Chapter XVIII: Book III: 594 (2)

For the rest, the _Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène_ denies the entreaties for mercy to which Bonaparte is said to have been exposed. The pretended scene of Joséphine on her knees asking for pardon for the Duc d'Enghien, clinging to the skirt of her husband's coat and allowing that inexorable husband to drag her about, is one of those melodramatic inventions with which our latter-day fabulists compose veracious history. Joséphine did not know, on the evening of the 19th of March, that the Duc d'Enghien was to be judged; she only knew that he had been arrested. She had promised Madame de Rémusat to interest herself in the Prince's fate. As this lady was returning to the Malmaison with Joséphine on the evening of the 19th, it was noticed that the future Empress, instead of being preoccupied solely with the perils of the prisoner of Vincennes, frequently put her head to the window of the carriage to look out at a general riding in her suite: a woman's coquetry had carried elsewhere the thought which might have saved the Duc d'Enghien's life. It was not until the 21st of March that Bonaparte said to his wife:

"The Duc d'Enghien has been shot."

These Memoirs of Madame de Rémusat, whom I have known, contained extremely curious details on the inner life of the imperial Court. The author burnt them during the Hundred Days[636], and afterwards wrote them anew: they are now no more than memories reproduced by memories; their colour has faded; but Bonaparte is throughout exposed to the light and judged with impartiality.

Men attached to Napoleon say that he knew of the death of the Duc d'Enghien only after the Prince's execution: this story would seem to derive some value from the anecdote related by the Duc de Rovigo concerning Réal's going to Vincennes, if the anecdote were true[637]. Once the death had taken place through the intrigues of the revolutionary party, Bonaparte recognised the accomplished fact, so as not to irritate men whom he thought powerful: this ingenious explanation is not admissible.

*

[Sidenote: Bonaparte's responsibility.]

Now, to resume these facts, here is what they have proved to me: Bonaparte wished the Duc d'Enghien's death; no one had made that death a condition of his mounting the throne. To suppose this condition is one of the subtleties of the politicians who claim to find occult causes for everything. Nevertheless it is probable that certain compromised persons did not without a certain pleasure see the First Consul sever himself for good from the Bourbons. The Vincennes sentence was an instance of Bonaparte's violent temperament, an outburst of cold anger fed by the reports of his Minister.

M. de Caulaincourt is guilty only of having executed the order for the arrest.

Murat has to reproach himself only with conveying general orders and with not having had the strength to withdraw: he was not at Vincennes during the trial.

The Duc de Rovigo found himself charged with the execution; he probably had secret orders: General Hulin hints as much. What man would have dared to take upon himself to order the execution _forthwith_ of a sentence of death upon the Duc d'Enghien, if he had not acted on an imperative mandate?

As to M. de Talleyrand, priest and nobleman, he inspired and prepared the murder by persistently alarming Bonaparte: he feared the return of the Legitimacy. It would be possible, by collecting what Napoleon said at St. Helena and the letters written by the Bishop of Autun, to prove that the latter took a very great part in the death of the Duc d'Enghien. It would be vain to object that the Minister's light-heartedness, character, and education ought to make him averse to violence, that his corruption ought to take away his energy; it would remain none the less a fact that he persuaded the Consul to the fatal arrest. This arrest of the Duc d'Enghien on the 15th of March was not unknown to M. de Talleyrand: he was in daily communication with Bonaparte and conferred with him; during the interval that elapsed between the arrest and the execution, did M. de Talleyrand, he, the instigating Minister, repent, did he say a single word to the First Consul in favour of the unhappy Prince? It is natural to believe that he applauded the execution of the sentence.

The military commission sentenced the Duc d'Enghien, but with sorrow and repentance.

This, conscientiously, impartially and strictly considered, is the exact part played by each. My fate has been too closely connected with this catastrophe that I should not endeavour to throw light upon its dark places and to lay bare its details. If Bonaparte had not killed the Duc d'Enghien, if he had brought me closer and closer to him (and his inclination prompted him to do so), what would have been the result for me? My literary career would have been ended; I should at one jump have entered the political career, in which I have proved what I could have done by the Spanish War; and I should have become rich and powerful. France might have been the gainer by my association with the Emperor; I should have been the loser. Possibly I might have succeeded in maintaining some ideas of liberty and moderation in the great man's head; but my life, ranking among those which are called happy, would have been deprived of that which has constituted its character and its honour: poverty, strife and independence.

*

Lastly, the principal accused rises after all the others; he brings up the rear of the blood-stained penitents. Suppose that a judge were to have brought up before him "the man named Bonaparte," as the captain-judge-advocate had brought up before him "the man named d'Enghien;" suppose that the minutes of the later examination copied upon the former had been preserved to us; compare and read:

_Asked_: His surname and Christian names?

_Answered_: That his name was Napoleon Bonaparte.

_Asked_: Where he had resided since he had left France?

_Answered_: At the Pyramids, in Berlin, Madrid, Vienna, Moscow, St Helena.

_Asked_: What rank he filled in the army?

_Answered_: Commander in the advance-guard of the armies of God. No other reply issues from the prisoner's lips.

*

[Sidenote: Bonaparte defended.]

The different actors in the tragedy mutually accused each other: Bonaparte alone throws the blame for it upon nobody; he preserves his greatness beneath the weight of malediction; he does not bow his head but stands erect; he exclaims with the stoic, "Pain, I will never admit that thou art an evil!" But that which, in his pride, he refuses to admit to the living he is constrained to confess to the dead. This Prometheus, with the vulture at his breast, who stole the fire from heaven, thought himself superior to all things, and he is compelled to reply to the Duc d'Enghien, whom he has made into dust before his time: the skeleton, the trophy over which he stumbled, questions him and dominates him by a providential dispensation.

Personal attendance and the army, the ante-room and the tent had their representatives at St. Helena: a servant, estimable for his fidelity to the master he had chosen, had come to place himself near Napoleon as an echo at his service. Simplicity repeated the fable, while giving it an accent of sincerity. Bonaparte was "Destiny;" like the latter, he deceived men's fascinated minds in _outward form_, but at the bottom of his impostures this inexorable truth was heard to resound: "I am!" And the universe felt its weight.

The author of the most credited work on St. Helena sets forth the theory which Napoleon invented for the murderer's benefit; the voluntary exile accepts as Gospel truth an homicidal talk, with pretensions to profundity, which would only explain Napoleon's life as he wished to arrange it, and as he contended that it should be written. He left instructions for his neophytes: M. le Comte de Las Cases[638] learnt his lesson without being aware of it; the stupendous captive, wandering along solitary paths, drew his credulous worshipper after him by means of lies, even as Hercules hung men to his mouth by chains of gold.

*

"The first time," says the honest chamberlain, "that I heard Napoleon pronounce the name of the Duc d'Enghien, I turned red with embarrassment. Fortunately I was walking behind him in a narrow path; otherwise, he would certainly have observed my confusion. Nevertheless, when the Emperor for the first time developed the whole of this incident, with all its details and accessories; when he set forth his various motives with his close, luminous, persuasive reasoning, I must confess that the matter seemed to me gradually to assume a new aspect.... The Emperor often resumed this subject, which gave me an opportunity of observing in him certain very pronounced shades of character. I was able on this occasion, and repeatedly, most distinctly to see in him the private individual struggling with the public man, and the natural sentiments of his heart contending against those of his pride and of the dignity of his position. In the confidence of intimacy, he did not show himself indifferent to the unfortunate Prince's fate; but so soon as it became a question of the public, it was quite a different thing. One day, after talking with me of the untimely end and of the youth of this ill-fated man, he concluded by saying:

"'And I have since learnt, my dear fellow, that he was rather in my favour; I have been told that he spoke of me with some admiration; such is retributive justice here below!'

"And the last words were spoken with so much feeling, all the features of his face displayed such harmony with the words that, if he whom Napoleon was pitying had at that moment been in his power, I am quite sure that, whatever his intentions or his acts, he would have been eagerly pardoned.... The Emperor used to consider this matter from two very different points of view: that of common law, or the established rules of justice, and that of the law of nature, or acts of violence...."

[Sidenote: By the Comte de Las Cases.]

"To us, in the intimacy of private conversation, the Emperor
would say that the blame in France might be ascribed to an
excess of zeal in those around him, or to private objects or
mysterious intrigues. He said that he had been precipitately
urged in this affair; that they had as it were taken his mind
unawares, hastened his measures, anticipated their result....

"'Without doubt,' he said, 'if I had been informed in time
of certain particulars concerning the Prince's opinions and
disposition; more still, if I had seen the letter which
he wrote to me and which, God knows for what reason, was
not handed to me until after he was no more, I should most
certainly have pardoned him.'

"It was easy for us to see that it was the Emperor's heart
and nature alone which dictated these words, and that they
were intended only for us; for he would have felt humiliated
to think that any one could for an instant believe that he
was trying to shift the burden from his own shoulders, or
condescending to justify himself; his fear in this respect,
or his susceptibility, was such that, in speaking of it to
strangers, or dictating on this matter for the public, he
confined himself to saying that, if he had known of the
Prince's letter, he would perhaps have pardoned him, in
view of the great political advantages which he could have
derived from it; and when, writing with his own hand his last
thoughts, which he concludes will be recorded in the present
age and reach posterity, he states, with reference to this
subject, which he regards as one of the most delicate for his
memory, that, if it were to be done over again, he would do
it again."

This passage, in so far as the writer is concerned, possesses all the characteristics of the most perfect sincerity; this shines through to the very phrase in which M. le Comte de Las Cases declared that Bonaparte would have eagerly pardoned a man who was not guilty. But the theories of the master are subtleties by aid of which an effort is made to reconcile the irreconcilable. In making the distinction between "common law or established justice, and natural law or the errors of violence," Napoleon seemed to be content with a piece of sophistry which in reality did not content him! He was unable to subject his conscience as he had subjected the world. A weakness natural to superior men and to little men, when they have committed a fault, is to wish to represent it as a work of genius, a vast combination beyond the understanding of the vulgar. Pride says those things, and folly believes them. Bonaparte doubtless regarded as the mark of the ruling mind the sentence which he delivered in his great man's compunction: "My dear fellow, such is retributive justice here below!" O truly philosophical emotion! What impartiality! How well it justifies, by laying it to the charge of destiny, the evil which has sprung from ourselves! A man nowadays thinks it an all-sufficient excuse to exclaim, "After all, it was my nature, it was the infirmity of mankind." When he has killed his father he repeats, "I am made like that!" And the crowd stands open-mouthed, and they examine the mighty man's bumps, and they recognise that he was "made like that." And what care I that you are made like that! Must I submit to this manner of being? The world would be a fine chaos if all the men who are "made like that" were to take it into their heads to force themselves one upon the other. Those who are unable to wipe out their errors deify them: they make a dogma of their evil-doing, they turn acts of sacrilege into religion, and they would think themselves apostates were they to renounce the cult of their iniquities.

*

There is a serious lesson to be drawn from Bonaparte's life. Two actions, both bad, began and caused his fall: the death of the Duc d'Enghien and the war with Spain. It was vain for him to ride over them with his glory: they remained there to ruin him. He perished on the very side in which he thought himself strong, profound, invincible, when he violated the moral law while neglecting and scorning his real strength, that is, his superior qualities of order and equity. So long as he confined himself to attacking anarchy and foreigners hostile to France, he was victorious; he found himself robbed of his vigour so soon as he entered upon the paths of corruption: the shaving of the locks by Delilah is nothing other than the loss of virtue. Every crime bears within itself a radical incapacity and a germ of misfortune: let us then practise good to be happy, and let us be just to be able.

In proof of this truth, observe that, at the very moment of the Prince's death, commenced the dissent which, growing in proportion to ill-fortune, decided the fall of the ordainer of the tragedy of Vincennes. The Russian Cabinet, in reference to the arrest of the Duc d'Enghien, addressed vigorous representantions against the violation of the territory of the Empire: Bonaparte felt the blow, and replied in the _Moniteur_ with a fulminating article bringing up the death of Paul I[639]. A funeral service had been celebrated in St. Petersburg for young Condé. On the cenotaph was read:

"To the Duc d'Enghien _quem devoravit bellua Corsica._"

The two mighty adversaries subsequently became reconciled in appearance; but the mutual wound which policy had inflicted and insult-enlarged remained in their hearts. Napoleon did not think himself revenged until he came to sleep in Moscow; Alexander[640] was not satisfied before he entered Paris.

[Sidenote: European indignation.]

The hatred of the Cabinet of Berlin arose from the same origin: I have spoken of the noble letter of M. de Laforest, in which he told M. de Talleyrand of the effect which the murder of the Duc d'Enghien had produced at the Court of Potsdam. Madame de Staël was in Prussia when the news from Vincennes arrived:

"I was living in Berlin," he said, "on the Spree Quay, and
my apartment was on the ground floor. At eight o'clock
one morning, they woke me to tell me that Prince Louis
Ferdinand[641] was under my windows on horse-back, and asked
me to come and speak to him....

"'Do you know,' he asked, 'that the Duc d'Enghien has been
kidnapped on Baden territory, handed over to a military
commission, and shot within four-and-twenty hours after his
arrival in Paris?'

"'What nonsense!' I replied. 'Do you not see that this can
only be a rumour spread by the enemies of France?'

"In fact, I admit that my hatred of Bonaparte, strong as it
was, did not go so far as to make me credit the possibility
of his committing so great a crime.

"'As you doubt what I tell you,' replied Prince Louis, 'I
will send you the _Moniteur_, in which you can read the
sentence.'

"With these words he left me, and the expression of his
face was the presage of vengeance or death. A quarter of an
hour later, I had in my hands the _Moniteur_ of the 21st of
March (30 Pluviôse), which contained a sentence of death
passed by the military commission, sitting at Vincennes,
upon 'the man called Louis d'Enghien!' It was thus that
Frenchmen described the descendant of heroes who were the
glory of their country! Even if one were to abjure all the
prejudices in favour of illustrious birth which the return of
monarchical forms would necessarily recall, was it possible
thus to blaspheme the memories of the Battle of Lens[642]
and of Rocroi? This Bonaparte, who has won so many battles,
does not even know how to respect them; for him there is
neither past nor future; his imperious and scornful soul will
recognise nothing for opinion to hold sacred; he admits only
respect for the force in power. Prince Louis wrote to me,
beginning his note with these words: 'The man called Louis
of Prussia begs Madame de Staël,' etc. He felt the insult
offered to the Blood Royal whence he sprang, to the memory of
the heroes among whom he was longing to enroll himself. How,
after this horrible deed, could a single king in Europe ally
himself with such a man? Necessity, you will say. There is a
sanctuary in the soul to which its empire may not penetrate;
were this not so, what would virtue be upon this earth? A
liberal amusement, suited only to the peaceful leisure of
private men[643]."

This resentment on the part of the Prince, for which he was to pay with his life, was still lasting when the Prussian Campaign opened in 1806. Frederic William, in his manifesto of the 9th of October, said:

"The Germans have not revenged the death of the Duc d'Enghien; but the memory of that crime will never fade among them."

These historical particulars, rarely observed, deserved to be so; for they explain enmities of which one would be puzzled to discover the primary cause elsewhere, and at the same time they disclose the steps by which Providence leads a man's destiny from the crime to the expiation.

*

Happy, at least, my life, which was not troubled by fear, nor attacked by contagion, nor carried away by examples! The satisfaction which I experience to-day at what I did then is my warrant that my conscience is no illusion. More content than all those potentates, than all those nations fallen at the feet of the glorious soldier, I turn again with pardonable pride to this page, which I have retained as my only belonging and which I owe only to myself. In 1807, with my heart still moved by the murder which I have just related, I wrote the following lines; they caused the _Mercure_ to be suppressed, and jeopardized my liberty once more:

[Sidenote: I utter my protest.]

"When, amid the silence of abjection, no sound is heard
save that of the chains of the slave and the voice of the
informer; when all tremble before the tyrant, and when
it is as dangerous to incur his favour as to deserve his
displeasure, the historian appears, entrusted with the
vengeance of the nations. Nero prospers in vain, Tacitus
already is born within the Empire; he grows up unknown beside
the ashes of Germanicus, and already a just Providence has
surrendered to an obscure child the glory of the master of
the world. If the historian's part is fine, it is often
dangerous; but there are altars such as that of honour which,
although deserted, demand further sacrifices: the god is
not annihilated because the temple is empty. Wherever there
remains a chance for fortune, there is no heroism in trying
it; magnanimous actions are those of which adversity and
death are the foreseen result After all, what do reverses
matter, if our name, pronounced by posterity, makes one
generous heart beat two thousand years after our life[644]?"

The death of the Duc d'Enghien, by introducing a new principle into Bonaparte's conduct, marred the correctness of his intelligence: he was obliged to adopt as a shield maxims of which he had not the whole force at his disposal, for his glory and his genius incessantly blunted them. He was looked upon with suspicion, with fear; men lost confidence in him and in his destiny; he was constrained to see, if not to seek out, men whom he would never have seen, and who, through his action, considered themselves to have become his equals: the contagion of their defilement was overtaking him. His great qualities remained the same, but his good dispositions became impaired and no longer upheld his great qualities: under the influence of the corruption of that original stain his nature deteriorated. God commanded his angels to disturb the harmonies of that world, to change its laws, to tilt it on its poles. As Milton says:

They with labour push'd
Oblique the centric Globe: some say, the Sun
Was bid turn reins from th' equinoctial road
Like distant breadth. . . . .
. . . . . . . .
Boreas and Cæcias and Argestes loud
And Thrascias rend the woods, and seas upturn[645].

Will the ashes of Bonaparte be exhumed, as were those of the Duc d'Enghien? If I had been the master, the latter victim would still be sleeping unhonoured in the moat of Vincennes Castle. That "excommunicated one" would have been left, like Raymond of Toulouse, in an open coffin; no man's hand would have dared to conceal beneath a plank the sight of the witness to the incomprehensible judgments and angers of God. The abandoned skeleton of the Duc d'Enghien and Napoleon's deserted tomb at St Helena would be the counterpart of each other: there would be nothing more commemorative than those remains, face to face, at opposite ends of the earth.

At least the Duc d'Enghien did not remain on foreign soil, like the exiled of kings: the latter took care to restore the former to his country, a little harshly, it is true; but will it be for ever? France (how much dust winnowed by the breath of the Revolution bears witness to it) is not faithful to the bones of the dead. Old Condé, in his will, declares "that he is not sure which country he will be inhabiting on the day of his death." O Bossuet, what would you not have added to the masterpiece of your eloquence, if, when you were speaking over the grave of the Great Condé, you had been able to foresee the future!

*

It was at this very spot, at Chantilly, that the Duc d'Enghien was born: "Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon, born 2 August 1772, at Chantilly," says the sentence of death. It was on this lawn that he played in childhood; the traces of his footsteps have become obliterated. And the victor of Friburg, of Nördlingen, of Lens, of Senef, where has he gone with his "victorious and now feeble hands"? And his descendants, the Condé of Johannisberg and of Bentheim[646], and his son, and his grandson, where are they? That castle, those gardens, those fountains "which were silent neither by day nor by night:" what has become of them? Mutilated statues, lions with a claw or a jaw restored; trophies of arms sculptured in a crumbling wall; escutcheons with obliterated fleurs-de-lis; foundations of razed turrets; a few marble coursers above the empty stables no longer livened by the neighing of the steed of Rocroi; near a riding-school, a high unfinished gate: that is what remains of the memories of an heroic race; a will tied with a rope changed the owners of the inheritance[647].

The whole forest has repeatedly fallen under the axe. Persons of bygone times have run over those once resounding chases, mute to-day. What was their age, what their passions, when they stopped at the foot of those oaks? O my useless Memoirs, I should not now be able to say to you:

Qu'à Chantilly Condé vous lise quelquefois;
Qu'Enghien en soit touché[648]!

Obscure men that we are, what are we beside those famous men? We shall disappear never to return; you, sweet William, who lie upon my table beside this paper, whose belated little flower I have gathered among the heather will blossom again; but we, we shall not come to life again with the perfumed solitary which has diverted my thoughts.

[594] This book was written at Chantilly in November 1838.--T.

[595] Blanche of Castile, Queen of France (1187-1252), daughter of Alphonsus IX. King of Castile, wife of Louis VIII. King of France, and mother of St. Louis IX. A hunting-lodge, at Chantilly, stands on the site of the old Castle of Queen Blanche, near the Commelle Ponds.--T.

[596] Charles IV. King of Spain (1748-1819). On the 18th of March 1808, forced by the revolt of Aranjuez, he abdicated in favour of his son Ferdinand. Napoleon compelled him to withdraw this abdication and to make a fresh one in favour of himself (5 May 1808), after which Napoleon's brother Joseph was placed on the throne of Spain. Charles IV. was sent to Compiègne and Marseilles, and died in Rome in 1819. On the fall of Joseph, in 1813, Charles's son Ferdinand VII. ascended the throne.--T.

[597] Gustavus IV. (1778-1837) was the last Legitimist King of Sweden. A revolt of the nobles in 1809 compelled him to abdicate, and his uncle, the Duke of Sudermania, was proclaimed King with the title of Charles XIII., ultimately adopting General Bernadotte as his heir. Gustavus spent the remaining years of his life in Germany, Holland, and Switzerland, under the names of Count of Holstein-Gottorp and Colonel Gustawson. He died at Saint-Gall in 1837.--T.

[598] Frederic William III. King of Prussia (1770-1840), son of Frederic William II. and grand-nephew to Frederic the Great. He was married to the beautiful Queen Louisa, daughter of the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.--T.

[599] Bonaparte had the Black Eagle.--_Authors Note._

[600] Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus Nero, later Nero Claudius Cæsar Drusus Germanicus, Roman Emperor (37-68), son of Domitius Ahenobarbus and Agrippina, by whose uncle and third husband, the Emperor Claudius, he was adopted, succeeding him, to the exclusion of the natural heir, Britannicus, in 54.--T.

[601] Lucius Annæus Seneca (3-65), the Stoic philosopher, was Nero's tutor and principal minister. He is accused, not only of writing the apology for the murder of Agrippina, but of approving the poisoning of Britannicus in 55.--T.

[602] Julia Agrippina (_circa_ 15-59 or 60), daughter of the Emperor Germanicus and of Agrippina, grand-daughter of Augustus. She poisoned Claudius to secure the Empire for Nero, her son by her first husband, and was herself murdered by Nero's orders in 59.--T.

[603] The Duc de Bourbon was the Due d'Enghien's father, not his grandfather. The grandfather was the Prince de Condé, the writer of the letter in question. Chateaubriand's mistake is due to a slip of the pen, which we occasionally find in more than one other historian of the period.--B.

[604] Pierre François Comte Réal (1765-1834) was an attorney at the Châtelet at the outbreak of the Revolution. He attached himself to Danton and became Public Accuser and Solicitor to the Commune of Paris. He was imprisoned by Robespierre and released on the 9 Thermidor. Bonaparte made him a State Councillor and appointed him a deputy at the Ministry of Police. In 1804 Réal discovered the conspiracy of Georges Cadoudal. He was made Prefect of Police during the Hundred Days, and was exiled under the Second Restoration. He returned to Paris in 1818.--T.

[605] Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès (1753-1824), an eminent jurist and a moderate revolutionary, who voted for the reprieve at the trial of Louis XVI. He was Minister of Justice under the Directory. Bonaparte chose him as Second Consul in 1799, with Lebrun as Third Consul. When Napoleon became Emperor he appointed Cambacérès Arch-chancellor and created him a Prince of the Empire and Duke of Parma. Cambacérès is responsible for the greater portion of the Code civil. He was exiled by the Bourbons and recalled in 1818.--T.

[606] In the morning.--_Author's Note._

[607] Madame Joséphine Bonaparte (1763-1814), _née_ Tascher de La Pagerie, and widow of Alexandre Vicomte de Beauharnais, who was guillotined in 1794. She married Bonaparte in 1796, was crowned Empress in 1804, and was divorced in 1809.--T.

[608] Anne Jean Marie René Savary, Duc de Rovigo (1774-1833), was in 1804 Colonel of the Gendarmerie d'Élite, in which capacity he was charged with the execution of the sentence on the Duc d'Enghien. At the battle of Marengo (14 June 1800) he was aide-de-camp to General Desaix, and was by his side when that general was shot through the heart. He became a general of brigade in 1803, a general of division in 1805, a duke in 1808, and succeeded Fouché as Minister of Police in 1810. He followed the Emperor on to the _Bellérophon_ in 1815, but was separated from him and kept a prisoner for seven months in Malta, where he drew up the plan of his Memoirs (published in 1828). On the Restoration, he was sentenced to death in his absence. He returned to France in 1819 in order to obtain the quashing of the sentence. A pamphlet which he subsequently wrote upon the death of the Duc d'Enghien, accusing Talleyrand of complicity, brought about his disgrace, and he was obliged to retire to Rome. He returned once more to France after the Revolution of 1830, and in 1831 received from Louis-Philippe the command-in-chief of the Army of Algiers, which he retained till his death in 1833.--T.

[609] Claire Élisabeth Jeanne Comtesse de Rémusat (1780-1821), _née_ Gravier de Vergennes, wife of the Comte de Rémusat, Chamberlain to Napoleon and Superintendent of Theatres, and lady-in-waiting to the Empress Joséphine. She was the author of an _Essai sur l'éducation des femmes_ (1823) and of some excellent Memoirs (1880).--T.

[610] Cf. CORNEILLE, _Cinna_, Act II. Sc. I.--T.

[611] Cf. _Mémoires de Madame de Rémusat_, vol. I.--B.

[612] 20 March 1804.--B.

[613] Murat.--_Author's Note._

[614] Lieutenant-General Pierre Auguste Comte Hulin (1758-1841) was one of the foremost among the conquerors of the Bastille on the 14th of July 1789, and at the end of the same year was made Commander of the National Guard of Paris. He accompanied Bonaparte to Italy as Adjutant-General, was appointed Commander of Milan in 1797 and 1798, and in 1803 became a general of division and Commander of the Consular Guard. He took part in the several German campaigns, and was selected for the command of the places around Vienna and of Berlin (1806). He was at the head of the armed forces in Paris when the Malet conspiracy broke out in 1812, and caused the plot to fail, having his lower jaw shattered by Malet with a pistol-shot. Hulin lost the command of the City of Paris on the return of the Bourbons, and was obliged to leave France in 1816. He returned in 1819, and ended his days in retirement.--T.

[615] Marie Louise Empress of the French (1791-1847), daughter of Francis I. Emperor of Austria, and married to Napoleon in 1810. She left him after his first abdication, protested against his restoration and, in reward for her docility, received the Duchy of Parma at the hands of the Congress of Vienna. There she spent the remainder of her days, living with the Count von Niepperg, whom she married morganatically after Napoleon's death.--T.

[616] Francis Charles Joseph Napoleon Duke of Reichstadt (1811-1832), son of Napoleon and Marie Louise, was proclaimed King of Rome at his birth. On his father's abdication there was an idea of proclaiming him Emperor, as Napoleon II.; but this was speedily abandoned and he was brought up at the Court of his maternal grandfather, who in 1818 gave him the title of Duke of Reichstadt, together with a regiment of cavalry.--T.

[617] André Marie Jean Jacques Dupin (1783-1865), known as Dupin the Elder, was a deputy from 1827 to 1848, a member of the Constituent Assembly of 1848 and of the Legislative Assembly of 1849, a senator of the Second Empire (1857), and Attorney-General to the Court of Appeal from 1830 to 1852. He resigned the latter post in order to dissociate himself from the decrees confiscating the possessions of the Orleans Family; but resumed it five years later when summoned to the Imperial Senate. He had been a member of the French Academy since 1832. The pamphlet to which Chateaubriand refers was published in 1823, and entitled, _Pièces judiciaires et historiques relatives au procès du duc dEnghien, avec le Journal de ce prince depuis l'instant de son arrestation; précédées de la Discussion des actes de la commission militaire instituée en l'an XII, par le gouvernement consulaire, pour juger le duc d'Enghien, par l'auteur de l'opuscule intitulé: "De la Libre Défense des accusés._"--B.

[618] An allusion to the abominable reply said to have been made to M. le Duc d'Enghien.--_Author's Note._

The Duke is reported to have cried, "Shoot straight, my friends," to the soldiers about to fire their volley.

"You have no friends here," replied the officer in command!--T.

[619] General Claude François de Malet (1754-1812) played a distinguished part in the campaigns of the Revolution, became a general of brigade in 1799, and was appointed Governor of Pavia by Masséna in 1805. His republicanism, however, made him suspect in the eyes of Napoleon, who had him imprisoned in Paris in 1808. Availing himself of the facilities awarded him by his transfer to a mad-house, he organized a conspiracy against the Empire, involving Generals Guidal and Lahorie in the plot. He escaped from prison on the night of the 23rd of October 1812, rapidly visited the Paris barracks, spreading the news of Napoleon's death, and was on the point of succeeding, when the resistance of General Hulin, who was at the head of the Staff, caused the whole plot to fail. Malet was brought before a military commission and shot on the 29th of October 1812.--T

[620] General Hulin's pamphlet, published in 1823, is entitled, _Explications offertes aux hommes impartiaux par M. le Comte Hulin, au sujet de la Commission militaire institute en l'an XII pour juger le duc d'Enghien._--B.

[621] Jacques Harel (_b._ 1755) had received the command of Vincennes Castle in 1800 as his reward for his services in betraying his fellow-conspirators in a plot to kill the First Consul. The story is told at length in the Memoirs of M. de Bourrienne.--B.

[622] Freiburg-in-Breisgau (Baden), where the great Condé defeated the Imperial forces in 1644.--T.

[623] Savary's pamphlet appeared in the same year as General Hulin's and M. Dupin's, and was entitled, _Extrait des Mémoires du duc de Rovigo, concernant le catastrophe de M. le duc d'Enghien._--B.

[624] Armand Augustin Louis Marquis de Caulaincourt, Duc de Vicence (1773-1827), had in his youth been a page to the Prince de Condé. He took part in nearly all the wars of the Revolution, and was made Master of the Horse by Napoleon when the latter assumed the imperial crown, a general of division, a duke (1805), and Ambassador to Russia (1807). In 1813, he became Foreign Minister, and represented France at the Congress of Châtillon in 1814.--T.

[625] Achille Roche (1801-1834), a publicist and secretary to Benjamin Constant. The work from which Chateaubriand quotes is a pamphlet entitled, _De Messieurs le duc de Rovigo et le prince de Talleyrand._--B.

[626] JOINVILLE, _Memoirs of Louis IX., King of France_, Part I.--T.

[627] Misspelt as printed: _Enguiens_ for Enghien, proper names not taking the plural in French.--T.

[628] François de Bourbon-Vendôme, Comte d'Enghien (1519-1545), brother of Anthony de Bourbon, King of Navarre, defeated the Imperial forces at Cérisoles in 1544--T.

[629] The Great Condé was Duc d'Enghien when he defeated the Spaniards at Rocroi in 1643.--T.

[630] The Princesse Charlotte de Rohan-Rochefort. The Prince de Condé refused to acknowledge the marriage, although he himself had married a Rohan. After the death of the Duc d'Enghien, the Duc de Bourbon tardily offered to acknowledge his son's marriage, but the Princess refused the offer. Nevertheless she visited the Duchesse de Bourbon in the early days of the Restoration, when the latter addressed her as "my daughter" (_Cf._ MURET, _Histoire de l'armée de Condé_). The Duchess of Madrid (_de jure_ Queen of Spain and France), _née_ Princesse Marie Berthe de Rohan, and married to the Duke of Madrid in 1894, is a member of the same (Rochefort) branch of the Rohan family. Their motto is, _Roi ne puis, prince ne daigne, Rohan suis._--T.

[631] Antoine René Charles Mathurin Comte de Laforest (1756-1846) entered the diplomatic service under Louis XVI. He was Consul-General in the United States, Secretary of Legation to Joseph Bonaparte at the Congress of Lunéville, and Chargé-d'affaires Extraordinary at Munich and Ratisbon. He was Ambassador in Berlin from 1805 to 1808, and in Madrid from 1808 to 1813. Napoleon created him a count in 1808. On the fall of the Empire, in 1814, he directed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for six weeks _ad interim_, and was charged by the King to prepare the Treaty of Paris. Under the Second Restoration, he was sent as Minister Plenipotentiary to various Powers. He was made a peer of France in 1819, and a minister of State and privy councillor in 1825. He lost his places and dignities at the Revolution of 1830.--B.

[632] Gaspard Baron Gourgaud (1783-1852), a distinguished artillery officer who had twice saved Napoleon's life, at Moscow and Brienne. He accompanied Napoleon to St. Helena, where he remained until 1817, and where he wrote the _Campagne de 1815_, published in 1818, which was the cause of his being struck off the roll of the French army by Louis XVIII. Louis-Philippe reinstated him and made him his aide-de-camp, and in 1840 he accompanied the Prince de Joinville to St. Helena to bring back the remains of Napoleon. On his return, he was raised to the peerage. Gourgaud is part-author, together with Montholon, of the _Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de France sous Napoléon_ (1823-1825), from which the above quotation is taken.--T.

[633] Charles Tristan Comte de Montholon (1782-1853), Gourgaud's collaborator, was one of Napoleon's bravest and most reckless officers. He too accompanied Napoleon to St Helena, remained with him to the day of his death, and was one of his executors and the depositary of his manuscripts, which were subsequently published in eight volumes under the title given in the preceding note. In 1840, Montholon took part in Louis Napoleon's futile descent at Boulogne, and suffered a short confinement.--T.

[634] LAS CASES, _Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène_ (8 volumes, 1822-1824).--T.

[635] Talleyrand's residence.--T.

[636] Lest they should compromise her friends. See M. Paul de Rémusat's Preface to the Memoirs.--T.

[637] This is the anecdote:

"After the execution of the sentence," says the Duc de Rovigo, "I took the road back to Paris. I was approaching the barriers, when I met M. Réal going to Vincennes in the dress of a councillor of State. I stopped him to ask him where he was going:

"'To Vincennes,' he replied; 'I received orders yesterday to repair there to examine the Duc d'Enghien.'

"I told him what had just happened, and he appeared as much astonished at what I had told him as I at what he had told me. I began to ponder. My meeting with the Minister of Foreign Relations at General Murat's recurred to my mind, and I began to doubt whether the death of the Duc d'Enghien was the work of the First Consul."--B.

[638] Emmanuel Augustin Dieudonné Comte de Las Cases (1766-1842) was a lieutenant in the navy when he emigrated in 1789 and joined Condé's Army. He returned to France after the 18 Brumaire, and devoted himself for several years to literary work, until in 1809 he enlisted as a volunteer to assist in repelling the English, who were threatening a descent upon Flushing. He attracted the notice of Napoleon, who made him one of his chamberlains, and he was one of the four men who followed Napoleon into exile. He remained eighteen months at St. Helena, gathering the talk that fell from Napoleon's lips into his famous _Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène_; but losing favour with Sir Hudson Lowe, he was removed from Napoleon's service, taken to the Cape of Good Hope, and thence to Europe, where he was kept for some time in confinement. Las Cases was not allowed to return to France until after the Emperor's death. In 1830 he was returned for the Seine to the Chamber of Deputies, where he sat in the Opposition.--T.

[639] Paul I. Emperor of Russia (1754-1801), son of Catherine II. and Peter III. On the death of Catherine in 1796, he placed himself at the head of the second coalition against France; but in 1799, suddenly smitten with a passionate admiration for Bonaparte, he contracted an alliance with him, and paved the way for the treaties of Lunéville and Amiens. He was strangled by some of his nobles on the 23rd of March 1801.--T.

[640] Alexander I. Emperor of Russia (1777-1825), was at war with Napoleon from 1805 to 1807, and in alliance with him from 1807 to 1812, when war broke out anew. The retreat from Moscow took place in the latter year, and Alexander entered Paris at the head of the allied forces on the 31st of March 1814.--T.

[641] Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia (1772-1806), son of Prince Ferdinand, brother to Frederic the Great, was killed in 1806 at the Battle of Saalfeld.--T.

[642] The Great Condé defeated the Imperial forces at Lens in 1648.--T.

[643] MADAME DE STAËL, _Dix années d'exil._--B.

[644] These lines are taken from the article, published by Chateaubriand in the _Mercure_ of 4 July 1807, on M. Alexandre de Laborde's _Voyage pittoresque et historique en Espagne._--B.

[645] MILTON, _Paradise Lost_, X., 670-673, 698-699.--T.

[646] The Prince de Condé co-operated with the Prince de Soubise in winning the Battle of Johannisberg, during the Seven Years' War, in 1762, and performed prodigies of valour to no purpose at Bentheim in 1799.--T.

[647] The Duc de Bourbon was found hanged or strangled in his apartment a few days after the Revolution of 1830. He left Chantilly and the greater part of his fortune to the late Duc d'Aumale, fourth son of Louis Philippe.--T.

[648] BOILEAU, _Ep. VII. A.M. Racine_:

"May Condé sometimes at Chantilly read you; And may Enghien be touched." --T.