Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume III

Already aware of the unpopularity which attached to his late cruel proceedings, Buonaparte became desirous to counterbalance it by filling the public mind with a terrific idea of the schemes of England, which, in framing and encouraging attempts upon his life, drove him to those unusual and extraordinary acts, which he desired to represent as measures of retaliation. Singular manœuvres were resorted to for the purpose of confirming the opinions which he was desirous to impress upon the world. The imprudence – so, at least, it seems – of Mr. Drake, British resident at Munich, enabled Buonaparte to make his charges against England with some speciousness. This agent of the British Government had maintained a secret correspondence with a person of infamous character, called Mehee de la Touche, who, affecting the sentiments of a Royalist and enemy of Buonaparte, was, in fact, employed by the first consul to trepan Mr. Drake into expressions which might implicate the English ministers, his constituents, and furnish grounds for the accusations which Buonaparte made against them. It certainly appears that Mr. Drake endeavoured, by the medium of de la Touche, to contrive the means of effecting an insurrection of the Royalists, or other enemies of Buonaparte, with whom his country was then at war; and, in doing so, he acted according to the practice of all belligerent powers, who, on all occasions, are desirous to maintain a communication with such malecontents as may exist in the hostile nation. But, unless by the greatest distortion of phrase and expression, there arises out of the letters not the slightest room to believe that Mr. Drake encouraged the party with whom he supposed himself to be in correspondence, to proceed by the mode of assassination, or any others that are incompatible with the law of nations, and acknowledged by civilized governments. The error of Mr. Drake seems to have been, that he was not sufficiently cautious respecting the sincerity of the person with whom he maintained his intercourse. Mr. Spencer Smith, the British envoy at Stuttgard, was engaged in a similar intrigue, which appears also to have been a snare spread for him by the French Government.

Buonaparte failed not to make the utmost use of these pretended discoveries, which were promulgated with great form by Regnier,69 who held the office of grand judge. He invoked the faith of nations, as if the Duke d'Enghien had been still residing in peaceable neutrality at Ettenheim, and exclaimed against assassination, as if his state dungeons could not have whispered of the death of Pichegru. The complaisant sovereigns of Stuttgard and Munich readily ordered Smith and Drake to leave their courts; and the latter was forced to depart on foot, and by crossroads, to avoid being kidnapped by the French gendarmes.

SIR GEORGE RUMBOLD.

The fate which Mr. Drake dreaded, and perhaps narrowly escaped, actually befell Sir George Rumbold, resident at the free German city of Hamburgh, in the capacity of his British Majesty's envoy to the Circle of Lower Saxony. On the night of the 25th October, he was seized, in violation of the rights attached by the law of nations to the persons of ambassadors, as well as to the territories of neutral countries, by a party of the French troops, who crossed the Elbe for that purpose. The envoy, with his papers, was then transferred to Paris in the capacity of a close prisoner, and thrown into the fatal Temple. The utmost anxiety was excited even amongst Buonaparte's ministers, lest this imprisonment should be intended as a prelude to further violence; and both Fouché and Talleyrand exerted what influence they possessed over the mind of Napoleon, to prevent the proceedings which were to be apprehended. The King of Prussia also extended his powerful interposition; and the result was, that Sir George Rumbold, after two days' imprisonment, was dismissed to England, on giving his parole not to return to Hamburgh. It seems probable, although the Moniteur calls this gentleman the worthy associate of Drake and Spencer Smith, and speaks of discoveries amongst his papers which were to enlighten the public on the policy of England, that nothing precise was alleged against him, even to palliate the outrage which the French ruler had committed.

The tenor of Buonaparte's conduct in another instance, towards a British nobleman of distinction, though his scheme was rendered abortive by the sagacity of the noble individual against whom it was directed, is a striking illustration of the species of intrigue practised by the French police, and enables us to form a correct judgment of the kind of evidence upon which Buonaparte brought forward his calumnious accusation against Britain and her subjects.

LORD ELGIN.

The Earl of Elgin, lately ambassador of Great Britain at the Porte, had, contrary to the usage among civilized nations, been seized upon with his family as he passed through the French territory; and during the period of which we are treating, he was residing upon his parole near Pau, in the south of France, as one of the Détenus. Shortly after the arrest of Moreau, Georges, &c., an order arrived for committing his lordship to close custody, in reprisal, it was said, of severities exercised in England on the French General Boyer. The truth was, that the affair of General Boyer had been satisfactorily explained to the French Government. In the Parisian papers, on the contrary, his lordship's imprisonment was ascribed to barbarities which he was said to have instigated against the French prisoners of war in Turkey – a charge totally without foundation. Lord Elgin was, however, transferred to the strong castle of Lourdes, situated on the descent of the Pyrenees, where the commandant received him, though a familiar acquaintance, with the reserve and coldness of an entire stranger. Attempts were made by this gentleman and his lieutenant to exasperate the feelings which must naturally agitate the mind of a man torn from the bosom of his family, and committed to close custody in a remote fortress, where the accommodation was as miserable as the castle itself was gloomy, strong, and ominously secluded from the world. They failed, however, in extracting from their prisoner any expressions of violence or impatience, however warranted by the usage to which he was subjected.

After a few days' confinement, a sergeant of the guard delivered to Lord Elgin a letter, the writer of which informed him, that, being his fellow prisoner, and confined in a secluded dungeon, he regretted he could not wait on his lordship, but that when he walked in the court-yard, he could have conversation with him at the window of his room. Justly suspecting this communication, Lord Elgin destroyed the letter; and while he gave the sergeant a louis-d'or, told him, that if he or any of his comrades should again bring him any secret letter or message, he would inform the commandant of the circumstance. Shortly afterwards, the commandant of the fortress, in conversation with Lord Elgin, spoke of the prisoner in question as a person whose health was suffering for want of exercise; and next day his lordship saw the individual walking in the court-yard before his window. He manifested every disposition to engage his lordship in conversation, which Lord Elgin successfully avoided.

A few weeks afterwards, and not till he had been subjected to several acts of severity and vexation, Lord Elgin was permitted to return to Pau. But he was not yet extricated from the nets in which it was the fraudulent policy of the French Government to involve him. The female, who acted as porter to his lordship's lodgings, one morning presented him with a packet, which she said had been left by a woman from the country, who was to call for an answer. With the same prudence which distinguished his conduct at Lourdes, Lord Elgin detained the portress in the apartment, and found that the letter was from the state prisoner already mentioned; that it contained an account of his being imprisoned for an attempt to burn the French fleet; and detailed his plan as one which he had still in view, and which he held out in the colours most likely, as he judged, to interest an Englishman. The packet also covered letters to the Comte d'Artois, and other foreigners of distinction, which Lord Elgin was requested to forward with his best convenience. Lord Elgin thrust the letters into the fire in presence of the portress, and kept her in the room till they were entirely consumed; explaining to her, at the same time, that such letters to him as might be delivered by any other channel than the ordinary post, should be at once sent to the governor of the town. His lordship judged it his farther duty to mention to the prefect the conspiracy detailed in the letter, under the condition, however, that no steps should be taken in consequence, unless the affair became known from some other quarter.

Some short time after these transactions, and when Buonaparte was appointed to assume the imperial crown, (at which period there was hope of a general act of grace, which should empty the prisons,) Lord Elgin's fellow-captive at Lourdes, being, it seems, a real prisoner, as well as a spy, in hopes of meriting a share in this measure of clemency, made a full confession of all which he had done or designed to do against Napoleon's interest. Lord Elgin was naturally interested in this confession, which appeared in the Moniteur, and was a good deal surprised to see that a detail, otherwise minute, bore no reference to, or correspondence regarding, the plan of burning the Brest fleet. He lost no time in writing an account of the particulars we have mentioned to a friend at Paris, by whom they were communicated to Monsieur Fargues, senator of the district of Bearn, whom these plots particularly interested as having his senatorie for their scene. When Lord Elgin's letter was put into his hand, the senator changed countenance, and presently after expressed his high congratulation at what he called Lord Elgin's providential escape. He then intimated, with anxious hesitation, that the whole was a plot to entrap Lord Elgin; that the letters were written at Paris, and sent down to Bearn by a confidential agent, with the full expectation that they would be found in his lordship's possession. This was confirmed by the commandant of Lourdes, with whom Lord Elgin had afterwards an unreserved communication, in which he laid aside the jailor, and resumed the behaviour of a gentleman. He imputed Lord Elgin's liberation to the favourable report which he himself and his lieutenant had made of the calm and dignified manner in which his lordship had withstood the artifices which they had been directed to use, with a view of working on his feelings, and leading him into some intemperance of expression against France or her ruler; which might have furnished a pretext for treating him with severity, and for implicating the British Government in the imprudence of one of her nobles, invested with a diplomatic character.70

The above narrative forms a singularly luminous commentary on the practices imputed to Messrs. Drake and Spencer, and subsequently to Sir George Rumbold; nor is it a less striking illustration of the detention of the unfortunate Captain Wright. With one iota less of prudence and presence of mind, Lord Elgin must have been entangled in the snare which was so treacherously spread for him. Had he even engaged in ten minutes conversation with the villanous spy and incendiary, it would have been in the power of such a wretch to represent the import after his own pleasure. Or had his lordship retained the packet of letters even for half an hour in his possession, which he might have most innocently done, he would probably have been seized with them upon his person, and it must in that case have been impossible for him to repel such accusations, as Buonaparte would have no doubt founded on a circumstance so suspicious.

While Napoleon used such perfidious means, in order to attach, if possible, to a British ambassador of such distinguished rank, the charge of carrying on intrigues against his person, the British ministers, in a tone the most manly and dignified, disclaimed the degrading charges which had been circulated against them through Europe. When the topic was introduced by Lord Morpeth71 into the British House of Commons, by a motion respecting the correspondence of Drake, the Chancellor of the Exchequer replied, "I thank the noble lord for giving me an opportunity to repel, openly and courageously, one of the most gross and most atrocious calumnies ever fabricated in one civilized nation to the prejudice of another. I affirm, that no power has been given, no instruction has been sent, by this government to any individual, to act in a manner contrary to the law of nations. I again affirm, as well in my own name as in that of my colleagues, that we have not authorised any human being to conduct himself in a manner contrary to the honour of this country, or the dictates of humanity."72

This explicit declaration, made by British ministers in a situation where detected falsehood would have proved dangerous to those by whom it was practised, is to be placed against the garbled correspondence of which the French possessed themselves, by means violently subversive of the law of nations; and which correspondence was the result of intrigues that would never have existed but for the treacherous suggestions of their own agents.