“Napoleon showed his rancour by ordering some eight or ten thousand English travellers in France to be kept prisoners.” Why the eminent Master of Arts and “Late Scholar of Christ’s College” did so studiously omit to state that England had already seized French ships and sailors before Napoleon seized the travellers, can be explained by no one but a master of the art of writing partisan history.
“Napoleon showed his rancour”—by hitting back when Britain dealt him a sudden unprovoked and dastardly blow. Showed his rancour! “Sir, the phrase is neat,” as Mirabeau said to Mounier upon a certain historic occasion.
Napoleon hastened to put Louisiana beyond England’s reach. This imperial, but undeveloped, province had been lost to France by the Bourbon, Louis XV. and had only recently been recovered. Napoleon profoundly regretted the necessity which compelled him to sell it to the United States, for he realized its value.
The war recommenced with vigor on both sides. Great Britain seized again upon all the colonies which she had released by treaty, and French armies in Italy or Germany added territory to France.
Spain refusing to join the league against Napoleon, Great Britain made war upon her, captured her treasure ships upon the high seas, and thus forced her into the arms of France. She not only put her fleet at Napoleon’s disposal, but agreed to furnish him a monthly subsidy of more than $1,000,000.
Definitely threatening to invade Great Britain, Napoleon made preparations for that purpose on a scale equal to the mighty task. Along the French and Dutch coasts 160,000 men were assembled, and vast flotillas built to take them across the Channel. So great was the alarm felt in England that her coasts were watched by every available ship, and almost the entire manhood of the island enrolled itself in the militia, and prepared for a desperate struggle.
So prominently did Napoleon stand forth as the embodiment of all that monarchical Europe detested, so completely did he represent all that England and the Bourbons most dreaded, that a mad determination to kill him took possession of his enemies. The head of the conspiracy was the Count of Artois, afterward king of France under the name of Charles X. The meetings of the conspirators were held in London. The plan adopted was that Pichegru (who had escaped from South America) and Moreau should be brought together to head the malcontents in the army; Georges Cadoudal, and a band of royalists equally resolute, should be landed on the Norman coast, should proceed to Paris, and should kill the First Consul; a royalist revolt should follow, and the Count of Artois should then himself land on the Norman coast to head the insurrection. The English minister to Bavaria, Mr. Drake, was actively at work in the plot, and in one of his letters to a correspondent, wrote: “All plots against the First Consul must be forwarded; for it is a matter of little consequence by whom the animal be stricken down, provided you are all in the hunt.” Among others who were in the background and winding sonorous horns to those who were “in the hunt,” were certain British agents,—Spencer Smith at Stuttgard, Taylor at Cassel, and Wickham at Berne. Directly in communication with the heads of the conspiracy in London was the under secretary of state, Hammond, the same who was so intolerably insolent to the United States during the second term of President Jefferson.
Lavishly supplied with money by the English government, a ship of the royal navy was put at their service,—Captain Wright, an officer of that navy, being in command.
The assassins were landed at the foot of a sea-washed cliff on the coast of Normandy in the night. Using a secret path and the rope-ladder of smugglers, they climbed the precipice and made their way secretly to Paris. Here they spent some weeks in organizing the conspiracy. The danger to Napoleon became so urgent that those who had the care of his personal safety felt that no precautions could be too great. De Ségur, captain of the body-guard, relates how Caulaincourt, Grand Marshal of the palace pro tem, woke him up after twelve o’clock at night toward the end of January, 1804, with: “Get up! Change the parole and the countersign immediately. There is not an instant to lose. The duties must be carried out as if in the presence of the enemy!”
Napoleon himself remained cool, but gradually became very stern. Asked by one of his councillors if he were afraid, he replied: “I, afraid! Ah, if I were afraid, it would be a bad day for France.”