A.D. 1804.] KIDNAPPING OF THE DUKE D'ENGHIEN. existing writing by chemical means, and replace it with whatever they pleased. But he added, the process-verbal is unnecessary; for he was prepared to make disclosures, on his trial, which would astound France and unmask certain great villains. Alas! poor Pichegru! this menace caused him never to come to trial at all! Another of the prisoners, Bouvet de Lozier, was so overcome by the terrors of the reported horrors of the prison, that, though a man of high natural courage, he attempted to hang himself, but was 229 ceremony or mercy. He had grasped at more than regal, and was now grasping at imperial, power; and he had shown but too clearly, in his massacres of prisoners in Syria, and his proposal to poison his own wounded, that he would hesitate at no crimes, however monstrous, which might seem necessary for the accomplishment of his designs. But these princes had avoided his snare, and Louis-now styled Louis XVIII.—was living at Warsaw, under the protection of the emperor of Russia But there was another prevented, and afterwards guarded, night and day, with constant vigilance to frustrate his intention. But we must leave these brave men, so diabolically entrapped, in their dungeons, to narrate a still more murderous deed of Napoleon. As the Bourbons still continued to watch for the overthrow of his power, Buonaparte determined to take a deep revenge on the persons of any of that family whom he could by any means get into his hands. Could he have inveigled the count d'Artois and the duke of Berri, as he attempted, from London to land in Brittany, he would have seized them, and certainly put them to death without member of the family, though the farthest off from succession to the throne, who was living on the French frontiers. within a tempting reach of his soldiers in Alsace, and him he determined to kidnap and kill. This proposed victim of a most lawless and wicked vengeance was Antoine-Henri de Bourbon, the son of the duke of Bourbon, and grandson of the prince of Condé. He was born at Chantilly in August, 1772, and was, consequently, now nearly thirtytwo years of age. The duke was an amiable and witty Frenchman, of a fine person, and of great bravery. He had fought with much distinction under his grandfather, the prince of Condé, in the Netherlands and on the Rhine Altogether, he was much admired and esteemed, and regarded as worthy, by his martial spirit and talents, of the great name which he bore. He was the more estimated by the royalist party, as being the last of the Condés. When the emigrant army was disbanded, in compliance with the treaty of Luneville, he retired to Ettenheim, in Baden, which lay a few miles from the Rhine, and on the edge of the Black Forest, in which the duke was fond of hunting. He had chosen this place of abode-too dangerously near to the French garrison of Strasburg-because it was the residence of cardinal de Rohan, so notorious for his criminal conduct in blackening the character of Marie Antoinette. But it was not the society of the cardinal, but that of his niece, the princess Charlotte de Rohan, which had drawn the duke there. He passed his time in hunting, shooting, and in cultivating a flower-garden; and, happy in the company of the princess, was engaged in no plots against the first consul, though ready, at any moment, like all the family, to prosecute their claims by open and honourable means. It is greatly to the credit of the Bourbons that, on all occasions, they repelled every proposition for taking off those whom they deemed usurpers by clandestine means. Many attempts had been made, by Napoleon and his agents, to implicate them in such measures, but in vain. One of these attempts is recorded by the prince of Condé as taking place in London. He relates the circumstance in a letter to the count d'Artois, on the 24th of January, 1802. He says, a man of very simple and gentle exterior waited on him, and proposed to rid the Bourbons of the usurper in the shortest way. The prince of Condé would not allow him to conclude his remarks, but told him that all such proposals were hateful to the whole family; that they would never cease to assert their claims by open and legitimate means, but that assassinations did not become princes, and were only fit for jacobins. He advised the man to quit England with all speed, as, should he be arrested, he could afford him no protection. This man was subsequently proved to be an agent of Buonaparte. Could Napoleon have drawn any one of the Bourbons in to assist in such expedients, he would immediately have blazoned it to the world, and it would have afforded some sanction to his intended assassinations; but, failing, he was compelled to perpetrate his hideous projects without such sanction, and to make up for the want by impudent falsehoods. Accordingly, he determined to seize the unsuspecting duke d'Enghien. The project was so odious, so certain to cover both Napoleon and France with inextinguishable infamy, that it startled the not very sensitive mind of Talleyrand, who gave the duke secret warning of his danger, and advised him to remove farther from the Rhine. In consequence, the duke applied to Sir Charles Stuart to get him a passport from the Austrian minister, to enable him to cross the Austrian territory to rejoin his grandfather, then at Warsaw with Louis XVIII. Sir Charles Stuart applied to M. de Cobenzel for this purpose, and, had the Austrian court been quicker in its movements than a German court usually is, the duke would have been safe enough from the myrmidons of Buonaparte; but, whilst lingering at Ettenheim for the necessary passport, the duke had so little suspicion of the prompt and deadly nature of the usurper's design against him, that he took no means to conceal himself, or he might still have escaped. But, in the middle of the night of the 14th of March, he was aroused by the sound of horses' hoofs, and, looking out, saw that the château was surrounded by a troop of French cavalry. Buonaparte had dispatched his aide-de-camp, Caulaincourt, to Strasburg to execute this capture, and he had sent on colonel Ordenner to surprise the duke and bring him away. Throwing on part of his clothes, the duke d'Enghien summoned his servants, and determined to resist to the utmost. His servants were soon armed with fowling-pieces, pistols, and side-arms, and, as there was no hope of preventing the French bursting in the outer door, the duke took his post at the head of the stairs, in front of his suite. He ordered the servants to hand the loaded guns to him, that he might fire them rapidly at the assailants, and thus prevent them scaling the stairs alive. But, at the moment that the French appeared at the foot of the staircase, and the duke was about to fire, the baron Grinstein, the first gentleman of the duke, threw himself upon him, and dragged him into an adjoining room, declaring that the attempt to resist such a troop was madness. Had the duke been allowed to resist, he would, to a certainty, have been shot, and then the full infamy of Buonaparte would never have appeared, for be would have asserted that he contemplated nothing more than the safe detention of the duke's person. It was better as it was. No sooner did the French enter the chamber, and demand which was the duke d'Enghien, than the duke himself said, "If you have a warrant, that ought to describe his person." They again demanded which was the duke, and, no one answering, Ordenner said, "Then I arrest you all." They seized and bound the whole party, half dressed as they were, and, refusing to let them complete their dressing, they hurried them away from the castle, and through the town of Ettenheim, to a mill at some distance. It is said that the princess de Rohan, aroused by the noise, looked out of her window, and saw her lover being dragged along in merely his slippers, trousers, and waistcoat, by the soldiers, but did not, at the moment, recognise him as the duke. At the mill, d'Enghien entreated that he might be allowed to send back to the castle for his clothes and some money, for, by this time, the French had discovered him, through the unsuspecting words of the peasants who had crowded around. This was complied with; the duke completed his dress, and the troop set forward at a rapid pace towards the Rhine. On crossing that river between Cappell and Rheinau, they found carriages waiting for them. Ordenner would have put the baron von Grinstein into the carriage with the duke, but he refused to admit him; he probably suspected that there had been treachery in the baron's preventing him firing. He requested to have his faithful valet, Joseph, and this was conceded. The duke was secured in the citadel at Strasburg, and detained there till the night of the 18th, when he was suddenly ordered to rise at midnight, and prepare for a journey. He was told that two shirts would be sufficient linen, and here he was compelled to leave all his servants, even his valet, Joseph, being told ominously that he would require no valet where he was going. He distributed what little money he had about him, excepting one rouleau, amongst his attendants, and they were then thrust unceremoniously out of the apartment. The prince was chained, and hurried into a carriage; and, escorted by a strong body of cavalry, all speed was made towards Paris. No stop was made, except to change horses and escort, or for the duke to take rest or refreshments; and, in the evening of the 20th, the carriage rolled over the drawbridge into the gloomy castle of Vincennes, only a mile and a half from the capital. The duke was immediately recognised by the wife of the commandant of the fortress, for her mother had been the duke's nurse, and, as children, they had played together. This woman, indeed, had been pensioned by the family before the revolution. She communicated this intelligence to her husband, who was no other than the infamous Harrel, who had encouraged Ceracchi, Anna, Diana, and the rest, to attempt the life of Buonaparte, on the 10th of October, 1800, and then betrayed them, for which he had received this post. It soon became known that it was the duke d'Enghien who was brought in, and not only the attendants belonging to the prison, but the officers and men of the regiment on guard there, were greatly excited, and expressed much respect for him. This alarmed Savary, who was there to execute the diabolical will of Buonaparte, and he had the regiment marched out, and bivouacked for the night on the heights of Belle Ville. 231 have gone with a sentence of death ready written in his pocket, and the grave was already dug in the castle ditch. Savary, who was charged by Buonaparte to see this detestable transaction accomplished, has denied the fact of the ready-dug grave; but he has, in his laboured endeavour to clear himself from the damning infamy of his part in the murder, denied many things which were only too true. Others, who were present in the castle, reported this to have been the case, and the rapidity with which the whole affair was hurried over is the best proof of the truth of the statement. The grave was there when the duke was taken out to be shot, and he was tumbled into it the moment he fell. So thoroughly had everything been prepared, that scarcely had the duke, worn out by his journey of two days and two nights, fallen asleep, when he was summoned to attend the tribunal already assembled. Hulin, the president, in the pamphlet which, like others concerned, he published to exculpate himself when Buonaparte was deposed and sent to St. Helena, bears testimony to the noble manner in which the duke, thus fatigued and roused from sleep, appeared before them. He denied, indignantly, the charges of conspiring to assassinate the first consul. He said he was a Condéby birth, by feeling, by opinion, the eternal enemy of the present government; that no Condé could enter France except with arms in his hands; but that a Condé could never stoop to assassinate, or to be the colleague of assassins. He denied that he had fixed his residence at Ettenheim on account of its vicinity to France, but that he had first gone there at the invitation of cardinal de Rohan, and had remained there because he found much amusement in the forest; that he was living there by permission of the margrave of Baden, but was on the point of moving far away into Poland, when he was thus seized, contrary to the laws of nations, Baden being at profound peace with France. He was accused of having conspired with Pichegru, but he declared that he had never seen Pichegru, or had any correspondence with him; and that, if it were true, as they stated, that Pichegru had conspired to assassinate the first consul, he was glad that he never had known him. When charged with having been in England, and with being in its pay, he denied ever having been there, but admitted that he received an allowance from that country, as he had nothing else left him. He was then desired to sign the process-verbal, but he demanded, before doing that, to have a private inter The information of the duke's consignment to the fortress of Vincennes being communicated to Buonaparte at Malmaison, he immediately issued an order to Murat, the military governor of Paris, to deliver the duke over to a military tribunal, to consist of seven members, on the charge of being in the pay of England, and engaged in plots against the republic. Murat, as governor-general of Paris, the grand judge, and minister of war, were charged with the execution of the decree. Murat said afterwards that both he and his wife, Buonaparte's sister, Marie Caroline, were horrified at the order, and implored the first consul not to incur the crime and odium of the duke's death. But this, if true, had already been attempted by Josephine, who had, on her knees, implored him to abstain from shedding the duke's blood, which would cause all the world to exclaim against him, and bring down upon him the sure judgments of Heaven. Nothing, however, moved the ruthless soul of Buonaparte, who gave stern and peremptory orders for prompt obedience to his command, and Murat counter-view with the first consul, declaring that his name, his rank, signed the order already signed by Napoleon and by Maret, secretary to the council of state, and afterwards duke of Bassano. Murat seems to have appointed the military commission himself, which consisted of general Hulin as president, colonels Bazancourt, Barrois, Guiton, Ravier, Rabbe, captain Nolan as secretary, and captain d'Autancourt as military judge-advocate. Neither the grand-judge, Regnier, nor the minister of war, Berthier, named in the order, seems to have been consulted at all on the occasion. Talleyrand, and even Fouché, appear to have been left ignorant of the whole proceeding till it was over. So determined was Buonaparte to have the murder effected quickly, and without remonstrance from any quarter, that the commission was sesembled immediately; the president, Hulin, is said to his well-known opinions, and the horror of his situation entitled him to this. The prince, however, consented to sign the process, or it was forged for him. He was then led away, and had so little idea of the fate that awaited him, that he lay down and was presently asleep. Meantime, the military judges appeared to shrink from the task assigned them—that of simply signing the form of sentence prepared for them. In this sentence blanks had been left to name the law by which he was condemned. They proposed that the first consul should be requested to grant the prisoner's request of a private audience; but Savary, who stood behind the president's chair, said it was useless wasting time and troubling the first consul-it must be signed; and, seeing that it was already determined, they daylight. But we are told, at the same time, that the morning was foggy, and in the deep castle-ditch, in the month of March, it could not be very light, especially as other accounts assert that it was only five o'clock, and not sx. Probably, the prince himself may have hung the lantern to his breast, to enable the gens-d'armes to give him a more complete death; but this is a matter of little moment, neither aggravating nor ameliorating the murder. all signed the sentence. No sooner, however, had they done say that it was six o'clock in the morning, and that it was this than their hearts misgave them, and they drew up another sentence. In the first sentence stood the words immediate execution; in the second sentence was no mention of execution at all; but it directed that copies of the sentence should be sent, within the time prescribed by law, to the grandjudge, the minister of war, and the military governor of Paris. And all this agrees with the statement published by Hulin, the president of the tribunal, in his old age, that the members of the tribunal had done this in order that there should be appeal to the authorities mentioned in it; and that he believed the first sentence to have been destroyed on the signing of the second. He adds, that the moment the second sentence was signed, he began a letter to the first consul, expressing the unanimous wish of the court that the prisoner should be admitted to the interview which he craved. But he said Savary asked him what he was writing, and then took the pen from his hand, saying :-" You have done your business, what remains is mine." That, supposing Savary intended to convey this request himself, he and the other judges were hoping that the prisoner would have the benefit of this request, when, as they were asking permission to go to their carriages, they were horrified by the report of fire-arms in the castle moat, and understood the fearful catastrophe which had taken place. Considering all the circumstances, there appears no reason to doubt this statement of Hulin. The judges showed, by rejecting the first sentence, and preparing another without mention of execution, that they were anxious to exempt themselves from the crime of the duke's death. Unfortunately, they had not taken care to destroy the first fatal sentence, and Savary had secured it, and immediately put it in force. Excusing the judges, this throws a deeper blackness of guilt on the head of Savary, who had declared that, had the first consul ordered him to shoot his own father, he would have done it, and who throughout showed that he had come prepared to execute Buonaparte's murderous resolve to the letter. The unfortunate prisoner was immediately roused again from his sleep, and ordered to attend the gens-d'armes who surrounded his bed. He asked where they wanted to take him. No answer was given by the gens-d'armes, who were men purposely picked by Savary as amongst the most hardened by such secret and illegal murders, but he was forced away, and they descended the rough staircase leading down to the castle-ditch. The duke, feeling the cold air, asked Harrel, who walked by his side with a lantern, whether they were going to immure him in an oubliette-that is, one of those dungeons in all such old fortresses, into which certain prisoners were thrown, never to come out again alive, but to remain, as the word implies, forgotten. On arriving in the ditch, the duke must have at once perceived his doom, for there lay his grave yawning at his feet, and, beyond that, a file of gens-d'armes with their muskets ready. Savary had placed himself on a parapet, above the heads of the gens-d'armes; captain d'Autancourt read to the duke the sentence by the light of the lantern which Harrel carried, and then it is said that the lantern was hung to the button-hole of the duke, in order that the gens-d'armes might see the better to take aim. This fact of the lantern was denied by both Savary and Bourrienne, who On the sentence being read, the duke asked for a confessor, but he received the cart reply:-"Would you de like a monk?" Without noticing the insult, the duke kn-it down a few minutes, and seemed absorbed in devotion. He then rose, cut off a lock of his hair, and handing it, with a miniature and a gold ring, to an officer, requested that they might be conveyed, through the womanly hands of Josephine, the wife of Buonaparte, to the princess de Rohan. Then, turning to the soldiers, he said :-"I die for my king and for France." Savary, from the parapet said:-" Give it !"— phrase which he had hit upon to enable himself afterwards to deny that he gave the word to fire-and the duke fel dead, pierced by seven bullets. He was immediately fung into the grave, dressed as he was. The man who was employed to fill up the grave took the precaution to drop in a considerable stone near the duke's head, presuming that the body would some day be sought after. A little dog. belonging to the duke, which had been allowed to foll him, and to accompany him in the carriage, laid hin: down on the grave, when filled in, and lay whining for master. It was carried away, lest it should excite imagination of the public by the story of its attachment and, being sold, was for many years preserved by the getman who purchased it in memory of the unhappy victi A small cross afterwards marked the spot of the grave, b. the body itself was removed on the restoration of the B bons, and deposited with funeral ceremonies in the chapel the castle. The news of this most audacious kidnapping of the d. in a foreign territory, and his murder at Vincennes, & transpired, and filled Europe with horror and execrat against its perpetrators. It is true that few in Paris dara to speak out, and scarcely a man, except the writer C teaubriand, abandoned the service of the assassin, bat : the less was the memory of this dark deed reprobated secret. Everywhere else throughout the civilised world! press and public conversation branded the man and his Cin the terms which he merited. The whole proceeding w equally defiant of all the laws of nations and of mar A prince, quietly residing in the territory and under t protection of a foreign power, was suddenly, by an ars force, seized in his house, hurried away to Paris, and n dered in a castle-ditch, without scarcely the mock form trial. No real cause for so flagrant a violation of an kingdom, for so atrocious a treatment of the distingus individual, could be assigned: he was allowed no pers be present with him, or to defend him; no eviden whatever kind was produced against him; it was so brutal, foul, and unexampled murder. All that in'which Josephine had predicted fell on Buonaparte wil crushing weight. In England, the deed was treated A.D. 1804.] THE DEATH OF PICHEGRU. 233 parliament, by the press, by the whole country, as "the shudder throughout Europe. During this time, Pichegru odious and ineradicable bloodstain" which it was. In all and his fellow-prisoners had been awaiting their doom in other countries it met with the like expression. The mar- the dungeons of Paris. The public mind was yet occupied grave of Baden and the German princes in the diet alone with the atrocious violence to the duke d'Enghien, when were silent; but theirs was the silence of cowardice. They there came the rumour that general Pichegru had strangled dreaded to excite the anger of a man who might cross the himself in prison. The death of d'Enghien took place on Rhine and inflict signal vengeance on them for a remon- the 21st of March, this of Pichegru on the 7th of April, strance against so outrageous an invasion of Germanic soil. with only seventeen days' interval. The next day a report In vain did the emperor of Russia and the king of Sweden was issued, signed by six surgeons of no note, declaring it stimulate them to a proper declaration of their sense of the a case of suicide. They had examined the turnkeys and the offence; and Buonaparte, seizing on this cowardly silence, gens-d'armes on guard at the prison, who deposed that the asked the czar, insolently, why he troubled himself about a prisoner's cell was locked, and that no one could have, by matter which only concerned Germany, and which Germany any means, entered it without their knowledge. But this did not complain of. He even upbraided the czar with evidence just amounted to nothing at all, for it was having been an accomplice in the murder of his own father. known that all the turnkeys about these state prisons were But bitterly did Buonaparte rue this deed. Time only picked men, ready to do the will of the first consul and his seemed to imprint deeper and deeper the sense of the world's agents, and that no one dared to give any statement conabhorrence of this murder on his soul. There never was a trary to their wishes. As for the gens-d'armes, they were cheerful and lightsome spirit in his court any more. The Savary's myrmidons, ready to murder any one as they were cloud of blood always seemed to hang about it, and the ordered, and as they had done in the case of the duke vengeance of Providence to follow and abide its time to d'Enghien. From the moment that Pichegru declared that strike its suspended blow, and which fell at last, crushing all he would exculpate Moreau, and criminate Buonaparte and his piled-up dreams of empire, and sending him to finish his many of his subordinates, on his trial, his doom was certain. days in a far-off, lonely, and thought-haunted exile. Many He had vowed that he would expose the whole conspiracy were the excuses which he invented to exculpate himself; against Moreau; that he would detail all the means by many the lies which he invented for that purpose. At one which himself and his companions had been inveigled from time, he affected to believe that the duke d'Enghien had been England, and entrapped in Paris; and would enlighten the in Paris conspiring his death, and then to have discovered, country on the late tampering of Buonaparte with the too late, that this was Pichegru; at another, he pretended that Bourbons for the sale of their claims on the crown to him. the duke had written a letter to him from Strasburg, which That Pichegru should commit suicide whilst waiting with imTalleyrand had wilfully detained from him-Talleyrand, patience to blaze forth with all these dénouements on the public who had been kept ignorant of the affair. It has been fully, ear-Pichegru, the eloquent and the undaunted-Pichegru, and by different evidence, shown that the duke never did burning for revenge on the perfidious enemies who had enwrite, and was not the man to write, begging for his life, as snared him to his doom-is an impossible supposition; but Napoleon pretended he did. All these pretences, indeed, that Pichegru, who was certain to do all this if brought to were rendered impossible by the written documents issued an open tribunal, should ever be allowed to come to that open by Buonaparte himself the orders for the duke's arrest, all tribunal, was equally an impossible supposition. It was the arrangements laid down for the journey there and back, known that Réal, the manager of police, had spent a long and the warrant issued for instant execution, with the time with Pichegru the very day before in his cell, and had execution immediately following. But when all these false- come away muttering, "What a man this Pichegru is! hoods had proved vain, and Buonaparte had seen them fall there is no moving him!" The next morning, when the successively away, leaving the foul truth staring in the public turnkey entered his cell, he was found with his black silk eye, in his last days at St. Helena, he daringly avowed the cravat twisted tightly round his neck by means of a stick, deed, and endeavoured to justify it on the ground of state which he was assumed to have secreted from amongst his policy! "I caused the duke d'Enghien to be arrested and firewood, and the stick put under his head, to keep judged, because it was necessary to the security, the interest, it in its place. It has been observed that it was almost and the honour of the French people. In the same circum- impossible that the prisoner could have had sense left so to stances, I would act in the same manner." On another fix the stick, for he must have lost consciousness when the occasion, he said he had only acted on the law of nature: cravat was drawn tight enough to suffocate him; but it is the Bourbons aimed at his existence, and he, therefore, still more impossible that Pichegru should have attempted struck at theirs. Unhappily, the Bourbons confined them-suicide at all. Every motive in him was opposed to it; elves to legitimate warfare; he condescended to kidnapping every motive in Buonaparte was in favour of his secret und assassination. Robert Lindo, the jacobin and disciple of Marat, had, before him, defended the wholesale murders f September, 1792, on the same plea; and the plea had fen been urged to palliate similar atrocities, but never yet was admitted by the moral sense of mankind. Fresh horrors followed fast on the heels of this tragedy, sad the assumption of the imperial purple by Buonaparte was inaugurated by fresh murders, of a kind which sent a death; and, though the agents in the murder were too well trained and too much under terror ever to blab, no reasonable mortal ever, for one moment, believed anything else than that the brave Pichegru was a noble victim of the unprincipled tyrant now grasping at the crown. The world was the more revolted by this dark deed, as Pichegru and Buonaparte had been school-fellows at the military school at Brienne, where Pichegru, who was the elder, had been |