A variety of attempts had consequently been made against his life. The popular belief—that of Bonaparte himself—was that these attempts proceeded mainly from the émigrés, aided by the money of England, a belief which the foolish correspondence of the British minister at Munich, Mr. Drake, with a pretended émigré—in fact, however, an agent of the French government (Mahée),—might unfortunately have encouraged.
George Cadoudal, the daring leader of the Chouans, who had already been implicated in plots of this kind, was known to be in Paris and engaged in some new enterprise, with which Pichegru, certainly—Moreau, apparently—was connected. But in the reports of the police it was also stated that the conspirators awaited the arrival at Paris of a prince of the house of Bourbon.
The Duc d’Enghien, then residing at Ettenheim, in the Duchy of Baden, seemed the most likely of the Bourbon princes to be the one alluded to: and spies were sent to watch his movements.
The reports of such agents are rarely correct in the really important particulars. But they were particularly unfortunate in this instance, for they mistook, owing to the German pronunciation, a Marquis de Thumery, staying with the Bourbon Prince, for Dumouriez: and the presence of that general on the Rhenan frontier, and with a Condé, strongly corroborated all other suspicions.
A council was summoned, composed of the three consuls,—Bonaparte, Cambacérès, Lebrun,—the minister of justice and police, Régnier,—and Talleyrand, minister of foreign affairs.[43]
At this council (10th March 1804) it was discussed whether it would not be advisable to seize the Duc d’Enghien, though out of France, and bring him to Paris; and the result was the immediate expedition of a small force, under Colonel Caulaincourt, which seized the prince on the Baden territory (15th March); M. de Talleyrand, in a letter to the Grand Duke, explaining and justifying the outrage. Having been kept two days at Strasburg, the royal victim was sent from that city, on the 18th, in a post chariot, arrived on the 20th at the gates of Paris at eleven in the morning; was kept there till four in the afternoon; was then conducted by the boulevards to Vincennes, which he reached at nine o’clock in the evening; and was shot at six o’clock on the following morning, having been condemned by a military commission—composed of a general of brigade (General Hullin), six colonels, and two captains—according to a decree of the governor of Paris (Murat) of that day (20th March), which decree (dictated by Napoleon) ordered the unfortunate captive to be tried on the charge of having borne arms against the Republic: of having been and being in the pay of England, and of having been engaged in plots, conducted by the English in and out of France, against the French government. The concluding order was, that, if found guilty, he should be at once executed.
The whole of this proceeding is atrocious. A prince of the dethroned family is arrested in a neutral state, without a shadow of legality;[44] he is brought to Paris and tried for his life on accusations which, considering his birth and position, no generous enemy could have considered crimes; he is found guilty without a witness being called, without a proof of the charges against him being adduced, and without a person to defend him being allowed.[45]
This trial takes place at midnight, in a dungeon; and the prisoner is shot, before the break of day, in a ditch!
It is natural enough that all persons connected with such a transaction should have endeavoured to escape from its ignominy. General Hullin has charged Savary (afterwards Duc de Rovigo), who, as commander of the gendarmerie, was present at the execution, with having hurried the trial, and prevented an appeal to Napoleon, which the condemned prince demanded. The Duc de Rovigo denies with much plausibility these particulars, and indeed, all concern in the affair beyond his mere presence, and the strict fulfilment of the orders he had received; and accuses M. de Talleyrand—against whom it must be observed he had on other accounts a special grudge—of having led to the prince’s seizure by a report read at the Council on the 10th March; of having intercepted a letter written to the first consul by the illustrious captive at Strasburg, and of having hastened and provoked the execution, of which he offers no other proof than that he met Talleyrand, at five o’clock, coming out of Murat’s, who was then, as I have said, governor of Paris, and who had just given orders for the formation of the military commission. It must be observed also, that, for the report of what passed in the council, M. de Rovigo only quotes a conversation which he had some years afterwards with Cambacérès, who was anxious to prove that he himself had opposed the violation of the German territory.