Part 21 (2/2)
PARIS, October, 1805
MY LORD:--You must often have been surprised at the immense wealth which, from the best and often authentic inforenerals and public functionaries have extorted and possess; but the catalogue of private rapine committed, without authority, by our soldiers, officers, coenerals, is likewise ial kind that is to say, those authorized by our Government itself, or by its civil and military representatives It comprehends the innumerable requisitions demanded and enforced, whether as loans, or in provisions or merchandise, or in money as an equivalent for both; the levies of es; corvees of all kinds; the eazines for the service of our armies; in short, whatever was required for the maintenance, a portion of the pay, and divers wants of those armies, from the time they had posted themselves in Brabant, Holland, Italy, Switzerland, and on either bank of the Rhine Add to this the pillage of public or private warehouses, granaries, andto individuals, to the State, to societies, to towns, to hospitals, and even to orphan-houses
But these and other sorts of requisitions, under the appellation of subsistence necessary for the ar, or re them, included also an infinite consumption for the pleasures, luxuries, whims, and debaucheries of our civil or military commanders Most of those articles were delivered in kind, and ere not used were set up to auction, converted into readythe plunderers
In 1797, General Ney had the command in the vicinity of the free and Imperial city of Wetzlar He there put in requisition all private stores of cloths; and after disposing of them by a public sale, retook them upon another requisition from the purchasers, and sold them a second time
Leather and linen underwent the saht be filled with similar examples, all of public notoriety
This Gendral Ney, who is now one of the principal commanders under Bonaparte in Ger in 1790, and is the son of an old-clothesentered as a coiment of Alsace, to escape the pursuit of his creditors, he was there picked up by some Jacobin emissaries, whom he assisted to seduce the ed an to distinguish himself as an orator of the Jacobin clubs, and was, therefore, by his associates, proeneral Brave and enterprising, areedy after riches, he seized every opportunity to distinguish and enrich himself; and, as fortune supported his endeavours, he was in a short tieneral of division, and acquired a property of severalpreviously served only under Pichegru, Moreau, and Le Courbe
He, with General Richepanse, was one of the first generals supposed to be attached to their former chief, General Moreau, whom Bonaparte seduced into his interest In the autumn of 1802, when the Helvetic Republic attempted to recover its lost independence, Ney was appointed commander-in-chief of the French army in Switzerland, and Ambassador from the First Consul to the Helvetic Government He there conducted himself so much to the satisfaction of Bonaparte, that, on the rupture with your country, he was made commander of the camp near Montreuil; and last year his as received as a Maid of Honour to the Ehter of a washer-wo, at the time that she eloped with Ney With hins as a mistress before the municipality of Coblentz made her his wife Her conduct since has corresponded with that of her husband When he publicly lived with allants, but the instant the Emperor of the French told him to save appearances, if he desired a place for his wife at the Imperial Court, he showed himself the most attentive and faithful of husbands, and she the most tender and dutiful of wives Her h not handsome in her person, she is lively; and her conversation is entertaining, and her society agreeable The Princesse Louis Bonaparte is particularly fond of her, more so than Napoleon, perhaps, desires She has a fault common with most of our Court ladies: she cannot resist, when opportunity presents itself, the te fortunate Report says thatdebts by personal favours
Another of our generals, and the richest of the under Bonaparte, is his brother-in-law, Prince Murat According to some, he had been a Septe before he obtained his first coiven him by the recommendation of Marat, whom he in return afterwards wished to ie of one letter in his own na himself Marat instead of Murat Others, however, declare that his father was an honest cobbler, very superstitious, residing at Bastide, near Cahors, and destined his son to be a Capuchin friar, and that he was in his novitiate when the Revolution teimentals of a soldier In what ained proade, and an aide-de-caypt, and returned thence with him, and who, in 1801, married hiovernor of Paris, and in 1804 a Prince
The wealth which Murat has collected, during his n, is rated at upwards of fifty millions of livres The landed property he possesses in France alone has cost him forty--two ht in the name of his wife, both in France and Italy, are not worth much less A brother-in-law of his, as a sislator; and an uncle, as a tailor, he has placed in the Senate A cousin of his, as a chimneysweeper, is now a tribune; and his niece, as an apprentice to a mantua-maker, is now married to one of the Eenerous to all his relations, and would not have been ashamed, even, to present his parents at the Imperial Court, had not the mother, on the first information of his princely rank, lost her life, and the father his senses, from surprise and joy The millions are not few that he has procured his relatives an opportunity to gain His brother-in-law, the legislator, is worth three millions of livres
It has been asserted before, and I repeat it again:
”It is avarice, and not the on of liberty, that has led, and ever will lead, the Revolution--its promoters, its accomplices, and its instruments Wherever they penetrate, plunder follows; rapine was their first object, of which ferocity has been but the means The French Revolution was fostered by robbery and murder; two nurses that will adhere to her to the last hour of her existence”
General Murat is the trusty executioner of all the Eeance, or public acts of revolutionary justice It was under his private responsibility that Pichegru, Moreau, and Georges were guarded; and he saw Pichegru strangled, Georges guillotined, and Moreau on his way to his place of exile After the seizure and trial of the Duc d'
Enghien, some doubts existed with Napoleon whether even the soldiers of his Italian guard would fire at this Prince ”If they hesitate,” said Murat, who commanded the expedition in the wood of Vincennes, ”my pistols are loaded, and I will blow out his brains”
His wife is the greatest coquette of the Bonaparte fae, rather jealous of his brother-in-law, Lucien, who assured him, upon his word of honour, that his suspicions were unfounded, he is now the ent husbands; but his mistresses are nearly as nu aide-de-camp of the name of Flahault, a son of Talleyrand, while Bishop of Autun, by the then Countess de Flahault, whom Madame Murat would not have been sorry to have had for a consoler at Paris, while her princely spouse was desolating Germany
LETTER XXIII
PARIS, October, 1805
MY LORD:--Since Bonaparte's departure for Gerilance of the police has ht, and our spiesthe day Many suspected persons have also been exiled to some distance from this capital, while others, for a measure of safety, have been shut up in the Temple, or in the Castle of Vincennes These 'lettres de cachet', orthe Emperor's absence exclusively by his brother Louis, after a report, or upon a request, of the Minister of Police, Fouche
I have mentioned to you before that Louis Bonaparte is both a drunkard and a libertine When a young and unprincipled man of such propensities enjoys an unrestrained authority, it cannot be surprising to hear that he has abused it He had not been his brother's military viceroy for twenty-four hours before one set of our Parisians were aical intrigue enterprised by His I to see at the opera a very handso woman in the boxes, he despatched one of his aides-de-caround, and to find out who she was All gentlemen attached to his person or household are also his pi plans of seduction Caulincourt (the officer he employed in this affair) returned soon, but had succeeded only in one part of the business He had not been able to speak to the lady, but was inforht to a manufacturer of Lyons, as seated by her side, jealous of his wife as a lover of his ave at the same time as his opinion that it would be necessary to employ the police commissary to arrest the husband when he left the play, under some pretext or other, while soe of the confusion to seize the wife, and carry her to his hotel
An order was directly signed by Louis, according to which the police commissary, Chazot, was to arrest the manufacturer Leboure, of Lyons, and put hiendarn a pro to Paris without the periotage) Everything succeeded according to the proposal of Caulincourt, and Louis found Mada in his saloon It is said that she promised to surrender her virtue upon condition of only onceher husband, to be certain that he was not murdered, but that Louis refused, and obtained by brutal force, and the assistance of his infamous associates, that conquest over her honour which had not been yielded to his entreaties or threats His enjoyment, however, was but of short continuance; he had no sooner fallen asleep than his poor injured victi into his anteroo she was found a corpse, weltering in her blood In the hope of burying this infa, when it was dark, put into a sack, and thrown into the river, where, being afterwards discovered, the police agents gave out that she had fallen the victim of assassins But when Madame Leboure was thus seized at the opera, besides her husband, her parents and a brother were in her coe in which his sister was placed till it had entered the hotel of Louis Bonaparte, where, on the next day, he, with his father, in vain claimed her As soon as the husband was informed of the untimely end of his wife, he wrote a letter to her h the head, but his own head was not the place where he should have sent the bullet; to destroy with it the cause of his wretchedness would only have been an act of retaliation, in a country where power forces the law to lie dormant, and where justice is invoked in vain when the criue, as it is styled by courtesy in our fashi+onable circles, amused one part of the Parisians; and I believe the word 'amuse' is not improperly employed in this instance At a dozen parties where I have been since, this unfortunate adventure has always been an object of conversation, of witticisms, but not of blame, except at Madame Fouche's, where Mada been so overnice, and foolishly scrupulous
Another intrigue of His Iically, was related last night, at the tea-party of Madame Recamier
A man of the name of Deroux had lately been condee, to stand in the pillory six hours, and, after being alleys for twenty years His daughter, a young girl under fifteen, who lived with her grand lost her mother), went, accompanied by the old lady, and presented a petition to Louis, in favour of her father Her youth and modesty, more than her beauty, inspired the unprincipled libertine with a desire of ruining innocence, under the colour of cleuilt He ordered her to call on his chamberlain, Darinsson, in an hour, and she should obtain an answer There, either seduced by paternal affection, inti proed her virtue for an order of release for her parent; and so satisfied was Louis with his bargain that he added her to the nuular mistresses
As soon as Deroux had recovered his liberty, he visited his daughter in her new situation, where he saw an order of Louis, on the Imperial Treasury, for twelve thousand livres--destined to pay the upholsterer who had furnished her apart the Prince pay a higher value for his child, and he forged another order for sixty thousand livres--so closely rese it that it ithout suspicion acquitted by the I this money, he fabricated a pass, in the na despatches to the Emperor in Germany, hich he set out, and arrived safe on the other side of the Rhine His forgeries were only discovered after he had written a letter froe of what he had done In the first er, her Imperial lover ordered her to be arrested, but he has since forgiven her, and taken her back to his favour This trick of Deroux has pleased Fouche, who long opposed his release, froerous talent and vicious character He had once before released hied order fro he had only seen for a minute upon his own mandate of imprisonment