Banking on Talleyrand’s friendship, Roger had not expected that the diplomat would treat him as an exception to the prevailing rule. That might well have proved the case had he been in France as a civilian, or even had Talleyrand not known of his past association with Mr. Pitt. Belatedly he realised that it had been too much to expect the Foreign Minister to allow him to retain his status as a French Colonel in Paris with access to military secrets. No alternative had been suggested; but Roger felt certain there would be one, and one which might well put a permanent end to his activities as a secret agent. Once more he felt that there was nothing for it but to agree; so with as much cheerfulness as he could muster he replied:
‘So be it, then. Since you insist on my giving you this evidence of my good faith, I’ll go to Egypt; but if I die there my blood will be on your head.’
‘God forbid that either of us should be called on so to suffer,’ smiled his host. ‘And now that everything is settled between us in such an amicable manner let us drink to your safe return. That the peaches are somewhat short of perfection you must forgive, but at this season I have to have them brought by courier from hothouses in the south of France. I can assure you, though, that the Château Yquem that goes with them is near as old as myself and could hardly be bettered.’
It was not until half an hour later, as Roger walked away from the Rue du Bac, that he had a chance to take serious stock of his new situation. He still felt that the account of himself which he had given was sufficiently plausible for Talleyrand to have at least half believed it, but the fact remained that he had not swallowed it hook, line and sinker. Instead, he had not only extracted a promise that Roger should not communicate with his country but had also taken steps to see that he would shortly be transported to a distant shore where, for a long time to come, even if he ignored his promise, he would be in no position to send information to England about such plans as the Directory might be making.
On one point Roger took an immediate decision. It could be taken for granted that during the six months the Foreign Minister had been in office he would have established his own service of secret agents. That being so, if he did suspect that Roger was still acting for Mr. Pitt, he would be kept under constant observation from now on until he was safely out of Paris. Therefore, it would be tempting Fate to pay another visit to the secret post-office and hand in his despatch.
That did not particularly worry him. He was in fact relieved that circumstances should prevent his having to carry out a duty at the cost of breaking his word to a friend. He regarded it as a good thing that preparations to resist invasion should continue to be made in England at high pressure; for, although Bonaparte had refused the gamble, the Directory were so eager that the operation should be undertaken that it was quite possible that during his absence they might persuade Moreau or some other General to undertake it.
As far as the expedition to Egypt was concerned, its preparations would take many weeks, if not months, and must be on such a scale that other British agents could hardly fail to learn their purpose. It was annoying to have acquired this important piece of information long before any other agent was likely to do so, yet be deprived of the kudos for passing it on. But it was better to be safe than sorry, so he quickly resigned himself to leaving it to someone else to report.
That brought him to the all-important question—should he or should he not accompany Bonaparte? If he backed out, it was certain that the clever Talleyrand would think of some way of thoroughly discrediting him without actually bringing him into danger. It would then be useless for him to remain in Paris. Moreover, as Talleyrand had pointed out, to resign his appointment at such a juncture would cost him for good the place he had won in Bonaparte’s confidence and, if the General did return safely from his Eastern venture, there could be little doubt that he would prove the dominant figure in the French politics of the future.
Having reasoned so far, it became apparent to Roger that he was faced with clear-cut alternatives—either he must go to Egypt or slip quietly away to England with his tail between his legs and confess to Mr. Pitt that he was finished as a secret agent.
Could he have been certain that Georgina would marry him, he would have been prepared to take the latter course; but he knew that for her to change her mind after all these years was very unlikely. That being the case, there would be nothing to console him for retiring from the ringside seat from which he had observed, and sometimes influenced, High Policy in Europe for so long. Moreover, it was a bitter thought that he would end on a note of complete failure the career he had followed for the past ten years with such outstanding success.
The alternative, too, offered extremely high dividends. By going to Egypt he could convince Talleyrand of his bona fides, and so even win his confidence. He would retain Bonaparte’s goodwill and if, as Talleyrand predicted, he returned sooner than might be expected to assume dictatorial powers, his goodwill would then be invaluable.
There were two other smaller points, though important ones to Roger. First, he had promised Talleyrand not to communicate with England only while he was in France. Once outside the country he would again be free to do so by any means he could devise without any feeling of shame at having broken his word, even though it were in the service of his country. Secondly, although he might leave France with Bonaparte, it did not follow that he would remain with him indefinitely. An occasion might well arise by which, while still retaining the General’s goodwill, he could manage to get back to Europe long before Bonaparte.
By the time he was crossing the Place du Louvre towards La Belle Etoile he had decided that Talleyrand had, for the present, cornered him; so he must accept the challenge and play the game out or lose all respect for himself. On reaching the inn he went up to his room, lifted a loose floor-board, took the despatch he had written from its hiding place and burned it. Then he resolutely set about accustoming his mind to the fact that he would soon be leaving Europe and might not see his own country again for a long time to come.
During the weeks that followed he spent his time much as he had since his arrival in Paris. The Directory had not yet given its official consent to the expedition to Egypt so no overt preparations for it could be made; but Bonaparte had begun to draw up lists of his requirements, and from time to time used Roger to make discreet enquiries about the availability of different items. Apart from that he continued with his social round, which was rapidly making him one of the best-informed men in Paris. This round included attendance at all receptions given by members of the Bonaparte family, the older members of which he had met in Italy.
The General’s mother, Madame Letizia, entertained rarely, but Roger saw her occasionally at the houses of her children. She was a tall, angular woman and had inherited from her peasant ancestors both the best and worst of their qualities. Her husband had died in ’85, leaving her far from well-off and with a brood of seven children, ranging from one to seventeen years of age. During the upheavals that had shaken Corsica in the years that followed she had often been in dire straits to support her young family, but had faced every hardship with immense courage and, while treating her children with great strictness, had succeeded in bringing them up in the best traditions of the petit-noblesse. She was devout, high-principled and unspoilt by her second son’s rise to greatness. But she was extremely mean, owing to a belief that such prosperity could not last and that a day would come when to help her extravagant children she would need all she could save from the generous allowance the General made her.
Joseph, her eldest son—now aged thirty—had recently returned from being Ambassador in Rome. He had studied law at Pisa and was a virtuous, good-natured, intelligent man. After the family left Corsica and settled in Marseilles as refugees he had married Julie Clary, the daughter of a wealthy merchant there. She made him an excellent wife and was regarded by all as an angel of goodness, owing to her tireless activity in every form of charity. They had a pretty house in the Rue du Rocher, to which Joseph had bro
ught back with him from Rome his wife’s sister, Désirée. She was a great, if somewhat insipid, beauty and some years earlier had inspired Bonaparte with a most tender passion. At the moment she was in deep mourning for General Duphot, for she had become engaged to him before his untimely death in Rome the previous December.
Between Napoleon and Lucien, Letiziá’s third son, there was a gap of six years. Physically he bore little resemblance to the others, for he was tall, ill-shaped and had a small head and long thin limbs like those of a spider. In addition, he was so near-sighted that he was always peering at people with his head thrust forward and eyes half-closed. After Napoleon he was the most talented and independent-minded of the family, and its firebrand. As a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, he had been imprisoned as a Robespierrist at the end of the Terror, although he was only nineteen at that time. His brother Napoleon had had some difficulty in securing his release. He then got himself work as a storekeeper in St. Maxim and while there had married Christine Boyer, the daughter of the village innkeeper.
It was in keeping with Lucien’s Republican principles to have married a barmaid; but the news drove his brother, then in Italy, into a frenzy of rage, for the young General-in-Chief was already visualising himself as the head of a powerful family and planning for his relatives to marry far above their social status. Christine proved to be a good-looking, but undesigning, sweet-natured girl, and she soon won the love of all her husband’s family, with the one exception of the General. She very soon adapted herself to her new circumstances and on coming to Paris was much admired for the elegance with which she displayed on her tall figure the latest creations of the fashionable dressmakers Leroi, Despaux and German. Even so, it was a long time before the disgruntled Napoleon would receive her, although, to enable the couple to support themselves, he procured for Lucien a post as one of the Commissioners with the Army in Germany. From this post they had just returned to Paris and Lucien was about to enter the Assembly as Deputy for Corsica.
Elise, the General’s eldest sister, was just twenty-one. She was the least good-looking and least attractive of the sisters. Having been sent at an early age to Madame Campan’s Academy for the Daughters of the Nobility as a charity pupil, supported by the late Queen, she always endeavoured to conceal the fact that she owed her excellent education to Marie Antoinette, and gave herself airs far above those to which a member of a poor Corsican family could pretend. Nevertheless, in the previous May she had married Felice Bacciochi, a Corsican landowner of little better birth than herself. This marriage, too, had infuriated her ambitious brother, as he had by then already established his Court at Montebello, and it had been contracted without his knowledge. However, Madame Letizia had been privy to the match and had sponsored it, from the belief that a solid Corsican with a little land would make Elise a better husband than some sprig of the Italian nobility selected for her by the General. Even so, he provided the Bacciochis with a house in the Grande Rue Verte and enabled them to entertain lavishly; but Elise showed him little gratitude and the ambitious intrigues that she conducted with considerable skill were often a cause of annoyance to him.
Louis, some eighteen months younger, came next. He was a mild, easy-going young man, lacking both the robust health and quick intelligence of his elder brothers. Yet he was the General’s favourite, because he had been personally brought up by him. At the time when Napoleon was a near-penniless officer, studying at the Military College in Paris, he had sent for Louis, shared his attic with him, taught him at night by candlelight and made great sacrifices to clothe and feed him. At the age of seventeen Louis accompanied the General to Italy as one of his aides-de-camp and had acquitted himself creditably during the campaign. As he still held this appointment, Roger saw a lot of him.
Pauline was still only seventeen. She was the beauty of the family—gay, amusing and always surrounded by young men. She, too, had married in the previous summer, but a man of her brother’s choice: the handsome young General Leclerc. She was Napoleon’s favourite sister and, although like the others, ambitious and grasping, she showed him more affection and loyalty than they did. She and her husband were now installed in a house in the Rue de la Ville l’Evêque.
Caroline, aged fifteen, and Jerome, aged thirteen, were still completing their education. These two were as yet too young to have joined the family feud; but the rest, however much they might quarrel about other matters, were united in one thing—their hatred of Josephine. The puritanical Madame Letizia considered her daughter-in-law little better than a whore, while the others were riddled with jealousy and intensely resented Josephine’s failure to reprove flatterers who insinuated that as she was better born than Napoleon she had done him a favour by marrying him.
Since Josephine, between her two marriages, had sunk to the status of a titled demi-mondaine, dependent for money on such presents as her men friends gave her, and had been no longer received by ladies of good reputation, Roger appreciated the point of view of the Bonaparte family. But Josephine had always shown him such unfailing kindness that, without going so far as to champion her against her detractors, he endeavoured, whenever the opportunity arose, to make them think better of her.
In all the salons Roger attended the talk, when not concerned with the latest scandals, was of events in Italy and Switzerland. In the latter country the declaration by the Directory at the end of December that France would give her protection to the Republicans of the Vaudois had led to a general war. The mobs in Zürich, Basle and Geneva had taken up the agitation for equality. General Schaumberg was ordered to march a Division of the French Army of the Rhine into Switzerland, and General Brune another Division from the Army of Italy. The Bernese aristocracy had, meanwhile, told their people in the cantons that the French were bandits and atheists who would rob them and deprive them of their religion, upon which twenty thousand stalwart mountaineers banded together in defence of their property and beliefs.
Numerous bloody engagements followed and, unfortunately, the Swiss, having on two occasions been compelled to retreat, believed that they had been betrayed by their officers. So they murdered many of the best among them, including the Bernese General, Erlach. Compelled to give way before the disciplined assaults of the French, the Swiss patriots had fallen back on Berne. Women, old men and young boys heroically threw themselves on the bayonets of the enemy in an endeavour to defend the city, but to no avail. On March 5th, after a most bloody massacre, General Brune entered it as a conqueror.
Soon afterwards, having arbitrarily annexed the city of Geneva, the French renamed the Swiss Confederation, calling it the Helvetic Republic, and installed a Government on similar lines to that in France. They then set about realising the intention which had inspired their unscrupulous decision to bring murder, misery and ruin to this peaceful people—namely, the systematic looting of the country from end to end.
While hundreds of priests were being dragged from their hiding places and shot, and bands of Christians who still resisted were being hunted through the mountains until they could be cornered and massacred, the French Commissioners were sending back to France millions of gold francs looted indiscriminately from the treasuries of the cities and the private savings of individuals.
These doings caused Bonaparte considerable anxiety, as France’s unprovoked attack on the Swiss cantons had alarmed many of the German Princes. With good reason they felt apprehensive that they might become the next victims of the rapacious Republic and that their best means of protecting their territories lay in combining their forces under the leadership of Austria and urging the Emperor to renew the war against France. A fresh outbreak of hostilities on the Continent would have led to many of the best regiments, which Bonaparte had earmarked for his Egyptian expedition, being sent to the Rhine. That was the very last thing he wanted; so he was doing his utmost to restrain the republican belligerency of the Directors and manoeuvre them into taking steps calculated to reassure the Germans.
Nevertheless, no man was more guilty
of this bloody plundering of a nation than Bonaparte. When in Italy he had already been dreaming of himself as the Conqueror of the East and, without disclosing their object, making certain preparations which would facilitate his great design. One had been to send a million francs to the authorities at Toulon, to enable them to repair certain warships and thus strengthen the Fleet he would need to escort his transports. On learning of this the Directors had promptly seized the million for their own use. Angry as he was, Bonaparte had not at that time felt himself strong enough to join issue with them; so the warships remained unfit to put to sea.
Then, on his return from Italy via Switzerland, he had seen the wealth of the latter country and decided that she should pay for fitting out his armada. It was he who had conferred in Berne with the Swiss agitator Peter Ochs, encouraging him to create disturbances at the head of mobs calling for ‘Liberty’, and promising him the protection of France. He well knew that intervention would automatically be followed by conquest and a stream of Swiss gold flowing to Paris.
Now that he was in Paris he knew that the Directors would think twice before they dared to countermand any measures he took, and he was complacently reaping the fruits of his infamy. Roger had seen a letter from him that was to be despatched to Lannes, who had been sent to serve under Brune in Switzerland. In this letter Bonaparte instructed the Brigadier to have three millions of the stolen gold sent at once to Toulon.
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