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Lewis Goldsmith >> Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Volume 7
MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF ST. CLOUD
Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London
By Lewis Goldsmith
Volume 7
LETTER XXIV.
PARIS, October, 1805.
MY LORD:--Though loudly complained of by the Cabinet of St. Cloud, the
Cabinet of St. Petersburg has conducted itself in these critical times
with prudence without weakness, and with firmness without obstinacy. In
its connections with our Government it has never lost sight of its own
dignity, and, therefore, never endured without resentment those
impertinent innovations in the etiquette of our Court, and in the manner
and language of our Emperor to the representatives of legitimate
Sovereigns. Had similar becoming sentiments directed the councils of all
other Princes and the behaviour of their Ambassadors here, spirited
remonstrances might have moderated the pretensions or passions of upstart
vanity, while a forbearance and silence, equally impolitic and shameful,
have augmented insolence by flattering the pride of an insupportable and
outrageous ambition.
The Emperor of Russia would not have been so well represented here, had
he not been so wisely served and advised in his council chamber at St.
Petersburg. Ignorance and folly commonly select fools for their agents,
while genius and capacity employ men of their own mould, and of their own
cast. It is a remarkable truth that, notwithstanding the frequent
revolutions in Russia, since the death of Peter the First the ministerial
helm has always been in able hands; the progressive and uninterrupted
increase of the real and relative power of the Russian Empire evinces the
reality of this assertion.
The Russian Chancellor, Count Alexander Woronzoff, may be justly called
the chief of political veterans, whether his talents or long services are
considered. Catherine II., though a voluptuous Princess, was a great
Sovereign, and a competent judge of merit; and it was her unbiased choice
that seated Count Woronzoff, while yet young, in her councils. Though
the intrigues of favourites have sometimes removed him, he always retired
with the esteem of his Sovereign, and was recalled without caballing or
cringing to return. He is admired by all who have the honour of
approaching him, as much for his obliging condescension as for his great
information. No petty views, no petty caprices, no petty vengeances find
room in his generous bosom. He is known to have conferred benefactions,
not only on his enemies, but on those who, at the very time, were
meditating his destruction. His opinion is that a patriotic Minister
should regard no others as his enemies but those conspiring against their
country, and acknowledge no friends or favourites incapable of well
serving the State. Prince de Z-------- waited on him one day, and, after
hesitating some time, began to compliment him on his liberal sentiments,
and concluded by asking the place of a governor for his cousin, with whom
he had reason to suppose the Count much offended. "I am happy," said His
Excellency, "to oblige you, and to do my duty at the same time. Here is
a libel he wrote against me, and presented to the Empress, who graciously
has communicated it to me, in answer to my recommendation of him
yesterday to the place you ask for him to-day. Read what I have written
on the libel, and you will be convinced that it will not be my fault if
he is not to-day a governor." In two hours afterwards the nomination was
announced to Prince de Z--------, who was himself at the head of a cabal
against the Minister. In any country such an act would have been
laudable, but where despotism rules with unopposed sway, it is both
honourable and praiseworthy.
Prince Adam Czartorinsky, the assistant of Count Woronzoff, and Minister
of the foreign department, unites, with the vigour of youth, the
experience of age. He has travelled in most countries of Europe, not
solely to figure at Courts, to dance at balls, to look at pictures, or to
collect curiosities, but to study the character of the people, the laws
by which they are governed, and their moral or social influence with
regard to their comforts or misery. He therefore brought back with him a
stock of knowledge not to be acquired from books, but only found in the
world by frequenting different and opposite societies with observation,
penetration, and genius. With manners as polished as his mind is well
informed, he not only, possesses the favour, but the friendship of his
Prince, and, what is still more rare, is worthy of both. All Sovereigns
have favourites, few ever had any friends; because it is more easy to
flatter vanity, than to display a liberal disinterestedness; to bow
meanly than to instruct or to guide with delicacy and dignity; to abuse
the confidence of the Prince than to use it to his honour, and to the
advantage of his Government.
That such a Monarch as an Alexander, and such Ministers as Count
Woronzoff and Prince Czartorinsky, should appoint a Count Markof to a
high and important post, was not unexpected by any one not ignorant of
his merit.
Count Markof was, early in the reign of Catherine II., employed in the
office of the foreign department at St. Petersburg, and was, whilst
young, entrusted with several important negotiations at the Courts of
Berlin and Vienna., when Prussia had proposed the first partition of
Poland. He afterward went on his travels, from which he was recalled to
fill the place of an Ambassador to the late King of Sweden, Gustavus III.
He was succeeded, in 1784, at Stockholm, by Count Muschin Puschin, after
being appointed a Secretary of State in his own country, a post he
occupied with distinction, until the death of Catherine II., when Paul
the First revenged upon him, as well as on most others of the faithful
servants of this Princess, his discontent with his mother. He was then
exiled to his estates, where he retired with the esteem of all those who
had known him. In 1801, immediately after his accession to the throne,
Alexander invited Count Markof to his Court and Council, and the trusty
but difficult task of representing a legitimate Sovereign at the Court of
our upstart usurper was conferred on him. I imagine that I see the great
surprise of this nobleman, when, for the first time, he entered the
audience-chamber of our little great man, and saw him fretting, staring,
swearing, abusing to right and to left, for one smile conferring twenty
frowns, and for one civil word making use of fifty hard expressions,
marching in the diplomatic audience as at the head of his troops, and
commanding foreign Ambassadors as his French soldiers. I have heard that
the report of Count Markof to his Court, describing this new and rare
show, is a chef-d'oeuvre of wit, equally amusing and instructive. He is
said to have requested of his Cabinet new and particular orders how to
act--whether as the representative of an independent Sovereign, or, as
most of the other members of the foreign diplomatic corps in France, like
a valet of the First Consul; and that, in the latter case, he implored as
a favour, an immediate recall; preferring, had he no other choice left,
sooner to work in the mines at Siberia than to wear, in France the
disgraceful fetters of a Bonaparte. His subsequent dignified conduct
proves the answer of his Court.
Talleyrand's craft and dissimulation could not delude the sagacity of
Count Markof, who was, therefore, soon less liked by the Minister than by
the First Consul. All kind of low, vulgar, and revolutionary chicanery
was made use of to vex or to provoke the Russian Ambassador. Sometimes
he was reproached with having emigrants in his service; another time
protection was refused to one of his secretaries, under pretence that he
was a Sardinian subject. Russian travellers were insulted, and detained
on the most frivolous pretences. Two Russian noblemen were even arrested
on our side of the Rhine, because Talleyrand had forgotten to sign his
name to their passes, which were otherwise in order. The fact was that
our Minister suspected them of carrying some papers which he wanted to
see, and, therefore, wrote his name with an ink of such a composition
that, after a certain number of days, everything written with it
disappeared. Their effects and papers were strictly searched by an agent
preceding them from this capital, but nothing was found, our Minister
being misinformed by his spies.
When Count Markof left Sweden, he carried with him an actress of the
French theatre at Stockholm, Madame Hus, an Alsatian by birth, but who
had quitted her country twelve years before the Revolution, and could,
therefore, never be included among emigrants. She had continued as a
mistress with this nobleman, is the mother of several children by him,
and an agreeable companion to him, who has never been married. As I have
often said, Talleyrand is much obliged to any foreign diplomatic agent
who allows him to be the indirect provider or procurer of his mistresses.
After in vain tempting Count Markof with new objects, he introduced to
the acquaintance of Madame Hus some of his female emissaries. Their
manoeuvres, their insinuations, and even their presents were all thrown
away. The lady remained the faithful friend, and therefore refused with
indignation to degrade herself into a spy on her lover. Our Minister
then first discovered that, not only was Madame Hus an emigrant, but had
been a great benefactress and constant companion of emigrants at St.
Petersburg, and, of course, deserved to be watched, if not punished.
Count Markof is reported to have said to Talleyrand on this grave
subject, in the presence of two other foreign Ambassadors:
"Apropos! what shall I do to prevent my poor Madame Hus from being shot
as an emigrant, and my poor children from becoming prematurely orphans?"
"Monsieur," said our diplomatic oracle, "she should have petitioned the
First Consul for a permission to return, to France before she entered it;
but out of regard for you, if she is prudent, she will not, I daresay, be
troubled by our Government."
"I should be sorry if she was not," replied the Count, with a significant
look; and here this grand affair ended, to the great entertainment of
those foreign agents who dared to smile or to laugh.
LETTER XXV.
PARIS, October, 1805.
MY LORD:--The Legion of Honour, though only proclaimed upon Bonaparte's
assumption of the Imperial rank, dates from the first year of his
consulate. To prepare the public mind for a progressive elevation of
himself, and for consequential distinctions among all classes of his
subjects, he distributed among the military, arms of honour, to which
were attached precedence and privileges granted by him, and, therefore,
liable to cease with his power or life. The number of these arms
increased in proportion to the approach of the period fixed for the
change of his title and the erection of his throne. When he judged them
numerous enough to support his changes, he made all these wearers of arms
of honour knights. Never before were so many chevaliers created en
masse; they amounted to no less than twenty-two thousand four hundred,
distributed in the different corps of different armies, but principally
in the army of England. To these were afterwards joined five thousand
nine hundred civil functionaries, men of letters, artists, etc. To
remove, however, all ideas of equality, even among the members of the
Legion of Honour, they were divided into four classes--grand officers,
commanders, officers, and simple legionaries.
Every one who has observed Bonaparte's incessant endeavours to intrude
himself among the Sovereigns of Europe, was convinced that he would
cajole, or force, as many of them as he could into his revolutionary
knighthood; but I heard men, who are not ignorant of the selfishness and
corruption of our times, deny the possibility of any independent Prince
suffering his name to be registered among criminals of every description,
from the thief who picked the pockets of his fellow citizens in the
street, down to the regicide who sat in judgment and condemned his King;
from the plunderers who have laid waste provinces, republics, and
kingdoms, down to the assassins who shot, drowned, or guillotined their
countrymen en masse. For my part, I never had but one opinion, and,
unfortunately, it has turned out a just one. I always was convinced that
those Princes who received other presents from Bonaparte could have no
plausible excuse to decline his ribands, crosses, and stars. But who
could have presumed to think that, in return for these blood-stained
baubles, they would have sacrificed those honourable and dignified
ornaments which, for ages past, have been the exclusive distinction of
what birth had exalted, virtue made eminent, talents conspicuous, honour
illustrious, or valour meritorious? Who would have dared to say that the
Prussian Eagle and the Spanish Golden Fleece should thus be prostituted,
thus polluted? I do not mean by this remark to throw any blame on the
conferring those and other orders on Napoleon Bonaparte, or even on his
brothers; I know it is usual, between legitimate Sovereigns in alliance,
sometimes to exchange their knighthoods; but to debase royal orders so
much as to present them to a Cambaceres, a Talleyrand, a Fouche, a
Bernadotte, a Fesch, and other vile and criminal wretches, I do not deny
to have excited my astonishment as well as my indignation. What
honest--I do not say what noble--subjects of Prussia, or of Spain, will
hereafter think themselves rewarded for their loyalty, industry,
patriotism, or zeal, when they remember that their Sovereigns have
nothing to give but what the rebel has obtained, the robber worn, the
murderer vilified, and the regicide debased?
The number of grand officers of the Legion of Honour does not yet amount
to more than eighty, according to a list circulated at Milan last spring,
of which I have seen a copy. Of these grand officers, three had been
shoemakers, two tailors, four bakers, four barbers, six friars, eight
abbes, six officers, three pedlers, three chandlers, seven drummers,
sixteen soldiers, and eight regicides; four were lawful Kings, and the
six others, Electors or Princes of the most ancient houses in Europe. I
have looked over our, own official list, and, as far as I know, the
calculation is exact, both with regard to the number and to the quality.
This new institution of knighthood produced a singular effect on my vain
and giddy, countrymen, who, for twelve years before, had scarcely seen a
star or a riband, except those of foreign Ambassadors, who were
frequently insulted when wearing them. It became now the fashion to be a
knight, and those who really were not so, put pinks, or rather blooms, or
flowers of a darker red, in their buttonholes, so as to resemble, and to
be taken at a distance for, the red ribands of the members of the Legion
of Honour.
A man of the name of Villeaume, an engraver by profession, took advantage
of this knightly fashion and mania, and sold for four louis d'or, not
only the stars, but pretended letters of knighthood, said to be procured
by his connection with persons of the household of the Emperor. In a
month's time, according to a register kept by him, he had made twelve
hundred and fifty knights. When his fraud was discovered, he was already
out of the way, safe with his money; and, notwithstanding the researches
of the police, has not since been taken.
A person calling himself Baron von Rinken, a subject and an agent of one
of the many Princes of Hohenlohe, according to his own assertion, arrived
here with real letters and patents of knighthood, which he offered for
sale for three hundred livres. The stars of this Order were as large as
the star of the grand officers of the Legion of Honour, and nearly
resembled it; but the ribands were of a different colour. He had already
disposed of a dozen of these stars, when he was taken up by the police
and shut up in the Temple, where he still remains. Four other agents of
inferior petty German Princes have also been arrested for offering the
Orders of their Sovereigns for sale.
A Captain Rouvais, who received six wounds in his campaign under Pichegru
in 1794, wore the star of the Legion of Honour without being nominated a
knight. He has been tried by a military commission, deprived of his
pension, and condemned to four years' imprisonment in irons. He proved
that he had presented fourteen petitions to Bonaparte for obtaining this
mark of distinction, but in vain; while hundreds of others, who had
hardly seen an enemy, or, at the most, made but one campaign, or been
once wounded, had succeeded in their demands. As soon as sentence had
been pronounced against him, he took a small pistol from his pocket, and
shot himself through the head, saying, "Some one else will soon do the
same for Bonaparte."
A cobbler, of the name of Matthieu, either in a fit of madness or from
hatred to the new order of things, decorated himself with the large
riband of the Legion of Honour, and had an old star fastened on his coat.
Thus accoutred, he went into the Palais Royal, in the middle of the day,
got upon a chair, and began to speak to his audience of the absurdity of
true republicans not being on a level, even under an Emperor, and putting
on, like him, all his ridiculous ornaments. "We are here," said he,
"either all grand officers, or there exist no grand officers at all; we
have all fought and paid for liberty, and for the Revolution, as much as
Bonaparte, and have, therefore, the same right and claim with him." Here
a police agent and some gendarmes interrupted his eloquence by taking him
into custody. When Fouche asked him what he meant by such rebellious
behaviour, he replied that it was only a trial to see whether destiny had
intended him to become an Emperor or to remain a cobbler. On the next
day he was shot as a conspirator. I saw the unfortunate man in the
Palais Royal; his eyes looked wild, and his words were often incoherent.
He was certainly a subject more deserving a place in a madhouse than in a
tomb.
Cambaceres has been severely reprimanded by the Emperor for showing too
much partiality for the Royal Prussian Black Eagle, by wearing it in
preference to the Imperial Legion of Honour. He was given to understand
that, except for four days in the year, the Imperial etiquette did not
permit any subjects to display their knighthood of the Prussian Order. In
Madame Bonaparte's last drawing-room, before His Imperial Majesty set out
for the Rhine, he was ornamented with the Spanish, Neapolitan, Prussian,
and Portuguese orders, together with those of the French Legion of Honour
and of the Italian Iron Crown. I have seen the Emperor Paul, who was
also an amateur of ribands and stars, but never with so many at once. I
have just heard that the Grand Master of Malta has presented Napoleon
with the Grand Cross of the Maltese Order. This is certainly a negative
compliment to him, who, in July, 1798, officially declared to his then
sectaries, the Turks and Mussulmans, "that the Grand Master, Commanders,
Knights, and Order of Malta existed no more."
I have heard it related for a certainty among our fashionable ladies,
that the Empress of the French also intends to institute a new order of
female knighthood, not of honour, but of confidence; of which all our
Court ladies, all the wives of our generals, public functionaries, etc.,
are to be members. The Imperial Princesses of the Bonaparte family are
to be hereditary grand officers, together with as many foreign Empresses,
Queens, Princesses, Countesses, and Baronesses as can be bayoneted into
this revolutionary sisterhood. Had the Continent remained tranquil, it
would already have been officially announced by a Senatus Consultum. I
should suppose that Madame Bonaparte, with her splendid Court and
brilliant retinue of German Princes and Electors at Strasburg, need only
say the word to find hundreds of princely recruits for her knighthood in
petto. Her mantle, as a Grand Mistress of the Order of CONFIDENCE, has
been already embroidered at Lyons, and those who have seen it assert that
it is truly superb. The diamonds of the star on the mantle are valued at
six hundred thousand livres.
LETTER XXVI.
PARIS, October, 1805.
MY LORD:--Since Bonaparte's departure for Germany, fifteen individuals
have been brought here, chained, from La Vendee and the--Western
Departments, and are imprisoned in the Temple. Their crime is not
exactly known, but private letters from those countries relate that they
were recruiting for another insurrection, and that some of them were
entrusted as Ambassadors from their discontented countrymen to Louis
XVIII. to ask for his return to France, and for the assistance of Russia,
Sweden, and England to support his claims.
These are, however, reports to which I do not affix much credit. Had the
prisoners in the Temple been guilty, or only accused of such crimes, they
would long ago have been tortured, tried, and executed, or executed
without a trial. I suppose them mere hostages arrested by our
Government, as security for the tranquillity of the Chouan Departments
during our armies' occupation elsewhere. We have, nevertheless, two
movable columns of six thousand men each in the country, or in its
vicinity, and it would be not only impolitic, but a cruelty, to engage or
allure the unfortunate people of these wretched countries into any plots,
which, situated as affairs now are, would be productive of great and
certain evil to them, without even the probability of any benefit to the
cause of royalty and of the Bourbons. I do not mean to say that there
are not those who rebel against Bonaparte's tyranny, or that the Bourbons
have no friends; on the contrary, the latter are not few, and the former
very numerous. But a kind of apathy, the effect of unavailing resistance
to usurpation and oppression, has seized on most minds, and annihilated
what little remained of our never very great public spirit. We are tired
of everything, even of our existence, and care no more whether we are
governed by a Maximilian Robespierre or by a Napoleon Bonaparte, by a
Barras or by Louis XVIII. Except, perhaps, among the military, or among
some ambitious schemers, remnants of former factions, I do not believe a
Moreau, a Macdonald, a Lucien Bonaparte, or any person exiled by the
Emperor, and formerly popular, could collect fifty trusty conspirators in
all France; at least, as long as our armies are victorious, and organized
in their present formidable manner. Should anything happen to our
present chief, an impulse may be given to the minds now sunk down, and
raise our characters from their present torpid state. But until such an
event, we shall remain as we are, indolent but submissive, sacrificing
our children and treasures for a cause we detest, and for a man we abhor.
I am sorry to say it, but it certainly does, no honour to my nation when
one million desperados of civil and military banditti are suffered to
govern, tyrannize, and pillage, at their ease and undisturbed, thirty
millions of people, to whom their past crimes are known, and who have
every reason to apprehend their future wickedness.
This astonishing resignation (if I can call it so, and if it does not
deserve a worse name), is so much the more incomprehensible, as the
poverty of the higher and middle classes is as great as the misery of the
people, and, except those employed under Bonaparte, and some few upstart
contractors or army commissaries, the greatest privations must be
submitted to in order to pay the enormous taxes and make a decent
appearance. I know families of five, six, and seven persons, who
formerly were wealthy, and now have for a scanty subsistence an income of
twelve or eighteen hundred livres--per year, with which they are obliged
to live as they can, being deprived of all the resource that elsewhere
labour offers to the industrious, and all the succours compassion bestows
on the necessitous. You know that here all trade and all commerce are at
a stand or destroyed, and the hearts of our modern rich are as unfeeling
as their manners are vulgar and brutal.
A family of ci-devant nobles of my acquaintance, once possessing a
revenue of one hundred and fifty thousand livres--subsist now on fifteen
hundred livres--per year; and this sum must support six individuals--the
father and mother, with four children! It does so, indeed, by an
arrangement of only one poor meal in the day; a dinner four times, and a
supper three times, in the week. They endure their distress with
tolerable cheerfulness, though in the same street, where they occupy the
garrets of a house, resides, in an elegant hotel, a man who was once
their groom, but who is now a tribune, and has within these last twelve
years, as a conventional deputy, amassed, in his mission to Brabant and
Flanders, twelve millions of livres. He has kindly let my friend
understand that his youngest daughter might be received as a chambermaid
to his wife, being informed that she has a good education. All the four
daughters are good musicians, good drawers, and very able with their
needles. By their talents they supported their parents and themselves
during their emigration in Germany; but here these are of but little use
or advantage. Those upstarts who want instruction or works of this sort
apply to the first, most renowned, and fashionable masters or mistresses;
while others, and those the greatest number, cannot afford even to pay
the inferior ones and the most cheap. This family is one of the many
that regret having returned from their emigration. But, you may ask, why
do they not go back again to Germany? First, it would expose them to
suspicion, and, perhaps, to ruin, were they to demand passes; and if this
danger or difficulty were removed, they have no money for such a long
journey.