His last important work in an official capacity was executed also in 1809 when, through the influence of the ever-obliging Savary, Schulmeister was appointed by Napoleon to act as chief of the secret police during that famous Congress of Erfurt to which the Corsican commanded the presence of nearly all the sovereign princes of Continental Europe. In the voluminous correspondence which the spy conducted—his particular Atticus being Savary—Schulmeister, whose pen was clearly as fluent as his wits were nimble, keeps his patron, who, it will be remembered, afterwards succeeded Fouché as head of the French ministry of police, in full touch with the intrigues of that historic gathering of European celebrities. None was too low or unweighty, nor any too highly placed to escape the often hypercritical and always interesting comments of the all-observing spy. The result is that apart from details bearing on the political significance of the Congress we are also regaled with tittle-tattle concerning the often far from dignified relations of the Tsar Alexander, as well as other august personages, with the subsidiary grand army of demi-mondaines who had taken advantage of the opportunity afforded them by the afflux of wealthy princes and nobles from every capital, to accumulate profit during the process of the congressional sun. The Corsican, with his omnivorous sense of intrigue, laid particular emphasis on the necessity of closely watching the movements of Russia's Emperor, whose taste in venal characters of the hetaira type was often in the inverse ratio of his exalted station. Napoleon, indeed, found himself more than once under the necessity of reproving the Imperial Muscovite whose attentions to a celebrated French actress with whom the Corsican himself had once been on the best of terms, very much perturbed him. "Visit that woman," he said, with the coarseness of the soldier, "and to-morrow all Europe will know what your physical proportions are from the ground up." Schulmeister had even explicit orders to note the movements of the fair Queen Louise of Prussia, her personal attractions for the Tsar also providing a source of much soul-burning to the French Emperor, who, whether he were well informed or not, allowed no opportunity to escape him of aspersing the much-humiliated Queen to Alexander. Goethe himself, despite all the admiration the Corsican professed for the Sage of Weimar, was not sacred from Napoleon's agent. The insistent "ce Monsieur de Goet'—qui voit-il?" was hardly less frequent on imperial lips than that other demand: "Et l'Empereur Alexandre—où a-t-il passé la nuit dernière?" These were types of implicit instructions which were daily issued to his spy by the sometimes least dignified of sovereigns.
Readers of the Imperial legend will remember well the young General Lasalle, Napoleon's most famous leader of light cavalry. This soldier was also the possessor of many of those characteristics which we are accustomed to associate with that harmless enough social type which is described by the term, "funny man." The General's peculiar aptitude for cutting strange and grotesque figures, his talent for distorting his features into the most singular of grimaces, his capacity for assimilating strong drinks, as well as his unfailing geniality with all sorts of men, were traits as well known to the Army as the theatrical dress-manias of Murat, or the boastfulness of General Rapp. It is not surprising to learn, therefore, that Schulmeister, between 1800 and 1809—Lasalle was killed at Wagram, in the latter year—was on terms of great intimacy with the young General. Well aware of the high favour with which Napoleon regarded his cavalry leader, Schulmeister confided to the latter the secret of his great ambition. He had riches, he said, far beyond his needs and everything, indeed, which was capable of satisfying the heart of ambitious man. He lacked, however, the one especial decoration on which his aspirations were set. That was—of all things—the Legion of Honour! The bestowal of that distinction would, he declared, cap his noblest and most honourable ambitions. Would Lasalle use his undoubted influence with the Emperor to procure him that supreme testimony of Imperial good will? The General, accordingly, informed Napoleon of his chief spy's aspiration only (a writer says) to draw from the great soldier what was probably the only horse-laugh in which the conqueror had ever indulged. "Schulmeister," said the Emperor, "may have all the money he wants, but the Legion of Honour—never!" With the Emperor himself the spy was, nevertheless, on terms which were cordial enough. It was Napoleon's custom to address him by his Christian name "Karl," and, in the presence of others particularly, to twit him, often in the most cruel terms, on the despicable nature of his trade. The Emperor's refusal to include him among the wearers of the famous Order which he founded is not to be explained on very logical grounds, seeing that the decoration was worn by soldiers like Radet, whose chief business in the Army seemed to be the execution of, frankly, dirty jobs, from the performance of which the far from squeamish officers of the Corsican shrank with wholesome aversion. Such, for example, was the invasion of the Vatican and the arrest of a harmless old Bishop like Pius VII., or the supervision of the incarcerated Black Cardinals who had refused in 1810, on religious grounds, to attend the church ceremony which gave Napoleon a second wife in the person of Marie Louise.
On the advent of this Austrian Archduchess to share the Imperial throne, Viennese influence at the Court of Napoleon began to count in Paris as an important enough factor. Sufficiently important, at any rate, to put a term to the activities of the man who had been to a great extent responsible for the debâcle of Austria's military and political schemes in 1805. Schulmeister accordingly disappeared from Paris, selling his estate near Paris and retiring to his splendid property at Meinau, where his popularity with the Alsatians was so great as to justify the belief that the spy was generously endowed with many qualities other than those which had led him to adopt the trade of espionage. "He is a spy," his countrymen used to say, "but surely also a gallant man." In 1814, during the invasion of France, a regiment of Austrian artillery was especially detailed to demolish his mansion and to destroy as much of his personal property as possible. The spy returned to Paris during the Hundred Days, only to be arrested when Napoleon left for Belgium. He was released on paying over so large a ransom that his fortune was permanently crippled. On the return of the Bourbons, all his attempts to play a social rôle were severely frowned down by the friends of his prosperous days, and with the small remnants of a fortune which unfortunate speculations had now reduced to the vanishing point, he returned to Alsace, there to live a life of lean days and pathetic obscurity. As late as 1840 he was the keeper of a bureau de tabac, one of those tobacco stalls which are given to Frenchmen as a solatium for public services in the lower grades. He was alive in 1850 when the Prince-President toured through Alsace, but refused to bring himself to the notice of the nephew of Napoleon. The President called on him, however, vouchsafing him an honour which he had never received from the great Captain—namely, a handshake. He died in 1853 and was buried near his wife and parents in the cemetery of Saint Urbain in Strassburg.
V
NATHAN HALE
On studying the career of Nathan Hale, who, with Major André, owes his historicity to the American War of Independence, one is conscious of being in touch with a character at once dangerous and difficult, to quote the words in which an eminent English statesman has described the mystic who is at the same time a practical man. In Hale, as his private correspondence clearly shows, there was every indication that an otherwise reasonable and lovable disposition was supplemented by a deep-running current of that hard fanaticism which has ever marked your descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers. Like his fellow-spy André, Hale was a man whose social and intellectual gifts were of an important order, while the admitted excellence of the man's private character, as well as his high sense of personal honour, go a long way to justify the opinion generally held by Americans regarding the motives which induced Hale to enter into the business of spying—according to that view, a pure love of the principle of liberty, which prompted him to risk his life in the service of his country. "Spies," says Vattel, "are usually condemned to capital punishment and not unjustly, there being hardly any other way of preventing the mischief which they do. For this reason a man of honour who would not expose himself to die by the hand of a common executioner, ever declines serving as a spy. He considers such work disgraceful, as it can seldom be done without some kind of treachery." Hale himself gave recorded expression, however, to his view of the matter when he said that, "every kind of service necessary for the public good becomes honourable by being necessary"—a view which is quite in keeping with that mysticism which ever characterises the fanatic who claims the support of spiritual principles for his acts. Again, Hale declared: "I wish to be useful. If the exigencies of my country demand a peculiar service, its claims to the performance of that service are imperious." André, on the other hand, stated that in the ill-starred enterprise into which he threw himself, he was mainly "actuated by a thirst for military glory, the applause of his countrymen and perhaps a brigadiership"—clearly a true megalomaniac. Indeed, André's last words gave the key to the large personal vanity which underlay his undoubtedly interesting character: "I call upon you all, gentlemen, to bear witness that I die like a brave man." Hale indicated a purely ethical or religious attachment to the ideas inherent in Independence doctrines of liberty, when he made his last utterance: "I only regret that I have but one life to sacrifice for my country"—the true spirit of the Coliseum martyr. The young American was willing to give up life itself for his idea of liberty.
The Hale family, originally of the Kentish family of that name, had been settled since 1635 in various parts of the New England States, the country of the Puritan settlers. The parents of Richard and Elizabeth Hale were, it is on record, of the strictest sect of Puritans of their day. The Bible was to them the speaking voice of the Almighty, says a friend of the family; their admirable civic virtues were also based upon the religion that was in them and they respected the Law because they recognised its divine origin. Records still extant emphasise the important fact that the domestic life of the Hale family was one in which practical religion played a leading part. Nathan Hale was born in 1755, the sixth of twelve children, and from his earliest days was destined for the ministry. With this object he was entered at Yale College in 1771, after an uneventful village life in the course of which he gave evidence of a more than usually studious nature. Of the famous American University he became a graduate in 1773, leaving there in that year to take up the profession of teaching. All contemporary writers agree in attributing to young Hale a singularly engaging personality as well as a presence which was conspicuous among men whose physical excellence was of a splendid type. "Six feet high, perfectly proportioned, in figure and deportment, he was the most manly man I ever saw," wrote an enthusiastic college friend, who added the interesting fact that "all the girls in New Haven fell in love with him and wept tears of real sorrow when they heard of his sad fate. Ever willing to lend a helping hand to a being in distress, brute or human, he was overflowing with good humour and the idol of his acquaintances." During his university days Hale had made a mark in the debating society and his political speeches were remarkable, it is recorded, for a strong advocacy of those principles of personal liberty which had reached America by way of France, then in the final stage of that academic propaganda which was so soon to precipitate the catastrophe of the Revolution. Determined to devote his life to teaching, and with a view to obtaining ultimately a professorship at his old university, Hale settled down to the prosaic enough life of a New England schoolmaster, devoting his extra-professional hours to the study of science, ethics and literature.
The outbreak of the War of Independence with the battle of Lexington, 19th April 1775, upset the philosophic dreams of the Connecticut teacher. Throughout the New England States, action was at once and almost unanimously called for, and among those who became earnest advocates of patriotic endeavour, young Hale began to take a prominent place. "Let us march at once," he cried, "nor ever lay down our arms till we have obtained our independence." Hale was, indeed, the first speaker to voice the popular notion of freedom from the union with Great Britain. In co-operation with kindred spirits, he set about the forming of a local regiment for immediate service at the Front. He himself eventually enlisted in Webb's corps, a kind of territorial organisation for local defence. In 1775 Hale was present with his regiment at the siege of Boston, where his conspicuous activities won him a captaincy. The British were driven from that city in March 1776 and sailed for Halifax, the American forces in their turn moving on New York. That Hale's patriotism was of a purely disinterested kind would seem to be shown by the fact that he himself paid for the services of many of his enlisted men. At New York Hale distinguished himself at once by capturing a British vessel carrying large supplies, a midnight raid of much danger which secured for his regiment provisions for a lengthy subsistence and to himself the notice of General Washington, by whom he was presently to be entrusted with the carrying out of a mission the successful results of which must react decisively on the whole war. The commission entrusted to Hale was nothing less than the penetration of the enemy's plan of campaign, an absolutely necessary condition of success for the Revolutionary commanders and for the following reasons:—
After the various actions which compelled the retreat of the insurgents from Long Island, the main American army in Manhattan, owing to the demoralised state of its men, ill-clad, half-starved and unpaid as they were, seemed to be on the point of dissolution. In a force which on paper totalled 20,000 men, desertion and disease had discounted one-third of the numbers. Opposed to them was a British army of 25,000 strong, supported by a powerful naval force. Its soldiers were veterans who had already tasted success and were magnificently equipped with artillery, stores and war-munitions of every sort. The military crux which confronted Washington was the defence or the abandonment of New York, the strategic key of the existing military situation. Unable, owing to inaction to which his topographical position as well as the hesitations of Congress condemned him, to divine the real intentions of the British, Washington instructed his lieutenants to obtain at all hazards correct information as to the designs of the enemy's generals. "Leave no stone unturned," he wrote to General Heath, "nor do not stick at expense to bring this to pass, as I was never more uneasy than on account of my want of knowledge on this score." The vital matter was to find out at which point, if at all, the British intended to attack New York. Such being the situation, it was decided to send a competent observer in disguise into the British lines on Long Island, in order to penetrate the momentous secret, and Nathan Hale volunteered for the execution of the perilous undertaking.