Napoleon Bonaparte

by Alan Schom

  Thus once again we must ask, What in fact were his political objectives, which Chateaubriand among others found so perplexing? Was he a Jacobin, bent on revolution at any price? Was he a moderate republican? Was he a monarchist in disguise? In fact he was nothing and everything, according to the demands of the hour. He believed in nothing but himself, his own power, and the game he was then playing. But one thing was certain, he despised religion, democracy, the masses, and any and all authority (when he was not wielding it). “He felt there could be neither indecency nor impossibility in the game of politics. Moreover, he had but one concern, that of rendering himself always indispensable, the man of the hour, and that was the secret of his good fortune under every regime. He was always, under the government of today, the man preparing for the government of tomorrow,” Louis Madelin observed.[460] Or, putting it more simply, as he himself admitted to Chancellor Pasquier, “One must have one’s hand in every pie.”[461] Perhaps it was Guizot, however, who best summed up the man and his politics:

  No man had more completely shown such hardy, ironic, cynical indifference, such an imperturbable sang-froid, along with an immoderate need of action and in a commitment to do whatever was needed to succeed — not in order to fulfill a predetermined plan — but, rather, simply to take advantage of the chance offered by that particular passing moment.[462]

  As far as policy was concerned during Napoleon’s First Empire, Fouché’s could best be summed up as anti-Napoleon: Napoleon was forever at war, and Fouché always sought peace. Napoleon ruled the land, and Fouché envied him. Fouché made no secret of this, though he did conceal his various plots in the years to come, while attempting to ease relations with the various European powers, England in particular. But there was apparently no one even remotely able enough to replace all aspects of Fouché’s police work in France, except perhaps Dubois, and he was needed as prefect. Napoleon acknowledged his own dependency on this strange man. When in 1802 Fouché opposed the general’s bid for a life consulship, having further irritated Napoleon by revealing Lucien Bonaparte’s corrupt practices, crimes, and indiscretions in his private life and at the Interior Ministry, not to mention hints of lists of indiscretions of each member of the Bonaparte clan, Napoleon finally sacked the police minister — with a 1.2-million-franc golden handshake. Yet Napoleon could not do without him, it seemed. He retained his services by naming him a life senator (with a generous salary) and a state counselor (also with a good salary), calling him occasionally to the Tuileries for advice and to sit on various government commissions. Following Fouché’s dismissal and the closing of the entire Police Ministry, however, the crime rate soared, probably aided by Fouché in a few instances, especially in the provinces, where royalist brigands carried out a reign of terror even as fresh conspiracies to overthrow the Corsican general came to light. There was no second-best police official with sufficient expertise, experience, and administrative know-how. It was as simple as that.

  It was hardly surprising, then, that on establishing the Empire two years later, Napoleon would revive the defunct Police Ministry and return the former police minister with greater powers than ever and orders to clean up the country and restore order. This did not preclude friction between the two men from resurfacing from time to time. Fouché would never change his ways any more than would Napoleon. It was on such occasions that Fouché, as disdainful and independent as ever, showed his true phlegm and mettle, making Napoleon laugh despite his consuming anger. And frequently Napoleon even baited Fouché, to see what droll response he would arouse, for Napoleon liked a good show as much as Fouché an appreciative audience. For example, Napoleon was not loath to remind Fouché what a good Jacobin and terrorist he had been in the early years of the Revolution, a subject on which Fouché generally remained entirely reticent. “You voted for the death of Louis XVI, Monsieur le Duc d’Otrante?” he asked with a glint in his eye and a lurking smile. “Indeed I did, Sire,” Fouché replied in a loud clear voice. “In fact that was the first service I was able to render Your Majesty,” Napoleon burst into laughter.[463] That Fouché! Later, in 1815, when the emperor discovered that the police minister was again negotiating secretly — and without his authorization — with the English and their allies in order to avoid a fresh war, Napoleon called him a traitor. “Duc d’Otrante, I ought to have you hanged.” An unruffled Fouché replied, without batting an eye, “I am not of the same opinion, Sire,” and continued to retain his office.[464] On another occasion, after Napoleon returned unscathed from battle, his Corsican humor got the better of him again, leading him to pose a devilish question that would have flummoxed any other minister: “What would you have done if I had just been killed by a cannonball, or in an accident?” With perfect equanimity, not moving a muscle or even altering his expression or tone, Fouché replied: “Sire, I would have seized as much power for myself as I possibly could, so as not to have become the victim of events.” Eyeing him intently, the now-beaming Napoleon quipped: “Splendid! That’s the way to play the game!”[465] Which is precisely what he continued to do.

  Chapter Eighteen – The Christmas Eve Plot and Others

  ‘I don’t like having to bring conspirators to trial, for the government invariably loses when the condemned man becomes a public hero.’

  Around 5:45 P.M. on Christmas Eve of the year 1800, a little over thirteen months after Napoleon Bonaparte had carried out his successful coup d’état, three men dressed in long blue workmen’s blouses were seen boarding a stout wooden cart at 23 Rue du Paradis in Paris and driving its lone horse in the general direction of the Louvre.[466] Before the hour was out the cart entered the darkened Rue St.-Nigaise, across from the Tuileries, where the three men parked the vehicle, bearing two large barrels surrounded by heavy stones, just before a clothing store, more or less barring the narrow street. Two of the men walked toward the nearby Rue de Rivoli, while the third gave a young girl a coin to hold the horse’s bridle and then moved several paces away.

  Seconds before eight o’clock, the other workmen signaled the one nearest the cart, who ignited some straw near the barrels and darted away, just as First Consul Bonaparte’s state carriage appeared, emerging from the Carrousel. Instead of going up the Rue St.-Niçaise as it invariably did, it turned into the Rue de la Loi,[467] which would take it to the Opera in the Place Louvois, where General Bonaparte was awaited for the opening performance of Haydn’s oratorio La Création. No sooner had Napoleon’s mounted guard and carriage disappeared around the corner than the two wooden barrels on the cart exploded, killing and maiming several dozen persons, including the proprietess of the Café d’Apollon, whose breasts were severed by a piece of one barrel’s metal hoops, and the little girl holding the horse. Bodies were strewn everywhere in the street and apartments above the shops, particularly at the cafe around the corner, hurling Napoleon’s mounted grenadiers from their bloodstained mounts, smashing windows, and bringing down an avalanche of tiles and loose stones from the façades and roofs. Nevertheless Napoleon and his three aides-de-camp Generals Lannes, Bessières, and Lauriston, emerged unscathed from the carriage, as an immense cloud of dust and rubble momentarily obliterated everything in the dim lamplight.[468] Quickly assessing the situation, and looking back for Josephine’s carriage (still out of sight behind his own), the first consul returned to his carriage and ordered the mounted guard and coachman to continue up the street to the Opéra. There a quarter of an hour later he received a standing ovation from the audience and performers, in the very building where just a few months earlier assassins had lain in wait, only to be captured minutes before attacking Napoleon. But this time the police had failed to act in time, and he and Josephine were saved only by what he was wont to call “sa Providence” Indeed, it seemed to be a case of double good fortune, for Josephine’s carriage, which should immediately have followed the first consul’s, had been delayed when she unexpectedly returned to the Tuileries to change part of her costume. Had she followed directly behind her husband’s carriage
, she would have been exposed to the full blast of the explosion and no doubt killed outright. Nevertheless she was hysterical for hours afterward.[469]

  Both Fouché and Dubois had been caught unawares. There had been rumors of the vaguest sort that something was about to happen, and the Opéra itself had been thoroughly searched before the general’s arrival, although nothing was found. Warnings were received every day; this had seemed to be just another false alarm.[470]

  While Napoleon was listening to The Création, Chazot, police commissioner of the Tuileries, began directing the initial investigation in the Rue St.-Niçaise, evacuating the dozens of grievously wounded and directing the four corpses discovered in the rubble to be taken to the morgue in the Châtelet. Stopping a passing carter, Commissioner Chazot requisitioned him and his cart, as the police went through the debris of human limbs, gathering everything that was left, including the mutilated remains of the unfortunate mare, and one hoof, both shafts of the cart (surprisingly intact), two pieces of one wheel, and heaps of blackened and bloody clothes and shoes, which on Prefect Dubois’s orders Chazot then sent over to prefecture headquarters near the Quai Desaix.[471] He also began interviewing witnesses and taking statements. Back at the Tuileries at one o’clock in the morning, Chazot began analyzing everything he had gathered thus far and then drafted his initial report. Many more were to follow.

  During the rest of the night and the following days, panic set in and accusations multiplied regarding those behind this diabolical plot. Prefect Dubois had no quick answers, but an angry Napoleon immediately blamed the former Jacobins and their fellow revolutionaries, Septembrists, and fanatics who had so vociferously opposed Napoleon’s coup d’état and consular government. And with the panic came the inevitable anonymous denunciations by the good citizens of Paris, as in the days of Robespierre and the Reign of Terror — neighbors denouncing suspicious strangers or even neighbors against whom they had some long-standing grudge. During the first seventy-two hours, well over thirty such denunciations reached Dubois’s desk alone, all of which proved not only to be unsubstantiated but some even vicious, permitting thirty innocent names to enter police records. Even Dubois’s chief inspector, Limodin, finally got fed up. “We must speak out, for if this awful system of cowardly anonymous denunciations is allowed to continue, who among our honest and law-abiding citizens cannot be tainted in this manner?”[472]

  Although Police Minister Fouché felt the plot to be the work of the Chouans (royalists) and their military leader, Georges Cadoudal, Napoleon continued to insist — without proof of any sort — that it was the Jacobins who were behind this, and ordered their mass roundup. Forty-eight police commissioners and their teams dispersed through the capital seeking out the culprits. And thus the accused were rushed in indiscriminately for questioning. Not content with this list of 130 names — to which General Bonaparte himself sent lengthy additions — and on his instructions Fouché ordered still other former Jacobins and revolutionaries, against whom nothing could be found, to be expelled from the city. So the panic continued, despite warnings and considerable hesitation on the part of both Dubois and Fouché. Dubois’s team of interrogators, led by Limodin, thus pursued their fruitless questioning of the endless stream summarily accused and brought to their cells.

  But if it was not the Jacobins and instead the royalists who were behind this plot, then proof had to be found, as Dubois well realized. On Christmas Day he concentrated his personal investigation on the facts alone, beginning with the grisly remains of the horse. Enough pieces remained for it to be identified, he felt, including the one remaining recently shod hoof, and perhaps the owner or blacksmith could be found. The veterinarian consulted by the police was considered the best in France. By reassembling the animal’s remains in the courtyard of the prefecture, he was soon able to provide a full description of the horse, which in turn was given to police agents throughout the city. It did not seem like much, especially in a city filled with tens of thousands of horses, but it was a beginning, however slender.

  At the same time the twenty-seven National Guardsmen on duty along Napoleon’s route to the Opera and in the Rue St.-Niçaise that night were intensively interrogated, and one of them revealed that one man standing near the fatal cart had asked him for a light for his pipe. Obtaining a description of him and his accent, Dubois ordered the questioning of all surviving inhabitants of that street as well.

  The first real break came on December 26, when an inspector reported that a cart like the one carrying the “infernal machine” — as the French press referred to the explosive device — had been stored for three or four days in the Faubourg Poissonière, by a man with a large scar above his left eye. Focusing on this, the police interviewed a grain merchant by the name of Lambel, from the Porte Saint-Martin, who had come forward of his own volition to inform them that, just a few days earlier, he had sold a cart and horse like the ones described to a man calling himself an itinerant cloth merchant. Excited, the inspector took Lambel into the courtyard where the remains of the horse, harness, and wooden cart were laid out on the cobblestones. The stench was horrendous, and it was a slow procedure, but Lambel took his time and afterward definitely identified the remains of the mare’s head, the few bits of the leather harness, and the fragments of wood from the cart. He had sold the horse and cart for two hundred francs — which was paid by another man by the name of “Citizen Brunet” — on December 20 to that itinerant merchant. Brunet even gave him a six-franc tip, and Lambel invited the two clients out for a drink in the Rue du Temple, where he got a good look at them, though the purchaser still refused to give his name. Lambel thus provided the police with the first detailed description of both men.

  Luck now continued to favor Dubois, as a blacksmith, also from the Faubourg du Temple, came to the prefecture out of curiosity, where he, too, studied the gruesome remains. The horseshoe was definitely his work, he declared, having shod the poor beast for the past four years. Who was the owner? he was asked. “Lambel.”

  The focus tightened when Dubois learned that the “itinerant merchant” had rented a coachhouse at 23 Rue du Paradis, up the street from one owned by General Marmont. Dubois himself stepped in to question the owner of that property, Citizen Mesnager, and his concierge, Citizeness Rocher, and their twenty tenants. Interrogating one of the renters, he discovered that she had found the itinerant merchant somewhat curious, considering the type of work he allegedly did, and had spied on him through a hole in the wall, observing him meeting with two other men in his room. Thus the police discovered for the first time that there were possibly at least three men involved. Concierge Rocher, with great zest and in the best Parisian tradition, described the other two men in vivid detail, including their accents and clothes. Regarding the vehicle itself, she said it was laden with two heavy caisses, not cloth, and that it had remained at 23 Rue du Paradis until about 5:45 P.M. on December 24. Luck was continuing to hold. Then the prefect discovered that a master cooper had been earlier hired to reinforce two stout barrels with heavy iron bands. He next discovered that this same individual had just bought those barrels at 22 Rue du Paradis. Everyone confirmed the description of the suspect, locally known as “Petit François,” and another man with him.

  On learning that “Petit François” came from the area between the Portes St.-Denis and St.-Martin, they quickly located his sister, who lived on the seventh floor of an ancient apartment building in the Rue St.-Martin. Although known locally as Madame Valon, her name in fact was Carbon, and they discovered the “itinerant merchant’s” real name to be François Carbon, the man with the scar over the eye.

  Two weeks into the new year, 1801, came another break. During the search of Madame Valon’s squalid rooms the investigating commissioner found a half-empty barrel of fine gunpowder, some cartridges, and a variety of men’s clothing. Madame Valon and her two teenage daughters were arrested by Dubois and whisked away to a secret detention center for questioning. Carbon of course was going to be the in
itial key to unraveling the plot, and bulletins for his arrest were issued throughout the French capital and the eighty-seven departments.

  Meanwhile the grueling interrogation of Valon and her daughters was intensified. The daughters admitted that their uncle François had been staying there and was now hiding with two former nuns, the Saint-Michel sisters, in the Rue Nôtre-Dame-des-Champs. The girls said that he had been seeing some friends, but they had no idea what he had been up to. Dubois was surprised to learn that Carbon, a rough Breton sailor who had eventually joined Cadoudal’s ranks, was now in fact with a group of aristocratic ladies. Clearly this was no Jacobin plot, and Fouché for one had been completely right after all. Thus at seven o’clock on the morning of January 16, the police raided the luxurious residence of the two ex-nuns, where in a small room in the garret they found Carbon fast asleep.