The Emperor used to consider this affair under two very distinct aspects: with reference to the common law, or the established rules of justice, and with reference to the law of nature, or acts of violence. With us he would willingly argue the matter, and generally on the principles of common law; and he seemed to condescend to do so on account of the familiarity that existed between us, or of his superiority over us. He generally concluded these conversations by observing that he might possibly be reproached with severity, but that he could not be accused of any violation of justice; because, notwithstanding all that calumny and falsehood had invented on the subject, all the forms required by law had been regularly observed and strictly attended to.
In the presence of strangers, the Emperor adopted a line of argument founded almost exclusively on the law of nature and state politics. It was visible that it would have been too painful to him so far to lower himself with them as to insist much on the principles of common law: to have done so would have appeared like an attempt to justify himself. “If I had not had in my favour the laws of the country to punish the culprit,” he would say to them, “I should still have had the right of the law of nature, of legitimate self-defence. The Duke and his party had constantly but one object in view, that of taking away my life: I was assailed on all sides, and at every instant; air-guns, infernal machines, plots, ambuscades of every kind, were resorted to for that purpose. At last I was tired out, and took an opportunity of striking them with terror in their turn in London; I succeeded, and from that moment there was an end to all conspiracies. Who can blame me for having acted so? What! blows threatening my existence are aimed at me day after day, from a distance of one hundred and fifty leagues; no power on earth, no tribunal can afford me redress; and I shall not be allowed to use the right of nature and return war for war! What man, unbiassed by party feeling, possessing the smallest share of judgment and justice, can take upon himself to condemn me? on what side will he not throw blame, odium, and criminal accusations? Blood for blood; such is the natural, inevitable, and infallible law of retaliation: woe to him who provokes it! Those who foment civil dissensions or excite political commotions render themselves liable to become the victims of them. It would be a proof of imbecility or madness to imagine and pretend that a whole family should have the strange privilege to threaten my existence, day after day, without giving me the right of retaliation: they could not reasonably pretend to be above the law to destroy others, and claim the benefit of it for their own preservation: the chances must be equal. I had never personally offended any of them; a great nation had chosen me to govern them; almost all Europe had sanctioned their choice; my blood, after all, was not ditch-water; it was time to place it on a par with theirs. And what if I had carried retaliation further? I might have done it: the disposal of their destiny, the lives of every one of them, from the highest to the lowest, were more than once offered to me; but I rejected the offer with indignation. Not that I thought it would be unjust for me to consent to it, in the situation to which they had reduced me; but I felt so powerful, I thought myself so secure, that I should have considered it a base and gratuitous act of cowardice. My great maxim has always been that, in war as well as in politics, every evil action, even if legal, can only be excused in case of absolute necessity: whatever goes beyond that is criminal.
“It would have been ridiculous in those who violated so openly the law of nations to appeal to it themselves. The violation of the territory of Baden, of which so much has been said, is entirely foreign to the main point of the question. The law of the inviolability of territory has not been devised for the benefit of the guilty, but merely for the preservation of the independence of nations and of the dignity of the sovereign. It was therefore for the Duke of Baden, and for him alone, to complain, and he did not; he yielded, no doubt, to violence and to the feeling of his political inferiority: but, even then, what has that to do with the merits of the plots and outrages which I had to complain of, and of which I had every right to be revenged?” And he concluded that the real authors of the dreadful catastrophe, the persons who alone were responsible for it, were those who had favoured and excited from abroad the plots formed against the life of the First Consul. “For,” said he, “either they had implicated the unfortunate Prince in them, and had thus sealed his doom; or, by neglecting to give him intimation of what was going forward, they had suffered him to slumber imprudently on the brink of the precipice, and to be so near the frontiers at the moment when so great a blow was about to be struck in the name and on the behalf of his family.”
To us, in the intimacy of private conversation, the Emperor would say that the blame in France might be ascribed to an excess of zeal in those who surrounded him, or to dark intrigues or private views; that he had been precipitately urged on in this affair; that they had as it were taken his mind unawares; and that his measures had been hastened, and their results pre-determined. “I was one day alone,” said he, “I recollect it well; I was taking my coffee, half seated on the table at which I had just dined; when sudden information is brought to me that a new conspiracy has been discovered. I am warmly urged to put an end to these enormities; they represent to me that it is time at last to give a lesson to those who have been day after day conspiring against my life; that this end can only be attained by shedding the blood of one of them; and that the Duke d’Enghien[d’Enghien], who might now be convicted of forming part of this new conspiracy, and taken in the very fact, should be that one. It was added that he had been seen at Strasburg; that it was even believed that he had been in Paris; and that the plan was that he should enter France by the east, at the moment of the explosion, whilst the Duke of Berry was disembarking in the west. I should tell you,” observed the Emperor, “that I did not even know precisely who the Duke d’Enghien was (the Revolution having taken place when I was yet a very young man, and I having never been at Court); and that I was quite in the dark as to where he was at that moment. Having been informed on those points, I exclaimed that, if such were the case, the Duke ought to be arrested, and orders should be given to that effect. Every thing had been foreseen and prepared; the different orders were already drawn up, nothing remained to be done but to sign them, and the fate of the young Prince was thus decided. He had been residing for some time past at a distance of about three leagues from the Rhine, in the states of Baden. Had I been sooner aware of this fact and of its importance, I should have taken umbrage at it, and should not have suffered the Prince to remain so near the frontiers of France; and that circumstance, as it turned out, would have saved his life. As for the assertions, that were advanced at the time, that I had been strenuously opposed in this affair, and that numerous solicitations had been made to me, they are utterly false, and were only invented to make me appear in a more odious light. The same thing may be said of the various motives that have been ascribed to me; these motives may have existed in the bosoms of those who acted an inferior part on this occasion, and may have guided them in their private views; but my conduct was influenced only by the nature of the fact itself and the energy of my disposition. Undoubtedly, if I had been informed in time of certain circumstances respecting the opinions of the Prince, and his disposition; if, above all, I had seen the letter which he wrote to me, and which, God knows for what reason, was not delivered to me till after his death, I should certainly have pardoned him.”
It was easy for us to perceive that these expressions of the Emperor’s were dictated by his heart and by nature, and that they were only intended for us; for he would have felt himself much humbled had he supposed that any body could think for a moment that he endeavoured to shift the blame upon some other person; or that he condescended to justify himself. And this feeling was carried so far that, when he was speaking to strangers, or dictating on that subject for the public eye, he confined himself to saying that, if he had seen the Prince’s letter, he should perhaps have forgiven him, on account of the great political advantages that he might have derived from so doing; and in tracing with his own hand his last thoughts, which he concludes will be recorded in the present age, and reach posterity, he still pronounces on this subject, which he is aware will be considered the most delicate for his memory, that, if he were again placed in the same situation, he should again act in the same manner!! Such was the man, such the stamp of his mind, and the turn of his disposition.
Let those who delight in searching the human heart in its inmost recesses, to deduce consequences and draw conclusions, now exercise their ingenuity: I have supplied them with valuable materials, I have laid genuine documents before them. I will add another and a last, which will not be the least worthy of notice.
Napoleon one day said to me, with reference to the same subject, “If I occasioned a general consternation by that melancholy event, what a universal feeling of horror would have been produced by another spectacle, with which I might have surprised the world!...
“I have frequently been offered the lives of those whose places I filled on the throne, at the rate of one million a head. They were seen to be my competitors, and it was supposed that I thirsted after their blood; but, even if my disposition had been different from what it was, had I been formed to commit crimes, I should have repelled all thoughts of the crime thus proposed to me, as seeming altogether gratuitous. I was then so powerful, so firmly seated; and they seemed so little to be feared! Revert to the periods of Tilsit and Wagram; to my marriage with Maria Louisa; to the state and attitude of Europe! However, at the height of the crisis of Georges and Pichegru, when I was assailed by murderers, the moment was thought favourable to tempt me, and the offer was renewed, having for its object the individual, whom public opinion, in England as well as in France, pointed out as chief mover of all these horrible conspiracies. I was at Boulogne, where the bearer of these offers arrived; I took it into my head to ascertain personally the truth and the nature of the proposal. I ordered him to be brought before me.—‘Well, Sir!’ said I, when he appeared.—‘Yes, First Consul, we will give him up to you for one million.‘—‘Sir, I will give you two millions; but on condition that you will bring him alive.’—‘Ah! that I could not promise,’ said the man, hesitating, and much disconcerted by the tone of my voice and the expression of my looks at that moment.—‘Do you then take me for a mere assassin? Know Sir, that, though I may think it necessary to inflict a punishment or to make a great example, I am not disposed to encourage the perfidy of an ambuscade;’ and I drove him from my presence. Indeed his mere presence was already too great a contamination.”
THE SERVANT WHO HAD BEEN TAKEN AWAY FROM ME PAYS ME A SECRET VISIT.—HIS OFFERS.—SECOND VISIT.—THIRD VISIT.—I INTRUST TO HIM MY LETTER TO PRINCE LUCIEN, WHICH CAUSES MY REMOVAL FROM ST. HELENA.
From 21st to 24th.—I had remained with the Emperor the preceding day, as late as one or two o’clock in the morning; on returning to my own apartment, I found that I had had a visit paid to me, during my absence, by a person who had become tired of waiting for me.