Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte — Volume 06

CHAPTER XV

1802.

The intoxication of great men—Unlucky zeal—MM. Maret, Champagny, and Savary—M. de Talleyrand's real services—Postponement of the execution of orders—Fouche and the Revolution—The Royalist committee—The charter first planned during the Consulate—Mission to Coblentz—Influence of the Royalists upon Josephine—The statue and the pedestal—Madame de Genlis' romance of Madame de la Valliere—The Legion of Honour and the carnations—Influence of the Faubourg St. Germain—Inconsiderate step taken by Bonaparte—Louis XVIII's indignation—Prudent advice of the Abbe Andre—Letter from Louis XVIII. to Bonaparte—Council held at Neuilly—The letter delivered—Indifference of Bonaparte, and satisfaction of the Royalists.

Perhaps one of the happiest ideas that ever were expressed was that of the Athenian who said, "I appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober." The drunkenness here alluded to is not of that kind which degrades a man to the level of a brute, but that intoxication which is occasioned by success, and which produces in the heads of the ambitious a sort of cerebral congestion. Ordinary men are not subject to this excitement, and can scarcely form an idea of it. But it is nevertheless true that the fumes of glory and ambition occasionally derange the strongest heads; and Bonaparte, in all the vigour of his genius, was often subject to aberrations of judgment; for though his imagination never failed him, his judgment was frequently at fault.

This fact may serve to explain, and perhaps even to excuse the faults with which the First Consul has been most seriously reproached. The activity of his mind seldom admitted of an interval between the conception and the execution of a design; but when he reflected coolly on the first impulses of his imperious will, his judgment discarded what was erroneous. Thus the blind obedience, which, like an epidemic disease, infected almost all who surrounded Bonaparte, was productive of the most fatal effects. The best way to serve the First Consul was never to listen to the suggestions of his first ideas, except on the field of battle, where his conceptions were as happy as they were rapid. Thus, for example, MM. Maret, de Champagny, and Savary evinced a ready obedience to Bonaparte's wishes, which often proved very unfortunate, though doubtless dictated by the best intentions on their part. To this fatal zeal may be attributed a great portion of the mischief which Bonaparte committed. When the mischief was done, and past remedy, Bonaparte deeply regretted it. How often have I heard him say that Maret was animated by an unlucky zeal! This was the expression he made use of.

M. de Talleyrand was almost the only one among the ministers who did not flatter Bonaparte, and who really served both the First Consul and the Emperor. When Bonaparte said to M. de Talleyrand, "Write so and so, and send it off by a special courier," that minister was never in a hurry to obey the order, because he knew the character of the First Consul well enough to distinguish between what his passion dictated and what his reason would approve: in short, he appealed from Philip drunk to Philip sober. When it happened that M. de Talleyrand suspended the execution of an order, Bonaparte never evinced the least displeasure. When, the day after he had received any hasty and angry order, M. de Talleyrand presented himself to the First Consul, the latter would say, "Well, did you send off the courier?"—"No," the minister would reply, "I took care not to do so before I showed you my letter." Then the First Consul would usually add, "Upon second thoughts I think it would be best not to send it." This was the way to deal with Bonaparte. When M. de Talleyrand postponed sending off despatches, or when I myself have delayed the execution of an order which I knew had been dictated by anger, and had emanated neither from his heart nor his understanding, I have heard him say a hundred times, "It was right, quite right. You understand me: Talleyrand understands me also. This is the way to serve me: the others do not leave me time for reflection: they are too precipitate." Fouche also was one of those who did not on all occasions blindly obey Bonaparte's commands. His other ministers, on the other hand, when told to send off a courier the next morning, would have more probably sent him off the same evening. This was from zeal, but was not the First Consul right in saying that such zeal was unfortunate?

Of Talleyrand and Fouche, in their connections with the First Consul, it might be said that the one represented the Constituent Assembly, with a slight perfume of the old regime, and the other the Convention in all its brutality. Bonaparte regarded Fouche as a complete personification of the Revolution. With him, therefore, Fouche's influence was merely the influence of the Revolution. That great event was one of those which had made the most forcible impression on Bonaparte's ardent mind, and he imagined he still beheld it in a visible form as long as Fouche continued at the head of his police. I am now of opinion that Bonaparte was in some degree misled as to the value of Fouche's services as a minister. No doubt the circumstance of Fouche being in office conciliated those of the Revolutionary party who were his friends. But Fouche cherished an undue partiality for them, because he knew that it was through them he held his place. He was like one of the old Condottieri, who were made friends of lest they should become enemies, and who owed all their power to the soldiers enrolled under their banners.

Such was Fouche, and Bonaparte perfectly understood his situation. He kept the chief in his service until he could find an opportunity of disbanding his undisciplined followers. But there was one circumstance which confirmed his reliance on Fouche. He who had voted the death of the King of France, and had influenced the minds of those who had voted with him, offered Bonaparte the best guarantee against the attempts of the Royalists for raising up in favour of the Bourbons the throne which the First Consul himself had determined to ascend. Thus, for different reasons, Bonaparte and Fouche had common interests against the House of Bourbon, and the master's ambition derived encouragement from the supposed terror of the servant.

The First Consul was aware of the existence in Paris of a Royalist committee, formed for the purpose of corresponding with Louis XVIII. This committee consisted of men who must not be confounded with those wretched intriguers who were of no service to their employers, and were not unfrequently in the pay of both Bonaparte and the Bourbons. The Royalist committee, properly so called, was a very different thing. It consisted of men professing rational principles of liberty, such as the Marquis de Clermont Gallerande, the Abbe de Montesqiou, M. Becquet, and M. Royer Collard. This committee had been of long standing; the respectable individuals whose names I have just quoted acted upon a system hostile to the despotism of Bonaparte, and favourable to what they conceived to be the interests of France. Knowing the superior wisdom of Louis XVIII., and the opinions which he had avowed and maintained in the Assembly of the Notables, they wished to separate that Prince from the emigrants, and to point him out to the nation as a suitable head of a reasonable Constitutional Government. Bonaparte, whom I have often heard speak on the subject, dreaded nothing so much as these ideas of liberty, in conjunction with a monarchy. He regarded them as reveries, called the members of the committee idle dreamers, but nevertheless feared the triumph of their ideas. He confessed to me that it was to counteract the possible influence of the Royalist committee that he showed himself so indulgent to those of the emigrants whose monarchical prejudices he knew were incompatible with liberal opinions. By the presence of emigrants who acknowledged nothing short of absolute power, he thought he might paralyse the influence of the Royalists of the interior; he therefore granted all such emigrants permission to return.

About this time I recollect having read a document, which had been signed, purporting to be a declaration of the principles of Louis XVIII. It was signed by M. d'Andre, who bore evidence to its authenticity. The principles contained in the declaration were in almost all points conformable to the principles which formed the basis of the charter. Even so early as 1792, and consequently previous to the fatal 21st of January, Louis XVI., who knew the opinions of M. de Clermont Gallerande, sent him on a mission to Coblentz to inform the Princes from him, and the Queen, that they would be ruined by their emigration. I am accurately informed, and I state this fact with the utmost confidence. I can also add with equal certainty that the circumstance was mentioned by M. de Clermont Gallerande in his Memoirs, and that the passage relative to his mission to Coblentz was cancelled before the manuscript was sent to press.

During the Consular Government the object of the Royalist committee was to seduce rather than to conspire. It was round Madame Bonaparte in particular that their batteries were raised, and they did not prove ineffectual. The female friends of Josephine filled her mind with ideas of the splendour and distinction she would enjoy if the powerful hand which had chained the Revolution should raise up the subverted throne. I must confess that I was myself, unconsciously, an accomplice of the friends of the throne; for what they wished for the interest of the Bourbons I then ardently wished for the interest of Bonaparte.

While endeavours were thus made to gain over Madame Bonaparte to the interest of the royal family, brilliant offers were held out for the purpose of dazzling the First Consul. It was wished to retemper for him the sword of the constable Duguesclin; and it was hoped that a statue erected to his honour would at once attest to posterity his spotless glory and the gratitude of the Bourbons. But when these offers reached the ears of Bonaparte he treated them with indifference, and placed no faith in their sincerity. Conversing on the subject one day with M. de La Fayette he said, "They offer me a statue, but I must look to the pedestal. They may make it my prison." I did not hear Bonaparte utter these words; but they were reported to me from a source, the authenticity of which may be relied on.

About this time, when so much was said in the Royalist circles and in the Faubourg St. Germain, of which the Hotel de Luynes was the headquarters, about the possible return of the Bourbons, the publication of a popular book contributed not a little to direct the attention of the public to the most brilliant period of the reign of Louis XIV. The book was the historical romance of Madame de la Valloire, by Madame de Genlis, who had recently returned to France. Bonaparte read it, and I have since understood that he was very well pleased with it, but he said nothing to me about it. It was not until some time after that he complained of the effect which was produced in Paris by this publication, and especially by engravings representing scenes in the life of Louis XIV., and which were exhibited in the shop-windows. The police received orders to suppress these prints; and the order was implicitly obeyed; but it was not Fouche's police. Fouche saw the absurdity of interfering with trifles. I recollect that immediately after the creation of the Legion of Honour, it being summer, the young men of Paris indulged in the whim of wearing a carnation in a button-hole, which at a distance had rather a deceptive effect. Bonaparte took this very seriously. He sent for Fouche, and desired him to arrest those who presumed thus to turn the new order into ridicule. Fouche merely replied that he would wait till the autumn; and the First Consul understood that trifles were often rendered matters of importance by being honoured with too much attention.

But though Bonaparte was piqued at the interest excited by the engravings of Madame de Genlis' romance he manifested no displeasure against that celebrated woman, who had been recommended to him by MM. de Fontanes and Fievee and who addressed several letters to him. As this sort of correspondence did not come within the routine of my business I did not see the letters; but I heard from Madame Bonaparte that they contained a prodigious number of proper names, and I have reason to believe that they contributed not a little to magnify, in the eyes of the First Consul, the importance of the Faubourg St. Germain, which, in spite of all his courage, was a scarecrow to him.

Bonaparte regarded the Faubourg St. Germain as representing the whole mass of Royalist opinion; and he saw clearly that the numerous erasures from the emigrant list had necessarily increased dissatisfaction among the Royalists, since the property of the emigrants had not been restored to its old possessors, even in those cases in which it had not been sold. It was the fashion in a certain class to ridicule the unpolished manners of the great men of the Republic compared with the manners of the nobility of the old Court. The wives of certain generals had several times committed themselves by their awkwardness. In many circles there was an affectation of treating with contempt what are called the parvenus; those people who, to use M. de Talleyrand's expression, do not know how to walk upon a carpet. All this gave rise to complaints against the Faubourg St. Germain; while, on the other hand, Bonaparte's brothers spared no endeavours to irritate him against everything that was calculated to revive the recollection of the Bourbons.

Such were Bonaparte's feelings, and such was the state of society during the year 1802. The fear of the Bourbons must indeed have had a powerful influence on the First Consul before he could have been induced to take a step which may justly be regarded as the most inconsiderate of his whole life. After suffering seven months to elapse without answering the first letter of Louis XVIII., after at length answering his second letter in the tone of a King addressing a subject, he went so far as to write to Louis, proposing that he should renounce the throne of his ancestors in his, Bonaparte's, favour, and offering him as a reward for this renunciation a principality in Italy, or a considerable revenue for himself and his family.

—[Napoleon seems to have always known, as with Cromwell and the Stuarts, that if his dynasty failed the Bourbons must succeed him. "I remember," says Metternich, "Napoleon said to me, 'Do you know why Louis XVIII. is not now sitting opposite to you? It is only because it is I who am sitting here. No other person could maintain his position; and if ever I disappear in consequence of a catastrophe no one but a Bourbon could sit here.'" (Metternich, tome i. p. 248). Farther, he said to Metternich, "The King overthrown, the Republic was master of the soil of France. It is that which I have replaced. The old throne of France is buried under its rubbish. I had to found a new one. The Bourbons could not reign over this creation. My strength lies in my fortune. I am new, like the Empire; there is, therefore, a perfect homogeneity between the Empire and myself."—"However," says Metternich, "I have often thought that Napoleon, by talking in this way, merely sought to study the opinion of others, or to confuse it, and the direct advance which he made to Louis XVIII., in 1804 seemed to confirm this suspicion. Speaking to me one day of this advance he said, 'Monsieur's reply was grand; it was full of fine traditions. There is something in legitimate rights which appeals to more than the mere mind. If Monsieur had consulted his mind only he would have arranged with me, and I should have made for him a magnificent future'" (Metternich, tome i, p. 276). According to Iung's Lucien (tome ii. p. 421), the letter written and signed by Napoleon, but never sent, another draft being substituted, is still in the French archives. Metternich speaks of Napoleon making a direct advance to Louis XVIII. in 1804. According to Colonel Iung (Lucien Bonaparte, tome ii. pp. 4211-426) the attempt was made through the King of Prussia in 1802, the final answer of Louis being made on the 28th February 1803, as given in the text, but with a postscript of his nephew in addition, "With the permission of the King, my uncle, I adhere with heart and soul to the contents of this note. "(signed) LOUIS ANTOINE, Due d'Angouleme."

The reader will remark that there is no great interval between this letter and the final break with the Bourbons by the death of the Duc d'Enghien. At this time, according to Savory (tome iii. p. 241), some of the Bourbons were receiving French pensions. The Prince de Conti, the Duchesse de Bourbon, and the Duchesse d'Orleans, when sent out of France by the Directory, were given pensions of from 20,000 to 26,000 francs each. They lived in Catalonia. When the French troops entered Spain in 1808 General Canclaux, a friend of the Prince de Conti, brought to the notice of Napoleon that the tiresome formalities insisted on by the pestilent clerks of all nations were observed towards these regal personages. Gaudin, the Minister of Finance, apparently on his own initiative, drew up a decree increasing the pensions to 80,000 francs, and doing away with the formalities. "The Emperor signed at once, thanking the Minister of Finance." The reader, remembering the position of the French Princes then, should compare this action of Napoleon with the failure of the Bourbons in 1814 to pay the sums promised to Napoleon, notwithstanding the strong remonstrances made at Vienna to Talleyrand by Alexander and Lord Castlereagh. See Talleyrand's Correspondence with Louis XVIII., tome ii. pp. 27, 28; or French edition, pp. 285, 288.]—

The reader will recollect the curious question which the First Consul put to me on the subject of the Bourbons when we were walking in the park of Malmaison. To the reply which I made to him on that occasion I attribute the secrecy he observed towards me respecting the letter just alluded to. I am indeed inclined to regard that letter as the result of one of his private conferences with Lucien; but I know nothing positive on the subject, and merely mention this as a conjecture. However, I had an opportunity of ascertaining the curious circumstances which took place at Mittau, when Bonaparte's letter was delivered to Louis XVIII.

That Prince was already much irritated against Bonaparte by his delay in answering his first letter, and also by the tenor of his tardy reply; but on reading the First Consul's second letter the dethroned King immediately sat down and traced a few lines forcibly expressing his indignation at such a proposition. The note, hastily written by Louis XVIII. in the first impulse of irritation, bore little resemblance to the dignified and elegant letter which Bonaparte received, and which I shall presently lay before the reader. This latter epistle closed very happily with the beautiful device of Francis I., "All is lost but honour." But the first letter was stamped with a more chivalrous tone of indignation. The indignant sovereign wrote it with his hand supported on the hilt of his sword; but the Abbe Andre, in whom Louis XVIII. reposed great confidence, saw the note, and succeeded, not without some difficulty, in soothing the anger of the King, and prevailing on him to write the following letter:

I do not confound M. Bonaparte with those who have preceded him. I esteem his courage and his military talents. I am grateful for some acts of his government; for the benefits which are conferred on my people will always be prized by me.

But he errs in supposing that he can induce me to renounce my rights; so far from that, he would confirm them, if they could possibly be doubtful, by the step he has now taken.

I am ignorant of the designs of Heaven respecting me and my subjects; but I know the obligations which God has imposed upon me. As a Christian, I will fulfil my duties to my last breath—as the son of St. Louis, I would, like him, respect myself even in chains— as the successor of Francis I., I say with him—'Tout est perdu fors l'honneur'.

Louis XVIII.'s letter having reached Paris, the Royalist committee assembled, and were not a little embarrassed as to what should be done. The meeting took place at Neuilly. After a long deliberation it was suggested that the delivery of the letter should be entrusted to the Third Consul, with whom the Abby de Montesqiou had kept up acquaintance since the time of the Constituent Assembly. This suggestion was adopted. The recollections of the commencement of his career, under Chancellor Maupeou, had always caused M. Lebrun to be ranked in a distinct class by the Royalists. For my part, I always looked upon him as a very honest man, a warm advocate of equality, and anxious that it should be protected even by despotism, which suited the views of the First Consul very well. The Abbe de Montesquiou accordingly waited upon M. Lebrun, who undertook to deliver the letter. Bonaparte received it with an air of indifference; but whether that indifference were real or affected, I am to this day unable to determine. He said very little to me about the ill success of the negotiation with Louis XVIII. On this subject he dreaded, above all, the interference of his brothers, who created around him a sort of commotion which he knew was not without its influence, and which on several occasions had excited his anger.

The letter of Louis XVIII. is certainly conceived in a tone of dignity which cannot be too highly admired; and it may be said that Bonaparte on this occasion rendered a real service to Louis by affording him the opportunity of presenting to the world one of the finest pages in the history of a dethroned King. This letter, the contents of which were known in some circles of Paris, was the object of general approbation to those who preserved the recollection of the Bourbons, and above all, to the Royalist committee. The members of that committee, proud of the noble spirit evinced by the unfortunate monarch, whose return they were generously labouring to effect, replied to him by a sort of manifesto, to which time has imparted interest, since subsequent events have fulfilled the predictions it contained.

CHAPTER XVI

1802.

The day after my disgrace—Renewal of my duties—Bonaparte's affected regard for me—Offer of an assistant—M. de Meneval—My second rupture with Bonaparte—The Due de Rovigo's account of it— Letter from M. de Barbe Marbois—Real causes of my separation from the First Consul—Postscript to the letter of M. de Barbe Marbois— The black cabinet—Inspection of letters dining the Consulate— I retire to St. Cloud—Communications from M. de Meneval—A week's conflict between friendship and pride—My formal dismissal—Petty revenge—My request to visit England—Monosyllabic answer—Wrong suspicion—Burial of my papers—Communication from Duroc—My letter to the First Consul—The truth acknowledged.