World's Best Histories — Volume 7: France

by François Guizot; Madame de Witt

Murat had loudly declared his repugnance for the functions imposed on him by his brother-in-law. "He wants to stain my uniform with blood," said he with anger. He was not called to Vincennes. General Savary, devoted without reserve to the First Consul, had set out with a corps of gendarmes. Already the Duc d'Enghien, weighed down by fatigue, was asleep; he was roused up at midnight. A captain, as judge advocate, was entrusted with a first examination. He being asked his names, Christian names, age, and place of birth, in reply said "he was named Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon, Duc d'Enghien, born at Chantilly, the 2nd of August, 1772." Being asked at what time he quitted France, in reply he said, "I cannot say precisely, but I think it was on the 16th July, 1789, that I set out with the Prince de Condé my grandfather, my father the Comte d'Artois, and the children of the Comte d'Artois." Being asked where he had resided since leaving France, in reply he said, "On leaving France I passed with my parents, whom I always accompanied, by Mons and Brussels; thence we returned to Turin, to the palace of the king, where we remained nearly sixteen months. Thence, always with my parents, I went to Worms and the neighborhood, upon the banks of the Rhine. Lastly the Condé corps was formed, and I was with it throughout the war. I had before that made the campaign of 1792, in Brabant, with the Bourbon corps, in the army of Duke Albert. We terminated the last campaign in the environs of Grätz, and I asked permission of the Cardinal de Rohan to go into his country, to Ettenheim, in Brisgau, the former bishopric of Strasburg. For two years and a half I remained in this country, with the permission of the Elector of Baden." Being asked if he had ever passed into England, and if that power had always accorded him a grant of money, in reply he said he had never been there; that England always accorded him a grant of money, and that he had only that to live upon. Being asked if he kept up correspondence with the French princes in London, and if he had seen them for some time, he said that naturally he kept up a correspondence with his grandfather, and that equally naturally he corresponded with his father, whom he had not seen, so far as he could recollect, since 1794 or 1795. Being asked if he knew General Pichegru, and if he had any relations with him, he said, "I believe I have never seen him; I have had no relations with him. I know that he has desired to see me. I am thankful not to have known him, after the vile means of which it is said he has desired to make use, if it is true." Being asked if he knew the ex-general Dumouriez, and if he had had relations with him, he said, "On the contrary, I have never seen him." Being asked if, since the peace, he had not kept up correspondence with the interior of the republic, he said, "I have written to a few friends who are still attached to me, who have been my companions in war, about their affairs and my own; these correspondences are not, I think, those to which it is intended to refer."

Upon the minute of the examination, beneath his signature, the Duc d'Enghien wrote, "I earnestly entreat to have a private audience with the First Consul. My name, my rank, my way of thinking, and the horror of my situation, make me hope that he will not refuse me my request." The request was foreseen, and the answer, according to instructions given, that under no pretext would the First Consul be willing to receive the Duc d'Enghien. At two o'clock in the morning the military commission was assembled, presided over by General Hullin, formerly life-guard of Louis XVI., and one of the insurgent leaders before the Bastille. The same questions were addressed to the prince, more briefly—less explicitly, as if the time was short, and the enemy threatening. Sometimes the president interfered with an appearance of rude benevolence. General Savary did not speak. When the examination was finished he rose up. "Now this is my concern," said he. The judges deliberated a moment. The sentence, signed in blank, was already in their hands. The Governor of Vincennes, Harel, appeared at the gate carrying a light. He had formerly delivered to Bonaparte the conspirators of the plot of Aréna and Topino-Lebrun; to-day he preceded in the sombre corridors the prisoner, escorted by a piquet of troops. The prince did not pale; he reiterated his request for an audience, which was harshly denied. Already the grave was dug in the ditch of the chateau; a detachment of gendarmes waited for the condemned.

The Duke stopped. "Comrades," said he loudly, "there is without doubt among you a man of honor who will charge himself with receiving and transmitting my last thoughts." And as a young officer stepped out of the ranks, "Has any one here a pair of scissors?" asked the Prince. He cut a lock of his hair, and joining it in the form of a ring, he pronounced in low tones the name of the person for whom he intended this souvenir; then pushing back with his hands the bandage with which they wished to cover his eyes, he made one step towards the soldiers: they fired, and he was dead. General Savary went to tell his master that he was obeyed.

Shakespeare has depicted remorse with that terrible truthfulness which carries home to our minds the horror of crime. Lady Macbeth passes before us haunted by a vision, and ceaselessly washing her blood-stained hands. During all his life, even in his exile, Napoleon vainly sought to wash off the innocent and illustrious blood which he caused to flow in the fosse of Vincennes on the 20th of March, 1804. The men whom he had employed as the instruments of his heinous crime struggled like himself under this terrible responsibility. In vain has Bonaparte reproached Talleyrand with having perfidiously urged him on in the fatal path; in vain has Réal affirmed that an order reached his house during the night assuring to the prisoner a new examination, unfortunately forestalled by his death. All explanations, and all accusations have failed before the severe justice of history and the infallible instinct of the public conscience. The odious burden of a cowardly assassination was constantly weighing upon him who had ordered it. The blood of his victim created round him an abyss that all the efforts of supreme power could never succeed in filling up.

When the news spread in Paris, on March 21st, it was received with stupor; people wept, even at Malmaison. Caulaincourt, previously entrusted with the explanatory letter for the Elector of Baden, complained bitterly of the stain upon his honor. Fourcroy was sent to dissolve the Corps Législatif; Fontanes, who presided over the assembly, replied to the counsellor of state without making allusion to the catastrophe, the intelligence of which the latter had mixed up with matters of business. His speech was modified in the Moniteur. Fontanes had the courage to protest against the approbation which had been attributed to him. The same journal contained the judgment of the military commission which had condemned the Duc d'Enghien; like the speech of Fontanes, the wording had been altered.

Alone amongst the public functionaries of every rank or origin, young Chateaubriand, minister of France to the republic of Valais, felt himself constrained to give in his resignation. Louis XVIII. sent back the collar of the Golden Fleece to the King of Spain, who remained the ally of Napoleon. The courts of Russia and Sweden put on mourning for the Duc d'Enghien.

Thus was preparing in Europe, under the impulse of public opinion, the third coalition, which was to unite all the sovereigns against France. Alone till then, England had hatched against us the plots in which its diplomatic agents were found compromised; but the denunciations of the First Consul against Spencer and Drake vanish, and lose all importance in presence of the crime committed at Vincennes. Prussia, long and obstinately faithful to its policy of neutrality, and recently disposed to draw nearer to us, began to incline towards Russia, with whom she soon concluded an alliance. Austria evinced neither regret nor anger, but the action of the German powers was silently influencing her. The First Consul broke out against the Emperor Alexander, violently hurling a gross insult at him. "When England meditated the assassination of Paul I., if it had been known that the authors of the plot could be found at a place on the frontiers, would not you have been inclined to have them seized?" General Hédouville, ambassador of France at St. Petersburg, received the order to set out in forty-eight hours. "Know for your direction," said he to the chargé d'affaires, "that the First Consul does not wish for war, but he does not fear it with anybody."

In presence of this general perturbation of Europe, of the loud indignation of some and the dull uneasiness of others—in order to respond to the denunciations of the royalists, who understood the fatal consequences of the blow that Bonaparte had dealt to his own glory, the First Consul resolved to take at length the last step which separated him from supreme greatness. A year before he had been appointed Consul for life of the French Republic: the murderer of a prince of the house of Bourbon, he raised again on his own account the overturned throne. Still without children, he founded in his person an hereditary monarchy, assured of finding in the nation the assent of admiration as of lassitude and fear. Eight days had scarcely passed since the execution of the Duc d'Enghien; the brothers of the First Consul were absent and discontented. Cambacérès was opposed to the projects which he had divined in the mind of Napoleon Bonaparte. In his place, Fouché, always eager to serve the man whose favor he courted, cleverly prepared the minds of the Senate. No equivocation was possible as to the desires of Napoleon. On March 27th the first assembly of the state addressed to the supreme chief this humble request: "You found a new era," said the Senate, "but you ought to make it eternal. Splendor is nothing without duration. You are harassed by circumstances, by conspirators, by the ambitious. You are also in another sense harassed by the uneasiness which agitates all Frenchmen. You can conquer the times, master circumstances, put a curb on conspirators, disarm the ambitious, tranquillize all France, by giving it institutions which shall cement your edifice, and prolong for the children what you have done for the fathers. In town and country if you could interrogate all Frenchmen one after another, no one would speak otherwise than we. Great Man, complete your work by rendering it as immortal as your glory; you have drawn us forth from the chaos of the past, you make us blessed in the benefits of the present—make us sure of the future."

The clever manoeuvre of Fouché gave Napoleon the opportunity of declaring himself; he wished to be invited to speak. His answer was not, and could not, be ready; he asked of the Senate time to reflect. Meanwhile he set himself to sound the courts of Europe. On the morrow of the insult he had offered to all the sovereigns by the murder of the Duc d'Enghien, their good-will was doubtful: the earnest adhesion of Prussia and Austria astonished and satisfied him; he was at war with England, embroiled with Russia; the rest of Europe seemed to be at his feet. Clever at managing those of whom he had need, he wished to assure himself of the disposition of the army still agitated by the arrest of Moreau. He wrote to General Soult, who commanded the camp of Saint Omer: "Citizen General Soult, I have received your letter. The Councils-General of the departments, the Electoral Colleges, and all the great bodies of the State, ask that an end should be at last put to the hopes of the Bourbons, by placing the republic in safety from the shocks of elections and the uncertainty of the life of a single man. But up to this moment I have decided upon nothing; meanwhile I desire that you should instruct me in great detail as to the opinion of the army on a measure of this nature. You perceive that I would not be drawn into it except with the sole object of the nation's interest, for the French people have made me so great and so powerful that I can desire nothing more."

The malcontents in the army were silent; the ambitious, the courtiers, the faithful and devoted servants of the great general, brought him the protestation of their devotion; the addresses from the departments succeeded each other in great numbers. On April 25 the First Consul sent a message to the Senate: "Your address of the 6th Germinal has not ceased to be present to my thoughts," said he. "You have judged the hereditary succession of the chief magistrate to be necessary to shelter the French people from the plots of our enemies, and the agitation born of rival ambitions. Many of our institutions have at the same time appeared to you to require to be improved in order to assure without reversal the triumph of equality and public liberty, and to offer to the government and the nation the double guarantee of which they have need. In proportion as I have fixed my attention on these great objects, I have perceived more and more that, under circumstances as novel as they are important, the counsels of your wisdom and of your experience are necessary to me in order to fix all my ideas. I invite you then to let me become completely acquainted with all your thoughts. I desire that on the 14th July this year we shall be able to say to the French people: Fifteen years ago, by a spontaneous movement, you rushed to arms; you required liberty, equality, and glory. To-day, this best of all national wealth, assured to you without fear of reversal, is protected from all tempests. Institutions conceived and commenced in the midst of the storms of internal and external war, developed with constancy, have been brought to their climax amidst the noise of the efforts and plots of our mortal enemies, by the adoption of all that the experience of ages and of peoples has demonstrated as fit to guarantee the laws which the nation has judged necessary for its dignity, its liberty, and its honor."