summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
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      MEMOIRS COURT OF ST. CLOUD, By Lewis Goldsmith
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    <h2>
      MEMOIRS COURT OF ST. CLOUD, By Lewis Goldsmith
    </h2>
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Project Gutenberg's Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete,
by Lewis Goldsmith

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net


Title: Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete
       Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London

Author: Lewis Goldsmith


Release Date: September 11, 2006 [EBook #3899]
Last Updated: April 3, 2013

Language: English

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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COURT OF ST. CLOUD ***




Produced by David Widger





</pre>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </p>
    <h1>
      MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF ST. CLOUD
    </h1>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <h3>
      Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London
    </h3>
    <p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
    </p>
    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
      <img alt="bookcover.jpg (144K)" src="images/bookcover.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </p>
    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
      <img alt="titlepage.jpg (52K)" src="images/titlepage.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </p>
    <h2>
      PUBLISHERS' NOTE.
    </h2>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <p>
      The present work contains particulars of the great Napoleon not to be
      found in any other publication, and forms an interesting addition to the
      information generally known about him.
    </p>
    <p>
      The writer of the Letters (whose name is said to have been Stewarton, and
      who had been a friend of the Empress Josephine in her happier, if less
      brilliant days) gives full accounts of the lives of nearly all Napoleon's
      Ministers and Generals, in addition to those of a great number of other
      characters, and an insight into the inner life of those who formed
      Napoleon's Court.
    </p>
    <p>
      All sorts and conditions of men are dealt with&mdash;adherents who have
      come over from the Royalist camp, as well as those who have won their way
      upwards as soldiers, as did Napoleon himself. In fact, the work abounds
      with anecdotes of Napoleon, Talleyrand, Fouche, and a host of others, and
      astounding particulars are given of the mysterious disappearance of those
      persons who were unfortunate enough to incur the displeasure of Napoleon.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </p>
    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
      <img alt="napoleon.jpg (54K)" src="images/napoleon.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </p>
    <blockquote>
      <p class="toc">
        <big><b>ILLUSTRATIONS</b></big>
      </p>
      <p>
        <br /> <a href="#p078">At Cardinal Caprara's</a><br /><br /> <a href="#p146">Cardinal
        Fesch</a><br /><br /> <a href="#p214">Episode at Mme. Miot's</a><br /><br />
        <a href="#p236">Napoleon's Guard</a><br /><br /> <a href="#p338">A Grand
        Dinner</a><br /><br /> <a href="#pb064">Chaptal</a><br /><br /> <a
        href="#pb114">Turreaux</a><br /><br /> <a href="#pb118">Carrier</a><br /><br />
        <a href="#pb146">Barrere</a><br /><br /> <a href="#pb214">Cambaceres</a><br /><br />
        <a href="#pauline">Pauline Bonaparte</a><br /><br />
      </p>
    </blockquote>
    <p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
    </p>
    <h1>
      SECRET COURT MEMOIRS.
    </h1>
    <h2>
      THE COURT OF ST. CLOUD. <br /><br />INTRODUCTORY LETTER.
    </h2>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <p>
      PARIS, November 10th, 1805.
    </p>
    <p>
      MY LORD,&mdash;The Letters I have written to you were intended for the
      private entertainment of a liberal friend, and not for the general perusal
      of a severe public. Had I imagined that their contents would have
      penetrated beyond your closet or the circle of your intimate acquaintance,
      several of the narratives would have been extended, while others would
      have been compressed; the anecdotes would have been more numerous, and my
      own remarks fewer; some portraits would have been left out, others drawn,
      and all better finished. I should then have attempted more frequently to
      expose meanness to contempt, and treachery to abhorrence; should have
      lashed more severely incorrigible vice, and oftener held out to ridicule
      puerile vanity and outrageous ambition. In short, I should then have
      studied more to please than to instruct, by addressing myself seldomer to
      the reason than to the passions.
    </p>
    <p>
      I subscribe, nevertheless, to your observation, "that the late long war
      and short peace, with the enslaved state of the Press on the Continent,
      would occasion a chasm in the most interesting period of modern history,
      did not independent and judicious travellers or visitors abroad collect
      and forward to Great Britain (the last refuge of freedom) some materials
      which, though scanty and insufficient upon the whole, may, in part, rend
      the veil of destructive politics, and enable future ages to penetrate into
      mysteries which crime in power has interest to render impenetrable to the
      just reprobation of honour and of virtue." If, therefore, my humble
      labours can preserve loyal subjects from the seduction of traitors, or
      warn lawful sovereigns and civilized society of the alarming conspiracy
      against them, I shall not think either my time thrown away, or fear the
      dangers to which publicity might expose me were I only suspected here of
      being an Anglican author. Before the Letters are sent to the press I
      trust, however, to your discretion the removal of everything that might
      produce a discovery, or indicate the source from which you have derived
      your information.
    </p>
    <p>
      Although it is not usual in private correspondence to quote authorities, I
      have sometimes done so; but satisfied, as I hope you are, with my
      veracity, I should have thought the frequent productions of any better
      pledge than the word of a man of honour an insult to your feelings. I
      have, besides, not related a fact that is not recent and well known in our
      fashionable and political societies; and of ALL the portraits I have
      delineated, the originals not only exist, but are yet occupied in the
      present busy scene of the Continent, and figuring either at Courts, in
      camps, or in Cabinets.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
    </p>
    <h2>
      LETTER I.
    </h2>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      PARIS, August, 1805.
    </p>
    <p>
      MY LORD:&mdash;I promised you not to pronounce in haste on persons and
      events passing under my eyes; thirty-one months have quickly passed away
      since I became an attentive spectator of the extraordinary transactions,
      and of the extraordinary characters of the extraordinary Court and Cabinet
      of St. Cloud. If my talents to delineate equal my zeal to inquire and my
      industry to examine; if I am as able a painter as I have been an
      indefatigable observer, you will be satisfied, and with your approbation
      at once sanction and reward my labours.
    </p>
    <p>
      With most Princes, the supple courtier and the fawning favourite have
      greater influence than the profound statesman and subtle Minister; and the
      determinations of Cabinets are, therefore, frequently prepared in
      drawing-rooms, and discussed in the closet. The politician and the
      counsellor are frequently applauded or censured for transactions which the
      intrigues of antechambers conceived, and which cupidity and favour gave
      power to promulgate.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is very generally imagined, but falsely, that Napoleon Bonaparte
      governs, or rather tyrannizes, by himself, according to his own capacity,
      caprices, or interest; that all his acts, all his changes, are the sole
      consequence of his own exclusive, unprejudiced will, as well as unlimited
      authority; that both his greatness and his littleness, his successes and
      his crimes, originate entirely with himself; that the fortunate hero who
      marched triumphant over the Alps, and the dastardly murderer that
      disgraced human nature at Jaffa, because the same person, owed victory to
      himself alone, and by himself alone commanded massacre; that the same
      genius, unbiased and unsupported, crushed factions, erected a throne, and
      reconstructed racks; that the same mind restored and protected
      Christianity, and proscribed and assassinated a D'Enghien.
    </p>
    <p>
      All these contradictions, all these virtues and vices, may be found in the
      same person; but Bonaparte, individually or isolated, has no claim to
      them. Except on some sudden occasions that call for immediate decision, no
      Sovereign rules less by himself than Bonaparte; because no Sovereign is
      more surrounded by favourites and counsellors, by needy adventurers and
      crafty intriguers.
    </p>
    <p>
      What Sovereign has more relatives to enrich, or services to recompense;
      more evils to repair, more jealousies to dread, more dangers to fear, more
      clamours to silence; or stands more in need of information and advice? Let
      it be remembered that he, who now governs empires and nations, ten years
      ago commanded only a battery; and five years ago was only a military
      chieftain. The difference is as immense, indeed, between the sceptre of a
      Monarch and the sword of a general, as between the wise legislator who
      protects the lives and property of his contemporaries, and the hireling
      robber who wades through rivers of blood to obtain plunder at the expense
      and misery of generations. The lower classes of all countries have
      produced persons who have distinguished themselves as warriors; but what
      subject has yet usurped a throne, and by his eminence and achievements,
      without infringing on the laws and liberties of his country, proved
      himself worthy to reign? Besides, the education which Bonaparte received
      was entirely military; and a man (let his innate abilities be ever so
      surprising or excellent) who, during the first thirty years of his life,
      has made either military or political tactics or exploits his only study,
      certainly cannot excel equally in the Cabinet and in the camp. It would be
      as foolish to believe, as absurd to expect, a perfection almost beyond the
      reach of any man; and of Bonaparte more than of any one else. A man who,
      like him, is the continual slave of his own passions, can neither be a
      good nor a just, an independent nor immaculate master.
    </p>
    <p>
      Among the courtiers who, ever since Bonaparte was made First Consul, have
      maintained a great ascendency over him, is the present Grand Marshal of
      his Court, the general of division, Duroc. With some parts, but greater
      presumption, this young man is destined by his master to occupy the most
      confidential places near his person; and to his care are entrusted the
      most difficult and secret missions at foreign Courts. When he is absent
      from France, the liberty of the Continent is in danger; and when in the
      Tuileries, or at St. Cloud, Bonaparte thinks himself always safe.
    </p>
    <p>
      Gerard Christophe Michel Duroc was born at Ponta-Mousson, in the
      department of Meurthe, on the 25th of October, 1772, of poor but honest
      parents. His father kept a petty chandler's shop; but by the interest and
      generosity of Abbe Duroc, a distant relation, he was so well educated
      that, in March, 1792, he became a sub-lieutenant of the artillery. In 1796
      he served in Italy, as a captain, under General Andreossy, by whom he was
      recommended to General l'Espinasse, then commander of the artillery of the
      army of Italy, who made him an aide-de-camp. In that situation Bonaparte
      remarked his activity, and was pleased with his manners, and therefore
      attached him as an aide-de-camp to himself. Duroc soon became a favourite
      with his chief, and, notwithstanding the intrigues of his rivals, he has
      continued to be so to this day.
    </p>
    <p>
      It has been asserted, by his enemies no doubt, that by implicit obedience
      to his general's orders, by an unresisting complacency, and by executing,
      without hesitation, the most cruel mandates of his superior, he has fixed
      himself so firmly in his good opinion that he is irremovable. It has also
      been stated that it was Duroc who commanded the drowning and burying alive
      of the wounded French soldiers in Italy, in 1797; and that it was he who
      inspected their poisoning in Syria, in 1799, where he was wounded during
      the siege of St. Jean d' Acre. He was among the few officers whom
      Bonaparte selected for his companions when he quitted the army of Egypt,
      and landed with him in France in October, 1799.
    </p>
    <p>
      Hitherto Duroc had only shown himself as a brave soldier and obedient
      officer; but after the revolution which made Bonaparte a First Consul, he
      entered upon another career. He was then, for the first time, employed in
      a diplomatic mission to Berlin, where he so far insinuated himself into
      the good graces of their Prussian Majesties that the King admitted him to
      the royal table, and on the parade at Potsdam presented him to his
      generals and officers as an aide-de-camp 'du plus grand homme que je
      connais; whilst the Queen gave him a scarf knitted by her own fair hands.
    </p>
    <p>
      The fortunate result of Duroc's intrigues in Prussia, in 1799, encouraged
      Bonaparte to despatch him, in 1801, to Russia; where Alexander I. received
      him with that noble condescension so natural, to this great and good
      Prince. He succeeded at St. Petersburg in arranging the political and
      commercial difficulties and disagreements between France and Russia; but
      his proposal for a defensive alliance was declined.
    </p>
    <p>
      An anecdote is related of his political campaign in the North, upon the
      barren banks of the Neva, which, in causing much entertainment to the
      inhabitants of the fertile banks of the Seine, has not a little displeased
      the military diplomatist.
    </p>
    <p>
      Among Talleyrand's female agents sent to cajole Paul I. during the latter
      part of his reign, was a Madame Bonoeil, whose real name is De F&mdash;&mdash;-.
      When this unfortunate Prince was no more, most of the French male and
      female intriguers in Russia thought it necessary to shift their quarters,
      and to expect, on the territory of neutral Prussia, farther instructions
      from Paris, where and how to proceed. Madame Bonoeil had removed to
      Konigsberg. In the second week of May, 1801, when Duroc passed through
      that town for St. Petersburg, he visited this lady, according to the
      orders of Bonaparte, and obtained from her a list of the names of the
      principal persons who were inclined to be serviceable to France, and might
      be trusted by him upon the present occasion. By inattention or mistake she
      had misspelled the name of one of the most trusty and active adherents of
      Bonaparte; and Duroc, therefore, instead of addressing himself to the
      Polish Count de S&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;lz, went to the Polish Count
      de S&mdash;&mdash;-tz. This latter was as much flattered as surprised,
      upon seeing an aide-de-camp and envoy of the First Consul of France enter
      his apartments, seldom visited before but by usurers, gamesters, and
      creditors; and, on hearing the object of this visit, began to think either
      the envoy mad or himself dreaming. Understanding, however, that money
      would be of little consideration, if the point desired by the First Consul
      could be carried, he determined to take advantage of this fortunate hit,
      and invited Duroc to sup with him the same evening; when he promised him
      he should meet with persons who could do his business, provided his
      pecuniary resources were as ample as he had stated.
    </p>
    <p>
      This Count de S&mdash;&mdash;-tz was one of the most extravagant and
      profligate subjects that Russia had acquired by the partition of Poland.
      After squandering away his own patrimony, he had ruined his mother and two
      sisters, and subsisted now entirely by gambling and borrowing. Among his
      associates, in similar circumstances with himself, was a Chevalier de
      Gausac, a French adventurer, pretending to be an emigrant from the
      vicinity of Toulouse. To him was communicated what had happened in the
      morning, and his advice was asked how to act in the evening. It was soon
      settled that De Gausac should be transformed into a Russian Count de W&mdash;&mdash;-,
      a nephew and confidential secretary of the Chancellor of the same name;
      and that one Caumartin, another French adventurer, who taught fencing at
      St. Petersburg, should act the part of Prince de M&mdash;&mdash;-, an
      aide-de-camp of the Emperor; and that all three together should strip
      Duroc, and share the spoil. At the appointed hour Bonaparte's agent
      arrived, and was completely the dupe of these adventurers, who plundered
      him of twelve hundred thousand livres. Though not many days passed before
      he discovered the imposition, prudence prevented him from denouncing the
      impostors; and this blunder would have remained a secret between himself,
      Bonaparte, and Talleyrand, had not the unusual expenses of Caumartin
      excited the suspicion of the Russian Police Minister, who soon discovered
      the source from which they had flowed. De Gausac had the imprudence to
      return to this capital last spring, and is now shut up in the Temple,
      where he probably will be forgotten.
    </p>
    <p>
      As this loss was more ascribed to the negligence of Madame Bonoeil than to
      the mismanagement of Duroc, or his want of penetration, his reception at
      the Tuileries, though not so gracious as on his return from Berlin,
      nineteen months before, was, however, such as convinced him that if he had
      not increased, he had at the same time not lessened, the confidence of his
      master; and, indeed, shortly afterwards, Bonaparte created him first
      prefect of his palace, and procured him for a wife the only daughter of a
      rich Spanish banker. Rumour, however, says that Bonaparte was not quite
      disinterested when he commanded and concluded this match, and that the
      fortune of Madame Duroc has paid for the expensive supper of her husband
      with Count de S&mdash;&mdash;-tz at St. Petersburg.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
    </p>
    <h2>
      LETTER II.
    </h2>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      PARIS, August, 1805.
    </p>
    <p>
      MY LORD:&mdash;Though the Treaty of Luneville will probably soon be buried
      in the rubbish of the Treaty of Amiens, the influence of their parents in
      the Cabinet of St. Cloud is as great as ever: I say their parents, because
      the crafty ex-Bishop, Talleyrand, foreseeing the short existence of these
      bastard diplomatic acts, took care to compliment the innocent Joseph
      Bonaparte with a share in the parentage, although they were his own
      exclusive offspring.
    </p>
    <p>
      Joseph Bonaparte, who in 1797, from an attorney's clerk at Ajaccio, in
      Corsica, was at once transformed into an Ambassador to the Court of Rome,
      had hardly read a treaty, or seen a despatch written, before he was
      himself to conclude the one, and to dictate the other. Had he not been
      supported by able secretaries, Government would soon have been convinced
      that it is as impossible to confer talents as it is easy to give places to
      men to whom Nature has refused parts, and on whom a scanty or neglected
      education has bestowed no improvements. Deep and reserved, like a true
      Italian, but vain and ambitious, like his brothers, under the character of
      a statesman, he has only been the political puppet of Talleyrand. If he
      has sometimes been applauded upon the stages where he has been placed, he
      is also exposed to the hooting and hisses of the suffering multitude;
      while the Minister pockets undisturbed all the entrance-money, and
      conceals his wickedness and art under the cloak of Joseph; which protects
      him besides against the anger and fury of Napoleon. No negotiation of any
      consequence is undertaken, no diplomatic arrangements are under
      consideration, but Joseph is always consulted, and Napoleon informed of
      the consultation. Hence none of Bonaparte's Ministers have suffered less
      from his violence and resentment than Talleyrand, who, in the political
      department, governs him who governs France and Italy.
    </p>
    <p>
      As early as 1800, Talleyrand determined to throw the odium of his own
      outrages against the law of nations upon the brother of his master. Lucien
      Bonaparte was that year sent Ambassador to Spain, but not sharing with the
      Minister the large profits of his appointment, his diplomatic career was
      but short. Joseph is as greedy and as ravenous as Lucien, but not so frank
      or indiscreet. Whether he knew or not of Talleyrand's immense gain by the
      pacification at Luneville in February, 1801, he did not neglect his own
      individual interest. The day previous to the signature of this treaty, he
      despatched a courier to the rich army contractor, Collot, acquainting him
      in secret of the issue of the negotiation, and ordering him at the same
      time to purchase six millions of livres&mdash;L 250,000&mdash;in the
      stocks on his account. On Joseph's arrival at Paris, Collot sent him the
      State bonds for the sum ordered, together with a very polite letter; but
      though he waited on the grand pacificator several times afterwards, all
      admittance was refused, until a douceur of one million of livres&mdash;nearly
      L 42,000&mdash;of Collot's private profit opened the door. In return,
      during the discussions between France and England in the summer of 1801,
      and in the spring of 1802, Collot was continued Joseph's private agent,
      and shared with his patron, within twelve months, a clear gain of
      thirty-two millions of livres.
    </p>
    <p>
      Some of the secret articles of the Treaty of Luneville gave Austria,
      during the insurrection in Switzerland, in the autumn of 1802, an
      opportunity and a right to make representations against the interference
      of France; a circumstance which greatly displeased Bonaparte, who
      reproached Talleyrand for his want of foresight, and of having been
      outwitted by the Cabinet of Vienna. The Minister, on the very next day,
      laid before his master the correspondence that had passed between him and
      Joseph Bonaparte, during the negotiation concerning these secret articles,
      which were found to have been entirely proposed and settled by Joseph; who
      had been induced by his secretary and factotum (a creature of Talleyrand)
      to adopt sentiments for which that Minister had been paid, according to
      report, six hundred thousand livres&mdash;L25,000. Several other tricks
      have in the same manner been played upon Joseph, who, notwithstanding, has
      the modesty to consider himself (much to the advantage and satisfaction of
      Talleyrand) the first statesman in Europe, and the good fortune to be
      thought so by his brother Napoleon.
    </p>
    <p>
      When a rupture with England was apprehended, in the spring of 1803,
      Talleyrand never signed a despatch that was not previously communicated
      to, and approved by Joseph, before its contents were sanctioned by
      Napoleon. This precaution chiefly continued him in place when Lord
      Whitworth left this capital,&mdash;a departure that incensed Napoleon to
      such a degree that he entirely forgot the dignity of his rank amidst his
      generals, a becoming deportment to the members of the diplomatic corps,
      and his duty to his mother and brothers, who all more or less experienced
      the effects of his violent passions. He thus accosted Talleyrand, who
      purposely arrived late at his circle:
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well! the English Ambassador is gone; and we must again go to war. Were
      my generals as great fools as some of my Ministers, I should despair
      indeed of the issue of my contest with these insolent islanders. Many
      believe that had I been more ably supported in my Cabinet, I should not
      have been under the necessity of taking the field, as a rupture might have
      been prevented."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Such, Citizen First Consul!" answered the trembling and bowing Minister,
      "is not the opinion of the Counsellor of State, Citizen Joseph Bonaparte."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well, then," said Napoleon, as recollecting himself, "England wishes for
      war, and she shall suffer for it. This shall be a war of extermination,
      depend upon it."
    </p>
    <p>
      The name of Joseph alone moderated Napoleon's fury, and changed its
      object. It is with him what the harp of David was with Saul. Talleyrand
      knows it, and is no loser by that knowledge. I must, however, in justice,
      say that, had Bonaparte followed his Minister's advice, and suffered
      himself to be entirely guided by his counsel, all hostilities with England
      at that time might have been avoided; her Government would have been
      lulled into security by the cession of Malta, and some commercial
      regulations, and her future conquest, during a time of peace, have been
      attempted upon plans duly organized, that might have ensured success. He
      never ceased to repeat, "Citizen First Consul! some few years longer peace
      with Great Britain, and the 'Te Deums' of modern Britons for the conquest
      and possession of Malta, will be considered by their children as the
      funeral hymns of their liberty and independence."
    </p>
    <p>
      It was upon this memorable occasion of Lord Whitworth's departure, that
      Bonaparte is known to have betrayed the most outrageous acts of passion;
      he rudely forced his mother from his closet, and forbade his own sisters
      to approach his person; he confined Madame Bonaparte for several hours to
      her chamber; he dismissed favourite generals; treated with ignominy
      members of his Council of State; and towards his physician, secretaries,
      and principal attendants, he committed unbecoming and disgraceful marks of
      personal outrage. I have heard it affirmed that, though her husband, when
      shutting her up in her dressing-room, put the key in his pocket, Madame
      Napoleon found means to resent the ungallant behaviour of her spouse, with
      the assistance of Madame Remusat.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
    </p>
    <h2>
      LETTER III.
    </h2>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      PARIS, August, 1805.
    </p>
    <p>
      MY LORD:&mdash;No act of Bonaparte's government has occasioned so many, so
      opposite, and so violent debates, among the remnants of revolutionary
      factions comprising his Senate and Council of State, as the introduction
      and execution of the religious concordat signed with the Pope. Joseph was
      here again the ostensible negotiator, though he, on this as well as on
      former occasions, concluded nothing that had not been prepared and
      digested by Talleyrand.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bonaparte does not in general pay much attention to the opinions of others
      when they do not agree with his own views and interests, or coincide with
      his plans of reform or innovation; but having in his public career
      professed himself by turns an atheist and an infidel, the worshipper of
      Christ and of Mahomet, he could not decently silence those who, after
      deserting or denying the God of their forefathers and of their youth,
      continued constant and firm in their apostasy. Of those who deliberated
      concerning the restoration or exclusion of Christianity, and the
      acceptance or rejection of the concordat, Fouche, Francois de Nantz,
      Roederer, and Sieges were for the religion of Nature; Volney, Real,
      Chaptal, Bourrienne, and Lucien Bonaparte for atheism; and Portalis,
      Gregoire, Cambaceres, Lebrun, Talleyrand, Joseph and Napoleon Bonaparte
      for Christianity. Besides the sentiments of these confidential
      counsellors, upwards of two hundred memoirs, for or against the Christian
      religion, were presented to the First Consul by uninvited and volunteer
      counsellors,&mdash;all differing as much from one another as the members
      of his own Privy Council.
    </p>
    <p>
      Many persons do Madame Bonaparte, the mother, the honour of supposing that
      to her assiduous representations is principally owing the recall of the
      priests, and the restoration of the altars of Christ. She certainly is the
      most devout, or rather the most superstitious of her family, and of her
      name; but had not Talleyrand and Portalis previously convinced Napoleon of
      the policy of reestablishing a religion which, for fourteen centuries, had
      preserved the throne of the Bourbons from the machinations of republicans
      and other conspirators against monarchy, it is very probable that her
      representations would have been as ineffective as her piety or her
      prayers. So long ago as 1796 she implored the mercy of Napoleon for the
      Roman Catholics in Italy; and entreated him to spare the Pope and the
      papal territory, at the very time that his soldiers were laying waste and
      ravaging the legacy of Bologna and of Ravenna, both incorporated with his
      new-formed Cisalpine Republic; where one of his first acts of sovereignty,
      in the name of the then sovereign people, was the confiscation of Church
      lands and the sale of the estates of the clergy.
    </p>
    <p>
      Of the prelates who with Joseph Bonaparte signed the concordat, the
      Cardinal Gonsalvi and the Bishop Bernier have, by their labours and
      intrigues, not a little contributed to the present Church establishment,
      in this country; and to them Napoleon is much indebted for the intrusion
      of the Bonaparte, dynasty, among the houses of sovereign Princes. The
      former, intended from his youth for the Church, sees neither honour in
      this world, nor hopes for any blessing in the next, but exclusively from
      its bosom and its doctrine. With capacity to figure as a country curate,
      he occupies the post of the chief Secretary of State to the Pope; and
      though nearly of the same age, but of a much weaker constitution than his
      Sovereign, he was ambitious enough to demand Bonaparte's promise of
      succeeding to the Papal See, and weak and wicked enough to wish and expect
      to survive a benefactor of a calmer mind and better health than himself.
      It was he who encouraged Bonaparte to require the presence of Pius VII. in
      France, and who persuaded this weak pontiff to undertake a journey that
      has caused so much scandal among the truly faithful; and which, should
      ever Austria regain its former supremacy in Italy, will send the present
      Pope to end his days in a convent, and make the successors of St. Peter
      what this Apostle was himself, a Bishop of Rome, and nothing more.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bernier was a curate in La Vendee before the Revolution, and one of those
      priests who lighted the torch of civil war in that unfortunate country,
      under pretence of defending the throne of his King and the altars of his
      God. He not only possessed great popularity among the lower classes, but
      acquired so far the confidence of the Vendean chiefs that he was appointed
      one of the supreme and directing Council of the Royalists and Chouans.
      Even so late as the summer of 1799 he continued not only unsuspected, but
      trusted by the insurgents in the Western departments. In the winter,
      however, of the same year he had been gained over by Bonaparte's
      emissaries, and was seen at his levies in the Tuileries. It is stated that
      General Brune made him renounce his former principles, desert his former
      companions, and betray to the then First Consul of the French Republic the
      secrets of the friends of lawful monarchy, of the faithful subjects of
      Louis XVIII. His perfidy has been rewarded with one hundred and fifty
      thousand livres in ready money, with the see of Orleans, and with a
      promise of a cardinal's hat. He has also, with the Cardinals Gonsalvi,
      Caprara, Fesch, Cambaceres, and Mauri, Bonaparte's promise, and, of
      course, the expectation of the Roman tiara. He was one of the prelates who
      officiated at the late coronation, and is now confided in as a person who
      has too far committed himself with his legitimate Prince, and whose past
      treachery, therefore, answers for his future fidelity.
    </p>
    <p>
      This religious concordat of the 10th September, 1801, as well as all other
      constitutional codes emating from revolutionary authorities, proscribes
      even in protecting. The professors and protectors of the religion of
      universal peace, benevolence, and forgiveness banish in this concordat
      from France forever the Cardinals Rohan and Montmorency, and the Bishop of
      Arras, whose dutiful attachment to their unfortunate Prince would, in
      better times and in a more just and generous nation, have been recompensed
      with distinctions, and honoured even by magnanimous foes.
    </p>
    <p>
      When Madame Napoleon was informed by her husband of the necessity of
      choosing her almoner and chaplain, and of attending regularly the Mass,
      she first fell a-laughing, taking it merely for a joke; the serious and
      severe looks, and the harsh and threatening expressions of the First
      Consul soon, however, convinced her how much she was mistaken. To evince
      her repentance, she on the very next day attended her mother-in-law to
      church, who was highly edified by the sudden and religious turn of her
      daughter, and did not fail to ascribe to the efficacious interference of
      one of her favourite saints this conversion of a profane sinner. But
      Napoleon was not the dupe of this church-going mummery of his wife, whom
      he ordered his spies to watch; these were unfortunate enough to discover
      that she went to the Mass more to fill her appointments with her lovers
      than to pray to her Saviour; and that even by the side of her mother she
      read billets-doux and love-letters when that pious lady supposed that she
      read her prayers, because her eyes were fixed upon her breviary. Without
      relating to any one this discovery of his Josephine's frailties, Napoleon,
      after a violent connubial fracas and reprimand, and after a solitary
      confinement of her for six days, gave immediate orders to have the chapels
      of the Tuileries and of St. Cloud repaired; and until these were ready,
      Cardinal Cambaceres and Bernier, by turns, said the Mass, in her private
      apartments; where none but selected favourites or favoured courtiers were
      admitted. Madame Napoleon now never neglects the Mass, but if not
      accompanied by her husband is escorted by a guard of honour, among whom
      she knows that he has several agents watching her motions and her very
      looks.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the month of June, 1803; I dined with Viscomte de Segur, and Joseph and
      Lucien Bonaparte were among the guests. The latter jocosely remarked with
      what facility the French Christians had suffered themselves to be hunted
      in and out of their temples, according to the fanaticism or policy of
      their rulers; which he adduced as a proof of the great progress of
      philosophy and toleration in France. A young officer of the party,
      Jacquemont, a relation of the former husband of the present Madame Lucien,
      observed that he thought it rather an evidence of the indifference of the
      French people to all religion; the consequence of the great havoc the
      tenets of infidelity and of atheism had made among the flocks of the
      faithful. This was again denied by Bonaparte's aide-de-camp, Savary, who
      observed that, had this been the case, the First Consul (who certainly was
      as well acquainted with the religious spirit of Frenchmen as anybody else)
      would not have taken the trouble to conclude a religious concordat, nor
      have been at the expense of providing for the clergy. To this assertion
      Joseph nodded an assent.
    </p>
    <p>
      When the dinner was over, De Segur took me to a window, expressing his
      uneasiness at what he called the imprudence of Jacquemont, who, he
      apprehended, from Joseph's silence and manner, would not escape punishment
      for having indirectly blamed both the restorer of religion and his
      plenipotentiary. These apprehensions were justified. On the next day
      Jacquemont received orders to join the colonial depot at Havre; but
      refusing to obey, by giving in his resignation as a captain, he was
      arrested, shut up in the Temple, and afterwards transported to Cayenne or
      Madagascar. His relatives and friends are still ignorant whether he is
      dead or alive, and what is or has been his place of exile. To a petition
      presented by Jacquemont's sister, Madame de Veaux, Joseph answered that
      "he never interfered with the acts of the haute police of his brother
      Napoleon's Government, being well convinced both of its justice and
      moderation."
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
    </p>
    <h2>
      LETTER IV.
    </h2>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      PARIS, August, 1805.
    </p>
    <p>
      MY LORD:&mdash;That Bonaparte had, as far back as February, 1803 (when the
      King of Prussia proposed to Louis XVIII. the formal renunciation of his
      hereditary rights in favour of the First Consul), determined to assume the
      rank and title, with the power of a Sovereign, nobody can doubt. Had it
      not been for the war with England, he would, in the spring of that year,
      or twelve months earlier, have proclaimed himself Emperor of the French,
      and probably would have been acknowledged as such by all other Princes. To
      a man so vain and so impatient, so accustomed to command and to
      intimidate, this suspension of his favourite plan was a considerable
      disappointment, and not a little increased his bitter and irreconcilable
      hatred of Great Britain.
    </p>
    <p>
      Here, as well as in foreign countries, the multitude pay homage only to
      Napoleon's uninterrupted prosperity; without penetrating or considering
      whether it be the consequence of chance or of well-digested plans; whether
      he owes his successes to his own merit or to a blind fortune. He asserted
      in his speech to the constitutional authorities, immediately after
      hostilities had commenced with England, that the war would be of short
      duration, and he firmly believed what he said. Had he by his gunboats, or
      by his intrigues or threats, been enabled to extort a second edition of
      the Peace of Amiens, after a warfare of some few months, all mouths would
      have been ready to exclaim, "Oh, the illustrious warrior! Oh, the profound
      politician!" Now, after three ineffectual campaigns on the coast, when the
      extravagance and ambition of our Government have extended the contagion of
      war over the Continent; when both our direct offers of peace, and the
      negotiations and mediations of our allies, have been declined by, or
      proved unavailing with, the Cabinet of St. James, the inconsistency, the
      ignorance, and the littleness of the fortunate great man seem to be not
      more remembered than the outrages and encroachments that have provoked
      Austria and Russia to take the field. Should he continue victorious, and
      be in a position to dictate another Peace of Luneville, which probably
      would be followed by another pacific overture to or from England, mankind
      will again be ready to call out, "Oh, the illustrious warrior! Oh, the
      profound politician! He foresaw, in his wisdom, that a Continental war was
      necessary to terrify or to subdue his maritime foe; that a peace with
      England could be obtained only in Germany; and that this war must be
      excited by extending the power of France on the other side of the Alps.
      Hence his coronation as a King of Italy; hence his incorporation of Parma
      and Genoa with France; and hence his donation of Piombino and Lucca to his
      brother-in-law, Bacchiochi!" Nowhere in history have I read of men of
      sense being so easily led astray as in our times, by confounding
      fortuitous events with consequences resulting from preconcerted plans and
      well-organized designs.
    </p>
    <p>
      Only rogues can disseminate and fools believe that the disgrace of Moreau,
      and the execution of the Duc d'Enghien, of Pichegru, and Georges, were
      necessary as footsteps to Bonaparte's Imperial throne; and that without
      the treachery of Mehee de la Touche, and the conspiracy he pretended to
      have discovered, France would still have been ruled by a First Consul. It
      is indeed true, that this plot is to be counted (as the imbecility of
      Melas, which lost the battle of Marengo) among those accidents presenting
      themselves apropos to serve the favourite of fortune in his ambitious
      views; but without it, he would equally have been hailed an Emperor of the
      French in May, 1804. When he came from the coast, in the preceding winter,
      and was convinced of the impossibility of making any impression on the
      British Islands with his flotilla, he convoked his confidential Senators,
      who then, with Talleyrand, settled the Senatus Consultum which appeared
      five months afterwards. Mehee's correspondence with Mr. Drake was then
      known to him; but he and the Minister of Police were both unacquainted
      with the residence and arrival of Pichegru and Georges in France, and of
      their connection with Moreau; the particulars of which were first
      disclosed to them in the February following, when Bonaparte had been
      absent from his army of England six weeks. The assumption of the Imperial
      dignity procured him another decent opportunity of offering his
      olive-branch to those who had caused his laurels to wither, and by whom,
      notwithstanding his abuse, calumnies, and menaces, he would have been more
      proud to be saluted Emperor than by all the nations upon the Continent.
      His vanity, interest, and policy, all required this last degree of
      supremacy and elevation at that period.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bonaparte had so well penetrated the weak side of Moreau's character that,
      although he could not avoid doing justice to this general's military
      talents and exploits, he neither esteemed him as a citizen nor dreaded him
      as a rival. Moreau possessed great popularity; but so did Dumourier and
      Pichegru before him: and yet neither of them had found adherents enough to
      shake those republican governments with which they avowed themselves
      openly discontented, and against which they secretly plotted. I heard
      Talleyrand say, at Madame de Montlausier's, in the presence of fifty
      persons, "Napoleon Bonaparte had never anything to apprehend from General
      Moreau, and from his popularity, even at the head of an army. Dumourier,
      too, was at the head of an army when he revolted against the National
      Convention; but had he not saved himself by flight his own troops would
      have delivered him up to be punished as a traitor. Moreau, and his
      popularity, could only be dangerous to the Bonaparte dynasty were he to
      survive Napoleon, had not this Emperor wisely averted this danger." From
      this official declaration of Napoleon's confidential Minister, in a
      society of known anti-imperialists, I draw the conclusion that Moreau will
      never more, during the present reign, return to France. How very feeble,
      and how badly advised must this general have been, when, after his
      condemnation to two years' imprisonment, he accepted a perpetual exile,
      and renounced all hopes of ever again entering his own country. In the
      Temple, or in any other prison, if he had submitted to the sentence
      pronounced against him, he would have caused Bonaparte more uneasiness
      than when at liberty, and been more a point of rally to his adherents and
      friends than when at his palace of Grosbois, because compassion and pity
      must have invigorated and sharpened their feelings.
    </p>
    <p>
      If report be true, however, he did not voluntarily exchange imprisonment
      for exile; racks were shown him; and by the act of banishment was placed a
      poisonous draught. This report gains considerable credit when it is
      remembered that, immediately after his condemnation, Moreau furnished his
      apartments in the Temple in a handsome manner, so as to be lodged well, if
      not comfortably, with his wife and child, whom, it is said, he was not
      permitted to see before he had accepted Bonaparte's proposal of
      transportation.
    </p>
    <p>
      It may be objected to this supposition that the man in power, who did not
      care about the barefaced murder of the Duc d'Enghien, and the secret
      destruction of Pichegru, could neither much hesitate, nor be very
      conscientious about adding Moreau to the number of his victims. True, but
      the assassin in authority is also generally a politician. The untimely end
      of the Duc d'Enghien and of Pichegru was certainly lamented and deplored
      by the great majority of the French people; but though they had many who
      pitied their fate, but few had any relative interest to avenge it; whilst
      in the assassination of Moreau, every general, every officer, and every
      soldier of his former army, might have read the destiny reserved for
      himself by that chieftain, who did not conceal his preference of those who
      had fought under him in Italy and Egypt, and his mistrust and jealousy of
      those who had vanquished under Moreau in Germany; numbers of whom had
      already perished at St. Domingo, or in the other colonies, or were
      dispersed in separate and distant garrisons of the mother country. It has
      been calculated that of eighty-four generals who made, under Moreau, the
      campaign of 1800, and who survived the Peace of Lundville, sixteen had
      been killed or died at St. Domingo, four at Guadeloupe, ten in Cayenne,
      nine at Ile de France, and eleven at l'Ile Reunion and in Madagascar. The
      mortality among the officers and men has been in proportion.
    </p>
    <p>
      An anecdote is related of Pichegru, which does honour to the memory of
      that unfortunate general. Fouche paid him a visit in prison the day before
      his death, and offered him "Bonaparte's commission as a Field-marshal, and
      a diploma as a grand officer of the Legion of Honour, provided he would
      turn informer against Moreau, of whose treachery against himself in 1797
      he was reminded. On the other hand, he was informed that, in consequence
      of his former denials, if he persisted in his refractory conduct, he
      should never more appear before any judge, but that the affairs of State
      and the safety of the country required that he should be privately
      despatched in his gaol."
    </p>
    <p>
      "So," answered this virtuous and indignant warrior, "you will spare my
      life only upon condition that I prove myself unworthy to live. As this is
      the case, my choice is made without hesitation; I am prepared to become
      your victim, but I will never be numbered among your accomplices. Call in
      your executioners; I am ready to die as I have lived, a man of honour, and
      an irreproachable citizen."
    </p>
    <p>
      Within twenty-four hours after this answer, Pichegru was no more.
    </p>
    <p>
      That the Duc d'Enghien was shot on the night of the 21st of March, 1804,
      in the wood or in the ditch of the castle at Vincennes, is admitted even
      by Government; but who really were his assassins is still unknown. Some
      assert that he was shot by the grenadiers of Bonaparte's Italian guard;
      others say, by a detachment of the Gendarmes d'Elite; and others again,
      that the men of both these corps refused to fire, and that General Murat,
      hearing the troops murmur, and fearing their mutiny, was himself the
      executioner of this young and innocent Prince of the House of Bourbon, by
      riding up to him and blowing out his brains with a pistol. Certain it is
      that Murat was the first, and Louis Bonaparte the second in command, on
      this dreadful occasion.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
    </p>
    <h2>
      LETTER V.
    </h2>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      PARIS, August, 1805.
    </p>
    <p>
      MY LORD:&mdash;Thanks to Talleyrand's political emigration, our Government
      has never been in ignorance of the characters and foibles of the leading
      members among the emigrants in England. Otto, however, finished their
      picture, but added, some new groups to those delineated by his
      predecessor. It was according to his plan that the expedition of Mehee de
      la Touche was undertaken, and it was in following his instructions that
      the campaign of this traitor succeeded so well in Great Britain.
    </p>
    <p>
      Under the Ministry of Vergennes, of Montmorin, and of Delessart, Mehee had
      been employed as a spy in Russia, Sweden, and Poland, and acquitted
      himself perfectly to the satisfaction of his masters. By some accident or
      other, Delessart discovered, however, in December, 1791, that he had,
      while pocketing the money of the Cabinet of Versailles, sold its secrets
      to the Cabinet of St. Petersburg. He, of course, was no longer trusted as
      a spy, and therefore turned a Jacobin, and announced himself to Brissot as
      a persecuted patriot. All the calumnies against this Minister in Brissot's
      daily paper, Le Patriote Francois, during January, February, and March,
      1792, were the productions of Mehee's malicious heart and able pen. Even
      after they had sent Delessart a State prisoner to Orleans, his inveteracy
      continued, and in September the same year he went to Versailles to enjoy
      the sight of the murder of his former master. Some go so far as to say
      that the assassins were headed by this monster, who aggravated cruelty by
      insult, and informed the dying Minister of the hands that stabbed him, and
      to whom he was indebted for a premature death.
    </p>
    <p>
      To these and other infamous and barbarous deeds, Talleyrand was not a
      stranger when he made Mehee his secret agent, and entrusted him with the
      mission to England. He took, therefore, such steps that neither his
      confidence could be betrayed, nor his money squandered. Mehee had
      instructions how to proceed in Great Britain, but he was ignorant of the
      object Government had in view by his mission; and though large sums were
      promised if successful, and if he gave satisfaction by his zeal and
      discretion, the money advanced him was a mere trifle, and barely
      sufficient to keep him from want. He was, therefore, really distressed,
      when he fixed upon some necessitous and greedy emigrants for his
      instruments to play on the credulity of the English Ministers in some of
      their unguarded moments. Their generosity in forbearing to avenge upon the
      deluded French exiles the slur attempted to be thrown upon their official
      capacity, and the ridicule intended to be cast on their private
      characters, has been much approved and admired here by all liberal-minded
      persons; but it has also much disappointed Bonaparte and Talleyrand, who
      expected to see these emigrants driven from the only asylum which
      hospitality has not refused to their misfortunes and misery.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mehee had been promised by Talleyrand double the amount of the sums which
      he could swindle from your Government; but though he did more mischief to
      your country than was expected in this, and though he proved that he had
      pocketed upwards of ten thousand English guineas, the wages of his infamy,
      when he hinted about the recompense he expected here, Durant, Talleyrand's
      chef du bureau, advised him, as a friend, not to remind the Minister of
      his presence in France, as Bonaparte never pardoned a Septembrizer, and
      the English guineas he possessed might be claimed and seized as national
      property, to compensate some of the sufferers by the unprovoked war with
      England. In vain did he address himself to his fellow labourer in
      revolutionary plots, the Counsellor of State, Real, who had been the
      intermedium between him and Talleyrand, when he was first enlisted among
      the secret agents; instead of receiving money he heard threats; and,
      therefore, with as good grace as he could, he made the best of his
      disappointment; he sported a carriage, kept a mistress, went to
      gambling-houses, and is now in a fair way to be reduced to the status quo
      before his brilliant exploits in Great Britain.
    </p>
    <p>
      Real, besides the place of a Counsellor of State, occupies also the office
      of a director of the internal police. Having some difference with my
      landlord, I was summoned to appear before him at the prefecture of the
      police. My friend, M. de Sab&mdash;&mdash;-r, formerly a counsellor of the
      Parliament at Rouen, happened to be with me when the summons was
      delivered, and offered to accompany me, being acquainted with Real. Though
      thirty persons were waiting in the antechamber at our arrival, no sooner
      was my friend's name announced than we were admitted, and I obtained not
      only more justice than I expected, or dared to claim, but an invitation to
      Madame Real's tea-party the same evening. This justice and this politeness
      surprised me, until my friend showed me an act of forgery in his
      possession, committed by Real in 1788, when an advocate of the Parliament,
      and for which the humanity of my friend alone prevented him from being
      struck off the rolls, and otherwise punished.
    </p>
    <p>
      As I conceived my usual societies and coteries could not approve my
      attendance at the house of such a personage, I was intent upon sending an
      apology to Madame Real. My friend, however, assured me that I should meet
      in her salon persons of all classes and of all ranks, and many I little
      expected to see associating together. I went late, and found the assembly
      very numerous; at the upper part of the hall were seated Princesses Joseph
      and Louis Bonaparte, with Madame Fouche, Madame Roederer, the cidevant
      Duchesse de Fleury, and Marquise de Clermont. They were conversing with M.
      Mathew de Montmorency, the contractor (a ci-devant lackey) Collot, the
      ci-devant Duc de Fitz-James, and the legislator Martin, a ci-devant
      porter: several groups in the several apartments were composed of a
      similar heterogeneous mixture of ci-devant nobles and ci-devant valets, of
      ci-devant Princesses, Marchionesses, Countesses and Baronesses, and of
      ci-devant chambermaids, mistresses and poissardes. Round a gambling-table,
      by the side of the ci-devant Bishop of Autun, Talleyrand, sat Madame
      Hounguenin, whose husband, a ci-devant shoeblack, has, by the purchase of
      national property, made a fortune of nine millions of livres&mdash;L375,000.
      Opposite them were seated the ci-devant Prince de Chalais, and the present
      Prince Cambaceres with the ci-devant Comtesse de Beauvais, and Madame
      Fauve, the daughter of a fishwoman, and the wife of a tribune, a ci-devant
      barber. In another room, the Bavarian Minister Cetto was conferring with
      the spy Mehee de la Touche; but observed at a distance by Fouche's
      secretary, Desmarets, the son of a tailor at Fontainebleau, and for years
      a known spy. When I was just going to retire, the handsome Madame Gillot,
      and her sister, Madame de Soubray, joined me. You have perhaps known them
      in England, where, before their marriage, they resided for five years with
      their parents, the Marquis and Marquise de Courtin; and were often admired
      by the loungers in Bond Street. The one married for money, Gillot, a
      ci-devant drummer in the French Guard, but who, since the Revolution, has,
      as a general; made a large fortune; and the other united herself to a
      ci-devant Abbe, from love; but both are now divorced from their husbands,
      who passed them without any notice while they were chatting with me. I was
      handing Madame Gillot to her carriage, when, from the staircase, Madame de
      Soubray called to us not to quit her, as she was pursued by a man whom she
      detested, and wished to avoid. We had hardly turned round, when Mehee
      offered her his arm, and she exclaimed with indignation, "How dare you,
      infamous wretch, approach me, when I have forbidden you ever to speak to
      me? Had you been reduced to become a highwayman, or a housebreaker, I
      might have pitied your infamy; but a spy is a villain who aggravates guilt
      by cowardice and baseness, and can inspire no noble soul with any other
      sentiment but abhorrence, and the most sovereign contempt." Without being
      disconcerted, Mehee silently returned to the company, amidst bursts of
      laughter from fifty servants, and as many masters, waiting for their
      carriages. M. de Cetto was among the latter, but, though we all fixed our
      eyes steadfastly upon him, no alteration could be seen on his diplomatic
      countenance: his face must surely be made of brass or his heart of marble.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
    </p>
    <h2>
      LETTER VI.
    </h2>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      PARIS, August, 1805.
    </p>
    <p>
      MY LORD:&mdash;The day on which Madame Napoleon Bonaparte was elected an
      Empress of the French, by the constitutional authorities of her husband's
      Empire, was, contradictory as it may seem, one of the most uncomfortable
      in her life. After the show and ceremony of the audience and of the
      drawing-room were over, she passed it entirely in tears, in her library,
      where her husband shut her up and confined her.
    </p>
    <p>
      The discipline of the Court of St. Cloud is as singular as its composition
      is unique. It is, by the regulation of Napoleon, entirely military. From
      the Empress to her lowest chambermaid, from the Emperor's first
      aide-de-camp down to his youngest page, any slight offence or negligence
      is punished with confinement, either public or private. In the former case
      the culprits are shut up in their own apartments, but in the latter they
      are ordered into one of the small rooms, constructed in the dark galleries
      at the Tuileries and St. Cloud, near the kitchens, where they are guarded
      day and night by sentries, who answer for their persons, and that nobody
      visits them.
    </p>
    <p>
      When, on the 28th of March, 1804, the Senate had determined on offering
      Bonaparte the Imperial dignity, he immediately gave his wife full powers,
      with order to form her household of persons who, from birth and from their
      principles, might be worthy, and could be trusted to encompass the
      Imperial couple. She consulted Madame Remusat, who, in her turn, consulted
      her friend De Segur, who also consulted his bonne amie, Madame de
      Montbrune. This lady determined that if Bonaparte and his wife were
      desirous to be served, or waited on, by persons above them by ancestry and
      honour, they should pay liberally for such sacrifices. She was not
      therefore idle, but wishing to profit herself by the pride of upstart
      vanity, she had at first merely reconnoitred the ground, or made distant
      overtures to those families of the ancient French nobility who had been
      ruined by the Revolution, and whose minds she expected to have found on a
      level with their circumstances. These, however, either suspecting her
      intent and her views, or preferring honest poverty to degrading and
      disgraceful splendour, had started objections which she was not prepared
      to encounter. Thus the time passed away; and when, on the 18th of the
      following May, the Senate proclaimed Napoleon Bonaparte Emperor of the
      French, not a Chamberlain was ready to attend him, nor a Maid of Honour to
      wait on his wife.
    </p>
    <p>
      On the morning of the 20th May, the day fixed for the constitutional
      republican authorities to present their homage as subjects, Napoleon asked
      his Josephine who were the persons, of both sexes, she had engaged,
      according to his carte blanche given her, as necessary and as unavoidable
      decorations of the drawing-room of an Emperor and Empress, as thrones and
      as canopies of State. She referred him to Madame Remusat, who, though but
      half-dressed, was instantly ordered to appear before him. This lady avowed
      that his grand master of the ceremonies, De Segur, had been entrusted by
      her with the whole arrangement, but that she feared that he had not yet
      been able to complete the full establishment of the Imperial Court. The
      aide-de-camp Rapp was then despatched after De Segur, who, as usual,
      presented himself smiling and cringing.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Give me the list," said Napoleon, "of the ladies and gentlemen you have
      no doubt engaged for our household."
    </p>
    <p>
      "May it please Your Majesty," answered De Segur, trembling with fear, "I
      humbly supposed that they were not requisite before the day of Your
      Majesty's coronation."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You supposed!" retorted Napoleon. "How dare you suppose differently from
      our commands? Is the Emperor of the Great Nation not to be encompassed
      with a more numerous retinue, or with more lustre, than a First Consul? Do
      you not see the immense difference between the Sovereign Monarch of an
      Empire, and the citizen chief magistrate of a commonwealth? Are there not
      starving nobles in my empire enough to furnish all the Courts in Europe
      with attendants, courtiers, and valets? Do you not believe that with a
      nod, with a single nod, I might have them all prostrated before my throne?
      What can, then, have occasioned this impertinent delay?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Sire!" answered De Segur, "it is not the want of numbers, but the
      difficulty of the choice among them. I will never recommend a single
      individual upon whom I cannot depend; or who, on some future day, may
      expose me to the greatest of all evils, the displeasure of my Prince."
    </p>
    <p>
      "But," continued Napoleon, "what is to be done to-day that I may augment
      the number of my suite, and by it impose upon the gaping multitude and the
      attending deputations?"&mdash;"Command," said De Segur, "all the officers
      of Your Majesty's staff, and of the staff of the Governor of Paris,
      General Murat, to surround Your Majesty's sacred person, and order them to
      accoutre themselves in the most shining and splendid manner possible. The
      presence of so many military men will also, in a political point of view,
      be useful. It will lessen the pretensions of the constituted authorities,
      by telling them indirectly, 'It is not to your Senatus Consultum, to your
      decrees, or to your votes, that I am indebted for my present Sovereignty;
      I owe it exclusively to my own merit and valour, and to the valour of my
      brave officers and men, to whose arms I trust more than to your
      counsels.'"
    </p>
    <p>
      This advice obtained Napoleon's entire approbation, and was followed. De
      Segur was permitted to retire, but when Madame Remusat made a curtsey also
      to leave the room, she was stopped with his terrible 'aux arrets' and left
      under the care and responsibility of his aide-de-camp, Lebrun, who saw her
      safe into her room, at the door of which he placed two grenadiers.
      Napoleon then went out, ordering his wife, at her peril, to be in time,
      ready and brilliantly dressed, for the drawing-room.
    </p>
    <p>
      Dreading the consequences of her husband's wrath, Madame Napoleon was not
      only punctual, but so elegantly and tastefully decorated with jewels and
      ornaments that even those of her enemies or rivals who refused her beauty,
      honour, and virtue, allowed her taste and dignity. She thought that even
      in the regards of Napoleon she read a tacit approbation. When all the
      troublesome bustle of the morning was gone through, and when Senators,
      legislators, tribunes, and prefects had complimented her as a model of
      female perfection, on a signal from her husband she accompanied him in
      silence through six different apartments before he came to her library,
      where he surlily ordered her to enter and to remain until further orders.
    </p>
    <p>
      "What have I done, Sire! to deserve such treatment?" exclaimed Josephine,
      trembling.
    </p>
    <p>
      "If," answered Napoleon, "Madame Remusat, your favourite, has made a fool
      of you, this is only to teach you that you shall not make a fool of me:
      Had not De Segur fortunately for him&mdash;had the ingenuity to extricate
      us from the dilemma into which my confidence and dependence on you had
      brought me, I should have made a fine figure indeed on the first day of my
      emperorship. Have patience, Madame; you have plenty of books to divert
      you, but you must remain where you are until I am inclined to release
      you." So saying, Napoleon locked the door and put the key in his pocket.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was near two o'clock in the afternoon when she was thus shut up.
      Remembering the recent flattery of her courtiers, and comparing it with
      the unfeeling treatment of her husband, she found herself so much the more
      unfortunate, as the expressions of the former were regarded by her as
      praise due to her merit, while the unkindness of the latter was
      unavailingly resented as the undeserved oppression of a capricious despot.
    </p>
    <p>
      Business, or perhaps malice, made Napoleon forget to send her any dinner;
      and when, at eight o'clock, his brothers and sisters came, according to
      invitation, to take tea, he said coldly:
    </p>
    <p>
      "Apropos, I forgot it. My wife has not dined yet; she is busy, I suppose,
      in her philosophical meditations in her study."
    </p>
    <p>
      Madame Louis Bonaparte, her daughter, flew directly towards the study, and
      her mother could scarcely, for her tears, inform her that&mdash;she was a
      prisoner, and that her husband was her gaoler.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, Sire!" said Madame Louis, returning, "even this remarkable day is a
      day of mourning for my poor mother!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "She deserves worse," answered Napoleon, "but, for your sake, she shall be
      released; here is the key, let her out."
    </p>
    <p>
      Madame Napoleon was, however, not in a situation to wish to appear before
      her envious brothers and sisters-in-law. Her eyes were so swollen with
      crying that she could hardly see; and her tears had stained those Imperial
      robes which the unthinking and inconsiderate no doubt believed a certain
      preservative against sorrow and affliction. At nine o'clock, however,
      another aide-de-camp of her husband presented himself, and gave her the
      choice either to accompany him back to the study or to join the family
      party of the Bonapartes.
    </p>
    <p>
      In deploring her mother's situation, Madame Louis Bonaparte informed her
      former governess, Madame Cam&mdash;-n, of these particulars, which I heard
      her relate at Madame de M&mdash;&mdash;r's, almost verbatim as I report
      them to you. Such, and other scenes, nearly of the same description, are
      neither rare nor singular, in the most singular Court that ever existed in
      civilized Europe.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
    </p>
    <h2>
      LETTER VII.
    </h2>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      PARIS, August, 1805.
    </p>
    <p>
      MY LORD:&mdash;Though Government suffer a religious, or, rather,
      anti-religious liberty of the Press, the authors who libel or ridicule the
      Christian, particularly the Roman Catholic, religion, are excluded from
      all prospect of advancement, or if in place, are not trusted or liked.
      Cardinal Caprara, the nuncio of the Pope, proposed last year, in a long
      memorial, the same severe restrictions on the discussions or publications
      in religious matters as were already ordered in those concerning politics.
      But both Bonaparte and his Minister in the affairs of the Church,
      Portalis, refused the introduction of what they called a tyranny on the
      conscience. Caprara then addressed himself to the ex-Bishop Talleyrand,
      who, on this occasion, was more explicit than he generally is.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Bonaparte," said he, "rules not only over a fickle, but a gossiping
      (bavard) people, whom he has prudently forbidden all conversation and
      writing concerning government of the State. They would soon (accustomed as
      they are, since the Revolution, to verbal and written debates) be tired of
      talking about fine weather or about the opera. To occupy them and their
      attention, some ample subject of diversion was necessary, and religion was
      surrendered to them at discretion; because, enlightened as the world now
      is, even athiests or Christian fanatics can do but little harm to society.
      They may spend rivers of ink, but they will be unable to shed a drop of
      blood."
    </p>
    <p>
      "True," answered the Cardinal, "but only to a certain degree. The
      licentiousness of the Press, with regard to religious matters, does it not
      also furnish infidelity with new arms to injure the faith? And have not
      the horrors from which France has just escaped proved the danger and evil
      consequences of irreligion, and the necessity of encouraging and
      protecting Christianity? By the recall of the clergy, and by the religious
      concordat, Bonaparte has shown himself convinced of this truth."
    </p>
    <p>
      "So he is," interrupted Talleyrand; "but he abhors intoleration and
      persecution" (not in politics). "I shall, however, to please Your
      Eminence, lay the particulars of your conversation before him."
    </p>
    <p>
      Some time afterwards, when Talleyrand and Bonaparte must have agreed about
      some new measure to indirectly chastise impious writers, the Senators
      Garat, Jaucourt, Roederer, and Demeunier, four of the members of the
      senatorial commission of the liberty of the Press, were sent for, and
      remained closeted with Napoleon, his Minister Portalis, and Cardinal
      Caprara for two hours. What was determined on this occasion has not
      transpired, as even the Cardinal, who is not the most discreet person when
      provoked, and his religious zeal gets the better of his political
      prudence, has remained silent, though seemingly contented.
    </p>
    <p>
      Two rather insignificant authors, of the name of Varennes and Beaujou, who
      published some scandalous libels on Christianity, have since been taken
      up, and after some months' imprisonment in the Temple been condemned to
      transportation to Cayenne for life,&mdash;not as infidels or atheists, but
      as conspirators against the State, in consequence of some unguarded
      expressions which prejudice or ill-will alone would judge connected with
      politics. Nothing is now permitted to be printed against religion but with
      the author's name; but on affixing his name, he may abuse the worship and
      Gospel as much as he pleases. Since the example of severity alluded to
      above, however, this practice is on the decline. Even Pigault-Lebrun, a
      popular but immoral novel writer, narrowly escaped lately a trip to
      Cayenne for one of his blasphemous publications, and owes to the
      protection of Madame Murat exclusively that he was not sent to keep
      Varennes and Beaujou company. Some years ago, when Madame Murat was
      neither so great nor so rich as at present, he presented her with a copy
      of his works, and she had been unfashionable enough not only to remember
      the compliment, but wished to return it by nominating him her private
      secretary; which, however, the veto of Napoleon prevented.
    </p>
    <p>
      Of Napoleon Bonaparte's religious sentiments, opinions are not divided in
      France. The influence over him of the petty, superstitious Cardinal
      Caprara is, therefore, inexplicable. This prelate has forced from him
      assent to transactions which had been refused both to his mother and his
      brother Joseph, who now often employ the Cardinal with success, where they
      either dare not or will not show themselves. It is true His Eminence is
      not easily rebuked, but returns to the charge unabashed by new repulses;
      and be obtains by teasing more than by persuasion; but a man by whom
      Bonaparte suffers, himself to be teased with impunity is no insignificant
      favourite, particularly when, like this Cardinal, he unites cunning with
      devotion, craft with superstition; and is as accessible to corruption as
      tormented by ambition.
    </p>
    <p>
      As most ecclesiastical promotions passed through his pure and
      disinterested hands, Madame Napoleon, Talleyrand, and Portalis, who also
      wanted some douceurs for their extraordinary expenses, united together
      last spring to remove him from France. Napoleon was cajoled to nominate
      him a grand almoner of the Kingdom of Italy, and the Cardinal set out for
      Milan. He was, however, artful enough to convince his Sovereign of the
      propriety of having his grand almoner by his side; and he is, therefore,
      obliged to this intrigue of his enemies that he now disposes of the
      benefices in the Kingdom of Italy, as well as those of the French Empire.
    </p>
    <p>
      During the Pope's residence in this capital, His Holiness often made use
      of Cardinal Caprara in his secret negotiations with Bonaparte; and
      whatever advantages were obtained by the Roman Pontiff for the Gallican
      Church His Eminence almost extorted; for he never desisted, where his
      interest or pride were concerned, till he had succeeded. It is said that
      one day last January, after having been for hours exceedingly teasing and
      troublesome, Bonaparte lost his patience, and was going to treat His
      Eminence as he frequently does his relatives, his Ministers, and
      counsellors,&mdash;that is to say, to kick him from his presence; but
      suddenly recollecting himself, he said: "Cardinal, remain here in my
      closet until my return, when I shall have more time to listen to what you
      have to relate." It was at ten o'clock in the morning, and a day of great
      military audience and grand review. In going out he put the key in his
      pocket, and told the guards in his antechamber to pay no attention if they
      should hear any noise in his closet.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was dark before the review was over, and Bonaparte had a large party to
      dinner. When his guests retired, he went into his wife's drawing-room,
      where one of the Pope's chamberlains waited on him with the information
      that His Holiness was much alarmed about the safety of Cardinal Caprara,
      of whom no account could be obtained, even with the assistance of the
      police, to whom application had been made, since His Eminence had so
      suddenly disappeared.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh! how absent I am," answered Napoleon, as with surprise; "I entirely
      forgot that I left the Cardinal in my closet this morning. I will go
      myself and make an apology for my blunder."
    </p>
    <p>
      His Eminence, quite exhausted, was found fast asleep; but no sooner was he
      a little recovered than he interrupted Bonaparte's affected apology with
      the repetition of the demand he had made in the morning; and so well was
      Napoleon pleased with him, for neglecting his personal inconvenience only
      to occupy himself with the affairs of his Sovereign, that he consented to
      what was asked, and in laying his hand upon the shoulders of the prelate,
      said:
    </p>
    <p>
      "Faithful Minister! were every Prince as well served as your Sovereign is
      by you, many evils might be prevented, and much good effected."
    </p>
    <p>
      The same evening Duroc brought him, as a present, a snuffbox with
      Bonaparte's portrait, set round with diamonds, worth one thousand louis
      d'or. The adventures of this day certainly did not lessen His Eminence in
      the favour of Napoleon or of Pius VII.
    </p>
    <p>
      Last November, some not entirely unknown persons intended to amuse
      themselves at the Cardinal's expense. At seven o'clock one evening, a
      young Abbe presented himself at the Cardinal's house, Hotel de Montmorin,
      Rue Plumet, as by appointment of His Eminence, and was, by his secretary,
      ushered into the study and asked to wait there. Hardly half an hour
      afterwards, two persons, pretending to be agents of the police, arrived
      just as the Cardinal's carriage had stopped. They informed him that the
      woman introduced into his house in the dress of an Abby was connected with
      a gang of thieves and housebreakers, and demanded his permission to arrest
      her. He protested that, except the wife of his porter, no woman in any
      dress whatever could be in his house, and that, to convince themselves,
      they were very welcome to accompany his valet-de-chambre into every room
      they wished to see. To the great surprise of his servant, a very pretty
      girl was found in the bed of His Eminence's bed-chamber, which joined his
      study, who, though the pretended police agents insisted on her getting up,
      refused, under pretence that she was there waiting for her 'bon ami', the
      Cardinal.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="p078" id="p078"></a>
    </p>
    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
      <img alt="p078.jpg (84K)" src="images/p078.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
      <p>
        His Eminence was no sooner told of this than he shut the gate of his
        house, after sending his secretary to the commissary of police of the
        section. In the meantime, both the police agents and the girl entreated
        him to let them out, as the whole was merely a badinage; but he remained
        inflexible, and they were all three carried by the real police
        commissary to prison.
      </p>
      <p>
        Upon a complaint made by His Eminence to Bonaparte, the Police Minister,
        Fouche, received orders to have those who had dared thus to violate the
        sacred character of the representative of the Holy Pontiff immediately,
        and without further ceremony, transported to Cayenne. The Cardinal
        demanded, and obtained, a process verbal of what had occurred, and of
        the sentence on the culprits, to be laid before his Sovereign. As Eugene
        de Beauharnais interested himself so much for the individuals involved
        in this affair as both to implore Bonaparte's pardon and the Cardinal's
        interference for them, many were inclined to believe that he was in the
        secret, if not the contriver of this unfortunate joke. This supposition
        gained credit when, after all his endeavours to save them proved vain,
        he sent them seventy-two livres L 3,000&mdash;to Rochefort, that they
        might, on their arrival at Cayenne, be able to buy a plantation. He
        procured them also letters to the Governor, Victor Hughes, recommending
        that they should be treated differently from other transported persons.
      </p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
      <h2>
        LETTER VIII.
      </h2>
      <br />
      <p>
        PARIS, August, 1805.
      </p>
      <p>
        MY LORD:&mdash;I was particularly attentive in observing the
        countenances and demeanour of the company at the last levee which Madame
        Napoleon Bonaparte held, previous to her departure with her husband to
        meet the Pope at Fontainebleau. I had heard from good authority that "to
        those whose propensities were known, Duroc's information that the
        Empress was visible was accompanied with a kind of admonitory or courtly
        hint, that the strictest decency in dress and manners, and a
        conversation chaste, and rather of an unusually modest turn, would be
        highly agreeable to their Sovereigns, in consideration of the solemn
        occasion of a Sovereign Pontiff's arrival in France,&mdash;an occurrence
        that had not happened for centuries, and probably would not happen for
        centuries to come." I went early, and was well rewarded for my
        punctuality.
      </p>
      <p>
        There came the Senator Fouche, handing his amiable and chaste spouse,
        walking with as much gravity as formerly, when a friar, he marched in a
        procession. Then presented themselves the Senators Sieyes and Roederer,
        with an air as composed as if the former had still been an Abbe and the
        confessor of the latter. Next came Madame Murat, whom three hours before
        I had seen in the Bois de Boulogne in all the disgusting display of
        fashionable nakedness, now clothed and covered to her chin. She was
        followed by the pious Madame Le Clerc, now Princesse Borghese, who was
        sighing deeply and loudly. After her came limping the godly Talleyrand,
        dragging his pure moiety by his side, both with downcast and edifying
        looks. The Christian patriots, Gravina and Lima, Dreyer and Beust,
        Dalberg and Cetto, Malsburgh and Pappenheim, with the Catholic
        Schimmelpenninck and Mohammed Said Halel Effendi,&mdash;all presented
        themselves as penitent sinners imploring absolutions, after undergoing
        mortifications.
      </p>
      <p>
        But it would become tedious and merely a repetition, were I to depict
        separately the figures and characters of all the personages at this
        politico-comical masquerade. Their conversation was, however, more
        uniform, more contemptible, and more laughable, than their accoutrements
        and grimaces were ridiculous. To judge from what they said, they
        belonged no longer to this world; all their thoughts were in heaven, and
        they considered themselves either on the borders of eternity or on the
        eve of the day of the Last Judgment. The truly devout Madame Napoleon
        spoke with rapture of martyrs and miracles, of the Mass and of the
        vespers, of Agnuses and relics of Christ her Saviour, and of Pius VII.,
        His vicar. Had not her enthusiasm been interrupted by the enthusiastic
        commentaries of her mother-in-law, I saw every mouth open ready to cry
        out, as soon as she had finished, "Amen! Amen! Amen!"
      </p>
      <p>
        Napoleon had placed himself between the old Cardinal de Bellois and the
        not young Cardinal Bernier, so as to prevent the approach of any profane
        sinner or unrepentant infidel. Round him and their clerical chiefs, all
        the curates and grand vicars, almoners and chaplains of the Court, and
        the capitals of the Princess, Princesses, and grand officers of State,
        had formed a kind of cordon. "Had," said the young General Kellerman to
        me, "Bonaparte always been encompassed by troops of this description, he
        might now have sung hymns as a saint in heaven, but he would never have
        reigned as an Emperor upon earth." This indiscreet remark was heard by
        Louis Bonaparte, and on the next morning Kellerman received orders to
        join the army in Hanover, where he was put under the command of a
        general younger than himself. He would have been still more severely
        punished, had not his father, the Senator (General Kellerman), been in
        so great favour at the Court of St. Cloud, and so much protected by
        Duroc, who had made, in 1792, his first campaign under this officer,
        then commander-in-chief of the army of the Ardennes.
      </p>
      <p>
        When this devout assembly separated, which was by courtesy an hour
        earlier than usual, I expected every moment to hear a chorus of
        horse-laughs, because I clearly perceived that all of them were tired of
        their assumed parts, and, with me, inclined to be gay at the expense of
        their neighbours. But they all remembered also that they were watched by
        spies, and that an imprudent look or an indiscreet word, gaiety instead
        of gravity, noise when silence was commanded, might be followed by an
        airing in the wilderness of Cayenne. They, therefore, all called out,
        "Coachman, to our hotel!" as if to say, "We will to-day, in compliment
        to the new-born Christian zeal of our Sovereigns, finish our evening as
        piously as we have begun it." But no sooner were they out of sight of
        the palace than they hurried to the scenes of dissipation, all
        endeavouring, in the debauchery and excesses so natural to them, to
        forget their unnatural affectation and hypocrisy.
      </p>
      <p>
        Well you know the standard of the faith even of the members of the
        Bonaparte family. Two days before this Christian circle at Madame
        Napoleon's, Madame de Chateaureine, with three other ladies, visited the
        Princesse Borghese. Not seeing a favourite parrot they had often
        previously admired, they inquired what was become of it.
      </p>
      <p>
        "Oh, the poor creature!" answered the Princess; "I have disposed of it,
        as well as of two of my monkeys. The Emperor has obliged me to engage an
        almoner and two chaplains, and it would be too extravagant in me to keep
        six useless animals in my hotel. I must now submit to hearing the
        disgusting howlings of my almoner instead of the entertaining chat of my
        parrot, and to see the awkward bows and kneelings of my chaplains
        instead of the amusing capering of my monkeys. Add to this, that I am
        forced to transform into a chapel my elegant and tasty boudoir, on the
        ground-floor, where I have passed so many delicious tete-a-tetes. Alas!
        what a change! what a shocking fashion, that we are now all again to be
        Christians!"
      </p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
      <h2>
        LETTER IX.
      </h2>
      <br />
      <p>
        PARIS, August, 1805.
      </p>
      <p>
        MY LORD:&mdash;Notwithstanding what was inserted in our public prints to
        the contrary, the reception Bonaparte experienced from his army of
        England in June last year, the first time he presented himself to them
        as an Emperor, was far from such as flattered either his vanity or
        views. For the first days, some few solitary voices alone accompanied
        the "Vive l'Empereur!" of his generals, and of his aides-de-camp. This
        indifference, or, as he called it, mutinous spirit, was so much the more
        provoking as it was unexpected. He did not, as usual, ascribe it to the
        emissaries or gold of England, but to the secret adherents of Pichegru
        and Moreau amongst the brigades or divisions that had served under these
        unfortunate generals. He ordered, in consequence, his Minister Berthier
        to make out a list of all these corps. Having obtained this, he
        separated them by ordering some to Italy, others to Holland, and the
        rest to the frontiers of Spain and Germany. This act of revenge or
        jealousy was regarded, both by the officers and men, as a disgrace and
        as a doubt thrown out against their fidelity, and the murmur was loud
        and general. In consequence of this, some men were shot, and many more
        arrested.
      </p>
      <p>
        Observing, however, that severity had not the desired effect, Bonaparte
        suddenly changed his conduct, released the imprisoned, and rewarded with
        the crosses of his Legion of Honour every member of the so lately
        suspected troops who had ever performed any brilliant or valorous
        exploits under the proscribed generals. He even incorporated among his
        own bodyguards and guides men who had served in the same capacity under
        these rival commanders, and numbers of their children were received in
        the Prytanees and military free schools. The enthusiastic exclamation
        that soon greeted his ears convinced him that he had struck upon the
        right string of his soldiers' hearts. Men who, some few days before,
        wanted only the signal of a leader to cut an Emperor they hated to
        pieces, would now have contended who should be foremost to shed their
        last drop of blood for a chief they adored.
      </p>
      <p>
        This affected liberality towards the troops who had served under his
        rivals roused some slight discontent among those to whom he was chiefly
        indebted for his own laurels. But if he knew the danger of reducing to
        despair slighted men with arms in their hands, he also was well aware of
        the equal danger of enduring licentiousness or audacity among troops who
        had, on all occasions, experienced his preference and partiality; and he
        gave a sanguinary proof of his opinion on this subject at the grand
        parade of the 12th of July, 1804, preparatory to the grand fete of the
        14th.
      </p>
      <p>
        A grenadier of the 21st Regiment (which was known in Italy under the
        name of the Terrible), in presetting arms to him, said: "Sire! I have
        served under you four campaigns, fought under you in ten battles or
        engagements; have received in your service seven wounds, and am not a
        member of your Legion of Honour; whilst many who served under Moreau,
        and are not able to show a scratch from an enemy, have that
        distinction."
      </p>
      <p>
        Bonaparte instantly ordered this man to be shot by his own comrades in
        the front of the regiment. The six grenadiers selected to fire, seeming
        to hesitate, he commanded the whole corps to lay down their arms, and
        after being disbanded, to be sent to the different colonial depots. To
        humiliate them still more, the mutinous grenadier was shot by the
        gendarmes. When the review was over, "Vive l'Empereur!" resounded from
        all parts, and his popularity among the troops has since rather
        increased than diminished. Nobody can deny that Bonaparte possesses a
        great presence of mind, an undaunted firmness, and a perfect knowledge
        of the character of the people over whom he reigns. Could but justice
        and humanity be added to his other qualities, but, unfortunately for my
        nation, I fear that the answer of General Mortier to a remark of a
        friend of mine on this subject is not problematical: "Had," said this
        Imperial favourite, "Napoleon Bonaparte been just and humane, he would
        neither have vanquished nor reigned."
      </p>
      <p>
        All these scenes occurred before Bonaparte, seated on a throne, received
        the homage, as a Sovereign, of one hundred and fifty thousand warriors,
        who now bowed as subjects, after having for years fought for liberty and
        equality, and sworn hatred to all monarchical institutions; and who
        hitherto had saluted and obeyed him only as the first among equals. What
        an inconsistency! The splendour and show that accompanied him
        everywhere, the pageantry and courtly pomp that surrounded him, and the
        decorations of the stars and ribands of the Legion of Honour, which he
        distributed with bombastic speeches among troops&mdash;to whom those
        political impositions and social cajoleries were novelties&mdash;made
        such an impression upon them, that had a bridge been then fixed between
        Calais and Dover, brave as your countrymen are, I should have trembled
        for the liberty and independence of your country. The heads and
        imagination of the soldiers, I know from the best authority, were then
        so exalted that, though they might have been cut to pieces, they could
        never have been defeated or routed. I pity our children when I reflect
        that their tranquillity and happiness will, perhaps, depend upon such a
        corrupt and unprincipled people of soldiers,&mdash;easy tools in the
        hands of every impostor or mountebank.
      </p>
      <p>
        The lively satisfaction which Bonaparte must have felt at the pinnacle
        of grandeur where fortune had placed him was not, however, entirely
        unmixed with uneasiness and vexation. Except at Berlin, in all the other
        great Courts the Emperor of the French was still Monsieur Bonaparte; and
        your country, of the subjugation of which he had spoken with such
        lightness and such inconsideration, instead of dreading, despised his
        boasts and defied his threats. Indeed, never before did the Cabinet of
        St. James more opportunely expose the reality of his impotency, the
        impertinence of his menaces, and the folly of his parade for the
        invasion of your country, than by declaring all the ports containing his
        invincible armada in a state of blockade. I have heard from an officer
        who witnessed his fury when in May, 1799, he was compelled to retreat
        from before St. Jean d'Acre, and who was by his side in the camp at
        Boulogne when a despatch informed him of this circumstance, that it was
        nothing compared to the violent rage into which he flew upon reading it.
        For an hour afterwards not even his brother Joseph dared approach him;
        and his passion got so far the better of his policy, that what might
        still have long been concealed from the troops was known within the
        evening to the whole camp. He dictated to his secretary orders for his
        Ministers at Vienna, Berlin, Lisbon, and Madrid, and couriers were sent
        away with them; but half an hour afterwards other couriers were
        despatched after them with other orders, which were revoked in their
        turn, when at last Joseph had succeeded in calming him a little. He
        passed, however, the whole following night full dressed and agitated;
        lying down only for an instant, but having always in his room Joseph and
        Duroc, and deliberating on a thousand methods of destroying the insolent
        islanders; all equally violent, but all equally impracticable.
      </p>
      <p>
        The next morning, when, as usual, he went to see the manoeuvres of his
        flotilla, and the embarkation and landing of his troops, he looked so
        pale that he almost excited pity. Your cruisers, however, as if they had
        been informed of the situation of our hero, approached unusually near,
        to evince, as it were, their contempt and, derision. He ordered
        instantly all the batteries to fire, and went himself to that which
        carried its shot farthest; but that moment six of your vessels, after
        taking down their sails, cast anchors, with the greatest sang-froid,
        just without the reach of our shot. In an unavailing anger he broke upon
        the spot six officers of artillery, and pushed one, Captain d'
        Ablincourt, down the precipice under the battery, where he narrowly
        escaped breaking his neck as well as his legs; for which injury he was
        compensated by being made an officer of the Legion of Honour. Bonaparte
        then convoked upon the spot a council of his generals of artillery and
        of the engineers, and, within an hour's time, some guns and mortars of
        still heavier metal and greater calibre were carried up to replace the
        others; but, fortunately for the generals, before a trial could be made
        of them the tide changed, and your cruisers sailed.
      </p>
      <p>
        In returning to breakfast at General Soult's, he observed the
        countenances of his soldiers rather inclined to laughter than to wrath;
        and he heard some jests, significant enough in the vocabulary of
        encampments, and which informed him that contempt was not the sentiment
        with which your navy had inspired his troops. The occurrences of these
        two days hastened his departure from the coast for Aix-la-Chapelle,
        where the cringing of his courtiers consoled him, in part, for the want
        of respect or gallantry in your English tars.
      </p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
      <h2>
        LETTER X.
      </h2>
      <br />
      <p>
        PARIS, August, 1805.
      </p>
      <p>
        MY LORD:&mdash;According to a general belief in our diplomatic circles,
        it was the Austrian Ambassador in France, Count von Cobenzl, who
        principally influenced the determination of Francis II. to assume the
        hereditary title of Emperor of Austria, and to acknowledge Napoleon
        Emperor of the French.
      </p>
      <p>
        Johann Philipp, Count von Cobenzl, enjoys, not only in his own country,
        but through all Europe, a great reputation as a statesman, and has for a
        number of years been employed by his Court in the most intricate and
        delicate political transactions. In 1790 he was sent to Brabant to treat
        with the Belgian insurgents; but the States of Brabant refusing to
        receive him, he retired to Luxembourg, where he published a
        proclamation, in which Leopold II. revoked all those edicts of his
        predecessor, Joseph II., which had been the principal cause of the
        troubles; and reestablished everything upon the same footing as during
        the reign of Maria Theresa. In 1791 he was appointed Ambassador to the
        Court of St. Petersburg, where his conduct obtained the approbation of
        his own Prince and of the Empress of Russia.
      </p>
      <p>
        In 1793 the Committee of Public Safety nominated the intriguer, De
        Semonville, Ambassador to the Ottoman Porte. His mission was to excite
        the Turks against Austria and Russia, and it became of great consequence
        to the two Imperial Courts to seize this incendiary of regicides. He was
        therefore stopped, on the 25th of July, in the village of Novate, near
        the lake of Chiavenne. A rumour was very prevalent at this time that
        some papers were found in De Semonville's portfolio implicating Count
        von Cobenzl as a correspondent with the revolutionary French generals.
        The continued confidence of his Sovereign contradicts, however, this
        inculpation, which seems to have been merely the invention of rivalry or
        jealousy.
      </p>
      <p>
        In October, 1795, Count von Cobenzl signed, in the name of the Emperor,
        a treaty with England and Russia; and in 1797 he was one of the Imperial
        plenipotentiaries sent to Udine to negotiate with Bonaparte, with whom,
        on the 17th of October, he signed the Treaty of Campo Formio. In the
        same capacity he went afterwards to Rastadt, and when this congress
        broke up, he returned again as an Ambassador to St. Petersburg.
      </p>
      <p>
        After the Peace of Lunwille, when it required to have a man of
        experience and talents to oppose to our so deeply able Minister,
        Talleyrand, the Cabinet of Vienna removed him from Russia to France,
        where, with all other representatives of Princes, he has experienced
        more of the frowns and rebukes, than of the dignity and good grace, of
        our present Sovereign.
      </p>
      <p>
        Count von Cobenzl's foible is said to be a passion for women; and it is
        reported that our worthy Minister, Talleyrand, has been kind enough to
        assist him frequently in his amours. Some adventures of this sort, which
        occurred at Rastadt, afforded much amusement at the Count's expense.
        Talleyrand, from envy, no doubt, does not allow him the same political
        merit as his other political contemporaries, having frequently repeated
        that "the official dinners of Count von Cobenzl were greatly preferable
        to his official notes."
      </p>
      <p>
        So well pleased was Bonaparte with this Ambassador when at
        Aix-la-Chapelle last year, that, as a singular favour, he permitted him,
        with the Marquis de Gallo (the Neapolitan Minister and another
        plenipotentiary at Udine), to visit the camps of his army of England on
        the coast. It is true that this condescension was, perhaps, as much a
        boast, or a threat, as a compliment.
      </p>
      <p>
        The famous diplomatic note of Talleyrand, which, at Aix-la-Chapelle
        proscribed en masse all your diplomatic agents, was only a slight
        revenge of Bonaparte's for your mandate of blockade. Rumour states that
        this measure was not approved of by Talleyrand, as it would not exclude
        any of your Ambassadors from those Courts not immediately under the whip
        of our Napoleon. For fear, however, of some more extravagant
        determination, Joseph Bonaparte dissuaded him from laying before his
        brother any objections or representations. "But what absurdities do I
        not sign!" exclaimed the pliant Minister.
      </p>
      <p>
        Bonaparte, on his arrival at Aix-la-Chapelle, found there, according to
        command, most of the members of the foreign diplomatic corps in France,
        waiting to present their new credentials to him as Emperor. Charlemagne
        had been saluted as such, in the same place, about one thousand years
        before,&mdash;an inducement for the modern Charlemagne to set all these
        Ambassadors travelling some hundred miles, without any other object but
        to gratify his impertinent vanity. Every spot where Charlemagne had
        walked, sat, slept, talked, eaten or prayed, was visited by him with
        great ostentation; always dragging behind him the foreign
        representatives, and by his side his wife. To a peasant who presented
        him a stone upon which Charlemagne was said to have once kneeled, he
        gave nearly half its weight in gold; on a priest who offered him a small
        crucifix, before which that Prince was reported to have prayed, he
        bestowed an episcopal see; to a manufacturer he ordered one thousand
        louis for a portrait of Charlemagne, said to be drawn by his daughter,
        but which, in fact, was from the pencil of the daughter of the
        manufacturer; a German savant was made a member of the National
        Institute for an old diploma, supposed to have been signed by
        Charlemagne, who many believed was not able to write; and a German
        Baron, Krigge, was registered in the Legion of Honour for a ring
        presented by this Emperor to one of his ancestors, though his nobility
        is well known not to be of sixty years' standing. But woe to him who
        dared to suggest any doubt about what Napoleon believed, or seemed to
        believe! A German professor, Richter, more a pedant than a courtier, and
        more sincere than wise, addressed a short memorial to Bonaparte, in
        which he proved, from his intimacy with antiquity, that most of the
        pretended relics of Charlemagne were impositions on the credulous; that
        the portrait was a drawing of this century, the diploma written in the
        last; the crucifix manufactured within fifty, and the ring, perhaps,
        within ten years. The night after Bonaparte had perused this memorial, a
        police commissary, accompanied by four gendarmes, entered the
        professor's bedroom, forced him to dress, and ushered him into a covered
        cart, which carried him under escort to the left bank of the Rhine;
        where he was left with orders, under pain of death, never more to enter
        the territory of the French Empire. This expeditious and summary justice
        silenced all other connoisseurs and antiquarians; and relics of
        Charlemagne have since poured in in such numbers from all parts of
        France, Italy, Germany, and even Denmark, that we are here in hope to
        see one day established a Museum Charlemagne, by the side of the museums
        Napoleon and Josephine. A ballad, written in monkish Latin, said to be
        sung by the daughters and maids of Charlemagne at his Court on great
        festivities, was addressed to Duroc, by a Danish professor, Cranener,
        who in return was presented, on the part of Bonaparte, with a diamond
        ring worth twelve thousand livres&mdash;L 500. This ballad may, perhaps,
        be the foundation of future Bibliotheque or Lyceum Charlemagne.
      </p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
      <h2>
        LETTER XI.
      </h2>
      <br />
      <p>
        PARIS, August, 1805.
      </p>
      <p>
        MY LORD:&mdash;On the arrival of her husband at Aix-la-Chapelle, Madame
        Napoleon had lost her money by gambling, without recovering her health
        by using the baths and drinking the waters; she was, therefore, as poor
        as low-spirited, and as ill-tempered as dissatisfied. Napoleon himself
        was neither much in humour to supply her present wants, provide for her
        extravagances, or to forgive her ill-nature; he ascribed the inefficacy
        of the waters to her excesses, and reproached her for her too great
        condescension to many persons who presented themselves at her
        drawing-room and in her circle, but who, from their rank in life, were
        only fit to be seen as supplicants in her antechambers, and as
        associates with her valets or chambermaids.
      </p>
      <p>
        The fact was that Madame Napoleon knew as well as her husband that these
        gentry were not in their place in the company of an Empress; but they
        were her creditors, some of them even Jews; and as long as she continued
        debtor to them she could not decently&mdash;or rather, she dared not
        prevent them from being visitors to her. By confiding her situation to
        her old friend, Talleyrand, she was, however, soon released from those
        troublesome personages. When the Minister was informed of the occasion
        of the attendance of these impertinent intruders, he humbly proposed to
        Bonaparte not to pay their demands and their due, but to make them
        examples of severe justice in transporting them to Cayenne, as the only
        sure means to prevent, for the future, people of the same description
        from being familiar or audacious.
      </p>
      <p>
        When, thanks to Talleyrand's interference, these family arrangements
        were settled, Madame Napoleon recovered her health with her good-humour;
        and her husband, who had begun to forget the English blockade, only to
        think of the papal accolade (dubbing), was more tender than ever. I am
        assured that, during the fortnight he continued with his wife at
        Aix-la-Chapelle, he only shut her up or confined her twice, kicked her
        three times, and abused her once a day.
      </p>
      <p>
        It was during their residence in that capital that Comte de Segur at
        last completed the composition of their household, and laid before them
        the list of the ladies and gentlemen who had consented to put on their
        livery. This De Segur is a kind of amphibious animal, neither a royalist
        nor a republican, neither a democrat nor an aristocrat, but a
        disaffected subject under a King, a dangerous citizen of a Commonwealth,
        ridiculing both the friend of equality and the defender of prerogatives;
        no exact definition can be given, from his past conduct and avowed
        professions, of his real moral and political character. One thing only
        is certain;&mdash;he was an ungrateful traitor to Louis XVI., and is a
        submissive slave under Napoleon the First.
      </p>
      <p>
        Though not of an ancient family, Comte de Segur was a nobleman by birth,
        and ranked among the ancient French nobility because one of his
        ancestors had been a Field-marshal. Being early introduced at Court, he
        acquired, with the common corruption, also the pleasing manners of a
        courtier; and by his assiduities about the Ministers, Comte de Maurepas
        and Comte de Vergennes, he procured from the latter the place of an
        Ambassador to the Court of St. Petersburg. With some reading and genius,
        but with more boasting and presumption, he classed himself among French
        men of letters, and was therefore as such received with distinction by
        Catharine II., on whom, and on whose Government, he in return published
        a libel. He was a valet under La Fayette, in 1789, as he has since been
        under every succeeding King of faction. The partisans of the Revolution
        pointed him out as a fit Ambassador from Louis XVI. to the late King of
        Prussia; and he went in 1791 to Berlin, in that capacity; but Frederick
        William II. refused him admittance to his person, and, after some
        ineffectual intrigues with the Illuminati and philosophers at Berlin, he
        returned to Paris as he left it; provided, however, with materials for
        another libel on the Prussian Monarch, and on the House of Brandenburgh,
        which he printed in 1796. Ruined by the Revolution which he had so much
        admired, he was imprisoned under Robespierre, and was near starving
        under the Directory, having nothing but his literary productions to
        subsist on. In 1799, Bonaparte made him a legislator, and in 1803, a
        Counsellor of State,&mdash;a place which he resigned last year for that
        of a grand master of the ceremonies at the present Imperial Court. His
        ancient inveteracy against your country has made him a favourite with
        Bonaparte. The indelicate and scandalous attacks, in 1796 and 1797,
        against Lord Malmesbury, in the then official journal, Le Redacteur,
        were the offspring of his malignity and pen; and the philippics and
        abusive notes in our present official Moniteur, against your Government
        and country, are frequently his patriotic progeny, or rather, he often
        shares with Talleyrand and Hauterive their paternity.
      </p>
      <p>
        The Revolution has not made Comte de Segur more happy with regard to his
        family, than in his circumstances, which, notwithstanding his brilliant
        grand-mastership, are far from being affluent. His amiable wife died of
        terror, and brokenhearted from the sufferings she had experienced, and
        the atrocities she had witnessed; and when he had enticed his eldest son
        to accept the place of a sub-prefect under Bonaparte, his youngest son,
        who never approved our present regeneration, challenged his brother to
        fight, and, after killing him in a duel, destroyed himself. Comte de
        Segur is therefore, at present, neither a husband nor a father, but only
        a grand master of ceremonies! What an indemnification!
      </p>
      <p>
        Madame Napoleon and her husband are both certainly under much obligation
        to this nobleman for his care to procure them comparatively decent
        persons to decorate their levees and drawing-rooms, who, though they
        have no claim either to morality or virtue, either to honour or
        chastity, are undoubtedly a great acquisition at the Court of St. Cloud,
        because none of them has either been accused of murder, or convicted of
        plunder; which is the case with some of the Ministers, and most of the
        generals, Senators and counsellors. It is true that they are a mixture
        of beggared nobles and enriched valets, of married courtesans and
        divorced wives, but, for all that, they can with justice demand the
        places of honour of all other Imperial courtiers of both sexes.
      </p>
      <p>
        When Bonaparte had read over the names of these Court recruits, engaged
        and enlisted by De Segur, he said, "Well, this lumber must do until we
        can exchange it for better furniture." At that time, young Comte d'
        Arberg (of a German family, on the right bank of the Rhine), but whose
        mother is one of Madame Bonaparte's Maids of Honour, was travelling for
        him in Germany and in Prussia, where, among other negotiations, he was
        charged to procure some persons of both sexes, of the most ancient
        nobility, to augment Napoleon's suite, and to figure in his livery. More
        individuals presented themselves for this honour than he wanted, but
        they were all without education and without address: ignorant of the
        world as of books; not speaking well their own language, much less
        understanding French or Italian; vain of their birth, but not ashamed of
        their ignorance, and as proud as poor. This project was therefore
        relinquished for the time; but a number of the children of the principal
        ci-devant German nobles, who, by the Treaty of Luneville and Ratisbon,
        had become subjects of Bonaparte, were, by the advice of Talleyrand,
        offered places in French Prytanees, where the Emperor promised to take
        care of their future advancement. Madame Bonaparte, at the same time,
        selected twenty-five young girls of the same families, whom she also
        offered to educate at her expense. Their parents understood too well the
        meaning of these generous offers to dare decline their acceptance. These
        children are the plants of the Imperial nursery, intended to produce
        future pages, chamberlains, equerries, Maids of Honour and ladies in
        waiting, who for ancestry may bid defiance to all their equals of every
        Court in Christendom. This act of benevolence, as it was called in some
        German papers, is also an indirect chastisement of the refractory French
        nobility, who either demanded too high prices for their degradation, or
        abruptly refused to disgrace the names of their forefathers.
      </p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
      <h2>
        LETTER XII.
      </h2>
      <br />
      <p>
        PARIS, August, 1805.
      </p>
      <p>
        MY LORD:&mdash;Bonaparte has been as profuse in his disposal of the
        Imperial diadem of Germany, as in his promises of the papal tiara of
        Rome. The Houses of Austria and Brandenburgh, the Electors of Bavaria
        and Baden, have by turns been cajoled into a belief of his exclusive
        support towards obtaining it at the first vacancy. Those, however, who
        have paid attention to his machinations, and studied his actions; who
        remember his pedantic affectation of being considered a modern, or
        rather a second Charlemagne; and who have traced his steps through the
        labyrinth of folly and wickedness, of meanness and greatness, of art,
        corruption, and policy, which have seated him on the present throne, can
        entertain little doubt but that he is seriously bent on seizing and
        adding the sceptre of Germany to the crowns of France and Italy.
      </p>
      <p>
        During his stay last autumn at Mentz, all those German Electors who had
        spirit and dignity enough to refuse to attend on him there in person
        were obliged to send Extraordinary Ambassadors to wait on him, and to
        compliment him on their part. Though hardly one corner of the veil that
        covered the intrigues going forward there is yet lifted up, enough is
        already seen to warn Europe and alarm the world. The secret treaties he
        concluded there with most of the petty Princes of Germany, against the
        Chief of the German Empire which not only entirely detached them from
        their country and its legitimate Sovereign, but made their individual
        interests hostile and totally opposite to that of the German
        Commonwealth, transforming them also from independent Princes into
        vassals of France, both directly increased has already gigantic power,
        and indirectly encouraged him to extend it beyond what his most sanguine
        expectation had induced him to hope. I do not make this assertion from a
        mere supposition in consequence of ulterior occurrences. At a supper
        with Madame Talleyrand last March, I heard her husband, in a gay,
        unguarded, or perhaps premeditated moment, say, when mentioning his
        proposed journey to Italy:
      </p>
      <p>
        "I prepared myself to pass the Alps last October at Mentz. The first
        ground-stone of the throne of Italy was, strange as it may seem, laid on
        the banks of the Rhine: with such an extensive foundation, it must be
        difficult to shake, and impossible to overturn it."
      </p>
      <p>
        We were, in the whole, twenty-five persons at table when he spoke thus,
        many of whom, he well knew, were intimately acquainted both with the
        Austrian and Prussian Ambassadors, who by the bye, both on the next day
        sent couriers to their respective Courts.
      </p>
      <p>
        The French Revolution is neither seen in Germany in that dangerous light
        which might naturally be expected from the sufferings in which it has
        involved both Princes and subjects, nor are its future effects dreaded
        from its past enormities. The cause of this impolitic and anti-patriotic
        apathy is to be looked for in the palaces of Sovereigns, and not in the
        dwellings of their people. There exists hardly a single German Prince
        whose Ministers, courtiers and counsellors are not numbered, and have
        long been notorious among the anti-social conspirators, the Illuminati:
        most of them are knaves of abilities, who have usurped the easy
        direction of ignorance, or forced themselves as guides on weakness or
        folly, which bow to their charlatanism as if it was sublimity, and hail
        their sophistry and imposture as inspiration.
      </p>
      <p>
        Among Princes thus encompassed, the Elector of Bavaria must be allowed
        the first place. A younger brother of a younger branch, and a colonel in
        the service of Louis XVI., he neither acquired by education, nor
        inherited from nature, any talent to reign, nor possessed any one
        quality that fitted him for a higher situation than the head of a
        regiment or a lady's drawing-room. He made himself justly suspected of a
        moral corruption, as well as of a natural incapacity, when he announced
        his approbation of the Revolution against his benefactor, the late King
        of France, who, besides a regiment, had also given him a yearly pension
        of one hundred thousand livres. Immediately after his unexpected
        accession to the Electorate of Bavaria, he concluded a subsidiary treaty
        with your country, and his troops were ordered to combat rebellion,
        under the standard of Austrian loyalty. For some months it was believed
        that the Elector wished by his conduct to obliterate the memory of the
        errors, vices, and principles of the Duc de Deux-Ponts (his former
        title). But placing all his confidence in a political adventurer and
        revolutionary fanatic, Montgelas, without either consistency or
        firmness, without being either bent upon information or anxious about
        popularity, he threw the whole burden of State on the shoulders of this
        dangerous man, who soon showed the world that his master, by his first
        treaties, intended only to pocket your money without serving your cause
        or interest.
      </p>
      <p>
        This Montgelas is, on account of his cunning and long standing among
        them, worshipped by the gang of German Illuminati as an idol rather than
        revered as an apostle. He is their Baal, before whom they hope to oblige
        all nations upon earth to prostrate themselves as soon as infidelity has
        entirely banished Christianity; for the Illuminati do not expect to
        reign till the last Christian is buried under the rubbish of the last
        altar of Christ. It is not the fault of Montgelas if such an event has
        not already occurred in the Electorate of Bavaria.
      </p>
      <p>
        Within six months after the Treaty of Lundville, Montgelas began in that
        country his political and religious innovations. The nobility and the
        clergy were equally attacked; the privileges of the former were invaded,
        and the property of the latter confiscated; and had not his zeal carried
        him too far, so as to alarm our new nobles, our new men of property, and
        new Christians, it is very probable that atheism would have already,
        without opposition, reared its head in the midst of Germany, and
        proclaimed there the rights of man, and the code of liberty and
        equality.
      </p>
      <p>
        The inhabitants of Bavaria are, as you know, all Roman Catholics, and
        the most superstitious and ignorant Catholics of Germany. The step is
        but short from superstition to infidelity; and ignorance has furnished
        in France more sectaries of atheism than perversity. The Illuminati,
        brothers and friends of Montgelas, have not been idle in that country.
        Their writings have perverted those who had no opportunity to hear their
        speeches, or to witness their example; and I am assured by Count von
        Beust, who travelled in Bavaria last year, that their progress among the
        lower classes is astonishing, considering the short period these
        emissaries have laboured. To any one looking on the map of the
        Continent, and acquainted with the spirit of our times, this impious
        focus of illumination must be ominous.
      </p>
      <p>
        Among the members of the foreign diplomatic corps, there exists not the
        least doubt but that this Montgelas, as well as Bonaparte's Minister at
        Munich, Otto, was acquainted with the treacherous part Mehde de la
        Touche played against your Minister, Drake; and that it was planned
        between him and Talleyrand as the surest means to break off all
        political connections between your country and Bavaria. Mr. Drake was
        personally liked by the Elector, and was not inattentive either to the
        plans and views of Montgelas or to the intrigues of Otto. They were,
        therefore, both doubly interested to remove such a troublesome witness.
      </p>
      <p>
        M. de Montgelas is now a grand officer of Bonaparte's Legion of Honour,
        and he is one of the few foreigners nominated the most worthy of such a
        distinction. In France he would have been an acquisition either to the
        factions of a Murat, of a Brissot, or of a Robespierre; and the Goddess
        of Reason, as well as the God of the Theophilanthropists, might have
        been sure of counting him among their adorers. At the clubs of the
        Jacobins or Cordeliers, in the fraternal societies, or in a
        revolutionary tribunal; in the Committee of Public Safety, or in the
        council chamber of the Directory, he would equally have made himself
        notorious and been equally in his place. A stoic sans-culotte under Du
        Clots, a stanch republican under Robespierre, he would now have been the
        most pliant and brilliant courtier of Bonaparte.
      </p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
      <h2>
        LETTER XIII.
      </h2>
      <br />
      <p>
        PARIS, August, 1805.
      </p>
      <p>
        MY LORD:&mdash;No Queen of France ever saw so many foreign Princes and
        Princesses in her drawing-rooms as the first Empress of the French did
        last year at Mentz; and no Sovereign was ever before so well paid, or
        accepted with less difficulty donations and presents for her gracious
        protection. Madame Napoleon herself, on her return to this capital last
        October, boasted that she was ten millions of livres&mdash;richer in
        diamonds; two millions of livres richer in pearls, and three million of
        livres richer in plate and china, than in the June before, when she
        quitted it. She acknowledged that she left behind her some creditors and
        some money at Aix-la-Chapelle; but at Mentz she did not want to borrow,
        nor had she time to gamble. The gallant ultra Romans provided
        everything, even to the utmost extent of her wishes; and she, on her
        part, could not but honour those with her company as much as possible,
        particularly as they required nothing else for their civilities. Such
        was the Empress's expression to her lady in waiting, the handsome Madame
        Seran, with whom no confidence, no tale, no story, and no scandal
        expires; and who was in a great hurry to inform, the same evening, the
        tea-party at Madame de Beauvais's of this good news, complaining at the
        same time of not having had the least share in this rich harvest.
      </p>
      <p>
        Nowhere, indeed, were bribery and corruption carried to a greater
        extent, or practised with more effrontery, than at Mentz. Madame
        Napoleon had as much her fixed price for every favourable word she
        spoke, as Talleyrand had for every line he wrote. Even the attendants of
        the former, and the clerks of the latter, demanded, or rather extorted,
        douceurs from the exhausted and almost ruined German petitioners; who in
        the end were rewarded for all their meanness and for all their expenses
        with promises at best; as the new plan of supplementary indemnities was,
        on the very day proposed for its final arrangement, postponed by the
        desire of the Emperor of the French, until further orders. This
        provoking delay could no more be foreseen by the Empress than by the
        Minister, who, in return for their presents and money almost overpowered
        the German Princes with his protestations of regret at their
        disappointments. Nor was Madame Bonaparte less sorry or less civil. She
        sent her chamberlain, Daubusson la Feuillad, with regular compliments of
        condolence to every Prince who had enjoyed her protection. They returned
        to their homes, therefore, if not wealthier, at least happier; flattered
        by assurances and condescensions, confiding in hope as in certainties.
        Within three months, however, it is supposed that they would willingly
        have disposed both of promises and expectations at a loss of fifty per
        cent.
      </p>
      <p>
        By the cupidity and selfishness of these and other German Princes, and
        their want of patriotism, Talleyrand was become perfectly acquainted
        with the value and production of every principality, bishopric, county,
        abbey, barony, convent, and even village in the German Empire; and
        though most national property in France was disposed of at one or two
        years' purchase, he required five years' purchase-money for all the
        estates and lands on the other side of the Rhine, of which, under the
        name of indemnities, he stripped the lawful owners to gratify the
        ambition or avidity of intruders. This high price has cooled the claims
        of the bidders, and the plan of the supplementary indemnities is still
        suspended, and probably will continue so until our Minister lowers his
        terms. A combination is supposed to have been entered into by the chief
        demanders of indemnities, by which they have bound themselves to resist
        all farther extortions. They do not, however, know the man they have to
        deal with; he will, perhaps, find out some to lay claim to their own
        private and hereditary property whom he will produce and support, and
        who certainly will have the same right to pillage them as they had to
        the spoils of others.
      </p>
      <p>
        It was reported in our fashionable circles last autumn, and smiled at by
        Talleyrand, that he promised the Comtesse de L&mdash;&mdash;&mdash; an
        abbey, and the Baroness de S&mdash;&mdash;-z a convent, for certain
        personal favours, and that he offered a bishopric to the Princesse of
        Hon&mdash;&mdash;- the same terms, but this lady answered that "she
        would think of his offers after he had put her husband in possession of
        the bishopric." It is not necessary to observe that both the Countess
        and the Baroness are yet waiting to enjoy his liberal donations, and to
        be indemnified for their prostitution.
      </p>
      <p>
        Napoleon Bonaparte was attacked by a fit of jealousy at Mentz. The young
        nephew of the Elector Arch-Chancellor, Comte de L&mdash;&mdash;ge, was
        very assiduous about the Empress, who, herself, at first mistook the
        motive. Her confidential secretary, Deschamps, however, afterwards
        informed her that this nobleman wanted to purchase the place of a
        coadjutor to his uncle, so as to be certain of succeeding him. He
        obtained, therefore, several private audiences, no doubt to regulate the
        price, when Napoleon put a stop to this secret negotiation by having the
        Count carried by gendarmes, with great politeness, to the other side of
        the Rhine. When convinced of his error, Bonaparte asked his wife what
        sum had been promised for her protection, and immediately gave her an
        order on his Minister of the Treasury (Marbois) for the amount. This was
        an act of justice, and a reparation worthy of a good and tender husband;
        but when, the very next day, he recalled this order, threw it into the
        fire before her eyes, and confined her for six hours in her bedroom;
        because she was not dressed in time to take a walk with him on the
        ramparts, one is apt to believe that military despotism has erased from
        his bosom all connubial affection, and that a momentary effusion of
        kindness and generosity can but little alleviate the frequent pangs
        caused by repeated insults and oppression. Fortunately, Madame
        Napoleon's disposition is proof against rudeness as well as against
        brutality. If what her friend and consoler, Madame Delucay, reports of
        her is not exaggerated, her tranquillity is not much disturbed nor her
        happiness affected by these explosions of passionate authority, and she
        prefers admiring, in undisturbed solitude, her diamond box to the most
        beautiful prospects in the most agreeable company; and she inspects with
        more pleasure in confinement, her rich wardrobe, her beautiful china,
        and her heavy plate, than she would find satisfaction, surrounded with
        crowds, in comtemplating Nature, even in its utmost perfection. "The
        paradise of Madame Napoleon," says her friend, "must be of metal, and
        lighted by the lustre of brilliants, else she would decline it for a
        hell and accept Lucifer himself for a spouse, provided gold flowed in
        his infernal domains, though she were even to be scorched by its heat."
      </p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
      <h2>
        LETTER XIV.
      </h2>
      <br />
      <p>
        LETTER XIV.
      </p>
      <p>
        PARIS, August, 1805.
      </p>
      <p>
        MY LORD:&mdash;I believe that I have mentioned to you, when in England,
        that I was an old acquaintance of Madame Napoleon, and a visitor at the
        house of her first husband. When introduced to her after some years'
        absence, during which fortune had treated us very differently, she
        received me with more civility than I was prepared to expect, and would,
        perhaps, have spoken to me more than she did, had not a look of her
        husband silenced her. Madame Louis Bonaparte was still more
        condescending, and recalled to my memory what I had not forgotten how
        often she had been seated, when a child, on my lap, and played on my
        knees with her doll. Thus they behaved to me when I saw them for the
        first time in their present elevation; I found them afterwards, in their
        drawing-rooms or at their routs and parties, more shy and distant. This
        change did not much surprise me, as I hardly knew any one that had the
        slightest pretension to their acquaintance who had not troubled them for
        employment or borrowed their money, at the same time that they
        complained of their neglect and their breach of promises. I continued,
        however, as much as etiquette and decency required, assiduous, but never
        familiar: if they addressed me, I answered with respect, but not with
        servility; if not, I bowed in silence when they passed. They might
        easily perceive that I did not intend to become an intruder, nor to make
        the remembrance of what was past an apology or a reason for applying for
        present favours. A lady, on intimate terms with Madame Napoleon, and
        once our common friend, informed me, shortly after the untimely end of
        the lamented Duc d' Enghien, that she had been asked whether she knew
        anything that could be done for me, or whether I would not be flattered
        by obtaining a place in the Legislative Body or in the Tribunate? I
        answered as I thought, that were I fit for a public life nothing could
        be more agreeable or suit me better; but, having hitherto declined all
        employments that might restrain that independence to which I had
        accustomed myself from my youth, I was now too old to enter upon a new
        career. I added that, though the Revolution had reduced my
        circumstances, it had not entirely ruined me. I was still independent,
        because my means were the boundaries of my wants.
      </p>
      <p>
        A week after this conversation General Murat, the governor of this
        capital, and Bonaparte's favourite-brother-in-law, invited me to a
        conversation in a note delivered to me by an aide-de-camp, who told me
        that he was ordered to wait for my company, or, which was the same, he
        had orders not to lose sight of me, as I was his prisoner. Having
        nothing with which to reproach myself, and all my written remarks being
        deposited with a friend, whom none of the Imperial functionaries could
        suspect, I entered a hackney coach without any fear or apprehension; and
        we drove to the governor's hotel.
      </p>
      <p>
        From the manner in which Murat addressed me, I was soon convinced that
        if I had been accused of any error or indiscretion, the accusation could
        not be very grave in his eyes. He entered with me into his closet and
        inquired whether I had any enemies at the police office. I told him not
        to my knowledge.
      </p>
      <p>
        "Is the Police Minister and Senator, Fouche, your friend?" continued he.
      </p>
      <p>
        "Fouche," said I, "has bought an estate that formerly belonged to me;
        may he enjoy it with the same peace of mind as I have lost it. I have
        never spoken to him in my life."
      </p>
      <p>
        "Have you not complained at Madame de la Force's of the execution of the
        ci-devant Duc d'Enghien, and agreed with the other members of her
        coterie to put on mourning for him?"
      </p>
      <p>
        "I have never been at the house of that lady since the death of the
        Prince, nor more than once in my life."
      </p>
      <p>
        "Where did you pass the evening last Saturday?"&mdash;"At the hotel, and
        in the assembly of Princesse Louis Bonaparte."
      </p>
      <p>
        "Did she see you?"
      </p>
      <p>
        "I believe that she did, because she returned my salute."
      </p>
      <p>
        "You have known Her Imperial Highness a long time?"
      </p>
      <p>
        "From her infancy."
      </p>
      <p>
        "Well, I congratulate you. You have in her a generous protectress. But
        for her you would now have been on the way to Cayenne. Here you see the
        list of persons condemned yesterday, upon the report of Fouche, to
        transportation. Your name is at the head of them. You were not only
        accused of being an agent of the Bourbons, but of having intrigued to
        become a member of the Legislature, or the Tribunate, that you might
        have so much the better opportunity to serve them. Fortunately for you,
        the Emperor remembered that the Princesse Louis had demanded such a
        favour for you, and he informed her of the character of her protege.
        This brought forward your innocence, because it was discovered that,
        instead of asking for, you had declined the offer she had made you
        through the Empress. Write the Princess a letter of thanks. You have,
        indeed, had a narrow escape, but it has been so far useful to you, that
        Government is now aware of your having some secret enemy in power, who
        is not delicate about the means of injuring you."
      </p>
      <p>
        In quitting General Murat, I could not help deploring the fate of a
        despot, even while I abhorred his unnatural power. The curses, the
        complaints, and reproaches for all the crimes, all the violence, all the
        oppression perpetrated in his name, are entirely thrown upon him, while
        his situation and occupation do not admit the seeing and hearing
        everything and everybody himself. He is often forced, therefore, to
        judge according to the report of an impostor; to sanction with his name
        the hatred, malignity, or vengeance of culpable individuals; and to
        sacrifice innocence to gratify the vile passions of his vilest slave. I
        have not so bad an opinion of Bonaparte as to think him capable of
        wilfully condemning any person to death or transportation, of whose
        innocence he was convinced, provided that person stood not in the way of
        his interest and ambition; but suspicion and tyranny are inseparable
        companions, and injustice their common progeny. The unfortunate beings
        on the long list General Murat showed me were, I dare say, most of them
        as innocent as myself, and all certainly condemned unheard. But suppose,
        even, that they had been indiscreet enough to put on mourning for a
        Prince of the blood of their former Kings, did their imprudence deserve
        the same punishment as the deed of the robber, the forger, or the
        housebreaker? and, indeed, it was more severe than what our laws inflict
        on such criminals, who are only condemned to transportation for some few
        years, after a public trial and conviction; while the exile of these
        unconvicted, untried, and most probably innocent persons is continued
        for life, on charges as unknown to themselves as their destiny and
        residence remain to their families and friends. Happy England! where no
        one is condemned unheard, and no one dares attempt to make the laws
        subservient to his passions or caprice.
      </p>
      <p>
        As to Fouche's enmity, at which General Murat so plainly hinted, I had
        long apprehended it from what others, in similar circumstances with
        myself, had suffered. He has, since the Revolution, bought no less, than
        sixteen national estates, seven of the former proprietors of which have
        suddenly disappeared since his Ministry, probably in the manner he
        intended to remove me. This man is one of the most immoral characters
        the Revolution has dragged forward from obscurity. It is more difficult
        to mention a crime that he has not perpetrated than to discover a good
        or just action that he ever performed. He is so notorious a villain that
        even the infamous National Convention expelled him from its bosom, and
        since his Ministry no man has been found base enough, in my debased
        country, to extenuate, much less to defend, his past enormities. In a
        nation so greatly corrupted and immoral, this alone is more than
        negative evidence.
      </p>
      <p>
        As a friar before the Revolution he has avowed, in his correspondence
        with the National Convention, that he never believed in a God; and as
        one of the first public functionaries of a Republic he has officially
        denied the existence of virtue. He is, therefore, as unmoved by tears as
        by reproaches, and as inaccessible to remorse as hardened against
        repentance. With him interest and bribes are everything, and honour and
        honesty nothing. The supplicant or the pleader who appears before him
        with no other support than the justice of his cause is fortunate indeed
        if, after being cast, he is not also confined or ruined, and perhaps
        both; while a line from one of the Bonapartes, or a purse of gold,
        changes black to white, guilt to innocence, removes the scaffold waiting
        for the assassin, and extinguishes the faggots lighted for the
        parricide. His authority is so extensive that on the least signal, with
        one blow, from the extremities of France to her centre, it crushes the
        cot and the palace; and his decisions, against which there is no appeal,
        are so destructive that they never leave any traces behind them, and
        Bonaparte, Bonaparte alone, can prevent or arrest their effect.
      </p>
      <p>
        Though a traitor to his former benefactor, the ex-Director Barras, he
        possesses now the unlimited confidence of Napoleon Bonaparte, and, as
        far as is known, has not yet done anything to forfeit it,&mdash;if
        private acts of cruelty cannot, in the agent of a tyrant, be called
        breach of trust or infidelity. He shares with Talleyrand the fraternity
        of the vigilant, immoral, and tormenting secret police; and with Real,
        and Dubois, the prefect of police, the reproduction, or rather the
        invention, of new tortures and improved racks; the oubliettes, which are
        wells or pits dug under the Temple and most other prisons, are the works
        of his own infernal genius. They are covered with trap-doors, and any
        person whom the rack has mutilated, or not obliged to speak out; whose
        return to society is thought dangerous, or whose discretion is
        suspected; who has been imprisoned by mistake, or discovered to be
        innocent; who is disagreeable to the Bonapartes, their favourites, or
        the mistresses of their favourites; who has displeased Fouche, or
        offended some other placeman; any who have refused to part with their
        property for the recovery of their liberty, are all precipitated into
        these artificial abysses there to be forgotten; or worse, to be starved
        to death, if they have not been fortunate enough to break their necks
        and be killed by the fall.
      </p>
      <p>
        The property Fouche has acquired by his robberies within these last
        twelve years is at the lowest rate valued at fifty million livres&mdash;which
        must increase yearly; as a man who disposes of the liberty of fifty
        millions of people is also, in a great part, master of their wealth.
        Except the chiefs of the Governments and their officers of State, there
        exists not an inhabitant of France, Italy, Holland, or Switzerland who
        can consider himself secure for an instant of not being seized,
        imprisoned, plundered, tortured, or exterminated by the orders of Fouche
        and by the hands of his agents.
      </p>
      <p>
        You will no doubt exclaim, "How can Bonaparte employ, how dares he
        confide, in such a man?" Fouche is as able as unprincipled, and, with
        the most unfeeling and perverse heart, possesses great talents. There is
        no infamy he will not stoop to, and no crime, however execrable, that he
        will hesitate to commit, if his Sovereign orders it. He is, therefore, a
        most useful instrument in the hand of a despot who, notwithstanding what
        is said to the contrary in France, and believed abroad, would cease to
        rule the day he became just, and the reign of laws and of humanity
        banished terror and tyranny.
      </p>
      <p>
        It is reported that some person, pious or revengeful, presented some
        time ago to the devout mother of Napoleon a long memorial containing
        some particulars of the crimes and vices of Fouche and Talleyrand, and
        required of her, if she wished to prevent the curses of Heaven from
        falling on her son, to inform him of them, that he might cease to employ
        men so unworthy of him, and so repugnant to a Divinity. Napoleon, after
        reading through the memorial, is stated to have answered his mother, who
        was always pressing him to dismiss these Ministers: The memorial,
        Madame, contains nothing of what I was not previously informed. Louis
        XVI. did not select any but those whom he thought the most virtuous and
        moral of men for his Ministers and counsellors; and where did their
        virtues and morality bring him? If the writer of the memorial will
        mention two honest and irreproachable characters, with equal talents and
        zeal to serve me, neither Fouche nor Talleyrand shall again be admitted
        into my presence.
      </p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
      <h2>
        LETTER XV.
      </h2>
      <br />
      <p>
        PARIS, August, 1805.
      </p>
      <p>
        MY LORD:&mdash;You have with some reason in England complained of the
        conduct of the members of the foreign diplomatic corps in France, when
        the pretended correspondence between Mr. Drake and Mehee de la Touche
        was published in our official gazette. Had you, however, like myself,
        been in a situation to study the characters and appreciate the worth of
        most of them, this conduct would have excited no surprise, and pity
        would have taken the place both of accusation and reproach. Hardly one
        of them, except Count Philipp von Cobenzl, the Austrian Ambassador (and
        even he is considerably involved), possesses any property, or has
        anything else but his salary to depend upon for subsistence. The least
        offence to Bonaparte or Talleyrand would instantly deprive them of their
        places; and, unless they were fortunate enough to obtain some other
        appointment, reduce them to live in obscurity, and perhaps in want, upon
        a trifling pension in their own country.
      </p>
      <p>
        The day before Mr. Drake's correspondence appeared in the Moniteur, in
        March, 1804, Talleyrand gave a grand diplomatic dinner; in the midst of
        which, as was previously agreed with Bonaparte, Duroc called him out on
        the part of the First Consul. After an absence of near an hour, which
        excited great curiosity and some alarm among the diplomatists, he
        returned, very thoughtful and seemingly very low-spirited.
      </p>
      <p>
        "Excuse me, gentlemen," said he, "I have been impolite against my
        inclination. The First Consul knew that you honoured me with your
        company today, and would therefore not have interrupted me by his orders
        had not a discovery of a most extraordinary nature against the law of
        nations just been made; a discovery which calls for the immediate
        indignation against the Cabinet of St. James, not only of France, but of
        every nation that wishes for the preservation of civilized society.
        After dinner I shall do myself the honour of communicating to you the
        particulars, well convinced that you will all enter with warmth into the
        just resentment of the First Consul."
      </p>
      <p>
        During the repast the bottle went freely round, and as soon as they had
        drunk their coffee and liqueurs, Talleyrand rang a bell, and Hauterive
        presented himself with a large bundle of papers. The pretended original
        letters of Mr. Drake were handed about with the commentaries of the
        Minister and his secretary. Their heads heated with wine, it was not
        difficult to influence their minds, or to mislead their judgment, and
        they exclaimed, as in a chorus, "C'est abominable! Cela fait fremir!"
      </p>
      <p>
        Talleyrand took advantage of their situation, as well as of their
        indiscretion. "I am glad, gentlemen," said he, "and shall not fail to
        inform the First Consul of your unanimous sentiments on this
        disagreeable subject; but verbal expressions are not sufficient in an
        affair of such great consequence. I have orders to demand your written
        declarations, which, after what you have already expressed, you cannot
        hesitate about sending to me to-night, that they may accompany the
        denunciation which the First Consul despatches, within some few hours,
        to all the Courts on the Continent. You would much please the First
        Consul were you to write as near as possible according to the formula
        which my secretary has drawn up. It states nothing either against
        convenance, or against the customs of Sovereigns, or etiquettes of
        Courts, and I am certain is also perfectly congenial with your
        individual feelings."
      </p>
      <p>
        A silence of some moments now followed (as all the diplomatists were
        rather taken by surprise with regard to a written declaration), which
        the Swedish Ambassador, Baron Ehrensward, interrupted by saying that,
        "though he personally might have no objection to sign such a
        declaration, he must demand some time to consider whether he had a right
        to, write in the name of his Sovereign, without his orders, on a subject
        still unknown to him."
      </p>
      <p>
        This remark made the Austrian Ambassador, Count von Cobenzl, propose a
        private consultation among the members of the foreign diplomatic corps
        at one of their hotels, at which the Russian charge d'affaires,
        D'Oubril, who was not at the dinner&mdash;party, was invited to assist.
        They met accordingly, at the Hotel de Montmorency, Rue de Lille,
        occupied by Count von Cobenzl; but they came to no other unanimous
        determination than that of answering a written communication of
        Talleyrand by a written note, according as every one judged most proper
        and prudent, and corresponding with the supposed sentiments of his
        Sovereign.
      </p>
      <p>
        As all this official correspondence has been published in England, you
        may, upon reading the notes presented by Baron de Dreyer, and Mr.
        Livingstone,
      </p>
      <p>
        [In consequence of this conduct, Livingstone was recalled by his
        Government, and lives now in obscurity and disgrace in America. To
        console him, however, in his misfortune, Bonaparte, on his departure,
        presented him with his portrait, enamelled on the lid of a snuff-box,
        set round with diamonds, and valued at one thousand louis d'or.]
      </p>
      <p>
        the neutral Ambassadors of Denmark and America, form some tolerably just
        idea of Talleyrand's formula. Their impolitic servility was blamed even
        by the other members of the diplomatic corps.
      </p>
      <p>
        Livingstone you know, and perhaps have not to learn that, though a
        stanch republican in America, he was the most abject courtier in France;
        and though a violent defender of liberty and equality on the other side
        of the Atlantic, no man bowed lower to usurpation, or revered despotism
        more, in Europe. Without talents, and almost without education, he
        thinks intrigues negotiations, and conceives that policy and duplicity
        are synonymous. He was called here "the courier of Talleyrand," on
        account of his voyages to England, and his journeys to Holland, where
        this Minister sent him to intrigue, with less ceremony than one of his
        secret agents. He acknowledged that no Government was more liberal, and
        no nation more free, than the British; but he hated the one as much as
        he abused the other; and he did not conceal sentiments that made him
        always so welcome to Bonaparte and Talleyrand. Never over nice in the
        choice of his companions, Arthur O'Connor, and other Irish traitors and
        vagabonds, used his house as their own; so much so that, when he invited
        other Ambassadors to dine with him, they, before they accepted the
        invitation, made a condition that no outlaws or adventurers should be of
        the party.
      </p>
      <p>
        In your youth, Baron de Dreyer was an Ambassador from the Court of
        Copenhagen to that of St. James. He has since been in the same capacity
        to the Courts of St. Petersburg and Madrid. Born a Norwegian, of a poor
        and obscure family, he owes his advancement to his own talents; but
        these, though they have procured him rank, have left him without a
        fortune. When he came here, in June, 1797, from Spain, he brought a
        mistress with him, and several children he had had by her during his
        residence in that country. He also kept an English mistress some thirty
        years ago in London, by whom he had a son, M. Guillaumeau, who is now
        his secretary. Thus encumbered, and thus situated at the age of seventy,
        it is no surprise if he strives to die at his post, and that fear to
        offend Bonaparte and Talleyrand sometimes gets the better of his
        prudence.
      </p>
      <p>
        In Denmark, as well as in all other Continental States, the pensions of
        diplomatic invalids are more scanty than those of military ones, and
        totally insufficient for a man who, during half a century nearly, has
        accustomed himself to a certain style of life, and to expenses requisite
        to represent his Prince with dignity. No wonder, therefore, that Baron
        de Dreyer prefers Paris to Copenhagen, and that the cunning Talleyrand
        takes advantage of this preference.
      </p>
      <p>
        It was reported here among our foreign diplomatists, that the English
        Minister in Denmark complained of the contents of Baron de Dreyer's note
        concerning Mr. Drake's correspondence; and that the Danish Prime
        Minister, Count von Bernstorff, wrote to him in consequence, by the
        order of the Prince Royal, a severe reprimand. This act of political
        justice is, however, denied by him, under pretence that the Cabinet of
        Copenhagen has laid it down as an invariable rule, never to reprimand,
        but always to displace those of its agents with whom it has reason to be
        discontented. Should this be the case, no Sovereign in Europe is better
        served by his representatives than his Danish Majesty, because no one
        seldomer changes or removes them.
      </p>
      <p>
        While I am speaking of diplomatists, I cannot forbear giving you a short
        sketch of one whose weight in the scale of politics entitles him to
        particular notice: I mean the Count von Haugwitz, insidiously
        complimented by Talleyrand with the title of "The Prince of Neutrality,
        the Sully of Prussia." Christian Henry Curce, Count von Haugwitz, who,
        until lately, has been the chief director of the political conscience of
        His Prussian Majesty, as his Minister of the Foreign Department, was
        born in Silesia, and is the son of a nobleman who was a General in the
        Austrian service when Frederick the Great made the conquest of that
        country. At the death of this King in 1786, Count von Haugwitz occupied
        an inferior place in the foreign office, where Count von Herzburg
        observed his zeal and assiduity, and recommended him to the notice of
        the late King Frederick William II. By the interest of the celebrated
        Bishopswerder, he procured, in 1792, the appointment of an Ambassador to
        the Court of Vienna, where he succeeded Baron von Jacobi, the present
        Prussian Minister in your country. In the autumn of the same year he
        went to Ratisbon, to cooperate with the Austrian Ambassador, and to
        persuade the Princes of the German Empire to join the coalition against
        France. In the month of March, 1794, he was sent to the Hague, where he
        negotiated with Lord Malmesbury concerning the affairs of France;
        shortly afterwards his nomination as a Minister of State took place, and
        from that time his political sentiments seem to have undergone a
        revolution, for which it is not easy to account; but, whatever were the
        causes of his change of opinions, the Treaty of Basle, concluded between
        France and Prussia in 1795, was certainly negotiated under his auspices;
        and in August, 1796, he signed, with the French Minister at Berlin,
        Citizen Caillard, the first and famous Treaty of Neutrality; and a
        Prussian cordon was accordingly drawn, to cause the neutrality of the
        North to be observed and protected. Had the Count von Haugwitz of 1795
        been the same as the Count von Haugwitz of 1792, it is probable we
        should no longer have heard of either a French Republic or a French
        Empire; but a legitimate Monarch of the kingdom of France would have
        ensured that security to all other legitimate Sovereigns, the want of
        which they themselves, or their children, will feel and mourn in vain,
        as long as unlimited usurpations tyrannize over my wretched country. It
        is to be hoped, however, that the good sense of the Count will point out
        to him, before it is too late, the impolicy of his present connections;
        and that he will use his interest with his Prince to persuade him to
        adopt a line of conduct suited to the grandeur and dignity of the
        Prussian Monarchy, and favourable to the independence of insulted
        Europe.
      </p>
      <p>
        When his present Prussian Majesty succeeded to the throne, Count von
        Haugwitz continued in office, with increased influence; but he some time
        since resigned, in consequence, it is said, of a difference of opinion
        with the other Prussian Ministers on the subject of a family alliance,
        which Bonaparte had the modesty to propose, between the illustrious
        house of Napoleon the First and the royal line of Brandenburgh.
      </p>
      <p>
        On this occasion his King, to evince his satisfaction with his past
        conduct, bestowed on him not only a large pension, but an estate in
        Silesia, where he before possessed some property. Bonaparte also, to
        express his regret at his retreat, proclaimed His Excellency a grand
        officer of the Legion of Honour.
      </p>
      <p>
        Talleyrand insolently calls the several cordons, or ribands, distributed
        by Bonaparte among the Prussian Ministers and Generals, "his
        leading-strings." It is to be hoped that Frederick William III. is
        sufficiently upon his guard to prevent these strings from strangling the
        Prussian Monarchy and the Brandenburgh dynasty.
      </p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
      <h2>
        LETTER XVI.
      </h2>
      <br />
      <p>
        PARIS, August, 1805.
      </p>
      <p>
        MY LORD:&mdash;Upwards of two months after my visit to General Murat, I
        was surprised at the appearance of M. Darjuson, the chamberlain of
        Princesse Louis Bonaparte. He told me that he came on the part of Prince
        Louis, who honoured me with an invitation to dine with him the day
        after. Upon my inquiry whether he knew if the party would be very
        numerous, he answered, between forty and fifty; and that it was a kind
        of farewell dinner, because the Prince intended shortly to set out for
        Compiegne to assume the command of the camp, formed in its vicinity, of
        the dragoons and other light troops of the army of England.
      </p>
      <p>
        The principal personages present at this dinner were Joseph Bonaparte
        and his wife, General and Madame Murat, the Ministers Berthier,
        Talleyrand, Fouche, Chaptal, and Portalis. The conversation was entirely
        military, and chiefly related to the probable conquest or subjugation of
        Great Britain, and the probable consequence to mankind in general of
        such a great event. No difference of opinion was heard with regard to
        its immediate benefit to France and gradual utility to all other
        nations; but Berthier seemed to apprehend that, before France could have
        time to organize this valuable conquest, she would be obliged to support
        another war, with a formidable league, perhaps, of all other European
        nations. The issue, however, he said, would be glorious to France, who,
        by her achievements, would force all people to acknowledge her their
        mother country; and then, first, Europe would constitute but one family.
      </p>
      <p>
        Chaptal was as certain as everybody else of the destruction of the
        tyrants of the seas; but he thought France would never be secure against
        the treachery of modern Carthage until she followed the example of Rome
        towards ancient Carthage; and therefore, after reducing London to ashes,
        it would be proper to disperse round the universe all the inhabitants of
        the British Islands, and to re-people them with nations less
        evil-disposed and less corrupted. Portalis observed that it was more
        easy to conceive than to execute such a vast plan. It would not be an
        undertaking of five, of ten, nor of twenty years, to transplant these
        nations; that misfortunes and proscription would not only inspire
        courage and obstinacy, but desperation.
      </p>
      <p>
        "No people," continued he, "are more attached to their customs and
        countries than islanders in general; and though British subjects are the
        greatest travellers, and found everywhere, they all suppose their
        country the best, and always wish to return to it and finish their days
        amidst their native fogs and smoke. Neither the Saxons, nor the Danes,
        nor Norman conquerors transplanted them, but, after reducing them,
        incorporated themselves by marriages among the vanquished, and in some
        few generations were but one people. It is asserted by all persons who
        have lately visited Great Britain, that, though the civilization of the
        lower classes is much behind that of the same description in France, the
        higher orders, the rich and the fashionable, are, with regard to their,
        manners, more French than English, and might easily be cajoled into
        obedience and subjection to the sovereignty of a nation whose customs,
        by free choice, they have adopted in preference to their own, and whose
        language forms a necessary part of their education, and, indeed, of the
        education of almost every class in the British Empire. The universality
        of the French language is the best ally France has in assisting her to
        conquer a universal dominion. He wished, therefore, that when we were in
        a situation to dictate in England, instead of proscribing Englishmen we
        should proscribe the English language, and advance and reward, in
        preference, all those parents whose children were sent to be educated in
        France, and all those families who voluntarily adopted in their houses
        and societies exclusively the French language."
      </p>
      <p>
        Murat was afraid that if France did not transplant the most stubborn
        Britons, and settle among them French colonies, when once their military
        and commercial navy was annihilated, they would turn pirates, and,
        perhaps, within half a century, lay all other nations as much under
        contribution by their piracies as they now do by their industry; and
        that, like the pirates on the coast of Barbary, the instant they had no
        connections with other civilized nations, cut the throats of each other,
        and agree in nothing but in plundering, and considering all other people
        in the, world their natural enemies and purveyors.
      </p>
      <p>
        To this opinion Talleyrand, by nodding assent, seemed to adhere; but he
        added: "Earthquakes are generally dreaded as destructive; but such a
        convulsion of nature as would swallow up the British Islands, with all
        their inhabitants, would be the greatest blessing Providence ever
        conferred on mankind."
      </p>
      <p>
        Louis Bonaparte then addressed himself to me and to the Marquis de F&mdash;&mdash;.
        "Gentlemen," said he, "you have been in England; what is your opinion of
        the character of these islanders, and of the probability of their
        subjugation?"
      </p>
      <p>
        I answered that, during the fifteen months I resided in London I was too
        much occupied to prevent myself from starving, to meditate about
        anything else; that my stomach was my sole meditation as well as
        anxiety. That, however, I believed that in England, as everywhere else,
        a mixture of good and bad qualities was to be found; but which
        prevailed, it would be presumption in me, from my position, to decide.
        But I did not doubt that if we cordially hated the English they returned
        us the compliment with interest, and, therefore, the contest with them
        would be a severe one. The Marquis de F&mdash;&mdash; imprudently
        attempted to convince the company that it was difficult, if not
        impossible, for our army to land in England, much more to conquer it,
        until we were masters of the seas by a superior navy. He would, perhaps,
        have been still more indiscreet, had not Madame Louis interrupted him,
        and given another turn to the conversation by inquiring about the fair
        sex in England, and if it was true that handsome women were more
        numerous there than in France? Here again the Marquis, instead of paying
        her a compliment, as she perhaps expected, roundly assured her that for
        one beauty in France, hundreds might be counted in England, where
        gentlemen were, therefore, not so easily satisfied; and that a woman
        regarded by them only as an ordinary person would pass for a first-rate
        beauty among French beaux, on account of the great scarcity of them
        here.
      </p>
      <p>
        "You must excuse the Marquis, ladies," said I, in my turn; "he has not
        been in love in England. There, perhaps, he found the belles less cruel
        than in France, where, for the cruelty of one lady, or for her
        insensibility of his merit, he revenges himself on the whole sex:
      </p>
      <p>
        "I apply to M. de Talleyrand," answered the Marquis; "he has been longer
        in England than myself."
      </p>
      <p>
        "I am not a competent judge," retorted the Minister; "Madame de
        Talleyrand is here, and has not the honour of being a Frenchwoman; but I
        dare say the Marquis will agree with me that in no society in the
        British Islands, among a dozen of ladies, has he counted more beauties,
        or admired greater accomplishments or more perfection."
      </p>
      <p>
        To this the Marquis bowed assent, saying that in all his general remarks
        the party present, of course, was not included. All the ladies, who were
        well acquainted with his absent and blundering conversation, very
        good-humouredly laughed, and Madame Murat assured him that if he would
        give her the address of the belle in France who had transformed a
        gallant Frenchman into a chevalier of British beauty, she would attempt
        to make up their difference. "She is no more, Madame," said the Marquis;
        "she was, unfortunately, guillotined two days before&mdash;&mdash;" the
        father of Madame Louis, he was going to say, when Talleyrand interrupted
        him with a significant look, and said, "Before the fall of Robespierre,
        you mean."
      </p>
      <p>
        From these and other traits of the Marquis's character, you may see that
        he erred more from absence of mind than any premeditation to give
        offence. He received, however, the next morning, a lettre de cachet from
        Fouche, which exiled him to Blois, and forbade him to return to Paris
        without further orders from the Minister of Police. I know, from high
        authority, that to the interference of Princesse Louis alone is he
        indebted for not being shut up in the Temple, and, perhaps, transported
        to our colonies, for having depreciated the power and means of France to
        invade England. I am perfectly convinced that none of those who spoke on
        the subject of the invasion expressed anything but what they really
        thought; and that, of the whole party, none, except Talleyrand, the
        Marquis, and myself, entertained the least doubt of the success of the
        expedition; so firmly did they rely on the former fortune of Bonaparte,
        his boastings, and his assurance.
      </p>
      <p>
        After dinner I had an opportunity of conversing for ten minutes with
        Madame Louis Bonaparte, whom I found extremely amiable, but I fear that
        she is not happy. Her husband, though the most stupid, is, however, the
        best tempered of the Bonapartes, and seemed very attentive and attached
        to her. She was far advanced in her pregnancy, and looked,
        notwithstanding, uncommonly well. I have heard that Louis is inclined to
        inebriation, and when in that situation is very brutal to his wife, and
        very indelicate with other women before her eyes. He intrigues with her
        own servants and the number of his illegitimate children is said to be
        as many as his years. She asked General Murat to present me and
        recommend me to Fouche, which he did with great politeness; and the
        Minister assured me that he should be glad to see me at his hotel, which
        I much doubt. The last words Madame Louis said to me, in showing me a
        princely crown, richly set with diamonds, and given her by her
        brother-in-law, Napoleon, were, "Alas! grandeur is not always happiness,
        nor the most elevated the most fortunate lot."
      </p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
      <h2>
        LETTER XVII.
      </h2>
      <br />
      <p>
        PARIS, August, 1805.
      </p>
      <p>
        My LORD:&mdash;The arrival of the Pope in this country was certainly a
        grand epoch, not only in the history of the Revolution, but in the
        annals of Europe. The debates in the Sacred College for and against this
        journey, and for and against his coronation of Bonaparte, are said to
        have been long as well as violent, and arranged according to the desires
        of Cardinal Fesch only by the means of four millions of livres
        distributed apropos among its pious members. Of this money the Cardinals
        Mattei, Pamphili, Dugnani, Maury, Pignatelli, Roverella, Somaglia,
        Pacca, Brancadoro, Litta, Gabrielli, Spina, Despuig, and Galefli, are
        said to have shared the greatest part; and from the most violent
        anti-Bonapartists, they instantly became the strenuous adherents of
        Napoleon the First, who, of course, cannot be ignorant of their real
        worth.
      </p>
      <p>
        The person entrusted by Bonaparte and Talleyrand to carry on at Rome the
        intrigue which sent Pius VII. to cross the Alps was Cardinal Fesch,
        brother of Madame Letitia Bonaparte by the side of her mother, who, in a
        second marriage, chose a pedlar of the name of Nicolo Fesch, for her
        husband.
      </p>
      <p>
        Joseph, Cardinal Fesch, was born at Ajaccio, in Corsica, on the 8th of
        March, 1763, and was in his infancy received as a singing boy (enfant de
        choeur) in a convent of his native place. In 1782, whilst he was on a
        visit to some of his relations in the Island of Sardinia, being on a
        fishing party some distance from shore, he was, with his companions,
        captured by an Algerine felucca, and carried a captive to Algiers. Here
        he turned Mussulman, and, until 1790, was a zealous believer in, and
        professor of, the Alcoran. In that year he found an opportunity to
        escape from Algiers, and to return to Ajaccio, when he abjured his
        renegacy, exchanged the Alcoran for the Bible, and, in 1791, was made a
        constitutional curate, that is to say, a revolutionary Christian priest.
        In 1793, when even those were proscribed, he renounced the sacristy of
        his Church for the bar of a tavern, where, during 1794 and 1795, he
        gained a small capital by the number and liberality of his English
        customers. After the victories of his nephew Napoleon in Italy during
        the following year, he was advised to reassume the clerical habit, and
        after Napoleon's proclamation of a First Consul, he was made Archbishop
        of Lyons. In 1802, Pius VII. decorated him with the Roman purple, and he
        is now a pillar of the Roman faith, in a fair way of seizing the Roman
        tiara. If letters from Rome can be depended upon, Cardinal Fesch, in the
        name of the Emperor of the French, informed His Holiness the Pope that
        he must either retire to a convent or travel to France, either abdicate
        his own sovereignty, or inaugurate Napoleon the First a Sovereign of
        France. Without the decision of the Sacred College, effected in the
        manner already stated, the majority of the faithful believe that this
        pontiff would have preferred obscurity to disgrace.
      </p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="p146" id="p146"></a>
      <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
        <img alt="p146.jpg (48K)" src="images/p146.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
      </div>
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
      <p>
        While Joseph Fesch was a master of a tavern he married the daughter of a
        tinker, by whom he had three children. This marriage, according to the
        republican regulations, had only been celebrated by the municipality at
        Ajaccio; Fesch, therefore, upon again entering the bosom of the Church,
        left his municipal wife and children to shift for themselves,
        considering himself still, according to the canonical laws, a bachelor.
        But Madame Fesch, hearing, in 1801, of her ci-devant husband's promotion
        to the Archbishopric of Lyons, wrote to him for some succours, being
        with her children reduced to great misery. Madame Letitia Bonaparte
        answered her letter, enclosing a draft for six hundred livres&mdash;informing
        her that the same sum would be paid her every six months, as long as she
        continued with her children to reside at Corsica, but that it would
        cease the instant she left that island. Either thinking herself not
        sufficiently paid for her discretion, or enticed by some enemy of the
        Bonaparte family, she arrived secretly at Lyons in October last year,
        where she remained unknown until the arrival of the Pope. On the first
        day His Holiness gave there his public benediction, she found means to
        pierce the crowd, and to approach his person, when Cardinal Fesch was by
        his side. Profiting by a moment's silence, she called out loudly,
        throwing herself at his feet: "Holy Father! I am the lawful wife of
        Cardinal Fesch, and these are our children; he cannot, he dares not,
        deny this truth. Had he behaved liberally to me, I should not have
        disturbed him in his present grandeur; I supplicate you, Holy Father,
        not to restore me my husband, but to force him to provide for his wife
        and children, according to his present circumstances."&mdash;"Matta&mdash;ella
        e matta, santissimo padre! She is mad&mdash;she is mad, Holy Father,"
        said the Cardinal; and the good pontiff ordered her to be taken care of,
        to prevent her from doing herself or the children any mischief. She was,
        indeed, taken care of, because nobody ever since heard what has become
        either of her or her children; and as they have not returned to Corsica,
        probably some snug retreat has been allotted them in France.
      </p>
      <p>
        The purple was never disgraced by a greater libertine than Cardinal
        Fesch: his amours are numerous, and have often involved him in
        disagreeable scrapes. He had, in 1803, an unpleasant adventure at Lyons,
        which has since made his stay in that city but short. Having thrown his
        handkerchief at the wife of a manufacturer of the name of Girot, she
        accepted it, and gave him an appointment at her house, at a time in the
        evening when her husband usually went to the play. His Eminence arrived
        in disguise, and was received with open arms. But he was hardly seated
        by her side before the door of a closet was burst open, and his
        shoulders smarted from the lashes inflicted by an offended husband. In
        vain did he mention his name and rank; they rather increased than
        decreased the fury of Girot, who pretended it was utterly impossible for
        a Cardinal and Archbishop to be thus overtaken with the wife of one of
        his flock; at last Madame Girot proposed a pecuniary accommodation,
        which, after some opposition, was acceded to; and His Eminence signed a
        bond for one hundred thousand livres&mdash;upon condition that nothing
        should transpire of this intrigue&mdash;a high price enough for a sound
        drubbing. On the day when the bond was due, Girot and his wife were both
        arrested by the police commissary, Dubois (a brother of the prefect of
        police at Paris), accused of being connected with the coiners, a capital
        crime at present in this country. In a search made in their house, bad
        money to the amount of three thousand livres was discovered; which they
        had received the day before from a man who called himself a merchant
        from Paris, but who was a police spy sent to entrap them. After giving
        up the bond of the Cardinal, the Emperor graciously remitted the capital
        punishment, upon condition that they should be transported for life to
        Cayenne.
      </p>
      <p>
        This is the prelate on whom Bonaparte intends to confer the Roman tiara,
        and to constitute a successor of St. Peter. It would not be the least
        remarkable event in the beginning of the remarkable nineteenth century
        were we to witness the papal throne occupied by a man who from a singing
        boy became a renegade slave, from a Mussulman a constitutional curate,
        from a tavern-keeper an archbishop, from the son of a pedlar the uncle
        of an Emperor, and from the husband of the daughter of a tinker, a
        member of the Sacred College.
      </p>
      <p>
        His sister, Madame Letitia Bonaparte, presented him, in 1802, with an
        elegant library, for which she had paid six hundred thousand livres&mdash;and
        his nephew, Napoleon, allows him a yearly pension double that amount.
        Besides his dignity as a prelate, His Eminence is Ambassador from France
        at Rome, a Knight of the Spanish Order of the Golden Fleece, a grand
        officer of the Legion of Honour, and a grand almoner of the Emperor of
        the French.
      </p>
      <p>
        The Archbishop of Paris is now in his ninety-sixth year, and at his
        death Cardinal Fesch is to be transferred to the see of this capital, in
        expectation of the triple crown and the keys of St. Peter.
      </p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
      <h2>
        LETTER XVIII.
      </h2>
      <br />
      <p>
        Paris, August, 1805.
      </p>
      <p>
        MY LORD:&mdash;The amiable and accomplished Amelia Frederique, Princess
        Dowager of the late Electoral Prince, Charles Louis of Baden, born a
        Princess of Hesse-Darmstadt, has procured the Electoral House of Baden
        the singular honour of giving consorts to three reigning and Sovereign
        Princes,&mdash;to an Emperor of Russia, to a King of Sweden, and to the
        Elector of Bavaria. Such a distinction, and such alliances, called the
        attention of those at the head of our Revolution; who, after attempting
        in vain to blow up hereditary thrones by the aid of sans-culotte
        incendiaries, seated sans-culottes upon thrones, that they might degrade
        what was not yet ripe for destruction.
      </p>
      <p>
        Charles Frederick, the reigning Elector of Baden, is now near fourscore
        years of age. At this period of life if any passions remain, avarice is
        more common than ambition; because treasures may be hoarded without
        bustle, while activity is absolutely necessary to push forward to the
        goal of distinction. Having bestowed a new King on Tuscany, Bonaparte
        and Talleyrand also resolved to confer new Electors on Germany. A more
        advantageous fraternity could not be established between the innovators
        here and their opposers in other countries, than by incorporating the
        grandfather-in-law of so many Sovereigns with their own revolutionary
        brotherhood; to humble him by a new rank, and to disgrace him by
        indemnities obtained from their hands. An intrigue between our Minister,
        Talleyrand, and the Baden Minister, Edelsheim, transformed the oldest
        Margrave of Germany into its youngest Elector, and extended his
        dominions by the spoils obtained at the expense of the rightful owners.
        The invasion of the Baden territory in time of peace, and the seizure of
        the Duc d'Enghien, though under the protection of the laws of nations
        and hospitality, must have soon convinced Baron Edelsheim what return
        his friend Talleyrand expected, and that Bonaparte thought he had a
        natural right to insult by his attacks those he had dishonoured by his
        connections.
      </p>
      <p>
        The Minister, Baron Edelsheim, is half an illuminato, half a
        philosopher, half a politician, and half a revolutionist. He was, long
        before he was admitted into the council chamber of his Prince, half an
        atheist, half an intriguer, and half a spy, in the pay of Frederick the
        Great of Prussia. His entry upon the stage at Berlin, and particularly
        the first parts he was destined to act, was curious and extraordinary;
        whether he acquitted himself better in this capacity than he has since
        in his political one is not known. He was afterwards sent to this
        capital to execute a commission, of which he acquitted himself very ill;
        exposing himself rashly, without profit or service to his employer.
        Frederick II., dreading the tediousness of a proposed congress at
        Augsburg, wished to send a private emissary to sound the King of France.
        For this purpose he chose Edelsheim as a person least liable to
        suspicion. The project of Frederick was to idemnify the King of Poland
        for his first losses by robbing the ecclesiastical Princes of Germany.
        This, Louis XV. totally rejected; and Edelsheim returned with his answer
        to the Prussian Monarch, then at Freyburg. From thence he afterwards
        departed for London, made his communications, and was once again sent
        back to Paris, on pretence that he had left some of his travelling
        trunks there; and the Bailli de Foulay, the Ambassador of the Knights of
        Malta, being persuaded that the Cabinet of Versailles was effectually
        desirous of peace, was, as he had been before, the mediator. The Bailli
        was deceived. The Duc de Choiseul, the then Prime Minister, indecently
        enough threw Edelsheim into the Bastille, in order to search or seize
        his papers, which, however, were secured elsewhere. Edelsheim was
        released on the morrow, but obliged to depart the kingdom by the way of
        Turin, as related by Frederick II. in his "History of the Seven Years'
        War." On his return he was disgraced, and continued so until 1778; when
        he again was used as emissary to various Courts of Germany. In 1786 the
        Elector of Baden sent him to Berlin, on the ascension of Frederick
        William II., as a complimentary envoy. This Monarch, when he saw him,
        could not forbear laughing at the high wisdom of the Court that selected
        such a personage for such an embassy, and of his own sagacity in
        accepting it. He quitted the capital of Prussia as he came there, with
        an opinion of himself that the royal smiles of contempt had neither
        altered nor diminished.
      </p>
      <p>
        You see, by this account, that Edelsheim has long been a partisan of the
        pillage of Germany called indemnities; and long habituated to affronts,
        as well as to plots. To all his other half qualities, half modesty can
        hardly be added, when he calls himself, or suffers himself to be called,
        "the Talleyrand of Carlsrhue." He accompanied his Prince last year to
        Mentz; where this old Sovereign was not treated by Bonaparte in the most
        decorous or decent manner, being obliged to wait for hours in his
        antechamber, and afterwards stand during the levees, or in the
        drawing-rooms of Napoleon or of his wife, without the offer of a chair,
        or an invitation to sit down. It was here where, by a secret treaty,
        Bonaparte became the Sovereign of Baden, if sovereignty consists in the
        disposal of the financial and military resources of a State; and they
        were agreed to be assigned over to him whenever he should deem it proper
        or necessary to invade the German Empire, in return for his protection
        against the Emperor of Germany, who can have no more interest than
        intent to attack a country so distant from his hereditary dominions, and
        whose Sovereign is, besides, the grandfather of the consort of his
        nearest and best ally.
      </p>
      <p>
        Talleyrand often amused himself at Mentz with playing on the vanity and
        affected consequence of Edelsheim, who was delighted if at any time our
        Minister took him aside, or whispered to him as in confidence. One
        morning, at the assembly of the Elector Arch-Chancellor, where Edelsheim
        was creeping and cringing about him as usual, he laid hold of his arm
        and walked with him to the upper part of the room. In a quarter of an
        hour they both joined the company, Edelsheim unusually puffed up with
        vanity.
      </p>
      <p>
        "I will lay and bet, gentlemen," said Talleyrand, "that you cannot, with
        all your united wits, guess the grand subject of my conversation with
        the good Baron Edelsheim." Without waiting for an answer, he continued:
        "As the Baron is a much older and more experienced traveller than
        myself, I asked him which, of all the countries he had visited, could
        boast the prettiest and kindest women. His reply was really very
        instructive, and it would be a great pity if justice were not done to
        his merit by its publicity."
      </p>
      <p>
        Here the Baron, red as a turkey-cock and trembling with anger,
        interrupted. "His Excellency," said he, "is to-night in a humour to
        joke; what we spoke of had nothing to do with women."
      </p>
      <p>
        "Nor with men, either," retorted Talleyrand, going away.
      </p>
      <p>
        This anecdote, Baron Dahlberg, the Minister of the Elector of Baden to
        our Court, had the ingenuity to relate at Madame Chapui's as an evidence
        of Edelsheim's intimacy with Talleyrand; only he left out the latter
        part, and forgot to mention the bad grace with which this impertinence
        of Talleyrand was received; but this defect of memory Count von Beust,
        the envoy of the Elector Arch-Chancellor, kindly supplied.
      </p>
      <p>
        Baron Edelsheim is a great amateur of knighthoods. On days of great
        festivities his face is, as it were, illuminated with the lustre of his
        stars; and the crosses on his coat conceal almost its original colour.
        Every petty Prince of Germany has dubbed him a chevalier; but Emperors
        and Kings have not been so unanimous in distinguishing his desert, or in
        satisfying his desires.
      </p>
      <p>
        At Mentz no Prince or Minister fawned more assiduously upon Bonaparte
        than this hero of chivalry. It could not escape notice, but need not
        have alarmed our great man, as was the case. The prefect of the palace
        was ordered to give authentic information concerning Edelsheim's moral
        and political character. He applied to the police commissary, who,
        within twenty hours, signed a declaration affirming that Edelsheim was
        the most inoffensive and least dangerous of all imbecile creatures that
        ever entered the Cabinet of a Prince; that he had never drawn a sword,
        worn a dagger, or fired a pistol in his life; that the inquiries about
        his real character were sneered at in every part of the Electorate, as
        nowhere they allowed him common sense, much less a character; all blamed
        his presumption, but none defended his capacity.
      </p>
      <p>
        After the perusal of this report, Bonaparte asked Talleyrand: "What can
        Edelsheim mean by his troublesome assiduities? Does he want any
        indemnities, or does he wish me to make him a German Prince? Can he have
        the impudence to hope that I shall appoint him a tribune, a legislator,
        or a Senator in France, or that I shall give him a place in my Council
        of State?"
      </p>
      <p>
        "No such thing," answered the Minister; "did not Your Majesty condescend
        to notice at the last fete that this eclipsed moon was encompassed in a
        firmanent of stars. You would, Sire, make him the happiest of mortals
        were you to nominate him a member of your Legion of Honour."
      </p>
      <p>
        "Does he want nothing else?" said Napoleon, as if relieved at once of an
        oppressive burden. "Write to my chancellor of the Legion of Honour,
        Lacepede, to send him a patent, and do you inform him of this favour."
      </p>
      <p>
        It is reported at Carlsruhe, the capital of Baden, that Baron Edelsheim
        has composed his own epitaph, in which he claims immortality, because
        under his Ministry the Margravate of Baden was elevated into an
        Electorate!!!
      </p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
      <h2>
        LETTER XIX.
      </h2>
      <br />
      <p>
        PARIS, August, 1805.
      </p>
      <p>
        MY LORD:&mdash;The sensation that the arrival of the Pope in this
        country caused among the lower classes of people cannot be expressed,
        and if expressed, would not be believed. I am sorry, however, to say
        that, instead of improving their morals or increasing their faith, this
        journey has shaken both morality and religion to their foundation.
      </p>
      <p>
        According to our religious notions, as you must know, the Roman pontiff
        is the vicar of Christ, and infallible; he can never err. The atheists
        of the National Convention and the Theophilanthropists of the Directory
        not only denied his demi-divinity, but transformed him into a satyr; and
        in pretending to tear the veil of superstition, annihilated all belief
        in a God. The ignorant part of our nation, which, as everywhere else,
        constitutes the majority, witnessing the impunity and prosperity of
        crime, and bestowing on the Almighty the passions of mortals, first
        doubted of His omnipotence in not crushing guilt, and afterwards of His
        existence in not exterminating the blasphemous from among the living.
        Feeling, however, the want of consolation in their misfortunes here, and
        hope of a reward hereafter for unmerited sufferings upon earth, they all
        hailed as a blessing the restoration of Christianity; and by this
        political act Bonaparte gained more adherents than by all his victories
        he had procured admirers.
      </p>
      <p>
        Bonaparte's character, his good and his bad qualities, his talents and
        his crimes, are too recent and too notorious to require description.
        Should he continue successful, and be attended by fortune to his grave,
        future ages may perhaps hail him a hero and a great man; but by his
        contemporaries it will always be doubtful whether mankind has not
        suffered more from his ambition and cruelties than benefited by his
        services. Had he satisfied himself by continuing the Chief Magistrate of
        a Commonwealth; or, if he judged that a monarchical Government alone was
        suitable to the spirit of this country, had he recalled our legitimate
        King, he would have occupied a principal, if not the first, place in the
        history of France,&mdash;a place much more exalted than he can ever
        expect to fill as an Emperor of the French. Let his prosperity be ever
        so uninterrupted, he cannot be mentioned but as an usurper, an
        appellation never exciting esteem, frequently inspiring contempt, and
        always odious.
      </p>
      <p>
        The crime of usurpation is the greatest and most enormous a subject can
        perpetrate; but what epithet can there be given to him who, to preserve
        an authority unlawfully acquired, asssociates in his guilt a Supreme
        Pontiff, whom the multitude is accustomed to reverence as the
        representative of their God, but who, by this act of scandal and
        sacrilege, descends to a level with the most culpable of men? I have
        heard, not only in this city but in villages, where sincerity is more
        frequent than corruption, and where hypocrites are as little known as
        infidels, these remarks made by the people:
      </p>
      <p>
        "Can the real vicar of Christ, by his inauguration, commit the double
        injustice of depriving the legitimate owner of his rights, and of
        bestowing as a sacred donation what belongs to another; and what he has
        no power, no authority, to dispose of? Can Pius VII. confer on Napoleon
        the First what belongs to Louis XVIII.? Would Jesus Christ, if upon
        earth, have acted thus? Would his immediate successors, the Apostles,
        not have preferred the suffering of martyrdom to the commission of any
        injury? If the present Roman pontiff acts differently from what his
        Master and predecessors would have done, can he be the vicar of our
        Saviour?"
      </p>
      <p>
        These and many similar reflections the common people have made, and make
        yet. The step from doubt to disbelief is but short, and those brought up
        in the Roman Catholic religion, who hesitate about believing Pius VII.
        to be the vicar of Christ, will soon remember the precepts of atheists
        and freethinkers, and believe that Christ is not the Son of God, and
        that God is only the invention of fear.
      </p>
      <p>
        The fact is, that by the Pope's performance of the coronation of an
        Emperor of the French, a religious as well as a political revolution was
        effected; and the usurper in power, whatever his creed may be, will
        hereafter, without much difficulty, force it on his slaves. You may,
        perhaps, object that Pius VII., in his official account to the Sacred
        College of his journey to France, speaks with enthusiasm of the
        Catholicism of the French people. But did not the Goddess of Reason, did
        not Robespierre as a high priest of a Supreme Being, speak as highly of
        their sectaries? Read the Moniteur of 1793 and 1794, and you will be
        convinced of the truth of this assertion. They, like the Pope, spoke of
        what they saw, and they, like him, did not see an individual who was not
        instructed how to perform his part, so as to give satisfaction to him
        whom he was to please, and to those who employed him. As you have
        attended to the history of our Revolution, you have found it in great
        part a cruel masquerade, where none but the unfortunate Louis XVI.
        appeared in his native and natural character and without a mask.
      </p>
      <p>
        The countenance of Pius VII. is placid and benign, and a kind of
        calmness and tranquillity pervades his address and manners, which are,
        however, far from being easy or elegant. The crowds that he must have
        been accustomed to see since his present elevation have not lessened a
        timidity the consequence of early seclusion. Nothing troubled him more
        than the numerous deputations of our Senate, Legislative Body,
        Tribunate, National Institute, Tribunals, etc., that teased him on every
        occasion. He never was suspected of any vices, but all his virtues are
        negative; and his best quality is, not to do good, but to prevent evil.
        His piety is sincere and unaffected, and it is not difficult to perceive
        that he has been more accustomed to address his God than to converse
        with men. He is nowhere so well in his place as before the altar; when
        imploring the blessings of Providence on his audience he speaks with
        confidence, as to a friend to whom his purity is known, and who is
        accustomed to listen favourably to his prayers. He is zealous but not
        fanatical, but equally superstitious as devout. His closet was crowded
        with relics, rosaries, etc., but there he passed generally eight hours
        of the twenty-four upon his knees in prayer and meditation. He often
        inflicted on himself mortifications, observed fast-days, and kept his
        vows with religious strictness.
      </p>
      <p>
        None of the promises made him by Cardinal Fesch, in the name of Napoleon
        the First, were performed, but all were put off until a general
        pacification. He was promised indemnity for Avignon, Bologna, Ferrara,
        and Ravenna; the ancient supremacy and pecuniary contributions of the
        Gallican Church, and the restoration of certain religious orders, both
        in France and Italy; but notwithstanding his own representations, and
        the activity of his Cardinal, Caprara, nothing was decided, though
        nothing was refused.
      </p>
      <p>
        By some means or other he was made perfectly acquainted with the crimes
        and vices of most of our public functionaries. Talleyrand was surprised
        when Cardinal Caprara explained to him the reason why the Pope refused
        to admit some persons to his presence, and why he wished others even not
        to be of the party when he accepted the invitations of Bonaparte and his
        wife to their private societies. Many are, however, of opinion that
        Talleyrand, from malignity or revenge, often heightened and confirmed
        His Holiness's aversion. This was at least once the case with regard to
        De Lalande. When Duroc inquired the cause of the Pope's displeasure
        against this astronomer, and hinted that it would be very agreeable to
        the Emperor were His Holiness to permit him the honour of prostrating
        himself, he was answered that men of talents and learning would always
        be welcome to approach his person; that he pitied the errors and prayed
        for the conversion of this savant, but was neither displeased nor
        offended with him. Talleyrand, when informed of the Pope's answer,
        accused Cardinal Caprara of having misinterpreted his master's
        communications; and this prelate, in his turn, censured our Minister's
        bad memory.
      </p>
      <p>
        You must have read that this De Lalande is regarded in France as the
        first astronomer of Europe, and hailed as the high priest of atheists;
        he is said to be the author of a shockingly blasphemous work called "The
        Bible of a People who acknowledge no God." He implored the ferocious
        Robespierre to honour the heavens by bestowing, on a new planet
        pretended to be discovered, his ci-devant Christian-name, Maximilian. In
        a letter of congratulation to Bonaparte, on the occasion of his present
        elevation, he also implored him to honour the God of the Christians by
        styling himself Jesus Christ the First, Emperor of the French, instead
        of Napoleon the First. But it was not his known impiety that made
        Talleyrand wish to exclude him from insulting with his presence a
        Christian pontiff. In the summer of 1799, when the Minister was in a
        momentary disgrace, De Lalande was at the head of those who imputed to
        his treachery, corruptions, and machinations all the evils France then
        suffered, both from external enemies and internal factions. If
        Talleyrand has justly been reproached for soon forgetting good offices
        and services done him, nobody ever denied that he has the best
        recollection in the world of offences or attacks, and that he is as
        revengeful as unforgiving.
      </p>
      <p>
        The only one of our great men whom Pius VII. remained obstinate and
        inflexible in not receiving, was the Senator and Minister of Police,
        Fouche. As His Holiness was not so particular with regard to other
        persons who, like Fouche, were both apostate priests and regicide
        subjects, the following is reported to be the cause of his aversion and
        obduracy:
      </p>
      <p>
        In November, 1793, the remains of a wretch of the name of Challiers&mdash;justly
        called, for his atrocities, the Murat of Lyons&mdash;were ordered by
        Fouche, then a representative of the people in that city, to be produced
        and publicly worshipped; and, under his particular auspices, a grand
        fete was performed to the memory of this republican martyr, who had been
        executed as an assassin. As part of this impious ceremony, an ass,
        covered with a Bishop's vestments, having on his head a mitre, and the
        volumes of Holy Writ tied to his tail, paraded the streets. The remains
        of Challiers were then burnt, and the ashes distributed among his
        adorers; while the books were also consumed, and the ashes scattered in
        the wind. Fouche proposed, after giving the ass some water to drink in a
        sacred chalice, to terminate the festivity of the day by murdering all
        the prisoners, amounting to seven thousand five hundred; but a sudden
        storm prevented the execution of this diabolical proposition, and
        dispersed the sacrilegious congregation.
      </p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
      <h2>
        LETTER XX.
      </h2>
      <br />
      <p>
        PARIS, August, 1805.
      </p>
      <p>
        MY LORD:&mdash;Though all the Bonapartes were great favourites with Pius
        VII., Madame Letitia, their mother, had a visible preference. In her
        apartments he seemed most pleased to meet the family parties, as they
        were called, because to them, except the Bonapartes, none but a few
        select favourites were invited,&mdash;a distinction as much wished for
        and envied as any other Court honour. After the Pope had fixed the
        evening he would appear among them, Duroc made out a list, under the
        dictates of Napoleon, of the chosen few destined to partake of the
        blessing of His Holiness's presence; this list was merely pro form, or
        as a compliment, laid before him; and after his tacit approbation, the
        individuals were informed, from the first chamberlain's office, that
        they would be honoured with admittance at such an hour, to such a
        company, and in such an apartment. The dress in which they were to
        appear was also prescribed. The parties usually met at six o'clock in
        the evening. On the Pope's entrance all persons, of both sexes, kneeled
        to receive his blessing. Tea, ice, liqueurs, and confectionery were then
        served. In the place of honour were three elevated elbow-chairs, and His
        Holiness was seated between the Emperor and Empress, and seldom spoke to
        any one to whom Napoleon did not previously address the word. The
        exploits of Bonaparte, particularly his campaigns in Egypt, were the
        chief subjects of conversation. Before eight o'clock the Pope always
        retired, distributing his blessing to the kneeling audience, as on his
        entry. When he was gone, card-tables were brought in, and play was
        permitted. Duroc received his master's orders how to distribute the
        places at the different tables, what games were to be played, and the
        amount of the sums to be staked. These were usually trifling and small
        compared to what is daily risked in our fashionable circles.
      </p>
      <p>
        Often, after the Pope had returned to his own rooms, Madame Letitia
        Bonaparte was admitted to assist at his private prayers. This lady,
        whose intrigues and gallantry are proverbial in Corsica, has, now that
        she is old (as is generally the case), turned devotee, and is surrounded
        by hypocrites and impostors, who, under the mask of sanctity, deceive
        and plunder her. Her antechambers are always full of priests; and her
        closet and bedroom are crowded with relics, which she collected during
        her journey to Italy last year. She might, if she chose, establish a
        Catholic museum, and furnish it with a more curious collection, in its
        sort, than any of our other museums contain. Of all the saints in our
        calendar, there is not one of any notoriety who has not supplied her
        with a finger, a toe, or some other part; or with a piece of a shirt, a
        handkerchief, a sandal, or a winding-sheet. Even a bit of a pair of
        breeches, said to have belonged to Saint Mathurin, whom many think was a
        sans-cullotte, obtains her adoration on certain occasions. As none of
        her children have yet arrived at the same height of faith as herself,
        she has, in her will, bequeathed to the Pope all her relics, together
        with eight hundred and seventy-nine Prayer-books, and four hundred and
        forty-six Bibles, either in manuscript or of different editions. Her
        favourite breviary, used only on great solemnities, was presented to her
        by Cardinal Maury at Rome, and belonged, as it is said, formerly to
        Saint Francois, whose commentary, written with his own hand, fills the
        margins; though many, who with me adore him as a saint, doubt whether he
        could either read or write.
      </p>
      <p>
        Not long ago she made, as she thought, an exceedingly valuable
        acquisition. A priest arrived direct from the Holy City of Jerusalem,
        well recommended by the inhabitants of the convents there, with whom he
        pretended to have passed his youth. After prostrating himself before the
        Pope, he waited on Madame Letitia Bonaparte. He told her that he had
        brought with him from Syria the famous relic, the shoulder-bone of Saint
        John the Baptist; but that, being in want of money for his voyage, he
        borrowed upon it from a Grecian Bishop in Montenegro two hundred louis
        d'or. This sum, and one hundred louis d'or besides, was immediately
        given him; and within three months, for a large sum in addition to those
        advanced, this precious relic was in Madame Letitia's possession.
      </p>
      <p>
        Notwithstanding this lady's care not to engage in her service any person
        of either sex who cannot produce, not a certificate of civism from the
        municipality as was formerly the case, but a certificate of
        Christianity, and a billet of confession signed by the curate of the
        parish, she had often been robbed, and the robbers had made particularly
        free with those relics which were set in gold or in diamonds. She
        accused her daughter, the Princesse Borghese, who often rallies the
        devotion of her mamma, and who is more an amateur of the living than of
        the dead, of having played her these tricks. The Princess informed
        Napoleon of her mother's losses, as well as of her own innocence, and
        asked him to apply to the police to find out the thief, who no doubt was
        one of the pious rogues who almost devoured their mother.
      </p>
      <p>
        On the next day Napoleon invited Madame Letitia to dinner, and Fouche
        had orders to make a strict search, during her absence, among the
        persons composing her household. Though he, on this occasion, did not
        find what he was looking for, he made a discovery which very much
        mortified Madame Letitia.
      </p>
      <p>
        Her first chambermaid, Rosina Gaglini, possessed both her esteem and
        confidence, and had been sent for purposely from Ajaccio, in Corsica, on
        account of her general renown for great piety, and a report that she was
        an exclusive favourite with the Virgin Mary, by whose interference she
        had even performed, it was said, some miracles; such as restoring stolen
        goods, runaway cattle, lost children, and procuring prizes in the
        lottery. Rosina was as relic-mad as her mistress; and as she had no
        means to procure them otherwise, she determined to partake of her lady's
        by cutting off a small part of each relic of Madame Letitia's principal
        saints. These precious 'morceaux' she placed in a box upon which she
        kneeled to say her prayers during the day; and which, for a
        mortification, served her as a pillow during the night. Upon each of the
        sacred bits she had affixed a label with the name of the saint it
        belonged to, which occasioned the disclosure. When Madame Letitia heard
        of this pious theft, she insisted on having the culprit immediately and
        severely punished; and though the Princesse Borghese, as the innocent
        cause of poor Rosina's misfortune, interfered, and Rosina herself
        promised never more to plunder saints, she was without mercy turned
        away, and even denied money sufficient to carry her back to Corsica. Had
        she made free with Madame Letitia's plate or wardrobe, there is no doubt
        but that she had been forgiven; but to presume to share with her those
        sacred supports on her way to Paradise was a more unpardonable act with
        a devotee than to steal from a lover the portrait of an adored mistress.
      </p>
      <p>
        In the meantime the police were upon the alert to discover the person
        whom they suspected of having stolen the relics for the diamonds, and
        not the diamonds for the relics. Among our fashionable and new saints,
        surprising as you may think it, Madame de Genlis holds a distinguished
        place; and she, too, is an amateur and collector of relics in proportion
        to her means; and with her were found those missed by Madame Letitia.
        Being asked to give up the name of him from whom she had purchased them,
        she mentioned Abbe Saladin, the pretended priest from Jerusalem. He, in
        his turn, was questioned, and by his answers gave rise to suspicion that
        he himself was the thief. The person of whom he pretended to have bought
        them was not to be found, nor was any one of such a description
        remembered to have been seen anywhere. On being carried to prison, he
        claimed the protection of Madame Letitia, and produced a letter in which
        this lady had promised him a bishopric either in France or in Italy.
        When she was informed of his situation, she applied to her son Napoleon
        for his liberty, urging that a priest who from Jerusalem had brought
        with him to Europe such an extraordinary relic as the shoulder of Saint
        John, could not be culpable.
      </p>
      <p>
        Abbe Saladin had been examined by Real, who concluded, from the accent
        and perfection with which he spoke the French language, that he was some
        French adventurer who had imposed on the credulity and superstition of
        Madame Letitia; and, therefore, threatened him with the rack if he did
        not confess the truth. He continued, however, in his story, and was
        going to be released upon an order from the Emperor, when a gendarme
        recognized him as a person who, eight years before, had, under the name
        of Lanoue, been condemned for theft and forgery to the galleys, whence
        he had made his escape. Finding himself discovered, he avowed
        everything. He said he had served in Egypt, in the guides of Bonaparte,
        but deserted to the Turks and turned Mussulman, but afterwards returned
        to the bosom of the Church at Jerusalem. There he persuaded the friars
        that he had been a priest, and obtained the certificates which
        introduced him to the Pope and to the Emperor's mother; from whom he had
        received twelve thousand livres for part of the jaw bone of a whale,
        which he had sold her for the shoulder-bone of a saint. As the police
        believe the certificates he has produced to be also forged, he is
        detained in prison until an answer arrives from our Consul in Syria.
      </p>
      <p>
        Madame Letitia did not resign without tears the relic he had sold her;
        and there is reason to believe that many other pieces of her
        collections, worshipped by her as remains of saints, are equally genuine
        as this shoulder-bone of Saint John.
      </p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
      <h2>
        LETTER XXI.
      </h2>
      <br />
      <p>
        PARIS, August, 1805.
      </p>
      <p>
        MY LORD:&mdash;That the population of this capital has, since the
        Revolution, decreased near two hundred thousand souls, is not to be
        lamented. This focus of corruption and profligacy is still too populous,
        though the inhabitants do not amount to six hundred thousand; for I am
        well persuaded that more crimes and excesses of every description are
        committed here in one year than are perpetrated in the same period of
        time in all other European capitals put together. From not reading in
        our newspapers, as we do in yours, of the robberies, murders, and frauds
        discovered and punished, you may, perhaps, be inclined to suppose my
        assertion erroneous or exaggerated; but it is the policy of our present
        Government to labour as much as possible in the dark; that is to say, to
        prevent, where it can be done, all publicity of anything directly or
        indirectly tending to inculpate it of oppression, tyranny, or even
        negligence; and to conceal the immorality of the people so nearly
        connected with its own immoral power. It is true that many vices and
        crimes here, as well as everywhere else, are unavoidable, and the
        natural consequences of corruption, and might be promulgated, therefore,
        without attaching any reproach to our rulers; but they are so accustomed
        to the mystery adherent to tyranny, that even the most unimportant
        lawsuit, uninteresting intrigue, elopement, or divorce, are never
        allowed to be mentioned in our journals, without a previous permission
        from the prefect of police, who very seldom grants it.
      </p>
      <p>
        Most of the enormities now deplored in this country are the consequence
        of moral and religious licentiousness, that have succeeded to political
        anarchy, or rather were produced by it, and survive it. Add to this the
        numerous examples of the impunity of guilt, prosperity of infamy, misery
        of honesty, and sufferings of virtue, and you will not think it
        surprising that, notwithstanding half a million of spies, our roads and
        streets are covered with robbers and assassins, and our scaffolds with
        victims.
      </p>
      <p>
        The undeniable TRUTH that this city alone is watched by one hundred
        thousand spies (so that, when in company with six persons, one has
        reason to dread the presence of one spy), proclaims at once the morality
        of the governors and that of the governed: were the former just, and the
        latter good, this mass of vileness would never be employed; or, if
        employed, wickedness would expire for want of fuel, and the hydra of
        tyranny perish by its own pestilential breath.
      </p>
      <p>
        According to the official registers published by Manuel in 1792, the
        number of spies all over France during the reign of Louis XVI. was
        nineteen thousand three hundred (five thousand less than under Louis
        XV.); and of this number six thousand were distributed in Paris, and in
        a circle of four leagues around it, including Versailles. You will
        undoubtedly ask me, even allowing for our extension of territory, what
        can be the cause of this disproportionate increase of distrust and
        depravity? I will explain it as far as my abilities admit, according to
        the opinions of others compared with my own remarks.
      </p>
      <p>
        When factions usurped the supremacy of the Kings, vigilance augmented
        with insecurity; and almost everybody who was not an opposer, who
        refused being an accomplice, or feared to be a victim, was obliged to
        serve as an informer and vilify himself by becoming a spy. The rapidity
        with which parties followed and destroyed each other made the criminals
        as numerous as the sufferings of honour and loyalty innumerable; and I
        am sorry to say few persons exist in my degraded country, whose firmness
        and constancy were proof against repeated torments and trials, and who,
        to preserve their lives, did not renounce their principles and probity.
      </p>
      <p>
        Under the reign of Robespierre and of the Committee of Public Safety,
        every member of Government, of the clubs, of the tribunals, and of the
        communes, had his private spies; but no regular register was kept of
        their exact number. Under the Directory a Police Minister was nominated,
        and a police office established. According to the declaration of the
        Police Minister, Cochon, in 1797, the spies, who were then regularly
        paid, amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand; and of these, thirty
        thousand did duty in this capital. How many there were in 1799, when
        Fouche, for the first time, was appointed a chief of the department of
        police, is not known, but suppose them doubled within two years; their
        increase since is nevertheless immense, considering that France has
        enjoyed upwards of four years' uninterrupted Continental peace, and has
        not been exposed to any internal convulsions during the same period.
      </p>
      <p>
        You may, perhaps, object that France is not rich enough to keep up as
        numerous an army of spies as of soldiers; because the expense of the
        former must be triple the amount of the latter. Were all these spies,
        now called police agents, or agents of the secret police, paid regular
        salaries, your objection would stand, but most of them have no other
        reward than the protection of the police; being employed in gambling&mdash;houses,
        in coffee&mdash;houses, in taverns, at the theatres, in the public
        gardens, in the hotels, in lottery offices, at pawnbrokers', in
        brothels, and in bathing-houses, where the proprietors or masters of
        these establishments pay them. They receive nothing from the police, but
        when they are enabled to make any great discoveries, those who have been
        robbed or defrauded, and to whom they have been serviceable, are,
        indeed, obliged to present them with some douceur, fixed by the police
        at the rate of the value recovered; but such occurrences are merely
        accidental. To these are to be added all individuals of either sex who
        by the law are obliged to obtain from the police licenses to exercise
        their trade, as pedlars, tinkers, masters of puppet-shows, wild beasts,
        etc. These, on receiving their passes, inscribe themselves, and take the
        oaths as spies; and are forced to send in their regular reports of what
        they hear or see. Prostitutes, who, all over this country, are under the
        necessity of paying for regular licenses, are obliged also to give
        information, from time to time, to the nearest police commissary of what
        they observe or what they know respecting their visitors, neighbours,
        etc. The number of unfortunate women of this description who had taken
        out licenses during the year 12, or from September, 1803, to September,
        1804, is officially known to have amounted to two hundred and twenty
        thousand, of whom forty thousand were employed by the armies.
      </p>
      <p>
        It is no secret that Napoleon Bonaparte has his secret spies upon his
        wife, his brothers, his sisters, his Ministers, Senators, and other
        public functionaries, and also upon his public spies. These are all
        under his own immediate control and that of Duroc, who does the duty of
        his private Police Minister, and in whom he confides more than even in
        the members of his own family. In imitation of their master, each of the
        other Bonapartes, and each of the Ministers, have their individual
        spies, and are watched in their turn by the spies of their secretaries,
        clerks, etc. This infamous custom of espionage goes ad infinitum, and
        appertains almost to the establishment and to the suite of each man in
        place, who does not think himself secure a moment if he remains in
        ignorance of the transactions of his rivals, as well as of those of his
        equals and superiors.
      </p>
      <p>
        Fouche and Talleyrand are reported to have disagreed before Bonaparte on
        some subject or other, which is frequently the case. The former,
        offended at some doubts thrown out about his intelligence, said to the
        latter:
      </p>
      <p>
        "I am so well served that I can tell you the name of every man or woman
        you have conversed with, both yesterday and today; where you saw them,
        and how long you remained with them or they with you."
      </p>
      <p>
        "If such commonplace espionage evinces any merit," retorted Talleyrand,
        "I am even here your superior; because I know not only what has already
        passed with you and in your house, but what is to pass hereafter. I can
        inform you of every dish you had for your dinners this week, who
        provided these dinners, and who is expected to provide your meats
        to-morrow and the day after. I can whisper you, in confidence, who slept
        with Madame Fouche last night, and who has an appointment with her
        to-night."
      </p>
      <p>
        Here Bonaparte interrupted them, in his usual dignified language: "Hold
        both your tongues; you are both great rogues, but I am at a loss to
        decide which is the greatest."
      </p>
      <p>
        Without uttering a single syllable, Talleyrand made a profound reverence
        to Fouche. Bonaparte smiled, and advised them to live upon good terms if
        they were desirous of keeping their places.
      </p>
      <p>
        A man of the name of Ducroux, who, under Robespierre, had from a barber
        been made a general, and afterwards broken for his ignorance, was
        engaged by Bonaparte as a private spy upon Fouche, who employed him in
        the same capacity upon Bonaparte. His reports were always written, and
        delivered in person into the hands both of the Emperor and of his
        Minister. One morning he, by mistake, gave to Bonaparte the report of
        him instead of that intended for him. Bonaparte began to read:
        "Yesterday, at nine o'clock, the Emperor acted the complete part of a
        madman; he swore, stamped, kicked, foamed, roared&mdash;", here poor
        Ducroux threw himself at Bonaparte's feet, and called for mercy for the
        terrible blunder he had committed.
      </p>
      <p>
        "For whom," asked Bonaparte, "did you intend this treasonable
        correspondence? I suppose it is composed for some English or Russian
        agent, for Pitt or for Marcoff. How long have you conspired with my
        enemies, and where are your accomplices?"
      </p>
      <p>
        "For God's sake, hear me, Sire," prayed Ducroux. "Your Majesty's enemies
        have always been mine. The report is for one of your best friends; but
        were I to mention his name, he will ruin me."
      </p>
      <p>
        "Speak out, or you die!" vociferated Bonaparte.
      </p>
      <p>
        "Well,'Sire, it is for Fouche&mdash;for nobody else but Fouche."
      </p>
      <p>
        Bonaparte then rang the bell for Duroc, whom he ordered to see Ducroux
        shut up in a dungeon, and afterwards to send for Fouche. The Minister
        denied all knowledge of Ducroux, who, after undergoing several tortures,
        expiated his blunder upon the rack.
      </p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
      <h2>
        LETTER XXII.
      </h2>
      <br />
      <p>
        PARIS, August, 1805.
      </p>
      <p>
        MY LORD:&mdash;The Pope, during his stay here, rose regularly every
        morning at five o'clock, and went to bed every night before ten. The
        first hours of the day he passed in prayers, breakfasted after the Mass
        was over, transacted business till one, and dined at two. Between three
        and four he took&mdash;his siesta, or nap; afterwards he attended the
        vespers, and when they were over he passed an hour with the Bonapartes,
        or admitted to his presence some members of the clergy. The day was
        concluded, as it was begun, with some hours of devotion.
      </p>
      <p>
        Had Pius VII. possessed the character of a Pius VI., he would never have
        crossed the Alps; or had he been gifted with the spirit and talents of
        Sextus V. or Leo X., he would never have entered France to crown
        Bonaparte, without previously stipulating for himself that he should be
        put in possession of the sovereignty of Italy. You can form no idea what
        great stress was laid on this act of His Holiness by the Bonaparte
        family, and what sacrifices were destined to be made had any serious and
        obstinate resistance been apprehended. Threats were, indeed, employed
        personally against the Pope, and bribes distributed to the refractory
        members of the Sacred College; but it was no secret, either here or at
        Milan, that Cardinal Fesch had carte blanche with regard to the
        restoration of all provinces seized, since the war, from the Holy See,
        or full territorial indemnities in their place, at the expense of Naples
        and Tuscany; and, indeed, whatever the Roman pontiff has lost in Italy
        has been taken from him by Bonaparte alone, and the apparent generosity
        which policy and ambition required would, therefore, have merely been an
        act of justice. Confiding foolishly in the honour and rectitude of
        Napoleon, without any other security than the assertion of Fesch, Pius
        VII., within a fortnight's stay in France, found the great difference
        between the promises held out to him when residing as a Sovereign at
        Rome, and their accomplishment when he had so far forgotten himself and
        his sacred dignity as to inhabit as a guest the castle of the Tuileries.
      </p>
      <p>
        Pius VII. mentioned, the day after his arrival at Fontainebleau, that it
        would be a gratification to his own subjects were he enabled to
        communicate to them the restoration of the former ecclesiastical
        domains, as a free gift of the Emperor of the French, at their first
        conference, as they would then be as well convinced of Napoleon's good
        faith as he was himself. In answer, His Holiness was informed that the
        Emperor was unprepared to discuss political subjects, being totally
        occupied with the thoughts how to entertain worthily his high visitor,
        and to acknowledge becomingly the great honour done and the great
        happiness conferred on him by such a visit. As soon as the ceremony of
        the coronation was over, everything, he hoped, would be arranged to the
        reciprocal satisfaction of both parties.
      </p>
      <p>
        About the middle of last December, Bonaparte was again asked to fix a
        day when the points of negotiation between him and the Pope could be
        discussed and settled. Cardinal Caprara, who made this demand, was
        referred to Talleyrand, who denied having yet any instructions, though
        in daily expectation of them. Thus the time went on until February, when
        Bonaparte informed the Pope of his determination to assume the crown of
        Italy, and of some new changes necessary, in consequence on the other
        side of the Alps.
      </p>
      <p>
        Either seduced by caresses, or blinded by his unaccountable partiality
        for Bonaparte, Pius VII., if left to himself, would not only have
        renounced all his former claims, but probably have made new sacrifices
        to this idol of his infatuation. Fortunately, his counsellors were wiser
        and less deluded, otherwise the remaining patrimony of Saint Peter might
        now have constituted a part of Napoleon's inheritance, in Italy. "Am I
        not, Holy Father!" exclaimed the Emperor frequently, "your son, the work
        of your hand? And if the pages of history assign me any glory, must it
        not be shared with you&mdash;or rather, do you not share it with me?
        Anything that impedes my successes, or makes the continuance of my power
        uncertain or hazardous, reflects on you and is dangerous to you. With me
        you will shine or be obscured, rise or fall. Could you, therefore,
        hesitate (were I to demonstrate to you the necessity of such a measure)
        to remove the Papal See to Avignon, where it formerly was and continued
        for centuries, and to enlarge the limits of my kingdom of Italy with the
        Ecclesiastical States? Can you believe my throne at Milan safe as long
        as it is not the sole throne of Italy? Do you expect to govern at Rome
        when I cease to reign at Milan? No, Holy Father! the pontiff who placed
        the crown on my head, should it be shaken, will fall to rise no more."
        If what Cardinal Caprara said can be depended upon, Bonaparte frequently
        used to intimidate or flatter the Pope in this manner.
      </p>
      <p>
        The representations of Cardinal Caprara changed Napoleon's first
        intention of being again crowned by the Pope as a King of Italy. His
        crafty Eminence observed that, according to the Emperor's own
        declaration, it was not intended that the crowns of France and Italy
        should continue united. But were he to cede one supremacy confirmed by
        the sacred hands of a pontiff, the partisans of the Bourbons, or the
        factions in France, would then take advantage to diminish in the opinion
        of the people his right and the sacredness of His Holiness, and perhaps
        make even the crown of the French Empire unstable. He did not deny that
        Charlemagne was crowned by a pontiff in Italy, but this ceremony was
        performed at Rome, where that Prince was proclaimed an Emperor of the
        Holy Roman and German Empires, as well as a King of Lombardy and Italy.
        Might not circumstances turn out so favourably for Napoleon the First
        that he also might be inaugurated an Emperor of the Germans as well as
        of the French? This last compliment, or prophecy, as Bonaparte's
        courtiers call it (what a prophet a Caprara!), had the desired effect,
        as it flattered equally Napoleon's ambition and vanity. For fear,
        however, of Talleyrand and other anti-Catholic counsellors, who wanted
        him to consider the Pope merely as his first almoner, and to treat him
        as all other persons of his household, His Eminence sent His Holiness as
        soon as possible packing for Rome. Though I am neither a cardinal nor a
        prophet, should you and I live twenty years longer, and the other
        Continental Sovereigns not alter their present incomprehensible conduct,
        I can, without any risk, predict that we shall see Rome salute the
        second Charlemagne an Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, if before that
        time death does not put a period to his encroachments and gigantic
        plans.
      </p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
      <h2>
        LETTER XXIII.
      </h2>
      <br />
      <p>
        PARIS, August, 1805.
      </p>
      <p>
        MY LORD:&mdash;No Sovereigns have, since the Revolution, displayed more
        grandeur of soul, and evinced more firmness of character, than the
        present King and Queen of Naples. Encompassed by a revolutionary volcano
        more dangerous than the physical one, though disturbed at home and
        defeated abroad, they have neither been disgraced nor dishonoured. They
        have, indeed, with all other Italian Princes, suffered territorial and
        pecuniary losses; but these were not yielded through cowardice or
        treachery, but enforced by an absolute necessity, the consequence of the
        desertion or inefficacy of allies.
      </p>
      <p>
        But Their Sicilian Majesties have been careful, as much as they were
        able, to exclude from their councils both German Illuminati and Italian
        philosophers. Their principal Minister, Chevalier Acton, has proved
        himself worthy of the confidence with which his Sovereigns have honoured
        him, and of the hatred with which he has been honoured by all
        revolutionists&mdash;the natural and irreconcilable enemies of all
        legitimate sovereignty.
      </p>
      <p>
        Chevalier Acton is the son of an Irish physician, who first was
        established at Besancon in France, and afterwards at Leghorn in Italy.
        He is indebted for his present elevation to his own merit and to the
        penetration of the Queen of Sardinia, who discovered in him, when young,
        those qualities which have since distinguished him as a faithful
        counsellor and an able Minister. As loyal as wise, he was, from 1789, an
        enemy to the French Revolution. He easily foresaw that the specious
        promise of regeneration held out by impostors or fools to delude the
        ignorant, the credulous and the weak, would end in that universal
        corruption and general overthrow which we since have witnessed, and the
        effects of which our grandchildren will mourn.
      </p>
      <p>
        When our Republic, in April, 1792, declared war against Austria, and
        when, in the September following, the dominions of His Sardinian Majesty
        were invaded by our troops, the neutrality of Naples continued, and was
        acknowledged by our Government. On the 16th of December following, our
        fleet from Toulon, however, cast anchor in the Bay of Naples, and a
        grenadier of the name of Belleville was landed as an Ambassador of the
        French Republic, and threatened a bombardment in case the demands he
        presented in a note were not acceded to within twenty-four hours. Being
        attacked in time of peace, and taken by surprise, the Court of Naples
        was unable to make any resistance, and Chevalier Acton informed our
        grenadier Ambassador that this note had been laid before his Sovereign,
        who had ordered him to sign an agreement in consequence.
      </p>
      <p>
        When in February, 1793, the King of Naples was obliged, for his own
        safety, to join the league against France, Acton concluded a treaty with
        your country, and informed the Sublime Porte of the machinations of our
        Committee of Public Safety in sending De Semonville as an Ambassador to
        Constantinople, which, perhaps, prevented the Divan from attacking
        Austria, and occasioned the capture and imprisonment of our emissary.
      </p>
      <p>
        Whenever our Government has, by the success of our arms, been enabled to
        dictate to Naples, the removal of Acton has been insisted upon; but
        though he has ceased to transact business ostensibly as a Minister, his
        influence has always, and deservedly, continued unimpaired, and he still
        enjoys the just confidence and esteem of his Prince.
      </p>
      <p>
        But is His Sicilian Majesty equally well represented at the Cabinet of
        St. Cloud as served in his own capital? I have told you before that
        Bonaparte is extremely particular in his acceptance of foreign
        diplomatic agents, and admits none near his person whom he does not
        believe to be well inclined to him.
      </p>
      <p>
        Marquis de Gallo, the Ambassador of the King of the Two Sicilies to the
        Emperor of the French, is no novice in the diplomatic career. His
        Sovereign has employed him for these fifteen years in the most delicate
        negotiations, and nominated him in May, 1795, a Minister of the Foreign
        Department, and a successor of Chevalier Acton, an honour which he
        declined. In the summer and autumn, 1797, Marquis de Gallo assisted at
        the conferences at Udine, and signed, with the Austrian
        plenipotentiaries, the Peace of Campo Formio, on the 17th of October,
        1797.
      </p>
      <p>
        During 1798, 1799, and 1800 he resided as Neapolitan Ambassador at
        Vienna, and was again entrusted by his Sovereign with several important
        transactions with Austria and Russia. After a peace had been agreed to
        between France and the Two Sicilies, in March, 1801, and the Court of
        Naples had every reason to fear, and of course to please, the Court of
        St. Cloud, he obtained his present appointment, and is one of the few
        foreign Ambassadors here who has escaped both Bonaparte's private
        admonitions in the diplomatic circle and public lectures in Madame
        Bonaparte's drawing-room.
      </p>
      <p>
        This escape is so much the more fortunate and singular as our Government
        is far from being content with the mutinous spirit (as Bonaparte calls
        it) of the Government of Naples, which, considering its precarious and
        enfeebled state, with a French army in the heart of the kingdom, has
        resisted our attempts and insults with a courage and dignity that demand
        our admiration.
      </p>
      <p>
        It is said that the Marquis de Gallo is not entirely free from some
        taints of modern philosophy, and that he, therefore, does not consider
        the consequences of our innovations so fatal as most loyal men judge
        them; nor thinks a sans-culotte Emperor more dangerous to civilized
        society than a sans-culotte sovereign people.
      </p>
      <p>
        It is evident from the names and rank of its partisans that the
        Revolution of Naples in 1799 was different in many respects from that of
        every other country in Europe; for, although the political convulsions
        seem to have originated among the middle classes of the community, the
        extremes of society were everywhere else made to act against each other;
        the rabble being the first to triumph, and the nobles to succumb. But
        here, on the contrary, the lazzaroni, composed of the lowest portion of
        the population of a luxurious capital, appear to have been the most
        strenuous, and, indeed, almost the only supporters of royalty; while the
        great families, instead of being indignant at novelties which levelled
        them, in point of political rights, with the meanest subject, eagerly
        embraced the opportunity of altering that form of Government which alone
        made them great. It is, however, but justice to say that, though Marquis
        de Gallo gained the good graces of Bonaparte and of France in 1797, he
        was never, directly or indirectly, inculpated in the revolutionary
        transactions of his countrymen in 1799, when he resided at Vienna; and
        indeed, after all, it is not improbable that he disguises his real
        sentiments the better to, serve his country, and by that means has
        imposed on Bonaparte and acquired his favour.
      </p>
      <p>
        The address and manners of a courtier are allowed Marquis de Gallo by
        all who know him, though few admit that he possesses any talents as a
        statesman. He is said to have read a great deal, to possess a good
        memory and no bad judgment; but that, notwithstanding this, all his
        knowledge is superficial.
      </p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
      <h2>
        LETTER XXIV.
      </h2>
      <br />
      <p>
        PARIS, August, 1805.
      </p>
      <p>
        MY LORD:&mdash;You have perhaps heard that Napoleon Bonaparte, with all
        his brothers and sisters, was last Christmas married by the Pope
        according to the Roman Catholic rite, being previously only united
        according to the municipal laws of the French Republic, which consider
        marriage only as a civil contract. During the last two months of His
        Holiness's residence here, hardly a day passed that he was not
        petitioned to perform the same ceremony for our conscientious grand
        functionaries and courtiers, which he, however, according to the
        Emperor's desire, declined. But his Cardinals were not under the same
        restrictions, and to an attentive observer who has watched the progress
        of the Revolution and not lost sight of its actors, nothing could appear
        more ridiculous, nothing could inspire more contempt of our versatility
        and inconsistency, than to remark among the foremost to demand the
        nuptial benediction, a Talleyrand, a Fouche, a Real, an Augereau, a
        Chaptal, a Reubel, a Lasnes, a Bessieres, a Thuriot, a Treilhard, a
        Merlin, with a hundred other equally notorious revolutionists, who were,
        twelve or fifteen years ago, not only the first to declaim against
        religious ceremonies as ridiculous, but against religion itself as
        useless, whose motives produced, and whose votes sanctioned, those
        decrees of the legislature which proscribed the worship, together with
        its priests and sectaries. But then the fashion of barefaced infidelity
        was as much the order of the day as that of external sanctity is at
        present. I leave to casuists the decision whether to the morals of the
        people, naked atheism, exposed with all its deformities, is more or less
        hurtful than concealed atheism, covered with the garb of piety; but for
        my part I think the noonday murderer less guilty and much less
        detestable than the midnight assassin who stabs in the dark.
      </p>
      <p>
        A hundred anecdotes are daily related of our new saints and fashionable
        devotees. They would be laughable were they not scandalous, and
        contemptible did they not add duplicity to our other vices.
      </p>
      <p>
        Bonaparte and his wife go now every morning to hear Mass, and on every
        Sunday or holiday they regularly attend at vespers, when, of course, all
        those who wish to be distinguished for their piety or rewarded for their
        flattery never neglect to be present. In the evening of last Christmas
        Day, the Imperial chapel was, as usual, early crowded in expectation of
        Their Majesties, when the chamberlain, Salmatoris, entered, and said to
        the captain of the guard, loud enough to be heard by the audience, "The
        Emperor and the Empress have just resolved not to come here to-night,
        His Majesty being engaged by some unexpected business, and the Empress
        not wishing to come without her consort." In ten minutes the chapel was
        emptied of every person but the guards, the priests, and three old women
        who had nowhere else to pass an hour. At the arrival of our Sovereigns,
        they were astonished at the unusual vacancy, and indignantly regarded
        each other. After vespers were over, one of Bonaparte's spies informed
        him of the cause, when, instead of punishing the despicable and
        hypocritical courtiers, or showing them any signs of his displeasure, he
        ordered Salmatoris under arrest, who would have experienced a complete
        disgrace had not his friend Duroc interfered and made his peace.
      </p>
      <p>
        At another time, on a Sunday, Fouche entered the chapel in the midst of
        the service, and whispered to Bonaparte, who immediately beckoned to his
        lord-in-waiting and to Duroc. These both left the Imperial chapel, and
        returning in a few minutes at the head of five grenadiers, entered the
        grand gallery, generally frequented by the most scrupulous devotees, and
        seized every book. The cause of this domiciliary visit was an anonymous
        communication received by the Minister of Police, stating that libels
        against the Imperial family, bound in the form of Prayer-books, had been
        placed there. No such libels were, however, found; but of one hundred
        and sixty pretended breviaries, twenty-eight were volumes of novels,
        sixteen were poems, and eleven were indecent books. It is not necessary
        to add that the proprietors of these edifying works never reclaimed
        them. The opinions are divided here, whether this curious discovery
        originated in the malice of Fouche, or whether Talleyrand took this
        method of duping his rival, and at the same time of gratifying his own
        malignity. Certain it is that Fouche was severely reprimanded for the
        transaction, and that Bonaparte was highly offended at the disclosure.
      </p>
      <p>
        The common people, and the middle classes, are neither so ostentatiously
        devout, nor so basely perverse. They go to church as to the play, to
        gape at others, or to be stared at themselves; to pass the time, and to
        admire the show; and they do not conceal that such is the object of
        their attendance. Their indifference about futurity equals their
        ignorance of religious duties. Our revolutionary charlatans have as much
        brutalized their understanding as corrupted their hearts. They heard the
        Grand Mass said by the Pope with the same feelings as they formerly
        heard Robespierre proclaim himself a high priest of a Supreme Being; and
        they looked at the Imperial processions with the same insensibility as
        they once saw the daily caravans of victims passing for execution.
      </p>
      <p>
        Even in Bonaparte's own guard, and among the officers of his household
        troops, several examples of rigour were necessary before they would go
        to any place of worship, or suffer in their corps any almoners; but now,
        after being drilled into a belief of Christianity, they march to the
        Mass as to a parade or to a review. With any other people, Bonaparte
        would not so easily have changed in two years the customs of twelve, and
        forced military men to kneel before priests, whom they but the other day
        were encouraged to hunt and massacre like wild beasts.
      </p>
      <p>
        On the day of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin, a company of gendarmes
        d'Elite, headed by their officers, received publicly, and by orders, the
        sacrament; when the Abbe Frelaud approached Lieutenant Ledoux, he fell
        into convulsions, and was carried into the sacristy. After being a
        little recovered, he looked round him, as if afraid that some one would
        injure him, and said to the Grand Vicar Clauset, who inquired the cause
        of his accident and terror: "Good God! that man who gave me, on the 2d
        of September, 1792, in the convent of the Carenes, the five wounds from
        which I still suffer, is now an officer, and was about to receive the
        sacrament from my hands." When this occurrence was reported to
        Bonaparte, Ledoux was dismissed; but Abbe Frelaud was transported, and
        the Grand Vicar Clauset sent to the Temple, for the scandal their
        indiscretion had caused. This act was certainly as unjust towards him
        who was bayoneted at the altar, as towards those who served the altar
        under the protection of the bayonets.
      </p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
      <h2>
        LETTER XXV.
      </h2>
      <br />
      <p>
        PARIS, August, 1805.
      </p>
      <p>
        MY LORD:&mdash;Although the seizure of Sir George Rumbold might in your
        country, as well as everywhere else, inspire indignation, it could
        nowhere justly excite surprise. We had crossed the Rhine seven months
        before to seize the Duc d'Enghien; and when any prey invited, the
        passing of the Elbe was only a natural consequence of the former
        outrage, of audacity on our part, and of endurance or indifference on
        the part of other Continental States. Talleyrand's note at
        Aix-la-Chapelle had also informed Europe that we had adopted a new and
        military diplomacy, and, in confounding power with right, would respect
        no privileges at variance with our ambition, interest or, suspicions,
        nor any independence it was thought useful or convenient for us to
        invade.
      </p>
      <p>
        It was reported here, at the time, that Bonaparte was much offended with
        General Frere, who commanded this political expedition, for permitting
        Sir George's servant to accompany his master, as Fouche and Real had
        already tortures prepared and racks waiting, and after forcing your
        agent to speak out, would have announced his sudden death, either by his
        own hands or by a coup-de-sang, before any Prussian note could require
        his release. The known morality of our Government must have removed all
        doubts of the veracity of this assertion; a man might, besides, from the
        fatigues of a long journey, or from other causes, expire suddenly; but
        the exit of two, in the same circumstances, would have been thought at
        least extraordinary, even by our friends, and suspicious by our enemies.
      </p>
      <p>
        The official declaration of Rheinhard (our Minister to the Circle of
        Lower Saxony) to the Senate at Hamburg, in which he disavowed all
        knowledge on the subject of the capture of Sir George Rumbold,
        occasioned his disgrace. This man, a subject of the Elector of
        Wurtemberg by birth, is one of the negative accomplices of the criminals
        of France who, since the Revolution, have desolated Europe. He began in
        1792 his diplomatic career, under Chauvelin and Talleyrand, in London,
        and has since been the tool of every faction in power. In 1796 he was
        appointed a Minister to the Hanse Towns, and, without knowing why, he
        was hailed as the point of rally to all the philosophers,
        philanthropists, Illuminati and other revolutionary amateurs, with which
        the North of Germany, Poland, Denmark, and Sweden then abounded.
      </p>
      <p>
        A citizen of Hamburg&mdash;or rather, of the world&mdash;of the name of
        Seveking, bestowed on him the hand of a sister; and though he is not
        accused of avarice, some of the contributions extorted by our Government
        from the neutral Hanse Towns are said to have been left behind in his
        coffers instead of being forwarded to this capital. Either on this
        account, or for some other reason, he was recalled from Hamburg in
        January, 1797, and remained unemployed until the latter part of 1798,
        when he was sent as Minister to Tuscany.
      </p>
      <p>
        When, in the summer of 1799, Talleyrand was forced by the Jacobins to
        resign his place as a Minister of the Foreign Department, he had the
        adroitness to procure Rheinhard to be nominated his successor, so that,
        though no longer nominally the Minister, he still continued to influence
        the decisions of our Government as much as if still in office, because,
        though not without parts, Rheinhard has neither energy of character nor
        consistency of conduct. He is so much accustomed, and wants so much to
        be governed, that in 1796, at Hamburg, even the then emigrants, Madame
        de Genlis and General Valence, directed him, when he was not ruled or
        dictated to by his wife or brother-in-law.
      </p>
      <p>
        In 1800 Bonaparte sent him as a representative to the Helvetian
        Republic, and in 1802, again to Hamburg, where he was last winter
        superseded by Bourrienne, and ordered to an inferior station at the:
        Electoral Court at Dresden. Rheinhard will never become one of those
        daring diplomatic banditti whom revolutionary Governments always employ
        in preference. He has some moral principles, and, though not religious,
        is rather scrupulous. He would certainly sooner resign than undertake to
        remove by poison, or by the steel of a bravo, a rival of his own or a
        person obnoxious to his employers. He would never, indeed, betray the
        secrets of his Government if he understood they intended to rob a
        despatch or to atop a messenger; but no allurements whatever would
        induce him to head the parties perpetrating these acts of our modern
        diplomacy.
      </p>
      <p>
        Our present Minister at Hamburg (Bourrienne) is far from being so nice.
        A revolutionist from the beginning of the Revolution, he shared, with
        the partisans of La Fayette, imprisonment under Robespierre, and escaped
        death only by emigration. Recalled afterwards by his friend, the late
        Director (Barras), he acted as a kind of secretary to him until 1796,
        when Bonaparte demanded him, having known him at the military college.
        During all Bonaparte's campaigns in Italy, Egypt, and Syria, he was his
        sole and confidential secretary&mdash;a situation which he lost in 1802,
        when Talleyrand denounced his corruption and cupidity because he had
        rivalled him in speculating in the funds and profiting by the
        information which his place afforded him. He was then made a Counsellor
        of State, but in 1803 he was involved in the fraudulent bankruptcy of
        one of our principal houses to the amount of a million of livres&mdash;and,
        from his correspondence with it, some reasons appeared for the suspicion
        that he frequently had committed a breach of confidence against his
        master, who, after erasing his name from among the Counsellors of State,
        had him conveyed a prisoner to the Temple, where he remained six months.
        A small volume, called Le Livre Rouge of the Consular Court, made its
        appearance about that time, and contained some articles which gave
        Bonaparte reason to suppose that Bourrienne was its author. On being
        questioned by the Grand Judge Regnier and the Minister Fouce, before
        whom he was carried, he avowed that he had written it, but denied that
        he had any intention of making it public. As to its having found its way
        to the press during his confinement, that could only be ascribed to the
        ill-will or treachery of those police agents who inspected his papers
        and put their seals upon them. "Tell Bonaparte," said he, "that, had I
        been inclined to injure him in the public opinion, I should not have
        stooped to such trifles as Le Livre Rouge, while I have deposited with a
        friend his original orders, letters, and other curious documents as
        materials for an edifying history of our military hospitals during the
        campaigns of Italy and Syria all authentic testimonies of his humanity
        for the wounded and dying French soldiers."
      </p>
      <p>
        After the answers of this interrogatory had been laid before Bonaparte,
        his brother Joseph was sent to the Temple to negotiate with Bourrienne,
        who was offered his liberty and a prefecture if he would give up all the
        original papers that, as a private secretary, he had had opportunity to
        collect.
      </p>
      <p>
        "These papers," answered Bourrienne, "are my only security against your
        brother's wrath and his assassins. Were I weak enough to deliver them up
        to-day, to-morrow, probably, I should no longer be counted among the
        living; but I have now taken my measures so effectually that, were I
        murdered to-day, these originals would be printed to-morrow. If Napoleon
        does not confide in my word of honour, he may trust to an assurance of
        discretion, with which my own interest is nearly connected. If he
        suspects me of having wronged him, he is convinced also of the eminent
        services I have rendered him, sufficient surely to outweigh his present
        suspicion. Let him again employ me in any post worthy of him and of me,
        and he shall soon see how much I will endeavour to regain his
        confidence."
      </p>
      <p>
        Shortly afterwards Bourrienne was released, and a pension, equal to the
        salary of a Counsellor of State; was granted him until some suitable
        place became vacant. On Champagny's being appointed a Minister of the
        Home Department, the embassy at Vienna was demanded by Bourrienne, but
        refused, as previously promised to La Rochefoucauld, our late Minister
        at Dresden. When Rheinhard, in a kind of disgrace, was transferred to
        that relatively insignificant post, Bourrienne was ordered, with
        extensive instructions, to Hamburg. The Senate soon found the difference
        between a timid and honest Minister, and an unprincipled and crafty
        intriguer. New loans were immediately required from Hanover; but hardly
        were these acquitted, than fresh extortions were insisted on. In some
        secret conferences Bourrienne is, however, said to have hinted that some
        douceurs were expected for alleviating the rigour of his instructions.
        This hint has, no doubt, been taken, because he suddenly altered his
        conduct, and instead of hunting the purses of the Germans, pursued the
        persons of his emigrated countrymen; and, in a memorial, demanded the
        expulsion of all Frenchmen who were not registered and protected by him,
        under pretence that every one of them who declined the honour of being a
        subject of Bonaparte, must be a traitor against the French Government
        and his country.
      </p>
      <p>
        Bourrienne is now stated to have connected himself with several
        stock-jobbers, both in Germany, Holland, and England; and already to
        have pocketed considerable sums by such connections. It is, however, not
        to be forgotten that several houses have been ruined in this capital by
        the profits allowed him, who always refused to share their losses, but,
        whatever were the consequences, enforced to its full amount the payment
        of that value which he chose to set on his communications.
      </p>
      <p>
        A place in France would, no doubt, have been preferable to Bourrienne,
        particularly one near the person of Bonaparte. But if nothing else
        prevented the accomplishment of his wishes, his long familiarity with
        all the Bonapartes, whom he always treated as equals, and even now (with
        the exception of Napoleon) does not think his superiors, will long
        remain an insurmountable barrier.
      </p>
      <p>
        I cannot comprehend how Bonaparte (who is certainly no bad judge of men)
        could so long confide in Bourrienne, who, with the usual presumption of
        my countrymen, is continually boasting, to a degree that borders on
        indiscretion, and, by an artful questioner, may easily be lead to
        overstep those bounds. Most of the particulars of his quarrel with
        Napoleon I heard him relate himself, as a proof of his great
        consequence, in a company of forty individuals, many of whom were
        unknown to him. On the first discovery which Bonaparte made of
        Bourrienne's infidelity, Talleyrand complimented him upon not having
        suffered from it. "Do you not see," answered Bonaparte, "that it is also
        one of the extraordinary gifts of my extraordinary good fortune?
      </p>
      <p>
        "Even traitors are unable to betray me. Plots respect me as much as
        bullets." I need not tell you that Fortune is the sole divinity
        sincerely worshipped by Napoleon.
      </p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
      <h2>
        LETTER XXVI.
      </h2>
      <br />
      <p>
        PARIS, August, 1805.
      </p>
      <p>
        MY LORD:&mdash;Joseph Bonaparte leads a much more retired life, and sees
        less company, than any of his brothers or sisters. Except the members of
        his own family, he but seldom invites any guests, nor has Madame Joseph
        those regular assemblies and circles which Madame Napoleon and Madame
        Louis Bonaparte have. His hospitality is, however, greater at his
        countryseat Morfontaine than at his hotel here. Those whom he likes, or
        does not mistrust (who, by the bye, are very few), may visit him without
        much formality in the country, and prolong their stay, according to
        their own inclination or discretion; but they must come without their
        servants, or send them away on their arrival.
      </p>
      <p>
        As soon as an agreeable visitor presents himself, it is the etiquette of
        the house to consider him as an inmate; but to allow him at the same
        time a perfect liberty to dispose of his hours and his person as suits
        his convenience or caprice. In this extensive and superb mansion a suite
        of apartments is assigned him, with a valet-de&mdash;chambre, a lackey,
        a coachman, a groom, and a jockey, all under his own exclusive command.
        He has allotted him a chariot, a gig, and riding horses, if he prefers
        such an exercise. A catalogue is given him of the library of the
        chateau; and every morning he is informed what persons compose the
        company at breakfast, dinner, and supper, and of the hours of these
        different repasts. A bill of fare is at the same time presented to him,
        and he is asked to point out those dishes to which he gives the
        preference, and to declare whether he chooses to join the company or to
        be served in his own rooms.
      </p>
      <p>
        During the summer season, players from the different theatres of Paris
        are paid to perform three times in the week; and each guest, according
        to the period of his arrival, is asked, in his turn, to command either a
        comedy or a tragedy, a farce or a ballet. Twice in the week concerts are
        executed by the first performers of the opera-bouffe; and twice in the
        week invitations to tea-parties are sent to some of the neighbours, or
        accepted from them.
      </p>
      <p>
        Besides four billiard-tables, there are other gambling-tables for Rouge
        et Noir, Trente et Quarante, Faro, La Roulette, Birribi, and other games
        of hazard. The bankers are young men from Corsica, to whom Joseph, who
        advances the money, allows all the gain, while he alone suffers the
        loss. Those who are inclined may play from morning till night, and from
        night till morning, without interruption, as no one interferes. Should
        Joseph hear that any person has been too severely treated by Fortune, or
        suspects that he has not much cash remaining, some rouleaux of napoleons
        d'or are placed on the table of his dressing-room, which he may use or
        leave untouched, as he judges proper.
      </p>
      <p>
        The hours of Joseph Bonaparte are neither so late as yours in England,
        nor so early as they were formerly in France. Breakfast is ready served
        at ten o'clock, dinner at four, and supper at nine. Before midnight he
        retires to bed with his family, but visitors do as they like and follow
        their own usual hours, and their servants are obliged to wait for them.
      </p>
      <p>
        When any business calls Joseph away, either to preside in the Senate
        here, or to travel in the provinces, he notifies the visitors, telling
        them at the same time not to displace themselves on account of his
        absence, but wait till his return, as they would not observe any
        difference in the economy of his house, of which Madame Joseph always
        does the honours, or, in her absence, some lady appointed by her.
      </p>
      <p>
        Last year, when Joseph first assumed a military rank, he passed nearly
        four months with the army of England on the coast or in Brabant. On his
        return, all his visitors were gone, except a young poet of the name of
        Montaigne, who does not want genius, but who is rather too fond of the
        bottle. Joseph is considered the best gourmet or connoisseur in liquors
        and wines of this capital, and Montaigne found his Champagne and
        burgundy so excellent that he never once went to bed that he was not
        heartily intoxicated. But the best of the story is that he employed his
        mornings in composing a poem holding out to abhorrence the disgusting
        vice of drunkenness, and presented it to Joseph, requesting permission
        to dedicate it to him when published. To those who have read it, or only
        seen extracts from it, the compilation appears far from being
        contemptible, but Joseph still keeps the copy, though he has made the
        author a present of one hundred napoleons d'or, and procured him a place
        of an amanuensis in the chancellory of the Senate, having resolved never
        to accept any dedication, but wishing also not to hurt the feelings of
        the author by a refusal.
      </p>
      <p>
        In a chateau where so many visitors of licentious and depraved morals
        meet, of both sexes, and where such an unlimited liberty reigns,
        intrigues must occur, and have of course not seldom furnished materials
        for the scandalous chronicle. Even Madame Joseph herself has either been
        gallant or calumniated. Report says that to the nocturnal assiduities of
        Eugene de Beauharnais and of Colonel la Fond-Blaniac she is exclusively
        indebted to the honour of maternity, and that these two rivals even
        fought a duel concerning the right of paternity. Eugene de Beauharnais
        never was a great favourite with Joseph Bonaparte, whose reserved
        manners and prudence form too great a contrast to his noisy and
        blundering way to accord with each other. Before he set out for Italy,
        it was well known in our fashionable circles that he had been
        interdicted the house of his uncle, and that no reconciliation took
        place, notwithstanding the endeavours of Madame Napoleon. To humble him
        still more, Joseph even nominated la Fond-Blaniac an equerry to his
        wife, who, therefore, easily consoled herself for the departure of her
        dear nephew.
      </p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="p214" id="p214"></a>
      <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
        <img alt="p214.jpg (77K)" src="images/p214.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
      </div>
        <p>
          The husband of Madame Miot (one of Madame Joseph's ladies-in-waiting)
          was not so patient, nor such a philosopher as Joseph Bonaparte. Some
          charitable person having reported in the company of a 'bonne amie' of
          Miot, that his wife did not pass her nights in solitude, but that she
          sought consolation among the many gallants and disengaged visitors at
          Morfontaine, he determined to surprise her. It was past eleven o'clock
          at night when his arrival was announced to Joseph, who had just
          retired to his closet. Madame Miot had been in bed ever since nine,
          ill of a migraine, and her husband was too affectionate not to be the
          first to inform her of his presence, without permitting anybody
          previously to disturb her. With great reluctance, Madame Miot's maid
          delivered the key of her rooms, while she accompanied him with a
          light. In the antechamber he found a hat and a greatcoat, and in the
          closet adjoining the bedroom, a coat, a waistcoat, and a pair of
          breeches, with drawers, stockings, and slippers. Though the maid kept
          coughing all the time, Madame Miot and her gallant did not awake from
          their slumber, till the enraged husband began to use the bludgeon of
          the lover, which had also been left in the closet. A battle then
          ensued, in which the lover retaliated so vigorously, that the husband
          called out "Murder! murder!" with all his might. The chateau was
          instantly in an uproar, and the apartments crowded with half-dressed
          and half-naked lovers. Joseph Bonaparte alone was able to separate the
          combatants; and inquiring the cause of the riot, assured them that he
          would suffer no scandal and no intrigues in his house, without
          seriously resenting it. An explanation being made, Madame Miot was
          looked for but in vain; and the maid declared that, being warned by a
          letter from Paris of her husband's jealousy and determination to
          surprise her, her mistress had reposed herself in her room; while, to
          punish the ungenerous suspicions of her husband, she had persuaded
          Captain d' Horteuil to occupy her place in her own bed. The maid had
          no sooner finished her deposition, than her mistress made her
          appearance and upbraided her husband severely, in which she was
          cordially joined by the spectators. She inquired if, on seeing the
          dress of a gentleman, he had also discovered the attire of a female;
          and she appealed to Captain d' Horteuil whether he had not the two
          preceding nights also slept in her bed. To this he, of course,
          assented; adding that, had M. Miot attacked him the first night, he
          would not then perhaps have been so roughly handled as now; for then
          he was prepared for a visit, which this night was rather unexpected.
          This connubial farce ended by Miot begging pardon of his wife and her
          gallant; the former of whom, after much entreaty by Joseph, at last
          consented to share with him her bed. But being disfigured with two
          black eyes and suffering from several bruises, and also ashamed of his
          unfashionable behaviour, he continued invisible for ten days
          afterwards, and returned to this city as he had left it, by stealth.
        </p>
        <p>
          This Niot was a spy under Robespierre, and is a Counsellor of State
          under Bonaparte. Without bread, as well as without a home, he was,
          from the beginning of the Revolution, one of the most ardent patriots,
          and the first republican Minister in Tuscany. After the Sovereign of
          that country had, in 1793, joined the League, Miot returned to France,
          and was, for his want of address to negotiate as a Minister, shut up
          to perform the part of a spy in the Luxembourg, then transformed into
          a prison for suspected persons. Thanks to his patriotism, upwards of
          two hundred individuals of both sexes were denounced, transferred to
          the Conciergerie prison, and afterwards guillotined. After that, until
          1799, he continued so despised that no faction would accept him for an
          accomplice; but in the November of that year, after Bonaparte had
          declared himself a First Consul, Miot was appointed a tribune, an
          office from which he was advanced, in 1802, to be a Counsellor of
          State. As Miot squanders away his salary with harlots and in
          gambling-houses, and is pursued by creditors he neither will nor can
          pay, it was merely from charity that his wife was received among the
          other ladies of Madame Joseph Bonaparte's household.
        </p>
        <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
        <h2>
          LETTER XXVII.
        </h2>
        <br />
        <p>
          PARIS, August, 1805.
        </p>
        <p>
          MY LORD:&mdash;Notwithstanding the ties of consanguinity, honour,
          duty, interest, and gratitude, which bound the Spanish Bourbons to the
          cause of the Bourbons of France, no monarch has rendered more service
          to the cause of rebellion, and done more harm to the cause of royalty,
          than the King of Spain.
        </p>
        <p>
          But here, again, you must understand me. When I speak of Princes whose
          talents are known not to be brilliant, whose intellects are known to
          be feeble, and whose good intentions are rendered null by a want of
          firmness of character or consistency of conduct; while I deplore their
          weakness and the consequent misfortunes of their contemporaries, I lay
          all the blame on their wicked or ignorant counsellors; because, if no
          Ministers were fools or traitors, no Sovereigns would tremble on their
          thrones, and no subjects dare to shake their foundation. Had
          Providence blessed Charles IV. of Spain with the judgment in selecting
          his Ministers, and the constancy of persevering in his choice,
          possessed by your George III.; had the helm of Spain been in the firm
          and able hands of a Grenville, a Windham, and a Pitt, the Cabinet of
          Madrid would never have been oppressed by the yoke of the Cabinet of
          St. Cloud, nor paid a heavy tribute for its bondage, degrading as well
          as ruinous.
        </p>
        <p>
          "This is the age of upstarts," said Talleyrand to his cousin, Prince
          de Chalais, who reproached him for an unbecoming servility to low and
          vile personages; "and I prefer bowing to them to being trampled upon
          and crushed by them." Indeed, as far as I remember, nowhere in history
          are hitherto recorded so many low persons who, from obscurity and
          meanness, have suddenly and at once attained rank and notoriety. Where
          do we read of such a numerous crew of upstart Emperors, Kings, grand
          pensionaries, directors, Imperial Highnesses, Princes, Field-marshals,
          generals, Senators, Ministers, governors, Cardinals, etc., as we now
          witness figuring upon the theatre of Europe, and who chiefly decide on
          the destiny of nations? Among these, several are certainly to be found
          whose superior parts have made them worthy to pierce the crowd and to
          shake off their native mud; but others again, and by far the greatest
          number of these 'novi homines', owe their present elevation to
          shameless intrigues or atrocious crimes.
        </p>
        <p>
          The Prime Minister&mdash;or rather, the viceroy of Spain, the Prince
          of Peace&mdash;belongs to the latter class. From a man in the ranks of
          the guards he was promoted to a general-in-chief, and from a harp
          player in antechambers to a president of the councils of a Prince; and
          that within the short period of six years. Such a fortune is not
          common; but to be absolutely without capacity as well as virtue,
          genius as well as good breeding, and, nevertheless, to continue in an
          elevation so little merited, and in a place formerly so subject to
          changes and so unstable, is a fortune that no upstart ever before
          experienced in Spain.
        </p>
        <p>
          An intrigue of his elder brother with the present Queen, then Princess
          of Asturia, which was discovered by the King, introduced him first at
          Court as a harp player, and, when his brother was exiled, he was
          entrusted with the correspondence of the Princess with her gallant.
          After she had ascended the throne, he thought it more profitable to be
          the lover than the messenger, and contrived, therefore, to supplant
          his brother in the royal favour. Promotions and riches were
          consequently heaped upon him, and, what is surprising, the more
          undisguised the partiality of the Queen was, the greater the
          attachment of the King displayed itself; and it has ever since been an
          emulation between the royal couple who should the most forget and
          vilify birth and supremacy by associating this man not only in the
          courtly pleasures, but in the functions of Sovereignty. Had he been
          gifted with sound understanding, or possessed any share of delicacy,
          generosity, or discretion, he would, while he profited by their
          imprudent condescension, have prevented them from exposing their
          weaknesses and frailties to a discussion and ridicule among courtiers,
          and from becoming objects of humiliation and scandal among the people.
          He would have warned them of the danger which at all times attends the
          publicity of foibles and vices of Princes, but particularly in the
          present times of trouble and innovations. He would have told them:
          "Make me great and wealthy, but not at the expense of your own
          grandeur or of the loyalty of your people. Do not treat an humble
          subject as an equal, nor suffer Your Majesties, whom Providence
          destined to govern a high-spirited nation, to be openly ruled by one
          born to obey. I am too dutiful not to lay aside my private vanity when
          the happiness of my King and the tranquillity of my fellow subjects
          are at stake. I am already too high. In descending a little, I shall
          not only rise in the eyes of my contemporaries, but in the opinion of
          posterity. Every step I am advancing undermines your throne. In
          retreating a little, if I do not strengthen, I can never injure it."
          But I beg your pardon for this digression, and for putting the
          language of dignified reason into the mouth of a man as corrupt as he
          is imbecile.
        </p>
        <p>
          Do not suppose, because the Prince of Peace is no friend of my nation,
          that I am his enemy. No! Had he shown himself a true patriot, a friend
          of his own country, and of his too liberal Prince, or even of monarchy
          in general, or of anybody else but himself&mdash;although I might have
          disapproved of his policy, if he has any&mdash;I would never have
          lashed the individual for the acts of the Minister. But you must have
          observed, with me, that never before his administration was the
          Cabinet of Madrid worse conducted at home or more despised abroad; the
          Spanish Monarch more humbled or Spanish subjects more wretched; the
          Spanish power more dishonoured or the Spanish resources worse
          employed. Never, before the treaty with France of 1796, concluded by
          this wiseacre (which made him a Prince of Peace, and our Government
          the Sovereign of Spain), was the Spanish monarchy reduced to such a
          lamentable dilemma as to be forced into an expensive war without a
          cause, and into a disgraceful peace, not only unprofitable, but
          absolutely disadvantageous. Never before were its treasures
          distributed among its oppressors to support their tyranny, nor its
          military and naval forces employed to fight the battles of rebellion.
          The loyal subjects of Spain have only one hope left. The delicate
          state of his present Majesty's health does not promise a much longer
          continuance of his reign, and the Prince of Asturia is too well
          informed to endure the guidance of the most ignorant Minister that
          ever was admitted into the Cabinet and confidence of a Sovereign. It
          is more than probable that under a new reign the misfortunes of the
          Prince of Peace will inspire as much compassion as his rapid
          advancement has excited astonishment and indignation.
        </p>
        <p>
          A Cabinet thus badly directed cannot be expected to have
          representatives abroad either of abilities or patriotism. The Admiral
          and General Gravina, who but lately left this capital as an Ambassador
          from the Court of Spain to assume the command of a Spanish fleet, is
          more valiant than wise, and more an enemy of your country than a
          friend of his own. He is a profound admirer of Bonaparte's virtues and
          successes, and was, during his residence, one of the most
          ostentatiously awkward courtiers of Napoleon the First. It is said
          that he has the modesty and loyalty to wish to become a Spanish
          Bonaparte, and that he promises to restore by his genius and exploits
          the lost lustre of the Spanish monarchy. When this was reported to
          Talleyrand, he smiled with contempt; but when it was told to
          Bonaparte, he stamped with rage at the impudence of the Spaniard in
          daring to associate his name of acquired and established greatness
          with his own impertinent schemes of absurdities and impossibilities.
        </p>
        <p>
          In the summer of 1793, Gravina commanded a division of the Spanish
          fleet in the Mediterranean, of which Admiral Langara was the
          commander-in-chief. At the capitulation of Toulon, after the combined
          English and Spanish forces had taken possession of it, when
          Rear-Admiral Goodall was declared governor, Gravina was made the
          commandant of the troops. At the head of these he often fought bravely
          in different sorties, and on the 1st of October was wounded at the
          re-capture of Fort Pharon. He complains still of having suffered
          insults or neglect from the English, and even of having been exposed
          unnecessarily to the fire and sword of the enemy merely because he was
          a patriot as well as an envied or suspected ally. His inveteracy
          against your country takes its date, no doubt, from the siege of
          Toulon, or perhaps, from its evacuation.
        </p>
        <p>
          When, in May, 1794, our troops were advancing towards Collioure, he
          was sent with a squadron to bring it succours, but he arrived too
          late, and could not save that important place. He was not more
          successful at the beginning of the campaign of 1795 at Rosa, where he
          had only time to carry away the artillery before the enemy entered. In
          August, that year, during the absence of Admiral Massaredo, he assumed
          ad interim the command of the Spanish fleet in the Mediterranean; but
          in the December following he was disgraced, arrested, and shut up as a
          State prisoner.
        </p>
        <p>
          During the embassy of Lucien Bonaparte to the Court of Madrid, in the
          autumn of 1800, Gravina was by his influence restored to favour; and
          after the death of the late Spanish Ambassador to the Cabinet of St.
          Cloud, Chevalier d' Azara, by the special desire of Napoleon, was
          nominated both his successor and a representative of the King of
          Etruria. Among the members of our diplomatic corps, he was considered
          somewhat of a Spanish gasconader and a bully. He more frequently
          boasted of his wounds and battles than of his negotiations or
          conferences, though he pretended, indeed, to shine as much in the
          Cabinet as in the field.
        </p>
        <p>
          In his suite were two Spanish women, one about forty, and the other
          about twenty years of age. Nobody knew what to make of them, as they
          were treated neither as wives, mistresses, nor servants; and they
          avowed themselves to be no relations. After a residence here of some
          weeks, he was, by superior orders, waylaid one night at the opera, by
          a young and beautiful dancing girl of the name of Barrois, who engaged
          him to take her into keeping. He hesitated, indeed, for some time; at
          last, however, love got the better of his scruples, and he furnished
          for her an elegant apartment on the new Boulevard. On the day he
          carried her there, he was accompanied by the chaplain of the Spanish
          Legation; and told her that, previous to any further intimacy, she
          must be married to him, as his religious principles did not permit him
          to cohabit with a woman who was not his wife. At the same time he laid
          before her an agreement to sign, by which she bound herself never to
          claim him as a husband before her turn&mdash;that is to say, until
          sixteen other women, to whom he had been previously married, were
          dead. She made no opposition, either to the marriage or to the
          conditions annexed to it. This girl had a sweetheart of the name of
          Valere, an actor at one of the little theatres on the Boulevards, to
          whom she communicated her adventure. He advised her to be scrupulous
          in her turn, and to ask a copy of the agreement. After some difficulty
          this was obtained. In it no mention was made of her maintenance, nor
          in what manner her children were to be regarded, should she have any.
          Valere had, therefore, another agreement drawn up, in which all these
          points were arranged, according to his own interested views. Gravina
          refused to subscribe to what he plainly perceived were only
          extortions; and the girl, in her turn, not only declined any further
          connection with him, but threatened to publish the act of polygamy.
          Before they had done discussing this subject, the door was suddenly
          opened and the two Spanish ladies presented themselves. After severely
          upbraiding Gravina, who was struck mute by surprise, they announced to
          the girl that whatever promise or contract of marriage she had
          obtained from him was of no value, as, before they came with him to
          France, he had bound himself, before a public notary at Madrid, not to
          form any more connections, nor to marry any other woman, without their
          written consent. One of these ladies declared that she had been
          married to Gravina twenty-two years, and was his oldest wife but one;
          the other said that she had been married to him six years. They
          insisted upon his following them, which he did, after putting a purse
          of gold into Barrois's hand.
        </p>
        <p>
          When Valere heard from his mistress this occurrence, he advised her to
          make the most money she could of the Spaniard's curious scruples. A
          letter was, therefore, written to him, demanding one hundred thousand
          livres&mdash;as the price of secrecy and withholding the particulars
          of this business from the knowledge of the tribunals and the police;
          and an answer was required within twenty-four hours. The same night
          Gravina offered one thousand Louis, which were accepted, and the
          papers returned; but the next day Valere went to his hotel, Rue de
          Provence, where he presented himself as a brother of Barrois. He
          stated that he still possessed authenticated copies of the papers
          returned, and that he must have either the full sum first asked by his
          sister, or an annuity of twelve thousand livres settled upon her.
          Instead of an answer, Gravina ordered him to be turned out of the
          house. An attorney then waited on His Excellency, on the part of the
          brother and the sister, and repeated their threats and their demands,
          adding that he would write a memorial both to the Emperor of the
          French and to the King of Spain, were justice refused to his
          principals any longer.
        </p>
        <p>
          Gravina was well aware that this affair, though more laughable than
          criminal, would hurt both his character and credit if it were known in
          France; he therefore consented to pay seventy-six thousand livres
          more, upon a formal renunciation by the party of all future claims.
          Not having money sufficient by him, he went to borrow it from a
          banker, whose clerk was one of Talleyrand's secret agents. Our
          Minister, therefore, ordered every step of Gravina to be watched; but
          he soon discovered that, instead of wanting this money for a political
          intrigue, it was necessary to extricate him out of an amorous scrape.
          Hearing, however, in what a scandalous manner the Ambassador had been
          duped and imposed upon, he reported it to Bonaparte, who gave Fouche
          orders to have Valere, Barrois, and the attorney immediately
          transported to Cayenne, and to restore Gravina his money. The former
          part of this order the Minister of Police executed the more willingly,
          as it was according to his plan that Barrois had pitched upon Gravina
          for a lover. She had been intended by him as a spy on His Excellency,
          but had deceived him by her reports&mdash;a crime for which
          transportation was a usual punishment.
        </p>
        <p>
          Notwithstanding the care of our Government to conceal and bury this
          affair in oblivion, it furnished matter both for conversation in our
          fashionable circles, and subjects for our caricaturists. But these
          artists were soon seized by the police, who found it more easy to
          chastise genius than to silence tongues. The declaration of war by
          Spain against your country was a lucky opportunity for Gravina to quit
          with honour a Court where he was an object of ridicule, to assume the
          command of a fleet which might one day make him an object of terror.
          When he took leave of Bonaparte, he was told to return to France
          victorious, or never to return any more; and Talleyrand warned him as
          a friend, "whenever he returned to his post in France to leave his
          marriage mania behind him in Spain. Here," said he, "you may, without
          ridicule, intrigue with a hundred women, but you run a great risk by
          marrying even one."
        </p>
        <p>
          I have been in company with Gravina, and after what I heard him say,
          so far from judging him superstitious, I thought him really impious.
          But infidelity and bigotry are frequently next-door neighbours.
        </p>
        <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
        <h2>
          LETTER XXVIII.
        </h2>
        <br />
        <p>
          PARIS, August, 1805.
        </p>
        <p>
          MY LORD:&mdash;It cannot have escaped the observation of the most
          superficial traveller of rank, that, at the Court of St. Cloud, want
          of morals is not atoned for by good breeding or good manners. The
          hideousness of vice, the pretensions of ambition, the vanity of rank,
          the pride of favour, and the shame of venality do not wear here that
          delicate veil, that gloss of virtue, which, in other Courts, lessens
          the deformity of corruption and the scandal of depravity. Duplicity
          and hypocrisy are here very common indeed, more so than dissimulation
          anywhere else; but barefaced knaves and impostors must always make
          indifferent courtiers. Here the Minister tells you, I must have such a
          sum for a place; and the chamberlain tells you, Count down so much for
          my protection. The Princess requires a necklace of such a value for
          interesting herself for your advancement; and the lady-in-waiting
          demands a diamond of such worth on the day of your promotion. This
          tariff of favours and of infamy descends 'ad infinitum'. The secretary
          for signing, and the clerk for writing your commission; the cashier
          for delivering it, and the messenger for informing you of it, have all
          their fixed prices. Have you a lawsuit, the judge announces to you
          that so much has been offered by your opponent, and so much is
          expected from you, if you desire to win your cause. When you are the
          defendant against the Crown, the attorney or solicitor-general lets
          you know that such a douceur is requisite to procure such an issue.
          Even in criminal proceedings, not only honour, but life, may be saved
          by pecuniary sacrifices.
        </p>
        <p>
          A man of the name of Martin, by profession a stock-jobber, killed, in
          1803, his own wife; and for twelve thousand livres&mdash;he was
          acquitted, and recovered his liberty. In November last year, in a
          quarrel with his own brother, he stabbed him through the heart, and
          for another sum of twelve thousand livres he was acquitted, and
          released before last Christmas. This wretch is now in prison again, on
          suspicion of having poisoned his own daughter, with whom he had an
          incestuous intercourse, and he boasts publicly of soon being
          liberated. Another person, Louis de Saurac, the younger son of Baron
          de Saurac, who together with his eldest son had emigrated, forged a
          will in the name of his parent, whom he pretended to be dead, which
          left him the sole heir of all the disposable property, to the
          exclusion of two sisters. After the nation had shared its part as heir
          of all emigrants, Louis took possession of the remainder. In 1802,
          both his father and brother accepted the general amnesty, and returned
          to France. To their great surprise, they heard that this Louis had, by
          his ill-treatment, forced his sisters into servitude, refusing them
          even the common necessaries of life. After upbraiding him for his want
          of duty, the father desired, according to the law, the restitution of
          the unsold part of his estates. On the day fixed for settling the
          accounts and entering into his rights, Baron de Saurac was arrested as
          a conspirator and imprisoned in the Temple. He had been denounced as
          having served in the army of Conde, and as being a secret agent of
          Louis XVIII. To disprove the first part of the charge, he produced
          certificates from America, where he had passed the time of his
          emigration, and even upon the rack he denied the latter. During his
          arrest, the eldest son discovered that Louis had become the owner of
          their possessions, by means of the will he had forged in the name of
          his father; and that it was he who had been unnatural enough to
          denounce the author of his days. With the wreck of their fortune in
          St. Domingo, he procured his father's release; who, being acquainted
          with the perversity of his younger son, addressed himself to the
          department to be reinstated in his property. This was opposed by
          Louis, who defended his title to the estate by the revolutionary maxim
          which had passed into a law, enacting that all emigrants should be
          considered as politically dead. Hitherto Baron de Saurac had, from
          affection, declined to mention the forged will; but shocked by his
          son's obduracy, and being reduced to distress, his counsellor produced
          this document, which not only went to deprive Louis of his property,
          but exposed him to a criminal prosecution.
        </p>
        <p>
          This unnatural son, who was not yet twenty-five, had imbibed all the
          revolutionary morals of his contemporaries, and was well acquainted
          with the moral characters of his revolutionary countrymen. He
          addressed himself, therefore, to Merlin of Douai, Bonaparte's Imperial
          attorney-general and commander of his Legion of Honour; who, for a
          bribe of fifty thousand livres&mdash;obtained for him, after he had
          been defeated in every other court, a judgment in his favour, in the
          tribunal of cassation, under the sophistical conclusion that all
          emigrants, being, according to law, considered as politically dead, a
          will in the name of any one of them was merely a pious fraud to
          preserve the property in the family.
        </p>
        <p>
          This Merlin is the son of a labourer of Anchin, and was a servant of
          the Abbey of the same name. One of the monks, observing in him some
          application, charitably sent him to be educated at Douai, after having
          bestowed on him some previous education. Not satisfied with this
          generous act, he engaged the other monks, as well as the chapter of
          Cambray, to subscribe for his expenses of admission as an attorney by
          the Parliament of Douai, in which situation the Revolution found him.
          By his dissimulation and assumed modesty, he continued to dupe his
          benefactors; who, by their influence, obtained for him the nomination
          as representative of the people to our First National Assembly. They
          soon, however, had reason to repent of their generosity. He joined the
          Orleans faction and became one of the most persevering, violent, and
          cruel persecutors of the privileged classes, particularly of the
          clergy, to whom he was indebted for everything. In 1792 he was elected
          a member of the National Convention, where he voted for the death of
          his King. It was he who proposed a law (justly called, by Prudhomme,
          the production of the deliberate homicide Merlin) against suspected
          persons; which was decreed on the 17th of September, 1793, and caused
          the imprisonment or proscription of two hundred thousand families.
          This decree procured him the appellation of Merlin Suspects and of
          Merlin Potence. In 1795 he was appointed a Minister of Police, and
          soon afterwards a Minister of Justice. After the revolution in favour
          of the Jacobins of the 4th of September, 1797, he was made a director,
          a place which he was obliged by the same Jacobins to resign, in June,
          1799. Bonaparte expressed, at first, the most sovereign contempt for
          this Merlin, but on account of one of his sons, who was his
          aide-de-camp, he was appointed by him, when First Consul, his
          attorney-general.
        </p>
        <p>
          As nothing paints better the true features of a Government than the
          morality or vices of its functionaries, I will finish this man's
          portrait with the following characteristic touches.
        </p>
        <p>
          Merlin de Douai has been successively the counsel of the late Duc d'
          Orleans, the friend of Danton, of Chabot, and of Hebert, the admirer
          of Murat, and the servant of Robespierre. An accomplice of Rewbell,
          Barras, and la Reveilliere, an author of the law of suspected persons,
          an advocate of the Septembrizers, and an ardent apostle of the St.
          Guillotine. Cunning as a fog and ferocious as a tiger, he has outlived
          all the factions with which he has been connected. It has been his
          policy to keep in continual fermentation rivalships, jealousies,
          inquietudes, revenge and all other odious passions; establishing, by
          such means, his influence on the terror of some, the ambition of
          others, and the credulity of them all. Had I, when Merlin proposed his
          law concerning suspected persons, in the name of liberty and equality,
          been free and his equal, I should have said to him, "Monster, this,
          your atrocious law, is your sentence of death; it has brought
          thousands of innocent persons to an untimely end; you shall die by my
          hands as a victim, if the tribunals do not condemn you to the scaffold
          as an executioner or as a criminal."
        </p>
        <p>
          Merlin has bought national property to the amount of fifteen million
          of livress&mdash;and he is supposed to possess money nearly to the
          same amount, in your or our funds. For a man born a beggar, and
          educated by charity, this fortune, together with the liberal salaries
          he enjoys, might seem sufficient without selling justice, protecting
          guilt, and oppressing or persecuting innocence.
        </p>
        <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
        <h2>
          LETTER XXIX.
        </h2>
        <br />
        <p>
          Paris, August, 1805.
        </p>
        <p>
          MY LORD:&mdash;The household troops of Napoleon the First are by
          thousands more numerous than those even of Louis XIV. were. Grenadiers
          on foot and on horseback, riflemen on foot and on horseback, heavy and
          light artillery, dragoons and hussars, mamelukes and sailors,
          artificers and pontoneers, gendarmes, gendarmes d'Alite, Velites and
          veterans, with Italian grenadiers, riflemen, dragoons, etc., etc.,
          compose all together a not inconsiderable army.
        </p>
        <p>
          Though it frequently happens that the pay of the other troops is in
          arrears, those appertaining to Bonaparte's household are as regularly
          paid as his Senators, Counsellors of State, and other public
          functionaries. All the men are picked, and all the officers as much as
          possible of birth, or at least of education. In the midst of this
          voluptuous and seductive capital, they are kept very strict, and the
          least negligence or infraction of military discipline is more severely
          punished than if committed in garrison or in an encampment. They are
          both better clothed, accoutred, and paid, than the troops of the line,
          and have everywhere the precedency of them. All the officers, and many
          of the soldiers, are members of Bonaparte's Legion of Honour, and
          carry arms of honour distributed to them by Imperial favour, or for
          military exploits. None of them are quartered upon the citizens; each
          corps has its own spacious barracks, hospitals, drilling-ground,
          riding or fencing-houses, gardens, bathing-houses, billiard-table, and
          even libraries. A chapel has lately been constructed near each
          barrack, and almoners are already appointed. In the meantime, they
          attend regularly at Mass, either in the Imperial Chapel or in the
          parish churches. Bonaparte discourages much all marriages among the
          military in general, but particularly among those of his household
          troops. That they may not, however, be entirely deprived of the
          society of women, he allows five to each company, with the same
          salaries as the men, under the name of washerwomen.
        </p>
        <p>
          With a vain and fickle people, fond of shows and innovations, nothing
          in a military despotism has a greater political utility, gives greater
          satisfaction, and leaves behind a more useful terror and awe, than
          Bonaparte's grand military reviews. In the beginning of his consulate,
          they regularly occurred three times in the month; after his victory of
          Marengo, they were reduced to once in a fortnight, and since he has
          been proclaimed Emperor, to once only in the month. This ostentatious
          exhibition of usurped power is always closed with a diplomatic review
          of the representatives of lawful Princes, who introduce on those
          occasions their fellow-subjects to another subject, who successfully
          has seized, and continues to usurp, the authority of his own
          Sovereign. What an example for ambition! what a lesson to treachery!
        </p>
        <p>
          Besides the household troops, this capital and its vicinity have, for
          these three years past, never contained less than from fifteen to
          twenty thousand men of the regiments of the line, belonging to what is
          called the first military division of the Army of the Interior. These
          troops are selected from among the brigades that served under
          Bonaparte in Italy and Egypt with the greatest eclat, and constitute a
          kind of depot for recruiting his household troops with tried and
          trusty men. They are also regularly paid, and generally better
          accoutred than their comrades encamped on the coast, or quartered in
          Italy or Holland.
        </p>
        <p>
          But a standing army, upon which all revolutionary rulers can depend,
          and that always will continue their faithful support, unique in its
          sort and composition, exists in the bosom as well as in the
          extremities of this country. I mean, one hundred and twenty thousand
          invalids, mostly young men under thirty, forced by conscription
          against their will into the field, quartered and taken care of by our
          Government, and all possessed with the absurd prejudice that, as they
          have been maimed in fighting the battles of rebellion, the restoration
          of legitimate sovereignty would to them be an epoch of destruction, or
          at least of misery and want; and this prejudice is kept alive by
          emissaries employed on purpose to mislead them. Of these, eight
          thousand are lodged and provided for in this city; ten thousand at
          Versailles, and the remainder in Piedmont, Brabant, and in the
          conquered departments on the left bank of the Abine; countries where
          the inhabitants are discontented and disaffected, and require,
          therefore, to be watched, and to have a better spirit infused.
        </p>
        <p>
          Those whose wounds permit it are also employed to do garrison duty in
          fortified places not exposed to an attack by enemies, and to assist in
          the different arsenals and laboratories, foundries, and depots of
          military or naval stores. Others are attached to the police offices,
          and some as gendarmes, to arrest suspected or guilty individuals; or
          as garnissaires, to enforce the payment of contributions from the
          unwilling or distressed. When the period for the payment of taxes is
          expired, two of these janissaires present themselves at the house of
          the persons in arrears, with a billet signed by the director of the
          contributions and countersigned by the police commissary. If the money
          is not immediately paid, with half a crown to each of them besides,
          they remain quartered in the house, where they are to be boarded and
          to receive half a crown a day each until an order from those who sent
          them informs them that what was due to the state has been acquitted.
          After their entrance into a house, and during their stay, no furniture
          or effects whatever can be removed or disposed of, nor can the master
          or mistress go out-of-doors without being accompanied by one of them.
        </p>
        <p>
          In the houses appropriated to our invalids, the inmates are very well
          treated, and Government takes great care to make them satisfied with
          their lot. The officers have large halls, billiards, and reading-room
          to meet in; and the common men are admitted into apartments adjoining
          libraries, from-which they can borrow what books they contain, and
          read them at leisure. This is certainly a very good and even a humane
          institution, though these libraries chiefly contain military histories
          or novels.
        </p>
        <p>
          As to the morals of these young invalids, they may be well conceived
          when you remember the morality of our Revolution; and that they,
          without any religious notions or restraints, were not only permitted,
          but encouraged to partake of the debauchery and licentiousness which
          were carried to such an extreme in our armies and encampments. In an
          age when the passions are strongest, and often blind reason and
          silence conscience, they have not the means nor the permission to
          marry; in their vicinity it is, therefore, more difficult to discover
          one honest woman or a dutiful wife, than hundreds of harlots and of
          adulteresses. Notwithstanding that many of them have been accused
          before the tribunals of seductions, rape, and violence against the
          sex, not one has been punished for what the morality of our Government
          consider merely as bagatelles. Even in cases where husbands, brothers,
          and lovers have been killed by them while defending or avenging the
          honour of their wives, sisters, and mistresses, our tribunals have
          been ordered by our grand judge, according to the commands of the
          Emperor, not to proceed. As most of them have no occupation, the vice
          of idleness augments the mass of their corruption; for men of their
          principles, when they have nothing to do, never do anything good.
        </p>
        <p>
          I do not know if my countrywomen feel themselves honoured by or
          obliged to Bonaparte, for leaving their virtue and honour unprotected,
          except by their own prudence and strength; but of this I am certain,
          that all our other troops, as well as the invalids, may live on free
          quarters with the sex without fearing the consequences; provided they
          keep at a distance from the females of our Imperial Family, and of
          those of our grand officers of State and principal functionaries. The
          wives and the daughters of the latter have, however, sometimes
          declined the advantage of these exclusive privileges.
        </p>
        <p>
          A horse grenadier of Bonaparte's Imperial Guard, of the name of
          Rabais, notorious for his amours and debauchery, was accused before
          the Imperial Judge Thuriot, at one and the same time by several
          husbands and fathers, of having seduced the affections of their wives
          and of their daughters. As usual, Thuriot refused to listen to their
          complaints; at the same time insultingly advising them to retake their
          wives and children, and for the future to be more careful of them.
          Triumphing, as it were, in his injustice, he inconsiderately mentioned
          the circumstance to his own wife, observing that he never knew so many
          charges of the same sort exhibited against one man.
        </p>
        <p>
          Madame Thuriot, who had been a servant-maid to her husband before he
          made her his wife, instead of being disgusted at the recital, secretly
          determined to see this Rabais. An intrigue was then begun, and carried
          on for four months, if not with discretion, at least without
          discovery; but the lady's own imprudence at last betrayed her, or I
          should say, rather, her jealousy. But for this she might still have
          been admired among our modest women, and Thuriot among fortunate
          husbands and happy fathers; for the lady, for the first time since her
          marriage, proved, to the great joy and pride of her husband, in the
          family way. Suspecting, however, the fidelity of her paramour, she
          watched his motions so closely that she discovered an intrigue between
          him and the chaste spouse of a rich banker; but the consequence of
          this discovery was the detection of her own crime.
        </p>
        <p>
          On the discovery of this disgrace, Thuriot obtained an audience of
          Bonaparte, in which he exposed his misfortune, and demanded punishment
          on his wife's gallant. As, however, he also acknowledged that his own
          indiscretion was an indirect cause of their connection, he received
          the same advice which he had given to other unfortunate husbands: to
          retake, and for the future guard better, his dear moiety.
        </p>
        <p>
          Thuriot had, however, an early opportunity of wreaking his vengeance
          on this gallant Rabais. It seems his prowess had reached the ears of
          Madame Baciocchi, the eldest sister of Bonaparte. This lady has a
          children mania, which is very troublesome to her husband, disagreeable
          to her relations, and injurious to herself. She never beholds any
          lady, particularly any of her family, in the way which women wish to
          be who love their lords, but she is absolutely frantic. Now, Thuriot's
          worthy friend Fouche had discovered, by his spies, that Rabais paid
          frequent and secret visits to the hotel Baciocchi, and that Madame
          Baciocchi was the object of these visits. Thuriot, on this discovery,
          instantly denounced him to Bonaparte.
        </p>
        <p>
          Had Rabais ruined all the women of this capital, he would not only
          have been forgiven, but applauded by Napoleon, and his counsellors and
          courtiers; but to dare to approach, or only to cast his eyes on one of
          our Imperial Highnesses, was a crime nothing could extenuate or
          avenge, but the most exemplary punishment. He was therefore arrested,
          sent to the Temple, and has never since been heard of; so that his
          female friends are still in the cruel uncertainty whether he has died
          on the rack, been buried alive in the oubliettes, or is wandering an
          exile in the wilds of Cayenne.
        </p>
        <p>
          In examining his trunk, among the curious effects discovered by the
          police were eighteen portraits and one hundred billets-doux, with
          medallions, rings, bracelets, tresses of hair, etc., as numerous. Two
          of the portraits occasioned much scandal, and more gossiping. They
          were those of two of our most devout and most respectable Court
          ladies, Maids of Honour to our Empress, Madame Ney and Madame Lasnes;
          who never miss an opportunity of going to church, who have received
          the private blessing of the Pope, and who regularly confess to some
          Bishop or other once in a fortnight. Madame Napoleon cleared them,
          however, of all suspicion, by declaring publicly in her drawing-room
          that these portraits had come into the possession of Rabais by the
          infidelity of their maids; who had confessed their faults, and,
          therefore, had been charitably pardoned. Whether the opinions of
          Generals Ney and Lasnes coincide with Madame Napoleon's assertion is
          uncertain; but Lasnes has been often heard to say that, from the
          instant his wife began to confess, he was convinced she was inclined
          to dishonour him; so that nothing surprised him.
        </p>
        <p>
          One of the medallions in Rabais's collection contained on one side the
          portrait of Thuriot, and on the other that of his wife; both set with
          diamonds, and presented to her by him on their last wedding day. For
          the supposed theft of this medallion, two of Thuriot's servants were
          in prison, when the arrest of Rabais explained the manner in which it
          had been lost. This so enraged him that he beat and kicked his wife so
          heartily that for some time even her life was in danger, and Thuriot
          lost all hopes of being a father.
        </p>
        <p>
          Before the Revolution, Thuriot had been, for fraud and forgery, struck
          off the roll as an advocate, and therefore joined it as a patriot. In
          1791, he was chosen a deputy to the National Assembly, and in 1792 to
          the National Convention. He always showed himself one of the most
          ungenerous enemies of the clergy, of monarchy, and of his King, for
          whose death he voted. On the 25th of May, 1792, in declaiming against
          Christianity and priesthood, he wished them both, for the welfare of
          mankind, at the bottom of the sea; and on the 18th of December the
          same year, he declared in the Jacobin Club that, if the National
          Convention evinced any signs of clemency towards Louis XVI., he would
          go himself to the Temple and blow out the brains of this unfortunate
          King. He defended in the tribune the massacres of the prisoners,
          affirming that the tree of liberty could never flourish without being
          inundated with the blood of aristocrats and other enemies of the
          Revolution. He has been convicted by rival factions of the most
          shameful robberies, and his infamy and depravity were so notorious
          that neither Murat, Brissot, Robespierre, nor the Directory would or
          could employ him. After the Revolution of the 9th of November, 1799,
          Bonaparte gave him the office of judge of the criminal tribunal, and
          in 1804 made him a Commander of his Legion of Honour. He is now one of
          our Emperor's most faithful subjects and most sincere Christians. Such
          is now his tender conscientiousness, that he was among those who were
          the first to be married again by some Cardinal to their present wives,
          to whom they had formerly been united only by the municipality. This
          new marriage, however, took place before Madame Thuriot had introduced
          herself to the acquaintance of the Imperial Grenadier Rabais.
        </p>
        <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
        <h2>
          LETTER XXX.
        </h2>
        <br />
        <p>
          PARIS, August, 1805.
        </p>
        <p>
          MY LORD:&mdash;Regarding me as a connoisseur, though I have no
          pretensions but that of being an amateur, Lucien Bonaparte, shortly
          before his disgrace, invited me to pass some days with him in the
          country, and to assist him in arranging his very valuable collection
          of pictures&mdash;next our public ones, the most curious and most
          valuable in Europe, and, of course, in the world. I found here, as at
          Joseph Bonaparte's, the same splendour, the same etiquette, and the
          same liberty, which latter was much enhanced by the really engaging
          and unassuming manners and conversation of the host. At Joseph's, even
          in the midst of abundance and of liberty, in seeing the person or
          meditating on the character of the host, you feel both your
          inferiority of fortune and the humiliation of dependence, and that you
          visit a master instead of a friend, who indirectly tells you, "Eat,
          drink, and rejoice as long and as much as you like; but remember that
          if you are happy, it is to my generosity you are indebted, and if
          unhappy, that I do not care a pin about you." With Lucien it is the
          very reverse. His conduct seems to indicate that by your company you
          confer an obligation on him, and he is studious to remove, on all
          occasions, that distance which fortune has placed between him and his
          guests; and as he cannot compliment them upon being wealthier than
          himself, he seizes with delicacy every opportunity to chew that he
          acknowledges their superiority in talents and in genius as more than
          an equivalent for the absence of riches.
        </p>
        <p>
          He is, nevertheless, himself a young man of uncommon parts, and, as
          far as I could judge from my short intercourse with the reserved
          Joseph and with the haughty Napoleon, he is abler and better informed
          than either, and much more open and sincere. His manners are also more
          elegant, and his language more polished, which is the more creditable
          to him when it is remembered how much his education has been
          neglected, how vitiated the Revolution made him, and that but lately
          his principal associates were, like himself, from among the vilest and
          most vulgar of the rabble. It is not necessary to be a keen observer
          to remark in Napoleon the upstart soldier, and in Joseph the former
          low member of the law; but I defy the most refined courtier to see in
          Lucien anything indicating a ci-devant sans-culotte. He has, besides,
          other qualities (and those more estimable) which will place him much
          above his elder brothers in the opinion of posterity. He is extremely
          compassionate and liberal to the truly distressed, serviceable to
          those whom he knows are not his friends, and forgiving and obliging
          even to those who have proved and avowed themselves his enemies. These
          are virtues commonly very scarce, and hitherto never displayed by any
          other member of the Bonaparte family.
        </p>
        <p>
          An acquaintance of yours, and&mdash;a friend of mine, Count de T&mdash;&mdash;-,
          at his return here from emigration, found, of his whole former
          fortune, producing once eighty thousand livres&mdash;in the year, only
          four farms unsold, and these were advertised for sale. A man who had
          once been his servant, but was then a groom to Lucien, offered to
          present a memorial for him to his master, to prevent the disposal of
          the only support which remained to subsist himself, with a wife and
          four children. Lucien asked Napoleon to prohibit the sale, and to
          restore the Count the farms, and obtained his consent; but Fouche,
          whose cousin wanted them, having purchased other national property in
          the neighbourhood, prevailed upon Napoleon to forget his promise, and
          the farms were sold. As soon as Lucien heard of it he sent for the
          Count, delivered into his hands an annuity of six thousand livres&mdash;for
          the life of himself, his wife, and his children, as an indemnity for
          the inefficacy of his endeavours to serve him, as he expressed
          himself. Had the Count recovered the farms, they would not have given
          him a clear profit of half the amount, all taxes paid.
        </p>
        <p>
          A young author of the name of Gauvan, irritated by the loss of parents
          and fortune by the Revolution, attacked, during 1799, in the public
          prints, as well as in pamphlets, every Revolutionist who had obtained
          notoriety or popularity. He was particularly vehement against Lucien,
          and laid before the public all his crimes and all his errors, and
          asserted, as facts, atrocities which were either calumnies or merely
          rumours. When, after Napoleon's assumption of the Consulate, Lucien
          was appointed a Minister of the Interior, he sent for Gauvan, and said
          to him, "Great misfortunes have early made you wretched and unjust,
          and you have frequently revenged yourself on those who could not
          prevent them, among whom I am one. You do not want capacity, nor, I
          believe, probity. Here is a commission which makes you a Director of
          Contributions in the Departments of the Rhine and Moselle, an office
          with a salary of twelve thousand livres but producing double that sum.
          If you meet with any difficulties, write to me; I am your friend. Take
          those one hundred louis d'or for the expenses of your journey. Adieu!"
          This anecdote I have read in Gauvan's own handwriting, in a letter to
          his sister. He died in 1802; but Mademoiselle Gauvan, who is not yet
          fifteen, has a pension of three thousand livres a year&mdash;from
          Lucien, who, has never seen her.
        </p>
        <p>
          Lucien Bonaparte has another good quality: he is consistent in his
          political principles. Either from conviction or delusion he is still a
          Republican, and does not conceal that, had he suspected Napoleon of
          any intent to reestablish monarchy, much less tyranny, he would have
          joined those deputies who, on the 9th of November, 1799, in the
          sitting at St. Cloud, demanded a decree of outlawry against him. If
          the present quarrel between these two brothers were sifted to the
          bottom, perhaps it would be found to originate more from Lucien's
          Republicanism than from his marriage.
        </p>
        <p>
          I know, with all France and Europe, that Lucien's youth has been very
          culpable; that he has committed many indiscretions, much injustice,
          many imprudences, many errors, and, I fear, even some crimes. I know
          that he has been the most profligate among the profligate, the most
          debauched among libertines, the most merciless among the plunderers,
          and the most perverse among rebels. I know that he is accused of being
          a Septembrizer; of having murdered one wife and poisoned another; of
          having been a spy, a denouncer, a persecutor of innocent persons in
          the Reign of Terror. I know that he is accused of having fought his
          brothers-in-law; of having ill-used his mother, and of an incestuous
          commerce with his own sisters.
        </p>
        <p>
          I have read and heard of these and other enormous accusations, and far
          be it from me to defend, extenuate, or even deny them. But suppose all
          this infamy to be real, to be proved, to be authenticated, which it
          never has been, and, to its whole extent, I am persuaded, never can be&mdash;what
          are the cruel and depraved acts of which Lucien has been accused to
          the enormities and barbarities of which Napoleon is convicted? Is the
          poisoning a wife more criminal than the poisoning a whole hospital of
          wounded soldiers; or the assisting to kill some confined persons,
          suspected of being enemies, more atrocious than the massacre in cold
          blood of thousands of disarmed prisoners? Is incest with a sister more
          shocking to humanity than the well-known unnatural pathic but I will
          not continue the disgusting comparison. As long as Napoleon is unable
          to acquit himself of such barbarities and monstrous crimes, he has no
          right to pronounce Lucien unworthy to be called his brother; nor have
          Frenchmen, as long as they obey the former as a Sovereign, or the
          Continent, as long as it salutes him as such, any reason to despise
          the latter for crimes which lose their enormity when compared to the
          horrid perpetrations of his Imperial brother.
        </p>
        <p>
          An elderly lady, a relation of Lucien's wife, and a person in whose
          veracity and morality I have the greatest confidence, and for whom he
          always had evinced more regard than even for his own mother, has
          repeated to me many of their conversations. She assures me that Lucien
          deplores frequently the want of a good and religious education, and
          the tempting examples of perversity he met with almost at his entrance
          upon the revolutionary scene. He says that he determined to get rich
          'per fas aut nefas', because he observed that money was everything,
          and that most persons plotted and laboured for power merely to be
          enabled to gather treasure, though, after they had obtained both, much
          above their desert and expectation, instead of being satiated or even
          satisfied, they bustled and intrigued for more, until success made
          them unguarded and prosperity indiscreet, and they became with their
          wealth the easy prey of rival factions. Such was the case of Danton,
          of Fabre d'Eglantine, of Chabot, of Chaumette, of Stebert, and other
          contemptible wretches, butchered by Robespierre and his partisans&mdash;victims
          in their turn to men as unjust and sanguinary as themselves. He had,
          therefore, laid out a different plan of conduct for himself. He had
          fixed upon fifty millions of livres&mdash;as the maximum he should
          wish for, and when that sum was in his possession, he resolved to
          resign all pretensions to rank and employment, and to enjoy 'otium cum
          dignitate'. He had kept to his determination, and so regulated his
          income that; with the expenses, pomp, and retinue of a Prince, he is
          enabled to make more persons happy and comfortable than his extortions
          have ruined or even embarrassed. He now lives like a philosopher, and
          endeavours to forget the past, to delight in the present, and to be
          indifferent about futurity. He chose, therefore, for a wife, a lady
          whom he loved and esteemed, in preference to one whose birth would
          have been a continual reproach to the meanness of his own origin.
        </p>
        <p>
          You must, with me, admire the modesty of a citizen sans-culotte, who,
          without a shilling in the world, fixes upon fifty millions as a reward
          for his revolutionary achievements, and with which he would be
          satisfied to sit down and begin his singular course of singular
          philosophy. But his success is more extraordinary that his pretensions
          were extravagant. This immense sum was amassed by him in the short
          period of four years, chiefly by bribes from foreign Courts, and by
          selling his protections in France.
        </p>
        <p>
          But most of the other Bonapartes have made as great and as rapid
          fortunes as Lucien, and yet, instead of being generous, contented, or
          even philosophers, they are still profiting by every occasion to
          increase their ill-gotten treasures, and no distress was ever
          relieved, no talents encouraged, or virtues recompensed by them. The
          mind of their garrets lodges with them in their palaces, while Lucien
          seems to ascend as near as possible to a level with his circumstances.
          I have myself found him beneficent without ostentation.
        </p>
        <p>
          Among his numerous pictures, I observed four that had formerly
          belonged to my father's, and afterwards to my own cabinet. I inquired
          how much he had paid for them, without giving the least hint that they
          had been my property, and were plundered from me by the nation. He
          had, indeed, paid their full value. In a fortnight after I had quitted
          him, these, with six other pictures, were deposited in my room, with a
          very polite note, begging my acceptance of them, and assuring me that
          he had but the day before heard from his picture dealer that they had
          belonged to me. He added that he would never retake them, unless he
          received an assurance from me that I parted with them without
          reluctance, and at the same time affixed their price. I returned them,
          as I knew they were desired by him for his collection, but he
          continued obstinate. I told him, therefore, that, as I was acquainted
          with his inclination to perform a generous action, I would, instead of
          payment for the pictures, indicate a person deserving his assistance.
          I mentioned the old Duchesse de &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;, who is
          seventy-four years of age and blind; and, after possessing in her
          youth an income of eight hundred thousand livres&mdash;is now, in her
          old age, almost destitute. He did for this worthy lady more than I
          expected; but happening, in his visits to relieve my friend, to cast
          his eye on the daughter of the landlady where she lodged, he found
          means to prevail on the simplicity of the poor girl, and seduced her.
          So much do I know personally of Lucien Bonaparte, who certainly is a
          composition of good and bad qualities, but which of them predominate I
          will not take upon me to decide. This I can affirm&mdash;Lucien is not
          the worst member of the Bonaparte family.
        </p>
        <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
        <h2>
          LETTER XXXI.
        </h2>
        <br />
        <p>
          PARIS, August, 1805.
        </p>
        <p>
          MY LORD:&mdash;As long as Austria ranks among independent nations,
          Bonaparte will take care not to offend or alarm the ambition and
          interest of Prussia by incorporating the Batavian Republic with the
          other provinces of his Empire. Until that period, the Dutch must
          continue (as they have been these last ten years) under the
          appellation of allies, oppressed like subjects and plundered like
          foes. Their mock sovereignty will continue to weigh heavier on them
          than real servitude does on their Belgic and Flemish neighbours,
          because Frederick the Great pointed out to his successors the Elbe and
          the Tegel as the natural borders of the Prussian monarchy, whenever
          the right bank of the Rhine should form the natural frontiers of the
          kingdom of France.
        </p>
        <p>
          That during the present summer a project for a partition treaty of
          Holland has by the Cabinet of St. Cloud been laid before the Cabinet
          of Berlin is a fact, though disseminated only as a rumour by the
          secret agents of Talleyrand. Their object was on this, as on all
          previous occasions when any names, rights, or liberties of people were
          intended to be erased from among the annals of independence, to sound
          the ground, and to prepare by such rumours the mind of the public for
          another outrage and another overthrow. But Prussia, as well as France,
          knows the value of a military and commercial navy, and that to obtain
          it good harbours and navigable rivers are necessary, and therefore, as
          well as from principles of justice, perhaps, declined the acceptance
          of a plunder, which, though tempting, was contrary to the policy of
          the House of Brandenburgh.
        </p>
        <p>
          According to a copy circulated among the members of our diplomatic
          corps, this partition treaty excluded Prussia from all the Batavian
          seaports except Delfzig, and those of the river Ems, but gave her
          extensive territories on the side of Guelderland, and a rich country
          in Friesland. Had it been acceded to by the Court of Berlin, with the
          annexed condition of a defensive and offensive alliance with the Court
          of St. Cloud, the Prussian monarchy would, within half a century, have
          been swallowed up in the same gulf with the Batavian Commonwealth and
          the Republic of Poland; and by some future scheme of some future
          Bonaparte or Talleyrand, be divided in its turn, and serve as a pledge
          of reconciliation or inducement of connection between some future
          rulers of the French and Russian Empires.
        </p>
        <p>
          Talleyrand must, indeed, have a very mean opinion of the capacity of
          the Prussian Ministers, or a high notion of his own influence over
          them, if he was serious in this overture. For my part, I am rather
          inclined to think that it was merely thrown out to discover whether
          Frederick William III. had entered into any engagement contrary to the
          interest of Napoleon the First; or to allure His Prussian Majesty into
          a negotiation which would suspend, or at least interfere with, those
          supposed to be then on the carpet with Austria, Russia, or perhaps
          even with England.
        </p>
        <p>
          The late Batavian Government had, ever since the beginning of the
          present war with England, incurred the displeasure of Bonaparte. When
          it apprehended a rupture from the turn which the discussion respecting
          the occupation of Malta assumed, the Dutch Ambassadors at St.
          Petersburg and Berlin were ordered to demand the interference of these
          two Cabinets for the preservation of the neutrality of Holland, which
          your country had promised to acknowledge, if respected by France. No
          sooner was Bonaparte informed of this step, than he marched troops
          into the heart of the Batavian Republic, and occupied its principal
          forts, ports, and arsenals. When, some time afterwards, Count Markof
          received instructions from his Court, according to the desire of the
          Batavian Directory, and demanded, in consequence, an audience from
          Bonaparte, a map was laid before him, indicating the position of the
          French troops in Holland, and plans of the intended encampment of our
          army of England on the coast of Flanders and France; and he was asked
          whether he thought it probable that our Government would assent to a
          neutrality so injurious to its offensive operations against Great
          Britain.
        </p>
        <p>
          "But," said the Russian Ambassador, "the independence of Holland has
          been admitted by you in formal treaties."
        </p>
        <p>
          "So has the cession of Malta by England," interrupted Bonaparte, with
          impatience.
        </p>
        <p>
          "True," replied Markof, "but you are now at war with England for this
          point; while Holland, against which you have no complaint, has not
          only been invaded by your troops, but, contrary both to its
          inclination and interest, involved in a war with you, by which it has
          much to lose and nothing to gain."
        </p>
        <p>
          "I have no account to render to anybody for my transactions, and I
          desire to hear nothing more on this subject," said Bonaparte, retiring
          furious, and leaving Markof to meditate on our Sovereign's singular
          principles of political justice and of 'jus pentium'.
        </p>
        <p>
          From that period Bonaparte resolved on another change of the executive
          power of the Batavian Republic. But it was more easy to displace one
          set of men for another than to find proper ones to occupy a situation
          in which, if they do their duty as patriots, they must offend France;
          and if they are our tools, instead of the independent governors of
          their country, they must excite a discontent among their fellow
          citizens, disgracing themselves as individuals, and exposing
          themselves as chief magistrates to the fate of the De Witts, should
          ever fortune forsake our arms or desert Bonaparte.
        </p>
        <p>
          No country has of late been less productive of great men than Holland.
          The Van Tromps, the Russel, and the William III. all died without
          leaving any posterity behind them; and the race of Batavian heroes
          seems to have expired with them, as that of patriots with the De,
          Witts and Barneveldt. Since the beginning of the last century we read,
          indeed, of some able statesmen, as most, if not all, the former grand
          pensionaries have been; but the name of no warrior of any great
          eminence is recorded. This scarcity, of native genius and valour has
          not a little contributed to the present humbled, disgraced, and
          oppressed state of wretched Batavia.
        </p>
        <p>
          Admiral de Winter certainly neither wants courage nor genius, but his
          private character has a great resemblance to that of General Moreau.
          Nature has destined him to obey, and not to govern. He may direct as
          ably and as valiantly the manoeuvres of a fleet as Moreau does those
          of an army, but neither the one nor the other at the head of his
          nation would render himself respected, his country flourishing, or his
          countrymen happy and tranquil.
        </p>
        <p>
          Destined from his youth for the navy, Admiral de Winter entered into
          the naval service of his country before he was fourteen, and was a
          second lieutenant when the Batavian patriots, in rebellion against the
          Stadtholder, were, in 1787, reduced to submission by the Duke of
          Brunswick, the commander of the Prussian army that invaded Holland.
          His parents and family being of the anti-Orange party, he emigrated to
          France, where he was made an officer in the legion of Batavian
          refugees. During the campaign of 1793 and 1794, he so much
          distinguished himself under that competent judge of merit, Pichegru,
          that this commander obtained for him the commission of a general of
          brigade in the service of the French; which, after the conquest of
          Holland in January, 1795, was exchanged for the rank of a vice-admiral
          of the Batavian Republic. His exploits as commander of the Dutch
          fleet, during the battle of the 11th of October, 1797, with your
          fleet, under Lord Duncan, I have heard applauded even in your
          presence, when in your country. Too honest to be seduced, and too
          brave to be intimidated, he is said to have incurred Bonaparte's
          hatred by resisting both his offers and his threats, and declining to
          sell his own liberty as well as to betray the liberty of his fellow
          subjects. When, in 1800, Bonaparte proposed to him the presidency and
          consulate of the United States, for life, on condition that he should
          sign a treaty, which made him a vassal of France, he refused, with
          dignity and with firmness, and preferred retirement to a supremacy so
          dishonestly acquired, and so dishonourably occupied.
        </p>
        <p>
          General Daendels, another Batavian revolutionist of some notoriety,
          from an attorney became a lieutenant-colonel, and served as a spy
          under Dumouriez in the winter of 1792 and in the spring of 1793. Under
          Pichegru he was made a general, and exhibited those talents in the
          field which are said to have before been displayed in the forum. In
          June, 1795, he was made a lieutenant-general of the Batavian Republic,
          and he was the commander-in-chief of the Dutch troops combating in
          1799 your army under the Duke of York. In this place he did not much
          distinguish himself, and the issue of the contest was entirely owing
          to our troops and to our generals.
        </p>
        <p>
          After the Peace of Amiens, observing that Bonaparte intended to
          annihilate instead of establishing universal liberty, Daendels gave in
          his resignation and retired to obscurity, not wishing to be an
          instrument of tyranny, after having so long fought for freedom. Had he
          possessed the patriotism of a Brutus or a Cato, he would have bled or
          died for his cause and country sooner than have deserted them both; or
          had the ambition and love of glory of a Caesar held a place in his
          bosom, he would have attempted to be the chief of his country, and by
          generosity and clemency atone, if possible, for the loss of liberty.
          Upon the line of baseness,&mdash;the deserter is placed next to the
          traitor.
        </p>
        <p>
          Dumonceau, another Batavian general of some publicity, is not by birth
          a citizen of the United States, but was born at Brussels in 1758, and
          was by profession a stonemason when, in 1789, he joined, as a
          volunteer, the Belgian insurgents. After their dispersion in 1790 he
          took refuge and served in France, and was made an officer in the corps
          of Belgians, formed after the declaration of war against Austria in
          1792. Here he frequently distinguished himself, and was, therefore,
          advanced to the rank of a general; but the Dutch general officers
          being better paid than those of the French Republic, he was, with the
          permission of our Directory, received, in 1795, as a
          lieutenant-general of the Batavian Republic. He has often evinced
          bravery, but seldom great capacity. His natural talents are considered
          as but indifferent, and his education is worse.
        </p>
        <p>
          These are the only three military characters who might, with any
          prospect of success, have tried to play the part of a Napoleon
          Bonaparte in Holland.
        </p>
        <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
        <h2>
          LETTER XXXII.
        </h2>
        <br />
        <p>
          PARIS, August, 1805.
        </p>
        <p>
          MY LORD:&mdash;Not to give umbrage to the Cabinet of Berlin, Bonaparte
          communicated to it the necessity he was under of altering the form of
          Government in Holland, and, if report be true, even condescended to
          ask advice concerning a chief magistrate for that country. The young
          Prince of Orange, brother-in-law of His Prussian Majesty, naturally
          presented himself; but, after some time, Talleyrand's agents
          discovered that great pecuniary sacrifices could not be expected from
          that quarter, and perhaps less submission to France experienced than
          from the former governors. An eye was then cast on the Elector of
          Bavaria, whose past patriotism, as well as that of his Ministers, was
          a full guarantee for future obedience. Had he consented to such an
          arrangement, Austria might have aggrandized herself on the Inn,
          Prussia in Franconia, and France in Italy; and the present bone of
          contest would have been chiefly removed.
        </p>
        <p>
          This intrigue, for it was nothing else, was carried on by the Cabinet
          of St. Cloud in March, 1804, about the time that Germany was invaded
          and the Duc d'Enghien seized. This explains to you the reason why the
          Russian note, delivered to the Diet of Ratisbon on the 8th of the
          following May, was left without any support, except the ineffectual
          one from the King of Sweden. How any Cabinet could be dupe enough to
          think Bonaparte serious, or the Elector of Bavaria so weak as to enter
          into his schemes, is difficult to be conceived, had not Europe
          witnessed still greater credulity on one side, and still greater
          effrontery on the other.
        </p>
        <p>
          In the meantime Bonaparte grew every day more discontented with the
          Batavian Directory, and more irritated against the members who
          composed it. Against his regulations for excluding the commerce and
          productions of your country, they resented with spirit instead of
          obeying them without murmur as was required. He is said to have
          discovered, after his own soldiers had forced the custom-house
          officers to obey his orders, that, while in their proclamations the
          directors publicly prohibited the introduction of British goods, some
          of them were secret insurers of this forbidden merchandise, introduced
          by fraud and by smuggling; and that while they officially wished for
          the success of the French arms and destruction of England, they
          withdrew by stealth what property they had in the French funds, to
          place it in the English. This refractory and, as Bonaparte called it,
          mercantile spirit, so enraged him, that he had already signed an order
          for arresting and transferring en masse his high allies, the Batavian
          directors, to his Temple, when the representations of Talleyrand
          moderated his fury, and caused the order to be recalled, which Fouche
          was ready to execute.
        </p>
        <p>
          Had Jerome Bonaparte not offended his brother by his transatlantic
          marriage, he would long ago have been the Prince Stadtholder of
          Holland; but his disobedience was so far useful to the Cabinet of St.
          Cloud as it gave it an opportunity of intriguing with, or deluding,
          other Cabinets that might have any pretensions to interfere in the
          regulation of the Batavian Government. By the choice finally made, you
          may judge how difficult it was to find a suitable subject to represent
          it, and that this representation is intended only to be temporary.
        </p>
        <p>
          Schimmelpenninck, the present grand pensionary of the Batavian
          Republic, was destined by his education for the bar, but by his
          natural parts to await in quiet obscurity the end of a dull existence.
          With some property, little information, and a tolerably good share of
          common sense, he might have lived and died respected, and even
          regretted, without any pretension, or perhaps even ambition, to shine.
          The anti-Orange faction, to which his parents and family appertained,
          pushed him forward, and elected him, in 1795, a member of the First
          Batavian National Convention, where, according to the spirit of the
          times, his speeches were rather those of a demagogue than those of a
          Republican. Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity were the constant themes
          of his political declamations, infidelity his religious profession,
          and the examples of immorality, his social lessons; so rapid and
          dangerous are the strides with which seduction frequently advances on
          weak minds.
        </p>
        <p>
          In 1800 he was appointed an Ambassador to Napoleon Bonaparte and
          Charles Maurice Talleyrand. The latter used him as a stockbroker, and
          the former for anything he thought proper; and he was the humble and
          submissive valet of both. More ignorant than malicious, and a greater
          fool than a rogue, he was more laughed at and despised than trusted or
          abused.
        </p>
        <p>
          His patience being equal to his phlegm, nothing either moved or
          confounded him; and he was, as Talleyrand remarked, "a model of an
          Ambassador, according to which he and Bonaparte wished that all other
          independent Princes and States would choose their representatives to
          the French Government."
        </p>
        <p>
          When our Minister and his Sovereign were discussing the difficulty of
          properly filling up the vacancy, of the Dutch Government, judged
          necessary by both, the former mentioned Schimmelpenninck with a smile;
          and serious as Bonaparte commonly is, he could not help laughing. "I
          should have been less astonished," said he, "had you proposed my
          Mameluke, Rostan."
        </p>
        <p>
          This rebuke did not deter Talleyrand (who had settled his terms with
          Schimmelpenninck) from continuing to point out the advantage which
          France would derive from this nomination. "Because no man could easier
          be directed when in office, and no man easier turned out of office
          when disagreeable or unnecessary. Both as a Batavian plenipotentiary
          at Amiens, and as Batavian Ambassador in England, he had proved
          himself as obedient and submissive to France as when in the same
          capacity at Paris."
        </p>
        <p>
          By returning often to the charge, with these and other remarks,
          Talleyrand at last accustomed Bonaparte to the idea, which had once
          appeared so humiliating, of writing to a man so much inferior in
          everything, "Great and dear Friend!" and therefore said to the
          Minister:
        </p>
        <p>
          "Well! let us then make him a grand pensionary and a locum tenens for
          five years; or until Jerome, when he repents, returns to his duty, and
          is pardoned."
        </p>
        <p>
          "Is he, then, not to be a grand pensionary for life?" asked
          Talleyrand; "whether for one month or for life, he would be equally
          obedient to resign when, commanded; but the latter would be more
          popular in Holland, where they were tired of so many changes."
        </p>
        <p>
          "Let them complain, if they dare," replied Bonaparte.
          "Schimmelpenninck is their chief magistrate only for five years, if so
          long; but you may add that they may reelect him."
        </p>
        <p>
          It was not before Talleyrand had compared the pecuniary proposal made
          to his agents by foreign Princes with those of Schimmelpenninck to
          himself, that the latter obtained the preference. The exact amount of
          the purchase-money for the supreme magistracy in Holland is not well
          known to any but the contracting parties. Some pretended that the
          whole was paid down beforehand, being advanced by a society of
          merchants at Amsterdam, the friends or relatives of the grand
          pensionary; others, that it is to be paid by annual instalments of two
          millions of livres&mdash;for a certain number of years. Certain it is,
          that this high office was sold and bought; and that, had it been given
          for life, its value would have been proportionately enhanced; which
          was the reason that Talleyrand endeavoured to have it thus
          established.
        </p>
        <p>
          Talleyrand well knew the precarious state of Schimmelpenninck's
          grandeur; that it not only depended upon the whim of Napoleon, but had
          long been intended as an hereditary sovereignty for Jerome. Another
          Dutchman asked him not to ruin his friend and his family for what he
          was well aware could never be called a sinecure place, and was so
          precarious in its tenure. "Foolish vanity," answered the Minister,
          "can never pay enough for the gratification of its desires. All the
          Schimmelpennincks in the world do not possess property enough to
          recompense me for the sovereign honours which I have procured for one
          of their name and family, were he deposed within twenty-four hours.
          What treasures can indemnify me for connecting such a name and such a
          personage with the great name of the First Emperor of the French?"
        </p>
        <p>
          I have only twice in my life been in Schimmelpenninck's company, and I
          thought him both timid and reserved; but from what little he said, I
          could not possibly judge of his character and capacity. His portrait
          and its accompaniments have been presented to me; such as delivered to
          you by one of his countrymen, a Mr. M&mdash;&mdash; (formerly an
          Ambassador also), who was both his schoolfellow and his comrade at the
          university. I shall add the following traits, in his own words as near
          as possible:
        </p>
        <p>
          "More vain than ambitious, Schimmelpenninck from his youth, and,
          particularly, from his entrance into public life, tried every means to
          make a noise, but found none to make a reputation. He caressed in
          succession all the systems of the French Revolution, without adopting
          one for himself. All the Kings of faction received in their turns his
          homage and felicitations. It was impossible to mention to him a man of
          any notoriety, of whom he did not become immediately a partisan. The
          virtues or the vices, the merit or defects, of the individual were of
          no consideration; according to his judgment it was sufficient to be
          famous. Yet with all the extravagances of a head filled with
          paradoxes, and of a heart spoiled by modern philosophy, added to a
          habit of licentiousness, he had no idea of becoming an instrument for
          the destruction of liberty in his own country, much less of becoming
          its tyrant, in submitting to be the slave of France. It was but lately
          that he took the fancy, after so long admiring all other great men of
          our age, to be at any rate one of their number, and of being admired
          as a great man in his turn. On this account many accuse him of
          hypocrisy, but no one deserves that appellation less, his vanity and
          exaltation never permitting him to dissimulate; and no presumption,
          therefore, was less disguised than his, to those who studied the man.
          Without acquired ability, without natural genius, or political
          capacity, destitute of discretion and address, as confident and
          obstinate as ignorant, he is only elevated to fall and to rise no
          more."
        </p>
        <p>
          Madame Schimmelpenninck, I was informed, is as amiable and
          accomplished as her husband is awkward and deficient; though well
          acquainted with his infidelities and profligacy, she is too virtuous
          to listen to revenge, and too generous not to forgive. She is,
          besides, said to be a lady of uncommon abilities, and of greater
          information than she chooses to display. She has never been the
          worshipper of Bonaparte, or the friend of Talleyrand; she loved her
          country, and detested its tyrants. Had she been created a grand
          pensionary, she would certainly have swayed with more glory than her
          husband; and been hailed by contemporaries, as well as posterity, if
          not a heroine, at least a patriot,&mdash;a title which in our times,
          though often prostituted, so few have any claim to, and which,
          therefore, is so much the more valuable.
        </p>
        <p>
          When it was known at Paris that Schimmelpenninck had set out for his
          new sovereignty, no less than sixteen girls of the Palais Royal
          demanded passes for Holland. Being questioned by Fouche as to their
          business in that country, they answered that they intended to visit
          their friend, the grand pensionary, in his new dominions. Fouche
          communicated to Talleyrand both their demands and their business, and
          asked his advice. He replied:
        </p>
        <p>
          "Send two, and those of whose vigilance and intelligence you are sure.
          Refuse, by all means, the other fourteen. Schimmelpenninck's time is
          precious, and were they at the Hague, he would neglect everything for
          them. If they are fond of travelling, and are handsome and adroit,
          advise them to set out for London or for St. Petersburg; and if they
          consent, order them to my office, and they shall be supplied, if
          approved of, both with instructions, and with their travelling
          expenses."
        </p>
        <p>
          Fouche answered his colleague that "they were in every respect the
          very reverse of his description; they seemed to have passed their
          lives in the lowest stage of infamy, and they could neither read nor
          write." You have therefore, no reason to fear that these belles will
          be sent to disseminate corruption in your happy island.
        </p>
        <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
        <h2>
          LETTER XXXIII.
        </h2>
        <br />
        <p>
          PARIS, August, 1805.
        </p>
        <p>
          MY LORD:&mdash;The Italian subjects of Napoleon the First were far
          from displaying the same zeal and the same gratitude for his paternal
          care and kindness in taking upon himself the trouble of governing
          them, as we good Parisians have done. Notwithstanding that a brigade
          of our police agents and spies, drilled for years to applaud and to
          excite enthusiasm, proceeded as his advanced guard to raise the public
          spirit, the reception at Milan was cold and everything else but
          cordial and pleasing. The absence of duty did not escape his
          observation and resentment. Convinced, in his own mind, of the great
          blessing, prosperity, and liberty his victories and sovereignty have
          conferred on the inhabitants of the other side of the Alps, he
          ascribed their present passive or mutinous behaviour to the effect of
          foreign emissaries from Courts envious of his glory and jealous of his
          authority.
        </p>
        <p>
          He suspected particularly England and Russia of having selected this
          occasion of a solemnity that would complete his grandeur to humble his
          just pride. He also had some idea within himself that even Austria
          might indirectly have dared to influence the sentiments and conduct of
          her ci-devant subjects of Lombardy; but his own high opinion of the
          awe which his very name inspired at Vienna dispersed these thoughts,
          and his wrath fell entirely on the audacity of Pitt and Markof. Strict
          orders were therefore issued to the prefects and commissaries of
          police to watch vigilantly all foreigners and strangers, who might
          have arrived, or who should arrive, to witness the ceremony of the
          coronation, and to arrest instantly any one who should give the least
          reason to suppose that he was an enemy instead of an admirer of His
          Imperial and Royal Majesty. He also commanded the prefects of his
          palace not to permit any persons to approach his sacred person, of
          whose morality and politics they had not previously obtained a good
          account.
        </p>
        <p>
          These great measures of security were not entirely unnecessary.
          Individual vengeance and individual patriotism sharpened their
          daggers, and, to use Senator Roederer's language, "were near
          transforming the most glorious day of rejoicing into a day of
          universal mourning."
        </p>
        <p>
          All our writers on the Revolution agree that in France, within the
          first twelve years after we had reconquered our lost liberty, more
          conspiracies have been denounced than during the six centuries of the
          most brilliant epoch of ancient and free Rome. These facts and avowals
          are speaking evidences of the eternal tranquillity of our unfortunate
          country, of our affection to our rulers, and of the unanimity with
          which all the changes of Government have been, notwithstanding our
          printed votes, received and approved.
        </p>
        <p>
          The frequency of conspiracies not only shows the discontent of the
          governed, but the insecurity and instability of the governors. This
          truth has not escaped Napoleon, who has, therefore, ordered an
          expeditious and secret justice to despatch instantly the conspirators,
          and to bury the conspiracy in oblivion, except when any grand coup
          d'etat is to be struck; or, to excite the passions of hatred, any
          proofs can be found, or must be fabricated, involving an inimical or
          rival foreign Government in an odious plot. Since the farce which
          Mehee de la Touche exhibited, you have, therefore, not read in the
          Moniteur either of the danger our Emperor has incurred several times
          since from the machinations of implacable or fanatical foes, or of the
          alarm these have caused his partisans. They have, indeed, been hinted
          at in some speeches of our public functionaries, and in some
          paragraphs of our public prints, but their particulars will remain
          concealed from historians, unless some one of those composing our
          Court, our fashionable, or our political circles, has taken the
          trouble of noting them down; but even to these they are but
          imperfectly or incorrectly known.
        </p>
        <p>
          Could the veracity of a Fouche, a Real, a Talleyrand, or a Duroc (the
          only members of this new secret and invisible tribunal for expediting
          conspirators) be depended upon, they would be the most authentic
          annalists of these and other interesting secret occurrences.
        </p>
        <p>
          What I intend relating to you on this subject are circumstances such
          as they have been reported in our best informed societies by our most
          inquisitive companions. Truth is certainly the foundation of these
          anecdotes; but their parts may be extenuated, diminished, altered, or
          exaggerated. Defective or incomplete as they are, I hope you will not
          judge them unworthy of a page in a letter, considering the grand
          personage they concern, and the mystery with which he and his
          Government encompass themselves, or in which they wrap up everything
          not agreeable concerning them.
        </p>
        <p>
          A woman is said to have been at the head of the first plot against
          Napoleon since his proclamation as an Emperor of the French. She
          called herself Charlotte Encore; but her real name is not known. In
          1803 she lived and had furnished a house at Abbeville, where she
          passed for a young widow of property, subsisting on her rents. About
          the same time several other strangers settled there; but though she
          visited the principal inhabitants, she never publicly had any
          connection with the newcomers.
        </p>
        <p>
          In the summer of 1803, a girl at Amiens&mdash;some say a real
          enthusiast of Bonaparte's, but, according to others, engaged by Madame
          Bonaparte to perform the part she did demanded, upon her knees, in a
          kind of paroxysm of joy, the happiness of embracing him, in doing
          which she fainted, or pretended to faint away, and a pension of three
          thousand livres&mdash;was settled on her for her affection.
        </p>
        <p>
          Madame Encore, at Abbeville, to judge of her discourse and
          conversation, was also an ardent friend and well-wisher of the
          Emperor; and when, in July, 1804, he passed through Abbeville, on his
          journey to the coast, she, also, threw herself at his feet, and
          declared that she would die content if allowed the honour of embracing
          him. To this he was going to assent, when Duroc stepped between them,
          seized her by the arm, and dragged her to an adjoining room, whither
          Bonaparte, near fainting from the sudden alarm his friend's
          interference had occasioned, followed him, trembling. In the right
          sleeve of Madame Encore's gown was found a stiletto, the point of
          which was poisoned. She was the same day transported to this capital,
          under the inspection of Duroc, and imprisoned in the Temple. In her
          examination she denied having accomplices, and she expired on the rack
          without telling even her name. The sub-prefect at Abbeville, the once
          famous Andre Dumont, was ordered to disseminate a report that she was
          shut up as insane in a madhouse.
        </p>
        <p>
          In the strict search made by the police in the house occupied by her,
          no papers or any, other indications were discovered that involved
          other persons, or disclosed who she was, or what induced her to
          attempt such a rash action. Before the secret tribunal she is reported
          to have said, "that being convinced of Bonaparte's being one of the
          greatest criminals that ever breathed upon the earth, she took upon
          herself the office of a volunteer executioner; having, with every
          other good or loyal person, a right to punish him whom the law could
          not, or dared not, reach." When, however, some repairs were made in
          the house at Abbeville by a new tenant, a bundle of papers was found,
          which proved that a M. Franquonville, and about thirty, other
          individuals (many, of whom were the late newcomers there), had for six
          months been watching an opportunity to seize Bonaparte in his journeys
          between Abbeville and Montreuil, and to carry him to some part of the
          coast, where a vessel was ready to sail for England with him. Had he,
          however, made resistance, he would have been shot in France, and his
          assassins have saved themselves in the vessel.
        </p>
        <p>
          The numerous escort that always, since he was an Emperor, accompanied
          him, and particularly his concealment of the days of his journeys,
          prevented the execution of this plot; and Madame Encore, therefore,
          took upon her to sacrifice herself for what she thought the welfare of
          her country. How Duroc suspected or discovered her intent is not
          known; some say that an anonymous letter informed him of it, while
          others assert that, in throwing herself at Bonaparte's feet, this
          prefect observed the steel through the sleeve of her muslin gown. Most
          of her associates were secretly executed; some, however, were carried
          to Boulogne and shot at the head of the army of England as English
          spies.
        </p>
        <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
        <h2>
          LETTER XXXIV.
        </h2>
        <br />
        <p>
          PARIS, August, 1805.
        </p>
        <p>
          MY LORD:&mdash;After the discovery of Charlotte Encore's attempt,
          Bonaparte, who hitherto had flattered himself that he possessed the
          good wishes, if not the affection, of his female subjects, made a
          regulation according to which no women who had not previously given in
          their names to the prefects of his palaces, and obtained previous
          permission, can approach his person or throw themselves at his feet,
          without incurring his displeasure, and even arrest. Of this Imperial
          decree, ladies, both of the capital and of the provinces, when he
          travels, are officially informed. Notwithstanding this precaution, he
          was a second time last spring, at Lyons, near falling the victim of
          the vengeance or malice of a woman.
        </p>
        <p>
          In his journey to be crowned King of Italy, he occupied his uncle's
          episcopal palace at Lyons during the forty-eight hours he remained
          there. Most of the persons of both sexes composing the household of
          Cardinal Fesch were from his own country, Corsica; among these was one
          of the name of Pauline Riotti, who inspected the economy of the
          kitchens. It is Bonaparte's custom to take a dish of chocolate in the
          forenoon, which she, on the morning of his departure, against her
          custom, but under pretence of knowing the taste of the family, desired
          to prepare. One of the cooks observed that she mixed it with something
          from her pocket, but, without saying a word to her that indicated
          suspicion, he warned Bonaparte, in a note, delivered to a page, to be
          upon his guard. When the chamberlain carried in the chocolate,
          Napoleon ordered the person who had prepared it to be brought before
          him. This being told Pauline, she fainted away, after having first
          drunk the remaining contents of the chocolate pot. Her convulsions
          soon indicated that she was poisoned, and, notwithstanding the
          endeavours of Bonaparte's physician, Corvisart, she expired within an
          hour; protesting that her crime was an act of revenge against
          Napoleon, who had seduced her, when young, under a promise of
          marriage; but who, since his elevation, had not only neglected her,
          but reduced her to despair by refusing an honest support for herself
          and her child, sufficient to preserve her from the degradation of
          servitude. Cardinal Fesch received a severe reprimand for admitting
          among his domestics individuals with whose former lives he was not
          better acquainted, and the same day he dismissed every Corsican in his
          service. The cook was, with the reward of a pension, made a member of
          the Legion of Honour, and it was given out by Corvisart that Pauline
          died insane.
        </p>
        <p>
          Within three weeks after this occurrence, Bonaparte was, at Milan,
          again exposed to an imminent danger. According to his commands, the
          vigilance of the police had been very strict, and even severe. All
          strangers who could not give the most satisfactory account of
          themselves, had either been sent out of the country, or were
          imprisoned. He never went out unless strongly attended, and during his
          audiences the most trusty officers always surrounded him; these
          precautions increased in proportion as the day of his coronation
          approached. On the morning of that day, about nine o'clock, when full
          dressed in his Imperial and royal robes, and all the grand officers of
          State by his side, a paper was delivered to him by his chamberlain,
          Talleyrand, a nephew of the Minister. The instant he had read it, he
          flew into the arms of Berthier, exclaiming: "My friend, I am betrayed;
          are you among the number of conspirators? Jourdan, Lasnes, Mortier,
          Bessieres, St. Cyr, are you also forsaking your friend and
          benefactor?" They all instantly encompassed him, begging that he would
          calm himself; that they all were what they always had been, dutiful
          and faithful subjects. "But read this paper from my prefect,
          Salmatoris; he says that if I move a step I may cease to live, as the
          assassins are near me, as well as before me."
        </p>
        <p>
          The commander of his guard then entered with fifty grenadiers, their
          bayonets fixed, carrying with them a prisoner, who pointed out four
          individuals not far from Bonaparte's person, two of whom were Italian
          officers of the Royal Italian Guard, and two were dressed in Swiss
          uniforms. They were all immediately seized, and at their feet were
          found three daggers. One of those in Swiss regimentals exclaimed,
          before he was taken: "Tremble, tyrant of my country! Thousands of the
          descendants of William Tell have, with me, sworn your destruction.
          You, escape this day, but the just vengeance of outraged humanity
          follows you like your shade. Depend upon it an untimely end is
          irremediably reserved you." So saying, he pierced his heart and fell a
          corpse into the arms of the grenadiers who came to arrest him.
        </p>
        <p>
          This incident suspended the procession to the cathedral for an hour,
          when Berthier announced that the conspirators were punished. Bonaparte
          evinced on this occasion the same absence of mind and of courage as on
          the 9th of November, 1799, when Arena and other deputies drew their
          daggers against him at St. Cloud. As this scene did not redound much
          to the honour of the Emperor and King, all mention of the conspiracy
          was severely prohibited, and the deputations ready to congratulate him
          on his escape were dispersed to attend their other duties.
        </p>
        <p>
          The conspirators are stated to have been four young men, who had lost
          their parents and fortunes by the Revolutions effected by Bonaparte in
          Italy and Switzerland, and who had sworn fidelity to each other, and
          to avenge their individual wrongs with the injuries of their countries
          at the same time. They were all prepared and resigned to die,
          expecting to be cut to pieces the moment Bonaparte fell by their
          hands; but one of the Italians, rather superstitious, had, before he
          went to the drawing-room, confessed and received absolution from a
          priest, whom he knew to be an enemy of Bonaparte; but the priest, in
          hope of reward, disclosed the conspiracy to the master of ceremonies,
          Salmatoris. The three surviving conspirators are said to have been
          literally torn to pieces by the engines of torture, and the priest was
          shot for having given absolution to an assassin, and for having
          concealed his knowledge of the plot an hour after he was acquainted
          with it. Even Salmatoris had some difficulty to avoid being disgraced
          for having written a terrifying note, which had exposed the Emperor's
          weakness, and shown that his life was dearer to him at the head of
          Empires than when only at the head of armies.
        </p>
        <p>
          My narrative of this event I have from an officer present, whose
          veracity I can guarantee. He also informed me that, in consequence of
          it, all the officers of the Swiss brigades in the French service that
          were quartered or encamped in Italy were, to the number of near fifty,
          dismissed at once. Of the Italian guards, every officer who was known
          to have suffered any losses by the new order of things in his country,
          was ordered to resign, if he would not enter into the regiments of the
          line.
        </p>
        <p>
          Whatever the police agents did to prevent it, and in spite of some
          unjust and cruel chastisement, Bonaparte continued, during his stay in
          Italy, an object of ridicule in conversation, as well as in pamphlets
          and caricatures. One of these represented him in the ragged garb of a
          sans-culotte, pale and trembling on his knees, with bewildered looks
          and his hair standing upright on his head like pointed horns, tearing
          the map of the world to pieces, and, to save his life, offering each
          of his generals a slice, who in return regarded him with looks of
          contempt mixed with pity.
        </p>
        <p>
          I have just heard of a new plot, or rather a league against
          Bonaparte's ambition. At its head the Generals Jourdan, Macdonald, Le
          Courbe, and Dessolles are placed, though many less victorious generals
          and officers, civil as well as military, are reported to be its
          members. Their object is not to remove or displace Bonaparte as an
          Emperor of the French; on the contrary, they offer their lives to
          strengthen his authority and to resist his enemies; but they ask and
          advise him to renounce, for himself, for his relations, and for
          France, all possessions on the Italian side of the Alps, as the only
          means to establish a permanent peace, and to avoid a war with other
          States, whose safety is endangered by our great encroachments. A
          mutinous kind of address to this effect has been sent to the camp of
          Boulogne and to all other encampments of our troops, that those
          generals and other military persons there, who chose, might both see
          the object and the intent of the associates. It is reported that
          Bonaparte ordered it to be burnt by the hands of the common
          executioner at Boulogne; that sixteen officers there who had
          subscribed their names in appropriation of the address were broken,
          and dismissed with disgrace; that Jourdan is deprived of his command
          in Italy, and ordered to render an account of his conduct to the
          Emperor. Dessolles is also said to be dismissed, and with Macdonald,
          Le Courbe, and eighty-four others of His Majesty's subjects, whose
          names appeared under the remonstrance (or petition, as some call it),
          exiled to different departments of this country, where they are to
          expect their Sovereign's further determination, and, in the meantime,
          remain under the inspection and responsibility of his constituted
          authorities and commissaries of police. As it is as dangerous to
          inquire as to converse on this and other subjects, which the
          mysterious policy of our Government condemns to silence or oblivion, I
          have not yet been able to gather any more or better information
          concerning this league, or unconstitutional opposition to the
          executive power; but as I am intimate with one of the actors, should
          he have an opportunity, he will certainly write to me at full length,
          and be very explicit.
        </p>
        <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
        <h2>
          LETTER XXXV.
        </h2>
        <br />
        <p>
          PARIS, August, 1805.
        </p>
        <p>
          MY LORD:&mdash;I believe I have before remarked that, under the
          Government of Bonaparte, causes relatively the most insignificant have
          frequently produced effects of the greatest consequence. A capricious
          or whimsical character, swaying with unlimited power, is certainly the
          most dangerous guardian of the prerogatives of sovereignty, as well as
          of the rights and liberties of the people. That Bonaparte is as vain
          and fickle as a coquette, as obstinate as a mule, and equally
          audacious and unrelenting, every one who has witnessed his actions or
          meditated on his transactions must be convinced. The least opposition
          irritates his pride, and he determines and commands, in a moment of
          impatience or vivacity, what may cause the misery of millions for
          ages, and, perhaps, his own repentance for years.
        </p>
        <p>
          When Bonaparte was officially informed by his Ambassador at Vienna,
          the young La Rochefoucauld, that the Emperor of Germany had declined
          being one of his grand officers of the Legion of Honour, he flew into
          a rage, and used against this Prince the most gross, vulgar, and
          unbecoming language. I have heard it said that he went so far as to
          say, "Well, Francis II. is tired of reigning. I hope to have strength
          enough to carry a third crown. He who dares refuse to be and continue
          my equal, shall soon, as a vassal, think himself honoured with the
          regard which, as a master, I may condescend, from compassion, to
          bestow on him." Though forty-eight hours had elapsed after this
          furious sally before he met with the Austrian Ambassador, Count Von
          Cobenzl, his passion was still so furious, that, observing his
          grossness and violence, all the members of the diplomatic corps
          trembled, both for this their respected member, and for the honour of
          our nation thus represented.
        </p>
        <p>
          When the diplomatic audience was over, he said to Talleyrand, in a
          commanding and harsh tone of voice, in the presence of all his
          aides-de-camp and generals:
        </p>
        <p>
          "Write this afternoon, by an extraordinary courier, to my Minister at
          Genoa, Salicetti, to prepare the Doge and the people for the immediate
          incorporation of the Ligurian Republic with my Empire. Should Austria
          dare to murmur, I shall, within three months, also incorporate the
          ci-devant Republic of Venice with my Kingdom of Italy!"
        </p>
        <p>
          "But&mdash;but&mdash;Sire!" uttered the Minister, trembling.
        </p>
        <p>
          "There exists no 'but,' and I will listen to no 'but,'" interrupted
          His Majesty. "Obey my orders without further discussions. Should
          Austria dare to arm, I shall, before next Christmas, make Vienna the
          headquarters of a fiftieth military division. In an hour I expect you
          with the despatches ready for Salicetti."
        </p>
        <p>
          This Salicetti is a Corsican of a respectable family, born at Bastia,
          in 1758, and it was he who, during the siege of Toulon in 1793,
          introduced his countryman, Napoleon Bonaparte, his present Sovereign,
          to the acquaintance of Barras, an occurrence which has since produced
          consequences so terribly notorious.
        </p>
        <p>
          Before the Revolution an advocate of the superior council of Corsica,
          he was elected a member to the First National Assembly, where, on the
          30th of November, 1789, he pressed the decree which declared the
          Island of Corsica an integral part of the French monarchy. In 1792, he
          was sent by his fellow citizens as a deputy to the National
          Convention, where he joined the terrorist faction, and voted for the
          death of his King. In May, 1793, he was in Corsica, and violently
          opposed the partisans of General Paoli. Obliged to make his escape in
          August from that island, to save himself, he joined the army of
          General Carteaux, then marching against the Marseilles insurgents,
          whence he was sent by the National Convention with Barras, Gasparin,
          Robespierre the younger, and Ricrod, as a representative of the
          people, to the army before Toulon, where, as well as at Marseilles, he
          shared in all the atrocities committed by his colleagues and by
          Bonaparte; for which, after the death of the Robespierres, he was
          arrested with him as a terrorist.
        </p>
        <p>
          He had not known Bonaparte much in Corsica, but, finding him and his
          family in great distress, with all other Corsican refugees, and
          observing his adroitness as a captain of artillery, he recommended him
          to Barras, and upon their representation to the Committee of Public
          Safety, he was promoted to a chef de brigade, or colonel. In 1796,
          when Barras gave Bonaparte the command of the army of Italy, Salicetti
          was appointed a Commissary of Government to the same army, and in that
          capacity behaved with the greatest insolence towards all the Princes
          of Italy, and most so towards the Duke of Modena, with whom he and
          Bonaparte signed a treaty of neutrality, for which they received a
          large sum in ready money; but shortly afterwards the duchy was again
          invaded, and an attempt made to surprise and seize the Duke. In 1797
          he was chosen a member of the Council of Five Hundred, where he always
          continued a supporter of violent measures.
        </p>
        <p>
          When, in 1799, his former protege, Bonaparte, was proclaimed a First
          Consul, Salicetti desired to be placed in the Conservative Senate; but
          his familiarity displeased Napoleon, who made him first a commercial
          agent, and afterwards a Minister to the Ligurian Republic, so as to
          keep him at a distance. During his several missions, he has amassed a
          fortune, calculated, at the lowest, of six millions of livres.
        </p>
        <p>
          The order Salicetti received to prepare the incorporation of Genoa
          with France, would not, without the presence of our troops, have been
          very easy to execute, particularly as he, six months before, had
          prevailed on the Doge and the Senate to resign all sovereignty to
          Lucien Bonaparte, under the title of a Grand Duke of Genoa.
        </p>
        <p>
          The cause of Napoleon's change of opinion with regard to his brother
          Lucien, was that the latter would not separate from a wife he loved,
          but preferred domestic happiness to external splendour frequently
          accompanied with internal misery. So that this act of incorporation of
          the Ligurian Republic, in fact, originated, notwithstanding the great
          and deep calculations of our profound politicians and political
          schemers, in nothing else but in the keeping of a wife, and in the
          refusal of a riband.
        </p>
        <p>
          That corruption, seduction, and menaces seconded the intrigues and
          bayonets which convinced the Ligurian Government of the honour and
          advantage of becoming subjects of Bonaparte, I have not the least
          doubt; but that the Doge, Girolamo Durazzo, and the senators Morchio,
          Maglione, Travega, Maghella, Roggieri, Taddei, Balby, and Langlade
          sold the independence of their country for ten millions of livres&mdash;though
          it has been positively asserted, I can hardly believe; and, indeed,
          money was as little necessary as resistance would have been
          unavailing, all the forts and strong positions being in the occupation
          of our troops. A general officer present when the Doge of Genoa, at
          the head of the Ligurian deputation, offered Bonaparte their homage at
          Milan, and exchanged liberty for bondage, assured me that this
          ci-devant chief magistrate spoke with a faltering voice and with tears
          in his eyes, and that indignation was read on the countenance of every
          member of the deputation thus forced to prostitute their rights as
          citizens, and to vilify their sentiments as patriots.
        </p>
        <p>
          When Salicetti, with his secretary, Milhaud, had arranged this
          honourable affair, they set out from Genoa to announce to Bonaparte,
          at Milan, their success. Not above a league from the former city their
          carriage was stopped, their persons stripped, and their papers and
          effects seized by a gang, called in the country the gang of PATRIOTIC
          ROBBERS, commanded by Mulieno. This chief is a descendant of a good
          Genoese family, proscribed by France, and the men under him are all
          above the common class of people. They never commit any murders, nor
          do they rob any but Frenchmen, or Italians known to be adherents of
          the French party. Their spoils they distribute among those of their
          countrymen who, like themselves, have suffered from the revolutions in
          Italy within these last nine years. They usually send the amount
          destined to relieve these persons to the curates of the several
          parishes, signifying in what manner it is to be employed. Their
          conduct has procured them many friends among the low and the poor,
          and, though frequently pursued by our gendarmes, they have hitherto
          always escaped. The papers captured by them on this occasion from
          Salicetti are said to be of a most curious nature, and throw great
          light on Bonaparte's future views of Italy. The original act of
          consent of the Ligurian Government to the incorporation with France
          was also in this number. It is reported that they were deposited with
          the Austrian Minister at Genoa, who found means to forward them to his
          Court; and it is supposed that their contents did not a little to
          hasten the present movements of the Emperor of Germany.
        </p>
        <p>
          Another gang, known under the appellation of the PATRIOTIC AVENGERS,
          also desolates the Ligurian Republic. They never rob, but always
          murder those whom they consider as enemies of their country. Many of
          our officers, and even our sentries on duty, have been wounded or
          killed by them; and, after dark, therefore, no Frenchman dares walk
          out unattended. Their chief is supposed to be a ci-devant Abbe,
          Sagati, considered a political as well as a religious fanatic. In
          consequence of the deeds of these patriotic avengers, Bonaparte's
          first act, as a Sovereign of Liguria, was the establishment of special
          military commissions, and a law prohibiting, under pain of death,
          every person from carrying arms who could not show a written
          permission of our commissary of police. Robbers and assassins are,
          unfortunately, common to all nations, and all people of all ages; but
          those of the above description are only the production and progeny of
          revolutionary and troublesome times. They pride themselves, instead of
          violating the laws, on supplying their inefficacy and counteracting
          their partiality.
        </p>
        <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
        <h2>
          LETTER XXXVI.
        </h2>
        <br />
        <p>
          PARIS, September, 1805.
        </p>
        <p>
          MY LORD:&mdash;Bonaparte is now the knight of more Royal Orders than
          any other Sovereign in Europe, and were he to put them on all at once,
          their ribands would form stuff enough for a light summer coat of as
          many different colours as the rainbow. The Kings of Spain, of Naples,
          of Prussia, of Portugal, and of Etruria have admitted him a
          knight-companion, as well as the Electors of Bavaria, Hesse, and
          Baden, and the Pope of Rome. In return he has appointed these Princes
          his grand officers of HIS Legion of Honour, the highest rank of his
          newly instituted Imperial Order. It is even said that some of these
          Sovereigns have been honoured by him with the grand star and broad
          riband of the Order of His Iron Crown of the Kingdom of Italy.
        </p>
        <p>
          Before Napoleon's departure for Milan last spring, Talleyrand
          intimated to the members of the foreign diplomatic corps here, that
          their presence would be agreeable to the Emperor of the French at his
          coronation at Milan as a King of Italy. In the preceding summer a
          similar hint, or order, had been given by him for a diplomatic trip to
          Aix-la-Chapelle, and all Their Excellencies set a-packing instantly;
          but some legitimate Sovereigns, having since discovered that it was
          indecent for their representatives to be crowding the suite of an
          insolently and proudly travelling usurper, under different pretences
          declined the honour of an invitation and journey to Italy. It would,
          besides, have been pleasant enough to have witnessed the Ambassadors
          of Austria and Prussia, whose Sovereigns had not acknowledged
          Bonaparte's right to his assumed title of King of Italy, indirectly
          approving it by figuring at the solemnity which inaugurated him as
          such. Of this inconsistency and impropriety Talleyrand was well aware;
          but audacity on one side, and endurance and submission on the other,
          had so often disregarded these considerations before, that he saw no
          indelicacy or impertinence in the proposal. His master had, however,
          the gratification to see at his levee, and in his wife's drawing-room,
          the Ambassadors of Spain, Naples, Portugal, and Bavaria, who laid at
          the Imperial and royal feet the Order decorations of their own
          Princes, to the nor little entertainment of His Imperial and Royal
          Majesty, and to the great edification of his dutiful subjects on the
          other side of the Alps.
        </p>
        <p>
          The expenses of Bonaparte's journey to Milan, and his coronation there
          (including also those of his attendants from France), amounted to no
          less a sum than fifteen millions of livres&mdash;of which one hundred
          and fifty thousand livres&mdash;was laid out in fireworks, double that
          sum in decorations of the Royal Palace and the cathedral, and three
          millions of livres&mdash;in presents to different generals, grand
          officers, deputations, etc. The poor also shared his bounty; medals to
          the value of fifty thousand livres&mdash;were thrown out among them on
          the day of the ceremony, besides an equal sum given by Madame Napoleon
          to the hospitals and orphan-houses. These last have a kind of
          hereditary or family claim on the purse of our Sovereign; their
          parents were the victims of the Emperor's first step towards glory and
          grandeur.
        </p>
        <p>
          Another three millions of livres was expended for the march of troops
          from France to form pleasure camps in Italy, and four millions more
          was requisite for the forming and support of these encampments during
          two months, and the Emperor distributed among the officers and men
          composing them two million livres' worth of rings, watches,
          snuff-boxes, portraits set with diamonds, stars, and other trinkets,
          as evidences of His Majesty's satisfaction with their behaviour,
          presence, and performances.
        </p>
        <p>
          These troops were under the command of Bonaparte's Field-marshal,
          Jourdan, a general often mentioned in the military annals of our
          revolutionary war. During the latter part of the American war, he
          served under General Rochambeau as a common soldier, and obtained in
          1783, after the peace, his discharge. He then turned a pedlar, in
          which situation the Revolution found him. He had also married, for her
          fortune, a lame daughter of a tailor, who brought him a fortune of two
          thousand livres&mdash;from whom he has since been divorced, leaving
          her to shift for herself as she can, in a small milliner's shop at
          Limoges, where her husband was born in 1763.
        </p>
        <p>
          Jourdan was among the first members and pillars of the Jacobin Club
          organized in his native town, which procured him rapid promotion in
          the National Guards, of whom, in 1792, he was already a colonel. His
          known love of liberty and equality induced the Committee of Public
          Safety, in 1793, to appoint him to the chief command of the armies of
          Ardennes and of the North, instead of Lamarche and Houchard. On the
          17th of October the same year, he gained the victory of Wattignies,
          which obliged the united forces of Austria, Prussia, and Germany to
          raise the siege of Maubeuge. The jealous Republican Government, in
          reward, deposed him and appointed Pichegru his successor, which was
          the origin of that enmity and malignity with which Jourdan pursued
          this unfortunate general, even to his grave. He never forgave Pichegru
          the acceptance of a command which he could not decline without risking
          his life; and when he should have avenged his disgrace on the real
          causes of it, he chose to resent it on him who, like himself, was
          merely an instrument, or a slave, in the hands and under the whip of a
          tyrannical power.
        </p>
        <p>
          After the imprisonment of General Hoche, in March, 1794, Jourdan
          succeeded him as chief of the army of the Moselle. In June he joined,
          with thirty thousand men, the right wing of the army of the North,
          forming a new one, under the name of the army of the Sambre and Meuse.
          On the 16th of the same month he gained a complete victory over the
          Prince of Coburg, who tried to raise the siege of Charleroy. This
          battle, which was fought near Trasegnies, is, nevertheless, commonly
          called the battle of Fleurus. After Charleroy had surrendered on the
          25th, Jourdan and his army were ordered to act under the direction of
          General Pichegru, who had drawn the plan of that brilliant campaign.
          Always envious of this general, Jourdan did everything to retard his
          progress, and at last intrigued so well that the army of the Sambre
          and the Meuse was separated from that of the North.
        </p>
        <p>
          With the former of these armies Jourdan pursued the retreating
          confederates, and, after driving them from different stands and
          positions, he repulsed them to the banks of the Rhine, which river
          they were obliged to pass. Here ended his successes this year,
          successes that were not obtained without great loss on our side.
        </p>
        <p>
          Jourdan began the campaigns of 1795 and 1796 with equal brilliancy,
          and ended them with equal disgrace. After penetrating into Germany
          with troops as numerous as well-disciplined, he was defeated at the
          end of them by Archduke Charles, and retreated always with such
          precipitation, and in such confusion, that it looked more like the
          flight of a disorderly rabble than the retreat of regular troops; and
          had not Moreau, in 1796, kept the enemy in awe, few of Jourdan's
          officers or men would again have seen France; for the inhabitants of
          Franconia rose on these marauders, and cut them to pieces, wherever
          they could surprise or waylay them.
        </p>
        <p>
          In 1797, as a member of the Council of Five Hundred, he headed the
          Jacobin faction against the moderate party, of which Pichegru was a
          chief; and he had the cowardly vengeance of base rivalry to pride
          himself upon having procured the transportation of that patriotic
          general to Cayenne. In 1799, he again assumed the command of the army
          of Alsace and of Switzerland; but he crossed the Rhine and penetrated
          into Suabia only to be again routed by the Archduke Charles, and to
          repass this river in disorder. Under the necessity of resigning as a
          general-in-chief, he returned to the Council of Five Hundred, more
          violent than ever, and provoked there the most oppressive measures
          against his fellow citizens. Previous to the revolution effected by
          Bonaparte in November of that year, he had entered with Garreau and
          Santerre into a conspiracy, the object of which was to restore the
          Reign of Terror, and to prevent which Bonaparte said he made those
          changes which placed him at the head of Government. The words were
          even printed in the papers of that period, which Bonaparte on the 10th
          of November addressed to the then deputy of Mayenne, Prevost: "If the
          plot entered into by Jourdan and others, and of which they have not
          blushed to propose to me the execution, had not been defeated, they
          would have surrounded the place of your sitting, and to crush all
          future opposition, ordered a number of deputies to be massacred. That
          done, they were to establish the sanguinary despotism of the Reign of
          Terror." But whether such was Jourdan's project, or whether it was
          merely given out to be such by the consular faction, to extenuate
          their own usurpation, he certainly had connected himself with the most
          guilty and contemptible of the former terrorists, and drew upon
          himself by such conduct the hatred and blame even of those whose
          opinion had long been suspended on his account.
        </p>
        <p>
          General Jourdan was among those terrorists whom the Consular
          Government condemned to transportation; but after several interviews
          with Bonaparte he was not only pardoned, but made a Counsellor of
          State of the military section; and afterwards, in 1801, an
          administrator-general of Piedmont, where he was replaced by General
          Menou in 1803, being himself entrusted with the command in Italy. This
          place he has preserved until last month, when he was ordered to resign
          it to Massena, with whom he had a quarrel, and would have fought him
          in a duel, had not the Viceroy, Eugene de Beauharnais, put him under
          arrest and ordered him back hither, where he is daily expected. If
          Massena's report to Bonaparte be true, the army of Italy was very far
          from being as orderly and numerous as Jourdan's assertions would have
          induced us to believe. But this accusation of a rival must be listened
          to with caution; because, should Massena meet with repulse, he will no
          doubt make use of it as an apology; and should he be victorious, hold
          it out as a claim for more honour and praise.
        </p>
        <p>
          The same doubts which still continue of Jourdan's political opinions
          remain also with regard to his military capacity. But the unanimous
          declaration of those who have served under his orders as a general
          must silence both his blind admirers and unjust slanderers. They all
          allow him some military ability; he combines and prepares in the
          Cabinet a plan of defence and attack, with method and intelligence,
          but he does not possess the quick coup d'oeil, and that promptitude
          which perceives, and rectifies accordingly, an error on the field of
          battle. If, on the day of action, some accident, or some manoeuvre,
          occurs, which has not been foreseen by him, his dull and heavy genius
          does not enable him to alter instantly his dispositions, or to remedy
          errors, misfortunes, or improvidences. This kind of talent, and this
          kind of absence of talent, explain equally the causes of his
          advantages, as well as the origin of his frequent disasters. Nobody
          denies him courage, but, with most of our other republican generals,
          he has never been careful of the lives of the troops under him. I have
          heard an officer of superior talents and rank assert, in the presence
          of Carnot, that the number of wounded and killed under Jourdan, when
          victorious, frequently surpassed the number of enemies he had
          defeated. I fear it is too true that we are as much, if not more,
          indebted for our successes to the superior number as to the superior
          valour of our troops.
        </p>
        <p>
          Jourdan is, with regard to fortune, one of our poorest republican
          generals who have headed armies. He has not, during all his campaigns,
          collected more than a capital of eight millions of livres&mdash;a mere
          trifle compared to the fifty millions of Massena, the sixty millions
          of Le Clerc, the forty millions of Murat, and the thirty-six millions
          of Augereau; not to mention the hundred millions of Bonaparte. It is
          also true that Jourdan is a gambler and a debauchee, fond of cards,
          dice, and women; and that in Italy, except two hours in twenty-four
          allotted to business, he passed the remainder of his time either at
          the gaming-tables, or in the boudoirs of his seraglio&mdash;I say
          seraglio, because he kept, in the extensive house joining his palace
          as governor and commander, ten women-three French, three Italians, two
          Germans, two Irish or English girls. He supported them all in style;
          but they were his slaves, and he was their sultan, whose official
          mutes (his aides-de-camp) both watched them, and, if necessary,
          chastised them.
        </p>
        <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
        <h2>
          LETTER XXXVII.
        </h2>
        <br />
        <p>
          PARIS, September, 1805.
        </p>
        <p>
          MY LORD:&mdash;I can truly defy the world to produce a corps of such a
          heterogeneous composition as our Conservative Senate, when I except
          the members composing Bonaparte's Legion of Honour. Some of our
          Senators have been tailors, apothecaries, merchants, chemists, quacks,
          physicians, barbers, bankers, soldiers, drummers, dukes, shopkeepers,
          mountebanks, Abbes, generals, savans, friars, Ambassadors,
          counsellors, or presidents of Parliament, admirals, barristers,
          Bishops, sailors, attorneys, authors, Barons, spies, painters,
          professors, Ministers, sans-culottes, atheists, stonemasons, robbers,
          mathematicians, philosophers, regicides, and a long et cetera. Any
          person reading through the official list of the members of the Senate,
          and who is acquainted with their former situations in life, may be
          convinced of this truth. Should he even be ignorant of them, let him
          but inquire, with the list in his hand, in any of our fashionable or
          political circles; he will meet with but few persons who are not able
          or willing to remove his doubts, or to gratify his curiosity. There
          are not many of them whom it is possible to elevate, but those are
          still more numerous whom it is impossible to degrade. Their past
          lives, vices, errors, or crimes, have settled their characters and
          reputation; and they must live and die in 'statu quo', either as fools
          or as knaves, and perhaps as both.
        </p>
        <p>
          I do not mean to say that they are all criminals or all equally
          criminal, if insurrection against lawful authority and obedience to
          usurped tyranny are not to be considered as crimes; but there are few
          indeed who can lay their hands on their bosoms and say, 'vitam
          expendere vero'. Some of them, as a Lagrange, Berthollet, Chaptal,
          Laplace, Francois de Neuf-Chateau, Tronchet, Monge, Lacepede, and
          Bougainville, are certainly men of talents; but others, as a Porcher,
          Resnier, Vimar, Auber, Perk, Sera, Vernier, Vien, Villetard, Tascher,
          Rigal, Baciocchi, Beviere, Beauharnais, De Luynea (a ci-devant duke,
          known under the name of Le Gros Cochon), nature never destined but to
          figure among those half-idiots and half-imbeciles who are, as it were,
          intermedial between the brute and human creation.
        </p>
        <p>
          Sieges, Cabanis, Garron Coulon, Lecouteul, Canteleu, Lenoin Laroche,
          Volney, Gregoire, Emmery, Joucourt, Boissy d'Anglas, Fouche, and
          Roederer form another class,&mdash;some of them regicides, others
          assassins and plunderers, but all intriguers whose machinations date
          from the beginning of the Revolution. They are all men of parts, of
          more or less knowledge, and of great presumption. As to their
          morality, it is on a level with their religion and loyalty. They
          betrayed their King, and had denied their God already in 1789.
        </p>
        <p>
          After these come some others, who again have neither talents to boast
          of nor crimes of which they have to be ashamed. They have but little
          pretension to genius, none to consistency, and their honesty equals
          their capacity. They joined our political revolution as they might
          have done a religious procession. It was at that time a fashion; and
          they applauded our revolutionary innovations as they would have done
          the introduction of a new opera, of a new tragedy, of a new comedy, or
          of a new farce. To this fraternity appertain a ci-devant Comte de
          Stult-Tracy, Dubois&mdash;Dubay, Kellerman, Lambrechts, Lemercier,
          Pleville&mdash;Le Pelley, Clement de Ris, Peregeaux, Berthelemy,
          Vaubois, Nrignon, D'Agier, Abrial, De Belloy, Delannoy, Aboville, and
          St. Martin La Motte.
        </p>
        <p>
          Such are the characteristics of men whose 'senatus consultum' bestows
          an Emperor on France, a King on Italy, makes of principalities
          departments of a Republic, and transforms Republics into provinces or
          principalities. To show the absurdly fickle and ridiculously absurd
          appellations of our shamefully perverted institutions, this Senate was
          called the Conservative Senate; that is to say, it was to preserve the
          republican consular constitution in its integrity, both against the;
          encroachments of the executive and legislative power, both against the
          manoeuvres of the factions, the plots of the royalists or monarchists,
          and the clamours of a populace of levellers. But during the five years
          that these honest wiseacres have been preserving, everything has
          perished&mdash;the Republic, the Consuls, free discussions, free
          election, the political liberty, and the liberty of the Press; all&mdash;all
          are found nowhere but in old, useless, and rejected codes. They have,
          however, in a truly patriotic manner taken care of their own dear
          selves. Their salaries are more than doubled since 1799.
        </p>
        <p>
          Besides mock Senators, mock praetors, mock quaestors, other 'nomina
          libertatis' are revived, so as to make the loss of the reality so much
          the more galling. We have also two curious commissions; one called
          "the Senatorial Commission of Personal Liberty," and the other "the
          Senatorial Commission of the Liberty of the Press." The imprisonment
          without cause, and transportation without trial, of thousands of
          persons of both sexes weekly, show the grand advantages which arise
          from the former of these commissions; and the contents of our new
          books and daily prints evince the utility and liberality of the
          latter.
        </p>
        <p>
          But from the past conduct of these our Senators, members of these
          commissions, one may easily conclude what is to be expected in future
          from their justice and patriotism. Lenoin Laroche, at the head of the
          one, was formerly an advocate of some practice, but attended more to
          politics than to the business of his clients, and was, therefore, at
          the end of the session of the first assembly (of which he was a
          member), forced, for subsistence, to become the editor of an
          insignificant journal. Here he preached licentiousness, under the name
          of Liberty, and the agrarian law in recommending Equality. A prudent
          courtier of all systems in fashion, and of all factions in power, he
          escaped proscription, though not accusation of having shared in the
          national robberies. A short time in the summer of 1797, after the
          dismissal of Cochon, he acted as a Minister of Police; and in 1798 the
          Jacobins elected him a member of the Council of Ancients, where he,
          with other deputies, sold himself to Bonaparte, and was, in return,
          rewarded with a place in the Senate. Under monarchy he was a
          republican, and under a Republic he extolled monarchical institutions.
          He wished to be singular, and to be rich. Among so many shocking
          originals, however, he was not distinguished; and among so many
          philosophical marauders, he had no opportunity to pillage above two
          millions of livres. This friend of liberty is now one of the most
          despotic Senators, and this lover of equality never answers when
          spoken to, if not addressed as "His Excellency," or "Monseigneur."
        </p>
        <p>
          Boissy d' Anglas, another member of this commission, was before the
          Revolution a steward to Louis XVIII. when Monsieur; and, in 1789, was
          chosen a deputy of the first assembly, where he joined the factions,
          and in his speeches and writings defended all the enormities that
          dishonoured the beginning as well as the end of the Revolution. A
          member afterwards of the National Convention, he was sent in mission
          to Lyons, where, instead of healing the wounds of the inhabitants, he
          inflicted new ones. When, on the 15th of March, 1796, in the Council
          of Five Hundred, he pronounced the oath of hatred to royalty, he
          added, that this oath was in his heart, otherwise no power upon earth
          could have forced him to take it; and he is now a sworn subject of
          Napoleon the First! He pronounced the panegyric of Robespierre, and
          the apotheosis of Marat. "The soul," said he, "was moved and elevated
          in hearing Robespierre speak of the Supreme Being with philosophical
          ideas, embellished by eloquence;" and he signed the removal of the
          ashes of Marat to the temple consecrated to humanity! In September,
          1797, he was, as a royalist, condemned to transportation by the
          Directory; but in 1799 Bonaparte recalled him, made him first a
          tribune and afterwards a Senator.
        </p>
        <p>
          Boissy d' Anglas, though an apologist of robbers and assassins, has
          neither murdered nor plundered; but, though he has not enriched
          himself, he has assisted in ruining all his former protectors,
          benefactors, and friends.
        </p>
        <p>
          Sers, a third member of this commission, was, before the Revolution, a
          bankrupt merchant at Bordeaux, but in 1791 was a municipal officer of
          the same city, and sent as a deputy to the National Assembly, where he
          attempted to rise from the clouds that encompassed his heavy genius by
          a motion for pulling down all the statues of Kings all over France. He
          seconded another motion of Bonaparte's prefect, Jean Debrie, to decree
          a corps of tyrannicides, destined to murder all Emperors, Kings, and
          Princes. At the club of the Jacobins, at Bordeaux, he prided himself
          on having caused the arrest and death of three hundred aristocrats;
          and boasted that he never went out without a dagger to despatch, by a
          summary justice, those who had escaped the laws. After meeting with
          well-merited contempt, and living for some time in the greatest
          obscurity, by a handsome present to Madame Bonaparte, in 1799, he
          obtained the favour of Napoleon, who dragged him forward to be placed
          among other ornaments of his Senate. Sers has just cunning enough to
          be taken for a man of sense when with fools; when with men of sense,
          he reassumes the place allotted him by Nature. Without education, as
          well as without parts, he for a long time confounded brutal scurrility
          with oratory, and thought himself eloquent when he was only insolent
          or impertinent. His ideas of liberty are such that, when he was a
          municipal officer, he signed a mandate of arrest against sixty-four
          individuals of both sexes, who were at a ball, because they had
          refused to invite to it one of his nieces.
        </p>
        <p>
          Abrial, Emmery, Vernier, and Lemercier are the other four members of
          that commission; of these, two are old intriguers, two are nullities,
          and all four are slaves.
        </p>
        <p>
          Of the seven members of the senatorial commission for preserving the
          liberty of the Press, Garat and Roederer are the principal. The former
          is a pedant, while pretending to be a philosopher; and he signed the
          sentence of his good King's death, while declaring himself a royalist.
          A mere valet to Robespierre, his fawning procured him opportunities to
          enrich himself with the spoil of those whom his calumnies and plots
          caused to be massacred or guillotined. When, as a Minister of Justice,
          he informed Louis XVI. of his condemnation, he did it with such an
          affected and atrocious indifference that he even shocked his
          accomplices, whose nature had not much of tenderness. As a member of
          the first assembly, as a Minister under the convention, and as a
          deputy of the Council of Five Hundred, he always opposed the liberty
          of the Press. "The laws, you say" (exclaimed he, in the Council),
          "punish libellers; so they do thieves and housebreakers; but would
          you, therefore, leave your doors unbolted? Is not the character, the
          honour, and the tranquillity of a citizen preferable to his treasures?
          and, by the liberty of the Press, you leave them at the mercy of every
          scribbler who can write or think. The wound inflicted may heal, but
          the scar will always remain. Were you, therefore, determined to decree
          the motion for this dangerous and impolitic liberty, I make this
          amendment, that conviction of having written a libel carries with it
          capital punishment, and that a label be fastened on the breast of the
          libeller, when carried to execution, with this inscription: 'A social
          murderer,' or 'A murderer of characters!'"
        </p>
        <p>
          Roederer has belonged to all religious or antireligious sects, and to
          all political or anti-social factions, these last twenty years; but,
          after approving, applauding, and serving them, he has deserted them,
          sold them, or betrayed them. Before the Revolution, a Counseller of
          Parliament at Metz, he was a spy of the Court on his colleagues; and,
          since the Revolution, he served the Jacobins as a spy on the Court.
          Immoral and unprincipled to the highest degree, his profligacy and
          duplicity are only equalled by his perversity and cruelty. It was he
          who, on the 10th of August, 1792, betrayed the King and the Royal
          Family into the hands of their assassins, and who himself made a merit
          of this infamous act. After he had been repulsed by all, even by the
          most sanguinary of our parties and partisans, by a Brissot, a Marat, a
          Robespierre, a Tallien, and a Barras, Bonaparte adopted him first as a
          Counsellor of State, and afterwards as a Senator. His own and only
          daughter died in a miscarriage, the consequence of an incestuous
          commerce with her unnatural parent; and his only, son is disinherited
          by him for resenting his father's baseness in debauching a young girl
          whom the son had engaged to marry.
        </p>
        <p>
          With the usual consistency of my revolutionary countrymen, he has, at
          one period, asserted that the liberty of the Press was necessary for
          the preservation both of men and things, for the protection of
          governors as well as of the governed, and that it was the best support
          of a constitutional Government. At another time he wrote that, as it
          was impossible to fix the limits between the liberty and the
          licentiousness of the Press, the latter destroyed the benefits of the
          former; that the liberty of the Press was useful only against a
          Government which one wished to overturn, but dangerous to a Government
          which one wished to preserve. To show his indifference about his own
          character, as well as about the opinion of the public, these opposite
          declarations were inserted in one of our daily papers, and both were
          signed "Roederer."
        </p>
        <p>
          In 1789, he was indebted above one million two hundred thousand livres&mdash;and
          he now possesses national property purchased for seven millions of
          livres&mdash;and he avows himself to be worth three millions more in
          money placed in our public funds. He often says, laughingly, that he
          is under great obligations to Robespierre, whose guillotine acquitted
          in one day all his debts. All his creditors, after being denounced for
          their aristocracy, were murdered en masse by this instrument of death.
        </p>
        <p>
          Of all the old beaux and superannuated libertines whose company I have
          had the misfortune of not being able to avoid, Roederer is the most
          affected, silly, and disgusting. His wrinkled face, and effeminate and
          childish air; his assiduities about every woman of beauty or fashion;
          his confidence in his own merit, and his presumption in his own power,
          wear such a curious contrast with his trembling hands, running eyes,
          and enervated person, that I have frequently been ready to laugh at
          him in his face, had not indignation silenced all other feeling. A
          light-coloured wig covers a bald head; his cheeks and eyelids are
          painted, and his teeth false; and I have seen a woman faint away from
          the effect of his breath, notwithstanding that he infects with his
          musk and perfumes a whole house only with his presence. When on the
          ground floor you may smell him in the attic.
        </p>
        <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
        <h2>
          LETTER XXXVIII.
        </h2>
        <br />
        <p>
          PARIS, September, 1805.
        </p>
        <p>
          MY LORD:&mdash;The reciprocal jealousy and even interest of Austria,
          France, and Russia have hitherto prevented the tottering Turkish
          Empire from being partitioned, like Poland, or seized, like Italy; to
          serve as indemnities, like the German empire; or to be shared, as
          reward to the allies, like the Empire of Mysore.
        </p>
        <p>
          When we consider the anarchy that prevails, both in the Government and
          among the subjects, as well in the capital as in the provinces of the
          Ottoman Porte; when we reflect on the mutiny and cowardice of its
          armies and navy, the ignorance and incapacity of its officers and
          military and naval commanders, it is surprising, indeed, as I have
          heard Talleyrand often declare, that more foreign political intrigues
          should be carried on at Constantinople alone than in all other
          capitals of Europe taken together. These intrigues, however, instead
          of doing honour to the, sagacity and patriotism of the members of the
          Divan, expose only their corruption and imbecility; and, instead of
          indicating a dread of the strength of the Sublime Sultan, show a
          knowledge of his weakness, of which the gold of the most wealthy, and
          the craft of the most subtle, by turns are striving to profit.
        </p>
        <p>
          Beyond a doubt the enmity of the Ottoman Porte can do more mischief
          than its friendship can do service. Its neutrality is always useful,
          while its alliance becomes frequently a burden, and its support of no
          advantage. It is, therefore, more from a view of preventing evils than
          from expectation of profit, that all other Powers plot, cabal, and
          bribe. The map of the Turkish Empire explains what maybe though absurd
          or nugatory in this assertion.
        </p>
        <p>
          As soon as a war with Austria was resolved on by the Brissot faction
          in 1792, emissaries were despatched to Constantinople to engage the
          Divan to invade the provinces of Austria and Russia, thereby to create
          a diversion in favour of this country. Our Ambassador in Turkey at
          that time, Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier, though an admirer of the
          Revolution, was not a republican, and, therefore, secretly
          counteracted what he officially seemed to wish to effect. The Imperial
          Court succeeded, therefore, in establishing a neutrality of the
          Ottoman Porte, but Comte de Choiseul was proscribed by the Convention.
          As academician, he was, however, at St. Petersburg, liberally
          recompensed by Catherine II. for the services the Ambassador had
          performed at Constantinople.
        </p>
        <p>
          In May, 1793, the Committee of Public Safety determined to expedite
          another embassy to the Grand. Seignior, at the head of which was the
          famous intriguer, De Semonville, whose revolutionary diplomacy had,
          within three years, alarmed the Courts of Madrid, Naples, and Turin,
          as well as the republican Government of Genoa. His career towards
          Turkey was stopped in the Grisons Republic, on the 25th of July
          following, where he, with sixteen other persons of his suite, was
          arrested, and sent a prisoner, first to Milan, and afterwards to
          Mantua. He carried with him presents of immense value, which were all
          seized by the Austrians. Among them were four superb coaches, highly
          finished, varnished, and gilt; what is iron or brass in common
          carriages was here gold or silver-gilt. Two large chests were filled
          with stuff of gold brocade, India gold muslins, and shawls and laces
          of very great value. Eighty thousand louis d'or in ready money; a
          service of gold plate of twenty covers, which formerly belonged to the
          Kings of France; two small boxes full of diamonds and brilliants, the
          intrinsic worth of which was estimated at forty-eight millions of
          livres&mdash;and a great number of jewels; among others, the crown
          diamond, called here the Regents', and in your country the Pitt
          Diamond, fell, with other riches, into the hands of the captors.
          Notwithstanding this loss and this disappointment, we contrived in
          vain to purchase the hostility of the Turks against our enemies,
          though with the sacrifice of no less a sum (according to the report of
          Saint Just, in June, 1794,) than seventy millions of livres: These
          official statements prove the means which our so often extolled
          economical and moral republican Governments have employed in their
          negotiations.
        </p>
        <p>
          After the invasion of Egypt, in time of peace, by Bonaparte, the
          Sultan became at last convinced of the sincerity of our professions of
          friendship, which he returned with a declaration of war. The
          preliminaries of peace with your country, in October, 1801, were,
          however, soon followed with a renewal of our former friendly
          intercourse with the Ottoman Porte. The voyage of Sebastiani into
          Egypt and Syria, in the autumn of 1802, showed that our tenderness for
          the inhabitants of these countries had not diminished, and that we
          soon intended to bestow on them new hugs of fraternity. Your
          pretensions to Malta impeded our prospects in the East, and your
          obstinacy obliged us to postpone our so well planned schemes of
          encroachments. It was then that Bonaparte first selected for his
          representative to the Grand Seignior, General Brune, commonly called
          by Moreau, Macdonald, and other competent judges of military merit, an
          intriguer at the head of armies, and a warrior in time of peace when
          seated in the Council chamber.
        </p>
        <p>
          This Brune was, before the Revolution, a journeyman printer, and
          married to a washerwoman, whose industry and labour alone prevented
          him from starving, for he was as vicious as idle. The money he gained
          when he chose to work was generally squandered away in brothels, among
          prostitutes. To supply his excesses he had even recourse to dishonest
          means, and was shut up in the prison of Bicetre for robbing his master
          of types and of paper.
        </p>
        <p>
          In the beginning of the Revolution, his very crimes made him an
          acceptable associate of Marat, who, with the money advanced by the
          Orleans faction, bought him a printing-office, and he printed the so
          dreadfully well-known journal, called 'L'Amie du Peuple'. From the
          principles of this atrocious paper, and from those of his sanguinary
          patron, he formed his own political creed. He distinguished himself
          frequently at the clubs of the Cordeliers, and of the Jacobins, by his
          extravagant motions, and by provoking laws of proscription against a
          wealth he did not possess, and against a rank he would have
          dishonoured, but did not see without envy. On the 30th of June, 1791,
          he said, in the former of these clubs:
        </p>
        <p>
          "We hear everywhere complaints of poverty; were not our eyes so often
          disgusted with the sight of unnatural riches, our hearts would not so
          often be shocked at the unnatural sufferings of humanity. The
          blessings of our Revolution will never be felt by the world, until we
          in France are on a level, with regard to rank as well as to fortune.
          I, for my part, know too well the dignity of human nature ever to bow
          to a superior; but, brothers and friends, it is not enough that we are
          all politically equal, we must also be all equally rich or equally
          poor&mdash;we must either all strive to become men of property, or
          reduce men of property to become sans-culottes. Believe me, the
          aristocracy of property is more dangerous than the aristocracy of
          prerogative or fanaticism, because it is more common. Here is a list
          sent to 'L' Amie du People', but of which prudence yet prohibits the
          publication. It contains the names of all the men of property of
          Paris, and of the Department of the Seine, the amount of their
          fortunes, and a proposal how to reduce and divide it among our
          patriots. Of its great utility in the moment when we have been
          striking our grand blows, nobody dares doubt; I, therefore, move that
          a brotherly letter be sent to every society of our brothers and
          friends in the provinces, inviting each of them to compose one of
          similar contents and of similar tendency, in their own districts, with
          what remarks they think proper to affix, and to forward them to us, to
          be deposited, in the mother club, after taking copies of them for the
          archives of their own society."
        </p>
        <p>
          His motion was decreed.
        </p>
        <p>
          Two days afterwards, he again ascended the tribune. "You approved,"
          said he, "of the measures I lately proposed against the aristocracy of
          property; I will now tell you of another aristocracy which we must
          also crush&mdash;I mean that of religion, and of the clergy. Their
          supports are folly, cowardice, and ignorance. All priests are to be
          proscribed as criminals, and despised as impostors or idiots; and all
          altars must be reduced to dust as unnecessary. To prepare the public
          mind for such events, we must enlighten it; which can only be done by
          disseminating extracts from 'L' Amie du People', and other
          philosophical publications. I have here some ballads of my own
          composition, which have been sung in my quarter; where all
          superstitious persons have already trembled, and all fanatics are
          raving. If you think proper, I will, for a mere trifle, print twenty
          thousand copies of them, to be distributed and disseminated gratis all
          over France."
        </p>
        <p>
          After some discussion, the treasurer of the club was ordered to
          advance Citizen Brune the sum required, and the secretary to transmit
          the ballads to the fraternal societies in the provinces.
        </p>
        <p>
          Brune put on his first regimentals as an aide-decamp to General
          Santerre in December, 1792, after having given proofs of his military
          prowess the preceding September, in the massacre of the prisoners in
          the Abbey. In 1793 he was appointed a colonel in the revolutionary
          army, which, during the Reign of Terror, laid waste the departments of
          the Gironde, where he was often seen commanding his corps, with a
          human head fixed on his sword. On the day when he entered Bordeaux
          with his troops, a new-born child occupied the same place, to the
          great horror of the inhabitants. During this brilliant expedition he
          laid the first foundation of his present fortune, having pillaged in a
          most unmerciful manner, and arrested or shot every suspected person
          who could not, or would not, exchange property for life. On his return
          to Paris, his patriotism was recompensed with a commission of a
          general of brigade. On the death of Robespierre, he was arrested as a
          terrorist, but, after some months' imprisonment, again released.
        </p>
        <p>
          In October, 1795, he assisted Napoleon Bonaparte in the massacre of
          the Parisians, and obtained for it, from the director Barras, the rank
          of a general of division. Though occupying, in time of war, such a
          high military rank, he had hitherto never seen an enemy, or witnessed
          an engagement.
        </p>
        <p>
          After Bonaparte had planned the invasion and pillage of Switzerland,
          Brune was charged to execute this unjust outrage against the law of
          nations. His capacity to intrigue procured him this distinction, and
          he did honour to the choice of his employers. You have no doubt read
          that, after lulling the Government of Berne into security by repeated
          proposals of accommodation, he attacked the Swiss and Bernese troops
          during a truce, and obtained by treachery successes which his valour
          did not promise him. The pillage, robberies, and devastations in
          Helvetia added several more millions to his previously great riches.
        </p>
        <p>
          It was after his campaign in Holland, during the autumn of 1799, that
          he first began to claim some military glory. He owed, however, his
          successes to the superior number of his troops, and to the talents of
          the generals and officers serving under him. Being made a Counsellor
          of State by Bonaparte, he was entrusted with the command of the army
          against the Chouans. Here he again seduced by his promises, and duped
          by his intrigues, acted infamously&mdash;but was successful.
        </p>
        <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="p236" id="p236"></a>
        <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
          <img alt="p236.jpg (68K)" src="images/p236.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
        </div>
				<br /><br /><br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XXXIX.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, September, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;Three months before Brune set out on his embassy to
            Constantinople, Talleyrand and Fouche were collecting together all
            the desperadoes of our Revolution, and all the Italian, Corsican,
            Greek, and Arabian renegadoes and vagabonds in our country, to form
            him a set of attendants agreeable to the real object of his mission.
          </p>
          <p>
            You know too much of our national character and of my own veracity
            to think it improbable, when I assure you that most of our great men
            in place are as vain as presumptuous, and that sometimes vanity and
            presumption get the better of their discretion and prudence. What I
            am going to tell you I did not hear myself, but it was reported to
            me by a female friend, as estimable for her virtues as admired for
            her accomplishments. She is often honoured with invitations to
            Talleyrand's familiar parties, composed chiefly of persons whose
            fortunes are as independent as their principles, who, though not
            approving the Revolution, neither joined its opposers nor opposed
            its adherents, preferring tranquillity and obscurity to agitation
            and celebrity. Their number is not much above half a dozen, and the
            Minister calls them the only honest people in France with whom he
            thinks himself safe.
          </p>
          <p>
            When it was reported here that two hundred persons of Brune's suite
            had embarked at Marseilles and eighty-four at Genoa, and when it was
            besides known that nearly fifty individuals accompanied him in his
            outset, this unusual occurrence caused much conversation and many
            speculations in all our coteries and fashionable circles. About that
            time my friend dined with Talleyrand, and, by chance, also mentioned
            this grand embassy, observing, at the same time, that it was too
            much honour done to the Ottoman Porte, and too much money thrown
            away upon splendour, to honour such an imbecile and tottering
            Government.
          </p>
          <p>
            "How people talk," interrupted Talleyrand, "about what they do not
            comprehend. Generous as Bonaparte is, he does not throw away his
            expenses; perhaps within twelve months all these renegadoes or
            adventurers, whom you all consider as valets of Brune, will be
            three-tailed Pachas or Beys, leading friends of liberty, who shall
            have gloriously broken their fetters as slaves of a Selim to become
            the subjects of a Napoleon. The Eastern Empire has, indeed, long
            expired, but it may suddenly be revived."
          </p>
          <p>
            "Austria and Russia," replied my friend, "would never suffer it, and
            England would sooner ruin her navy and exhaust her Treasury than
            permit such a revolution."
          </p>
          <p>
            "So they have tried to do," retorted Talleyrand, "to bring about a
            counter revolution in France. But though only a moment is requisite
            to erect the standard of revolt, ages often are necessary to conquer
            and seize it. Turkey has long been ripe for a revolution. It wanted
            only chiefs and directors. In time of war, ten thousand Frenchmen
            landed in the Dardanelles would be masters of Constantinople, and
            perhaps of the Empire. In time of peace, four hundred bold and
            well-informed men may produce the same effect. Besides, with some
            temporary cession of a couple of provinces to each of the Imperial
            Courts, and with the temporary present of an island to Great
            Britain, everything may be settled 'pro tempore', and a Joseph
            Bonaparte be permitted to reign at Constantinople, as a Napoleon
            does at Paris."
          </p>
          <p>
            That the Minister made use of this language I can take upon me to
            affirm; but whether purposely or unintentionally, whether to give a
            high opinion of his plans or to impose upon his company, I will not
            and cannot assert.
          </p>
          <p>
            On the subject of this numerous suite of Brune, Markof is said to
            have obtained several conferences with Talleyrand and several
            audiences of Bonaparte, in which representations, as just as
            energetic, were made, which, however, did not alter the intent of
            our Government or increase the favour of the Russian Ambassador at
            the Court of St. Cloud. But it proved that our schemes of subversion
            are suspected, and that our agents of overthrow would be watched and
            their manoeuvres inspected.
          </p>
          <p>
            Count Italinski, the Russian Ambassador to the Ottoman Porte, is one
            of those noblemen who unite rank and fortune, talents and modesty,
            honour and patriotism, wealth and liberality. His personal character
            and his individual virtues made him, therefore, more esteemed and
            revered by the members of the Divan, than the high station he
            occupied, and the powerful Prince he represented, made him feared or
            respected. His warnings had created prejudices against Brune which
            he found difficult to remove. To revenge himself in his old way, our
            Ambassador inserted several paragraphs in the Moniteur and in our
            other papers, in which Count Italinski was libelled, and his
            transactions or views calumniated.
          </p>
          <p>
            After his first audience with the Grand Seignior, Brune complained
            bitterly, of not having learned the Turkish language, and of being
            under the necessity, therefore, of using interpreters, to whom he
            ascribed the renewed obstacles he encountered in every step he took,
            while his hotel was continually surrounded with spies, and the
            persons of his suite followed everywhere like criminals when they
            went out. Even the valuable presents he carried with him, amounting
            in value to twenty-four millions of livres&mdash;were but
            indifferently received, the acceptors, seeming to suspect the object
            and the honesty of the donor.
          </p>
          <p>
            In proportion as our politics became embroiled with those of Russia,
            the post of Brune became of more importance; but the obstacles
            thrown in his way augmented daily, and he was forced to avow that
            Russia and England had greater influence and more credit than the
            French Republic and its chief. When Bonaparte was proclaimed an
            Emperor of the French, Brune expected that his acknowledgment as
            such at Constantinople would be a mere matter of course and
            announced officially on the day he presented a copy of his new
            credentials. Here again he was disappointed, and therefore demanded
            his recall from a place where there was no probability, under the
            present circumstances, of either exciting the subjects to revolt, of
            deluding the Prince into submission, or seducing Ministers who, in
            pocketing his bribes, forgot for what they were given.
          </p>
          <p>
            It was then that Bonaparte sent Joubert with a letter in his own
            handwriting, to be delivered into the hands of the Grand Seignior
            himself. This Joubert is a foundling, and, was from his youth
            destined and educated to be one of the secret agents of our secret
            diplomacy. You already, perhaps, have heard that our Government
            selects yearly a number of young foundlings or orphans, whom it
            causes to be brought up in foreign countries at its expense, so as
            to learn the language as natives of the nation, where, when grown
            up, they are chiefly to be employed. Joubert had been educated under
            the inspection of our consuls at Smyrna, and, when he assumes the
            dress of a Turk, from his accent and manners even the Mussulmans
            mistake him for one of their own creed and of their country. He was
            introduced to Bonaparte in 1797, and accompanied him to Egypt, where
            his services were of the greatest utility to the army. He is now a
            kind of undersecretary in the office of our secret diplomacy, and a
            member of the Legion of Honour. Should ever Joseph Bonaparte be an
            Emperor or Sultan of the East, Joubert will certainly be his Grand
            Vizier. There is another Joubert (with whom you must not confound
            him), who was; also a kind of Dragoman at Constantinople some years
            ago, and who is still somewhere on a secret mission in the East
            Indies.
          </p>
          <p>
            Joubert's arrival at Constantinople excited both curiosity among the
            people and suspicion among the Ministry. There is no example in the
            Ottoman history of a chief of a Christian nation having written to
            the Sultan by a private messenger, or of His Highness having
            condescended to receive the letter from the bearer, or to converse
            with him. The Grand Vizier demanded a copy of Bonaparte's letter,
            before an audience could be granted. This was refused by Joubert;
            and as Brune threatened to quit the capital of Turkey if any longer
            delay were experienced, the letter was delivered in a garden near
            Constantinople, where the Sultan met Bonaparte's agent, as if by
            chance, who, it seems, lost all courage and presence of mind, and
            did not utter four words, to which no answer was given.
          </p>
          <p>
            This impertinent intrigue, and this novel diplomacy, therefore,
            totally miscarried, to the great shame and greater disappointment of
            the schemers and contrivers. I must, however, do Talleyrand the
            justice to say that he never approved of it, and even foretold the
            issue to his intimate friends. It was entirely the whim and
            invention of Bonaparte himself, upon a suggestion of Brune, who was
            far from being so well acquainted with the spirit and policy of the
            Divan as he had been with the genius and plots of Jacobinism. Not
            rebuked, however, Joubert was ordered away a second time with a
            second letter, and, after an absence of four months, returned again
            as he went, less satisfied with the second than with his first
            journey.
          </p>
          <p>
            In these trips to Turkey, he had always for travelling companions
            some of our emissaries to Austria, Hungary, and in particular to
            Servia, where the insurgents were assisted by our councils, and even
            guided by some of our officers. The principal aide-de-camp of Czerni
            George, the Servian chieftain, is one Saint Martin, formerly a
            captain in our artillery, afterwards an officer of engineers in the
            Russian service, and finally a volunteer in the army of Conde. He
            and three other officers of artillery were, under fictitious names,
            sent by our Government, during the spring of last year, to the camp
            of the insurgents. They pretended to be of the Grecian religion, and
            formerly Russian officers, and were immediately employed. Saint
            Martin has gained great influence over Czerni George, and directs
            both his political councils and military operations. Besides the
            individuals left behind by Joubert; it is said that upwards of one
            hundred persons of Brune's suite have been ordered for the same
            destination. You see how great the activity of our Government is,
            and that nothing is thought unworthy of its vigilance or its
            machinations. In the staff of Paswan Oglou, six of my countrymen
            have been serving ever since 1796, always in the pay of our
            Government.
          </p>
          <p>
            It was much against the inclination and interest of our Emperor that
            his Ambassador at Constantinople should leave the field of battle
            there to the representatives of Russia, Austria, and England. But
            his dignity was at stake. After many threats to deprive the Sultan
            of the honour of his presence, and even after setting out once for
            some leagues on his return, Brune, observing that these marches and
            countermarches excited more mirth than terror, at last fixed a day,
            when, finally, either Bonaparte must be acknowledged by the Divan as
            an Emperor of the French, or his departure would take place. On that
            day he, indeed, began his retreat, but, under different pretexts, be
            again stopped, sent couriers to his secretaries, waited for their
            return, and sent new couriers again,&mdash;but all in vain, the
            Divan continued refractory.
          </p>
          <p>
            At his first audience after his return, the reception Bonaparte gave
            him was not very cordial. He demanded active employment, in case of
            a continental war, either in Italy or in Germany, but received
            neither. When our army of England was already on its march towards
            the Rhine, and Bonaparte returned here, Brune was ordered to take
            command on the coast, and to organize there an army of observation,
            destined to succour Holland in case of an invasion, or to invade
            England should a favourable occasion present itself. The fact is, he
            was charged to intrigue rather than to fight; and were Napoleon able
            to force upon Austria another Peace of Luneville, Brune would
            probably be the plenipotentiary that would ask your acceptance of
            another Peace of Amiens. It is here a general belief that his
            present command signifies another pacific overture from Bonaparte
            before your Parliament meets, or, at least, before the New Year.
            Remember that our hero is more to be dreaded as a Philip than as an
            Alexander.
          </p>
          <p>
            General Brune has bought landed property for nine millions of livres&mdash;and
            has, in different funds, placed ready money to the same amount. His
            own and his wife's diamonds are valued by him at three millions; and
            when he has any parties to dinner, he exhibits them with great
            complaisance as presents forced upon him during his campaign in
            Switzerland and Holland, for the protection he gave the inhabitants.
            He is now so vain of his wealth and proud of his rank, that he not
            only disregards all former acquaintances, but denies his own
            brothers and sisters,&mdash;telling them frankly that the
            Fieldmarshal Brune can have no shoemaker for a brother, nor a sister
            married to a chandler; that he knows of no parents, and of no
            relatives, being the maker of his own fortune, and of what he is;
            that his children will look no further back for ancestry than their
            father. One of his first cousins, a postilion, who insisted, rather
            obstinately, on his family alliance, was recommended by Brune to his
            friend Fouche, who sent him on a voyage of discovery to Cayenne,
            from which he probably will not return very soon.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XL.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, September, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            My LORD:&mdash;Madame de C&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;n is now one of our
            most fashionable ladies. Once in the week she has a grand tea-party;
            once in a fortnight a grand dinner; and once in the month a grand
            ball. Foreign gentlemen are particularly well received at her house,
            which, of course, is much frequented by them. As you intend to visit
            this country after a peace, it may be of some service to you not to
            be unacquainted with the portrait of a lady whose invitation to see
            the original you may depend upon the day after your arrival.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="p338" id="p338"></a>
          <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
            <img alt="p338.jpg (75K)" src="images/p338.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
          </div>
          <br /><br /><br /><br />
          <p>
            Madame de C&mdash;&mdash;n is the widow of the great and useless
            traveller, Comte de C&mdash;&mdash;n, to whom his relatives pretend
            that she was never married. Upon his death-bed he acknowledged her,
            however, for his wife, and left her mistress of a fortune of three
            hundred thousand livres a year. The first four years of her
            widowhood she passed in lawsuits before the tribunals, where the
            plaintiffs could not prove that she was unmarried, nor she herself
            that she was married. But Madame Napoleon Bonaparte, for a small
            douceur, speaking in her favour, the consciences of the juries, and
            the understanding of the judges, were all convinced at once that she
            had been the lawful wife, and was the lawful heiress, of Comte de C&mdash;&mdash;n,
            who had no children, or nearer relatives than third cousins.
          </p>
          <p>
            Comte de C&mdash;&mdash;n was travelling in the East Indies when the
            Revolution broke out. His occupation there was a very innocent one;
            he drew countenances, being one of the most enthusiastic sectaries
            of Lavater, and modestly called himself the first physiognomist in
            the world. Indeed, he had been at least the most laborious one; for
            he left behind him a collection of six thousand two hundred
            portraits, drawn by himself in the four quarters of the world,
            during a period of thirty years.
          </p>
          <p>
            He never engaged a servant, nor dealt with a tradesman, whose
            physiognomy had not been examined by him. In his travels he
            preferred the worst accommodation in a house where he approved of
            the countenance of the host, to the best where the traits or lines
            of the landlord's face were irregular, or did not coincide with his
            ideas of physiognomical propriety. The cut of a face, its
            expression, the length of the nose, the width or smallness of the
            mouth, the form of the eyelids or of the ears, the colour or
            thickness of the hair, with the shape and tout ensemble of the head,
            were always minutely considered and discussed before he entered into
            any agreement, on any subject, with any individual whatever.
            Whatever recommendations, or whatever attestations were produced, if
            they did not correspond with his own physiognomical remarks and
            calculations, they were disregarded; while a person whose
            physiognomy pleased him required no other introduction to obtain his
            confidence. Whether he thought himself wiser than his forefathers,
            he certainly did not grow richer than they were. Charlatans who
            imposed upon his credulity and impostors who flattered his mania,
            servants who robbed him and mistresses who deceived him, proved that
            if his knowledge of physiognomy was great, it was by no means
            infallible. At his death, of the fortune left him by his parents
            only the half remained.
          </p>
          <p>
            His friends often amused themselves at the expense of his foibles.
            When he prepared for a journey to the East, one of them recommended
            him a servant, upon whose fidelity he could depend. After examining
            with minute scrupulosity the head of the person, he wrote: "My
            friend, I accept your valuable present. From calculations, which
            never deceive me, Manville (the servant's name) possesses, with the
            fidelity of a dog, the intrepidity of the lion. Chastity itself is
            painted on his front, modesty in his looks, temperance on his cheek,
            and his mouth and nose bespeak honesty itself." Shortly after the
            Count had landed at Pondicherry, Mauville, who was a girl, died, in
            a condition which showed that chastity had not been the divinity to
            whom she had chiefly sacrificed. In her trunk were found several
            trinkets belonging to her master, which she honestly had
            appropriated to herself. His miscalculation on this subject the
            Count could not but avow; he added, however, that it was the entire
            fault of his friend, who had duped him with regard to the sex.
          </p>
          <p>
            Madame de C&mdash;&mdash;n was, on account of her physiognomy,
            purchased by her late husband, then travelling in Turkey, from a
            merchant of Circassian slaves, when she was under seven years of
            age, and sent for her education to a relative of the Count, an
            Abbess of a convent in Languedoc. On his return from Turkey, some
            years afterwards, he took her under his own care, and she
            accompanied him all over Asia, and returned first to France in 1796,
            where her husband's name was upon the list of emigrants, though he
            had not been in Europe for ten years before the Revolution.
          </p>
          <p>
            However, by some pecuniary arrangements with Barras, he recovered
            his property, which he did not long enjoy, for he died in 1798. The
            suitors of Madame de C&mdash;&mdash;n, mistress of a large fortune,
            with some remnants of beauty and elegance of manners, have been
            numerous, and among them several Senators and generals, and even the
            Minister Chaptal. But she has politely declined all their offers,
            preferring her liberty and the undisturbed right of following her
            own inclination to the inconvenient ties of Hymen. A gentleman, whom
            she calls, and who passes for, her brother, Chevalier de M de T&mdash;&mdash;,
            a Knight of Malta, assists her in doing the honours of her house,
            and is considered as her favourite lover; though report and the
            scandalous chronicle say that she bestows her favours on every
            person who wishes to bestow on her his name, and that, therefore,
            her gallants are at least as numerous as her suitors.
          </p>
          <p>
            Such is the true statement of the past, as well as the present, with
            regard to Madame de C&mdash;&mdash;n. She relates, however, a
            different story. She says that she is the daughter of the Marquis de
            M de T&mdash;&mdash;-, of a Languedoc family; that she sailed, when
            a child, with her mother in a felucca from Nice to Malta, there to
            visit her brother; was captured by an Algerine pilot, separated from
            her mother, and carried to Constantinople by a merchant of slaves;
            there she was purchased by Comte de C&mdash;&mdash;n, who restored
            her to her family, and whom, therefore, notwithstanding the
            difference of their ages, she married from gratitude. This pretty,
            romantic story is ordered in our Court circles to be officially
            believed; and, of course, is believed by nobody, not even by the
            Emperor and Empress themselves, who would not give her the place of
            a lady-in-waiting, though her request was accompanied with a
            valuable diamond to the latter. The present was kept, but the offer
            declined.
          </p>
          <p>
            All the members of the Bonaparte family, female as well as male,
            honour her house with their visits and with the acceptance of her
            invitations; and it is, therefore, among our fashionables, the 'haut
            ton' to be of the society and circle of Madame de C&mdash;&mdash;n.
          </p>
          <p>
            Last February, Madame de P&mdash;&mdash;t (the wife of Comte de P&mdash;&mdash;t,
            a relative, by her husband's side, of Madame de C&mdash;&mdash;n,
            and who by the Revolution lost all their property, and now live with
            her as companions) was brought to bed of a son; the child was
            baptized by the Cardinal de Belloy, and Madame Joseph and Prince
            Louis Bonaparte stood sponsors. This occurrence was celebrated with
            great pomp, and a fete was given to nearly one hundred and fifty per
            sons of both sexes,&mdash;as usual, a mixture of ci-devant nobles
            and of ci-devant sans-culottes; of rank and meanness; of upstart
            wealth and beggared dignity.
          </p>
          <p>
            What that day struck me most was the audacity of the Senator
            Villetard in teasing and insulting the old Cardinal de Belloy with
            his impertinent conversation and affected piety. This Villetard was,
            before the Revolution, a journeyman barber, and was released in 1789
            by the mob from the prison of the Chatelet, where he was confined
            for theft. In 1791 his patriotism was so well known in the
            Department of Yonne, that he was deputed by the Jacobins there to
            the Jacobins of the capital with an address, encouraging and
            advising the deposition of Louis XVI.; and in 1792 he was chosen a
            member of the National Convention, where the most sanguinary and
            most violent of the factions were always certain to reckon him in
            the number of their adherents.
          </p>
          <p>
            In December, 1797, when an insurrection, prepared by Joseph
            Bonaparte at Rome, deprived the late revered pontiff both of his
            sovereignty and liberty, Villetard was sent by the Jacobin and
            atheistical party of the Directory to Loretto, to seize and carry
            off the celebrated Madonna. In the execution of this commission he
            displayed a conduct worthy the littleness of his genius and the
            criminality of his mind. The wooden image of the Holy Virgin, a
            black gown said to have appertained to her, together with three
            broken china plates, which the Roman Catholic faithful have for ages
            believed to have been used by her, were presented by him to the
            Directory, with a cruelly scandalous show, accompanied by a horribly
            blasphemous letter. He passed the next night, after he had
            perpetrated this sacrilege, with two prostitutes, in the chapel of
            the Holy Virgin; and, on the next morning, placed one of them,
            naked, on the pedestal where the statue of the Virgin had formerly
            stood, and ordered all the devotees at Loretto, and two leagues
            round, to prostrate themselves before her. This shocking command
            occasioned the premature death of fifteen ladies, two of whom, who
            were nuns, died on the spot on beholding the horrid outrage; and
            many more were deprived of their reason. How barbarously unfeeling
            must that wretch be who, in bereaving the religious, the pious, and
            the conscientious of their consolation and hope, adds the tormenting
            reproach of apostasy, by forcing virtue upon its knees to bow before
            what it knows to be guilt and infamy.
          </p>
          <p>
            A traitor to his associates as to his God, it was he who, in
            November, 1799, presented at St. Cloud the decree which excluded all
            those who opposed Bonaparte's authority from the Council of Five
            Hundred, and appointed the two committees which made him a First
            Consul. In reward for this act of treachery, he was nominated to a
            place in the Conservative Senate. He has now ranked himself among
            our modern saints, goes regularly to Mass and confesses; has made a
            brother of his, who was a drummer, an Abbe; and his assiduity about
            the Cardinal was probably with a view to obtain advancement for this
            edifying priest.
          </p>
          <p>
            The Cardinal de Belloy is now ninety-six years of age, being born in
            1709, and has been a Bishop for fifty-three years, but, during the
            Revolution, was proscribed, with all other prelates. He remained,
            however, in France, where his age saved him from the guillotine, but
            not from being reduced to the greatest want. A descendant of a noble
            family, and possessing an unpolluted character, Bonaparte fixed upon
            him as one of the pillars for the reestablishment of the Catholic
            worship, made him an Archbishop of Paris, and procured him the rank
            of a Cardinal from Rome. But he is now in his second childhood,
            entirely directed by his grand vicaries, Malaret, De Mons, and
            Legeas, who are in the pay of, and absolutely devoted to, Bonaparte.
            An innocent instrument in their hands, of those impious compliments
            pronounced by him to the Emperor and the Empress, he did not,
            perhaps, even understand the meaning. From such a man the vile and
            artful Villetard might extort any promise. I observed, however, with
            pleasure, that he was watched by the grand vicar, Malaret, who
            seldom loses sight of His Eminence.
          </p>
          <p>
            These two so opposite characters&mdash;I mean De Belloy and
            Villetard&mdash;are already speaking evidences of the composition of
            the society at Madame de C&mdash;&mdash;n's. But I will tell you
            something still more striking. This lady is famous for her elegant
            services of plate, as much as for her delicate taste in entertaining
            her parties. After the supper on this night, eleven silver and four
            gold plates, besides numerous silver and gold spoons, forks, etc.,
            were missed. She informed Fouche of her loss, who had her house
            surrounded by spies, with orders not to let any servant pass without
            undergoing a strict search. The first gentleman who called for his
            carriage was His Excellency the Counsellor of State and grand
            officer of the Legion of Honour, Treilhard. His servants were
            stopped and the cause explained. They willingly, and against the
            protest of their master, suffered themselves to be searched. Nothing
            was found upon them; but the police agents, observing the full-dress
            hat of their master rather bulky under his arm, took the liberty to
            look into it, where they found one of Madame de C&mdash;&mdash;n's
            gold plates and two of her spoons. His Excellency immediately
            ordered his servants to be arrested, for having concealed their
            theft there. Fouche, however, when called out, advised his friend to
            forgive them for misplacing them, as the less said on the subject
            the better. When Madame de C&mdash;&mdash;n heard of this discovery,
            she asked Fouche to recall his order or to alter it. "A repetition
            of such misplacings in the hats or in the pockets of the masters,"
            said she, "would injure the reputation of my house and company." She
            never recovered the remainder of her loss, and that she might not be
            exposed in future to the same occurrences, she bought two services
            of china the following day, to be used when she had mixed society.
          </p>
          <p>
            Treilhard had, before the Revolution, the reputation of being an
            honest man and an able advocate; but has since joined the criminals
            of all factions, being an accomplice in their guilt and a sharer of
            their spoils. In the convention, he voted for the death of Louis
            XVI. and pursued without mercy the unfortunate Marie Antoinette to
            the scaffold. During his missions in the departments, wherever he
            went the guillotine was erected and blood flowed in streams. He was,
            nevertheless, accused by Robespierre of moderatism. At Lille, in
            1797, and at Rastadt, in 1798, he negotiated as a plenipotentiary
            with the representatives of Princes, and in 1799 corresponded as a
            director with Emperors and Kings, to whom he wrote as his great and
            dear friends. He is now a Counsellor of State, in the section of
            legislation, and enjoys a fortune of several millions of livres,
            arising from estates in the country, and from leases in the capital.
            As this accident at Madame de C&mdash;&mdash;n's soon became public,
            his friends gave out that he had of late been exceedingly absent,
            and, from absence of mind, puts everything he can lay hold of into
            his pocket. He is not a favourite with Madame Bonaparte, and she
            asked her husband to dismiss and disgrace him for an act so
            disgraceful to a grand officer of the Legion of Honour, but was
            answered, "Were I to turn away all the thieves and rogues that
            encompass me I should soon cease to reign. I despise them, but I
            must employ them."
          </p>
          <p>
            It is whispered that the police have discovered another of Madame de
            C n's lost gold plates at a pawnbroker's, where it had been pledged
            by the wife of another Counsellor of State, Francois de Nantes.
          </p>
          <p>
            This I give you merely as a report! though the fact is, that Madame
            Francois is very fond of gambling, but very unfortunate; and she,
            with other of our fashionable ladies, has more than once resorted to
            her charms for the payment of her gambling debts.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /><br />
          <h1>
            MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF ST. CLOUD
          </h1>
          <br /><br />
          <h3>
            Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in
            London
          </h3>
          <br /><br /><br /><br />
          <p>
            BOOK 2.
          </p>
          <br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER I.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, September, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;Since my return here, I have never neglected to
            present myself before our Sovereign, on his days of grand reviews
            and grand diplomatic audiences. I never saw him more condescending,
            more agreeable, or, at least, less offensive, than on the day of his
            last levee, before he set out to be inaugurated a King of Italy; nor
            worse tempered, more petulant, agitated, abrupt, and rude than at
            his first grand audience after his arrival from Milan, when this
            ceremony had been performed. I am not the only one who has made this
            remark; he did not disguise either his good or ill-humour; and it
            was only requisite to have eyes and ears to see and be disgusted at
            the difference of behaviour.
          </p>
          <p>
            I have heard a female friend of Madame Bonaparte explain, in part,
            the cause of this alteration. Just before he set out for Italy, the
            agreeable news of the success of the first Rochefort squadron in the
            West Indies, and the escape of our Toulon fleet from the vigilance
            of your Lord Nelson, highly elevated his spirits, as it was the
            first naval enterprise of any consequence since his reign. I am
            certain that one grand naval victory would flatter his vanity and
            ambition more than all the glory of one of his most brilliant
            Continental campaigns. He had also, at that time, great expectations
            that another negotiation with Russia would keep the Continent
            submissive under his dictature, until he should find an opportunity
            of crushing your power. You may be sure that he had no small hopes
            of striking a blow in your country, after the junction of our fleet
            with the Spanish, not by any engagement between our Brest fleet and
            your Channel fleet, but under a supposition that you would detach
            squadrons to the East and West Indies in search of the combined
            fleet, which, by an unexpected return, according to orders, would
            have then left us masters of the Channel, and, if joined with the
            Batavian fleet, perhaps even of the North Sea. By the
            incomprehensible activity of Lord Nelson, and by the defeat (or as
            we call it here, the negative victory) of Villeneuve and Gravina,
            all this first prospect had vanished. Our vengeance against a nation
            of shopkeepers we were not only under the necessity of postponing,
            but, from the unpolite threats and treaties of the Cabinet of St.
            Petersburg with those of Vienna and St. James, we were on the eve of
            a Continental war, and our gunboats, instead of being useful in
            carrying an army to the destruction of the tyrants of the seas, were
            burdensome, as an army was necessary to guard them, and to prevent
            these tyrants from capturing or destroying them. Such changes, in so
            short a period of time as three months, might irritate a temper less
            patient than that of Napoleon the First.
          </p>
          <p>
            At his grand audience here, even after the army, of England had
            moved towards Germany, when the die was cast, and his mind should,
            therefore, have been made up, he was almost insupportable. The low
            bows, and the still humbler expressions of the Prussian Ambassador,
            the Marquis da Lucchesini, were hardly noticed; and the Saxon
            Ambassador, Count von Buneau, was addressed in a language that no
            well-bred master ever uses in speaking to a menial servant. He did
            not cast a look, or utter a word, that was not an insult to the
            audience and a disgrace to his rank. I never before saw him vent his
            rage and disappointment so indiscriminately. We were, indeed (if I
            may use the term), humbled and trampled upon en masse. Some he put
            out of countenance by staring angrily at them; others he shocked by
            his hoarse voice and harsh words; and all&mdash;all of us&mdash;were
            afraid, in our turn, of experiencing something worse than our
            neighbours. I observed more than one Minister, and more than one
            general, change colour, and even perspire, at His Majesty's
            approach.
          </p>
          <p>
            I believe the members of the foreign diplomatic corps here will all
            agree with me that, at a future congress, the restoration of the
            ancient and becoming etiquette of the Kings of France would be as
            desirable a point to demand from the Emperor of the French as the
            restoration of the balance of power.
          </p>
          <p>
            Before his army of England quitted its old quarters on the coast,
            the officers and men often felt the effects of his ungovernable
            temper. When several regiments of grenadiers, of the division of
            Oudinot, were defiling before him on the 25th of last month, he
            frequently and severely, though without cause, reprobated their
            manner of marching, and once rode up to Captain Fournois, pushed him
            forwards with the point of a small cane, calling out, "Sacre Dieu!
            Advance; you walk like a turkey." In the first moment of
            indignation, the captain, striking at the cane with his sword, made
            a push, or a gesture, as if threatening the person of Bonaparte, who
            called out to his aide-de-camp, Savary:
          </p>
          <p>
            "Disarm the villain, and arrest him!"
          </p>
          <p>
            "It is unnecessary," the captain replied, "I have served a tyrant,
            and merit my fate!" So saying, he passed his sword through his
            heart.
          </p>
          <p>
            His whole company stopped instantly, as at a word of command, and a
            general murmur was heard.
          </p>
          <p>
            "Lay down your arms, and march out of the file instantly," commanded
            Bonaparte, "or you shall be cut down for your mutiny by my guides."
          </p>
          <p>
            They hesitated for a moment, but the guides advancing to surround
            them, they obeyed, and were disarmed. On the following afternoon, by
            a special military commission, each tenth man was condemned to be
            shot; but Bonaparte pardoned them upon condition of serving for life
            in the colonies; and the whole company was ordered to the colonial
            depots. The widow and five children of Captain Fournois the next
            morning threw themselves at the Emperor's feet, presenting a
            petition, in which they stated that the pay of the captain had been
            their only support.
          </p>
          <p>
            "Well," replied Bonaparte to the kneeling petitioners, "Fournois was
            both a fool and a traitor; but, nevertheless, I will take care of
            you." Indeed, they have been so well taken care of that nobody knows
            what has become of them.
          </p>
          <p>
            I am almost certain that I am not telling you what you did not know
            beforehand in informing you that the spirit of our troops is greatly
            different from that of the Germans, and even from that of your own
            country. Every, one of our soldiers would prefer being shot to being
            beaten or caned. Flogging, with us, is out of the question. It may,
            perhaps, be national vanity, but I am doubtful whether any other
            army is, or can be, governed, with regard to discipline, in a less
            violent and more delicate manner, and, nevertheless, be kept in
            subordination, and perform the most brilliant exploits. Remember, I
            speak of our spirit of subordination and discipline, and not of our
            character as citizens, as patriots, or as subjects. I have often
            hinted it, but I believe I have not explained myself so fully
            before; but my firm opinion and persuasion is that, with regard to
            our loyalty, our duty, and our moral and political principles,
            another equally inconsistent and despicable people does not exist in
            the universe.
          </p>
          <p>
            The condition of the slave is certainly in itself that of vileness;
            but is that slave a vile being who, for a blow, pierces his bosom
            because he is unable to avenge it? And what epithet can be given him
            who braves voluntarily a death seemingly certain, not from the love
            of his country, but from a principle of honour, almost incompatible
            with the dishonour of bondage?
          </p>
          <p>
            During the siege of Yorktown, in America, we had, during one night,
            erected a battery, with intent to blow up a place which, according
            to the report of our spies, was your magazine of ammunition, etc. We
            had not time to finish it before daylight; but one loaded
            twenty-four pounder was mounted, and our cannoneer, the moment he
            was about to fire it, was killed. Six more of our men, in the same
            attempt, experienced the same fate. My regiment constituted the
            advanced guard nearest to the spot, and La Fayette brought me the
            order from the commander-in-chief to engage some of my men upon that
            desperate undertaking. I spoke to them, and two advanced, but were
            both instantly shot by your sharpshooters. I then looked at my
            grenadiers, without uttering anything, when, to my sorrow, one of my
            best and most orderly men advanced, saying, "My colonel, permit me
            to try my fortune!" I assented, and he went coldly amidst hundreds
            of bullets whistling around his ears, set fire to the cannon, which
            blew up a depot of powder, as was expected, and in the confusion
            returned unhurt. La Fayette then presented him with his purse. "No,
            monsieur," replied he, "money did not make me venture upon such a
            perilous undertaking." I understood my man, promoted him to a
            sergeant, and recommended him to Rochambeau, who, in some months,
            procured him the commission of a sub-lieutenant. He is now one of
            Bonaparte's Field-marshals, and the only one of that rank who has no
            crimes to reproach himself with. This man was the soldier of a
            despot; but was not his action that of a man of honour, which a
            stanch republican of ancient Rome would have been proud of? Who can
            explain this contradiction?
          </p>
          <p>
            This anecdote about Fournois I heard General Savary relate at Madame
            Duchatel's, as a proof of Bonaparte's generosity and clemency,
            which, he affirmed, excited the admiration of the whole camp at
            Boulogne. I do not suppose this officer to be above thirty years of
            age, of which he has passed the first twenty-five in orphan-houses
            or in watch-houses; but no tyrant ever had a more cringing slave, or
            a more abject courtier. His affectation to extol everything that
            Bonaparte does, right or wrong, is at last become so habitual that
            it is naturalized, and you may mistake for sincerity that which is
            nothing but imposture or flattery. This son of a Swiss porter is now
            one of Bonaparte's adjutants-general, a colonel of the Gendarmes
            d'Elite, a general of brigade in the army, and a commander of the
            Legion of Honour; all these places he owes, not to valour or merit,
            but to abjectness, immorality, and servility. When an aide-de-camp
            with Bonaparte in Egypt, he served him as a spy on his comrades and
            on the officers of the staff, and was so much detested that, near
            Aboukir, several shots were fired at him in his tent by his own
            countrymen. He is supposed still to continue the same espionage; and
            as a colonel of the Gendarmes d'Elite, he is charged with the secret
            execution of all proscribed persons or State prisoners, who have
            been secretly condemned,&mdash;a commission that a despot gives to a
            man he trusts, but dares not offer to a man he esteems. He is so
            well known that the instant he enters a society silence follows, and
            he has the whole conversation to himself. This he is stupid enough
            to take for a compliment, or for a mark of respect, or an
            acknowledgment of his superior parts and intelligence, when, in
            fact, it is a direct reproach with which prudence arms itself
            against suspected or known dishonesty. Besides his wife, he has to
            support six other women whom he has seduced and ruined; and,
            notwithstanding the numerous opportunities his master has procured
            him of pillaging and enriching himself, he is still much in debt;
            but woe to his creditors were they indiscreet enough to ask for
            their payments! The Secret Tribunal would soon seize them and
            transport them, or deliver them over to the hands of their debtor,
            to be shot as traitors or conspirators.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER II.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, September, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            My LORD:&mdash;I am told that it was the want of pecuniary resources
            that made Bonaparte so ill-tempered on his last levee day. He would
            not have come here at all, but preceded his army to Strasburg, had
            his Minister of Finances, Gaudin, and his Minister of the Public
            Treasury, Marbois, been able to procure forty-four millions of
            livres&mdash;to pay a part of the arrears of the troops; and for the
            speedy conveyance of ammunition and artillery towards the Rhine.
          </p>
          <p>
            Immediately after his arrival here, Bonaparte sent for the directors
            of the Bank of France, informing them that within twenty-four hours
            they must advance him thirty-six millions of livres&mdash;upon the
            revenue of the last quarter of 1808. The president of the bank,
            Senator Garrat, demanded two hours to lay before the Emperor the
            situation of the bank, that His Majesty might judge what sum it was
            possible to spare without ruining the credit of an establishment
            hitherto so useful to the commerce of the Empire. To this Bonaparte
            replied that he was not ignorant of the resources, or of the credit
            of the bank, any more than of its public utility; but that the
            affairs of State suffered from every hour's delay, and that,
            therefore, he insisted upon having the sum demanded even within two
            hours, partly in paper and partly in cash; and were they to show any
            more opposition, he would order the bank and all its effects to be
            seized that moment. The directors bowed and returned to the bank;
            whither they were followed by four waggons escorted by hussars, and
            belonging to the financial department of the army of England. In
            these were placed eight millions of livres in cash; and twenty-eight
            millions in bank-notes were delivered to M. Lefevre, the
            Secretary-General of Marbois, who presented, in exchange,
            Bonaparte's bond and security for the amount, bearing an interest of
            five per cent. yearly.
          </p>
          <p>
            When this money transaction was known to the public, the alarm
            became general, and long before the hour the bank usually opens the
            adjoining streets were crowded with persons desiring to exchange
            their notes for cash. During the night the directors had taken care
            to pay themselves for the banknotes in their own possession with
            silver or gold, and, as they expected a run, they ordered all
            persons to be paid in copper coin, as long as any money of this
            metal remained. It required a long time to count those halfpennies
            and centimes (five of which make a sou, or halfpenny), but the
            people were not tired with waiting until towards three o'clock in
            the afternoon, when the bank is shut up. They then became so
            clamorous that a company of gendarmes was placed for protection at
            the entrance of the bank; but, as the tumult increased, the street
            was surrounded by the police guards, and above six hundred
            individuals, many of them women, were carried, under an escort, to
            different police commissaries, and to the prefecture of the police.
            There most of them, after being examined, were reprimanded and
            released. The same night, the police spies reported in the
            coffee-houses of the Palais Royal, and on the Boulevards, that this
            run on the bank was encouraged, and paid for, by English emissaries,
            some of whom were already taken, and would be executed on the next
            day. In the morning, however, the streets adjoining the bank were
            still more crowded, and the crowd still more tumultuous, because
            payment was refused for all notes but those of five hundred livres.
            The activity of the police agents, supported by the gendarmes and
            police soldiers, again restored order, after several hundred persons
            had been again taken up for their mutinous conduct. Of these many
            were, on the same evening, loaded with chains, and, placed in carts
            under military escort, paraded about near the bank and the Palais
            Royal; the police having, as a measure of safety, under suspicion
            that they were influenced by British gold, condemned them to be
            transported to Cayenne; and the carts set out on the same night for
            Rochefort, the place of their embarkation.
          </p>
          <p>
            On the following day, not an individual approached the bank, but all
            trade and all payments were at a stand; nobody would sell but for
            ready money, and nobody who had bank-notes would part with cash.
            Some Jews and money-brokers in the Palais Royal offered cash for
            these bills, at a discount of from ten to twenty per cent. But these
            usurers were, in their turn, taken up and transported, as agents of
            Pitt. An interview was then demanded by the directors and principal
            bankers with the Ministers of Finance and of the Public Treasury. In
            this conference it was settled that, as soon as the two millions of
            dollars on their way from Spain had arrived at Paris, the bank
            should reassume its payments. These dollars Government would lend
            the bank for three months, and take in return its notes, but the
            bank was, nevertheless, to pay an interest of six per cent. during
            that period. All the bankers agreed not to press unnecessarily for
            any exchange of bills into cash, and to keep up the credit of the
            bank even by the individual credit of their own houses.
          </p>
          <p>
            You know, I suppose, that the Bank of France has never issued but
            two sorts of notes; those of one thousand livres&mdash;and those of
            five hundred livres. At the day of its stoppage, sixty millions of
            livres&mdash;of the former, and fifteen millions of livres&mdash;of
            the latter, were in circulation; and I have heard a banker assert
            that the bank had not then six millions of livres&mdash;in money and
            bullion, to satisfy the claims of its creditors, or to honour its
            bills.
          </p>
          <p>
            The shock given to the credit of the bank by this last requisition
            of Bonaparte will be felt for a long time, and will with difficulty
            ever be repaired under his despotic government. Even now, when the
            bank pays in cash, our merchants make a difference from five to ten
            per cent. between purchasing for specie or paying in bank-notes; and
            this mistrust will not be lessened hereafter. You may, perhaps,
            object that, as long as the bank pays, it is absurd for any one
            possessing its bills to pay dearer than with cash, which might so
            easily be obtained. This objection would stand with regard to your,
            or any other free country, but here, where no payments are made in
            gold, but always in silver or copper, it requires a cart to carry
            away forty, thirty, or twenty thousand livres, in coin of these
            metals, and would immediately excite suspicion that a bearer of
            these bills was an emissary of our enemies, or an enemy of our
            Government. With us, unfortunately, suspicion is the same as
            conviction, and chastisement follows it as its shadow.
          </p>
          <p>
            A manufacturer of the name of Debrais, established in the Rue St.
            Martin, where he had for years carried on business in the woollen
            line, went to the bank two days after it had begun to pay. He
            demanded, and obtained, exchange for twenty-four thousand livres&mdash;in
            notes, necessary for him to pay what was due by him to his workmen.
            The same afternoon six of our custom-house officers, accompanied by
            police agents and gendarmes, paid him a domiciliary visit under
            pretence of searching for English goods. Several bales were seized
            as being of that description, and Debrais was carried a prisoner to
            La Force. On being examined by Fouche, he offered to prove, by the
            very men who had fabricated the suspected goods, that they were not
            English. The Minister silenced him by saying that Government had not
            only evidence of the contrary, but was convinced that he was
            employed as an English agent to hurt the credit of the bank, and
            therefore, if he did not give up his accomplices or employers, had
            condemned him to transportation. In vain did his wife and daughters
            petition to Madame Bonaparte; Debrais is now at Rochefort, if not
            already embarked for our colonies.
          </p>
          <p>
            When he was arrested, a seal, as usual, was put on his house, from
            which his wife and family were turned out, until the police should
            have time to take an inventory of his effects, and had decided on
            his fate. When Madame Debrais, after much trouble and many pecuniary
            sacrifices, at last obtained permission to have the seals removed,
            and reenter her house, she found that all her plate and more than
            half her goods and furniture had been stolen and carried away. Upon
            her complaint of this theft she was thrown into prison for not being
            able to support her complaint with proofs, and for attempting to
            vilify the characters of the agents of our Government. She is still
            in prison, but her daughters are by her orders disposing of the
            remainder of their parents' property, and intend to join their
            father as soon as their mother has recovered her liberty.
          </p>
          <p>
            The same tyranny that supports the credit of our bank also keeps up
            the price of our stocks. Any of our great stockholders who sell out
            to any large amount, if they are unable to account for, or unwilling
            to declare the manner in which they intend to employ, their money,
            are immediately arrested, sometimes transported to the colonies, but
            more frequently exiled into the country, to remain under the
            inspection of some police agent, and are not allowed to return here
            without the previous permission of our Government. Those of them who
            are upstarts, and have made their fortune since the Revolution by
            plunder or as contractors, are still more severely treated, and are
            often obliged to renounce part of their ill-gotten wealth to save
            the remainder, or to preserve their liberty or lives. A revisal of
            their former accounts, or an inspection of their past transactions,
            is a certain and efficacious threat to keep them in silent
            submission, as they all well understand the meaning of them.
          </p>
          <p>
            Even foreigners, whom our numerous national bankruptcies have not
            yet disheartened, are subject to these measures of rigour or vigour
            requisite to preserve our public credit. In the autumn of last year
            a Dutchman of the name of Van der Winkle sold out by his agent for
            three millions of livres&mdash;in our stock on one day, for which he
            bought up bills upon Hamburg and London. He lodged in the Hotel des
            Quatre Nations, Rue Grenelle, where the landlord, who is a patriot,
            introduced some police agents into his apartments during his
            absence. These broke open all his trunks, drawers, and even his
            writing-desk, and when he entered, seized his person, and carried
            him to the Temple. By his correspondence it was discovered that all
            this money was to be brought over to England; a reason more than
            sufficient to incur the suspicion of our Government. Van der Winkle
            spoke very little French, and he continued, therefore, in
            confinement three weeks before he was examined, as our secret police
            had not at Paris any of its agents who spoke Dutch. Carried before
            Fouche, he avowed that the money was destined for England, there to
            pay for some plantations which he desired to purchase in Surinam and
            Barbice. His interpreter advised him, by the orders of Fouche, to
            alter his mind, and, as he was fond of colonial property, lay out
            his money in plantations at Cayenne, which was in the vicinity of
            Surinam, and where Government would recommend him advantageous
            purchases. It was hinted to him, also, that this was a particular
            favour, and a proof of the generosity of our Government, as his
            papers contained many matters that might easily be construed to be
            of a treasonable nature. After consulting with Schimmelpenninck, the
            Ambassador of his country, he wrote for his wife and children, and
            was seen safe with them to Bordeaux by our police agents, who had
            hired an American vessel to carry them all to Cayenne. This
            certainly is a new method to populate our colonies with capitalists.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER III.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, September, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;Hanover has been a mine of gold to our Government, to
            its generals, to its commissaries, and to its favourites. According
            to the boasts of Talleyrand, and the avowal of Berthier, we have
            drawn from it within two years more wealth than has been paid in
            contributions to the Electors of Hanover for this century past, and
            more than half a century of peace can restore to that unfortunate
            country. It is reported here that each person employed in a
            situation to make his fortune in the Continental States of the King
            of England (a name given here to Hanover in courtesy to Bonaparte)
            was laid under contribution, and expected to make certain douceurs
            to Madame Bonaparte; and it is said that she has received from
            Mortier three hundred thousand livres, and from Bernadotte two
            hundred and fifty thousand livres, besides other large sums from our
            military commissaries, treasurers, and other agents in the
            Electorate.
          </p>
          <p>
            General Mortier is one of the few favourite officers of Bonaparte
            who have distinguished themselves under his rivals, Pichegru and
            Moreau, without ever serving under him. Edward Adolph Casimer
            Mortier is the son of a shopkeeper, and was born at Cambray in 1768.
            He was a shopman with his father until 1791, when he obtained a
            commission, first as a lieutenant of carabiniers, and afterwards as
            captain of the first battalion of volunteers of the Department of
            the North. His first sight of an enemy was on the 30th of April,
            1792, near Quievrain, where he had a horse killed under him. He was
            present in the battles of Jemappes, of Nerwinde, and of Pellenberg.
            At the battle of Houdscoote he distinguished himself so much as to
            be promoted to an adjutant general. He was wounded at the battle of
            Fleures, and again at the passage of the Rhine, in 1795, under
            General Moreau. During 1796 and 1797 he continued to serve in
            Germany, but in 1798 and 1799 he headed a division in Switzerland
            from which Bonaparte recalled him in 1800, to command the troops in
            the capital and its environs. His address to Bonaparte, announcing
            the votes of the troops under him respecting the consulate for life
            and the elevation to the Imperial throne, contain such mean and
            abject flattery that, for a true soldier, it must have required more
            self-command and more courage to pronounce them than to brave the
            fire of a hundred cannons; but these very addresses, contemptible as
            their contents are, procured him the Field-marshal's staff. Mortier
            well knew his man, and that his cringing in antechambers would be
            better rewarded than his services in the field. I was not present
            when Mortier spoke so shamefully, but I have heard from persons who
            witnessed this farce, that he had his eyes fixed on the ground the
            whole time, as if to say, "I grant that I speak as a despicable
            being, and I grant that I am so; but what shall I do, tormented as I
            am by ambition to figure among the great, and to riot among the
            wealthy? Have compassion on my weakness, or, if you have not, I will
            console myself with the idea that my meanness is only of the
            duration of half an hour, while its recompense-my rank-will be
            permanent."
          </p>
          <p>
            Mortier married, in 1799, the daughter of the landlord of the Belle
            Sauvage inn at Coblentz, who was pregnant by him, or by some other
            guest of her father. She is pretty, but not handsome, and she takes
            advantage of her husband's complaisance to console herself both for
            his absence and infidelities. When she was delivered of her last
            child, Mortier positively declared that he had not slept with her
            for twelve months, and the babe has, indeed, less resemblance to him
            than to his valet de chambre. The child was baptised with great
            splendour; the Emperor and the Empress were the sponsors, and it was
            christened by Cardinal Fesch. Bonaparte presented Madame Mortier on
            this occasion with a diamond necklace valued at one hundred and
            fifty thousand livres.
          </p>
          <p>
            During his different campaigns, and particularly during his glorious
            campaign in Hanover, he has collected property to the amount of
            seven millions of livres, laid out in estates and lands. He is
            considered by other generals as a brave captain, but an indifferent
            chief; and among our fashionables and our courtiers he is held up as
            a model of connubial fidelity&mdash;satisfying himself with keeping
            three mistresses only.
          </p>
          <p>
            There was no truth in the report that his recall from Hanover was in
            consequence of any disgrace; on the contrary, it was a new proof of
            Bonaparte's confidence and attachment. He was recalled to take the
            command of the artillery of Bonaparte's, household troops the moment
            Pichegru, George, and Moreau were arrested, and when the Imperial
            tide had been resolved on. More resistance against this innovation
            was at that time expected than experienced.
          </p>
          <p>
            Bernadotte, who succeeded Mortier in the command of our army in
            Hanover, is a man of a different stamp. His father was a chair-man,
            and he was born at Paris in 1763. In 1779 he enlisted in the
            regiment called La Vieille Harine, where the Revolution found him a
            sergeant. This regiment was then quartered at Toulon, and the
            emissaries of anarchy and licentiousness engaged him as one of their
            agents. His activity soon destroyed all discipline, and the troops,
            instead of attending to their military duty, followed him to the
            debates and discussions of the Jacobin clubs. Being arrested and
            ordered to be tried for his mutinous, scandalous behaviour, an
            insurrection liberated him, and forced his accusers to save their
            lives by flight. In April, 1790, he headed the banditti who murdered
            the Governor of the Fort St. Jean at Marseilles, and who afterwards
            occasioned the Civil War in Comtat Venaigin, where he served under
            Jourdan, known by the name of Coup-tell, or cut-throat, who made him
            a colonel and his aide-de-camp. In 1794, he was employed, as a
            general of brigade, in the army of the Sambre and Meuse; and during
            the campaigns of 1795 and 1796, he served under another Jourdan, the
            general, without much distinction,&mdash;except that he was accused
            by him of being the cause of all the disasters of the last campaign,
            by the complete rout he suffered near Neumark on the 23d of August,
            1796. His division was ordered to Italy in 1797, where, against the
            laws of nations, he arrested M. d' Antraigues, who was attached to
            the Russian legation. When the Russian Ambassador tried to dissuade
            him from committing this injustice, and this violation of the rights
            of privileged persons, he replied: "There is no question here of any
            other right or justice than the right and justice of power, and I am
            here the strongest. M. d'Antraigues is our enemy; were he
            victorious, he would cause us all to be shot. I repeat, I am here
            the strongest, 'et nous verrons'."
          </p>
          <p>
            After the Peace of Campo Formio, Bernadotte was sent as an
            Ambassador to the Court of Vienna, accompanied by a numerous escort
            of Jacobin propagators. Having procured the liberty of Austrian
            patriots, whose lives, forfeit to the law, the lenity of the Cabinet
            of Vienna had spared, he thought that he might attempt anything;
            and, therefore, on the anniversary day of the fete for the levy en
            masse of the inhabitants of the capital, he insulted the feelings of
            the loyal, and excited the discontented to rebellion, by placing
            over the door and in the windows of his house the tri-coloured flag.
            This outrage the Emperor was unable to prevent his subjects from
            resenting. Bernadotte's house was invaded, his furniture broken to
            pieces, and he was forced to save himself at the house of the
            Spanish Ambassador. As a satisfaction for this attack, provoked by
            his own insolence, he demanded the immediate dismissal of the
            Austrian Minister, Baron Thugut, and threatened, in case of refusal,
            to leave Vienna, which he did on the next day. So disgraceful was
            his conduct regarded, even by the Directory, that this event made
            but little impression, and no alteration in the continuance of their
            intercourse with the Austrian Government.
          </p>
          <p>
            In 1799, he was for some weeks a Minister of the war department,
            from which his incapacity caused him to be dismissed. When Bonaparte
            intended to seize the reins of State, he consulted Bernadotte, who
            spoke as an implacable Jacobin until a douceur of three hundred
            thousand livres&mdash;calmed him a little, and convinced him that
            the Jacobins were not infallible or their government the best of all
            possible governments. In 1801, he was made the commander-in-chief in
            the Western Department, where he exercised the greatest barbarities
            against the inhabitants, whom he accused of being still chouans and
            royalists.
          </p>
          <p>
            With Augereau and Massena, Bernadotte is a merciless plunderer. In
            the summer, 1796, he summoned the magistrates of the free and
            neutral city of Nuremberg to bring him, under pain of military
            execution, within twenty-four hours, two millions of livres. With
            much difficulty this sum was collected. The day after he had
            received it, he insisted upon another sum to the same amount within
            another twenty-four hours, menacing in case of disobedience to give
            the city up to a general pillage by his troops. Fortunately, a
            column of Austrians advanced and delivered them from the execution
            of his threats. The troops under him were, both in Italy and in
            Germany, the terror of the inhabitants, and when defeated were, from
            their pillage and murder, hunted like wild beasts. Bernadotte has by
            these means within ten years become master of a fortune of ten
            millions of livres.
          </p>
          <p>
            Many have considered Bernadotte a revolutionary fanatic, but they
            are in the wrong. Money engaged him in the cause of the Revolution,
            where the first crimes he had perpetrated fixed him. The many
            massacres under Jourdan the cut-throat, committed by him in the
            Court at Venaigin, no doubt display a most sanguinary character. A
            lady, however, in whose house in La Vendee he was quartered six
            months, has assured me that, to judge from his conversation, he is
            not naturally cruel, but that his imagination is continually
            tormented with the fear of gibbets which he knows that his crimes
            have merited, and that, therefore, when he stabs others, he thinks
            it commanded by the necessity of preventing others from stabbing
            him. Were he sure of impunity, he would, perhaps, show humanity as
            well as justice. Bernadotte is not, only a grand officer of the
            Legion of Honour, but a knight of the Royal Prussian Order of the
            Black Eagle.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER IV.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, September, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;Bonaparte has taken advantage of the remark of
            Voltaire, in his "Life of Louis XIV.," that this Prince owed much of
            his celebrity to the well&mdash;distributed pensions among men of
            letters in France and in foreign countries. According to a list
            shown me by Fontanes, the president of the legislative corps and a
            director of literary pensions, even in your country and in Ireland
            he has nine literary pensioners. Though the names of your principal
            authors and men of letters are not unknown to me, I have never read
            nor heard of any of those I saw in the list, except two or three as
            editors of some newspapers, magazines, or trifling and scurrilous
            party pamphlets. I made this observation to Fontanes, who replied
            that these men, though obscure, had, during the last peace, been
            very useful, and would be still more so after another pacification;
            and that Bonaparte must be satisfied with these until he could gain
            over men of greater talents. He granted also that men of true genius
            and literary eminence were, in England, more careful of the dignity
            of their character than those of Germany and Italy, and more
            difficult to be bought over. He added that, as soon as the war
            ceased, he should cross the Channel on a literary mission, from
            which he hoped to derive more success than from that which was
            undertaken three years ago by Fievee.
          </p>
          <p>
            To these men of letters, who are themselves, with their writings,
            devoted to Bonaparte, he certainly is very liberal. Some he has made
            tribunes, prefects, or legislators; others he has appointed his
            Ministers in foreign countries, and on those to whom he has not yet
            been able to given places, he bestows much greater pensions than any
            former Sovereign of this country allowed to a Corneille, a Racine, a
            Boileau, a Voltaire, a De Crebillon, a D' Alembert, a Marmontel, and
            other heroes of our literature and honours to our nation. This
            liberality is often carried too far, and thrown away upon worthless
            subjects, whose very flattery displays absence of taste and genius,
            as well as of modesty and shame. To a fellow of the name of Dagee,
            who sang the coronation of Napoleon the First in two hundred of the
            most disgusting and ill-digested lines that ever were written,
            containing neither metre nor sense, was assigned a place in the
            administration of the forest department, worth twelve thousand
            livres in the year&mdash;besides a present, in ready money, of one
            hundred napoleons d'or. Another poetaster, Barre, who has served and
            sung the chiefs of all former factions, received, for an ode of
            forty lines on Bonaparte's birthday, an office at Milan, worth
            twenty thousand livres in the year&mdash;and one hundred napoleons
            d'or for his travelling expenses.
          </p>
          <p>
            The sums of money distributed yearly by Bonaparte's agents for
            dedications to him by French and foreign authors, are still greater
            than those fixed for regular literary pensions. Instead of
            discouraging these foolish and impertinent contributions, which
            genius, ingenuity, necessity, or intrusion, lay on his vanity, he
            rather encourages them. His name is, therefore, found in more
            dedications published within these last five years than those of all
            other Sovereign Princes in Europe taken together for the last
            century. In a man whose name, unfortunately for humanity, must
            always live in history, it is a childish and unpardonable weakness
            to pay so profusely for the short and uncertain immortality which
            some dull or obscure scribbler or poetaster confers on him.
          </p>
          <p>
            During the last Christmas holidays I dined at Madame Remisatu's, in
            company with Duroc. The question turned upon literary productions
            and the comparative merit of the compositions of modern French and
            foreign authors. "As to the merits or the quality," said Duroc, "I
            will not take upon me to judge, as I profess myself totally
            incompetent; but as to their size and quantity I have tolerably good
            information, and it will not, therefore, be very improper in me to
            deliver my opinion. I am convinced that the German and Italian
            authors are more numerous than those of my own country, for the
            following reasons: I suppose, from what I have witnessed and
            experienced for some years past, that of every book or publication
            printed in France, Italy, and Germany, each tenth is dedicated to
            the Emperor. Now, since last Christmas ninety-six German and
            seventy-one Italian authors have inscribed their works to His
            Majesty, and been rewarded for it; while during the same period only
            sixty-six Frenchmen have presented their offerings to their
            Sovereign." For my part I think Duroc's conclusion tolerably just.
          </p>
          <p>
            Among all the numerous hordes of authors who have been paid,
            recompensed, or encouraged by Bonaparte, none have experienced his
            munificence more than the Italian Spanicetti and the German
            Ritterstein. The former presented him a genealogical table in which
            he proved that the Bonaparte family, before their emigration from
            Tuscany to Corsica, four hundred years ago, were allied to the most
            ancient Tuscany families, even to that of the House of Medicis; and
            as this house has given two queens to the Bourbons when Sovereigns
            of France, the Bonapartes are, therefore, relatives of the Bourbons;
            and the sceptre of the French Empire is still in the same family,
            though in a more worthy branch. Spanicetti received one thousand
            louis&mdash;in gold, a pension of six thousand livres&mdash;for
            life, and the place of a chef du bureau in the ministry of the home
            department of the Kingdom of Italy, producing eighteen thousand
            livres yearly.
          </p>
          <p>
            Ritterstein, a Bavarian genealogist, proved the pedigree of the
            Bonapartes as far back as the first crusades, and that the name of
            the friend of Richard Coeur de Lion was not Blondel, but Bonaparte;
            that he exchanged the latter for the former only to marry into the
            Plantagenet family, the last branch of which has since been
            extinguished by its intermarriage and incorporation with the House
            of Stuart, and that, therefore, Napoleon Bonaparte is not only
            related to most Sovereign Princes of Europe, but has more right to
            the throne of Great Britain than George the Third, being descended
            from the male branch of the Stuarts; while this Prince is only
            descended from the female branch of the same royal house.
            Ritterstein was presented with a snuff-box with Bonaparte's portrait
            set with diamonds, valued at twelve thousand livres, and received
            twenty-four thousand livres ready money, together with a pension of
            nine thousand livres&mdash;in the year, until he could be better
            provided for. He was, besides, nominated a Knight of the Legion of
            Honour. It cannot be denied but that Bonaparte rewards like a real
            Emperor.
          </p>
          <p>
            But artists as well as authors obtain from him the same
            encouragement, and experience the same liberality. In our different
            museums we, therefore, already, see and admire upwards of two
            hundred pictures, representing the different actions, scenes, and
            achievements of Bonaparte's public life. It is true they are not all
            highly finished or well composed or delineated, but they all strike
            the spectators more or less with surprise or admiration; and it is
            with us, as, I suppose, with you, and everywhere else, the multitude
            decide: for one competent judge or real connoisseur, hundreds pass,
            who stare, gape, are charmed, and inspire thousands of their
            acquaintance, friends, and neighbours with their own satisfaction.
            Believe me, Napoleon the First well knows the age, his
            contemporaries, and, I fear, even posterity.
          </p>
          <p>
            That statuaries and sculptors consider him also as a generous
            patron, the numerous productions of their chisels in France, Italy,
            and Germany, having him for their object, seem to evince. Ten
            sculptors have already represented his passage over the Mount St.
            Bernard, eighteen his passage over Pont de Lodi, and twenty-two that
            over Pont d' Arcole. At Rome, Milan, Turin, Lyons, and Paris are
            statues of him representing his natural size; and our ten thousand
            municipalities have each one of his busts; without mentioning the
            thousands of busts all over Europe, not excepting even your own
            country. When Bonaparte sees under the windows of the Tuileries the
            statue of Caesar placed in the garden of that palace, he cannot help
            saying to himself: "Marble lives longer than man." Have you any
            doubt that his ambition and vanity extend beyond the grave?
          </p>
          <p>
            The only artist I ever heard of who was disappointed and unrewarded
            for his labour in attempting to eternize the memory of Napoleon
            Bonaparte, was a German of the name of Schumacher. It is, indeed,
            allowed that he was more industrious, able, and well-meaning than
            ingenious or considerate. He did not consider that it would be no
            compliment to give the immortal hero a hint of being a mortal man.
            Schumacher had employed near three years in planning and executing
            in marble the prettiest model of a sepulchral monument I have ever
            seen, read or heard of. He had inscribed it: "The Future Tomb of
            Bonaparte the Great." Under the patronage of Count von Beast, he
            arrived here; and I saw the model in the house of this Minister of
            the German Elector Arch&mdash;Chancellor, where also many French
            artists went to inspect it. Count von Beast asked De Segur, the
            grand master of the ceremonies, to request the Emperor to grant
            Schumacher the honour of showing him his performance. De Segur
            advised him to address himself to Duroc, who referred him to Devon,
            who, after looking at it, could not help paying a just tribute to
            the execution and to the talents of the artist, though he
            disapproved of the subject, and declined mentioning it to the
            Emperor. After three months' attendance in this capital, and all
            petitions and memorials to our great folks remaining unanswered,
            Schumacher obtained an audience of Fouche, in which he asked
            permission to exhibit his model of Bonaparte's tomb to the public
            for money, so as to be enabled to return to his country.
          </p>
          <p>
            "Where is it now?" asked Fouche.
          </p>
          <p>
            "At the Minister's of the Elector Arch-Chancellor," answered the
            artist.
          </p>
          <p>
            "But where do you intend to show it for money?" continued Fouche.
          </p>
          <p>
            "In the Palais Royal."
          </p>
          <p>
            "Well, bring it there," replied Fouche.
          </p>
          <p>
            The same evening that it was brought there, Schumacher was arrested
            by a police commissary, his model packed up, and, with himself, put
            under the care of two gendarmes, who carried them both to the other
            side of the Rhine. Here the Elector of Baden gave him some money to
            return to his home, near Aschaffenburg, where he has since exposed
            for money the model of a grand tomb for a little man. I have just
            heard that one of your countrymen has purchased it for one hundred
            and fifty louis d'or.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER V.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, September, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;Those who only are informed of the pageantry of our
            Court, of the expenses of our courtiers, of the profusion of our
            Emperor, and of the immense wealth of his family and favourites, may
            easily be led to believe that France is one of the happiest and moat
            prosperous countries in Europe. But for those who walk in our
            streets, who visit our hospitals, who count the number of beggars
            and of suicides, of orphans and of criminals, of prisoners and of
            executioners, it is a painful necessity to reverse the picture, and
            to avow that nowhere, comparatively, can there be found so much
            collective misery. And it is not here, as in other States, that
            these unfortunate, reduced, or guilty are persons of the lowest
            classes of society; on the contrary, many, and, I fear, the far
            greater part, appertain to the ci-devant privileged classes,
            descended from ancestors noble, respectable, and wealthy, but who by
            the Revolution have been degraded to misery or infamy, and perhaps
            to both.
          </p>
          <p>
            When you stop but for a moment in our streets to look at something
            exposed for sale in a shop-window, or for any other cause of
            curiosity or want, persons of both sexes, decently dressed, approach
            you, and whisper to you: "Monsieur, bestow your charity on the
            Marquis, or Marquise&mdash;on the Baron or Baroness, such a one,
            ruined by the Revolution;" and you sometimes hear names on which
            history has shed so brilliant a lustre that, while you contemplate
            the deplorable reverses of human greatness, you are not a little
            surprised to find that it is in your power to relieve with a trifle
            the wants of the grandson of an illustrious warrior, before whom
            nations trembled, or of the granddaughter of that eminent statesman
            who often had in his hands the destiny of Empires. Some few solitary
            walks, incognito, by Bonaparte, in the streets of his capital, would
            perhaps be the best preservative against unbounded ambition and
            confident success that philosophy could present to unfeeling
            tyranny.
          </p>
          <p>
            Some author has written that "want is the parent of industry, and
            wretchedness the mother of ingenuity." I know that you have often
            approved and rewarded the ingenious productions of my emigrated
            countrymen in England; but here their labours and their endeavours
            are disregarded; and if they cannot or will not produce anything to
            flatter the pride or appetite of the powerful or rich upstarts, they
            have no other choice left but beggary or crime, meanness or suicide.
            How many have I heard repent of ever returning to a country where
            they have no expectation of justice in their claims, no hope of
            relief in their necessities, where death by hunger, or by their own
            hands, is the final prospect of all their sufferings.
          </p>
          <p>
            Many of our ballad-singers are disguised emigrants; and I know a
            ci-devant Marquis who is, incognito, a groom to a contractor, the
            son of his uncle's porter. Our old pedlars complain that their trade
            is ruined by the Counts, by the Barons and Chevaliers who have
            monopolized all their business. Those who pretend to more dignity,
            but who have in fact less honesty, are employed in our billiard and
            gambling-houses. I have seen two music-grinders, one of whom was
            formerly a captain of infantry, and the other a Counsellor of
            Parliament. Every, day you may bestow your penny or halfpenny on two
            veiled girls playing on the guitar or harp&mdash;the one the
            daughter of a ci-devant Duke, and the other of a ci-devant Marquis,
            a general under Louis XVI. They, are usually placed, the one on the
            Boulevards, and the other in the Elysian Fields; each with an old
            woman by her side, holding a begging-box in her hand. I am told one
            of the women has been the nurse of one of those ladies. What a
            recollection, if she thinks of the past, in contemplating the
            present!
          </p>
          <p>
            On the day of Bonaparte's coronation, and a little before he set out
            with his Pope and other splendid retinue, an old man was walking
            slowly on the Quai de Voltaire, without saying a word, but a label
            was pinned to his hat with this inscription: "I had sixty thousand
            livres rent&mdash;I am eighty years of age, and I request alms."
            Many individuals, even some of Bonaparte's soldiers, gave him their
            mite; but as soon as he was observed he was seized by the police
            agents, and has not since been heard of. I am told his name is De la
            Roche, a ci-devant Chevalier de St. Louis, whose property was sold
            in 1793 as belonging to an emigrant, though at the time he was shut
            up here as a prisoner, suspected of aristocracy. He has since for
            some years been a water-carrier; but his strength failing, he
            supported himself lately entirely by begging. The value of the dress
            of one of Bonaparte's running footmen might have been sufficient to
            relieve him for the probably short remainder of his days. But it is
            more easy and agreeable in this country to bury undeserved want in
            dungeons than to renounce unnecessary and useless show to relieve
            it. In the evening the remembrance of these sixty thousand livres of
            the poor Chevalier deprived me of all pleasure in beholding the
            sixty thousand lamps decorating and illuminating Bonaparte's palace
            of the Tuileries.
          </p>
          <p>
            Some of the emigrants, whose strength of body age has not impaired,
            or whose vigour of mind misfortunes have not depressed, are now
            serving as officers or soldiers under the Emperor of the French,
            after having for years fought in vain for the cause of a King of
            France in the brave army of Conde. Several are even doing duty in
            Bonaparte's household troops, where I know one who is a captain, and
            who, for distinguishing himself in combating the republicans,
            received the Order of St. Louis, but is now made a knight of
            Napoleon's Republican Order, the Legion of Honour, for bowing
            gracefully to Her Imperial Majesty the Empress. As he is a man of
            real honour, this favour is not quite in its place; but I am
            convinced that should one day an opportunity present itself, he will
            not miss it, but prove that he has never been misplaced. Another
            emigrant who, after being a page to the Duc d'Angouleme, made four
            campaigns as an officer of the Uhlans in the service of the Emperor
            of Germany, and was rewarded with the Military Order of Maria
            Theresa, is now a knight of the Legion of Honour, and an officer of
            the Mamelukes of the Emperor of the French. Four more emigrants have
            engaged themselves in the same corps as common Mamelukes, after
            being for seven years volunteers in the legion of Mirabeau, under
            the Prince de Conde. It were to be wished that the whole of this
            favourite corps were composed of returned emigrants. I am sure they
            would never betray the confidence of Napoleon, but they would also
            never swear allegiance to another Bonaparte.
          </p>
          <p>
            While the humbled remnants of one sex of the ci-devant privileged
            classes are thus or worse employed, many persons of the other sex
            have preferred domestic servitude to courtly splendour, and are
            chambermaids or governesses, when they might have been Maids of
            Honour or ladies-in-waiting. Mademoiselle de R&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;,
            daughter of Marquis de R&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;, was offered a place
            as a Maid of Honour to Princesse Murat, which she declined, but
            accepted at the same time the offer of being a companion of the rich
            Madame Moulin, whose husband is a ci-devant valet of Comte de
            Brienne. Her father and brother suffered for this choice and
            preference, which highly offended Bonaparte, who ordered them both
            to be transported to Guadeloupe, under pretence that the latter had
            said in a coffee-house that his sister would rather have been the
            housemaid of the wife of a ci-devant valet, than the friend of the
            wife of a ci-devant assassin and Septembrizer. It was only by a
            valuable present to Madame Bonaparte from Madame Moulin, that
            Mademoiselle de B&mdash;&mdash;- was not included in the act of
            proscription against her father and brother.
          </p>
          <p>
            I am sorry to say that returned emigrants have also been arrested
            for frauds and debts, and even tried and convicted of crimes. But
            they are proportionally few, compared with those who, without
            support, and perhaps without hope, and from want of resignation and
            submission to the will of Providence, have, in despair, had recourse
            to the pistol or dagger, or in the River Seine buried their
            remembrance both of what they have been and of what they were. The
            suicides of the vicious capital are reckoned upon an average to
            amount to one hundred in the month; and for these last three years,
            one-tenth, at least, have been emigrants of both sexes!
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER VI.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, September, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;Nobody here, except his courtiers, denies that
            Bonaparte is vain, cruel, and ambitious; but as to his private,
            personal, or domestic vices, opinions are various, and even
            opposite. Most persons, who have long known him, assert that women
            are his aversion; and many anecdotes have been told of his unnatural
            and horrid propensities. On the other hand, his seeming attachment
            to his wife is contradictory to these rumours, which certainly are
            exaggerated. It is true, indeed, that it was to oblige Barras, and
            to obtain her fortune, that he accepted of her hand ten years ago;
            though insinuating, she was far from being handsome, and had long
            passed the period of inspiring love by her charms. Her husband's
            conduct towards her may, therefore, be construed, perhaps, into a
            proof of indifference towards the whole sex as much as into an
            evidence of his affection towards her. As he knew who she was when
            he received her from the chaste arms of Barras, and is not
            unacquainted with her subsequent intrigues particularly during his
            stay in Egypt&mdash;policy may influence a behaviour which has some
            resemblance to esteem. He may choose to live with her, but it is
            impossible he can love her.
          </p>
          <p>
            A lady, very intimate with Princesse Louis Bonaparte, has assured me
            that, had it not been for Napoleon's singular inclination for his
            youthful stepdaughter, he would have divorced his wife the first
            year of his consulate, and that indirect proposals on that subject
            had already been made her by Talleyrand. It was then reported that
            Bonaparte had his eyes fixed upon a Russian Princess, and that from
            the friendship which the late Emperor Paul professed for him, no
            obstacles to the match were expected to be encountered at St.
            Petersburg. The untimely end of this Prince, and the supplications
            of his wife and daughter, have since altered his intent, and Madame
            Napoleon and her children are now, if I may use the expression,
            incorporated and naturalized with the Bonaparte family.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="pb064" id="pb064"></a>
          <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
            <img alt="pb064.jpg (63K)" src="images/pb064.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
          </div>
          <br /><br /><br /><br />
          <p>
            But what has lately occurred here will better serve to show that
            Bonaparte is neither averse nor indifferent to the sex. You read
            last summer in the public prints of the then Minister of the
            Interior (Chaptal) being made a Senator; and that he was succeeded
            by our Ambassador at Vienna Champagny. This promotion was the
            consequence of a disgrace, occasioned by his jealousy of his
            mistress, a popular actress, Mademoiselle George, one of the
            handsomest women of this capital. He was informed by his spies that
            this lady frequently, in the dusk of the evening, or when she
            thought him employed in his office, went to the house of a famous
            milliner in the Rue St. Honor, where, through a door in an adjoining
            passage, a person, who carefully avoided showing his face, always
            entered immediately before or after her, and remained as long as she
            continued there. The house was then by his orders beset with spies,
            who were to inform him the next time she went to the milliner. To be
            near at hand, he had hired an apartment in the neighbourhood, where
            the very next day her visit to the milliner's was announced to him.
            While his secretary, with four other persons, entered the milliner's
            house through the street door, Chaptal, with four of his spies,
            forced the door of the passage open, which was no sooner done than
            the disguised gallant was found, and threatened in the most rude
            manner by the Minister and his companions. He would have been still
            worse used had not the unexpected appearance of Duroc and a whisper
            to Chaptal put a stop to the fury of this enraged lover. The
            incognito is said to have been Bonaparte himself, who, the same
            evening, deprived Chaptal of his ministerial portfolio, and would
            have sent him to Cayenne, instead of to the Senate, had not Duroc
            dissuaded his Sovereign from giving an eclat to an affair which it,
            would be best to bury in oblivion.
          </p>
          <p>
            Chaptal has never from that day approached Mademoiselle George, and,
            according to report, Napoleon has also renounced this conquest in
            favour of Duroc, who is at least her nominal gallant. The quantity
            of jewels with which she has recently been decorated, and displayed
            with so much ostentation in the new tragedy, 'The Templars',
            indicate, however, a Sovereign rather than a subject for a lover.
            And, indeed, she already treats the directors of the theatre, her
            comrades, and even the public, more as a real than a theatrical
            Princess. Without any cause whatever, but from a mere caprice to see
            the camp on the coast, she set out, without leave of absence, and
            without any previous notice, on the very day she was to play; and
            this popular and interesting tragedy was put off for three weeks,
            until she chose to return to her duty.
          </p>
          <p>
            When complaint was made to the prefects of the palace, now the
            governors of our theatres, Duroc said that the orders of the Emperor
            were that no notice should be taken of this 'etourderie', which
            should not occur again.
          </p>
          <p>
            Chaptal was, before the Revolution, a bankrupt chemist at
            Montpellier, having ruined himself in search after the philosopher's
            stone. To persons in such circumstances, with great presumption,
            some talents, but no principles, the Revolution could not, with all
            its anarchy, confusion, and crime, but be a real blessing, as
            Chaptal called it in his first speech at the Jacobin Club. Wishing
            to mimic, at Montpellier, the taking of the Bastille at Paris, he,
            in May, 1790, seduced the lower classes and the suburbs to an
            insurrection, and to an attack on the citadel, which the governor,
            to avoid all effusion of blood, surrendered without resistance. He
            was denounced by the municipality to the National Assembly, for
            these and other plots and attempts, but Robespierre and other
            Jacobins defended him, and he escaped even imprisonment. During 1793
            and 1794, he monopolized the contract for making and providing the
            armies with gunpowder; a favour for which he paid Barrere, Carnot,
            and other members of the Committee of Public Safety, six millions of
            livres&mdash;but by which he pocketed thirty-six millions of livres&mdash;himself.
            He was, under the Directory, menaced with a prosecution for his
            pillage, but bought it off by a douceur to Rewbel, Barras, and
            Siyes. In 1799, he advanced Bonaparte twelve millions of livres&mdash;to
            bribe adherents for the new Revolution he meditated, and was, in
            recompense, instead of interest, appointed first Counsellor of
            State; and when Lucien Bonaparte, in September, 1800, was sent on an
            embassy to Spain, Chaptal succeeded him in the Ministry of the
            Interior. You may see by this short account that the chemist Chaptal
            has, in the Revolution, found the true philosophical stone. He now
            lives in great style, and has, besides three wives alive (from two
            of whom he has been divorced), five mistresses, with each a separate
            establishment. This Chaptal is regarded here as the most moral
            character that has figured in our Revolution, having yet neither
            committed a single murder nor headed any of our massacres.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER VII.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, September, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;I have read a copy of a letter from Madrid,
            circulated among the members of our foreign diplomatic corps, which
            draws a most deplorable picture of the Court and Kingdom of Spain.
            Forced into an unprofitable and expensive war, famine ravaging some,
            and disease other provinces, experiencing from allies the treatment
            of tyrannical foes, disunion in his family and among his Ministers,
            His Spanish Majesty totters on a throne exposed to the combined
            attacks of internal disaffection and external plots, with no other
            support than the advice of a favourite, who is either a fool or a
            traitor, and perhaps both.
          </p>
          <p>
            As the Spanish monarchy has been more humbled and reduced during the
            twelve years' administration of the Prince of Peace than during the
            whole period that it has been governed by Princes of the House of
            Bourbon, the heir of the throne, the young Prince of Asturias, has,
            with all the moderation consistent with duty, rank, and
            consanguinity, tried to remove an upstart, universally despised for
            his immorality as, well as for his incapacity; and who, should he
            continue some years longer to rule in the name of Charles IV., will
            certainly involve his King and his country in one common ruin.
            Ignorant and presumptuous, even beyond upstarts in general, the
            Prince of Peace treats with insolence all persons raised above him
            by birth or talents, who refuse to be his accomplices or valets.
            Proud and certain of the protection of the Queen, and of the
            weakness of the King, the Spanish nobility is not only humbled,
            provoked, and wronged by him, but openly defied and insulted.
          </p>
          <p>
            You know the nice principles of honour and loyalty that have always
            formerly distinguished the ancient families of Spain. Believe me
            that, notwithstanding what appearances indicate to the contrary, the
            Spanish grandee who ordered his house to be pulled down because the
            rebel constable had slept in it, has still many descendants, but
            loyal men always decline to use that violence to which rebels always
            resort. Soon after the marriage of the Prince of Asturias, in
            October, 1801, to his cousin, the amiable Maria Theresa, Princess
            Royal of Naples, the ancient Spanish families sent some deputies to
            Their Royal Highnesses, not for the purpose of intriguing, but to
            lay before them the situation of the kingdom, and to inform them of
            the real cause of all disasters. They were received as faithful
            subjects and true patriots, and Their Royal Highnesses promised
            every support in their power towards remedying the evil complained
            of, and preventing, if possible, the growth of others.
          </p>
          <p>
            The Princess of Asturias is a worthy granddaughter of Maria Theresa
            of Austria, and seems to inherit her character as well as her
            virtues. She agreed with her royal consort that, after having gained
            the affection of the Queen by degrees, it would be advisable for her
            to insinuate some hints of the danger that threatened their country
            and the discontent that agitated the people. The Prince of Asturias
            was to act the same part with his father as the Princess did with
            his mother. As there is no one about the person of Their Spanish
            Majesties, from the highest lord to the lowest servant, who is not
            placed there by the favourite, and act as his spies, he was soon
            aware that he had no friend in the heir to the throne. His
            conversation with Their Majesties confirmed him in this supposition,
            and that some secret measures were going on to deprive him of the
            place he occupied, if not of the royal favour. All visitors to the
            Prince and Princess of Asturias were, therefore, watched by his
            emissaries; and all the letters or memorials sent to them by the
            post were opened, read, and; if contrary to his interest, destroyed,
            and their writers imprisoned in Spain or banished to the colonies.
            These measures of injustice created suspicion, disunion, and,
            perhaps, fear, among the members of the Asturian cabal, as it was
            called; all farther pursuit, therefore, was deferred until more
            propitious times, and the Prince of Peace remained undisturbed and
            in perfect security until the rupture with your country last autumn.
          </p>
          <p>
            It is to be lamented that, with all their valuable qualities and
            feelings of patriotism, the Prince and Princess of Asturias do not
            possess a little dissimulation and more knowledge of the world. The
            favourite tried by all means to gain their good opinion, but his
            advances met with that repulse they morally deserved, but which,
            from policy, should have been suspended or softened, with the hope
            of future accommodation.
          </p>
          <p>
            Beurnonville, the Ambassador of our Court to the Court of Madrid,
            was here upon leave of absence when war was declared by Spain
            against your country, and his first secretary, Herman, acted as
            charge d'affaires. This Herman has been brought up in Talleyrand's
            office, and is both abler and more artful than Beurnonville; he
            possesses also the full confidence of our Minister, who, in several
            secret and pecuniary transactions, has obtained many proofs of this
            secretary's fidelity as well as capacity. The views of the Cabinet
            of St. Cloud were, therefore, not lost sight of, nor its interest
            neglected at Madrid.
          </p>
          <p>
            I suppose you have heard that the Prince of Peace, like all other
            ignorant and illiberal people, believes no one can be a good or
            clever man who is not also his countryman, and that all the ability
            and probity of the world is confined within the limits of Spain. On
            this principle he equally detests France and England, Germany and
            Russia, and is, therefore, not much liked by our Government, except
            for his imbecility, which makes him its tool and dupe. His disgrace
            would not be much regretted here, where we have it in our power to
            place or displace Ministers in certain States, whenever and as often
            as we like. On this occasion, however, we supported him, and helped
            to dissolve the cabal formed against him; and that for the following
            reasons:
          </p>
          <p>
            By the assurances of Beurnonville, Bonaparte and Talleyrand had been
            led to believe that the Prince and Princess of Asturias were well
            affected to France, and to them personally; and conceiving
            themselves much more certain of this than of the good disposition of
            the favourite, though they did not take a direct part against him,
            at the same time they did not disclose what they knew was determined
            on to remove him from the helm of affairs. During Beurnonville's
            absence, however, Herman had formed an intrigue with a Neapolitan
            girl, in the suite of Asturias, who, influenced by love or bribes,
            introduced him into the Cabinet where her mistress kept her
            correspondence with her royal parents. With a pick-lock key he
            opened all the drawers, and even the writing-desk, in which he is
            said to have discovered written evidence that, though the Princess
            was not prejudiced against France, she had but an indifferent
            opinion of the morality and honesty of our present Government and of
            our present governors. One of these original papers Herman
            appropriated to himself, and despatched to this capital by an
            extraordinary courier, whose despatches, more than the rupture with
            your country, forced Beurnonville away in a hurry from the agreeable
            society of gamesters and prostitutes, chiefly frequented by him in
            this capital.
          </p>
          <p>
            It is not and cannot be known yet what was the exact plan of the
            Prince and Princess of Asturias and their adherents; but a
            diplomatic gentleman, who has just arrived from Madrid, and who can
            have no reason to impose upon me, has informed me of the following
            particulars:
          </p>
          <p>
            Their Royal Highnesses succeeded perfectly in their endeavours to
            gain the well-merited tenderness and approbation of their Sovereigns
            in everything else but when the favourite was mentioned with any
            slight, or when any insinuations were thrown out concerning the
            mischief arising from his tenacity of power, and incapacity of
            exercising it with advantage to the State. The Queen was especially
            irritated when such was the subject of conversation or of remark;
            and she finally prohibited it under pain of her displeasure. A
            report even reached Their Royal Highnesses, that the Prince of Peace
            had demanded their separation and separate confinement. Nothing
            could, therefore, be effected to impede the progress of wickedness
            and calamity, but by some temporary measure of severity. In this
            disagreeable dilemma, it was resolved by the cabal to send the Queen
            to a convent, until her favourite had been arrested and imprisoned;
            to declare the Prince of Asturias Regent during the King's illness
            (His Majesty then still suffered from several paralytic strokes),
            and to place men of talents and patriotism in the place of the
            creatures of the Prince of Peace. As soon as this revolution was
            organized, the Queen would have been restored to full liberty and to
            that respect due to her rank.
          </p>
          <p>
            This plan had been communicated to our Ambassador, and approved of
            by our Government; but when Herman in such an honest manner had
            inspected the confidential correspondence of the Princess of
            Asturias, Beurnonville was instructed by Talleyrand to, warn the
            favourite of the impending danger, and to advise him to be
            beforehand with his enemies. Instead of telling the truth, the
            Prince of Peace alarmed the King and Queen with the most absurd
            fabrications; and assured Their Majesties that their son and their
            daughter-in-law had determined not only to dethrone them, but to
            keep them prisoners for life, after they had been forced to witness
            his execution.
          </p>
          <p>
            Indolence and weakness are often more fearful than guilt. Everything
            he said was at once believed; the Prince and Princess were ordered
            under arrest in their own apartments, without permission to see or
            correspond with anybody; and so certain was the Prince of Peace of a
            complete and satisfactory revenge for the attempt against his
            tyranny, that a frigate at Cadiz was ready waiting to carry the
            Princess of Asturias back to Naples. All Spaniards who had the
            honour of their Sovereigns and of their country at heart lamented
            these rash proceedings; but no one dared to take any measures to
            counteract them. At last, however, the Duke of Montemar, grand
            officer to the Prince of Asturias, demanded an audience of Their
            Majesties, in the presence of the favourite. He began by begging his
            Sovereign to recollect that for the place he occupied he was
            indebted to the Prince of Peace; and he called upon him to declare
            whether he had ever had reason to suspect him either of ingratitude
            or disloyalty. Being answered in the negative, he said that, though
            his present situation and office near the heir to the throne was the
            pride and desire of his life, he would have thrown it up the instant
            that he had the least ground to suppose that this Prince ceased to
            be a dutiful son and subject; but so far from this being the case,
            he had observed him in his most unguarded moments&mdash;in moments
            of conviviality had heard him speak of his royal parents with as
            much submission and respect as if he had been in their presence.
            "If," continued he, "the Prince of Peace has said otherwise, he has
            misled his King and his Queen, being, no doubt, deceived himself. To
            overthrow a throne and to seize it cannot be done without
            accomplices, without arms, without money. Who are the conspirators
            hailing the Prince as their chief? I have heard no name but that of
            the lovely Princess, his consort, the partaker of his sentiments as
            well as of his heart. And his arms? They are in the hands of those
            guards his royal parent has given to augment the necessary splendour
            of his rank. And as to his money? He has none but what is received
            from royal and paternal munificence and bounty. You, my Prince,"
            said he to the favourite (who seemed much offended at the impression
            the speech made on Their Majesties), "will one day thank me, if I am
            happy enough to dissuade dishonourable, impolitic, or unjust
            sentiments. Of the approbation of posterity I am certain&mdash;"
          </p>
          <p>
            "If," interrupted the favourite, "the Prince of Asturias and his
            consort will give up their bad counsellors, I hope Their Majesties
            will forget and forgive everything with myself."
          </p>
          <p>
            "Whether Their Royal Highnesses," replied the Duke of Montemar,
            "have done anything that deserves forgiveness, or whether they have
            any counsellors, I do not know, and am incompetent to judge; but I
            am much mistaken in the character of Their Royal Highnesses if they
            wish to purchase favour at the expense of confidence and honour. An
            order from His Majesty may immediately clear up this doubt."
          </p>
          <p>
            The Prince of Peace was then ordered to write, in the name of the
            King, to his children in the manner he proposed, and to command an
            answer by the messenger. In half an hour the messenger returned with
            a letter addressed to the favourite, containing only these lines:
          </p>
          <p>
            "A King of Spain is well aware that a Prince and Princess of
            Asturias can have no answer to give to such proposals or to such
            questions."
          </p>
          <p>
            After six days' arrest, and after the Prince of Peace had in vain
            endeavoured to discover something to inculpate Their Royal
            Highnesses, they were invited to Court, and reconciled both to him
            and their royal parents.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER VIII.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, September, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;I will add in this letter, to the communication of
            the gentlemen mentioned in my last, what I remember myself of the
            letter which was circulated among our diplomatists, concerning the
            intrigues at Madrid.
          </p>
          <p>
            The Prince of Peace, before he listened to the advice of Duke of
            Montemar, had consulted Beurnonville, who dissuaded all violence,
            and as much as possible all noise. This accounts for the favourite's
            pretended moderation on this occasion. But though he was externally
            reconciled, and, as was reported at Madrid, had sworn his
            reconciliation even by taking the sacrament, all the undertakings of
            the Prince and Princess of Asturias were strictly observed and
            reported by the spies whom he had placed round Their Royal
            Highnesses. Vain of his success and victory, he even lost that
            respectful demeanour which a good, nay, a well-bred subject always
            shows to the heir to the throne, and the Princes related to his
            Sovereign. He sometimes behaved with a premeditated familiarity, and
            with an insolence provoking or defying resentment. It was on the
            days of great festivities, when the Court was most brilliant, and
            the courtiers most numerous, that he took occasion to be most
            arrogant to those whom he traitorously and audaciously dared to call
            his rivals. On the 9th of last December, at the celebration of the
            Queen's birthday, his conduct towards Their Royal Highnesses excited
            such general indignation that the remembrance of the occasion of the
            fete, and the presence of their Sovereigns, could not repress a
            murmur, which made the favourite tremble. A signal from the Prince
            of Asturias would then have been sufficient to have caused the
            insolent upstart to be seized and thrown out of the window. I am
            told that some of the Spanish grandees even laid their hands on
            their swords, fixing their eyes on the heir to the throne, as if to
            say: "Command, and your unworthy enemy shall exist no more."
          </p>
          <p>
            To prepare, perhaps, the royal and paternal mind for deeds which
            contemporaries always condemn, and posterity will always reprobate,
            the Prince of Peace procured a history to be written in his own way
            and manner, of Don Carlos, the unfortunate son of the barbarous and
            unnatural Philip II.; but the Queen's confessor, though, like all
            her other domestics, a tool of the favourite, threw it into the fire
            with reproof, saying that Spain did not remember in Philip II. the
            grand and powerful Monarch, but abhorred in him the royal assassin;
            adding that no laws, human or divine, no institutions, no supremacy
            whatever, could authorize a parent to stain his hands in the blood
            of his children. These anecdotes are sufficient both to elucidate
            the inveteracy of the favourite, the abject state of the heir to the
            throne, and the incomprehensible infatuation of the King and Queen.
          </p>
          <p>
            Our Ambassador, in the meantime, dissembled always with the Prince
            and Princess of Asturias; and even made them understand that he
            disapproved of those occurrences so disagreeable to them; but he
            neither offered to put an end to them nor to be a mediator for a
            perfect reconciliation with their Sovereigns. He was guided by no
            other motive but to keep the favourite in subjection and alarm by
            preserving a correspondence with his rivals. That this was the case
            and the motive cannot be doubted from the financial intrigue he
            carried on in the beginning of last month.
          </p>
          <p>
            Foreigners have but an imperfect or erroneous idea of the amount of
            the immense sums Spain has paid to our Government in loans, in
            contributions, in donations, and in subsidies. Since the reign of
            Bonaparte, or for these last five years, upwards of half the revenue
            of the Spanish monarchy has either been brought into our National
            Treasury or into the privy purse of the Bonaparte family. Without
            the aid of Spanish money, neither would our gunboats have been
            built, our fleets equipped, nor our armies paid. The dreadful
            situation of the Spanish finances is, therefore, not surprising&mdash;it
            is, indeed, still more surprising that a general bankruptcy has not
            already involved the Spanish nation in a general ruin.
          </p>
          <p>
            When, on his return from Italy, the recall of the Russian negotiator
            and the preparations of Austria convinced Bonaparte of the
            probability of a Continental war, our troops on the coast had not
            been paid for two months, and his Imperial Ministers of Finances had
            no funds either to discharge the arrears or to provide for future
            payments until the beginning of the year 14, or the 22d instant.
            Beurnonville was, therefore, ordered to demand peremptorily from the
            Cabinet of Madrid forty millions of livres&mdash;in advance upon
            future subsidies. Half of that sum had, indeed, shortly before
            arrived at Cadiz from America, but much more was due by the Spanish
            Government to its own creditors, and promised them in payment of old
            debts. The Prince of Peace, in consequence, declared that, however
            much he wished to oblige the French Government, it was utterly
            impossible to procure, much less to advance such sums. Beurnonville
            then became more assiduous than ever about the Prince and Princess
            of Asturias; and he had the impudence to assert that they had
            promised, if their friends were at the head of affairs, to satisfy
            the wishes and expectation of the Emperor of the French, by seizing
            the treasury at Cadiz, and paying the State creditors in vales
            deinero; notes hitherto payable in cash, and never at a discount.
            The stupid favourite swallowed the palpable bait; four millions in
            dollars were sent under an escort to this country, while the Spanish
            notes instantly fell to a discount at first of four and afterwards
            of six per cent., and probably will fall lower still, as no
            treasures are expected from America this autumn. It was with two
            millions of these dollars that the credit of the Bank of France was
            restored, or at least for some time enabled to resume its payments
            in specie. Thus wretched Spain pays abroad for the forging of those
            disgraceful fetters which oppress her at home; and supports a
            foreign tyranny, which finally must produce domestic misery as well
            as slavery.
          </p>
          <p>
            When the Prince and Princess of Asturias were informed of the
            scandalous and false assertion of Beurnonville, they and their
            adherents not only publicly, and in all societies, contradicted it,
            but affirmed that, rather than obtain authority or influence on such
            ruinous terms, they would have consented to remain discarded and
            neglected during their lives. They took the more care to have their
            sentiments known on this subject, as our Ambassador's calumny had
            hurt their popularity. It was then first that, to revenge the shame
            with which his duplicity had covered him, Beurnonville permitted and
            persuaded the Prince of Peace to begin the chastisement of Their
            Royal Highnesses in the persons of their favourites. Duke of
            Montemar, the grand officer to the Prince of Asturias; Marquis of
            Villa Franca, the grand equerry to the Princess of Asturias; Count
            of Miranda, chamberlain to the King; and the Countess Dowager del
            Monte, with six other Court ladies and four other noblemen, were,
            therefore, exiled from Madrid into different provinces, and
            forbidden to reside in any place within twenty leagues of the
            residence of the royal family. According to the last letters and
            communications from Spain, the Prince and Princess of Asturias had
            not appeared at Court since the insult offered them in the disgrace
            of their friends, and were resolved not to appear in any place where
            they might be likely to meet with the favourite.
          </p>
          <p>
            Among our best informed politicians here, it is expected that a
            revolution and a change of dynasty will be the issue of this our
            political embryo in Spain. Napoleon has more than once indirectly
            hinted that the Bonaparte dynasty will never be firm and fixed in
            France as long as any Bourbons reign in Spain or Italy. Should he
            prove victorious in the present Continental contest, another peace,
            and not the most advantageous, will again be signed with your
            country&mdash;a peace which, I fear, will leave him absolute master
            of all Continental States. His family arrangements are publicly
            avowed to be as follow: His third brother, Louis, and his sons, are
            to be the heirs of the French Empire. Joseph Bonaparte is, at the
            death or resignation of Napoleon, to succeed to the Kingdom of
            Italy, including Naples. Lucien, though at present in disgrace, is
            considered as the person destined to supplant the Bourbons in Spain,
            where, during his embassy in 1800, and in 1801, he formed certain
            connections which Napoleon still keeps up and preserves. Holland
            will be the inheritance of Jerome should Napoleon not live long
            enough to extend his power in Great Britain. Such are the modest
            pretensions our Imperial courtiers bestow upon the family of our
            Sovereign.
          </p>
          <p>
            As to the Prince of Peace, he is only an imbecile instrument in the
            hands of our intriguers and innovators, which they make use of as
            long as they find it necessary, and which, when that ceases to be
            the case, they break and throw away. This idiot is made to believe
            that both his political and physical existence depends entirely upon
            our support, and he has infused the same ridiculous notion into his
            accomplices and adherents. Guilt, ignorance, and cowardice thus
            misled may, directed by art, interest, and craft, perform wonders to
            entangle themselves in the destruction of their country.
          </p>
          <p>
            Beurnonville, our present Ambassador at Madrid, is the son of a
            porter, and was a porter himself when, in 1770, he enlisted as a
            soldier in one of our regiments serving in the East Indies. Having
            there collected some pillage, he purchased the place of a major in
            the militia of the Island of Bourbon, but was, for his immorality,
            broken by the governor. Returning to France, he bitterly complained
            of this injustice, and, after much cringing in the antechambers of
            Ministers, he obtained at last the Cross of St. Louis as a kind of
            indemnity. About the same time he also bought with his Indian wealth
            the place of an officer in the Swiss Guard of Monsieur, the present
            Louis XVIII. Being refused admittance into any genteel societies, he
            resorted with Barras and other disgraced nobles to gambling-houses,
            and he even kept to himself when the Revolution took place. He had
            at the same time, and for a certain interest, advanced Madame
            d'Estainville money to establish her famous, or rather infamous,
            house in the Rue de Bonnes Enfants, near the Palais Royal,&mdash;a
            house that soon became the fashionable resort of our friends of
            Liberty and Equality.
          </p>
          <p>
            In 1790, Beurnonville offered his services as aide-de-camp to our
            then hero of great ambition and small capacity, La Fayette, who
            declined the honour. The Jacobins were not so nice. In 1792, they
            appointed him a general under Dumouriez, who baptized him his Ajax.
            This modern Ajax, having obtained a separate command, attacked
            Treves in a most ignorant manner, and was worsted with great loss.
            The official reports of our revolutionary generals have long been
            admired for their modesty as well as veracity; but Beurnonville has
            almost outdone them all, not excepting our great Bonaparte. In a
            report to the National Convention concerning a terrible engagement
            of three hours near Grewenmacker, Beurnonville declares that, though
            the number of the enemy killed was immense, his troops got out of
            the scrape with the loss of only the little finger of one of his
            riflemen. On the 4th of February, 1793, a fortnight after the
            execution of Louis XVI., he was nominated Minister of the War
            Department&mdash;a place which he refused, under a pretence that he
            was better able to serve his country with his sword than with his
            pen, having already been in one hundred and twenty battles (where,
            he did not enumerate or state). On the 14th of the following March,
            however, he accepted the ministerial portfolio, which he did not
            keep long, being delivered up by his Hector, Dumouriez, to the
            Austrians. He remained a prisoner at Olmutz until the 22d of
            November, 1795, when he was included among the persons exchanged for
            the daughter of Louis XVI., Her present Royal Highness, the Duchess
            of Angouleme.
          </p>
          <p>
            In the autumn of 1796 he had a temporary, command of the dispersed
            remnants of Jourdan's army, and in 1797 he was sent as a French
            commander to Holland. In 1799, Bonaparte appointed him an Ambassador
            to the Court of Berlin; and in 1803 removed him in the same
            character to the Court of Madrid. In Prussia, his talents did not
            cause him to be dreaded, nor his personal qualities make him
            esteemed. In France, he is laughed at as a boaster, but not trusted
            as a warrior. In Spain, he is neither dreaded nor esteemed, neither
            laughed at nor courted; he is there universally despised. He studies
            to be thought a gentleman; but the native porter breaks through the
            veil of a ridiculously affected and outre politeness.
            Notwithstanding the complacent grimaces of his face, the
            self-sufficiency of his looks, his systematically powdered and
            dressed hair, his showy dress, his counted and short bows, and his
            presumptuous conversation, teeming with ignorance, vulgarity, and
            obscenity, he cannot escape even the most inattentive observer.
          </p>
          <p>
            The Ambassador, Beurnonville, is now between fifty and sixty years
            of age; is a grand officer of our Imperial Legion of Honour; has a
            brother who is a turnkey, and two sisters, one married to a tailor,
            and another to a merchant who cries dogs' and cats' meat in our
            streets.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER IX.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, September, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;Bonaparte did not at first intend to take his wife
            with him when he set out for Strasburg; but her tears, the effect of
            her tenderness and apprehension for his person, at last altered his
            resolution. Madame Napoleon, to tell the truth, does not like much
            to be in the power of Joseph, nor even in that of her son-in-law,
            Louis Bonaparte, should any accident make her a widow.
          </p>
          <p>
            During the Emperor's absence, the former is the President of the
            Senate, and the latter the Governor of this capital, and commander
            of the troops in the interior; so that the one dictates the Senatus
            Consultum, in case of a vacancy of the throne, and the other
            supports these civil determinations with his military forces. Even
            with the army in Germany, Napoleon's brother-in-law, Murat, is as a
            pillar of the Bonaparte dynasty, and to prevent the intrigues and
            plots of other generals from an Imperial diadem; while, in Italy,
            his step-son, Eugene de Beauharnais, as a viceroy, commands even the
            commander-in-chief, Massena. It must be granted that the Emperor has
            so ably taken his precautions that it is almost certain that, at
            first, his orders will be obeyed, even after his death; and the will
            deposited by him in the Senate, without opposition, carried into
            execution. These very precautions evince, however, how uncertain and
            precarious he considers his existence to be, and that,
            notwithstanding addresses and oaths, he apprehends that the
            Bonaparte dynasty will not survive him.
          </p>
          <p>
            Most of the generals now employed by him are either of his own
            creation, or men on whom he has conferred rank and wealth, which
            they might consider unsafe under any other Prince but a Bonaparte.
            The superior officers, not included in the above description, are
            such insignificant characters that, though he makes use of their
            experience and courage, he does not fear their views or ambition.
            Among the inferior officers, and even among the men, all those who
            have displayed, either at reviews or in battles, capacity, activity,
            or valour, are all members of his Legion of Honour; and are bound to
            him by the double tie of gratitude and self-interest. They look to
            him alone for future advancements, and for the preservation of the
            distinction they have obtained from him. His emissaries artfully
            disseminate that a Bourbon would inevitably overthrow everything a
            Bonaparte has erected; and that all military and civil officers
            rewarded or favoured by Napoleon the First will not only be
            discarded, but disgraced, and perhaps punished, by a Louis XVIII.
            Any person who would be imprudent enough to attempt to prove the
            impossibility, as well as the absurdity, of these impolitic and
            retrospective measures, would be instantly taken up and shot as an
            emissary of the Bourbons.
          </p>
          <p>
            I have often amused myself in conversing with our new generals and
            new officers; there is such a curious mixture of ignorance and
            information, of credulity and disbelief, of real boasting and
            affected modesty, in everything they say or do in company; their
            manners are far from being elegant, but also very distant from
            vulgarity; they do not resemble those of what we formerly called
            'gens comme il faut', and 'la bonne societe'! nor those of the
            bourgeoisie, or the lower classes. They form a new species of
            fashionables, and a 'haut ton militaire', which strikes a person
            accustomed to Courts at first with surprise, and perhaps with
            indignation; though, after a time, those of our sex, at last, become
            reconciled, if not pleased with it, because there is a kind of
            military frankness interwoven with the military roughness. Our
            ladies, however (I mean those who have seen other Courts, or
            remember our other coteries), complain loudly of this alteration of
            address, and of this fashionable innovation; and pretend that our
            military, under the notion of being frank, are rude, and by the
            negligence of their manners and language, are not only offensive,
            but inattentive and indelicate. This is so much the more provoking
            to them, as our Imperial courtiers and Imperial placemen do not
            think themselves fashionable without imitating our military gentry,
            who take Napoleon for their exclusive model and chief in everything,
            even in manners.
          </p>
          <p>
            What I have said above applies only to those officers whose parents
            are not of the lowest class, or who entered so early or so young
            into the army that they may be said to have been educated there, and
            as they advanced, have assumed the 'ton' of their comrades of the
            same rank. I was invited, some time ago, to a wedding, by a jeweller
            whose sister had been my nurse, and whose daughter was to be married
            to a captain of hussars quartered here. The bridegroom had engaged
            several other officers to assist at the ceremony, and to partake of
            the fete and ball that followed. A general of the name of Liebeau
            was also of the party, and obtained the place of honour by the side
            of the bride's mother. At his entrance into the apartment I formed
            an opinion of him which his subsequent conduct during the ball
            confirmed.
          </p>
          <p>
            During the dinner he seemed to forget that he had a knife and a
            fork, and he did not eat of a dish (and he ate of them all, numerous
            as they were) without bespattering or besmearing himself or his
            neighbours. He broke two glasses and one plate, and, for equality's
            sake, I suppose, when he threw the wine on the lady to his right,
            the lady to his left was inundated with sauces. In getting up from
            dinner to take coffee and liqueurs, according to our custom, as he
            took the hand of the mistress of the house, he seized at the same
            time a corner of the napkin, and was not aware of his blunder till
            the destruction of bottles, glasses, and plate, and the screams of
            the ladies, informed him of the havoc and terror his awkward
            gallantry had occasioned. When the ball began, he was too vain of
            his rank and precedency to suffer any one else to lead the bride
            down the first dance; but she was not, I believe, much obliged to
            him for his politeness; it cost her the tail of her wedding-gown and
            a broken nail, and she continued lame during the remainder of the
            night. In making an apology to her for his want of dexterity, and
            assuring her that he was not so awkward in handling the enemies of
            his country in battle as in handling friends he esteemed in a dance,
            he gave no quarter to an old maid aunt, whom, in the violence of his
            gesticulation, he knocked down with his elbow and laid sprawling on
            the ground. He was sober when these accidents literally occurred.
          </p>
          <p>
            Of this original I collected the following particulars: Before the
            Revolution he was a soldier in the regiment of Flanders, from which
            he deserted and became a corporal in another regiment; in 1793 he
            was a drum-major in one of the battalions in garrison in Paris. You
            remember the struggles of factions in the latter part of May and in
            the beginning of June, the same year, when Brissot and his
            accomplices were contending with Marat, Robespierre, and their
            adherents for the reins of power. On the 1st of June the latter
            party could not get a drummer to beat the alarm, though they offered
            money and advancement. At last Robespierre stepped forward to
            Liebeau and said, "Citizen, beat the alarm march, and to-day you
            shall be nominated a general." Liebeau obeyed, Robespierre became
            victorious and kept his promise, and thus my present associate
            gained his rank. He has since been employed under Jourdan in
            Germany, and under Le Courbe in Switzerland. When, under the former,
            he was ordered to retreat towards the Rhine, he pointed out the
            march route to his division according to his geographical knowledge,
            but mistook upon the map the River Main for a turnpike road, and
            commanded the retreat accordingly. Ever since, our troops have
            called that river 'La chausee de Liebeau'. He was not more fortunate
            in Helvetia. Being ordered to cross one of the mountains, he marched
            his men into a glacier, where twelve perished before he was aware of
            his mistake.
          </p>
          <p>
            Being afterwards appointed a governor of Blois, he there became a
            petty, insupportable tyrant, and laid all the inhabitants
            indiscriminately under arbitrary contribution. Those who refused to
            pay were imprisoned as aristocrats, and their property confiscated
            in the name and on the part of the nation; that is to say, he
            appropriated to himself in the name of the nation everything that
            struck his fancy; and if any complaints were made, the owners were
            seized and sent to the Revolutionary Tribunal at Paris to be
            condemned as the correspondents or adherents of the royalists of La
            Vendee. After the death of Robespierre he was deprived of this
            profitable place, in which, during the short space of eleven months,
            he amassed five millions of livres. The Directory, then gave him a
            division, first under Jourdan, and afterwards under Le Courbe.
          </p>
          <p>
            Bonaparte, after witnessing his incapacity in Italy, in 1800, put
            him on the full half-pay, and has lately made him a commander of the
            Legion of Honour.
          </p>
          <p>
            His dear spouse, Madame Liebeau, is his counterpart. When he married
            her, she was crying mackerel and herrings in our streets; but she
            told me in confidence, during the dinner, being seated by my side,
            that her father was an officer of fortune, and a Chevalier of the
            Order of St. Louis. She assured me that her husband had done greater
            services to his country than Bonaparte; and that, had it not been
            for his patriotism in 1793, the Austrians would have taken Paris.
            She was very angry with Madame Napoleon, to whom she had been
            presented, but who had not shown her so much attention and civility,
            as was due to her husband's rank, having never invited her to more
            than one supper and two tea-parties; and when invited by her, had
            sent Duroc with an apology that she was unable to come, though the
            same evening she went to the opera.
          </p>
          <p>
            Another guest, in the regimentals of a colonel, seemed rather
            bashful when I spoke to him. I could not comprehend the reason, and
            therefore inquired of our host who he was. (You know that with us it
            is not the custom to introduce persons by name, etc., as in your
            country, when meeting in mixed companies.) He answered:
          </p>
          <p>
            "Do you not remember your brother's jockey, Prial?"
          </p>
          <p>
            "Yes," said I, "but he was established by my brother as a
            hairdresser."
          </p>
          <p>
            "He is the very same person," replied the jeweller. "He has fought
            very bravely, and is now a colonel of dragoons, a great favourite
            with Bonaparte, and will be a general at the first promotion."
          </p>
          <p>
            As the colonel did not seem to desire a renewal of acquaintance with
            me, I did not intrude myself upon him.
          </p>
          <p>
            During the supper the military gentlemen were encouraged by the
            bridegroom, and the bottle went round very freely; and the more they
            drank, the greater and more violent became their political
            discussions. Liebeau vociferated in favour of republican and
            revolutionary measures, and avowed his approbation of requisitions,
            confiscations, and the guillotine; while Frial inclined to the
            regular and organized despotism of one, to secret trial, and still
            more secret executions; defending arbitrary imprisonments, exiles,
            and transportations. This displeased Madame Liebeau, who exclaimed:
          </p>
          <p>
            "Since the colonel is so fond of an Imperial Government, he can have
            no objection to remain a faithful subject whenever my husband,
            Liebeau, becomes, an Antoine the First, Emperor of the French."
          </p>
          <p>
            Frial smiled with contempt.
          </p>
          <p>
            "You seem to think it improbable," said Liebeau. "I, Antoine
            Liebeau, I have more prospect of being an Emperor than Napoleon
            Bonaparte had ten years ago, when he was only a colonel, and was
            arrested as a terrorist. And am I not a Frenchman? And is he not a
            foreigner? Come, shake hands with me; as soon as I am Emperor,
            depend upon it you shall be a general, and a grand officer of the
            Legion of Honour."
          </p>
          <p>
            "Ah! my jewel," interrupted Madame Liebeau, "how happy will France
            then be. You are such a friend of peace. We will then have no wars,
            no contributions; all the English milords may then come here and
            spend their money, nobody cares about where or how. Will you not,
            then, my sweet love, make all the gentlemen here your chamberlains,
            and permit me to accept all the ladies of the company for my Maids
            of Honour or ladies-in-waiting?"
          </p>
          <p>
            "Softly, softly," cried Frial, who now began to be as intoxicated
            and as ambitious as the general; "whenever Napoleon dies, I have
            more hope, more: claim, and more right than you to the throne. I am
            in actual service; and had not Bonaparte been the same, he might
            have still remained upon the half-pay, obscure and despised. Were
            not most of the Field-marshals and generals under him now, above him
            ten years ago? May I not, ten years hence, if I am satisfied with
            you, General Liebeau, make you also a Field-marshal, or my Minister
            of War; and you, Madame Liebeau, a lady of my wife's wardrobe, as
            soon as I am married? I, too, have my plans and my views, and
            perhaps one day you will recollect this conversation, and not be
            sorry for my acquaintance."
          </p>
          <p>
            "What! you a colonel, an Emperor, before me, who have so long been a
            general?" howled Liebeau, who was no longer able to speak. "I would
            sooner knock your brains out with this bottle than suffer such a
            precedence; and my wife a lady of your wardrobe! she who has
            possessed from her birth the soul of an Empress! No, sir! never will
            I take the oath to you, nor suffer anybody else to take it."
          </p>
          <p>
            "Then I will punish you as a rebel," retorted Frial; "and as sure as
            you stand here you shall be shot."
          </p>
          <p>
            Liebeau then rose up to fetch his sword, but the company interfered,
            and the dispute about the priority of claim to the throne of France
            between the ci-devant drummer and ci-devant jockey was left
            undecided. From the words and looks of several of the captains
            present, I think that they seemed, in their own opinions, to have as
            much prospect and expectation to reign over the French Empire as
            either General Liebeau or Colonel Frial.
          </p>
          <p>
            As soon as I returned home I wrote down this curious conversation
            and this debate about supremacy. To what a degradation is the
            highest rank in my unfortunate country reduced when two such
            personages seriously contend about it! I collected more subjects for
            meditation and melancholy in this low company (where, by the bye, I
            witnessed more vulgarity and more indecencies than I had before seen
            during my life) than from all former scenes of humiliation and
            disgust since my return here. When I the next day mentioned it to
            General de M&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;, whom you have known as an
            emigrant officer in your service, but whom policy has since ranged
            under the colours of Bonaparte, he assured me that these discussions
            about the Imperial throne are very frequent among the superior
            officers, and have caused many bloody scenes; and that hardly any of
            our generals of any talent exist who have not the same 'arriere
            pensee of some day or other. Napoleon cannot, therefore, well be
            ignorant of the many other dynasties here now rivalling that of the
            Bonapartes, and who wait only for his exit to tear his Senatus
            Consultum, his will, and his family, as well as each other, to
            pieces.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER X.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, September, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            My LORD:&mdash;I was lately invited to a tea-party by one of our
            rich upstarts, who, from a scavenger, is, by the Revolution and by
            Bonaparte, transformed into a Legislator, Commander of the Legion of
            Honour, and possessor of wealth amounting to eighteen millions of
            livres. In this house I saw for the first time the famous Madame
            Chevalier, the mistress, and the indirect cause of the untimely end,
            of the unfortunate Paul the First. She is very short, fat, and
            coarse. I do not know whether prejudice, from what I have heard of
            her vile, greedy, and immoral character, influenced my feelings, but
            she appeared to me a most artful, vain, and disagreeable woman. She
            looked to be about thirty-six years of age; and though she might
            when younger have been well made, it is impossible that she could
            ever have been handsome. The features of her face are far from being
            regular. Her mouth is large, her eyes hollow, and her nose short.
            Her language is that of brothels, and her manners correspond with
            her expressions. She is the daughter of a workman at a silk
            manufactory at Lyons; she ceased to be a maid before she had
            attained the age of a woman, and lived in a brothel in her native
            city, kept by a Madame Thibault, where her husband first became
            acquainted with her. She then had a tolerably good voice, was young
            and insinuating, and he introduced her on the same stage where he
            was one of the inferior dancers. Here in a short time she improved
            so much, that she was engaged as a supernumerary; her salary in
            France as an actress was, however, never above twelve hundred livres
            in the year&mdash;which was four hundred livres more than her
            husband received.
          </p>
          <p>
            He, with several other inferior and unprincipled actors and dancers,
            quitted the stage in the beginning of the Revolution for the clubs;
            and instead of diverting his audience, resolved to reform and
            regenerate his nation. His name is found in the annals of the crimes
            perpetrated at Lyons, by the side of that of a Fouche, a Collot
            d'Herbois, and other wicked offsprings of rebellion. With all other
            terrorists, he was imprisoned for some time after the death of
            Robespierre; as soon as restored to liberty, he set out with his
            wife for Hamburg, where some amateurs had constructed a French
            theatre.
          </p>
          <p>
            It was in the autumn of 1795 when Madame Chevalier was first heard
            of in the North of Europe, where her arrival occasioned a kind of
            theatrical war between the French, American, and Hamburg Jacobins on
            one side, and the English and emigrant loyalists on the other.
            Having no money to continue her pretended journey to Sweden, she
            asked the manager of the French theatre at Hamburg to allow her a
            benefit, and permission to play on that night. She selected, of
            course, a part in which she could appear to the most advantage, and
            was deservedly applauded. The very next evening the Jacobin cabal
            called the manager upon the stage, and insisted that Madame
            Chevalier should be given a regular engagement. He replied that no
            place suitable to her talents was vacant, and that it would be
            ungenerous to turn away for her sake another actress with whom the
            public had hitherto declared their satisfaction. The Jacobins
            continued inflexible, and here, as well as everywhere else,
            supported injustice by violence. As the patriotism of the husband,
            more than the charms of the wife, was known to have produced this
            indecent fracas, which for upwards of a week interrupted the plays,
            all anti-Jacobins united to restore order. In this they would,
            perhaps, have finally succeeded, had not the bayonets of the Hamburg
            soldiers interfered, and forced this precious piece of revolutionary
            furniture upon the manager and upon the stage.
          </p>
          <p>
            After displaying her gratitude in her own way to each individual of
            the Jacobin levy en masse in her favour, she was taken into keeping
            by a then rich and married Hamburg merchant, who made her a present
            of a richly and elegantly furnished house, and expended besides ten
            thousand louis d'or on her, before he had a mortifying conviction
            that some other had partaken of those favours for which he had so
            dearly paid. A countryman of yours then showed himself with more
            noise than honour upon the scene, and made his debut with a phaeton
            and four, which he presented to his theatrical goddess, together
            with his own dear portrait, set round with large and valuable
            diamonds. Madame Chevalier, however, soon afterwards hearing that
            her English gallant had come over to Germany for economy, and that
            his credit with his banker was nearly exhausted, had his portrait
            changed for that of another and richer lover, preserving, however,
            the diamonds; and she exposed this inconstancy even upon the stage,
            by suspending, as if in triumph, the new portrait fastened on her
            bosom. The Englishman, wishing to retrieve his phaeton and horses,
            which he protested only to have lent his belle, found that she had
            put the whole equipage into a kind of lottery, or raffle, to which
            all her numerous friends had subscribed, and that an Altona Jew had
            won it.
          </p>
          <p>
            The successor of your countryman was a Russian nobleman, succeeded
            in his turn by a Polish Jew, who was ruined and discarded within
            three months. She then became the property of the public, and, by
            her active industry, during a stay of four years at Hamburg, she was
            enabled to remit to France, before her departure for Russia, one
            million two hundred thousand livres. Her popularity was, however, at
            that period, very much on the decline, as she had stooped to the
            most indelicate means to collect money, and to extort it from her
            friends and acquaintances. She had always lists of subscriptions in
            her pocket; some with proposals to play in her lotteries for
            trinkets unnecessary to her; others, to procure her, by the
            assistance of subscribers, some trinkets which she wanted.
          </p>
          <p>
            I suppose it to be no secret to you that the female agents of
            Talleyrand's secret diplomacy are frequently more useful than those
            of the other sex. I am told that Madame Rochechouart was that friend
            of our Ministers who engaged Madame Chevalier in her Russian
            expedition, and who instructed her how to act her parts well at St.
            Petersburg. I need not repeat what is so well known, that, after
            this artful emissary had ruined the domestic happiness of the
            Russian Monarch, she degraded him in his political transactions, and
            became the indirect cause of his untimely end, in procuring, for a
            bribe of fifty thousand roubles in money and jewels, the recall of
            one of the principal conspirators against the unfortunate Paul.
          </p>
          <p>
            The wealth she plundered in the Russian capital, within the short
            period of twenty months, amounted to much above one million of
            roubles. For money she procured impunity for crime, and brought upon
            innocence the punishment merited by guilt. The scaffolds of Russia
            were bleeding, and the roads to Siberia crowded with the victims of
            the avarice of this female demon, who often promised what she was
            unable to perform, and, to silence complaint, added cruelty to
            fraud, and, after pocketing the bribe, resorted to the executioner
            to remove those whom she had duped. The shocking anecdote of the
            Sardinian secretary, whom she swindled out of nearly a hundred
            thousand roubles, and on whom she afterwards persuaded her Imperial
            lover to inflict capital punishment, is too recent and too public to
            be unknown or forgotten. A Russian nobleman has assured me that the
            number of unfortunate individuals whom her and her husband's
            intrigues have caused to suffer capitally during 1800 and 1801 was
            forty-six; and that nearly three hundred persons besides, who could
            not or would not pay their extortionate demands, were exiled to
            Siberia during the same period of time.
          </p>
          <p>
            You may, perhaps, think that a low woman who could produce such
            great and terrible events, must be mistress of natural charms, as
            well as of acquired accomplishments. As I have already stated, she
            can have no pretensions to either, but she is extremely insinuating,
            sings tolerably well, has a fresh and healthy look, and possesses an
            unusually good share of cunning, presumption, and duplicity. Her
            husband, also, everywhere took care to make her fashionable; and the
            vanity of the first of their dupes increased the number of her
            admirers and engaged the vanity of others in their turn to sacrifice
            themselves at her shrine.
          </p>
          <p>
            The immorality of our age, also, often procured her popularity for
            what deserved, and in better times would have encountered, the
            severest reprobation. In 1797, an emigrant lodged at an inn at
            Hamburg where another traveller was robbed of a large sum in ready
            money and jewels. The unfortunate is always suspected; and in the
            visit made to his room by the magistrates was found a key that
            opened the door of the apartment where the theft had been committed.
            In vain did he represent that had he been the thief he should not
            have kept an instrument which was, or might be, construed into an
            argument of guilt; he was carried to prison, and, though none of the
            property was discovered in his possession, would have been
            condemned, had he not produced Madame Chevalier, who avowed that the
            key opened the door of her bedroom, which the smith who had made it
            confirmed, and swore that he had fabricated eight keys for the same
            actress and for the same purpose.
          </p>
          <p>
            At that time this woman lived in the same house with her husband,
            but cohabited there with the husband of another woman. She had also
            places of assignation with other gallants at private apartments,
            both in Hamburg and at Altona. All these, her scandalous intrigues,
            were known even to the common porters of these cities. The first
            time, after the affair of the key had become public, she acted in a
            play where a key was mentioned, and the audience immediately
            repeated, "The key! the key!" Far from being ashamed, she appeared
            every night in pieces selected by her, where there was mention of
            keys, and thus tired the jokes of the public. This impudence might
            have been expected from her, but it was little to be supposed that
            her barefaced vices should, as really was the case, augment the
            crowd of suitors, and occasion even some duels, which latter she
            both encouraged and rewarded.
          </p>
          <p>
            Two brothers, of the name of De S&mdash;&mdash;-, were both in love
            with her, and the eldest, as the richest, became her choice.
            Offended at his refusal of too large a sum of money, she wrote to
            the younger De S&mdash;&mdash;-, and offered to accede to his
            proposals if, like a gentleman, he would avenge the affront she had
            experienced from his brother. He consulted a friend, who, to expose
            her infamy, advised him to send some confidential person to inform
            her that he had killed his elder brother, and expected the
            recompense on the same night. He went and was received with open
            arms, and had just retired with her, when the elder brother,
            accompanied by his friend, entered the room. Madame Chevalier,
            instead of upbraiding, laughed, and the next day the public laughed
            with her, and applauded her more than ever. She knew very well what
            she was doing. The stories of the key and the duel produced for her
            more than four thousand louis d'or by the number of new gallants
            they enticed. It was a kind of emulation among all young men in the
            North who should be foremost to dishonour and ruin himself with this
            infamous woman.
          </p>
          <p>
            Madame Chevalier and her husband now live here in grand style, and
            have their grand parties, grand teas, grand assemblies, and grand
            balls. Their hotel, I am assured, is even visited by the Bonapartes
            and by the members of the foreign diplomatic corps. In the house
            where I saw her, I observed that Louis Bonaparte and two foreign
            Ambassadors spoke to her as old acquaintances. Though rich, to the
            amount of ten millions of livres&mdash;she, or rather her husband,
            keeps a gambling-house, and her superannuated charms are still to be
            bought for money, at the disposal of those amateurs who are fond of
            antiques. Both her husband and herself are still members of our
            secret diplomacy, though she complains loudly that, of the two
            millions of livres&mdash;promised her in 1799 by Bonaparte and
            Talleyrand if she could succeed in persuading Paul I. to withdraw
            from his alliance with England and Austria, only six hundred
            thousand livres&mdash;has been paid her.
          </p>
          <p>
            I cannot finish this letter without telling you that before our
            military forces had reached the Rhine, our political incendiaries
            had already taken the field, and were in full march towards the
            Austrian, Russian, and Prussian capitals. The advanced guard of this
            dangerous corps consists entirely of females, all gifted with beauty
            and parts as much superior to those of Madame Chevalier as their
            instructions are better digested. Bonaparte and Talleyrand have more
            than once regretted that Madame Chevalier was not ordered to enter
            into the conspiracy against Paul (whose inconsistency and violence
            they foresaw would make his reign short), that she might have
            influenced the conspirators to fix upon a successor more pliable and
            less scrupulous, and who would have suffered the Cabinet of St.
            Cloud to dictate to the Cabinet of St. Petersburg.
          </p>
          <p>
            I dined in company several times this last spring with two ladies
            who, rumour said, have been destined for your P&mdash;&mdash;- of W&mdash;&mdash;
            and D&mdash;- of Y&mdash;- ever since the Peace of Amiens.
            Talleyrand is well informed what figures and what talents are
            requisite to make an impression on these Princes, and has made his
            choice accordingly. These ladies have lately disappeared, and when
            inquired after are stated to be in the country, though I do not
            consider it improbable that they have already arrived at
            headquarters. They are both rather fair and lusty, above the middle
            size, and about twenty-five years of age. They speak, besides
            French, the English and Italian languages. They are good drawers,
            good musicians, good singers, and, if necessary, even good drinkers.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XI.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, September, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;Had the citizens of the United States been as
            submissive to the taxation of your Government as to the vexations of
            our ruler, America would, perhaps, have been less free and Europe
            more tranquil. After the treaty of Amiens had Produced a general
            pacification, our Government was seriously determined to reconquer
            from America a part of those treasures its citizens had gained
            during the Revolutionary War, by a neutrality which our policy and
            interest required, and which the liberality of your Government
            endured. Hence the acquisition we made of New Orleans from Spain,
            and hence the intrigues of our emissaries in that colony, and the
            peremptory requisitions of provision for St. Domingo by our Minister
            and generals. Had we been victorious in St. Domingo, most of our
            troops there were destined for the American Continent, to invade,
            according to circumstances, either the Spanish colonies on the terra
            firma or the States of the American Commonwealth. The unforeseen
            rupture with your country postponed a plan that is far from being
            laid aside.
          </p>
          <p>
            You may, perhaps, think that since we sold Louisiana we have no
            footing in America that can threaten the peace or independence of
            the United States; but may not the same dictates that procured us at
            Madrid the acquisition of New Orleans, also make us masters of
            Spanish Florida? And do you believe it improbable that the present
            disagreement between America and Spain is kept up by our intrigues
            and by our future views? Would not a word from us settle in an
            instant at Madrid the differences as well as the frontiers of the
            contending parties in America? And does it not seem to be the
            regular and systematic plan of our Government to provoke the
            retaliation of the Americans, and to show our disregard of their
            privilege of neutrality and rights of independence; and that we
            insult them only because we despise them, and despise them only
            because we do not apprehend their resentment.
          </p>
          <p>
            I have heard the late American Minister here assert that the
            American vessels captured by our cruisers and condemned by our
            tribunals, only during the last war, amounted to about five hundred;
            and their cargoes (all American property) to one hundred and fifty
            millions of livres&mdash;L6,000,000. Some few days ago I saw a
            printed list, presented by the American consul to our Minister of
            the Marine Department, claiming one hundred and twelve American
            ships captured in the West Indies and on the coast of America within
            these last two years, the cargoes of which have all been
            confiscated, and most of the crews still continue prisoners at
            Martinico, Gaudeloupe, or Cayenne. Besides these, sixty-six American
            ships, after being plundered in part of their cargoes at sea by our
            privateers, had been released; and their claims for property thus
            lost, or damage thus done, amounting to one million three hundred
            thousand livres.
          </p>
          <p>
            You must have read the proclamations of our governors in the West
            Indies, and therefore remember that one dated at Guadeloupe, and
            another dated at the City of San Domingo, both declare, without
            farther ceremony, all American and other neutral ships and cargoes
            good and lawful prizes, when coming from or destined to any port in
            the Island of St. Domingo, because Bonaparte's subjects there were
            in a state of rebellion. What would these philosophers who, twelve
            years ago, wrote so many libels against your Ministers for their
            pretended system of famine, have said, had they, instead of
            prohibiting the carrying of ammunition and provisions to the ports
            of France, thus extended their orders without discrimination or
            distinction? How would the neutral Americans, and the neutral Danes,
            and their then allies, philosophers, and Jacobins of all colours and
            classes, have complained and declaimed against the tyrants of the
            seas; against the enemies of humanity, liberty, and equality. Have
            not the negroes now, as much as our Jacobins had in 1793, a right to
            call upon all those tender-hearted schemers, dupes, or impostors, to
            interest humanity in their favour? But, as far as I know, no friends
            of liberty have yet written a line in favour of these oppressed and
            injured men, whose former slavery was never doubtful, and who,
            therefore, had more reason to rise against their tyrants, and to
            attempt to shake off their yoke, than our French insurgents, who,
            free before, have never since they revolted against lawful authority
            enjoyed an hour's freedom. But the Emperor Jacques the First has no
            propagators, no emissaries, no learned savans and no secret agents
            to preach insurrection in other States, while defending his own
            usurpation; besides, his treasury is not in the most brilliant and
            flourishing situation, and the crew of our white revolutionists are
            less attached to liberty than to cash.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="pb114" id="pb114"></a>
          <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
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          </div>
          <br /><br /><br /><br />
          <p>
            Our Ambassador to the United States, General Turreaux, is far from
            being contented with our friend, the President Jefferson, whose
            patriotic notions have not yet soared to the level of our patriotic
            transactions. He refused both to prevent the marriage of Jerome
            Bonaparte with a female American citizen, and to detain her after
            her marriage when her husband returned to Europe. To our continual
            representation against the liberties which the American newspapers
            take with our Government, with our Emperor, with our Imperial
            Family, and with our Imperial Ministers, the answer has always been,
            "Prosecute the libeller, and as soon as he is convicted he will be
            punished." This tardy and negative justice is so opposite to our
            expeditious and summary mode of proceeding, of punishing first and
            trying afterwards, that it must be both humiliating and offensive.
            In return, when the Americans have complained to Turreaux against
            the piracy of our privateers, he has sent them here to seek redress,
            where they also will, to their cost, discover that in civil cases
            our justice has not the same rapid march as when it is a question of
            arresting or transporting suspected persons, or of tormenting,
            shooting, or guillotining a pretended spy, or supposed conspirator.
          </p>
          <p>
            Had the peace of Europe continued, Bernadotte was the person
            selected by Bonaparte and Talleyrand as our representative in
            America; because we then intended to strike, and not to negotiate.
            But during the present embroiled state of Europe, an intriguer was
            more necessary there than either a warrior or a politician. A man
            who has passed through all the mire of our own Revolution, who has
            been in the secrets, and an accomplice of all our factions, is,
            undoubtedly, a useful instrument where factions are to be created
            and directed, where wealth is designed for pillage, and a State for
            overthrow. General Turreaux is, therefore, in his place, and at his
            proper post, as our Ambassador in America.
          </p>
          <p>
            The son of a valet of the late Duc de Bouillon, Turreaux called
            himself before the Revolution Chevalier de Grambonville, and was, in
            fact, a 'chevalier d'industrie' (a swindler), who supported himself
            by gambling and cheating. An associate of Beurnonville, Barras, and
            other vile characters, he with them joined the colours of rebellion,
            and served under the former in 1792, in the army of the Moselle,
            first as a volunteer, and afterwards as an aide-de-camp. In a speech
            at the Jacobin Club at Quesnoy, on the 20th of November, 1792, he
            made a motion&mdash;"That, throughout the whole republican army, all
            hats should be prohibited, and red caps substituted in their place;
            and that, not only portable guillotines, but portable Jacobin clubs,
            should accompany the soldiers of Liberty and Equality."
          </p>
          <p>
            A cousin of his was a member of the National Convention, and one of
            those called Mountaineers, or sturdy partisans of Marat and
            Robespierre. It was to the influence of this cousin, that he was
            indebted, first for a commission as an adjutant-general, and
            afterwards for his promotion to a general of brigade. In 1793, he
            was ordered to march, under the command of Santerre, to La Vendee,
            where he shared in the defeat of the republicans at Vihiers. At the
            engagement near Roches d'Erigne he commanded, for the first time, a
            separate column, and the capacity and abilities which he displayed
            on that occasion were such as might have been expected from a man
            who had passed the first thirty years of his life in brothels and
            gambling-houses. So pleasant were his dispositions, that almost the
            whole army narrowly escaped having been thrown and pushed into the
            River Loire. The battle of Doux was the only one in which he had a
            share where the republicans were not routed; but some few days
            afterwards, near Coron, all the troops under him were cut to pieces,
            and he was himself wounded.
          </p>
          <p>
            The confidence of his friends, the Jacobins, increased, however, in
            proportion to his disasters, and he was, in 1794, after the superior
            number of the republican soldiers had forced the remnants of the
            Royalists to evacuate what was properly called La Vendee, appointed
            a commander-in-chief. He had now an opportunity to display his
            infamy and barbarity. Having established his headquarters at Mantes,
            where he was safe, amidst the massacres of women and children
            ordered by his friend Carriere, he commanded the republican army to
            enter La Vendee in twelve columns, preceded by fire and sword; and
            within four weeks, one of the most populous departments of France,
            to the extent and circumference of sixty leagues, was laid waste-not
            a house, not a cottage, not a tree was spared, all was reduced to
            ashes; and the unfortunate inhabitants, who had not perished amid
            the ruin of their dwellings, were shot or stabbed; while attempting
            to save themselves from the common conflagration. On the 22d of
            January, 1794, he wrote to the Committee of Public Safety of the
            National Convention: "Citizen Representatives!&mdash;A country of
            sixty leagues extent, I have the happiness to inform you, is now a
            perfect desert; not a dwelling, not a bush, but is reduced to ashes;
            and of one hundred and eighty thousand worthless inhabitants, not a
            soul breathes any longer. Men and women, old men and children, have
            all experienced the national vengeance, and are no more. It was a
            pleasure to a true republican to see upon the bayonets of each of
            our brave republicans the children of traitors, or their, heads.
            According to the lowest calculation, I have despatched, within three
            months, two hundred thousand individuals of both sexes, and of all
            ages. Vive la Republique!!!" In the works of Prudhomme and our
            republican writers, are inserted hundreds of letters, still more
            cruelly extravagant, from this ci-devant friend of Liberty and
            Equality, and at present faithful subject, and grand officer of the
            Legion of Honour, of His Imperial Majesty Napoleon the First.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="pb118" id="pb118"></a>
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          </div>
          <br /><br /><br /><br />
          <p>
            After the death of Robespierre, Turreaux, then a governor at
            Belleisle, was arrested as a terrorist, and shut up at Du Plessis
            until the general amnesty released him in 1795. During his
            imprisonment he amused himself with writing memoirs of the war of La
            Vendee, in which he tried to prove that all his barbarities had been
            perpetrated for the sake of humanity, and to save the lives of
            republicans. He had also the modesty to announce that, as a military
            work, his production would be equally interesting as those of a
            Folard and Guibert. These memoirs, however, proved nothing but that
            he was equally ignorant and wicked, presumptuous and ferocious.
          </p>
          <p>
            During the reign of the Directory he was rather discarded, or only
            employed as a kind of recruiting officer to hunt young conscripts,
            but in 1800 Bonaparte gave him a command in the army of reserve; and
            in 1802, another in the army of the interior. He then became one of
            the most assiduous and cringing courtiers at the Emperor's levies;
            while in the Empress's drawing-room he assumed his former air and
            ton of a chevalier, in hopes of imposing upon those who did not
            remember the nickname which his soldiers gave him ten years before,
            of Chevalier of the Guillotine.
          </p>
          <p>
            At a ball of the Bonaparte family to which he was invited, the
            Emperor took the fancy to dance with his stepdaughter, Madame Louis.
            He, therefore, unhooked his sword, which he handed to a young
            colonel, D' Avry, standing by his side. This colonel, who had been a
            page at the Court of Louis XVI., knew that it would have been
            against etiquette, and even unbecoming of him, to act as a valet to
            Napoleon while there were valets in the room; he therefore
            retreated, looking round for a servant. "Oh!" said the Emperor, "I
            see that I am mistaken; here, generals," continued he (addressing
            himself to half a dozen, with whose independent principles and good
            breeding he was acquainted), "take this sword during my dance." They
            all pushed forward, but Turreaux and La Grange, another general and
            intriguer, were foremost; the latter, however, received the
            preference. On the next day, D' Avry was ordered upon service to
            Cayenne.
          </p>
          <p>
            Turreaux has acquired, by his patriotic deeds in La Vendee, a
            fortune of seven millions of livres. He has the highest opinion of
            his own capacity, while a moment's conversation will inform a man of
            sense that he is only a conceited fool. As to his political
            transactions, he has by his side, as a secretary, a man of the name
            of Petry, who has received a diplomatic education, and does not want
            either subtlety or parts; and on him, no doubt, is thrown the
            drudgery of business. During a European war, Turreaux's post is of
            little relative consequence; but should Napoleon live to dictate
            another general pacification, the United States will be exposed, on
            their frontiers, or in their interior, to the same outrages their
            commercial navy now experiences on the main.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XII.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, September, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;A general officer, who has just arrived from Italy,
            has assured me that, so far from Bonaparte's subjects on the other
            side of the Alps being contented and attached to his person and
            Government, were a victorious Austrian army to enter the plains of
            Lombardy a general insurrection would be the consequence. During
            these last nine years the inhabitants have not enjoyed a moment's
            tranquillity or safety. Every relation or favourite whom Napoleon
            wished to provide for, or to enrich, he has saddled upon them as in
            free quarters; and since 1796, when they first had the honour of our
            Emperor's acquaintance, they have paid more in taxes, in forced
            loans, requisitions, and extortions of every description, than their
            ancestors or themselves had paid during the one hundred and
            ninety-six preceding years.
          </p>
          <p>
            Such is the public spirit, and such have been the sufferings of the
            people in the ci-devant Lombardy; in Piedmont they are still worse
            off. Having more national character and more fidelity towards their
            Sovereign than their neighbours, they are also more cruelly treated.
            Their governor, General De Menou, has caused most of the departments
            to be declared under martial law, and without right to claim the
            protection of our happy constitution. In every city or town are
            organized special tribunals, the progeny of our revolutionary
            tribunals, against the sentences of which no appeal can be made,
            though these sentences are always capital ones. Before these,
            suspicion is evidence, and an imprudent word is subject to the same
            punishment as a murderous deed. Murmur is regarded as mutiny, and he
            who complains is shot as a conspirator.
          </p>
          <p>
            There exist only two ways for the wretched Piedmontese to escape
            these legal assassinations. They must either desert their country or
            sacrifice a part of their property. In the former case, if retaken,
            they are condemned as emigrants; and in the latter they incur the
            risk that those to whom they have already given a part of their
            possessions will also require the remainder, and having obtained it,
            to enjoy in security the spoil, will send them to the tribunals and
            to death. De Menou has a fixed tariff for his protection, regulated
            according to the riches of each person; and the tax-gatherers
            collect these arbitrary contributions with the regular ones, so
            little pains are taken to conceal or to disguise these robberies.
          </p>
          <p>
            De Menou, by turns a nobleman and a sans-culotte, a Christian and a
            Mussulman, is wicked and profligate, not from the impulse of the
            moment or of any sudden gust of passion, but coldly and
            deliberately. He calculates with sangfroid the profit and the risk
            of every infamous action he proposes to commit, and determines
            accordingly. He owed some riches and the rank of the major-general
            to the bounty of Louis XVI., but when he considered the immense
            value of the revolutionary plunder, called national property, and
            that those who confiscated could also promote, he did not hesitate
            what party to take. A traitor is generally a coward; he has
            everywhere experienced defeats; he was defeated by his Royalist
            countrymen in 1793, by his Mahometan sectaries in 1800, and by your
            countrymen in 1801.
          </p>
          <p>
            Besides his Turkish wife, De Menou has in the same house with her
            one Italian and two French girls, who live openly with him, but who
            are obliged to keep themselves by selling their influence and
            protection, and, perhaps, sometimes even their personal favours. He
            has also in his hotel several gambling-tables, where those who are
            too bashful to address themselves to himself or his mistresses may
            deposit their donations, and if they are thought sufficient, the
            hint is taken and their business done. He never pays any debts and
            never buys anything for ready money, and all persons of his suite,
            or appertaining to his establishment, have the same privilege.
            Troublesome creditors are recommended to the care of the special
            tribunals, which also find means to reduce the obstinacy of those
            refractory merchants or traders who refuse giving any credit. All
            the money he extorts or obtains is brought to this capital and laid
            out by his agents in purchasing estates, which, from his advanced
            age and weak constitution, he has little prospect of long enjoying.
            He is a grand officer of Bonaparte's Legion of Honour, and has a
            long claim to that distinction, because as early as on the 25th of
            June, 1790, he made a motion in the National Assembly to suppress
            all former Royal Orders in France, and to create in their place only
            a national one. Always an incorrigible flatterer, when Napoleon
            proclaimed himself Ali the Mussulman, De Menou professed himself
            Abdallah the believer in the Alcoran.
          </p>
          <p>
            The late vice-president of the Italian Republic, Melzi-Eril, is now
            in complete disgrace with his Sovereign, Napoleon the First. If
            persons of rank and property would read through the list of those,
            their equals by birth and wealth, who, after being seduced by the
            sophistry of impostors, dishonoured and exposed themselves by
            joining in the Revolution, they might see that none of them have
            escaped insults, many have suffered death, and all have been, or
            are, vile slaves, at the mercy of the whip of some upstart beggar,
            and trampled upon by men started up from the mud, of lowest birth
            and basest morals. If their revolutionary mania were not incurable,
            this truth and this evidence would retain them within their duty, so
            corresponding with their real interest, and prevent them from being
            any longer borne along by a current of infamy and danger, and
            preserve them from being lost upon quicksands or dashed against
            rocks.
          </p>
          <p>
            The conduct and fate of the Italian nobleman and Spanish grandee,
            Melzi-Eril, has induced me to make these reflections. Wealthy as
            well as elevated, he might have passed his life in uninterrupted
            tranquillity, enjoying its comforts without experiencing its
            vicissitudes, with the esteem of his contemporaries and without
            reproach from posterity or from his own conscience. Unfortunately
            for him, a journey into this country made him acquainted both with
            our philosophers and with our philosophical works; and he had
            neither natural capacity to distinguish errors from reality, nor
            judgment enough to perceive that what appeared improving and
            charming in theory, frequently became destructive and improper when
            attempted to be put into practice. Returned to his own country, his
            acquired half-learning made him wholly dissatisfied with his
            Government, with his religion, and with himself. In our Revolution
            he thought that he saw the first approach towards the perfection of
            the human species, and that it would soon make mankind as good and
            as regenerated in society as was promised in books. With our own
            regenerators he extenuated the crimes which sullied their work from
            its first page, and declared them even necessary to make the
            conclusion so much the more complete. When, therefore, Bonaparte, in
            1796, entered the capital of Lombardy, Melzi was among the first of
            the Italian nobility who hailed him as a deliverer. The numerous
            vexations and repeated pillage of our Government, generals,
            commissaries, and soldiers, did not abate his zeal nor alter his
            opinion. "The faults and sufferings of individuals," he said, "are
            nothing to the goodness of the cause, and do not impair the utility
            of the whole." To him, everything the Revolution produced was the
            best; the murder of thousands and the ruin of millions were, with
            him, nothing compared with the benefit the universe would one day
            derive from the principles and instruction of our armed and unarmed
            philosophers. In recompense for so much complacency, and such great
            patriotism, Bonaparte appointed him, in 1797, a plenipotentiary from
            the Cisalpine Republic to the Congress at Rastadt; and, in 1802, a
            vice-president of the Italian Republic. As Melzi was a sincere and
            disinterested republican fanatic, he did not much approve of the
            strides Bonaparte made towards a sovereignty that annihilated the
            sovereignty of his sovereign people. In a conference, however, with
            Talleyrand, at Lyons, in February, 1802, he was convinced that this
            age was not yet ripe for all the improvements our philosophers
            intended to confer on it; and that, to prevent it from retrogading
            to the point where it was found by our Revolution, it was necessary
            that it should be ruled by enlightened men, such as he and
            Bonaparte, to whom he advised him by all means never to give the
            least hint about liberty and equality. Our Minister ended his
            fraternal counsel with obliging Melzi to sign a stipulation for a
            yearly sum, as a douceur for the place he occupied.
          </p>
          <p>
            The sweets of power shortly caused Melzi to forget both the tenets
            of his philosophy and his schemes of regeneration. He trusted so
            much to the promises of Bonaparte and Talleyrand, that he believed
            himself destined to reign for life, and was, therefore, not a little
            surprised when he was ordered by Napoleon the First to descend and
            salute Eugene de Beauharnais as the deputy Sovereign of the
            Sovereign King of Italy. He was not philosopher enough to conceal
            his chagrin, and bowed with such a bad grace to the new Viceroy that
            it was visible he would have preferred seeing in that situation an
            Austrian Archduke as a governor-general. To soften his
            disappointment, Bonaparte offered to make him a Prince, and with
            that rank indemnify him for breaking the promises given at Lyons,
            where it is known that the influence of Melzi, more than the
            intrigues of Talleyrand, determined the Italian Consulta in the
            choice of a president.
          </p>
          <p>
            Immediately after Bonaparte's return to France, Melzi left Milan,
            and retired to an estate in Tuscany; from that place he wrote to
            Talleyrand a letter full of reproach, and concluded by asking leave
            to pass the remainder of his days in Spain among his relatives. An
            answer was presented him by an officer of Bonaparte's Gendarmes
            d'Elite, in which he was forbidden to quit Italy, and ordered to
            return with the officer to Milan, and there occupy his office of
            Arch-Chancellor to which he had been nominated. Enraged at such
            treatment, he endeavoured to kill himself with a dose of poison, but
            his attempt did not succeed. His health was, however, so much
            injured by it that it is not supposed he can live long. What, a
            lesson for reformers and innovators!
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XIII.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, September, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;A ridiculous affair lately occasioned a great deal of
            bustle among the members of our foreign diplomatic corps. When
            Bonaparte demanded for himself and for his wife the title of
            Imperial Majesty, and for his brothers and sisters that of Imperial
            Highness, he also insisted on the salutation of a Serene Highness
            being given to his Arch-Chancellor, Cambaceres, and his
            Arch-Treasurer, Lebrun. The political consciences of the independent
            representatives of independent Continental Princes immediately took
            the alarm at the latter innovation, as the appellation of Serene
            Highness has never hitherto been bestowed on persons who had not
            princely rank. They complained to Talleyrand, they petitioned
            Bonaparte, and they even despatched couriers to their respective
            Courts. The Minister smiled, the Emperor cursed, and their own
            Cabinets deliberated. All routs, all assemblies, all circles, and
            all balls were at a stop. Cambaceres applied to his Sovereign to
            support his pretensions, as connected with his own dignity; and the
            diplomatic corps held forward their dignity as opposing the
            pretensions of Cambaceres. In this dilemma Bonaparte ordered all the
            Ambassadors, Ministers, envoys, and agents 'en masse' to the castle
            of the Tuileries. After hearing, with apparent patience, their
            arguments in favour of established etiquette and customs, he
            remained inflexible, upon the ground that he, as master, had a right
            to confer what titles he chose within his own dominions on his own
            subjects; and that those foreigners who refused to submit to his
            regulations might return to their own country. This plain
            explanation neither effecting a conversion nor making any,
            impression, he grew warm, and left the refractory diplomatists with
            these remarkable words: "Were I to create my Mameluke Rostan a King,
            both you and your masters should acknowledge him in that rank."
          </p>
          <p>
            After this conference most of Their Excellencies were seized with
            terror and fear, and would, perhaps, have subscribed to the commands
            of our Emperor had not some of the wisest among them proposed, and
            obtained the consent of the rest, to apply, once more to Talleyrand,
            and purchase by some douceur his assistance in this great business.
            The heart of our Minister is easily softened; and he assented, upon
            certain conditions, to lay the whole before his Sovereign in such a
            manner that Cambaceres should be made a Prince as well as a Serene
            Highness.
          </p>
          <p>
            It is said that Bonaparte was not easily persuaded to this measure,
            and did not consent to it before the Minister remarked that his
            condescension in this insignificant opposition to his will would
            proclaim his moderation and generosity, and empower him to insist on
            obedience when matters of the greatest consequence should be in
            question or disputed. Thus our regicide, Cambaceres, owes his
            princely title to the shallow intrigues of the agents of legitimate
            Sovereigns. Their nicety in talking of innovations with regard to
            him, after they had without difficulty hailed a sans-culotte an
            Emperor, and other sans-culottes Imperial Highnesses, was as absurd
            as improper. Report, however, states, what is very probable, that
            they were merely the duped tools of Cambaceres's ambition and
            vanity, and of Talleyrand's corruption and cupidity.
          </p>
          <p>
            Cambaceres expected to have been elevated to a Prince on the same
            day that he was made a Serene Highness; but Joseph Bonaparte
            represented to his brother that too many other princedoms would
            diminish the respect and value of the princedoms of the Bonaparte
            family. Cambaceres knew that Talleyrand had some reason at that
            period to be discontented with Joseph, and, therefore, asked his
            advice how to get made a Prince against the wishes of this Grand
            Elector. After some consideration, the Minister replied that he was
            acquainted with one way, which would, with his support, certainly
            succeed; but it required a million of livres to set the wheels in
            motion, and keep them going afterwards. The hint was taken, and an
            agreement signed for one million, payable on the day when the
            princely patent should be delivered to the Arch-Chancellor.
          </p>
          <p>
            Among the mistresses provided by our Minister for the members of the
            foreign diplomatic corps, Madame B&mdash;&mdash;s is one of the
            ablest in the way of intrigue. She was instructed to alarm her 'bon
            ami', the Bavarian Minister, Cetto, who is always bustling and
            pushing himself forward in the grand questions of etiquette. A fool
            rather than a rogue, and an intriguer while he thinks himself a
            negotiator, he was happy to have this occasion to prove his
            penetrating genius and astonishing information. A convocation of the
            diplomatic corps was therefore called, and the suggestions of Cetto
            were regarded as an inspiration, and approved, with a resolution to
            persevere unanimously. At their first audience with Talleyrand on
            this subject, he seemed to incline in their favour; but, as soon as
            he observed how much they showed themselves interested about this
            trifling punctilio, it occurred to him that they, as well as
            Cambaceres, might in some way or other reward the service he
            intended to perform. Madame B&mdash;&mdash;s was again sent for; and
            she once more advised her lover, who again advised his colleagues.
            Their scanty purses were opened, and a subscription entered into for
            a very valuable diamond, which, with the millions of the
            Arch-Chancellor, gave satisfaction to all parties; and even Joseph
            Bonaparte was reconciled, upon the consideration that Cambaceres has
            no children, and that, therefore, the Prince will expire with the
            Grand Officer of State.
          </p>
          <p>
            Cambaceres, though before the Revolution a nobleman of a
            Parliamentary family, was so degraded and despised for his unnatural
            and beastly propensities, that to see him in the ranks of rebellion
            was not unexpected. Born in Languedoc, his countrymen were the first
            to suffer from his revolutionary proceedings, and reproached him as
            one of the most active instruments of persecution against the clergy
            of Toulouse, and as one of the causes of all the blood that flowed
            in consequence. A coward as well as a traitor, after the death of
            Louis XVI. he never dared ascend the tribune of the National
            Convention, but always gave a silent vote to all the atrocious laws
            proposed and carried by Marat, Robespierre, and their accomplices.
            It was in 1795, when the Reign of Terror had ceased, that he first
            displayed his zeal for anarchy, and his hatred to royalty; his
            contemptible and disgusting vices were, however, so publicly
            reprobated, that even the Directory dared not nominate him a
            Minister of Justice, a place for which he intrigued in vain, from
            1796 to 1799; when Bonaparte, either not so scrupulous, or setting
            himself above the public opinion, caused him to be called to the
            Consulate; which, in 1802, was ensured him for life, but exchanged,
            in 1804, for the office of an Arch-Chancellor.
          </p>
          <p>
            He is now worth thirty millions of livres&mdash;all honestly
            obtained by his revolutionary industry. Besides a Prince, a Serene
            Highness, an Arch-Chancellor, a grand officer of the Legion of
            Honour, he is also a Knight of the Prussian Black Eagle! For his
            brother, who was for a long time an emigrant clergyman, and whom he
            then renounced as a fanatic, he has now procured the Archbishopric
            of Rouen and a Cardinal's hat. His Eminence is also a grand officer
            of the Legion of Honour in France, and a Pope in petto at Rome.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XIV.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, September, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;No Sovereign Prince has more incurred the hatred of
            Bonaparte than the present King of Sweden; and I have heard from
            good authority that our Government spares neither bribes nor
            intrigues to move the tails of those factions which were dissolved,
            but not crushed, after the murder of Gustavus III. The Swedes are
            generally brave and loyal, but their history bears witness that they
            are easily misled; all their grand achievements are their own, and
            the consequence of their national spirit and national valour, while
            all their disasters have been effected by the influence of foreign
            gold and of foreign machinations. Had they not been the dupes of the
            plots and views of the Cabinets of Versailles and St. Petersburg,
            their country might have been as powerful in the nineteenth century
            as it was in the seventeenth.
          </p>
          <p>
            That Gustavus IV. both knew the danger of Europe, and indicated the
            remedy, His Majesty's notes, as soon as he came of age, presented by
            the able and loyal Minister Bildt to the Diet of Ratisbon, evince.
            Had they been more attended to during 1798 and 1799, Bonaparte would
            not, perhaps, have now been so great, but the Continent would have
            remained more free and more independent. They were the first causes
            of our Emperor's official anger against the Cabinet of Stockholm.
          </p>
          <p>
            When, however, His Swedish Majesty entered into the Northern league,
            his Ambassador, Baron Ehrensward, was for some time treated with no
            insults distinct or different from those to which all foreign
            diplomatic agents have been accustomed during the present reign; but
            when he demanded reparation for the piracies committed during the
            last war by our privateers on the commerce of his nation, the tone
            was changed; and when his Sovereign, in 1803, was on a visit to his
            father-in-law, the Elector of Baden, and there preferred the
            agreeable company of the unfortunate Duc d'Enghien to the society of
            our Minister, Baron Ehrensward never entered Napoleon's diplomatic
            circle or Madame Napoleon's drawing-room without hearing rebukes and
            experiencing disgusts. One day, when more than usually attacked, he
            said, on leaving the apartment, to another Ambassador, and in the
            hearing of Duroc, "that it required more real courage to encounter
            with dignity and self-command unbecoming provocations, which the
            person who gave them knew could not be resented, than to brave a
            death which the mouths of cannon vomit or the points of bayonets
            inflict." Duroc reported to his master what he heard, and but for
            Talleyrand's interference, the Swedish Ambassador would, on the same
            night, have been lodged in the Temple. Orders were already given to
            that purpose, but were revoked.
          </p>
          <p>
            This Baron Ehrensward, who is also a general in the service of his
            country, has almost from his youth passed his time at Courts; first
            in his own country, and afterwards in Spain, where he resided twelve
            years as our Ambassador. Frank as a soldier, but also polite as a
            courtier, he was not a little surprised at the new etiquette of our
            new court, and at the endurance of all the members of the diplomatic
            corps, of whom hardly one had spirit enough to remember that he was
            the representative of one, at least nominally, independent Prince or
            State. It must be added that he was the only foreign diplomatist,
            with Count Markof, who was not the choice of our Cabinet, and,
            therefore, was not in our secrets.
          </p>
          <p>
            As soon as His Swedish Majesty heard of the unexpected and unlawful
            seizure of the Duc d'Enghien, he wrote a letter with his own hand to
            Bonaparte, which he sent by his adjutant-general, Tawast; but this
            officer arrived too late, and only in time to hear of the execution
            of the Prince he intended to save, and the indecent expressions of
            Napoleon when acquainted with the object of his mission. Baron
            Ehrensward was then recalled, and a Court mourning was proclaimed by
            Gustavus IV., as well as by Alexander the First, for the lamented
            victim of the violated laws of nations and humanity. This so,
            enraged our ruler that General Caulincourt (the same who commanded
            the expedition which crossed the Rhine and captured the Duc d'
            Enghien) was engaged to head and lead fifty other banditti, who were
            destined to pass in disguise into Baden, and to bring the King of
            Sweden a prisoner to this capital. Fortunately, His Majesty had some
            suspicion of the attempt, and removed to a greater distance from our
            frontiers than Carlsruhe. So certain was our Government of the
            success of this shameful enterprise, that our charge d'affaires in
            Sweden was preparing to engage the discontented and disaffected
            there for the convocation of a diet and the establishment of a
            regency.
          </p>
          <p>
            According to the report in our diplomatic circle. Bonaparte and
            Talleyrand intended nevermore to, release their royal captive when
            once in their power; but, after forcing him to resign the throne to
            his son, keep him a prisoner for the remainder of his days, which
            they would have taken care should not have been long. The Duke of
            Sudermania was to have been nominated a regent until the majority of
            the young King, not yet six years of age. The Swedish diets were to
            recover that influence, or, rather, that licentiousness, to which
            Gustavus III., by the revolution of the 19th of August, 1772, put an
            end. All exiled regicides, or traitors, were to be recalled, and a
            revolutionary focus organized in the North, equally threatening
            Russia and Denmark. The dreadful consequences of such an event are
            incalculable. Thanks to the prudence of His Swedish Majesty, all
            these schemes evaporated in air.
          </p>
          <p>
            Not being able to dethrone a Swedish Monarch, our Cabinet resolved
            to partition the Swedish territory, to which effect I am assured
            that proposals were last summer made to the Cabinets of St.
            Petersburg, Berlin, and Copenhagen. Swedish Finland was stated to
            have been offered to Russia, Swedish Pomerania to Prussia, and
            Scania and Blekinge to Denmark; but the overture was rejected.
          </p>
          <p>
            The King of Sweden possesses both talents and information superior
            to most of his contemporaries, and he has surrounded himself with
            counsellors who, with their experience, make wisdom more firm, more
            useful, and more valuable. His chancellor, D'Ehrenheim, unites
            modesty with sagacity; he is a most able statesman, an accomplished
            gentleman, and the most agreeable of men. He knows the languages, as
            well as the constitutions, of every country in Europe, with equal
            perfection as his native tongue and national code. Had his Sovereign
            the same ascendency over the European politics as Christina had
            during the negotiation of the Treaty of Munster, other States would
            admire, and Sweden be proud of, another Axel Oxenstiern.
          </p>
          <p>
            Count Fersen, who also has, and is worthy of, the confidence of his
            Prince, is a nobleman, the honour and pride of his rank. A colonel
            before the Revolution of the regiment Royal Suedois, in the service
            of my country, his principles were so well appreciated that he was
            entrusted by Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, when so many were so
            justly suspected, and served royalty in distress, at the risk of his
            own existence. This was so much the more generous in him as he was a
            foreigner, of one of the most ancient families, and one of the
            richest noblemen in his own country. To him Louis XVIII. is indebted
            for his life; and he brought consolation to the deserted Marie
            Antoinette even in the dungeon of the Conciergerie, when a discovery
            would have been a sentence of death. In 1797, he was appointed by
            his King plenipotentiary to the Congress of Rastadt, and arrived
            there just at the time when Bonaparte, after the destruction of
            happiness in Italy, had resolved on the ruin of liberty in
            Switzerland, and came there proud of past exploits and big with
            future schemes of mischief. His reception from the conquerer of
            Italy was such as might have been expected by distinguished loyalty
            from successful rebellion. He was told that the Congress of Rastadt
            was not his place! and this was true; for what can be common between
            honour and infamy, between virtue and vice? On his return to Sweden,
            Count Fersen was rewarded with the dignity of a Grand Officer of
            State.
          </p>
          <p>
            Of another faithful and trusty counsellor of His Swedish Majesty,
            Baron d'Armfeldt, a panegyric would be pronounced in saying that he
            was the friend of Gustavus III. From a page to that chevalier of
            royalty he was advanced to the rank of general; and during the war
            with Russia, in 1789 and 1790, he fought and bled by the side of his
            Prince and benefactor. It was to him that his King said, when
            wounded mortally, by the hand of a regicide, at a masquerade in
            March, 1792, "Don't be alarmed, my friend. You know as well as
            myself that all wounds are not dangerous." Unfortunately, his were
            not of that description.
          </p>
          <p>
            In the will of this great Monarch, Baron d'Armfeldt was nominated
            one of the guardians of his present Sovereign, and a governor of the
            capital; but the Duke Regent, who was a weak Prince, guided by
            philosophical adventurers, by Illuminati and Freemasons, most of
            whom had imbibed the French revolutionary maxims, sent him, in a
            kind of honourable exile, as an Ambassador to Italy. Shortly
            afterwards, under pretence of having discovered a conspiracy, in
            which the Baron was implicated, he was outlawed. He then took refuge
            in Russia, where he was made a general, and as such distinguished
            him self under Suwarow during the campaign of 1799. He was then
            recalled to his country, and restored to all his former places and
            dignities, and has never since ceased to merit and obtain the
            favour, friendship, and approbation of his King. He is said to be
            one of the Swedish general officers intended to serve in union with
            the Russian troops expected in Pomerania. Wherever he is employed, I
            am convinced that he will fight, vanquish, or perish like a hero.
            Last spring he was offered the place of a lieutenant-general in the
            Austrian service, which, with regard to salary and emoluments, is
            greatly superior to what he enjoys in Sweden; he declined it,
            however, because, with a warrior of his stamp, interest is the last
            consideration.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XV.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, September, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;Believe me, Bonaparte dreads more the liberty of the
            Press than all other engines, military or political, used by his
            rivals or foes for his destruction. He is aware of the fatal
            consequences all former factions suffered from the public exposure
            of their past crimes and future views; of the reality of their
            guilt, and of the fallacy of their boasts and promises. He does not
            doubt but that a faithful account of all the actions and intrigues
            of his Government, its imposition, fraud, duplicity, and tyranny,
            would make a sensible alteration in the public opinion; and that
            even those who, from motives of patriotism, from being tired of our
            revolutionary convulsions, or wishing for tranquillity, have been
            his adherents, might alter their sentiments when they read of
            enormities which must indicate insecurity, and prove to every one
            that he who waded through rivers of blood to seize power will never
            hesitate about the means of preserving it.
          </p>
          <p>
            There is not a printing-office, from the banks of the Elbe to the
            Gulf of Naples, which is not under the direct or indirect inspection
            of our police agents; and not a bookseller in Germany, France,
            Italy, Spain, Portugal, Holland, or Switzerland, publishes a work
            which, if contrary to our policy or our fears, is not either
            confiscated, or purchased on the day it, makes its appearance.
            Besides our regular emissaries, we have persons travelling from the
            beginning to the end of the year, to pick up information of what
            literary productions are printing; of what authors are popular; of
            their political opinions and private circumstances. This branch of
            our haute police extends even to your country.
          </p>
          <p>
            Before the Revolution, we had in this capital only two daily papers,
            but from 1789 to 1799 never less than thirty, and frequently sixty
            journals were daily printed. After Bonaparte had assumed the
            consular authority, they were reduced to ten. But though these were
            under a very strict inspection of our Minister of Police, they were
            regarded still as too numerous, and have lately been diminished to
            eight, by the incorporation of 'Le Clef du Cabinet' and 'Le Bulletin
            de l'Europe' with the 'Gazette de France', a paper of which the
            infamously famous Barrere is the editor. According to a proposal of
            Bonaparte, it was lately debated in the Council of State whether it
            would not be politic to suppress all daily prints, with the sole
            exception of the Moniteur. Fouche and Talleyrand spoke much in
            favour of this measure of security. Real, however, is said to have
            suggested another plan, which was adopted; and our Government,
            instead of prohibiting the appearance of our daily papers, has
            resolved by degrees to purchase them all, and to entrust them
            entirely to the direction of Barrere, who now is consulted in
            everything concerning books or newspapers.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="pb146" id="pb146"></a>
          <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
            <img alt="pb146.jpg (95K)" src="images/pb146.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
          </div>
          <br /><br /><br /><br />
          <p>
            All circulation of foreign papers is prohibited, until they have
            previously obtained the stamp of approbation from the grand literary
            censor, Barrere. Any person offending against this law is most
            severely punished. An American gentlemen, of the name of Campbell,
            was last spring sent to the Temple for lending one of your old daily
            papers to a person who lodged in the same hotel with him. After an
            imprisonment of ten weeks he made some pecuniary sacrifices to
            obtain his liberty, but was carried to Havre, under an escort of
            gendarmes, put on board a neutral vessel, and forbidden, under pain
            of death, ever to set his foot on French ground again. An American
            vessel was, about the same time, confiscated at Bordeaux, and the
            captain and crew imprisoned, because some English books were found
            on board, in which Bonaparte, Talleyrand, Fouche, and some of our
            great men were rather ill-treated. The crew have since been
            liberated, but the captain has been brought here, and is still in
            the Temple. The vessel and the cargo have been sold as lawful
            captures, though the captain has proved from the names written in
            the books that they belonged to a passenger. A young German student
            in surgery, who came here to improve himself, has been nine months
            in the same state prison, for having with him a book, printed in
            Germany during Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt, wherein the chief
            and the undertaking are ridiculed. His mother, the widow of a
            clergyman, hearing of the misfortune of her son, came here, and has
            presented to the Emperor and Empress half a dozen petitions, without
            any effect whatever, and has almost ruined herself and her other
            children by the expenses of the journey. During a stay of four
            months she has not yet been able to gain admittance into the Temple,
            to visit or see her son, who perhaps expired in tortures, or died
            brokenhearted before she came here.
          </p>
          <p>
            A dozen copies of a funeral sermon on the Duc d'Enghien had found
            their way here, and were secretly circulated for some time; but at
            last the police heard of it, and every person who was suspected of
            having read them was arrested. The number of these unfortunate
            persons, according to some, amounted to one hundred and thirty,
            while others say that they were only eighty-four, of whom twelve
            died suddenly in the Temple, and the remainder were transported to
            Cayenne; upwards of half of them were women, some of the ci-devant
            highest rank among subjects.
          </p>
          <p>
            A Prussian, of the name of Bulow, was shot as a spy in the camp of
            Boulogne, because in his trunk was an English book, with the lives
            of Bonaparte and of some of his generals. Every day such and other
            examples of the severity of our Government are related; and
            foreigners who visit us continue, nevertheless, to be off their
            guard. They would be less punished had they with them forged bills
            than, printed books or newspapers, in which our Imperial Family and
            public functionaries are not treated with due respect. Bonaparte is
            convinced that in every book where he is not spoken of with praise,
            the intent is to blame him; and such intents or negative guilt never
            escape with impunity.
          </p>
          <p>
            As, notwithstanding the endeavours of our Government, we are more
            fond of foreign prints, and have more confidence in them than in our
            own, official presses have lately been established at Antwerp, at
            Cologne, and at Mentz, where the 'Gazette de Leyden', 'Hamburg
            Correspondenten', and 'Journal de Frankfort' are reprinted; some
            articles left out, and others inserted in their room. It was
            intended to reprint also the 'Courier de Londres', but our types,
            and particularly, our paper, would detect the fraud. I have read one
            of our own Journal de Frankfort, in which were extracts from this
            French paper, printed in your country, which I strongly suspect are
            of our own manufacture. I am told that several new books, written by
            foreigners, in praise of our present brilliant Government, are now
            in the presses of those our frontier towns, and will soon be laid
            before the public as foreign productions.
          </p>
          <p>
            A clerk of a banking-house had lately the imprudence to mention,
            during his dinner at the restaurateur's of 'Cadran Vert', on the
            Boulevards, some doubt of the veracity of an official article in the
            'Moniteur'. As he left the house he was arrested, carried before
            Fouche, accused of being an English agent, and before supper-time he
            was on the road to Rochefort on his way to Cayenne. As soon as the
            banker Tournon was informed of this expeditious justice, as it is
            called here, he waited on Fouche, who threatened even to transport
            him if he dared to interfere with the transactions of the police.
            This banker was himself seized in the spring of last year by a
            police agent and some gendarmes, and carried into exile forty
            leagues from this capital, where he remained six. months, until a
            pecuniary douceur procured him a recall. His crime was having
            inquired after General Moreau when in the Temple, and of having left
            his card there.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XVI.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, September, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;The Prince Borghese has lately been appointed a
            captain of the Imperial Guard of his Imperial brother-in-law,
            Napoleon the First, and is now in Germany, making his first
            campaign. A descendant of a wealthy and ancient Roman family, but
            born with a weak understanding, he was easily deluded into the ranks
            of the revolutionists of his own country, by a Parisian Abbe, his
            instructor and governor, and gallant of the Princesse Borghese, his
            mother. He was the first secretary of the first Jacobin club
            established at Rome, in the spring of 1798; and in December of the
            same year, when the Neapolitan troops invaded the Ecclesiastical
            States, he, with his present brother-in-law, another hopeful Roman
            Prince, Santa Cruce, headed the Roman sans-culottes in their
            retreat. To show his love of equality, he had previously served as a
            common man in a company of which the captain was a fellow that sold
            cats' meat and tripe in the streets of Rome, and the lieutenant a
            scullion of his mother's kitchen. Since Imperial aristocracy is now
            become the order of the day, he is as insupportable for his pride
            and vanity as he, some years ago, was contemptible for his meanness.
            He married, in 1803, Madame Leclerc, who, between the death of a
            first and a wedding with a second husband&mdash;a space of twelve
            months&mdash;had twice been in a fair way to become a mother. Her
            portion was estimated at eighteen millions of livres&mdash;a sum
            sufficient to palliate many 'faux pas' in the eyes of a husband more
            sensible and more delicate than her present Serene Idiot, as she
            styles the Prince Borghese.
          </p>
          <p>
            The lady is the favourite sister of Napoleon, the ablest, but also
            the most wicked of the female Bonapartes. She had, almost from her
            infancy, passed through all the filth of prostitution, debauchery,
            and profligacy before she attained her present elevation; rank,
            however, has not altered her morals, but only procured her the means
            of indulging in new excesses. Ever since the wedding night the
            Prince Borghese has been excluded from her bed; for she declared
            frankly to him, as well as to her brother, that she would never
            endure the approach of a man with a bad breath; though many who,
            from the opportunities they have had of judging, certainly ought to
            know, pretend that her own breath is not the sweetest in the world.
            When her husband had marched towards the Rhine, she asked her
            brother, as a favour, to procure the Prince Borghese, after a
            useless life, a glorious death. This curious demand of a wife was,
            made in Madame Bonaparte's drawing-room, in the presence of fifty
            persons. "You are always 'etourdie'," replied Napoleon, smiling.
          </p>
          <p>
            If Bonaparte, however, overlooks the intrigues of his sisters, he is
            not so easily pacified when any reports reach him inculpating the
            virtues of his sisters-in-law. Some gallants of Madame Joseph
            Bonaparte have already disappeared to return no more, or are
            wandering in the wilds of Cayenne; but the Emperor is particularly
            attentive to everything concerning the morality of Madame Louis,
            whose descendants are destined to continue the Bonaparte dynasty.
            Two officers, after being cashiered, were, with two of Madame
            Louis's maids, shut up last month in the Temple, and have not since
            been heard of, upon suspicion that the Princess preferred their
            society to that of her husband.
          </p>
          <p>
            Louis Bonaparte, whose constitution has been much impaired by his
            debaucheries, was, last July, advised by his physicians to use the
            baths at St. Amand. After his wife had accompanied him as far as
            Lille, she went to visit one of her friends, Madame Ney, the wife of
            General Ney, who commanded the camp near Montreuil. This lady
            resided in a castle called Leek, in the vicinity, where dinners,
            concerts, balls, and other festivities celebrated the arrival of the
            Princess; and to these the principal officers of the camp were
            invited. One morning, about an hour after the company had retired to
            bed, the whole castle was disturbed and alarmed by an uproar in the
            anteroom of Princesse Louis's bedchamber. On coming to the scene of
            riot, two officers were found there fighting, and the Princesse
            Louis, more than half undressed, came out and called the sentries on
            duty to separate the combatants, who were both wounded. This affair
            occasioned great scandal; and General Ney, after having put the
            officers under arrest, sent a courier to Napoleon at Boulogne,
            relating the particulars and demanding His Majesty's orders. It was
            related and believed as a fact that the quarrel originated about two
            of the maids of the Princess (whose virtue was never suspected),
            with whom the officers were intriguing. The Emperor ordered the
            culprits to be broken and delivered up to his Minister of Police,
            who knew how to proceed. The Princesse Louis also received an
            invitation to join her sister-in-law, Madame Murat, then in the camp
            at Boulogne, and to remain under her care until her husband's return
            from St. Amand.
          </p>
          <p>
            General Murat was then at Paris, and his lady was merely on a visit
            to her Imperial brother, who made her responsible for Madame Louis,
            whom he severely reprimanded for the misconduct of her maids. The
            bedrooms of the two sisters were on the same floor. One night,
            Princesse Louis thought she heard the footsteps of a person on the
            staircase, not like those of a female, and afterwards the door of
            Madame Murat's room opened softly. This occurrence deprived her of
            all desire to sleep; and curiosity, or perhaps revenge, excited her
            to remove her doubts concerning the virtue of her guardian. In about
            an hour afterwards, she stole into Madame Murat's bedroom, by the
            way of their sitting-room, the door in the passage being bolted.
            Passing her hand over the pillow, she almost pricked herself with
            the strong beard of a man, and, screaming out, awoke her sister, who
            inquired what she could want at such an unusual hour.
          </p>
          <p>
            "I believe," replied the Princess, "my room is haunted. I have not
            shut my eyes, and intended to ask for a place by your side, but I
            find it is already engaged:
          </p>
          <p>
            "My maid always sleeps with me when my husband is absent," said
            Madame Murat.
          </p>
          <p>
            "It is very rude of your maid to go to bed with her mistress without
            first shaving herself," said the Princess, and left the room.
          </p>
          <p>
            The next morning an explanation took place; the ladies understood
            each other, and each, during the remaining part of her husband's
            absence, had for consolation a maid for a bedfellow. Madame Murat
            also convinced the Emperor that his suspicions with regard to the
            Princesse Louis were totally unfounded; and he with some precious
            presents, indemnified her for his harsh treatment.
          </p>
          <p>
            It is reported that the two maids of the Princesse Louis, when
            before Fouche, first denied all acquaintance with the officers; but,
            being threatened with tortures, they signed a 'proces verbal',
            acknowledging their guilt. This valuable and authentic document the
            Minister sent by an extra courier to the Emperor, who showed it to
            his stepdaughter. Her generosity is proverbial here, and therefore
            nobody is surprised that she has given a handsome sum of money to
            the parents of her maids, who had in vain applied to see their
            children; Fouche having told them that affairs of State still
            required their confinement. One of them, Mariothe, has been in the
            service of the Princess ever since her marriage, and is known to
            possess all her confidence; though during that period of four years
            she has twice been in a state of pregnancy, through the
            condescending attention of her princely master.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XVII.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, September, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;When preparations were made for the departure of our
            army of England for Germany, it excited both laughter and murmuring
            among the troops. Those who had always regarded the conquest of
            England as impracticable in present circumstances, laughed, and
            those who had in their imagination shared the wealth of your
            country, showed themselves vexed at their disappointment. To keep
            them in good spirits, the company of the theatre of the Vaudevilles
            was ordered from hence to Boulogne, and several plays, composed for
            the occasion, were performed, in which the Germans were represented
            as defeated, and the English begging for peace on their knees, which
            the Emperor of the French grants upon condition that one hundred
            guineas ready money should be paid to each of his soldiers and
            sailors. Every corps in its turn was admitted gratis to witness this
            exhibition of the end of all their labours; and you can form no idea
            what effect it produced, though you are not a stranger to our fickle
            and inconsiderate character. Ballads, with the same predictions and
            the same promises, were written and distributed among the soldiers,
            and sung by women sent by Fouche to the coast. As all productions of
            this sort were, as usual, liberally rewarded by the Emperor, they
            poured in from all parts of his Empire.
          </p>
          <p>
            Three poets and authors of the theatre of the Vaudevilles, Barrel,
            Radet, and Desfontaines, each received two hundred napoleons d'or
            for their common production of a ballad, called "Des Adieux d'un
            Grenadier au Camp de Boulogne." From this I have extracted the
            following sample, by which you may judge of the remainder:
          </p>
          <p>
            THE GRENADIER'S ADIEU
          </p>
          <p>
            TO THE CAMP AT BOULOGNE
          </p>
          <p>
            The drum is beating, we must march, We're summon'd to another field,
            A field that to our conq'ring swords Shall soon a laurel harvest
            yield. If English folly light the torch Of war in Germany again The
            loss is theirs&mdash;the gain is ours March! march! commence the
            bright campaign.
          </p>
          <p>
            There, only by their glorious deeds Our chiefs and gallant bands are
            known; There, often have they met their foes, And victory was all
            their own: There, hostile ranks, at our approach, Prostrate beneath
            our feet shall bow; There, smiling conquest waits to twine A laurel
            wreath round every brow.
          </p>
          <p>
            Adieu, my pretty turf-built hut * Adieu, my little garden, too! I
            made, I deck'd you all myself, And I am loth to part with you: But
            since my arms I must resume, And leave your comforts all behind,
            Upon the hostile frontier soon My tent shall flutter in the wind.
          </p>
          <p>
            My pretty fowls and doves, adieu! Adieu, my playful cat, to thee!
            Who every morning round me came, And were my little family. But
            thee, my dog, I shall not leave No, thou shalt ever follow me, Shalt
            share my toils, shaft share my fame For thou art called VICTORY.
          </p>
          <p>
            But no farewell I bid to you, Ye prams and boats, which, o'er the
            wave, Were doom'd to waft to England's shore Our hero chiefs, our
            soldiers brave. To you, good gentlemen of Thames, Soon, soon our
            visit shall be paid, Soon, soon your merriment be o'er 'T is but a
            few short hours delay'd.
          </p>
          <p>
            * During the long continuance of the French encampment at Boulogne
            the troops had formed, as it were, a romantic town of huts. Every
            hut had a garden surrounding it, kept in neat order and stocked with
            vegetables and flowers. They had, besides, fowls, pigeons, and
            rabbits; and these, with a cat and a dog, generally formed the
            little household of every soldier.
          </p>
          <p>
            As I am writing on the subject of poetical agents, I will also say
            some words of our poetical flatterers, though the same persons
            frequently occupy both the one office and the other. A man of the
            name of Richaud, who has sung previously the glory of Marat and
            Robespierre, offered to Bonaparte, on the evening preceding his
            departure for Strasburg, the following lines; and was in return
            presented with a purse full of gold, and an order to the Minister of
            the Interior, Champagny, to be employed in his offices, until better
            provided for.
          </p>
          <blockquote>
            <p>
              STANZAS
            </p>
            <p>
              ON THE RUMOUR OF A WAR WITH AUSTRIA
            </p>
            <p>
              Kings who, so often vanquish'd, vainly dare <br /> Menace the
              victor that has laid you low&mdash; <br /> Look now at France&mdash;and
              view your own despair <br /> In the majestic splendour of your foe.
            </p>
          </blockquote>
          <br />
          <p>
            What miserable pride, ye foolish kings, <br /> Still your deluded
            reason thus misleads? <br /> Provoke the storm&mdash;the bolt with
            lightning wings <br /> Shall fall&mdash;but fall on your devoted
            heads.
          </p>
          <br />
          <p>
            And thou, Napoleon, if thy mighty sword <br /> Shall for thy people
            conquer new renown; <br /> Go&mdash;Europe shall attest, thy heart
            preferr'd <br /> The modest olive to the laurel crown.
          </p>
          <br />
          <p>
            But thee, lov'd chief, to new achievements bold
          </p>
          <br />
          <p>
            The aroused spirit of the soldier calls; <br /> Speak!&mdash;and
            Vienna cowering shall behold <br /> Our banners waving o'er her
            prostrate walls.
          </p>
          <p>
            I received, four days afterwards, at the circle of Madame Joseph
            Bonaparte, with all other visitors, a copy of these stanzas. Most of
            the foreign Ambassadors were of the party, and had also a share of
            this patriotic donation. Count von Cobenzl had prudently absented
            himself; otherwise, this delenda of the Austrian Carthage would have
            been officially announced to him.
          </p>
          <p>
            Another poetaster, of the name of Brouet, in a long, dull,
            disgusting poem, after comparing Bonaparte with all great men of
            antiquity, and proving that he surpasses them all, tells his
            countrymen that their Emperor is the deputy Divinity upon earth&mdash;the
            mirror of wisdom, a demi-god to whom future ages will erect statues,
            build temples, burn incense, fall down and adore. A proportionate
            share of abuse is, of course, bestowed on your nation. He says:
          </p>
          <p>
            A Londres on vit briller d'un eclat ephemere Le front tout radieux
            d'un ministre influent; Mais pour faire palir l'etoile d'Angleterre,
            Un SOLEIL tout nouveau parut au firmament, Et ce soleil du peuple
            franc Admire de l'Europe entiere Sur la terre est nomme BONAPARTE LE
            GRAND.
          </p>
          <p>
            For this delicate compliment Brouet was made deputy
            postmaster-general in Italy, and a Knight of the Legion of Honour.
            It must be granted that, if Bonaparte is fond of flattery, he does
            not receive it gratis, but pays for it like a real Emperor.
          </p>
          <p>
            It has lately become the etiquette, not only in our Court circle and
            official assemblies, but even in fashionable societies of persons
            who are, or wish to become, Bonaparte's public functionaries, to
            distribute and have read and applauded these disinterested effusions
            of our poetical geniuses. This fashion occasioned lately a curious
            blunder at a tea-party in the hotel of Madame de Talleyrand. The
            same printer who had been engaged by this lady had also been
            employed by Chenier, or some other poet, to print a short satire
            against several of our literary ladies, in which Madame de Genlis
            and Madame de Stael (who has just arrived here from her exile) were,
            with others, very severely handled. By mistake, a bundle of this
            production was given to the porter of Madame de Talleyrand, and a
            copy was handed to each visitor, even to Madame de Genlis and Madame
            de Stael, who took them without noticing their contents. Picard,
            after reading an act of a new play, was asked by the lady of the
            house to read this poetic worship of the Emperor of the French.
            After the first two lines he stopped short, looking round him
            confused, suspecting a trick had been played upon him. This induced
            the audience to read what had been given them, and Madame de
            Talleyrand with the rest; who, instead of permitting Picard to
            continue with another. scene of his play, as he had adroitly begun,
            made the most awkward apology in the world, and by it exposed the
            ladies still more who were the objects of the satire; which, an hour
            afterwards, was exchanged for the verses intended for the homage of
            the Emperor, and the cause of the error was cleared up.
          </p>
          <p>
            I have read somewhere of a tyrant of antiquity who forced all his
            subjects to furnish one room of their houses in the best possible
            manner, according to their circumstances, and to have it consecrated
            for the reception of his bust, before which, under pain of death,
            they were commanded to prostrate themselves, morning, noon, and
            night. They were to enter this room, bareheaded and barefooted, to
            remain there only on their knees, and to leave it without turning
            their back towards the sacred representative of their Prince. All
            laughing, sneezing, coughing, speaking, or even whispering, were
            capitally prohibited; but crying was not only permitted, but
            commanded, when His Majesty was offended, angry, or unwell. Should
            our system of cringing continue progressively to increase as it has
            done these last three years, we, too, shall very soon have rooms
            consecrated, and an idol to adore.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XVIII.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, September, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;Portugal has suffered more from the degraded state of
            Spain, under the administration of the Prince of Peace, than we have
            yet gained by it in France. Engaged by her, in 1793, in a war
            against its inclination and interest, it was not only deserted
            afterwards, but sacrificed. But for the dictates of the Court of
            Madrid, supported, perhaps, by some secret influence of the Court of
            St. James, the Court of Lisbon would have preserved its neutrality,
            and, though not a well-wisher of the French Republic, never have
            been counted among her avowed enemies.
          </p>
          <p>
            In the peace of 1795, and in the subsequent treaty of 1796, which
            transformed the family compact of the French and Spanish Bourbons
            into a national alliance between France and Spain, there was no
            question about Portugal. In 1797, indeed, our Government
            condescended to receive a Portuguese plenipotentiary, but merely for
            the purpose of plundering his country of some millions of money, and
            to insult it by shutting up its representative as a State prisoner
            in the Temple. Of this violation of the laws of civilized nations,
            Spain never complained, nor had Portugal any means to avenge it.
            After four years of negotiation, and an expenditure of thirty
            millions, the imbecile Spanish premier supported demands made by our
            Government, which, if assented to, would have left Her Most Faithful
            Majesty without any territory in Europe, and without any place of
            refuge in America. Circumstances not permitting your country to send
            any but pecuniary succours, Portugal would have become an easy prey
            to the united Spanish and French forces, had the marauders agreed
            about the partition of the spoil. Their disunion, the consequence of
            their avidity, saved it from ruin, but not from pillage. A province
            was ceded to Spain, the banks and the navigation of a river to
            France, and fifty millions to the private purse of the Bonaparte
            family.
          </p>
          <p>
            It might have been supposed that such renunciations, and such
            offerings, would have satiated ambition, as well as cupidity; but,
            though the Cabinet of Lisbon was in peace with the Cabinet of St.
            Cloud, the pretensions and encroachments of the latter left the
            former no rest. While pocketing tributes it required commercial
            monopolies, and when its commerce was favoured, it demanded seaports
            to ensure the security of its trade. Its pretensions rose in
            proportion to the condescensions of the State it, oppressed. With
            the money and the value of the diamonds which Portugal has paid in
            loans, in contributions, in requisitions, in donations, in tributes,
            and in presents, it might have supported, during ten years, an army
            of one hundred thousand men; and could it then have been worse
            situated than it has been since, and is still at this moment?
          </p>
          <p>
            But the manner of extorting, and the individuals employed to extort,
            were more humiliating to its dignity and independence than the
            extortions themselves were injurious to its resources. The first
            revolutionary Ambassador Bonaparte sent thither evinced both his
            ingratitude and his contempt.
          </p>
          <p>
            Few of our many upstart generals have more illiberal sentiments, and
            more vulgar and insolent manners, than General Lasnes. The son of a
            publican and a smuggler, he was a smuggler himself in his youth, and
            afterwards a postilion, a dragoon, a deserter, a coiner, a Jacobin,
            and a terrorist; and he has, with all the meanness and brutality of
            these different trades, a kind of native impertinence and audacity
            which shocks and disgusts. He seems to say, "I am a villain. I know
            that I am so, and I am proud of being so. To obtain the rank I
            possess I have respected no human laws, and I bid defiance to all
            Divine vengeance. I might be murdered or hanged, but it is
            impossible to degrade me. On a gibbet or in the palace of a Prince,
            seized by the executioner or dining with Sovereigns, I am, I will,
            and I must, always remain the same. Infamy cannot debase me, nor is
            it in the power of grandeur to exalt me." General, Ambassador,
            Field-marshal, First Consul, or Emperor, Lasnes will always be the
            same polluted, but daring individual; a stranger to remorse and
            repentance, as well as to honour and virtue. Where Bonaparte sends a
            banditto of such a stamp, he has resolved on destruction.
          </p>
          <p>
            A kind of temporary disgrace was said to have occasioned Lasnes's
            first mission to Portugal. When commander of the consular guard, in
            1802, he had appropriated to himself a sum of money from the
            regimental chest, and, as a punishment, was exiled as an Ambassador,
            as he said himself. His resentment against Bonaparte he took care to
            pour out on the Regent of Portugal. Without inquiring or caring
            about the etiquette of the Court of Lisbon, he brought the
            sans-culotte etiquette of the Court of the Tuileries with him, and
            determined to fraternize with a foreign and legitimate Sovereign, as
            he had done with his own sans-culotte friend and First Consul; and,
            what is the more surprising, he carried his point. The Prince Regent
            not only admitted him to the royal table, but stood sponsor to his
            child by a wife who had been two years his mistress before he was
            divorced from his first spouse, and with whom the Prince's consort,
            a Bourbon Princess and a daughter of a King, was also obliged to
            associate.
          </p>
          <p>
            Avaricious as well as unprincipled, he pursued, as an Ambassador,
            his former business of a smuggler, and, instead of being ashamed of
            a discovery, proclaimed it publicly, deserted his post, was not
            reprimanded in France, but was, without apology, received back again
            in Portugal. His conduct afterwards could not be surprising. He only
            insisted that some faithful and able Ministers should be removed,
            and others appointed in their place, more complaisant and less
            honest.
          </p>
          <p>
            New plans of Bonaparte, however, delivered Portugal from this
            plague; but what did it obtain in return?&mdash;another grenadier
            Ambassador, less brutal but more cunning, as abandoned but more
            dissimulating.
          </p>
          <p>
            Gendral Junot is the son of a corn-chandler near the corn-market of
            this capital, and was a shopman to his father in 1789. Having
            committed some pilfering, he was turned out of the parental
            dwelling, and therefore lodged himself as an inmate of the Jacobin
            Club. In 1792, he entered, as a soldier, in a regiment of the army
            marching against the county of Nice; and, in 1793, he served before
            Toulon, where he became acquainted with Bonaparte, whom he, in
            January, 1794, assisted in despatching the unfortunate Toulonese;
            and with whom, also, in the autumn of the same year, he, therefore,
            was arrested as a terrorist.
          </p>
          <p>
            In 1796, when commander-in-chief, Bonaparte made Junot his
            aide-de-camp; and in that capacity he accompanied him, in 1798, to
            Egypt. There, as well as in Italy, he fought bravely, but had no
            particular opportunity of distinguishing himself. He was not one of
            those select few whom Napoleon brought with him to Europe in 1799,
            but returned first to France in 1801, when he was nominated a
            general of division and commander of this capital, a place he
            resigned last year to General Murat.
          </p>
          <p>
            His despotic and cruel behaviour while commander of Paris made him
            not much regretted. Fouche lost in him, indeed, an able support, but
            none of us here ever experienced from him justice, much less
            protection. As with all other of our modern public functionaries,
            without money nothing was obtained from him. It required as much for
            not doing any harm as if, in renouncing his usual vexatious
            oppressions, he had conferred benefits. He was much suspected of
            being, with Fouche, the patron of a gang of street robbers and
            housebreakers, who, in the winter of 1803, infested this capital,
            and who, when finally discovered, were screened from justice and
            suffered to escape punishment.
          </p>
          <p>
            I will tell you what I personally have seen of him. Happening one
            evening to enter the rooms at Frascati, where the gambling-tables
            are kept, I observed him, undressed, out of regimentals, in company
            with at young man, who afterwards avowed himself an aide-de-camp of
            this general, and who was playing with rouleaux of louis d'or,
            supposed to contain fifty each, at Rouge et Noir. As long as he
            lost, which he did several times, he took up the rouleau on the
            table, and gave another from his pocket. At last he won, when he
            asked the bankers to look at their loss, and count the money in his
            rouleau before they paid him. On opening it, they found it contained
            one hundred bank-notes of one thousand livres each&mdash;folded in a
            manner to resemble the form and size of louis d'or. The bankers
            refused to pay, and applied to the company whether they were not in
            the right to do so, after so many rouleaux had been changed by the
            person who now required such an unusual sum in such an unusual
            manner. Before any answer could be given, Junot interfered, asking
            the bankers whether they knew who he was. Upon their answering in
            the negative, he said: "I am General Junot, the commander of Paris,
            and this officer who has won the money is my aide-de-camp; and I
            insist upon your paying him this instant, if you do not wish to have
            your bank confiscated and your persons arrested." They refused to
            part with money which they protested was not their own, and most of
            the individuals present joined them in their resistance. "You are
            altogether a set of scoundrels and sharpers," interrupted Junot;
            "your business shall soon be done."
          </p>
          <p>
            So saying, he seized all the money on the table, and a kind of
            boxing-match ensued between him and the bankers, in which he, being
            a tall and strong man, got the better of them. The tumult, however,
            brought in the guard, whom he ordered, as their chief, to carry to
            prison sixteen persons he pointed out. Fortunately, I was not of the
            number&mdash;I say fortunately, for I have heard that most of them
            remained in prison six months before this delicate affair was
            cleared up and settled. In the meantime, Junot not only pocketed all
            the money he pretended was due to his aide-de-camp, but the whole
            sum contained in the bank, which was double that amount. It was
            believed by every one present that this was an affair arranged
            between him and his aide-de-camp beforehand to pillage the bank.
            What a commander, what a general, and what an Ambassador!
          </p>
          <p>
            Fitte, the secretary of our Embassy to Portugal, was formerly an
            Abbe, and must be well remembered in your country, where he passed
            some years as an emigrant, but was, in fact, a spy of Talleyrand. I
            am told that, by his intrigues, he even succeeded in swindling your
            Ministers out of a sum of money by some plausible schemes he
            proposed to them. He is, as well as all other apostate priests, a
            very dangerous man, and an immoral and unprincipled wretch. During
            the time of Robespierre he is said to have caused the murder of his
            elder brother and younger sister; the former he denounced to
            appropriate to himself his wealth, and the latter he accused of
            fanaticism, because she refused to cohabit with him. He daily boasts
            of the great protection and great friendship of Talleyrand. 'Qualis
            rex, talis grex'.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XIX.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, September, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;In some of the ancient Republics, all citizens who,
            in time of danger and trouble, remained neutral, were punished as
            traitors or treated as enemies. When, by our Revolution, civilized
            society and the European Commonwealth were menaced with a total
            overthrow, had each member of it been considered in the same light,
            and subjected to the same laws, some individual States might,
            perhaps, have been less wealthy, but the whole community would have
            been more happy and more tranquil, which would have been much
            better. It was a great error in the powerful league of 1793 to admit
            any neutrality at all; every Government that did not combat
            rebellion should have been considered and treated as its ally. The
            man who continues neutral, though only a passenger, when hands are
            wanted to preserve the vessel from sinking, deserves to be thrown
            overboard, to be swallowed up by the waves and to perish the first.
            Had all other nations been united and unanimous, during 1793 and
            1794, against the monster, Jacobinism, we should not have heard of
            either Jacobin directors, Jacobin consuls, or a Jacobin Emperor. But
            then, from a petty regard to a temporary profit, they entered into a
            truce with a revolutionary volcano, which, sooner or later, will
            consume them all; for I am afraid it is now too late for all human
            power, with all human means, to preserve any State, any Government,
            or any people, from suffering by the threatening conflagration.
            Switzerland, Venice, Geneva, Genoa, and Tuscany have already
            gathered the poisoned fruits of their neutrality. Let but Bonaparte
            establish himself undisturbed in Hanover some years longer, and you
            will see the neutral Hanse Towns, neutral Prussia, and neutral
            Denmark visited with all the evils of invasion, pillage, and
            destruction, and the independence of the nations in the North will
            be buried in the rubbish of the liberties of the people of the South
            of Europe.
          </p>
          <p>
            These ideas have frequently occurred to me, on hearing our agents
            pronounce, and their dupes repeat: "Oh! the wise Government of
            Denmark! Oh, what a wise statesman the Danish Minister, Count von
            Bernstorff!" I do not deny that the late Count von Bernstorff was a
            great politician; but I assert, also, that his was a greatness more
            calculated for regular times than for periods of unusual political
            convulsion. Like your Pitt, the Russian Woronzow, and the Austrian
            Colloredo, he was too honest to judge soundly and to act rightly,
            according to the present situation of affairs. He adhered too much
            to the old routine, and did not perceive the immense difference
            between the Government of a revolutionary ruler and the Government
            of a Louis XIII. or a Louis XIV. I am certain, had he still been
            alive, he would have repented of his errors, and tried to have
            repaired them.
          </p>
          <p>
            His son, the present Danish Minister, follows his father's plans,
            and adheres, in 1805, to a system laid down by him in 1795; while
            the alterations that have occurred within these ten years have more
            affected the real and relative power and weakness of States than all
            the revolutions which have been produced by the insurrections, wars,
            and pacifications of the two preceding centuries. He has even gone
            farther, in some parts of his administration, than his father ever
            intended. Without remembering the political TRUTH, that a weak State
            which courts the alliance of a powerful neighbour always becomes a
            vassal, while desiring to become an ally, he has attempted to
            exchange the connections of Denmark and Russia for new ones with
            Prussia; and forgotten the obligations of the Cabinet of Copenhagen
            to the Cabinet of St. Petersburg, and the interested policy of the
            House of Brandenburgh. That, on the contrary, Russia has always been
            a generous ally of Denmark, the flourishing state of the Danish
            dominions since the beginning of the last century evinces. Its
            distance and geographical position prevent all encroachments from
            being feared or attempted; while at the same time it affords
            protection equally against the rivalry of Sweden and ambition of
            Prussia.
          </p>
          <p>
            The Prince Royal of Denmark is patriotic as well as enlightened, and
            would rule with more true policy and lustre were he to follow
            seldomer the advice of his counsellors, and oftener the dictates of
            his own mind. Count von Schimmelmann, Count von Reventlow, and Count
            von Bernstorff, are all good and moral characters; but I fear that
            their united capacity taken together will not fill up the vacancy
            left in the Danish Cabinet by the death of its late Prime Minister.
            I have been personally acquainted with them all three, but I draw my
            conclusions from the acts of their administration, not from my own
            knowledge. Had the late Count von Bernstorff held the ministerial
            helm in 1803, a paragraph in the Moniteur would never have disbanded
            a Danish army in Holstein; nor would, in 1805, intriguers have been
            endured who preached neutrality, after witnessing repeated violation
            of the law of nations, not on the remote banks of the Rhine, but on
            the Danish frontiers, on the Danish territory, on the banks of the
            Elbe.
          </p>
          <p>
            It certainly was no compliment to His Danish Majesty when our
            Government sent Grouvelle as a representative to Copenhagen, a man
            who owed his education and information to the Conde branch of the
            Bourbons, and who afterwards audaciously and sacrilegiously read the
            sentence of death on the chief of that family, on his good and
            legitimate King, Louis XVI. It can neither be called dignity nor
            prudence in the Cabinet of Denmark to suffer this regicide to serve
            as a point of rally to sedition and innovation; to be the official
            propagator of revolutionary doctrines, and an official protector of
            all proselytes and sectaries of this anti-social faith.
          </p>
          <p>
            Before the Revolution a secretary to the Prince of Conde, Grouvelle
            was trusted and rewarded by His Serene Highness, and in return
            betrayed his confidence, and repaid benefactions and generosity with
            calumny and persecution, when his patron was obliged to seek safety
            in emigration against the assassins of successful rebellion. When
            the national seals were put on the estates of the Prince, he
            appropriated to himself not only the whole of His Highness's
            library, but a part of his plate. Even the wardrobe and the cellar
            were laid under contributions by this domestic marauder.
          </p>
          <p>
            With natural genius and acquired experience, Grouvelle unites
            impudence and immorality; and those on whom he fixes for his prey
            are, therefore, easily duped, and irremediably undone. He has
            furnished disciples to all factions, and to all sects, assassins to
            the revolutionary tribunals, as well as victims for the
            revolutionary guillotine; sans-culottes to Robespierre,
            Septembrizers to Marat, republicans to the Directory, spies to
            Talleyrand, and slaves to Bonaparte, who, in 1800, nominated him a
            tribune, but in 1804 disgraced him, because he wished that the Duc
            d' Enghien had rather been secretly poisoned in Baden than publicly
            condemned and privately executed in France.
          </p>
          <p>
            Our present Minister at the Court of Copenhagen, D' Aguesseau, has
            no virtues to boast of, but also no crimes to blush for. With
            inferior capacity, he is only considered by Talleyrand as an
            inferior intriguer, employed in a country ruled by an inferior
            policy, neither feared nor esteemed by our Government. His
            secretary, Desaugiers the elder, is our real and confidential
            firebrand in the North, commissioned to keep burning those materials
            of combustion which Grouvelle and others of our incendiaries have
            lighted and illuminated in Holstein, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XX.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, October, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;The insatiable avarice of all the members of the
            Bonaparte family has already and frequently been mentioned; some of
            our philosophers, however, pretend that ambition and vanity exclude
            from the mind of Napoleon Bonaparte the passion of covetousness;
            that he pillages only to get money to pay his military plunderers,
            and hoards treasures only to purchase slaves, or to recompense the
            associates and instruments of his authority.
          </p>
          <p>
            Whether their assertions be just or not, I will not take upon myself
            to decide; but to judge from the great number of Imperial and royal
            palaces, from the great augmentation of the Imperial and royal
            domains; from the immense and valuable quantity of diamonds, jewels,
            pictures, statues, libraries, museums, etc., disinterestedness and
            self-denial are certainly not among Napoleon's virtues.
          </p>
          <p>
            In France, he not only disposes of all the former palaces and
            extensive demesnes of our King, but has greatly increased them, by
            national. property and by lands and estates bought by the Imperial
            Treasury, or confiscated by Imperial decrees. In Italy, he has, by
            an official act, declared to be the property of his crown, first,
            the royal palace at Milan, and a royal villa, which he now calls
            Villa Bonaparte; second, the palace of Monza and its dependencies;
            third, the palace of Mantua, the palace of The, and the ci-devant
            ducal palace of Modena; fourth, a palace situated in the vicinity of
            Brescia, and another palace in the vicinity of Bologna; fifth, the
            ci-devant ducal palaces of Parma and Placenza; sixth, the beautiful
            forest of Tesin. Ten millions were, besides, ordered to be drawn out
            of the Royal Treasury at Milan to purchase lands for the formation
            of a park, pleasure-grounds, etc.
          </p>
          <p>
            To these are added all the royal palaces and domains of the former
            Kings of Sardinia, of the Dukes of Brabant, of the Counts of
            Flanders, of the German Electors, Princes, Dukes, Counts, Barons,
            etc., who, before the last war, were Sovereigns on the right bank of
            the Rhine. I have seen a list, according to which the number of
            palaces and chateaux appertaining to Napoleon as Emperor and King,
            are stated to be seventy-nine; so that he may change his habitations
            six times in the month, without occupying during the same year the
            same palace, and, nevertheless, always sleep at home.
          </p>
          <p>
            In this number are not included the private chateaux and estates of
            the Empress, or those of the Princes and Princesses Bonaparte.
            Madame Napoleon has purchased, since her husband's consulate, in her
            own name, or in the name of her children, nine estates with their
            chateaux, four national forests, and six hotels at Paris. Joseph
            Bonaparte possesses four estates and chateaux in France, three
            hotels at Paris and at Brussels, three chateaux and estates in
            Italy, and one hotel at Milan, and another at Turin. Lucien
            Bonaparte has now remaining only one hotel at Paris, another at
            Bonne, and a third at Chambery. He has one estate in Burgundy, two
            in Languedoc, and one in the vicinity of this capital. At Bologna,
            Ferrara, Florence, and Rome, he has his own hotels, and in the Papal
            States he has obtained, in exchange for property in France, three
            chateaux with their dependencies. Louis Bonaparte has three hotels
            at Paris, one at Cologne, one at Strasburg, and one at Lyons. He has
            two estates in Flanders, three in Burgundy, one in Franche-Comte,
            and another in Alsace. He has also a chateau four leagues from this
            city. At Genoa he has a beautiful hotel, and upon the Genoese
            territory a large estate. He has bought three plantations at
            Martinico, and two at Guadeloupe. To Jerome Bonaparte has hitherto
            been presented only an estate in Brabant, and a hotel in this
            capital. Some of the former domains of the House of Orange, in the
            Batavian Republic, have been purchased by the agents of our
            Government, and are said to be intended for him.
          </p>
          <p>
            But, while Napoleon Bonaparte has thus heaped wealth on his wife and
            his brothers, his mother and sisters have not been neglected or left
            unprovided for. Madame Bonaparte, his mother, has one hotel at
            Paris, one at Turin, one at Milan, and one at Rome. Her estates in
            France are four, and in Italy two. Madame Bacciochi, Princess of
            Piombino and Lucca, possesses two hotels in this capital, and one
            palace at Piombino and another at Lucca. Of her estates in France,
            she has only retained two, but she has three in the Kingdom of
            Italy, and four in her husband's and her own dominions. The Princess
            Santa Cruce possesses one hotel at Rome and four chateaux in the
            papal territory. At Milan she has, as well as at Turin and at Paris,
            hotels given her by her Imperial brother, together with two estates
            in France, one in Piedmont, and two in Lombardy. The Princesse Murat
            is mistress of two hotels here, one at Brussels, one at Tours, and
            one at Bordeaux, together with three estates on this, and five on
            the other side of the Alps. The Princesse Borghese has purchased
            three plantations at Guadeloupe, and two at Martinico, with a part
            of the treasures left her by her first husband, Leclerc. With her
            present husband she received two palaces at Rome, and three estates
            on the Roman territory; and her Imperial brother has presented her
            with one hotel at Paris, one at Cologne, one at Turin, and one at
            Genoa, together with three estates in France and five in Italy. For
            his mother, and for each of his sisters, Napoleon has also purchased
            estates, or lands to form estates, in their native island of
            Corsica.
          </p>
          <p>
            The other near or distant relatives of the Emperor and King have
            also experienced his bounty. Cardinal Fesch has his hotels at Paris,
            Milan, Lyons, Turin, and Rome; with estates both in France and
            Italy. Seventeen, either first, second, or third cousins, by his
            father's or mother's side, have all obtained estates either in the
            French Empire, or in the Kingdom of Italy, as well as all brothers,
            sisters, or cousins of his own wife, and the wives of his brothers,
            or of the husbands of his sisters. Their exact number cannot well be
            known, but a gentleman who has long been collecting materials for
            some future history of the House of Bonaparte, and of the French
            Empire, has already shown me sixty-six names of individuals of that
            description, and of both sexes, who all, thanks to the Imperial
            liberality, have suddenly and unexpectedly become people of
            property.
          </p>
          <p>
            When you consider that all these immense riches have been seized and
            distributed within the short period of five years, it is not
            hazardous to say that, in the annals of Europe, another such
            revolution in property, as well as in power, is not to be found.
          </p>
          <p>
            The wealth of the families of all other Sovereigns taken together
            does not amount to half the value of what the Bonapartes have
            acquired and possess.
          </p>
          <p>
            Your country, more than any other upon earth, has to be alarmed at
            this revolution of property. Richer than any other nation, you have
            more to apprehend; besides, it threatens you more, both as our
            frequent enemies and as our national rivals; as a barrier against
            our plans of universal dominion, and as our superiors in pecuniary
            resources. May we never live to see the day when the mandates of
            Bonaparte or Talleyrand are honoured at London, as at Amsterdam,
            Madrid, Milan, and Rome. The misery of ages to come will then be
            certain, and posterity will regard as comparative happiness, the
            sufferings of their forefathers. It is not probable that those who
            have so successfully pillaged all surrounding States will rest
            contented until you are involved in the same ruin. Union among
            yourselves only can preserve you from perishing in the universal
            wreck; by this you will at least gain time, and may hope to profit
            by probable changes and unexpected accidents.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XXI.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, October, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;The Counsellor of State and intendant of the Imperial
            civil list, Daru, paid for the place of a commissary-general of our
            army in Germany the immense sum of six millions of livres&mdash;which
            was divided between Madame Bonaparte (the mother), Madame Napoleon
            Bonaparte, Princesse Louis Bonaparte, Princesse Murat and the
            Princesse Borghese. By this you may conclude in what manner we
            intend to treat the wretched inhabitants of the other side of the
            Rhine. This Daru is too good a calculator and too fond of money to
            throw away his expenses; he is master of a great fortune, made
            entirely by his arithmetical talents, which have enabled him for
            years to break all the principal gambling-banks on the Continent,
            where he has travelled for no other purpose. On his return here, he
            became the terror of all our gamesters, who offered him an annuity
            of one hundred thousand livres&mdash;not to play; but as this sum
            would have been deducted from what is weekly paid to Fouche, this
            Minister sent him an order not to approach a gambling-table, under
            pain of being transported to Cayenne. He obeyed, but the bankers
            soon experienced that he had deputies, and for fear that even from
            the other side of the Atlantic he might forward his calculations
            hither, Fouche recommended him, for a small douceur, to the office
            of an intendant of Bonaparte's civil list, upon condition of never,
            directly or indirectly, injuring our gambling-banks. He has kept his
            promise with regard to France, but made, last spring, a gambling
            tour in Italy and Germany, which, he avows, produced him nine
            millions of livres. He always points, but never keeps a bank. He
            begins to be so well known in many parts of the Continent, that the
            instant he arrives all banks are shut up, and remain so until his
            departure. This was the case at Florence last April. He travels
            always in style, accompanied by two mistresses and four servants. He
            is a chevalier of the Legion of Honour.
          </p>
          <p>
            He will, however, have some difficulty to make a great profit by his
            calculations in Germany, as many of the generals are better
            acquainted than he with the country, where their extortions and
            dilapidations have been felt and lamented for these ten years past.
            Augereau, Bernadotte, Ney, Van Damme, and other of our military
            banditti, have long been the terror of the Germans and the reproach
            of France.
          </p>
          <p>
            In a former letter I have introduced to you our Field-marshal,
            Bernadotte, of whom Augereau may justly be called an elder
            revolutionary brother&mdash;like him, a Parisian by birth, and, like
            him, serving as a common soldier before the Revolution. But he has
            this merit above Bernadotte, that he began his political career as a
            police spy, and finished his first military engagement by desertion
            into foreign countries, in most of which, after again enlisting and
            again deserting, he was also again taken and again flogged. Italy
            has, indeed, since he has been made a general, been more the scene
            of his devastations than Germany. Lombardy and Venice will not soon
            forget the thousands he butchered, and the millions he plundered;
            that with hands reeking with blood, and stained with human gore, he
            seized the trinkets which devotion had given to sanctity, to
            ornament the fingers of an assassin, or decorate the bosom of a
            harlot. The outrages he committed during 1796 and 1797, in Italy,
            are too numerous to find place in any letter, even were they not
            disgusting to relate, and too enormous and too improbable to be
            believed. He frequently transformed the temples of the divinity into
            brothels for prostitution; and virgins who had consecrated
            themselves to remain unpolluted servants of a God, he bayoneted into
            dens of impurity, infamy, and profligacy; and in these abominations
            he prided himself. In August, 1797, on his way to Paris to take
            command of the sbirri, who, on the 4th of the following September,
            hunted away or imprisoned the representatives of the people of the
            legislative body, he paid a prostitute, with whom he had passed the
            night at Pavia, with a draft for fifty louis d'or on the
            municipality of that town, who dared not dishonour it; but they kept
            the draft, and in 1799 handed it over to Gendral Melas, who sent it
            to Vienna, where I saw the very original.
          </p>
          <p>
            The general and grand officer of Bonaparte's Legion of Honour, Van
            Damme, is another of our military heroes of the same stamp. A
            barber, and son of a Flemish barber, he enlisted as a soldier,
            robbed, and was condemned to be hanged. The humanity of the judge
            preserved him from the gallows; but he was burnt on the shoulders,
            flogged by the public executioner, and doomed to serve as a
            galley-slave for life. The Revolution broke his fetters, made him a
            Jacobin, a patriot, and a general; but the first use he made of his
            good fortune was to cause the judge, his benefactor, to be
            guillotined, and to appropriate to himself the estate of the family.
            He was cashiered by Pichegru, and dishonoured by Moreau, for his
            ferocity and plunder in Holland and Germany; but Bonaparte restored
            him to rank and confidence; and by a douceur of twelve hundred
            thousand livres&mdash;properly applied and divided between some of
            the members of the Bonaparte family, he procured the place of a
            governor at Lille, and a commander-in-chief of the ci-devant
            Flanders. In landed property, in jewels, in amount in the funds, and
            in ready money (he always keeps, from prudence, six hundred thousand
            livres&mdash;in gold), his riches amount to eight millions of
            livres. For a ci-devant sans-culotte barber and galley-slave, you
            must grant this is a very modest sum.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XXII.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, October, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;You must often have been surprised at the immense
            wealth which, from the best and often authentic information, I have
            informed you our generals and public functionaries have extorted and
            possess; but the catalogue of private rapine committed, without
            authority, by our soldiers, officers, commissaries, and generals, is
            likewise immense, and surpassing often the exactions of a legal kind
            that is to say, those authorized by our Government itself, or by its
            civil and military representatives. It comprehends the innumerable
            requisitions demanded and enforced, whether as loans, or in
            provisions or merchandise, or in money as an equivalent for both;
            the levies of men, of horses, oxen, and carriages; corvees of all
            kinds; the emptying of magazines for the service of our armies; in
            short, whatever was required for the maintenance, a portion of the
            pay, and divers wants of those armies, from the time they had posted
            themselves in Brabant, Holland, Italy, Switzerland, and on either
            bank of the Rhine. Add to this the pillage of public or private
            warehouses, granaries, and magazines, whether belonging to
            individuals, to the State, to societies, to towns, to hospitals, and
            even to orphan-houses.
          </p>
          <p>
            But these and other sorts of requisitions, under the appellation of
            subsistence necessary for the armies, and for what was wanted for
            accoutring, quartering, or removing them, included also an infinite
            consumption for the pleasures, luxuries, whims, and debaucheries of
            our civil or military commanders. Most of those articles were
            delivered in kind, and what were not used were set up to auction,
            converted into ready money, and divided among the plunderers.
          </p>
          <p>
            In 1797, General Ney had the command in the vicinity of the free and
            Imperial city of Wetzlar. He there put in requisition all private
            stores of cloths; and after disposing of them by a public sale,
            retook them upon another requisition from the purchasers, and sold
            them a second time. Leather and linen underwent the same operation.
            Volumes might be filled with similar examples, all of public
            notoriety.
          </p>
          <p>
            This Gendral Ney, who is now one of the principal commanders under
            Bonaparte in Germany, was a bankrupt tobacconist at Strasburg in
            1790, and is the son of an old-clothes man of Sarre Louis, where he
            was born in 1765. Having entered as a common soldier in the regiment
            of Alsace, to escape the pursuit of his creditors, he was there
            picked up by some Jacobin emissaries, whom he assisted to seduce the
            men into an insurrection, which obliged most of the officers to
            emigrate. From that period he began to distinguish himself as an
            orator of the Jacobin clubs, and was, therefore, by his associates,
            promoted by one step to an adjutant-general. Brave and enterprising,
            ambitious for advancement, and greedy after riches, he seized every
            opportunity to distinguish and enrich himself; and, as fortune
            supported his endeavours, he was in a short time made a general of
            division, and acquired a property of several millions. This is his
            first campaign under Bonaparte, having previously served only under
            Pichegru, Moreau, and Le Courbe.
          </p>
          <p>
            He, with General Richepanse, was one of the first generals supposed
            to be attached to their former chief, General Moreau, whom Bonaparte
            seduced into his interest. In the autumn of 1802, when the Helvetic
            Republic attempted to recover its lost independence, Ney was
            appointed commander-in-chief of the French army in Switzerland, and
            Ambassador from the First Consul to the Helvetic Government. He
            there conducted himself so much to the satisfaction of Bonaparte,
            that, on the rupture with your country, he was made commander of the
            camp near Montreuil; and last year his wife was received as a Maid
            of Honour to the Empress of the French.
          </p>
          <p>
            This Maid of Honour is the daughter of a washer-woman, and was kept
            by a man-milliner at Strasburg, at the time that she eloped with
            Ney. With him she had made four campaigns as a mistress before the
            municipality of Coblentz made her his wife. Her conduct since has
            corresponded with that of her husband. When he publicly lived with
            mistresses, she did not live privately with her gallants, but the
            instant the Emperor of the French told him to save appearances, if
            he desired a place for his wife at the Imperial Court, he showed
            himself the most attentive and faithful of husbands, and she the
            most tender and dutiful of wives. Her manners are not polished, but
            they are pleasing; and though not handsome in her person, she is
            lively; and her conversation is entertaining, and her society
            agreeable. The Princesse Louis Bonaparte is particularly fond of
            her, more so than Napoleon, perhaps, desires. She has a fault common
            with most of our Court ladies: she cannot resist, when opportunity
            presents itself, the temptation of gambling, and she is far from
            being fortunate. Report says that more than once she has been
            reduced to acquit her gambling debts by personal favours.
          </p>
          <p>
            Another of our generals, and the richest of them all who are now
            serving under Bonaparte, is his brother-in-law, Prince Murat.
            According to some, he had been a Septembrizer, terrorist, Jacobin,
            robber, and assassin, long before he obtained his first commission
            as an officer, which was given him by the recommendation of Marat,
            whom he in return afterwards wished to immortalize, by the exchange
            of one letter in his own name, and by calling himself Marat instead
            of Murat. Others, however, declare that his father was an honest
            cobbler, very superstitious, residing at Bastide, near Cahors, and
            destined his son to be a Capuchin friar, and that he was in his
            novitiate when the Revolution tempted him to exchange the frock of
            the monk for the regimentals of a soldier. In what manner, or by
            what achievements, he gained promotion is not certain, but in 1796
            he was a chief of brigade, and an aide-de-camp of Bonaparte, with
            whom he went to Egypt, and returned thence with him, and who, in
            1801, married him to his sister, Maria Annunciade, in 1803 made him
            a governor of Paris, and in 1804 a Prince.
          </p>
          <p>
            The wealth which Murat has collected, during his military service,
            and by his matrimonial campaign, is rated at upwards of fifty
            millions of livres. The landed property he possesses in France alone
            has cost him forty&mdash;two millions&mdash;and it is whispered that
            the estates bought in the name of his wife, both in France and
            Italy, are not worth much less. A brother-in-law of his, who was a
            smith, he has made a legislator; and an uncle, who was a tailor, he
            has placed in the Senate. A cousin of his, who was a chimneysweeper,
            is now a tribune; and his niece, who was an apprentice to a
            mantua-maker, is now married to one of the Emperor's chamberlains.
            He has been very generous to all his relations, and would not have
            been ashamed, even, to present his parents at the Imperial Court,
            had not the mother, on the first information of his princely rank,
            lost her life, and the father his senses, from surprise and joy. The
            millions are not few that he has procured his relatives an
            opportunity to gain. His brother-in-law, the legislator, is worth
            three millions of livres.
          </p>
          <p>
            It has been asserted before, and I repeat it again:
          </p>
          <p>
            "It is avarice, and not the mania of innovation, or the jargon of
            liberty, that has led, and ever will lead, the Revolution&mdash;its
            promoters, its accomplices, and its instruments. Wherever they
            penetrate, plunder follows; rapine was their first object, of which
            ferocity has been but the means. The French Revolution was fostered
            by robbery and murder; two nurses that will adhere to her to the
            last hour of her existence."
          </p>
          <p>
            General Murat is the trusty executioner of all the Emperor's secret
            deeds of vengeance, or public acts of revolutionary justice. It was
            under his private responsibility that Pichegru, Moreau, and Georges
            were guarded; and he saw Pichegru strangled, Georges guillotined,
            and Moreau on his way to his place of exile. After the seizure and
            trial of the Duc d' Enghien, some doubts existed with Napoleon
            whether even the soldiers of his Italian guard would fire at this
            Prince. "If they hesitate," said Murat, who commanded the expedition
            in the wood of Vincennes, "my pistols are loaded, and I will blow
            out his brains."
          </p>
          <p>
            His wife is the greatest coquette of the Bonaparte family. Murat
            was, at first, after his marriage, rather jealous of his
            brother-in-law, Lucien, whom he even fought; but Napoleon having
            assured him, upon his word of honour, that his suspicions were
            unfounded, he is now the model of complaisant and indulgent
            husbands; but his mistresses are nearly as numerous as Madame
            Murat's favourites. He has a young aide-de-camp of the name of
            Flahault, a son of Talleyrand, while Bishop of Autun, by the then
            Countess de Flahault, whom Madame Murat would not have been sorry to
            have had for a consoler at Paris, while her princely spouse was
            desolating Germany.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XXIII.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, October, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;Since Bonaparte's departure for Germany, the
            vigilance of the police has much increased: our patrols are doubled
            during the night, and our spies more numerous and more insolent
            during the day. Many suspected persons have also been exiled to some
            distance from this capital, while others, for a measure of safety,
            have been shut up in the Temple, or in the Castle of Vincennes.
            These 'lettres de cachet', or mandates of arrest, are expedited
            during the Emperor's absence exclusively by his brother Louis, after
            a report, or upon a request, of the Minister of Police, Fouche.
          </p>
          <p>
            I have mentioned to you before that Louis Bonaparte is both a
            drunkard and a libertine. When a young and unprincipled man of such
            propensities enjoys an unrestrained authority, it cannot be
            surprising to hear that he has abused it. He had not been his
            brother's military viceroy for twenty-four hours before one set of
            our Parisians were amused, while others were shocked and
            scandalized, at a tragical intrigue enterprised by His Imperial
            Highness.
          </p>
          <p>
            Happening to see at the opera a very handsome young woman in the
            boxes, he despatched one of his aides-de-camp to reconnoitre the
            ground, and to find out who she was. All gentlemen attached to his
            person or household are also his pimps, and are no novices in
            forming or executing plans of seduction. Caulincourt (the officer he
            employed in this affair) returned soon, but had succeeded only in
            one part of the business. He had not been able to speak to the lady,
            but was informed that she had only been married a fortnight to a
            manufacturer of Lyons, who was seated by her side, jealous of his
            wife as a lover of his mistress. He gave at the same time as his
            opinion that it would be necessary to employ the police commissary
            to arrest the husband when he left the play, under some pretext or
            other, while some of the friends of Prince Louis took advantage of
            the confusion to seize the wife, and carry her to his hotel. An
            order was directly signed by Louis, according to which the police
            commissary, Chazot, was to arrest the manufacturer Leboure, of
            Lyons, and put him into a post-chaise, under the care of two
            gendarmes, who were to see him safe to Lyons, where he was to sign a
            promise of not returning to Paris without the permission of
            Government, being suspected of stockjobbing (agiotage). Everything
            succeeded according to the proposal of Caulincourt, and Louis found
            Madame Leboure crying in his saloon. It is said that she promised to
            surrender her virtue upon condition of only once more seeing her
            husband, to be certain that he was not murdered, but that Louis
            refused, and obtained by brutal force, and the assistance of his
            infamous associates, that conquest over her honour which had not
            been yielded to his entreaties or threats. His enjoyment, however,
            was but of short continuance; he had no sooner fallen asleep than
            his poor injured victim left the bed, and, flying into his anteroom,
            stabbed herself with his sword. On the next morning she was found a
            corpse, weltering in her blood. In the hope of burying this infamy
            in secrecy, her corpse was, on the next evening, when it was dark,
            put into a sack, and thrown into the river, where, being afterwards
            discovered, the police agents gave out that she had fallen the
            victim of assassins. But when Madame Leboure was thus seized at the
            opera, besides her husband, her parents and a brother were in her
            company, and the latter did not lose sight of the carriage in which
            his sister was placed till it had entered the hotel of Louis
            Bonaparte, where, on the next day, he, with his father, in vain
            claimed her. As soon as the husband was informed of the untimely end
            of his wife, he wrote a letter to her murderer, and shot himself
            immediately afterwards through the head, but his own head was not
            the place where he should have sent the bullet; to destroy with it
            the cause of his wretchedness would only have been an act of
            retaliation, in a country where power forces the law to lie dormant,
            and where justice is invoked in vain when the criminal is powerful.
          </p>
          <p>
            I have said that this intrigue, as it is styled by courtesy in our
            fashionable circles, amused one part of the Parisians; and I believe
            the word 'amuse' is not improperly employed in this instance. At a
            dozen parties where I have been since, this unfortunate adventure
            has always been an object of conversation, of witticisms, but not of
            blame, except at Madame Fouche's, where Madame Leboure was very much
            blamed indeed for having been so overnice, and foolishly scrupulous.
          </p>
          <p>
            Another intrigue of His Imperial Highness, which did not, indeed,
            end tragically, was related last night, at the tea-party of Madame
            Recamier. A man of the name of Deroux had lately been condemned by
            our criminal tribunal, for forging bills of exchange, to stand in
            the pillory six hours, and, after being marked with a hot iron on
            his shoulders, to work in the galleys for twenty years. His
            daughter, a young girl under fifteen, who lived with her grandmother
            (having lost her mother), went, accompanied by the old lady, and
            presented a petition to Louis, in favour of her father. Her youth
            and modesty, more than her beauty, inspired the unprincipled
            libertine with a desire of ruining innocence, under the colour of
            clemency to guilt. He ordered her to call on his chamberlain,
            Darinsson, in an hour, and she should obtain an answer. There,
            either seduced by paternal affection, intimidated by threats, or
            imposed upon by delusive and engaging promises, she exchanged her
            virtue for an order of release for her parent; and so satisfied was
            Louis with his bargain that he added her to the number of his
            regular mistresses.
          </p>
          <p>
            As soon as Deroux had recovered his liberty, he visited his daughter
            in her new situation, where he saw an order of Louis, on the
            Imperial Treasury, for twelve thousand livres&mdash;destined to pay
            the upholsterer who had furnished her apartment. This gave him, no
            doubt, the idea of making the Prince pay a higher value for his
            child, and he forged another order for sixty thousand livres&mdash;so
            closely resembling it that it was without suspicion acquitted by the
            Imperial Treasurer. Possessing this money, he fabricated a pass, in
            the name of Louis, as a courier carrying despatches to the Emperor
            in Germany, with which he set out, and arrived safe on the other
            side of the Rhine. His forgeries were only discovered after he had
            written a letter from Frankfort to Louis, acquitting his daughter of
            all knowledge of what he had done. In the first moment of anger, her
            Imperial lover ordered her to be arrested, but he has since forgiven
            her, and taken her back to his favour. This trick of Deroux has
            pleased Fouche, who long opposed his release, from a knowledge of
            his dangerous talent and vicious character. He had once before
            released himself with a forged order from the Minister of Police,
            whose handwriting he had only seen for a minute upon his own mandate
            of imprisonment.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XXIV.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, October, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;Though loudly complained of by the Cabinet of St.
            Cloud, the Cabinet of St. Petersburg has conducted itself in these
            critical times with prudence without weakness, and with firmness
            without obstinacy. In its connections with our Government it has
            never lost sight of its own dignity, and, therefore, never endured
            without resentment those impertinent innovations in the etiquette of
            our Court, and in the manner and language of our Emperor to the
            representatives of legitimate Sovereigns. Had similar becoming
            sentiments directed the councils of all other Princes and the
            behaviour of their Ambassadors here, spirited remonstrances might
            have moderated the pretensions or passions of upstart vanity, while
            a forbearance and silence, equally impolitic and shameful, have
            augmented insolence by flattering the pride of an insupportable and
            outrageous ambition.
          </p>
          <p>
            The Emperor of Russia would not have been so well represented here,
            had he not been so wisely served and advised in his council chamber
            at St. Petersburg. Ignorance and folly commonly select fools for
            their agents, while genius and capacity employ men of their own
            mould, and of their own cast. It is a remarkable truth that,
            notwithstanding the frequent revolutions in Russia, since the death
            of Peter the First the ministerial helm has always been in able
            hands; the progressive and uninterrupted increase of the real and
            relative power of the Russian Empire evinces the reality of this
            assertion.
          </p>
          <p>
            The Russian Chancellor, Count Alexander Woronzoff, may be justly
            called the chief of political veterans, whether his talents or long
            services are considered. Catherine II., though a voluptuous
            Princess, was a great Sovereign, and a competent judge of merit; and
            it was her unbiased choice that seated Count Woronzoff, while yet
            young, in her councils. Though the intrigues of favourites have
            sometimes removed him, he always retired with the esteem of his
            Sovereign, and was recalled without caballing or cringing to return.
            He is admired by all who have the honour of approaching him, as much
            for his obliging condescension as for his great information. No
            petty views, no petty caprices, no petty vengeances find room in his
            generous bosom. He is known to have conferred benefactions, not only
            on his enemies, but on those who, at the very time, were meditating
            his destruction. His opinion is that a patriotic Minister should
            regard no others as his enemies but those conspiring against their
            country, and acknowledge no friends or favourites incapable of well
            serving the State. Prince de Z&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash; waited on
            him one day, and, after hesitating some time, began to compliment
            him on his liberal sentiments, and concluded by asking the place of
            a governor for his cousin, with whom he had reason to suppose the
            Count much offended. "I am happy," said His Excellency, "to oblige
            you, and to do my duty at the same time. Here is a libel he wrote
            against me, and presented to the Empress, who graciously has
            communicated it to me, in answer to my recommendation of him
            yesterday to the place you ask for him to-day. Read what I have
            written on the libel, and you will be convinced that it will not be
            my fault if he is not to-day a governor." In two hours afterwards
            the nomination was announced to Prince de Z&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;,
            who was himself at the head of a cabal against the Minister. In any
            country such an act would have been laudable, but where despotism
            rules with unopposed sway, it is both honourable and praiseworthy.
          </p>
          <p>
            Prince Adam Czartorinsky, the assistant of Count Woronzoff, and
            Minister of the foreign department, unites, with the vigour of
            youth, the experience of age. He has travelled in most countries of
            Europe, not solely to figure at Courts, to dance at balls, to look
            at pictures, or to collect curiosities, but to study the character
            of the people, the laws by which they are governed, and their moral
            or social influence with regard to their comforts or misery. He
            therefore brought back with him a stock of knowledge not to be
            acquired from books, but only found in the world by frequenting
            different and opposite societies with observation, penetration, and
            genius. With manners as polished as his mind is well informed, he
            not only, possesses the favour, but the friendship of his Prince,
            and, what is still more rare, is worthy of both. All Sovereigns have
            favourites, few ever had any friends; because it is more easy to
            flatter vanity, than to display a liberal disinterestedness; to bow
            meanly than to instruct or to guide with delicacy and dignity; to
            abuse the confidence of the Prince than to use it to his honour, and
            to the advantage of his Government.
          </p>
          <p>
            That such a Monarch as an Alexander, and such Ministers as Count
            Woronzoff and Prince Czartorinsky, should appoint a Count Markof to
            a high and important post, was not unexpected by any one not
            ignorant of his merit.
          </p>
          <p>
            Count Markof was, early in the reign of Catherine II., employed in
            the office of the foreign department at St. Petersburg, and was,
            whilst young, entrusted with several important negotiations at the
            Courts of Berlin and Vienna., when Prussia had proposed the first
            partition of Poland. He afterward went on his travels, from which he
            was recalled to fill the place of an Ambassador to the late King of
            Sweden, Gustavus III. He was succeeded, in 1784, at Stockholm, by
            Count Muschin Puschin, after being appointed a Secretary of State in
            his own country, a post he occupied with distinction, until the
            death of Catherine II., when Paul the First revenged upon him, as
            well as on most others of the faithful servants of this Princess,
            his discontent with his mother. He was then exiled to his estates,
            where he retired with the esteem of all those who had known him. In
            1801, immediately after his accession to the throne, Alexander
            invited Count Markof to his Court and Council, and the trusty but
            difficult task of representing a legitimate Sovereign at the Court
            of our upstart usurper was conferred on him. I imagine that I see
            the great surprise of this nobleman, when, for the first time, he
            entered the audience-chamber of our little great man, and saw him
            fretting, staring, swearing, abusing to right and to left, for one
            smile conferring twenty frowns, and for one civil word making use of
            fifty hard expressions, marching in the diplomatic audience as at
            the head of his troops, and commanding foreign Ambassadors as his
            French soldiers. I have heard that the report of Count Markof to his
            Court, describing this new and rare show, is a chef-d'oeuvre of wit,
            equally amusing and instructive. He is said to have requested of his
            Cabinet new and particular orders how to act&mdash;whether as the
            representative of an independent Sovereign, or, as most of the other
            members of the foreign diplomatic corps in France, like a valet of
            the First Consul; and that, in the latter case, he implored as a
            favour, an immediate recall; preferring, had he no other choice
            left, sooner to work in the mines at Siberia than to wear, in France
            the disgraceful fetters of a Bonaparte. His subsequent dignified
            conduct proves the answer of his Court.
          </p>
          <p>
            Talleyrand's craft and dissimulation could not delude the sagacity
            of Count Markof, who was, therefore, soon less liked by the Minister
            than by the First Consul. All kind of low, vulgar, and revolutionary
            chicanery was made use of to vex or to provoke the Russian
            Ambassador. Sometimes he was reproached with having emigrants in his
            service; another time protection was refused to one of his
            secretaries, under pretence that he was a Sardinian subject. Russian
            travellers were insulted, and detained on the most frivolous
            pretences. Two Russian noblemen were even arrested on our side of
            the Rhine, because Talleyrand had forgotten to sign his name to
            their passes, which were otherwise in order. The fact was that our
            Minister suspected them of carrying some papers which he wanted to
            see, and, therefore, wrote his name with an ink of such a
            composition that, after a certain number of days, everything written
            with it disappeared. Their effects and papers were strictly searched
            by an agent preceding them from this capital, but nothing was found,
            our Minister being misinformed by his spies.
          </p>
          <p>
            When Count Markof left Sweden, he carried with him an actress of the
            French theatre at Stockholm, Madame Hus, an Alsatian by birth, but
            who had quitted her country twelve years before the Revolution, and
            could, therefore, never be included among emigrants. She had
            continued as a mistress with this nobleman, is the mother of several
            children by him, and an agreeable companion to him, who has never
            been married. As I have often said, Talleyrand is much obliged to
            any foreign diplomatic agent who allows him to be the indirect
            provider or procurer of his mistresses. After in vain tempting Count
            Markof with new objects, he introduced to the acquaintance of Madame
            Hus some of his female emissaries. Their manoeuvres, their
            insinuations, and even their presents were all thrown away. The lady
            remained the faithful friend, and therefore refused with indignation
            to degrade herself into a spy on her lover. Our Minister then first
            discovered that, not only was Madame Hus an emigrant, but had been a
            great benefactress and constant companion of emigrants at St.
            Petersburg, and, of course, deserved to be watched, if not punished.
            Count Markof is reported to have said to Talleyrand on this grave
            subject, in the presence of two other foreign Ambassadors:
          </p>
          <p>
            "Apropos! what shall I do to prevent my poor Madame Hus from being
            shot as an emigrant, and my poor children from becoming prematurely
            orphans?"
          </p>
          <p>
            "Monsieur," said our diplomatic oracle, "she should have petitioned
            the First Consul for a permission to return, to France before she
            entered it; but out of regard for you, if she is prudent, she will
            not, I daresay, be troubled by our Government."
          </p>
          <p>
            "I should be sorry if she was not," replied the Count, with a
            significant look; and here this grand affair ended, to the great
            entertainment of those foreign agents who dared to smile or to
            laugh.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XXV.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, October, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;The Legion of Honour, though only proclaimed upon
            Bonaparte's assumption of the Imperial rank, dates from the first
            year of his consulate. To prepare the public mind for a progressive
            elevation of himself, and for consequential distinctions among all
            classes of his subjects, he distributed among the military, arms of
            honour, to which were attached precedence and privileges granted by
            him, and, therefore, liable to cease with his power or life. The
            number of these arms increased in proportion to the approach of the
            period fixed for the change of his title and the erection of his
            throne. When he judged them numerous enough to support his changes,
            he made all these wearers of arms of honour knights. Never before
            were so many chevaliers created en masse; they amounted to no less
            than twenty-two thousand four hundred, distributed in the different
            corps of different armies, but principally in the army of England.
            To these were afterwards joined five thousand nine hundred civil
            functionaries, men of letters, artists, etc. To remove, however, all
            ideas of equality, even among the members of the Legion of Honour,
            they were divided into four classes&mdash;grand officers,
            commanders, officers, and simple legionaries.
          </p>
          <p>
            Every one who has observed Bonaparte's incessant endeavours to
            intrude himself among the Sovereigns of Europe, was convinced that
            he would cajole, or force, as many of them as he could into his
            revolutionary knighthood; but I heard men, who are not ignorant of
            the selfishness and corruption of our times, deny the possibility of
            any independent Prince suffering his name to be registered among
            criminals of every description, from the thief who picked the
            pockets of his fellow citizens in the street, down to the regicide
            who sat in judgment and condemned his King; from the plunderers who
            have laid waste provinces, republics, and kingdoms, down to the
            assassins who shot, drowned, or guillotined their countrymen en
            masse. For my part, I never had but one opinion, and, unfortunately,
            it has turned out a just one. I always was convinced that those
            Princes who received other presents from Bonaparte could have no
            plausible excuse to decline his ribands, crosses, and stars. But who
            could have presumed to think that, in return for these blood-stained
            baubles, they would have sacrificed those honourable and dignified
            ornaments which, for ages past, have been the exclusive distinction
            of what birth had exalted, virtue made eminent, talents conspicuous,
            honour illustrious, or valour meritorious? Who would have dared to
            say that the Prussian Eagle and the Spanish Golden Fleece should
            thus be prostituted, thus polluted? I do not mean by this remark to
            throw any blame on the conferring those and other orders on Napoleon
            Bonaparte, or even on his brothers; I know it is usual, between
            legitimate Sovereigns in alliance, sometimes to exchange their
            knighthoods; but to debase royal orders so much as to present them
            to a Cambaceres, a Talleyrand, a Fouche, a Bernadotte, a Fesch, and
            other vile and criminal wretches, I do not deny to have excited my
            astonishment as well as my indignation. What honest&mdash;I do not
            say what noble&mdash;subjects of Prussia, or of Spain, will
            hereafter think themselves rewarded for their loyalty, industry,
            patriotism, or zeal, when they remember that their Sovereigns have
            nothing to give but what the rebel has obtained, the robber worn,
            the murderer vilified, and the regicide debased?
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="pb214" id="pb214"></a>
          <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
            <img alt="pb214.jpg (55K)" src="images/pb214.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
          </div>
          <br /><br /><br /><br />
          <p>
            The number of grand officers of the Legion of Honour does not yet
            amount to more than eighty, according to a list circulated at Milan
            last spring, of which I have seen a copy. Of these grand officers,
            three had been shoemakers, two tailors, four bakers, four barbers,
            six friars, eight abbes, six officers, three pedlers, three
            chandlers, seven drummers, sixteen soldiers, and eight regicides;
            four were lawful Kings, and the six others, Electors or Princes of
            the most ancient houses in Europe. I have looked over our, own
            official list, and, as far as I know, the calculation is exact, both
            with regard to the number and to the quality.
          </p>
          <p>
            This new institution of knighthood produced a singular effect on my
            vain and giddy, countrymen, who, for twelve years before, had
            scarcely seen a star or a riband, except those of foreign
            Ambassadors, who were frequently insulted when wearing them. It
            became now the fashion to be a knight, and those who really were not
            so, put pinks, or rather blooms, or flowers of a darker red, in
            their buttonholes, so as to resemble, and to be taken at a distance
            for, the red ribands of the members of the Legion of Honour.
          </p>
          <p>
            A man of the name of Villeaume, an engraver by profession, took
            advantage of this knightly fashion and mania, and sold for four
            louis d'or, not only the stars, but pretended letters of knighthood,
            said to be procured by his connection with persons of the household
            of the Emperor. In a month's time, according to a register kept by
            him, he had made twelve hundred and fifty knights. When his fraud
            was discovered, he was already out of the way, safe with his money;
            and, notwithstanding the researches of the police, has not since
            been taken.
          </p>
          <p>
            A person calling himself Baron von Rinken, a subject and an agent of
            one of the many Princes of Hohenlohe, according to his own
            assertion, arrived here with real letters and patents of knighthood,
            which he offered for sale for three hundred livres. The stars of
            this Order were as large as the star of the grand officers of the
            Legion of Honour, and nearly resembled it; but the ribands were of a
            different colour. He had already disposed of a dozen of these stars,
            when he was taken up by the police and shut up in the Temple, where
            he still remains. Four other agents of inferior petty German Princes
            have also been arrested for offering the Orders of their Sovereigns
            for sale.
          </p>
          <p>
            A Captain Rouvais, who received six wounds in his campaign under
            Pichegru in 1794, wore the star of the Legion of Honour without
            being nominated a knight. He has been tried by a military
            commission, deprived of his pension, and condemned to four years'
            imprisonment in irons. He proved that he had presented fourteen
            petitions to Bonaparte for obtaining this mark of distinction, but
            in vain; while hundreds of others, who had hardly seen an enemy, or,
            at the most, made but one campaign, or been once wounded, had
            succeeded in their demands. As soon as sentence had been pronounced
            against him, he took a small pistol from his pocket, and shot
            himself through the head, saying, "Some one else will soon do the
            same for Bonaparte."
          </p>
          <p>
            A cobbler, of the name of Matthieu, either in a fit of madness or
            from hatred to the new order of things, decorated himself with the
            large riband of the Legion of Honour, and had an old star fastened
            on his coat. Thus accoutred, he went into the Palais Royal, in the
            middle of the day, got upon a chair, and began to speak to his
            audience of the absurdity of true republicans not being on a level,
            even under an Emperor, and putting on, like him, all his ridiculous
            ornaments. "We are here," said he, "either all grand officers, or
            there exist no grand officers at all; we have all fought and paid
            for liberty, and for the Revolution, as much as Bonaparte, and have,
            therefore, the same right and claim with him." Here a police agent
            and some gendarmes interrupted his eloquence by taking him into
            custody. When Fouche asked him what he meant by such rebellious
            behaviour, he replied that it was only a trial to see whether
            destiny had intended him to become an Emperor or to remain a
            cobbler. On the next day he was shot as a conspirator. I saw the
            unfortunate man in the Palais Royal; his eyes looked wild, and his
            words were often incoherent. He was certainly a subject more
            deserving a place in a madhouse than in a tomb.
          </p>
          <p>
            Cambaceres has been severely reprimanded by the Emperor for showing
            too much partiality for the Royal Prussian Black Eagle, by wearing
            it in preference to the Imperial Legion of Honour. He was given to
            understand that, except for four days in the year, the Imperial
            etiquette did not permit any subjects to display their knighthood of
            the Prussian Order. In Madame Bonaparte's last drawing-room, before
            His Imperial Majesty set out for the Rhine, he was ornamented with
            the Spanish, Neapolitan, Prussian, and Portuguese orders, together
            with those of the French Legion of Honour and of the Italian Iron
            Crown. I have seen the Emperor Paul, who was also an amateur of
            ribands and stars, but never with so many at once. I have just heard
            that the Grand Master of Malta has presented Napoleon with the Grand
            Cross of the Maltese Order. This is certainly a negative compliment
            to him, who, in July, 1798, officially declared to his then
            sectaries, the Turks and Mussulmans, "that the Grand Master,
            Commanders, Knights, and Order of Malta existed no more."
          </p>
          <p>
            I have heard it related for a certainty among our fashionable
            ladies, that the Empress of the French also intends to institute a
            new order of female knighthood, not of honour, but of confidence; of
            which all our Court ladies, all the wives of our generals, public
            functionaries, etc., are to be members. The Imperial Princesses of
            the Bonaparte family are to be hereditary grand officers, together
            with as many foreign Empresses, Queens, Princesses, Countesses, and
            Baronesses as can be bayoneted into this revolutionary sisterhood.
            Had the Continent remained tranquil, it would already have been
            officially announced by a Senatus Consultum. I should suppose that
            Madame Bonaparte, with her splendid Court and brilliant retinue of
            German Princes and Electors at Strasburg, need only say the word to
            find hundreds of princely recruits for her knighthood in petto. Her
            mantle, as a Grand Mistress of the Order of CONFIDENCE, has been
            already embroidered at Lyons, and those who have seen it assert that
            it is truly superb. The diamonds of the star on the mantle are
            valued at six hundred thousand livres.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XXVI.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, October, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;Since Bonaparte's departure for Germany, fifteen
            individuals have been brought here, chained, from La Vendee and the&mdash;Western
            Departments, and are imprisoned in the Temple. Their crime is not
            exactly known, but private letters from those countries relate that
            they were recruiting for another insurrection, and that some of them
            were entrusted as Ambassadors from their discontented countrymen to
            Louis XVIII. to ask for his return to France, and for the assistance
            of Russia, Sweden, and England to support his claims.
          </p>
          <p>
            These are, however, reports to which I do not affix much credit. Had
            the prisoners in the Temple been guilty, or only accused of such
            crimes, they would long ago have been tortured, tried, and executed,
            or executed without a trial. I suppose them mere hostages arrested
            by our Government, as security for the tranquillity of the Chouan
            Departments during our armies' occupation elsewhere. We have,
            nevertheless, two movable columns of six thousand men each in the
            country, or in its vicinity, and it would be not only impolitic, but
            a cruelty, to engage or allure the unfortunate people of these
            wretched countries into any plots, which, situated as affairs now
            are, would be productive of great and certain evil to them, without
            even the probability of any benefit to the cause of royalty and of
            the Bourbons. I do not mean to say that there are not those who
            rebel against Bonaparte's tyranny, or that the Bourbons have no
            friends; on the contrary, the latter are not few, and the former
            very numerous. But a kind of apathy, the effect of unavailing
            resistance to usurpation and oppression, has seized on most minds,
            and annihilated what little remained of our never very great public
            spirit. We are tired of everything, even of our existence, and care
            no more whether we are governed by a Maximilian Robespierre or by a
            Napoleon Bonaparte, by a Barras or by Louis XVIII. Except, perhaps,
            among the military, or among some ambitious schemers, remnants of
            former factions, I do not believe a Moreau, a Macdonald, a Lucien
            Bonaparte, or any person exiled by the Emperor, and formerly
            popular, could collect fifty trusty conspirators in all France; at
            least, as long as our armies are victorious, and organized in their
            present formidable manner. Should anything happen to our present
            chief, an impulse may be given to the minds now sunk down, and raise
            our characters from their present torpid state. But until such an
            event, we shall remain as we are, indolent but submissive,
            sacrificing our children and treasures for a cause we detest, and
            for a man we abhor. I am sorry to say it, but it certainly does, no
            honour to my nation when one million desperados of civil and
            military banditti are suffered to govern, tyrannize, and pillage, at
            their ease and undisturbed, thirty millions of people, to whom their
            past crimes are known, and who have every reason to apprehend their
            future wickedness.
          </p>
          <p>
            This astonishing resignation (if I can call it so, and if it does
            not deserve a worse name), is so much the more incomprehensible, as
            the poverty of the higher and middle classes is as great as the
            misery of the people, and, except those employed under Bonaparte,
            and some few upstart contractors or army commissaries, the greatest
            privations must be submitted to in order to pay the enormous taxes
            and make a decent appearance. I know families of five, six, and
            seven persons, who formerly were wealthy, and now have for a scanty
            subsistence an income of twelve or eighteen hundred livres&mdash;per
            year, with which they are obliged to live as they can, being
            deprived of all the resource that elsewhere labour offers to the
            industrious, and all the succours compassion bestows on the
            necessitous. You know that here all trade and all commerce are at a
            stand or destroyed, and the hearts of our modern rich are as
            unfeeling as their manners are vulgar and brutal.
          </p>
          <p>
            A family of ci-devant nobles of my acquaintance, once possessing a
            revenue of one hundred and fifty thousand livres&mdash;subsist now
            on fifteen hundred livres&mdash;per year; and this sum must support
            six individuals&mdash;the father and mother, with four children! It
            does so, indeed, by an arrangement of only one poor meal in the day;
            a dinner four times, and a supper three times, in the week. They
            endure their distress with tolerable cheerfulness, though in the
            same street, where they occupy the garrets of a house, resides, in
            an elegant hotel, a man who was once their groom, but who is now a
            tribune, and has within these last twelve years, as a conventional
            deputy, amassed, in his mission to Brabant and Flanders, twelve
            millions of livres. He has kindly let my friend understand that his
            youngest daughter might be received as a chambermaid to his wife,
            being informed that she has a good education. All the four daughters
            are good musicians, good drawers, and very able with their needles.
            By their talents they supported their parents and themselves during
            their emigration in Germany; but here these are of but little use or
            advantage. Those upstarts who want instruction or works of this sort
            apply to the first, most renowned, and fashionable masters or
            mistresses; while others, and those the greatest number, cannot
            afford even to pay the inferior ones and the most cheap. This family
            is one of the many that regret having returned from their
            emigration. But, you may ask, why do they not go back again to
            Germany? First, it would expose them to suspicion, and, perhaps, to
            ruin, were they to demand passes; and if this danger or difficulty
            were removed, they have no money for such a long journey.
          </p>
          <p>
            But this sort of penury and wretchedness is also common with the
            families of the former wealthy merchants and tradesmen. Paper money,
            a maximum, and requisitions, have reduced those that did not share
            in the crimes and pillage of the Revolution, as much as the
            proscribed nobility. And, contradictory as it may seem, the number
            of persons employed in commercial speculations has more than tripled
            since we experienced a general stagnation of trade, the consequence
            of war, of want of capital, protection, encouragement, and
            confidence; but one of the magazines of 1789 contained more goods
            and merchandize than twenty modern magazines put together. The
            expenses of these new merchants are, however, much greater than
            sixteen years ago, the profit less, and the credit still less than
            the profit. Hence numerous bankruptcies, frauds, swindling,
            forgeries, and other evils of immorality, extravagance, and misery.
            The fair and honest dealers suffer most from the intrusion of these
            infamous speculators, who expecting, like other vile men wallowing
            in wealth under their eyes, to make rapid fortunes, and to escape
            detection as well as punishment&mdash;commit crimes to soothe
            disappointment. Nothing is done but for ready money, and even
            bankers' bills, or bills accepted by bankers, are not taken in
            payment before the signatures are avowed by the parties concerned.
            You can easily conceive what confusion, what expenses, and what;
            loss of time these precautions must occasion; but the numerous
            forgeries and fabrications have made them absolutely necessary.
          </p>
          <p>
            The farmers and landholders are better off, but they also complain
            of the heavy taxes, and low price paid for what they bring to the
            market, which frequently, for want of ready money, remains long
            unsold. They take nothing but cash in payment; for, notwithstanding
            the endeavours of our Government, the notes of the Bank of France
            have never been in circulation among them. They have also been
            subject to losses by the fluctuation of paper money, by extortions,
            requisitions, and by the maximum. In this class of my countrymen
            remains still some little national spirit and some independence of
            character; but these are far from being favourable to Bonaparte, or
            to the Imperial Government, which the yearly increase of taxes, and,
            above all, the conscription, have rendered extremely odious. You may
            judge of the great difference in the taxation of lands and landed
            property now and under our Kings, when I inform you that a friend of
            mine, who, in 1792, possessed, in one of the Western Departments,
            twenty-one farms, paid less in contribution for them all than he
            does now for the three farms he has recovered from the wreck of his
            fortune.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XXVII.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, October, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;In a military empire, ruled by a military despot, it
            is a necessary policy that the education of youth should also be
            military. In all our public schools or prytanees, a boy, from the
            moment of entering, is registered in a company, and regularly
            drilled, exercised, and reviewed, punished for neglect or fault
            according to martial law, and advanced if displaying genius or
            application. All our private schools that wish for the protection of
            Government are forced to submit to the same military rules, and,
            therefore, most of our conscripts, so far from being recruits, are
            fit for any service as soon as put into requisition. The fatal
            effects to the independence of Europe to be dreaded from this sole
            innovation, I apprehend, have been too little considered by other
            nations. A great Power, that can, without obstacle, and with but
            little expense, in four weeks increase its disposable military force
            from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and eighty thousand young
            men, accustomed to military duty from their youth, must finally
            become the master of all other or rival Powers, and dispose at
            leisure of empires, kingdoms, principalities, and republics. NOTHING
            CAN SAVE THEM BUT THE ADOPTION OF SIMILAR MEASURES FOR THEIR
            PRESERVATION AS HAVE BEEN ADOPTED FOR THEIR SUBJUGATION.
          </p>
          <p>
            When l'Etat Militaire for the year 13 (a work containing the
            official statement of our military forces) was presented to
            Bonaparte by Berthier, the latter said: "Sire, I lay before Your
            Majesty the book of the destiny of the world, which your hands
            direct as the sovereign guide of the armies of your empire." This
            compliment is a truth, and therefore no flattery. It might as justly
            have been addressed to a Moreau, a Macdonald, a Le Courbe, or to any
            other general, as to Bonaparte, because a superior number of well
            disciplined troops, let them be well or even indifferently
            commanded, will defeat those inferior in number. Three to one would
            even overpower an army of giants. Add to it the unity of plans, of
            dispositions, and of execution, which Bonaparte enjoys exclusively
            over such a great number of troops, while ten, or perhaps fifty,
            will direct or contradict every movement of his opponents. I tremble
            when I meditate on Berthier's assertion; may I never live to see it
            realized, and to see all hitherto independent nations prostrated,
            acknowledge that Bonaparte and destiny are the same, and the same
            distributor of good and evil.
          </p>
          <p>
            One of the bad consequences of this our military education of youth
            is a total absence of all religious and moral lessons. Arnaud had,
            last August, the courage to complain of this infamous neglect, in
            the National Institute. "The youth," said he, "receive no other
            instruction but lessons to march, to fire, to bow, to dance, to sit,
            to lie, and to impose with a good grace. I do not ask for Spartans
            or Romans, but we want Athenians, and our schools are only forming
            Sybarites." Within twenty-four hours afterwards, Arnaud was visited
            by a police agent, accompanied by two gendarmes, with an order
            signed by Fouche, which condemned him to reside at Orleans, and not
            to return to Paris without the permission of the Government,&mdash;a
            punishment regarded here as very moderate for such an indiscreet
            zeal.
          </p>
          <p>
            A schoolmaster at Auteuil, near this capital, of the name of Gouron,
            had a private seminary, organized upon the footing of our former
            colleges. In some few months he was offered more pupils than he
            could well attend to, and his house shortly became very fashionable,
            even for our upstarts, who sent their children there in preference.
            He was ordered before Fouche last Christmas, and commanded to change
            the hours hitherto employed in teaching religion and morals, to a
            military exercise and instruction, as both more necessary and more
            salubrious for French youth. Having replied that such an alteration
            was contrary to his plan and agreement with the parents of his
            scholars, the Minister stopped him short by telling him that he must
            obey what had been prescribed by Government, or stand the
            consequences of his refractory spirit. Having consulted with his
            friends and patrons, he divided the hours, and gave half of the time
            usually allotted to religion or morality to the study of military
            exercise. His pupils, however, remained obstinate, broke the drum,
            and tore and burnt the colours he had bought. As this was not his
            fault, he did not expect any further disturbance, particularly after
            having reported to the police both his obedience and the unforeseen
            result. But last March his house was suddenly surrounded in the
            night by gendarmes, and some police agents entered it. All the boys
            were ordered to dress and to pack up their effects, and to follow
            the gendarmes to several other schools, where the Government had
            placed them, and of which their parents would be informed. Gouron,
            his wife, four ushers, and six servants, were all arrested and
            carried to the police office, where Fouche, after reproaching them
            for their fanatical behaviour, as he termed it, told them, as they
            were so fond of teaching religious and moral duties, a suitable
            situation had been provided for them in Cayenne, where the negroes
            stood sadly in need of their early arrival, for which reason they
            would all set out on that very morning for Rochefort. When Gouron
            asked what was to become of his property, furniture, etc., he was
            told that his house was intended by Government for a preparatory
            school, and would, with its contents, be purchased, and the amount
            paid him in lands in Cayenne. It is not necessary to say that this
            example of Imperial justice had the desired effect on all other
            refractory private schoolmasters.
          </p>
          <p>
            The parents of Gouron's pupils were, with a severe reprimand,
            informed where their sons had been placed, and where they would be
            educated in a manner agreeable to the Emperor, who recommended them
            not to remove them, without a previous notice to the police. A
            hatter, of the name of Maille, however, ordered his son home,
            because he had been sent to a dearer school than the former. In his
            turn he was carried before the police, and, after a short
            examination of a quarter of an hour, was permitted, with his wife
            and two children, to join their friend Gouron at Rochefort, and to
            settle with him at Cayenne, where lands would also be given him for
            his property, in France. These particulars were related to me by a
            neighbour whose son had, for two years previous to this, been under
            Gouron's care, but who was now among those placed out by our
            Government. The boy's present master, he said, was a man of a
            notoriously bad and immoral character; but he was intimidated, and
            weak enough to remain contented, preferring, no doubt, his personal
            safety to the future happiness of his child. In your country, you
            little comprehend what a valuable instrument terror has been in the
            hands of our rulers since the Revolution, and how often fear has
            been mistaken abroad for affection and content.
          </p>
          <p>
            All these minutiae and petty vexations, but great oppressions, of
            petty tyrants, you may easily guess, take up a great deal of time,
            and that, therefore, a Minister of Police, though the most powerful,
            is also the most occupied of his colleagues. So he certainly is,
            but, last year, a new organization of this Ministry was regulated by
            Bonaparte; and Fouche was allowed, as assistants, four Counsellors
            of State, and an augmentation of sixty-four police commissaries. The
            French Empire was then divided into four arrondissements, with
            regard to the general police, not including Paris and its vicinity,
            inspected by a prefect of police under the Minister. Of the first of
            these arrondissements, the Counsellor of State, Real, is a kind of
            Deputy Minister; the Counsellor of State, Miot, is the same of the
            second; the Counsellor of State, Pelet de la Lozere, of the third;
            and the Counsellor of State, Dauchy, of the fourth. The secret
            police agents, formerly called spies, were also considerably
            increased.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XXVIII.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, October, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;Before Bonaparte set out for the Rhine, the Pope's
            Nuncio was for the first time publicly rebuked by him in Madame
            Bonaparte's drawing-room, and ordered loudly to write to Rome and
            tell His Holiness to think himself fortunate in continuing to govern
            the Ecclesiastical States, without interfering with the
            ecclesiastical arrangements that might be thought necessary or
            proper by the Government in France.
          </p>
          <p>
            Bonaparte's policy is to promote among the first dignitaries of the
            Gallican Church the brothers or relatives of his civil or military
            supporters; Cambacere's brother is, therefore, an Archbishop and
            Cardinal, and one of Lebrun's, and two of Berthier's cousins are
            Bishops. As, however, the relatives of these Senators, Ministers, or
            generals, have, like themselves, figured in many of the scandalous
            and blasphemous scenes of the Revolution, the Pope has sometimes
            hesitated about sanctioning their promotions. This was the case last
            summer, when General Dessolles's brother was transferred from the
            Bishopric of Digne to that of Chambry, and Bonaparte nominated for
            his successor the brother of General Miollis, who was a curate of
            Brignoles, in the diocese of Aix. This curate had not only been one
            of the first to throw up his letters of priesthood at the Jacobin
            Club at Aix, but had also sacrilegiously denied the divinity of the
            Christian religion, and proposed, in imitation of Parisian atheists,
            the worship of a Goddess of Reason in a common prostitute with whom
            he lived. The notoriety of these abominations made even his
            parishioners at Brignoles unwilling to go to church, and to regard
            him as their pastor, though several of them had been imprisoned,
            fined, and even transported as fanatics, or as refractory.
          </p>
          <p>
            During the negotiation with Cardinal Fesch last year, the Pope had
            been promised, among other things, that, for the future, his
            conscience should not be wounded by having presented to him for the
            prelacy any persons but those of the purest morals of the French
            Empire; and that all his objections should be attended to, in case
            of promotions; his scruples removed, or his refusal submitted to.
            When Cardinal Fesch demanded His Holiness's Bull for the curate
            Miollis, the Cardinal Secretary of State, Gonsalvi, showed no less
            than twenty acts of apostasy and blasphemy, which made him unworthy
            of such a dignity. To this was replied that, having obtained an
            indulgence in toto for what was past, he was a proper subject; above
            all, as he had the protection of the Emperor of the French. The
            Pope's Nuncio here then addressed himself to our Minister of the
            Ecclesiastical Department, Portalis, who advised him not to speak to
            Bonaparte of a matter upon which his mind had been made up; he,
            nevertheless, demanded an audience, and it was in consequence of
            this request that he, in his turn, became acquainted with the new
            Imperial etiquette and new Imperial jargon towards the
            representatives of Sovereigns. On the same evening the Nuncio
            expedited a courier to Rome, and I have heard to-day that the
            nomination of Miollis is confirmed by the Pope.
          </p>
          <p>
            From this relatively trifling occurrence, His Holiness might judge
            of the intention of our Government to adhere to its other
            engagements; but at Rome, as well as in most other Continental
            capitals, the Sovereign is the dupe of the perversity of his
            Counsellors and Ministers, who are the tools, and not seldom the
            pensioners, of the Cabinet of St. Cloud.
          </p>
          <p>
            But in the kingdom of Italy the parishes and dioceses are, if
            possible, still worse served than in this country. Some of the
            Bishops there, after having done duty in the National Guards, worn
            the Jacobin cap, and fought against their lawful Prince, now live in
            open adultery; and, from their intrigues, are the terror of all the
            married part of their flock. The Bishop of Pavia keeps the wife of a
            merchant, by whom he has two children; and, that the public may not
            be mistaken as to their real father, the merchant received a sum of
            money to establish himself at Brescia, and has not seen his wife for
            these two years past. General Gourion, who was last spring in Italy,
            has assured me that he read the advertisement of a curate after his
            concubine, who had eloped with another curate; and that the Police
            Minister at Milan openly licensed women to be the housekeepers of
            priests.
          </p>
          <p>
            A grand vicar, Sarini, at Bologna, was, in 1796, a friar, but
            relinquished then the convent for the tent, and exchanged the
            breviary for the musket. He married a nun of one cloister, from whom
            he procured a divorce in a month, to unite himself with an Abbess of
            another, deserted by him in her turn for the wife of an innkeeper,
            who robbed and eloped from her husband. Last spring he returned to
            the bosom of the Church, and, by making our Empress a present of a
            valuable diamond cross, of which he had pillaged the statue of a
            Madonna, he obtained the dignity of a grand vicar, to the great
            edification, no doubt, of all those who had seen him before the
            altar or in the camp, at the brothel, or in the hospital.
          </p>
          <p>
            Another grand vicar of the same Bishop, in the same city, of the
            name of Rami, has two of his illegitimate children as singing-boys
            in the same cathedral where he officiates as a priest. Their mother
            is dead, but her daughter, by another priest, is now their father's
            mistress. This incestuous commerce is so little concealed that the
            girl does the honours of the grand vicar's house, and, with naivete
            enough, tells the guests and visitors of her happiness in having
            succeeded her mother. I have this anecdote from an officer who heard
            her make use of that expression.
          </p>
          <p>
            In France, our priests, I fear, are equally as debauched and
            unprincipled; but, in yielding to their vicious propensities, they
            take care to save the appearance of virtue, and, though their guilt
            is the same, the scandal is less. Bonaparte pretends to be severe
            against all those ecclesiastics who are accused of any
            irregularities after having made their peace with the Church. A
            curate of Picardy, suspected of gallantry, and another of Normandy,
            accused of inebriety, were last month, without further trial or
            ceremony than the report of the Minister Portalis, delivered over to
            Fouche, who transported them to Cayenne, after they had been
            stripped of their gowns. At the same time, Cardinal Cambaceres and
            Cardinal Fesch, equally notorious for their excesses, were taken no
            notice of, except that they were laughed at in our Court circles.
          </p>
          <p>
            I am, almost every day, more and more convinced that our Government
            is totally indifferent about what becomes of our religious
            establishment when the present race of priests is extinguished;
            which, in the course of nature, must happen in less than thirty
            years. Our military system and our military education discourage all
            young men from entering into orders; while, at the same time, the
            army is both more honourable and more profitable than the Church.
            Already we want curates, though several have been imported from
            Germany and Spain, and, in some departments, four, and even six
            parishes have only one curate to serve them all. The Bishops exhort,
            and the parents advise their children to study theology; but then
            the law of conscription obliges the student of theology, as well as
            the student of philosophy, to march together; and, when once in the
            ranks, and accustomed to the licentiousness of a military life, they
            are either unwilling, unfit, or unworthy to return to anything else.
            The Pope, with all his entreaties, and with all his prayers, was
            unable to procure an exception from the conscription of young men
            preparing themselves for priesthood. Bonaparte always answered:
            "Holy Father, were I to consent to your demand, I should soon have
            an army of priests, instead of an army of soldiers." Our Emperor is
            not unacquainted with the real character and spirit of his
            Volunteers. When the Pope represented the danger of religion
            expiring in France, for want of priests to officiate at the altars,
            he was answered that Bonaparte, at the beginning of his consulate,
            found neither altars nor priests in France; that if his reign
            survived the latter, the former would always be standing, and
            survive his reign. He trusted that the chief of the Church would
            prevent them from being deserted. He assured him that when once he
            had restored the liberties of the seas, and an uninterrupted
            tranquillity on the Continent, he should attend more, and perhaps
            entirely, to the affairs of the Church. He consented, however, that
            the Pope might institute, in the Ecclesiastical States, a seminary
            for two hundred young Frenchmen, whom he would exempt from military
            conscription. This is the stock from which our Church establishment
            is to be supplied!
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XXIX.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, October, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;The short journey of Count von Haugwitz to Vienna,
            and the long stay of our Imperial Grand Marshal, Duroc, at Berlin,
            had already caused here many speculations, not quite corresponding
            with the views and, perhaps, interests of our Court, when our
            violation of the Prussian territory made our courtiers exclaim:
            "This act proves that the Emperor of the French is in a situation to
            bid defiance to all the world, and, therefore, no longer courts the
            neutrality of a Prince whose power is merely artificial; who has
            indemnities to restore, but no delicacy, no regard to claims." Such
            was the language of those very men who, a month before, declared
            "that His Prussian Majesty held the balance of peace or war in his
            hands; that he was in a position in which no Prussian Monarch ever
            was before; that while his neutrality preserved the tranquillity of
            the North of Germany, the South of Europe would soon be indebted to
            his powerful mediation for the return of peace."
          </p>
          <p>
            The real cause of this alteration in our courtiers' political jargon
            has not yet been known; but I think it may easily be discovered
            without any official publication. Bonaparte had the adroitness to
            cajole the Cabinet of Berlin into his interest, in the first month
            of his consulate, notwithstanding his own critical situation, as
            well as the critical situation of France; and he has ever since
            taken care both to attach it to his triumphal car and to inculpate
            it indirectly in his outrages and violations. Convinced, as he
            thought, of the selfishness which guided all its resolutions, all
            his attacks and invasions against the law of nations, or
            independence of States, were either preceded or followed with some
            offers of aggrandizement, of indemnity, of subsidy, or of alliance.
            His political intriguers were generally more successful in Prussia
            than his military heroes in crossing the Rhine or the Elbe, in
            laying the Hanse Towns under contribution, or in occupying Hanover;
            or, rather, all these acts of violence and injustice were merely the
            effects of his ascendency in Prussia. When it is, besides,
            remembered what provinces Prussia accepted from his bounty, what
            exchange of presents, of ribands, of private letters passed between
            Napoleon the First and Frederick William III., between the Empress
            of the French and the Queen of Prussia, it is not surprising if the
            Cabinet of St. Cloud thought itself sure of the submission of the
            Cabinet of Berlin, and did not esteem it enough to fear it, or to
            think that it would have spirit enough to resent, or even honour to
            feel, the numerous Provocations offered.
          </p>
          <p>
            Whatever Bonaparte and Talleyrand write or assert to the contrary,
            their gifts are only the wages of their contempt, and they despise
            more that State they thus reward than those nations at whose expense
            they are liberal, and with whose spoil they delude selfishness or
            meanness into their snares. The more legitimate Sovereigns descend
            from their true dignity, and a liberal policy, the nearer they
            approach the baseness of usurpation and the Machiavellism of
            rebellion. Like other upstarts, they never suffer an equal. If you
            do not keep yourself above them, they will crush you beneath them.
            If they have no reason to fear you, they will create some quarrel to
            destroy you.
          </p>
          <p>
            It is said here that Duroc's journey to Berlin was merely to demand
            a passage for the French troops through the Prussian territory in
            Franconia, and to prevent the Russian troops from passing through
            the Prussian territory in Poland. This request is such as might have
            been expected from our Emperor and his Minister. Whether, however,
            the tone in which this curious negotiation with a neutral power was
            begun, or that, at last, the generosity of the Russian Monarch
            awakened a sense of duty in the Cabinet of Berlin, the arrival of
            our pacific envoy was immediately followed with warlike
            preparations. Fortunate, indeed, was it for Prussia to have resorted
            to her military strength instead of trusting any longer to our
            friendly assurances. The disasters that have since befallen the
            Austrian armies in Suabia, partly occasioned by our forced marches
            through neutral Prussia, would otherwise soon have been felt in
            Westphalia, in Brandenburgh, and in Pomerania. But should His
            Prussian Majesty not order his troops to act in conjunction with
            Russia, Austria, England, and Sweden, and that very soon, all
            efforts against Bonaparte will be vain, as those troops which have
            dispersed the Austrians and repulsed the Russians will be more than
            equal to master the Prussians, and one campaign may be sufficient to
            convince the Prussian Ministers of their folly and errors for years,
            and to punish them for their ignorance or selfishness.
          </p>
          <p>
            Some preparations made in silence by the Marquis of Lucchesini, his
            affected absence from some of our late Court circles, and the number
            of spies who now are watching his hotel and his steps, seem to
            indicate that Prussia is tired of its impolitic neutrality, and
            inclined to join the confederacy against France. At the last
            assembly at our Prince Cambaceres's, a rumour circulated that
            preliminary articles for an offensive alliance with your country had
            already been signed by the Prussian Minister, Baron Von Hardenberg,
            on one side, and by your Minister to the Court of Berlin on the
            other; according to which you were to take sixty thousand Prussians
            and twelve thousand Hessians into your pay, for five years certain.
            A courier from Duroc was said to have brought this news, which at
            first made some impression, but it wore away by degrees; and our
            Government, to judge from the expressions of persons in its
            confidence, seems more to court than to fear a rupture with Prussia.
            Indeed, besides all other reasons to carry on a war in the North of
            Europe, Bonaparte's numerous and young generals are impatient to
            enrich themselves, as Italy, Switzerland, Holland, and the South of
            Germany are almost exhausted.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XXX.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, October, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;The provocations of our Government must have been
            extraordinary indeed, when they were able to awaken the Cabinet of
            Berlin from its long and incomprehensible infatuation of trusting to
            the friendly intentions of honest Talleyrand, and to the
            disinterested policy of our generous Bonaparte. To judge its intents
            from its acts, the favour of the Cabinet of St. Cloud was not only
            its wish but its want. You must remember that, last year, besides
            his ordinary Ambassador, Da Lucchesini, His Prussian Majesty was so
            ill advised as to despatch General Knobelsdorff as his extra
            representative, to assist at Napoleon's coronation, a degradation of
            lawful sovereignty to which even the Court of Naples, though
            surrounded with our troops, refused to subscribe; and, so late as
            last June, the same Knobelsdorff did, in the name of his Prince, the
            honours at the reviews near Magdeburg, to all the generals of our
            army in Hanover who chose to attend there. On this occasion the King
            lodged in a farmhouse, the Queen in the house of the curate of
            Koestelith, while our sans-culotte officers, Bernadotte &amp; Co.,
            were quartered and treated in style at the castle of Putzbull,
            fitted up for their accommodation. This was certainly very
            hospitable, and very civil, but it was neither prudent nor politic.
            Upstarts, experiencing such a reception from Princes, are convinced
            that they are dreaded, because they know that they have not merit to
            be esteemed.
          </p>
          <p>
            Do not confound this Knobelsdorff with the late Field-marshal of
            that name, who, in 1796, answered to a request which our then
            Ambassador at Berlin (Abbe Sieges) had made to be introduced to him,
            NON ET SANS PHRASE, the very words this regicide used when he sat in
            judgment on his King, and voted LA MORT ET SANS PHRASE. This
            Knobelsdorff is a very different character. He pretends to be
            equally conspicuous in the Cabinet as in the field, in the boudoir
            as in the study. A demi-philosopher, a demi-savant, a demi-gallant
            and a demi-politician, constitute, all taken together, nothing
            except an insignificant courtier. I do not know whether he was among
            those Prussian officers who, in 1798, CRIED when it was inserted in
            the public prints that the Grand Bonaparte had been killed in an
            insurrection at Cairo, but of this I am certain, that were
            Knobelsdorff to survive Napoleon the First, none of His Imperial
            Majesty's own dutiful subjects would mourn him more sincerely than
            this subject of the King of Prussia. He is said to possess a great
            share of the confidence of his King, who has already employed him in
            several diplomatic missions. The principal and most requisite
            qualities in a negotiator are political information, inviolable
            fidelity, penetrating but unbiased judgment, a dignified firmness,
            and condescending manners. I have not been often enough in the
            society of General Knobelsdorff to assert whether nature and
            education have destined him to illumine or to cloud the Prussian
            monarchy.
          </p>
          <p>
            I have already mentioned in a former letter that it was Count von
            Haugwitz who, in 1792, as Prussian Ambassador at Vienna, arranged
            the treaty which then united the Austrian and Prussian Eagles
            against the Jacobin Cap of Liberty. It is now said in our diplomatic
            circle that his second mission to the same capital has for an object
            the renewal of these ties, which the Treaty of Basle dissolved; and
            that our Government, to impede his success, or to occasion his
            recall, before he could have time to conclude, had proposed to
            Prussia an annual subsidy of thirty millions of liveres&mdash;which
            it intended to exact from Portugal for its neutrality. The present
            respectable appearance of Prussia, shows, however, that whether the
            mission of Haugwitz had the desired issue or not, His Prussian
            Majesty confides in his army in preference to our parchments.
          </p>
          <p>
            Some of our politicians pretend that the present Minister of the
            foreign department in Prussia, Baron von Hardenberg, is not such a
            friend of the system of neutrality as his predecessor. All the
            transactions of his administration seem, nevertheless, to proclaim
            that, if he wished his country to take an active part in the present
            conflict, it would not have been against France, had she not begun
            the attack with the invasion of Anspach and Bayreuth. Let it be
            recollected that, since his Ministry, Prussia has acknowledged
            Bonaparte an Emperor of the French, has exchanged orders with him,
            and has sent an extraordinary Ambassador to be present at his
            coronation,&mdash;not common compliments, even between Princes
            connected by the nearest ties of friendship and consanguinity. Under
            his administration, the Rhine has been passed to seize the Duc
            d'Enghien, and the Elbe to capture Sir George Rumbold; the Hanse
            Towns have been pillaged, and even Emden blockaded; and the
            representations against, all these outrages have neither been
            followed by public reparation nor a becoming resentment; and was it
            not also Baron von Hardenberg, who, on the 5th of April, 1795,
            concluded at Basle that treaty to which we owe all our conquests and
            Germany and Italy all their disasters? It is not probable that the
            parent of pacification will destroy its own progeny, if
            self-preservation does not require it.
          </p>
          <p>
            Baron von Hardenberg is both a learned nobleman and an enlightened
            statesman, and does equal honour both to his own rank and to the
            choice of his Prince. The late Frederick William II. nominated him a
            Minister of State and a Counsellor of his Cabinet. On the 26th of
            January, 1792, as a directorial Minister, he took possession, in the
            name of the King of Prussia, of the Margravates of Anspach and
            Bayreuth, and the inhabitants swore before him, as their governor,
            their oaths of allegiance to their new Sovereign.&mdash;He continued
            to reside as a kind of viceroy, in these States, until March, 1795,
            when he replaced Baron von Goltz as negotiator with our republican
            plenipotentiary in Switzerland; but after settling all differences
            between Prussia and France, he returned to his former post at
            Anspach, where no complaints have been heard against his Government.
          </p>
          <p>
            The ambition of Baron von Hardenberg has always been to obtain the
            place he now occupies, and the study of his life has been to gain
            such information as would enable him to fill it with distinction. I
            have heard it said that in most countries he had for years kept and
            paid private agents, who regularly corresponded with him and sent
            him reports of what they heard or saw of political intrigue or
            machinations. One of these his agents I happened to meet with, in
            1796, at Basle, and were I to conclude from what I observed in him,
            the Minister has not been very judicious in his selection of private
            correspondents. Figure to yourself a bald-headed personage, about
            forty years of age, near seven feet high, deaf as a post, stammering
            and making convulsive efforts to express a sentence of five words,
            which, after all, his gibberish made unintelligible. His dress was
            as eccentric as his person was singular, and his manners
            corresponded with both. He called himself Baron von Bulow, and I saw
            him afterwards, in the autumn of 1797, at Paris, with the same
            accoutrements and the same jargon, assuming an air of diplomatic
            mystery, even while displaying before me, in a coffee-house, his
            letters and instructions from his principal. As might be expected,
            he had the adroitness to get himself shut up in the Temple, where, I
            have been told, the generosity of your Sir Sidney Smith prevented
            him from starving.
          </p>
          <p>
            No member of the foreign diplomatic corps here possesses either more
            knowledge, or a longer experience, than the Prussian Ambassador,
            Marquis of Lucchesini. He went with several other philosophers of
            Italy to admire the late hero of modern philosophy at Berlin,
            Frederick the Great, who received him well, caressed him often, but
            never trusted or employed him. I suppose it was not at the mention
            of the Marquis's name for the place of a governor of some province
            that this Monarch said, "My subjects of that province have always
            been dutiful; a philosopher shall never rule in my name but over
            people with whom I am discontented, or whom I intend to chastise."
            This Prince was not unacquainted with the morality of his sectaries.
          </p>
          <p>
            During the latter part of the life of this King, the Marquis of
            Lucchesini was frequently of his literary and convivial parties; but
            he was neither his friend nor his favourite, but his listener. It
            was first under Frederick William II. that he began his diplomatic
            career, with an appointment as Minister from Prussia to the late
            King of Poland. His first act in this post was a treaty signed on
            the 29th of March, 1790, with the King and Republic of Poland, which
            changed an elective monarchy into an hereditary one; but,
            notwithstanding the Cabinet of Berlin had guaranteed this
            alteration, and the constitution decreed in consequence, in 1791,
            three years afterwards Russian and Prussian bayonets annihilated
            both, and selfishness banished faith.
          </p>
          <p>
            In July, 1790, he assisted as a Prussian plenipotentiary at the
            conferences at Reichenback, together with the English and Dutch
            Ambassadors, having for object a pacification between Austria and
            Turkey. In December of the same year he went with the same Ministers
            to the Congress at Sistova, where, in May, 1791, he signed the
            Treaty of Peace between the Grand Seignior and the Emperor of
            Germany. In June, 1792, he was a second time sent as a Minister to
            Warsaw, where he remained until January, 1793, when he was promoted
            to the post of Ambassador at the Court of Vienna. He continued,
            however, to reside with His Prussian Majesty during the greatest
            part of the campaign on the Rhine, and signed, on the 24th of June,
            1793, in the camp before Mentz, an offensive and defensive alliance
            with your Court; an alliance which Prussian policy respected not
            above eighteen months. In October, 1796, he requested his recall,
            but this his Sovereign refused, with the most gracious expressions;
            and he could not obtain it until March, 1797. Some disapprobation of
            the new political plan introduced by Count von Haugwitz in the
            Cabinet at Berlin is supposed to have occasioned his determination
            to retire from public employment. As he, however, continued to
            reside in the capital of Prussia, and, as many believed, secretly
            intrigued to appear again upon the scene, the nomination, in 1800,
            to his present important post was as much the consequence of his own
            desire as of the favour of his King.
          </p>
          <p>
            The Marquis of Lucchesini lives here in great style at the beautiful
            Hotel de l'Infantado, where his lady's routs, assemblies, and
            circles are the resort of our most fashionable gentry. Madame da
            Lucchesini is more agreeable than handsome, more fit to shine at
            Berlin than at Paris; for though her manners are elegant, they want
            that ease, that finish which a German or Italian education cannot
            teach, nor a German or Italian society confer. To judge from the
            number of her admirers, she seems to know that she is married to a
            philosopher. Her husband was born at Lucca, in Italy, and is,
            therefore, at present a subject of Bonaparte's brother-in-law,
            Prince Bacciochi, to whom, when His Serene Highness was a marker at
            a billiard-table, I have had the honour of giving many a shilling,
            as well as many a box on the ear.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XXXI.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, October, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;The unexampled cruelty of our Government to your
            countryman, Captain Wright, I have heard reprobated, even by some of
            our generals and public functionaries, as unjust as well as
            disgraceful. At a future General Congress, should ever Bonaparte
            suffer one to be convoked, except under his auspices and dictature,
            the distinction and treatment of prisoners of war require to be
            again regulated, that the valiant warrior may not for the future be
            confounded with, and treated as, a treacherous spy; nor innocent
            travellers, provided with regular passes, visiting a country either
            for business or for pleasure, be imprisoned, like men taken while
            combating with arms in their hands.
          </p>
          <p>
            You remember, no doubt, from history, that many of our ships&mdash;that,
            during the reigns of George I. and II., carried to Ireland and
            Scotland, and landed there, the adherents and partisans of the House
            of Stuart were captured on their return or on their passage; and
            that your Government never seized the commanders of these vessels,
            to confine them as State criminals, much less to torture or murder
            them in the Tower. If I am not mistaken, the whole squadron which,
            in 1745, carried the Pretender and his suite to Scotland, was taken
            by your cruisers; and the officers and men experienced no worse or
            different treatment than their fellow prisoners of war; though the
            distance is immense between the crime of plotting against the lawful
            Government of the Princes of the House of Brunswick, and the attempt
            to disturb the usurpation of an upstart of the House of Bonaparte.
            But, even during the last war, how many of our ships of the line,
            frigates, and cutters, did you not take, which had landed rebels in
            Ireland, emissaries in Scotland, and malefactors in Wales; and yet
            your generosity prevented you from retaliating, even at the time
            when your Sir Sidney Smith, and this same unfortunate Captain
            Wright, were confined in our State prison of the Temple! It is with
            Governments as with individuals, they ought to be just before they
            are generous. Had you in 1797, or in 1798, not endured our outrages
            so patiently, you would not now have to lament, nor we to blush for,
            the untimely end of Captain Wright.
          </p>
          <p>
            From the last time that this officer had appeared before the
            criminal tribunal which condemned Georges and Moreau, his fate was
            determined on by our Government. His firmness offended, and his
            patriotism displeased; and as he seemed to possess the confidence of
            his own Government, it was judged that he was in its secrets; it
            was, therefore, resolved that, if he refused to become a traitor, he
            should perish a victim. Desmarets, Fouche's private secretary, who
            is also the secretary of the secret and haute police, therefore
            ordered him to another private interrogatory. Here he was offered a
            considerable sum of money, and the rank of an admiral in our
            service, if he would divulge what he knew of the plans of his
            Government, of its connections with the discontented in this
            country, and of its means of keeping up a correspondence with them.
            He replied, as might have been expected, with indignation, to such
            offers and to such proposals, but as they were frequently repeated
            with new allurements, he concluded with remaining silent and giving
            no answers at all. He was then told that the torture would soon
            restore him his voice, and some select gendarmes seized him and laid
            him on the rack; there he uttered no complaint, not even a sigh,
            though instruments the most diabolical were employed, and pains the
            most acute must have been endured. When threatened that he should
            expire in torments, he said:
          </p>
          <p>
            "I do not fear to die, because my country will avenge my murder,
            while my God receives my soul." During the two hours of the first
            day that he was stretched on the rack, his left arm and right leg
            were broken, and his nails torn from the toes of both feet; he then
            passed into the hands of a surgeon, and was under his care for five
            weeks, but, before he was perfectly cured, he was carried to another
            private interrogatory, at which, besides Desmarets, Fouche and Real
            were present.
          </p>
          <p>
            The Minister of Police now informed him that, from the mutilated
            state of his body, and from the sufferings he had gone through, he
            must be convinced that it was not the intention of the French
            Government ever to restore him to his native country, where he might
            relate occurrences which the policy of France required to be buried
            in oblivion; he, therefore, had no choice between serving the
            Emperor of the French, or perishing within the walls of the prison
            where he was confined. He replied that he was resigned to his
            destiny, and would die as he had lived, faithful to his King and to
            his country.
          </p>
          <p>
            The man in full possession of his mental qualities and corporeal
            strength is, in most cases, very different from that unfortunate
            being whose mind is, enervated by sufferings and whose body is
            weakened by wants. For five months Captain Wright had seen only
            gaolers, spies, tyrants, executioners, fetters, racks, and other
            tortures; and for five weeks his food had been bread and his drink
            water. The man who, thus situated and thus perplexed, preserves his
            native dignity and innate sentiments, is more worthy of monuments,
            statues, or altars than either the legislator, the victor, or the
            saint.
          </p>
          <p>
            This interrogatory was the last undergone by Captain Wright. He was
            then again stretched on the rack, and what is called by our
            regenerators the INFERNAL torments, were inflicted on him. After
            being pinched with red-hot irons all over his body, brandy, mixed
            with gunpowder, was infused in the numerous wounds and set fire to
            several times until nearly burned to the bones. In the convulsions,
            the consequence of these terrible sufferings, he is said to have
            bitten off a part of his tongue, though, as before, no groans were
            heard. As life still remained, he was again put under the care of
            his former surgeon; but, as he was exceedingly exhausted, a spy, in
            the dress of a Protestant clergyman, presented himself as if to read
            prayers with him. Of this offer he accepted; but when this man began
            to ask some insidious questions, he cast on him a look of contempt
            and never spoke to him more. At last, seeing no means to obtain any
            information from him, a mameluke last week strangled him in his bed.
            Thus expired a hero whose fate has excited more compassion, and
            whose character has received more admiration here, than any of our
            great men who have fallen fighting for our Emperor. Captain Wright
            has diffused new rays of renown and glory on the British name, from
            his tomb as well as from his dungeon.
          </p>
          <p>
            You have certainly a right to call me to an account for all the
            particulars I have related of this scandalous and abominable
            transaction, and, though I cannot absolutely guarantee the truth of
            the narration, I am perfectly satisfied of it myself, and I hope to
            explain myself to your satisfaction. Your unfortunate countryman was
            attended by and under the care of a surgeon of the name of Vaugeard,
            who gained his confidence, and was worthy of it, though employed in
            that infamous gaol. Either from disgust of life, or from attachment
            to Captain Wright, he survived him only twelve hours, during which
            he wrote the shocking details I have given you, and sent them to
            three of the members of the foreign diplomatic corps, with a prayer
            to have them forwarded to Sir Sidney Smith or to Mr. Windham, that
            those his friends might be informed that, to his last moment,
            Captain Wright was worthy of their protection and kindness. From one
            of those Ministers I have obtained the original in Vaugeard's own
            handwriting.
          </p>
          <p>
            I know that Bonaparte and Talleyrand promised the release of Captain
            Wright to the Spanish Ambassador; but, at that time, he had already
            suffered once on the rack, and this liberality on their part was
            merely a trick to impose upon the credulity of the Spaniard or to
            get rid of his importunities. Had it been otherwise, Captain Wright,
            like Sir George Rumbold, would himself have been the first to
            announce in your country the recovery of his liberty.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XXXII.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, October, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            My LORD:&mdash;Should Bonaparte again return here victorious, and a
            pacificator, great changes in our internal Government and
            constitution are expected, and will certainly occur. Since the
            legislative corps has completed the Napoleon code of civil and
            criminal justice, it is considered by the Emperor not only as
            useless, but troublesome and superfluous. For the same reasons the
            tribunate will also be laid aside, and His Majesty will rule the
            French Empire, with the assistance of his Senate, and with the
            advice of his Council of State, exclusively. You know that the
            Senators, as well as the Councillors of State, are nominated by the
            Emperor; that he changes the latter according to his whim, and that,
            though the former, according to the present constitution, are to
            hold their offices for life, the alterations which remove entirely
            the legislature and the tribunate may also make Senators movable.
            But as all members of the Senate are favourites or relatives, he
            will probably not think it necessary to resort to such a measure of
            policy.
          </p>
          <p>
            In a former letter I have already mentioned the heterogeneous
            composition of the Senate. The tribunate and legislative corps are
            worthy to figure by its side; their members are also ci-devant
            mechanics of all descriptions, debased attorneys or apostate
            priests, national spoilers or rebellious regicides, degraded nobles
            or dishonoured officers. The nearly unanimous vote of these corps
            for a consulate for life, and for an hereditary Emperor, cannot,
            therefore, either be expressive of the national will, or constitute
            the legality of Bonaparte's sovereignty.
          </p>
          <p>
            In the legislature no vote opposed, and no voice declaimed against,
            Bonaparte's Imperial dignity; but in the tribunate, Carnot&mdash;the
            infamously notorious Carnot&mdash;'pro forma', and with the
            permission of the Emperor 'in petto', spoke against the return of a
            monarchical form of Government. This farce of deception and roguery
            did not impose even on our good Parisians, otherwise, and so
            frequently, the dupes of all our political and revolutionary
            mountebanks. Had Carnot expressed a sentiment or used a word not
            previously approved by Bonaparte, instead of reposing himself in the
            tribunate, he would have been wandering in Cayenne.
          </p>
          <p>
            Son of an obscure attorney at Nolay, in Burgundy, he was brought up,
            like Bonaparte, in one of those military schools established by the
            munificence of the French Monarchs; and had obtained, from the late
            King, the commission of a captain of engineers when the Revolution
            broke out. He was particularly indebted to the Prince of Conde for
            his support during the earlier part of his life, and yet he joined
            the enemies of his house, and voted for the death of Louis XVI. A
            member, with Robespierre and Barrere, of the Committee of Public
            Safety, he partook of their power, as well as of their crimes,
            though he has been audacious enough to deny that he had anything to
            do with other transactions than those of the armies. Were no other
            proofs to the contrary collected, a letter of his own hand to the
            ferocious Lebon, at Arras, is a written evidence which he is unable
            to refute. It is dated November 16th, 1793. "You must take," says
            he, "in your energy, all measures of terror commanded or required by
            present circumstances. Continue your revolutionary attitude; never
            mind the amnesty pronounced with the acceptance of the absurd
            constitution of 1791; it is a crime which cannot extenuate other
            crimes. Anti-republicans can only expiate their folly under the age
            of the guillotine. The public Treasury will always pay the journeys
            and expenses of informers, because they have deserved well of their
            country. Let all suspected traitors expire by the sword or by fire;
            continue to march upon that revolutionary line so well delineated by
            you. The committee applauds all your undertakings, all your measures
            of vigour; they are not only all permitted, but commanded by your
            mission." Most of the decrees concerning the establishment of
            revolutionary tribunals, and particularly that for the organization
            of the atrocious military commission at Orange, were signed by him.
          </p>
          <p>
            Carnot, as an officer of engineers, certainly is not without
            talents; but his presumption in declaring himself the sole author of
            those plans of campaign which, during the years 1794, 1795, and
            1796, were so triumphantly executed by Pichegru, Moreau, and
            Bonaparte, is impertinent, as well as unfounded. At the risk of his
            own life, Pichegru entirely altered the plan sent him by the
            Committee of Public Safety; and it was Moreau's masterly retreat,
            which no plan of campaign could prescribe, that made this general so
            famous. The surprising successes of Bonaparte in Italy were both
            unexpected and unforeseen by the Directory; and, according to
            Berthier's assertion, obliged the, commander-in-chief, during the
            first four months, to change five times his plans of proceedings and
            undertakings.
          </p>
          <p>
            During his temporary sovereignty as a director, Carnot honestly has
            made a fortune of twelve millions of livres; which has enabled him
            not only to live in style with his wife, but also to keep in style
            two sisters, of the name of Aublin, as his mistresses. He was the
            friend of the father of these girls, and promised him, when
            condemned to the guillotine in 1793, to be their second father; but
            he debauched and ruined them both before either was fourteen years
            of age; and young Aublin, who, in 1796, reproached him with the
            infamy of his conduct, was delivered up by him to a military
            commission, which condemned him to be shot as an emigrant. He has
            two children by each of these unfortunate girls.
          </p>
          <p>
            Bonaparte employs Carnot, but despises and mistrusts him; being well
            aware that, should another National Convention be convoked, and the
            Emperor of the French be arraigned, as the King of France was, he
            would, with as great pleasure, vote for the execution of Napoleon
            the First as he did for that of Louis XVI. He has waded too far in
            blood and crime to retrograde.
          </p>
          <p>
            To this sample of a modern tribune I will add a specimen of a modern
            legislator. Baptiste Cavaignae was, before the Revolution, an excise
            officer, turned out of his place for infidelity; but the department
            of Lot electing him, in 1792, a representative of the people to the
            National Convention, he there voted for the death of Louis XVI. and
            remained a faithful associate of Marat and Robespierre. After the
            evacuation of Verdun by the Prussians, in October, 1792, he made a
            report to the Convention, according to which eighty-four citizens of
            that town were arrested and executed. Among these were twenty-two
            young girls, under twenty years of age, whose crime was the having
            presented nosegays to the late King of Prussia on his entry after
            the surrender of Verdun. He was afterwards a national commissary
            with the armies on the coast near Brest, on the Rhine, and in
            Western Pyrenees, and everywhere he signalized himself by unheard of
            ferocities and sanguinary deeds. The following anecdote, printed and
            published by our revolutionary annalist, Prudhomme, will give you
            some idea of the morality of this our regenerator and Imperial
            Solon: "Cavaignac and another deputy, Pinet," writes Prudhomme, "had
            ordered a box to be kept for them at the play-house at Bayonne on
            the evening they expected to arrive in that town. Entering very
            late, they found two soldiers, who had seen the box empty, placed in
            its front. These they ordered immediately to be arrested, and
            condemned them, for having outraged the national representation, to
            be guillotined on the next day, when they both were accordingly
            executed!" Labarrere, a provost of the Marechaussee at Dax, was in
            prison as a suspected person. His daughter, a very handsome girl of
            seventeen, lived with an aunt at Severe. The two pro-consuls passing
            through that place, she threw herself at their feet, imploring mercy
            for her parent. This they not only promised, but offered her a place
            in their carriage to Dax, that she might see him restored to
            liberty. On the road the monsters insisted on a ransom for the blood
            of her father. Waiting, afflicted and ashamed, at a friend's house
            at Dag, the accomplishment of a promise so dearly purchased, she
            heard the beating of the alarm drum, and looked, from curiosity,
            through the window, when she saw her unfortunate parent ascending
            the scaffold! After having remained lifeless for half an hour, she
            recovered her senses an instant, when she exclaimed:
          </p>
          <p>
            "Oh, the barbarians! they violated me while flattering me with the
            hope of saving my father!" and then expired. In October, 1795,
            Cavaignac assisted Barras and Bonaparte in the destruction of some
            thousands of men, women, and children in the streets of this
            capital, and was, therefore, in 1796, made by the Directory an
            inspector-general of the customs; and, in 1803, nominated by
            Bonaparte a legislator. His colleague, Citizen Pinet, is now one of
            our Emperor's Counsellors of State, and both are commanders of His
            Majesty's Legion of Honour; rich, respected, and frequented by our
            most fashionable ladies and gentlemen.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XXXIII.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, October, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;I suppose your Government too vigilant and too
            patriotic not to be informed of the great and uninterrupted activity
            which reigns in our arsenals, dockyards, and seaports. I have seen a
            plan, according to which Bonaparte is enabled, and intends, to build
            twenty ships of the line and ten frigates, besides cutters, in the
            year, for ten years to come. I read the calculation of the expenses,
            the names of the forests where the timber is to be cut, of the
            foreign countries where a part of the necessary materials are
            already engaged, and of our own departments which are to furnish the
            remainder. The whole has been drawn up in a precise and clear manner
            by Bonaparte's Maritime Prefect at Antwerp, M. Malouet, well known
            in your country, where he long remained as an emigrant, and, I
            believe, was even employed by your Ministers.
          </p>
          <p>
            You may, perhaps, smile at this vast naval scheme of Bonaparte; but
            if you consider that he is the master of all the forests, mines, and
            productions of France, Italy, and of a great part of Germany, with
            all the navigable rivers and seaports of these countries and
            Holland, and remember also the character of the man, you will,
            perhaps, think it less impracticable. The greatest obstacle he has
            to encounter, and to remove, is want of experienced naval officers,
            though even in this he has advanced greatly since the present war,
            during which he has added to his naval forces twenty&mdash;nine
            ships of the line, thirty&mdash;four frigates, twenty-one cutters,
            three thousand prams, gunboats, pinnaces, etc., with four thousand
            naval officers and thirty-seven thousand sailors, according to the
            same account, signed by Malouet. It is true that most of our new
            naval heroes have never ventured far from our coast, and all their
            naval laurels have been gathered under our land batteries; but the
            impulse is given to the national spirit, and our conscripts in the
            maritime departments prefer, to a man, the navy to the army, which
            was not formerly the case.
          </p>
          <p>
            It cannot have escaped your observation that the incorporation of
            Genoa procured us, in the South of our Empire, a naval station and
            arsenal, as a counterpoise to Antwerp, our new naval station in the
            North, where twelve ships of the line have been built, or are
            building, since 1803, and where timber and other materials are
            collected for eight more. At Genoa, two ships of the line and four
            frigates have lately been launched, and four ships and two frigates
            are on the stocks; and the Genoese Republic has added sixteen
            thousand seafaring men to our navy. Should Bonaparte terminate
            successfully the present war, Naples and Venice will increase the
            number of our seaports and resources on the borders of the
            Mediterranean and Adriatic Seas. All his courtiers say that he will
            conquer Italy in Germany, and determine at Vienna&mdash;the fate of
            London.
          </p>
          <p>
            Of all our admirals, however, we have not one to compare with your
            Nelson, your Hood, your St. Vincent, and your Cornwallis. By the
            appointment of Murat as grand admiral, Bonaparte seems to indicate
            that he is inclined to imitate the example of Louis. XVI., in the
            beginning of his reign, and entrust the chief command of his fleets
            and squadrons to military men of approved capacity and courage,
            officers of his land troops. Last June, when he expected a probable
            junction of the fleet under Villeneuve with the squadron under
            Admiral Winter, and the union of both with Ganteaume at Brest, Murat
            was to have had the chief command of the united French, Spanish, and
            Batavian fleets, and to support the landing of our troops in your
            country; but the arrival of Lord Nelson in the West Indies, and the
            victory of Admiral Calder, deranged all our plans and postponed all
            our designs, which the Continental war has interrupted; to be
            commenced, God knows when.
          </p>
          <p>
            The best amongst our bad admirals is certainly Truguet; but he was
            disgraced last year, and exiled twenty leagues from the coast, for
            having declared too publicly "that our flotillas would never be
            serviceable before our fleets were superior to yours, when they
            would become useless." An intriguer by long habit and by character,
            having neither property nor principles, he joined the Revolution,
            and was the second in command under Latouche, in the first
            republican fleet that left our harbours. He directed the expedition
            against Sardinia, in January, 1793, during which he acquired neither
            honour nor glory, being repulsed with great loss by the inhabitants.
            After being imprisoned under Robespierre, the Directory made him a
            Minister of the marine, an Ambassador to Spain, and a Vice-Admiral
            of France. In this capacity he commanded at Brest, during the first
            eighteen months of the present war. He has an irreconcilable foe in
            Talleyrand, with whom he quarrelled, when on his embassy in Spain,
            about some extortions at Madrid, which he declined to share with his
            principal at Paris. Such was our Minister's inveteracy against him
            in 1798, that a directorial decree placed him on the list of
            emigrants, because he remained in Spain after having been recalled
            to France. In 1799, during Talleyrand's disgrace, Truguet returned
            here, and, after in vain challenging his enemy to fight, caned him
            in the Luxembourg gardens, a chastisement which our premier bore
            with true Christian patience. Truguet is not even a member of the
            Legion of Honour.
          </p>
          <p>
            Villeneuve is supposed not much inferior in talents, experience, and
            modesty to Truguet. He was, before the Revolution, a lieutenant of
            the royal navy; but his principles did not prevent him from
            deserting to the colours of the enemies of royalty, who promoted him
            first to a captain and afterwards to an admiral.
          </p>
          <p>
            His first command as such was over a division of the Toulon fleet,
            which, in the winter of 1797, entered Brest. In the battle at
            Aboukir he was the second in command; and, after the death of
            Admiral Brueys, he rallied the ships which had escaped, and sailed
            for Malta, where, two years afterwards, he signed, with General
            Vaubois, the capitulation of that island. When hostilities again
            broke out, he commanded in the West Indies, and, leaving his
            station, escaped your cruisers, and was appointed first to the chief
            command of the Rochefort, and afterwards the Toulon fleet, on the
            death of Admiral Latouche. Notwithstanding the gasconade of his
            report of his negative victory over Admiral Calder, Villeneuve is
            not a Gascon by birth, but only, by sentiment.
          </p>
          <p>
            Ganteaume does not possess either the intriguing character of
            Truguet or the valorous one of Villeneuve.
          </p>
          <p>
            Before the Revolution he was a mate of a merchantman, but when most
            of the officers of the former royal navy had emigrated or perished,
            he was, in 1793, made a captain of the republican navy, and in 1796
            an admiral. During the battle of Aboukir he was the chief of the
            staff, under Admiral Brueys, and saved himself by swimming, when
            l'Orient took fire and blew up. Bonaparte wrote to him on this
            occasion: "The picture you have sent me of the disaster of l'Orient,
            and of your own dreadful situation, is horrible; but be assured
            that, having such a miraculous escape, DESTINY intends you to avenge
            one day our navy and our friends." This note was written in August,
            1798, shortly after Bonaparte had professed himself a Mussulman.
          </p>
          <p>
            When, in the summer of 1799, our general-in-chief had determined to
            leave his army of Egypt to its destiny, Ganteaume equipped and
            commanded the squadron of frigates which brought him to Europe, and
            was, after his consulate, appointed a Counsellor of State and
            commander at Brest. In 1800 he escaped with a division of the Brest
            fleet to Toulon, and, in the summer of 1801, when he was ordered to
            carry succours to Egypt, your ship Skitsure fell in with him, and
            was captured. As he did not, however, succeed in landing in Egypt
            the troops on board his ships, a temporary disgrace was incurred,
            and he was deprived of the command, but made a maritime prefect.
            Last year favour was restored him, with the command of our naval
            forces at Brest. All officers who have served under Ganteaume agree
            that, let his fleet be ever so superior, he will never fight if he
            can avoid it, and that, in orderly times, his capacity would, at the
            utmost, make him regarded as a good master of a merchantman, and
            nothing else.
          </p>
          <p>
            Of the present commander of our, flotilla at Boulogne, Lacrosse, I
            will also say some few words. A lieutenant before the Revolution, he
            became, in 1789, one of the most ardent and violent Jacobins, and in
            1792 was employed by the friend of the Blacks, and our Minister,
            Monge, as an emissary in the West Indies, to preach there to the
            negroes the rights of man and insurrection against the whites, their
            masters. In 1800, Bonaparte advanced him to a captain-general at
            Guadeloupe, an island which his plots, eight years before, had
            involved in all the horrors of anarchy, and where, when he now
            attempted to restore order, his former instruments rose against him
            and forced him to escape to one of your islands&mdash;I believe
            Dominico. Of this island, in return for his hospitable reception, he
            took plans, according to which our General Lagrange endeavoured to
            conquer it last spring. Lacrosse is a perfect revolutionary fanatic,
            unprincipled, cruel, unfeeling, and intolerant. His presumption is
            great, but his talents are trifling.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XXXIV.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, October, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;The defeat of the Austrians has excited great
            satisfaction among our courtiers and public functionaries; but the
            mass of the inhabitants here are too miserable to feel for anything
            else but their own sufferings. They know very well that every
            victory rivets their fetters, that no disasters can make them more
            heavy, and no triumph lighter. Totally indifferent about external
            occurrences, as well as about internal oppressions, they strive to
            forget both the past and the present, and to be indifferent as to
            the future; they would be glad could they cease to feel that they
            exist. The police officers were now, with their gendarmes,
            bayoneting them into illuminations for Bonaparte's successes, as
            they dragooned them last year into rejoicings for his coronation. I
            never observed before so much apathy; and in more than one place I
            heard the people say, "Oh! how much better we should be with fewer
            victories and more tranquillity, with less splendour and more
            security, with an honest peace instead of a brilliant war." But in a
            country groaning under a military government, the opinions of the
            people are counted for nothing.
          </p>
          <p>
            At Madame Joseph Bonaparte's circle, however, the countenances were
            not so gloomy. There a real or affected joy seemed to enliven the
            usual dullness of these parties; some actors were repeating
            patriotic verses in honour of the victor; while others were singing
            airs or vaudevilles, to inspire our warriors with as much hatred
            towards your nation as gratitude towards our Emperor. It is
            certainly neither philosophical nor philanthropical not to exclude
            the vilest of all passions, HATRED, on such a happy occasion.
            Martin, in the dress of a conscript, sang six long couplets against
            the tyrants of the seas; of which I was only able to retain the
            following one:
          </p>
          <p>
            Je deteste le peuple anglais, Je deteste son ministere; J'aime
            l'Empereur des Francais, J'aime la paix, je hais la guerre; Mais
            puisqu'il faut la soutenir Contre une Nation Sauvage, Mon plus doux,
            mon plus grand desir Est de montrer tout mon courage.
          </p>
          <p>
            But what arrested my attention, more than anything else which
            occurred in this circle on that evening, was a printed paper
            mysteriously handed about, and of which, thanks to the civility of a
            Counsellor of State, I at last got a sight. It was a list of those
            persons, of different countries, whom the Emperor of the French has
            fixed upon, to replace all the ancient dynasties of Europe within
            twenty years to come. From the names of these individuals, some of
            whom are known to me, I could perceive that Bonaparte had more
            difficulty to select proper Emperors, Kings, and Electors, than he
            would have had, some years ago, to choose directors or consuls. Our
            inconsistency is, however, evident even here; I did not read a name
            that is not found in the annals of Jacobinism and republicanism. We
            have, at the same time, taken care not to forget ourselves in this
            new distribution of supremacy. France is to furnish the stock of the
            new dynasties for Austria, England, Spain, Denmark, and Sweden. What
            would you think, were you to awake one morning the subject of King
            Arthur O'Connor the First? You would, I dare say, be even more
            surprised than I am in being the subject of Napoleon Bonaparte the
            First. You know, I suppose, that O'Connor is a general of division,
            and a commander of the Legion of Honour,&mdash;the bosom friend of
            Talleyrand, and courting, at this moment, a young lady, a relation
            of our Empress, whose portion may one day be an Empire. But I am
            told that, notwithstanding Talleyrand's recommendations, and the
            approbation of Her Majesty, the lady prefers a colonel, her own
            countryman, to the Irish general. Should, however, our Emperor
            announce his determination, she would be obliged to marry as he
            commands, were he even to give her his groom, or his horse, for a
            spouse.
          </p>
          <p>
            You can form no idea how wretched and despised all the Irish rebels
            are here. O'Connor alone is an exception; and this he owes to
            Talleyrand, to General Valence, and to Madame de Genlis; but even he
            is looked on with a sneer, and, if he ever was respected in England,
            must endure with poignancy the contempt to which he is frequently
            exposed in France. When I was in your country I often heard it said
            that the Irish were generally considered as a debased and perfidious
            people, extremely addicted to profligacy and drunkenness, and, when
            once drunk, more cruelly ferocious than even our Jacobins. I thought
            it then, and I still believe it, a national prejudice, because I am
            convinced that the vices or virtues of all civilized nations are
            relatively the same; but those Irish rebels we have seen here, and
            who must be, like our Jacobins, the very dregs of their country,
            have conducted themselves so as to inspire not only mistrust but
            abhorrence. It is also an undeniable truth that they were greatly
            disappointed by our former and present Government. They expected to
            enjoy liberty and equality, and a pension for their treachery; but
            our police commissaries caught them at their landing, our gendarmes
            escorted them as criminals to their place of destination, and there
            they received just enough to prevent them from starving. If they
            complained they were put in irons, and if they attempted to escape
            they were sent to the galleys as malefactors or shot as spies.
            Despair, therefore, no doubt induced many to perpetrate acts of
            which they were accused, and to rob, swindle, and murder, because
            they were punished as thieves and assassins. But, some of them, who
            have been treated in the most friendly, hospitable, and generous
            manner in this capital, have proved themselves ungrateful, as well
            as infamous. A lady of my acquaintance, of a once large fortune, had
            nothing left but some furniture, and her subsistence depended upon
            what she got by letting furnished lodgings. Mischance brought three
            young Irishmen to her house, who pretended to be in daily
            expectation of remittances from their country, and of a pension from
            Bonaparte. During six months she not only lodged and supported them,
            but embarrassed herself to procure them linen and a decent apparel.
            At last she was informed that each of, them had been allowed sixty
            livres&mdash;in the month, and that arrears had been paid them for
            nine months. Their debt to her was above three thousand livres&mdash;but
            the day after she asked for payment they decamped, and one of them
            persuaded her daughter, a girl of fourteen, to elope with him, and
            to assist him in robbing her mother of all her plate.&mdash;He has,
            indeed, been since arrested and sentenced to the galleys for eight
            years; but this punishment neither restored the daughter her virtue
            nor the mother her property. The other two denied their debts, and,
            as she had no other evidence but her own scraps of accounts, they
            could not be forced to pay; their obdurate effrontery and infamy,
            however, excited such an indignation in the judges, that they
            delivered them over as swindlers to the Tribunal Correctional; and
            the Minister of Police ordered them to be transported as rogues and
            vagabonds to the colonies. The daughter died shortly after, in
            consequence of a miscarriage, and the mother did not survive her
            more than a month, and ended her days in the Hotel Dieu, one of our
            common hospitals. Thus, these depraved young men ruined and murdered
            their benefactress and her child; and displayed, before they were
            thirty, such a consummate villainy as few wretches grown hoary in
            vice have perpetrated. This act of scandalous notoriety injured the
            Irish reputation very much in this country; for here, as in many
            other places, inconsiderate people are apt to judge a whole nation
            according to the behaviour of some few of its outcasts.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XXXV.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, October, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;The plan of the campaign of the Austrians is
            incomprehensible to all our military men&mdash;not on account of its
            profundity, but on account of its absurdity or incoherency. In the
            present circumstances, half-measures must always be destructive, and
            it is better to strike strongly and firmly than justly. To invade
            Bavaria without disarming the Bavarian army, and to enter Suabia and
            yet acknowledge the neutrality of Switzerland, are such political
            and military errors as require long successes to repair, but which
            such an enemy as Bonaparte always takes care not to leave
            unpunished.
          </p>
          <p>
            The long inactivity of the army under the Archduke Charles has as
            much surprised us as the defeat of the army under General von Mack;
            but from what I know of the former, I am persuaded that he would
            long since have pushed forward had not his movements been
            unfortunately combined with those of the latter. The House of
            Lorraine never produced a more valiant warrior, nor Austria a more
            liberal or better instructed statesman, than this Prince. Heir to
            the talents of his ancestors, he has commanded, with glory, against
            France during the revolutionary war; and, although he sometimes
            experienced defeats, he has rendered invaluable services to the
            chief of his House by his courage, by his activity, by his
            constancy, and by that salutary firmness which, in calling the
            generals and superior officers to their duty, has often reanimated
            the confidence and the ardour of the soldier.
          </p>
          <p>
            The Archduke Charles began, in 1793, his military career under the
            Prince of Coburg, the commander-in-chief of the Austrian armies in
            Brabant, where he commanded the advanced guard, and distinguished
            himself by a valour sometimes bordering on temerity, but which, by
            degrees, acquired him that esteem and popularity, among the troops
            often very advantageous to him afterwards. He was, in 1794,
            appointed governor and captain-general of the Low Countries, and a
            Field-marshal lieutenant of the army of the German Empire. In April,
            1796, he took the command-in-chief of the armies of Austria and of
            the Empire, and, in the following June, engaged in several combats
            with General Moreau, in which he was repulsed, but in a manner that
            did equal honour to the victor and to the vanquished.
          </p>
          <p>
            The Austrian army on the Lower Rhine, under General Wartensleben,
            having, about this time, been nearly dispersed by General Jourdan,
            the Archduke left some divisions of his forces under General Latour,
            to impede the progress of Moreau, and went with the remainder into
            Franconia, where he defeated Jourdan near Amberg and Wurzburg,
            routed his army entirely, and forced him to repass the Rhine in the
            greatest confusion, and with immense loss. The retreat of Moreau was
            the consequence of the victories of this Prince. After the capture
            of Kehl, in January, 1797, he assumed the command of the army of
            Italy, where he in vain employed all his efforts to put a stop to
            the victorious progress of Bonaparte, with whom, at last, he signed
            the preliminaries of peace at Leoben. In the spring of 1799, he
            again defeated Jourdan in Suabia, as he had done two years before in
            Franconia; but in Switzerland he met with an abler adversary in
            General Massena; still, I am inclined to think that he displayed
            there more real talents than anywhere else; and that this part of
            his campaign of 1799 was the most interesting, in a military point
            of view.
          </p>
          <p>
            The most implacable enemies of the politics of the House of Austria
            render justice to the plans, to the frankness, to the morality of
            Archduke Charles; and, what is remarkable, of all the chiefs who
            have commanded against revolutionary France, he alone has seized the
            true manner of combating enthusiasts or slaves; at least, his
            proclamations are the only ones composed with adroitness, and are
            what they ought to be, because in them an appeal is made to the
            public opinion at a time when opinion almost constitutes half the
            strength of armies.
          </p>
          <p>
            The present opposer of this Prince in Italy is one of our best, as
            well as most fortunate, generals. A Sardinian subject, and a
            deserter from the Sardinian troops, he assisted, in 1792, our
            commander, General Anselm, in the conquest of the county of Nice,
            rather as a spy than as a soldier. His knowledge of the Maritime
            Alps obtained, in 1793, a place on our staff, where, from the
            services he rendered, the rank of a general of brigade was soon
            conferred on him. In 1796 he was promoted to serve as a general of
            division under Bonaparte in Italy, where he distinguished himself so
            much that when, in 1798, General Berthier was ordered to accompany
            the army of the East to Egypt, he succeeded him as
            commander-in-chief of our troops in the temporary Roman Republic.
            But his merciless pillage, and, perhaps, the idea of his being a
            foreigner, brought on a mutiny, and the Directory was obliged to
            recall him. It was his campaign in Switzerland of 1799, and his
            defence of Genoa in 1800, that principally ranked him high as a
            military chief. After the battle of Marengo he received the command
            of the army of Italy; but his extortions produced a revolt among the
            inhabitants, and he lived for some time in retreat and disgrace,
            after a violent quarrel with Bonaparte, during which many severe
            truths were said and heard on both sides.
          </p>
          <p>
            After the Peace of Luneville, he seemed inclined to join Moreau, and
            other discontented generals; but observing, no doubt, their want of
            views and union, he retired to an estate he has bought near Paris,
            where Bonaparte visited him, after the rupture with your country,
            and made him, we may conclude, such offers as tempted him to leave
            his retreat. Last year he was nominated one of our Emperor's
            Field-marshals, and as such he relieved Jourdan of the command in
            the kingdom of Italy. He has purchased with a part of his spoil, for
            fifteen millions of livres&mdash;property in France and Italy; and
            is considered worth double that sum in jewels, money, and other
            valuables.
          </p>
          <p>
            Massena is called, in France, the spoiled child of fortune; and as
            Bonaparte, like our former Cardinal Mazarin, has more confidence in
            fortune than in merit, he is, perhaps, more indebted to the former
            than to the latter for his present situation; his familiarity has
            made him disliked at our Imperial Court, where he never addresses
            Napoleon and Madame Bonaparte as an Emperor or an Empress without
            smiling.
          </p>
          <p>
            General St. Cyr, our second in command of the army of Italy, is also
            an officer of great talents and distinctions. He was, in 1791, only
            a cornet, but in 1795, he headed, as a general, a division of the
            army of the Rhine. In his report to the Directory, during the famous
            retreat of 1796, Moreau speaks highly of this general, and admits
            that his. achievements, in part, saved the republican army. During
            1799 he served in Italy, and in 1800 he commanded the centre of the
            army of the Rhine, and assisted in gaining the victory of
            Hohenlinden. After the Peace of Lundville, he was appointed a
            Counsellor of State of the military section, a place he still
            occupies, notwithstanding his present employment. Though under forty
            years of age, he is rather infirm, from the fatigues he has
            undergone and the wounds he has received. Although he has never
            combated as a general-in-chief, there is no doubt but that he would
            fill such a place with honour to himself and advantage to his
            country.
          </p>
          <p>
            Of the general officers who command under Archduke Charles, Comte de
            Bellegarde is already known by his exploits during the last war. He
            had distinguished himself already in 1793, particularly when
            Valenciennes and Maubeuge were besieged by the united Austrian and
            English forces; and, in 1794, he commanded the column at the head of
            which the Emperor marched, when Landrecy was invested. In 1796, he
            was one of the members of the Council of the Archduke Charles, when
            this Prince commanded for the first time as a general-in-chief, on
            which occasion he was promoted to a Field-marshal lieutenant.
          </p>
          <p>
            He displayed again great talents during the campaign of 1799, when
            he headed a small corps, placed between General Suwarow in Italy,
            and Archduke Charles in Switzerland; and in this delicate post he
            contributed equally to the success of both. After the Peace of
            Luneville he was appointed a commander-in-chief for the Emperor in
            the ci-devant Venetian States, where the troops composing the army
            under the Archduke Charles were, last summer, received and inspected
            by him, before the arrival of the Prince. He is considered by
            military men as greatly superior to most of the generals now
            employed by the Emperor of Germany.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XXXVI.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, October, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;"I would give my brother, the Emperor of Germany, one
            further piece of advice. Let him hasten to make peace. This is the
            crisis when, he must recollect, all States must have an end. The
            idea of the approaching extinction of the, dynasty of Lorraine must
            impress him with horror." When Bonaparte ordered this paragraph to
            be inserted in the Moniteur, he discovered an 'arriere pensee', long
            suspected by politicians, but never before avowed by himself, or by
            his Ministers. "That he has determined on the universal change of
            dynasties, because a usurper can never reign with safety or honour
            as long as any legitimate Prince may disturb his power, or reproach
            him for his rank." Elevated with prosperity, or infatuated with
            vanity and pride, he spoke a language which his placemen, courtiers,
            and even his brother Joseph at first thought premature, if not
            indiscreet. If all lawful Sovereigns do not read in these words
            their proscription, and the fate which the most powerful usurper
            that ever desolated mankind has destined for them, it may be
            ascribed to that blindness with which Providence, in its wrath,
            sometimes strikes those doomed to be grand examples of the
            vicissitudes of human life.
          </p>
          <p>
            "Had Talleyrand," said Louis Bonaparte, in his wife's drawing-room,
            "been by my brother's side, he would not have unnecessarily alarmed
            or awakened those whom it should have been his policy to keep in a
            soft slumber, until his blows had laid them down to rise no more;
            but his soldier-like frankness frequently injures his political
            views." This I myself heard Louis say to Abbe Sieyes, though several
            foreign Ambassadors were in the saloon, near enough not to miss a
            word. If it was really meant as a reflection on Napoleon, it was
            imprudent; if designed as a defiance to other Princes, it was
            unbecoming and impertinent. I am inclined to believe it, considering
            the individual to whom it was addressed, a premeditated declaration
            that our Emperor expected a universal war, was prepared for it, and
            was certain of its fortunate issue.
          </p>
          <p>
            When this Sieyes is often consulted, and publicly flattered, our
            politicians say, "Woe to the happiness of Sovereigns and to the
            tranquillity of subjects; the fiend of mankind is busy, and at
            work," and, in fact, ever since 1789, the infamous ex-Abbe has
            figured, either as a plotter or as an actor, in all our dreadful and
            sanguinary revolutionary epochas. The accomplice of La Fayette in
            1789, of Brissot in 1791, of Marat in 1792, of Robespierre in 1793,
            of Tallien in 1794, of Barras in 1795, of Rewbel in 1797, and of
            Bonaparte in 1799, he has hitherto planned, served, betrayed, or
            deserted all factions. He is one of the few of our grand criminals,
            who, after enticing and sacrificing his associates, has been
            fortunate enough to survive them. Bonaparte has heaped upon him
            presents, places, and pensions; national property, senatories,
            knighthoods, and palaces; but he is, nevertheless, not supposed one
            of our Emperor's most dutiful subjects, because many of the late
            changes have differed from his metaphysical schemes of innovation,
            of regeneration, and of overthrow. He has too high an opinion of his
            own deserts not to consider it beneath his philosophical dignity to
            be a contented subject of a fellow-subject, elevated into supremacy
            by his labours and dangers. His modesty has, for these sixteen years
            past, ascribed to his talents all the glory and prosperity of
            France, and all her misery and misfortunes to the disregard of his
            counsels, and to the neglect of his advice. Bonaparte knows it; and
            that he is one of those crafty, sly, and dark conspirators, more
            dangerous than the bold assassin, who, by sophistry, art, and
            perseverance insinuate into the minds of the unwary and daring the
            ideas of their plots, in such an insidious manner that they take
            them and foster them as the production of their own genius; he is,
            therefore, watched by our Imperial spies, and never consulted but
            when any great blow is intended to be struck, or some enormous
            atrocities perpetrated. A month before the seizure of the Duc
            d'Enghien, and the murder of Pichegru, he was every day shut up for
            some hours with Napoleon Bonaparte at St. Cloud, or in the
            Tuileries; where he has hardly been seen since, except after our
            Emperor's return from his coronation as a King of Italy.
          </p>
          <p>
            Sieyes never was a republican, and it was cowardice alone that made
            him vote for the death of his King and benefactor; although he is
            very fond of his own metaphysical notions, he always has preferred
            the preservation of his life to the profession or adherence to his
            systems. He will not think the Revolution complete, or the
            constitution of his country a good one, until some Napoleon, or some
            Louis, writes himself an Emperor or King of France, by the grace of
            Sieyes. He would expose the lives of thousands to obtain such a
            compliment to his hateful vanity and excessive pride; but he would
            not take a step that endangered his personal safety, though it might
            eventually lead him to the possession of a crown.
          </p>
          <p>
            From the bounty of his King, Sieyes had, before the Revolution, an
            income of fifteen thousand livres&mdash;per annum; his places,
            pensions, and landed estates produce now yearly five hundred
            thousand livres&mdash;not including the interest of his money in the
            French and foreign funds.
          </p>
          <p>
            Two years ago he was exiled, for some time, to an estate of his in
            Touraine, and Bonaparte even deliberated about transporting him to
            Cayenne, when Talleyrand observed "that such a condemnation would
            endanger that colony of France, as he would certainly organize there
            a focus of revolutions, which might also involve Surinam and the
            Brazils, the colonies of our allies, in one common ruin. In the
            present circumstances," added the Minister, "if Sieyes is to be
            transported, I wish we could land him in England, Scotland, or
            Ireland, or even in Russia."
          </p>
          <p>
            I have just heard from a general officer the following anecdote,
            which he read to me from a letter of another general, dated Ulm, the
            25th instant, and, if true, it explains in part Bonaparte's apparent
            indiscretion in the threat thrown out against all ancient dynasties.
          </p>
          <p>
            Among his confidential generals (and hitherto the most
            irreproachable of all our military commanders), Marmont is
            particularly distinguished. Before Napoleon left this capital to
            head his armies in Germany, he is stated to have sent despatches to
            all those traitors dispersed in different countries whom he has
            selected to commence the new dynasties, under the protection of the
            Bonaparte Dynasty. They were, no doubt, advised of this being the
            crisis when they had to begin their machinations against thrones. A
            courier from Talleyrand at Strasburg to Bonaparte at Ulm was ordered
            to pass by the corps under the command of Marmont, to whom, in case
            the Emperor had advanced too far into Germany, he was to deliver his
            papers. This courier was surprised and interrupted by some Austrian
            light troops; and, as it was only some few hours after being
            informed of this capture that Bonaparte expressed himself frankly,
            as related above, it was supposed by his army that the Austrian
            Government had already in its power despatches which made our
            schemes of improvement at Paris no longer any secrets at Vienna. The
            writer of this letter added that General Marmont was highly
            distressed on account of this accident, which might retard the
            prospect of restoring to Europe its long lost peace and
            tranquillity.
          </p>
          <p>
            This officer made his first campaign under Pichegru in 1794, and
            was, in 1796, appointed by Bonaparte one of his aides-de-camp. His
            education had been entirely military, and in the practice the war
            afforded him he soon evinced how well he remembered the lessons of
            theory. In the year 1796, at the battle of Saint-Georges, before
            Mantua, he charged at the head of the eighth battalion of
            grenadiers, and contributed much to its fortunate issue. In October
            of the same year, Bonaparte, as a mark of his satisfaction, sent him
            to present to the Directory the numerous colours which the army of
            Italy had conquered; from whom he received in return a pair of
            pistols, with a fraternal hug from Carnot. On his return to Italy he
            was, for the first time, employed by his chief in a political
            capacity. A republic, and nothing but a republic, being then the
            order of the day, some Italian patriots were convoked at Reggio to
            arrange a plan for a Cisalpine Republic, and for the incorporation
            with it of Modena, Bologna, and other neutral States; Marmont was
            nominated a French republican plenipotentiary, and assisted as such
            in the organization of a Commonwealth, which since has been by turns
            a province of Austria or a tributary State of France.
          </p>
          <p>
            Marmont, though combating for a bad cause, is an honest man; his
            hands are neither soiled with plunder, nor stained with blood.
            Bonaparte, among his other good qualities, wishes to see every one
            about him rich; and those who have been too delicate to accumulate
            wealth by pillage, he generally provides for, by putting into
            requisition some great heiress. After the Peace of Campo Formio,
            Bonaparte arrived at Paris, where he demanded in marriage for his
            aide-de-camp Marmont, Mademoiselle Perregeaux, the sole child of the
            first banker in France, a well-educated and accomplished young lady,
            who would be much more agreeable did not her continual smiles and
            laughing indicate a degree of self-satisfaction and complacency
            which may be felt, but ought never to be published.
          </p>
          <p>
            The banker, Perregeaux, is one of those fortunate beings who, by
            drudgery and assiduity, has succeeded in some few years to make an
            ample fortune. A Swiss by birth, like Necker, he also, like him,
            after gratifying the passion of avidity, showed an ambition to shine
            in other places than in the counting-house and upon the exchange.
            Under La Fayette, in 1790, he was the chief of a battalion of the
            Parisian National Guards; under Robespierre, a commissioner for
            purchasing provisions; and under Bonaparte he is become a Senator
            and a commander of the Legion of Honour. I am told that he has made
            all his money by his connection with your country; but I know that
            the favourite of Napoleon can never be the friend of Great Britain.
            He is a widower; but Mademoiselle Mars, of the Emperor's theatre,
            consoles him for the loss of his wife.
          </p>
          <p>
            General Marmont accompanied Bonaparte to Egypt, and distinguished
            himself at the capture of Malta, and when, in the following year,
            the siege of St. Jean d'Acre was undertaken, he was ordered to
            extend the fortifications of Alexandria; and if, in 1801, they
            retarded your progress, it was owing to his abilities, being an
            officer of engineers as well as of the artillery. He returned with
            Bonaparte to Europe, and was, after his usurpation, made a
            Counsellor of State. At the battle of Marengo he commanded the
            artillery, and signed afterwards, with the Austrian general, Count
            Hohenzollern, the Armistice of Treviso, which preceded shortly the
            Peace of Luneville. Nothing has abated Bonaparte's attachment to
            this officer, whom he appointed a commander-in-chief in Holland,
            when a change of Government was intended there, and whom he will
            entrust everywhere else, where sovereignty is to be abolished, or
            thrones and dynasties subverted.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
          <h2>
            LETTER XXXVII.
          </h2>
          <br />
          <p>
            PARIS, October, 1805.
          </p>
          <p>
            MY LORD:&mdash;Many wise people are of the opinion that the
            revolution of another great Empire is necessary to combat or oppose
            the great impulse occasioned by the Revolution of France, before
            Europe can recover its long-lost order and repose. Had the subjects
            of Austria been as disaffected as they are loyal, the world might
            have witnessed such a terrible event, and been enabled to judge
            whether the hypothesis was the production of an ingenious schemer or
            of a profound statesman. Our armies under Bonaparte have never
            before penetrated into the heart of a country where subversion was
            not prepared, and where subversion did not follow.
          </p>
          <p>
            How relatively insignificant, in the eyes of Providence, must be the
            independence of States and the liberties of nations, when such a
            relatively insignificant personage as General von Mack can shake
            them? Have, then, the Austrian heroes&mdash;a Prince Eugene, a
            Laudon, a Lasci, a Beaulieu, a Haddick, a Bender, a Clairfayt, and
            numerous other valiant and great warriors&mdash;left no posterity
            behind them; or has the presumption of General von Mack imposed upon
            the judgment of the Counsellors of his Prince? This latter must have
            been the case; how otherwise could the welfare of their Sovereign
            have been entrusted to a military quack, whose want of energy and
            bad disposition had, in 1799, delivered up the capital of another
            Sovereign to his enemies. How many reputations are gained by an
            impudent assurance, and lost when the man of talents is called upon
            to act and the fool presents himself.
          </p>
          <p>
            Baron von Mack served as an aide-de-camp under Field-marshal Laudon,
            during the last war between Austria and Turkey, and displayed some
            intrepidity, particularly before Lissa. The Austrian army was
            encamped eight leagues from that place, and the commander-in-chief
            hesitated to attack it, believing it to be defended by thirty
            thousand men. To decide him upon making this attack, Baron von Mack
            left him at nine o'clock at night, crossed the Danube, accompanied
            only by a single Uhlan, and penetrated into the suburb of Lissa,
            where he made prisoner a Turkish officer, whom, on the next morning
            at seven o'clock, he presented to his general, and from whom it was
            learnt that the garrison contained only six thousand, men. This
            personal temerity, and the applause of Field-marshal Laudon,
            procured him then a kind of reputation, which he has not since been
            able to support. Some theoretical knowledge of the art of war, and a
            great facility of conversing on military topics, made even the
            Emperor Joseph conceive a high opinion of this officer; but it has
            long been proved, and experience confirms it every day, that the
            difference is immense between the speculator and the operator, and
            that the generals of Cabinets are often indifferent captains when in
            the camp or in the field.
          </p>
          <p>
            Preceded by a certain celebrity, Baron von Mack served, in 1793,
            under the Prince of Coburg, as an adjutant-general, and was called
            to assist at the Congress at Antwerp, where the operations of the
            campaign were regulated. Everywhere he displayed activity and
            bravery; was wounded twice in the month of May; but he left the army
            without having performed anything that evinced the talents which
            fame had bestowed on him. In February, 1794, the Emperor sent him to
            London to arrange, in concert with your Government, the plans of the
            campaign then on the eve of being opened; and when he returned to
            the Low Countries he was advanced to a quartermaster-general of the
            army of Flanders, and terminated also this unfortunate campaign
            without having done anything to justify the reputation he had before
            acquired or usurped. His Sovereign continued, nevertheless, to
            employ him in different armies; and in January, 1797, he was
            appointed a Field-marshal lieutenant and a quartermaster-general of
            the army of the Rhine. In February he conducted fifteen thousand of
            the troops of this army to reinforce the army of Italy; but when
            Bonaparte in April penetrated into Styria and Carinthia, he was
            ordered to Vienna as a second in command of the levy 'en masse'.
          </p>
          <p>
            Real military characters had already formed their opinion of this
            officer, and saw a presumptuous charlatan where others had admired
            an able warrior. His own conduct soon convinced them that they
            neither had been rash nor mistaken. The King of Naples demanding, in
            1798, from his son-in-law, the Emperor of Germany, a general to
            organize and head his troops, Baron von Mack was presented to him.
            After war had been declared against France he obtained some success
            in partial engagements, but was defeated in a general battle by an
            enemy inferior in number. In the Kingdom of Naples, as well as in
            the Empire of Germany, the fury of negotiation seized him when he
            should have fought, and when he should have remembered that no
            compacts can ever be entered into with political and military
            earthquakes, more than with physical ones. This imprudence,
            particularly as he was a foreigner, excited suspicion among his
            troops, whom, instead of leading to battle, he deserted, under the
            pretence that his life was in danger, and surrendered himself and
            his staff to our commander, Championnet.
          </p>
          <p>
            A general who is too fond of his life ought never to enter a camp,
            much less to command armies; and a military chief who does not
            consider the happiness and honour of the State as his first passion
            and his first duty, and prefers existence to glory, deserves to be
            shot as a traitor, or drummed out of the army as a dastardly coward.
            Without mentioning the numerous military faults committed by General
            von Mack during this campaign, it is impossible to deny that, with
            respect to his own troops, he conducted himself in the most
            pusillanimous manner. It has often been repeated that martial valour
            does not always combine with it that courage and that necessary
            presence of mind which knows how to direct or repress multitudes,
            how to command obedience and obtain popularity; but when a man is
            entrusted with the safety of an Empire, and assumes such a brilliant
            situation, he must be weak-minded and despicable indeed, if he does
            not show himself worthy of it by endeavouring to succeed, or perish
            in the attempt. The French emigrant, General Dumas, evinced what
            might have been done, even with the dispirited Neapolitan troops,
            whom he neither deserted, nor with whom he offered to capitulate.
          </p>
          <p>
            Baron von Mack is in a very infirm state of health, and is often
            under the necessity of being carried on a litter; and his bodily
            complaints have certainly not increased the vigour of his mind. His
            love of life seems to augment in proportion as its real value
            diminishes. As to the report here of his having betrayed his trust
            in exchanging honour for gold, I believe it totally unfounded. Our
            intriguers may have deluded his understanding, but our traitors
            would never have been able to seduce or shake his fidelity. His head
            is weak, but his heart is honest. Unfortunately, it is too true
            that, in turbulent times, irresolution and weakness in a commander
            or a Minister operate the same, and are as dangerous as, treason.
          </p>
          <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="pauline" id="pauline"></a>
          <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
            <img alt="pauline.jpg (45K)" src="images/pauline.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
          </div>
          <br /><br /><br /><br />
          <h3>
            THE ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
          </h3>
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A stranger to remorse and repentance, as well as to honour
Accused of fanaticism, because she refused to cohabit with him
All his creditors, denounced and executed
All priests are to be proscribed as criminals
As everywhere else, supported injustice by violence
As confident and obstinate as ignorant
Bestowing on the Almighty the passions of mortals
Bonaparte and his wife go now every morning to hear Mass
Bonaparte dreads more the liberty of the Press than all other
Bourrienne
Bow to their charlatanism as if it was sublimity
Cannot be expressed, and if expressed, would not be believed
Chevalier of the Guillotine: Toureaux
Complacency which may be felt, but ought never to be published
Country where power forces the law to lie dormant
Distinguished for their piety or rewarded for their flattery
Easy to give places to men to whom Nature has refused parts
Encounter with dignity and self-command unbecoming provocations
Error to admit any neutrality at all
Expeditious justice, as it is called here
Extravagances of a head filled with paradoxes
Feeling, however, the want of consolation in their misfortunes
Forced military men to kneel before priests
French Revolution was fostered by robbery and murder
Future effects dreaded from its past enormities
General who is too fond of his life ought never to enter a camp
Generals of Cabinets are often indifferent captains in the field
God is only the invention of fear
Gold, changes black to white, guilt to innocence
Hail their sophistry and imposture as inspiration
He was too honest to judge soundly and to act rightly
Her present Serene Idiot, as she styles the Prince Borghese
Hero of great ambition and small capacity: La Fayette
How many reputations are gained by an impudent assurance
How much people talk about what they do not comprehend
If Bonaparte is fond of flattery&mdash;pays for it like a real Emperor
Indifference about futurity
Indifference of the French people to all religion
Invention of new tortures and improved racks
Irresolution and weakness in a commander operate the same
Its pretensions rose in proportion to the condescensions
Jealous of his wife as a lover of his mistress
Justice is invoked in vain when the criminal is powerful
Labour as much as possible in the dark
Love of life increase in proportion as its real value diminishes
Marble lives longer than man
May change his habitations six times in the month&mdash;yet be home
Men and women, old men and children are no more
Military diplomacy
Misfortunes and proscription would not only inspire courage
More vain than ambitious
My maid always sleeps with me when my husband is absent
My means were the boundaries of my wants
Napoleon invasion of States of the American Commonwealth
Nature has destined him to obey, and not to govern
Not suspected of any vices, but all his virtues are negative
Not only portable guillotines, but portable Jacobin clubs
Nothing was decided, though nothing was refused
Now that she is old (as is generally the case), turned devotee
One of the negative accomplices of the criminal
Opinion almost constitutes half the strength of armies
Prelate on whom Bonaparte intends to confer the Roman tiara
Prepared to become your victim, but not your accomplice
Presumptuous charlatan
Pretensions or passions of upstart vanity
Pride of an insupportable and outrageous ambition
Procure him after a useless life, a glorious death
Promises of impostors or fools to delude the ignorant
Prudence without weakness, and with firmness without obstinacy
Saints supplied her with a finger, a toe, or some other parts
Salaries as the men, under the name of washerwomen
Satisfying himself with keeping three mistresses only
Should our system of cringing continue progressively
Sold cats' meat and tripe in the streets of Rome
Step is but short from superstition to infidelity
Sufferings of individuals, he said, are nothing
Suspicion and tyranny are inseparable companions
Suspicion is evidence
They will create some quarrel to destroy you
They ought to be just before they are generous
"This is the age of upstarts," said Talleyrand
Thought at least extraordinary, even by our friends
Thought himself eloquent when only insolent or impertinent
Two hundred and twenty thousand prostitute licenses
Under the notion of being frank, are rude
United States will be exposed to Napoleon's outrages
Usurped the easy direction of ignorance
Vices or virtues of all civilized nations are relatively the same
Want is the parent of industry
We are tired of everything, even of our existence
Were my generals as great fools as some of my Ministers
Which crime in power has interest to render impenetrable
Who complains is shot as a conspirator
With us, unfortunately, suspicion is the same as conviction
Would cease to rule the day he became just
</pre>
          <br /><br /> <br /> <br />
          <hr />
          <br /><br />
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