Conspiracy of Moreau and Pichegru.
The news had just arrived at Berlin of the great conspiracy of
Moreau, of Pichegru, and of George Cadoudal. There was certainly
among the principal heads of the republican and royalist parties a
strong desire to overturn the authority of the first consul, and to
oppose themselves to the still more tyrannical authority which he
resolved to establish on making himself be declared emperor: but it
has been said, and perhaps not without foundation, that this
conspiracy, which has so well served Bonaparte's tyranny, was
encouraged by himself, from his wish to take advantage of it, with a
Machiavelian art, of which it is of consequence to observe all the
springs. He sent an exiled jacobin into England, who could only
obtain his return to France by services to be performed for the
first consul. This man presented himself, like Sinon in the city of
Troy describing himself as persecuted by the Greeks. He saw several
emigrants who had neither the vices nor the faculties necessary to
detect a certain kind of villainy. He found it therefore a matter of
great ease to entrap an old bishop, an old officer, in short some of
the wrecks of a government, under which it was scarcely known what
factions were. In the sequel he wrote a pamphlet in which he
mystified, with a great deal of wit, all who had believed him, and
who in truth ought to have made up what they wanted in sagacity by
firmness of principle, that is to say, never to place the least
confidence in a man capable of bad actions.
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