go positively declared to have
been, from first to last, a contrivance of his,[23] we must pass over in
comparative silence; as the subject is one which it is impossible to
elucidate, and which we could not hope to discuss with any profit in the
short space which remains to us. If noticed at all in this volume, we
have unfortunately mislaid the reference to it; and in a work which is
without an index, and which has been compiled with a total disregard to
chronological arrangement, we have not been able to recover it. All the
parties to that infamous transaction were anxious in after times to
shift the culpability from off their own shoulders; and amidst the
criminations and recriminations of the future dukes and princes of the
Empire, there is little positive knowledge of any kind to be gained. It
might be, as Fouche said, "worse than a crime--a blunder;" but there was
certainly nothing about the act itself from which a man of Talleyrand's
lax morality would have shrunk; and our present impression is, that he
was privy to this odious and useless tragedy, if the whole scheme of the
violation of a neutral territory, the arrest, the mock trial, and the
execution, did not originate with him. Even Napoleon regretted the
occurrence, though he was too inflexible in his character to throw the
blame on others when the deed was done, and at St. Helena he took the
whole responsibility of it upon himself. "The Duc d'Enghein," said he,
"died, because I willed it." This is the style imperial, but it is not
the expression of a fact; and the Duke of Rovigo, with great
probability, attributes this language to the desire which he latterly
manifested to impress upon others a lofty idea of his absolute power as
a sovereign. He was at the time only First Consul, and he has himself
stated that, to use a familiar phrase, he was _worried_ into it by those
about him. "I did not rightly know," says he, "who the Duc d'Enghein
was. The Revolution had come upon me when I was very young, and I had
never been at court. _All these points_ were explained to me. If it be
so, I said, he must be seized, and the necessary orders were given in
consequence. Every thing had been provided beforehand. The papers were
prepared, and there was nothing to do but to sign them, and the fate of
the prince was already decided."[24] This, if accepted as true--and we
see no reason why it should not be--is conclusive; and if Bonaparte may
be believed, a letter addressed to