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Title: Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud (Being secret letters from a gentleman at Paris to a nobleman in London) — Volume 5

Author: Lewis Goldsmith

Release date: December 4, 2004 [eBook #3896]
                Most recently updated: January 9, 2021

Language: English

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF ST. CLOUD (BEING SECRET LETTERS FROM A GENTLEMAN AT PARIS TO A NOBLEMAN IN LONDON) — VOLUME 5 ***




Produced by David Widger





MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF ST. CLOUD

By Lewis Goldsmith

Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London




Volume 5




BOOK 2.




LETTER I.

PARIS, September, 1805.

MY LORD:--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.

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.

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--all of us--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.

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.

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:

"Disarm the villain, and arrest him!"

"It is unnecessary," the captain replied, "I have served a tyrant, and
merit my fate!"  So saying, he passed his sword through his heart.

His whole company stopped instantly, as at a word of command, and a
general murmur was heard.

"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."

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.

"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.

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.

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?

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?

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,--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.




LETTER II.

PARIS, September, 1805.

My LORD:--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--to pay a part of the
arrears of the troops; and for the speedy conveyance of ammunition and
artillery towards the Rhine.

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--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.

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.

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.

You know, I suppose, that the Bank of France has never issued but two
sorts of notes; those of one thousand livres--and those of five hundred
livres.  At the day of its stoppage, sixty millions of livres--of the
former, and fifteen millions of livres--of the latter, were in
circulation; and I have heard a banker assert that the bank had not then
six millions of livres--in money and bullion, to satisfy the claims of
its creditors, or to honour its bills.

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.

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--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.

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.

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.

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--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.




LETTER III.

PARIS, September, 1805.

MY LORD:--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.

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."

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.

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--satisfying himself with keeping three mistresses only.

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.

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,--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'."

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.

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--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.

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.

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.




LETTER IV.

PARIS, September, 1805.

MY LORD:--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--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.

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--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--and one hundred napoleons d'or for his travelling
expenses.

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.

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.

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--in gold, a pension of six thousand livres--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.

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--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.

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.

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?

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--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.

"Where is it now?"  asked Fouche.

"At the Minister's of the Elector Arch-Chancellor," answered the artist.

"But where do you intend to show it for money?"  continued Fouche.

"In the Palais Royal."

"Well, bring it there," replied Fouche.

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.




LETTER V.

PARIS, September, 1805.

MY LORD:--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.

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--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.

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.

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--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!

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--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.

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.

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------, daughter of Marquis de
R------, 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----- was not
included in the act of proscription against her father and brother.

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!




LETTER VI.

PARIS, September, 1805.

MY LORD:--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--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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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--but by which he pocketed thirty-six millions of livres--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--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.




LETTER VII.

PARIS, September, 1805.

MY LORD:--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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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:

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.

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.

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--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--"

"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."

"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."

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:

"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."

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.




LETTER VIII.

PARIS, September, 1805.

MY LORD:--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.

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."

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.

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.

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--it is, indeed, still more surprising that a
general bankruptcy has not already involved the Spanish nation in a
general ruin.

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--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.

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.

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--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.

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.

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,--a house that
soon became the fashionable resort of our friends of Liberty and
Equality.

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--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.

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.

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.




LETTER IX.

PARIS, September, 1805.

MY LORD:--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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

"Do you not remember your brother's jockey, Prial?"

"Yes," said I, "but he was established by my brother as a hairdresser."

"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."

As the colonel did not seem to desire a renewal of acquaintance with me,
I did not intrude myself upon him.

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:

"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."

Frial smiled with contempt.

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"Then I will punish you as a rebel," retorted Frial; "and as sure as you
stand here you shall be shot."

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.

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------, 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.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Hero of great ambition and small capacity: La Fayette
Marble lives longer than man
Satisfying himself with keeping three mistresses only
Under the notion of being frank, are rude
Want is the parent of industry
With us, unfortunately, suspicion is the same as conviction







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