The Irish refugees, whom Napoleon, as we have seen, had offered Cornwallis to expel, now became his cats-paws. In July 1803, while declining to see Arthur O’Connor, he deputed General Truguet to treat with him and Berthier to advance him small sums of money. He promised to send 25,000 troops to Ireland, and if 20,000 Irishmen would join them he pledged himself to make Irish independence a condition of peace. But he found that the Irish refugees or emissaries were split into two parties, not always on speaking terms, O’Connor accepting, the Emmets rejecting, the idea of a French protectorate. In July 1804, having read a memoir by the Emmets, Lewins, and other exiles, he decreed that all Irishmen accompanying the projected expedition should be considered Frenchmen, and if not treated when captured as prisoners of war reprisals would be exercised.[166] Robert Emmet had had an audience of Napoleon previously to the peace, and an Irish legion was formed in November 1803. MacSheehy organised it at Brest, and on the Emperor’s coronation it was presented, like the French regiments, with an eagle and colours. Irish dissensions, however, are proverbial, and a duel between MacSheehy and O’Mealy led to the former being transferred to a French regiment and to the latter resigning and apparently returning to Baltimore. In 1806 the legion was ordered to Landau and had to pass through Verdun.
The governor [says Myles Byrne] took upon himself to lodge the Irish legion in a suburb, lest its presence might not be agreeable to the British prisoners. At daybreak he had the drawbridge let down and the gates opened to let the legion march through before the English prisoners could have light to see and contemplate our green flag and its beatific inscription, so obnoxious to them, ‘the independence of Ireland.’ Our march, however, through the town at that early hour attracted great notice. As our band played up our national air of Patrick’s Day in the Morning we could see many windows opened and gentlemen in their shirts inquiring across the street in good English what was meant by this music at such an early hour.
Some months later the legion was ordered to Boulogne, to be ready for the invasion of England, and at Arras ‘the governor,’ says Byrne, ‘had the good sense to make the English sleep one night in the citadel until we marched out in the morning.’ The legion was eventually sent to Spain. The experiment of inviting English prisoners to join it did not succeed, and in 1810 Napoleon stopped it. ‘I do not want any English soldiers,’ he wrote; ‘I prefer their being prisoners to answer for my prisoners in England; moreover the majority desert.’ This had apparently happened in Spain. In 1811 Napoleon directed Clarke to send for O’Connor and his fellow-exiles in Paris and try to revive an insurrection. He was ready to send 30,000 troops if sure of a rising and if England continued to send forces to Portugal. O’Connor accordingly sent Napoleon a preliminary memoir, whereupon in September he commissioned Clarke to despatch agents to Ireland.
In spite of his ostentatious preparations Napoleon told Metternich in 1810 that he had never been mad enough to think of invading England unless in the wake of an insurrection, the Boulogne army being all along aimed at Austria. The latest and fullest French writer on the subject, Colonel Desbrières, from an examination of the confused orders and counterorders, so unlike the rest of Napoleon’s plans, comes to the same conclusion.[167] All that Napoleon could have intended was to disquiet England, and thus prevent her from despatching troops to the Continent. This was legitimate strategy, and he was obviously, moreover, as much entitled to use the Irish as pawns as England had been to use the Vendeans, but his manufacture of counterfeit notes is less excusable. A manufactory of forged notes in Paris, enshrouded in mystery, was superintended by Lale, a clerk in the engraving department of the War Office, Fouché, Savary, and Desmarest being the only confidants of the secret. A Hamburg Jew named Malchus and two Frenchmen, Blanc and Bernard, were sent to buy merchandise with the notes. They were instructed to go to Scotland and Ireland, so as to disappear before the fraud was discovered. They were ostensibly told to destroy what they bought, but they naturally preferred smuggling it into France, and this was winked at, so that they made large profits. The fraud was, however, soon discovered. Malchus was hanged. His confederates escaped in an English smuggling boat which was captured by a French revenue vessel. They were at first imprisoned at Boulogne, but Savary promptly ordered their release, together with funds to return to Paris for further employment. Napoleon, at a later date, practised the same trick on Russia and Austria. On the restoration of peace with the latter in 1810, he offered an excuse or rather defence of the act to Metternich. He had at that time just ordered Fouché to resume the forgery of English notes.[168]
Napoleon, it may be remarked, attributed the rupture of 1803 to his refusal to conclude a commercial treaty ‘which would necessarily have been detrimental to the manufactures and industry of his subjects,’[169] and he never relaxed stringency in excluding British merchandise. As late as 1810 such goods were seized and burned at Roscoff, Bâle, and Strasburg, though the prefect of Strasburg suggested that textiles should be utilised in hospitals and ambulances. The war thus gave a stimulus to French manufactures, except to those hampered by want of raw materials. The ports, however, suffered severely through the English blockade, especially Nantes and other towns which had had a large trade with the West Indies. During the short peace Nantes had sent out merchantmen, and sixty of these, unable to get back, were captured. Marseilles also suffered, but the blockade could not entirely stop its trade.
Even some Englishmen long resident in France were declared prisoners and had to plead for exemption. Chalmers, a Bordeaux merchant, Scottish on the father’s side, French on the mother’s; James Macculloch, who had been in Brittany for thirty-five years; James Smith, Stone’s successor as printer; and James Milne, who taught cotton-spinning at the Arts et Métiers, were in this position. Chalmers found naturalisation the only resource. Smith and Milne, perhaps also Macculloch, were struck off the list of captives. As a rule rich residents as well as manufacturers and artisans were unmolested, for Napoleon was not insensible of the advantage thus accruing to Parisian tradesmen. Thus Francis Henry Egerton, brother and eventual successor of the Earl of Bridgewater, an eccentric clergyman or ex-clergyman of whom we shall hear anon, was not disquieted. According to a French writer he had created a scandal which necessitated expatriation, but this assertion I have not been able to verify. His chess parties in 1807 excited much notice. In 1813 he visited Italy. Quintin Craufurd was also unmolested, along with his quasi-wife Mrs. Sullivan, who, according to a French police register, was originally an Italian ballet-dancer, married John O’Sullivan, Under-Secretary for War and the Colonies, and eloped with Craufurd. Another version, however, states that she had been the mistress or morganatic wife of the King of Würtemberg, on whose legitimate marriage she withdrew with her daughter to Paris, subsequently marrying Sullivan. What is certain is that she had cohabited with Craufurd in Paris as long ago as 1787, for in that year she had had to fetch him home at 9 A.M. from the British Embassy after a whole night at the card-table. Nothing worse now befell Craufurd than a robbery. Madame de Genlis writes on the 23rd March 1811 to her adopted son, Casimir Becker:—
That poor Mr. Craufurd was robbed yesterday while he was playing whist at Madame de Talleyrand’s. All his superb jewels, caskets, rings, gold medals, 300 louis d’or, etc. The window was opened by means of a hole cut in the shutter, and the desk was forced. But it is believed from several indications that what was done to the window was merely a feint and that the thief belonged to the house.[170]
Even Craufurd, however, being uncle, as we have seen, of two British diplomatists, incurred the suspicions of Fouché’s spies, for their report of the 22nd May 1804 says:—
It may be supposed that this old man, now blasé, has no longer the activity which formerly rendered his house at Frankfort a centre of political movements very hostile to France, but he is still under the influence of Madame Sullivan, that foreigner of easy virtue who facilitated the departure of Louis XVI. and started the same day for Brussels.[171]
Talleyrand’s protection nevertheless ensured him against molestation, and he was even permitted to procure books from England. In 1816 he obtained the restitution of his papers,[172] seized, like his other effects, in 1793, and he claimed 2,230,000 francs compensation for his losses. A smaller sum was probably awarded him. He continued living in Paris till his death in November 1819. A painful episode disturbed his last months. Sir James Craufurd went over, and as far as can be judged endeavoured to extort from the sick uncle a will or a bequest of £48,000 in his favour. Though forbidden entrance, he flourished pistols in the faces of two servants and forced his way in. He next prosecuted Mrs. Craufurd and several of her fashionable friends for spreading reports of his conduct, and in court he indulged in such personalities that he had to be expelled. He also charged the servants with assaulting him, but this, like the other accusations, was dismissed, and he was eventually twice sentenced by default to six months’ imprisonment for libellous pamphlets, in one of which he accused Mrs Craufurd of bigamy.[173] Quintin Craufurd was very charitable to the poor of Paris. Though primarily a man of fashion, he ranks as an author by works on India, Mary Stuart, and Marie Antoinette, some of them in French. His widow, retaining to the age of eighty-four her vivacity and charm, died in Paris about 1832. Her daughter[174] married Count Albert d’Orsay, one of Napoleon’s generals, and thus became the mother of Count Alfred d’Orsay, the handsome fop, spendthrift, and amateur painter, who in 1827 married Lady Harriet Gardner, step-daughter of the famous Lady Blessington. Sir James (latterly Sir James Grogan) Craufurd died in 1839.