Part 16 (2/2)
Their Royal Highnesses succeeded perfectly in their endeavours to gain the well-ns in everything else but when the favourite was ht, or when any insinuations were thrown out concerning thefro it with advantage to the State The Queen was especially irritated when such was the subject of conversation or of remark; and she finally prohibited it under pain of her displeasure A report even reached Their Royal Highnesses, that the Prince of Peace had de could, therefore, be effected to iress of wickedness and calareeable dilemma, it was resolved by the cabal to send the Queen to a convent, until her favourite had been arrested and i the King's illness (His Majesty then still suffered from several paralytic strokes), and to place men of talents and patriotism in the place of the creatures of the Prince of Peace As soon as this revolution was organized, the Queen would have been restored to full liberty and to that respect due to her rank
This plan had been communicated to our Ambassador, and approved of by our Government; but when Herman in such an honest manner had inspected the confidential correspondence of the Princess of Asturias, Beurnonville was instructed by Talleyrand to, warn the favourite of the ier, and to advise hi the truth, the Prince of Peace alar and Queen with the most absurd fabrications; and assured Their Majesties that their son and their daughter-in-law had determined not only to dethrone them, but to keep them prisoners for life, after they had been forced to witness his execution
Indolence and weakness are oftenhe said was at once believed; the Prince and Princess were ordered under arrest in their own apartments, without permission to see or correspond with anybody; and so certain was the Prince of Peace of a coainst his tyranny, that a frigate at Cadiz was ready waiting to carry the Princess of Asturias back to Naples All Spaniards who had the honour of their Sovereigns and of their country at heart las; but no one dared to take any measures to counteract therand officer to the Prince of Asturias, demanded an audience of Their Majesties, in the presence of the favourite He began by begging his Sovereign to recollect that for the place he occupied he was indebted to the Prince of Peace; and he called upon him to declare whether he had ever had reason to suspect hi answered in the negative, he said that, though his present situation and office near the heir to the throne was the pride and desire of his life, he would have thrown it up the instant that he had the least ground to suppose that this Prince ceased to be a dutiful son and subject; but so far frouarded moments--in moments of conviviality had heard him speak of his royal parents with as much submission and respect as if he had been in their presence ”If,” continued he, ”the Prince of Peace has said otherwise, he has , no doubt, deceived himself To overthrow a throne and to seize it cannot be done without accomplices, without ar the Prince as their chief? I have heard no name but that of the lovely Princess, his consort, the partaker of his sentiments as well as of his heart And his aruards his royal parent has given to augment the necessary splendour of his rank And as to his money? He has none but what is received from royal and paternal munificence and bounty You, my Prince,” said he to the favourite (who seemed much offended at the impression the speech made on Their Majesties), ”will one day thank h to dissuade dishonourable, impolitic, or unjust sentiments Of the approbation of posterity I am certain--”
”If,” interrupted the favourite, ”the Prince of Asturias and his consort will give up their bad counsellors, I hope Their Majesties will forget and forgive everything with hnesses,” replied the Duke of Monteiveness, or whether they have any counsellors, I do not know, and ae; but I ahnesses if they wish to purchase favour at the expense of confidence and honour An order from His Majesty may immediately clear up this doubt”
The Prince of Peace was then ordered to write, in the na, to his children in the er In half an hour the er returned with a letter addressed to the favourite, containing only these lines:
”A King of Spain is well aware that a Prince and Princess of Asturias can have no answer to give to such proposals or to such questions”
After six days' arrest, and after the Prince of Peace had in vain endeavoured to discover sohnesses, they were invited to Court, and reconciled both to him and their royal parents
LETTER VIII
PARIS, September, 1805
MY LORD:--I will add in this letter, to the coentlemen mentioned in my last, what I re our diploues at Madrid
The Prince of Peace, before he listened to the advice of Duke of Montemar, had consulted Beurnonville, who dissuaded all violence, and as much as possible all noise This accounts for the favourite's pretended h he was externally reconciled, and, as was reported at Madrid, had sworn his reconciliation even by taking the sacras of the Prince and Princess of Asturias were strictly observed and reported by the spies whohnesses Vain of his success and victory, he even lost that respectful deood, nay, a well-bred subject always shows to the heir to the throne, and the Princes related to his Sovereign He sometimes behaved with a pre or defying resentreat festivities, when the Court was most brilliant, and the courtiers ant to those whom he traitorously and audaciously dared to call his rivals On the 9th of last December, at the celebration of the Queen's birthday, his conduct towards Their Royal Highnesses excited such general indignation that the remembrance of the occasion of the fete, and the presence of their Sovereigns, could not repress a nal from the Prince of Asturias would then have been sufficient to have caused the insolent upstart to be seized and thrown out of theI arandees even laid their hands on their swords, fixing their eyes on the heir to the throne, as if to say: ”Command, and your unworthy enemy shall exist no more”
To prepare, perhaps, the royal and paternal mind for deeds which contemporaries always condemn, and posterity will always reprobate, the Prince of Peace procured a history to be written in his oay and manner, of Don Carlos, the unfortunate son of the barbarous and unnatural Philip II; but the Queen's confessor, though, like all her other domestics, a tool of the favourite, threw it into the fire with reproof, saying that Spain did not rerand and powerful Monarch, but abhorred in hi that no laws, human or divine, no institutions, no supremacy whatever, could authorize a parent to stain his hands in the blood of his children These anecdotes are sufficient both to elucidate the inveteracy of the favourite, the abject state of the heir to the throne, and the inco and Queen
Our Ambassador, in the meantime, dissembled alith the Prince and Princess of Asturias; and even made thereeable to them; but he neither offered to put an end to them nor to be a ns He was guided by no other motive but to keep the favourite in subjection and alar a correspondence with his rivals That this was the case and the ue he carried on in the beginning of last ners have but an imperfect or erroneous idea of the amount of the immense sums Spain has paid to our Government in loans, in contributions, in donations, and in subsidies Since the reign of Bonaparte, or for these last five years, upwards of half the revenue of the Spanish ht into our National Treasury or into the privy purse of the Bonaparte faunboats have been built, our fleets equipped, nor our armies paid The dreadful situation of the Spanish finances is, therefore, not surprising--it is, indeed, still eneral bankruptcy has not already involved the Spanish nation in a general ruin
When, on his return frootiator and the preparations of Austria convinced Bonaparte of the probability of a Continental war, our troops on the coast had not been paid for two months, and his Ie the arrears or to provide for future pay of the year 14, or the 22d instant Beurnonville was, therefore, ordered to demand peremptorily from the Cabinet of Madrid forty millions of livres--in advance upon future subsidies Half of that sum had, indeed, shortly before arrived at Cadiz from America, but much more was due by the Spanish Government to its own creditors, and promised them in payment of old debts The Prince of Peace, in consequence, declared that, however e the French Government, it was utterly impossible to procure, much less to advance such sums
Beurnonville then became more assiduous than ever about the Prince and Princess of Asturias; and he had the impudence to assert that they had promised, if their friends were at the head of affairs, to satisfy the wishes and expectation of the E the treasury at Cadiz, and paying the State creditors in vales deinero; notes hitherto payable in cash, and never at a discount The stupid favourite sed the palpable bait; four millions in dollars were sent under an escort to this country, while the Spanish notes instantly fell to a discount at first of four and afterwards of six per cent, and probably will fall lower still, as no treasures are expected from America this autumn It ith two millions of these dollars that the credit of the Bank of France was restored, or at least for some time enabled to resume its paying of those disgraceful fetters which oppress her at hon tyranny, which finally must produce domestic misery as well as slavery
When the Prince and Princess of Asturias were informed of the scandalous and false assertion of Beurnonville, they and their adherents not only publicly, and in all societies, contradicted it, but affirmed that, rather than obtain authority or influence on such ruinous terlected during their lives They took the more care to have their sentiments known on this subject, as our Ambassador's calumny had hurt their popularity It was then first that, to revenge the shame hich his duplicity had covered him, Beurnonville perin the chastisehnesses in the persons of their favourites Duke of Monterand officer to the Prince of Asturias; Marquis of Villa Franca, the grand equerry to the Princess of Asturias; Count of Miranda, chaer del Monte, with six other Court ladies and four other noblemen, were, therefore, exiled from Madrid into different provinces, and forbidden to reside in any place within twenty leagues of the residence of the royal fa to the last letters and communications from Spain, the Prince and Princess of Asturias had not appeared at Court since the insult offered therace of their friends, and were resolved not to appear in any place where theyour best informed politicians here, it is expected that a revolution and a change of dynasty will be the issue of this our political embryo in Spain Napoleon has more than once indirectly hinted that the Bonaparte dynasty will never be firn in Spain or Italy Should he prove victorious in the present Continental contest, another peace, and not the ned with your country--a peace which, I fear, will leave hiements are publicly avowed to be as follow: His third brother, Louis, and his sons, are to be the heirs of the French Enation of Napoleon, to succeed to the Kingdoh at present in disgrace, is considered as the person destined to supplant the Bourbons in Spain, where, during his embassy in 1800, and in 1801, he formed certain connections which Napoleon still keeps up and preserves Holland will be the inheritance of Jeroh to extend his power in Great Britain Such are the modest pretensions our In
As to the Prince of Peace, he is only an iuers and innovators, which theyas they find it necessary, and which, when that ceases to be the case, they break and throay This idiot is made to believe that both his political and physical existence depends entirely upon our support, and he has infused the same ridiculous notion into his acconorance, and cowardice thus misled may, directed by art, interest, and craft, perforle themselves in the destruction of their country
Beurnonville, our present Ambassador at Madrid, is the son of a porter, and was a porter himself when, in 1770, he enlisted as a soldier in one of our regi there collected soe, he purchased the place of a major in the militia of the Island of Bourbon, but was, for his i to France, he bitterly co in the antechambers of Ministers, he obtained at last the Cross of St Louis as a kind of indeht with his Indian wealth the place of an officer in the Swiss Guard of Monsieur, the present Louis XVIII Being refused adenteel societies, he resorted with Barras and other disgraced nobles to ga-houses, and he even kept to himself when the Revolution took place He had at the same time, and for a certain interest, advanced Madame d'Estainville money to establish her famous, or rather infamous, house in the Rue de Bonnes Enfants, near the Palais Royal,--a house that soon became the fashi+onable resort of our friends of Liberty and Equality
In 1790, Beurnonville offered his services as aide-de-careat ambition and small capacity, La Fayette, who declined the honour The Jacobins were not so nice In 1792, they appointed hieneral under Du obtained a separate conorant reat loss The official reports of our revolutionary generals have long been admired for their modesty as well as veracity; but Beurnonville has alreat Bonaparte In a report to the National Convention concerning a terrible engagement of three hours near Grewenh the nuot out of the scrape with the loss of only the little finger of one of his rifleht after the execution of Louis XVI, he was nominated Minister of the War Department--a place which he refused, under a pretence that he was better able to serve his country with his sword than with his pen, having already been in one hundred and twenty battles (where, he did not enu March, however, he accepted thedelivered up by his Hector, Dumouriez, to the Austrians He remained a prisoner at Olmutz until the 22d of Noveed for the daughter of Louis XVI, Her present Royal Highness, the duchess of Angouleme
In the autumn of 1796 he had a temporary, command of the dispersed remnants of Jourdan's army, and in 1797 he was sent as a French commander to Holland In 1799, Bonaparte appointed him an Ambassador to the Court of Berlin; and in 1803 removed him in the same character to the Court of Madrid In Prussia, his talents did not cause him to be dreaded, nor his personal qualities hed at as a boaster, but not trusted as a warrior In Spain, he is neither dreaded nor esteehed at nor courted; he is there universally despised He studies to be thought a gentleh the veil of a ridiculously affected and outre politeness
Notwithstanding the corimaces of his face, the self-sufficiency of his looks, his systematically powdered and dressed hair, his showy dress, his counted and short bows, and his presuarity, and obscenity, he cannot escape even the most inattentive observer
The Ambassador, Beurnonville, is noeen fifty and sixty years of age; is a grand officer of our Iion of Honour; has a brother who is a turnkey, and two sisters, one s' and cats' meat in our streets