World's Best Histories — Volume 7: France

by François Guizot; Madame de Witt

Fresh arrests had taken place in Paris, for a servant of Georges had given information. One of his principal officers, Bouvet de Lozier, vainly attempted to kill himself; rescued from death, he asked to see the chief judge. Régnier sent in his place Réal, the counsellor of state, more penetrating and more clever than himself. It is supposed that the latter was no stranger to the drawing up of the deposition of Bouvet, who implicated General Moreau in the gravest manner. "Here is a man who comes back from the gates of the tomb, still surrounded by the shadows of death, who demands vengeance upon those who by their perfidy have thrown him and his party into the abyss where they now find themselves. Sent to sustain the cause of the Bourbons, he finds himself compelled either to fight for Moreau, or to renounce an enterprise which was the sole object of his mission. Monsieur was to pass into France, to put himself at the head of the royalist party. Moreau promised to unite himself to the cause of the Bourbons; the royalists arrived in France, and Moreau retracts. He proposes to them to work for him, and to get him named Dictator. Hence the hesitation, the dissension, and the almost total loss of the royalist party. I know not what weight you will attach to the assertions of a man snatched an hour ago from the death to which he had devoted himself, and who sees before him the fate which an offended government has in reserve for him. But I cannot withhold the cry of despair, or refrain from attacking the man who has reduced me to this."

Réal hastened to the Tuileries. The First Consul was less astonished than himself; he was acquainted with the interviews of Moreau and Pichegru. He was well aware that the opinions of Moreau were quite opposed to any thought of monarchical restoration. The general returned to Paris, after a visit to Grosbois, on the morning of the 15th of February; he was arrested on the bridge of Charenton, and taken to the Temple. Lajolais was arrested at the same time. The trial was directed to take place before the civil tribunal of the Seine. Cambacérès had proposed a military commission. "No," said the First Consul; "it would be said that I desire to disembarrass myself of Moreau, and to get him judicially assassinated by own creatures." The jury was chosen in the department of the Seine; a report upon the causes of the arrest of Moreau was sent to the Senate, the Corps Législatif, and the Tribunate.

The commotion in Paris was great, and the public instinct was favorable to General Moreau. The presumed accomplices of his crime had not yet fallen into the hands of the government. People refused to believe him guilty, a traitor to the opinions of a lifetime, and mixed up in a royalist conspiracy. The attitude of the general was firm and calm. For a moment, the First Consul conceived the idea of seeing him. "I pardon Moreau," said he; "let him own everything to me, and I will forget the errors of a foolish jealousy." General Lajolais had recounted the details of the interviews of Moreau with Pichegru; the accused persisted in denying everything. "Ah, well," replied Napoleon, "since he will not open with me, it will be necessary for him to yield to justice." Anger broke forth, in spite of the efforts of the First Consul to preserve the appearance of a sorrowful justice. The brother of Moreau, was a member of the Tribunate; he had loudly pleaded in favor of the accused. "I declare," cried he, "to the assembly, to the entire nation, that my brother is innocent of the atrocious crimes that are imputed to him. Let him be given the means of justifying himself, and he will do so. I demand that he may be judged by his natural judges," The president of the Tribunate dared to style the accusation against Moreau a denunciation; the First Consul warmly criticised this expression. "The greatness of the services rendered by Moreau is not a sufficient motive for screening him from the rigor of the laws," cried he. "There is no government in existence where a man by reason of his past services may screen himself from the law, which ought to have the same grasp on him as on the meanest individual. What! Moreau is already guilty in the eyes of the highest powers of the State, and you will not even consider him as accused!" "Paris and France have only one sentiment, only one opinion," wrote he to Comte Melzi, vice-president of the Italian Republic.

The pursuit had become rigorous. It was known that Pichegru and Georges were hidden in Paris; the gates of the city were closed, egress by the river watched by armed vessels. The Corps Législatif voted a measure condemning to death whoever should conceal the conspirators, to the number of sixty. Whoever should be cognizant of them without denouncing them, was liable to six years in irons. One night General Pichegru went to ask asylum of Barbé-Marbois, formerly intendant of St. Domingo, transported, like himself, to Sinnamari, and now become a minister of the First Consul. Barbé-Marbois did not hesitate to receive him. When he avowed it afterwards to Napoleon, the latter warmly congratulated him upon it.

A few days passed by; General Pichegru, shamefully betrayed by one of his former officers, was arrested on the 28th of February, bravely resisting the agents of the police. Georges, seized in the street on the 9th of March, blew out the brains of the first gendarme who seized the bridle of his horse. La Rivière and Polignac were also in prison. Moreau had given up his system of absolute denials; at the prayer of his wife and his friends he wrote to the First Consul, simply recounting his relations with Pichegru, without asking pardon, and without denying the past transactions, seeking to disengage his cause from the Royalist conspiracy —less haughty, however, than he had till then appeared. Bonaparte had the letter affixed to the process of the trial. He appeared moved at the situation of Pichegru. "A fine end!" said he to Réal: "A fine end for the conqueror of Holland. It will not do for the men of the Revolution to devour each other. I have long had a dream about Cayenne; it is the finest country in the world for founding a colony. Pichegru has been proscribed, as he knows; ask him how many men and how much money he wants to create a great establishment; I will give them to him, and he will retrieve his glory by rendering a service to France." The general did not reject the proposition, but he persisted in his silence. "I will speak before the tribunal," said he. Before the supreme day when the trial was about to take place before human justice, Pichegru had appeared before a more august tribunal; on the morning of the 6th of April he was found dead in his bed, strangled, it was said, by his own hands.

The royalist conspirators at first proudly avowed the aim of their enterprise. "What did you come to do in Paris?" asked the prefect of the police of Georges Cadoudal. "I came to attack the First Consul." "What were your means?" "I had as yet little enough; I counted on collecting them." "Of what nature were your means of attack?" "By means of living force." "Where did you count on finding this force?" "In all France." "And what was your project?" "To put a Bourbon in the place of the First Consul." "Had you many people with you?" "No, because I was not to attack the First Consul until there was a French prince in Paris, and he has not yet arrived."

This was the prince for whom General Savary had been, waiting in vain for nearly a month on the cliff of Biville. The anger of the First Consul continued to increase. "The Bourbons think they can get me killed like a dog," said he. "My blood is worth more than theirs; I shall make no more of their case than of Moreau or Pichegru; the first Bourbon prince who falls into my hands, I will have shot remorselessly." The Comte d'Artois and the Duc de Berry were announced, and did not arrive. Napoleon stretched forth his arm to seize an innocent prince, whose misfortune it was to be within his reach. On the 10th of March, 1804, he wrote to General Berthier: "You will do well, citizen minister, to give orders to General Ordener, whom I place at your disposal, to repair at night, by post, to Strasburg. He will travel under another name than his own, and see the general of division. The aim of his mission is to throw himself upon Ettenheim, invest the city, and carry away from it the Duc d'Enghien, Dumouriez, an English colonel, and any other individual who may be in their suite. The general of division, the marshal of the barracks of gendarmes, who has been to reconnoitre Ettenheim, as well as the commissary of police, will give him all necessary information."

The young Duc d'Enghien, son of the Duc de Bourbon, and grandson of the Prince of Condé, resided in fact at Ettenheim, in the grand duchy of Baden. Drawn at times to Strasburg, by his taste for the theatre, he was held fast in this little city by a passionate attachment for the Princess Charlotte of Rohan, who lived there. He was young and brave, and was waiting for the call from England to take part in the war. He was not implicated in the plot hatched round the Comte d'Artois, and was absolutely ignorant of it. A few emigrants—very few in numbers, and without political importance—resided near him; one of them was the Marquis de Thumery, whose name, mispronounced with a German accent, gave rise to the error which supposed the presence of Dumouriez at Ettenheim. This supposition might for a moment deceive the First Consul as to the complicity of the Duc d'Enghien; it was cleared up when, after having violated the territory of the Grand Duke of Baden (for which Talleyrand was careful to apologize), he learnt the arrival of the unfortunate prince at Strasburg; all the papers seized at Ettenheim were in his hands.

The first movement of the Duc d'Enghien had been to defend himself. "Are you compromised?" asked a German officer who was at his house. "No!" replied the young man with astonishment. Resistance was useless; he surrendered. There was one single ground of accusation against him: like all the princes of his house, and thousands of emigrants, he had borne arms against France. Nearly all the nobility had been permitted again to tread the soil of their country: he alone was about to expiate the fault of all. The minister of France at Baden, Massias, felt compelled to bear witness that "the conduct of the Prince had always been innocent and guarded." A few days later the Moniteur had to announce the assembling of emigrants, with a staff of officers and bureaux of officials round a prince of the House of Bourbon. Massias had beforehand given the lie to this rumor. The Duc d'Enghien was brought to Paris; detained for a few hours at the barriers, he was then conducted to the chateau of Vincennes. On the same morning the First Consul had sent this order to his brother- in-law, General Murat, whom he had just named governor of Paris: "General, in accordance with the orders of the First Consul, the Duc d'Enghien is to be conducted to the castle of Vincennes, where arrangements are made to receive him. He will probably arrive at his destination to-night. I pray you to make such arrangements as shall provide for the safety of this prisoner at Vincennes, as well as on the road from Meaux by which he comes. The First Consul has ordered that the name of this prisoner, and everything relative to him, shall be kept a profound secret. In consequence, the officer entrusted with his guard ought not to be made acquainted with the name and rank of his prisoner; he travels under the name of Plessis."

Bonaparte was at Malmaison, gloomy and agitated; since the day when the order had been given to arrest the Duc d'Enghien, the intimate companions of the First Consul had no doubt as to his fatal resolution. Cambacérès had warmly insisted upon the deplorable consequences of such an act; Madame Bonaparte had cast herself at his feet, but he raised her up ill- temperedly. "You have grown very saving over the blood of the Bourbons," said he bitterly to Cambacérès. "I shall not allow myself to be killed without being able to defend myself." The fatal moment approached. Madame de Remusat, playing at chess with Napoleon, heard him repeating in a low voice the noble words of Augustus pardoning Cinna, and she believed the prince saved: he had just entered the castle of Vincennes, and already the judges were awaiting him.