The Memoirs of François René Vicomte de Chateaubriand sometime Ambassador to England, Volume 2 (of 6) / Mémoires d'outre-tombe, volume 2

by vicomte de François-René Chateaubriand

But the general neither produces these documents nor tells us where to find them. The course of the trial shows that the Duc d'Enghien was tried at two o'clock in the morning and shot forthwith. Those words, "two o'clock in morning," which originally appeared on the first minutes of the sentence, were subsequently erased from the minutes. The official report of the exhumation proves, by the depositions of three witnesses, Madame Bon, the Sieur Godard and the Sieur Bounelet (the latter had helped to dig the grave), that the death penalty was effected at night. M. Dupin the Elder records the circumstance of a lantern fastened over the Duc d'Enghien's heart to serve as a mark, or held, with the same object, in the Prince's firm hand. Stories were told of a heavy stone taken from the grave with which the victim's head was crushed in. Lastly, the Duc de Rovigo is supposed to have boasted of possessing some of the spoils of the sacrifice; I myself have believed in these rumours; but the legal documents prove that they were unfounded.

From the official report, dated Wednesday the 20th of March 1816, of the physicians and surgeons entrusted with the exhumation of the corpse, it has been certified that the skull was broken, that "the upper jaw, separated entirely from the facial bones, contained twelve teeth; that the lower jaw, fractured in the middle, was divided in two, and showed only three teeth."

The body was lying flat upon its abdomen, the head being lower than the feet; there was a gold chain around the vertebrae of the neck.

The second official report of the exhumation (of the same date, 20 March 1816), "the general report," states that with the remains of the skeleton were found a purse in morocco-leather containing eleven pieces of gold, seventy pieces of gold enclosed in sealed rolls, some hair, shreds of clothing, remnants of his cap bearing marks of the bullets by which it had been pierced.

M. de Rovigo therefore took none of the spoils; the earth which had held them has restored them, and has borne witness to the general's honesty; no lantern was fastened over the Prince's heart, its fragments would have been found, as were those of the perforated cap; no heavy stone was taken from the grave; the fire of the piquet at six paces was enough to blow the head to pieces, to "separate the upper jaw from the facial bones," and so on.

To complete this mockery of human vanities were needed only the similar immolation of Murat, the Governor of Paris, the death of Bonaparte in captivity, and the inscription engraved upon the Duc d'Enghien's coffin:

"Here lies the body of the most high and mighty Prince of the Blood, Peer of France, died at Vincennes, 21 March 1804; aged 31 years, 7 months and 19 days."

The "body" was mere bare and shattered bones; the "high and mighty Prince," the broken fragments of a soldier's carcase; not a word to recall the catastrophe, not a word of blame or grief in this epitaph carved by a sorrowing family; a prodigious result of the respect which the century shows to the works and susceptibilities of the Revolution! In the same way, no time was lost in removing all traces of the mortuary chapel of the Duc de Berry.

What a sum total of annihilation! Bourbons, who returned to so little purpose to your palaces, you have busied yourselves with naught save exhumations and funerals: your time of life was passed. God has willed it so! The ancient glory of France perished beneath the eyes of the shade of the Great Condé, in a moat at Vincennes: perhaps at the very place where Louis IX., "to whom men resorted as to a saint.... seated himself at the foot of an oak, and where all who had any business with him came without ceremony and without hindrance from any usher or others; and whenever he heard anything that could be amended in the speeches of those who pleaded for others he most graciously corrected it himself, and all the people who had a cause to bring before him stood round him[626]."

The Duc d'Enghien asked leave to speak to Bonaparte: "he had a cause to bring before him;" he was not heard! Who, standing at the edge of the ravelin, looked down into the moat upon those muskets, those soldiers dimly lighted by a lantern in the mist and gloom, as in night everlasting? Where was the light placed? Did the Duc d'Enghien stand over his open grave? Was he obliged to step across it to place himself at the distance of "six paces" specified by the Duc de Rovigo.