 6 also that 
 Thuriot went out several times and held colloquies 
 with them and M. Real." 
 
 The colloquies, the comings and goings, which 
 
 secured the annulment of the first vote, were 
 
 brought about by a strange letter, full of falsehoods, 
 
 written by the Emperor who was informed of what 
 
 was going on, and alarmed by it to Cambaceres, the 
 
 Grand Chamberlain. This letter gives an idea of 
 
 the furious passion which possessed Bonaparte, of 
 
 his contempt for justice, and the extreme pressure 
 
 which he brought to bear upon the members of the 
 
 tribunal. 
 
 " St. Cloud, 
 "20th Prairial, year XII. (June 9th, 1804). 
 
 "MY COUSIN, The judges began to deliberate 
 
 6 We may judge how trustworthy the " Memoires du Due de 
 Rovigo " are, by the terms in which Savary speaks of this judi- 
 cial deliberation. He says, "It has been generally said that 
 the members of the Criminal Court, thoroughly knowing 
 Moreau's republican opinions, had given him the benefit of 
 them, and that a brother of General Lecourbe (a partisan of 
 Moreau's), who was one of the judges, had, assisted by M. 
 Fouche, gained several votes for Moreau. / know nothing 
 about it, but something of the sort must have taken place." 
 " Memoires du Due de Rovigo." 1829.) 
 
318 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 this morning at eight o'clock. During this time, 
 Riviere, Armand de Polignac, and Bouvet de Lozier 
 have pronounced their defenders to have deceived them 
 by teiling them that by saving Moreau they would 
 oblige the court to declare that there had not been 
 any conspiracy, and it was for this reason that during 
 the trial, all, from Georges down to the least of the 
 accused, spoke in the same sense. The counte- 
 nance of the court has undeceived them, and they saw 
 that the manner in which they have conducted them- 
 selves might save Moreau and not them. Either for 
 these reasons or for quite ot/iers f they sent a request to 
 the Instructing Judge (Thuriot) to be permitted to 
 make fresh declarations. The Instructing Judge, who 
 was sitting, could not receive them. M. Real sent 
 some one, and it scans they have stated that, instead 
 of three interviews be ween Moreau and Pichegru, 
 there were five, and that, in short, they have made 
 fresh charges. I wish you to send me to the Pro- 
 cureur General, who should go to the prison, as 
 the judges are in consultation, demand to be admitted 
 to the sitting, and state to the court that he has to 
 inform them of a new order of things, the conduct 
 pursued towards the accused, and their fresh declara- 
 tions. You will feel the importance of these steps, 
 especially after what Savary will tell you. 7 In any 
 case, it seems to me requisite that the Procureur 
 General should take cognizance of these latter facts, 
 and should state them to the court. 
 
 " For the rest, I am not sufficiently familiar with this 
 matter to overrule your opinion. But in a conspiracy 
 
 7 See preceding note (6). 
 
The Last Days of the Const/ late. 3 1 9 
 
 against the State, the sentences being not yet pro- 
 nounced, it ought to be at the option of the court to 
 resume its sitting ; and, indeed, the statement made 
 by the Procureur General to the as>embled court, 
 were it in writing only, would have the effect of being 
 joined to the procedure, and giving room for the 
 formulation of a sentence more conformable to 
 justice and the interests of the State." 
 
 We may readily imagine how the writer of this 
 letter and his satellites took the verdict of the 
 tribunal upon Moreau, who had been proclaimed 
 irretrievably lost, by the Government hacks, Murat, 
 Maret, the future Due de Bassano, Regnaud de Saint- 
 Jean d'Angely, &c, &c. 
 
 " I was at St. Cloud," says Madame de Remusat 
 (in her " Correspondance," vol. ix. p. 495), "when the 
 news arrived. Everybody was in consternation. The 
 Grand Judge had rashly pledged himself to the First 
 Consul that Moreau should be condemned to death, 
 and Bonaparte was so deeply displeased that it was 
 impossible for him to disguise his feelings. We have 
 seen with what vehement fury he received Judge 
 Lecourbe, the general's brother, who had spoken very 
 forcibly at the tribunal for Moreau's innocence, at his 
 first public audience on Sunday. He drove him from 
 his presence, calling him a ' prevaricating judge,' 
 without any one's being able to guess what significa- 
 tion he, in his anger, attached to that expression. 
 Shortly afterwards he deprived him of his post." 
 
 She adds, a little later : " I observed among a cer- 
 tain party in the town, much rejoicing over the result 
 of this event, which was insulting to the Emperor." 
 
 According to his custom, the Emperor endeavoured 
 
320 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 to throw the blame of everything upon the members 
 of his Council whom he had consulted before he gave 
 orders for the prosecution. " These animals," said he 
 to Bourriennc, "declare to me that it is impossible to 
 fail in getting a capital condemnation \ that his com- 
 plicity is evident, and now they put me off with a 
 pickpocket's sentence for stealing handkerchiefs. What 
 would you have me do with him? Keep him ? lie 
 would still be a rallying- point ; let him sell his goods, 
 and be off out of France. What should I do with 
 him at the Temple ? I have enough of them without 
 him." 8 
 
 He ordered Moreau's family to sell his property, 
 bought a portion of it, and made Bcrthier a present 
 of the estate of Gros Bois, and the day after the 
 execution of Georges Cadoudal and his companions, 
 (the 25th of June) the Moniteur announced the 
 departure of the conqueror of Hohenlindcn for 
 America. 1 
 
 Georges Cadoudal and eleven others who were sen- 
 tenced to death, and the girl Hizay, who was sen- 
 tenced to two years' imprisonment, had appealed to 
 the Court of Cassation. On the 4th Messidor (23rd 
 of June) the court rejected their appeal, and on the 
 following day the unhappy men were guillotined at 
 the Place de Greve. The newspapers generally 
 limited themselves to a mere announcement that the 
 convicts had suffered their penalty, but the fottrnal 
 etes DSats gave the following details in its issue of 
 the 26th of June : 
 
 " The condemned men were transferred last night, 
 
 8 " M^moires de Bourrienne," vol. vi. p. 157. 
 
 1 " Memoires de Madame de Remusat," vol. ii. p. 19. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 321 
 
 under an escort of gendarmes, from Bictre to the 
 Conciergerie. Very early in the morning the letters 
 of grace granted by the imperial clemency in favour 
 of eight of the convicts were brought to the Court of 
 Criminal Justice. , The decree of that court, con- 
 firmed by the Court of Cassation, against Georges 
 and the other eleven condemned men, was signified to 
 them after the transfer. They all immediately asked 
 for confessors. Georges knelt at the feet of his, and 
 listened for a long time to his exhortations. At 
 eleven o'clock, the twelve convicts, assisted by their 
 confessors, were placed in three carts which were in 
 waiting. In each cart were four men ; at thirty-five 
 minutes past eleven Georges Cadoudal's head fell, the 
 first. Two of the others, Louis Ducorps and Lemer- 
 cier, went up to the Hotel de Ville, came down some 
 time afterwards, and also underwent their sentence. 
 Lemercier was executed the last." 
 
 Was Georges the first to die, as the Debats states ? 
 I have not been able to clear up this point, because 
 the proch-verbal of the execution, which must have 
 been kept at the Hotel de Ville, was destroyed in the 
 burning of that edifice in 187 1. I raise this question 
 because I found among the detached notes accom- 
 panying Fauriel's manuscript, and in his own hand- 
 writing, one which contradicts the Journal des Debats 
 on that point, and adds some details of sufficient 
 interest to be given here. The note is full of abbre- 
 viations, and has evidently been written in haste, 
 either from the dictation of an eye-witness, or after 
 the perusal of a document which he had in his hands 
 for only a short time. 
 
 " At six o'clock in the morning, the Place de GrCve 
 
 Y 
 
322 TJie Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 occupied by troops, as well as all the streets through 
 which the carts were to pass windows hired Georges 
 much taken up during the journey with a person 
 dressed in black. He is the last to ascend makes 
 all the signs of a man who wants to make a speech 
 the beating of drums drowns his words in the midst 
 of the universal silence he is heard to cry repeatedly 
 until his last sigh, ' Vive le Roi ! ' " 
 
 Ten years afterwards, day for day, on the 25th of 
 June, 1 8 14, a service was celebrated at the church of 
 Saint Paul, in Paris, for "Generals Pichegru, Georges, 
 Murcau, and the eleven persons who perished with 
 General Georges" thus the Monitenr. 
 
 " A numerous assembly attended the ceremony, and 
 all manifested a solemn reverence. A collection was 
 made by Madame de Polignac, accompanied by the 
 Marquis de Riviere, who, as it is well known, escaped 
 the fate of the other victims. The service was to 
 have been celebrated at the expense of the relatives 
 of General Georges, but his Majesty, being apprised 
 of this, and being desirous to manifest his interest in 
 the object of the ceremony, signified that he would 
 defray the expenses." 
 
 Moreau well deserved to be associated with the 
 former companion-in-arms whose treason he had 
 unmasked in days past, in that funeral ceremony. I Ic 
 had left the distant land to which imperial enmity 
 had banished him, only to go and die in Bohemia, 
 struck by a French bullet in the ranks of our enemies, 
 and to give his triumphant rival the cruel joy of 
 seeing him go down to the grave dishonoured and 
 under the ban of his native land! Unhappy man, 
 he could not wait ! If, rejecting fatal and shameful 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 323 
 
 examples, he could have resigned himself to exile for 
 only a few months longer, he would have seen his 
 proud persecutor hurled from the throne and banished 
 from that country which Moreau would have re- 
 entered with a head held high indeed. Then would 
 the whole nation, recently overwhelmed by disaster, 
 have welcomed the glorious outlaw who had so 
 often led the soldiers of the Republic to victory with 
 acclamation. 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Letter from General Moreau to the Minister of 
 War (Berthier). 
 
 Army of the Rhine. Libertv. Equality. Headquarters at 
 Strasburg, 29th Floreal, year IX. of the French Republic, one 
 and indivisible. 
 
 The General-in-Chief to the Minister of War of the French 
 Republic. 
 
 Citizen Minister, The Ordinator-in-Chief and the Pay- 
 master-General were charged to render to you, as well as to the 
 public Treasury, a detailed account of the administration of 
 the army. But the emphasis with which the official journal in its 
 numbers of the 15 th and 17th Germinal asserted that no contribu- 
 tion had been levied on Germany, and that all the funds for the 
 payment of the Army of the Rhine had been furnished by the 
 public Treasury, imposes upon me the duty of giving you a state- 
 ment of the sums received, and their employment. 
 
 When I took command of the Army of the Rhine, in the 
 month of Nivdse, year VII. e"ght months' pay was due to the 
 troops, the distribution of victuals was most irregular not to 
 say that there was no such thing and the clothing was in a 
 very bad condition. 
 
 I requested the government to regulate the distributions, and 
 to give me only two months' pay. I was acquainted with the 
 state of the Treasury, and I had to limit my demands. 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 Before entering on the campaign I received two millions 
 (francs), and this sum provided for the most pressing needs. 
 
 Six or seven decades of pay were settled ; the funds advanced 
 for services gained us credit ; and by means of eight or nine 
 millions of debt the distributions were made regularly, the 
 clothing was repaired, and the troops began the campaign cf 
 year VII. in tolerably good case, and full of courage and good- 
 will. 
 
 It was not possible to establish regularity in the collection of 
 contributions until after the armistice. 
 
 Germany lacking money, it was only through banking opera- 
 tions that we could hope to get them in promptly. In order to 
 meet this expense and all the irregular expenses which are 
 necessary to an active army, I decided that the Payma 
 should charge himself as receipts on behalf of the Treasury with 
 four-fifths of the contributions only ; reserving it to myself to 
 determine on private bonds the employment of the remaining 
 fifth, which I ordered to be paid into a private account [caisse). 
 
 You should have received copies of all the procte-verbaux of 
 these payments. The Paymaster has also sent them to the 
 Treasury. 
 
 The total of these receipts amounts to forty-four millions. 
 
 The Paymaster has been charged with about thirty-six 
 millions, on account of the public Treasury. 
 
 The funds which I have : amount to about seven 
 
 millions. 
 
 The expenditure of the thirty-six millions is composed of 
 about twenty-live millions for pay, and about eleven millions for 
 different services and other regular expenses authorized by the 
 Ordinator-in-Chief. 
 
 The expenditure of the seven millions which I have reserved 
 is composed of : 
 
 Costs of negotiating twenty-five or twenty-six millions which 
 have been got in by banking operations only. 
 
 Gratuities to the troops, the cost of certain monuments which 
 I have had erected to general officers deserving of commenda- 
 tion who have been killed in battle. 
 
 Aid given to certain corps which have suffered more than 
 others. 
 
 The payment of a number of accounts due to officers, all of 
 which, though correct, I was unable to regulate with precision 
 owing to certain formal errors. 
 
 When I have received these portions of the account opened 
 with myself alone, I will give you any explanation you may 
 desire. 
 
 Of the regular expenditure, the Paymaster will render an 
 account to the Treasury, and the Ordinator will have sent you 
 the drafts of all his ordinances. 
 
Ike Last Days of the Consulate. 325 
 
 To resume, the contributions have supplied nearly thirteen 
 months' pay. Thus, supposing that the army had been handed 
 over to me paid up, a single decade would not have been due 
 to it on re-entering France. 
 
 I have only been able to give a certain amount on account to 
 all the services, since the liquidations are not made ; but those 
 services have been able to pay almost all their debts, and I pre- 
 sume that what remains, which will be probably from 700,000 
 to 800,000 francs, and which will be paid over to the War Pay- 
 master of the fifth military division, will meet the sums due to 
 them. 
 
 The army has been brought back as well equipped as can be 
 desired for troops who have just made a very difficult winter 
 campaign. The infantry corps are as complete as when they 
 went into active service. Several are at 800 or 900 men per 
 battalion, and there is not one under 700. 
 
 The cavalry corps are more numerous than at the beginning 
 of the campaign ; the resources of the conquered country have 
 furnished their depots with the means of equipment which they 
 needed. Several cavalry regiments exceed 700 horses. 
 
 The artillery has returned in good case, bringing nearly 200 
 guns taken from the enemy, and close on 3000 more horses 
 than they took with them. The arsenals of Strasburg are pro- 
 vided with wood, iron, steel, &c. 
 
 Lastly, supplies to the value of 500.000 francs have been 
 replaced in the stores of the military hospitals. 
 
 Be assured, Citizen Minister, that I have put the utmost 
 possible order into the levying of contributions, and that I have 
 not neglected the interests of the Republic, the conquered 
 countries having been taxed as heavily as they could be without 
 violating the laws of humanity. 
 
 The Ge?ieral-in-Chief (Signed) Moreau. 
 
 P.S. The staff and officers without troops have been paid up 
 to the month of Flore'al. This represents two millions. 
 
 The General-in-Chief (Signed) Moreau. 
 
 II. 
 
 Letter from Napoleon to the Grand Judge concern- 
 ing the Pardon of Armand de Polignac. 
 
 Saint dozed, 
 22nd Prairial, year X 1 1 . ( June nth, 1 804) . 
 Monsieur Regnier, Grand Judge, Minister of Justice, 
 We are sensibly affected by the conspiracy which, with 
 the help of God, and by your vigilance and that of the good 
 
 Preserved as we 
 
o 
 
 26 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 have been for ten years from dangers of all kinds, we are en- 
 titled to think that it would not be in the power ot man to 
 attempt our life until Providence should have marked the term 
 of it, and we ourselves will care to defend it only so long as it 
 shall be useful, and we shall believe it necessary to the Great 
 People. We should therefore have cast into oblivion and 
 hushed up the rumour of this conspiracy, as we have done in 
 other cases, if \\e had not discerned a real danger to the 
 destiny and the interests of the nation, in the peculiar character 
 which, as it seemed to us, has been imparted to it by the inter- 
 vention of men sheltered under the mask of great services. Many 
 individuals condemned by our Criminal Court have appealed 
 to us ; and, either through weakness, or from that sentiment of 
 indulgence which has ever guided us in our government, leading 
 us to pardon the enemies ot whom the nation had most right to 
 complain, and which has happily enabled us to reunite, 
 reorganize, and restore to the country more than eighty thousand 
 families, we have been unable to prevent ourselves from being 
 touched by the grief of Madame Armand de Polignac. Besides, 
 we have remembered that we were well acquainted with this 
 young man at school 1 in our early years of boyhood, and it is 
 not to be wondered at that he has forgotten this, in the outrageous 
 attempt to which he allowed himself to be led, since he has 
 forgotten those duties towards his country which under all cir- 
 cumstances should be borne in mind by every Frenchman. We 
 have, then, resolved to take advantage of our prerogative to the 
 full extent, and to grant him the grace of life, ch irging you to 
 present at our next Privy Council letters to that effect, and 
 we desire that he be, on the instant, transferred to where his 
 brother is. 
 
 Napoleon. 
 
 III. 
 
 The subsequent Fate of the pardoned or acquitted 
 Prisoners. 
 
 On the day of the execution of Georges and his eleven com- 
 panions, Napoleon sent a note to the Grand Judge (" Corre- 
 spondance," vol. ix. p. 506) in which he enjoined him to have all 
 those individuals whom the court had sentenced to imprison- 
 ment sent off that same night to their several places of con- 
 
 1 " Correspondance," vol. ix. p. 406. For the steps taken to 
 save Armand de Polignac, see the second volume of the " Me- 
 moirs of Madame de Rem u sat," who played an active part in 
 the matter, and was rather ill-rewarded. This letter apprises us 
 of a fact that was not known, or at least seems to have been 
 forgotten, viz. that Napoleon and Armand de Polignac had 
 been school-fellows. "Where ? The letter does not say. 
 
The Last Days of the Consulate. 327 
 
 finement. Exception was made of Rolland, whose information 
 had been so useful. " He may," says the note, " be left at the 
 Abbaye, having had no connection with the promoters of the 
 civil war, and not having meddled in this affair, except by his 
 relations with Pichegru, who no longer exists." 
 
 Spin was ordered to leave Paris on the following day, and 
 the individuals who had been tried and acquitted were, with the 
 exception of some of whom we shall presently speak, banished 
 to forty leagues from the coasts and from Paris, and placed 
 under the superintendence of the police. 
 
 The eight condemned men who had been saved from the 
 scaffold by imperial clemency, were, according to the tenor of 
 the 'Tetters of grace," to be transported after four years' im- 
 prisonment ; but, for lack of a place of transportation, their 
 detention was indefinitely prolonged. One of them, Lajolais, 2 
 who, notwithstanding his retractations, was none the less 
 severely handled by Fauriel, died a prisoner in the Chateau d'lf 
 at the end of 1808. 3 
 
 1 have learned what the Empire did with the seven others who 
 were pardoned from a very important document, for my ac- 
 quaintance with which I am indebted to M. Georges Picot, 
 Member of the Institute. 4 It is the report of the commissaries 
 who were sent to inspect the State Prisons in 1812, and to 
 receive the petitions of the inmates. We find recorded in this 
 report the cause and date of the imprisonment of each, and 
 the decision of the Emperor on the subject of their requests. 
 
 2 Bourrienne, who had brought the same charges against 
 Lajolais which Fauriel brings, in the fifth volume of his 
 " Mdmoires " (pp. 273, 274), has inserted a long note in the ninth 
 (p. 200), from which I extract the following sentences. While 
 acknowledging that " the conduct of Lajolais was perhaps such 
 as to awaken suspicions in the minds of Moreau's friends," and 
 also that " his heedlessness, which he has but too severely ex- 
 piated, may have borne the semblance of treason at a time when 
 it was so great an object to find traitors," he states from 
 authentic proofs which were placed before his own eyes, that 
 " Lajolais was a more than imprudent accomplice, and not an 
 impelling agent in Georges Cadoudal's conspiracy." What are 
 those proofs? Bourrienne ought to have told us. 
 
 According to the Journal de Paris of the nth of June, 1804 
 (p. 1750), it was Lajolais' daughter, a girl of fourteen, who, having 
 got access to the Emperor, obtained her fathers life from him. 
 
 3 Among others, on the subject of the pretended interview of 
 Moreau and Pichegru on the Boulevard de la Madeleine. 
 
 4 The original, which M. Picot had found at the Ministry of 
 Justice, is at present in the National Archives. He has kindly 
 lent me a copy which he had made. 
 
328 The Last Days of the Consulate. 
 
 Hardly any of the latter were granted. The following are the 
 particulars which concern the persons with whom we are 
 occupied. 
 
 Rochelle and Rusillion were confined in the Chateau d'lf, 
 and also D'Hozier, who, " protesting his fidelity and attachment 
 to the Emperor, desires liberty, that he may devote his life to 
 his service." 
 
 Gaillard, who also protests his fidelity and attachment, and 
 Bouvet Lozier, who, being ill, begs in vain to be transferred to 
 a " maison de sante " in Paris, were at the Chateau de Bouillon 
 (Ardennes). 
 
 Armand de Polignac, who had succeeded in getting admis- 
 sion to Dubuisson's ** maison de sant" in Paris, "recognizes 
 that he owes this to the generosity of his Majesty, to whom 
 he will be happy to prove his gratitude." His brother, who was 
 condemned to only two years' imprisonment, and ought to have 
 been set at liberty in 1806, but was still immured in the same 
 place, u begs with confidence and respect for the execution of the 
 judgment concerning him, and relies upon the generosity of his 
 Majesty." Both these persons took advantage of the confusion 
 caused by the invasion of 18 14 to escape. 
 
 The decision of justice respecting the accused who had been 
 acquitted, and whom the President had directed to be set at 
 liberty, according to the law, if there were no other cause of de- 
 tention against thorn, was carried out in the case of several of 
 them in the following manner : 
 
 The imperial commissaries found at Ham, Victor Couchery 
 and Noel Ducorps ; at the Chateau de Herve, Rubin de la 
 Grimaudiere and Datry. To their just demands answer is 
 made in a note which states that the Emperor had decided 
 that they were to be detained until peace was made with 
 England,* 
 
 According to the " Biographie Universale," supplementary 
 article "Riviere," p. 189, Riviere ''obtained the commutation 
 of his sentence through the intervention of Madame de Mon- 
 tesson, and not through that of Murat. who was afterwards 
 given the credit of it." We read in the " Memoirs of Madame 
 de Remusat " that " Murat, who by his violent conduct, and his 
 animadversions against Moreau, had excited universal indigna- 
 tion, wanted to rehabilitate himself, and obtained the pardon of 
 the Marquis de Riviere." 
 
. 
 
 THIS "BOOK t* TV* 0> 
 
 14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 
 l4 Nov'56lW 
 
 REC'D LD 
 
 OCT 31 13-u 
 
 i_ 
 
 m 
 
 REC'D LD 
 
 MAY 30 1957 
 
 ^ 
 
 LD 21-100m-6,'56 
 (B9311sl0)476 
 
 General Library 
 
 University of California 
 
 Berkeley 
 
ID DOJUJN^ 
 
 Cv-mML 11 
 
 tmkm 
 
 isa&i 
 
 
 
 '4% 
 
 w