The sermon which Napoleon preached to the Hamburg deputies on their infringement of the law of nations was in the mouths of his admirers for years after; but it lost in impressiveness by his own violation of the neutral territory of Baden, when, on the night of March 17, 1804, he sent a strong guard to seize and carry off to France the Duc d'Enghien. After a hasty trial by court-martial, and on unproven charges of conspiracy, he was cruelly put to death in the Castle of Vincennes. In the heated discussions to which this outrage gave rise, Buonaparte more than once quoted the case of Tandy, and feebly sought to find in the past conduct of Hamburg a precedent and justification.
Thomas Addis Emmet accused him of coldness and indecision as regards the long threatened invasion of Ireland, because, instead of steering for Erin in 1798, he changed his plan and went to Egypt. The arrest of Tandy in Hamburg rekindled Napoleon's hostile feeling, and shortly after the death of that general he resolved to carry out comprehensively his oft-mooted design.
The 'Correspondence of Napoleon'[230] contains a letter to Berthier, dated September 27, 1804. He says that an expedition to Ireland had been decided upon; that 18,000 men for that purpose were ready at Brest; that a simultaneous landing was to be attempted in Kent; while in Ireland the French army would march straight on Dublin. Meanwhile 200,000 men were encamped at Boulogne; but hostile plans collapsed with the smash of the French fleet at Trafalgar. A few weeks later the so-called 'Army of England' traversed the banks of the blue Danube instead of the Thames. General Mack capitulated at Ulm; Francis of Austria fled, and Napoleon's legions entered Vienna.
FOOTNOTES:
[190] The words of the French writer will be found at p. [78], infra.
[191] The London Courier of September 14, 1799, displays the following translation of a letter addressed to a Paris journal: 'Citizens,—The Redacteur has said, and many other Journalists have repeated it, that Napper Tandy had been given up by the Senate of Hamburg. I declare to you, Citizens, that not a word is said of this in any letters received in any of the Banking houses in Paris, nor in those which I myself have received. I hasten to give you this information, because the Public ought never to be deceived.
(Signed) 'Daniel C. Meyer,
'Consul General from Hamburgh.'
[192] Castlereagh Papers, i. 405. The letter, of which this is a bit, was written by a spy who contrived to accompany Tandy as a sort of aide-de-camp, and was on board the 'Anacreon' during the voyage. Wickham divulges merely his initial, 'O,' but the reader will find his name and career successfully traced in the Appendix.
[193] Cox's Irish Magazine, January 1809, pp. [32]-4.
[194] It will be shown, later on, that an Irish spy named 'Durnin' resided at Hamburg.