Before the Revolution, we had in this capital only two daily papers, but from 1789 to 1799 never less than thirty, and frequently sixty journals were daily printed. After Bonaparte had assumed the consular authority, they were reduced to ten. But though these were under a very strict inspection of our Minister of Police, they were regarded still as too numerous, and have lately been diminished to eight, by the incorporation of 'Le Clef du Cabinet' and 'Le Bulletin de l'Europe' with the 'Gazette de France', a paper of which the infamously famous Barrere is the editor. According to a proposal of Bonaparte, it was lately debated in the Council of State whether it would not be politic to suppress all daily prints, with the sole exception of the Moniteur. Fouche and Talleyrand spoke much in favour of this measure of security. Real, however, is said to have suggested another plan, which was adopted; and our Government, instead of prohibiting the appearance of our daily papers, has resolved by degrees to purchase them all, and to entrust them entirely to the direction of Barrere, who now is consulted in everything concerning books or newspapers.
All circulation of foreign papers is prohibited, until they have previously obtained the stamp of approbation from the grand literary censor, Barrere. Any person offending against this law is most severely punished. An American gentlemen, of the name of Campbell, was last spring sent to the Temple for lending one of your old daily papers to a person who lodged in the same hotel with him. After an imprisonment of ten weeks he made some pecuniary sacrifices to obtain his liberty, but was carried to Havre, under an escort of gendarmes, put on board a neutral vessel, and forbidden, under pain of death, ever to set his foot on French ground again. An American vessel was, about the same time, confiscated at Bordeaux, and the captain and crew imprisoned, because some English books were found on board, in which Bonaparte, Talleyrand, Fouche, and some of our great men were rather ill-treated. The crew have since been liberated, but the captain has been brought here, and is still in the Temple. The vessel and the cargo have been sold as lawful captures, though the captain has proved from the names written in the books that they belonged to a passenger. A young German student in surgery, who came here to improve himself, has been nine months in the same state prison, for having with him a book, printed in Germany during Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt, wherein the chief and the undertaking are ridiculed. His mother, the widow of a clergyman, hearing of the misfortune of her son, came here, and has presented to the Emperor and Empress half a dozen petitions, without any effect whatever, and has almost ruined herself and her other children by the expenses of the journey. During a stay of four months she has not yet been able to gain admittance into the Temple, to visit or see her son, who perhaps expired in tortures, or died brokenhearted before she came here.
A dozen copies of a funeral sermon on the Duc d'Enghien had found their way here, and were secretly circulated for some time; but at last the police heard of it, and every person who was suspected of having read them was arrested. The number of these unfortunate persons, according to some, amounted to one hundred and thirty, while others say that they were only eighty-four, of whom twelve died suddenly in the Temple, and the remainder were transported to Cayenne; upwards of half of them were women, some of the ci-devant highest rank among subjects.
A Prussian, of the name of Bulow, was shot as a spy in the camp of Boulogne, because in his trunk was an English book, with the lives of Bonaparte and of some of his generals. Every day such and other examples of the severity of our Government are related; and foreigners who visit us continue, nevertheless, to be off their guard. They would be less punished had they with them forged bills than, printed books or newspapers, in which our Imperial Family and public functionaries are not treated with due respect. Bonaparte is convinced that in every book where he is not spoken of with praise, the intent is to blame him; and such intents or negative guilt never escape with impunity.
As, notwithstanding the endeavours of our Government, we are more fond of foreign prints, and have more confidence in them than in our own, official presses have lately been established at Antwerp, at Cologne, and at Mentz, where the 'Gazette de Leyden', 'Hamburg Correspondenten', and 'Journal de Frankfort' are reprinted; some articles left out, and others inserted in their room. It was intended to reprint also the 'Courier de Londres', but our types, and particularly, our paper, would detect the fraud. I have read one of our own Journal de Frankfort, in which were extracts from this French paper, printed in your country, which I strongly suspect are of our own manufacture. I am told that several new books, written by foreigners, in praise of our present brilliant Government, are now in the presses of those our frontier towns, and will soon be laid before the public as foreign productions.
A clerk of a banking-house had lately the imprudence to mention, during his dinner at the restaurateur's of 'Cadran Vert', on the Boulevards, some doubt of the veracity of an official article in the 'Moniteur'. As he left the house he was arrested, carried before Fouche, accused of being an English agent, and before supper-time he was on the road to Rochefort on his way to Cayenne. As soon as the banker Tournon was informed of this expeditious justice, as it is called here, he waited on Fouche, who threatened even to transport him if he dared to interfere with the transactions of the police. This banker was himself seized in the spring of last year by a police agent and some gendarmes, and carried into exile forty leagues from this capital, where he remained six. months, until a pecuniary douceur procured him a recall. His crime was having inquired after General Moreau when in the Temple, and of having left his card there.
LETTER XVI.
PARIS, September, 1805.
MY LORD:—The Prince Borghese has lately been appointed a captain of the Imperial Guard of his Imperial brother-in-law, Napoleon the First, and is now in Germany, making his first campaign. A descendant of a wealthy and ancient Roman family, but born with a weak understanding, he was easily deluded into the ranks of the revolutionists of his own country, by a Parisian Abbe, his instructor and governor, and gallant of the Princesse Borghese, his mother. He was the first secretary of the first Jacobin club established at Rome, in the spring of 1798; and in December of the same year, when the Neapolitan troops invaded the Ecclesiastical States, he, with his present brother-in-law, another hopeful Roman Prince, Santa Cruce, headed the Roman sans-culottes in their retreat. To show his love of equality, he had previously served as a common man in a company of which the captain was a fellow that sold cats' meat and tripe in the streets of Rome, and the lieutenant a scullion of his mother's kitchen. Since Imperial aristocracy is now become the order of the day, he is as insupportable for his pride and vanity as he, some years ago, was contemptible for his meanness. He married, in 1803, Madame Leclerc, who, between the death of a first and a wedding with a second husband—a space of twelve months—had twice been in a fair way to become a mother. Her portion was estimated at eighteen millions of livres—a sum sufficient to palliate many 'faux pas' in the eyes of a husband more sensible and more delicate than her present Serene Idiot, as she styles the Prince Borghese.
The lady is the favourite sister of Napoleon, the ablest, but also the most wicked of the female Bonapartes. She had, almost from her infancy, passed through all the filth of prostitution, debauchery, and profligacy before she attained her present elevation; rank, however, has not altered her morals, but only procured her the means of indulging in new excesses. Ever since the wedding night the Prince Borghese has been excluded from her bed; for she declared frankly to him, as well as to her brother, that she would never endure the approach of a man with a bad breath; though many who, from the opportunities they have had of judging, certainly ought to know, pretend that her own breath is not the sweetest in the world. When her husband had marched towards the Rhine, she asked her brother, as a favour, to procure the Prince Borghese, after a useless life, a glorious death. This curious demand of a wife was, made in Madame Bonaparte's drawing-room, in the presence of fifty persons. "You are always 'etourdie'," replied Napoleon, smiling.