rue, that this plot is to be counted (as the
imbecility of Melas, which lost the battle of Marengo) among those
accidents presenting themselves apropos to serve the favourite of fortune
in his ambitious views; but without it, he would equally have been hailed
an Emperor of the French in May, 1804. When he came from the coast, in
the preceding winter, and was convinced of the impossibility of making
any impression on the British Islands with his flotilla, he convoked his
confidential Senators, who then, with Talleyrand, settled the Senatus
Consultum which appeared five months afterwards. Mehee's correspondence
with Mr. Drake was then known to him; but he and the Minister of Police
were both unacquainted with the residence and arrival of Pichegru and
Georges in France, and of their connection with Moreau; the particulars
of which were first disclosed to them in the February following, when
Bonaparte had been absent from his army of England six weeks. The
assumption of the Imperial dignity procured him another decent
opportunity of offering his olive-branch to those who had caused his
laurels to wither, and by whom, notwithstanding his abuse, calumnies, and
menaces, he would have been more proud to be saluted Emperor than by all
the nations upon the Continent. His vanity, interest, and policy, all
required this last degree of supremacy and elevation at that period.

Bonaparte had so well penetrated the weak side of Moreau's character
that, although he could not avoid doing justice to this general's
military talents and exploits, he neither esteemed him as a citizen nor
dreaded him as a rival. Moreau possessed great popularity; but so did
Dumourier and Pichegru before him: and yet neither of them had found
adherents enough to shake those republican governments with which they
avowed themselves openly discontented, and against which they secretly
plotted. I heard Talleyrand say, at Madame de Montlausier's, in the
presence of fifty persons, "Napoleon Bonaparte had never anything to
apprehend from General Moreau, and from his popularity, even at the head
of an army. Dumourier, too, was at the head of an army when he revolted
against the National Convention; but had he not saved himself by flight
his own troops would have delivered him up to be punished as a traitor.
Moreau, and his popularity, could only be dangerous to the Bonaparte
dynasty were he to survive Napoleon, had not this Emperor wisely averted
this danger."