du Midi de la France, ainsi qu'aux troupes employées à Nice et à Villefranche, qui abandonneront sur-le-champ les drapeaux de l'anarchie, et viendront se réunir à tous les Français fidelles, pour soutenir la cause et les droits de Louis XVII.; laquelle amnistie n'aura cependant lieu que pour les Français égarés qui ont porté les armes contre leur légitime Souverain, en croyant servir la bonne cause, et ne pourra s'appliquer à ceux qui se sont souillés des crimes d'assassinat et de contributions forcées, ni aux instigateurs de pareilles crimes.

"Donné à Toulon, le 4 Septembre 1793, et le premier du Règne de Louis XVII.

"HOOD. LANGARA.

Secrétaires.

"Par ordre des Amiraux respectifs. "Signé, J. M'ARTHUR, et

JOSEF MOSCOW,

The following passport was given to the French ship Le Patriot, Captain Bouvet, and also to the three other ships which carried near 5000 turbulent, and disaffected, seamen from Toulon, to the ports of Brest, Rochfort, and L'Orient:

L. S.

No. X.

"BY the Right Honourable Samuel Lord Hood, Vice Admiral of the Red, and Commander in Chief of his Majesty's ships and vessels employed, and to be employed in the Mediterranean : "Whereas from a convention made between Vice Admiral Trogoffe, and the Committee General of the Sections of Toulon, on the one part, and the seamen belonging to the ports of Brest, L'Orient, and Rochfort on the other part, I have thought proper from the existing circumstances to accede thereto, by granting a safe and free pass to the French two-decked ship called Le Patriot, which ship is to carry a flag of truce for the purpose of transporting those seamen from Toulon to their respective places of abode, and who are to be landed at the port of Brest.

"These are therefore to make known to all whom it may concern, that in pursuance of the aforesaid convention, the said ship Le Patriot hath my free liberty to proceed without molestation as above men tioned; and I request all admirals, captains, and commanders of ships, and vessels, belonging to the nations in amity with Great Britain, and at war with France, to allow the said ship to pass unmolested to the aforesaid port; but should they be found straying from their direct course, and cannot give justifiable reasons for so doing, they are to be detained and considered as prisoners of war.

"Given under my hand and seal, on board his Britannic Majesty's ship Victory, Outer Road of Toulon, this 14th day of September 1793.

SECRET NEGOCIATION agreed upon between the French and Spaniards at Toulon, October 1793.

In Robespierre's Political Testament, a pamphlet translated from the French, published by Rivington, there is an account of the secret negociations carried on under Robespierre's direction, with several of the principal states of Europe, written and signed by his own hand. We have extracted the following curious particulars relative to the secret negociation agreed upon, or at least understood, between the French and Spaniards, at the time the latter were coalesced with the British at Toulon :

"When Toulon was delivered up to the English, fortunately they had not troops to take possession of the place and all its forts; they were therefore obliged to ask assistance from their new allies the Spaniards :-English pride would not however stoop to Spanish command, though the troops of Spain at Toulon were more numerous, and her officers superior, both in rank and abilities, to those of England; and this disdain of foreign authority was increased, when a few weeks after troops from Naples and Piedmont landed to be at the disposal of the English commanders. Spanish haughtiness is as great as English pride; consequently mutual jealousy and disagreement took place between the officers and troops of the two nations. The French government must have been stupid indeed not to take advantage of these differences, but the difficulty lay in finding means of sending instructions; happily the connection of one of our agents at Genoa with a German merchant established at Cadiz,

It is a most extraordinary fact, well authenticated, that through the medium of the same agent at Genoa, the French Directory, as wishing to out-heroở Robespierre in acts of barbarity, actually sold, in the years 1795 and 1796, to

opened a channel for conveying instructions, and what was still more useful, money; and it must be confessed that lucky circumstances much assisted our negociation. The Court of Spain wished to have the French navy sent into Spanish harbours, there to be secured for the son of Louis the XVIth; but the British minister insisted on its either remaining entirely at Toulon, or the greater part to be sent to Gibraltar and England, as the best means of securing it for young Capet, and ensuring to England an indemnification for the vast expence she had been put to by the possession of Toulon. During these negociations between the courts of Madrid and St. James's, news arrived that the English had got possession by treachery of some places in St. Domingo."

[Here Robespierre narrates the arguments employed by his agents to induce the Spaniards to renounce all co-operation with the English, and proceeds thus:]

"Arguments of weight, and especially of golden weight, seldom fail of having some effect: orders were sent to the Spanish commander at St. Domingo not to co-operate with the English, as he had been directed to do some time before, but to conquer what he could for his master; and the Spanish admirals and generals in the Mediterranean had instructions sent them rather to watch than to act with the English.

No farther connection could possibly be formed with the Spaniards until General O'Hara was made prisoner by us*; then, however, by means of a female spy, the Spanish officers at Toulon, still more disgusted by the attempts of the English to humiliate them, gave the French commissaries to understand, that a negociation might be opened between them as soon as a messenger which they had dispatched to Madrid should return. At this time the situation of the republican army was dreadful; it was destitute of every thing necessary to carry on a siege, and the want of wholesome nutriment sent the soldiers by hundreds in a day to the hospital and the grave. But this was not all, a general insurrection was every hour expected to burst out in the department round Toulon, where the people had been worked upon by English emissaries, and it was therefore once determined to withdraw the army from before the town, and retreat to the other side of the Durance, when fortunately the Spanish courier arrived, and every thing was settled between my brother + on our part, and Major S on the other, with respect to Toulon. This

their allies the Spaniards, several thousands of unfortunate Austrian soldiers who had been made prisoners of war, receiving for them at the rate of a dollar a man, and who were absolutely transported to South America, there to work the remainder of their days at the Spanish mines. These facts are corroborated by a letter we have inserted in vol. i. p. 476.

30th November 1793.

+ Robespierre the younger was one of the commissaries attached to the French army before Toulon; Buonaparte at the same time commanded the artillery. Wol, II.

R

sort of a treaty was not signed, and yet I believe few signed treaties were ever better observed, or at least had more endeavours used to make them observed by both parties.

"The Spaniards, in consequence of this agreement, being attacked at an appointed time, fled on all sides, and left the English every where to bite the dust, and particularly at a strong hold called by them Fort Mulgrave, where not one Englishman escaped; for after the retreat of the Spaniards they were surrounded on all sides, and had no quarter given. The ships which the Spaniards were to burn, they did not set fire to; but evacuating, and in the general confusion ordering the Neapolitan and other troops to evacuate those forts which commanded part of the inner harbour, they put it in the power of our troops, not only to have prevented the English from burning the French ships, but also to have destroyed some of the English ships, which were within reach of the forts; but the ignorance of our officers, and the confusion which amidst the darkness of the night prevailed among our soldiers, permitted the English to save their own ships and to burn some of ours. The British ships had, however, more than one escape at this period; conformably to the agreement, the Spaniards were to attempt the destruction of some of them by cutting the cables and blowing up in the harbour some old French men of war laden with gunpowder t. This indeed they did, but too late to cause any damage to the English; and it is in this instance alone we have any reason to complain of the Spaniards; for with respect to the magazines and other places which they were to have burnt, though they did put fire to them to prevent their being suspected by the English, yet it was in such a manner as to be very soon extinguished.

"If the Spaniards kept the agreement on the one side, the French government did the same on the other. Port Vendris, and two forts, were, after a sham fight, delivered up to the Spaniards, who had the satisfaction of being thought victorious over the French at a time when the French were victorious over all other nations at war with them, from the borders of the Rhine to the Mediterranean Sea."

Robespierre is perfectly correct in this, as we are informed from undoubted authority that the French gave no quarter to the English in Fort Mulgrave. Lieutenant Duncan of the artillery, who so eminently distinguished himself afterwards at the siege of Bastia, finding himself left alone, overpowered with numbers, and receiving the thrust of a bayonet in his breast, by a sudden and convulsive exertion disengaged it from his antagonist's musquet, and escaped with it sticking in his body to the beach, being near half a mile distance, and soon after the weapon was drawn out he was so much exhausted by the loss of blood, that he was carried by the surrounding sailors into a boat in a state of insensibility.

+ The Iris and Montreal frigates, containing several thousand barrels of gunpowder, were anchored in the Inner Road of Toulon Harbour; and although, as narrated in the Biographical Memoir of Lord Hood, p. 36, the Spanish admiral had pledged his honour to direct these ships to be scuttled and sunk at their anchorage, yet, with the most diabolical intention, the Spaniards set fire to them and blew them up with a tremendous explosion.

The foregoing extraordinary and curious account of the Secret Negociation agreed upon, or at least understood, between the French and Spaniards, so far as it relates to the affairs of Toulon, has been transmitted to us in so unquestionable a shape, that we think it but justice to the public, as well as the English publisher, to mention, that through the channel of our information we are able to give addi. tional force to the solemn authentication prefixed to the pamphlet published by Mr. Rivington. But in the first place it is incumbent on us to touch briefly on the proofs adduced by the publisher in support of the authenticity of the Secret Negociation contained in the pamphlet alluded to, and from which we made the foregoing interesting extract.

Mr. Vadier, who was the colleague of Robespierre in the Committee of General Safety, and who is well known at the time of Robespierre's fall to have taken a decided part against him, got possession of the private papers of the accused. Soon after it came to his turn to be denounced, and he himself being obliged to fly, carried the papers with him to Switzerland.

M. Le Gout, a native of Switzerland, for a trifling consideration was allowed to transcribe these papers, and having been private secretary to the unfortunate Clermont de Tonnerre in the time of the first National Assembly, had frequent opportunities of seeing the hand. writing of Robespierre, and was perfectly acquainted with it, and has positively sworn to the originals which he transcribed. A copy of his solemn affidavit is annexed to the preface of the pamphlet alluded to, and the original of which, under the seal of the burgo-master at Nienhus, in the neighbourhood of Hamburgh, is in the hands of the publishers.

In confirmation of these proofs, we are assured by the gentleman who has favoured us with this article of information, that during a period of more than two year's residence at Arras in Artois, between the latter end of 1784 and beginning of 1787, he was personally acquainted with Monsieur Le Gout, then a reputable literary cha. racter residing at that place, and who, from being in habits of intimacy with Robespierre, at the same time following the profession of an advocate, must naturally be supposed to be well acquainted with his hand-writing, and which he has, as already mentioned, solemnly sworn to. These testimonials, coming from the channel just mentioned, carry with them such internal evidence of the authenticity of the work alluded to, that with these impressions the public curiosity must be no less excited than gratified in the perusal of the pamphlet entitled ROBESPIERRE'S POLITICAL TESTAMENT, containing an account of all the secret negociations carried on under the direction, of Robespierre with several of the principal states of Europe.

[To be continued.]