Ten Years' Exile / Memoirs of That Interesting Period of the Life of the Baroness De Stael-Holstein, Written by Herself, during the Years 1810, 1811, 1812, and 1813, and Now First Published from the Original Manuscript, by Her Son.

by Madame de Staël

CHAPTER 14.

Conspiracy of Moreau and Pichegru.

The news had just arrived at Berlin of the great conspiracy of Moreau, of Pichegru, and of George Cadoudal. There was certainly among the principal heads of the republican and royalist parties a strong desire to overturn the authority of the first consul, and to oppose themselves to the still more tyrannical authority which he resolved to establish on making himself be declared emperor: but it has been said, and perhaps not without foundation, that this conspiracy, which has so well served Bonaparte's tyranny, was encouraged by himself, from his wish to take advantage of it, with a Machiavelian art, of which it is of consequence to observe all the springs. He sent an exiled jacobin into England, who could only obtain his return to France by services to be performed for the first consul. This man presented himself, like Sinon in the city of Troy describing himself as persecuted by the Greeks. He saw several emigrants who had neither the vices nor the faculties necessary to detect a certain kind of villainy. He found it therefore a matter of great ease to entrap an old bishop, an old officer, in short some of the wrecks of a government, under which it was scarcely known what factions were. In the sequel he wrote a pamphlet in which he mystified, with a great deal of wit, all who had believed him, and who in truth ought to have made up what they wanted in sagacity by firmness of principle, that is to say, never to place the least confidence in a man capable of bad actions. We have all our own way at looking at things; but from the moment that a person has shewn himself to be treacherous or cruel, God alone can pardon, for it belongs to him only to read the human heart sufficiently to know if it is changed; man ought to keep himself for ever at a distance from the person who has lost his esteem. This disguised agent of Bonaparte pretended that the elements of revolt existed in France to a great extent; he went to Munich to find an English envoy, Mr. Drake, whom he also contrived to deceive. A citizen of Great Britain ought to have kept clear of this web of artifice, composed of the crossed threads of jacobinism and tyranny.

George and Pichegru, who were entirely devoted to the Bourbon party, came into France secretly, and concerted with Moreau, whose wish was to rid France of the first consul, but not to deprive the French nation of its right to choose that form of government by which it desired to be ruled. Pichegru wished to have a conversation with General Bernadotte, who refused it, being dissatisfied with the manner in which the enterprise was conducted, and desiring first of all, to have a guarantee for the constitutional freedom of France. Moreau, whose moral character is most excellent, whose military talent is unquestionable, and whose understanding is just and enlightened, allowed himself in conversation, to go to great lengths in blaming the first consul, before he could be at all certain of overthrowing him. It is a defect very natural to a generous mind to express its opinion, even inconsiderately; but General Moreau attracted too much the notice of Bonaparte, not to make such conduct the cause of his destruction. A pretext was wanting to justify the arrest of a man who had gained so many battles, and this pretext was found in his conversation, if it could not be in his actions.

Republican forms were still in existence; people called each other citizen, whilst the most terrible inequality, that which liberates some from the yoke of the law, while others are under the dominion of despotism, reigned over all France. The days of the week were still reckoned according to the republican calendar; boasts were made of being at peace with the whole of continental Europe; reports were, (as they still continue to be,) continually presenting upon the making of roads and canals, the building of bridges and fountains; the benefits of the government were extolled to the skies; in short, there was not the least apparent reason for endeavouring to change a state of things, with which the nation was said to be so perfectly satisfied. A plot therefore, in which the English, and the Bourbons should be named, was a most desirable event to the government, in order to stir up once more the revolutionary elements of the nation, and to turn those elements to the establishment of an ultra-monarchical power, under the pretence of preventing the return of the ancient regime. The secret of this combination, which appears very complicated, is in fact very simple: it was necessary to alarm the revolutionists as to the danger to which their interests would be exposed, and to propose to complete their security, by a final abandonment of their principles; and so it was done.

Pichegru was become a decided royalist, as he had formerly been a republican; his opinion had been completely turned; his character was superior to his understanding; but the one was as little calculated as the other to draw men after him. George had more elasticity about him, but he was not fitted either by nature or education for the rank of chief. As soon as it was known that these two were at Paris, Moreau was immediately arrested, the barriers were shut, death was denounced to any one who should give an asylum to Pichegru or George, and all the measures of jacobinism were put in force to protect the life of one man. This man is not only of too much importance in his own eyes to stick at any thing, when his own interests are in question, but it likewise entered into his calculations to alarm men's minds, to recall the days of terror, in short to inspire the nation, if possible, with the desire of throwing itself entirely upon him, in order to escape the troubles which it was the tendency of all his measures to increase. The retreat of Pichegru was discovered, and George was arrested in a cabriolet; for, being unable to live longer in any house, he in this manner traversed the streets night and day, to keep himself out of sight of his pursuers. The police agent who seized him, was recompensed with the legion of honour. I imagine that French soldiers would have wished him any reward but that.

The Moniteur was filled with addresses to the first consul, congratulating him on his escape from this danger; this incessant repetition of the same phrases, bursting from every corner of France, offers such a concord in slavery as is perhaps unexampled in the history of any other people. You may in turning over the Moniteur, find, according to the different epochs, exercises upon liberty, upon despotism, upon philosophy, and upon religion, in which the departments and good cities of France strive to say the same thing in different terms; and one feels astonished that men so intelligent as the French, should attach themselves entirely to success in the style, and never once have had the desire of exhibiting ideas of their own; one might say that the emulation of words was all that they required. These hymns of dictation, however, with the points of admiration which accompany them, announced that France was completely tranquil, and that the small number of the emissaries of perfidious Albion were seized. One general, it is true, amused himself with reporting, that the English had thrown bales of Levant cotton on the coast of Normandy, to give France the plague; but these inventions of grave buffoonery were only regarded as pieces of flattery addressed to the first consul; and the chiefs of the conspiracy, as well as their agents, being in the power of the government, there was reason for believing that calm was restored in France; but Bonaparte had not yet attained his object.