"Interrogated, if he knew General Dumouriez, or had any connexion with him? Answered, that he knew him no more than the other—he had never seen him."
"Interrogated, if, after the peace, he had not kept up a correspondence in the interior of the Republic? Replied, I have written to some friends that are still attached to me, who had fought along with me, both on their affairs and my own. These correspondences were not of the character which I conceive to be alluded to."
The report further bears, that when the process-verbal was closed, he expressed himself thus:—"Before signing the process-verbal, I make with urgency the request, to have a particular audience of the First Consul. My name, my rank, my manner of thinking, and the horror of my situation, make me hope he will not refuse my desire."
In the second interrogatory, in presence of the military commission, the duke adhered to what he had said in his preceding examination, with the sole additional circumstance, that he was ready to renew the war, and to take service in the approaching hostilities betwixt England and France.
The commission, as appears from record of their proceedings, received no other evidence of any kind whatever, whether written or oral, and undertook the task which they knew was expected from them, of extracting reasons for awarding a capital punishment out of a confession from which nothing could be drawn by any ordinary process of reasoning, save that the accused person had been in arms against France, and was willing to be so again—but in open warfare, and in the hope of recovering what he considered as the rights of his family—a case which could not be brought under the penalty of death, except under the laws of 28th March, 1793, and of 25th Brumaire, An. III., where the capital punishment is limited, as we have repeatedly said, to emigrants taken within the limits of France, or of countries hostile to her, or subjected by her arms. The avowal that the duke had a pension from England did not infer that he was in her military pay, nor, indeed, did he in fact hold that allowance on any other conditions than as an alimentary provision allowed by the generous compassion of the British nation. Neither could he be found guilty upon his candid avowal that he was willing, or even desirous, to enter into the English service; for, supposing the actually doing so were a crime, the mere intention to do so could not be construed into one, since men are in this world responsible only for their actions, not for their thoughts, or the unexecuted purposes of their mind. No other evidence was adduced excepting the report of an officer of police, or state spy, sent to watch the Duke d'Enghien's movements, who declared that the Duke d'Enghien received many emigrants at his table, and that he was frequently absent for several days without his (the spy's) being able to discover where he went; but which suspicious facts were sufficiently explained, by his having the means of giving some assistance to his distressed companions, and his long hunting parties in the Black Forest, in which he was wont to pass many days at a time. A report from Shee, the prefect of the Lower Rhine, was also read; but neither Savary nor Hullin mention its import, nor how it was converted into evidence, or bore upon the question of the Duke d'Enghien's guilt or innocence. Hullin also mentions a long report from the counsellor of state, Real, where the affair, with all its ramifications, was rendered so interesting, that it seemed the safety of the state, and the existence of the government, depended on the judgment which should be returned. Such a report could only argue the thirst of the government for the poor young man's blood, and exhibit that open tampering with the court, which they were not ashamed to have recourse to, but certainly could not constitute evidence in the cause.
But both Savary and Hullin are disposed to rest the reason of the condemnation upon the frank and noble avowal of the prisoner, which, in their opinion, made it imperative on the court to condemn him. He uniformly maintained, that "'he had only sustained the right of his family, and that a Condé could never enter France save with arms in his hands. My birth,' he said, 'my opinions, must ever render me inflexible on this point.' The firmness of his answers reduced the judges," continues Hullin, "to despair. Ten times we gave him an opening to retract his declarations, but he still persisted in them immovably. 'I see,' he said, 'the honourable intention of the members of the commission, but I cannot resort to the means of safety which they indicate.'" And being acquainted that the military commissioners judged without appeal; "I know it," he replied, "and I do not disguise from myself the danger which I incur. My only request is, to have an interview with the First Consul." It is sufficiently plain, that the gallant bearing of the prince, so honourable to himself, brought him under no law by which he was not previously affected. But it did much worse for him in a practical sense. It avowed him the open enemy of Buonaparte, and placed each judge under the influence of such reasoning as encouraged Sir Piers Exton to the murder of a deposed prince at the hint of a usurper.[520]
The doom of the prisoner had been fixed from the moment he crossed the drawbridge of that gloomy state prison. But it required no small degree of dexterity to accommodate the evidence to the law, so as to make out an ostensible case of guilt, which should not carry absurdity and contradiction on its very front. This was the more difficult, as it is an express legal form in French courts-martial, that it shall express upon its record the exact fact for which death is to be inflicted, and the precise article of the law under which the sentence is awarded. The military commission had much more trouble in placing the record upon a plausible footing, than they found in going through the brief forms of such a trial as they were pleased to afford the accused. They experienced the truth of the observation, that it is much more easy to commit a crime than to justify it.
VERDICT.
The first difficulty which occurred was to apply the verdict to the indictment, to which it ought to be the precise answer, since it would be monstrous to find a man guilty of a crime different from that of which he stood accused; as, for example, to find a man guilty of theft, when he had been charged with murder, or vice versa. The judges of this military commission had, at the same time, the additional difficulty of reconciling the verdict with the evidence which had been adduced, as well as with the accusations laid. If the reader will take the trouble to peruse the following copy of the record, with our observations, which we have marked by italics, they will see how far the military court of Vincennes had been able to reconcile their verdict with the act of accusation, and with the sentence.
The verdict bears: "The voices being collected on each of the underwritten questions, beginning with the younger, and ending with the president; the court declares Louis Antoine de Bourbon, Duke de Enghien,—