It is no wonder, therefore, that some obscure Jacobins should have early nourished the purpose of assassinating Napoleon, as the enemy of his country's freedom, and the destroyer of her liberties; but it is singular, that most of the conspirators against his person were Italians. Arena, brother of the deputy[592] who was said to have aimed a dagger at Buonaparte in the Council of Five Hundred, was at the head of the conspiracy. He was a Corsican.[593] With him, Ceracchi[594] and Diana, two Italian refugees; a painter called Topino-Lebrun;[595] and two or three enthusiasts of low condition, formed a plot for the purpose of assassinating the chief consul at the Opera-house. Their intention was detected by the police; Ceracchi and Diana were arrested in the lobby,[596] armed, it was said, and prepared for the attempt, and Napoleon was congratulated by most of the constituted authorities upon having escaped a great danger.[597]
Crassous, president of the Tribunate, made a singular speech on the occasion, which would almost bear a double interpretation. "There had been so many conspiracies," he said, "at so many different periods, and under so many different pretexts, which had never been followed up either by inquiry or punishment, that a great number of good citizens had become sceptical on the subject of their existence. This incredulity was dangerous," he argued; "it was time it should be ended." With this view, Monsieur Crassous recommended, that the persons guilty on the present occasion should be prosecuted and punished with all the solemnity and rigour of the laws.
Buonaparte replied, with military indifference, that he had been in no real danger. "The contemptible wretches," he said, in something like a renewal of his Egyptian vein, "had no power to commit the crime they meditated. Besides the assistance of the whole audience, I had with me a piquet of my brave guard, from whom the wretches could not have borne a look."[598] So ended this singular discourse; and it is remarkable that neither were the circumstances of the plot made public, nor the conspirators punished, till the more memorable attempt on Napoleon's life by the Royalists.
THE ROYALISTS.
The Royalists, as a party, had far more interest with Buonaparte than the Democrats. The former approved of the principles and form of his government,—it was only necessary for their conversion, that they should learn to endure his person; whereas the Jacobins being equally averse to the office to which he aspired, to his power, and to himself, there were no hopes of their being brought to tolerate either the monarch or the man. Of the latter, therefore, Napoleon entertained equal dislike and distrust; while, from obvious causes, his feelings towards the former were in some measure friendly.
The Royalists, too, for some time entertained a good opinion of Buonaparte, and conceived that he intended, in his own time and in his own way, to act in behalf of the exiled royal family. The enthusiastic of the party were at a loss to conceive that the throne of France should be again erected, and that any one but a Bourbon should dare to ascend it. It seemed to them impossible that the monarchy should revive without the restoration of the legitimate monarch, and they could not believe that a Corsican soldier of fortune would meditate an usurpation, or that France would be for a moment tolerant of his pretensions. The word liberty had, indeed, misled the people of France for a time, but, that illusion being dissipated, their natural love to the royal race would return like a reviving spring, and again run in its old channel.
So general was the belief among this class, that Buonaparte meditated the restoration of the Bourbons, that several agents of the family made their way so far as to sound his own mind upon the subject. Louis himself, afterwards XVIII., addressed to the first consul a letter of the following tenor:—"You cannot achieve the happiness of France without my restoration, any more than I can ascend the throne which is my right, without your co-operation. Hasten then to complete the good work, which none but you can accomplish, and name the rewards which you claim for your friends."[599]
Buonaparte answered the letter with cold civility. He esteemed the person, he said, and pitied the misfortunes, of his Royal Highness the Comte de Provence, and should be glad to assist him, did an opportunity permit. But as his royal highness could not be restored to France, save at the expense of an hundred thousand lives, it was an enterprise in which he, Buonaparte, must decline to aid him.[600]
A less direct, and more artful course, is said to have been attempted, by the mission of the Duchesse de Guiche, one of the most beautiful and pleasing women of the time, who, obtaining permission to come to Paris under pretext of her private affairs, was introduced at the Tuileries, and delighted Josephine with the elegance of her manners.[601] Napoleon did not escape the fascination but the instant she touched on the subject of politics, the interesting duchesse received an order to quit Paris.
As soon as the Royalists discovered, by the failure of these and similar applications, as well as by the gradual tendency of Buonaparte's measures, that the restoration of the Bourbons was the thing farthest from his purpose, their disappointment exasperated them against the audacious individual, whose single person seemed now the only obstacle to that event. Monarchical power was restored, in spirit at least, if not in form; was it to be endured, the more zealous followers of the Bourbons demanded of each other, that it should become the prize of a military usurper? This party, as well as that of the Jacobins, contained doubtless many adherents, whom the enthusiasm of their political principles disposed to serve their cause, even at the expense of great crimes. The sentiments of the princes of the royal family upon such a subject, were becoming their high ranks.[602] They were resolved to combat Buonaparte's pretensions with open force, such as befitted their pretensions as head of the chivalry of France, but to leave to Jacobins the schemes of private assassination. Still there must have been many, among those characters which are found during the miseries and crimes of civil war, who conceived that the assassination of the chief consul would be received as good service when accomplished, although it might not be authorised beforehand. Nay, there may have been partisans zealous enough to take the crime and punishment on themselves, without looking farther than the advantage which their party would receive by the action.