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Marshal Bertrand is a great favourite with Mr. Warden, and he therefore endeavours to exculpate him from the charge of having, while at Elba, made overtures to the King. On this point Mr. Warden thinks Count Bertrand himself the best witness he could adduce, and he represents him as saying, the report of my having taken the oath of fidelity to Louis XVIII. is groundless; for, I never beheld a single individual of the Bourbon family of France.' -(p. 45.)-Admirable logic! but M. Bertrand misstates the charge he was not charged with having sworn allegiance, but with writing a letter to the Duke of Fitzjames, promising allegiance on the honour of a gentleman, and soliciting permission to return to France, where he intended to live as a faithful subject of the King, and under his protection: and it is further charged, that this letter was written at a time when Bonaparte's return was in preparation, and it is therefore reasonably supposed that this profession of honour and high-minded loyalty was a cloak to cover the conspiracy which was hatching, and an insidious attempt to deceive the King and his ministers. This letter, written to the Duke of Fitzjames, (who has the misfortune to be Bertrand's brother-inlaw,) cannot be denied; it was at the time communicated by the Duke to the King, and it has been since verified and officially published in France, and half the journals of Europe.

The contempt in which these folks must have held poor Mr. Warden, is evident from the absurdities with which they crammed his credulity.

Thus, Bertrand says that Bonaparte was never sensual, never gross.' (p. 212.) His manners and language were gross in the extreme, and his habits scandalously sensual. We need only recall to our readers' recollection the anecdote slightly alluded to in our XXVIIth Number, page 96, the authenticity of which (filthy and disgraceful to Bonaparte as it is) is established by the testimony of the Commissioners that attended him to Elba, and his own confessions.

Las Cases completes the picture

"He never speaks of himself; he never mentions his achievements. Of money he is totally regardless; and he was not known to express a regret for any part of his treasure but the diamond necklace, which he wore constantly in his neckcloth, because it was the gift of his sister, the Princess Hortense, whom he tenderly loved." This he lost after the battle of Waterloo.—p. 212.

This is no bad instance of Las Cases's veracity :-the necklace in question was stolen or forced from his sister previously to his leaving Paris, when the generous Bonaparte, contemplating the chances of a reverse, determined to collect about his own person as much wealth as possible; he accordingly, as the most portable

took all the jewels he could lay his hands on, and, amongst the rest, this necklace of the Princess Hortense; who wished her brother's anxiety for a keep-sake had been contented with a lock of her hair, or a bracelet, or a ring, or any thing, in short, rather than her best diamond necklace, of the value of 20,000l.

But there are four topics connected with the character of Bonaparte, on which, above all others, a good deal of interest is naturally excited-we mean the murders of Captain Wright and the Duke d'Enghien, the poisoning of his own sick at Jaffa, and the massacre of the garrison of that place; and as Mr. Warden professes to have heard from Bonaparte himself explanations of each of these events, we shall give them as shortly as we can, but always in his own words; stating, however, that Mr. Warden's reports may be in these instances substantially correct, because we have understood that Bonaparte was forward to give similar explanations to other persons.

"The English brig of war, commanded by Captain Wright, was em ployed by your government in landing traitors and spies on the West coast of France. Seventy of the number had actually reached Paris; and, so mysterious were their proceedings, so veiled in impenetrable concealment, that although General Ryal, of the Police, gave me this information, the name or place of their resort could not be discovered. I received daily assurances that my life would be attempted, and though I did not give entire credit to them, I took every precaution for my preservation. The Brig was afterwards taken near L'Orient, with Captain Wright, its commander, who was carried before the Perfect of the Department of Morbeau, (Morbihan,) at Vannes: General Julian, then Prefect, had accompanied me in the expedition to Egypt, and recognised Captain Wright on the first view of him. Intelligence of this circumstance was instantly transmitted to Paris; and instructions were expeditiously returned to interrogate the crew, separately, and transfer their testimonies to the Minister of Police. The purport of their examination was at first. very unsatisfactory; but, at length, on the examination of one of the crew, some light was thrown on the subject. He stated that the Brig had landed several Frenchmen, and among them he particularly remembered one, a very merry fellow, who was called Pichegru. Thus a clue was found that Jed to the discovery of a plot, which, had it succeeded, would have thrown the French nation, a second time, into a state of revolution.-Captain Wright was accordingly conveyed to Paris, and confined in the Temple; there to remain till it was found convenient to bring the formidable accessaries of this treasonable design to trial. The law of France would have subjected Wright to the punishment of death: but he was of minor consideration. My grand object was to secure the principals, and I considered the English Captain's evidence of the utmost consequence towards completing my object."-Bonaparte again and again, most solemnly asserted, that Captain Wright died, in the Temple, by his own hand, as described in the Moniteur, and at a much earlier period than has been generally believed.'-p. 139-141.

We beg leave to postpone making any observation on this story till we have quoted the Ex-Emperor's denial of the murder of Pichegru, and his defence of that of the Duke d'Enghien.

'Here Napoleon became very animated, and often raised himself on the sofa where he had hitherto remained in a reclining posture. The interest attached to the subject, and the energy of his delivery, combined to impress the tenor of his narrative so strongly on my mind, that you need not doubt the accuracy of this repetition of it.He began as follows.

"At this time, reports were every night brought me," (I think, he said, by General Ryal,)" that conspiracies were in agitation; that meetings were held in particular houses in Paris, and names even were mentioned; at the same time, no satisfactory proofs could be obtained, and the utmost vigilance and ceaseless pursuit of the Police was evaded. General Moreau, indeed, became suspected, and I was seriously importuned to issue an order for his arrest; but his character was such, his name stood so high, and the estimation of him so great in the public mind, that it appeared, to me, he had nothing to gain, and every thing to lose, by becoming a conspirator against me: I, therefore, could not but exonerate him from such a suspicion.-I accordingly refused an order for the proposed arrest by the following intimation to the Minister of Police. You have named Pichegru, Georges, and Moreau: convince me that the former is in Paris, and I will immediately cause the latter to be arrested.-Another and a very singular circumstance led to the developement of the plot. One night, as I lay agitated and wakeful, I rose from my bed, and examined the list of suspected traitors; and Chance, which rules the world, occasioned my stumbling, as it were, on the name of a surgeon, who had lately returned from an English prison. This man's age, education, and experience in life, induced me to believe, that his conduct must be attributed to any other motive than that of youthful fanaticism in favour of a Bourbon: as far as circumstances qualified me to judge, money appeared to be his object.-I accordingly gave orders for this man to be arrested; when a summary mock trial was instituted, by which he was found guilty, sentenced to die, and informed he had but six hours to live. This stratagem had the desired effect: he was terrified into confession. It was now known that Pichegru had a brother, a monastic Priest, then residing in Paris. I ordered a party of gendarmes to visit this man, and if he had quitted his house, I conceived there would be good ground for suspicion. The old Monk was secured, and, in the act of his arrest, his fears betrayed what I most wanted to know, Is it,' he exclaimed, because I afforded shelter to a brother that I am thus treated!'The object of the plot was to destroy me; and the success of it would, of course, have been my destruction. It emanated from the capital of your country, with the Count d'Artois at the head of it. To the West he sent the Duke de Berri, and to the East the Duke d'Enghien. To France your vessels conveyed underlings of the plot, and Moreau became a convert to the cause. The moment was big with evil: I felt myself on a tottering eminence, and I resolved to hurl the thunder back upon the Bourbons even to the metropolis of the British empire. My

Minister vehemently urged the seizure of the Duke though in a neutral territory. But I still hesitated, and Prince Benevento brought the order twice, and urged the measure with all his powers of persuasion: It was not, however, till I was fully convinced of its necessity, that I sanctioned it by my signature. The matter could be easily arranged between me and the Duke of Baden. Why, indeed, should I suffer a man residing on the very confines of my kingdom, to commit a crime which, within the distance of a mile, by the ordinary course of law, Justice herself would condemn to the scaffold? And now answer me ;-Did I do more than adopt the principle of your government, when it ordered the capture of the Danish fleet, which was thought to threaten mischief to your country? It had been urged to me again and again, as a sound political opinion, that the new dynasty could not be secure, while the Bourbons remained. Talleyrand never deviated from this principle: it was a fixed, unchangeable article in his political creed. But I did not become a ready or a willing convert. I examined the opinion with care and with caution and the resuit was a perfect conviction of its necessity.-The Duke d'Enghien was accessary to the confederacy; and although the resident of a neutral territory, the urgency of the case, in which my safety and the public tranquillity, to use no stronger expression, were involved, JUSTIFIED THE PROCEEDING. I accordingly ordered him to be seized and tried: He was found guilty, and sentenced to be shot.-The sentence was immediately executed; and the same fate would have followed had it been Louis the Eighteenth. For I again declare that I found it necessary to roll the thunder back on the metropolis of England, as from thence, with the Count d'Artois at their head, did the assassins assail me." . pp. 144-149.

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Now we have here, from this most interested witness, some admissions which, so far from exculpating him, increase the presumption against him.

Let it be recollected that the charge relative to Captain Wright was not that Bonaparte had wantonly murdered him, but that he had at first caused him to be tortured, in order to obtain the clue of the conspiracy, and afterwards to be murdered to prevent this atrocity from being discovered.

From Bonaparte's own account, it is evident how great his anxiety was to trace this plot.-His police, he says, were in an ignorant perplexity-his life was supposed to be in imminent danger-seventy conspirators were at Paris, but neither their names, persons, nor haunts can be discovered: fortunately in this moment of perplexity, Captain Wright is taken-the intelligence, is instantly transmitted to Paris-instructions immediately returned to interrogate the crew separately, i. e. secretly, and by the police. These examinations, however, produced nothing at first; but at length one of the crew threw some light on the subject: he stated that the brig had landed several Frenchmen on the coast, and among others, a merry fellow called Pichegru. To all those who,

knew any thing of General Pichegru's mind and manners-to all those who have been accustomed to weigh probabilities, and to reason on evidence, it will be evident that this particular must be false. Pichegru was, by character and habit, sedate-he could never have been the buffoon of the seamen-he could never have betrayed his name to the gossiping merriment of a ship's crew, who would have repeated it on their return to England, where it would have soon found its way into the newspapers, and through them into France. No--Bonaparte knew mankind too well, and he was well aware that the only one of the crew who was worth interrogating was Captain Wright. The conclusion then to be drawn from all this is inevitable, that the Captain, to be made of use, must be forced to speak. It would be too much to assert positively that Captain Wright would have resisted all the extremities of torture. We must not reckon so confidently on the firmness of human nature; but at least the generous character of that gallant officer induces us to think him as capable as any other man of a noble resistance; yet, to prove how uncertain are all deductions of this kind, Bonaparte afterwards tells us that he found Pichegru was in France, not by one of the crew, but by a surgeon to whom he was miraculously directed, and from whom, because he was avaricious, he contrives to obtain a confession, not by money, but by terror! These contradictory statements prove, at least,one thing,-that Bonaparte was not telling truth, and that there was some part of the transaction which he chose to involve in obscurity. We have seen his anxiety for information, the vast importance he attached to the capture of Captain Wright, and the necessity in which he was to obtain his evidence: let us now see whether there is reason to suppose he was a man to be deterred from endeavouring to obtain this evidence by torture.

In the first place, he does not deny that, contrary to the laws of nations, he subjected the English crew to secret interrogatories before the Police-this is the first step towards torture. In the second place, it is admitted that Capt. Wright was placed in solitary confinement in a state prison-this is the next-nay, it is of itself a species of torture. Thirdly, he confesses that he employed the direct and overwhelming terror of immediate death upon the mind of the surgeon. And, finally, he avows and boasts, that-for the purpose of defeating the very plot in which Captain Wright was implicated-he seized a prince, no subject of his, in a neutral territory, hurried him from his bed before a military midnight tribunal, and thence to a sudden and ignominious death-Nay, says this monster, the same fate should have followed had it been Louis XVIII. And he justifies this atrocious violence 'because be found it necessary to roll the thunder back on the metropolis of

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