lowing phrase: This terrible movement of the people seemed necessary for the safety of the country, and the result (the massacre of the prisoners) was only the impartial application of the principles of the law of nature!--Exposé des Motifs, &c. Buonaparte, however, having adopted this doctrine from the Septembrizers, is himself startled at its enormity; and he endea vours to palliate his conduct by a recurrence to the old falsehood about the suppressed letter. Undoubtedly if I had been informed in time of certain circumstances respecting the opinions of this prince, and his disposition; and if, above all, I had seen the letter which he wrote to me, and which, GoD KNOWS for what reason, was only delivered to me after his death; I should certainly have forgiven him.'-part vii. pp. 269, 270. 274. O'Meara gives substantially the same false charge of assassination, the same false exposition of the law of nature, the same false circumstance of a supplicatory letter, and the same false and hypocritical pretence to clemency. It was discovered,' continued Napoleon, by the confession of some of the conspirators, that the Duke d'Enghien was an accomplice, and that he was only waiting on the frontiers of France for the news of my assassination, upon receiving which he was to have entered France as the king's lieutenant. Was I to suffer that the Count d'Artois should send a parcel of miscreants to murder me, and that a prince of his house should hover on the borders of the country that I governed, to profit by my assassination? According to the laws of nature, I was authorized to cause him to be assassinated in retaliation for the numerous attempts of the kind that he had before caused to be made against me. I gave orders to have him seized....He was tried and condemned by a law made long before I had any power in France. He was tried by a military commission formed of all the colonels of the regiments then in garrison at Paris.vol. i, pp. 453, 454. The Duke d'Enghien,, who was engaged upon the frontiers of my territories in a plot to assassinate me, I caused to be seized and given up to JUSTICE, which condemned him. HE HAD A FAIR TRIAL. (We shall see that presently!)-p. 468. 'I (O'Meara) asked Napoleon again, as I was anxious to put the matter beyond doubt, whether, if Talleyrand had delivered the Duke d'Enghien's letter in time, he would have pardoned him?. He replied, it is probable I might; for in it he made an offer of his services; besides, he was the best of the family. It is true that I, as well as the nation, was very desirous of making an example of one of that family; that was against him; but still I think I should have pardoned him.'-vol. ii. p. 58. Our readers will not fail to observe that the probable pardon of O'Meara has become, under the more veracious pen of M. Las Cases, Cases, an absolute certainty; but that both the probability and the certainty were conditional on a supposed event which never existed. All this tissue of absurd falsehood, however, is at once destroyed by a paragraph of General Hulin's pamphlet. I am bound to say that the prisoner presented himself before us (Hulin was president of this mock court) with a noble assurance; he repelled with great force the charge of having conspired directly or indirectly in any plot for assassinating the first consul-but he owned that he had borne arms against France, insisting, with a degree of courage and pride, (which even for his own sake we could not repress,) that he had maintained the rights of his family; that a Condé never could enter France, but with his arms in his hand. "My birth, my feelings, my opinions," he added," render me the eternal enemy of your government?' Will any of Buonaparte's bribed apologists dare after this to accuse the Duke d'Enghien of having asked to serve under the usurper? We now proceed to examine the mockery, which (to avoid circumlocution) we will call the trial. M. Dupin, a very eminent French lawyer, known to this country as the defender of Sir Robert Wilson, and in France as a man of liberal and constitutional principles, whose opinion therefore will not be liable to the imputation, as it is by some persons considered, of ultra-loyalty, M. Dupin, we say, proves by legal authorities, what was already clear to common sense, that even if the charge was as true as it was false, a court-martial was not the tribunal to try it-that a packed court-martial was not a fit tribunal to try any thing that a trial in the middle of the night was as illegal as it was atrocious; that the immediate execution was contrary not only to the general law, but even to the military code under which the court sat; and that, in one word, the whole proceeding was a foul conspiracy, and the result a black assassination. This M. Dupin shows, even if the charge had been proved; but he shows, not from reasoning, but from the production of the actual documents, that there was not only not a tittle of evidence to support the charges, but that what was produced as evidence actually contradicted them. The indignation which the following details, extracted from the proceedings of the court, must excite, will prevent their appearing tedious. is. The first document is the order for the trial-the bill, as it of indictment-and a most curious and important paper it "Paris, ...bm. nh, thuan phoi f Paris, the 29th Ventose, the 12th year of 'The Government of the Republic, decrees as follows:Art. I. The ci-devant Duc d'Enghien, accused of having borne arms against the republic;-of having been, and still 'being, in the pay of England; of participating in plots carried on by the latter power against the internal and external safety of the republic; shall be tried before a military commission, to be composed of seven members named by the General (Murat), Governor of Paris, and which shall assemble at Vincennes. isut Art. II. The Grand Judge, the Minister of War, and the General, Governor of Paris, are charged with the execution of this decree. BUONAPARTE. HUGUES MARET (Bassano). (Signed) pyja A true copy. MURAT, Governor of Paris.' The first observation on this precious document, which must strike every reader, is, that in this, the solemn, formal and official statement, by Buonaparte himself, of the supposed 'crinies of the Duke d'Enghien-there is not even an insinuation of his having participated in any assassination plot! On that point, therefore, the negative evidence of this indictment is conclusive. This order was signed on the 20th March, and probably did not reach Murat till long after Buonaparte's sealed letter, sent the same day, by Savary; for the next document, namely, the proces-verbal of the Rapporteur, or Judge-Advocate of the courtmartial, begins in this manner: In the 12th year of the French Republic, this day, 29th Ventôse, (20th March,) at twelve o'clock at night, I, major of the gendarmerie d'elite, by order of the general commanding the corps (Savary), attended at the residence of General Murat, governor of Paris, who immediately gave orders to proceed to General Hulin, whom I should find at the castle of Vincennes, from whom I was to take and receive ulterior orders. Pièces Hist. xi. p. emod gign Z Here we discover a circumstance of atrocious precipitation, which even M. Dupin has overlooked; he thinks it was at midnight, that the Judge-Advocate entered on his functions at Kincennes; but it is clear, that it was at midnight that he waited on ·Murat in Paris, to receive his first orders. T Murat's house in Paris was in the Place Vendôme, at least six miles from Vincennes. The sentence was passed at two in the morning, (as is stated in the body of the instrument itself,) so that the judge-advocate received Murat's instructions-travelled from the Place Vendôme to Vincennes-there received General the neHulin's orders-had to look for evidence and prepare PP 2 cessary cessary papers-examined the prisoner-summoned and constituted the court-held the trial-made out several drafts of a long sentence; and had the whole passed, signed, and perfected, within two hours! But Buonaparte says, this was a fair trial, and Buonaparte is an honourable man!" The judge-advocate, proceeds in his procès-verbal to state that— . ‹ Having arrived at Vincennes, General Hulin communicated to me, 1. A copy of the decree of the government of the same day, ordering that the ci-devant Duke d'Enghien should be tried by a military commission, composed of seven members to he named by General Murat ; and 2d, the order of General Murat of the same date, directing that General Hulin and six other officers, colonels and commandants of regiments, should constitute the court, and further that I (the writer of the report) should act as rapporteur (judge-advocate); and further, that the court should assemble forthwith, in the castle of Vincennes, there, without delay or separation (sans désemparer), to judge the accused on the charges stated in the said decree of the government.—Pièces Hist. p. xii. Here we must pause a moment-let us consider the state in which this judge-advocate found himself. At midnight he is summoned to attend Murat in Paris-thence he is ordered to proceed to attend General Hulin at Vincennes-there he finds, át about one o'clock in the morning, that he is to be the conductor of this most extraordinary and stupendous trial, and all the evidence put into his hand is, the indictment and an order to proceed to judgment forthwith, without separation or delay. Not one other iota of evidence was furnished to him—what then was to be done? We think no reader can anticipate what is about to follow.-The duke had not been out of a travelling carriage for three days and nights; worn out with wonder, anxiety, and fatigue, the victim had fallen asleep. Between one and two o'clock in the morning, the judge-advocate with two officers and two private gendarmes, suddenly entered his room, awakened him, and began immediately to interrogate him; in hopes of getting from his own mouth, in the confusion and fatigue in which he naturally must have been, some colour of evidence against him. We firmly believe that a scene of such romantic atrocity was never before acted. Now comes the interrogatory. · Asked him his name, christian name, age, and birth-place? Answered, That he was Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon, Duc d'Enghien, born the 2d of August, 1772, at Chantilly. • Asked, When he had quitted France? Answered, “I cannot exactly tell, but I believe it was about the 16th 16th of July, 1789';" added, that he went with the Prince de Condé, his grandfather, his father, the Count d'Artois, and his children. Asked, Where he has resided since he left France? Answered," On leaving France I went with my parents, whom I always accompanied, to Mons and Bruxelles; thence we went to Turin, where the King of Sardinia received us for about sixteen months;" that thence, still with his parents, he had gone to Worms and its neighbourhood on the Rhine; there the corps of Condé was formed, and I served in the whole war. I had before made the campaign of 1792, in Brabant, with the corps de Bourbon, a part of the Archduke Albert's army.' Asked, Whether he had retired since the peace between France · and the Emperor? (of Germany.) Answered, "We ended the last campaign near Gratz, where the corps of Condé, which was in English pay, was disbanded;" that he afterwards remained for his amusement in the neighbourhood of Gratz for six or seven months, waiting directions from his grandfather, the Prince of Condé, who had gone into England, and was to let him know what allowance that power would make him, it being not yet settled. During this interval I asked the Cardinal de Rohan's consent to reside in his territory at Ettenheim, in the Brisgaw, part of the late archbishopric of Strasbourg; that for the last two years and a half he had resided at Ettenheim; that, on the cardinal archbishop's death, he had officially requested the Elector of Baden's consent for a continuation of his residence at Ettenheim, which was granted; for he would not have thought it proper to reside there without the Elector's consent. residen Asked, If he has not been in England, and if this power does not still make him an allowance? Answered, That he never was in England; but that England does still make him an allowance, and that he has nothing else to live upon! Desires to add to the above answers, that the reasons which induced him to reside at Ettenheim having ceased, he was about to change his residence to Friburg, in the Brisgaw, a much more agreeable town than Ettenheim, in which latter he would not have stayed so long, but that the Elector, had given him extensive permission to shoot, of which amusement he was very fond. ་་ Asked, If he maintained any correspondence with the French princes in England, and if he had lately seen them? Answered, That he naturally kept up a correspondence with his grandfather since they had parted, on the reduction of the corps, and with his father, whom he had not seen since 1794 or 1795. Asked, What rank he held in the army of Condé? Answered, "Commanding the advanced guard." Before the campaign of 1796, he served as a volunteer on his grandfather's staff; but ever since 1796 he was always at the advanced guard-observing, that after the army of Condé was taken into the service of Russia, it was divided into two regiments, one of infantry and one of cavalry; of the latter the emperor made him colonel, and it was in this capacity that he returned to the army on the Rhine. |