It is strange to reflect that Lady Atkyns, in the course of her many visits to Paris, should not have ever sought to meet again her old friend. The Emperor’s rule was gaining in strength from day to day. Of those who had played notable parts in the Revolution, some, won over to the new Government, were doing their utmost to merit by their zeal the confidence reposed in them; the others, irreconcilable, but crushed by the remorseless watchfulness of a police force unparalleled in its powers, lived on forgotten, and afraid to take any step that might attract attention to them. This, perhaps, is the explanation of the silence of the various actors in the drama of the Temple, once the Empire had been established.
CHAPTER VII
THE “LITTLE BARON”
Cormier’s departure did not for a single moment interrupt the fiery activity of Baron d’Auerweck, nor his co-operation in the most audacious enterprises of the agents of Princes and of the Princes themselves. He lost, it is true, a mentor whose advice was always worthy of attention, and who had guided him up to the present time with a certain amount of success; but the ingenious fellow was by no means at the end of his resources. The life which he had led for the past five years was one which exactly suited him. A practically never-ending list might be drawn up of acquaintances made in the course of his continual comings and goings, of encounters in this army of emissaries serving the counter-Revolution, and of particularly prosperous seasons. Besides the d’Antraigues, the Fauche-Borels, and the Dutheils, there was a regular army of subordinates, bustling about Europe as though it were a vast anthill.
Amongst them d’Auerweck could not fail to be prominent, and he was soon marked as a clever and resourceful agent. His sojourn in Hamburg also continued to arouse curiosity and observation on the part of the representatives of the Directoire. They recognized now that he was employed and paid by England. “He serves her with an activity worthy of the Republican Government,” Reinhard wrote to Talleyrand; and it was well known that Peltier’s former collaborator, always an energetic journalist, assisted in editing the Spectateur du Nord.
An unlooked-for opportunity to exploit his talent soon offered itself to d’Auerweck.
The Deputies of the ten states, which at that time formed the Empire, had been brought together by the congress which opened at Rastadt on December 9, 1797, and for eighteen months there was an extraordinary amount of visits to and departures from the little town in Baden. The presence of Bonaparte, who had arrived some days before the commencement of the conference in an eight-horse coach, with a magnificent escort, and welcomed throughout his journey as the victor of Arcole, increased the solemnity and scope of the negotiations. All the diplomatists, with their advisers, their secretaries, and their clerks, crowded anxiously round him. Agents from all the European Powers came to pick up greedily any scraps of information, and to try to worm out any secrets that might exist. Rastadt was full to overflowing of spies and plotters, and the name of this quiet, peaceful city, hitherto so undisturbed, was in every one’s mouth.
From Hamburg the “little Baron” followed attentively the first proceedings of the Congress through the medium of the newspapers, but the sedentary life which he was leading began to worry him. In vain he wrote out all day long never-ending political treatises, crammed with learned notes on the European situation, wove the most fantastic systems, and drew up “a plan for the partition of France, which he proposed to a certain M. du Nicolay;” all this was not sufficient for him. D’Auerweck was on friendly terms with the Secretary of the French Legation, Lemaître by name (who, by the way, had no scruples about spying on him some years later, and informed against him without a blush), and, giving full play “to his romantic imagination and to his taste for sensational enterprises,” he one day submitted to his confidant a scheme to “kidnap the Minister, Reinhard, and carry him off to London; his attendants were to be made intoxicated, his coachman to be bribed, ten English sailors to be hidden on the banks of the Elbe!” At the back of these schemes of mystery there figured a certain “Swiss and Genevan Agency,” which at the proper time would, he declared, generously reimburse them for all their expenditure. But, for all these foolish imaginings, d’Auerweck displayed a knowledge of the world and a sound judgment which struck all those who came in contact with him, and it was certain that with strong and firm guidance he was capable of doing much good and useful work. In the winter of 1798 we are told that “he left Hamburg secretly” for an unknown destination. Lemaître believed that he had buried himself “in the depths of Silesia,” but he had no real knowledge of his man. For, as a matter of course, d’Auerweck was bound to be attracted to such a centre of affairs as Rastadt then was, in order to make the most profitable use of his ingenuity, seeing that, according to report, the British Government, which was making use of his services, in fear of being kept in the dark as to what was going on, had begged him “to go and exercise his wits in another place.”
He made Baden his headquarters, for the proximity of Rastadt, and his intimacy with the de Gelb family, which has already been mentioned, led him to prefer Baden to the actual field of battle, at which place he must have come under suspicion as an old English agent. One of the Austrian envoys at the Congress was Count Lehrbach; and d’Auerweck managed to get into relations with him, and even to be allowed to do secretarial work for him, on the strength of the connection which he declared he had possessed with Minister Thugut during the early days of the Revolution and the confidence which had lately been reposed in him. He had reason to hope that with the help of his ability and his gift of languages he would soon be able to secure active employment. And, indeed, it was in this way that d’Auerweck succeeded in re-establishing himself at once, to his great satisfaction, as an active agent, with a footing in the highest places, ferreting out the secrets of the Ambassadors, and carrying on an underhand correspondence openly. His intention was, doubtless, to return to Austria as soon as the Congress was over, by the help of Count Lehrbach, and there to regain the goodwill of his former patron, the Minister Thugut.
But the sanguinary drama which brought the Conference to such an abrupt conclusion completely spoiled his plans and undid his most brilliant combinations. We can realize the universal feeling of consternation throughout the whole of Europe which was caused by the news that on the evening of April 28, 1799, the French Ministers, Bonnier, Roberjot, and Debry, who had just made up their minds to betake themselves to Strasburg, along with their families, their servants, and their records—a party filling eight carriages—had been openly attacked as they were leaving Rastadt by Barbaczy’s Hussars; that the two first-mentioned gentlemen had been dragged from their carriages and treacherously murdered, and that the third, Debry, had alone escaped by a miracle. Even if the outrage of Rastadt was “neither the cause nor the pretext of the war of 1799,” its consequences were, nevertheless, very serious.
One of these consequences, and not the least important, was that Bonaparte’s police, magnificently reorganized by Fouché, redoubled its shepherding of émigrés and agents of the Princes, who swarmed in the country-side between Basle, the general headquarters of the spies, and Mayence. Once an arrest took place, the accused was certain to be suspected of having had a hand in the assassination of the plenipotentiaries, and if by any bad luck he was unable to deny having been present in the district, he found it a very difficult task to escape from the serious results of this accusation.