Memoirs of the Empress Josephine, Vol. 1 of 2

by Madame de Rémusat

CHAPTER VIII

(1804.)

HE creation of the Empire had turned public attention away from the proceeding against Moreau, which were, however, going on. The accused had been brought before the tribunal several times; but, the more the case was investigated, the less hope there was of the condemnation of Moreau, which became day by day an object of greater importance. I am perfectly convinced that the Emperor would not have allowed Moreau’s life to be taken. That the General should be condemned and pardoned would have been sufficient for his purpose, which was to refute, by the sentence of the court, those who accused him of having acted with undue haste and personal animosity.

All who have brought cool observation to bear upon this important event are agreed in thinking that Moreau exhibited weakness and want of judgment. When he was brought up for examination, he showed none of the dignity that was expected from him. He did not, like Georges Cadoudal, assume the attitude of a determined man, who openly avowed the lofty designs that had actuated him; neither did he assume that of an innocent man, full of righteous indignation at an unjust charge. He prevaricated in some of his answers, and the interest which he inspired was diminished by that fact; but even then Bonaparte gained nothing by this lessening enthusiasm, and not only party spirit, but reason itself, censured no less strongly than before a proceeding which was still attributed to personal enmity.

At length, on the 30th of May, the formal indictment (acte d’accusation) appeared in the “Moniteur.” It was accompanied by certain letters written by Moreau in 1795, before the 18th Fructidor, which proved that the General, being then convinced that Pichegru was corresponding with the princes, had denounced him to the Directory. A general and natural question then arose: Why had Moreau acted so differently in the case of this second conspiracy, justifying himself by the statement that he had not thought it proper to reveal the secret of a plot, in which he had refused to engage, to the First Consul?

On the 6th of June the examinations of all the accused persons were published. Among these there were some who declared positively that the princes, in England, were quite confident that they might count upon Moreau; that it was with this hope Pichegru had gone to France, and that the two generals had subsequently on several occasions had interviews with Georges Cadoudal. They even asserted that Pichegru had evinced great dissatisfaction after these interviews, had complained that Moreau gave him only half-hearted support, and seemed anxious to profit on his own account by the blow which was to strike Bonaparte. A person named Bolland declared that Moreau had said, “The first thing to be done is to get rid of the First Consul.”

Moreau, on being questioned in his turn, answered that Pichegru, when he was in England, had conveyed an inquiry to him as to whether he would assist him in case he should wish to return to France, and that he had promised to help him to carry out that project. It naturally occasioned no little astonishment that Pichegru, who had been denounced some years before by Moreau himself, should have applied to him to obtain his “erasure”; and Pichegru had, at the time of his examination, denied that he had done so. At the same time, however, he also denied that he had seen Moreau, although Moreau acknowledged that they had met, and he persisted in declaring that in coming to France he had been actuated solely by his aversion to a foreign country, and his desire to return to his own. Shortly afterward Pichegru was found strangled in his prison, and the circumstances of his death have never been explained, nor have any comprehensible motives which could have rendered it necessary to himself been assigned.

Moreau admitted that he had received Pichegru (who took him, he said, by surprise) at his house, but he declared at the same time that he had positively refused to enter into a scheme for the replacement of the house of Bourbon on the throne, because such a resolution would disturb the settlement of the national property; and he added that, so far as his own personal pretensions were concerned, the notion was absurd, as it would have been necessary to their success that not only the First Consul, but the two other Consuls, the Governors of Paris, and the guard, should be got rid of. He declared that he had seen Pichegru but once, although others of the accused asserted that several interviews had taken place between them; and he maintained this line of defense unshaken. He was, however, obliged to admit that he had discovered at an advanced stage of the affair that Frasnières, his private secretary, was deeply involved with the conspirators. Frasnières had fled on the first alarm.

Georges Cadoudal answered that his plan was to attack the First Consul, and remove him by force; that he had never entertained a doubt of finding in Paris itself a number of enemies of the actual régime who would aid him in his enterprise; and that he would have endeavored by every means in his power to replace Louis XVIII. upon his throne. He steadily denied, however, that he knew either Pichegru or Moreau; and he terminated his replies with these words: “You have victims enough; I do not wish to augment their number.”