D'Aché had not wasted his time during his stay at Mandeville. It was a difficult enterprise in existing circumstances to arrange his crossings with any chance of success. The embarkation was easy enough, and David the Intrepid had undertaken to see to it; but it was especially important to secure a safe return, and a secret landing on the French coast, lined as it was by patrols, watched day and night by custom-house officers, and guarded by sentinels at every point where a boat could approach the shore, offered almost insuperable difficulties. D'Aché selected a little creek at the foot of the rocks of Saint Honorine, scarcely two leagues from Trévières and David, who knew all the coast guards in the district, bribed one of them to become an accomplice.
It was on a stormy night at the end of April, 1806, that d'Aché put to sea in a boat seventeen feet long, which was steered by David the Intrepid. After tossing about for fifty hours, they landed in England. David immediately stood out to sea again, while d'Aché took the road to London.
One can easily imagine what the feelings of these royalist fanatics must have been when they approached the princes to whom they had devoted so many years of their lives, hunted over France and pursued like malefactors; how they must have anticipated the welcome in London that their devotion merited. They were prepared to be treated like sons by the King, as friends by the princes, as leaders by the emigrants, who were only waiting to return till France was reconquered for them. The deception was cruel. The emigrant world, so easy to dupe on account of its misfortunes, and immeasurable vanity, had fallen a victim to so many false Chouans—spies in disguise and barefaced swindlers, who each brought plans for the restoration, and after obtaining money made off and were never seen again—that distrust at last had taken the place of the unsuspecting confidence of former days. Every Frenchman who arrived in London was considered an adventurer, and as far as we can gather from this closed page of history,—for those, who tried the experiment of a visit to the exiled princes, have respectfully kept silence on the subject of their discomfiture—it appears that terrible mortifications were in store for the militant royalists who approached the emigrant leaders. D'Aché did not escape disillusionment, and though he did not disclose the incidents of his stay in London, we know that at first he was thrown into prison, and that for two months he could not succeed in obtaining an interview with the Comte d'Artois, much less with the exiled King.
M. de la Chapelle, the most influential man at the little court at Hartwell, sent for him and questioned him about his plans, but was opposed to his being received by the princes, though he put him in communication with King George's ministers, every person who brought news of any plot against Napoleon's government being sure of a welcome and a hearing from the latter.
After three weeks of conferences the expedition which was to support a general rising of the peasants in the West, was postponed till the spring of 1807. A feigned attack on Port-en-Bessin would allow of their surprising the islands of Tahitou and Saint-Marcouf as well as Port-Bail on the western slope of the Cotentin. The destruction of the roads, which protect the lower part of the peninsula, would insure the success of the undertaking by cutting off Cherbourg which, attacked from behind, would easily be carried, resistance being impossible. The invading army, concentrating under the forts of the town, in which they would have a safe retreat, would descend by Carenton on Saint-Lô and Caen to meet the army of peasants and malcontents whose cooperation d'Aché guaranteed. He undertook to collect twenty thousand men; the English government offered the same number of Russian and Swedish soldiers, and to provide for their transportation to the coast of France. Pending this, d'Aché was given unlimited credit on the banker Nourry at Caen.
His stay in London lasted nearly three months. Towards the end of July an English frigate took him to the fleet where Admiral Saumarez received him with great deference, and equipped a brig with fourteen cannon to convey him to the shore. When, at night, they were within a gunshot of the coast of Saint-Honorine, d'Aché himself made the signals agreed upon, which were quickly answered by the coast guard on shore. An hour afterwards David the Intrepid's boat hailed the English brig, and before daybreak d'Aché was back at Mandeville, sharing with his hosts the joy he felt at the success of his voyage. They began to make plans immediately. It was decided on the spot that the Château de Monfiquet should shelter the King during the first few days after he landed. Eight months were to elapse before the beginning of the campaign, and as money was not lacking this time was sufficient for d'Aché to prepare for operations.
We may as well mention at once that the English Cabinet, while playing on the fanaticism of d'Aché, as they had formerly done on that of Georges Cadoudal and so many others, had not the slightest intention of keeping their promises. Their hatred of Napoleon suggested to them the infamous idea of exciting the naïve royalists of France by raising hopes they never meant to satisfy. They abandoned them once they saw their dupes so deeply implicated that there was no drawing back, caring little if they helped them to the scaffold, desirous only of maintaining agitations in France and of driving them into such desperate straits that some assassin might arise from among them who would rid the world of Bonaparte. Here lies, doubtless, one of the reasons why the exiled princes so obstinately refused to encourage their partisans' attempts. Did they know of the snares laid for these unhappy creatures? Did they not dare to put them on their guard for fear of offending the English government? Was this the rent they paid for Hartwell? The history of the intrigues which played around the claimant to the throne is full of mystery. Those who were mixed up in them, such as Fauche-Bonel or Hyde de Neuville were ruined, and it required the daylight of the Restoration to open the eyes of the persons most interested to the fact that certain professions of devotion had been treacherous.
As far as d'Aché was concerned it seems fairly certain that he did not receive any promise from the princes, and was not even admitted to their presence; the English ministers alone encouraged him to embark on this extraordinary adventure, in which they were fully determined to let him ruin himself. Therefore the "unlimited" credit opened at the banker Nourry's was only a bait: while making the conspirators think they would never want for money, the credit was limited beforehand to 30,000 francs, a piece of duplicity which enraged even the detectives who, later on, discovered it.
It is not easy to follow d'Aché in the mysterious work upon which he entered: the precautions he took to escape the police have caused him to be lost to posterity as well. Some slight landmarks barely permit our following his trail during the few years which form the climax of his wonderful career.
We find him first of all during the autumn of 1806, at La Bijude, where Mme. de Combray, who had remained at Tournebut had charged Bonnœil and Mme. Acquet to go and receive him. There was some question of providing him with a messenger familiar with the haunts of the Chouans and the dangers connected with the task. To fulfil this duty Mme. Acquet proposed a German named Flierlé whom Le Chevalier recommended. Flierlé had distinguished himself in the revolt of the Chouans; a renowned fighter, he had been mixed up in every plot. He was in Paris at the time of the eighteenth Fructidor; he turned up there again at the moment when Saint-Réjant was preparing his infernal machine; he again spent three months there at the time of Georges' conspiracy. For the last two years, whilst waiting for a fresh engagement, he had lived on a small pension from the royal treasury, and when funds were low, he made one of his more fortunate companions in old days put him up; and thus he roamed from Caen to Falaise, from Mortain to Bayeux or Saint-Lô, even going into Mayenne in his wanderings. Although he would never have acknowledged it, we may say that he was one of the men usually employed in attacking public vehicles: in fact, he was an adept at it and went by the name of the "Teisch."