There were varied reasons why the exiled French Bourbons should compass the overthrow of Napoleon. Every month that they delayed action lessened their chances of success. They had long clung to the hope that his Concordat with the Pope and other anti-revolutionary measures betokened his intention to recall their dynasty. But in February, 1803, the Comte de Provence received overtures which showed that Bonaparte had never thought of playing the part of General Monk. The exiled prince, then residing at Warsaw, was courteously but most firmly urged by the First Consul to renounce both for himself and for the other members of his House all claims to the throne of France, in return for which he would receive a pension of two million francs a year. The notion of sinking to the level of a pensionary of the French Republic touched Bourbon pride to the quick and provoked this spirited reply:
"As a descendant of St. Louis, I shall endeavour to imitate his example by respecting myself even in captivity. As successor to Francis I., I shall at least aspire to say with him: 'We have lost everything but our honour."'
To this declaration the Comte d'Artois, his son, the Duc de Berri, Louis Philippe of Orleans, his two sons, and the two Condés gave their ardent assent; and the same loyal response came from the young Condé, the Duc d'Enghien, dated Ettenheim, March 22nd, 1803. Little did men think when they read this last defiance to Napoleon that within a year its author would be flung into a grave in the moat of the Castle of Vincennes.
Scarcely had the echoes of the Bourbon retorts died away than the outbreak of war between England and France raised the hopes of the French royalist exiles in London; and their nimble fancy pictured the French army and nation as ready to fling themselves at the feet of Louis XVIII. The future monarch did not share these illusions. In the chilly solitudes of Warsaw he discerned matters in their true light, and prepared to wait until the vaulting ambition of Napoleon should league Europe against him. Indeed, when the plans of the forward wing in London were explained to him, with a view of enlisting his support, he deftly waved aside the embarrassing overtures by quoting the lines:
"Et pour être approuvés
De semblables projets veulent être achevés,"
a cautious reply which led his brother, then at Edinburgh, scornfully to contemn his feebleness as unworthy of any further confidences.[281] In truth, the Comte d'Artois, destined one day to be Charles X. of France, was not fashioned by nature for a Fabian policy of delay: not even the misfortunes of exile could instill into the watertight compartments of his brain the most elementary notions of prudence. Daring, however, attracts daring; and this prince had gathered around him in our land the most desperate of the French royalists, whose hopes, hatreds, schemes, and unending requests for British money may be scanned by the curious in some thirty large volumes of letters bequeathed by their factotum the Comte de Puisaye, to the British Museum. Unfortunately this correspondence throws little light on the details of the plot which is fitly called by the name of Georges Cadoudal.
This daring Breton was, in fact, the only man of action on whom the Bourbon princes could firmly rely for an enterprise that demanded a cool head, cunning in the choice of means, and a remorseless hand. Pichegru it is true, lived near London, but saw little of the émigrés, except the venerable Condé. Dumouriez also was in the great city, but his name was too generally scorned in France for his treachery in 1793 to warrant his being used. But there were plenty of swashbucklers who could prepare the ground in France, or, if fortune favoured, might strike the blow themselves; and a small committee of French royalists, which had the support of that furious royalist, Mr. Windham, M.P., began even before the close of 1802 to discuss plans for the "removal" of Bonaparte. Two of their tools, Picot and Le Bourgeois by name, plunged blindly into a plot, and were arrested soon after they set foot in France. Their boyish credulity seems to have suggested to the French authorities the sending of an agent so as to entrap not only French émigrés, but also English officials and Jacobinical generals.
The agent provocateur has at all times been a favourite tool of continental Governments: but rarely has a more finished specimen of the class been seen than Méhée de la Touche. After plying the trade of an assassin in the September massacres of 1792, and of a Jacobin spy during the Terror, he had been included by Bonaparte among the Jacobin scapegoats who expiated the Chouan outrage of Nivôse. Pining in the weariness of exile, he heard from his wife that he might be pardoned if he would perform some service for the Consular Government. At once he consented, and it was agreed that he should feign royalism, should worm himself into the secrets of the émigrés at London, and act as intermediary between them and the discontented republicans of Paris.
The man who seems to have planned this scheme was the ex-Minister of Police. Fouché had lately been deprived by Bonaparte of the inquisitorial powers which he so unscrupulously used. His duties were divided between Régnier, the Grand Judge and Minister of Justice, and Réal, a Councillor of State, who watched over the internal security of France. These men had none of the ability of Fouché, nor did they know at the outset what Méhée was doing in London. It may, therefore, be assumed that Méhée was one of Fouché's creatures, whom he used to discredit his successor, and that Bonaparte welcomed this means of quickening the zeal of the official police, while he also wove his meshes round plotting émigrés, English officials, and French generals.[282]
Among these last there was almost chronic discontent, and Bonaparte claimed to have found out a plot whereby twelve of them should divide France into as many portions, leaving to him only Paris and its environs. If so, he never made any use of his discovery. In fact, out of this group of malcontents, Moreau, Bernadotte, Augereau, Macdonald, and others, he feared only the hostility of the first. The victor of Hohenlinden lived in sullen privacy near to Paris, refusing to present himself at the Consular Court, and showing his contempt for those who donned a courtier's uniform. He openly mocked at the Concordat; and when the Legion of Honour was instituted, he bestowed a collar of honour upon his dog. So keen was Napoleon's resentment at this raillery that he even proposed to send him a challenge to a duel in the Bois de Boulogne.[283] The challenge, of course, was not sent; a show of reconciliation was assumed between the two warriors; but Napoleon retained a covert dislike of the man whose brusque republicanism was applauded by a large portion of the army and by the frondeurs of Paris.