Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. V, No. XXIX., October, 1852

by Various

Napoleon sincerely pitied Moreau and Pichegru, and wished to save them from the ignominious death they merited. He sent a messenger to Moreau assuring him that a frank confession should secure his pardon and restoration to favor. But it was far more easy for Napoleon to forgive than for the proud Moreau to accept his forgiveness. With profound sympathy Napoleon contemplated the position of Pichegru. As he thought of this illustrious general, condemned and executed like a felon, he exclaimed to M. Real, "What an end for the conqueror of Holland! But the men of the Revolution must not thus destroy each other. I have long thought about forming a colony at Cayenne. Pichegru was exiled thither, and knows the place well; and of all our generals, he is best calculated to form an extensive establishment there. Go and visit him in his prison, and tell him that I pardon him; that it is not toward him or Moreau, or men like them that I am inclined to be severe. Ask him how many men, and what amount of money he would require for founding a colony in Cayenne, and I will supply him, that he may go thither and re-establish his reputation in rendering a great service to France." Pichegru was so much affected by this magnanimity of the man whose death he had been plotting, that he bowed his head and wept convulsively. The illustrious man was conquered.

But Napoleon was much annoyed in not being able to lay hold upon one of those Bourbon princes who had so long been conspiring against his life, and inciting others to perils from which they themselves escaped. One morning in his study he inquired of Talleyrand and Fouché respecting the place of residence of the various members of the Bourbon family. He was told in reply that Louis XVIII. and the Duke d'Angouléme lived in Warsaw; the Count d'Artois and the Duke de Berri in London, where also were the Princes of Condé with the exception of the Duke d'Enghien, the most enterprising of them all, who lived at Ettenheim near Strasburg. It was in this vicinity that the British ministers Taylor, Smith, and Drake had been busying themselves in fomenting intrigues. The idea instantly flashed into the mind of the First Consul that the Duke d'Enghien was thus lurking near the frontier of France to take part in the conspiracy. He immediately sent an officer to Ettenheim to make inquiries respecting the Prince. The officer returned with the report that the Duke d'Enghien was living there with a Princess of Rohan, to whom he was warmly attached. He was often absent from Ettenheim, and occasionally went in disguise to Strasburg. He was in the pay of the British government, a soldier against his own country, and had received orders from the British Cabinet to repair to the banks of the Rhine, to be ready to take advantage of any favorable opportunity which might be presented to invade France.

On the very morning in which this report reached Paris, a deposition was presented to Napoleon, made by the servant of George Cadoudal, in which he stated that a prince was at the head of the conspiracy, that he believed this Prince to be in France, as he had often seen at the house of Cadoudal a well dressed man, of distinguished manners, whom all seemed to treat with profound respect. This man, thought Napoleon, must certainly be the Duke d'Enghien, and his interviews with the conspirators will account for his frequent absence from Ettenheim. Another very singular circumstance greatly strengthened this conclusion. There was a Marquis de Thumery in the suite of the Duke d'Enghien. The German officer, who repeated this fact, mispronounced the word so that it sounded like Dumuner, a distinguished advocate of the Bourbons. The officer sent by Napoleon to make inquiries, consequently reported that General Dumuner was with the Duke d'Enghien. All was now plain to the excited mind of the First Consul. The Duke d'Enghien was in the conspiracy. With General Dumuner and an army of emigrants he was to march into France, by Strasburg, as soon as the death of the First Consul was secured; while the Count d'Artois. aided by England, would approach from London.

A council was immediately called, to decide what should be done. The ministers were divided in opinion. Some urged sending a secret force to arrest the Duke, with all his papers and accomplices, and bring them to Paris. Cambacères, apprehensive of the effect that such a violation of the German territory might produce in Europe, opposed the measure. Napoleon replied to him kindly, but firmly, "I know your motive for speaking thus—your devotion to me, I thank you for it. But I will not allow myself to be put to death without resistance. I will make those people tremble, and teach them to keep quiet for the time to come."

Orders were immediately given for three hundred dragoons to repair to the banks of the Rhine, cross the river, dash forward to Ettenheim, surround the town, arrest the Prince and all his retinue, and carry them to Strasburg. As soon as the arrest was made, Colonel Caulaincourt was directed to hasten to the Grand-duke of Baden, with an apology from the First Consul for violating his territory, stating that the gathering of the hostile emigrants so near the frontiers of France, authorized the French government to protect itself, and that the necessity for prompt and immediate action rendered it impossible to adopt more tardy measures. The duke of Baden expressed his satisfaction with the apology.

On the 15th of March, 1804, the detachment of dragoons set out, and proceeded with such rapidity as to surround the town before the Duke could receive any notice of their approach. He was arrested in his bed, and hurried, but partially clothed, into a carriage, and conveyed with the utmost speed to Strasburg. He was from thence taken to the Castle of Vincennes, in the vicinity of Paris. A military commission was formed composed of the colonels of the garrison, with General Hullin as President. The Prince was brought before the Commission. He was calm and haughty, for he had no apprehension of the fate which awaited him. He was accused of high treason, in having sought to excite civil war, and in bearing arms against France. To arraign him upon this charge was to condemn him, for of this crime he was clearly guilty. Though he denied all knowledge of the plot in question, boldly and rather defiantly he avowed that he had borne arms against France, and that he was on the banks of the Rhine for the purpose of serving against her again. "I esteem," said he, "General Bonaparte as a great man, but being myself a prince of the house of Bourbon, I have vowed against him eternal hatred." "A Condé," he added, "can never re-enter France but with arms in his hands. My birth, my opinions render me for ever the enemy of your government." By the laws of the Republic, for a Frenchman to serve against France was a capital offense. Napoleon, however, would not have enforced this law in the case of the Duke, had he not fully believed that he was implicated in the conspiracy, and that it was necessary, to secure himself from assassination, that he should strike terror into the hearts of the Bourbons. The Prince implored permission to see the First Consul. The court refused this request, which, if granted would undoubtedly have saved his life. Napoleon also commissioned M. Real to proceed to Vincennes, and examine the prisoner. Had M. Real arrived in season to see the Duke, he would have made a report of facts which would have rescued the Prince from his tragical fate; but, exhausted by the fatigue of several days and nights, he had retired to rest, and had given directions to his servants to permit him to sleep undisturbed. The order of the First Consul was, consequently, not placed in his hands until five o'clock in the morning. It was then too late. The court sorrowfully pronounced sentence of death. By torch light the unfortunate Prince was led down the winding staircase, which led into a fosse of the chateau. There he saw through the gray mist of the morning, a file of soldiers drawn up for his execution. Calmly he cut off a lock of his hair, and, taking his watch from his pocket, requested an officer to solicit Josephine to present those tokens of his love to the Princess de Rohan. Turning to the soldiers he said, "I die for my King and for France;" and giving the command to fire, he fell, pierced by seven balls.

While these scenes were transpiring, Napoleon was in a state of intense excitement. He retired to the seclusion of Malmaison, and for hours, communing with no one, paced his apartment with a countenance expressive of the most unwavering determination. It is said that Josephine pleaded with him for the life of the Prince, and he replied "Josephine, you are a woman, and know not the necessities of political life." As pensive and thoughtful he walked his room, he was heard in low tones to repeat to himself the most celebrated verses of the French poets upon the subject of clemency. This seemed to indicate that his thoughts were turned to the nobleness of pardon. He however remained unrelenting. He was deeply indignant that the monarchs of Europe should assume that he was an upstart, whom any one might shoot in the street. He resolved to strike a blow which should send consternation to the hearts of his enemies, a blow so sudden, so energetic, so terrible as to teach them that he would pay as little regard for their blood, as they manifested for his. The object at which he aimed was fully accomplished. Says Thiers "It is not much to the credit of human nature to be obliged to confess, that the terror inspired by the First Consul acted effectually upon the Bourbon Princes and the emigrants. They no longer felt themselves secure, now that even the German territory had proved no safeguard to the unfortunate Duke d'Enghien; and thenceforth conspiracies of that kind ceased." There are many indications that Napoleon subsequently deplored the tragical fate of the Prince. It subsequently appeared that the mysterious stranger to whom the prisoners so often alluded, was Pichegru. When this fact was communicated to Napoleon, he was deeply moved and musing long and painfully, gave utterance to an exclamation of grief, that he had consented to the seizure of the unhappy Prince.

He, however, took the whole responsibility of his execution upon himself. In his testament at St. Helena, he wrote, "I arrested the Duke d'Enghien because that measure was necessary to the security, the interest, and the honor of the French people, when the Count d'Artois maintained, on his own admission, sixty assassins. In similar circumstances I would do the same." The spirit is saddened in recording these terrible deeds of violence and of blood. It was a period of anarchy, of revolution, of conspiracies, of war. Fleets were bombarding cities, and tens of thousands were falling in a day upon a single field of battle. Human life was considered of but little value. Bloody retaliations and reprisals were sanctified by the laws of contending nations. Surrounded by those influences, nurtured from infancy in the minds of them, provoked beyond endurance by the aristocratic arrogance which regarded the elected sovereign of France as an usurper beyond the pale of law, it is only surprising that Napoleon could have passed through a career so wonderful and so full of temptations, with a character so seldom sullied by blemishes of despotic injustice.

This execution of a prince of the blood royal sent a thrill of indignation through all the courts of Europe. The French embassadors were treated in many instances with coldness amounting to insult. The Emperor Alexander sent a remonstrance to the First Consul. He thus provoked a terrible reply from the man who could hurl a sentence like a bomb-shell. The young monarch of Russia was seated upon the blood-stained throne, from which the daggers of assassins had removed his father. And yet, not one of these assassins had been punished. With crushing irony, Napoleon remarked, "France has acted, as Russia under similar circumstances would have done; for had she been informed that the assassins of Paul were assembled at a day's march from her frontier, would she not, at all hazards, have seized upon them there?" This was not one of these soft answers which turn away wrath. It stung Alexander to the quick.

Absorbed by these cares, Napoleon had but little time to think of the imprisoned conspirators awaiting their trial. Pichegru, hearing no further mention of the First Consul's proposal, and informed of the execution of the Duke d'Enghien, gave himself up for lost. His proud spirit could not endure the thought of a public trial and an ignominious punishment. One night, after having read a treatise of Seneca upon suicide, he laid aside his book, and by means of his silk-cravat, and a wooden-peg, which he used as a tourniquet, he strangled himself. His keepers found him in the morning dead upon his bed.