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Discredited himself, Pichegru sought a more powerful name and support in Moreau, who hesitated, however, gave but half assent to the plot, and disapproved of the Bourbon restoration altogether.

The French police, in the hands of Regnier and Real, was so ineffectually managed, that the conspirators were several months in Paris without being discovered. Fouché at length, though out of office, got wind of the plot, and set the First Consul on its trace. Pichegru, the Polignacs, George himself, were arrested, as well as Moreau, who, refusing to make any confession, even of weakness, was brought to trial.*

The French government had thus discovered and defeated this ill-conceived and criminal conspiracy, and could the First Consul have enjoyed his triumph with calm and honourable dignity, he would have derived countless advantages, with an increase of authority and power. But with very many great qualities Bonaparte had also some very small ones. He retained of his Corsican nature a thirst for vengeance, as unscrupulous in its daring as that of George Cadoudal, and wreaked it too often upon victims who had no share whatever in the supposed crime with which the French ruler charged them. What could exceed in petty malevolence the order for arresting and imprisoning all English travellers in 1803? What more puerile than his persecution of Madame de Staël, and other women, simply because they would not flatter him? What more infamous in the annals of crime than his extinction of the House of Condé by the murder of the Duke d'Enghien? That prince inhabited the Duchy of Baden, held there by an amour more than by a political design. Because George and his accomplices covered their villany by asserting that a French prince was to accompany and sanction their project, the erring malevolence of the

*Moniteur Procès, Desmarets.

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First Consul would have the Duke d'Enghien to be that CHAP. prince, despite not only truth but probability. And with no graver charge against him than this suspicion, Bonaparte ordered the seizure of the prince upon neutral and German territory, and his instant transferral to the Donjon of Vincennes. There the young duke was hastily brought before a military tribunal, condemned, and, without delay or mercy, shot in the fosses of that château. Criminal still, if exercised towards a prince who had plotted against him, it was as iniquitous as any act of Danton or Robespierre, with respect to a victim as innocent as he was illustrious.*

This outrageous act so shocked the court of St. Petersburg, that it put on mourning, and in that reprobatory garb received the French ambassador, Hedouville. The Czar, too, joined King Gustavus of Sweden in forwarding remonstrances to the German diet. It was not only the Duc d'Enghien's death that irritated Russia; the Emperor had thrown his protection over the royal families of Naples and of Sardinia, and deprecated altogether the French occupation of Hanover and its Baltic shores. The Czar had even come forward as a mediator to remedy and reform such anomalies. France, to gain time, had at first consented to this mediation, but soon showed that she regarded its result in no serious light.

The death of the Duke d'Enghien made an impression as profound on the court of Berlin, though it refrained from manifesting its displeasure. It had leagued with France so far as to promise to look on in neutrality whilst Austria was crushed. Hanover was to be its reward. But French troops had taken possession of that electorate after the rupture of the peace of Amiens, and the First Consul hesitated transferring it to Prussia on other terms than those of an active and offensive alliance. From this the King of Prussia shrank, and in the spring

Bourrienne, Rovigo, Mémoires sur la Catastrophe.

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of 1804 began to lend an ear rather to the suggestions of Russia than to the menaces of France.

Whilst foreign powers were thus alienated from the French ruler by an act which bespoke the terrorist, the nation, except perhaps its high society, were little affected with what was but another enormity of the time. That the object of murderous plots should avenge himself in the same spirit in which he was attacked, was allowed as revolutionary logic. The public interest was kept alive by the trials which ensued, those of George, the stubborn Chouan, who refused every offer of life accompanied with the condition of his serving another master, of Pichegru and of Moreau. The tragic end of Pichegru, found strangled in his prison, as well as the murder of Captain Wright, an English officer engaged in the landing of the conspirators, are reckoned by his enemies amongst the crimes of Napoleon. And it is to be feared that his police was not all guiltless. Proofs, however, are wanting. As for Moreau, he had no doubt wished well to the enterprises against Napoleon, though refusing to join in them. His was a weak head, that knew not how to be either republican or monarchist, Frenchman or foreigner, one of those characters which Dante depicts as neither rebelli nor fedeli, and unworthy of sympathy or attention; Moreau was pardoned and exiled.

To foreign enmity and domestic foes the First Consul opposed the assumption of permanent and imperial dignity. To provide for his succession in the government by creating it an empire, and thus rendering assassination plots bootless, was a natural policy for Bonaparte. It was, however, no easy one. He was without a direct heir. His wife was barren. His brothers openly put forward their claims to succeed, whilst Napoleon was convinced of their incompetence. The question had been mooted at the time when the Consulate was decreed to be for life. Josephine had

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then proposed that the future empire should be settled CHAP. upon the son of Louis by Hortense; and the First Consul approved the arrangement. To make compensation to Joseph, he was offered the crown of Lombardy. But he scorned the compromise. And Louis, instead of approving the choice of his son for heir, opposed it with all his might. Napoleon therefore contented himself with the clause, that he should have the power of nominating his successor.*

This even Louis the Fourteenth had not believed himself sufficiently powerful to impose. And Napoleon likewise was so conscious how feeble his authority would prove beyond the tomb, that especially after the death of the young prince whom he at first declared to be his heir, he conceived the idea of his divorce with Josephine and subsequent marriage. It showed what little faith he had in the senate, or in any of his institutions. Yet M. Thiers, likening them to the constitution of Venice, regards them as possessed of vitality, and as capable of germing into liberty, when the iron sceptre had been broken. M. Thiers thus considers a mere salaried functionary aristocracy as equivalent to the old and wealthy patriciate of Venice. But the Napoleonic senate fell far short of the Venetian in independence or influence. Even the Venetian Assembly with its lion's mouth and its sbirri could not have lived in the open air of the nineteenth century. It could never have borne the modern development of liberty. Still less could an aristocracy of pensioned functionaries have either originated, or amalgamated with, the new era of freedom.

In May, 1804, the senate proclaimed Napoleon Bonaparte Emperor of the French, the scene in which he accepted and his court acclaimed it, being the retired château and groves of St. Cloud. The capital and the multitude were both set aside. And yet the coronation

Mémoires du Comte Miot de Melito, who best describes the quarrels of the brothers.

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was not unpopular. The functionary aristocracy was enthroned along with the new empire. Not merely a well-endowed senate, but grand dignitaries partaking partly of Byzantine, partly of feudal greatness, were appointed in the persons of Cambacérès and Lebrun the Consuls, transposed into Arch-Chancellor and ArchTreasurer. Joseph was named Grand Elector, a manifest sinecure, and Louis, Constable, another. Talleyrand and Berthier, dignitaries subsequently, were merely styled Grand Chamberlain and Grand Veneur. All the court places swept away in the first years of the revolution were more than re-established.

As a sanction to all this Napoleon resolved, that he should be crowned by the Pope, after his conquest of England. That was an important feat, which the new Emperor arranged along with the other requirements of etiquette. The coronation, however, took place without that formidable preliminary. The Pope and his cardinals hesitated long, and obviously objected sanctioning a ceremony in which the Emperor proclaimed tolerance to the different sects of Christians. But Pius was led to hope that the Legations might be the price of his acquiescence, a hope which, subsequently disappointed, led to his future resistance and captivity. The Pope came to Paris in December, 1804, and from the altar of Notre Dame looked on approvingly whilst Napoleon placed successively on his own head, and upon that of his wife Josephine, the crown of empire."

Had the new emperor clearly and sincerely manifested, that his assumption of even an imperial crown was merely adding one to the fraternity of European monarchs, with whom he was prepared to live in equality and amity and in the observance of mutual respect, the crowning of the first Napoleon might have formed a new and pacific era for himself and for Europe. And this

* Thibaudeau, Pelet, Moniteur.

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