, let his fleet be ever so superior, he will never fight if he
can avoid it, and that, in orderly times, his capacity would, at the
utmost, make him regarded as a good master of a merchantman, and nothing
else.

Of the present commander of our, flotilla at Boulogne, Lacrosse, I will
also say some few words. A lieutenant before the Revolution, he became,
in 1789, one of the most ardent and violent Jacobins, and in 1792 was
employed by the friend of the Blacks, and our Minister, Monge, as an
emissary in the West Indies, to preach there to the negroes the rights of
man and insurrection against the whites, their masters. In 1800,
Bonaparte advanced him to a captain-general at Guadeloupe, an island
which his plots, eight years before, had involved in all the horrors of
anarchy, and where, when he now attempted to restore order, his former
instruments rose against him and forced him to escape to one of your
islands--I believe Dominico. Of this island, in return for his
hospitable reception, he took plans, according to which our General
Lagrange endeavoured to conquer it last spring. Lacrosse is a perfect
revolutionary fanatic, unprincipled, cruel, unfeeling, and intolerant.
His presumption is great, but his talents are trifling.

LETTER XXXIV.

PARIS, October, 1805.

MY LORD:--The defeat of the Austrians has excited great satisfaction
among our courtiers and public functionaries; but the mass of the
inhabitants here are too miserable to feel for anything else but their
own sufferings. They know very well that every victory rivets their
fetters, that no disasters can make them more heavy, and no triumph
lighter. Totally indifferent about external occurrences, as well as
about internal oppressions, they strive to forget both the past and the
present, and to be indifferent as to the future; they would be glad could
they cease to feel that they exist. The police officers were now, with
their gendarmes, bayoneting them into illuminations for Bonaparte's
successes, as they dragooned them last year into rejoicings for his
coronation. I never observed before so much apathy; and in more than one
place I heard the people say, "Oh! how much better we should be with
fewer victories and more tranquillity, with less splendour and more
security, with an honest peace instead of a brilliant war." But in a
country groaning under a military government, the opinions of the people
are counted for nothing.

At Madame Joseph Bo