As nothing paints better the true features of a Government than the morality or vices of its functionaries, I will finish this man’s portrait with the following characteristic touches.
Merlin de Douai has been successively the counsel of the late Duc d’ Orleans, the friend of Danton, of Chabot, and of Hebert, the admirer of Murat, and the servant of Robespierre. An accomplice of Rewbell, Barras, and la Reveilliere, an author of the law of suspected persons, an advocate of the Septembrizers, and an ardent apostle of the St. Guillotine. Cunning as a fog and ferocious as a tiger, he has outlived all the factions with which he has been connected. It has been his policy to keep in continual fermentation rivalships, jealousies, inquietudes, revenge and all other odious passions; establishing, by such means, his influence on the terror of some, the ambition of others, and the credulity of them all. Had I, when Merlin proposed his law concerning suspected persons, in the name of liberty and equality, been free and his equal, I should have said to him, “Monster, this, your atrocious law, is your sentence of death; it has brought thousands of innocent persons to an untimely end; you shall die by my hands as a victim, if the tribunals do not condemn you to the scaffold as an executioner or as a criminal.”
Merlin has bought national property to the amount of fifteen million of livress—and he is supposed to possess money nearly to the same amount, in your or our funds. For a man born a beggar, and educated by charity, this fortune, together with the liberal salaries he enjoys, might seem sufficient without selling justice, protecting guilt, and oppressing or persecuting innocence.
LETTER XXIX.
Paris, August, 1805.
MY LORD:—The household troops of Napoleon the First are by thousands more numerous than those even of Louis XIV. were. Grenadiers on foot and on horseback, riflemen on foot and on horseback, heavy and light artillery, dragoons and hussars, mamelukes and sailors, artificers and pontoneers, gendarmes, gendarmes d’Alite, Velites and veterans, with Italian grenadiers, riflemen, dragoons, etc., etc., compose all together a not inconsiderable army.
Though it frequently happens that the pay of the other troops is in arrears, those appertaining to Bonaparte’s household are as regularly paid as his Senators, Counsellors of State, and other public functionaries. All the men are picked, and all the officers as much as possible of birth, or at least of education. In the midst of this voluptuous and seductive capital, they are kept very strict, and the least negligence or infraction of military discipline is more severely punished than if committed in garrison or in an encampment. They are both better clothed, accoutred, and paid, than the troops of the line, and have everywhere the precedency of them. All the officers, and many of the soldiers, are members of Bonaparte’s Legion of Honour, and carry arms of honour distributed to them by Imperial favour, or for military exploits. None of them are quartered upon the citizens; each corps has its own spacious barracks, hospitals, drilling-ground, riding or fencing-houses, gardens, bathing-houses, billiard-table, and even libraries. A chapel has lately been constructed near each barrack, and almoners are already appointed. In the meantime, they attend regularly at Mass, either in the Imperial Chapel or in the parish churches. Bonaparte discourages much all marriages among the military in general, but particularly among those of his household troops. That they may not, however, be entirely deprived of the society of women, he allows five to each company, with the same salaries as the men, under the name of washerwomen.
With a vain and fickle people, fond of shows and innovations, nothing in a military despotism has a greater political utility, gives greater satisfaction, and leaves behind a more useful terror and awe, than Bonaparte’s grand military reviews. In the beginning of his consulate, they regularly occurred three times in the month; after his victory of Marengo, they were reduced to once in a fortnight, and since he has been proclaimed Emperor, to once only in the month. This ostentatious exhibition of usurped power is always closed with a diplomatic review of the representatives of lawful Princes, who introduce on those occasions their fellow-subjects to another subject, who successfully has seized, and continues to usurp, the authority of his own Sovereign. What an example for ambition! what a lesson to treachery!
Besides the household troops, this capital and its vicinity have, for these three years past, never contained less than from fifteen to twenty thousand men of the regiments of the line, belonging to what is called the first military division of the Army of the Interior. These troops are selected from among the brigades that served under Bonaparte in Italy and Egypt with the greatest eclat, and constitute a kind of depot for recruiting his household troops with tried and trusty men. They are also regularly paid, and generally better accoutred than their comrades encamped on the coast, or quartered in Italy or Holland.