KIDNAPPING OF THE DUKE D'ENGHIEN. (See p. [498].)

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The Georges conspiracy, as it is commonly called, was followed by a still more startling act of violence. As the Bourbons still continued to watch for the overthrow of his power, Buonaparte determined to take a deep revenge on the persons of any of that family whom he could by any means get into his hands. Could he have inveigled the Count d'Artois and the Duke of Berry, as he attempted, to leave London and land in Brittany, he would have seized them and put them to death without ceremony or mercy. But there was another member of the family, though the farthest off from succession to the throne, who was living on the French frontiers, within a tempting reach of his soldiers in Alsace, and him he determined to kidnap and kill. This proposed victim of a most lawless and wicked vengeance was Antoine-Henri de Bourbon, Duke d'Enghien, the son of the Prince of Condé. The project was so odious, so certain to cover both Napoleon and France with inextinguishable infamy, that it startled the not very sensitive mind of Talleyrand, who, it is said, gave the duke secret warning of his danger, and advised him to remove farther from the Rhine. In consequence, the duke applied to Sir Charles Stuart to get him a passport from the Austrian Minister, to enable him to cross the Austrian territory to rejoin his grandfather, then at Warsaw with Louis XVIII. Sir Charles Stuart applied to M. de Cobenzl for this purpose, and had the Austrian Court been quicker in its movements, the duke would have been safe enough from the myrmidons of Buonaparte; but, whilst lingering at Ettenheim in Baden for the necessary passport, the duke had so little suspicion of the prompt and deadly nature of the usurper's design against him, that he took no means to conceal himself, or he might still have escaped. But in the middle of the night of the 14th of March he was aroused by the sound of horses' hoofs, and, looking out, saw that the château was surrounded by a troop of French cavalry. Buonaparte had despatched his aide-de-camp, Caulaincourt, to Strasburg to effect this capture, and he had sent on Colonel Ordenner to bring the duke away from the heart of a neutral territory. The duke was summarily tried by a military tribunal and shot (March 21, 1804) at Vincennes. The news of this most audacious crime soon transpired, and filled Europe with horror and execration against its perpetrators.

In the midst of these deeply-planned manœuvres Buonaparte proceeded to make his last move in his great game. He had intimidated the Royalists by the seizure and fusilading of the Duke d'Enghien; he had deprived the Republicans of their leader in Moreau, who was exiled; the nation was passive; all its branching lines of authority were in his hands; and there remained only to erect a throne and seat himself upon it. It must not be a regal throne, because that would too much remind the world of the claims of the Bourbons: it should, therefore, be an imperial one, and mark a totally new era in France. It was one which was especially calculated to flatter the French vanity. Accordingly, on the 30th of April, Curée—a man of no particular note, and perhaps selected on that account for the occasion, as his proposal might be the more easily disavowed, if it were resisted—rose in the tribunate, and proposed that Napoleon Buonaparte should be invested with the title of Emperor.

No sooner had the tribunate sent up its decision to the Senate, signed by all except Carnot, than the Senate hastened at once to adopt it, and to sign the answer to the message of the First Consul, which had been drawn up by Fouché for the Committee of Ten appointed by the Senate. In July Napoleon went to Boulogne to review the grand army of England, on the heights above the town, overlooking the English Channel, and from which the white cliffs of England were conspicuous. Everything had been elaborately got up for this occasion, on which the enthusiasm of the soldiers was to be raised to the highest pitch. The common people believed that he was going to lead the army at once across the Channel, and return loaded with the enormous wealth of London, and with the king, queen, royal family, William Pitt, and the leading members of the aristocracy as prisoners in his train. Buonaparte had no such wild idea; but since the Duke d'Enghien's murder the Powers of almost all Europe had manifested unequivocally their abhorrence of the act, and of the man who perpetrated it, and he now designed, by the display of enthusiasm in his army, at once to awe his own people and the sovereigns of other nations.

From Boulogne, Buonaparte proceeded to Brussels, Ostend, Antwerp, and so through Belgium, where Josephine met him, to the Rhine. Wherever he appeared, the authorities of the towns, both then and on his return through France, presented him with the most adulatory addresses. One would no longer believe it the same people who had, for ten years, committed such unexampled horrors to destroy the royalty they were now again adoring. The Mayor of Arras, Robespierre's own town, put the climax to all this civic incense by declaring, in his address, that "God made Napoleon, and then rested!"

Buonaparte now prepared for his coronation. Whilst at Mayence, on the Rhine—where the German princes flocked to pay abject homage to him as their protector, no nations, except Great Britain, Russia, and Sweden, keeping aloof—he despatched one of his aides-de-camp, General Caffarelli, an Italian, to invite the Pope to go to Paris to crown the new emperor and empress. Pius VII. had already been compelled to submit to the terms of the Concordat, which had made such inroads into the ancient power of the Church; and he knew very well that to refuse this request would bring down upon him fresh humiliations. Buonaparte, who affected to imitate Charlemagne as the founder of the French nation, passing over all the kings of France as unworthy of notice, determined to inaugurate the Second Empire by a still bolder stretch of authority than Charlemagne himself. That monarch had condescended to make the journey to Italy to receive the privilege of coronation from Pope Leo; but Buonaparte resolved that poor old Pope Pius VII. should come to him in France. His desire was carried out to the letter, and Pius arrived at Fontainebleau on the 25th of November. The 2nd of December having been fixed for the coronation, the Cathedral of Notre Dame was gorgeously decorated for the occasion, and the ceremony was performed amidst the utmost pomp and magnificence, Napoleon himself putting the crown on his head and then placing the Empress's diadem on the head of the kneeling Josephine. During the whole proceedings the Pope was made to play a secondary part. He simply "assisted" at the function. The ceremony was followed by a profuse creation of marshals and nobles.

The year 1805 was opened by Buonaparte addressing a second letter to George III. Its tenor may be gathered from the concluding paragraph. "Alas! what a melancholy prospect to cause two nations to fight, merely for the sake of fighting. The world is sufficiently large for our two nations to live in it, and reason is sufficiently powerful to discover means of reconciling everything, when the wish for reconciliation exists on both sides. I have, however, fulfilled a sacred duty, and one which is precious to my heart. I trust your Majesty will believe in the sincerity of my sentiments, and my wish to give you every proof of it.—Napoleon."

Nothing could be more just or more excellent than the sentiments and arguments of this letter; but, unfortunately, circumstances on both sides were such as really precluded any hope of making peace. Great Britain foresaw Italy under the foot of France; Holland and Belgium in the same condition; Bavaria, Baden, Würtemberg, and other smaller German States, allied with France against the other German States. It was impossible for her to conclude a peace without stipulating for the return of these States to the status quo; and was Buonaparte likely to accede to such terms? On the contrary, at this very moment, besides being in possession of Hanover, George III.'s patrimony, he had been exercising the grossest violence towards our Ambassadors in various German States, was contemplating making himself king of Italy, and was forcibly annexing Genoa, contrary to the Treaty of Lunéville, to the Cisalpine Republic—that is, to the French State in Italy. Whilst he was thus perpetuating want of confidence in him, on the other hand a league for resistance to his encroachments was already formed between Great Britain, Russia, Sweden, and Austria. Peace, therefore, on diplomatic principles was impossible, and Napoleon must have known it well. True, we had no longer any right to complain of the expulsion of the Bourbons from France, seeing that the nation had ostensibly chosen a new government and a new royal family, any more than France had a right to attack us because we had expelled the Stuarts and adopted the line of Brunswick. But the very nature of Napoleon was incompatible with rest; for, as Lord Byron says, "quiet to quick bosoms is hell." Buonaparte had repeatedly avowed that he must be warlike. "My power," he said, "depends upon my glory; my glory on my victories. My power would fall if I did not support it by fresh glory and new victories. Conquest has made me what I am, and conquest alone can maintain me. A newly-born government, like mine, must dazzle and astonish. When it ceases to do that, it falls." With such an avowal as that, in entire keeping with his character, there must be constant aggressions by him on the Continent which intimately concerned us. Accordingly, the British Government replied to Buonaparte by a polite evasion. As Britain had not recognised Napoleon's new title, the king could not answer his letter himself. It was answered by Lord Mulgrave, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, addressed to M. Talleyrand, as the Foreign Secretary of France, and simply stated that Britain could not make any proposals regarding peace till she had consulted her Allies, and particularly the Emperor of Russia. The letter of Buonaparte and this curt reply were published in the Moniteur, accompanied with remarks tending to convince the French that the most heartfelt desires of peace by the Emperor were repelled by Great Britain, and that a storm was brewing in the North which would necessitate the Emperor's reappearance in the field.

Pitt had returned to office in anything but promising circumstances. Britain was at war with a great nation, and as yet the coalition which he was laboriously building up was far from being complete. Pitt's health was failing: his energies were prematurely worn out by the gigantic task that was forced upon him; his end was fast approaching, and his majority was shrunk and attenuated to an alarming degree. The Fox and Grenville opposition held together firmly, and Addington had carried a strong party along with him on retiring. Pitt felt his situation keenly and the king was sensibly alarmed at it. He attempted to conciliate Grenville, but, as Fox could not be accepted too, that failed. He then turned to Addington, and as the king was favourably disposed to his old minister, he warmly recommended this coalition. It was effected, and Addington was made a peer—Viscount Sidmouth, of Sidmouth. This was one of those rapid political promotions of George III.'s reign in which politics were made to ennoble men of no particular mark or abilities; and certainly the son of Pitt's father's doctor had never shown those splendid talents or rendered those brilliant services which justified such an elevation. But, as Pitt would take the lead in the Commons, it was, no doubt, felt more convenient that one who had lately been Prime Minister should not serve under the present Prime Minister, but should represent the Cabinet in the Upper House. There were some other changes at the same time. The Duke of Portland, who was growing old and infirm, retired from the post of President of the Council, which Sidmouth took up. Lord Harrowby, a warm friend of Pitt, retired, in consequence of continued illness, from the Foreign Department, and Lord Mulgrave took it, the Earl of Buckinghamshire succeeding to Lord Mulgrave's post as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.