Napoleon Bonaparte: A Life

by Alan Schom

  His standard plan — from which he did not deviate much — was to print and sign a series of forged government documents — proclamations, senatorial decrees, and orders — announcing the (fictional) death of Napoleon on some far-off battlefield and the (equally fictitious) resolution by the Senate to create a new government, ousting and arresting members of Napoleon’s cabinet and high command. He then drew up a list of important officials, mostly senators, whom he would like to appoint to replace the old government, but without consulting or informing them that they had been chosen.

  General Malet’s suspicious activities first came to the attention of the police in 1807, and then in June 1808 Fouché reported that Generals Malet, Guillaume, and Demaillot were plotting to overthrow the government and replace it with a dictatorship. Confronted by the police, General Guillaume confirmed that Malet and Demaillot had indeed discussed just such a plan, including the creation of a directory of five members. One police agent reported that Malet had offered a man five hundred thousand francs to assassinate Napoleon. “Malet had told him to be ready to act upon receipt of the orders he would be given two hours before the coup was to take place.” Thus Fouché and Dubois finally acted, ordering Malet’s arrest. Somehow warned, Malet had fled, though the police found three carbine rifles and two pairs of pistols at his apartment. “Malet’s is an overly stimulated mind,” Fouché reflected, “belabored by Jacobinism and discontent.” The plot, he insisted, despite the testimony of witnesses and the cache of guns, “never existed, or rather, existed only in the heads of two people, that of Malet and M. Dubois, State Councillor and Prefect of Police.” Dubois, who had uncovered the plot, was “making far too much of this whole affair,” though upon capture Malet was imprisoned in La Force.

  Nevertheless, one year later reports reached the Police Ministry that Malet, still in La Force, was at it again, now conspiring with three fellow prisoners to overthrow Emperor Napoleon. This was confirmed by an Italian inmate in whom Malet had confided.

  Malet’s new plan was to go into effect before Nôtre-Dame Cathedral on Sunday, May 28, 1809, when a Te Deum — to be attended by the highest officials of the land — was scheduled to celebrate Napoleon’s recent victories over the Austrians at Eckmühl and Aspern/Essling. Once again broadsheets and documents had been secretly printed and forged — “Bonaparte no longer exists. Down with the Corsicans and the Police! Long live freedom!” — and uniforms and arms stashed nearby. And although Fouché took the elementary precaution of moving three of the alleged conspirators to other prisons on May 26, he continued to dismiss the plot out of hand in a report to Napoleon, ridiculing Dubois again, whom he claimed had been taken in, summing up the whole thing as merely a harmless “plot of hypotheses.”

  By 1812, however, both Fouché and Dubois had been dismissed from office, replaced by two lesser individuals, Savary of course at the Police Ministry, and Pasquier at the Police Prefecture. It was their decision in 1812 to release this Malet, now deemed quite harmless, from La Force and transfer him to a small mental institution, “une maison de santé.” And there once again he was forgotten.

  But General Malet, a man obsessed with his own curious brand of destiny, was hard at work carefully forming a new coven in the old mold, drafting the usual documents, proclamations, and decrees, including again a senatorial document organizing the new government, naming its directors (quite unknown to them), which as usual he himself would soon “sign” on behalf of the absent senators. Among the new documents created this time was one appointing Malet as the new military governor of Paris, thereby giving him command of all the troops and National Guards in the First Military Division, which included Paris and the immediate region.

  At the maison de santé Malet had met a Spanish priest by the name of Cajamano, who had since been released and agreed to abet the hapless general in his latest conspiracy. Another priest, one Abbé Lafond, also an inmate of this hospital, joined them, and recommended two young protégés, a Corporal Rateau, serving in a Paris garrison, and a Vendéen law student by the name of Boutreux. As unlikely as it seems, given his extreme youth, Boutreux was to be appointed “Prefect of the Seine,” while Corporal Rateau was to become an officer, indeed, Malet’s aide-de-camp. Malet then duly forged the appropriate documents confirming these nominations. At the same time he prepared brevet promotions for a couple of army officers to be used later, as shall be seen, complete with one-hundred-thousand-franc drafts drawn on the treasury to be given these men as a special “bonus.” For Malet all was possible.

  In order to carry out his own coup this time, Malet decided he needed force, that is to say, troops, and fortune could not have been more accommodating, placing as it did the Popincourt Army Barracks in the street directly behind the mental institution. Naturally he would need help to maneuver the various military detachments envisioned by his plans. This included nothing less than arresting the minister of police, the prefect of police, the war minister, and members of the government, while securing the directory of post and telegraph (all communications with the city), the treasury, and certain government buildings, and sealing the city’s gates. For this delicate task he selected two real but at present “embarrassed” generals — Guidal and Lahorie — currently detained at his majesty’s pleasure in La Force Prison.

  Barring any unforeseen complications, with Malet’s uncanny verve and audacity, taking over the nearby army barracks and deploying those troops should present no problem at all. For this he would also need his old uniform and another for his new “aide-de-camp,” and he sent word to his wife, instructing her to pack them and some light arms and ammunition in a trunk and deliver them to the Spanish priest. With everything ready, the fateful countdown began late on Thursday, October 22, 1812. The stage was now set, and with Napoleon well out of the way — in fact in the process of evacuating Moscow at this very moment — Malet was free to act.

  After the main gates and massive doors of the maison de santé were locked at ten o’clock, Malet and Lafond put their operation into effect. Climbing out of Malet’s ground-floor window — there were no bars — they swiftly traversed the long enclosed garden and clambered over a small wall. Free at last, they set off for the Spanish priest’s flat, where they found everyone waiting. There Malet and Corporal Rateau donned their uniforms, and the new prefect of the Seine, Boutreux, a tricolored sash of office. Then, displaying his large leather portfolio of forged documents, Malet explained each one and what it was to be used for, and made duplicate packages for the conspirators to distribute later.

  At one o’clock on the morning of Friday, October 23, Malet, Prefect Boutreux, and Aide-de-Camp Rateau set out for the Popincourt Barracks, where Malet easily talked his way past the sleepy guard on duty, demanding to see the commanding officer, Colonel Soulier.

  Soulier was ill in bed, and Malet, with a candle in his hand, pushed his way into the bedroom and introduced himself as “General Lamotte.” “I can well see that you have not been apprised of the situation,” Malet blurted out. “We have had the misfortune of losing our emperor.” Soulier, still half asleep and trying to take in what was happening here in his bedroom, broke down sobbing. “There has been a change of government. Here are the orders General Malet gave me for you just a little while ago,” he added as he handed him his instructions to prepare his men and follow “Lamotte’s” orders to the letter, which he in turn had received from the Senate. At the same time he informed Soulier that he had just been promoted to the rank of brigadier general, handing him the nomination along with a one-hundred-thousand-franc draft. “Lamotte” ordered Soulier to assemble his troops in the large stone courtyard below.

  A quarter of an hour later “Lamotte” was addressing the twelve hundred men of the Tenth National Guard Regiment, reading a proclamation informing them of the death of Napoleon and change of government, and that they would now be following his orders. He instructed Soulier to take one company to the Hôtel de Ville to prepare for the convening of high officials forming the
new temporary governing junta, and to await his own arrival there. “Lamotte” himself commanded the remainder of the garrison to follow him, but, acting in great haste he forgot to issue flints or ammunition for their muskets.

  As Friday was the traditional day for the weekly dress parade in the Place Vendôme, the movement of so many troops in the street during the night apparently did not arouse anyone’s suspicion. Malet led the remainder of his troops right up the Rue St.-Antoine to La Force Prison, where he ordered the concierge to open the gates for him and release Generals Guidal and Lahorie in his custody. The latter, as bewildered as the concierge — not having been apprised by Malet of his big “putsch” — gradually began to understand and then embraced him.

  “There is no time to lose,” he told them once they were alone. “Here are your instructions; take these troops and carry them out. I need only a half-company with me to seize the government, and when that is done I’ll await your news.” For Lahorie, an old hand at conspiracies — he had been in on Napoleon’s coup d’état of 18 Brumaire — and now facing a long prison term as a result of the Moreau affair, there was nothing to lose as he and Guidal accepted the packets of instructions.

  General Lahorie immediately set out with his troops for the Prefecture of Police on the Ile de la Cité. Arriving there at six o’clock in the morning, he found Pasquier already at work. Forcing his way into the Prefect’s office, Lahorie arrested him on the spot, Pasquier not even protesting. Lahorie marched him over to La Force where he had him locked up, along with Police Minister Savary. At this very moment other troops were on their way to arrest War Minister Clarke and Archchancellor Cambacérès, while Malet was assembling two more National Guard regiments with which to close all gates and exits to the city of Paris, and to occupy the Banque de France, the treasury, and main administrative offices. All was going according to schedule.

  The most amazing aspect of this whole fantastic affair up to this point was that no one had considered the news of Napoleon’s death startling or, apart from Savary, had even challenged its validity or the orders and actions of the conspirators.

  With growing confidence Malet thus set out to arrest the military governor of Paris, General Hulin, at his official residence in the Place Vendôme, next door to his headquarters, which he had surrounded with a detachment of twenty-five men. Pushing his way into the luxurious apartment, Malet informed the incredulous Hulin of Napoleon’s death and the order for his own arrest. Hulin, amazed and still sleepy, insisted on reading the orders himself. But as he turned around to read the orders, Malet whipped out a pistol and shot the general in the face, his wife screaming in the background. Calmly putting the pistol away, Malet, attended by an infantry captain who had witnessed this entire assassination without even a protest, then returned to the Place Vendôme and entered the adjacent general headquarters with his own nomination as Hulin’s successor.

  Having been preceded by his officers, Malet found the second in command, Adjudant General Doucet, still going through the documents he had been handed, obviously perplexed by it all. Malet went over these instructions, explaining that Doucet was now promoted to the rank of brigadier general and ordering him to arrest his commanding officer, General Laborde. But Doucet still could not take in any of this. Stalling for time, he sent for Laborde. When he was informed of events, Laborde left the office before anyone could stop him, taking the batch of documents to study, he said. On the ground floor, he saw an inspector general from the Ministry of Police attempting to enter his office but being prevented from doing so by a detail of sixty troops from the Tenth Regiment. Laborde ordered them to let him pass, which they did. Taking him aside, General Laborde quickly explained the situation, the inspector general then insisting on returning upstairs immediately, as he not only knew Malet but had personally escorted him from prison to the maison de santé a few months earlier.

  Suddenly bursting into Doucet’s office, the two men confronted Malet. “Monsieur Malet,” the inspector general said sharply, “you have not been authorized to leave your maison without my permission.” Then he turned away to Colonel Doucet. “There is something phony about all this. Arrest him. I am going over to the [Police] Ministry to find out what is happening.” Malet, leaning against the mantelpiece on the other side of the room, reached into his jacket for his pistol, an action reflected in the opposite mirror, and all three of them — Laborde, Doucet, and the inspector general — seized and disarmed him. At that moment an orderly came running in with the news that Malet had shot the military governor, who was dying.[769]

  With Malet’s arrest, it was all over, and all the culprits, including the army and National Guard officers who had played a role in the affair, were dispatched to La Force, pending military trial. Of eighty-four persons arrested in the subsequent investigation and officially accused, fourteen were found guilty of treason and sentenced to death for attempting to overthrow Napoleon. And although most of the senior officers involved had no knowledge that the written orders handed them by Malet were forgeries and had thus acted in good faith, nonetheless they were executed by firing squad in the Grenelle Plain immediately after the trial — for there was no process of appeal — among them, Generals Malet, Guidal, and Lahorie and Colonel Soulier, as well as lesser individuals, including Boutreux. Only one colonel and the Spanish priest were ultimately pardoned.

  But on reflection what struck the senior officials involved was that one isolated madman had nearly succeeded in overthrowing Napoleon, a man who had successfully defeated the combined forces — hundreds of thousands of them — of Britain, Prussia, Austria, and Russia. And as Police Minister Savary later acknowledged, “General Malet could indeed have been in complete control of much of the government in very little time.” Savary continued:

  [Given] the sad situation of our military in Russia, [Malet] could have even seized the emperor himself upon his return from that campaign, without the least interference...The threat facing the nation was certainly great, and we realized too late how unprotected and unprepared we were from just this sort of attempt against the state...We were especially struck by how easy it was to persuade our troops that all was lost and the emperor dead, without any of their officers even questioning the authority of such claims, and certainly without a thought to Napoleon’s son and successor.

  Of course Malet’s charade would have been quickly revealed, certainly within a matter of hours, and he had no junta with which to replace Napoleon’s government. But “the contagion would have spread,” as Savary put it, and shaken the public to the quick, perhaps providing the opportunity for some other enemies of the emperor to step in and take advantage of the situation, or at least to cause a nationwide revolt and chaos. If Fouché was right, in the sense that Malet certainly did not have a mature, fully developed plan for running the government once he had carried out his coup, on the other hand he was proved wrong about the earlier steps (in Malet’s ability to arrest key officials and to seize control of critical government offices and agencies). That Napoleon’s reappearance in Paris within a few weeks might have restored order in the long run was by no means assured, or even relevant. Nor can the fact be minimized that in the final analysis this entire plot was the result of just one man, in a French lunatic asylum, who had rocked the most powerful empire in the world. But as Police Minister Savary summed up: “We were none the wiser for what transpired. They were scared and truly shaken in Paris, finding themselves on a volcano, when for so long they had felt themselves to be so secure, on such solid ground.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five – Death March

  ‘I could hardly be better situated than where I am now, at Moscow, to sit out the winter.’

  Napoleon — as usual — had survived completely unscathed the Battle of Borodino, suffering from nothing more serious than a case of laryngitis.

  Having spent the night of September 14-15 at a tavern outside Moscow, Méneval reported Napoleon’s entry into Moscow as “without any of the usual tumult accompanying the victo
ries associated with the taking of a large city. The streets were perfectly still, apart from the rumbling of the wheels of the gun limbers and the caissons of munitions...The streets we crossed were lined with beautiful houses for the most part, but the doors and windows were locked.” They passed “colonnaded palaces, churches, and beautiful public buildings...all reflecting the life of ease and luxury of a great city enriched by commerce and inhabited by a large, opulent aristocracy.” There was no life to be seen, however, not a face in a window, not a child in a garden, not a horse, carriage, or wagon in the streets or courtyards. Instead, “Moscow appeared to be lost in deep sleep, like those enchanted cities described in the Arabian Nights.” But unlike those cities this one was dead, most of its three hundred thousand inhabitants having fled.

  We hoped to find rest at last, especially bountiful supplies of food and provisions. It was truly a curious and imposing sight, the sudden appearance of this vast city, more asiatic than European in appearance, this city suddenly appearing out of a naked, deserted plain, with its twelve hundred steeples, towers, clocks, and sky blue cupolas strewn with golden stars and linked by golden chains. We had paid dearly for this conquest, but Napoleon found reassurance in the hope that its seizure would result in the dictation of a solid peace. The King of Naples, who was the first to enter the city, remarked anxiously to Napoleon, however, that the city appeared uninhabited and that no military or civil delegation, no nobleman or even a priest had come forth.