eror's will. In
that document Napoleon brushed away the excuses which had previously
been offered to the credulity or malice of his courtiers, and took on
himself the responsibility for the execution:

"I caused the Duc d'Enghien to be arrested and judged, because it
was necessary for the safety, the interest, and the honour of the
French people when the Comte d'Artois, by his own confession, was
supporting sixty assassins at Paris. In similar circumstances I
would act in the same way again."[303]

The execution of the Duc d'Enghien is one of the most important
incidents of this period, so crowded with momentous events. The
sensation of horror which it caused can be gauged by the mental agony
of Madame de Remusat and of others who had hitherto looked on
Bonaparte as the hero of the age and the saviour of the country. His
mother hotly upbraided him, saying it was an atrocious act, the stain
of which could never be wiped out, and that he had yielded to the
advice of enemies' eager to tarnish his fame.[304] Napoleon said
nothing, but shut himself up in his cabinet, revolving these terrible
words, which doubtless bore fruit in the bitter reproaches later to be
heaped upon Talleyrand for his share in the tragedy. Many royalists
who had begun to rally to his side now showed their indignation at the
deed. Chateaubriand, who was about to proceed as the envoy of France
to the Republic of Valais, at once offered his resignation and assumed
an attitude of covert defiance. And that was the conduct of all
royalists who were not dazzled by the glamour of success or cajoled by
Napoleon's favours. Many of his friends ventured to show their horror
of this Corsican vendetta; and a _mot_ which was plausibly, but it
seems wrongly, attributed to Fouche, well sums up the general opinion
of that callous society: "It was worse than a crime--it was a
blunder."

Scarcely had Paris recovered from this sensation when, on April 6th,
Pichegru was found strangled in prison; and men silently but almost
unanimously hailed it as the work of Napoleon's Mamelukes. This
judgment, however natural after the Enghien affair, seems to be
incorrect. It is true the corpse bore marks which scarcely tallied with
suicide: but Georges Cadoudal, whose cell was hard by, heard no sound of
a scuffle; and it is unlikely that so strong a man as Pichegru would
easily have succumbed to assailants. It is therefore more probable that
the conquero