Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte Part 33

The pearls being thus obtained, there was still another difficulty, which Madame Bonaparte did not at first think of. How was she to wear a necklace purchased without her husband's knowledge? Indeed it was the more difficult for her to do so as the First Consul knew very well that his wife had no money, and being, if I may be allowed the expression, something of the busybody, he knew, or believed he knew, all Josephine's jewels. The pearls were therefore condemned to remain more than a fortnight in Madame Bonaparte's casket without her daring to use them.

What a punishment for a woman! At length her vanity overcame her prudence, and being unable to conceal the jewels any longer, she one day said to me, "Bourrienne, there is to be a large party here to-morrow, and I absolutely must wear my pearls. But you know he will grumble if he notices them. I beg, Bourrienne, that you will keep near me. If he asks me where I got my pearls I must tell him, without hesitation, that I have had them a long time."

Everything happened as Josephine feared and hoped.

Bonaparte, on seeing the pearls, did not fail to say to Madame, "What is it you have got there? How fine you are to-day! Where did you get these pearls? I think I never saw them before."--"Oh! 'mon Dieu'! you have seen them a dozen times! It is the necklace which the Cisalpine Republic gave me, and which I now wear in my hair."--"But I think--"--"Stay: ask Bourrienne, he will tell you."--"Well, Bourrienne, what do you say to it?

Do you recollect the necklace?"--"Yes, General, I recollect very well seeing it before." This was not untrue, for Madame Bonaparte had previously shown me the pearls. Besides, she had received a pearl necklace from the Cisalpine Republic, but of incomparably less value than that purchased from Foncier. Josephine performed her part with charming dexterity, and I did not act amiss the character of accomplice a.s.signed me in this little comedy. Bonaparte had no suspicions. When I saw the easy confidence with which Madame Bonaparte got through this scene, I could not help recollecting Suzanne's reflection on the readiness with which well-bred ladies can tell falsehoods without seeming to do so.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

1800.

Police on police--False information--Dexterity of Fouche--Police agents deceived--Money ill applied--Inutility of political police-- Bonaparte's opinion--General considerations--My appointment to the Prefecture of police.

Before taking up his quarters in the Tuileries the First Consul organised his secret police, which was intended, at the same time, to be the rival or check upon Fouche's police. Duroc and Moncey were at first the Director of this police; afterwards Davoust and Junot. Madame Bonaparte called this business a vile system of espionage. My remarks on the inutility of the measure were made in vain. Bonaparte had the weakness at once to fear Fouche and to think him necessary. Fouche, whose talents at this trade are too well known to need my approbation, soon discovered this secret inst.i.tution, and the names of all the subaltern agents employed by the chief agents. It is difficult to form an idea of the nonsense, absurdity, and falsehood contained in the bulletins drawn up by the n.o.ble and ign.o.ble agents of the police. I do not mean to enter into details on this nauseating subject; and I shall only trespa.s.s on the reader's patience by relating, though it be in antic.i.p.ation, one fact which concerns myself, and which will prove that spies and their wretched reports cannot be too much distrusted.

During the second year of the Consulate we were established at Malmaison.

Junot had a very large sum at his disposal for the secret police of the capital. He gave 3000 francs of it to a wretched manufacturer of bulletins; the remainder was expended on the police of his stable and his table. In reading one of these daily bulletins I saw the following lines:

"M. de Bourrienne went last night to Paris. He entered an hotel of the Faubourg St. Germain, Rue de Varenne, and there, in the course of a very animated discussion, he gave it to be understood that the First Consul wished to make himself King."

As it happens, I never had opened my mouth, either respecting what Bonaparte had said to me before we went to Egypt or respecting his other frequent conversations with me of the same nature, during this period of his Consulship. I may here observe, too, that I never quitted, nor ever could quit Malmaison for a moment. At any time, by night or day, I was subject to be called for by the First Consul, and, as very often was the case, it so happened that on the night in question he had dictated to me notes and instructions until three o'clock in the morning.

Junot came every day to Malmaison at eleven o'clock in the morning. I called him that day into my cabinet, when I happened to be alone. "Have you not read your bulletin?" said I, "Yes, I have."--"Nay, that is impossible."--"Why?"--"Because, if you had, you would have suppressed an absurd story which relates to me."--"Ah!" he replied, "I am sorry on your account, but I can depend on my agent, and I will not alter a word of his report." I then told him all that had taken place on that night; but he was obstinate, and went away unconvinced.

Every morning I placed all the papers which the First Consul had to read on his table, and among the first was Junot's report. The First Consul entered and read it; on coming to the pa.s.sage concerning me he began to smile.

"Have you read this bulletin?"--"Yes, General."--"What an a.s.s that Junot is! It is a long time since I have known that."--"How he allows himself to be entrapped! Is he still here?"--"I believe so. I have just seen him, and made observations to him, all in good part, but he would hear nothing."--"Tell him to come here." When Junot appeared Bonaparte began--"Imbecile that you are! how could you send me such reports as these? Do you not read them? How shall I be sure that you will not compromise other persons equally unjustly? I want positive facts, not inventions. It is some time since your agent displeased me; dismiss him directly." Junot wanted to justify himself, but Bonaparte cut him short--"Enough!--It is settled!"

I related what had pa.s.sed to Fouche, who told me that, wishing to amuse himself at Junot's expense, whose police agents only picked up what they heard related in coffeehouses, gaming-houses, and the Bourse, he had given currency to this absurd story, which Junot had credited and reported, as he did many other foolish tales. Fouche often caught the police of the Palace in the snares he laid for them, and thus increased his own credit.

This circ.u.mstance, and others of the same nature, induced the First Consul to attach less importance than at first he had to his secret police, which seldom reported anything but false and silly stories.

That wretched police! During the time I was with him it embittered his life, and often exasperated him against his wife, his relations, and friends.

--[Bourrienne, it must be remembered, was a sufferer from the vigilance of this police.]--

Rapp, who was as frank as he was brave, tells us in his Memoirs (p. 233) that when Napoleon, during his retreat from Moscow, while before Smolenski, heard of the attempt of Mallet, he could not get over the adventure of the Police Minister, Savary, and the Prefect of Police, Pasquier. "Napoleon," says Rapp, "was not surprised that these wretches (he means the agents of the police) who crowd the salons and the taverns, who insinuate themselves everywhere and obstruct everything, should not have found out the plot, but he could not understand the weakness of the Duc de Rovigo. The very police which professed to divine everything had let themselves be taken by surprise." The police possessed no foresight or faculty of prevention. Every silly thing that transpired was reported either from malice or stupidity. What was heard was misunderstood or distorted in the recital, so that the only result of the plan was mischief and confusion.

The police as a political engine is a dangerous thing. It foments and encourages more false conspiracies than it discovers or defeats real ones. Napoleon has related "that M. de la Rochefoucauld formed at Paris a conspiracy in favour of the King, then at Mittau, the first act of which was to be the death of the Chief of the Government. The plot being discovered, a trusty person belonging to the police was ordered to join it and become one of the most active agents. He brought letters of recommendation from an old gentleman in Lorraine who had held a distinguished rank in the army of Conde." After this, what more can be wanted? A hundred examples could not better show the vileness of such a system. Napoleon, when fallen, himself thus disclosed the scandalous means employed by his Government.

Napoleon on one occasion, in the Isle of Elba, said to an officer who was conversing with him about France, "You believe, then, that the police agents foresee everything and know everything? They invent more than they discover. Mine, I believe, was better than that they have got now, and yet it was often only by mere chance, the imprudence of the parties implicated, or the treachery of some of them, that something was discovered after a week or fortnight's exertion." Napoleon, in directing this officer to transmit letters to him under the cover of a commercial correspondence, to quiet his apprehensions that the correspondence might be discovered, said, "Do you think, then, that all letters are opened at the post office? They would never be able to do so. I have often endeavoured to discover what the correspondence was that pa.s.sed under mercantile forms, but I never succeeded. The post office, like the police, catches only fools."

Since I am on the subject of political police, that leprosy of modern society, perhaps I may be allowed to overstep the order of time, and advert to its state even in the present day.

The Minister of Police, to give his prince a favourable idea of his activity, contrives great conspiracies, which he is pretty sure to discover in time, because he is their originator. The inferior agents, to find favour in the eyes of the Minister, contrive small plots. It would be difficult to mention a conspiracy which has been discovered, except when the police agents took part in it, or were its promoters.

It is difficult to conceive how those agents can feed a little intrigue, the result at first, perhaps, of some petty ill-humour and discontent which, thanks to their skill, soon becomes a great affair. How many conspiracies have escaped the boasted activity and vigilance of the police when none of its agents were parties. I may instance Babeuf's conspiracy, the attempt at the camp at Grenelle, the 18th Brumaire, the infernal machine, Mallet, the 20th of March, the affair of Gren.o.ble, and many others.

The political police, the result of the troubles of the Revolution, has survived them. The civil police for the security of property, health, and order, is only made a secondary object, and has been, therefore, neglected. There are times in which it is thought of more consequence to discover whether a citizen goes to ma.s.s or confession than to defeat the designs of a band of robbers. Such a state of things is unfortunate for a country; and the money expended on a system of superintendence over persons alleged to be suspected, in domestic inquisitions, in the corruption of the friends, relations, and servants of the man marked out for destruction might be much better employed. The espionage of opinion, created, as I have said, by the revolutionary troubles, is suspicious, restless, officious, inquisitorial, vexatious, and tyrannical.

Indifferent to crimes and real offences, it is totally absorbed in the inquisition of thoughts. Who has not heard it said in company, to some one speaking warmly, "Be moderate, M------ is supposed to belong to the police." This police enthralled Bonaparte himself in its snares, and held him a long time under the influence of its power.

I have taken the liberty thus to speak of a scourge of society of which I have been a victim. What I here state may be relied on. I shall not speak of the week during which I had to discharge the functions of Prefect of Police, namely, from the 13th to the 20th of March, 1815.

It may well be supposed that though I had not held in abhorrence the infamous system which I have described, the important nature of the circ.u.mstances and the short period of my administration must have prevented me from making complete use of the means placed at my disposal.

The dictates of discretion, which I consider myself bound to obey, forbid me giving proofs of what I advance. What it was necessary to do I accomplished without employing violent or vexatious means; and I can take on myself to a.s.sert that no one has cause to complain of me. Were I to publish the list of the persons I had orders to arrest, those of them who are yet living would be astonished that the only knowledge they had of my being the Prefect of Police was from the Moniteur. I obtained by mild measures, by persuasion, and reasoning what I could never have got by violence. I am not divulging any secrets of office, but I believe I am rendering a service to the public in pointing out what I have often observed while an unwilling confidant in the shameful manoeuvres of that political inst.i.tution.

The word ideologue was often in Bonaparte's mouth; and in using it he endeavoured to throw ridicule on those men whom he fancied to have a tendency towards the doctrine of indefinite perfectibility. He esteemed them for their morality, yet he looked on them as dreamers seeking for the type of a universal const.i.tution, and considering the character of man in the abstract only. The ideologues, according to him, looked for power in inst.i.tutions; and that he called metaphysics. He had no idea of power except in direct force. All benevolent men who speculate on the amelioration of human society were regarded by Bonaparte as dangerous, because their maxims and principles were diametrically opposed to the harsh and arbitrary system he had adopted. He said that their hearts were better than their heads, and, far from wandering with them in abstractions, he always said that men were only to be governed by fear and interest. The free expression of opinion through the press has been always regarded by those who are not led away by interest or power as useful to society. But Bonaparte held the liberty of the press in the greatest horror; and so violent was his pa.s.sion when anything was urged in its favour that he seemed to labour under a nervous attack. Great man as he was, he was sorely afraid of little paragraphs.

--[Joseph Bonaparte fairly enough remarks on this that such writings had done great harm in those extraordinary times (Erreurs, tome i, p. 259). Metternich, writing in 1827 with distrust of the proceedings of Louis XVIII., quotes, with approval, Napoleon's sentiments on this point. "Napoleon, who could not have been wanting in the feeling of power, said to me, 'You see me master of France; well, I would not undertake to govern her for three months with liberty of the press. Louis XVIII., apparently thinking himself stronger than Napoleon, is not content with allowing the press its freedom, but has embodied its liberty in the charter"

(Metternich, tome iv, p. 391.)]--

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

1800.

Successful management of parties--Precautions--Removal from the Luxembourg to the Tuileries--Hackney-coaches and the Consul's white horses--Royal custom and an inscription--The review--Bonaparte's homage to the standards--Talleyrand in Bonaparte's cabinet-- Bonaparte's aversion to the cap of liberty even in painting--The state bed--Our cabinet.

Of the three brothers to whom the 18th Brumaire gave birth Bonaparte speedily declared himself the eldest, and hastened to a.s.sume all the rights of primogeniture. He soon arrogated to himself the whole power.

The project he had formed, when he favoured the revolution of the 18th Fructidor, was now about to be realized. It was then an indispensable part of his plan that the Directory should violate the const.i.tution in order to justify a subsequent subversion of the Directory. The expressions which escaped him from time to time plainly showed that his ambition was not yet satisfied, and that the Consulship was only a state of probation preliminary to the complete establishment of monarchy.

The Luxembourg was then discovered to be too small for the Chief of the Government, and it was resolved that Bonaparte should inhabit the Tuileries. Still great prudence was necessary to avoid the quicksands which surrounded him! He therefore employed great precaution in dealing with the susceptibilities of the Republicans, taking care to inure them gradually to the temperature of absolute power. But this mode of treatment was not sufficient; for such was Bonaparte's situation between the Jacobins and the Royalists that he could not strike a blow at one party without strengthening the other. He, however, contrived to solve this difficult problem, and weakened both parties by alternately frightening each. "You see, Royalists," he seemed to say, "if you do not attach yourselves to my government the Jacobins will again rise and bring back the reign of terror and its scaffold." To the men of the Revolution he, on the other hand, said, "See, the counter-Revolution appears, threatening reprisals and vengeance. It is ready to overwhelm you; my buckler can alone protect you from its attacks." Thus both parties were induced, from their mutual fear of each other, to attach themselves to Bonaparte; and while they fancied they were only placing themselves under the protection of the Chief of the Government, they were making themselves dependent on an ambitious man, who, gradually bending them to his will, guided them as he chose in his political career. He advanced with a firm step; but he never neglected any artifice to conceal, as long as possible, his designs.

I saw Bonaparte put in motion all his concealed springs; and I could not help admiring his wonderful address.

But what most astonished me was the control he possessed over himself, in repressing any premature manifestation of his intentions which might prejudice his projects. Thus, for instance, he never spoke of the Tuileries but under the name of "the Palace of the Government," and he determined not to inhabit, at first, the ancient palace of the kings of France alone. He contented himself with selecting the royal apartments, and proposed that the Third Consul should also reside in the Tuileries, and in consequence he occupied the Pavilion of Flora. This skilful arrangement was perfectly in accordance with the designation of "Palace of the Government" given to the Tuileries, and was calculated to deceive, for a time, the most clear-sighted.

The moment for leaving the Luxembourg having arrived, Bonaparte still used many deceptive precautions. The day filed for the translation of the seat of government was the 30th Pluviose, the previous day having been selected for publishing the account of the votes taken for the acceptance of the new Const.i.tution. He had, besides, caused the insertion in the 'Moniteur' of the eulogy on Washington, p.r.o.nounced, by M. de Fontanes, the decadi preceding, to be delayed for ten days. He thought that the day when he was about to take so large a step towards monarchy would be well chosen for entertaining the people of Paris with grand ideas of liberty, and for coupling his own name with that of the founder of the free government of the United States.

At seven o'clock on the morning of the 30th Pluviose I entered, as usual, the chamber of the First Consul. He was in a profound sleep, and this was one of the days on which I had been desired to allow him to sleep a little longer than usual. I have often observed that General Bonaparte appeared much less moved when on the point of executing any great design than during the time of projecting it, so accustomed was he to think that what he had resolved on in his mind, was already done.

When I returned to Bonaparte he said to me, with a marked air of satisfaction, "Well, Bourrienne, to-night, at last, we shall sleep in the Tuileries. You are better off than I: you are not obliged to make a spectacle of yourself, but may go your own road there. I must, however, go in procession: that disgusts me; but it is necessary to speak to the eyes. That has a good effect on the people. The Directory was too simple, and therefore never enjoyed any consideration. In the army simplicity is in its proper place; but in a great city, in a palace, the Chief of the Government must attract attention in every possible way, yet still with prudence. Josephine is going to look out from Lebrun's apartments; go with her, if you like; but go to the cabinet as soon as you see me alight from my horse."

I did not go to the review, but proceeded to the Tuileries, to arrange in our new cabinet the papers which it was my duty to take care of, and to prepare everything for the First Consul's arrival. It was not until the evening that I learned, from the conversation in the salon, where there was a numerous party, what had taken place in the course of the day.

At one o'clock precisely Bonaparte left the Luxembourg. The procession was, doubtless, far from approaching the magnificent parade of the Empire: but as much pomp was introduced as the state of things in France permitted. The only real splendour of that period consisted in fine troops. Three thousand picked men, among whom was the superb regiment of the Guides, had been ordered out for the occasion: all marched in the greatest order; with music at the head of each corps. The generals and their staffs were on horseback, the Ministers in carriages, which were somewhat remarkable, as they were almost the only private carriages then in Paris, for hackney-coaches had been hired to convey the Council of State, and no trouble had been taken to alter them, except by pasting over the number a piece of paper of the same colour as the body of the vehicle. The Consul's carriage was drawn by six white horses. With the sight of those horses was a.s.sociated the recollection of days of glory and of peace, for they had been presented to the General-in-Chief of the army of Italy by the Emperor of Germany after the treaty of Campo-Formio.

Bonaparte also wore the magnificent sabre given him by the Emperor Francis. With Cambaceres on his left, and Lebrun in the front of the carriage, the First Consul traversed a part of Paris, taking the Rue de Thionville, and the Quai Voltaire to the Pont Royal. Everywhere he was greeted by acclamations of joy, which at that time were voluntary, and needed not to be commanded by the police.

From the wicket of the Carrousel to the gate of the Tuileries the troops of the Consular Guard were formed in two lines, through which the procession pa.s.sed--a royal custom, which made a singular contrast with an inscription in front of which Bonaparte pa.s.sed on entering the courtyard.

Two guard-houses had been built, one on the right and another on the left of the centre gate. On the one to the right were written these words:

"THE TENTH of AUGUST 1792.--ROYALTY IN FRANCE IS ABOLISHED; AND SHALL NEVER BE RE-ESTABLISHED!"

It was already re-established!

In the meantime the troops had been drawn up in line in the courtyard.

As soon as the Consul's carriage stopped Bonaparte immediately alighted, and mounted, or, to speak more properly, leaped on his horse, and reviewed his troops, while the other two Consuls proceeded to the state apartments of the Tuileries, where the Council of State and the Ministers awaited them. A great many ladies, elegantly dressed in Greek costume, which was then the fashion, were seated with Madame Bonaparte at the windows of the Third Consul's apartments in the Pavilion of Flora. It is impossible to give an idea of the immense crowds which flowed in from all quarters. The windows looking to the Carrousel were let for very large sums; and everywhere arose, as if from one voice, shouts of "Long live the First Consul!" Who could help being intoxicated by so much enthusiasm?