The Project Gutenberg Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte

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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 impending danger,
and to advise him to be beforehand with his enemies. Instead of telling
the truth, the Prince of Peace alarmed the King 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 often more fearful than guilt. Everything he
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 complete and
satisfactory revenge for the attempt against 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 lamented these rash proceedings; but no one dared
to take any measures to counteract them. At last, however, the Duke of
Montemar, grand 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 him either of ingratitude or
disloyalty. Being 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 from this being the case, he had observed him
in his most unguarded 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 misled his King and his Queen, being, no doubt,
deceived himself. To overthrow a throne and to seize it cannot be done
without accomplices, without arms, without money. Who are the
conspirators hailing 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 arms? They are in the hands of those
guards 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 me, if I am happy enough 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 myself."

"Whether Their Royal Highnesses," replied the Duke of Montemar, "have
done anything that deserves forgiveness, or whether they have any
counsellors, I do not know, and am incompetent to judge; but I am much
mistaken in the character of Their Royal Highnesses 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 name of the King,
to his children in the manner he proposed, and to command an answer by
the messenger. In half an hour the messenger 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 something to inculpate Their Royal Highnesses,
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 communication of the
gentlemen mentioned in my last, what I remember myself of the letter
which was circulated among our diplomatists, concerning the intrigues 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
moderation on this occasion. But though he was externally reconciled,
and, as was reported at Madrid, had sworn his reconciliation even by
taking the sacrament, all the undertakings of the Prince and Princess of
Asturias were strictly observed and reported by the spies whom he had
placed round Their Royal Highnesses. Vain of his success and victory, he
even lost that respectful demeanour which a good, 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 premeditated familiarity,
and with an insolence provoking or defying resentment. It was on the
days of great festivities, when the Court was most brilliant, and the
courtiers most numerous, that he took occasion to be most arrogant 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 murmur, which made the favourite
tremble. A signal from the Prince of Asturias would then have been
sufficient to have caused the insolent upstart to be seized and thrown
out of the window. I am told that some of the Spanish grandees 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 own way 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 remember in Philip II. the grand and powerful
Monarch, but abhorred in him the royal assassin; adding 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
incomprehensible infatuation of the King and Queen.

Our Ambassador, in the meantime, dissembled always with the Prince and
Princess of Asturias; and even made them understand that he disapproved
of those occurrences so disagreeable to them; but he neither offered to
put an end to them nor to be a mediator for a perfect reconciliation with
their Sovereigns. He was guided by no other motive but to keep the
favourite in subjection and alarm by preserving a correspondence with his
rivals. That this was the case and the motive cannot be doubted from the
financial intrigue he carried on in the beginning of last month.

Foreigners 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
monarchy has either been brought into our National Treasury or into the
privy purse of the Bonaparte family. Without the aid of Spanish money,
neither would our gunboats 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 more surprising that a
general bankruptcy has not already involved the Spanish nation in a
general ruin.

When, on his return from Italy, the recall of the Russian negotiator 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 Imperial Ministers of Finances had no funds either to
discharge the arrears or to provide for future payments until the
beginning 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 much he wished to oblige 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 Emperor of the French, by seizing 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
swallowed 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 was with 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 payments in specie. Thus wretched Spain pays abroad for the forging
of those disgraceful fetters which oppress her at home; and supports a
foreign 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 terms, they
would have consented to remain discarded and neglected 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 with which his duplicity had
covered him, Beurnonville permitted and persuaded the Prince of Peace to
begin the chastisement of Their Royal Highnesses in the persons of their
favourites. Duke of Montemar, the grand officer to the Prince of
Asturias; Marquis of Villa Franca, the grand equerry to the Princess of
Asturias; Count of Miranda, chamberlain to the King; and the Countess
Dowager 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 family. According to the last letters and communications
from Spain, the Prince and Princess of Asturias had not appeared at Court
since the insult offered them in the disgrace of their friends, and were
resolved not to appear in any place where they might be likely to meet
with the favourite.

Among our 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 firm and fixed in France as long
as any Bourbons reign in Spain or Italy. Should he prove victorious in
the present Continental contest, another peace, and not the most
advantageous, will again be signed with your country--a peace which, I
fear, will leave him absolute master of all Continental States. His
family arrangements are publicly avowed to be as follow: His third
brother, Louis, and his sons, are to be the heirs of the French Empire.
Joseph Bonaparte is, at the death or resignation of Napoleon, to succeed
to the Kingdom of Italy, including Naples. Lucien, though 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 Jerome should Napoleon not live long enough to
extend his power in Great Britain. Such are the modest pretensions our
Imperial courtiers bestow upon the family of our Sovereign.

As to the Prince of Peace, he is only an imbecile instrument in the hands
of our intriguers and innovators, which they make use of as long as they
find it necessary, and which, when that ceases to be the case, they break
and throw away. 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 accomplices and adherents.
Guilt, ignorance, and cowardice thus misled may, directed by art,
interest, and craft, perform wonders to entangle 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 regiments serving in the East Indies. Having there collected some
pillage, he purchased the place of a major in the militia of the Island
of Bourbon, but was, for his immorality, broken by the governor.
Returning to France, he bitterly complained of this injustice, and, after
much cringing in the antechambers of Ministers, he obtained at last the
Cross of St. Louis as a kind of indemnity. About the same time he also
bought with his Indian wealth the place of an officer in the Swiss Guard
of Monsieur, the present Louis XVIII. Being refused admittance into any
genteel societies, he resorted with Barras and other disgraced nobles to
gambling-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 fashionable resort of our friends of Liberty and
Equality.

In 1790, Beurnonville offered his services as aide-de-camp to our then
hero of great ambition and small capacity, La Fayette, who declined the
honour. The Jacobins were not so nice. In 1792, they appointed him a
general under Dumouriez, who baptized him his Ajax. This modern Ajax,
having obtained a separate command, attacked Treves in a most ignorant
manner, and was worsted with great loss. The official reports of our
revolutionary generals have long been admired for their modesty as well
as veracity; but Beurnonville has almost outdone them all, not excepting
our great Bonaparte. In a report to the National Convention concerning a
terrible engagement of three hours near Grewenmacker, Beurnonville
declares that, though the number of the enemy killed was immense, his
troops got out of the scrape with the loss of only the little finger of
one of his riflemen. On the 4th of February, 1793, a fortnight 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
enumerate or state). On the 14th of the following March, however, he
accepted the ministerial portfolio, which he did not keep long, being
delivered up by his Hector, Dumouriez, to the Austrians. He remained a
prisoner at Olmutz until the 22d of November, 1795, when he was included
among the persons exchanged 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 make him esteemed. In France, he is laughed at as a
boaster, but not trusted as a warrior. In Spain, he is neither dreaded
nor esteemed, neither laughed at nor courted; he is there universally
despised. He studies to be thought a gentleman; but the native porter
breaks through the veil of a ridiculously affected and outre politeness.
Notwithstanding the complacent grimaces 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 presumptuous conversation,
teeming with ignorance, vulgarity, and obscenity, he cannot escape even
the most inattentive observer.

The Ambassador, Beurnonville, is now between fifty and sixty years of
age; is a grand officer of our Imperial Legion of Honour; has a brother
who is a turnkey, and two sisters, one married to a tailor, and another
to a merchant who cries dogs' and cats' meat in our streets.




LETTER IX.

PARIS, September, 1805.

MY LORD:--Bonaparte did not at first intend to take his wife with him
when he set out for Strasburg; but her tears, the effect of her
tenderness and apprehension for his person, at last altered his
resolution. Madame Napoleon, to tell the truth, does not like much to be
in the power of Joseph, nor even in that of her son-in-law, Louis
Bonaparte, should any accident make her a widow.

During the Emperor's absence, the former is the President of the Senate,
and the latter the Governor of this capital, and commander of the troops
in the interior; so that the one dictates the Senatus Consultum, in case
of a vacancy of the throne, and the other supports these civil
determinations with his military forces. Even with the army in Germany,
Napoleon's brother-in-law, Murat, is as a pillar of the Bonaparte
dynasty, and to prevent the intrigues and plots of other generals from an
Imperial diadem; while, in Italy, his step-son, Eugene de Beauharnais, as
a viceroy, commands even the commander-in-chief, Massena. It must be
granted that the Emperor has so ably taken his precautions that it is
almost certain that, at first, his orders will be obeyed, even after his
death; and the will deposited by him in the Senate, without opposition,
carried into execution. These very precautions evince, however, how
uncertain and precarious he considers his existence to be, and that,
notwithstanding addresses and oaths, he apprehends that the Bonaparte
dynasty will not survive him.

Most of the generals now employed by him are either of his own creation,
or men on whom he has conferred rank and wealth, which they might
consider unsafe under any other Prince but a Bonaparte. The superior
officers, not included in the above description, are such insignificant
characters that, though he makes use of their experience and courage, he
does not fear their views or ambition. Among the inferior officers, and
even among the men, all those who have displayed, either at reviews or in
battles, capacity, activity, or valour, are all members of his Legion of
Honour; and are bound to him by the double tie of gratitude and
self-interest. They look to him alone for future advancements, and for
the preservation of the distinction they have obtained from him. His
emissaries artfully disseminate that a Bourbon would inevitably overthrow
everything a Bonaparte has erected; and that all military and civil
officers rewarded or favoured by Napoleon the First will not only be
discarded, but disgraced, and perhaps punished, by a Louis XVIII. Any
person who would be imprudent enough to attempt to prove the
impossibility, as well as the absurdity, of these impolitic and
retrospective measures, would be instantly taken up and shot as an
emissary of the Bourbons.

I have often amused myself in conversing with our new generals and new
officers; there is such a curious mixture of ignorance and information,
of credulity and disbelief, of real boasting and affected modesty, in
everything they say or do in company; their manners are far from being
elegant, but also very distant from vulgarity; they do not resemble those
of what we formerly called 'gens comme il faut', and 'la bonne societe'!
nor those of the bourgeoisie, or the lower classes. They form a new
species of fashionables, and a 'haut ton militaire', which strikes a
person accustomed to Courts at first with surprise, and perhaps with
indignation; though, after a time, those of our sex, at last, become
reconciled, if not pleased with it, because there is a kind of military
frankness interwoven with the military roughness. Our ladies, however (I
mean those who have seen other Courts, or remember our other coteries),
complain loudly of this alteration of address, and of this fashionable
innovation; and pretend that our military, under the notion of being
frank, are rude, and by the negligence of their manners and language, are
not only offensive, but inattentive and indelicate. This is so much the
more provoking to them, as our Imperial courtiers and Imperial placemen
do not think themselves fashionable without imitating our military
gentry, who take Napoleon for their exclusive model and chief in
everything, even in manners.

What I have said above applies only to those officers whose parents are
not of the lowest class, or who entered so early or so young into the
army that they may be said to have been educated there, and as they
advanced, have assumed the 'ton' of their comrades of the same rank. I
was invited, some time ago, to a wedding, by a jeweller whose sister had
been my nurse, and whose daughter was to be married to a captain of
hussars quartered here. The bridegroom had engaged several other
officers to assist at the ceremony, and to partake of the fete and ball
that followed. A general of the name of Liebeau was also of the party,
and obtained the place of honour by the side of the bride's mother. At
his entrance into the apartment I formed an opinion of him which his
subsequent conduct during the ball confirmed.

During the dinner he seemed to forget that he had a knife and a fork, and
he did not eat of a dish (and he ate of them all, numerous as they were)
without bespattering or besmearing himself or his neighbours. He broke
two glasses and one plate, and, for equality's sake, I suppose, when he
threw the wine on the lady to his right, the lady to his left was
inundated with sauces. In getting up from dinner to take coffee and
liqueurs, according to our custom, as he took the hand of the mistress of
the house, he seized at the same time a corner of the napkin, and was not
aware of his blunder till the destruction of bottles, glasses, and plate,
and the screams of the ladies, informed him of the havoc and terror his
awkward gallantry had occasioned. When the ball began, he was too vain
of his rank and precedency to suffer any one else to lead the bride down
the first dance; but she was not, I believe, much obliged to him for his
politeness; it cost her the tail of her wedding-gown and a broken nail,
and she continued lame during the remainder of the night. In making an
apology to her for his want of dexterity, and assuring her that he was
not so awkward in handling the enemies of his country in battle as in
handling friends he esteemed in a dance, he gave no quarter to an old
maid aunt, whom, in the violence of his gesticulation, he knocked down
with his elbow and laid sprawling on the ground. He was sober when these
accidents literally occurred.

Of this original I collected the following particulars: Before the
Revolution he was a soldier in the regiment of Flanders, from which he
deserted and became a corporal in another regiment; in 1793 he was a
drum-major in one of the battalions in garrison in Paris. You remember
the struggles of factions in the latter part of May and in the beginning
of June, the same year, when Brissot and his accomplices were contending
with Marat, Robespierre, and their adherents for the reins of power. On
the 1st of June the latter party could not get a drummer to beat the
alarm, though they offered money and advancement. At last Robespierre
stepped forward to Liebeau and said, "Citizen, beat the alarm march, and
to-day you shall be nominated a general." Liebeau obeyed, Robespierre
became victorious and kept his promise, and thus my present associate
gained his rank. He has since been employed under Jourdan in Germany,
and under Le Courbe in Switzerland. When, under the former, he was
ordered to retreat towards the Rhine, he pointed out the march route to
his division according to his geographical knowledge, but mistook upon
the map the River Main for a turnpike road, and commanded the retreat
accordingly. Ever since, our troops have called that river 'La chausee
de Liebeau'. He was not more fortunate in Helvetia. Being ordered to
cross one of the mountains, he marched his men into a glacier, where
twelve perished before he was aware of his mistake.