Since Roger’s return from Russia he had not seen his host, so he gave him an eye-witness account of Paul I’s murder. When he had done Pitt commented ‘ ’Twas a terrible business and shocked all Europe. Why they could not simply have put him under restraint, as we have our King in the past, I cannot think. But his removal proved invaluable to us at that time. The pity of it is that the present government is rapidly losing the advantage gained thereby. Young Alexander greatly favoured an alliance with us, and with his help we might have crushed Bonaparte. Instead they signed the Peace, although eighteen days after my retirement Admiral Nelson had smashed the nucleus of the Northern Fleet at Copenhagen. Since then Russia and France have been drawing together on the Eastern question, as both have designs on Turkey. And now we are again at loggerheads with the Czar over Malta.’
‘As I have been incarcerated for above four months, sir,’ Roger remarked, ‘I know little of what has been going on.’
‘Indeed yes; that I had momentarily forgotten. By this disastrous Peace it was agreed that we should return all our maritime conquests made during the war, with the exception of Ceylon and Trinidad, to France and her allies Holland and Spain. Those, of course, included the Cape and Malta. Should we give up the Cape our route to India could be cut at any time and our mercantile interests in the sub-continent become gravely imperilled. This has raised such an outcry that, I gather, the Government is considering going back upon its word lest it be kicked out of office.
‘As regards Malta, under the treaty it should be returned to its former owners, the Knights. But the Order has become so effete that it is now quite incapable of protecting shipping in the Mediterranean from the Barbary pirates. Within six months the Corsairs would have the island and soon be using it as a base to raid the coast towns of southern Italy. It was, therefore, decided that it should be governed by a Protecting Power, to be neither France nor Britain. The obvious choice is Russia and the Czar insists that he should take it over. But again our government is having second thoughts and is resisting his claim, whereas the French are backing it. Hence the Czar’s annoyance with us, and his new inclination to enter into a pact with the French.’
When they had talked of numerous other subjects, Pitt asked ‘What now do you plan to do; settle in England or return to France?’
‘Recently, sir,’ Roger replied, ‘apart from my spell in prison, I have met with a private misfortune which makes me disinclined to remain here, where I am likely to be reminded of it.’
Mr. Pitt made a slight grimace. ‘If ’tis your own countrymen that you wish to avoid you’ll be hard put to it in Paris. I’m told the capital now swarms with them, and many of them are touring the provinces. Charles Fox spent September there, and his speeches praising the Revolution having been reprinted in the French journals, he was given a royal welcome in every city through which he passed. Bonaparte received him with special honours, and he was shown his own bust at St. Cloud, among a collection including Brutus, Cicero, Hampden, Washington and other champions of Liberty.’
Roger gave a cynical laugh, ‘Then, since it pays so well, if there is another war I’ll play the part of a traitor.’
‘Nay, Charles Fox is no traitor. At least, not intentionally so; although it must be admitted that he caused grievous harm by encouraging discontent among the masses in this country while we were at war, and often seriously hampered my measures for the prosecution of it.’
Two days later Roger said good-bye to Droopy Ned and the members of his family who lived at Amesbury House; then he went down to Lymington to see his father, whom he found sadly crippled by the gout.
Having thought matters over he had decided not to return to Paris. It was nine months since he had left there and during that time the whole European scene had changed. Now that the war was over, even if Bonaparte was prepared to forgive his long, unexplained absence, it seemed that the First Consul would have little use for him; and as Paris was full of English people he might run into several whom he knew. To reply in broken English to one or two who might claim his acquaintance that they had mistaken him for his English cousin would cause him no worry; but should he have to tell the same story to a number of them, and they compared notes, that could result in the resemblance arousing a most undesirable interest in his past activities.
In consequence, after staying for three nights at Walhampton House he boarded a brig in which he had arranged a passage from Southampton to Bordeaux. On landing in France he hired a coach and made a leisurely progress through Agen, Toulouse, Carcassone, Nimes, Arles and Aix-en-Provence, spending a night or two in each of these cities to enjoy the remains of their ancient or mediaeval glories, before arriving at St. Maxime on November 14th.
The morning after his arrival he took a walk to his vineyard and enquired of a labourer working in the neighbouring one after the health of Madame Meuralt. With a grin the man replied, ‘She lives here no longer, Monsieur, although she still comes to stay at times. In the summer she married a Monsieur Tarbout who, I’m told, has a prosperous mercer’s business in Nice.’
Roger was glad for her, but could not make up his mind whether he was glad or sorry for himself. To have renewed his liaison with pretty, plump, passionate little Jeanne would have given him something to occupy his mind; but he was still so sick at heart about Georgina that he felt no real inclination to philander with any member of her sex.
He had been at his chateau for about ten days and one afternoon returned from a long, solitary walk on the seashore. As he was passing the room he used most frequently, in which he had collected a small library, he happened to glance through one of the tall windows. To his surprise he caught sight of a man sitting at his desk going through his papers. Imagining the intruder to be a thief, he was about to tiptoe round to the hall and collect his pistols. Then the man turned his head slightly, exposing his profile to view. Roger’s surprise turned to amazement, then wonder and sudden apprehension. He found himself staring at his old enemy Joseph Fouché, the Minister of Police.
14
Bonaparte becomes Napoleon
Roger and Fouché had buried the hatchet shortly before the coup d’état of Brumaire, because Fouché had foreseen that Bonaparte would most probably succeed in seizing power and Roger had provided the bridge between them. For many years Fouché, like Talleyrand, had known that ‘Monsieur’ ‘Chevalier,’ ‘Citoyen’ and now ‘le Colonel’ Breuc were, in fact, Roger Brook, the son of an English Admiral. But neither had ever caught him out while spying for Mr. Pitt and, since ‘99, both had accepted it that, as a protégé of Bonaparte’s, all his interests lay in regarding France as his adopted country that might hold a fine future for him.
What, then, was Fouché doing here, going through his papers in his absence? Had he, in his amazingly widespread intelligence net, picked up some little happening out of the past that had led him to believe that for all these years Roger had been acting as a British secret agent, and had come to the château in the hope of finding corroborative proof?
Swiftly Roger ran through in his mind the papers that were in his desk. Almost at once he was able to reassure himself that there was nothing among them which could be associated with his secret missions. Breathing more easily he walked softly on, entered the house, tiptoed to his little library and quietly opened the door.
At the faint noise it made, Fouché looked up; but he made no effort to conceal what he had been doing. Shuffling the papers before him into a pile, he pushed them away and came to his feet. With a faint smile on his lean, cadaverous face, but without looking directly at Roger, he bowed and said:
‘Ah, here you are at last. You have a very pleasant place of retirement here, Monsieur le Colonel.’
Roger returned the bow. ‘I am happy that it meets with your approval, Monsieur le Ministre. May I enquire to what I owe the pleasure of this visit?’
‘ ’Tis very simple. It may not be known to you, but before the Revolution my family owned a plantation in San Domingo and ships that pl
ied thence and back to my native town of Nantes. In recent times I have been fortunate enough to make a modest sum out of contracting to supply the requirements of our armies. But now we are at peace, such transactions may no longer prove very lucrative; so I am again interesting myself in shipping and have just spent some days in Marseilles. The port being not far distant from your—er—hideout, it occurred to me that it would be pleasant to renew our acquaintance. That—er—is if you happened to be here and not—er—perhaps away engaged in other activities.’
To Roger the implication was clear. Fouché suspected that his long sojourns on sick leave in the south of France might be, as indeed they often had been, cover for secret trips to England. But he had his answer ready, and said smoothly:
‘I am most fortunate in being here to receive you, for had you looked in to see me above ten days ago you would have found me absent—as you have no doubt already informed yourself by enquiries made of my servants or in the village.’
Fouché held up a long, bony hand in protest. ‘Mon cher Colonel, how can you think that I would seek to ferret out particulars of the doings of my friends?’
‘Yet I came upon you going through my papers,’ Roger replied a trifle tartly.
‘Oh, that!’ Fouché waved the matter aside then smoothed down his long, grey frock coat. ‘Alas, I have never been able to acquire the habit of idleness that our friend Talleyrand is so fortunate in possessing. Your man said you were to be expected back shortly and showed me in here. Such journals as I found on the table were hopelessly out of date, and I had to employ my accursedly active mind in some way, so it occurred to me to look through your desk.’
A cynical little smile twisted Roger’s lips, ‘I suppose such a manner of passing the time must be second nature to a Police Chief. But I fear you were unfortunate if you hoped to come upon any secrets.’
‘No, no. You wrong me. I had no such thought. But I have always been fascinated by the way others live, and how much their households cost them. I did no more than look through your bills.’
Confident that Fouché could have come upon nothing that could injure him, Roger said, ‘But I forget myself. You must be in sad need of a glass of wine and I trust you will stay to dinner.’
‘You are most kind. I might even stay here overnight if that would not be trespassing too greatly on your hospitality; for I should much like the opportunity of discussing various matters with you at some length.’
‘About that there will be no difficulty. Indeed, I am honoured to have Monsieur le Ministre as my guest.’
Fouché bowed, ‘I thank you; but there is one—er—small point upon which I must put you right. The First Consul has recently dispensed with my services. I am no longer Minister of Police.’
‘You astound me,’ Roger replied, raising his eyebrows. ‘Have you then quarrelled with Bonaparte?’
‘No, no; I would not say that,’ Fouché replied, looking away and blowing his nose. ‘It is only that he thinks that he can now do without me. He is, of course, mistaken—that is, if he wishes to retain both his life and his power; but let us talk of such matters later.’
Roger left the room to order a somewhat better dinner, and a bottle of wine to be brought to the library.
Over dinner they talked of many things, and there were few about which Fouché did not have inside information.
Roger had been absent from France for close on a year and a few weeks after he had left for England Hortense de Beauharnais had been married to Louis Bonaparte. She had been in love with the handsome Duroc, but he had not cared for her and had refused Bonaparte’s offer of her hand. Josephine, meanwhile, perpetually harassed by the hatred of her Bonaparte relations, had been seeking some way to sow dissension among them. If she could marry off her daughter to Louis Bonaparte that should detach him from his family and make him her ally. With the arts she knew so well how to use she had persuaded her husband that it would be a most suitable match. Hortense had been very averse to it; but her mother had overruled her protests. Louis, too, had greatly disliked the idea, but he was a weakling and had tamely submitted to his brother’s orders. So on January 7th these two young people, although hating one another, had been united in wedlock.
In January, too, the renewal of the Legislative Bodies had become due. No provision for this had been laid down in the hastily composed Constitution; so Bonaparte had decreed that the Senate should name the Tribunes and Legislators who were to go or remain. As might have been expected, no member was left in either Assembly who had the courage to oppose him violently.
Another innovation the First Consul had introduced was the splitting of the principal Ministries, so that their functions were divided under two equally responsible Chiefs. By this means he had cunningly deprived any single Minister of the power to thwart him and could check the activities of one Minister by the reports of another employed on more or less the same type of work. Fouché had found himself the opposite number to Savary, formerly one of Desaix’s A.D.C.s, whom Bonaparte had found to be a useful man and had now made Chief of the Security Police. All this, Fouché declared, was a clear indication of Bonaparte’s intention to make himself Dictator. On May 8th another step had been taken by his succeeding in getting passed a measure that extended his First Consulship for a further ten years. Two months later he had followed that up by having a referendum put to the people, and such was his immense popularity that the voting had been only eight thousand odd against the three million five hundred thousand in favour of his becoming First Consul for life. He had at once introduced a new Constitution, that he had ready in his pocket, which curtailed still further the liberties of the people who were so besotted about him, and from August 1st had decreed that henceforth he should be known as ‘Napoleon’.
Meanwhile he had forced through reform after reform, all aimed at restoring France to a monarchy in all but name. In April he had ratified the Concordat with Rome and, to celebrate it, had a spectacular Te Deum sung in Notre Dame, which he had compelled all the notables to attend. Those old die-hard Revolutionary Generals Augereau and Lannes had had to be virtually arrested and conveyed to the Cathedral under escort in a carriage. Throughout the service they had talked without restraint, using their habitual oaths. Augereau had spat on the floor and Lannes declared loudly, ‘Just to think that a million Frenchmen gave their lives to get rid of all this nonsense, and now we are forced to submit to it again.’
In an endeavour to win the allegiance of the Generals, Bonaparte had ignored the abolition during the Revolution of Orders of Chivalry and proposed to introduce a new one to be called the ‘Legion of Honour’.
This was announced in May and was to have several grades so that persons of all classes should receive the distinction as a reward for their services to the State, and the highest rank of the Order was to be awarded both to the leading Generals and learned men of the Academy.
Against considerable opposition Bonaparte had forced his project through the Senate and a great outcry from the old sans-culottes had resulted. Many of the Generals, too, had declared it contrary to the principles of the Revolution.
Lafayette, whom Bonaparte had compelled the Austrians to give up after having been for many years a prisoner of war, flatly refused to accept the new honour. Moreau, revolting at this desecration of Revolutionary ideology, declared that he would hang the Cross of the Order he had been awarded to the collar of his dog.
Fouché went on to say that, having crushed the Jacobins, Bonaparte had found a new threat to his ambitions in many of the Generals and the rank and file of the Army, which was still strongly Republican. Augereau, Brune, St. Cyr, Jourdan, Lannes, Oudinot, Macdonald, Masséna, Moreau and Bernadette all intensely resented his assumption of virtually monarchical powers.
They had actually conspired against him and introduced a proposal to the Senate that his power should be curtailed by dividing France into a number of Military Governments. Bonaparte, of all people, had promptly assumed the role of the defender of the
‘Liberties of the People’ and, declaring Military Governments to be a most tyrannical form of rule, had the measure thrown out.
Bernadotte, who positively hated him, had then had his Chief of Staff, General Simon, despatch in secret thousands of pamphlets for distribution among the troops, that began, ‘Soldiers! You no longer have a country; the Republic has ceased to exist. A tyrant has seized upon power; and that tyrant is Bonaparte.…’
Fouché had, of course, known all about this and had Simon and a number of officers arrested. Bonaparte had again shown extreme astuteness. Instead of ordering a purge that might have set half the army by the ears, he had had the arrested officers released without trial; one by one, quietly, got the recalcitrant Generals out of France to distant commands where they could do him no harm, and despatched all the most revolutionary-minded regiments on an expedition to San Domingo.
This, the largest island in the West Indies, had been a source of enormous wealth to France in the days of the Monarchy but, early in the Revolution, fiery agitators had been despatched there to preach the doctrine of equality, with the result that the slaves had risen and massacred thousands of the white population.
Out of this imbroglio a Negro General named Toussaint l’Ouverture had arisen. He was a man of remarkable gifts and had succeeded in restoring a state approaching order in the island. In May 1801, following Bonaparte’s example, he had given San Domingo a Constitution and appointed himself Governor for life. He had then written to the First Consul requesting that France should take the island under her protection and defend it from the English. As at that time Bonaparte was already putting out peace feelers towards Britain he acted with extreme duplicity. Replying to Toussaint in the most flattering terms, he said that he would send an army to protect San Domingo, while his real intention was to reconquer it.
The expedition had sailed the previous December under the command of Pauline’s husband, General Leclerc. Fouché, who rarely laughed, sniggered into his handkerchief as he told Roger of Pauline’s fury when her brother had ordered her to accompany her husband. She adored the gaieties of Paris, visualised life in the West Indies as exile among savages, and believed it to be a plot hatched by her enemy, Josephine, to get her out of the way. But Bonaparte had proved adamant, so she had had to pack her many dresses and Paris had lost the most beautiful of all her beautiful girls.
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