bering only some ten or a dozen horse, disperse it, carrying heavy loads of merchandise upon their and kill the first consul in a quasi battle. By shoulders. The trusty followers of Georges had this method success was deemed to be certain. found out this path, and had readily enough purGeorges, who was brave, who had some military chased the use of it. To render their secret compretensions, and was unwilling to be considered anmunication with Paris complete, they had estabassassin, required that two of the princes, or at lished a chain of lodging places; some in solitary all events one of them, should accompany him, and farms, some in the chateaux of Norman nobles, thus regain his or their ancestral crown sword in faithful and wary royalists, who rarely left their hand. Is it credible? These men, perverted by abodes. By these means it was easy to pass from exile, flattered themselves that thus to attack the the channel coast right onward to Paris without first consul while surrounded by his guards was once touching upon a high-road or entering an inn. not to assassinate him, but to give him battle! Finally, that there might be the less risk of disThey seemed to be on a par with the gallant Arch-covering this secret way to enemies, it was reduke Charles, combating against General Bona-served for the exclusive use of the most important parte at Tagliamento or at Wagram; or only personages of the party and their immediately folinferior to him as to number of troops! Wretched lowers. The money lavished among some of the sophistry, to which even those who propounded it Norman royalists, whose shelter was thus secured, could have given but half credence, and which the fidelity of others, and, especially, the distance stigmatizes those unfortunate Bourbons, not indeed of this secret track from all frequented roads, renwith a natural perversity, but with a perversity dered imprudences but little to be dreaded, and, acquired amidst the ferocities of civil war, and in for some time, at least, the secret secure. the weariness and misery of exile. There was but one of these men whose part became him, Georges Cadoudal. He was a proficient in these surprises, which he had practised in the forest wilds of Brittany; and now, that he was about to exert his science at the very gates of Paris, he did not fear being degraded into the mere herd of vulgar tools, who are made use of and then disowned or denounced; for he anticipated having princes for his accomplices. He had thus far secured all the dignity which could comport with the part that he was about to play; and he subsequently showed, by his bearing in the presence of his judges, that it was not he who was degraded by these events."

The emigrant actors in the plot, whatever its purpose may have been, proceeded to enter France, by stealth, in successive parties. They were carried over by Captain Wright, whose tragical fate afterwards exposed Napoleon to one of the darkest suspicions that rest upon his name.

All details being thus far arranged, Georges, with a party of Chouans, upon whose fidelity he could rely, set out from London for France. He and his men were armed, like so many highwaymen; and he carried in a belt bills of exchange to the amount of a million. Not for an instant can it be supposed that the French princes, reduced to all sorts of expedients to supply their own wants, could furnish such sums as circulated among the wholesale speculators in conspiracy. Those sums proceeded from the old source, that is to say, from the British treasury,

"An officer of the English royal navy, Captain Wright, a bold and skilful seaman, in command of a light vessel, took on board at Deal or Hastings such emigrants as wished to make the French coast, and landed them at such point in France as they chose. Since the first consul had discovered this, and had caused the coast of Brittany to be more strictly watched than ever, Captain Wright had chosen another track, and landed his passengers upon the coast of Normandy.

"Between Dieppe and Tréport, in the side of the steep cliff of Biville, was a secret passage, formed in a cleft of the rock, and known only to smugglers. A cable, securely fixed to the top of the cliff, descended through this cleft, as far as the surface of the sea. At a certain cry, the concealed wardens of this passage let down the cable, the smugglers seized it, and, by its aid, climbed the precipice, two or three hundred feet in height,

"It was by this route that Georges entered Paris, disembarking from Captain Wright's vessel at the foot of the cliff of Biville on the 21st of August, 1803, at the very time when the first consul was inspecting the coasts. Following the track of the smugglers, and accompanied by some of his most trusty lieutenants, he proceeded from shelter to shelter, till he reached Chaillot, in one of the suburbs of Paris. There a small lodging was prepared for him, whence he could nightly steal forth into Paris, to see his associates, and make all ready to strike the blow for which he had returned to France."

Georges, we are next told, sounded the feelings of the people in La Vendée, and found that no assistance was to be expected from them. Pichegru, following Georges by the same route he had taken, lay concealed in Paris, with M. de Polignac, and some other men of rank; and communicated with his old friend Moreau, who, however, is said to have shown himself averse to the restoration of the dethroned family. The plot, whatever it was, encountered obstacles; and Georges remained in hiding from August, 1803, till January of the next year. Suspicion was awakened, and Napoleon became anxious; but he had removed Fouché from the head of the police, and his new minister, Regnier, served him less efficiently. The first consul had to thank his own sagacity and patience for the discovery of the clue.

"The first consul was still strongly persuaded that the men who had conceived the plan of the infernal machine were still more likely to strike some new blow under existing circumstances; and, struck by some arrests effected in Paris, La Vendée, and Normandy, he said to Murat, then governor of Paris, and to M. Réal, who was at the head of the police: The emigrants are certainly at their old tricks; there have been several arrests; let some of the prisoners be selected and sent before a military commission; and rather than be shot they will tell all that they know.' What we here relate occurred between the 25th and the 30th of January, while interviews were taking place between Pichegru and Moreau, and just as the conspirators were becoming disheartened. The first consul had a list of the arrested individuals laid before him. In this list he discovered some of the agents of Georges, who had preceded or followed him into France, and among them an ex-doctor of the Vendéan armies who had landed in Georges' company in August. After careful consideration

6

Successive arrests were rapidly made, the first lieutenant of Georges being seized, among others, and intimidated into a confession of all he knew, or suspected. Moreau, too, was put in prison; a step which gave rise to insinuations that Napoleon wanted to get rid of a formidable rival; and these insinuations, reaching the ears of the first consul, irritated him much, and helped to tempt him into new severities. One circumstance, in the depositions of the prisoners, worked on his mind with fatal effect.

"These men, unwilling to be deemed assassins, hastened to state that they had returned to Paris in the highest company, including the first nobles of the Bourbon court, especially Messrs. De Polignac and De Rivière; and finally, they most distinctly affirmed, that they were to be headed by a prince, whose arrival they had hourly looked for and that this prince, said to be the Duc De Berry, was to accompany the final disembarkation announced to take place in February.

of the individual cases, the first consul pointed disembarkation was to take place at Biville, he, out five, and said, Either I am greatly mistaken, in fact, being appointed to receive those who were or we shall find these men both able and willing to land. to give us information.' For some time past, no use had been made of the laws formerly enacted for the establishment of military courts; during the peace, the first consul had been desirous to let these laws fall into disuse, but, on the renewal of war, he thought it necessary to call them again into existence; and especially against those spies who entered France to watch the preparations making there against England, and some of whom had consequently been arrested, condemned, and shot. The five individuals, whom the first consul now selected, were sent to trial. Two of them were acquitted; two, being convicted of crimes punishable with death, were condemned to be shot, and suffered that punishment without making any confession, beyond a bold avowal that they had entered France to serve that legitimate king who would speedily become victorious over his republican foes. They also spoke in most hostile terms against the person of the first consul. The fifth of these individuals, whom the first consul had especially pointed out as being likely to make "On that point the depositions were to the a clean breast, declared, when on the way to exe- highest possible degree precise, full, and consistcution, that he had some important information to ent; and the conspiracy grew terribly clear to the give; and he was immediately visited by one of eyes of the first consul. He saw the Comte the most astute and experienced agents of the d'Artois and the Duc de Berry, surrounded by empolice. He confessed everything, declaring that igrants, connected by means of Pichegru with the he had landed at Biville cliff in company with republicans, and maintaining in their service a Georges himself, as far back as the month of Au- horde of mercenaries, whom they proposed to lead gust; that they had made their way through the to his murder by means of an ambush, which they woods, from one hiding-place to another, till they affected to look upon as an honorable and equal reached Paris, with the intention of murdering the battle. Possessed by a kind of fury, the first conconsul, in an attack to be made upon his escort sul had, now, but one wish, the seizure of that by open force; and he pointed out several persons, prince, who was to reach Paris from the cliff of especially inn-keepers, who were in the habit of Biville. The impassioned language in which harboring Chouans. This confession threw a Bonaparte frequently expressed himself against broad and bright light upon the subject. The the Jacobins, subsequent to the affair of the Inferpresence of Georges in Paris was a fact of the nal Machine, was now bestowed exclusively upon utmost possible importance: it was not for any the princes and nobles who could descend to play unimportant attempt that a person so important to such a part. These Bourbons fancy,' he exhis party had lain concealed in the heart of Paris claimed, that they may shed my blood like that with a band of hirelings. The point of disem-of some vile animal; and yet, my blood is quite as barkation at the cliff of Biville was now known; precious as theirs. I will repay them the alarm as also was the existence of a secret road through with which they seek to inspire me. I pardon the woods, and some, at least, of the secret lodg-Moreau the weakness and the errors to which he ings which gave shelter to the conspirators. A is urged by a stupid jealousy; but I will pitilessly most strange accident had revealed a name which shoot the very first of these princes who shall fall put the first consul and the police upon the track into my hands: I will teach them with what sort of some very important circumstances. A short time before the period of which we are writing, a party of Chouans had landed at this same cliff of Biville, and had exchanged shots with the gendarmerie a paper wadding which was found on that occasion, was marked with the name of Troche. This Troche was a watchmaker at Eu; and he had a son, a very young man, employed as a corresponding clerk. This young man was privately arrested and conveyed to Paris, where he was examined and confessed all he knew.

He

of a man they have to deal.' Such was the language to which he was constantly giving utterance during this terrible investigation. He was thoughtful, agitated, threatening; and, what was singular in him, he labored less than usual; for the time, he seemed to have entirely forgotten Boulonge, Brest, and the Texel."

Colonel Savary, with fifty picked police-soldiers, watched Biville Cliff, night and day, for weeks, but all in vain. New measures were taken.

confessed that it was he who had been employed "The first consul, shrinking from no means of to receive the conspirators at the cliff of Biville, attaining his end, resolved to propose a law, the: and had guided them to the first stations at which nature of which will show what opinion was at they were to find shelter; he gave an account of that time held upon the guarantees of individual! those three disembarkations of which we have liberty, now so carefully guarded. A law was: already spoken; viz., that of Georges in August, proposed to the legislative assembly, enacting that and those of December and January, including any person who should shelter Georges, Pichegru,, Pichegru, and Messrs. De Rivière and De Polignac. or any one of sixty of their accomplices, who were He was unacquainted with the name and rank of the persons to whom he had acted as guide; but he was able to say that, early in February, a fourth

mentioned by name, would be punished, not by imprisonment or the galleys, but by DEATH: and whoever should see them, or be aware of 1

hiding-place, and yet fail to denounce them, should the sort of man whom they provoked in attacking be punished with six years' imprisonment. This him that he feared no more to put a Bourbon to fearful law, which commanded, on pain of death, death, than to do the same by the merest scum of the commission of a barbarous act, was passed Chouannerie; that he would, ere long, show the without opposition on the very day of its propo- world that all parties were on a level in his sal." eyes; that whoever provoked him, no matter what their rank, should feel the whole weight of his hand, and that though he had hitherto been the most merciful of men, he would prove that, wher. roused, he could be one of the most terrible. "No one dared urge a contradiction. The conCambacérès; but he gave to his silence that character of disapprobation by which he usually opposed the first consul. M. Fouché, who wished to regain Napoleon's favor, and who, though generally disposed to lenity, was very anxious to embroil the government and the royalists, warmly approved the idea of making an example; and M. Talleyrand, not cruel, indeed, but incapable of opposing power, and possessed to a mischievous extent of a taste for flattering the wishes of those to whom he was attached, M. de Talleyrand, too, argued, with M. Fouché, that too much consideration had already been shown to the royalists; that the lavish kindness shown to them had even excited mischievous doubts in the minds of the revolutionists, and that the time had now come when it was necessary to punish severely, and to punish without exception. With the exception of the consul Cambacérès, every one, either tacitly or in terms, encouraged that anger which needed no encouragement to render it terrible, perhaps even cruel."

It is honorable to the citizens of Paris, that but one of the conspirators was betrayed. This was Pichegru. Georges was discovered soon afterwards and made prisoner, after shooting one of his captors dead on the spot. His deposition tallied sadly with the circumstance which already por-sul Lebrun was silent. So also was the consul tended the most bloody part of the catastrophe.

"Georges was taken to the prefecture of police; his first excitement over, this chieftain of conspirators had recovered the most perfect coolness. He was young and powerful: his shoulders were square, his features full, and rather mild and open than gloomy or ferocious, as they might have been supposed to be, from the part he had acted. On his person were found a dagger, pistols, and sixty thou- | sand francs in gold and bank notes. Examined on the instant, he unhesitatingly told his name, and the object of his presence in Paris. He had arrived, he said, for the purpose of attacking the first consul, not by stealing into his palace with four assassins, but openly, by main force, and fighting in the open country against the consular guard. He was to have acted in conjunction with a French prince, who was to have joined him in France for that purpose, but who had not arrived. Georges was in some sort proud of the new character of this plot, which he with much care distinguished from an assassination. 'But,' it was remarked to him, you sent Saint Rèjant to Paris to prepare the Infernal Machine.'

The crisis rapidly approached. Napoleon's own restless and alarmed activity furnished the last link in the chain of causes which were to prompt him to a crime.

"The first consul, annoyed at not having been able to lay hold of one of those princes who had conspired against his life, now glanced around at the various parts in which they, respectively, had found shelter. One morning, while in his study with Messrs. de Talleyrand and Fouché, he inquired about the various members of that unfortunate family, as pitiable for its errors as for its misfortunes. He was told, in reply, that Louis XVIII. and the Duc d'Angoulème lived at Warsaw; the Comte d'Artois and the Duc de Berry in London, where, also, were the princes of Condé, with the exception of the third, the youngest and most enterprizing of them, the Duc D'Enghien, who lived at Ettenheim, very near Strasburg, in which neighborhood it was that Messrs. Taylor, Smith, and Drake, the English diplomatic agents, busied themselves in fomenting intrigues. The

"Would to Heaven that the first consul had remained contented with the means he already possessed of confounding his enemies! He could have struck awe into them, by inflicting the punishments recognized by our laws; still further, he could have overwhelmed them with confusion for he had obtained abundance of proofs of their guilt. He had in his hands even more than was needed for his safety and reputation. But, as we have already remarked, though he, at this period, was well disposed towards the republicans, the royal-idea that that young prince might make use of the ists had outraged and disgusted him with their ingratitude, and he was resolved that they should feel the full weight of his power. Besides the spirit of revenge, another feeling occupied his heart-a sort of pride. He openly said to all who approached him, that he cared as little, perhaps rather less, for a Bourbon, than for a Moreau or a Pichegru; that these princes entertained a notion that they were inviolate, and that this notion led them to involve in their plots unfortunate men of all ranks, and then to shelter themselves beyond sea; that they were greatly mistaken in putting so much trust in that shelter; and that he should infallibly finish with seizing some one of them, and having him shot to death like a common malefactor; that it was requisite to let these princes feel

bridge of Strasburg, as the Comte d'Artois had intended to make use of Biville Cliff, suddenly flashed across the mind of the first consul; and he determined to send an intelligent sub-officer into that neighborhood to obtain information. There was a sub-officer of gendarmerie, who in his youth had served under the princes of Condé; and he now received orders to assume a disguise, and to proceed to Ettenheim to make inquiries as to the connexions of the young prince, and his way of life. The sub-officer accordingly repaired to Ettenheim. The young prince had lived there some time with a princess of Rohan, to whom he was warmly attached and he divided his time between this attachment and enjoying the pleasures of the chase in the Black Forest. He had been directed

by the British cabinet to repair to the banks of the was announced to his council, and combated, but Rhine, no doubt in anticipation of that movement ineffectually, by Cambacérès alone. A detachof which Messrs. Drake, Smith and Taylor had ment of troops was sent to seize the Duke D'Enheld out ill-founded hopes. This prince expected, ghien and bring him to Paris; another to present then, that he should shortly have to fight against a weak apology to the Grand Duke of Baden, his country-a pitiable task to which he had for whose territory was to be violated. Both detachsome years been accustomed; but nothing proves ments set out five days after the meeting of the that he knew anything about the conspiracy of council. The prince was seized, carried to StrasGeorges everything that is known about him burg, and thence to Paris; where, at the Chatends, on the contrary, to the supposition that he renton gate, his guarded carriage stood from noon was ignorant of it. He often left Ettenheim on till five o'clock on the 20th of March, 1804. It sporting excursions, and sometimes, it was said, was then ordered to the castle of Vincennes. even to go to the theatre at Strasburg. Certain That which ensued is told by M. Thiers with a it is, that these reports had so much of probability brevity not to be wondered at, when adopted by that they induced his father to write to him from one so deeply interested in the fame of his hero. London a letter strictly cautioning him to greater His main purpose would in no way have been proprudence. In the personal suite of the young moted by particulars, tending either to show the prince were certain emigrants, among them a Mar- enormity of the crime, or to excite compassion for quis de Thumery. the victim. The most curious parts of the narrative are those which describe Napoleon's own demeanor. He had passed from the alternate anxiety and rage which had at first possessed him. "At the approach of the moment of this terrible sacrifice, the first consul desired solitude.

"The sub-officer who was sent to make inquiries arrived at Ettenheim in disguise, and made his way even into the very household of the prince, and obtained a whole host of particulars, from which prejudiced judgments might easily draw the most fatal inferences. The young duke was said to be very frequently absent from Ettenheim; sometimes his absence lasted for days, and his journey extended to Strasburg. A person in his suite, who was represented as of far more consequence than he really was, bore a name which the Germans, who gave these particulars to the subofficer, mispronounced in such a way, that it sounded like that of General Dumouriez. The person in question was, in reality, the Marquis de Thumery, of whom we have already made mention; and the sub-officer, misled by the German pronunciation, quite honestly took that name to designate General Dumouriez, and this name he put into the report, written under this unfortunate mistake, and immediately despatched to Paris.

"On the 18th of March, Palm Sunday, he set out for Malmaison, where, better than elsewhere, he could command quietness and solitude. With the exception of the consuls, the ministers, and his brothers, he received no one. For hours together he walked about by himself, giving to his countenance an expression of calmness which he felt not in his heart. Even his inoccupation proves the agitation to which he was a prey; for during a whole week that he staid at Malmaison, he dictated scarcely a single letter-an unique instance of idleness in his active life; and yet, only a few days earlier, all the energies of his mind had been bestowed upon Brest, Boulogne, and the Texel! His wife, who, in common with all his family, was acquainted with the arrest of the prince; his wife, who, unable to help sympathizing with the Bourbons, thought with horror of the shedding of royal blood; his wife, with that foresight of the heart which is peculiar to women, perhaps anticipated that a cruel action would draw down retaliative cruelties upon her husband, her children and herself, and spoke to him several times about the prince, shedding tears as she thought of his destruction, which she feared was resolved upon, though her mind revolted from such a belief. The first consul, who somewhat prided himself upon repressing the movements of his heart, naturally so generous and kind, whatever might be said to the contrary by those who did not know him, the first consul repelled these tearful supplications, of which he feared the effect upon his resolve, and replied to Madame Bonaparte in a homely style, which he strove to render harsh: you are a woman, and know nothing about politics; your proper part is to hold your tongue.'

"This fatal report reached Paris on the morning of the 10th of March. On the previous evening, at night, and on the very morning in question, a no less fatal deposition had been repeatedly made by Leridant, the servant of Georges, and arrested with him. At first this young man had resisted the most pressing interrogations; but at length he spoke out with an apparently complete sincerity; declaring that there was a conspiracy, that a prince was at its head, that this prince either soon would arrive, or had arrived already; and that his own opinion inclined to the latter state of the case, as he had frequently seen, as a visiter of Georges, a young and well-dressed man, of distinguished manners, to whom all seemed to pay great respect. This deposition, repeatedly renewed, and each time with fresh details, was laid before the first consul. The report of the sub-officer of gendarmerie was presented to him at the same time; and the coincidences struck his mind with a most lamentable force. The absences of the Duc After the orders have been described, which D'Enghien from Ettenheim immediately connected were issued to the court-martial held at Vincennes, themselves with the pretended presence of the we are told that M. Réal, a councillor of state young Prince in Paris; and that young man, to employed under the minister of police, had been whom all the conspirators paid so much respect, commanded to examine the prisoner personally, could not be a prince arrived from London, so and endeavor to ascertain what he knew about the strictly as Biville Cliff had been watched. This conspiracy; and it is suggested that, if the interyoung man could be no other than the Duc D'En-view had taken place, the innocence of the prisoner ghein, travelling from Ettenheim to Paris in eight-must have become evident, and the execution and-forty hours, and returning in the same space would not have taken place. But his own earnest of time, after having a brief conference with his request for an interview with the first consul himguilty accomplices.' self was rejected by Savary, who superintended the execution; and Réal and he never met.

Napoleon's decision was formed at once. It

"In the evening, there was a family dinner at Malmaison: all wore serious and saddened countenances, and no one ventured to speak, the first consul himself being as silent as the rest. This silence at length became embarrassing; and, on rising from the table, the first consul himself broke it, addressing himself exclusively to M. de Fontanes, who had just arrived. He was alarmed at the event which was noised throughout Paris; but "It would have been a difficult task, even for he could not express his feelings where he now the ablest and the most firmly established governHe listened chiefly, and replied but little. ment, to maintain a conflict with England. It The first consul, speaking almost without interrup- was easy, it is true, for the first consul to screen tion, and endeavoring to make up for the silence himself from her blows; but it was just as easy for of his company, discoursed upon the princes of all | England to screen herself from his. England and