On being released two years later at the age of four-and-twenty, having been imprudent enough to lampoon one of the principal members of the Government, Morande fled the country. After tramping about Belgium he arrived in London in a condition of absolute want. But he was not long without means of subsistence. The ease with which he extorted money by threatening to inform the police of the equivocal lives of such acquaintances as chance threw in his way suggested the system of blackmail which he afterwards developed into a fine art.
Gifted with a talent for writing he ventured to attack notabilities. From fear of his mordant, cynical pen many were induced to purchase his silence. In Le Gazetier Cuirassé, ou Anecdotes scandaleuses sur la cour de France, all who had refused to purchase exemption had been represented by him in the worst possible light. For this work, which Brissot describes as “one of those infamous productions the very name of which one blushes to mention,” he is said to have received 1,000 guineas.
Emboldened by the fright he inspired he redoubled his attacks, but they did not always meet with the same success. He thought to extort a ransom from Voltaire, but the aged philosopher of Ferney had lived through too much to be frightened for so little. He published Morande’s letter, accompanied with commentaries of the sort he knew so well how to make effective. The Comte de Lauraguais replied even more effectively than Voltaire. Not only did he obstinately refuse to pay the tribute demanded of him, but, being in London at the time, gave the blackmailer a horsewhipping, and compelled him to publish an abject apology in the press into the bargain.
Morande, however, was not discouraged, and prepared to reap the most fruitful of all his harvests. For the object he had in view Madame du Barry was a gold mine. The famous favourite of Louis XV was notoriously sensitive on the subject of her reputation, and dreaded nothing so much as a libel. Morande, accordingly, wrote to inform her that he had in preparation a work in four volumes, to be entitled the Mémoires d’une femme publique, in which she would figure as the heroine, unless she preferred to pay a handsome sum for its suppression. To assist her to come to the latter decision a scenario of the work was sent her. “Le Gazetier Cuirassé,” says Bachaumont, who saw it, “was rose-water in comparison with this new chef-d’œuvre.”
Alarmed and enraged, the poor creature communicated her fears and anger to the King, who applied to George III for Morande’s extradition. The attitude of the British Government was characteristic of the political morality of the age. The laws and customs of England rendering the extradition of a foreign refugee out of the question, the French Court was informed that failing an action for libel—which under the circumstances was clearly impossible—the only alternative was to kidnap the libellist. The British Government even offered its assistance, providing that Morande’s “removal was done with the greatest secrecy and in such a manner as not to wound the national susceptibilities.”
The French Government accordingly sent a brigade of police to London, but Morande was on the alert. Warned from Paris of his danger, he exposed the contemplated attack upon him in the Press, giving himself out as “a political exile and an avenger of public morality”—poses, needless to say, which are always applauded in England. Public sympathy was thus excited in his favour to such a pitch that the French police were obliged to return to France empty-handed, after having narrowly escaped being thrown into the Thames by an infuriated crowd.
Morande, enchanted at having got the better of the French Government, redoubled his threats. He wrote again to Madame du Barry to inform her that 6,000 copies of his scandalous work were already printed and ready for circulation. Louis XV, who had no more fear of a libel than Voltaire, would have let him do his worst, but to please his mistress he decided to come to terms. As this had now become a delicate matter, Beaumarchais was entrusted with the negotiation on account of his superior cunning. The celebrated author who had everything to gain by earning the gratitude of Madame du Barry went to London under the name of Ronac, and in a very short time succeeded in gaining the confidence of the libellist, whose silence was purchased for the sum of 32,000 livres in cash and a pension of 4,000 livres, to be paid to Morande’s wife in the event of her surviving him.
It was about this time that Morande, without altogether abandoning his career of blackmail, adopted the more profitable one of spy. Instead of attacking authority, he now offered to serve it. Having been taught his value by experience, the French Government gladly accepted the offer. He began by “watching” the French colony in London, which was composed chiefly of escaped criminals and political refugees, and ended as Editor of the Courier de l’Europe.
This paper had been started by a refugee, Serres de Latour, with the object of instructing the French public in the internal affairs of England, particularly as regards her foreign policy. The money to finance the scheme had been supplied by a Scotchman by name of Swinton, who was granted every facility by the Comte de Vergennes, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, that would assist the enterprise.
Thus protected, the Courier de l’Europe was a success from the start. In a short time it had 5,000 subscribers—an enormous number for those days—and a revenue of 25,000 livres. Brissot, the leader of the Girondins in the Revolution, who was connected with it for a time as a young man, estimated its readers at over a million. “There was not,” he says, “a corner of Europe in which it was not read.”