Napoleon: A Sketch of His Life, Character, Struggles, and Achievements

by Thomas E. Watson

What was the movement at whose head he was waiting to place himself? What other plan did the royalists have in progress at the time other than the Georges-Pichegru plot? If d’Enghien was waiting on the Rhine until they should have dealt the blow in Paris, was he not an accomplice, a principal in the second degree? It does not matter whether he knew the details of the Georges-Pichegru conspiracy or not. If he had been instructed to hold himself in readiness on the French frontier to enter the country and “act a part” therein, his common sense told him that a plot was on foot, and if he did not wish to be treated as an accomplice, he should not have acted as one. The cowardly d’Artois had not left London, and the Duke d’Enghien was to enter France as representative of the Bourbon family after the First Consul should have been killed.

The rule in law and equity is that where one is put upon notice of a transaction, he is to be held as knowing all that he could have learned by reasonable inquiry. The instructions issued to d’Enghien put him upon notice that something unusual was in progress, that it concerned him, and that he had a part to play. Prudent inquiry made by him of his Bourbon relatives in London would have put him in possession of the facts. This inquiry he either made or he did not: if he made it, he learned of the plot; if he did not make it, his was the negligence of being ignorant of the plan in which he was to “act a part.”

It is very improbable that the Count of Artois, who had sent word to the Count of Provence at Warsaw asking his adhesion to the conspiracy, should have given his cousin, d’Enghien, a “part to act” in it without informing him of the nature of the drama itself.

The police reports made to Napoleon led him to believe that the young duke was privy to the plot, and was waiting at Ettenheim ready to take part in it. Here was a Bourbon he could reach. Through this one, he would strike terror into the others. “Neither is my blood ditchwater! I will teach these Bourbons a lesson they will not soon forget. Am I a dog to be shot down in the street?”

After deliberating with his councillors, Talleyrand and all the rest, the First Consul issued his orders. A French squadron rode rapidly to the Rhine, crossed over to Ettenheim, seized the Duke, who had been warned in vain, and hurried him to Paris. Stopped at the barrier, he was sent to Vincennes, tried by court-martial that night, condemned upon his own confession, sentenced to death, shot at daybreak, and buried in the moat of the castle.

This harsh act of retaliation had met the approval of Talleyrand—an approval given in a written paper which he was quick to seize and destroy upon Napoleon’s fall in 1814. During the day upon which the Duke was being taken to Vincennes, Talleyrand was asked, “What is to be done with the Duke d’Enghien?” and had replied to the questioner, “He is to be shot.”

The Consul Cambacérès, who had voted for death at the trial of Louis XVI., opposed the arrest, giving his reasons at length. Napoleon replied: “I know your motive for speaking—your devotion to me. I thank you for it; but I will not allow myself put to death without defending myself. I will make these people tremble, and teach them to keep quiet for all time to come.”

Poor Josephine, who could never meet a member of the old noblesse without a collapse of spirit, a gush of adulation, and a yielding sensation at the knees, made a feeble effort to turn her husband from his purpose; but when Napoleon reminded her that she was a mere child in politics, and had better attend to her own small affairs, she dried her tears, and went into the garden to amuse herself with her flower-beds.

Napoleon himself made a thorough study of the papers, taken with the Duke at Ettenheim, and drew up a series of questions which were to be put to the prisoner by Réal, state councillor. The messenger sent by the First Consul did not see Réal, and the paper was not handed him till five o’clock next morning. Worn out by continuous toil, the councillor had gone to bed the evening before, leaving instructions with his household that he was not to be disturbed. Next morning when he was posting along the highway to Vincennes, he met Savary on his way back to Paris. Savary had already carried out the death-sentence, and the victim was in his grave.

It seems that the young Duke had not realized his danger. A term of imprisonment, at most, was all he feared. In vain the court-martial endeavored to hint at the fatal consequence of the admissions he was making. Unconscious of the fact that he was convicting himself, he repeated the statements that he had borne arms against France, that he had been in the pay of England, that he had tampered with French soldiers on the Rhine, that he had been instructed to place himself near the Rhine where he could enter France, arms in hand, and be ready for the part he was to play; and that he intended to continue to bear arms against the government of France which he regarded as a usurpation.