Memoirs of the life, exile, and conversations of the Emperor Napoleon. (Vol. II)

by comte de Emmanuel-Auguste-Dieudonné Las Cases

MOREAU, GEORGES, AND PICHEGRU.—DIFFERENCE OF OPINION PRODUCED BY THEIR CONSPIRACY IN THE CAMP OF BOULOGNE AND IN PARIS.

30th.—The Emperor went out about two o’clock, and we all attended him. He began to converse about the intelligence contained in the French papers which he had just received, and alluded to the statues which, it was stated, were to be erected to the memory of Moreau and Pichegru. “A statue to Moreau,” said he, “whose conspiracy in 1803 is now so well proved! Moreau, who, in 1813, died fighting under the Russian standard! A monument to the memory of Pichegru, who was guilty of one of the most heinous of crimes! who purposely suffered himself to be defeated, and who connived with the enemy in the slaughter of his own troops! And after all,” continued he, “history is only made up of reports which gain credit by repetition. Because it has been repeatedly affirmed that these were great men, who deserved well of their country, they will at length pass for such, and their adversaries will be despised.”

Some one present remarked that it might have been thus in the dark ages of ignorance; but that now the multitude of monuments and public documents, the arts of printing and engraving, and the general diffusion of knowledge, must always render truth accessible to those who wish to come at it; and, as each party has its own historians, the thinking reader will always be enabled to form an impartial opinion.

The Emperor then described at length the affairs of Moreau, Georges, and Pichegru, to which I have before alluded, and of which I promised further details. He now informed us that the man who made the first confessions indicated, though without naming him, a person to whom Georges and the other leaders of the conspiracy never spoke without taking off their hats, and whom they treated with the utmost consideration and respect. It was at first supposed that this individual must have been the Duke de Berri; and some concluded him to have been the Duke d’Enghien, during his momentary appearance. Charles d’Hosier, one of the conspirators, unexpectedly drew aside the veil. A few days after his arrest, he was seized with a fit of melancholy and hanged himself in prison. The alarm was however given, and he was cut down. Stretched on his bed, and while yet struggling between life and death, he vented repeated imprecations against Moreau, and accused him of having treacherously seduced many well-disposed men, and held out to them promises of assistance which he never realized. He likewise mentioned the names of Georges and Pichegru. This was the first circumstance that excited suspicion against Georges and Pichegru; there was previously no idea of either the one or the other having been engaged in the conspiracy. Real, who had hastened to this sort of death-bed confession of d’Hosier, proposed to the Consul that he should order the arrest of Moreau.

“This event created a great sensation,” said the Emperor. “The public mind was wrought up to a high pitch of fermentation. Doubts were entertained of the truth of the statements made by the Government respecting the extent of the conspiracy and the number of the conspirators. Of the latter it was affirmed there were about forty in Paris. Their names were published, and the First Consul pledged his honour to secure them. He summoned Bassières, and gave orders that he, with his corps, should surround and guard the walls of Paris. For the space of six weeks, nobody was suffered to quit the capital without special permission. A general gloom prevailed through Paris; but every day the Moniteur announced the arrest of one or two of the individuals who it was alleged were concerned in the conspiracy. Public opinion took a turn in my favour; and indignation against the conspirators increased in proportion as they were secured. Not one escaped.”

The public papers of the period detail the particulars of the arrest of Georges, who killed two men before he could be secured. It appears that he was betrayed by his comrade, who drove the cabriolet in which they were both riding together.

As to Pichegru, he was the victim of the basest treachery. “This circumstance,” said the Emperor, “was truly a disgrace to human nature. He was sold by his intimate friend; by a man whom I will not name, on account of the horror and disgust which his conduct is calculated to excite.” We informed the Emperor that the name of this individual had been mentioned in the Moniteur, at which he expressed surprise. “This man,” continued he, "who was formerly a military officer, and who has since followed the business of a merchant at Lyons, offered to deliver up Pichegru for 100,000 crowns. On the day on which he made this proposal, he stated that they had, on the preceding evening, supped together, and that Pichegru, finding himself every day alluded to in the Moniteur, and being aware that the critical moment was fast approaching, said, ‘If I and a few other Generals were boldly to present ourselves to the troops, should we not gain them over?’—‘No,’ replied the friend, ‘you form a wrong idea of the state of feeling in France; you would not gain over a single soldier.’—He spoke truly. At night, the faithless friend conducted the officers of the police to Pichegru’s door; and he gave them a minute description of his chamber and his means of defending himself. Pichegru had pistols on his bed-room table, and he kept a light burning while he slept. The officers gently unlocked the door by means of false keys, which the treacherous friend had procured for them. The table was overturned, the candle was extinguished, and the officers seized Pichegru, who immediately jumped out of bed. He was a very powerful man; he struggled desperately, and it was found necessary to bind him and convey him to prison, without waiting till he could be dressed."

On being placed at the head of the government, the First Consul was extremely anxious to tranquillize the western departments. He summoned nearly all the leading men of those districts, and succeeded in rousing several of them to a sense of the interests and glory of their country; he added that he even drew tears from the eyes of some. Georges had his turn among the rest. The Emperor said that he had endeavoured to touch every individual string of his heart; but in vain, he could produce no vibration. He found him lost to every generous feeling, and coldly intent on his own ambitious calculations. He persisted in his determination to command his Cantons. The Consul, having exhausted every conciliatory argument, at length assumed the language of the first Magistrate of France. He dismissed him, and recommended him to go home and live quietly and submissively; and above all, not to mistake the nature of the course he had that moment adopted, nor to attribute to weakness what was only the result of his moderation and the consciousness of his power. He desired him to repeat to himself, and to all who were connected with him, that, so long as the First Consul should hold the reins of authority, there would be no chance of safety for any who might dare to engage in conspiracy. Georges took his leave; but, as the event proved, not without having imbibed from this conference a feeling of respect for Napoleon, on whose destruction, however, he still continued bent.

Moreau was the rallying point and the centre of attraction to the conspirators, who came from London to attack Paris. It appeared that Lajollais, his Aide-de-camp, had deceived these men, by addressing them in the name of Moreau, and telling them that that General was secure of popular favour throughout the whole of France, and could dispose of the whole army. Moreau constantly assured them that he could command no one, not even his Aide-de-camp; but that if they killed the First Consul, they might do any thing.

Moreau, when left to himself, was a very good sort of man. He was easily led, and this accounts for his inconsistencies. He left the palace in raptures, and returned to it full of spleen and malice;—having in the interim seen his mother-in-law and his wife. The First Consul, who would have been very glad to have gained him over to his side, once made it up with him completely; but their friendship lasted only four days. The Consul then vowed that he would never renew it. In fact, attempts were afterwards frequently made to reconcile them; but Napoleon never would agree to it. He foresaw that Moreau would commit some fault, that he would lose himself; and certainly he could not have done so in a way more advantageous to the First Consul.

Some days previous to the battle of Leipsic, some carriages containing property and papers belonging to Moreau, which were on their way to his widow in England, were intercepted at Wittemberg. Among those papers, there was a letter from Madame Moreau herself, in which she advised her husband to lay aside his silly wavering conduct, and to come boldly to a determination. She urged him to assist in the triumph of the legitimate cause, that of the Bourbons. In answer to this, Moreau wrote a few days before his death, begging her not to trouble him with her chimeras. “I have come near enough to France,” said he, "to learn all that is going forward there. I have got into a real hornet’s nest."

The Emperor was on the point of publishing these intercepted papers in the Moniteur; but there still existed in France some persons blindly tenacious of the opinion they had always maintained respecting Moreau, and who persisted in regarding him as a victim of tyranny. The counter-revolution had not yet afforded an opportunity of making known those acts hitherto disavowed, and of claiming their recompense. The circumstance of personal enmity prevented the Emperor from executing his intention. He thought that it would not be becoming to revive this enmity for his own advantage, and to tarnish the memory of a man who had just fallen on the field of battle.

The trial of Moreau and Pichegru, which was protracted for such a length of time, violently agitated the public mind. What added to the notoriety and interest of this trial was its connection with the affair of the Duke d’Enghien, with which it became interwoven. “I have,” said the Emperor, “been reproached with having committed a great fault in that trial. It has been compared with the affair of the necklace, in the reign of Louis XVI., which that Monarch put into the hands of Parliament, instead of having it judged by a Commission. Politicians have affirmed that I should have contented myself with consigning the criminals to the judgment of a Military Commission. It would have been ended in eight and forty hours. I could have done it; it was legal, and nothing more would have been required of me; I should have avoided the risks to which I was exposed. But I felt my power so unlimited, and I was at the same time so strong in the justice of my cause, that I was determined the affair should be open to the observation of the whole world. For this reason the ambassadors and agents of Foreign powers were present during the proceedings!”

One of the company present here observed to the Emperor that the course he then adopted had proved advantageous to history and honourable to his own character. It had furnished three volumes of authentic documents relating to the trial.

Another individual of the Emperor’s suite, who, at the time of this celebrated trial, was with the army at Boulogne, said that all these events, even the affair of the Duke d’Enghien[d’Enghien], had there excited but little interest, and that, on his return to Paris, some time afterwards, he was astonished to observe the sensation which they had created in the capital.

The Emperor remarked that the public mind had indeed been highly excited, particularly on the occasion of the death of the Duke d’Enghien, which event, he said, still appeared to be judged of in Europe with blindness and prejudice. He maintained his right of adopting the step he had taken, and enumerated the reasons which had urged him to it. He then adverted to the many attempts that had been made to assassinate him, and observed that he was bound in justice to say that he had never detected Louis XVIII. in any direct conspiracy against his life, though such plots had been incessantly renewed in other quarters. With regard to that Prince he had heard only of his systematic plans, ideal operations, &c.

“If,” continued he, “I had continued in France in 1815, I intended to have given publicity to some of the later attempts that were made against me. The Maubreuil affair, in particular, should have been solemnly investigated by the first Court of the Empire, and Europe would have shuddered to see to what an extent the crime of secret assassination could be carried.”