Chapter 21

Let us now go back to Bayonne, where I had just joined Augereau's staff. The winter, in this part of the country, is very mild; which allowed us to train and exercise troops in preparation for an attack on the Portuguese. However, the court of Lisbon having conceded all that the French government required, we gave up the idea of crossing the Pyrenees, and General Augereau was ordered to go to Brest and take command of the 7th army corps, which was earmarked for an invasion of Ireland.

General Augereau's first wife, the Greek, being in Pau, he wished to visit her and take his leave of her, and he took with him three aides-de-camp, of which I was one.

Normally, a commander-in-chief had a squadron of "Guides", a detachment of which always escorted his carriage, as long as he was in a part of the country occupied by troops under his command. Bayonne did not yet have any "Guides," so they were replaced by a platoon of cavalry at each of the post-houses between Bayonne and Pau. These came from the regiment which I had just left, the 25th Chasseurs; so that from the carriage in which I was taking my ease, beside the Commander in Chief, I could see my former companions trotting beside the door. I did not take any pride in this, but I must admit that when we came to Puyoo, where you saw me arrive two years previously on foot, bedraggled and in the hands of the gendarmerie, I was weak enough to put on an air, and to make myself known to the worthy mayor, Bordenave, whom I presented to the commander-in-chief to whom I had told the story of what had happened to me in this commune in 1801; and as the brigade of gendarmes from Pyrehorade had joined the escort to Pau, I was able to recognise the two who had arrested me. The old mayor was sufficiently malicious to inform them that the officer whom they saw in the commander-in-chief's fine carriage was the same traveller whom they had taken for a deserter, although his papers were in order, and the good fellow was, at the same time, very proud of the judgement he had given on this occasion.

After a stay of twenty-four hours at Pau, we returned to Bayonne, from where the general despatched me and Mainville to Brest, in order to prepare his headquarters. We took seats in the mail-coach as far as Bordeaux; but there, owing to the lack of public transport, we were forced to take to the hacks of the posting houses, which of all means of travelling, is surely the most uncomfortable. It rained. The roads were appalling. The nights pitch dark; but in spite of this, we had to press on at the gallop, as our mission was urgent. Although I have never been a very good horseman, the fact that I was accustomed to riding, and a year spent in the riding school at Versailles, gave me enough assurance and stamina to drive on the dreadful screws which we were forced to mount. I got well enough through this apprenticeship in the trade of courier, in which, you will see later, I had to perfect myself; but it was not so with Mainville, so we took two days and two nights to reach Nantes, where he arrived bruised and worn out and incapable of continuing to ride at speed. However we could not leave the commander-in-chief without lodgings when he arrived at Brest, so it was agreed that I would go on ahead, and that Mainville would follow later by coach.

On my arrival, I rented the town house of M. Pasquier, the banker, brother of the Pasquier who had been chancellor and president of the house of peers. Mainville and several of my comrades came to join me a few days later, and helped to make the necessary arrangements for the commander-in-chief to maintain the sort of state expected of him.

We began the year 1804 at Brest. The 7th Corps was made up of two divisions of infantry and a brigade of cavalry; as these troops were not encamped but were billeted in the neighbouring communes, all the generals and their staffs stayed in Brest, where the anchorages and the harbour were packed with vessels of all sorts. The admirals and senior officers of the fleet were also in the town, and other officers came there every day, so that Brest afforded a most animated spectacle. Admiral Truguet and the commander-in-chief held a number of brilliant receptions, scenes that have often been the prelude to war.

In February General Augereau left for Paris, to where the First Consul had summoned him to discuss with him the plan for the invasion of Ireland. I went with him.

On our arrival in Paris, we found a very tense political situation. The Bourbons, who had hoped that in taking the reins of government, Bonaparte would support them, and would be prepared to play the part that General Monk had once played in England, when they discovered that he had no intention of restoring them to the throne, resolved to overthrow him. To this end they concocted a conspiracy which had as its leaders three well known men, although of very different character. These were General Pichegru, General Moreau and Georges Cadoudal.

Pichegru had taught Bonaparte mathematics at the college of Brienne, but he had left there to join the army. The revolution found him a sergeant in the artillery. His talent and courage raised him rapidly to the rank of general. It was he who achieved the conquest of Holland, in the middle of winter, but ambition was his downfall. He allowed himself to be seduced by agents of the Prince de Conde, and entered into correspondence with the Prince, who promised him great rewards and the title of "Constable" if he would use the influence which he had with the troops to establish Louis XVIII on the throne of his forefathers.

Chance, that great arbiter of human destiny, decreed that following a battle in which French troops, commanded by Moreau, had defeated the division of the Austrian General Kinglin, the latter's supply wagon was captured, which contained letters from Pichegru to the Prince de Conde. It was taken to Moreau, who was a friend of Pichegru, to whom he owed some of his promotion, and who concealed his discovery as long as Pichegru retained his influence; but Pichegru having become a representative of the people in the house of elders, where he continued to favour the Bourbons, was arrested with several of his colleagues. Whereupon Moreau hurriedly sent to the directorate the documents which incriminated Pichegru, and led to his deportation to the wilds of Guyana.

Pichegru contrived to escape from Guyana to America, from whence he went to England; where having no longer any need for secrecy, he put himself openly in the pay of Louis XVIII and aimed at the overthrow of the consular government. However, he could not pretend that, deprived of his rank, banished and absent from France for more than six years, he could any longer wield as much influence over the army as General Moreau, the victor of Hohenlinden, and on this account, very popular with the troops, of whom he was the inspector-general. Pichegru, then, out of devotion to the Bourbon cause, agreed to forget the reasons he had for disliking Moreau, and to unite with him for the triumph of the policy to which he was committed. Moreau, who was born in Brittany, was studying law at Rennes when the revolution of 1789 broke out. The students, young and turbulent, elected him as their leader, and when they formed a battalion of volunteers, they named Moreau as their commander. Having made his debut in the profession of arms as a senior officer, he proved himself both courageous and competent, and was rapidly promoted to general and army commander. He won several battles, and conducted, in the face of Prince Charles of Austria, a justly celebrated retreat. But though a good soldier, Moreau lacked civic courage. We have seen him refuse to put himself at the head of the government, while Bonaparte was absent in Egypt, however, though he had helped the latter on the 18th Brumaire, he became envious of his power when he saw him raised to the position of First Consul, to the extent that he sought by all means to supplant him; driven on, it is said, by the jealousy felt by his wife and mother-in-law towards Josephine. Given this situation, it would not be difficult to persuade Moreau to conspire with Pichegru to overthrow the government.

A Breton, named Lajolais, an agent of Louis XVIII, and a friend of Moreau, became the intermediary between him and Pichegru; he travelled frequently between London and Paris, and it soon became evident to him that Moreau, while agreeing to the overthrow of Bonaparte, intended to keep power for himself, and not to hand it to the Bourbons. It was then thought that a meeting between him and Pichegru might lead him to change his mind, so Pichegru was landed on the coast of France from an English vessel at a spot near Trepot, and went to Paris, to where Georges Cadoudal had preceded him, along with M. de Riviere, the two Polignacs, and other royalists.

Georges Cadoudal was the youngest son of a miller from Morbihan; but as there was a bizarre custom, in that part of lower Brittany, whereby the last-born of a family inherited all the estate, Georges, whose father was comfortably off, had been given a certain amount of education. He was a short man, with wide shoulders and the heart of a tiger, whose audacity and courage had raised him to the high command of all the groups of "Chouans" in Brittany.

Since the pacification of Brittany he had lived in London; but his fanatical devotion to the house of Bourbon did not allow him any repose as long as the First Consul was at the head of the government. He formed a plan to kill him. Not by a clandestine assassination, but in broad daylight, by attacking him on the road to Saint-Cloud with a party of thirty or forty mounted "Chouans" well armed and wearing the uniform of the consular guard. This plan had the more chance of success, since, at this time, Bonaparte's escort was usually no more than four cavalrymen.

A meeting was arranged between Pichegru and Moreau; it took place at night, near the Church of La Madeleine, which was then being built. Moreau agreed to the deposition, and even the death of the First Consul, but he refused to consider the restoration of the Bourbons.

Bonaparte's secret police having warned him that there was underground plotting going on in Paris, he ordered the arrest of a number of former "Chouans" who were in the city. One of these gave some information which seriously compromised General Moreau, whose arrest was then agreed upon by the council of ministers.

This arrest initially created a very bad impression amongst the general public, because Cadoudal and Pichegru not having been arrested, no one believed they were in France, and it was said that Bonaparte had invented the conspiracy in order to get rid of Moreau. The government then had the strongest reasons to prove that Cadoudal and Pichegru were in Paris, and that they had met Moreau. All the barriers were closed for several days, and the most drastic punishment was decreed for anyone sheltering the conspirators. From that moment it became very difficult for them to find any place of safety, and soon Pichegru, M. de Riviere and the Polignacs fell into the hands of the police. These arrests began to convince the public of the reality of the conspiracy, and the capture of Georges Cadoudal dispelled any remaining doubts.

Cadoudal having stated in his interrogation that he had come with the intention of killing the First Consul, and that the conspiracy was backed by a prince of the royal family, the police started an investigation to discover the location of all the princes of the house of Bourbon. They found that the Prince D'Enghien, the grandson of the great Conde, had been living for some time at Ettenheim, a little town situated some leagues from the Rhine, in the country of Baden. It has never been proved that the Duc D'Enghien was involved in the conspiracy, but he certainly had, on several occasions, been imprudent enough to enter French territory. However that may be, the First Consul sent, secretly, and by night, a detachment of troops led by General Ordener, to the town of Ettenhiem, where they seized the Duc D'Enghien. He was taken immediately to Vincennes, where he was tried, condemned, and shot before the public was aware of his arrest.

This execution was greeted with general disapproval. It was held that had the prince been captured on French territory, he could have been tried under a law which in this case carried the death penalty, but that to go and seize him beyond the frontiers, in a foreign land, was a gross infringement of human rights.

It appeared, however, that the First Consul had not intended the execution of the prince, and had wished only to frighten the royalists who were conspiring against him; but that General Savary, the head of the gendarmerie, who had gone to Vincennes, took custody of the prince after sentence had been pronounced and in an excess of zeal, had him shot, in order, he said, to save the First Consul the trouble of ordering his death, or of sparing the life of so dangerous an enemy. Savary has since denied that he expressed such sentiments, but I have been assured by people who heard him that he did. Bonaparte is known to have blamed Savary for his hastiness, but the deed having been done, he had to accept the consequences.

General Pichegru, ashamed to be associated with assassins, and that the conqueror of Holland should stand in the dock with criminals, hanged himself in prison by his cravat. It has been claimed that he was strangled by Mamelukes of the Guard, but this is a fabrication. Bonaparte had no incentive to commit such a crime. It was more in his interest to have Pichegru disgraced before a public tribunal than to have him killed in secret.

Georges Cadoudal, condemned to death, along with several accomplices, was executed. The brothers Polignac, and M. de Riviere, who received the same sentence, had it commuted to life imprisonment. They were locked up in Vincennes, but after several years they obtained permission to live on parole in a nursing home. However, in 1814, on the approach of the allies, they left and went to join the Comte d'Artois in Franche-comte; then in 1815 they were most savage in their pursuit of the Bonapartists.

As for General Moreau, he was sentenced to two years detention. The First Consul pardoned him on condition that he went to the United States. He lived there in obscurity until 1813, when he went to Europe to range himself among the enemies of his country, and died fighting against the French; thus confirming all the accusations which were made against him at the time of Pichegru's conspiracy.

The French nation, weary of revolutions, and recognising the extent to which Bonaparte was needed for the maintenance of good order, chose to forget what was odious in the affair of the Duc d'Enghien, and raised Bonaparte to the throne, by declaring him Emperor on May 25th, 1804.

Almost all nations recognised the new sovereign of France. To mark the occasion, eighteen generals, selected from the most notable, were elevated to the dignity of Marshals of the Empire.