Part 4 (2/2)
As to Fouche's en apprehended it from what others, in similar circumstances with ht no less, than sixteen national estates, seven of the former proprietors of which have suddenly disappeared since his Ministry, probably in the manner he intended to remove me This man is one of the ed forward from obscurity It is more difficult to mention a criood or just action that he ever performed He is so notorious a villain that even the infamous National Convention expelled him from its bosoh, in my debased country, to extenuate, reatly corrupted and iative evidence
As a friar before the Revolution he has avowed, in his correspondence with the National Convention, that he never believed in a God; and as one of the first public functionaries of a Republic he has officially denied the existence of virtue He is, therefore, as unmoved by tears as by reproaches, and as inaccessible to reainst repentance With hi, and honour and honesty nothing The supplicant or the pleader who appears before him with no other support than the justice of his cause is fortunate indeed if, after being cast, he is not also confined or ruined, and perhaps both; while a line froes black to white, guilt to innocence, reuishes the faggots lighted for the parricide
His authority is so extensive that on the least signal, with one blow, from the extremities of France to her centre, it crushes the cot and the palace; and his decisions, against which there is no appeal, are so destructive that they never leave any traces behind them, and Bonaparte, Bonaparte alone, can prevent or arrest their effect
Though a traitor to his former benefactor, the ex-Director Barras, he possesses now the unlimited confidence of Napoleon Bonaparte, and, as far as is known, has not yet done anything to forfeit it,--if private acts of cruelty cannot, in the agent of a tyrant, be called breach of trust or infidelity He shares with Talleyrand the fraternity of the vigilant, i secret police; and with Real, and Dubois, the prefect of police, the reproduction, or rather the invention, of new tortures and i under the Temple and enius They are covered with trap-doors, and any person whoed to speak out; whose return to society is thought dangerous, or whose discretion is suspected; who has been imprisoned by reeable to the Bonapartes, their favourites, or the mistresses of their favourites; who has displeased Fouche, or offended some other placeman; any who have refused to part with their property for the recovery of their liberty, are all precipitated into these artificial abysses there to be forgotten; or worse, to be starved to death, if they have not been fortunate enough to break their necks and be killed by the fall
The property Fouche has acquired by his robberies within these last twelve years is at the lowest rate valued at fifty million livres--which must increase yearly; as a man who disposes of the liberty of fifty reat part, master of their wealth
Except the chiefs of the Governments and their officers of State, there exists not an inhabitant of France, Italy, Holland, or Switzerland who can consider hi seized, imprisoned, plundered, tortured, or exterents
You will no doubt exclaim, ”How can Bonaparte employ, how dares he confide, in such a man?” Fouche is as able as unprincipled, and, with the reat talents There is no infamy he will not stoop to, and no crime, however execrable, that he will hesitate to con orders it He is, therefore, a most useful instru what is said to the contrary in France, and believed abroad, would cease to rule the day he becan of laws and of humanity banished terror and tyranny
It is reported that soo to the devoutsome particulars of the crimes and vices of Fouche and Talleyrand, and required of her, if she wished to prevent the curses of Heaven froht cease to enant to a Divinity Napoleon, after reading through the memorial, is stated to have answered hishim to dis of what I was not previously inforht the most virtuous and moral of men for his Ministers and counsellors; and where did their virtues andhim? If the writer of the memorial will mention two honest and irreproachable characters, with equal talents and zeal to serve ain be adust, 1805
MY LORD:--You have with soland con diplomatic corps in France, when the pretended correspondence between Mr Drake and Mehee de la Touche was published in our official gazette Had you, however, like myself, been in a situation to study the characters and appreciate the worth of most of them, this conduct would have excited no surprise, and pity would have taken the place both of accusation and reproach Hardly one of them, except Count Philipp von Cobenzl, the Austrian Ambassador (and even he is considerably involved), possesses any property, or has anything else but his salary to depend upon for subsistence The least offence to Bonaparte or Talleyrand would instantly deprive theh to obtain some other appointment, reduce the pension in their own country
The day before Mr Drake's correspondence appeared in the Moniteur, in March, 1804, Talleyrand gave a grand diploreed with Bonaparte, Duroc called him out on the part of the First Consul After an absence of near an hour, which excited great curiosity and sohtful and seeentleainst my inclination The First Consul knew that you honoured me with your company today, and would therefore not have interrupted me by his orders had not a discovery of a ainst the law of nations just been ainst the Cabinet of St James, not only of France, but of every nation that wishes for the preservation of civilized society After dinner I shall doto you the particulars, well convinced that you will all enter armth into the just resent the repast the bottle went freely round, and as soon as they had drunk their coffee and liqueurs, Talleyrand rang a bell, and Hauterive presented hiinal letters of Mr Drake were handed about with the commentaries of the Minister and his secretary Their heads heated ine, it was not difficult to influence their ment, and they exclaimed, as in a chorus, ”C'est aboe of their situation, as well as of their indiscretion ”I aentlemen,” said he, ”and shall not fail to inforreeable subject; but verbal expressions are not sufficient in an affair of such great consequence I have orders to demand your written declarations, which, after what you have already expressed, you cannot hesitate about sending to ht, that they may accompany the denunciation which the First Consul despatches, within some few hours, to all the Courts on the Continent You would much please the First Consul were you to write as near as possible according to the for either against convenance, or against the custons, or etiquettes of Courts, and I aenial with your individual feelings”
A silence of some moments now followed (as all the diploard to a written declaration), which the Swedish A that, ”though he personally n such a declaration, he ht to, write in the nan, without his orders, on a subject still unknown to him”
This remark made the Austrian Ambassador, Count von Cobenzl, propose a private consultation an diploe d'affaires, D'Oubril, as not at the dinner--party, was invited to assist They ly, at the Hotel de Montmorency, Rue de Lille, occupied by Count von Cobenzl; but they ca a written co as every one judgedwith the supposed sentin
As all this official correspondence has been published in England, youthe notes presented by Baron de Dreyer, and Mr
Livingstone,
[In consequence of this conduct, Livingstone was recalled by his Governrace in America To console him, however, in his misfortune, Bonaparte, on his departure, presented him with his portrait, enamelled on the lid of a snuff-box, set round with diamonds, and valued at one thousand louis d'or]
the neutral Ambassadors of Denmark and America, form some tolerably just idea of Talleyrand's formula Their impolitic servility was blamed even by the other stone you know, and perhaps have not to learn that, though a stanch republican in Ah a violent defender of liberty and equality on the other side of the Atlantic, no man bowed lower to usurpation, or revered despotism more, in Europe Without talents, and alotiations, and conceives that policy and duplicity are synonymous He was called here ”the courier of Talleyrand,” on account of his voyages to England, and his journeys to Holland, where this Minister sent hients He acknowledged that no Government was more liberal, and no nation more free, than the British; but he hated the one as much as he abused the other; and he did not conceal sentiments that made him always so welcome to Bonaparte and Talleyrand Never over nice in the choice of his coabonds, used his house as their own; so much so that, when he invited other Ambassadors to dine with him, they, before they accepted the invitation, made a condition that no outlaws or adventurers should be of the party
In your youth, Baron de Dreyer was an Aen to that of St James He has since been in the sa and Madrid Born a Norwegian, of a poor and obscure family, he owes his advanceh they have procured him rank, have left him without a fortune When he caht a mistress with hi his residence in that country He also kept an English o in London, by whom he had a son, M Guillaumeau, who is now his secretary Thus encue of seventy, it is no surprise if he strives to die at his post, and that fear to offend Bonaparte and Talleyrand soets the better of his prudence
In Denmark, as well as in all other Continental States, the pensions of diplomatic invalids are more scanty than those ofhalf a century nearly, has accustomed himself to a certain style of life, and to expenses requisite to represent his Prince with dignity No wonder, therefore, that Baron de Dreyer prefers Paris to Copenhagen, and that the cunning Talleyrand takes advantage of this preference
It was reported here alish Minister in Denmark co Mr Drake's correspondence; and that the Danish Prime Minister, Count von Bernstorff, wrote to him in consequence, by the order of the Prince Royal, a severe reprimand This act of political justice is, however, denied by hien has laid it down as an invariable rule, never to reprients hom it has reason to be discontented
Should this be the case, no Sovereign in Europe is better served by his representatives than his Danish Majesty, because no one seldo of diplo you a short sketch of one whose weight in the scale of politics entitles hiwitz, insidiously complimented by Talleyrand with the title of ”The Prince of Neutrality, the Sully of Prussia” Christian Henry Curce, Count von Haugwitz, who, until lately, has been the chief director of the political conscience of His Prussian Majesty, as his Minister of the Foreign Department, was born in Silesia, and is the son of a nobleman as a General in the Austrian service when Frederick the Greatin 1786, Count von Haugwitz occupied an inferior place in the foreign office, where Count von Herzburg observed his zeal and assiduity, and reco Frederick William II By the interest of the celebrated Bishopswerder, he procured, in 1792, the appointment of an Ambassador to the Court of Vienna, where he succeeded Baron von Jacobi, the present Prussian Minister in your country In the autumn of the same year he went to Ratisbon, to cooperate with the Austrian Ambassador, and to persuade the Princes of the Gerainst France In the otiated with Lord Mal the affairs of France; shortly afterwards his nomination as a Minister of State took place, and froone a revolution, for which it is not easy to account; but, whatever were the causes of his change of opinions, the Treaty of Basle, concluded between France and Prussia in 1795, was certainly negotiated under his auspices; and in August, 1796, he signed, with the French Minister at Berlin, Citizen Caillard, the first and faly drawn, to cause the neutrality of the North to be observed and protected Had the Count von Haugwitz of 1795 been the sawitz of 1792, it is probable we should no longer have heard of either a French Republic or a French Edoitins, the want of which they themselves, or their children, will feel andas unlimited usurpations tyrannize over ood sense of the Count will point out to him, before it is too late, the impolicy of his present connections; and that he will use his interest with his Prince to persuade hinity of the Prussian Monarchy, and favourable to the independence of insulted Europe