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SPANISH DESPATCHES
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Memoirs of Tallerand
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M. 2.
MEMOIRS
OF
C. M. TALLEYRAND
DE PERIGORD
VOL. II
2QS1G16
of Illustrations
PAGE SPANISH DESPATCHES .... Frontispiece
GENERAL BUONAPARTE .... 44
Louis BUONAPARTE . . . . .96
TALLEYRAND . . . . .144
MARIE ANTOINETTE . . . . .212
Due D'ENGHIEN 222
MEMOIRS
OF
C. M. TALLEYRAND
CORDELIA'S husband had been informed of her intention to follow Talleyrand in his intended journey. Negligent, or rather indifferent, as he had been, he now, however, took the alarm, and concerted measures to prevent so rash an act. But they were unneces- sary. Talleyrand's ungenerous and cruel reproaches had deeply wounded a mind over which he tyran- nised too successfully. Neither the vigour of her youth, nor the strength of her constitution, could withstand this dastardly assault; and she was unable to stir out, although she made several attempts. For some days she refused the aid of medicine and every kind of sustenance; but, forty- eight hours before her death, she suddenly changed her obstinacy, and seemed recovering her health as well as her tranquillity. On the last evening of her life, she invited her husband (who seldom visited her) to tea. She thanked him for his condescending behaviour towards her, but entreated him, should he
VOL. II I
2 MEMOIRS OF
ever marry again, not to allow his wife such an un- restrained freedom as had been permitted her, as it had shortened her days, and was the origin of all her misery. Bathed with her tears, she delivered to him her daughter, whom she implored him to send, after her decease, to a noble convent, to be educated in such a manner as to become one of its future members. After pressing the child almost to suffoca- tion to her bosom, she ordered her to be carried to the nursery, which was at a distance in one of the wings of the chateau. She recommended to his notice the young man, her first lover, bequeathing to him, besides all her jewels, a sum of money — her private property — sufficient to procure him an annuity of ^850. In embracing her husband for the last time, she deposited her will in his hands, and entreated its execution, particularly that part in which she had desired to be burnt after her death, and her ashes collected in an urn and sent according to a sealed address. Upon his surprise at hearing her speak of a death which, judging from her im- proved state of health, seemed yet distant, she answered, " No, my friend ! you are mistaken ; my death-warrant was signed yesterday, and I received it this morning! " Saying this, she showed him a letter from Talleyrand, which he, in vain, demanded
TALLEYRAND 3
to read. In leaving her, he ordered the physician to be called, supposing her conversation the effect of delirium, or derangement. The physician found her reading; calm, and better than in the morning.
At ten o'clock she went to bed, and ordered one of her maids, who slept in the same room, and her nurse and another maid, who had beds in an adjoin- ing closet, to do the same. She had a table by her bedside, and continued for some time reading and writing alternately. Finding herself watched by her maid, she sent her to bed with the nurse, and bolted the door of the closet. This was about one o'clock in the morning. At six, the nurse heard a scream, and, forcing open the door, found the unfortunate Cordelia weltering in her blood, having stabbed her- self through the heart with an American penknife of curious workmanship, presented to her by Talley- rand. She was already dead. Upon the table were found a sealed letter to her husband, and an open note addressed to Talleyrand, containing these lines: "Five d ^ clock in the morning*
"I have burnt aft your letters. They would neither do honour to my memory, nor to your heart. God forgive you! you are my assassin! I
pardon you!
" CORDELIA."
i — 2
4 MEMOIRS OF
By the side of this note and the letter lay Rousseau's " Eloisa " and the " Sorrows of Werter." The former of these works lay open, and in the letter from St. Preux to Lord Boston, these words were underlined: "By making existence insupportable, God commands us to put an end to it. In putting an end to existence, we, therefore, only obey the command of the Divinity."
The alarm which the fatal deed occasioned soon assembled all persons in the chateau round the body; among others, the young lover, who, from illness, had not been able for three weeks to leave his bed. His sufferings, and the general consternation, may easily be conjectured. In pressing the bleeding remains of his Cordelia to his bosom, he fainted away, and was carried senseless back to his apartment. Even her
«
philosophical husband, whose want of feeling and apathy were proverbial, shed tears at the sight.
The same night her remains were, according to her will, without pomp, consumed upon a funereal pile, erected in the park opposite the windows of the library from which she, for the first time, had seen her seducer. The sealed address contained these words, to be engraved on the urn: "The ashes of
Cordelia de S , born Princess de H , bequeathed
to Citizen Charles Maurice Talleyrand. — Memento mori! "
TALLEYRAND 5
When Cordelia's young lover recovered from his swoon, he desired to speak with a clergyman, and to obtain the succours of religion. Upon the assurance of this venerable man that the sufferer was resigned with submission to the decrees of Providence, he was not suspected of any designs on his own life. It is probable that such was then the state of his mind; but observing, just before sunset, smoke issuing from the park, and enquiring the cause, his servant imprudently told him, not only that the body of Cordelia was reduced to ashes, but that those ashes had been bequeathed by her to Talleyrand. In about an hour afterwards he desired to be left alone, under pretence of requiring rest. At midnight the servant knocked at the door, and was ordered to go to bed: he was no more wanted that night. At seven o'clock in the morning, he returned to light his master's fire, but the door was still bolted. Afraid of causing disturbance, he went away; but in two hours afterwards, on knocking and calling without receiving an answer, he communicated his
apprehension to Baron de S , and, the door being
forced open, a most dreadful and affecting spectacle presented itself to view. The young man was lying on the bed, with the portrait of Cordelia in one hand and the very knife with which she had stabbed
6 MEMOIRS OF
herself in the other, having with it previously pierced his own heart. He was dressed in the same night- gown that in the morning had been stained with his mistress's blood; round his neck was a collar of her hair; on his left arm was a bracelet of the same, and upon his fingers were three rings with her hair set round with diamonds. Between fifty and sixty of her letters were spread about him on the bed, and the one in which she first avowed her love of him had been placed inside his shirt, near his bosom; and consequently a great part of its contents was blotted out by his blood. Upon his writing-desk lay two open letters; the one addressed to Baron de
S , the other to Talleyrand. In the former he
prayed that his body might be permitted to be buried in the park, upon the spot where that of Cordelia had been reduced to ashes, without being stripped of his present dress or ornaments. He desired to be shut up in his coffin surrounded by all the letters of his first and only mistress. Everything she had left him in her will he bequeathed to her daughter Julia. "Oh, Cordelia! " exclaimed he in this letter, "how was it possible for this strange seducer to perplex and shake your sentiments, even of me, whom you must have known so well? Could you suppose that wealth, gold, or diamonds would recom-
TALLEYRAND 7
pense me, or console me for the loss of your affec- tion? No! you could not be in your senses when you imagined that anything, or any person upon earth, would have power to alleviate that insupport- able agony, those incurable pangs your untimely death must inflict on a lover who saw nothing lovely in the universe but you; who, willingly, would have sacrificed worlds to see you happy, and to whom a world which you ceased to inhabit became a desert, and is now a tomb! And your ashes: you refuse me even them ! — but you were in the right ; if your destroyer has any human feelings, their sight must be to him a corrosive — a consuming poison."
The letter to Talleyrand was very long, and written in a language, though somewhat confused, strong and energetic. The following are the most pointed paragraphs :
"Monster, vomited out of hell! why did you pollute with your infernal presence this quiet pro- vince, so remote from the scene of your early crimes? And why did you infect with your de- pravity, and bring misery into dwellings, before the uninterrupted abode of happiness? What could induce you to mark for destruction persons who received you with hospitality, who treated you with kindness, who desired your happiness and studied
8 . MEMOIRS OF
your comfort? After betraying me, seducing Cor- delia, and dishonouring Baron de S , what could be your motive for reducing to despair those you had so cruelly outraged? Gracious God! was it blood you sought? — then why not select me for your sole victim? Why not, treacherous coward as you are, plunge your dagger in my back, rather than fix it in the bosom of Cordelia? Upon the verge of eternity, with one foot already in the grave, I solemnly declare before the God who will have judged me when these lines reach you, had you informed me that my death was necessary for the tranquillity of Cordelia, that very day should have been my last, and I had never more beheld the setting sun. I should then have forgiven you all the wretchedness you have caused me, persuaded that my resignation would have convinced Cordelia of the disinterested purity of my affection. But no! — no! it soothed the horrid vanity of your demoniac heart to contemplate the bleeding sacrifice of beauty; to deprive society of one of its brightest ornaments, whose virtues were so many and whose frailties so few; and to bury, in the prime of life, so much goodness, talent and elegance. God forgive me! For hours this morning I have been meditating to despatch you first, and then myself; but, trusting
TALLEYRAND 9
to the justice of the Divine Providence, I left this deed to the common executioner, who, sooner or later, must avenge insulted nature and violated hu- manity. May the shades of Cordelia and myself, as ever-relentless furies, pursue and torment your guilty conscience upon earth, that you may antici- pate here what you have to endure hereafter. My wrath descends with me to the tomb: I expire with- out forgiving you!"
It was from the lady whom he intended to seduce that Talleyrand first obtained the intelligence of the fatal catastrophe — the consequence of his depravity. It was accompanied with an order never afterwards to appear in her sight, and with a threat that, if he did not quit the country immediately, her husband should be informed of the attempt against his honour, and a prison for life would be the least the seducer could expect. Taking the alarm, he set out in some few hours for Berlin, there to continue his career of in- trigue and infamy.1
I Mon Sejouren Allemagne and Die A llgemeineA nnalen (Leipzig, 1790) contain most of the above particulars of Cordelia's and her lover's last moments, with their last letters, wills, &c. In Les Intrigues de Ch. M. Talleyrand, p. 66, it is, besides, stated that the urn was presented to him in December, 1796, at Paris, and lost by him on Christmas Day, urn, ashes and alj, to* Chevalier Pension, at faro.
IO MEMOIRS OF
Among French ladies of natural genius and literary talents; among the Genlis, the Staels, and others, there is a general opinion, professed in their conver- sations and published in their writings, that "the virtue of women has more to apprehend from witty, able and artful, than from young and handsome men." This notion seems to be confirmed in the life of Talleyrand. An able and impartial author has drawn an accurate portrait of this political Adonis in these words: "It is impossible to see a more lifeless, ill-shapen machine, hung out with a wide, glittering State uniform, than this Talleyrand. The greatest enervation of body, with hollow cheeks and a death-like eye, announce the profligate, broken, and exhausted sensualist. His worn-out carcase, supported on a pair of club feet, moves slowly on in short, un- certain steps. His tardy, loathsome utterance shows the satiated and cynical state of his mind: he must indeed be a great physiognomist who could discover the profound and subtle ex-bishop and statesman, who dupes France and Europe by this disgusting inani- mate exterior, by the dim remains of fire still visible in his eyes, and by the insipid, sallow hue of his com- plexion." * Such is the true picture of that man,
I See "Bonaparte and the French People under his Con- sulate" (London, 1804), pp. 157 and 158.
TALLEYRAND I I
who, after gaming her affections, by his inconstancy and vice reduced to despair one of the most beautiful and accomplished women of the age.
The journey to Berlin was not merely dictated by fear, but had for some time been meditated upon from policy. The King of Prussia had but lately concluded a peace with the regicides in France, who, insincere themselves, supposed him equally so. When Talley- rand had again obtained the right of a French citizen, he offered his services to sound the ground in the capital of Prussia, which had been accepted by the hardly organised Directorial Government, composed of un- principled men whose characters and conduct fore- bode new internal changes or civil disturbances in France. His own safety, therefore, he thought as much connected with his secret mission to Prussia now as his former secret mission to Great Britain had been some few years before. In fact, all the Directors agreed in one particular: they had assiduously promoted, and given their suffrages for, the murder of the King ; but in all other respects they were incapable of sincere union. Attached to all the different parties which had gained ascendency and been destroyed during the Revolution, they hated each other, and nothing but a temporary necessity could occasion an appearance of cordiality between Orleanists, Bris-
12 MEMOIRS OF
sotines and mountaineers, who had a thousand topics of mutual reproach and not one cause of mutual con- fidence. The contempt and detestation which attended the last days of the Convention were indeed favour- able to the new Government — for new it was, in name at least, though composed of the shreds and refuse of the body so much hated and despised.
Peace was now avowed to be the principal wish of the French people; but the campaign of 1795, both on the Rhine and the frontiers of Italy, had not produced events so important as might have been expected. The state of the French finances, the agitations and distractions which embarrassed the Directory, and the numerous uncertainties attending newly-acquired power, prevented vigorous exertions. , France had, besides, a deeper game of policy to play. The Governors affected a spirit of conciliation and a desire of peace, conforming their professions towards foreign nations with the pretended system of modera- tion and lenity which they had established at home, and thus deluded many Powers into a belief that they had carried on war merely on principles of self-defence and for purposes of security. The successes of the protracted campaign of 1794 had weakened their armies more than their opponents could believe. The neces- sity of keeping up such a force in Holland as would
TALLEYRAND 1 3
enable them to effect their schemes of extortion to the fullest extent, weakened their disposable forces for the field, and they had no hopes, until a peace with Prussia, Spain and other Powers limited and con- densed their operations, of being able to carry on effectual hostilities for another year. Their Conti- nental enemies, on the other hand, were equally weakened and fatigued by the length of the contest. The Cabinet of Vienna was, unfortunately, divided by jarring and treacherous counsels; and those who were most patriotic in their views for the good of the Empire were filled with consternation at the unex- pected successes of the French and the inglorious defection of the King of Prussia.
In that situation of affairs, a man of Talleyrand's talents was more useful at Berlin than anywhere else. It is, however, curious that, during the first three months he passed there, he was only known by the appellation of Citizen Maurice, having his pass in that name. He was, however, often observed in the company of the Prussian ministers, particularly in that of Count Haugwitz, and he associated familiarly with those male and female favourites who so much influenced the determinations of the late King. He is said to have passed many days with General Bishops- werder, and many nights with the Countess of Lich-
(4 MEMOIRS OF
teneau; he here plotted with the Prussian illuminati, preached with the Prussian atheists, fraternised with the Prussian revolutionists, declaimed with the Prus- sian demagogues, and complained with the Prussian aristocrats. From his political campaign in this capital he carried back with him to France, as trophies of his achievements, the friendship of Count Haugwitz; the secrets of the weakness of the Cabinet of Berlin; the organised neutrality of Prussia; the promise of procuring the present King— at that time Prince Royal— his election as King of the Romans; and a secret treaty, signed with the Prussian patriots in the name of the French Directory, agreeing to establish upon the ruins of monarchy a Prussian Re- public, one and indivisible. On his return to Paris, he wrote to Barras: "That, short as the period of his late secret mission had been, he could take upon himself to affirm, that either the King ot Prussia would continue neutral as long as it suited the plans and interest of France, or a Prussian Commonwealth would unite its arms in the cause of liberty with those of the French Republic."
Soon after his arrival at Paris he was elected first a member, and afterwards one of the secretaries to the National Institute, to which he presented a tract written with great ability, entitled, "Des Tra-
TALLEYRAND I g
vaux de la Classe des Sciences Morales et Politi- ques," in which he showed the advantages both of the sciences and of liberty, and, therefore, strongly recommended the continuance of a Republican Govern- ment, with an elective executive as well as legisla- tive power. Hereditary authorities and dignities, he attempted to prove, were not only incompatible with the improvement and felicity of society, but repro- bated by common sense, because the history of all times had evinced that eminent virtues and great talents had never continued hereditary, even in two generations. This tract, were it now revised and pre- sented to the Corsican usurper, would certainly procure the author a dungeon in the Temple, a place in the Cayenne diligence, or a bullet in the Wood of Vincennes. But honour and consistency are qualities to which French patriots have never pretended. This justice is due to them, that, under former as well as under present emperors of faction, they have, with the most daring impudence, equally exhibited their political and religious apostacy and their moral and social profligacy.
Before he left the vicinity of Hamburg, Talley- rand had, in the house occupied by Madame Genlis and General Valence, held several conferences with Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Arthur O'Connor, and other
1 6 MEMOIRS OF
Irish conspirators, who had arrived there by appoint- ment. With them he discussed the relative situations of his old friends the Irish and English patriots, and the means of establishing the independence of Ire- land, a revolution in Great Britain, and a republican government in both islands. In all ages and countries there have been plots and criminal confederacies, but it was reserved for the French Revolution to furnish a model of multiplied and concentrated associations conspiring against the laws, and deliberating upon their overthrow for a series of years, while under their pro- tection; forming, in the very heart of social order, a league to dissolve it, having a secret legislative and executive administration; attacking their country by the same organs and with the same forms which serve for its preservation and the maintenance of public tranquillity. He had communicated to Barras his revolutionary transactions with the Irish rebel chiefs, and the Directory sanctioned them with their official approbation. Their minister at Hamburg was ordered to make that city the sanctuary of fugitives from the British dominions, and to protect their committee which conducted the intermediary corre- spondence with Paris, London and Ireland, under the mask of commercial affairs or information for newspapers. General Hoche was sent in disguise to
TALLEYRAND 1 7
meet Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Arthur O'Connor in Switzerland; and it was in consequence of an agreement with them that the expedition, under this general, to Bantry Bay in December, 1796, was undertaken. Its miscarriage was of the greatest utility to the British Empire, because the Directory afterwards mistrusted the reports of the Irish rebels; and whatever Talleyrand, when in the ministry, did to the contrary, he could not persuade them to under- take any but partial armaments.
Notwithstanding the brilliant exploits of the British navy and the recent conquest of the Cape of Good Hope, the Cabinet of St. James's, always preferring humanity to glory, made two unsuccessful attempts during 1796 to enter into a negotiation for a peace with the French revolutionary rulers — the first by means of Mr. Wickham, minister to the Cantons of Switzerland, and the next through the medium of Lord Malmesbury, a nobleman whose long services in the diplomatic line, whose knowledge, experience and integrity justly inspired the utmost confidence that the interests of his country, or the claims of her allies, would not be sacrificed by him through ignorance or inattention. After much pre- vious discussion, he obtained a passport to visit Paris. The avowed temper and declared ambition of the
VOL. II 2
28 MEMOIRS OF
memorial, exposing the fallacy of the conclusions drawn in the former, and the danger of France in negotiating upon the very principles La Croix had so strongly recommended. He manifested, also, such an inveteracy against the British Empire, and such a rooted hatred against the British nation, that at last even Rewbel consented to his appointment to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, La Croix's incapacity being now regarded as too evident. Had not the peace faction here been blinded to everything else but to the indulgence of their seditious principles, the promotion of Talleyrand, whose aversion and fury against this country were proverbial, not only in France, but in every quarter of Europe and America, would have enabled them to conclude that the French Directory had no intention of ending the war with England, but that their whole design was to furnish some argument to the declaimers for peace here, while they amused the attention of the people of France preparatory to the new revolu- tion they were planning in favour of Jacobinism.
Talleyrand had been a member of the Diplomatic Committee of the Constituent Assembly, which de- creed, on the 2nd of May, 1790, " That the French nation for ever renounced all conquests, and con- sequently ail wars leading to that object." The
TALLEYRAND 2Q
Legislative Assembly expressed and confirmed the same principle ; and Chauvelin, in his official notes of the 1 2th and 24th of May, 1792, presented to Lord Grenville, declares in the former : " That whatever may finally be the fate of arms, France rejects all ideas of aggrandisement" ; and, in the latter, " That, religiously faithful to the principles of its Constitution, whatever may be definitively the fortune of her arms, France disclaims every idea of aggrandise- ment"1 These notes, though signed by Chauvelin, were penned by Talleyrand, whose political con- sistency and moral rectitude has since been such that he has not, as a minister, negotiated a single peace without directly or indirectly obtaining some acquisition to France by conquest or exaction; nor has a war been entered into by France during his ministry the object of which was not, besides extor- tion of plunder, extension of territory. Nay, even without a declaration of war, he has wrested from the allies of his country various possessions. Geneva and a part of Switzerland were conquered in time of peace ; the Republic of Genoa invaded in time of peace ; Piedmont incorporated in time of peace ; Louisiana, Parma, Plaisance, and the Isle of Elba
I See " Rivington's Annual Register for 1792," Part II., pp. 258, 260.
2O MEMOIRS OF
Foreign Department in France ; but he and the Director Rewbel were so closely connected by partitions of plunder and other patriotic deeds, when on missions as members of the National Convention, that Talleyrand, nevertheless, lost all hope of turning him out, or of succeeding him. Ramel, the Minister of the Finances, being a regicide as well as Rewbel and La Croix, had, however, embroiled himself with the former, was hated by Barras, and supported only by Carnot. Talley- rand, therefore, from a politician became a financier, and determined at any rate to have his ambition gratified by his appointment to the rank of a minis- ter. A long memorial, comparing the finances of France in 1796 with those of America in 1783, was presented by him to his friend Barras, who laid it before the Directory. It was found to contain so many just observations and pertinent remarks that it was remitted to the financial committee of the Council of Five Hundred. There the state of the finances continued to be a source of continual debates, and schemes of fraud and imposture were
dislocated his shoulder, the surgeon who set it discovered a mark from a hot iron inflicted on him as a thief and a forger. This scandalous discovery caused his removal. He is a member of the Legion of Honour! Let Nouvelies d la Main, Messidor, year XII., No. iii., page 8.
TALLEYRAND 2 1
daily presented for supplying the National Treasury with money, although the Government was divested of credit. This domestic penury, while a victorious army was plundering the most wealthy States of Europe, should convince the people of all countries that economy, public faith, general industry, and rigid justice can alone preserve them from distress ; and that, without these qualities, so eminently pos- sessed by the English Government and nation, the entire treasures of a subjugated world would be seized in vain. Individuals might, as in France, be shame- fully enriched, but the community must continue poor, oppressed and hopeless.
Shortly afterwards, at the desire of Barras, Talley- rand wrote on this subject a message from the Directory, in which, by an affecting, though not overcharged picture of public calamity, they solicited the attention of the Council of Five Hundred. "All parts of the public service," they said, "are in extreme distress. The pay of the troops is in arrear, and the defenders of the country given up to the horrors of nakedness. Their courage is enervated by their grievous wants, and their disgust occasions deser- tions. The hospitals are without furniture, fire or drugs; and the charitable institutions, similarly unpro- vided, repel the approach of that indigence and infir-
22 MEMOIRS OF
mity which they ought to solace. The State creditors and contractors who contributed to supply the wants of the armies can only obtain, by their utmost exertions, small parts of the sums which were due to them, and the example of their distress deters others who would perform the same services with more punctuality and less profit. The highroads are broken up and com- munication interrupted, the salaries of the public functionaries are unpaid, and throughout the Republic we see judges and administrators reduced to the horrible alternative of dragging on a miserable ex- istence, or disgracefully selling themselves to every intrigue. Malevolence is universally busy; in many places assassination is reduced to a system, and the police, without activity or force, and being destitute of pecu- niary means, is unable to terminate disorders." As a remedy for these inconveniences, it was proposed in the message — first, a compulsory advance in money from all purchasers of national domains, a project which only increased their embarrassments, by giving reason to expect a new circulation of paper, with no better guarantee than the credit of individuals. The Minister of Finance was next authorised to convoke an assembly of merchants from all the considerable trading towns of the Republic, to meet at Paris. Some attended, others refused to obey the summons;
TALLEYRAND 23
but all concurred in rejecting four several plans which were offered for the establishment of a national bank, though enforced by all the persuasions which power and eloquence could lend to the Ministers Ramel and Benezeth. The merchants answered by a plain enumeration of facts: "All Government paper," they said, "has been discredited, and every scheme for giving circulation to such a symbol in France has been disgraced by an unprincipled seizure of the property which was to realise its value. The effects of anarchy depress the spirit of commerce; we trade only on the ruins of our former wealth, capital is spent or buried, manufactures are shut up, corre- spondence is annihilated, a continual fluctuation in Government checks the spirit of enterprise, and the best combined speculations fail because, between the period of projecting and that of perfecting them, a total change takes place in the laws relating to their operation." When such was the situation of the French finances, a man must, indeed, possess great confidence of his own powers to promise him- self success in an attempt to repair derangement so universal, and to restore a ruined credit; but Talley- rand's intent was rather to expose the want of talents in the Minister than to relieve the sufferings of the State. He desired a place in the Ministry to enrich
24 MEMOIRS OF
himself first, and that done, he would, perhaps, con- sider whether it was possible to abate the misery of his impoverished country.
In the spring of 1797, Talleyrand presented a petition to the Directory in the name of Madame Grand. She proved herself to have been born a Danish subject, though married to an Englishman, whom she detested because he had made her un- happy. This petition was referred to Citizen Cochon, the then Minister of Police, whose approbation it obtained. She was, therefore, permitted to return to France, where she arrived with a Danish pass, and continued to reside under the protection of the Danish minister, until she was married to her present husband. Her house at Montmorency, near Paris, soon became the rendezvous of all those foreign diplomatic agents or directorial courtiers whom he judged favourable to his designs, whose services he expected, whose in- fluence he knew, and whose assistance he courted. It is difficult to say what could induce Madame Grand to prostitute herself and her reputation with a man of whose depravity she had been informed, and with whose libertinism she was not unacquainted; who never made a mistress happy, but who often had declared his greatest enjoyment was to witness the misery of those females he had ruined. Some pretended that it origin-
TALLEYRAND 2 5
ated in a feeble mind that knew and detested him, but wanted courage to express itself, and therefore received a faithless man as a friend and a disagreeable man as a lover. Others, and those her apologists, in not denying her own want of energy and her dislike of Talleyrand, insinuate that gratitude for having, by his means, recovered her property, silenced all other feelings, and even changed disgust into affection and contempt into confidence. But her indiscreet friends, in degrading her understanding, libel her heart. She had always, during her migration, property enough to live even in affluence, both from what Lieutenant Belcher, with such honourable disinterestedness and at so much risk, had saved for her, and from an unlimited credit sent her by Mr. Grand from Switzer- land, who, hearing of her flight to England and not knowing her circumstances, forgot that he had been injured by her, only remembering that she bore his name and had once been worthy of his love as well as of his esteem, and that if she had since been culpable she then was unfortunate. This was con- duct not unexpected from a Briton, because it is honourable to the man; in how different a manner has the delicate French citizen Talleyrand acted! He has always openly, though not much to the credit of his mistress, declared that she was just the woman
26 MEMOIRS OF
he wanted, and of the whole female army he had known and commanded, the person who best suited his purposes— not having sense enough to dupe him by interfering in any political intrigues, but capacity enough to do well the honours of her house. She was an inoffensive but agreeable companion at table, and Venus herself in the boudoir, which was all that he looked for. Whether he much trusted in her fidelity may be concluded from the following anecdote. His valet de chambre, who was also his pimp, introduced to his acquaintance, during his stay in Germany, a young daughter of a Protestant clergy- man, whom he soon debauched and carried away with him, in the disguise first of a jockey, and after- wards, as she grew taller, in that of private secre- tary. When Madame Grand came back to Paris, he made this girl assume the dress of her sex, and recommended her to his mistress as a chambermaid, or, rather, as a governess, . because she has been obliged to submit to the rudeness, as well as to the awkwardness of this Abigail, who watched her words, reported her behaviour, inspected her corre- spondence, and embroiled her with her lover, or pacified him, just as humour, anger, malice or caprice dictated. This woman he now calls the prefect of the female department of his house, and
TALLEYRAND 2?
Madame Talleyrand is to this time more afraid of provoking her than of offending her husband.1
By another endeavour of the English Government to negotiate a peace, Talleyrand expected to find another opportunity of making his abilities known, and, perhaps, himself necessary. He composed an artful, but more eloquent than conclusive, memorial of the relative political situation of Great Britain and France, which he, as a friend, gave La Croix to read over and improve with his observations. As he suspected, this minister immediately made use of it, and laid it before the Directory in his own name, recommending the adoption of its contents. Talley- rand was, however, beforehand with him, having two days previously presented to Rewbel another
I Les Nouvelles & la Main, Thermidor, year XI., No. ii., p. 4 and 5. In the note of the last page is mentioned a proof of Madame Talleyrand's ingenuousness. When, in the autumn of 1797, the Directory negotiated a loan, and Bonaparte gave England as security for its acquittal, Madame Grand wrote to Talleyrand, expressing her uneasiness on account of her jewels and valuables deposited in the Bank of England, and begged him to inform Bonaparte of it. In return she was answered, "that, having always her interest at heart more than his own, he had obtained from the Directory a separate decree, which exempted her property in England from being included in Bonaparte's pledge, and that it therefore was safe." She was ingenuous enough to show Talleyrand's answer to several persons, to the great amusement of the then fashionable wits. Even Talleyrand himself was entertained by her sally.
28 MEMOIRS OF
memorial, exposing the fallacy of the conclusions drawn in the former, and the danger of France in negotiating upon the very principles La Croix had so strongly recommended. He manifested, also, such an inveteracy against the British Empire, and such a rooted hatred against the British nation, that at last even Rewbel consented to his appointment to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, La Croix's incapacity being now regarded as too evident. Had not the peace faction here been blinded to everything else but to the indulgence of their seditious principles, the promotion of Talleyrand, whose aversion and fury against this country were proverbial, not only in France, but in every quarter of Europe and America, would have enabled them to conclude that the French Directory had no intention of ending the war with England, but that their whole design was to furnish some argument to the declaimers for peace here, while they amused the attention of the people of France preparatory to the new revolu- tion they were planning in favour of Jacobinism.
Talleyrand had been a member of the Diplomatic Committee of the Constituent Assembly, which de- creed, on the 2nd of May, 1790, "That the French nation for ever renounced all conquests, and con- sequently all wars leading to that object." The
TALLEYRAND 2Q
Legislative Assembly expressed and confirmed the same principle; and Chauvelin, in his official notes of the 1 2th and 24th of May, 1792, presented to Lord Grenville, declares in the former : " That whatever may finally be the fate of arms, France rejects all ideas of aggrandisement" ; and, in the latter, " That, religiously faithful to the principles of its Constitution, whatever may be definitively the fortune of her arms, France disclaims every idea of aggrandise- ment"1 These notes, though signed by Chauvelin, were penned by Talleyrand, whose political con- sistency and moral rectitude has since been such that he has not, as a minister, negotiated a single peace without directly or indirectly obtaining some acquisition to France by conquest or exaction ; nor has a war been entered into by France during his ministry the object of which was not, besides extor- tion of plunder, extension of territory. Nay, even without a declaration of war, he has wrested from the allies of his country various possessions. Geneva and a part of Switzerland were conquered in time of peace; the Republic of Genoa invaded in time of peace ; Piedmont incorporated in time of peace ; Louisiana, Parma, Plaisance, and the Isle of Elba
x See " Rivington's Annual Register for 1792," Part II., pp. 258, 260.
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were swindled in time of peace ; and had not the all-powerful veto of British bravery interposed, Egypt had, in time of peace, again been torn from the Turkish Empire.
Knowing the determination of the majority of the Directors to continue the unpopular war with England, and apprehensive that the odium of an unsuccessful issue of the negotiation would be cast on him, with a view to shelter himself as much as possible from all connection with it, Lisle, in Flanders, was fixed as the place of meeting, and the ex-Director Le Tourneur, the ex-Minister Pleville Lepelley, and Maret were nominated the French negotiators, whilst Lord Malmesbury alone was appointed Plenipotentiary on behalf of Great Britain. The English Ministry on their part were too well acquainted with the characteristics of the French Government to expect that a specific compact would easily be arranged ; yet the appearance of an approaching peace with the Emperor of Germany and the avowed disposition of two members of the Directory afforded some hopes. The extensive claims of restitution made by the French during ttie preceding negotiation, though coloured by pretexts of an honourable attention to the interests of their allies, were in fact intended merely as a means of gaining for themselves the most
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valuable colonies. Nor did the Directors scruple to avow their intention of keeping Holland in a state of abject dependence, to plunder the country, and to acquire, either by force, or at the expense of the Dutch, the Cape of Good Hope and Trin- comali ; but afterwards to retain the possession themselves. The cession of the Spanish part of St. Domingo to France had materially changed the aspect of affairs in the West Indies, and, therefore, the first proposition of a treaty, on the basis of reciprocal compensations, was followed by a note claiming, on the part of Great Britain, the retention of Trinidad, and, as an exemption to the proposition of the status quo ante bellum, the English Plenipotentiary demanded that the Cape of Good Hope, the Dutch possessions in Ceylon and the town and fort of Cochin should be given up to His Britannic Majesty, in exchange for Negapatam and its dependencies. The French negotiators, instead of answering these propositions, raised a cavil on the title of the King of France, which the monarchs of Great Britain had so long borne, and which they insisted should be no longer used. They claimed restitution of the ships captured at Toulon, and an indemnity for those which were destroyed; and stated several scruples respecting the mortgages that the English Government might have
32 MEMOIRS OF
on the Flemish dominions of the Emperor of Germany. These proposals, and the collateral discussions arising from them, consumed a large portion of time, during which the majority of the Directory were arranging their plans for the revolution of the i8th of Fructidor. When that was effected, measures of decency were no longer deemed necessary. The three negotiators hitherto employed were recalled; but, before they quitted Lisle, paid the most ample and merited homage to the frankness and honour with which Lord Malmesbury had conducted himself. Bonnier and Treilhard — both members of the National Con- vention, where they had voted for the death of their King — were their successors. Their questions were so captious, their demands so extravagant and their conduct so overbearing, that the unfavourable termina- tion of the negotiation was considered inevitable ; and, after a few unsatisfactory notes, Lord Malmesbury was ordered by the French to return within twenty- four hours, and obtain from his Court the necessary powers for consenting to such restitutions as the laws and treaties of the French Republic rendered indispensable. Lord Malmesbury accordingly quitted the scene of unavailing contest ; while the French, in order to retain the appearance of wishing for peace, suffered their regicide negotiators to remain some
TALLEYRAND 33
time longer, and even officially notified to the British plenipotentiary that his return to Lisle was expected. This piece of duplicity, of Talleyrand's invention, produced a spirited letter, in which Lord Malmesbury observed that he had in his last note pointed out, with precision and candour, the only remaining means of continuing the negotiation. The King, His Lordship added, could not again treat in an enemy's country without an assurance that the customs established among all civilised nations with respect to public ministers, especially those des- patched for the purpose of restoring peace, should in future be respected in the person of his pleni- potentiary. This reproach was the more offensive because obviously merited. The answer of the Direc- tory, written by Talleyrand, was published in an angry proclamation ; but the King of Great Britain appealed to all civilised nations in a temperate and dignified manifesto.1
Thus Talleyrand began his ministerial campaign. The Parisians said that, during the whole summer of 1797, he had many severe battles to fight, with the English guineas on one side and the Spanish
i See "State Papers, Collections of Parliamentary Debates, &c."
VOL. II 3
34 MEMOIRS OF
dollars, Prussian frederics d'or and Dutch ducats on the other. Whether the English guineas got the better of their adversaries, or the offers of the British plenipotentiary were such as he thought humiliating enough for this country, and sufficiently advantageous to France, it is a fact that, on the igth of August, he proposed to the Directory the acceptance of them. Even in some of the French papers it was reported that a peace had actually been signed.1 Ambitious men, of all countries, will endure many affronts, and suffer many insults, before they consent to give up their places, to renounce their authority, or to lose their lucrative employ- ments; but there are no outrages, however violent, nor any humiliation, however degrading, which an am- bitious revolutionary Frenchman will not submit to rather than resign. When Talleyrand offered this proposition for terminating hostilities, the Director Rewbel, after reading over the plan, threw it in his face with this delicate expression: "You rascally priest, you must either be a fool or a rogue gained
I It was inserted in many papers, among others, in Fuillant's Journal du Soir. The author was at Paris, and went to enquire of Pichegru, then in the Council of Five Hundred, and was told the report had reached him. This was said in General Jourdan's hearing who nodded affirmation. Some merchants even sent couriers to the provinces with this news.
TALLEYRAND 35
over by the English, to dare to lay before us such an ill-digested and inacceptable plan; call on me after our sitting is over and I will convince you that you are an imbecile or a traitor." Talleyrand, of course, subscribed to the strong arguments of his revolutionary sovereign, acknowledged his own ignor- ance, promised improvement, and the very next day made amende honorable by inventing and producing some new and extravagant demands on Great Britain to which he knew she would never assent. Whether Talleyrand published this scandalous affair to expose or to be revenged on Rewbel, or whether the latter did it to humiliate the former, whom he suspected of having pocketed a bribe without sharing it with him, is unknown; but certain it is that within twenty-four hours its particulars were circulated, not only in the Directorial circles, but found their way into several newspapers.1 At the same time copies of some letters curiously contrasting with its con- tents, written in 1789 by Rewbel to Talleyrand, were printed and handed about at Paris. In these the then humble attorney speaks to Monseigneur, the then Bishop of Autun, of nothing but of the
i See Le Thee, a daily evening paper, from the xgth to the 30tb of August, 1797. Barthelemy, when in England in 1798, confirmed the truth of this scandalous scene.
3—2
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most reverend prelate's haute sagcsse, pro/end savoir talents inappreciables, &c. This seasonable exposure certainly originated from Talleyrand's portfolio, though he announced in the Journal de Paris that these letters had been seized with his other papers during the time he was proscribed, and now made public by his enemies, either among the aristocrats or among the terrorists, with no other views than to emboil him with his benefactor, Citizen Rewbel. He, however, either would not or could not deny their authenticity. On this occasion it required all his cunning and pliability to preserve his place and to avoid the vengeance of the Directorial trio, Rewbel, La Re- veilliere and Barras. He had imprudently shown his plan of pacification to their antagonist, Barthelemy, previous to presenting it to the Directory. It had obtained this Director's approbation, and it is supposed that it was through him, or through his intelligence with several loyal members of the two councils, that it came to the notice of the public. This would have been an unpardonable error, and a punishable indis- cretion, had not Talleyrand been master of Barras's secret, relative to the Revolution nearly ripe for execution. Rewbel, therefore, was persuaded to accept of an apology, and seemed convinced that the whole fault originated in Maret's Anglomania, who was,
TALLEYRAND 37
therefore, disgraced during the remaining part of the Directorial reign.
On the i yth of September, Lord Malmesbury had been obliged to leave Lisle, and, on the I7th of Oc- tober, amidst mutual threats, defiances, preparations and even slight hostilities, the peace between Austria and France was signed at Campo Formio. The public articles stipulated the cession of the Low Countries to France, and that the Republicans should retain the islands in the Archipelago and in the Adriatic Sea formerly belonging to Venice, and the establishment of that Republic in Albania. The Emperor was to possess the absolute sovereignty of the territories of Venice to the Adige ; the Milanese and Mantuan territories were ceded to the Cisalpine Republic, which was formally acknowledged ; and an indemnity was to be granted to the Duke of Modena in the Brisgaw. Finally, a Congress was to be established at Rastadt, to settle a pacification between France and the German Empire. The secret articles did not long remain secret to those Powers whom they most injured : within six days after their ratification by the Direc- tory, Talleyrand, for the moderate sum of 1,500,000 livres, divided between him, Barras and Rewbel, informed the Turkish, the Prussian and the Bavarian ministers of their contents. They were, however,
$8 MEMOIRS OF
not given to the public at large until the dissolution of the political farce, which had been acting eighteen months at Rastadt, approached. It is more to be deplored that these secret articles ever existed, than that they should be published. They disclosed in the Austrian plenipotentiaries (one of them, Count Cobentzel, the present ambassador at Paris) a fas- cination, an erroneous calculation and a want of fore- sight difficult to be accounted for. It is incompre- hensible how they could be lured into Talleyrand's snare ; how they could receive and make such presents ; how bind themselves to the most treacherous of governments, by a stipulation the nature and secret of which chained in future the Imperial Cabinet to the usurping politics of revolutionary France. After reading these articles it is unnecessary to look any further for the cause of the distrust and division which afterwards broke out in the Congress at Rastadt, for the alarms which still withheld several Powers from a general confederacy, and for the unresisted tyranny of Bonaparte, in Germany as well as in Italy, in Switzerland as well as hi Holland, in Spain as well as in Portugal. It is easy to foresee that, in possession of such an instrument, the French Govern- ment would avail themselves of it to commit those numerous robberies they have perpetrated everywhere,
TALLEYRAND 39
and the boundless encroachments they have usurped, and with which they have encircled a regicide Re- public. The nature of the articles evidently proves that they were composed by Talleyrand, with the approbation of Bonaparte and their then sovereigns, the Directors. Of course, in publishing them they become accusers of their own treachery. If they made the Imperial Cabinet suspected in the eyes of Prussia, of Turkey, of the Elector Palatine, of the Germanic body, in short, of all Europe, what senti- ments must they excite among the potentates whose territories, safety, and sovereignty they thus trafficked with, to load them some time afterwards with their protestations of kindness and patronage! What pro- tectors for the Empire 1 What guardians of its independence !
No nation at war with France had less provoked her attacks, or had oftener negotiated with her for peace, than Portugal. The weighty persuasions of Spain at last overcame Talleyrand's political nicety, and a passport for Chevalier d'Aranjo, as an acknow- ledged Portuguese envoy, was signed by him. But after the plenipotentiary's arrival, his instructions to negotiate were deemed too limited ; he was, therefore, first dismissed, and then recalled. When, signing a peace (purchased at the price of ^250,000,
40 MEMOIRS OF
divided between the five Directors and Talleyrand), he was a second time turned away, as soon as they had touched that sum, and declared the treaty not to have taken place. The same patriotic negotiator, inured to all affronts, a third time compromising the dignity of his Sovereign and of his country, again returned to solicit peace and offer his gold, but with an indiscretion for which, notwithstanding his privileged character, he was sent to the Temple by an order (mandat d'arrtt) signed by Talleyrand. This arrest, so contrary to the laws of nations, took place in consequence of a discovery having been made by the then Minister of Police (Sattin), of Talleyrand receiving ^"82,000, besides the ^"250,000 shared with the Directory. Suspecting perfidy, and dreading evidences, he falsely accused Chevalier d'Aranjo of intriguing for Great Britain. Confined in the Republican State prison, this pacificator had no opportunity to confound his accusers or to refute his calumniators. Some further pecuniary sacrifices advanced by the Spanish Ambassador (Marquis Del Campo), opened, however, the doors of his prison, and prevented him being detained a prisoner until a general pacification, which was the wish of Talleyrand, and the first determination of the Directory.
TALLEYRAND 4!
The following account is given of a sitting of the Directory, on the 2nd of December, 1797, at which Bonaparte and Talleyrand were admitted:1
"The map of the world was spread over the table, and each Director had a globe before him. The order of the day was to discuss in what manner liberty and equality could be propagated to the greatest honour of the French arms, to the greatest glory of the great nation, and to the greatest injury to the British Empire. The Director Francis Neufchateau opened the sitting with a long speech, in which he proposed to revolutionise India and China, as with these nations France had no binding treaties or stipu- lations, but among whom her warriors might at once both plunder riches and gather laurels. He desired the equipment of the whole Republican navy, together with those of their allies, to sail, accompanied by as many transports and as numerous armies as possible. The Director Merlin agreed to the utility of invading and republicanising China and India, but he desired that France would first annihilate monarchy and aristocracy in Europe. The Director La Reveilliere
z Le Voyageur Suisse, page 24, &c. The author says that he read the minutes of this sitting at Madame St. Hilaire's who was then kept by La Garde, Secretary of the Directory and that it was in his handwriting.
42 MEMOIRS OP
assented to the justness of Citizen Merlin's opinion; he only added that, 'before we undertook any remote regenerations, we should bury Christianity in the same grave with monarchy and aristocracy, as priests were the most revengeful of all despots and the most dangerous of all aristocrats.' The Director Rewbel hoped that French patriots would always bear it in mind that their safety could only be ensured by the ruin of the English monarchy. The conquest and regeneration of Ireland by France was, unfortunately, retarded by the late disasters of the Batavian fleet (Lord Duncan's victory). By the Treaty of Campo Formio, Great Britain was isolated from the Conti- nent. ' Let us,' said he, ' organise this isolation by immediately extending republicanism to the other side of the Pyrenees and the Rhine, as well as on the other side of the Alps and the Adige. Let the tricoloured standard triumphantly wave, from the banks of the Elbe to the banks of the Tagus, from the borders of the Baltic to the shores of the Black and Red Seas. In every country we enter, we advance nearer the attainment of our object; and, by every new republic we erect, one of the pillars of monarchy falls to the ground.' The Director Barras agreed with Citizen Rewbel in the necessity of organising the political as well as the
TALLEYRAND 43
natural isolation of Great Britain from the Continent, and foresaw the great utility of surrounding France with allied or tributary republics in Europe as well as in Asia, Africa and America. ' But might we not hope,' continued he, 'from the valour of our troops and the talents of our generals, that regenera- tions may be effected at the same time in different quarters of the globe? Let us hasten the expedi- tion at Toulon; let us order one division of our forces to make Egypt a bridge to India; whilst other divisions constitute new republics in Helvetia, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and in Cis-Rhenian Germany. In all these countries we already are, or shall be, invited by the friends of liberty and equality, the soundest part of every nation. Let us invariably enter all States destined for regeneration as friends, as allies, and nowhere as intruders or foes. In so doing no treaties are broken, and no other Powers will have any just grounds of complaint. As all these new republics add to the weight of our scale in the balance of power, we shall soon have occasion to fear no superior, acknowledge no equal, but command and obtain tribute even from the most distant States, well convinced, as they must be, that subjugation will follow opposition.'
" General Bonaparte was then asked his opinion :
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' Citizen Directors,' said he, * I am so well persuaded of the advantage of colonising and regenerating Egypt, that I have already offered myself to head the expedition as soon as you are certain that Malta will receive a French garrison. As to republicanising the other countries, I should libel my love of universal freedom did I not approve it to its full extent. As, however, the naval forces of Spain and Portugal are absolutely necessary for the perfection of our plans, both in the Mediterranean and in the Indian Seas, and as these forces are still in the power of despots and commanded by aristocrats, I submit to your consideration whether it would not be more prudent and political, first to see the Spanish and Portuguese navy safe in our harbours before we plant the tree of liberty in the cities on the other side of the Pyrenees.'
"Citizen Talleyrand, upon obtaining permission to speak, declared that, after what had fallen from his superiors in talent, as well as in rank, he could have but little to say. With General Bonaparte he be- lieved it would be better to adopt, for a short time, a temporising system with respect to Spain and Portugal. By treaties with the former we could claim the dis- posal of her navy, and, by negotiations with the latter, French garrisons might soon occupy her seaports and
(j
RARE
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dispose of her arsenal and navy in the manner lately executed with so much skill and adroitness at Venice. As money was the sinew of authority and influence, as well as of war, he took the liberty to call the attention of the Directory to the relative situation of neutral States. They were formerly poor, but were now enriched by the distresses of France and her revolutionary war. They could not, therefore, com- plain of injustice if she reclaimed a part of these ex- torted and ill-gotten treasures. He did not mean to propose a direct warfare with neutral nations, but such severity and restrictions on their navigation and trade as would, in our turn, procure us opportunities to use the right our actual powers give us of seizing, capturing and confiscating, together with their cargoes, all vessels sailing contrary to our regulations: this, while it compensated the losses we have suffered, might even augment our future resources. To attain this desirable object, a decree of the Directory should immediately declare every neutral ship trading with England, or having English property on board, a legal prize. Such a decree would not only be political and advantageous to France, but detrimental and destruc- tive in the highest degree to England. The goods in her crowded magazines would then become rotten for want of purchasers, her manufacturers would cease to
46 MEMOIRS OF
work for want of consumers, her merchants would be- come bankrupts, her mechanics beggars, her people seditious, and, without the landing of an army, we might conquer her strongest hold — her finances. Such a decree would, no doubt, create some alarm among neutral Powers; but, to evince to them that the modera- tion of the French Government is equal to its grandeur, pecuniary sacrifices might be allowed to produce some extenuations, and even exceptions. 'I submit,' said he, 'to the wisdom of the Directory the following calculation as to the amount which each neutral government may be asked to repay ; and how much the subjects of each can, without causing their utter ruin, by captures restore to the French Re- public. From the American Government may be claimed ^"4,000,000, from the American citizens may be captured as high as to ^"20,000,000; from the Danish Government may be claimed ^"2,000,000, and from the Danish subjects may be captured as far as ^"8,000,000 ; from the Prussian Government, as an ally, whose commercial navy is vastly inferior to Eer military strength, may be claimed ^1,000,000, and from the Prussian subjects may be captured as far as ^2,500,000 ; from the Swedish Govern- ment may be claimed ^"1,200,000, and from the Swedish subjects may be captured as far as
TALLEYRAND 47
£4,000,000 ; from the Senate of the Imperial Cities and Hanse Towns may be claimed £3,200,000, and from their citizens may be captured as far as £8,000,000 ; from the King of Naples may be claimed £1,000,000, and from his subjects may be captured up to £2,000,000; from the Grand Duke of Tuscany £1,200,000 may be claimed, and from his subjects may be captured to the extent of £2,700,000 ; from the King of Spain may be claimed £6,000,000, and from his subjects may be captured as far as £12,000,000 ; from the Pope may be claimed £500,000, and from his subjects may be captured as far as £1,000,000.' When Talleyrand had ended his speech, the Director Merlin bestowed lavish encomiums on the Minister's zeal and patriot- ism, and moved, ' That this proposal with regard to neutral nations should be immediately changed into a decree, and its contents communicated to all neutral ministers and consuls resident in France, and by couriers sent to all the diplomatic and commercial agents of the French Republic accredited to neutral States.' Citizen Merlin's motion was, without further deliberation, assented to unanimously by the Directory."
Jonathan Wild, associated with six banditti like himself, could have furnished nothing more ingenious
48 MEMOIRS OP
than this official and State mockery. Let Europe attend to this special character of men, at once cruel and corrupt, who carry on their crimes with still more cunning than fury, mingling infamous with ferocious actions, robbing, sometimes openly, some- tunes covertly; who are plunderers under arms, sharpers under the Ministerial cloak, knaves and assassins under the Directorial mantle as well as under the Imperial diadem ; everywhere making dupes and sacrificing victims, uniting the vilest depravity and most contemptible means with the exercise of violence and despotic power ; and they crown this monstrous medley of iniquity with hypocrisy, equivoca- tion, and with the insolent and burlesque custom of describing themselves not only the great nation, but the only civilised nation. Is it possible to draw such a picture among any of the nations that have preceded the revolutionary French in the career of serious crimes? It cannot be too often repeated of regicide France :
Her slaves are soldiers, and her soldiers slaves; Her knaves are rulers, and her rulers knaves.
In proposing this decree against neutrals, Talley- rand could have had no other object in view but immediate, though temporary pillage. His abilities as a statesman are, unfortunately, too much tried to
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leave any doubt of his not foreseeing that its conse- quence, instead of being hurtful, must be profitable to Great Britain, as it would change her passive commerce with many neutral nations into an active one with them all. The productions of British industry, and of the British colonies, were, from custom and from reciprocal gain, become necessities to all people, not excepting the French Republicans themselves; if, therefore, they were prevented from procuring them from the first hand, they must pay dearer for them to a second or third, as they could not do without them. Even the wise Bonaparte, by his restrictions against English trade, forces his debased subjects to pay at Lubeck, Embden, Trieste or Lisbon from three to five guineas for what they, in a direct way, might have bought in London for twenty shillings. Such is, and such will always be, the case with revolutionary tyrants ; the will, passions, and vulgar prejudices of the obscure and envious individual never cease to accompany the fortunate upstart in his seized palace, as well as on his usurped throne: his mind is that of a needy and malicious adventurer, let his power be ever so great, ox his rank ever so elevated.
No sooner was the decree of the 2nd of December
known than English ships were engaged by neutrals, VOL. ii 4
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who carried, under the protection of convoys, those articles they before had fetched in their own bottoms, whence to other profits that England derived, freight was added. This miscalculation caused Talleyrand and the Directors no uneasiness. They had all fitted out privateers, that, with valuable prizes of friendly or neutral ships, repaid their advances, rewarded their patriotism, and gratified their cupidity. It was reported that, by this piracy only, from the ist of January, 1798, to the ist of July the same year, Rew- bel gained ^"250,000 ; Barras, ^"164,000 ; La Reveil- liere, ^"100,000 ; Merlin, ^290,000 ; Neufchateau, ^50,000 ; Talleyrand, ^"210,000 ; and Madame Bona- parte, to whom her husband had given ^12,500 to engage in privateering, ^75,000. But, notwithstand- ing that such infamous proceedings not only annulled all former commercial treaties but were real acts of hostilities in time of peace, so much had the world been of late accustomed to the insolent and treacherous conduct of France, that, although her men-of-war and privateers in some few months brought into her harbours upwards of fourteen hundred neutral merchantmen, and her mock tribunals condemned upwards of eight hundred of them, the sovereigns of these nations, instead of arming and defending the rights and property
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of their subjects, contented themselves with timid representations, made through their trembling am- bassadors or humbled consuls.1
Of all neighbouring States, the Swiss cantons
I Le Voyageur Suisse, page 12. The author heard the following particulars, in July, 1798, from a neutral consul-general at Paris : Most of the judges of the French prize-tribunal were owners of the privateers, and, of course, judges in their own cause. In Spain, Italy, and other countries under the French yoke, their consuls fitted out privateers, and were the only judges, in the first instance, of such prize causes as came under their cognisance. They did not use much ceremony. A Danish ship was condemned because in the cabin was rolled up an English carpet for the cabin-floor. Another was condemned because one of the sailors had on board a new pair of English boots. A Swedish ship coming direct from Sweden was condemned because on board was found a barrel of Swedish strong beer, which the French judged to be English porter. In these and many other instances the injustice of the French was surpassed almost by the meanness of the neutral Powers who suffered and so tamely submitted.
Some ingenious Frenchmen took advantage of this piracy fashion to introduce by it contraband goods. A merchant at Calais had two ships under Prussian colours loading in London. Knowing their departure, he fitted out a fishing-boat as a privateer, went to meet them, and carried them to Dunkirk as prizes. The Custom-house officers were in the secret, his own friends or relatives were the national guards put on board, and notwith- standing all his expenses and the share he paid the Government, his clear profit amounted to ^36,000. The author dined on board one of these prizes, and the owner's ingenuity was related and laughed at by twenty-two persons present. The English-manufac- tured goods on board had already received the stamp as manu- factured in France, and were sent to Paris as the production of French industry!
4—2
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had most grievously been insulted by revolutionary Frenchmen, though their neutrality had not only protected a long-unfortified frontier of France, but supplied her with provisions in the time of famine, and by their commerce kept up her few existing manufactories. They had endured such barbarous outrages since the conquest of their independence as were never offered them before. Their youth, serving in France according to ancient habits, and performing their duty conscientiously and honourably, were, for that very reason, murdered in the most dastardly manner ; and, at the same time, every one of their countrymen residing upon the faith of treaties among these civilised savages, was proscribed, and hunted to destruction like a wild beast. Notwithstanding these sufferings, or perhaps in consequence of these sufferings, scarcely had the regicide Convention pro- claimed France a Republic, when the French Revolu- tionists smothered the liberty of Geneva, and threat- ened that of Switzerland : it was the sport of their infancy. The general league against them obliged them, however, to change their manoeuvres in Switzer- land, and, instead of open attacks, console themselves with secret plots. Early in 1795 their influence was felt by the effects of the elections in the Councils, which were as immediate as fatal. It gave a shock
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to the Government, weakened the authority of the magistrates, and was the first step to anarchy. Whether it was that the novelties of the day had more charms for the young people, or that their im- patience to rule was fomented by circumstances, or whether, in fine, enervated by their relish for pleasure, they dreaded to expose their fortunes and enjoyments, the majority of the new-comers ranged themselves under the banners of the French party, in whom they found flatterers of their indiscretion and sponsors for unalterable peace. Everywhere, since the storms of the Revolution, youth has left to age the merit of manhood, of stoicism, and inflexible attachment to public duty.
On the admission of those novelties, all respect for grey hairs was lost : a deluge of motions and speeches overflowed the Grand Council; its new guides paid deference to none. Upon the word of their leaders and on the authority of their knowledge, they pursued the chimera of acquiring the goodwill of the French revolutionary rulers. Like the wor- shippers of malignant deities, they prostrated them- selves before them with the offering of their affections, without considering that the only sacrifice that could satisfy them was that of the Constitution, of the independence, and, above all, of the riches of Switzer
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land. Bonaparte had done enough in Italy to convince them of it. By inscribing the sentence of neutral States on the ruins of Genoa and Venice, he divulged to Europe the mysteries of the revolu- tionary cabinet. Such effrontery and perfidy, an hypocrisy so dastardly, combined with such bare- faced usurpations, announced the dissolution of every social system. A revolutionist by constitu- tion, a conqueror by subornation, unjust by instinct, insulting in victory, mercenary in his patronage, an inexorable plunderer, bartering his lenity with the victims whose credulity he betrays, as terrible by his artifices as by his arms, dishonouring valour by the studied abuse of public faith, crowning immorality with the palm of philosophy, and oppression with the cap of liberty — this fortunate Corsican, carrying the torch of Erostratus in one hand, and the sabre of Genseric in the other, laid the plan for burying Switzerland beneath the ruins of Italy. By the Revolution of the i8th of Fructidor, or of the 4th of September, 1797, that devoted country was left with- out protectors in the French Councils, and the avarice of Rewbel and Talleyrand became the active instru- ment of Bonaparte's lust for devastation. Without, however, regularly opening the trenches, the mines were dug, and preparations made to facilitate the
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assault. Above all, Talleyrand at Paris was at work rummaging archives and consulting sophists for a pretence for an invasion, and then to clear the way by revolutionary devices. Searching in vain, he con- strained himself to entangle the Swiss in some resolution which he might calumniate, in order to fix on that calumny the pivot of aggression. On the other hand, as cowardly as unjust, he did not dare to affront a martial nation when armed, whose resistance might have endangered the expedition and rekindled a general war. He therefore advised the Directory to set out with intrigues and expedients to dissolve the States internally. To prolong the confidence of the Swiss by pacific representations, to threaten one par- ticular canton in order to detach the others from its interests, to divide the members of the League and the Councils of each Government, to invest the people with suborners, to answer umbrages with caresses, to instigate innovations that enfeeble autho- rity and concord, to stifle Switzerland by her own means, and to crush her as she was expiring, was the subtle detail of the instructions he gave the Directorial agents. Serpents foreran tigers; and political poisoners were here — as everywhere else — the advanced guard of French armies. Some few alienated natives of Switzerland were associated in
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this conspiracy. To introduce war and desolation into the country which has nourished us, to be the underling of a foreign usurpation, to give up one's countrymen to the scourges of a revolution, and to rise upon their dead bodies to the dignity of vice- regent of a Rewbel, of a Bonaparte, or of a Talley- rand, were such crimes as had never yet tarnished the Helvetic history.
At last, when French banditti had in numbers advanced towards Switzerland, the petulance of Gallic despotism got the better of the policy of the Direc- tors, as well as of that of their minister. They quickly ceased to qualify the insolence of their con- duct. The Helvetic Government, beset by imperious requisition's, had only to choose between obedience and war. Their legislative independence tottered, and, by the first insult they bore against their sove- reignty, they lost the sovereignty itself. Of these accumulated outrages, the most decisive was the request for dismissing the minister of His Britannic Majesty. Ever since civilised communities have acknowledged a law of nations, not one among them had ever yet attempted such outrages. States have been known to send away ambassadors who, hav- ing themselves violated the law of nations, had also forfeited its protection; but to require of an inde-
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pendent State such a contempt for public faith and for national character, was to arrogate to themselves the sovereign authority. This presumption caused, then, a general surprise and indignation; the Talley- rand of 1797 has, therefore, in 1804, changed his method of humiliating free States. Instead of desir- ing British agents to be dismissed, his agents, his spies, and his other political banditti hunt them away as a Drake or a Taylor, or carry them off as a Sir George Rumbold.
The Swiss magistrates were confounded, and ap- peared to be struck with moral pusillanimity. Instead of shutting, without delay, all communication with France, increasing the strictness of their police, and intimidating the evil-minded, they were still afraid of offending their enemy by preventing his wicked encroachments, talked of the generosity of the revolu- tionary French, wasted time that was precious in fruitless debates, and did not seem at all to suspect that their ruin was at hand. In order to prolong this stupefaction, and not belie the preachers of moderation, Talleyrand, avowing Mengaud1 (a man formerly em- ployed in commissions of a dark nature, and in revolu-
i This is the same Mengaud who, during the late peace, as a police commissary at Calais, treated English travellers with so much rudeness and insolence.
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tionary achievements, joining insolence to the vulgarity of a recruiter) as chavgk d'affaires, acquainted the Hel- vetic body that the mission of that envoy " should have no other object than to embrace every oppor- tunity of expressing the sincere wishes of the Executive Directory for the prosperity of the deserving Helvetic body." These assurances were repeated by appointed informers. Mengaud himself wrote to the Chancery of Zurich: "The resolution of the Directory," says he, " forbids me all explanation upon the absurd reports of an invasion, which obtains the success of calumny only by the good faith of those whom odious motives, aided by the means of perfidy, keep in error." The duplicity of Talleyrand, the balderdash of Mengaud, and all those delusions of the petty princes of Italy in the fifteenth century, laid the cantons asleep till the 1 5th of December, 1797, the day on which the invasion of the Helvetic part of the Bishopric of Basle, by a body of French troops, burst the cloud and flashed lightning on every eye. When afterwards some seditious vagabonds in the Pays de Vaud, instigated by French emissaries, flew to arms, Tal- leyrand transmitted to the Helvetic Government the following resolutions, adopted by the Directory upon his report, dated the 8th Nivose, year 6, or Decem- ber 28th, 1797: "The Executive Directory resolve
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that it shall be declared to the Governments of Berne and Fribourg that the members of those Governments shall answer personally for the safety of the persons and property of the inhabitants of the Pays de Vaud who have applied, or may yet aPPty > to the French Republic to request, by virtue of ancient treaties, her mediation, for the purpose of being maintained or reinstated in their rights." In that impertinent decision it was no longer one sovereign State speaking of another sovereign State; the revolutionary French Cabinet was become, according to the proposal of the liberal-minded Talleyrand, a criminal court where the assistant- judges were passing sentence upon Swiss magistrates. By this expedient of terrorism he absolved the subjects of Berne and Fribourg from their allegiance, dissolved those two Governments, gave the signal of rebellion against their authority, and by threatening the magistrates personally, still further lessened their inclination to resist.
Of these and many other acts of audacity and treachery, the destruction of the liberty and independence of the Helvetians was the immediate consequence. But this is not the sole evil of French fraternity. Those people whom their military banditti politically enslave with their bayonets, their revo-
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lutionary emissaries morally degrade by their precepts and examples. Since the simplicity of the Swiss has been misled by perfidious delusion, the energy of their former national character has vanished, and they seem to console themselves under their yoke, their ruin and their disgrace. Their tyrants have succeeded in reconciling them to their sufferings, in corrupting their instincts, in ranging them among the flocks of effeminate beings to whom everything is indifferent except the loss of ease. Let them, however, be sure beforehand that, when Bonaparte's ambition or Talley- rand's avidity require it, this state of ease shall be no more. There is no sleeping upon the pillow of a revolution of which an eternal perturbation is the principle, and all the furious passions of mankind the result. Let the descendants of William Tell re- member for an instant the glorious exploits of their ancestor ! Let them recollect the liberty which he achieved, which their forefathers preserved, and which they have surrendered I If this remembrance does not make them ashamed of their present slavery and hu- miliation, let them fear the eternal reproaches of their posterity as well as of their contemporaries. What a degradation, what an infamy to a high-spirited and military nation, to be reduced to a situation so de- based that the most contemptible of all usurpers, the
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Corsican adventurer, Napoleon Bonaparte, confers on them a favour by addressing them thus : " Be the slaves of my interests, espouse my passions, bow to my determinations, endure your misfortunes without a murmur, dance round the scaffolds I have erected, sing in the gaols I have constructed, kiss the chains I present you, and I, Napoleon the First — your master, may, perhaps, then condescend to alleviate their pressure I"1
Whilst the ruin of Switzerland was accomplishing, Bonaparte, with a retinue of doctors and wise men, set sail from Toulon with the left wing of the Army of England, and, to make short work, went to conquer Great Britain on the sands of the Nile. The plan of this expedition was another offspring of Talleyrand's portfolio. France, at all times fertile in turbulent and fantastic projects, engendered the ideas of those encroachments, transitions and political vicissitudes which time but too abundantly multiplies without the aid of human perversity to assist their progress. But, formerly, the ministers, accustomed to those effervescences of restlessness and ambition, treated
z In this narrative have been consulted " Bulletin Helvetique for 1798 " ; Mallet du Pan's " History of Destruction of Liberty in Switzerland"; Posset's "Neceeste Weltkunde for 1798"; Danican's "Cassander" ; "Helvelicker Revolutions"; "Almanack for 1799"; and Planta's "History of the Helvetic Confederacy."
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the authors of such plans as madmen, and their inventions were thrown among old papers, scorned and forgotten. Bonaparte, the Directory, and before them, the Committee of Public Safety, with their ministers, have rummaged those archives to find in- flammatory materials, ideas of usurpation, and moulds of mischief. Among other plans formerly proposed was the conquest of Egypt. The attention of the former King had been twenty times called to it without effect. It requires a system such as that which followed to revive so extravagant an enter- prise, solicited by philosophers and scholars, promised by some enthusiastic travellers, digested by logical robbers, and worthy, in every sense, of the avarice, as well as of the disorganising activity of revolutionary councils and counsellors. Before it was put into execution, it had some time lingered in that scientific jumble called the National Institution, in Talleyrand's secret closet, and in the confidential societies of universal republicanism. The hope of penetrating to India by the Red Sea was only a secondary consideration in this project. It was attended with too many risks and delays for adventurous spirits; but the plunder of Egypt — its permanent usurpation, the conversion of that country into a colony, whence, when leisure and inclination
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suited, they might set Asia in a flame — and the ab- solute dominion over Greece and the Archipelago pre- sented more immediate advantages. Besides, the hope of getting rid of the Hero of Italy, of the companions of his fortune, and of the uneasiness ever resulting to a prevailing faction from generals whom they must displace or destroy as soon as they return home to their country, formed also a part of Directorial gratitude and of Talleyrand's friendship. Fortunately for mankind, the talents of a Nelson, Abercrombie and Hutchinson, and the valour of British officers, sailors and soldiers, brought Talley- rand's schemes to ruin, and Bonaparte's arms to disgrace.
In consequence of the above-mentioned decree against neutral Powers, proposed by Talleyrand on the 2nd of December, 1797, the American Republic was also marked as a fit victim to this new system of finance. Ambition, cupidity and gratitude seldom are found cordially to unite in the same bosom; but in the heart of an apostate and rebel the two former entirely exclude the latter, or change it into hatred. Talleyrand was hardly seated in place and power, when, in return for the hospitable protection that he had received in the United States at the time he was proscribed everywhere in Europe,
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without any previous declaration of war, he caused orders to be issued to capture all American ships ; and upwards of five hundred of them were very soon seized in the West Indies and in Europe. A late treaty of alliance and neutrality, concluded between Great Britain and the United States, was assigned as the cause of an attack that violated all ancient stipulations and conventions between France and America. That people, sufficiently removed from the centre of war to be exempt from the passions which it excited and the miseries which attended it, were anxious to retain the inestimable benefits re- sulting from neutrality. They were not, therefore, hasty in making reprisals, but deputed plenipoten- tiaries to Paris. After much political chicanery, he advised the Directory to receive them in France as privileged characters, but not to acknowledge them as am- bassadors or negotiators, a distinction as novel as unjust in transactions with independent nations. It was also very humiliating to the Americans, who, to gain his favour, had selected citizens of known impartiality in politics, and one of them his intimate friend when at Philadelphia. He made the Directory, in imputing this mode of conduct to abject fear, assume a pro- portionate haughtiness and refuse them an audience; but, through their inferior agents and subaltern in-
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triguers, insinuated that the donation of about ^60,000 to him, to be divided with four of the Directors, would be a necessary preliminary to any attempt at nego- tiation. It was also more than intimated that, as the Director Merlin1 had been paid for the letters of marque issued to privateers, those licences could not be recalled, but the American Government might purchase the goodwill of France by a loan of ^3,500,000, in part to be shared between the Directory and their minister. In making such pro- posals, Talleyrand had egregiously mistaken the character of those with whom he was treating. In the minds of the Americans no passion is stronger than the love of money; and this attempt at extortion immediately drove the plenipotentiaries back to their own shores, where they exposed to the whole universe the detestable system which had been practised with a design to plunder and dupe a friendly and neutral nation. The Americans cheerfully armed, and pre- pared to make reprisals; and General Washington was again invested with the command of all the military resources of the Republic, which derived its
I This regicide Merlin is now Bonaparte's Attorney-General, and member of the Legion of Honour. His property amounts to £840,000, plundered by him since 1792, -when he did not possess an acre of land, or a louis d'or in money. — Les Nouvelles a la Main, Ventose, year XII., No. iii., page 2.
VOL. II 5
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formation from his valour and judgment, and owed its continuance to his justice and moderation.
In this official specimen of Talleyrand's political morality, one of the secret agents employed by him was an intriguer of the name of Bellamy, born at Geneva, but educated at Paris in the ante-chambers of revolutionary ministers and committees, where he had been introduced by the notorious Claviere, an outlawed countryman of his. After the publicity of this shameful transaction, he had the audacity to come over to this country, provided with a neutral Danish pass, on a purpose that can easily be con- jectured, expecting, no doubt, that, as in the corre- spondence of the American plenipotentiaries he and his associates were only mentioned as X, Y and Z, he was unknown to our Government. An order to leave this country convinced him, however, that he was mistaken in his supposition. A certain Baron du Metz, an old fellow-labourer of Talleyrand, and who had already been sent away from England by our ministers, was another secret agent. But in this secret agency females were also employed — Madame de Rochechouart, and a Madame Bonociul, whose real name is Beaumont. The former of these ladies made, during 1797 and 1798, several voyages between France and England; and, after duping our Govern-
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ment of a sum of money, went to Altona and wrote a libel against it. The other lady is mentioned in Kotzebue's "Souvenirs," and played no inconsiderable part at St. Petersburg in the events of the latter part of the reign of Paul I.
At Talleyrand's entrance into the Ministry he found that anarchy and ignorance had penetrated into the offices of State, as well as into all other places of the Republic. This was chiefly the case with regard to the secret agency, where impostors of both sexes, without education, usurping the name of patriots, pocketed the secret-service money without capacity of serving. He was, therefore, obliged to begin an entirely new organisation, in which he was ably assisted by Daunoud, his grand vicaire when a bishop at Autun, but then a member of the Council of Five Hundred. According to the list left him by his predecessor, La Croix, two hundred and five male and sixty-two female secret agents were paid as employed by France in foreign countries and Courts. After reading through their correspondence, he dis- missed them all, assigning as a reason that "the French Government was determined for the future to act with such frankness that no secret agents should be necessary to watch foreign States, who
would, moreover, be kept to their duty from the dread
5—2
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of the irresistible power of France." Men whom he had formerly known when a member of the Jacobin propaganda were then engaged by him to find out able recruits, and within six months three hundred and fifteen' male and eighty-four female agents in his pay overspread not only Europe, but the other prin- cipal parts of the globe. He established a nursery for the secret agency office, by sending to all countries, for education, and to perfect themselves in the languages, children of both sexes, between eight and twelve years of age, taken from the found- ling or orphan houses. They were chosen from among those who showed some genius and possessed beauty of person. The secret agents everywhere inspect their education, and instruct them gradually in what manner best to serve their country. Politics and commerce form the principal part of instruction for the boys, as well as for the girls; but no pains are spared to make their persons as easy and agree- able as their understandings penetrating. The boys when eighteen, and the girls when fifteen, are to return to France to undergo an examination before the Minister ; some of the latter, previously to their new mission, as early as 1801, furnished him a tolerably numerous seraglio, and in his boudoir were initiated in the mystery of his political
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plans. Some of these female agents are now travelling as governesses, as actresses, as singers, as gipsies or fortune-tellers ; several of the most accomplished assume the names of some of the many extinguished noble families, and travel with a retinue in consequence ; but all their servants and all those about them are, as well as themselves, attached to the secret agency. Their religion is that of Nature, or of atheism, and they all understand fencing as well as the men, and know how to handle a stiletto, or to administer poison, with the same good grace and dexterity. They may marry in every country if they think that their husbands may be serviceable to France. Should they, after marriage, find themselves mistaken, they may despatch their partners, and France will protect them. They have learnt all the gambling tricks practised either with dice or cards, and can perform them skilfully. They can imitate all handwritings, and delineate the features of any dangerous person after seeing them for a moment. They are instructed at all times to overcome their passions, so as to command tears whilst the heart is rejoicing, or smiles whilst it is almost breaking. They are inured to suffer torments without complaint, and with the same seeming indifference hear their sentence of death pronounced or a happiness confirmed that
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makes life desirable. Insinuating in their manners and handsome in their persons — polite, lively and con- descending— they are everywhere in their place, in Courts or in cottages, and must make favourable im- pressions on the prince as well as on the peasant. They are especially ordered to insinuate themselves, so as to become the mistresses of sovereigns, of their ministers, counsellors or favourites, or to obtain the confidence of their mistresses or friends. Politics are never to enter into their conversation, and, being always furnished with pick-lock keys, they are to act without speaking. They are, besides, provided with the same instructions and resources as the secret agents of the secret French police. When they are past thirty-six years of age they may demand their retreat, and dispose of the remainder of their lives according to their own inclination, and be rewarded by Government with a pension proportioned to the extent and value of their services.
But the drudgery of office did not occupy the whole of Talleyrand's time. Four days of each decade he received company of both sexes, or accepted invitations of parties abroad. The ninth day of every decade he went to visit Madame Grand, at Montmorency, where he remained until the first of the next decade. Never fond of soli-
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tude, persons agreeable or entertaining were in- formed a week before by the hostess that their presence would be acceptable. The choicest dishes were served, the finest wines were drunk, and amusements were as numerous as various. Plays and farces were represented by comedians from the capital, or by amateurs of the company, who were chiefly good musicians or amateurs able to entertain their friends with excellent concerts. A bank of rouge et noir, another of pharaon, and a third of la roulette, or birribi, lightened the pockets of those who found no pleasure in more rational and less expen- sive amusements: more innocent games for pledges or fines often intervened. The grave ex- Bishop and crafty Minister sometimes even jumped about at Madame Grand's favourite blindman's-buff, and frequently set the party in a roar by his tricks as much as by his clumsiness. He was cunning even when blindfolded.1 Although Bonaparte, before he
Z See Les Intrigues du Ch. M. Talleyrand, p. 35. The author was present in the winter of 1797 at Montmorency, at one of these parties, when an Italian minister was blindman, and had, when blindfolded, his pocket picked of a despatch received when he sat down to dinner. Among other young men partaking in this child's play were the then Prussian Minister, Count Sandos, aged 75, and the Danish Minister, Chevalier Dreyer, aged 68. When tired of this, the company sat down to write and unfold enigmas, double entendres, conundrums, letters, &c. Talleyrand
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sailed for Egypt, had hinted to his dear moitil that the less she frequented this coterie the better, the rouleaus on the gaming tables, and the delicious juice of the grape in crystal decanters, were too tempting for a disconsolate, deserted wife, not to prefer them to the admonitions of an absent husband. Most of the ladies of Talleyrand's society at Montmorency were either, like Madame Grand, divorced wives, living in open adultery, or, like Madame Bonaparte and Madame Tallien, wives of many husbands. The manners, language and customs of fashionable revolutionary
presented one piece of paper to Madame Bonaparte, who, blush- ing, declared she could not explain the meaning of the letters, which were LA c. c. A c. c. LB c. Everyone knew that they meant LA COQUINE CREOLE A COCUSIER LE CORSE (Madame Bona- parte was born at Martinico). Talleyrand, observing that she began to look serious on account of the smiles of the company, called to her, joking, " Your pledge, madam, and the explanation is ready." On her giving him a ring, he said, " It is nothing but
LA CHERE CAROLINE A CHER CHER LE CHRISTOPHE. Caroline and
Christophe were both children of Madame Grand's gardener. Everybody approved of this explanation, and Madame Bona- parte with the rest.
It was calculated that the gambling banks here more than paid the expenses of the house and table ; a person who had not the politeness to lose from twenty to fifty louis d'or was seldom asked a second time. The bankers, who were ruined emi- grants, farmed, in 1800, these banks, at the rate of ^"1,200 in the month, and gained double that sum. Talleyrand boasted to everybody of this act of generosity. One of these emigrants was a relative of his, plundered by the Revolution of ^2,500 in the year 1
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coteries were so different from those of all other countries that a true description of them would everywhere be thought an exaggerated caricature. Bonaparte, since he has become emperor-mad, has certainly improved them ; but an attentive observer will soon distinguish the mixture of upstart valets fraternising with their former masters, whom they have ruined.1
Lord Nelson's victory near Aboukir shook the French rebel's hope of uninterrupted prosperity; and the dissolution of the Congress at Rastadt and the successful campaign of the combined Imperial arms during 1790, disturbed the regicide's dream of a
I See Le Voyageur Suisse, page 43. Madame Bonaparte's passion for gambling brought her into many difficulties during her husband's wanderings in the deserts of Africa. She borrowed money as long as she had any credit, which, owing to the dis- asters near Aboukir, was but a short time. She then pawned all her diamonds, plundered by General Bonaparte in Italy, and presented to her, to the amount of £50,000. Money was then scarce in France, and she got only £6,000 upon them. What was her surprise, when her husband usurped the consulate, to receive them back again as a present from Talleyrand, who had previously refused her the loan of a louis d'or. This crafty in- triguer had, by his spies, advanced the money, with an intent to keep those diamonds so cheaply possessed should the General perish, and to show his disinterested gallantry in restoring them should the Corsican once rule France. The conduct of General Moreau towards her was very different. — See " The Revolutionary Plutarch," third edition, vol. i., page 39.
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universal republic. Talleyrand had, however, left no resource of Machiavelism untried against Germany. When he advised the convocation of their States at Rastadt, it was to assassinate them. He and his sovereigns, the Directors, the generous protectors of the Germanic liberty, trafficked with it secretly to conciliate the Court of Vienna. If he found that Power too untractable, he accused it at Berlin, Munich, Dresden, Aschaffenburgh and Cassel of the projects which he had himself suggested. When he robbed certain sovereigns, he offered to rob others to indemnify them. When he signed a truce, he re- quired it to be observed by the other party, whilst he counselled the French Government to violate it themselves. According to his insinuations, sometimes by terror, sometimes by artifice, the Directory put an end to resistance or prevented opposition. Their extortioners, plunderers and generals did not spare the right bank of the Rhine more than the left. Every one of their haughty notes, written by him, was a threat or a command, and always an insult. At length this long and tedious farce came to an end. The three regicide incendiaries, whom the Empire acknowledged in quality of plenipotentiaries, and their clerks, delivered Germany from their presence, their insolence, the scandal of their diplo-
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matic dinners, the intriguers and the sharpers, vaulters and prostitutes that swarmed in their train. But, in leaving Rastadt, two of these revolutionary diplomats were assassinated by fifty agents of Talleyrand's secret police, disguised as Austrian hussars, that the odium might be thrown upon the Cabinet of Vienna and revive the extinguished enthusiasm of the French armies.1 This tragedy, in which the third plenipotentiary, Jean de Bry, was one of the principal actors, first excited surprise and indignation ; but, even in France, the Directory and their ministers were soon accused of having plotted a murder which could be of no advantage to Austria. They had long continued to deceive the French nation by promises of a speedy peace, and by hypocritical wishes for its conclusion. When
i Jean de Bry is at present Bonaparte's prefect at Besanfon, and commander of his Legion of Honour, and has, ever since this catastrophe, a pension from Talleyrand's secret-service money for his discretion. It is now well known that Dubois Creance, then commander at Coblentz, arranged for the Directory and Talley rand the whole plan of assassination. The assassins were com- manded by his nephew, a colonel of mounted riflemen, who, for this achievement, was rewarded with the hand of the Director Merlin's daughter, with a fortune of £1 60.000. Dubois Creance was, at the same time, promoted to a minister of the War Depart- ment. The regimentals for these banditti of Talleyrand's secret agency were made at Strasburg and Coblentz.— Les Nouvelks d la Main, Nivose, year X., No. v., page a.
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they renewed the war without a cause, after tres- passing so long on the condescension of the Em- peror and Empire, how were they to persuade France that the renewal of hostilities was owing to Austria? The two plenipotentiaries, Bonnier and Roberjot, who were both dissatisfied with the breaking -up of the Congress, would have divulged the cause of it ; they would have said, "Here are your instructions, your designs, your object, and the conduct you prescribed to us, all signed by Talleyrand." This embarrassing evidence was incontrovertible, and the more danger- ous, as, in order to escape public censure, it was their interest to divulge the truth. The war having begun unsuccessfully, they would have been eager to show that it was not the consequence of their counsels, and that they had opposed the measures of the Government, who alone ought to bear the blame of their hypocrisy and violence. Will it be asked why Jean de Bry was spared ? The answer is, " How could the Directory suspect such a man — a fellow who had said in the tribune of the National Convention that 'he wished all sovereigns had but a single head, that it might be struck off at one blow, who proposed a legion of regicides, and would have enlisted in that honourable corps ? He had proved himself; and Talleyrand and the Directors knew their
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men. It is easy to conceive that he might be spared by assassins in the secret, but very difficult to compre- hend how a foreign Government should have so mis- taken the importance of their victims as to let the most infamous in particular escape. When so much pains are taken about an assassination, the order given is, not to scratch with sabres, but to cut off heads. As to the capture of the papers of the French Legation, the secrets of revolutionary tyrants, and their revo- lutionary ministers, those who run may read them. Never were politics more evident than theirs; they arise from their situation — a situation which required war, and all their instructions flowed from the same principles. What occasion was there to seize papers to be acquainted with them ? They are to be read in Machiavel. The object is the same, namely, the ruin of the neighbouring States, the plunder of all people, the oppression of all legitimate governments, and the support of a usurped power: the maxims are also always the same — those of a boundless tyranny. But suppose the writings of the French plenipotentiaries contained secrets of the most important nature, were there no other means equally sure, and more conform- able to diplomatic arts, to get possession of those mysterious papers ? Read history : — what secrets have been discovered, or betrayed, without murder 1 It is
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but too true that of late those artifices, when Govern- ment chooses to make use of them, are nothing more than a game: Bonaparte and Talleyrand can testify that. Even setting all corruption aside, people may be taken up by mistake, tneir papers seized through excessive zeal, and when they have been read, apologies may be made; but the distance between this stratagem and murder is immense, and could only be passed by rebels accustomed to audacity, and regicides inured to atrocities.
The progress of the arms of the Allied Powers, and the disasters experienced by the French armies, revived in the Republic those numerous factions which had been slumbering, but had never been ex- tinguished. Their plots and threats removed those of the members of the Directory who, with Rewbel, going out of authority by lot, were impeached by the Council of Five Hundred. This alarmed their accom- plice and tool, Talleyrand, who, already denounced and pursued by several accusers, gave in his resigna- tion, expecting that a voluntary retirement would soothe resentment, extenuate guilt, and prevent chas- tisement. He took care, however, previously to influence the appointment of a successor, and to raise to the office of Minister for Foreign Affairs a German by birth named Rheinhard, who had been
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secretary under him and Chauvelin in England, a minister at Hamburg, and a commissary in Tuscany. This agent, prudent, moderate, and upright, saved the Grand Duchy from the pillage suffered by the rest of Italy. He had observed the greatest delicacy towards the Grand Duke ; he was incorruptible and considerate — the very reverse of that gang of robbers who usually execute abroad the ordinances of revo- lutionary France. But with all these good qualities he possessed a timid and weak character, easily im- posed upon, easily intimidated, and easily governed. When at Hamburg, the intriguers Genlis and Valence, though emigrants, ruled him, and at this time, though Talleyrand had resigned, his maxims were followed and his dictates submitted to as much as if he still had been in place. Without responsi- bility his power continued indefinite, his plans were adopted, his regulations observed, and his determina- tions respected.
Among the numerous pamphlets then published to prove the criminality and treachery of Talleyrand was one written by the Jacobin Le Marchand : 1 "I accuse you," said this citizen, "of having sold
I This pamphlet is called La Trahison de VEmigre Talleyrand, chez Bouvais a Paris, an vii., or 1799 ; see pages 9, 10, zx and 12, with the notes to 22 and 23.
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the secrets of France, instead of purchasing those of other Cabinets ; of having pocketed the money destined for this use, or, with the other wages of your infamy, remitted it to be deposited in the English Funds, at the very time you promised France and Europe the destruction of England. I accuse you of having violated the law of nations, by attacking, without declaration of war, the Ottoman Porte and the Helvetian Republic; of having invaded the sovereignty of the people, by altering so often the Constitution of the Batavian and Cisalpine nations, so solemnly sworn to by the citizens of these Republics. I accuse you of having endangered our external security by drawing another enemy on the French Republic, by forcing the Ottoman Porte to join in the coalition of the tyrants armed against liberty and equality. I accuse you of having en- dangered our internal security by admitting emigrants, by exciting with your intrigues the citizens against one another, by devoting Republicans to proscription, and by recommending aristocrats to advancement in the offices of State, as well as in the armies of the Republic. I accuse you of crimes against the sovereignty of the French nation by having engaged assassins to despatch those of our ambassadors whom your treachery had previously exposed to insults
TALLEYRAND 8 I
among the slaves representing despots. I accuse you of having dissipated the public money of the French Republic, and of having shared in the robberies and peculations of your agents in Italy, Germany, Hol- land, and Switzerland. I accuse you of having during year VI. (1797 and 1798) received 20,000 English guineas, to procure a peace with France; 12,000 Prussian frederics d'or, for continuing the war with England ; 10,000 double Austrian souverains, for promising a rupture with Prussia, and a part of Bavaria as indemnity; 12,000 sequins from the Pope and 18,000 from the King of Naples, for a promise of continuing their neutrality at the very time you *knew that the Papal territory would be repub- licanised and Malta wrested from the sovereignty of Naples. I accuse you of having attempted to extort 1,200,000 livres from the United States of America and 100,000 dollars from the King of Spain, for granting the former a neutrality they ought never to have lost, and for not forcing the latter to a war with Portugal, united with him by ties of blood and treaties. I accuse you of having attacked and plun- dered, under the most false and specious pretext, every neutral nation of the globe, and of having pocketed for your share in this plunder the immense sum of ^"420,000. I accuse you of having obtained from the banditti
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sent by your recommendation to devastate Helvetia the sum of ^"100,000, sent on your account by bills from Switzerland on Hamburg, and from thence by other bills sent to England, and employed by your agents in the English Funds. I accuse you of having, by your scandalous depravity, organised pillage and ra- pacity in every department of the State; of having sold the places of clerks, as well as the offices of ambassadors; of having your official tariff, and ac- cordingly disposing of all places depending on your nomination for money, and not to merit or patriotism. I accuse you of having, by your barefaced immo- rality, injured the honourable character and under- mined the morals of French Republicans; and finally, I accuse you of having perpetrated all these crimes with counter-revolutionary intents, of establishing an hereditary despotism upon the ruins of liberty and equality."
Although most of these charges were supported by public notoriety, and although the denunciation of them literally expressed the unanimous opinion of Europe, and of France, Talleyrand's intrigues pre- vailed to prevent their consequences, until another Revolution removed them for ever. He caused, however, an answer to be printed, in which, without entering into particulars or denying the reality of
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what he was accused, " he sheltered himself under the superior authority of the Directory, to whose ap- probation all his plans had been submitted before they were carried into execution, according to their orders. He said that he always had been, and was, a Republican by heart and from principle; and that another proscription, or restoration of monarchy in France, would either prove an act of universal eut- lawry against him, as no country existed upon earth where he must not expect to be punished for his patriotism, and for the part he had taken in propa- gating liberty and promoting equality."
At no preceding period had the situation of the French Republic been more extraordinary than it was at that moment. A government, renewed, tot- tering, and suspended between its total fall and the confirmation of its authority; a legislative body divided between two parties — one of them lamenting that they havs not attained their object, and the other, that they have gone beyond theirs ; a new political club of incendiaries striving to break the last thread by which the apparent equilibrium of the different Powers is supported ; most of the offices bestowed on the abettors of disorder, and an unbounded anarchy; a State, pressed on all sides by dangers, foreign and
domestic, facilitating its own disorganisation, by the
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sudden change of every man in place ; a nation, silent and motionless, looking on, while these turbulent fac- tions are provoking her destiny ; all the evils of a past Revolution, with the dread of a new one — such was the state to which France had been reduced, as a reward of the madness, barbarism, passions, and crimes that have enslaved her since the rebellion in the name of Reason, Liberty and Equality. A dic- tatorship of the firmest kind, the most absolute, and the least exposed to the interference of jurisdictions, and other obstacles, was desired by many patriots, in a country where, from Antwerp to Nice, from Stras- burg to Bayonne, an abyss of troubles, dissensions, and anarchy was opened, and daily grew wider ; where armies without pay, and finances degraded to theatrical expedients, required prompt remedies, administered by all-powerful hands ; where victorious foreign armies were seen approaching the frontiers; where internal enemies endangered tranquillity, and where the whole social system was shaken to its foundation by the perpetual succession of innovations, and by the flames of faction, which consumed to-day what was instituted yesterday.
So dreadfully circumstanced was the French Re- public when the too fortunate Corsican, after escaping the fire, the sword, the vengeance of Turks and Arabs,
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the vigilance of British cruisers, and the dangers of the waves, arrived in Europe, having treacherously deserted his army in Africa. He was hailed by all parties in France as a deliverer, courted by all factions as a valuable acquisition, and desired by all conspirators as their chief. The Revolution effected by Bonaparte was, therefore, easily ac- complished ; not from any greatness of character shown by himself, but from the weakness of his adversaries. If, after swearing fidelity to the Direc- torial Constitution at St. Cloud, at the moment when a great majority of the Council of Five Hundred were about to outlaw him, a hundred men, led by General Jourdan, had appeared at the opposite door, there would have been an end to his usurpation and conspiracy, to his consulate and emperorship, and the Jacobins would have remained masters of the Re- public. Upon such a comparatively trifling incident depended the success of an undertaking from which mankind has since suffered so much, and of which the consequences are still so fatally felt. But, trem- bling as he was when the event was undecided, he be- came tyrannical when victory declared in his favour. In every act of this drama the world soon heard of and saw only Bonaparte. He alone engrossed the scene. From pride, ambition, and further views he
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openly piqued himself upon eclipsing all his col- leagues ; gave a national occurrence the character of a personal contest between him and the Legisla- ture; assumed the gait, and expressed himself as an aga of Janissaries, coming to set the Divan to rights and force its decision on the Empire. There was no greatness, no patriotism, and no skill to be traced on this occasion in the affectation of a Republican general who, puffed up with his military fortune, spoke only of his soldiers, his brothers in arms, his bayonets, and the use he would make of them. No- body can trace the man of genius in this sudden transformation of the new military dictator into the Consul of a Republic, where they still continued to swear to respect the sovereignty of the people, liberty and equality. He was then accused, and the world is now convinced of the truth of this accusation, of having drawn his sword only to cut off the robe from his superiors in the State to invest himself with the Imperial mantle and the double-edged sword of un- limited despotism.
Sieyes, Talleyrand, Volney, Roederer and Renard de St. Jean d'Angely were the only persons who shared Bonaparte's confidence, and who were em- ployed in preparing an enterprise which annihilated a Constitution they, as well as himself, had so often
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sworn to respect and defend. Though this was the first time in which the military power in France absolutely prevailed over the civil one, no generals, not even Berthier or Moreau, were acquainted with his plans. They, with other generals, accompanied him to St. Cloud with the idea of supporting him with their popularity in his attempt to silence factions, as he promised, but not to overthrow the Government. Some indirect and indiscreet expres- sions had indeed escaped him ; but his secret re- mained impenetrable. The majority of the Council, and of the Directory, the War Minister, Dubois Creance, and several others, and more than hah0 of the agents of the police, found themselves threatened by the conspiracy; but their distrust did not go beyond vague suspicions, and was ignorant of the nature, as well as of the time of execution. The conspirators first met at Roederer's house in the Rue Faubourg St. Honcre, then in a house taken by Madame Grand in the Rue St. Dominique, in the Faubourg St. Germain, and finally in one hired by Talleyrand in the Rue de Turenne in the Marais. Sieyes, Talleyrand and Volney inclined to a consti- tutional monarchy, in some new dynasty : Roederer1
I See the characters of Sieyes, Volney and Roederer in the first volume of " The Revolutionary Plutarch." Camille Des-
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was of the same opinion, but opposed the revival of the name of a king, or kingdom, wishing that some other title should be given to the supreme and hereditary chief of a constitutional commonwealth ; Renard St. Jean d'Angely proposed that the French Republic should, like the Roman of old, be headed by two consuls, one of whom, in the course of time, might be converted into, and the other salute, a Caesar. Bonaparte alone mentioned the Bourbons, discussed the talents, virtues, weakness, services, of each member of each branch. He proved, to the satisfaction of his associates, that the princes in direct lineage of the oldest branch did not possess genius, capacity or firmness requisite to restore and pre- serve order and tranquillity in a nation agitated by so many factions, during so many years, and accustomed to a licentiousness which a man used to enforce discipline, even among soldiers bewildered by the cries of liberty, only can restrain from producing new crimes and new devastations. The princes of the other branches were all accused of those errors, or stained with those irresolutions which precipitated Louis XVI. from the throne of his ancestors. To elect a chief magistrate from among them would
moulins said of Roederer, that "his head was a sketch formed by Nature to express the affinity of envy, perfidy and roguery."
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inevitably bring on new civil wars, because the Conde branch had its adherents as well as the Orleans branch, and those of Louis XVIII. would, to a certainty, unite with any party combating the prince occupying an authority which he claimed, and from which he had been excluded. France, he said, was now, and must always continue to be, a military nation. Except the princes of the Cond6 branch, no Bourbon ever commanded a battalion, and the military exploits of these have consisted in carrying arms against their own country. The Spanish Bourbons he pretended to have degenerated still more in talents to reign, and therefore their sceptres were tottering in their hands. He went through all other Imperial dynasties, all, according to his notions, not producing, for a century past, one individual who could be called a great sovereign, with the sole exception of Frederic II. of Prussia ; but he died without leaving any posterity behind. Would it not, besides, said he, be a disgrace to France, and an acknowledgment of her incapacity, after such glorious achievements, to call in a foreigner, of no other merit than birth, to rule her, and to bestow upon him a rank, which so many eminent and meritorious Frenchmen had evinced themselves worthy to obtain? Would all the French patriots,
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purchasers of national property, generals, statesmen, or legislators think themselves safe, or continue quiet under a French Bourbon, or a prince of a foreign dynasty, educated in all the dangerous prejudices the French Revolution has proscribed ? He, therefore, believed that an elective consulate, at least for some years, was necessary. He then went into considera- tions of the danger of proclaiming three generals the three consuls, which he supposed would be necessary to well govern the French Republic at that crisis. He declared that he would never accept of the place of a consul with any distinguished military
character as his equal at his side. He exposed
•
also the foibles, or weak side, of the most cele- brated generals. He accused Pichegru of an in- corrigible fanaticism for the Bourbons; Moreau of an inconsistency which clouded all his military exploits; Jourdan of ignorance and brutality; Au- gereau of incapacity and ferocity; Massena of immorality and cupidity; Brune of uniting the ferocity of Augereau with the ignorance of Jourdan and the cupidity of Massena. Macdonald, he said, was a foreigner, and Bernadotte a grenadier in the regimentals of a general. Berthier had talents to grace a second rank, but in the first sphere his rank would eclipse his talents. This discussion is reported
TALLEYRAND 9 I
to have taken place on the yth of November, 1799, in Roederer's house, where it was finally agreed to effect a revolution on the next day; but Bonaparte imprudently delayed the explosion for twenty-four hours. Heroes who can fight Austrians, Italians, Cossacks, Arabs and Mamelukes are common enough; but Timoleons, Thrasybuluses and Washingtons are very rare. There is a great difference between that vulgar ambition which displaces and subverts States to seize upon the sovereignty, or sanction its caprice, and the patriotic, generous and sublime spirit of a chief great in authority, eminent in capacity and powerful by popularity, who takes advantage of an extraordinary moment in his fortune to lay down his power and restore to his country its lawful government and laws which would secure its liberty. Talleyrand intrigued to be, and was placed upon the list of candidates for the election of a second consul. But Bonaparte chose rather to have in him a real slave than nominally an equal, and therefore returned to him the ministerial portfolio of the Foreign Department, and joined with him Fouch6 to organise the destruction of the liberty of the Press, and to embroil and dupe the Royalist chiefs of La Vendee, and the other western department, to lay down their arms.
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Bonaparte, in the intoxication of his success on the day of his usurpation, had so rashly and so ostentatiously promised to become the pacificator of Europe, that he could not recede from making some show of an intention to negotiate. In a despatch from Talleyrand to Lord Grenville, he ordered a letter to be enclosed from him to our Sovereign, both the substance and form of which were enough to create doubts of the sincerity of the writer. Talley- rand could not be ignorant, if he were, of those forms established by custom which have the force of law throughout Europe; and that he who exalts himself above those ceremonies which are universally re- spected, stands forward the haughty and dangerous reformer of the law of nations. Besotted, then, with his eight days' consular greatness, as he has been more recently after usurping an Imperial dignity, he forgot the glorious distance between a King of Great Britain and the principal magistrate of a republic of yesterday. He addressed our Sovereign in an im- pertinent, interrogatory style, and with a dogmatical pedantry that would have been passed over as ridiculous in any other performance than that of a diplomatic letter, where it has to be rebutted as insolent and unbecoming. He opened his credentials with informing His Majesty that he was called to
TALLEYRAND Q3
the supr^T^e magistracy by the voice of the French nation, as if he intended to play the fool with the House of Brunswick as he was doing with the petit-maitrest shopkeepers, and coffee-house tribes of Paris. Lord Grenville's letters in answer, addressed to Talleyrand, were both becoming and dignified : " I have," wrote his Lordship, " received, and laid before the King, the two letters which you have transmitted to me; and His Majesty, seeing no reason to depart from those forms which have long been established in Europe for transacting business with foreign States, has commanded me to return, in his name, the official answer, which I send you herewith en- closed." This official answer, in the form of a note, very accurately traced the conduct of France from the origin of the existing hostilities, and noticed the repeated assurances made by every succeeding Govern- ment of pacific intentions, whilst all their acts were replete with aggression. His Majesty declared, at the same time, that when the security of his own dominions and those of his allies, and the general security of Europe could be attained, he would eagerly seize the opportunity to concert with his allies the means of an immediate and general pacifi- cation.
The recrimination upon which Talleyrand ven-
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tured, in a second note, led Lord Grenville to a reconsideration of the causes of the war between Great Britain and France — a question worn out, and which had united all voices, except those of faction, in a decision against the latter, and, therefore, very improperly brought forward again in a despatch pretending to propose a pacification. The examina- tion of Bonaparte's past conduct justly furnished his Lordship with his principal arguments against placing any confidence in his present advances. He traced the usurper through every step of his public career, beginning with his generalship against the sections of Paris, and concluding with his insidious instruc- tions given to General Kleber at the moment of his flight from Egypt. From this recapitulation, his Lordship thought himself warranted to conclude that, in proposing peace, Bonaparte had two objects in view: the one, to relax the efforts of England; the other, to sow jealousy and distrust among the allies of Great Britain. t"It is," continued his Lordship, "the same person who now appears so desirous of peace with England that formerly hastened to con- clude the Treaty of Campo Formio, for the purpose of turning the whole weight and force of France against this country ; who — at that time contem- plating our ruin as the greatest achievement of his
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life — seflt his two confidants, Berthier and Monge, to the Directory to declare that the French Republic and the English Government could not exist together." Talleyrand, in one of the first Councils of State after Bonaparte's usurpation, advised proposals for a general pacification. The Emperors of Germany and of Russia were, therefore, as well as the King of Great Britain, insulted with similar letters from the Corsican upstart, beginning with " Liberty and Equality." This had long been the revolutionary etiquette of former kings of factions in their corre- spondence with neutral princes, and would, therefore, not deserve any remark had not the petty, vain- glorious Bonaparte but lately again had the audacity to style our beloved Sovereign his brother! and on all occasions, both before and since, with the ferocity of a tiger united the vanity of a coxcomb. In this and other countries blessed with the government of legitimate princes, people are imperfectly acquainted with the littleness of mind of the present and past Republican rulers of the great nation. Rewbel, Mer- lin, La Reveilliere and Sieyes keep, as precious relics, all letters addressed to them, as great and dear friends, by the neutral Kings of Prussia, Spain, Denmark, when they were presidents of the Directory, together with au- thenticated copies of these letters or despatches thus,
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in fhe same quality, signed to their great and dear friends, Frederic William, Charles IV. and Christian VII. These certificates of fraternity with sovereign princes they and their wives and children show to everybody with a ludicrous ostentation and insupport- able arrogance. The wives of these dethroned usurpers have also their exhibitions to make, and their princely stories to tell, for which certain queens and princesses (not more vile in their correspondence, presents and connections with these mock queens than their con- sorts in accepting indemnities from their husbands) have furnished plenty of materials. Bonaparte, how- ever, has surpassed them all in insolence as well as in crimes; when they were satisfied to be the great and dear friends of kings, nothing would do for the Corsican tiger-monkey but to be a brother, both of emperors and kings; to acknowledge no other father but the Pope, no other relatives but imperial and royal highnesses. Since the fratricide of Abel, never was the fraternity of Cain more pro- verbial, more degrading and more dangerous. Bona- parte not only uses, but "writes and speaks daggers," that will never cease their destructive activity, ac- cording to Talleyrand's boasts, "until they have pierced the bosom of the last loyal subject upon the corpse of the last legitimate sovereign." Such
JIS BU<
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is the final issue of the doctrine of French sans- culottes, and of the precepts of French levellers !
When, in January, 1800, the First Consul Bona- parte presented to Great Britain his treacherous olive- branch of peace, Talleyrand's emissaries were plotting at St. Petersburg to embroil Russia with England, and were preparing at Berlin, Stockholm and Copen- hagen the plan for that Northern Coalition which eleven months afterwards was concluded, and which Lord Nelson's victory dissolved within four months after its conclusion. When, in January, 1805, the sham Emperor, Bonaparte, again attempted to delude us with his perfidious offer of a pacification, Talleyrand was well informed by his secret agents that those ties between England, Russia and Sweden which the success of his intrigues had five years ago dissolved were renewing, and that Prussia and Denmark were equally disgusted with his encroachments, alarmed at his vicinity, and acquainted with his duplicity, and, therefore, should a new Continental war break out, if they did not unite with the Coalition, would certainly not oppose it and support the arms of usurpation. As our ministers at the former period, by their abilities, energy and patriotism, saved their country, and deserved well of mankind, it is hoped that
now, when convinced that Napoleon Bonaparte VOL. ii 7
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the First is more deceitful and sanguinary in his plots against this country, and more violent and vindictive in his hatred against this nation than was ever the Citizen Napoleon, Brutus, or Ali Bona- parte, the last of sans-culottes, they will act with the same determination, loyalty, and firmness, and for a second time be the saviours of their country and of civilised society. Let them remember the Peace of Amiens, the intent to invade us during a peace, and the accumulated outrages heaped upon Great Britain since hostilities broke out; let them read his calumnies, his threats, his forgeries in the name of Drake and Taylor, and his seizure of Sir George Rumbold. Let them not forget that his starving army on the coast, and his impotent armada in his harbours, may perish and rot during some few years' war, whilst some few months' peace are sufficient, if we trust to treaties only, for his in- cendiaries and banditti to remove the last and sole remaining barrier against a universal revolution.
It was by Talleyrand's advice that Bonaparte sent, in the winter of 1796 his aide-de-camp Duroc, and in the winter of 1800 his brother Louis, to fraternise with the King and Queen of Prussia1 at
i When the sans-cvlotte Duroc went with the King of Prussia to see the parade at Berlin, he admired the scarfs of the officers
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Berlin, and to correspond from that capital with his secret agents in the capital of Russia. That rebels should conspire is not surprising — it belongs to their nature; but that lawful sovereigns and their counsellors can enter into their conspiracies, become accomplices of their guilt and associates of their infamy, posterity would hardly believe did not the disgusting pages of the doleful history of our wretched times bear incontrovertible testimonies of these facts. And how despicable the instruments that have been employed to produce such disgrace- ful events ! In one place, Duroc, the son of a fiddler, and Louis Bonaparte, the son of God knows whom, are successfully employed, not only to procure a continuance of neutrality on the one hand, but to break the precious neutrality of one king in favour of rebellion, and against another king, on the other. In another State a strumpet and spy, Madame Bonociul, and an actress, also a prostitute and spy, Madame Chevalier, are enabled with their charms, and in following Talleyrand's instructions, to transform the most powerful of
of the Guard. At his departure the Queen ! — the amiable Queen of Prussia — presented him with a scarf knitted with her own hands! What indemnities repaid such a condescension the world is still unacquainted with : they are the secrets of the patriots Haugvntz and Talleyrand I
7— a
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emperors and the proudest of princes into an ally of the most despicable of usurpers and most con- temptible of adventurers ! But the Russian monarch was great even in his degradation, because he was disinterested ; whilst the political pedlars, the Prus- sian ministers, bargained for every step they led their master towards his own dishonour and the debasement of monarchy.
When Bonaparte, in the spring of 1800, set out from Paris to head the army of reserve destined to cross the Alps and to invade Italy, Talleyrand, ac- cording to report, provided him with two projects for a separate pacification with Austria. The one to be used in case of a repulse was to propose to Austria, as an indemnity for Brabant and Flanders, the whole of the provinces and islands of the late Venetian Republic, the restoration of Lombardy, and the ces- sion of the Republic of Genoa, to indemnify the King of Sardinia for Savoy and Nice. The King of Naples, the Pope, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Dukes of Modena and Parma were to be put in statu quo ante bellum. France offered to renounce the Lower Rhine as a frontier, and the boundaries of the French Republic were to extend on the side of Germany no farther than the River Meuse, which deprived the King of Prussia of all claims to any indemnities.
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The second project, to serve in case of success, was to renew the preliminaries signed at Campo Formio.
By means of a certain Baron D , who had long
been in French pay at Vienna — where he had in- sinuated himself into the confidence and intimacy of the Prime Minister, Baron Thugut, and a Chevalier
de L , who was in the suite and secrets of General
Melas — Talleyrand had so arranged affairs that even a defeat in the field of battle would be followed by a victory in the Cabinets. Among the combined Powers Austria showed some coolness, and even suspicion, against England, because the troops under General Abercrombie, instead of landing in Italy, had sailed for Egypt; and Russia, in withdrawing from the League, was offended both with Austria and England. Of the inferior princes, the Elector of Bavaria hated the House of Austria more than he disliked the Jacobins of France, and, though receiving a subsidy from Great Britain, neutralised or neglected the stipulations he had signed.
After the victory of Marengo, which was lost by simplicity to treachery, the armies of France as- sumed an imposing attitude; but whilst they were preparing to reconquer the whole of Italy, partly by their arms and partly by intrigues and new revolu- tions, Talleyrand deemed it politic to make peace
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with the Barbary Powers, as nothing could be ob- tained from them, and they might be rendered ex- tremely serviceable by supplying the army in Egypt and the French ports in the Mediterranean with corn and provisions. Accordingly, treaties were entered into, and signed soon after, with the Regencies of Tunis, Algiers and Tripoli. A negotiation also took place with new plenipotentiaries from America, who brought with them a credit for beawoup d' argent ; and a peace was concluded which no declaration of war had preceded. The United States restored the ships their cruisers had captured from France, whilst the French Republic kept the American ships her pirates had seized and the American property which her rulers and Talleyrand had shared with her pirates.
But it was found more difficult to adjust the differences subsisting between the European States. Talleyrand began his scheme of a universal peace with transforming military conventions into diplomatic transactions, and both the one and the other into financial speculations. Making money was his first object, of which negotiations or ruptures, pacifications or hostilities were the only means. On the I2th of July, 1800, the Austrian General (Count de St. Julien) arrived at Paris, especially charged by the Imperial Commander-in-Chief (Melas) to settle some differences
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concerning the limits allowed the respective armies of the belligerent Powers in Italy by the Convention signed after the battle of Marengo, and to arrange an exchange of prisoners between Austria and France. This General was cajoled by Talleyrand into a belief, after some few hours' conference, that his talents as a statesman equalled his valour as a warrior, and that, limited as his instructions were, they might be regarded extensive enough to change the destiny of nations instead of the position of armies, and that it depended upon him to be hailed the pacificator of the Continent. Abler and less ambitious men than the Count de St. Julien might have been the dupes of so much art and such extravagant flattery. Accordingly, unauthorised as he was, he signed, on the 28th of July, preliminaries of peace between Austria and France, founded on the Treaty of Campo Formio. It must be added, in his justification, that an agreement had already been signed between him and Talleyrand that this act should remain secret until ratified by the Emperor of Germany. This was, however, contrary to the views and interest of Talleyrand, who immediately despatched couriers to his money-brokers in Holland and England, to speculate as if no such preliminaries had ever existed, being well aware that the Emperor of
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Germany, faithful to his engagements with Great Britain, by which His Majesty had pledged himself not to listen to a separate peace, would, as became the case, immediately disavow the transaction. By this intrigue, and its influence upon the French and foreign Funds, Talleyrand pocketed nearly ^"300,000. The great condescension of the First Consul, the brilliant routs of his wife, the elegant fetes of the Minister, and the caresses of his female spies, pre- vented, no doubt, the Austrian general from chas- tising the impostor who led him to commit an indiscretion which he knew would be followed by an inevitable disgrace.
In consequence of the demand of the Emperor of Germany that plenipotentiaries from Great Britain should assist at the Congress to be held at Lune- ville, Talleyrand's ingenuity was again at work not to deviate from his old system, Divide et impeva. He sent, therefore, instructions to Bonaparte's agent for the exchange of prisoners in London to propose an unacceptable maritime truce, in return for which the cessation of hostilities was not to be interrupted on the Continent. An impertinent project for this pur- pose was soon after presented, by which the ships and merchantmen of the two nations were to en- joy a free navigation, without being subject to
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search. Neutral vessels were to be allowed to repair to Alexandria, Malta and Bellisle. The squadrons which then blockaded Brest, Cadiz, Toulon and Flushing were to keep out of sight of the coast; and His Catholic Majesty, as well as the Batavian Republiq, were to be admitted to the benefit of these stipulations. As it was impossible that the British Ministry should comply with such a project, when they, in professing their readiness to accede to a suspension of hostilities by sea upon just terms, endeavoured in vain to frame a more moderate scheme of naval forbearance, all their moderation was steadfastly disregarded by French insolence and inveteracy.
In the midst of these discussions the armistice on the Continent had been suffered to expire; and the Cabinet of Vienna, little prepared for a renewal of the contest, was under the necessity of soliciting a new truce. The high price paid for a further suspension of arms for forty-five days indicated the critical situation of the Austrian affairs, and that France would soon command a Continental peace upon terms that would entirely destroy the already veering balance of power. This fatal occurrence the victories of Moreau hastened. In consequence of the preliminary articles signed at Luneville, on the a6th
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of January, 1801, Mantua was delivered up ; and by the definitive treaty of the gth February following, the Austrian Netherlands were ceded in perpetuity to France, as well as the whole of the left bank of the Rhine. All the principal articles of the Treaty of Campo Formio were at the same time confirmed, and the Cisalpine and Ligurian Republics were recognised. But, in addition to this treaty, the Emperor gave up the country of Falkenstein and the Frickthal ; and his brother, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, was also forced to renounce that Grand Duchy in favour of the infant Duke of Parma, who, for being appointed by a Corsican adventurer a revolutionary King of Etruria, paid with Spanish dollars, to the Bonaparte family, ^3,500,000, and ^"42,000 to Talleyrand, besides diamonds to Madame Grand to the value of ^"21,000. Such were the general outlines of the Treaty of Luneville, which spread general joy through France — a joy far better founded than the boasts of moderation with which the treaty was announced in the proclamation issued by Government. Such was even General Moreau's opinion. Between the Convention and definitive treaty, this General openly declared that, "by the humiliating and dishonourable terms imposed upon Austria, it was clear that Bonaparte and Talleyrand,
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with all their political hypocrisy and revolutionary Machiavelism, with all their pretended wish for peace and affected endeavours to procure it, never sincerely desired, nor could expect, more than a suspension of arms; because a peace dictated by the power of the bayonet could only by the same means be preserved, and might as easily be annulled by the bayonets of foreigners as commanded by the bayonets of France." Bonaparte had always spies in the different Republican armies, but round Moreau they were the most numerous: all his transactions were there- fore watched, and, together with his conversations, reported and known. When, after the battle of Hohenlinden, this General approached Vienna, he had several interviews both with the Archdukes Charles and John, and one audience even with the Emperor. On these occasions, according to report, he promised that Tuscany should continue to belong to the Austrian Grand Duke; and accordingly one of his aides-de-camp was expedited to Paris, with a remon- strance to Bonaparte, expressing the policy of not driving Austria to a dangerous despair by any degrading sacrifices ; that by consenting to restore Tuscany to its former Sovereign, France was certain of gaming the friendship and gratitude of Austria, without violating any engagements with Spain; but
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by giving up Tuscany to a Spanish Prince, France made Austria irreconcilable, without gaming any- thing by its impolitic liberality to Spain. The same officer that carried this despatch to the First Consul had a letter from Moreau to Talleyrand, which was to be delivered first, that this minister might be prepared to second the General's proposals. Talleyrand had on every occasion tried to insinuate himself into Moreau's confidence, or at least to obtain his good opinion ; and at an entertainment he gave in the spring before the General went to assume the command of the Republican army, he openly insinuated that, " if merit and services were the only successful pretensions to the supreme power in a Republic, General Moreau would have no rival to oppose his governing the French commonwealth": but since the victories of this General had consoli- dated Bonaparte's consulate, and Talleyrand's place depended upon this usurper's good grace, he justly imagined that, by humiliating Moreau in the eyes of foreign princes, this would be a fit opportunity to ensure its continuance, in gratifying at the same time the mean jealousy of the Consul. This crafty intriguer, therefore, easily dissuaded the aide-de-camp from mentioning anything concerning this business until it had been well considered what was to be
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done, because he could not answer for what other- wise might be the consequence, " knowing as he did how intent the First Consul was to create a Bourbon a King in Tuscany." This aide-de-camp had arrived at Paris on the -24th of January, at night, and on the 25th, in the morning, orders were sent by telegraph to Joseph Bonaparte at Luneville, imme- diately to sign the preliminaries of peace, by which Austria renounced Tuscany. During that day Talley- rand was not visible, although the aide-de-camp remained at the Foreign Office till near 12 o'clock at night ; but the next day Mr. Hauterive, one of the Minister's confidential secretaries, called upon him with the information that, "Government had just learned, by a telegraphic despatch, that the prelimi- naries between France and Austria had been signed; that Talleyrand therefore advised his return to General Moreau immediately, and to represent to him the necessity of dropping at present his inter- ference for Austria." He assured the aide-de-camp that the Minister had not communicated a word to the Consul as to the contents of the General's letter, who, of course, on his return to Paris, would be received as if nothing had occurred to alter the union between the First Magistrate and his first general — a union so indispensably necessary and
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useful to them both, so advantageous to their common cause, and so glorious for their common country.
England being now the only active enemy of the French Republic, Bonaparte, Talleyrand, and the Police Minister, Fouch6, employed then, as during the present war, all their artifices and machinations in exciting such a spirit among Frenchmen, and es- tablishing such a system among other Powers of Europe, as would promote their views of crushing, and if possible destroying, the British nation. Then, as well as now, every slight commotion in France, every exertion of expiring faction, every crime dic- tated by political enthusiasm or personal vengeance, was imputed to the agency of the English Govern- ment; and then, as well as now, from the enslaved state of the Press, and from the prejudices and ignor- ance of the people, it was not difficult to dupe their credulity and excite their passions by the grossest absurdities. Their fabrications were then, as they are now, worthy of their genius, veracity, honour, and honesty. Instead of some few letters written by a British envoy to a French spy, like the late offspring of their ingenuity, a volume of three hundred pages was published, containing a pretended correspondence between the English Ministry and their agents in
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France. It would be an unprofitable and tedious task to analyse these clumsy fictions, which have, however, not been without their effects in deluding and inflaming a giddy and debased nation. When- ever the arms of Bonaparte are unable to make any impression on the British Empire, or the intrigues of Talleyrand have been ineffectual in embroiling Great Britain with other States, this system of revolu- tionary calumny and political forgery will always be resorted to. When Bonaparte is raving, and Talley- rand is fabricating, it is for Britons to rejoice in their security; our country is then out of all danger from the bayonets of their military banditti, as well as from the plots of their revolutionary incendiaries.1
At Talleyrand's office is a private cabinet, contain- ing, besides the correspondence of his secret agents, fac-similes of the handwritings of every Sovereign, Minister of State, ambassador, agent, and of those of all other persons of rank, eminence, or talents whose loyal principles are suspected, whose penetration is offensive, or whose abilities are dreaded. One of his confidential secretaries is the chief of this private
I In Le Voyageur Suisse, page 17, it is stated that when Talleyrand's intrigue for a naval armistice had miscarried, he said with La Montagne : " Nous ne pouvons pas atteindre les Anglais, vengeons-nous par en me'dire."
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cabinet, having under him as clerks four young men educated abroad at Government's expense, on purpose to become members of the secret agency. Being foundlings, they have no relatives to whom they can betray their trust, and having passed their youth in foreign countries, their acquaintances in France are but few, and these such as their chief judges harm- less, or at least not dangerous. In Government is concentrated all their gratitude for past benefactions and all their hopes of future advancement; to it alone is directed all those natural and moral feelings which parentage, consanguinity, protection, and instruction divide in other persons between so many different objects. They consult, therefore, their superior, and obey his dictates as emanating from a double authority, parental as well as social. They are liberally paid, but strictly watched, and severely reprimanded for the least error. They are lodged together, and provided with everything, even with mistresses; but they are not permitted to marry without the consent of their chief, who chooses them both wives and mistresses from among persons of the other sex — orphans and foundlings like themselves, educated like themselves for dark designs. If, after a trial of three years, their conduct and capacity are approved of, they receive appointments as under-secretaries to foreign lega-
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tions, or as deputies of commercial agents. Their names are, on such occasions, changed a third time, having received on their return to their country a different name from that they were known under in their youth, differing still from that of their child- hood. This precaution is used to prevent all dis- covery of their families. Since Talleyrand's entry into the Ministry only two have been punished, and those only for indiscretions, having in the presence of their mistresses called each other " the Emperor of Russia " and " the Queen of Spain," two Sovereigns whose handwritings they were best acquainted with, and most accustomed to imitate. They were, with heir mistresses, within twenty-four hours after the discovery, despatched by poison.1 As at the same office, in the same private cabinet, they have the
I In last June, Bonaparte presided one day in the Senate, and taking out by nonchalance his pocket handkerchief, some letters dropped on the floor, which the senators strived who should be foremost to pick up. Being returned to the Corsican, he said, with a contemptuous sneer, " Never mind, they are of no consequence, being only some letters from Alexander and Frederic (the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia), who tease me almost to death with their troublesome correspondence. Look," continued he, "Alexander writes a better hand than Frederic ; but (seafching in his pocket for another letter) Francis (the Emperor of Germany) writes worse than either!" — Les Nouvelles ct. la Main, Messidor, year XII., No. iv., pages 9 and 10.
VOL. II g
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usual seals of all great, famous, or notorious charac- ters, it would not be hazardous to suppose that all the pretended private letters from the Emperor of Russia, from the King of Prussia, and from the Em- peror of Germany, to the upstart Bonaparte, men- tioned lately with such a disgusting affectation in the French journals as arrived with extra couriers from St. Petersburg, Berlin, and Vienna, were the pro- ductions of Talleyrand's manufactory at his office, Rue de Bacq, from which, after a journey of five or ten minutes, they had safely been delivered according to direction at the Tuileries, or at St. Cloud. At least, those billet-doux which Louis Bonaparte, in the spring of iSoi, prided himself in having received from a certain beautiful princess, even the Parisians dared to whisper were forgeries.
No sooner had the Peace of Luneville been signed, than the Consular Minister Talleyrand made Bonaparte determine to punish the kingdom of Por- tugal, the only remaining faithful ally of Great Britain. Queen Mary, the widow of her uncle Peter III., incapacitated, partly by age and partly by a terrible malady, from the exercise of the Royal functions, still retained the semblance of sovereignty, though her son governed under the name of Regent. The Prince of Brazil, conscious that his country had
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been repeatedly saved, and his family continued on the throne, in consequence of the support and pro- tection of the King of England, was devoted to that Sovereign. He had, however, by the mediation of Spain, made several attempts, by embassies and pecuniary sacrifices, to negotiate and purchase neutrality from the French usurpers ; but had, at the same time, rejected the idea of any treaty that tended to exclude the military or commercial navy of this country from his ports.
The King of Spain, guided by the imbecile Prince of Peace, and tyrannised by the Cabinet of the Tuileries, acted either imprudently or through com- pulsion. Talleyrand had, in the autumn of 1800, pre- sented him with an ambassador in Lucien Bona- parte, who, after selling Tuscany, was determined to govern Spain; and, with the forces of the King of Spain, invade or plunder the kingdom of Portugal, although ruled by the son-in-law of this Sovereign.1
I Les Nouvelles d la Main, Messidor, year XII., No, 5, page 240. It is said in the notes that Talleyrand sent this manifesto enclosed in a complimentary letter to the Prince of Peace asking him to perfect it by his wisdom and improvement. This flattery so much pleased this Spanish upstart, that he sent Talleyrand in return a diamond ring worth £20,000. The late false and virulent manifesto by the Prince of Peace against England originates, no doubt, from the same pure source.
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Charles IV. accordingly published a manifesto, drawn up by Talleyrand, in which were intermingled the complaints of Spain with those of France,
"Europe," he said, "was scandalised at beholding Portugal presenting a secure asylum to the squadrons of the enemy, from which they were enabled to issue forth and seize on his vessels and those of a Republic united to him by friendship. We have seen Portu- guese mixed with British ships, forming a part of their fleets, facilitating their movements, and par- ticipating in all those acts of hostility which the English commit against Spain. Their ports have become the public markets of the French and Spanish prizes taken upon their coast, and in sight of their fortresses ; while their Admiralty releases all the captures made by my subjects. The French Republic, irritated at these outrages, is desirous of inflicting a just punishment; and its victorious armies would have long since spread desolation through her own provinces if my fraternal affection for the most faithful Queen and her august children had not suspended the blow."
After complaining that the Prince Regent had " evaded the Royal promise so often pledged in favour of peace," and, in complaisance to England, his enemy, "abused those engagements which His
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Majesty had entered into with France,*' it was stated that the King of Spain had ordered his ambassador to quit Lisbon, and given a passport to the Portuguese Minister at the Court of Madrid to depart : " being decided," concluded His Majesty, "to attack that Power by uniting my forces with those of the Republic, whose cause is become the same as my own, as well as to avenge the par- ticular insults that have been offered to myself. For this purpose, I declare war against her most faithful Majesty, her kingdom and subjects, wishing this resolution to be promulgated through all my States, in order that convenient measures may be taken for the defence of my kingdom and my ships, as well as against the territories and vessels of my enemies."
The counter-manifesto, published by the Court of Lisbon, and addressed to the clergy, nobility and people, was replete with energy, and worthy of the more prosperous days of that monarchy. After con- gratulating the nation on retaining its independence, notwithstanding the subjugation of so many othet countries, the Prince Regent justly maintained that Portugal had always evinced a scrupulous fidelity to the fulfilment of its promises in respect to foreign States. A remarkable proof of this, he said, was
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afforded in the assistance given to Spain in 1795, which, by terminating hostilities against France, has not only involved the nation that succoured her, but declared war because the former had kept the faith of treaties inviolate.
" This alone," adds His Royal Highness, " is sufficient to rouse the dormant spirit of patriotism ; but there are still more powerful motives to animate you. It is intended to degrade and debase you by reducing you to supplicate for the preservation of your commerce. Spain even demands that our ports shall be guarded by her troops as a security for our fidelity ; but a nation which knew how to resist the Romans, to conquer Asia, to discover a passage to the East, to break, when she was still weak, the hereditary yoke of a foreign sceptre, to recover and maintain her independence — this nation ought to recollect the many honourable facts recorded in its history.
" Portuguese ! we will still preserve the courage and the sentiments of honour transmitted to us by our ancestors ; justice is on our side. The true God, propitious to our cause, will punish by means of our arms the injuries committed by our enemies; He will crown our generals and our legitimate Sovereign with glory ; while our zeal, the equity of
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our cause, and the remembrance of our exploits will secure us victory."
The brave Prince of Peace, having been declared generalissimo of the Spanish army, immediately en- tered Portugal ; and, as the Portuguese had not time to arm, easily over-ran that country. Having penetrated by two different routes to Alentejo, he obtained possession of Campo Major and all the fortified places in that extensive province, com- pelled the few troops who opposed him to retire beyond the Tagus, and transmitted eleven standards to Madrid. Immediately after these glorious achieve- ments, the Prince Regent, though he had received a subsidy of ^"300,000 from England, was obliged to consent to a treaty of peace, by which Spain obtained the province of Olivenza, and stipulated that no armed ships belonging to her enemy should be admitted into any of the harbours of Portugal.
Although Lucien Bonaparte had, for the moderate sum of ^"650,000, consented on- the part of France to this treaty, as Talleyrand had been forgotten, he ex- cited the First Consul to order General St. Cyr, who had succeeded Lucien as ambassador to the Court of Madrid, immediately to enter Portugal with twenty thousand men, and invest the fortress of Almeida, within thirty leagues of the capital. Without any
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means of resistance, the Prince Regent was under the necessity to sign a new peace with France. By this treaty Portugal engaged no longer to admit either British ships of war or merchantmen into her har- bours ; the limits of French Guiana were extended, and commercial immunities, highly favourable to the Consular Republic, together with a few more millions of livres in ready money, to be divided between the Consul's wife and his mother. Talleyrand also waf indemnified for his advice with ^"25,000.
Whilst the King of Spain was thus forced into an unnatural war against his son-in-law by the assas- sins of his family, these very men were meditating, after selling him the throne of Tuscany, to annihilate the throne of Spain. The same day that the Spanish ambassador at Paris, Chevalier d'Azzara, received the information of the Prince of Peace having invaded Portugal according to the desires of France, a report reached him, that " the Consular Government had de- termined to take advantage of the opportunities then offered to carry the revolution into Spain, and to constitute that monarchy an Iberian Republic, of which Lucien Bonaparte was to be the first consul or chief magistrate." As this report had been de- rived from so good a source that he could little doubt its authenticity, he called upon Talleyrand to
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know what were the intentions or complaints of France towards Spain. The answer, so far from being satisfactory, rather confirmed him in his opinion that the ruin of his country was meditating ; he therefore apprised his Court of it, and the con- sequence was the treaty unexpected by France between Spain and Portugal, ?.nd the orders given to St. Cyr to renew hostilities without the succours of the Spanish troops. The pacific turn which the negotiation between Bonaparte and the English Government took, caused, however, this revolutionary plan against Spain then to be laid aside ; and General St. Cyr obtained instructions to conclude a peace with the Portuguese monarchy, instead of organising a republic upon its ruins, as were his first orders. Should the Cabinet of Madrid ever again be imprudent or treacherous enough to unite in French harbours the Spanish navy with that of France, as was then the case, or permit French armies, without opposition, to pass through Spain to garrison the seaports, and consequently to seize on the navy of Portugal, a revolution in these two kingdoms will be inevitable. " Bonaparte has brothers still unprovided with thrones, and Talley- rand does not conceal that to insure the stability of the present revolutionary government in France,
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all Bourbons must be removed, and all ancient dynasties changed."1 Yet the Spanish monarchy is suspended between a revolution daily meditated and the burden of a shameful war, which has neither object nor motive, in which success would but hasten the ruin of the monarch, and in which every defeat deserves to be celebrated at Madrid with a Te Deum. It is in this deceitful position, it is in the arms of the assassins of his family, that the King of Spain drags his existence; a prey to the perturbation of bis mind, the incapacity, the dissentions of his ministry, the complaints, the misery of his subjects; to anxiety for the present, and to terror for the future. Slumbering beneath a canopy of impending poniards, this monarch, bound by the ties of an unnatural alliance, can neither break them nor suffer them to remain unbroken without danger; can neither make peace nor support war ; his allies are his scourges ; his enemies are his protectors ; he would cease to be a king were the British arms to cease
I According to Les Nouvelles d la Main, Frimaire, year XII., No. ii., page 2, Talleyrand has not only held this language in private coteries, but in the presence of foreign diplomatic agents. The author has received from a friend in Paris a " List of all persons in all countries of Europe and America intended as the chief of the new future dynasties," but prudence does not permit to publish it y«t. It has been circulated by Talleyrand's agents.
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being victorious. And thus reduced, thus agitated and thus wretched have the Spanish monarch and the Spanish monarchy been ever since the signature of the alliance with F-ench regicides in 1796 — an act that procured the present favourite and Prime Minister the title of a Prince of Peace!
Great Britain continued, after the pacification of the Continent, to maintain the indisputable sove- reignty of the ocean, not only protecting her own coasts and settlements, but assailing, in every part of the world, those of her opponents, ruining their commerce, conquering their colonies, and reducing them to a state of impotent mendicancy. To coun- tervail the ascendency of the British naval power, all the secret spies and official agents of France, male and female, were let loose by Talleyrand, that he might avail himself of the jealousies and disputes to which a long-continued contest of unexampled activity and extent had given birth. He represented to the Powers of the North, in the most insidious terms, the necessary precautions of our fleets in searching and detaining neutral vessels as acts of aggression. His intrigues and their interest — more persuasive than the sophistry of his emissaries — led the Northern Courts to renew the pretentions they had advanced during the American War, and to
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revive the dangerous and inapplicable axiom that " free bottoms make free goods."
During the former part of the late war, Great Britain had either obtained the open or secret appro- bation of every neighbouring Court. But the fortune of Bonaparte, the active plots of Talleyrand, and the selfishness of Prussia had now altered the scene t and this country, which had commenced the contest with all the States of Europe as her allies, now be- held the majority of them leagued against her. They absurdly complained that their neutrality was no longer respected, that their shores and harbours were violated by the British cruisers, and that even their men-of-war were not permitted to afford succours to the convoys entrusted to their charge. They urged at the same time the procrastination, delays and ex- penses incident to the English Court of Admiralty, and resolved to recur to decisive measures for the purpose of obtaining redress. Sweden deemed her- self greatly injured on a variety of occasions, but more particularly by the detention and condemnation of several merchantmen under the convoy of a ship of war. She also complained that one of her mer- chantmen, without a cargo, had been seized by an English squadron, and employed in a hostile enter- prise against two Dutch frigates in the Bay of
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Barcelona, by which stratagem they had both been captured. Denmark also, after enduring patiently so many insults and losses from France, enumerated her grievances against England. She asserted that a number of her vessels had been seized on the most frivolous pretexts, and even carried into the ports of Great Britain, although no species of contra- band property whatsoever had been found on board.1 It was stated, at the same time, that the captain of one of her frigates had been detained and treated with harshness. An event occurred soon after which, though undoubtedly planned and prepared by Talley- rand's agents at Copenhagen, occasioned much per- plexity, and was productive of all those disagreeable consequences which his plots had measured out.1 Although the armed vessels of the two Northern Powers had protested against a search, and one of them actually recurred to small-arms, yet nothing in the shape of a regular engagement had hitherto taken place. This, however, at length occurred in the
1 It is a notorious fact, that for 100 marks, or six guineas, Danish burgher-right was sold at Altona. The severity of British cruisers could, therefore, not be too strict in search of French property neutralised by such easy and cheap arts.
2 In Les Intrigues du Ch. M. Talleyrand, p. 12, it is stated that the rehearsal of this naval farce took place at Paris in Bonaparte's Cabinet, the day before he left that capital to assume the command of the army of reserve near Dijon.
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course of the summer of 1800 ; for the captain of the Danish frigate Freya having refused to permit the vessels under his protection to be examined by an English squadron, at the mouth of the Channel, an action immediately ensued ; and, after having two men killed and five wounded, he struck the Danish colours, and was carried into the Downs.
As a rupture was apprehended upon this occasion, the English Ministers were naturally alarmed for the safety of the vessels employed in the Baltic trade. Lord Whitworth was accordingly sent to Copenhagen in the character of a plenipotentiary, while his mis- sion was supported by a strong squadron under Ad- miral Dickson, which entered the Sound. After a considerable time spent in discussion, a temporary adjustment took place, in consequence of which the Danish frigate, with the convoy, were to be released, and the former repaired in a port of His Britannic Majesty, according to the usage of friendly and allied Powers. The decision respecting the right of visit- ing merchantmen, under the convoy of men-of-war, was postponed ; and, in the meantime, Denmark was to employ her armed vessels for this purpose in the Mediterranean only, a measure rendered necessary in that sea in consequence of the depredations of the Barbary corsairs.
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Had Sweden and Denmark alone been the dupes of Talleyrand's inveteracy against this country, and parties of an association entered into some few months afterwards, which actually revived the treaty of armed neutrality concluded during the American War, their efforts would probably have been confined to memo- rials and remonstrances; but, by one of those strange turns of politics which often derange the best pro- jects of human wisdom and foresight, the Emperor of Russia, totally changing his principles, and revers- ing the acts of that period of his reign which had entitled him to the greatest share of admiration, had, from the influence of Talleyrand's secret female agents, become the zealous partisan of revolutionary France, and the soul of the League fabricated under her auspices for the ruin of the British ^Empire. Justly offended at the transactions in Switzerland, at the close of the campaign in 1799, Paul I. had observed a gloomy and suspicious neutrality during the first portion of the ensuing year ; but, while his passions were bewildered by the charms of the harlots Talleyrand had placed in his train, as success gilded the banners of Bonaparte, his eyes became dazzled, and he panted to share the Emperor's friendship and the renown of his un- deserved prosperity. The First Consul and his
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Minister easily appreciated the character of this ur> fortunate Prince ; they saw that he rather admired what was splendid than pursued what was just, and therefore ensnared his senses, flattered his vanity and desire of being thought a model of heroism and virtue, by the most abject and incessant soothings.
As the ascendency of French partisans over the mind of the Emperor increased, he became addition- ally captious in his conduct towards Great Britain, and, on the surrender of Malta, appears to have seized that occasion of advancing pretences which would justify a premeditated hostility. In defiance of all rules, and contrary to the statutes of the Order, he had, after the treacherous occupation of the island by the French, been elected a Grand Master, and was desirous of opening a negotiation with the British Ministry for the possession of this ill-acquired sovereignty. But before any considerable progress could be made in the transaction, the im- patience of his temper and violence of his character, augmenting to a degree which afforded evident proofs of insanity, broke out into acts that rendered hos- tilities between him and his late ally inevitable. Bonaparte, anxious to secure his friendship, liberated 7,000 Russian prisoners captured by the French armies, and sent them tack to their own country,
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well clothed, and armed at his expense, the amount of which Talleyrand took care to have repaid by Great Britain, in the Treaty of Amiens. This generosity of the First Consul, at the time his own troops were in rags and without pay, made Paul his friend, even to enthusiasm. A solemn Russian legation, headed by the Vice-Chancellor Kalitchief, was immediately sent to Paris, for the purpose of drawing more closely the ties which were to con- nect the Russian Empire with the French Republic. Although he had formerly expressed his resolution to check the contraband trade carried on by Sweden and Denmark with France, to the prejudice of the allies, and of England in particular, he now declared himself the warm champion of their pretended rights. In a declaration published about this period by His Imperial Majesty, the measures taken in 1780 " for establishing the principles of a wise and impartial neutrality " were appealed to ; and great credit was given to Russia " for bringing to a conclusion this salutary work," which, in respect to that country, had become " the basis of all future treaties of commerce, while universal suffrage had converted this code of humanity into a code for nations." After lamenting that, " at the epoch of the dissolution of a Great Power," too little care was taken to give a new
VOL. II 9
I30
MEMOIRS OF
sanction to these principles, on account of the inter- vention of novel and extraordinary events, the deten- tion of the. Danish frigate is mentioned, as tending to prove " how much the independence of crowned heads might be endangered if they neglected to re- establish the principles and maxims on which the safety of the neutral Powers rests in the course of this war. As the manifest interest of His Imperial Majesty," it is added, " both in regard to the navi- gation of his own subjects and that of his ports bordering upon other nations, requires that the seas which wash the coasts of the Russian Empire should be sheltered from such acts of violence, he invites the Powers who possess harbours in these districts, and particularly Their Majesties the Kings of Prussia, of Denmark, and of Sweden, to concert with him respecting measures that will be successively com- municated to them, for re-establishing, in their full force, the principles of an armed neutrality, to secure the liberty of the seas. He accordingly makes known, by the present declaration, that he is dis- posed to employ all the forces of his Crown to maintain the honour of his flag and that of his allies ; to secure his subjects from every infraction of those rights respected by all nations, and to procure to them, under the protection of their respective
TALLEYRAND 1^1
Governments, the advantages resulting from the liberty of trade and navigation."1
In consequence of this invitation, the King of Sweden entered into a treaty with the Emperor Paul, in which they laid down certain principles for the extension and security of commerce. By these new regulations it was maintained that any ship might freely navigate on the coasts of the belligerent Powers ; and that everything but 'what is expressly contraband shall be free. The description of a blockaded harbour is limited and defined; the declaration of the officers commanding ships of war convoying merchantmen, respecting their cargoes, is deemed sufficient ; no search is to be allowed ; and, to protect the trade of the two countries, the con- tracting parties agree to equip and provide squad- rons. The Kings of Prussia and Denmark soon after acceeded to this confederacy ; and the Emperor
I In the publication Le Voyageur Suisse, pages 3 and 4, it is stated that Madame Chevalier, the mistress of Paul's favourite minister, Ropotschin, having received this note from Talley- rand's office, learned it by heart, and when the expected news arrived at St. Petersburg of the capture of the Danish frigate, asked him to permit her to write a note against the tyrants of the seas in his presence, which she did so very ably, that he had but very few alterations to make for changing his mistress's note into an official declaration of his Sovereign. A ring oi great value repaid her adroitness.
9—2
132 MEMOIRS OF
of Russia carried his resentment still further, by laying an embargo on all British ships in his ports. He also issued orders to burn those detained in the harbour of Narva, in consequence of the escape of two vessels in contravention of his commands, and treated the sailors with uncommon rigour.
These proceedings were partly connected wkh the grand-mastership of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem; but chiefly directed, in consequence of the hatred with which Talleyrand's agents about his person inspired him, against Great Britain. To con- ceal their degrading ascendency in Russia, and also to furnish materials of cavil for the factious in this country, the Court gazette at St. Petersburg ex- pressly stated that the Emperor had resorted to this measure because possession had been taken "of Val- etta and the island of Malta, in the name of the King of Great Britain, and the English flag alone hoisted," &c. ; and it is asserted, towards the con- clusion, that the sequestration should not be taken off " until the conditions of the Convention, con- cluded in the year 1798, were punctually fulfilled."
The crisis appeared truly tremendous to Great Britain. The nation, placed in a new political posi- tion by the incorporate union with Ireland, was oppressed by the calamities of two years of scarcity,
TALLEYRAND 133
and open to all the fluctuations of opinion of those who, at different periods, opposed the war, or were dissatisfied with the views, or with the measures, political or financial, of the minister who conducted it. Yet the national spirit, when adequately roused, was sufficient to repel every insult ; and the national resources were sufficiently abundant to meet any contest. The storm was therefore dissipated, and England, by the vigour of her ancient institutions, by her wealth, by her valour, by the talents and patriotism of her ministers, at length acquired her former ascendency.
When further moderation would have been weak- ness, and forbearance pusillanimity, our Government returned the aggression of Russia with great firmness. The payment of bills due to merchants of that Em- pire was prohibited by Order of Council, and extensive preparations were commenced for attacking the North- ern Confederates in other points, when the ministry suddenly dissolved, and was replaced, not by the party so long in the Opposition, but by loyal and cordial friends of the preceding Cabinet. Under their auspices, a powerful squadron was despatched to the Baltic, and the victor of the Nile reaped new laurels before Copenhagen. Denmark was terrified into a truce ; the King of that country, who had sequestered
134 MEMOIRS OF
British property at Hamburg, resigned his prey; the King of Prussia, who, in contempt of neutrality, honour and justice, had seized Hanover, evacuated this elec- torate; the King of Sweden withdrew from the Con- federacy, and Lord St. Helens was deputed ambassador to St. Petersburg, for the final arrangement of all disputes between the contending nations. The re- ception of an English plenipotentiary in Russia was facilitated by the sudden death of the Emperor Paul, which, in the proclamation of his successor, was ascribed to apoplexy ; but it is undoubted that the same French faction at St. Petersburg which influenced his late impolitic conduct were wearied with his extravagances, and dreaded another altera- tion of his principles, of which they had lately observed several symptoms. Another change of his politics would have been as severely felt by France as his virulence against England had been unavailing, because his resentment had always exceeded his attachment ; he might, when unopposed by this country, have landed armies either in Italy or France; but he could never land an army in the British Islands as long as the British navy re- mained master of the ocean. When the news of his murder reached Paris, Bonaparte and Talleyrand could not conceal their satisfaction. "Thank God,"
TALLEYRAND 135
said the latter, to the Dutch Ambassador, Schimmel- penninck, " the Russian navy is safe ! the death of Paul has preserved it from falling into the hands of the English." That this would have happened, and Cronstadt and Revel have added new lustre to British heroism, had not convention prevented engagement, the brilliant victory of Copenhagen evinced and ensured. The objects, the plots and their consequences are invariably the same, wher- ever French regicides, or their emissaries, penetrate; wherever their duplicity misleads, their artifice im- poses, or their sophistry seduces. Their thirst after the blood of all legitimate Sovereigns was doubly gratified if their victim was dishonoured before he was murdered.
Thus perished, at a very critical period, the son of that Peter III. who, forty years before, after a short reign, fell a sacrifice to the masculine am- bition of a female and the treason of a few con- temptible conspirators. Ensnared by the secret agents of Bonaparte and Talleyrand, Paul contemplated the Corsican usurper with the same degree of enthusiasm with which his unfortunate father had formerly ad- mired Frederick the Great. A correspondence had actually taken place between them, compliments and presents interchanged, and projects of a novel and
136 MEMOIRS OF
portentious kind broached. During the last six months of his reign, the Russian Emperor was per- plexed with no less than seven schemes of Talley- rand's to revolutionise, or partition, the different nations of the world. In one, the throne of Constan- tinople was proposed for the Grand Duke Constan- tine ; in another, the Swedish part of Finland, the better to secure the capital of the Russian Empire, and to increase the commerce of the Russian sub- jects. In one, the Empire of England in India is insured to a Russian army from Persia ; in another, the Russian Emperor is desired to regain the posses- sion of the German principality of Holstein, the patrimony of his ancestors, when France would place in his hand the sceptre of Germany, and on his head the crown of the Caesars. China, at least a part of it, is held out as an equally easy conquest in Asia, and the Austrian part of Poland in Europe. In re- turn for so many generous and disinterested offers, Talleyrand only demanded for France — Egypt, a part of Syria, the Morea, and the Seven Islands. These were some of the revolutionary diversions with which he entertained a sovereign whilst his grave, dug by his emissaries, was yawning to receive him.
Since the Treaty of Luneville, the lure of the secularisations and indemnities had been a Pandora's
TALLEYRAND 137
box to Germany, and the decisive means of influ- ence and of discord which Bonaparte and Talleyrand had contrived to keep in their hands. The spirit of rapine immediately burst forth. The latter, putting the German Empire up to auction, drew out the list of principalities, bishoprics, abbeys, monasteries, with which he meant to reward the services and docility of the friends of France. They fell upon the lots like starving wretches upon a feast. It was, in fact, a Saturnalian festival. The road from Strasburg to Paris was crowded with supplicants; and every- one ran to the door of the grantor with their maps, surveys, rules, and lines of demarcation. The whole empire would scarcely have been enough to satisfy the grantees, or furnish the indemnities they claimed. A prince, who never had anything but debts, asks for a State ; and a baron, without a home, without credit, and almost without clothing, wants a principality. Memorials were piled on Talleyrand's table, who, though not over - delicate himself, is shocked at this keen struggle for plunder, and determined to profit by it. His disinterestedness was soon observed ; but, notwithstanding, a multitude of members, and states of the empire, were ex- hausting the question, on the means of ruining their country and of abridging their own existence. In
138 MEMOIRS OP
vain, for several years past, had a number of them abandoned the Empire and the Emperor to their fate; in vain had they separated their cause from that of their associates, and their duty from their interests; in vain had they hoped that their defection would arrest the rod and the rapacity of the common enemy ; neither those stolen and private treaties, which they had the boldness to solicit and the mis- fortune to obtain of Talleyrand, nor their clandestine deputations, nor their ransoms, nor their petitions, nor the exorbitancy of - their sacrifices, have been able to secure them what they possessed, much less the possession of others desired by them as indem- nities. New conventions, new pecuniary offerings, were necessary; but the ink of the conventions was not all dried, or the money pocketed, before all stipu- lations were forgotten or laid aside for the agreements with others, and higher bidders pillaged and duped in their turn. When it is known that what has been squandered away in France in bribes, presents, taxes and requisitions, by the members of the Ger- man Empire, would have been sufficient to keep up six armies of 50,000 men each during six campaigns, it is evident that the exploits of France alone have not reduced the Continent to its present enslaved and wretched state. The time was when Germany fought thirty years to establish its political equili-
TALLEYRAND 139
brium, and the left bank of the Rhine was defended against Louis XIV. for forty years. In these days that possession has been relinquished by a dash of the pen ; and the independence of the right bank, after being disputed by notes and counter -notes, violated by Bonaparte at pleasure with impunity, and not a German soldier called out to avenge the depre- dation of his country. When no more money could be extorted Talleyrand removed the trial of the Empire from his ante-chambers to the Diet at Ratis- bon ; and Bonaparte invited the present magnanimous Russian Emperor to become, with him, a guarantee of the new constitution which his revolutionary con- stitution-mongers had fabricated at Paris for the German Empire. The ministers of this monarch committed a great mistake in having placed any confidence in an accommodation with the Corsican usurper — in having depended upon any equity in his claims, any sincerity in his engagements, or any fulfilment of hjs promises. The invasion of Hanover, of the territories of Baden and Hamburg, proclaim this error. It is difficult to conceive a situation more deplorable than that to which the Empire has now reduced itself by its disunion, by the selfishness that has prevailed in it, by its useless meanness, by its persevering endeavours at peace, and by that parade of eternal negotiations in which it has b«-
I4O MEMOIRS OP
trayed its weakness. Bonaparte rules at present as much at Ratisbon as at the Hague, at Milan, or at Madrid; and Talleyrand lays the Empire oftener under contribution than Holland, Italy or Spain. Even last summer, during Bonaparte's journey along the banks of the . Rhine, and during his stay at Aix-la-Chapelle, and at Mentz, his minister produced a new plan for supplementary indemnities, and ex- torted several millions for his invention, without any benefit or advantage to the incurably selfish dupes of Germany. When the money had been counted in his closet, and shut up in his drawers, the plan of supplementary indemnities was locked up in his port- folio, where it will remain until cupidity or ambition again calls it forward.
When a general pacification of the Continent had organised the slavery prepared by the partial con- quests of Bonaparte's enemies, Talleyrand took every opportunity of representing to his master "the glory he would acquire by adding the reputation of a great statesman to that of a great general, in preparing, by a pacification, the subjugation of the British Empire, on which, without an equal or superior navy, France could make no impression during a war."1 Accord-
i See Lts Intrigues du Ch. M. Talleyrand, page 13, and Les Nouvelles d la Main, Ventose, year X., No. v., page 2. Bonaparte
TALLEYRAND 14!
ingly, a negotiation which, during the summer of 1 80 1, had been depending, was accelerated, towards the autumn, with all the subtlety of French diplo- matic refinement. The inhabitants of Great Britain and France had become heartily tired of a war which circumstances had of late divested of any fixed object. The British Government had also long since, and often, desired to close the scene of carnage; and had always shown, because they felt, those sentiments of moderation which the French Consul and his minister only affected. After so many splendid acqui- sitions in all parts of the world, it did honour to British generosity sincerely to desire a peace; whilst Bonaparte — always guided by selfish and perfidious motives — held a pacific language only that he might restore the islands of the West Indian Archipelago and the French possessions in the East to the Republic, and issue, from thence, incendiaries on the British colonies in these climates, at the same time that his armed banditti in Europe surprised the British Islands — reposing on the dangerous secu- rity of Gallic faith and revolutionary treaties. For some time past an active intercourse had taken
said one day in August, 1801, "Talleyrand's eternal proposals of peace will kill me before they destroy England.'' He was then in ill-humour idem, page 4.
142 MEMOIRS OP
place between the two Governments. Flags of truce and of defiance were actually displayed at the same time and in the same strait; so that, while Boulogne and Dunkirk were bombarded, or blockaded, by hos- tile squadrons, the ports of Dover and Calais were frequently visited by the packet-boats and the mes- sengers from the Courts of St. James's and the Tuileries. At length the preliminaries were signed, on the ,ist of October, and ratified at the end of eleven days subsequent to this event. Amiens, the city assigned for the discussion of a definite treaty, was visited in the course of a few months by the ministers of the respective Powers. After a lapse of considerable time, during which the public expec- tation was amazingly excited by alternate hopes and fears, the long-expected treaty was signed, ratified and promulgated according to the established forms. This event at first diffused a lively joy throughout the British Empire; but its danger soon became as evident as Bonaparte's insidiousness, and every en- lightened mind foresaw, and every true patriot desired, an end of a truce which, if continued, would in- evitably have brought on the ruin, as well as the disgrace, of the British Empire. But, short as the cessation of hostilities was, it has not been without its utility. It exposed in its true light to all factious,
TALLEYRAND 143
seduced and deluded Britons, the real character of a man in favour of whom many had been so infatuated ; whose duplicity was as great as his cruelty; who offered freedom when he intended slavery, and the repose of peace when he meditated the horrors of a revolution ; and who held out equality, when all his actions and transactions had proved that he could no more endure an equal than salute a superior.
All the perfidiousness of Bonaparte and Talleyrand in giving up Egypt only as a compensation for the restitution of the French colonies, at a time when they were fully acquainted with the fall of Alexandria, has been doubted by many. The author, who, during the summer of 1801, was a prisoner on parole at Marseilles, can affirm that, on the 2ist of September, a vessel from Alexandria anchored in its vicinity, which it had left on the first of the same month, and brought the official account of the capitulation of General Menou, concluded two days before, or August 3oth. This capitulation was known upon the Exchange at Marseilles before three o'clock that day. At the playhouse in the evening, both the prefect, La Croix, and the commander, General Cervoni, made no secret of it, or that they had expedited couriers to Paris with information to Government of this event. Orders were, besides, publicly sent to the
144 MEMOIRS OP
commissary of marine and to the inspector of the quarantine, to prepare provisions, refreshments, medi- cines, &c., for the garrison of Alexandria, of which four hundred men arrived on the ist of October in the roads of Marseilles. The distance between this city and Paris is two hundred leagues, or six hundred English miles, which a courier may easily travel in four days and nights. No doubt, therefore, can re- main but that before the 26th of September, Talley- rand was acquainted with the surrender of Menou, and that he in consequence ordered Otto to sign the preliminaries which, though highly honourable to the good faith and sincerity of the English Cabinet, treachery alone concluded on the part of France.
From the impolitic eagerness to applaud Lauriston, who brought over the ratification of the preliminaries, and from the humiliating distinctions which were shown to this emissary of a usurper, Bonaparte and Talleyrand supposed that such was the desire and want of peace among all classes in this country, that they might do, contrary to the honour and interest of England, anything that caprice, passion or ambition should instigate or require to gratify humour, cupidity, hatred, revenge or vanity. A treaty injurious to British commerce was, therefore, sur- prised from Russia, and a peace, or rather a treaty
TALLEYRAND 145
of peace, was swindled from the Sublime Porte. An army was sent to invade St Domingo, and a legion of commercial agents .quartered on Great Britain. Cargoes of spies were shipped for the East Indies by way of the Isle of France, and Ireland was inundated with revolutionary propagators. The supreme magistracy of Italy was extended by Bonaparte, and Talleyrand's political frauds added Parma, 1'Isle d'Elba and Louisiana to the other usurpations of France. A senatus consultus incorporated Piedmont with the French Republic, and new regu- lations of the Council of State violated even the laws of nations to prevent all commercial inter- course with Great Britain. All these indirect threats, direct insults to England and real acquisitions and encroachments of France, occurred within six months after the preliminaries had been agreed to; and on the very day our plenipotentiary, by his signature, changed them into a definitive treaty, our country was insulted with another treaty between France and Holland, which deprived our ancient ally and the relative of our beloved Sovereign, the Prince of Orange, of all his property and claims in the Batavian Republic, and left him without any other prospect of being indemnified in Ger- many than to resort to the humiliating and
VOL. II ZO
146 MEMOIRS OP
expensive expedient of bowing to Bonaparte and feeing Talleyrand. No British subject who had the misfortune to have property in France was permitted to take possession of his estates ; nor could he obtain any remuneration for what had been sold or plun- dered, or the rents due to him from the public funds ; and, with some few political or patriotic ex- ceptions, all British travellers were, without redress, exposed to impositions, aggressions, insolence, rude- ness, and even imprisonments. From these and other repeated and barefaced provocations the most impartial politicians, both in England and upon the Continent, were convinced that the violent hatred of Bonaparte would not long submit to the advices of moderation, or imitate the example of the political deceit and inveteracy of Talleyrand ; but alarm the pride and rouse the spirit of Britons to avenge the outrages offered their country before the plots of her infamous foes had time to reach their maturity.
By the different negotiations, intrigues, indem- nities, loans, jobbings, treaties, armistices, conven- tions, &c., up to Midsummer, 1802, Talleyrand is said, since his appointment as a Minister, to have identified himself »with the following sums:1
z See Lts Nouvillts d la Main, Nivose, year XIII., No. 4, page 5, Ac.
TALLEYRAND
147
1797-
Lavres.1
Of the money extorted from Portugal his share was - 1,200,000
By speculations in the French and foreign Funds, during the negotiation of Lord Malmesbury at Lisle- ......... 1,500,000
Received from Austria for the secret articles of the Convention at Campo Fonnio of the tyth October, 1797 -------... 1,000,000
Received from Prussia for the disclosure of, and for
impacting, the execution of these secret articles - 1,000,000
Received from the Elector of Bavaria for ditto ditto 500,000
Advanced by the candidates for indemnities hi the German Empire, during the first six months of the Congress at Rastadt ------ 1,800,000
Free gift of Naples for the preservation of her neu- trality --..----. 500,000
Presents accepted of the King of Sardinia for the
continuance of his neutrality ----- 300,000
Patriotic donations of the Grand Duke of Tuscany,
for the respect shown the neutrality of his States 500,000
Offerings of His Holiness the Pope for the ratification of his treaty of neutrality with the French Re- public -----.... 150,000
From the Cisalpine Republic for procuring a new
Constitution -------- 1,000,000
From the Bavarian Republic for retarding a new Con- stitution --------- 1,200,000
From the Ligurian Republic for improving the old
Constitution - - 200,000
Shared of the prizes captured from neutral States by
French privateers ------- 2,000,000
A loan of the Prince of Peace ..... 1,000,000
Ditto of the Grand Vizier ...... 600,000
Ditto of the Hanse Towns ...... 500,000
x A French livre is worth about tenpence.
IO — 2
i48
MEMOIRS OF
I798.
Livres.
From new candidates for new German Indemnities • 900,000 By speculations in the French and foreign Funds - 1.000,000 A loan from the Imperial cities of Frankfort, Nurem- berg and Augsburg ...... 550,000
Shared with the Republican Generals and Commis- saries in the plunder of Switzerland ... 1,600,000 Ditto with General Berthier and Commissary Haller
in the pillage of Rome ------ 1,000,000
A loan from the Prime Minister of the King of Naples,
Chevalier Dacton -.----- 600,000
Ditto from the Minister of the King of Prussia, Count
Haugwitz- -..----. 500,000
Ditto from the Minister of the Emperor of Germany,
Prince Colloredo -.--.-. 750,000 Ditto from the Ministers of the Cisalpine Directory - 1,000,000 Ditto from the Ministers of the Batavian Directory • 1,300,000 Ditto from the Ministers of the Ligurian Directory - 150,000 Ditto from the Ministers of the Helvetian Directory - 200,000 Share of the value of neutral prizes brought into
French ports -------- 1,400,000
Profit by speculations in purchases of national pro- perty ......... 600,000
1799.
Offered from the Margrave of Baden, for the renova- tion of his treaty of neutrality with the French Republic --------- 500,000
Demanded and obtained from the Landgrave of Hesse
for ditto ditto -------- 650,000
Another loan from the Hanse Towns - 600,000
A loan from the Spanish Ambassador, Chevalier
d'Azzara - - - -'- - - - - 750,000
A present from the Cabinets of Madrid and Lisbon, for the breaking up of the army under General Augereau intended to conquer Portugal - - 1,200,000
TALLEYRAND
I49
Shared with the General and Commissaries, for the
plunder of Piedmont -..--. Shared with General Championet and Commissary
Faypoul, for the plunder of Naples Shared of the value of neutral prizes brought into
French harbours -------
Shared with the French Consuls the value of prizes
brought into the ports of Spain and Italy - A present from Bonaparte on his return from Egypt - A loan from the Batavian Directory • • • •
Idvres. 800,000
• 1,400,000
850,000
450,000 600,000 1,000,000
1800.
By speculations in the French and foreign Funds • 8,000,000 From Austria, for procuring several armistices - - 1,200,000 From Prussia, for causing these armistices not to be
prolonged without new territorial sacrifices - - 1,000,000 From Spain, for the promise of erecting Tuscany into a kingdom for the infant Prince of Parma, in
money and presents 2,200,000
A loan from Denmark, for promising a subsidiary
treaty --------- 500,000
For the separate treaties of neutrality signed with
several German princes ------ 1,500,000
A loan from the Bavarian Minister, Baron Montgelas 500,000 A loan from the new Ministers of the Cisalpine Re- public -.------. 600,000
A loan from the Russian Minister, Ropotschin - - 750,000 Presents from some Grecian and Algerine merchants, for contracts for grain and provisions, &c., to be delivered in Egypt for the subsistence and sup- port of the army of the East .... 400,000
By speculations in the barter of national property - 1,500,000 From Pope Pius VII., for his election to the tiara, and for the peace given His Holiness by the French Republic -..--.- 600,000
150
MEMOIRS OF
From some Neapolitan and other Italian patriots, for having their outlawry reversed, and their property restored ---------
From the States of Barbary, for their treaties of peace with the French Republic - - ... .
Presents in money and valuables from the Executive Government of the United States of America at the conclusion of the treaty of peace with the French Republic .......
Livres
200,000
600,000
500,000
, 1801.
From the Emperor of Germany, after the signature
and ratification of the Treaty of Luneville - - 1,200,000
From the Elector of Bavaria, for the conclusion of
his treaty of peace with the French Republic - 750,000
From the new candidates of indemnities in the German Empire, in consequence of the Treaty of Luneville 1,500,000
For the signature of separate treaties of peace or neutrality, between the French Republic and several German Princes - 1,000,000
By speculations in the French and foreign Funds - 15,500,000
For contracts to supply the army and navy with pro- vision, clothing, arms and stores - - - - 3,000,000
From Prussia, when the plan of her indemnities in Germany was agreed to by the Government of the French
A loan from Republic -
A loan from Republic -
A loan from Republic -
A loan from Republic -
Repi |
ibhc |
- |
- |
2,000,000 |
|
the |
Government |
of |
the |
Cisalpine |
|
- |
. |
- |
- |
600,000 |
|
the |
Government |
of |
the |
Batavian |
|
- |
- |
- |
- |
900,000 |
|
the |
Government |
of |
the |
Helvetian |
|
.--: |
* |
- |
• :- |
200,000 |
|
the |
Government |
of |
the |
Ligurian |
|
• |
«.,-. . |
- |
• |
150,000 |
|
5 Republic of Lucca . • • . |
100,000 |
TALLEYRAND
Livres. A present from the Hanse Towns, for preserving their
independence -------- 600,000
A present from the Imperial cities of Frankfort, Nuremberg and Augsburg, for not including them in the indemnities given to the Princes in the neighbourhood -------- 600,000
By speculations in the barter of national property • 1,300,000
From His Holiness the Pope, for his project of a
religious concordat ------- 300,000
From the King of Spain, for not impeding the ratifi- cation of the treaty of peace between Spain and Portugal 600,000
From Portugal, for procuring the ratification of the treaty of peace concluded with the French Republic --------- 500,000
Presents in money from the King of Etruria during
his stay in Paris 600,000
From the King of Naples, for the ratification of the treaty of peace between His Majesty and the French Republic - 500,000
A loan from the Austrian Minister of State, Count
Cobentzel- ----.--- 600,000
A loan from the Landgrave of Hesse - - - 300,000
A present from the members elected to the Italian
Consulta, assembled at Lyons .... 500,000
1802.
By speculations in the French and foreign Funds - 6,000,000
Presents from the Russian Emperor, at the ratifica- tion of the treaty of peace with the French Republic 500,000
Presents from the Cabinet of St. James's, at the
ratification of the Treaty of Amiens ... 500,000
Presents from the King of Spain, for the conclusion
of the Treaty of Amiens ----- 500,000
Presents from the Directory of the Batavian Republic,
for the conclusion of a peace with Great Britain- 600,000
153 MEMOIRS OF
Presents from the Batavian Government, fcr the Livres. private treaty signed with France, which delivered the United States from all claims of the Prince of Orange ----.„.. 1,000,000
Presents from the Grand Seignior, for the treaty concluded between the Ottoman Porte and the French Republic -----.. 600,000
From the contractors for purchasing naval stores in Russia for the French arsenals and navy, two per cent, of their contracts, amounting to two hundred millions of livres - - _.' - 4,000,000
A loan from Cardinal Caprara, at the proclamation
of the concordat ....... 200,000
Thus extorting, during a period of five years, nearly ^"4,000,000 sterling from Princes and sub- jects ; from Sovereigns and their ministers ; from hereditary chiefs of monarchies and from elective magistrates of commonwealths; from national con- tractors and from foreign merchants; from allied or neutral States and even from hostile nations — by taking advantage of that information his official station procured him to lay all people and all classes under a contribution, either directly by forced loans, or indirectly by speculation in public Funds. This is a new system of plunder, not yet mentioned in history, nor even in the annals which record the corruption of Eastern satraps, or of Turkish viziers and pachas. This explains the many changes in the governments and constitutions of the tributary republics, and the impolitic conduct of many cabinets
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of tributary, allied or neutral princes; because, when Talleyrand is able to command money from monarchs or their counsellors, their deliberations must be known to him, and their determinations dictated by him, whc therefore may justly be styled the Prime Minister of the Continent, instead of the Principal Minister of Bonaparte.
The manner in which this curious statement, of private political marauding was rendered public is accounted for in this manner: A young man of the name of Osselin was Talleyrand's confidential secretary, charged with inspecting and transacting the Minister's private financial speculations until Midsummer, 1802, when, in reward for his zeal and honesty, he obtained the lucrative place of a receiver- general of the contributions in Piedmont. He there fell into the snares of some male and female sharpers, and became a defaulter for several millions of livres. When this was discovered, General Murat, Bonaparte's vice-regent at Turin, had Osselin arrested last spring, and sent under an escort of gendarmes to Paris, where he was confined in the Temple. Here Fouch6 exa- mined him ; and, upon promise of procuring him liberty, obtained from him every necessary and useful information for a rival favourite to be acquainted with. This statement was immediately printed and
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circulated secretly by Fouch6's spies ; and of the copies disseminated in the palace of the Tuileries, one fell into the hands of Bonaparte, who showed it to Talley- rand, at the same time smiling maliciously, and saying, "Should this account be correct, your private property is greater than what I and all the members of my family possess together." " Sire," answered Talleyrand, " my enemies are more malicious than dexterous ; they might as easily, and with equal truth, have added a couple of ciphers (zeros) more to each article, and made me at once richer than all the sovereigns of Europe en masse." Between these two pure characters the subject dropped. As to poor Osselin, he had disappeared ; and was the victim either of Fouch6's treachery, Bonaparte's cruelty, or Talleyrand's vengeance.1 These two ministers of the revolutionary Emperor always continue irreconcilable, often expose the villainy of each other, and strive to supplant each other in the good opinion of their villainous master. After Bonaparte's return to Paris from Mentz, in October, 1804, Fouch6 told him that the honour of the great nation and the morality of government were injured abroad by the insatiable
I See Les Nouvelles d la Main, Nivose, year XIII., No. iv., pages ii and 12. It is said that this statement was signed Joseph d' Osselin.
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avarice of Talleyrand : " Hardly a day passes," said he, " that his agents did not report the complaints and reproaches, not only of the members of the foreign diplomatic corps in France, but of those of all Courts on the Continent, who are regularly every year im- posed on to a certain amount, under the appellations of loans or presents." Shortly after Fouche was gone Talleyrand arrived. " I am sorry to hear," said Bonaparte, "that your finances are deranged in such a manner that you are obliged to borrow money from foreign princes and sovereigns all over Europe." "Sire," answered the ex-Bishop, "if I borrow money, never a bond of mine was dishonoured. I suppose my friend Fouche has made Your Majesty uneasy on my account. It is impossible, Sire, that my situation can be so brilliant as the situation of this disinterested senator. Of this permit me to convince Your Ma- jesty by this calculation, which I defy Fouch6 to contradict. As a Minister of Police he has pocketed, during four years, £1,700,000, wrested from returned emigrants, for restoring them the rights of French citi- zens, and their unsold or sequestered property ; and of the £850,000 allowed him by Your Majesty for secret- service money, he has yearly laid hold of, for his own use, from £170,000 to £340,000. Permit me to deposit with your Majesty these documents,
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signed by my secret agents, who have no objection to be confronted with his Excellency, M. Fouch6." After casting his eyes over the papers, Bonaparte tore them to pieces, saying, " Allez, vous etes tous les deux des coquins!" (Begone, you are both rogues together). The Imperial aides-de-camp, Duroc and Rapp, were present during this conversation. Talley- rand's assertion that his bonds for his loans were never dishonoured, is so far true : they were never presented for payment; having taken care, before they came due, to pick some quarrel with the money- lenders, who knew what he wanted, and, therefore, to escape the consequences of his intrigues, returned bonds which they never expected to be paid.
Previous to annihilating the independence of Great Britain by military surprise and conquest during a peace, Talleyrand, after the ratification of the Treaty of Amiens, determined politically to isolate her from all Continental connections, to degrade her in the opinion of Continental States ; or, if that did not succeed, by calumnies render her despised, and by accusations mistrusted. His emissaries and gazetteers held her up to public view as the natural enemy of a Continent from which Nature had separated her; whose politics were to embroil nations, beggared by her com-
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merce, that she might be enabled to subsist and to bear away amidst disturbance, havoc and ruin, her sole and necessary support. Having thus, and successfully, attempted to alienate from her the friendship of Continental Princes, and inspire pre- judices or hatred against her amongst their subjects, he brought forward another old plan (buried for cen- turies in the dust of the archives of the Foreign Department), of dividing her interest from that of all other countries. He proposed, in the month of January, 1803, to some of the principal Continental Cabinets the establishment of a " Conservative Per- manent Congress for a Perpetual Peace," to sit in the city of Frankfort-on-the- Maine. Each Sovereign and each independent State were .to be represented there by a Conservative ambassador, and all disputes or pretensions between nations were to be amicably settled there, according to the decisions of the majority of votes ; and these decisions of the Con- gress were to be enforced by the united arms of all Powers against any refractory member. This Congress was to contain three colleges. In the first were to reside exclusively the ambassadors of the four Sovereigns of the first rank, or those of France, Austria, Russia, and Prussia. In the second, the ambassadors of those deemed Sovereigns of a secon-
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dary rank ; or, those of Turkey, Spain, Naples, Sweden, Denmark, Etruria, Portugal, Saxony, Ba- varia, and of the Batavian and Italian Republics. In the third, the ambassadors of those deemed Sovereigns of a third rank, or those of Sardinia, of Rome, of Hesse, and of all other electors and princes who could at present bring into the field upwards of i'5,ooo troops, together with the ambassadors of the Helvetian and Ligurian Republics. Were the am- bassadors of the Sovereigns of the first rank unani- mous in a question laid before them, the affair was decided, and the votes of the other two colleges were not necessary. Did one differ, the votes of the ambassadors of the second college were to be demanded ; and were the votes equally divided in the first college the votes of the ambassadors of the third college, as well as of the second, were to be taken, except in such cases where a member of the col- lege was the party, then the two other colleges were to decide; or, if the parties belonged to two colleges, both these colleges were excluded from voting, and the decision of the one remaining was to be respected as law. Were members of all three colleges parties, their ambassadors were to retire during the determination of the three colleges. Whenever in such cases the votes were equal in one
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college, lots were to be drawn for the admission of a member of one of the other colleges as an umpire. All the religious, political, military, judicial, com- mercial, or financial affairs of Europe were to be decided here as in the last resort. No political or commercial treaties, conventions, stipulations, or agreements were valid without the ratification of the members of the Congress ; even the regulations for a general police, or anything that regarded the political economy of each individual State, could not be put into execution without the previous approbation of the Congress : a member wilfully neglecting to obtain it was under the immediate care of the Conservative Permanent Congress of Perpetual Peace ; his ambassador was to be put under arrest, and, if he persisted in his disobedience, his subjects were released from their allegiance, and his territory divided according to the decision of the Congress. Talleyrand proposed to fix the number of troops of each Sovereign, to diminish to half their actual number the troops of Princes and States of the second and third rank, and to reduce those of France to 200,000 men, those of Austria and Russia to 125,000 men, and those of Prussia to 75,000 men. Each ambassador in his turn was to remain for three months in each college, and during that period
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the executive power was in his hands. As all affairs and negotiations were to be examined and decided by this Congress, the respective Sovereigns agreed to relinquish the expensive usage of permanent embassies at their respective Courts, and satisfy themselves with temporary legations to condole or to congratulate, as events might demand. Such were some of the outlines of a plan by which Talleyrand said that the First Consul of the French Republic intended to unite all Continental nations in one family of brothers. England was not mentioned by him, because " her interest and policy was not only different from, but opposite to, the interest and welfare of the Continent. But the Government of some small isolated islands could not be humili- ated by being obliged to submit to the regulations of these States, without whose connections she is unable to subsist or support her population and artificial power for ten years together. As she is entirely excluded from all Continental political trans- actions, it was suggested that only some of her com- mercial agents should be admitted in Continental seaports, whilst all her political agents were to be dismissed from all Continental Courts, which, for the future, were to agree to appoint none but com- mercial agents in Great Britain."
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Less able and less inveterate politicians than Talleyrand, but equally envious of the prosperity with which Providence has rewarded British honour and industry, contend that it was absolutely necessary for reducing the wealth, power and pride of Great Britain to effect a political isolation between her and other European States, as a commercial isolation would as soon follow then, as it would, in its turn, shortly be succeeded by national bankruptcy, sedition, anarchy, poverty and revolution. This is such an undeniable truth that it is surprising two opinions could have prevailed on the subject. It would, indeed, be irrational in us to resolve never to have any concern in the affairs of the Continent. We have two natural connections with the Continent of Europe: one for the preservation or encouragement of our trade, and the other for the restoration and preservation of a balance of power. Neither of these, if we have but common prudence, can ever lead us into any unreasonable or ruinous relations, because neither can ever lead us into an unequal war. We have a third — an accidental connection with the Continent of Europe — which is the hered- itary dominions of our Sovereign there. It was so when our kings were masters of a great part of
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France, and it will be so now they are masters of a considerable part of Germany.
But not satisfied with mere schemes of destruction against Great Britain on the Continent, Talleyrand had also procured some partial restrictions, which, were he enabled to make general, would certainly be fatal to our commerce. Not to mention the exclusion of all English productions from those Republics groaning under the French revolutionary tyranny, and from those countries awed and controlled by French armies, he obtained in 1800, at Berlin, a prohibition even for a transit of British goods through Prussia; at Stockholm, an augmentation of one per cent, on all importations to Sweden from Great Britain, and one per cent, on all exportations to Great Britain from Sweden ; at Copenhagen, an augmentation of two per cent, on all transits through Denmark of the productions of our colonies or in- dustry, and the toll or duty on the passage through the Sound was increased. In 1801, his friend and Bonaparte's minister to the Elector of Saxony, De la Rochefoucault, presented memorials upon memorials against the introduction of English - manufactured goods into the Saxon territory, particularly to the fairs at Leipzig; and by his intrigues and emissaries all the manufacturing towns of the Electorate have
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presented similar memorials with similar complaints. These have since been regularly renewed twice in the year at the period of the Leipzig fairs, in the spring and autumn, but without effect; the wise and patriotic Prince who governs this country being well aware of the source from which these jealousies originate, and being, besides, well convinced of the reciprocal advantage of the reciprocal commercial intercourse between Great Britain and Saxony. In every treaty Talleyrand penned since the preliminaries of peace with this country, some public or secret articles were inserted hurtful to our trade. Such was the case with Spain, Portugal, Naples, and the Pope. The flourishing state of our revenue and of our manufactories evinces, however, the inefficacy of his malice, his hatred, his envy and his plots. But with an ungenerous foe, equally able and active, we cannot be too much on our guard, too vigilant in watching his intrigues, or too suspicious of his machinations. Even in September, 1804, when Bona- parte was at Mentz, he diverted the proud upstart's attention from the flattery of the cringing German Princes to turn it on the trembling deputies from Frankfort, and to bestow on them a proportionate quantity of abuse for not preventing what would have been the ruin of their city — the sale of English
II — 2
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goods during the Frankfort fairs. The low usurper addressed them not in the language of a grenadier emperor, but that of a poissarde empress. He showed even his base and blushing courtiers that the mind and manners of a sans-culotte still remained unaltered and unimpaired under the cover of an Imperial mantle.
' His instructions to General Andreossy, of the aoth of October, 1802,* and the memorial which he
i Instructions of Charles M. Talleyrand to General An- dreossy :
" At your first interview with the British ministers, you have to declare, in the name of the First Consul, his great esteem for
them all; but particularly for Mr. A and Lord H , and
that it is the sincere wish of France to continue in peace with England. You hope they will not listen to the clamours and complaints of the personal enemies of the First Consul, and the implacable and hereditary enemies of France. You may insinuate that their own honour and interest and the welfare of England are nearly connected with such conduct, because the Pitts, the Windhams, the Grenvilles, the Bourbons and their friends the Chouans, and the emigrants, are as much their enemies, and the enemies of the peace, as the enemies of the present French Government, and little care if war ruin England, so that it only displaces the present ministers, and gives some trouble to the First Consul. On all occasions hold this same language, and try
to penetrate into the impression it makes upon Mr. A and
Lord H individually; if they believe its truth or doubt its
sincerity ; and if ambition and interest blind, or patriotism guide, their judgments, actions and answers.
" At your first audience of his B M , present him with
the high respect and admiration of the First Consul for all his
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presented to Bonaparte 'on the 4th of December following, to dissuade him from a rupture with this country, were two acts both proving his dangerous talents, and that they were chiefly employed on the same object — the severance of the British Empire from among independent States.
Under the monarchy, it was no more the custom of etiquette in France than in any other countries
Royal and personal virtues, to which alone, and to his present able and wise ministers, France and Europe ascribe the general peace with which the world is blessed, and which it is the intention of the First Consul inviolably to preserve. At every audience, until otherwise instructed, you are to touch with as much delicacy as possible on the merits of his present ministers, and his own great judgment in choosing such just, meritorious, and patriotic counsellors.
"To His Royal Highness the Prince of W , you have
to insinuate that the First Consul has always admired his generous and noble mind, and that it has been a source of the greatest regret to him, during the late contest, not to be able sooner to express his respectful admiration, and to gain the good opinion of such a great Prince. Pay particular attention to the Prince's answers and conversation, and if he throws out any hints, that he knows what the First Consul had said about him in a conversation with some of his friends who visited France last summer ; but by your conduct you are to appear perfectly ignorant on this subject. Try to find out who are the Prince's principal friends and favourites ; if those persons, whose names you already know, continue to advise and govern him, or if they have been suc- ceeded by others, and who they are. If you can insinuate yourself into the confidence of anyone who you afe certain possesses the entire confidence of the Prince, you may let him
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governed by lawful rulers, to nominate military characters to diplomatic offices. But the regicide French Republic has introduced this, as well as many other impertinent innovations. The first French grenadier ambassador was a real grenadier, sent to fraternise with the King of both Sicilies at .Naples, in November, 1792, and to oblige this Sovereign to acknowledge the new-created Republic.
understand, as from yourself, that you regret to see his (the Prince's) retired situation ; and that although you had no per- mission so to do, yet you would take upon yourself, from the known sentiments of the First Consul, if approved by the Prince, to ask any sum of money His Royal Highness should fix upon, as a loan, to be repaid when the Prince succeeds to the throne. This transaction is of the most delicate and secret nature, and must be kept entirely from the knowledge of the King, his family, and the ministers; and you cannot be too careful not to commit (compromettre) yourself or your character. Should the Prince accept of the offer, and you of course receive private audiences, impress strongly upon the Prince's mind the necessity for secrecy. When the question is about the sum he should want, you should observe, that to avoid exciting suspicion, which may be followed by discovery, and be hurtful to the Prince in the public opinion, you think a certain annual sum (any sum under one million) would be the best and most convenient arrangement. When this point is settled, and that you have received the first remittance for the Prince, and, of course, are offered his bond, you are to refuse it, saying, the First Consul trusts entirely to the honour of the Prince ; but you have at the same time to declare that it would give the First Consul the highest satisfaction, if, in a letter from the Prince's hand, he were assured that His Royal Highness would, by degrees, cease all future acquaintance and connection with the Bourbons, and, at the Prince's accession to the throne, not permit
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As he was supported by a numerous fleet at anchor, ready to bombard the capital, his recommendations were too powerful to be resisted, and he therefore succeeded in his diplomatic mission. The Ottoman Porte was, in 1796, also favoured with a grenadier ambassador, in the person of General Dubois Deboy, whose civil career was interrupted by death. The grenadier ambassador, General Bernadotte, son of a
them or the other emigrants to reside any longer in his dominions. Be attentive to what the Prince says, and if he is sincere in what he says, after your report you shall receive further instructions how to act. If the Prince or his friends decline your offer, en- deavour to find out the reason, and if he has not a previous engagement with the Bourbons, and if he entertains any hatred or prejudice against the First Consul. In her present disgrace,
avoid great attention Jo or notice of the Princess of^ W ,
because it might hurt her and offend the Prince ; as you know that next summer a French lady who knew the Princess at Bruns- wick intends to renew her acquaintance, and to inspire her with a good opinion of the First Consul, and then to receive directions how to assist her. Inform yourself, however, if her daughter, the young Princess, shows any genius and abilities; in what manner she is educated; if her governess and the persons educating and attending her have talents ; to what party they belong, and if they are known to like or to hate France. If, by some discreet attentions, you can gain their good opinion, do not neglect it. If they are to be gained over to our interest only by money, make your report, and you shall receive orders how to conduct yourself.
" With respect to the other branches of the Royal Family, you have to follow the examples, customs and etiquette of other
ambassadors ; but when you speak with the D of Y ,
remember to throw out delicate compliments on his military
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lackey, was, in 1798, forced upon the Emperor of Germany ; but having prematurely attempted to pro- claim the rights of man, and the sacred rights of insurrection, the loyal inhabitants of Vienna, not yet transformed into a sovereign people, forced their diplomatic grenadier to make a disgraceful retreat. Prussia, in her turn, was honoured, in 1800, with a grenadier ambassador from the First Consul Bona-
abilities, from which France has suffered so much; and to the
D of C express the obligations of France to him for not
employing his great naval talents during the late war.
"Endeavour to be as popular as possible; never refuse an invitation from the chief of the city, or of the wealthy citizens ; imitate as much as possible their manners of society, and their custom of conversation. As at their feasts and assemblies, where you are invited, some members of the Government will probably be present, as a Frenchman you may, without giving offence, mix water with your wine, whilst they drink theirs undiluted ; and thus often, perhaps, you may discover their secrets without exposing ours.
" It is not necessary to remind you to be polite and con- descending at the balls and routs of the English nobility, but not so as to forget your rank, and that of the nation which you represent. Your own judgment will tell you when it will be necessary to be prouder than the proudest, and to resent with indignation or contempt offences or neglect. Never forget or forgive the presence of a Bourbon, of any noble emigrant, or one decorated with the proscribed orders. Should you meet with Pitt, Windham, Grenville, or any other known enemies of the First Consul, be civil, but formal and distant; and at any future in- vitation to the same place, refuse your presence ; on the contrary, to those of the other party, who have opposed the late war, and whose liberal opinions and attachment to the cause of the Revolu-
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parte, in the person of General Bournonville, the son of a porter, and a footboy himself in his youth, actually the worthy representative of Napoleon the First at the Court of Madrid. In 1801, Portugal was presented with one of the most insolent of all grenadier ambassadors, in General Lasnes, the son of a lodger of smugglers and mule-drivers, and who, twelve years before he seated himself at the table
tion are known, you cannot be affable enough ; and endeavour by distinctions, invitations and amiableness to prove to them that the First Consul knows, remembers, and is grateful for their past conduct and behaviour.
" As in most societies you will probably meet with military men of the army and navy, if they do not shun yours, court their acquaintance and conversation, and report your opinion of their principles, talents and abilities ; lay it down as an invariable rule to address yourself to the passions, and not to the reason, of those men, particularly if they are over-heated by drinking; and you may depend upon it you will pick up some, to us unknown and useful, truths and discoveries. If they are dissatisfied or disaffected, endeavour to find out if ambition, avarice or patriotism is the cause of their disaffection or complaint; and should they be men of parts, rank and distinction, give with nonchalance as a consolation an indirect condemnation of their Government, by hinting that under monarchical governments those things happen, and men are neglected who, in republics, would probably be at the head of the State, and, instead of suffering from princes, would command emperors and kings. Your own discretion will tell you when such complaints are to be heard, such conversations to be suffered, and when such hints are to be thrown out ; but at all times observe that you speak not in your official capacity, but as an individual and a military man, who feels for the honour and interest of all military men. Should any such conversation
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of and ate with Sovereign Princes in their palaces, had fed horses and mules as a groom in a stable in Dauphiny. The appointment of Andreossy as an ambassador caused even the French to doubt the sincerity of Bonaparte in his pacification with Eng- land. This General had, twelve months before, been one of the most active members in a committee of select naval and military characters, occupied pur-
with firm and distinguished characters be followed with any overtures or intrigues, make your report, and expect orders be- fore you engage yourself any further.
" With the chief of the demagogues or democrats associate seldom in public, but hi private keep up the spirit of discontent- ment, of faction, and of hope ; with inferior members of parties decline all both public and private society and connection : leave it to your inferior agents. As to pensions to individuals, or money to factious societies, make always your report before you give your promise, and gain time to enquire into the characters of the persons, and what probable service may be derived from their societies ; I. X. is, however, the fittest person to transact those things ; leave them, therefore, to him, lest you should expose or commit yourself, and avoid, as much as possible, all such intriguers or intrigues, except when some decisive blow is to be struck.
" Should you, by chance, meet in company with known Repub- licans and reformers, take care to hint that they are not to judge of the future conduct of the First Consul in favour of liberty from that which necessity forces him to adopt at present ; that you are confident, should Providence preserve his life, and Europe once enjoy the tranquillity it has lost by the many late revolutionary con- vulsions, he will restore to Frenchmen a greater portion of liberty than the Romans enjoyed in the time of the Gracchi, and that pos- terity shall not have to reproach him with permitting any other government to exist in Europe but that of a universal Republic.
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posely to devise some plan, and direct their talents in finding out some means of rendering an invasion of England not only easy and possible, but suc- cessful. It was according to their project that Boulogne was fortified, its harbour enlarged and made a point of union for a fleet of gunboats, and that Cherbourg and Antwerp were decreed naval stations of the first rank, as well as Brest and Toulon.
" In the company of aristocrats you are to hold a different language : speak of the dangers of innovation, the horrors of revolu- tions, and the necessity of ceasing to be any longer the dupes of speculative philosophers and revolutionary sceptics ; that the privi- leged orders are as necessary and indispensable, in the present civilised state of mankind, as equality is absurd, dangerous and impossible ; and that such are the real sentiments of the First Consul, his whole conduct since in power has proved.
" England is the only country hi the world where a diplomatic character of talents and judgment has so many and repeated oppor- tunities to injure, to intrigue and to embroil, and, at the same time, to complain of wrongs and insults, and, even when he is himself the offender, to speak as the offended; a paragraph in a newspaper, a word hi a debate, or a toast at a club, which he may have paid for or provoked, will furnish him easily with complaints every week, if not every day.
" As the English ministers will probably show some jealousy of our aggrandisements, and our endeavours to exclude England from its former connections with the Continent — should they make you any representations on this or other subjects, meet them with complaints of the non-execution of the Treaty of Amiens; of their tyranny in the East Indies; of. the libels in the newspapers; of the injuries and calumnies of their writers against the First Consul; and of the protection afforded to the Bourbons and other French rebels. Should, however, some un-
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It was impolitic of Talleyrand to propose, and im- pertinent of Bonaparte to nominate, as a preserver of peace with this nation, a person whose only occu- pation of late had been to study its destruction, and at the time of whose arrival in England a French army was collecting on the opposite coast, and who was both preceded and accompanied with French threats and calumnies in Bonaparte's and
foreseen demand be made, or explanation insisted on, gain time by referring to the decision of the First Consul, and await his orders.
" If any complaints are made about the seizure of British ships, or confiscation of British property in France, say always that France is the proper place to arrange those matters, as England is for the arrangement of the claims of French citizens there.
" Never give a direct answer to any proposals made, or to any sudden complaints or offers. The want of instructions, and the necessity to consult your Government, are always acceptable and accepted excuses for delays in political transactions ; make use of them, even if your mind is made up on the subject in question, for fear of committing yourself or blundering. Few political transactions are of a nature not admitting delays, and no delays can in the present state of Europe ever hurt any political transactions; but a negotiator or minister, let his pre- sence of mind be ever so great, and his abilities ever so tried, by giving a decisive, and not a temporising, answer, may by one moment's forgetfulness do his cause and his country more harm than services of years could repair.
" Endeavour, if possible, to get an account of the real state of the East India Company's finances, and an exact list of all the native and European forces in English pay in the East Indies; of what force they are, of what religion and language,
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Talleyrand's daily libel — the official Moniteur. The revolutionary usurpers in France usually sent mili- tary men as political incendiaries to those nations they wished to embroil, or intended to conquer. Whilst Bernadotte was, in 1798, conspiring at Vienna, General Brune,1 the representative of the French Republic in Switzerland, whose plots were ripe for
and to what divisions they belong. Until our colonies there are in our power, and the forces intended to be sent there have arrived, avoid all discussions concerning the usurpations of England, the complaints of the native princes, or anything that can give reason to suspect our future plans. On this sub- ject, until further orders, observe the silence of the Treaty of Amiens.
" Spare no pains to obtain every information possible of the weak or vulnerable parts in India ; where the greatest dis- content reigns, where the English are most hated and the French most liked.
"Amuse the ministers with the details of our misfortunes in the Western Hemisphere, so as to divert their attention from what we intend to do in the East. Be unceasing in your endeavours to persuade them that, without their assistance in ships and money, we are unable to conquer the negroes of St. Domingo; observe that it is the common cause of France and England to prevent a republic, or rather an anarchy, of negroes in the West Indies, which, sooner or later, must extend to Jamaica and the other British colonies, and cause their ruin or separation from the mother-country. Should these arguments fail to determine England to afford us any assistance, and that you think the
I This is the same Brune who has lately been Bonaparte's Ambassador at Constantinople. The French Revolution found him a sans-culotte journeyman printer, and has made him a field- marshal, with plundered property producing ^30,000 a year I
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execution, suddenly changed his title of Ambassador for that of a Commander-in-Chief, and headed an army, invading and pillaging a country which his intrigues had divided and distracted, his perfidy duped, and his art blinded. Shortly before Andre- ossy landed in this country, the brave Helvetians had in vain attempted to shake off the heavy yoke imposed upon them by the barbarous Corsican and
offer will be accepted, you may propose that England should keep St. Eustatia as a security until what it may at present advance to France shall be repaid ; and should the advances of England exceed 120 millions, any other Dutch colony in the West Indies (Surinam excepted) may be added as further security. Be careful, however, not to make those offers without a certain prospect of success, and after all other means have been tried in vain.
" Enquire how the public spirit is in Canada ; if the inhabi- tants are yet attached to France, and if assisted by arms, ammunition and money, whether there would be any prospect in a future war that they would rise and throw off the English yoke. Should any person of consequence and of sense from that country' call upon you, say that his countrymen who emigrate to Louisiana shall there be received with the same protection and privileges as French citizens, and that it was one of the motives of the First Consul in getting back that settlement, to afford an asylum there to his oppressed and injured countrymen at Canada.
"With the Spanish, Prussian, and Dutch ministers yon are to live upon the most friendly and intimate terms; do not, how- ever, lose sight of their movements and transactions. Gain the friendship of the Russian ambassador, and endeavour to persuade him that it was not the intrigues of France, but those of his enemies in Russia, that caused his disgrace by the late Emperor.
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his vile slaves, who, to refit their fetters, appointed another French general, Citizen Ney, a ci-devant bankrupt shopkeeper of Strasburg, both a French ambassador and a French commander in wretched Helvetia. That Andreossy, should hostilities recom- mence between England and France, was destined to head the army invading the British Empire, or at least to be the chief of its staff, was the common
Should you conceive that any seasonable present of value from the First Consul would be acceptable, mention it, and it shall be sent you, accompanied with a letter from the First Consul's hand. Make, however, no unbecoming or degrading advances.
"With the present Austrian ambassador be rather distant, not however to offend, but enough to show that he is under the personal displeasure of the First Consul. Watch his actions strictly, and report if he continues to see the Bourbons and the emigrants ; and if those speak well or complain of him, and with what other members of the diplomatic body he is most intimate ; accept of his invitations, but be formal and regular in returning invitation for invitation, visit for visit.
" Find out, in your conversation with the Portuguese am- bassador, if he has abilities to see, and patriotism to feel for, the degraded bondage in which England keeps his country ; if he has any partiality for England or antipathy to France — if he mentions the conduct of Lasnes with prudence, anger, or con- tempt ; if he be liked or disliked by the English ministers, and if his reception at Court is as gracious as that of the Imperial ambassadors : flatter him sometimes it you judge it proper — but watch him at all times.
"With the ministers and diplomatic agents from the other Powers and States you are to follow the etiquette established in England, never forgetting, or suffering to be forgotten that you •re the representative of the first naiion upon earth.
176 MEMOIRS OF
opinicr in the Consular circles at Paris, and even in« serted in the French newspapers. This last rank it is well known that he at this moment fills in Bona- parte's Army of England. Every impartial man must acknowledge, in reading Talleyrand's instructions for this military ambassador, in considering the relative situation of the Continent at that period, and in . remembering all the circumstances which at first
" Should any one of them be particularly distinguished for great talent, or for great defects; for hatred or partiality for England or France ; a favourite with his own Sovereign, or with the English ministers — report it. Be condescending to them individually, but keep a vigilant eye upon them all, and upon what they are about.
" For the reasons explained to you, pay particular attention to everything concerning the English finances, manufactures and commerce. Of the financial agents under you, you may trust 15, 51 and 60; 29 is doubtful, but 18 is a traitor, to whom, when sufficient proofs of his delinquency are collected, you may give a mission either to France or Holland, and he shall be taken care of. The reports of 29 must always be compared with those of 15, 51 and 60, before believed or depended on, as he is very interested, and has many underhand transactions not concerning France. Citizen Otto will leave you some notes regarding those and other agents, which you must often consult. His plan of influencing and depressing the public funds you must study and follow at all times : it is a masterpiece. In the financial and commercial intrigues, as well as in those with the factions, you are always to remain mobile invisible ; you are to command, instruct and protect, but your agents only are seen to act and transact.
" Procure a correct list of all the persons possessing great property, with remarks of what their properties consist ; whether
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retarded, and afterwards determined, Andreossy's de- parture for this country, that his mission was not merely of a diplomatic nature, but that, like Brune in Switzerland, had time permitted Talleyrand's perfi- dious intrigues to ripen, the sword of the General would have cut to pieces the laws of nations which the ambassador had sworn to respect. In two Continental periodical publications it was also stated, which con- in landed estates, in the Funds, or in goods ; whether in the colonies of the East or West Indies ; the amount of their certain revenue ; if they are supposed to spend the whole, or only a part ; if they increase it or decrease it. The list copied from the income-tax, and sent by M. Otto, is incorrect ; but since this tax has ceased, English vanity will get the better of English cupidity, and a correct one may be easily procured, and is abso- lutely necessary for fixing loans and requisitions at our future invasion.
" Buy up all plans, drawings and maps of the English coasts, provinces, cities, fortifications, dock-yards and wharfs ; all writings and remarks on the soundings, tides and winds of England, Scotland and Ireland ; the productions, population, resources, poverty or riches of all the countries where a landing may take place with advantage; the character of the people of those countries, their political opinions, their vices and prejudices.
"Endeavour to find out if the officers of the English navy have a favourable opinion of the First Consul ; if they speak the French language and are of Whig or Republican princi- ples; and send over the names of those distinguished for naval abilities and political or senatorial talents.
" Of those agents employed to watch the conduct of the
Bourbons, you can trust 2, 5 and 52 ; read the reports of the
others, and pay the reporters, but do not depend upon them ; of
those about Pichegru and Georges, 19, 44 and 66 may be be-
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firms this conjecture, that General Berthier had shown a confidential friend a list of all the generals intended
lieved; the others are too stupid to be either of service or harm, and may, without danger, be dismissed ; of those about the bishops, and other emigrants and chouans, 10, 12, 33, 43 and 55 may be continued ; but let the others know that their services are no longer wanted in England; give them passes to France, with promises of employment there, under the police.
" Give seldom any grand feasts, but when you do give them, let them surpass others in splendour, taste, delicacy and elegance ; on some occasions, such as the birthday of the First Consul, the anniversary of the Republic, or, if approved by the Consul, in honour of the birthday of the King of England, no money is to be spared to impress upon the minds of the English nation the greatness and generosity of the French. Do not forget to order your subaltern agents to have all the particulars of these feasts noted in all the newspapers ; the lower classes in England devour the description of feasts in their public prints with the same avidity as the higher classes eat of your dishes and drink of your wine.
"Citizen Otto's list of authors and men of letters is to be attended to; but should you hear of, or discover, any great talents in any other persons, court their acquaintance, ofier a place in the National Institute, or a literary pension. To men of letters you are always to insinuate that pensions or places from the First Consul are only rewards for past labours, and not any pretensions or expectations of future services; that he looks on men of letters as fellow-citizens of all countries, and that their talents belong to no country ; neither to France nor to England, but to the universe.
"In your transactions with Irish patriots, or with any other persons, or in any things not mentioned here, you are to follow the instructions to Citizen Otto, of the loth of October, 1801 ; or, if you judge it necessary, ask for new ones.
"C. M. TALLEYRAND ••PARIS, October zoth, 1802."
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to command divisions under Andreossy, together with the name of the battalions, and the number of troops composing the armies projected by the First Consul to annihilate the commercial tyranny of Great Britain and to deliver Ireland from her yoke. These troops amounted to 270,000 men. Among others, their prin- cipal commanders, were mentioned Arthur O'Connor, Emmet, and some few other traitors whom the lenity of British laws and the ill-placed humanity of the British Government had preserved from a merited ignominious death.
As to Talleyrand's views and plans against this Empire, they are explained in his memorial to the First Consul, dated the 4th of December, 1802,* an official declaration which cannot too often be read, nor too well remembered, by every Briton who has the honour, prosperity and independence of his country at heart:
De ses inimitids, rien n'arrete le cours, Quand il hai't une fois, il veut hai toujours.
Though he, as cordially as Bonaparte, wished
I "Pursue, Citizen Consul, this plan steadily for ten or fifteen years, constantly directing the riches of the country to the raising a navy equal or superior to England ; and then, and not till then, shall we be able to strike the blow we have for above one hundred and fifty years been meditating— the conquest of the British Islands."
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the reduction of the British Islands to departments of France, he differed as to the means, as well as the time of effecting this desirable object. Better acquainted than his master with the resources of this country, and with the spirit of her inhabitants, he was, and is still, of opinion that the funeral pile of British liberty must be constructed of and lighted with the olive - branches of peace. He was, and is still, convinced that, although fraud may allure Britons into security, and duplicity impose upon them, open force will never be able to con- quer them ; and that even the last of Britons, instead of surrendering to revolutionary tyrants, and saving his life at the expense of liberty, would encompass himself with the ruins of his country and expire a free man. A letter, under the date of the 26th of February, 1805, with which the author has been favoured from a loyal French General,1 states that Bonaparte is now converted
i This General was formerly an officer in the King's service, and emigrated to this country, where, neither stooping to intrigue, nor cringing for protection, notwithstanding his talents, he obtained no other place than that of a corporal in one of the regiments sent to St. Domingo. At the peace he returned to France, where all his property was sold, and was therefore reduced to the necessity of accepting the place of a General of division under the Corsican, to which he was recommended by General Berthier, his distant relation. His loyalty is, however
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to, or has adopted, the sentiments of his Minister, seeing the total impossibility of even injuring Great Britain during a war; and that he is, therefore, plotting, through the mediation of neutral States, to obtain a peace on the best terms his power can extort, and Talleyrand's intrigues juggle (escamoter). " We have now," continues the writer, " been en- camped on this coast twenty-one months ; but our officers, and even our men, are less sanguine in their success now than on the first day we pitched our tents. We have now, however, flotillas sufficiently numerous to carry over to England in three hours 93,000 men, according fo the lowest calculation ; but the danger of attempting this short passage is no longer regarded as chimerical by anybody, though everybody, from the Commander-in-Chief down to the lowest drummer, firmly believes that this number of troops once landed in England would be sufficient to bury the independence of the British Islands beneath the ruins of the Continent. Blows must therefore be struck before any safe peace can be concluded. Great Britain will continue to be in- sulted by our Government and despised by our
unshaken; and, what is more consoling to suffering loyalty in England, Bonaparte's armies contain many other generals of bis sentiments.
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troops, and France will continue to be agitated by her present military mania, until, upon British ground, our hopes of easy conquest have been realised or defeated. As to our situation here, and the spirit of our troops, they are rather altered for the worse. According to the official report of our medical staff, we have lost by disease, within eighteen months, at the rate of one man in ten. This mortality is not surprising to anybody ac- quainted with the periodical fevers that always reign on this coast. The divisions encamped between Gravelines and Antwerp have suffered more than those between Calais and Montreuil. In Holland, particularly in Zealand, the mortality has been still more destructive. Until within these six weeks we have always been regularly paid, and the present arrears are said to originate from disappointments Government has experienced in payments due from Spain and Holland. The murmurs these delays have caused in our camp are, however, not of a dangerous nature : the discipline being kept up so very strict, and the Emperor's determination of never pardoning any breach of discipline being known, have produced the best effects to quash all mutinous inclinations. Last autumn, indeed, the desertion became rather fashionable among the conscripts, who dreaded a
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winter campaign; but some severe punishments, and a cordon of gendarmes placed between the camps and the interior soon put a stop to it. I was not among the generals invited to witness the coronation ceremony, and can therefore only relate what I have heard from others, and they all agree, that it excited a favourable sentiment in favour of the Emperor, particularly on account of the presence and performance of the Pope, who, notwithstand- ing, leaves France without having succeeded in eradicating the schism subsisting in our Church for the last fifteen yea^s.1 In the capital, the
i The following translation of the circular letter, lately addressed by the Minister of Police, Fouche, to all the French Bishops, is a confirmation of the above statement :
"Paris, .
"There is more connection, sir, between my office and yours than is generally imagined. It is my duty to prevent crimes, to avoid the necessity of punishing them. It is yours to stifle in the hearts of men all criminal projects, and even the very idea of crime. Our common object is to establish the security of the Empire upon virtue and good order. With the views and most benevolent intentions which you possess, the spiritual authority with which you are invested, would only be productive of very limited and uncertain advantages if it did not find in the co-operation of my office the means of chastising all opposition to it.
" A Prince of the Church ! This title will be disputed with you for some time to come, and by an inconsiderable number of Bishops of the old Establishment, who have abandoned the union of that Church; and by some priests whose passions
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Emperor's popularity is said to be greater than in our camps; but, if I am well informed, the inhabi- tants of the provinces evince the same apathy and indifference which have ever since the Revolution been productive to France of so much wretchedness. The penury is, however, very great everywhere,
have been increased, but whose understandings have not been enlarged by the Revolution. The first would arrogate to them- selves a stricter adherence to the faith of your fathers than you are supposed to profess ; the second assert that they are more true to the Revolution and its principles. You are placed between those extremes, and your place is that of wisdom and of truth. You are attacked on one side by the errors of barbarous and ignorant ages, and on the other you are assailed by those excesses that are inseparable from a period of revolution.
" What pretexts, however, can those Bishops have who have abandoned the union of the Church ? Where can they seek for it, or hope to find it ? Do they imagine that the true worship is not restored in our temples because the Bourbons have not been restored to the throne ? But what other throne than that of the Sovereign Pontiff has ever appeared to have a necessary connection with the Catholic religion? In what symbol of faith, or in what venerated tradition, can the smallest connection between the dynasty of the Bourbons and the pure and spotless existence of the Gallican Church be pointed out ? The union of our Church with all other Catholic Churches, and with the Pope, was not broken by the transfer of the Roman Empire to the Merovingian dynasty, from that to Charlemagne, or from that to the race of Capet ; nor was it broken by the change from the dynasty of the Bourbons to that of the Bonapartes. Political questions appertain to nations and not to religion; and France has always decided them according to her inclinations, or the lessons of experience.
"You are too well informed, sir, to render it incumbent on
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and the wish for a peace with England general, under a supposition that it alone can relieve the public distress. The people of Italy, Switzerland and Holland are said to be reduced to still greater misery, though they are more patient. The war in which Spain is now involved will deprive us of her pecuniary resources and increase the great scarcity
me to suggest to you the great necessity of attending to the rigorous execution of those laws which have for their object the liberty and the regulation of public worship. If you allow those pastors who are subject to your authority either to modify or infringe them, there will be no long ;r any bounds to arbitrary encroachments. The passions invariably extend, beyond all bounds, those indulgences which they have extorted from weakness.
" Freedom of religion is a law of the Empire, and one of the rights of man, and is at present established in every enlightened State. You are no longer at liberty to extend the conquests of religion, of which you are the chief ministers, than by your talents and your evangelical virtues. In the age in which we live, that may be denominated the best religion which most forcibly inculcates the principles of morality and obedience to the laws. The divine impress of a religion is to be as beneficent as the Almighty himself.
" His Majesty the Emperor will acknowledge that you have justified the confidence he has placed in you when, under the influence of your doctrine, he shall perceive that all hatred and dissension has disappeared, that the love of everything that can tend to the advantage of your country has been nourished in the places of worship in the presence of the images of the Divinity, and the prosperity of the Empire become to all those whose consciences you direct the most certain pledge that they have merited those rewards which religion holds out to them.
(Signed) " FOUCHE.'
1 86 MEMOIRS OF
of money we already experience. All these considera- tions have determined the Emperor to endeavour to finish an unavailing contest, and Talleyrand is re- ported to have presented, within some few weeks, three different plans for a general pacification to the Courts of Vienna and Berlin, besides pacific overtures to England, Russia and Sweden."
This General knows more than he dares to ex- press, and his opinion of Talleyrand's plots to allure us into another impolitic pacification all late com- munications from other parts of the Continent con- firm. They add that the impatience of Bonaparte's soldiers, now threatened with a third campaign, with- out any enemy to combat or any country to pillage, may force him to temporary sacrifices, as the only means of preventing the army destined to annihilate liberty and prosperity in Great Britain from chas- tising a guilty usurper in dethroning a cruel tyrant. Let us, however, beware of Talleyrand's perfidy and Bonaparte's ambition. Malta may be given up and Hanover evacuated ; France may consent to sign a commercial treaty; Holland may be forced to renounce some of her colonies and Spain sacrifice her treasures; but, great as these ac- quisitions might be regarded in ordinary times, in the present relative situation of England and
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France they are only the wages and allurements of bondage from the one to the other. This will always be the case as long as French gunboats exist opposite our shores, and the Corsican shall not consent to the destruction of his armada and give, if possible, security that no such means of menace shall be resorted to in future. While his flotilla exists, there is no safety against invasion, shelter from alarm, or limit to expense. In former treaties of peace it has been usual to establish, on each side of the disarming Powers, reciprocal and respectable commissioners to superintend and effectuate the mutual relinquishment of all hostile indications. Heretofore such commissions were limited to dis- mantling ships of the line and frigates ; but with these the dangers do not now rest. A gunboat, as a unit of an armada of gunboats, is an object of more insufferable offence than La Ville de Paris of three decks. An assassin dwarf, destined and dis- posed for midnight mischief and murder, is more dangerous to the safety and sanctity of repose than the brawny noonday ruffian equipped for undissembled contest. Let England stab the Corsican dwarf of assassins, and she will remain confident against the giants of the world in arms. Not only the quiet and independence of Great Britain, but of Europe,
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require, previously to the ratification of a peace, the destruction of Bonaparte's flotilla, either by battle or by compact. It must be blown to the bottom of the ocean by British seamen, or blasted in its own ports from the face of the creation by the power of convention. Were our enterprising forces in the West Indies to continue their valorous and victorious career, and be as completely and ultimately success- ful as their brethren in the East; were they to annex all the colonies of France, Spain and Holland to our country by conquest, it would, in our opinion, be better — far better — that Great Britain should resign them all at a peace, without any equivalent, without even the redemption of anything lost in the usual course and casualties of war, than suffer Bonaparte's gunboats to remain in existence, even without masts, rigging or ordnance. Scuttling, swamping, or even burning will not do, unless by burning is meant to be implied tho drawing them up high and dry upon the beach and reducing them to ashes.
That Bonaparte will not consent to, nor Talley- rand dare to propose, such humiliations, a paragraph in the Moniteur has officially declared — in copying from the English prints some speculations concerning this arrangement necessary before any peace can possibly be concluded between the two contending parties
* TALLEYRAND l8g
— that, "were even a victorious English army at the gates of Paris, the delenda est flotilla would not be signed." That the subjugation of this country are Bonaparte's and Talleyrand's unchangeable designs traitors only will deny, and fools doubt. Laying aside Bonaparte's proverbial inveteracy against the British nation, his safety as a criminal individual and his rank as a ferocious usurper require the absolute re- moval of the only barrier, of the only rallying-point, around which the good and loyal may still assemble and defend the only ancient unobliterated landmark that distinguished the rights of nations — from which they may still support the little that remains of civil- ised Europe, and from which they may still issue forth and revenge outraged humanity, blasphemed religion, and insulted lawful sovereignty. From what the world has seen within these last twenty-two months, but particularly since May, 1804, when the usurper officially proclaimed that his armada had obtained its completion in men and vessels, it is not probable, notwithstanding his audacity, inhumanity, and confidence in fortune, that he will expose his great schemes of universal dominion to be overturned, and the fallacy of his boasts proved, by an unsuc- cessful attempt on this country, an attempt he must know will meet with defeat and disgrace. On the
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other hand, unlimited as his power is, and heavy as are the fetters of his slaves, it cannot be supposed that so many millions have been expended in build- ing vessels merely for a show, nor that such ex- penses will be quietly submitted to merely for keeping up armies as for a parade. Should it be disclosed to the Continent how despicable and desperate, because inefficient and impracticable, his projects and means are to conquer this country, during a war, his numerous internal enemies may, perhaps, take advantage of the impatience and dis- appointment of his soldiers, and of the complaints and sufferings of the people, and stir up revolt in his camps and rebellion in his provinces, whilst his external enemies, who, notwithstanding treaties and indemnities, are as many as there are Continental nations, may unite and encourage the disaffected Frenchmen to throw off a degrading yoke which they wear in common with all their neighbours with so much impatience. Who can be ignorant or mad enough to doubt that a legitimate prince, a loyal subject, a pious Christian, or a good man exists upon earth who would not rather rejoice at seeing the head of Napoleon the First decorate a scaffold, than gilded with a crown and dishonouring monarchy upon a throne ? The private correspondence with
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Sovereigns is forged, the salutations of ambassadors are purchased, or ordered, as much as the compli- ments of prefects and the adulations of bishops are commanded. By fraud, bribes or terror, Bonaparte reigns in the capitals of Austria, Prussia, Spain, Portugal, Denmark and Naples, as well as in those of France, Italy, Holland and Switzerland. Take away the supports of the terrific despot, let mutiny break out in his armies, and the rejoicings for his execution will be greater, or, at least, more sincere, than those for his coronation. To preserve his life, as well as his authority, he has no other choice but an invasion of England, a negotiation with England or a Continental war. The distance of Russia and Sweden prevents him from carrying on the war with them with any prospect of success ; and, as long as the Emperor of Germany and the Kings of Prussia and Denmark continue their present armed neutrality, an offensive Continental war is out of the question. Of the danger and the consequences of invading this country he is no longer ignorant ; nothing, there- fore, remains for him but to try to gain, by his political incendiaries, what his .military ban- ditti are unable to conquer — a peace with Great Britain. The first military characters in Europe are of opinion that, during a war, Great
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Britain has little or nothing to apprehend from Bonaparte's hatred and power. Let it, therefore, never escape our recollection that his treachery equals his ferocity, and that by him and his accomplices, during a time of peace, the Republics of Genoa, of Venice and of Helvetia were invaded, conquered and ruined. In time of peace he attacked Egypt and captured Malta. In time of peace he made the Grand Duchy of Tuscany a revolutionary kingdom, and changed the Kingdom of Sardinia into depart- ments of a revolutionary Republic. In time of peace he planned a war in India by his military emissaries, and encouraged insurrections in Ireland by his com- mercial agents. Had he, in 1802, possessed his present armada, the tricoloured flag on Dover Castle would have informed the British nation of his per- fidy before the British Government could have known it from Lord Whitworth's despatch. But it is not only the destruction of his flotilla, but the restoration of the lost balance of power, which is absolutely necessary before our country can prudently listen to proposals of peace. In twelve months two thousand armed vessels have been built. Suppose them de- stroyed: has not Bonaparte — as long as he can dispose of the forests, the rivers, the carpenters, the artificers, the sailors and resources of Italy, Spain, France,
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Germany, Switzerland and Holland — the same means to repair those losses in the same short period of time ? If Bonaparte and Talleyrand seriously desire to be thought sincere ; if they really have abjured their former errors and injustice ; if they wish to raise the French Republic from the disgrace into which she has been plunged by her infidelities, vio- lences and proceedings, they have in their hands a means of laying a foundation for the return of con- fidence. Let them shor/ themselves worthy of it by their actions as well as by their professions ; and while they declaim against the crimes of former revo- lutionary governments, let them cease to be inheritors of the fruits of their iniquities. Very different, for instance, are the titles by which the Republic has in- corporated or subjected the Ipuntries which she has thought proper to confiscate to add to her own terri tory or to keep under her guardianship. Over some she exercises the right of conquest ; this right remains valid till changed by the fate of arms, or by negotiation. But are conquests which were the reward of victory to be confounded with scandalous robberies, usurpa- tions effected in the midst of peace by artifice or violence, the plunder of towns, and provinces deprived of their independence without resistance, and of their laws without any pretence ? Why does not Bonaparte
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show his moderation, justice, conversion, and love of peace by restoring their original liberty to these States? Why does he not render to the County of Nice, to the Duchy of Savoy, to the Principality of Piedmont, to the Republics of Italy, of Batavia, of Helvetia, of Geneva, of Mulhausen, of Bienne, to the Bishopric of Basle, the Principality of Salm, Mont- belliard, the Comtat of Venaissin, and to the countries France engulfed by decrees, and without unsheathing a sword — that sovereignty of which they have been robbed ? When he and Talleyrand have performed these acts of political repentance, then indeed may Europe confide in, and Great Britain with safety listen to, their offers of pacification.
Notwithstanding Talleyrand's perpetual though humble remonstrances, during the winter of 1802, Bonaparte, though well acquainted with the honour- able and independent spirit of Britons, received and treated the English ambassador, after having delayed his first audience for three weeks, with the most striking coolness, and with an impertinence which the meanness of the representatives of subdued, tributary, or indemnified Princes had accustomed him to use and themselves to endure. At the public audiences, and in the circles of Madame Bonaparte, he was often insolent in the
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highest degree. Perhaps the substance of his addresses might not have given so much offence, or excited so much disgust, as the haughty and commanding tone in which he spoke. The language of watch-houses, or of camps, is, however, at all times improper at Courts in the mouth of a person who occupies the rank and pretends to the respect always shown to Sovereigns; but when such a person so far forgets his own dignity as to attack with abuse, or insult with reproaches, in a place and in a situation where long-established etiquette does not permit answers or retorts, it proves a smallness of mind which fortune has elevated but not altered, and which Nafcire destined to remain in native lowness and obscurity. Every Frenchman of sense and every foreigner of distinction who witnessed this revolutionary conduct of the usurper justly inferred from it that his mind was already bent on great enterprises against the British Empire even during a peace, and that his ungovernable pride alone made him forget the necessary precaution of concealing his intentions. His endeavours towards an amicable adjustment of differences when the patience of our Government was exhausted, clearly evince that he did not wish to come to a rupture with this country so soon, though the reports of the
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Irish Committee at Paris, who continued during the peace to act and transact in the same manner as during the war, and the scenes of riot his emissaries had witnessed in London in the summer of 1802, during the Middlesex election, had made him believe England distracted by factions, Ireland ripe for an insurrection, and that therefore his menaces, supported by an army on the coast, were sufficient to effect those desolating outrages, that dreadful anarchy, and those cruel barbarities which have in many Conti- nental States been the forerunners of rebellions, of civil wars and of revolutions. He thought, from the terms he had obtained in the Treaty of Amiens, that Britons would quietly submit to his audacious provocations, and without suspicion or complaint behold his persevering and unremitting activity to restore the French navy, to fortify the French coast, to prepare a flotilla that might supply the want of large ships, and wink at all other direct or indirect threats held out by him in such an impertinent abundance. He supposed them unable to resist, whilst he, by opening an intercourse with the Netherlands, should secure to himself and to France a great revenue at the expense, and to the ruin, of British commerce.
It has been asserted that " Talleyrand, either the
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dupe of his own opinion of his ascendency over Bonaparte, or of his idea of the pretended weakness of the British Government, was so certain of pre- venting the renewal of hostilities, even after Lord Whitworth had left Paris, that he sent couriers to two respectable houses in London, to three at Amsterdam and to two at Hamburg to speculate in his name in the different Funds, as all differences between England and France would be settled without resorting to arms " ; and it has also been stated that "by the miscarriage of this political-financial specula- tion he lost ^"370,000, a sum.he, within six months afterwards, extorted from the Courts of Madrid and Lisbon for signing with them a temporary neu- trality."
Under date the 28th of February, 1792, Count de Goltz, Extraordinary Envoy of the King of Prussia to the King of France, addressed to M. Delessart, then Minister of the Foreign Department, the follow- ing note :
" The undersigned Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the King of Prussia at the Court of His Most Christian Majesty has the hpnour to remind His Excellency M. Delessart that he has repeatedly informed him that an invasion of the territory of the Empire by French troops can-
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not but be regarded as a declaration of war against the Germanic body, and that in consequence His Prussian Majesty could not avoid opposing it, in conjunction with His Imperial Majesty, with all his forces. He has more particularly given this informa- tion to the Ministry of France on occasion of the official note which the Imperial Court sent to the Ambassador of France, under date of the gth of January last. He now repeats it in consequence of a despatch dated the lyth of this month, from the Chancellor of State and of the Court, Prince de Kaunitz, to M. de Blumendorff, charge d'affaires of His Majesty the Emperor, and transmitted by the latter to the Ministry of His Most Christian Majesty ; this despatch contains the principles on which the Courts of Berlin and Vienna are perfectly in concert.
(Signed) "THE COUNT DE GOLTZ.
" Paris, the 28th of February, 1792."
This official declaration is conformable to the Constitution of the German Empire, and acknowledges the duty of His Prussian Majesty to oppose all in- vasion of the territory of Germany — a duty never neglected during former wars between England and France, and which had preserved Hanover for forty years from the visit of French marauders. During
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the months of March, April and May, 1803, Talley- rand's intriguers were particularly active at the Court of Berlin, and, after some opposition, removed by new plans of indemnities all scruples from the political con- science of the Prussian ministers; and the unfortunate electorate became a prey to disloyal and unfaithful selfishness on the one hand, and of audacious cupidity on the other. Notwithstanding the repeated declarations of Talleyrand that the English politics were entirely unconnected with those of the Conti- nent, Hanover was taken possession of because the King of England was her Sovereign ; Germany was invaded because Bonaparte had forced England into war ; and a hostile army had laid waste a province of the Empire because the Cabinet of St. James's had been attacked by the machinations of that of the Tuileries. This disgraceful consent of Prussia, her impolitic forbearance, and the dangerous innovation on the principles and system of the German common- wealth, has opened even in the vicinity of this artificial military monarchy a revolutionary volcano, which spreads its destructive veins under Berlin as well as Vienna, under Ratisbon as well as under Hamburg. For the future, from this division of politics and interest among the members of the German Empire, a French army may always be
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expected to be quartered in one of its provinces. Talleyrand and Bonaparte will never want pleas for collecting plunder or forging fetters. Every petty disagreement between the German Princes and their States or subjects will oblige the conciliator, the guarantee Bonaparte, to send his banditti to enforce obedience to the contents of Talleyrand's purchased notes. Division has always been the grand ally, and the best army in the service of the French Republic. It has resisted example, reason, counsel, aid ; it has assisted all the plots of the former as well as of the present revolutionary rulers of France, their insults, their taunts and their endless invasions. Italy left the King of Sardinia alone upon the field of battle; and Italy has shared the fate of his do- minions. The King of Naples found himself deserted, as the King of Sardinia and the Pope had been before him, and French troops are now at the gates both of Naples and Rome. The Helvetic League saw Berne and Underwalden perish without sending them a soldier; and French bayonets are now ruling the Helvetian Republic. Prussia rejoiced when Moreau was within two days' march of the capital of Austria ; and now, from the Hanoverian frontier, a French army may arrive in five days at the gates of the Prussian capital : the loyal part of
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V
Europe would certainly not rejoice, but they would neither pity nor succour this monarchy were Bona- parte to treat it as he has already done Italy and the German Empire. What he has already done he will undoubtedly do over again, and repeat, until the subjugation of the Continent, prepared by the selfishness and impolicy of Prussia, has been completed by the destruction of Prussia herself. How can Frederic William expect, more than other Sovereigns, to escape the assassin's dagger, the plun- derer's avidity, and the perfidy of a Government whose politics respect na^ treaties, favour no name, laugh at faith, despise rank and proscribe property ? When Talleyrand had thus allured Prussia, his first object was to make money of this unexpected success. Several generals immediately presented themselves as candidates for a command in a country where they expected no enemy to combat, but plenty of pillage to seize upon. In reward for the ability with which he had duped the Cabinet of Berlin, Bonaparte gave Talleyrand the nomination of a commander of the army in Hanover. No sooner was this known among the military pretenders, than they crowded his ante-chambers with presents, offers, contracts and proposals. Massena offered to give 1,000,000 livres, to be paid immediately ;
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<w
Auger eau, 1,200,000, in three payments ; Bernadotte, an estate he possessed in Normandy ; and Mortier, his sister, his wife, and carte blanche. Mademoiselle Mortier breakfasted Ute-a-tete with the minister, when she brought him her brother's carte blanche, which the next morning, at another breakfast tete-a-tete with Madame Mortier, he filled up. General Mortier was to pay him, during the first three months, 300,000 livres per month ; and during the remainder of his command, 100,000 livres1 per month.
The detention of British travellers in France as prisoners of war (another outrage against the law of nations) was another scheme of Talleyrand's inven- tion to " coin money," as the Parisians expressed themselves. By his spies in England he got infor- mation of the property which all detained persons possessed, and of the amount it was supposed that friends and relations would advance for the release of those who had no personal property. In Sep- tember, 1803, his agents had made out a list of names, and of the sums required to permit these British travellers to return to their country. Before, however, it could be communicated to them, Fouche
i See Les Nouvelles d la Main, Messidor, year XII., No. il., page 4. Madame Mortier is the daughter of an innkeeper at Coblentz, of the inn called " Le Sauvage."
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had by his spies discovered his rival's attempt to intrude upon the concerns and profits of the Ministry of Police, and advised the Grand Judge, then the chief of the police, not to endure such an encroach- ment, but, as the British prisoners were under his responsibility, take advantage himself of their desire to obtain their liberty. Accordingly, overtures were made to some of the most wealthy, who willingly consented to pecuniary sacrifices rather than to a disagreeable imprisonment. They had already written over to this country for^ remittances, when Talley- rand's agents presented themselves with their pro- posals, which were more exorbitant than those of the Grand Judge, and therefore declined. By their cunning, or by the indiscretion of the prisoners, the real cause of the refusal was soon found out. Enraged at his disappointment, Talleyrand informed Bonaparte that intriguers from Paris were busy to procure those British subjects he had so justly detained, their liberty or escape; that to prevent them from succeeding it would, perhaps, be prudent, if not absolutely necessary, to confine all British prisoners at some greater distance from the capital than Fontainebleau. The Grand Judge was imme- diately sent for, and, after receiving a severe philippic, ordered to remove all persons detained at
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Fontainebleau, or residing with permission at Paris or elsewhere, to Valenciennes and Verdun. The Grand Judge, knowing that Fouch6 again desired the place of Minister-General of the Police, supposed that he had taken advantage of this false step into which he had led him to disgrace him with Bonaparte, and to succeed him. From that time these two revolutionary statesmen have been irreconcilable : and, if Talleyrand was not successful enough to pillage Britons, he dexterously embroiled two of his rivals.
A certain neutral ambassador was, in January, 1804, detected by Talleyrand to have bribed over a clerk in his office. Of this discovery he took ad- vantage to form a plot, which reduced the ministers of two powerful Continental Cabinets to the necessity of enduring, instead of revenging, the invasion of Baden, the seizure and murder of the Duke of En- ghien, and the audacious usurpation of the Imperial dignity by Bonaparte. Being confident of the breach of trust by his clerk, he sent for him, told him what he knew, and that it depended upon his future services not only to be pardoned for past crimes, but to obtain a reward proportionate to his per- formance and its success. "You are in the pay of the P Ambassador," said Talleyrand; "try to be
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equally so in that of the A , and your fortune is
made. But you must follow my advice in every- thing, and, above all, be discreet. Here is a
despatch received this morning from B . Call on
Madame B on the Boulevards; she is kept by the
A Ambassador ; tell her a story that you are ruined
by gambling, and are, therefore, in that desperate situation, that you must either blow out your brains or sell the secrets of Sta^ That she may trust to your sincerity, leave the despatch with her for two hours, and if you are not well paid then, it is your own fault. You shall regularly be furnished every day with some news or other, the reality of which my conferences and conversation with the two am- bassadors will confirm. Whenever any couriers from
V or B arrive, their original despatches shall
always be delivered into your hands, to be shown to one or other of these two ambassadors, to whom you may announce from this day that I have made you one of my private secretaries. Lei them pay you well, and in proportion to the value of the authentic communication with which you have pro- vided them. Go now into my private cabinet, where your name is already put down for the confidential post to which I have appointed you. Remember that you are everywhere surrounded by spies, and that not
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a word nor an action of yours can escape their notice. You are now suspended between a total annihilation or an honourable and happy existence; your choice is in your ov/n hands, in your own power. Can you hesitate about it ? " The clerk, whose name was Tourneaux, retired with protestations of gratitude and professions of fidelity. For six weeks he continued, without intermission, and strictly, to obey Talleyrand's dictates, and to repeat his lessons ; and the two ambassadors despatched and received couriers upon couriers, had repeated conferences with Talleyrand, and repeated audiences with Bonaparte. They mutually strove who should be foremost to gain the usurper's friendship by proposals as humiliating to loyalty as flattering to rebellion. While the Cabinet
of B desired him to assume the title with the
power of a King, the Cabinet of V assured him
that anything short of Imperial dignity was beneath his deserts, and unworthy of his exploits. On the yth of March, Tourneaux was suddenly arrested and shut up in the Temple. His confession was com- municated to the two ambassadors, who were at the same time informed that Bonaparte's ministers at their respective Courts would be ordered to com- plain of their intrigues — so contrary to the intents of their Sovereigns — if they did not promise to sup-
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port, with their advice and influence, the grand coup d"£tat Bonaparte was meditating. They had advanced too far, and their Cabinets had, by their mutual negotiations and jealousies, laid themselves too open to discovery to dare to produce remon- strances, much less oppose resistance. This explains the almost incomprehensible conduct of certain Sovereigns, who, notoriously detesting Bonaparte's atrocity against the Duke of Enghien, his injustice in invading Baden, and his scandalous insolence of proclaiming himself an Emperor, left murder, violence, and insulting and humiliating usurpation, not only without chastisement, but without showing an indignation which policy commanded and honour claimed. It is not necessary to observe that all the original despatches given to Tourneaux were forgeries of Talleyrand's official forgers, and, as well as his authentic information, impostures to delude the two Cabinets into overtures required by Bonaparte's am- bition and Talleyrand's avidity, but which, if made public, would have degraded them in the opinion of all other Powers of Europe. Tourneaux was re- moved, and has never since been heard of; and Talleyrand was permitted by Bonaparte to demand another loan of the Hanse Towns for his private use. But Talleyrand not only employs his official forgers
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in fabricating private letters of legitimate Sovereigns to the usurper, and official despatches to himself; he also condescends sometimes to employ them in writing letters in the name of renowned individuals, particularly if their supposed sentiments are useful to Bonaparte, or advantageous to his own specula- tions, or corresponding with his passions. Among other forgeries the French and other foreign journals contained last summer, was a pretended letter from the staunch defender of royalty, Cardinal Maury, to Bonaparte, in which his usurpation is approved, his crimes extenuated and his elevation applauded. Un- fortunately for Talleyrand, this Cardinal had courage enough to contradict what his heart never felt, and resignation enough to abide the consequences of the publicity of a declaration injurious to a man who never forgave.1
i LETTER FROM CARDINAL MAURY TO Louis XVIII.
(From Les Nouvelks d la Main of 3oth Vende'miaire, year XIII.; or the zand of October, 1804.)
" SIRE, — My present dignity I owe to Your Majesty's recom- mendation ; for the fame I have obtained among the virtuous part of my contemporaries, I am indebted to nothing but to that zeal and courage with which I, fifteen years ago, com- bated rebels and atheists, as I was bound by honour, conscience, duty and gratitude. I would, therefore, be an undutiful, ungrateful and contemptible subject, and an unworthy prelate of the
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It ought not to pass unobserved that it was just about this very same period that Talleyrand's spy, Meh6e de la Touche, was employed to intrigue with our Minister to the Court of Munich, Mr. Drake, and to fabricate a correspondence in his name. That Bonaparte's minister, in publishing this impudent fabrication, should declaim against the violation of the law of nations, is less surprising than that the
Catholic Church werel to cease to profess the same senti- ments of loyalty and religion.
" Sire, persons, no doubt envious of my glory, have, from motives easily seen through, published writings in my name, which, though they cannot deceive my King, might mislead my fellow-subjects, and foreigners, to whom political as well as religious apostacy have of late become so familiar. This causes me to intrude upon Your Majesty with this letter, and to implore your forgiveness for the publicity I am under the necessity to give it.
" Sire, from principle, as well as from conviction, I united with the few loyal members of the Sacred College to supplicate the Pope not to give the death-blow to the Catholic religion by prostituting the sacredness of his high and holy station in sacrilegiously placing the crown of St. Louis on the head of a foreigner accused of such enormous crimes, and whose hands are still reeking with the pure and innocent blood of a descendant of this sainted King, so dastardly assassinated in the wood of Vincennes. With becoming humility I remonstrated on the probability of all future criminals whom fortune, from inscrut- able purposes, procures a temporary usurpation of power, forcing the successors of St. Peter to seal their iniquity and guilt with a sacred approbation, to the scandal of the faithful and to the destruction of the faith ; acts which soon must bring forth those dreaded and deplorable times when the VOL. II 14
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members of the foreign diplomatic corps at Paris should have reprobated what they must be convinced was nothing mo^e than one of Talleyrand's political stratagems to palliate the invasion of the German Empire, the assassination of the Duke of Enghien, and the senatus consultus which transformed a Corsican adventurer from a First Consul to an Emperor. After all, were the design of this conspiracy as evi-
blessing of a supreme Christian pontiff will be received and regarded by the people with the same indifference as the blasphemous mummeries of a high priest of the Goddess of Reason. I represented that, according to the canon laws of our Holy Church, General Bonaparte was still excommunicated, not having made public penance and obtained public absolu- tion for his shocking and disgraceful apostacy in his desertion from Christ to Mahomet, in 1798.
" Even in a political view I proved that this horrible act would neither procure tranquillity to France nor safety to Europe. The difference is great between the military despotism seized by a usurper, supported by accomplices, by victims and by terror, and the lawful monarchical authority inherited by a legitimate Prince with the national will and wishes for ages. The latter never dies ; but history of all times evinces that the annihilation of the former is on the point of the sword of a rival, or in the poisonous cup of an enemy. Napoleon Bona- parte may reign ; but were his progeny ever so numerous, he will leave no posterity behind him, and his dynasty perishes with him, because France has within her bosom many other generals, equally ambitious, audacious and ferocious, who will never respect a rank to which they have equal right with Napoleon, and superior claims to those of his children, brothers, and nephews. Until, therefore, Your Majesty ascends the throne of your ancestors, my unfortunate countrymen will only fight
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dent as it is chimerical, Europe indeed might have complained of it ; but silence would better become the French Government. They have broken the ties
for the choice of their tyrants, and my degraded country ex- perience nothing but an intermittent and incurable anarchy, extending its ravages, tormenting and undermining civilised society in every part of the globe. My humble remonstrances and representation?Siere, however, as ineffective as my power- ful arguments, and an evidence not to be refuted. Pius VII. goes to France, and true religion is equally threatened with all lawful dynasties !
" If I feel sensibly, Sire, particularly at this moment, the hap- piness of being consistent and faithful to my invariable doctrine, in laying at the feet of Your Majesty my usual and unchangeable allegiance and homage, I am also well aware of the imminent dangers to which such an honourable profession exposes me. But, Sire, already, from age, on the borders of eternity, some days' longer existence in a world where crime prospers and virtue suffers are of no value to me at the expense of the dictates of my conscience. Submitted with resignation to the will of Pro- vidence, I am prepared to meet death, either in the dungeons of the Temple, in the wilds of Cayenne, hi the wood of Vin- cennes, or at the Place de Greve. I shall expire as I have lived, with the firm and consoling hope of inhabiting the same blessed abodes with a St. Louis, with a Louis XVI., a Lescurie, with a Charrette, with an Enghien, with a Pichegru, with a Georges, and with all other heroes and martyrs of religion and loyalty.
" I am, with the most profound respect, Your Majesty's most
obedient, devoted, and faithful humble servant and subject,
^ (Signed) "JEAN SIFRBIN, Cardinal Maury,
"Bishop of Monte Fiascone and Bornetto.
••MONTE FIASCONE, Oct. 2, 1804*. "To His Most Christian Majesty Louis XVIIL, " King ol France and Navarre."
2—14
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which held men, States and nations together. They have awakened hatred, exasperated resentment and set every passion in a blaze, and yet dare to appeal to the law of nations ! Did their Republic observe the law of nations when they dragged the beautiful Queen of France, the irreproachable daughter of the great Maria Theresa, bound in a cart, and delivered her up to the executioner — a Princess bestowed on France upon the faith of a solemn contract, and the guarantee of laws human and divine? Did they observe it when they assassinated the child after the mother — when, without pity or remorse, they devoted that bud of Henry IV. to a lingering death beneath the vaults of a dungeon, in company with his virtuous aunt, who was hurried to the scaffold, and his sister drowned in tears in the dreary cell of a prison? Did they observe it when, in contempt of the laws of war, they treated General O'Hara, Sir Sidney Smith and Captain Wright as malefactors, whom they threatened to put to death? Did they observe the law of nations when they robbed Venice and
Genoa of their independence, and swept Geneva into
v
the vortex of their dominion, after deceiving them for four years successively with promises of fraternity, and of respect for their independence? Did they observe the law of nations when they attacked
MARIE ANTOINETTE ETCHED BY MERCIER
TALLEYRAND 213
the Swiss in the security of peace; when their General, the infamous Brune, broke a settled truce; when he caused General d'Erlach to be assas- sinated by his soldiers ; when he drenched the rocks of Underwalden with the blood of its free inhabitants ; when^aagistrates, men far advanced in years, were torn by his Sbirri from their independ- ent country — from their plundered dwellings — and carried off to French fortresses like State criminals? Did they observe the law of nations against the King of Sardinia, their ally, who was surprised in the profoundest security, seized in his palace, robbed of his fortresses, of his treasures, of his movables, and driven from his throne and dominions, at the very moment when his ambassador was cozened at Paris by Talleyrand with the basest protestations of goodwill, which he was transmitting to his Sove- reign ? Did they observe it when, in contempt of the capitulation of that unfortunate monarch, his servants were forced from him and thrown into confinement ; and when they transported to France, to be under the inspection of the municipalities, those very Pied- montese to whom they had guaranteed the liberty of remaining in their country, or of quitting it if they thought proper ? Did they observe it when, within six days after having extorted two millions of livres
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from the Grand Duke of Tuscany for granting him neutrality, their troops, by forced marches, were at the same time before the gates of Florence, and in the Port of Leghorn ? Did they observe the law of nations in the surprise of Malta, when their agents, sent under pretext of neutrality, plotted and effected treason ? Did they observe it in landing an army in Egypt, as allies of the Ottoman Porte, whilst they were butchering the Turkish subjects like assassins and plundering them like freebooters? Did they ob- serve it in crossing the Rhine to capture the Duke of Enghien, and the Elbe to seize Sir George Rum- bold ? Let them be silent for ever : the whole earth accuses them. They only have a right to complain who can appear pure and innocent at the tribunal of justice and humanity. But Bonaparte and Talleyrand act as if the Continental States with their independ- ence had lost their honour, their judgment and their understanding.
When their conduct has been such with inde- pendent or neutral States, it is not unexpectedly that they have introduced violation and violence for what the general law and progress of civilisation had adoped among received customs towards the representatives of Sovereigns. It is impossible to trace or discuss principles, because Bonaparte and
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Talleyrand acknowledge none. It is of their modes of proceeding only, not of their code, that it may be useful to take a view. The list of the testi- monies of respect which those barbarians have given to the sovereignty of other States since they have declared their schism from the civilised world, speaks for itself. It will show what recompenses they have inflicted upon those Governments which, considering them as a civilised Power, have sent them am- bassadors, envoys, or other privileged agents.
Count Carletti, ambassador from the Grand Duke of Tuscany, notwithstanding his revolutionary in- fatuation, his admiration, his assiduities at Madame Tallien's, at Madame Rewbel's, and at Madame Barras's, the powerful or fashionable goddesses of those days, was ordered away from Paris in three days — and not being able, from illness, to obey, was carried away sick, under the guard of gendarmes, to the French frontiers — because he sought to pay his respects to Madame Royal, the first cousin of his Sovereign, before her departure from the Temple, where she had passed three years and five months in tears, and witnessed the murders of her father, mother, brother and aunt.
The Chevalier Revel, Minister Plenipotentiary from the King of Sardinia, was turned out as an
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emigrant of the County of Nice, after being first acknowledged in his official capacity. His crime was his fidelity and loyalty, his spirit, courage and penetration.
The Abbe Pierrarchi, envoy from the Pope, and received as a negotiator, was driven out as an opposer of the French Government's decision re- specting His Holiness, and of their plocs against the Christian religion. After an imprisonment of twenty-four hours in the Temple, gendarmes, the then Republican masters of ceremonies, saw him safe to the other side of the Alps.
Baron de Stael, the Swedish ambassador, sus- pended by the French Government from his func- tions, when appointed by his own Sovereign, but when recalled, treated by them as an ambassador in fact, and his successor, M. de Rehausen, under pain of a visit to the Temple Bastile, were ordered to quit Paris in three days, and France in a week!
M. Reybaz, the minister from Geneva, cashiered and sent off for having seen through the amicable views of the French rulers towards his Republic, and for having warned his Government of its danger. Within three months after his departure, four other ministers from Geneva were first received, and then degraded and ordered away.
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Count de Cabarrus, who was admitted for a time in Paris as a Spaniard, was rejected as minister for being of French extraction. This exception would no doubt haverJteen overlooked had he been a free Revolutionist and entered into the views of the French Government of ruining his country by loan, subsidies, and tributes, previously to decreeing a Republic.
The Senator Quirini, the Venetian ambassador, after being swindled of a sum of money, was arrested, sent to the Temple, and then driven away under an escort of gendarmes, in consequence of the confisca- tion of the Republic of Venice by Bonaparte.
Count Rivarola, envoy from Genoa, after having paid some millions for the neutrality of his country, was arrested, shut up in the Temple, and hunted away by French gendarmes, when Bonaparte had overturned the Government which had so liberally rewarded him for his protection.
The Marquis Massini, the Pope's minister, was imprisoned in the Temple, and delivered over to gendarmes to be carried away, because his master did not give up his tiara, his capital, and his States to a rabble who were hired by the honest man of the family, Joseph Bonaparte, then am- bassador to the Sovereign Pontiff, and supported by
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their general, to seize upon Rome in the name of the rights of man, of the general will, and of the social compact.
MM. Tillier and Montach, ambassadors from Switzerland, were driven away for not having brought sufficient money and apologies to Paris, and as troublesome witnesses to the conspiracy brewing in the French capital against the liberty and wealth of Helvetia.
The Chevalier d'Aranjo, the Portuguese Pleni- potentiary, was admitted and dismissed as a negotiator ; recalled again, paid £250,000 for a peace, and when the money had been touched, turned away a second time, and the treaty declared not to have taken place. The same person, inured to all affronts, a third time compromising the dignity of his Sovereign and of his country, came again to solicit peace and offer his gold ; but with an indiscretion for which he was sent to the Temple.
Lord Malmesbury was twice admitted as a pleni- potentiary, and twice ordered away with as little ceremony as a common intriguer.
Three American negotiators, after being admitted in France as plenipotentiaries, were refused ad- mittance and audience by tiie French Government. To console them for this humiliation, Talleyrand
TALLEYRAND 21 Q
despatched some of his inferior male and female intriguers to dupe them of a sum of money.
M. de Blfekenau, the Swedish charge d'affaires, was ordered away from Paris three times in twenty- four hours, for complaining too frequently of the piracy of French privateers, for demanding repara- tion for the losses experienced by his countrymen, and, above all, for dining too often with Madame Stael, then in disgrace with her former friends, Bonaparte and Talleyrand. Another Swedish agent, La Tour, was in 1804 carried out of the country by gendarmes, after being shut up in the Temple.
The secretary of the Italian Legation, Acerbi, was in 1802 shut up in the Temple, for some impertinent expressions in his "Travels in Sweden" concerning his Swedish Majesty. In 1804 Bonaparte appointed him a member of the Italian Institute and of the Legion of Honour, for having written these very Travels.
The agents of the Hanse Towns, of the free Imperial cities, and of the inferior German Princes have been imprisoned, plundered, changed, or sent away, one or more every year, according to the whims, interest or avidity of the French rulers.
Among the representatives of foreign Sovereigns who have been officially and publicly insulted by
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Bonaparte at his diplomatic audiences, or at Madame Bonaparte's routs, are the English, the Russian, the Austrian, the Neapolitan, the Swedish, the Spanish, the Danish, the Portuguese, the Saxon, the Hessian, and the Wurtemberg ambassadors. The Batavian, Italian, Swiss, and other fraternal envoys Bonaparte and Talleyrand insult or chastise, publicly or in private, with as little regard as if they were the pages of the former or the valets of the latter. The Prussian, Baden, and two or three more indemnified ministers have hitherto escaped the dungeons of Bonaparte's gaols, as well as the language of a gaoler in the palaces of the Tuileries or St. Cloud. But a Government that spreads its political envoys and commercial agents over Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, and which, taking advantage of the weakness of Sovereigns so imprudent as to receive them, so daunted as to admit their inviolability, while their employers reject the principle of it, is not afraid to treat the ministers of other Powers like spies without credentials, is guilty of an additional outrage when the insult is not generalised, and when it determines, from caprice or interest, which am- bassador it shall disgrace and which respect.1
x The above particulars are extracted from Le Voyageur Suisse, page 75, &c. ; from Les Intrigues du Ch. M. Talleyrand,
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It is in this manner that the French revolution- ary rulers have respected the character of privileged agents in'^Brance; whilst wherever there exists a French envoy, consul, or agent abroad, there is sure to be found a revolutionary society, under some name or other, conspiring against the Governments admitting them. To preach up a contempt for the ancient in- stitutions, to insult Sovereigns, to magnify the French theories, to celebrate their triumphs, to defend the crimes of their professors, and, by anarchical or impious discussions, to shake the foundations of re- ligious belief, social order, and public tranquillity and obedience, are the use they make of places protected by the law of nations. They are in perpetual warfare against civilised society, and in perpetual conspiracy against its existence under the very shelter of its protection. They call down on the countries where they are tolerated all the evils that have overwhelmed France, and stand forth the accomplices of the authors of these evils. It would, therefore, be reasonable and just, in the critical state of the Continent, to consider the emissaries of Bonaparte and Talleyrand, not as seduced fanatics or privileged agents, but as assassins enlisted by other assassins to spread over the world
page 140, &c. ; and from several numbers of Les Nouvelles & la Main for the year XII.
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the French genius of dissolution, robbery, atheism and tyranny.
On the publication of the pretended correspon- dence between Mr. Drake and Talleyrand's spy, Meh£e de la Touche, an emulation, which would have been disgraceful had it not been ridiculous, took place among the members of the foreign diplomatic corps in France who should be foremost to evince their meanness or imbecility, in compli- menting the Corsican on his escape from imaginary assassins, whilst his own hands were still reeking with the blood of the Duke of Enghien. But these harm- less compliments might be excusable in persons having before them the prospect of the Temple, had they not also, without waiting for instructions from their Courts, acknowledged Talleyrand's fabrications as . evidences of the political immorality of the British Government. In their number the Danish and American1 ministers
x The following observations, from the New York Evening Post of the ist of June, 1804, show that the conduct of the American minister in France on this occasion was not approved by all parties in the United States.
" We now furnish our readers with the letters of some of the other ministers for whom Citizen Talleyrand set his gull-trap. They follow this article in their order ; the first, from the ambassador of the Italian Republic, is precisely such a one as might be expected from the representative of a conquered and an abject Republic, over which the First Consul holds an absolute sway.
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particularly distinguished themselves by their impolitic and impertinent answers and reproaches against this country. The plots of the French and Spanish ministers accredited to the United States of America, not only to excite insurrections in Canada, but to produce a revolution that would make the American Federal Commonwealth a Republic one and indi- visible as France, have been proved, as well as the
The other three letters, though from the ministers of Sovereigns who by no means stand in an independent or enviable situation, a relation to Bonaparte, are all of them written with more caution and discretion than that from the ambassador of the United States, who proudly boasts of their independence. If we are not extremely mistaken, Mr. Livingston will rue the day when he wrote that letter to Talleyrand.
" However much we detest the horrible crime of assassina- tion, we yet ask under what pretence it is that the French nation takes such high ground on this subject ? ' Oh I (says their humble vassal) — oh 1 who but must detest a Government that blushes not to employ corruption, sedition, bribery, and assassination as legitimate expedients of policy ? ' We shall say nothing about French corruption, sedition, and bribery — all that might as well have been left out; but, as to their assassination, why, in 1792, they drove a trade of it. Turn to the journals of the National Assembly and you will find a solemn decree intro- duced by Jean de Brie, one of the members, for organising a corps of assassins, to be called the Twelve Hundred Tyrannicides, which corps was to be made up of the greatest villains to be found in their felon dungeons; and this corps were to be bound by an oath to assassinate all the Kings, the Sovereigns, and generals in Europe whom they should judge unfriendly to the equal rights of man. All this is matter of solemn record, nay, more, it will appear from the same official documents that the
224 MEMOIRS OF
machinations of French envoys and emissaries in Denmark. In that country particularly their prin- ciples and licentiousness have found the readiest ad- mission, by means of the liberty of the Press. Until the era of the French Revolution, this liberty, which seemed incompatible with the nature of the Government, had been attended with greater advan- tages than inconveniences ; but, elated by circum-
fifteen southern departments of France actually offered to raise a subscription of 3,000,000 livres to be distributed as rewards to those brave Republicans who should assassinate the principal Sovereigns of Europe. The following is the proportion in which the Assemby voted the reward : To assassinating the
Livres. Emperor of Germany .... 400,000
King of Prussia ..... 400,000
Duke of Brunswick .... 400,000
Louis XVIII. ..... 300,000
Count d'Artois ..... 300,000
Prince Conde1 ..... 200,000
Duke de Bourbon .... 200,000
Marshall Bouill6 ..... 200,000
Duke de Broglio ..... 100,000
Monsieur Calonne .... 30,000
and other sums for all distinguished personages. After this, surely, we think it ill becomes the rulers of France to talk about detesting a Government that blushes not to employ assassination as legitimate expedients of policy ; France, the only country on earth where assassination was publicly sanctioned by law. We mean not to advance any sort of palliation for the conduct of Mr. Drake, the British minister at Munich, allowing it to be correctly stated; but we think an ordinary share of discretion would have prevented the American ambassador, the minister
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stances, and protected by the revolutionary ministers of France ^at Copenhagen and Hamburg, it soon engendered a swarm of pamphlets, as disgraceful to reason as derogatory to the salutary principles of public order. The most audacious of these libellers was one Heiberg, who, by ridiculing, abusing, and
of a neutral country, from taking the part in this affair he has done. He undertakes to judge between the parties, although he has only heard one side, and to decide that the charge brought against the British minister — of having engaged in a plot to assassinate the First Consul — has been proved against him. But it appears from Talleyrand's letter itself that Mr. Livingston had only seen printed copies of the letter of Mr. Drake; he, there- fore, has not had even the possibility of detecting a forgery, if one has been committed. Perhaps his veneration and uncommon attachment to the First Consul may have been so great as to render it impossible to entertain a suspicion of this sort ; and yet his recollection might, without any great difficulty, have supplied him with cases showing at least the possibility of such a thing at so very great a distance of time. Whether true or false, Mr. Livingston should have recollected that he represented a nation at peace with England as well as France, and that propriety, good sense, and the laws of nations required of him the strictest neutrality. That this letter is not neutral, but is a very wide departure from it, appears not only in the precipitate condemna- tion pronounced against the English minister, but in a still more explicit and exceptional manner in the close of his letter. In every point of view, Mr. Livingston's conduct must be regarded as indiscreet, improper, and unwarranted by precedent. For our- selves, we see in this business a deep-laid snare of policy, into which the American minister has blundered headlong. Whether his 'actions are to be attributed to the Government he repre- sents, and his conduct to be identified with it,' is a question we leave to be settled between him and Mr. Jefferson."
VOL. II 15
226 MEMOIRS OF
attacking religion and government, at length attracted the attention of the laws, and was prosecuted by the Crown officers. The fear this prosecution excited in him, and his insolence, may be judged by the following letter addressed by him to his protector, Grouvelle, the Minister of the French Republic at Copenhagen, the same person who read the sentence of death to his King, Louis XVI. This letter, as well as this minister's answer, deserve a place in a work where the plots and dangers of Talleyrand's revolutionary diplomacy are intended to be exposed:
"COPENHAGEN, 24 Ventose, Year VII. "of the French Republic.
•'CITIZEN, — At length the die is cast. I am cited before the Court to be punished, according to what the King's solicitor says, for the crime of high treason ! Never fear, I beseech you ! a solicitor does as the Jew boys do who go about the streets selling sealing- wax ; they ask sixpence a stick, and take twopence. I intend to plead my cause myself. I shall engage no counsel, but I shall find a lawyer to attend to the legal forms. In the first place, I shall dispute upon these forms with the Court, and upon some expres- sions, although I have given such offence in proving that I know my own tongue. In time you shall be
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informed o\ the issue of this business; and you shall see that I won't flinch. Let them persecute me, with all my heart; but I will compel my persecutors to esteem me.
" But this is not what I wanted to say to you. You know that for some time past some people have amused themselves with circulating reports equally injurious to you and me. Some notice, in my opinion, ought to be taken of them even in despising them ; however, I think that the humiliating idea which had been formed, I know not how, of my in- tention to rely on some support foreign to my country and my cause, is now pretty well removed. Nobody knows better than you the falsity of that assertion ; and I believe you are well assured that all the protec- tion I ever required is that of my innocence, of reason and of justice. I see very well there is a show of inclination to grant me the last of these ; and, how- ever dependent justice may now be amongst us, I do not fear it, especially as I am well convinced that the business may be of some advantage to the public.
" This is the reason of my not having seen you before. I repeat, I fear nothing for myself; but one ought not to commit one's friends in any manner whatever. I respect the innocent motives of others
*— 2
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as if they were my own ; and those very motives will also still make me abstain from the pleasure of seeing you, till you shall yourself be of opinion that an in- terview could not be injurious to your own interests or to those of the great Republic you represent.
" Give me joy ! I am happy to find that my wife approves my conduct. She has sufficient strength of mind to prefer that I should become a sacrifice to my principles and the good cause, rather than see me stoop through fear or meanness. You may now easily guess the reason of her not returning the visit the owes. She charges me, and I charge you in re- turn, with a thousand compliments to the female Citizen Grouvelle, and a thousand apologies ! I beg you to assure your amiable wife of my respectful attachment to her, which nothing equals but that which I shall always have for you.
'* Health and friendship,
"P. A. HEIBBRG. " Copenhagen, 12th March, 1799."
THE ANSWER.
" To Citizen Grouvelle, Minister of the French Republic.
"M. HEIBERG, — The information you give me, sir, surprises and grieves me. How can you have
TALLEYRAND 22Q
been involved in so serious a prosecution ? I have but an imperfect idea of the affair, as I scarcely understand what I read in Danish. But if I am little acquainted with your language, / am well ac- quainted with your sentiments; and, as nobody denies you the talent of expressing your ideas, I am per- suaded you have written nothing really criminal.
" I have not the least notion of the law of this country relative to Ugh treason, but I know the law on the liberty of the Press; and I do not suppose the one contradictory to the other. At Athens, the Areopagus considered it as a duty, every year, to purge the code of all kind of clashing in the laws, as a scandal to the good sense and sincerity of the Legislature. The Danish legislators, who knew them both, cannot have neglected this duty.
" I know, too, that the accusation de majestate is an instrument of terror, which the Trajans and Marcus Aureliuses did themselves the honour to leave dormant. They understood the majesty of the State by that term, and not the dignity of the Governor ; still further were they from believing that either that majesty or that dignity could be hurt by fugitive sarcasms.
"Besides, whatever may be the old law on which you are accused, I think that, if it be arbitrary and
230 MEMOIRS OF
vague, it would not be applied to you; and if equitable and exact, its application will be enougn to acquit you.
" Such are the obvious reflections on which I augur a termination in your favour. Your courage, too, as well as your talents, are such as to make your friends easy. Above all, the known virtue of a life, as simple as wise and laborious, is on your side. That alone is such a commentary on all you advance as to preclude malignant interpretations. So useful a citizen is not lightly given up.
" I depend on those real supports of your cause ; I depend on its publicity ; I depend, also, on the equity of your judges. They will be jealous of the abusive mode of legal proof. They will reject the in- sidious jurisprudence that hunts out our past wrongs to poison present grievances. They know that a thousand little errors, ever so well put together, do not make a crime. They will not wrest particular phrases to extort odious meanings from them. They will admit only natural explanations, and countenance only liberal proceedings. They are juries trying a citizen, and not inquisitors trying a heretic.
"As to the reports that have been circulated re- specting my connections with you, and which, as you say, are equally injurious to you and me, I confess that
TALLEYRAND 23!
/
I have paid little attention to them, and, perhaps, too little. But so many absurd things have been said of me, and my character and conduct are such complete answers to them, that I have acquired an invincible indifference to those gossipings. They who could think that I have promised you, and that you had asked of me, any protection whatever, will be soon undeceived, or would not deserve to be so. Most of the people who disseminate such reports do not believe a word of them. There is even every appearance that the authors of these fine inventions are still less your enemies or mine than the enemies of France, which every attempt is made to render odious and suspected here as else- where.
" It is doubtless with this idea, sir, that, being resolved to avoid all that could affect us, you think it proper to discontinue seeing me for a time. I feel all the delicacy of this conduct, and thank you for it, as well for my country as for myself. I yield to you, but with regret, I confess, inclined as I ever am to rebel against the despotism of the 'what will be said?' Although I have not so often enjoyed the advantages of your society as I could have wished, I was very sensible of the value of it. An agreeable company and safe intercourse* are rare
232 MEMOIRS OF
things everywhere. Literary and philosophical con- versations have long been my favourite amusements. With you I could sometimes resume a recreation so salutary to me. I must be deprived of it ; but it is hard, however, that I, who have nothing to do with your trial, should be already punished by it, while you are yet only accused.
" Yes ! I am delighted to congratulate you on the energy with which your wife associates in your principles. I am not surprised at it. Softness does not exclude magnanimity. There is nothing generous of which women are not capable. A National ardour is natural to them, as well as a spring of enthusiasm. So they will always be found by those who do not treat them as children or slaves. Virtue is of no sex. Souls are of both united ; our Revolution, so productive of both public and private calamities, has afforded many admirable instances of this. I have myself had very affecting proofs of it. What would it be with a different education?
" Whatever may happen, sir, my esteem and friendship you have acquired and shall always retain. I could have wished they might have been of service to you ; but I shall console myself with the hope that they will not be injurious to you, which will be something in these days of party prejudices, when
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the best hearts cannot shield themselves from some injustice, nor the wisest heads from some intoxication.
" I am, very cordially yours,
•« P. L. GROUVELLE."»
To complete their impudence, the accused and his diplomatic patron did not keep their correspond- ence a secret. The former inserted it in a paper he published under the title of " Reading for the Public," and he did it with the printed authority of Citizen Grouvelle. What must be the temper of a mon- archical government where a man charged with high treason is thus permitted to correspond with a foreign minister on the fact for which he is prosecuted; to ridicule the public accuser and the laws ; to print this mockery, and to add to it the pedantic witticisms of a regicide Grouvelle on the clash of laws, Marcus Aurelius and Trajan ? Is this public interference of a French minister in a criminal prosecution where the Sovereign is concerned very consistent with that profound respect for the law of nations which Bona- parte and Talleyrand sometimes take into their heads to proclaim ? Where is the Government that would not, twenty years ago, in such a case, have ordered
i Le Voyageur Suisse, page 84 et seq., and the Danish paper
Ldsning for Publicum.
234 MEMOIRS OF
the perfidious envoy to quit the country, or at least "have required his immediate recall ? Would not Bonaparte have commanded, and his minister signed, an order for the instant seizure of the Danish Ambas- sador at Paris — Chevalier Dreyer — had he written a line to Moreau or Pichegru, lately in similar situations in France to that of Heiberg in 1799 in Denmark ? This instance confirms what has been repeated before, that, wherever a legate of France is to be found, there is to be found a fire-ship, round which the factious, the seditious, the opposers of government, perverted heads, corrupted hearts, and vile con- spirators rally. This fire-ship is destined to blow up all ancient thrones, ail former dynasties, and all lawful sovereignties. Every Prince who has ac- knowledged and admitted an envoy selected by Bonaparte, and instructed by Talleyrand, should recollect that this envoy is the natural plotter of his destruction, the sworn enemy of his rank, and the audacious competitor of his authority ; who, if suc- cessful in his mission, will, after causing him to be deposed by rebels, substitute in his place some obscure criminal like his Corsican master. " This is the time," said the secret agents sent by Bonaparte and Talleyrand to engage assassins to poison Louis XVIII., " appointed by the Eternal for a universal
-»L TALLEYRAND 235
change of dynasties over the world; and before ten years not a Prince will reign who was not, ten years before, an 'unnoticed subject. The Emperor of the French can never rule with safety until good fortune and merit have taken place of birthright and pre- rogatives, until all present Sovereigns shall have been dethroned or annihilated, and individuals like himself placed upon their thrones. Do not think," continued they, "that what we promise are the sudden and insignificant sentiments of men imposed upon, or impostors themselves. We are members of Bona- parte's secret police, whose influence extends to all countries, to all ranks; who distribute indemnities among the Germans ; who prepared the death of the Duke of Enghien, the disgrace of Drake, and the elevation of a Parmesan Prince to the throne of Etruria." >
After the above known and avowed facts, ex- tracted from the enormous mass of outrages perpetrated by the guilty usurpers of the French Republic, the following circular note of Talleyrand, addressed to all Bonaparte's accredited emissaries on the Continent, must be supposed by many an act of insanity of the writer, or that he was of opinion
x See "The Revolutionary Plutarch," vol. iii., page 81, in the note of the third edition.
236 MEMOIRS OF
that he wrote to fools, and therefore ran no risk in writing like a madman :
Circular Note front the Minister of Foreign Affairs to all the Agents of His Majesty the Emperor of the French.
(From the Moniteur of November 5th.)
" Aix-la-Chapelle, Sept. 5th, Year XII.
"You must, sir, have observed and known, ac- cording to my instructions at the time of the com- munication of the note of Lord Hawkesbury to the foreign ministers residing in London, the impression which this publication of the strangest maxims of political and social morality could not fail to pro- duce on the mind of the Government with which you reside. I think I ought to return to the subject ; I therefore send, officially, a copy of this note, and expressly charge you, by order of His Majesty, to make it the object of a special conference with the Ministry.
" The project which the English Government has conceived for the last half-century, gradually to abolish the tutelary system of public law, which unites and engages all nations, develops itself with a fearful progression. Will other Governments re- frain from making opposition to such an enterprise till there no longer exists any moral bond which
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may preserve their rights, guarantee their engage- ments, and protect their interests ?
"The Powers of the Continent have seen with what audacity the faith of oaths has been sported with by this Government, and solemn treaties vio- lated even before they were carried into execution. The maritime nations every day experience its tyranny. There no longer exists any theoretical principle of navigation, any written convention, which have not been scandalously violated on every shore and in every sea. Neutral States know that, even in using the rights which still remain to them with the most timid circumspection, they expose themselves to insult, to pillage, and to extermina- tion.
"Those States, in fine, which have the unhappi- ness to be at war, no more rely on any reciprocal principle of moderation and justice. All the bonds existing between them and neutral Powers are broken. Approach to the coasts, and entrance into the ports and islands, though situate at the distance of two hundred leagues from the station of their squadrons, have been prohibited by simple proclamations.
"Thus the English Government has hitherto opposed every Power, according to its particular position — a maxim injurious to its honour, and
238 MEMOIRS OF
subversive of all its rights. It now attacks them all together, and, the more completely to attain its end, directs its blow against morality itself, and, if I may so speak, against the religion of public law.
" In all countries, and in all times, the ministry of diplomatic agents has been held in veneration amongst men.
" Ministers of peace, organs of conciliation, their presence is an augury of wisdom, of justice and of happiness ; they speak and act only to terminate or prevent those fatal differences which divide princes and degrade nations by the passions, murders and miseries which war produces. Such is the object of the diplomatic ministry ; and to the observation of the duties it imposes, and to the generally respectable character of the men who exercise this sacred ministry in Europe, is that quarter of the world in- debted for the glory and happiness it enjoys. But these happy results torment the jealous ambition of the only Government which is interested in the ruin, the disgrace and the servitude of other Governments.
"It wishes diplomatic ministers to be the insti- gators of plots, the agents of disturbances, the directors of secret machinations, vile spies and cowardly conspirators ; it charges them to foment seditions, to excite and pay assassinations ; and it
TALLEYRAND 239
would endeavour to shield this infamous service with the respect and inviolability which are due to the mediators of kings and the pacificators of nations.
" ' Diplomatic ministers,' says Lord Hawkesbury, ' ought not to conspire, in the country in which they reside, against the laws of that country; but they are not subject to the same rules with respect to States to which they are not accredited.' Admirable restriction ! Europe will be filled with conspirators ; yet the defenders of public law will have no right to complain. There will be always some local distance between the chief and his accomplices. The ministers of Lord Hawkesbury will pay the crimes which they will cause to be committed ; but they will have this prudent deference for public morality — that they will not be at once the instigators and witnesses of the fact.
"Such maxims are the height of audacity and hypocrisy. Never have the opinion of Cabinets and the conscience of nations been sported with so shame- lessly. His Majesty the Emperor thinks it is time to put an end to this disastrous train of principles, subversive of all social order.
" You are, in consequence, ordered to declare to the Governments with which you reside, that His Majesty will not acknowledge the English corps
240 MEMOIRS OF
diplomatique in Europe, so long as the British Ministry shall not abstain from charging its ministers with any military agency, and not retain them within the limits of their functions.
" The evils suffered by Europe arise only from this : that it is everywhere believed that we are bound to observe the maxims of moderation and liberality ; which, being just only from reciprocity, are not obligatory except to those who submit to be bound by them. Thus, Governments have as much to suffer from their own justice as from the iniquity of a Ministry which acknowledges no law but its ambi- tion and its caprice.
" The evils of Europe arise, again, from this : that public law is considered under a partial point of view; whereas it has neither life nor force but as a whole. The maritime law, Continental law and the law of nations are not parts of the public law, which may be considered and observed separately. The nation which pretends to introduce arbitrary rules into one of these parts, loses all rights to the privileges of the whole. The systematic infractor of the law of nations places himself out of that law, and renounces every interest founded on the maritime and Con- tinental law.
" His Majesty the Emperor regrets having to order
TALLEYRAND 24!
measures which are an absolute interdiction against a Government ; but all persons who reflect will easily perceive that in this he only acts according to facts. The English Ministry, by the universality of its attacks, has placed the coasts, the isles, the ports, neutral Powers, and commerce in general in a state of interdiction. Recently, in fine, it has proclaimed the prostitution of the Ministry the most sacred and the most indispensable to the tranquillity of the world. His Majesty believes it his duty to call the attention of all Governments, and to inform them that, with- out new measures, taken under the sense of the present danger, all the ancient maxims on which are founded the honour and independence of States must immediately be annihilated.
(Signed) "C. M. TALLEYRAND."
Talleyrand admits that the contents of this note are a "real interdiction pronounced against England"; and he concludes with observing that it is a " new measure." Here, then, Europe finds a Corsican usurper and his apostate minister addressing legitimate Sove- reigns of the Continent, and dictating to their Govern- ments in the same style they might be supposed to speak to so many French prefects, or secret political or police agents. If they are to dictate to foreign
VOL. II 1 6
242 MEMOIRS OF
Courts what ministers they are to receive, and whom to reject ; if they are to have the enlisting and drilling of the whole diplomatic corps of Europe — then they are the lords and masters of the Conti- nent, and emperors, kings, princes and ministers are but their vassals. It cannot be said that this is only an advice given by Talleyrand to foreign Courts, accompanied by a hint that if any English agent whom Bonaparte chooses to suspect or disapprove is admitted by them, he will withdraw his minister from the Court offending : the note will bear no such moderate construction. He would have it con- sidered as a positive decree; and he does not hesitate to assert that he means it should be a " real interdic- tion." That it is not to be a law without a sanction, a mere dead letter without any means of enforcement, he has also clearly shown. His seizure of Sir George Rumbold evinced how he meant to proceed in case any other minister not suiting his fancy should be accredited to any other Power on the Continent. Any such minister, he says, is interdicted all Courts and politically excommunicated from the diplomatic society. He is without the protection of the law of nations, and can derive no respect nor sanctity from his public character. Should not other States resent this new attack against their independence,
-
TALLEYRAND 243
Talleyrand will send his spies to watch, and Bona- parte his myrmidons to carry off, British agents from St. Petersburg or Naples, from Berlin or Con- stantinople, from Vienna or Lisbon, from Stockholm or Madrid, just as their plots or passions dictate ; and in future treaties with Continental Sovereigns, Great Britain must either ask them to procure safe- guards for her ministers from France, or oblige them to deposit in England, previously to the de- parture of her agents for their diplomatic posts, hostages for their safety. Civilised society will then revert to that state of barbarity in which it was during the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries. Besides, the principles here asserted would warrant a variety of monstrous conclusions if there be a single particle of independence upon the Continent, without the boundary of the French territory.1
x " STATE PAPER. "Note Offidelle, envoyee aux Cours etrangires.
"Sa majeste a regu la nouvelle d'une violence sans exemple, commise a Hambourg en la personne du chevalier Rumbold, son ministere aupres du gouvernement de cette ville, lequel a 6te saisi dans sa propre maison pendant la nuit du 25 Octobre, par un detachement de soldats francais. et enlev6 avec les archives de la mission.
"Apres les preuves reiterees que le gouvernement francais a fournies par sa conduite, de son mepris absolu pour toute obli- gation du droit des gens, sa majeste ne peut etre etonnee de
1 6 — 2
244 MEMOIRS OF
This note Talleyrand was ordered by Bonaparte to compose in one of those fits of disappointed rage to which British valour and spirit often expose him. He had, after using the bleeding corse of the Duke of Enghien, and the violated code of the law of nations, as footsteps to ascend a usurped throne, passed three months in shows and theatrical exhibi- tions on the coast with his Army of England, where British cruisers daily insulted or attacked his armada, despised his threats, and challenged his forces; and finally, the British Government, to convince the up-
1'exces d'un pareil outrage sur le territoire d'un e"tat faible et sans defense.
" Mais sa majest6 se doit non seulement a elle-meme et a la ville respectable et infortun^e dont les droits sont le plus im- mediatement attaques, mais elle doit aussi a ses relations avec le reste de 1' Europe, et a la dignite" de toute puissance qui conserve encore le d6sir et les moyens de maintenir son independance, de ne pas differer un instant sa protestation solennelle contre une agression aussi atroce.
" S'il etait possible qu'un pareil attentat devint plus insultant et plus effrayant encore, ce serait bien par 1'explication qu'on apprend y avoir €t6 donnee par le resident fran9ais a Hambourg, savoir : ' Qu'il avait eu lieu a la suite d'un ordre adresse de la part du chef de la police a Paris au commandant des forces fran9aises en Hanovre.'
" Sa majeste s'assure qu'il n'y aura pas sur le continent une puissance qui puisse rester insensible aux suites d'une mesure qui, par son principe et son exemple, menace immediatement toutes les cours qui pourraient se trouver a la portee des armes fran- caises, et qui tend en meme temps a la destruction des droiti
TALLEYRAND 245
start at once of their power and contempt, declared all the ports where armed vessels or unarmed trans- ports owed their safety to the protection of the land batteries in a state of blockade. His rage was somewhat softened when, at Aix-la-Chapelle, he was informed that Francis II. had not only saluted him as an Emperor of the French, but had himself assumed the title of an Emperor of Austria. This unexpected determination was made, according to reports in France, in consequence of an intrigue of
sacre de tout territoire neutre, a 1'extinction des communications usitees entre les 6tats independants, et a I'aneantissement des privileges des ministres diplomatiques, reconnus et respected jusqu'ici dans toutes les siecles et par toutes les nations. "Downing Street, le 5 Novembre, 1804.
TRANSLATION. " Official Note sent to Foreign-Courts.
" His Majesty has received an account of a new and unex- ampled violation committed at Hamburg on the person of Sir George Rumbold, his minister to the Government of that city, who has been seized in his own house on the night of the 25th of October, by a detachment of French soldiers, and carried off with the papers of his mission.
"After the reiterated proofs which the French Government has afforded by its conduct of its absolute contempt of all obliga- tion of the law of nations, His Majesty cannot be astonished at the excess of such an outrage upon the territory of a feeble and defenceless State.
" But His Majesty owes it not only to himself and to the respectable and unfortunate city whose rights are more immediately attacked, but also to his relations with the rest of Europe, and to
246 MEMOIRS OF
Talleyrand with the Cobentzel at Paris, whilst his agent, Champigny, lulled into this revolutionary sleep another Cobentzel at Vienna. Most foreign Powers and people have, however, mistaken the motives which determined the Cabinet of Vienna to advise its Sovereign to make this change in his hereditary title. Everyone must acknowledge that Bonaparte has reason to be proud of the success of his political machinations and intrigues ; that he makes a traffic of every passion of the human heart ; finds out the wants and weaknesses of every Court, of every
the dignity of every Power which still preserves the desire and the means to maintain its independence, not to postpone for a moment his solemn protest against so atrocious an aggression.
" If it were possible that such an attempt could become still more insulting and shocking, it would be done by the explanation which, it is understood, has been given of it by the French Resident at Hamburg, viz. : ' That it took place in pursuance of an order from the chief of police at Paris to the commander of the French forces in Hanover.1
" His Majesty is convinced that there will not be upon the Continent one Power which can remain insensible to the con- sequences of a measure which, from its principle and example, immediately threatens all the Courts which can be found within the reach of the French armies, and which tends at the same time to the destruction of the sacred rights of all neutral territory, to the extinction of t^e usual communications between independent States, and the Annihilation of the privileges of diplomatic ministers, acknowledged and respected hitherto in all ages and by all nations.
" Downing Street, November 5th, 1804."
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potentate, and of every minister; and, by playing upon the common feelings of them all, renders every Power, even in its degradation and fall, subservient to his own gigantic views of ambition and aggran- disement. But this cannot be applied to the assump- tion of the new hereditary dignity by the Emperor of Germany; nor is this measure to be regarded as a studied imitation of the conduct of the up- start self-elected tyrant of France, or as a sanction of his usurpation. Surely there is a sub- stantial and obvious difference between the mere change of a title from King to Emperor, by a lawful, hereditary monarch — without the advancement of any new pretensions, without the exercise of any additional power — and the assumption of a title by a usurper, not only more dignified and elevated than that which he previously enjoyed, but of a
nature totally different, and accompanied with the
v A usurpation 61 a despotic and absolute power, equally
destructive of that limited authority with which the people had entrusted him, and of that Constitution which he was appointed to protect, and which he had sworn to maintain. In the former, therefore, there is neither imitation nor sanction of the latter. It is the interest of Bonaparte, and the plan of Talleyrand, to have it considered in this point of
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view ; but it is to be hoped that their miserable sophistry will not succeed now, as it has done in many other instances, in blinding the judgment of mankind, and in silencing the voice of common sense. The Emperor's motive for the assumption of this new title is to be looked for in the known and selfish intentions of His Prussian Majesty to dispossess the House of Austria of its present dignity as chief of the German Empire, and in the insidious promises of the Cor si can to transfer this dignity to the House of Brandenburg. Francis II. is looking forward to the time when the growing influence of France in the pusillanimous Councils of the Empire will be suc- cessfully exerted in procuring for a Prince, mean enough to be indebted to her interference for the aggrandisement of this name, and the extension of his power, the title of " King of Romans," and his con- sequent elevation to the head of the German Empire; and, unwilling to have an inferior raised above his superior, a monarchy of yesterday placed higher in the regal scale than a Prince descended from a long line of royal and illustrious ancestors who had ruled as Emperors for centuries, was willing to avert the affront of such degradation by leaving to his heir at least an equal title to that which he enjoys himself. This was a natural and a laudable desire, and not the
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offspring of ridiculous pride, puerile ambition, or de- grading and dishonourable imitation.
Although the power of the Emperor of Austria is great, it is not unlimited. He is bound by Con- stitutions, which he has never attempted to violate or change, to govern each of the States of his exten- sive dominions according to laws which for ages have ensured obedience and respect to the Sovereign, and liberty and happiness to the subject, whilst such a mass of political imbecility and profligacy never before disgraced a nation claiming any rank among the civilised States of the globe as the Constitution which proclaimed Bonaparte an Emperor of the French. It is infinitely worse than any of the pre- ceding revolutionary codes, absurd or arbitrary as all of them were. In vain do the friends of national freedom look for that discrimination of power, that definition of duty, that official responsibility, and that legal dependence, without which no political inde- pendence, no public liberty, can possibly exist. These means of security to the subject, these guards of social happiness, these protectors of civil rights are nowhere to be found in the Corsican's Imperial char- ter. It exhibits one rude mass of harsh, disgusting, iron despotism. Through every part of it, in the minutest regulations, as well as the most important
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provisions, nothing is seen but the revolutionary Emperor. In him are virtually united the whole oi the executive, legislative and judicial powers of his mock Republic. Like her, his authority is one and indivisible ; it pervades every part of the body politic. It is subordinate to no laws, restrained by no modi- fications, confined by no limits. His will is absolute; it precludes all deliberation, annihilates all law, and overleaps all forms. The force of magic could not produce more wonderful effects. In short, from the Creation to the present day, in no part of the world has such a systematised code of absolute power been imposed on the people. Despotism has, indeed, existed in various countries, and does still exist in many parts of Asia; but in no country or State has it been before formed into a system, reduced to writing, and divided into sections. Besides, the most absolute or powerful Sovereign of the East would not dare to transgress the rules and precepts of the Alcoran : there is a boun- dary beyond which his authority cannot extend. But where are the moral rules or religious precepts which the sL' m Emperor of the French does not transgress? In the Bible? Napoleon the First does not believe in a God. Where is the boundary that can stop the pro- gress of his tyranny? Certainly the Pope will not be considered as this sacred barrier; that unhappy
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Pontiff, alas! is sunk, by his own weakness, into the lowest state of degradation, and, far from inter- posing obstacles to the will and power of the usurper, has — like the Romish religion, which the Corsican apostate to Christ, as well as to Mahomet, now affects to profess — become his tool and his instru- ment, and, by the sacrilegious act of his coronation, even his accomplice. Public opinion, which has been ever supposed to operate as a moral check upon the most despotic princes, can have no efficacy nor in- fluence upon a man whose known and past enormous crimes must be abhorred, but can never be palliated. It may, indeed, be urged that certain modes and forms of proceeding are prescribed, in judicial cases, by the Constitutional code. But the power assigned Bonaparte renders them all nugatory and impotent. His special tribunals and his conduct constitute the best explanation of their efficacy. He daily, nay hourly, exercises the tyranny of arresting and punish- ing individuals, and of delivering them up to the assassin judges of his special tribunals, for acts not declared to be criminal by any law, without observing any of the constitutional forms, and without even the appearance of any lawful trial. On all these occa- sions his will has been the substitute for law. He has formed the crime, arrested the offender, decided
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on his guilt, and punished him with imprisonment, exile, transportation or death. If, then, the person placed at the head of the Government has a right to treat as a crime an act which no law forbids ; and, by his mandate alone, to deprive any subject of his life or liberty — can it be denied that he is, to all intents and purposes, a despot, or that his power is marked by every attribute and characteristic of tyranny ? What would Britons say if their own beloved Sovereign, whose personal conduct gives him every claim to their respect and love ; who never sold his prisoners of war for slaves to an ally ; who never directed the murder of eight thousand men, women and children in the streets of his capital, nor the destruction of a village and the massacre of its inhabitants, without distinction of age and sex, for daring to resent the brutal insolence of one of his soldiers ; who never presided over a similar slaughter of the subjects of a friendly Power, for presuming to mat*, a vain attempt to defend their lives against enemies who would not allow them to surrender ; who never ordered the murder in cold blood of four thousand five hundred captives who had yielded to his arms, nor the poisoning of seven hundred of his own soldiers, wounded in fighting his battles; who never sent any military banditti in time of peace to
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capture on a neutral, and to butcher on his own, territory, an innocent Prince, whose rank and popu- larity were his only faults ; who never publicly re- nounced his Redeemer and preached atheism, nor ever violated any of his duties to God or man — if he were to usurp and use such a right over their lives or liberty ? Would they not deem him an insupport- able tyrant and themselves most abject slaves? Thus, then, different from the Austrians, practice combines with theory to render the sovereign people of the great nation the most wretched slaves that vegetate on the face of the earth. All the gloomy predictions of the great and ever-to-be-regretted Edmund Burke, which, eloquent as they were, were still less distin- guished for their eloquence than their wisdom, have been completely fulfilled; and the French Revolution — the pretended struggle for liberty — has terminated, as all rebellions ought, in a military despotism — an emperor the despot, the bayonet the minister of his power. For this did the depraved and miserable people of that guilty country murder their lawful Sovereign — just, mild and benignant as he was ! For this did they proscribe their nobility, plunder their clergy, annihilate their laws, destroy the sources of their prosperity, dry up the current of their happiness, subdue the best feelings of their nature, and render
254 MEMOIRS OF
their native land one continued scene of desolation and of blood ! Notwithstanding what Talleyrand's agents insinuate to the contrary, there is nothing in common between the usurpation of Napoleon the First and the lawful change of title of Francis II., any more than between the regicide crimes of the vile slaves of the former and the honourable loyalty of the dutiful subjects of the latter.
Talleyrand's journey with Bonaparte along the banks of the Rhine, and his residence at Aix-la- Chapelle and Mentz, during the summer and autumn of 1804, he called a golden campaign (une campagne d'oy). Besides his usual number of secret agents, four of his principal chefs des bureaux, or under-secretaries, were in his suite. Of these, Mathieu and Hauterive are said to have, by their industry, gained in six weeks, with the consent of Talleyrand, ^"5,000 each, whilst he himself was satisfied with ^"82,000 in cash, and half that sum in diamonds, or other presents, bestowed upon him by some electors for making them kings, by some princes for making them electors, by some counts for making them princes, and by some barons for making them counts. Several free Imperial cities advanced him loans for the continuance of their independence ; whilst some of their neighbouring Princes purchased his promise
TALLEYRAND 255
of having these free Imperial citiqs incorporated with their States, or annexed to their territories, when the final arrangement of the German affairs, or organisation of the German Constitution, has been settled between France, Austria, Russia, and Prussia. His activity and Bonaparte's condescension with some of the German electors caused Austria and Prussia to suspect that the Emperor of the French intrigued to be elected a King of the Romans, and thus add the crown of the Caesars to the sceptre of the Bourbons. Talleyrand, however, soon tranquil- lised them on this subject, by offering at the same time to procure this election to the Grand Duke, son of Francis II., and to Frederic William himself. He only asked in return, from the House of Austria, the Kingdom of Naples for Lucien Bonaparte, and from the House of Brandenburg the electorate of Hanover for Jerome Bonaparte. With the consent of either party was to be connected an immediate offensive and defensive alliance with France. The Cabinet of Vienna declined this proposal without deliberating ; whilst the Cabinet of Berlin calculated and deliberated without either accepting or declining. The immense sums which Talleyrand has plun- dered or extorted have certainly made him one of the richest, if not the richest man in Europe. His
256
MEMOIRS OF
expenses are great, even extravagant, but much be- neath half the interest arising from an enormous capital, daily increasing, deposited under several names in the French, as well as in all foreign Funds. During the year XII., or from the 22nd of Septem- ber, 1803, to the 22nd of September, 1804, he is said to have laid out the following sums :
Livres. For purchases of four national estates of the property
of the ci-devant Clergy ------ j,6oo,ooo
For five patrimonial estates of the returned emigrants 2,150,000 For seven houses or hotels at Paris of the ci-devant
Nobility in France ------- 950,000
For two estates in the Duchy of Holstein, and for one
.- in the Duchy of Mecklenburg ... - 3,260,000 Upon one German county in the circle of Franconia, and upon one German principality in Suabia, ad- vanced nearly their value at the interest of one per cent, per month ------ 6,446,000
For two estates bought in England by his agents • 2,241,000 For one estate bought up by his agents in Ireland - 560,000 For one copper-mine and for two iron-mines in Sweden 1,510,000 Fc. the purchase of lands in the United States of
America --------- 833,000
For one estate in Lombardy, one in the Neapolitan and
one in the Papal territory 1,115,000
To his female agents for the importation of females from Italy and Spain for his seraglio in the Rue St. Dominique, Faubourg St. Germain - - 490,000
To ditto for ditto from England and Germany for
ditto ditto - - - - . - - - - 244,000 Expenses for the women in this seraglio ... 560,000 Expenses for his French seraglio in the Faubourg St.
Honore, agents included- • • - - 793,000
TALLEYRAND 257
To Madame de R for the company of her two vres'
daughters during the month Floreal ... 60,000 To ditto for the company of her two nieces during
ditto ----_--.- 24,000
For the entertainment of six young jockeys at Citizen
Gaudry's in the Rue de Lille - - • 21,000
Yearly expense allowed Madame Talleyrand • • 600,000
For his establishment in town yearly - ... 1,200,000
For ditto in the country ...... 400,000
To poor relations ruined by the Revolution - - 6,000
In divers charities ....... 300
The girls imported from foreign countries, as well as those educated under his inspection in France, when he finds their charms faded, or when their novelty is worn off, he disposes of to his agents, or to the members of foreign diplomatic corps all over Europe, as well as to those accredited in France, after being previously instructed by him how to continue his friends though no longer kept as his mistresses. Those who cannot captivate either public ambassadors or secret agents, are transported to the colonies for having attempted to conspire against the State. The seraglios are renewed every year, and their governesses changed once in six months. Every girl who should have the misfortune to find herself pregnant is immediately removed as suspected of in- fidelity. As all the girls at their reception must be under fifteen, the neighbours of Talleyrand's former VOL. ii 17
258 MEMOIRS OF
seraglios supposed them to be boarding-schools for young ladies, until Fouch6's agents informed them of their mistake. He was, therefore, under the necessity of purchasing houses to which were annexed ex- tensive gardens ; so that the girls are no longer permitted to walk out, but are shut up as in a convent. Not to excite suspicions, or give rise to scandal, he has regular chaplains officiating there every Sunday, or holiday, and confessing as often as the consciences of these unfortunate beings demand it. These chaplains are also among his secret agents. They belong to the Constitutional clergy, and serve him, not only by revealing to him the secrets of his seraglios, but those of many others of both sexes to whom they are introduced, whom their hypocrisy deceives, and whom their treachery frequently ruins. It is stated that two of these chaplains are now honourably and devoutly employed by him as confessors to the Queen of Spain and to the Prince of Peace.
Bonaparte is well informed of Talleyrand's private transactions; but the immorality of the minister is inseparable from the immorality of his revolutionary government. Talleyrand's personal profligacy, always connected and interwoven with political intrigues, serves a State ruled by a criminal and supported
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only by crimes. From the mock Emperor himself down to his lowest sub-prefect, no faith is found in religion, nor any esteem shown to virtue. Hardly a man employed by or under the Corsican exists who, with the same means and resources, would cot have led an equally corrupt and vicious life with Talleyrand, whom no French Republican blames but from envy, and whom all are ambitious to imitate from inclination.
The only person whom Talleyrand had most reason to dread is now reconciled to him ; and he no longer quarrels with Fouch6 about "spoils and havoc," but partakes of them with him. This recon- ciliation, it is said, was effected by Madame Bona- parte, in gratitude for ^"50,000 lent her by Talleyrand some few days before the coronation, when she had lost greater sums in gambling than she dared to avow to her husband. These two ministers have since entered into an offensive and defensive treaty against all the other ministers, or courtiers, and are now supposed to govern and plunder France and Europe under the name and authority of Bonaparte. On the day of signature of the treaty, these two revolutionary potentates exchanged, as usual, presents. Talleyrand received from his ally a stiletto, encrusted at the point with the finest Indian poison, a scratch
17 — 2
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of which is sudden death; and four young girls, whom his agents had in vain been hunting for during six months. In return, Fouch6 obtained a perfumed snuff, mixed with the most subtle poison, which lulls to sleep in an instant, and kills in five minutes; and six of his favourite agents, whom his ally had contrived to shut for some months in one of bi9**frivafo Bastilles. Their first united exploit was to cajole Decres, the Minister of Marine, out of £60,000 he intended to lay aside for his private use from two contracts for the navy, but which they, with Bonaparte's permission, disposed of to more honest contractors, to whom they sold a national forest in Belgium, which produced them ^"42,000. They afterwards considered and fell upon the secret- service money in their respective departments. They agreed to propose to their secret agents to wink at their private extortions, in proportion as they con- sented to the reduction of their salaries and private expenses, without diminishing the vigilance and activity of their services. By this regulation some more millions would to a certainty yearly increase their already immense treasury.1
i See Les Nouvelles & la Main, Ventose, year XIII., pages n and 12. In the last page it is stated that the list of Talleyrand's expenses, and the particulars of his treaty with Fouche, were
TALLEYRAND 26l
How easily and extensively these worthies can even rob the usurper himself may be judged from the enormity of the sums, under the appellation of "unforeseen expenses, or expenses during negotia- tions" (frais des negotiations}, which pass through Talleyrand's hands without any other control than his official assertion that they are expended for the State.
FOR YEAR IX.
32,000,000 livres expended in negotiations (four frais des negotiations).
FOR YEAR X.
10,000,000 livres in unforeseen expenses (depenses imprlmus}.
15,500,000 livres expended in negotiations (four frais des negotiations').
FOR YEAR XI.
12,300,000 livres in unforeseen expenses. 17,660,000 livres expended in negotiations.
FOR YEAR XII.
14,000,000 livres in unforeseen expenses. 19,368,075 livres expended in negotiations.
presented in form of a supplication to the Pope, who, not comprehending what they meant, showed them to Cardinal Cambaceres, who made them public.
262 MEMOIRS OP
All these sums are extracted verbatim from the Moniteurs containing the budget of each year. During last year France signed no alliance and negotiated no treaty. The sums stated to be thus employed are, however, greater than those of the preceding years, which made it believed at Paris that Bonaparte, to satisfy his vanity and the expenses it necessitated, had sEared with Talleyrand and Fouche the plunder of the State. To present budgets to the legislators of the French Republic is only to add mockery to fraud and pillage.1
i Les Nouvelhs it la Main contains the following remarks concerning the late coronation and its expenses:
" The expenses of Robespierre's Court were supported by the persons of rank and property in France whom he confined in dungeons or released by the operation of the guillotine. The sultans of the Committee of Public Safety and the pachas of the Directory all glittered in gold and rioted in luxury at the expense of those whom they had reduced to slavery and rags. By whom is the splendour of his present revolutionary Majesty's illustrious throne maintained ? By the free patriotic donations of the free and happy inhabitants of France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and Holland — all indebted to Napoleon the First for the preservation of their liberty and rights, for the respect shown to their independence, for the safety of their pro- perty, and for the augmentation of their wealth and prosperity ? It is true that in most of these countries privileged spies and constitutional gendarmes, in and out of livery, plunder and imprison without interruption, whilst protected gaolers torment, and execu- tioners of honour despatch in permanence ; but it is also true, according to the hypotheses of modern philosophers and the calcu-
TALLEYRAND 263
Talleyrand's table is esteemed by the French gluttons and sensualists, and by those who pretend to be connoisseurs in cookery, or amateurs in sensual debauchery, who have passed their lives in inventing or studying the refinements of gratifying their palates as the best and best regulated at Paris. Every pro- duction of every country, of every climate, either esteemed delicious, valued as rare, regarded as fan-
lations of modern metaphysicians, that the wretchedness of millions is often necessary, and, of course, permitted, to procure power and support the usurpation of an individual, though ever so guilty or ever so obscure. As this doctrine is defended by the all-powerful arguments of the bayonet, Frenchmen must subscribe to it and pro- claim that Napoleon is not only the most proper to rule, but that the submissive Continental nations, which bear the yoke with such admirable patience, are the most fit to be the miserable slaves of his most revolutionary Majesty. These observations may be necessary to silence the anti-revolutionary remarks of envious Englishmen, who are still deprived of the blessing of the govern- ment of a revolutionary emperor, and are, therefore, incompetent judges of its invaluable comforts. These difficulties removed, it remains to show to the world that the expenses of one revolutionary coronation ought to surpass those of ten legitimate princes. A revolutionary monarch must keep up armies of spies as well as armies of soldiers, regiments of placemen and battalions of pen- sioners— burdensome, but not useful, to an hereditary Sovereign. The former must elevate his low parents, brothers or sisters, to princes or princesses, enrich his beggarly relatives, and support, by external show and extravagance, the want of internal merit and manners ; whilst the date of the rank, as well as the possessions and domains of the relations of the latter, is lost in archives of ages, and, born to be great and eminent, no artificial lustre is required to make them conspicuous. By the former, a revolutionary nobilitj
264 MEMOIRS OF
ciful, or admired as curious, either fashionable or unseasonable, if money can procure, the agents of his kitchens have carte blanche to purchase. Regular couriers to Marseilles, Cologne, and Dieppe bring fresh sturgeon of the Mediterranean, carp of the Rhine, and turbot of the Channel ; whilst other couriers carry salmon from Holland, venison from Germany, game from Italy, pies from Perigord, fruits
most be created, educated, clothed and fed ; whilst the hereditary nobles of an hereditary prince, with their fortunes as well as with their talents, support and serve the State. With as many rivals as equals by birth or by crime, the former must surround himself and his Courts with satellites, satraps and mutes ; his guards must be a hundred times more numerous than those of the latter — having no equal, fearing no rival, guarded by the hearts, and not by the arms, of his subjects. From these and a thousand other contrasts who shall dare to complain if 200,000,000 of livres, including 10,000,000 to the Pope and 6,000,000 to the Sacred College, are indis- pensable for the coronation of Napoleon I., while the corona- tion of Louis XVI. cost no more than 8,000,000 of livres ? if 192,000,000 were paid by the ancestors of the French during the fourteen centuries the Bourbons reigned, whilst the present race, with their contemporaries, are to pay at once, and en masse, 200,000,000, as the fixed price for a revolutionary emperor of a revolutionary dynasty? But to console even those not consoled by what we have already said, and who love their money more than the elevation of Napoleon, we can announce, from the authority of the revolutionary minister of the revolutionary treasury, that France and Frenchmen are to pay but a small part of the expenses of the coronation. A paper has been cir- culated at Paris, entitled, 'An Authentic List of Sovereigns, Subjects and States who are to contribute to the Expenses of the Coronation of His Imperial Majesty, Napoleon the First,
TALLEYRAND 265
from Switzerland, and mutton from the Ardennes. The most famous wine-merchants travel everywhere to select and buy up the choicest wines and finest liqueurs. His own hot-houses bring forth the most unseasonable, but at the same time the best-flavoured fruits; but neither the mountains of the Alps and the Pyrenees, nor the plains of Italy and Flanders, neither Sicily nor Russia, are left unsearched by his agents for what Nature produces in perfection, or
Emperor of the French.1 It is supposed to have been published by the authority of His Excellency M. Marbois, for the purpose of preventing the discontent which such extravagance is so well calculated to produce. In this list of plunder we find the Princes of the Empire, in gratitude for past, and in hope of future indemnities, are to pay 30,000,000 of livres ; the Hanse Towns, for the preservation of their privileges, and the- increase of their commerce, 20,000,000; the Batavian Republic, for the respect shown to her independence, and the augmentation of her incredible prosperity, 30,000,000; the Helvetic Republic, for her landamman, for her liberty, and for her equality, 10,000,000 ; the Italian Republic, for her majestic president, for her independ- ence, and for her crosses of the Legion of Honour, 30,000,000; the King of Naples, for the invasion of his kingdom in time of peace, 10,000,000; the King of Spain, for the gracious permis- sion of a tributary neutrality, 40,000,000; the Regent of Portu- gal, for the blessing of having only one French ambassador at Lisbon, whilst His Royal Highness has two ambassadors at Paris, 20,000,000; leaving but 20,000,000 to be paid by the great nation for the great coronation of her great revolutionary Emperor — a mere trifle for a great people, so greatly free, so greatly happy, so greatly prosperous, so greatly virtuous, so greatly contented, and so greatly submissive."
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what the artificial wants of the voluptuous and the wealth of the luxurious have suggested and perplexed the ingenuity of the indigent to improve. The ancient Epicurean's sentence, " Ede, libe, lude, post mortem nulla voluptas," even his friends and admirers -have supposed his maxim, and suggested to him as an applicable motto.1
But, extravagant and profligate as he is, his vices might injure France without prejudice to other States had he not incorporated most of the revenues of the Continental Governments to support the extravagance and want of economy of the French revolutionary rulers. In peace, as well as during a war, the products of the industry of other nations are forced to be deposited in the National Treasury of France. Montesquieu has justly observed, " Were one of the Powers of Europe to make war, as the Romans did, at the expense of those whom it vanquished, and draw its resources for war from war itself, it would attain the empire of the world." Talleyrand and Bonaparte have revived those military politics which
i See Le Voyageur Suisse, pages 93 and 94. In a note it is observed that, after the Peace of Luneville, the frequent arrival and departure of Talleyrand's kitchen couriers caused a great deal of conjecture and anxiety to certain neutral ambassadors, who supposed them to be political messengers, who brought, instead of carp or pike, plans of indemnities.
TALLEYRAND 267
morality, the laws of war, the general system, the experience of retaliation, and a strict agreement among civilised people, had long left mouldering on the antiquated rolls of history. Since the decline of the Roman Empire, the invasions made by irregular multitudes were as transitory as those transmigrations of rapid plunderers. Abler to con- quer than to preserve their conquests, after laying a country waste, they abandoned it ; or if, imitating the Visigoths and Normans, they settled on their con- quests, it was in a national body. They spent the fruit of their rapine among the vanquished them- selves, with whom they mingled, and were in time confounded. Till the reign of Louis XIV. the regular armies were neither considerable enough, nor the Princes sufficiently rich, to preserve conquests which lay at any distance. Neither Charles VIII. nor Louis XII. would have been able, like the modern French, to have subjugated Italy from the shores of Nice to the Velino. How were they to subject, to keep, and to extort the riches of a country without exhausting their armies? Dominion was at an end with the retreat of those armies, whose empire rarely extended the scene of the enterprise beyond the scene of the campaign, and some bad fortresses on the out- skirts. If conquests have become more difficult, they
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have also acquired more stability. This is one of the effects of the multiplicity and improvement of fortifications, and of the establishments of great standing armies — a scourge the weight of which, crushing at once nations and governments, has con- verted a revenue into a calamity, has introduced disorder into administration, and ripened the causes of popular revolutions.
Created in the midst of war, and for purposes of war, the military Republic of France, having more soldiers under arms than ever Augustus or Trajan had, extended its limits in order to make room for its supernumerary forces, to draw off the riches of the new territories, and to secure upon them the sub- sistence, pay, arming, and even clothing, of its army. In its turn, the army serves to pillage and preserve these acquisitions. From this double want have proceeded the oppression that supports its revenue, and the military oppression which consumes the con- quered States — oppressions that have been spread over those revolutionary emanations, over those tributary Republics which, instead of pillaging in a common way, Bonaparte and his predecessors have deigned to incorporate with France.
In settling their equestrian colonies, the Romans, with the military yoke, also introduced a generous
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police, wise laws and a creative spirit. But the spirit of the French Republic has not risen above that of a leader of Bedouins. The French Govern- ment differs from those of Egypt and Syria only by its hypocrisy and buffoonery. A committee of public safety, a directory, a consulate, an emperor, senators, legislators, tribunes, prefects, ministers, generals and commissaries, all tend to a central point, that of converting the right of conquest into a right of universal confiscation. No species of pro- perty, public or private, has withstood their rapacity. Whether hostile or neutral, republican or monarchical, every nation whose patience they experience has under- gone a treatment perfectly uniform. The presence of the armies and possession of the fortified towns make it easy to continue extortion ; even rebellion or insur- rection serves but to support it by opening a new door to the rapine of the confiscators.
Revolutionary France counts as many robbers as civil or military governors — of whom not one, was ever punished; not one of the ruffians let loose upon Holland, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Egypt, St. Domingo and Hanover has been even threatened with examination. But France had herself been previously stripped at home. The cause of this is to be traced to the year 1789 ; for, at
270 MEMOIRS OF
the very outset, by Talleyrand's motion for the sale of the property of the clergy, the supreme power patronising robbery, making it practically and theo- retically a law, put itself at the head of the outrages against property; and what it had established sys- tematically and through covetousness, it continued through necessity. It is avarice, and not the charms of the jargon of liberty, which has led, and which will ever lead," the Revolution ; wherever it comes, plunder follows. Rapine was its first object, of which ferocity has been but the means. The French Republic was fostered by robbery and murder, two nurses that will adhere to her to the last hour of her existence.
From Hamburg to Naples, from Ratisbon to Lisbon, the property of all men and of every in- dividual now forms the private capital of men who, like the Bonapartes, ten years ago possessed not a guinea ; or who, like Talleyrand, had debts to pay, but no honour to preserve. Such is the degradation of most Continental nations that they submit peace- ably because they know it is no longer possible to dispute either purse or life otherwise than by means of the sword. No civil or political responsibility restrains the arms of these collective ravishers, who are supported by edicts and by soldiers, by the degeneracy of their country, and their own depravity ;
TALLEYRAND 27!
whilst they rule and intrigue unopposed, in the midst of their individual plenty and of the public want, an irregular and beggared Government, rendered, by its very irregularities and poverty, insatiable and inordi- nate. There is no era in history in which dissipation and plunder can be found to have played so exten- sive a part. A great empire might be raised, en- riched and made to flourish with what the Revolution, the Republic, and war have cost France to brutalise, oppress and impoverish it. From the effects of the clergy, to the very bells of the churches ; not only the plate and jewels, but the very lead and iron on gentlemen's seats ; from the domains of the Crown, to the estates of suspected persons ; from patriotic con- tributions and forced loans, to dry taxes levied by the committees of revolutionary agents of the men in power ; from cash to paper - money — all has been seized, melted and engulfed. The capital of France thus made away with, Bonaparte inheriting, and Talleyrand improving, the crimes and ingenuity of their predecessors, have extended their practice to other parts of Europe, just as a new mine is opened when the old veins are exhausted. Whilst Hanover, the Hanse Towns and Naples are plundered by mili- tary banditti, political satraps lay Spain and Por- tugal under contribution. According to report, during
272 MEMOIRS OP
twenty months' occupation by French troops, Hanover has paid more than the revenue of its Government had amounted to the twenty-five years preceding ; and of the revenue of Spain the half, and of the revenue of Portugal two-thirds have been extorted as tributes for neutrality by Talleyrand's agents. The discretion of Bonaparte's generals and the liberality of Talleyrand's commissaries are the only ooundaries that prevent the total ruin of the neutral Imperial cities, as well as of neutral Naples. Few men have a just notion of the amount of this pillage ; in general, the enormity of it is far from being suspected. In Hanover, not only palaces have been emptied, but cottages stripped. Not only has movable wealth been captured, but what was immovable attacked. French satellites have not only seized the fruits of the earth and the produce of trade, but metals, money, men, forests, and the soil itself. Let those who have any property, of what- ever class, country, society, religion or politics they be, reflect that volumes on volumes might be filled with similar examples, all of public notoriety ; and that, wherever revolutionary Frenchmen penetrate, they will repeat the same enormities.
Amidst the present vortex of unpunished atro- cities and unrewarded virtues ; of audacious and sue-
TALLEYRAND 273
cessful rebellion, and suffering and unpitied loyalty; of usurpation daring everything, and legitimate sove- reignty enduring everything ; of impudence on one part, and weakness or meanness on the other — it may be interesting, if not useful, to remember and consider what Europe was, and would have been, under the reign of Bourbons in France; and what it is, and must continue, under the tyranny of Bonaparte over the French Republic. Before the Revolution Europe was truly what the pedantic, affected and hypo- critical language of the Corsican styles it — a Western family. Even the wars between the different States were merely family quarrels, if the generosity is remembered with which the victor treated the van- quished, and the magnanimity, even upon the field of battle, reciprocally shown and bestowed.
Frenchmen, called by trade or curiosity to Great Britain, were travelling in the midst of hostilities as in the profoundest peace, without impediment in all our islands; whilst British subjects, whom pleasure invited, business called or illness necessitated to undertake a voyage to France, were received in that kingdom with respect and treated with hospitality. No chicanery, no vexation, no trouble of a low, insolent or suspicious police insulted them anywhere ;
because the Sovereign as well as his ministers VOL. ii 18
274 MEMOIRS OF
and governors were gentlemen by sentiment as well as by birth. During war, neutrals brought, without obstacle, to France the productions of British in- dustry and invention, and returned to the ports of England, Scotland and Ireland with the productions of French climes as in the time of peace.
When preliminaries of peace were signed, war was at an end ; and, before their ratification, almost forgotten. In some few weeks all former amicable communications and connections were restored as if uninterrupted. Mutual injuries were repaired, mutual debts paid, mutual property returned, mutual wrongs forgiven, and mutual claims satisfied almost without diplomatic interference. More years of hostilities had often been counted than weeks after their cessation passed over, before a sincere, perfect, national har- mony was re-established, because the subjects of the Bourbons and of the House of Brunswick always reciprocally esteemed each other ; whilst it is impossible for the free subjects of George III. not to despise the degraded slaves of Napoleon I., and these in their turn most naturally envy or hate an honour and a liberty they have made themselves unworthy to enjoy, or which they have proved themselves incapable to maintain.
War between Great Britain and France once
TALLEYRAND 275
terminated, all other States experienced with the reconciled Powers the tranquillity and safety of peace. No agitations for the present, no appre- hensions for futurity! That sacred code of the law of nations and the revered custom of civilised States insured and protected the weak from the pretensions, from the encroachments and from the superiority of the powerful, of the ambitious and of the audacious. Their reciprocal rights and their recip- rocal duties were known, observed, seldom infringed,
(> but never violated without incurring the opposition,
remonstrances, and often chastisements, even of allies. The most insignificant, the most petty prince, and the most destitute, defenceless community, safe under the refreshing and protecting shade of the balance of power of civilised Europe, spoke the language of independence, felt their own con- sequence, and boldly, though justly, resented any attempt of intrusion, any external interference or projected violence as much as the most powerful Monarch or the most wealthy State. All Govern- ments and all Sovereigns were masters of their Con- stitutions, of their religious notions, of their political transactions, of external negotiations, as well as of internal policy. They ruled and regulated, deliberated
and determined, without the interference of imperti-
1 8— 2
276 MEMOIRS OF
nent neighbours, without the intimations of alien counsellors, the influence of strange intriguers, or the dictates of foreign Cabinets. Their mutual agents, their respective Courts, were equally acquainted with the obligations they had to perform and the privileges they could demand. In fulfilling the former they were certain that the latter would be preserved in- violate. Parchments were then of as much con- sequence and value as armies. All violence was
proscribed, all outrages abhorred, and bayonets em-
* ployed only on the field of battle, but were banished
from Courts and excluded by a unanimous consent from all council-chambers. Deliberations were as free as determinations were generally just. All European nations possessed an equal relative independence, and no nation saluted a master, much less bowed to a tyrant, in the chief or ruler of another nation. Such was, and such would have been still, the real and relative situation of the European commonwealth had Providence blessed Frenchmen with a Bourbon for their monarch instead of a Bonaparte for their despot. How dreadfully different this barbarous usurper treated the rights and liberties of indepen- dent Continental nations the following short remarks evince:
Divided between a forced peace and a necessary
TALLEYRAND 277
war, the Continent participates the dangers of both without enjoying the usual advantage of the former, or the chances which result from the latter. What kind of peace is that which excludes the principle on which our independence and tranquillity are founded ? After the thirty years' convulsion in the seventeenth century, which was terminated by the Peace of West- phalia, the public rights of Europe were at last settled by stipulations, in consequence of a long arbitration of Powers, more or less proportionate to each other, and guaranteed by the balance which that solemn transaction preserved among them. At present all balance is overthrown, and every treaty signed with Bonaparte and Talleyrand confirms that overthrow ; for the consequences of them are new usurpations, new spoils, either by arms or by revolu- tionary influence ; yet the cry for peace is everywhere heard. Such is the force of words and habits that many princes, many ministers and many individuals still imagine that they are where they were in 1648 or 1713 ; expect from conventions with the Corsican and his minister the result of those of Munster or of Utrecht, and conceive that all disputes between France and them will vanish the moment honest Talleyrand shall sign the assurance of it.
The distress into which most nations and govern-
278 MEMOIRS OF
ments are plunged by Bonaparte's usurpation, aud- its consequence — the uncertainty of their situation, is an object worthy attention and calling for remedy. Never did the miseries of war appear with so hideous an afepect, nor the dangers of peace more manifest. No State, in negotiating or purchasing its reconciliation with revolutionary France, can determine whether there be less risk in braving the hatred or in solicit- ing the friendship of the revolutionary Emperor. The effects of the latter are no longer problematical. Everyone knows what it costs, and must cost, to enter into terms with a usurper who oppresses full as much by his treaties as by his arms, and who never granted nor grants peace but with a view to falling upon his enemies the moment he has disarmed or disorganised them.
What have the pacific Powers, or those that have been made pacific, gained by their desertion of the general cause ? If there be one that merited any consideration, it was the King of Sardinia. By de- livering up to Bonaparte his fortresses, his country, his security, he delivered up Italy. He surrendered at discretion, put himself, his throne and family under the protection of the honour of the conqueror, trusting in the faith of a treaty signed upon the ruins of his ramparts, by which his sovereignty was
TALLEYRAND 27Q
stripped of all means of defence. In return, he is a wanderer without a home and without a subject on the Continent. Scarcely had the Pope bought peace at the price of his treasures, his chefs d'ceuvre of the arts, and the third of his territory, when a concordat was put into requisition to execute the same revolu- tionary innovations and scandals in the Church as had already taken place in the State ; and to give the death-blow to the Roman religion, its chief is forced to add blasphemy to degradation by perform- ing the vilest and most impolitic of all acts, the coronation of an assassin and poisoner as an Emperor of one of the most populous nations in Europe !
The Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchies of Parma and Modena, the Republics of Venice, Hel- vetia, Geneva, Genoa and Lucca, notwithstanding the successive contributions to which they so re- peatedly submitted, and their numberless sacrifices, by which they purchased the suspension of their ruin, exist no more, or only as departments of France. Has the King of Naples obtained more tranquillity or safety by a peace than he would have preserved by continuing in war ? Still is that enemy in his kingdom, whom he believed he should have removed from it. No longer is there any connection between his States and the rest of Italy, demo-
280 MEMOIRS OP .
cratised, enslaved, and under the subjection of in- satiable French banditti ; while the sums which peace has cost him would have maintained numerous armies. Madrid and Lisbon present the same melan- choly picture ; thrones suspended between a revolution daily preparing, an invasion daily threatened, and the burdens of the most shameful tributes.
If from the South one turns towards the North, a disgraceful multitude of German Princes and States is observed exhausting the question, on the means necessary to abridge their precarious existence. It is difficult to conceive a situation more deplorable than that of the German Empire. Disunited, plundered by armies, ruined by treaties, Bonaparte's satellites now cross with impunity, and dispose of with effrontery, the banks of the Rhine and of the Elbe in the same manner as those of the Seine or Loire. Deserted by his co-estates, the Emperor of Germany has been obliged to shelter himself under the same red cap which decorates the head of the sans-culotte Emperor of the French : an impolitic palliation, which, by suspending immediate ruin, has made ultimate destruction almost inevitable.
Prussia — neutral Prussia — does she enjoy anything but an armed truce? Her parade of endless negotia- tion, in which she betrayed her real weakness, as well
TALLEYRAND 28l
SLS her dangerous want of policy, and her camps in Brandenburg, Pomerania, Silesia and Westphalia, answer this question. Her transient calm she owes only to her cruel indifference at the ravages of a tempest rapidly advancing towards her, and which, in a few years, must plunge her artificial power into the same gulf that has swallowed the German Empire, Italy, Holland and Switzerland. Denmark and Sweden have armies on foot. The former had been threatened and insulted in the Moniteur of September, 1803, as the latter was in the same official libel of August, 1804. Both are exclusively indebted for their temporary safety to their distance, and the forces of Great Britain and Russia. What has Russia obtained from her condescensions, her guarantees and from her treaties? Insults, invasions, usurpations and infractions; and, as long as the throne of the Bourbons is occupied by a Corsican usurper, Russia, in common with all other nations, has nothing else to expect.
It is to avoid open war, then, in favour of the Bourbons, and what is immediately connected with so desirable an event, the return of social order and of general safety — it is, then, to perpetuate a dis- astrous breach of connection, that the Continent suffers such an accumulation of insolence and con-
282 MEMOIRS OP
tempt, habituates subjects no longer to fear or respect lawful authority, and allows the edifice of public safety, property and justice to be demolished. Lest they should perish at once by resistance, they perish piecemeal without resisting. In a similar crisis the Romans would have armed with the resolution of victory or death. The primitive Christians would have sung hymns to Providence and flown to martyr- dom. Their successors neither die nor fight, but consent to wait their last hour, and to calendar the days of their existence, like wretches who have re- ceived sentence of execution. This dying convulsion with which the Continent is attacked cannot be of long duration. Either the principal Powers must resume their arms and proclaim Louis XVIII., or it will sink gradually under successive invasions, for which revolutionary pioneers, secret emissaries, and shallow pacificators will clear the way. While it is deciding, every day increases the danger, multiplies obstacles, and diminishes resources. All property, all establishments, all ranks, all legitimate dynasties are in a state of consumptive uncertainty. Industry, trade, the arts, all decay, and civilised society returns with rapid steps to barbarism. Anxiety takes possession of every family, ruin is at their doors, and consternation in their hearts. Un«
TALLEYRAND 283
easiness appears on their countenance, terror disturbs even the enjoyments of selfish frivolity. All senti- ment is painful, and the expression of it restrained. They do not allow themselves to breathe a com- plaint, lest it should be heard on the left bank of the Rhine. Prudence enjoins the sufferance of humili- ations, outrages, and the most disgusting enormities. All their energy consists in hiding their heads, like the ostrich, and in escaping Bonaparte's bayonets and Talleyrand's plots by keeping their faces turned from them. The weight of these revolutionary criminals' merciless oppression is felt from Paris to Stockholm, and from the Danube to the Straits of Gibraltar. Their police may be said to be a spy abroad upon actions and thoughts. It is only to those with whom they are in the strictest intimacy that two-thirds of the inhabitants of the Continent dare avow their horror and their indignation. Such is the deplorable state into which they are thrown that, amidst a hundred daily papers and thousands of daily pamphlets devoted to extenuate the crimes of Bonaparte, and to excuse the perfidy of Talley- rand, to applaud their plans, to vaunt their power, to extol their benevolence, to insult their enemies, to contribute to the success of a universal revolu- tion, not a pen dares to write, nor a press to print,
284 MEMOIRS OF
the complaints of suffering humanity, or the defence of social order.
But let the observer, saddened by the gloom of the interdicted Continent, and scared by its stupor, irresolution and degradation, cross the ocean, and come and contemplate Great Britain. It is not the sea only that separates her from the rest of Europe ; it is, besides, a contrast of conduct worthy of ad- miration. All the fury of Bonaparte, all his efforts, accomplices, victims, battalions, flotillas and robberies ; all the fabrications, calumnies and intrigues of Talley- rand are directed against this point of the globe. They pursue it with the united forces of the revo- lutionary war, and the military resources which they acquire by continued public tyranny, execution, de- population and pillage. They have proscribed Great Britain, as they proscribe a Bourbon, an emigrant, a Batavian director or a Swiss landamman. Their Dutch, Italian, Helvetian and Spanish tributaries have, at the word of command, shut their ports, their stores and their commerce against England. They flattered themselves that they should cut her oft from one end of Europe to the other ; they would set both hemi- spheres on fire, could they but destroy their enemy in the conflagration. And this island has supported, and still with glory supports, the dreadful conflict. Hei
TALLEYRAND 285
dignity and her honour are unsullied as her navy and her army. Her fleets press on every side of this colossus of infamy and corruption, who tramples under his ensanguined feet all who negotiate, pay, fear, serve or caress him. It is amidst an annihilated com- merce, blockaded ports, deserted roads, ships destroyed or flying, that dare no longer visit the ocean but by stealth, that the Sultan and Grand Vizier of the great nation vent their rage and disappointment in knavery and imprecations. While other nations basely address them with prayers, with presents, with conferences and diplomatic flattery, this island despises them, combats them, surmounts danger, prospers, and re- gards no sacrifice that is necessary for its honour or its independence. These gloomy dreams of irresolution, that lethargic depression, that perplexity which tortures the Continent are here unknown ; because our liberty, property, security, repose and hope are not founded upon the faith of treaties digested by Talleyrand and commanded by Bonaparte, but upon our own resources, our own valour, our own patriotism and our own loyalty, and because George III. has not yet saluted Napoleon the First an Emperor of the French. But should ever such a deplorable event take place, Great Britain must be involved in the same disgrace, in the same slavery, in the same misery as the Con-
236 MEMOIRS OP
tinental nations. Then, offensive or defensive, the system of Europe will no longer be in its power. Bonaparte as the head of the Revolution, and Talley- as his worthy deputy, should things be suffered to arrive at that point, will alone decide the common destiny. You shall (they then will be enabled to say) have peace or war as it suits our convenience, ac- cording to the tranquillity or agitation which shall prevail in the interior of the Republic ; according to the obedience of the armies or the state of the National Treasury ; according to the occasion we shall have of diverting the attention of a vain and fickle people with revolutionary fetes which amuse and de- grade them, or with military triumphs which serve at once to enslave and terrify them. Thus must con- tinue the real and relative situation of other States with France until a Bourbon is seated on the throne of his ancestors. It is in vain for Europe to be in peace with the revolutionary Government, for it will never be so with the revolutionary spirit, which is much more independent of the Government than the Government is of it. Should, during a peace, a re- bellion be effected in Great Britain or Ireland, through the means of revolutionary propagators, can anyone imagine that Bonaparte would be willing, or Talley- rand advise him, to oppose it?
TALLEYRAND 287
From a work1 composed by a loyal and able writer, who visited Paris in 1803, is extracted the following character of Talleyrand, and the following particulars of his conduct, all confirming what has been stated in several parts of this publication :
" No Frenchman," it is said, " since Mirabeau was ever so generally and so decidedly stamped with the double character of the utmost moral depravity and the greatest superiority in the faculties of the mind. Mirabeau, though he signalised himself during the Revolution as a statesman and orator, though in full possession of popular favour, still showed great energy and art to establish a constitutional monarchy, for he would have nothing else ; he destroyed himself by his extravagances and profligacy, which soon brought him to the grave, and only the fame of his moral turpitude has outlived him.
" This sensual, pliant Bishop of Autun was, from the beginning of the Revolution, the friend and companion of Mirabeau in all his debaucheries. He, Talleyrand Perigord, descended from one of the most ancient families of France, was the first who resigned his clerical dignity and polluted his noble descent to side with the Tiers Etat when they de-
I See "Bonaparte and the French People under his Con- sulate" (London, 1804), p. 158 et seq.
288 MEMOIRS OP
manded in the National Assembly the equalisation of all Orders, under the direction of Sieyes and Mirabeau. He formed the Secret Committee with Sieyes and eight other members, who drew up the plan of the First Constitution. He was, in con- junction with Mirabeau and Sieyes, the first founder of the Jacobin Club, and afterwards of the new club of Jacobins in 1789. He was the first who proposed the general sale of all clerical property. He main- tained that the Clergy had not the right of secular proprietors, and that it was in the power of Govern- ment to apply their revenues, destined to defray the expenses of public worship, to other purposes. He stood up as a champion against the Clergy and Noblemen of France, who demanded the Roman Catholic religion, the sole reigning one in France. He endeavoured to obtain for Mirabeau, Voltaire and Rousseau the honour of being deposited in the Pantheon, formerly the Church of St. Genevieve. He celebrated Mass on the altar of Liberty, in the Field of Mars, at the grand festival of the Federa- tion. He consecrated the colours of the departments, and called them the sacred banners of liberty. But as soon as the Constitutional party found itself embar- rassed and in a precarious state, he was the first to desert it, and had the art to obtain from the minister
TALLEYRAND 289
a secret mission to England. When he was sent out of that country he sought an asylum with several other emigrants in America. When his name was discovered in those private papers of the King, which were taken from a secret desk, and on which the chief accusations against the unfortunate good monarch were founded, he was put on the list of emigrants by the National Convention. He availed himself of a favourable moment, and induced the very same Convention that had signed his proscription to erase his name from the list, and to reinstate him in all his property. He then returned to France, and was appointed Minister of the Directory which superseded this Convention. Sieyes, who too well knew the episcopal renegade, came into the Directory, and Talleyrand thought proper to retire, loaded with immense riches. An unfortunate honest German was substituted by him to weather the storm which arose during the dreadful epoch of a Directorial commission. He knew how to supplant this man as soon as it was safe to re-enter the Ministry.
" In conjunction with Lucien Bonaparte, his con- fidant and companion in his debaucheries, he had in the meantime, by secret intrigues, plotted the
return of Napoleon Bonaparte from Egypt; he, VOL. ii 19
290 MEMOIRS OP
with the latter, prepared the blow which was to be levelled against Barras, the first promoter of Bona- parte's exaltation, and Sieyes, the old rival of this ex-Bishop : they succeeded. Bonaparte stood at the head as First Consul, and Talleyrand as Principal Minister by his side. What he has done for the last four years, whilst in this important office, is sufficiently notorious ; but it is perhaps less known that, by his example, the most infamous bribery has been introduced into all public offices in France. Bribery was always more frequent there than in any other country, but some forms and decency were still observed. It was necessary, at least, to find out some pretext, if they wished to move the heart of the Minister and his underlings by the grand and universal laxative of feelings. At present there is no need of it. The Minister and his commissary say exactly like the French general and his quarter-master in an enemy's country — * II me faut tant (I must have so much). If you refuse me, you shall have nothing, whatever your right or claim may be.'
"It may also not be so well known abroad as it is at Paris, that it was Talleyrand who chiefly effected the recall of the Noblemen and Clergy. This man, who formerly ordered the seizure of their
TALLEYRAND 2QI
property and thereby prepared their proscription, and who so violently opposed them when they wanted the restoration of the Catholic faith — the only one tolerated in France — now labours himself to that very purpose. He applied even to the Pope for a dis- pensation to marry a woman with whom he had long cohabited, and whom he might have married before, like his other brothers in iniquity. He, the trum- peting advocate of the rights of man, the most ardent combatant against lotteries and all kinds of gambling — he is now the chief instrument of a Government that tramples upon the rights of all men indiscriminately, and draws a very great income from lotteries and licences for public gambling-houses of all kinds. He, the worshipper of Mirabeau, Voltaire and Rousseau, is now the handle of a despot, a sworn enemy to those men; who hates freedom at opinion and strives to annihilate all liberal instruction. He may say again, as he did in his late defence, 'I am Minister for Foreign Affairs, and have nothing to do with the Home Department'; but everyone who has watched him knows very well what he chiefly aims at. Even by the most expensive and sumptuous style in which he lives, he cannot spend his income. He looks upon himself, therefore, with the most purse-proud complacency, and treats every-
19 — 2
2Q2 MEMOIRS OP
body who has to deal with him with arrogance and contempt. Foreigners of the highest rank — nay, even foreign ladies of distinction — must be presented to him in the same manner as to Bonaparte; and he scarcely condescends to speak to them, despatching them sometimes with a hum or a nod. His power over the Chief Consul increases daily, and must increase, as he is the only one who is thoroughly versed in a thousand things which Bonaparte and his nearest attendants know nothing of." l
The public and indecent bribery and corruption mentioned above as introduced in the offices of Bona- parte's other ministers, as well as in that under the direction of Talleyrand, has enriched them all more or less. A parallel has been made in France of what they possessed formerly and what they enjoy at present :
1789. |
1804. |
|
Income |
Supposed |
|
formerly. |
income at |
|
present. |
||
1 |
Livres. |
Livres. |
Talleyrand, whose income could |
not |
|
pay the interest of his debts |
nil |
12,500,000 |
The Minister of War, Berthier |
12,000 |
1,500,000 |
i In the last-mentioned publication it is stated (page 105) that the power of Talleyrand and Cardinal Caprara over Bona- parte became at Paris the subject of a caricature, representing the miserable figure of Talleyrand, with his club feet, seizing both hands of Bonaparte and making him dance, whilst the smiling and simpering Cardinal is playing the fiddle.
TALLEYRAND 293
1789. 1804.
Income Supposed
formerly. income at present.
Livres. Livres.
The Minister of Police, Foucb.61 • nil 3,600.000
The Minister of Marine, Decres - 1,400 900,000
The Minister of Interior, Chaptal - l.ooo 750,000
The Minister of Finance, Gaudin - 600 600,000 The Minister of Justice, the Grand
Judge Regnier .... 500 450,000 The Minister of Public Worship,
Portalis ... . 3,000 200,000
Of the thousands of Bonaparte's public func- tionaries, senators, generals, legislators, tribunes, counsellors of State, prefects, &c., not fifty possessed before the Revolution a revenue of one thousand livres, or ^"42; and at present some enjoy one, two, three, and even five millions of livres yearly income, and none less than one hundred thousand livres (^"4,000). They have all pined in misery, rioted in plunder, and revel now in luxury.8 For a stranger who had known Monarchical, and who visits Repub- lican France, it is not the least striking contrast to observe at the balls, fetes and routs given by Talley- rand and the other members of the revolutionary
1 For other intrigues between Fouch6 and Talleyrand, see the sketches of their lives in " The Revolutionary Plutarch," vol. i.
2 See Le Voyageur Suisse, page 127. Those public functionaries who have commanded armies, or been commissaries or deputies, are all immensely rich.
294 MEMOIRS OF
gentry, the ci-devant Nobility and ladies of the old Court — all ruined — mixed with their former valets, lackeys or chamber-maids, all enriched with their property and elevated at the expense of their rank. But a still more curious sight is the deformed ex- Bishop of Autun, in full regimentals, with a large sabre at his side, presenting, in the Palace of the Tuileries, to a Corsican sans-culottc and apostate, on the same morning the legate from the Pope and the ambassador of the Grand Seignior; the Russian minister of the Greek Church and the Protestant plenipotentiary of Prussia; the representative of the Emperor of Germany and an envoy extraordinary from the Bourbon reigning in Spain.
Because the former Kings of France, Louis XIII., Louis XIV. and Louis XV., made their ministers cardinals, Bonaparte proposed to Talleyrand, in 1802, to procure him the same dignity. He had, however, given his promise to marry his mistress, Madame Grand. When, therefore, this proposal was made, he cunningly answered that those cardinals were prime ministers; that the great Henry IV. had no cardinal for a minister, but a friend in his minister Sully. The same day he obtained the usurper's per- mission to fulfil his engagement with Madame Grand, who shortly afterwards became his wife.
TALLEYRAND 2Q5
The French Revolution has corroborated a general truth which cannot be too much studied by Govern- ments, and that is, that great convulsions in society never originate with the people. Left to themselves, they may act seditiously, plunge into temporary errors, and commit transient excesses. An intoler- able degree of oppression has sometimes excited the sudden rising of a nation ; but never did a popular systematic insurrection, and still less did a total subversion of political order, ever accompany these occasional commotions. Even in the history of the pettiest republic, it is very rare to read of a revo- lution spontaneously undertaken by the people, whose fury is without foresight, whose rebellion is circum- scribed, and whose action is too disorderly to pro- duce anything but an anarchy, of which they soon grow tired. This kind of storm has been known frequently to rise and to subside by an influence of the slightest incident.
A State begins to be in danger when an attempt is made by men of rank and talents, as a Mirabeau and Talleyrand, to move the people by principles and to associate their passions with systems. If it be easy to calm the most turbulent, it is not so to pacify people rendered reasoners and made enthusiasts in their errors. All is lost in republics when orators,
296 MEMOIRS OF
demagogues and factious men make themselves mas- ters of this terrible instrument, shape it, and direct it to the ruin of established institutions. All is lost in monarchies when the great and powerful bodies, and the classes above the people, stimulate their passions, entice them into the execution of their plots, make use of their delirium, flatter their in- terests, and cause them to effect, without their having a suspicion of it, a subversion premeditated by their corruptors. The French Revolution would never have acquired its organised and frightful character if un- principled, ambitious and profligate men among the superior orders of society had not led the people into the path of guilt, and had not trained their under- standings as well as their hands to it. They perverted them by harangues and maxims ; they encouraged them by their example; and while they secured them with impunity, they chained them to a perpetual revolution by the terror of chastisement on the return of order and of the laws.
The end of this farrago of horrors — of popular murders, of prisoners butchered, of palaces reduced to ashes, of houses burnt, of tombs profaned, of pro- perty ravaged, of innocence proscribed, of guilt ele- vated, of hanging, drowning and shooting — is, finally, that the conquering Revolution has destroyed the philo-
TALLEYRAND 2Q7
Revolution. The people now consider their pretended deliverers as hypocritical executioners, and feel horror at a liberty and equality which made their appearance in the pillage of churches, in the most infamous outrages against morals and public opinion, and in the cruellest devastations of every description. They therefore patiently support slavery after licen- tiousness, and submit quietly to tyranny after having suffered so much from anarchy. Talleyrand and other French philosophers and friends of liberty are now happy in securely dragging their existence in the most debased bondage, after having escaped the scaffolds which their conspiracy, in the name of liberty, erected, and the daggers it sharpened sixteen years ago. He and they were then the free subjects of a legitimate and virtuous King ; and he and they are now the most oppressed slaves of the most despicable and barbarous usurper that ever tormented, afflicted, or dishonoured humanity. May the example of France not be lost to other countries, where the ambitious may intrigue, the factious plot, profligacy seduce, or craft delude 1
That Talleyrand would willingly sign the ruin of France were he certain that that of Great Britain would follow, even every Frenchman believes. As long as a revolutionary Government is the plague
2g8 MEMOIRS OF
of France, war is the only security of England. Of this (it cannot be too often repeated) he is well aware, and therefore never ceases to hold out his treacherous olive-branch of peace. The last com- munications from the Continent state that he has again made proposals to the Courts of Vienna and Berlin for a congress of general pacification, where not only the political, but naval balance of power is to be discussed and regulated. Our ministers are too wise and too patriotic to listen to such over- tures, made only to ensnare us or to embroil us with our Continental friends.
It has often been remarked by nice observers that there is a blind impulse which, in times of great events, force men in spite of themselves to the point which they are labouring to avoid, and by the very road they take to run from it. This impulse, which results from the invincible nature of things, is the prime minister of the universe and the executive power of Providence. Its influence has determined most of the great events of the French Revolution, and, pressing upon its leaders full as much as upon its victims, has chained the former to a round of crimes and the latter to a series of errors and inconsistencies. The present war between England and France is a memorable instance of this
TALLEYRAND 299
contradiction given to prudence by natural necessity. Neither Bonaparte's interest, power and threats; Talleyrand's wishes, perfidy and professions ; nor the sincere desire of the British Cabinet to avoid another war, could prevent a rupture.
France must soon be delivered of one of her great criminals, and England of one of her most inveterate foes. By debauchery, intemperance and gluttony, Talleyrand's constitution is entirely broken, and his health destroyed. Neither yearly journeys to the coast for bathing in the sea, nor yearly visits to the mineral springs at Aix-la-Chapelle and Ba- reuge ; neither the prescriptions of the faculty, nor the drugs of quacks, can long prevent a dissolu- tion which continual excesses must hasten. "Da mihi, Domine, mortem justi hujus," said Talleyrand, when he heard last summer that the Senator Fargues had expired suddenly in the arms of his mistress. This is an authentic confession of his present religious as well as moral notions : as he has lived profligate, he prays to die unrepenting.
Nature had bestowed on Talleyrand a first-rate genius. An early entrance into society procured him an early knowledge of mankind, and supplied the improvements others obtain by assiduous applica- tion and by profound meditations. Having, with the
300 MEMOIRS OF
most vicious propensities, the duties of his order as an ecclesiastic to observe, or at least to guard the appearance of them, hypocrisy first became necessary, and afterwards habitual. Club-footed from his birth, he studied to banish the sense of his deformity by insinuating manners, obliging attentions, and an agreeable conversation. Ambitious to please, he ac- quired an easy penetration to discover whether he could ascribe his success to his merit or his rank ; or his miscarriage to want of adroitness on his part, or want of discrimination in his companions. By degrees he accustomed himself to draw acute and accurate con- clusions, more from what he observed in the mind than heard from the discourses or professions of those with whom he associated. Duplicity was then added to hypocrisy, and treachery to both. He carried, therefore, with him into office all the vices, all the qualities, all the habits which in times of trouble, of rebellion, of revolution, make men conspicuous for eminence ; but which, in orderly and regular times, under moral and lawful governments, would make them shunned as dangerous, despised as contemptible, or punished as wicked. The im- morality of his private life accompanied him in his public station. His policy has therefore been fraud; his conferences, deceptions; his negotiations, intrigues;
TALLEYRAND 30!
his agreements, impostures ; his promises, infidelities ; and his treaties, acts to delude the unwary, to dupe the unsuspicious, to crush the weak, to humble ' the elevated, to plunder the rich, to enslave the free, to rule the powerful, and to oppress and tyrannise over them all — the strongest and best guarded State, as well as the most defenceless community, those who confided in his justice or generosity, or those who trusted only to their own valour or re- sources.
Of former French ministers, he possesses the financial abilities of a Sully, the political capacity and duplicity of a Richelieu, the cunning and cupidity of a Mazarin, the commercial knowledge of a Colbert, the insensibility and cruelty of Louvois, the profligacy and depravity of Dubois, the method and perspicuity of Fleury, the penetration of Choiseul, the suppleness of Maurepas, and the activity of Vergennes. Though, from haughtiness, he affects to depend upon his secretaries and inferiors for trans- acting the chief business of his office, nothing escapes his attention. With great facility, he decides in some few hours what has puzzled the com- prehension of others for a week.
Education unfolds talents received from the hand of Nature ; but their adaptation to time, and their
302 MEMOIRS OP
just application to extraordinary junctures, are the work of Reason, cultivated and enlightened by Experience. There were, no doubt, in France great generals, statesmen, and men of genius sixteen years ago ; but they wanted the lesson of adversity, the examples of the triumphs of the Revolution, the secrets of its strength, and the use of the weapons proper to offend or to oppose it.
But of what benefit to civilised society have all Talleyrand's natural and acquired talents been ? What advantage have his contemporaries derived, or can future ages expect, from his high station, mighty influence, decisive transactions, and all- powerful achievements? Have they procured for France liberty and happiness, and other nations tranquillity and safety? Open the map of the world, and not a country is found in which France, under his ministry, has not committed some de- vastation, infringed some treaty, or violated some principle of the law of nations.
Periere mores, jus, decus, pietas, fides; Et, qui redire nescit cum perit, pudor I
SKWXCA.
APPENDIX
LETTERS FROM THE BARONESS DE S
TO M. TALLEYRAND.
(See Vol. I., p. 334.)
" JE n'ai pas pa commencer ma lettre ce matin, j'ltois dans un e"tat qui me mettoit dans 1'impossibilite absolue d'ecrire, et puis je fis un plan que je voulois auparavant exe"cuter, et je 1'ai fait I — les viola de nouveau detruites toutes mes douces esperances de bonheur I J'osois encore une fois me livrer a 1'idee que je pourrai etre heureuse; c'etoit une folie, je devois savoir qu'il ne peut plus exister de bonheur pour moi dans le monde. Je voulois jouir de la paix, du contentement, des plaisirs purs qui ne peuvent etre que la recompense de la vertu. Quelle extrava- gance 1 j'en suis bien punie — et par qui ? Par celui qui avoit fait naitre un espoir trop flateur, par celui qui avoit ranime mon ame abattue, par celui qui je croyois me rendroit ce bonheur perdu depuis longtems, ce calme interieur, cette estime de moi- merne, qui me rendroit enfin tout ce que ma malheureuse destinee m'a fait perdre. Charles, je ne te fais pas de reproches, je n'en ai point a te faire, je suis malheureuse, plus malheureuse que je 1'ai jamais 6ti, mais je n'en prends qu'a moi-meme, au passe" que je ne puis pas aneantir ! Cependant il est vrai si je merite mes peines je ne me"ritois pas tout ce que contient ta lettre; non, Dieu m'est temoin, je ne le meritois pas. Te dire ce que m'a fait e"prouver ta cruelle lettre, non, je ne le puis. J'Stais au comble du bonheur par celle que j'avois recu bier de toi ; je suis a present au comble de la tristesse. Le passe me fait meriter que tu me juge comme tu 1'as fait, le passe me faisoit meriter cette punition affreuse, mais grand Dieu, qui connoit le fond de
T
304 APPENDIX
mon ame, tu sais que 1'amour avoit £ present 6pur6 mon coenr tu sais que j'avois repris plus que jamais le desir ardent d'etre sage et honnete; oui, Dieu salt que par toi, par mon amour vrai, tendre, par mon amour extreme pour toi, j'etois sur le point de redevenir ce que malheureusement j'avois cesse d'etre; par la destinee la plus bizarre, avec une ame faite pour la vertu, je croyois avoir trouve dans 1'amant bien-aim6 un ami tendre et indulgent, qui seroit £ 1'avenir mon guide, qui m'offriroit une main secourable pour me ramener sur le chemin de la vertu • et cette main secourable, helas ! elle-meme pourroit me pousser dans un abime. Pour revenir au bien il faut regagner un peu 1'estime de soi-meme, il falloit, comme tu 1'avois fait, me faire voir que malgr6 mes fautes passees, il y a un fond de bien en moi qui, grace i V amour et & I'amitie, pourroit me rendre capable de reparer le passe — et toi, au contraire, dans ta derniere lettre tu me dis que mon caractere est alt£r6, tu me dis que je ne suis qu'une fern me sensuelle, qui ne peut vivre sans amant, qui n'est guid6 que par son temperament ; tu me dis que j'aime mieux le jeune homme qu'ainsi mon amour pour toi n'est qu'un jeu, que je ne te regarde que comme un objet qui pourra faire oublier au monde ma liaison avec — — . Voili comme tu m'avilis, comme tu me rabaisses, comme tu juges ce sentiment si pur, si vrai, qui m'animoit pour toi. Ah, mon Dieu I avois-je m6rit£ cette peine, cette humiliation ? Vois ce que tu pourrois faire de moi ; c'est par toi que j'ai appris que ma reputation est entierement detruite, mais ton estime, ta bonne opinion de moi, m'en consoloit ; a present, je sais que tu ne m'estimes plus, je sait enfin que personne ne m'estime plus, tu m'a rabaiss6 4 mes propres yeux. Si j'etois cette femme seulement dirig6 par les sens comme tu le crois tu m'auroit ot£ tout le frein qui pourrois me retenir. Meprise'e de tout le monde, mdprisable a mes propres yeux, tu m'exposes au danger de le devenir plus que jamais. Mais non 1 un sentiment me ranime, c'est celui que, malgre' tout le passed je vaux mieux que tu ne pense. Je ne tiens pas aux sens comme tu le crois; j'ai la tete, 1'imagination beau- coup plus ardente, beaucoup plus vive que les sens, et tout ce que j'ai fait a £te beaucoup plus un egarement de tete que des
APPENDIX 305
sens. Mon plus grand defaut est d'avoir an grand desir de plaire; la vanite est pour moi le veritable ecueil que j'aurois a craindre, mais mou amour si vrai, si tendre pour toi, m'en auroit preserve a 1'avenir.
" Pour ce qui regarde le jeune homme, je t'avois parle en detail de ma liaison avec lui, pour ne manquer en rien a la parfaite sincerity que je t'avois promise et que j'ai cru te devoir. Au reste, si j'ai dit que j'avois ete trop facile a lui accorder des favours, j'ai parle des commencemens de notre liason, j'ai eie unie a lui moins pour mon bonheur que pour le sien, je jouirois de le voir si heureux, et c'est cela ce qui sourtout me rendoit un peu trop facile pour lui, mais depuis longtems cette facilite n'existoit plus, et depuis que je t'aime ma liaison avec lui m'a ete un veritable supplice. Je ne savois comment la rompre d'abord tout a fait, sans le rendre bien malheureux, mais je n'ai plus trouv6 un moment de jouissance avec lui, au contraire ; enfin ce qui est bien vrai, c'est que, loin de 1'aimer plus que toi, je sens dans ces cruels momens que je t'aime plus que j'ai jamais aime un etre dans le monde, et qu'en renoncant a toi, je renonce a mon seul bonheur, et cependant — oui cependant — O mon Dieu, je le vois — il faut que je renonce a toi I je le vois avec desespoir, ma main ne le trace qu'en tremblant, mon cceur est serre, mes yeux obscurcis par les larmes — je vois qu'il faut que je renonce a toi, mais ne crois pas que c'est pour appartenir au jeune homme ; non, je renonce aussi 4 lui, et cela n'est pas un sacrifice ; au contraire je ne pourrais plus etre a lui, d'abord apres avoir lu cette lettre fatale, j'ai forme un plan, et je 1'ai execute — j'ai fait venir un m6decin, je lui ai parl£ de mon corps, qui a pris une forme si singuliere depuis mes couches ; ensuite j'ai fait venir le jeune homme, je lui ai dit que le medecin m'avoit donne pour raison de cet accident a mon corps, que les parties intSrieures n'avoient pas repris leur ton, et qu'il seroit a souhaiter pour .moi, que je reste quelque terns sans avoir des enfans ; apres lui avoir dit cela, je lui ai demande comme une recompense de tout ce que j'ai fait pour Ini, comme la preuve d'une veritable tendresse, de renoncer pour quelques terns a des jouissances qui pourroient avoir des suites funestes pour moi. II fut effray£ et triste, mais il ne balanca pas un instant a se resigner a on sacrifice que lui parut si
VOL. ii 20
306 APPENDIX
necessaire par ce que je lui avois dit. Je jure & la face de Dieu, que depuis notre derniere entrevue il ne m'a pas touch6 ; je jure que jamais je ne serai plus pour lui ce que j'ai etc.
"Je ne dis pas cela pour te regagner; non, Charles, je le sens que je renonce au plus grand bonheur, mais comme tu me jugeje ne puis aussi etre desormais que ton amie. Tu me crois d'un temperament qui me rendent les plaisirs de 1'amour un veritable besoin — dans tes bras j'aurois la crainte affreuse que loin que tu puisse croire que tes jouissances te seroient donnas par le veritable amour, tu ne les devoient qu'a mes sens. • Je n'oserois pas le faire voir dans ces momens ni ma tendresse ni mon plaisir, je craindrois trop une conclusion trop humiliante, trop injuste pour moi ; et puis tu ne m'estime pas assez pour me croire vrai. Malgre ce que je t'ai dis et ce que je pourrai te dire, tu ne croira pas que ma liaison avec le jeune homme a cesse, et ces doutes — je ne les supporteroient pas; enfin il faut me resigner a mon sort ; la felicit6 d'un amour vrai, pur, et tendre, n'est plus fait pour moi — trop heureuse si un jour je puis, pour prix de mes peines actuelles, regagner une meilleure opinion de toi. Pour cet hyver, dois-je le passer loin de toi ? O mon Dieu, apres de si douces esperances serois-je si malheureuse ? Vois ce qui fait a present 1'objet de mes desirs, si tu peut con- sentir a ce que je te propose, je serai moins malheureuse; viens ici, mais comme mon ami; ne me quitte pas un seul instant, observe toujours ma conduite ; observe mes moindres actions ; et si pendant tout le terns tu trouve que je ne suis plus a lui, et que de meme je puis rester sans etre a toi, a 1'objet de toute ma tendresse, alors tu finira peut-etre par avouer que je ne suis pas 1'esclave des sens, et je puis encore esperer pour I'avcnir quelque bonheur. Mais si tu ne peux etre avec moi comme ami, alors je ne sais que faire, car je ne dois, je ne puis, je ne veux pas etre ton amante jusqu'au moment ou avec une persuasion intime tu pourra me dire, ' Cordelie, j'etois injuste pour toi, tu n'est pas une creature qui ne tient qu'aux vils plaisirs des sens — tu est de nouveau digne de ma tendresse et de ma confiance.' II s'est trouv£ une occasion pour t'envoyer cette lettre, je n'ai pu attendre le courier: par pitie respond moi, et dit si tu veux
APPENDIX 307
accepter la proposition qui est mon unique espoir. (Je te conjure, respond moi par 1'homme qui t'apport cette lettre.)
" Pourra tu lire cette lettre ? j'ai 6t6 si saisie en 1'ecrivant que I'ecriture est a peine lisible. Adresse ta lettre par le porteur de celle-ci a mon mari, et sois sure que, malgre 1'adresse, personne ne 1'ouvrira que moi."
•• Ce Lundi.
"Je ne voulois pas prendre hier les drogues que le medecin m'avoit ordonne — helas ! me disois-je, a quoi bon tous ces remedes ? la source du mal est dans mon cceur — mais mon mari m'y forca enfin par ses instances reite're'es. Je ne sais si c'est cependant 1'effet de la medecine, ou si le chagrin a cede enfin £ la nature £puisee, j'ai dormi cette nuit quelques heures, et j'ai pu me lever ce matin a mon heure ordinaire, au lieu que hier je fus obligee de raster presque tout le jour au lit. Aujourd'hui en me reVeillant j'etois d'abord toute confuse, je n'avois pas un sentiment distinct de ce qui depuis quelques jours me rend si malheureuse, mais mes tristes id£es, mes cruels souvenirs ne revinrent que trop t6t. O Charles! pourquoi pour prix de ma tendresse pour toi m'a-tu condamne au malheur ? pourquoi te refuse-tu a toi-meme d'etre heureux quand tu pourrois 1'etre ? h^las ! 1'arret que tu a prononce seroit-il irrevocable ? — oui, il Test sans doute ; car, je le repete, il faudroit qu'une puissance celeste te fasse lire dans mon ame, il faudroit qu'elle t'eclaire, qu'elle te fasse distinguer la verit^ du mensonge — toi seul tu ne le peut pas, je ne le sens que trop, tu ne peut savoir quand la malheureuse Cord61ie a 6t6 vrai — peut-etre son artifice te paraitra-t-il la ve'rite', la veiit6 un men- songe. Qu'ai-je fait en Scrivant ces lettres fatales ? O Charles ! pourquoi ce doute, et quand j'etois si vraie, te refusoit-tu a me croire ? pourquoi alors toujours ces dontes cruels qui m'6toient si affligeans ! — tes doutes, tes soupcons vinrent si souvent me troubler dans le sein meme des plaisirs ; dans les momens ou je me sentois la plus heureuse, tu revenois toujours a me les t£moigner, a me dire des phrases qui blessoient cruellement mon cceur : a Stillbeckens, O Dieu ! a Stillbeckens, ou je jouissois d'un si grand bonheur, tu m'a cependant fait verser des larmes ameres ; t'en souviens-tu, cher et
308 APPENDIX
cruel ami ? Je me disois £ moi-meme que nous ne serions jamaia parfaitement heureux si je ne parvenois pas a 1'inspirer une confiance si necessaire en amour et en amitie. Je voulois acheter cette con- fiance a tout prix. Voila ce qui me donna la funeste idee de m'accuser moi-meme, • il ne me croira, me disois-je, que lorsque je m'avouerai coupable, mon apparente sincerite me fera obtenir enfin sa confiance, dont je ne puis me passer.' Cependant je ne pouvois pas me resigner a te laisser croire que je partagerai toujours mes faveurs. Voila pourquoi je te demandois des conseils dont je n'avois que faire — j'aurois dit ensuite, que je les avois suivies, et j'esperois qn'alors, ayant enfin vaincus tes soup?ons par mes aveux, tu aurois fini par me croire pour 1'avenir sincere. J'6tois loin de penser que tu me conseillerois de renoncer a toi. Lorsque je re9us cette lettre qui me montra combien mes calculs avoient etoient faux, comme j 'avois par ce malheureux mensonge detruit tout mon bon- heur, alors j'etois au desespoir — je ne savois plus que dire, qui faire ; dire la ve"rite* ; dire que j 'avois menti en te faisant ces aveux imagi- naires, c'est ce que je n'osois, de crainte que tu prendroit cela pour un nouvel artifice. Encore une fois, pour en eViter 1'apparences, j'en imaginois, je disois avoir dit au jeune homme ce que je lui avois dit depuis longtems; a present et trop tard — je reviens a la ve"rite — mais a present je sais que c'est en vain, je sais que tu ne pourra plus me croire. Surtout en t'e"crivant la seconde de ces deux malheureuses lettres j 'avois le cceur si serre, il me sembloit que je pressentois les suites que ces lettres pourroient avoir. Mais plus j'y pensois, et plus je persistois £ croire que ce seroit le seul moyen de paroitre vraie i tes yeux. C'est ainsi que j'ai fait moi-meme mon malheur — mais je n'en suis pas seule la cause — O Charles ! tes soupcons, ta malheureuse cruelle defiance y a beaucoup de part. Je serois moins de"sesperee si j'e"tois seule a plaindre, mais 6 toi, 6 toi, mon bien-aimee, toi pour lequel aucun sacrifice ne me paroitroit pe"nible, dont j'aimerois assurer le contentement a tout prix, 6 Charles, tu partage 1'horreur de ma destinee ! — et nous pourrions etre si heureux 1 — tout nous favorisoit d'ailleurs ! — avec tout cela — non, avec tout cela je n'ose me livrer a aucun espoir — Que con. tiendra ta lettre de Jeudi ? . . . Charles, je suis plus de sang-
APPENDIX 3Og
froid que hier, je suis toujours triste, malheureuse au-deli de toute expression, mais ce que je dis, et plus encore que hier, dicte par la reflexion, et je persiste & tt dire, si tu ne veux pas m'accorder la derniere faveur que j 'implore de toi, si tu veux me quitter sans m'avoir revu une seule fois, alors oubliant tout ce qui pourroit me retenir, je pars, je te suis en tout lieux, je serai capable d'abandonner mon enfant, mon mari, d'aban- donner tout pour toi ; mais rester sans t'avoir revue, rester toujours livree £ ce desespoir affreux, c'est au-dessus des forces humaines. Dieu sait que je ne le puis. — Charles, Charles, prend pitie de moi, ne m'abandonne pas au malheur, au desespoir, aux remords. O Charles, une femme qui t'aime avec un senti- ment sans bornes, une femme qui n'a d'autre torts avec toi que d'avoir menti par une intention qui n'etoit pas criminelle, merite-t-elle que tu la condamne a un £ternel malheur ? Si c'est ainsi, si 1'arret est irrevocable, prie Dieu alors qu'il finira bien-
tot la triste existence de la malheureuse
" CORDELIB."
" Ce Dimanche.
" TON depart de G est ainsi fix£ : tu vas t'eloigner
de moi, et sans m'avoir revu ! Apres avoir recu cette nouvelle, il est terns que je t'ecrive pour la derniere fois sur un sujet si important pour notre bonheur. II m'en coutera beaucoup d'etre en l'£crivant si calme qu'il est necessaire ; malgr6 tous les efforts que je tache de faire sur moi-meme, la main me tremble, et mes idees se confondent. Charles, je te le repete c'est pour la derniere fois que je tacherai de parler a ton cceur. Si c'est en vain, je me condamne au silence ; je me soumet a mon sort que tu aura decide. Je te prie de lire ce que je vais te dire avec reflexion, de le retire souvent, et de ne pas te presser de prononcer mon arret. Je n'espere cependant rien de cette lettre. Non, non, je n'espere rien; ta resolution est sans doute tout-a-fait inebranlable ; oui, je le vois plus que jamais, tu est decide a rompre ce tendre lien qui nous unissoit, qui nous rendoit si heureux. Je tacherai d'examiner de sangfroid les raisons qui font port6 £ cette funeste resolution. N'est-ce pas
3IO APPENDIX
avant toute chose le bonheur et 1'honneur de Cordelie? Onl. ce sont des motifs si tendres, si honorables, si purs, qui te portent surtout au sacrifice auquel tu t'es resign^ et auquel tu veuz me soumetre. Je les honore ces motifs, mais prends garde, Charles, de n' avoir pas fait un faux calcul, si, en voulant faire mon bonheur, tu me plonge dans un abime; si un jour, malgr£ tes intentions louables, tu aurois les plus cruels reproches i te faire ; si tu aurois pu me rendre une personne heureuse et estimable, et que c'est toi peut-etre qui me condamne au mal- heur, et qui, en voulant me ramener au bien, m'en eloigne peut- etre plus que jamais — prends garde de ne pas me preparer un avenir affreuz. Tes conseils sont excellens, ta morale tres-pure, mais, helas ! je ne puis plus les suivre. Charles 1 Charles 1 une passion violente et invincible me consume. Tu me dis que je dois chercher mon bonheur en remplissant les devoirs d'epouse, d'amante, et de mere. Pour les derniers je les reconnois, je tacherai de les remplir ; mais pour ceux d'epouse et d'amante, il n'y plus des pareils devoirs pour moi — je te le jure, il m'est impossible d'etre an jeune homme, et je n'y vois aucun avan- tage ni pour lui ni pour moi, et s'il y en auroit, mon coeur s'oppose absolument. Je ne sais d'ailleurs quel est le devoir qui me forceroit, malgrl tons ces sentimens de mon coeur, d'etre a lui. Seroit-ce 4 cause de lui? Nous nous convenons trop pen pour le caractere, pour tout enfin. II lui en coutera un moment de renoncer pour jamais & moi, mais il en sera plus heureuz a 1'avenir pour Julie. II n'y a aucun interet de mon enfant qui puisse m'y obliger, de mon enfant qui n'ose meme jamais se douter qu'il est 1'auteur de ses jours ; et pour moi, pour moi en un mot, je ne le pourrois, et si tous les motifs qui peuvent m'en dispenser n'ezistoient pas. Je ne pourrai ainsi pas, comme tu le pense, trouver des consolations et du bonheur dans une union fond£ sur le devoir, car cette union n'ezistera pas. Je resterai ainsi triste et isolee, consumee d'une passion sans bornes, me disant que j 'aurois pu etre si heureuse — 1'ame dechiree par les regrets, par le desirs infructueux — ma jeunesse, ma sante, ma vie, va fletrir — mais ce n'est pas le plus grand malheur auquel ta m'expose, ta me fait courir les risques d'un malheur bien plus
APPENDIX 311
grand. Si pour m'arracher & one situation insupportable, si pour chasser les souvenirs qui me consument, si mon ame ayant perdu le reste de 1'energie que 1'amour heureux lui auroit donne — si. enfin, je risque de redevenir un jour plus meprisable que je n'ai jamais etc — Charles ! ce sera alors ton seul ouvrage. Si, au contraire, j'aurois pu etre & toi, je n'aurois pas ete seulement heureuse, 6 je serai devenue si estimable, que tu aurois pu, malgr£ mes egaremens passes, me trouver digne de toi, c'est alors que j'aurois remplie les devoirs d'epou$e et d'amante avec transport et dans toute leur etendues, 1'amour m'auroit rendu 1'exercice de toutes le vertus si faciles. O mon Dieu ! Charles, ne voudra-tu pas prendre pitie de mo: — tu crois travailler pour mon bonheur, mais tu te trompe, et je suis la victime de cette funeste erreur — ou est-ce pour toi-meme que tu veuz rompre le lien qui nous unissoit ? Me trouve-tu trop indigne de toi, ou ne veux-tu pas courir les risques de partager le bonheur avec un autre ? O Charles, si j'ai et6 indigne de toi, je veux consacrer ma vie entiere & le re'parer. Pardonne, homme genereux, ami tendre et sensible, pardonne le passe, et mit moi en etat de 1'effacer par ma conduite a 1'avenir — pour partager ta Cordelie avec un autre, tu peut t'en persuader, ne me quitte pas en seul instant ; je te jure de rester toujours sous tes yeux quand tu est ici ; des petits voyages, je pourrois les faire avec to! — mon Dieu, tu peux te persuader par toi-meme, ne t'y refuse pas, 6 ne fait pas mon malheur. Ecoute si tu ne peux te re- soudre a passer 1'hyver avec moi, si tu me condamne absolu- ment a ce cruel sacrifice, alors ne met pas le comble £ mon malheur, reste dans quelque endroit qui ne soit pas trop loin d'ici, je te jure que sans ta permission je ne veux pas t'y aller rejoindre; au moins pour le premier ne part pas trop loin, tache de gagner du terns pour reflechir avec plus de calrae ; non, il est impossible que ton ame soit assez tranquille pour que tu puisse parfaitement juger notre situation — si tu te trompe, si tu aurois pu me rendre bonne et heureuse, et que ce sera toi qui fera mon malheur, pourra-tu te le pardonner ? Ce n'est que pour cet hyver — ensuite tu pourroit emmener Cordelie loin d'ici, quels sont les odieux devoirs qui devroient me retenir? — re'ellement je
312 APPENDIX
n'en vois attain, et pour cet hjrver, tu peux done te persuader par ta presence, par ta chere presence, ou n'y auroit-il pas moyen d'e"loigner quand il se porte mieux, pour te tranquilliser parfaite- ment, le jeune homme? — trouve un moyen de me rendre . . ., de me rendre mon bonheur; non, je ne puis vivre sans toi: je fais tous les efforts possibles par moi-meme, mais en vain ; prends garde, je le repete, de ne pas te pr£parer d'e"ternels repentirs.
"Au moins pour dernier bienfait, ne part pas trop loin — je ne le supporterai pas; tu ne pourra pas lire cette lettre, elle te dira plus de ma sante que tout ce que je puis t'en dire — je ne puis pas tenir la plume. Tu me reprochera peut-etre ainsi d'etre malade, tu me dira qu'il est de mon devoir de me menager — helas ! j'en ai la bonne volont6. Dieu sait que je fait mon pos- sible— mais malgre' moi-meme, je suis dans un e"tat affreux : toi seul peut m'en tirer.
"Adieu, Charles, je ne veux plus t'affligir; je finis et pour toujours de te parler de mes peines affreuses — tu ne les apprendra plus par des vaines paroles — tu les apprendra peut-etre un jour par les cruelles suites qu'elles pourroit avoir pour moi — mais je te le jure, je ne t'en parlera plus.
"Adieu, Charles, adieu, tu vas done me quitter — sois heureux — Corddie fera tout pour ne pas troubler ton bonheur — elle ne te parlera plus de son chagrin. Adieu, adieu, mon cher, mon bien- aime, mon tout, adieu, adieu 1"
THE END
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