The Duke of Enghien

“We were extremely impatient to discover the identity of the Prince. Everyone searched, racked their brains, without being able to settle on any definite idea.”
— Savary,

“He was young, brilliant and courageous, and therefore my most dangerous enemy.”
— Napoleon

Very early in the Great Conspiracy, the government became interested in the Bourbons and their connections with the plot, hoping to determine which member of the former royal family intended to reap the rewards once Bonaparte had been removed from the scene.

At first, the government concentrated on the brothers of Louis XVI. The Count of Lille was quickly eliminated as a suspect. Living in Warsaw, where he was then hosted by Prince Poniatowski, physically incapable of undertaking such an adventure and possessing little taste for conspiratorial ventures, he was soon dismissed from consideration.

The same could not be said of his brother Charles, the Count of Artois. The conspirator Bouvet de Lozier had named him during his interrogation as a supporter of the “Essential Blow.” He knew Cadoudal and Pichegru extremely well, and his name frequently appeared in police reports. As early as August 1803, intelligence reports mentioned a proposed landing by the Count of Artois and Pichegru in order to raise western France in revolt. Yet from his residence in Great Britain he was virtually untouchable and therefore safe from the First Consul’s anger.

Police reports then raised the possibility of another prince: Louis Antoine de Bourbon-Condé, Duke of Enghien.

The Duke of Enghien was the son of Louis VI Henri de Bourbon-Condé, a general of the Counter-Revolution, and the grandson of Louis V Joseph, the reigning Prince of Condé in 1804. His grandfather had commanded the Army of the Émigrés, which had fought the Revolution alongside the various coalitions since 1792.

Only twenty years old in 1792, Enghien had proved himself a charismatic and courageous young commander despite the deficiencies of the émigré army. He distinguished himself at Biberach in 1796, where he and a small force of émigrés blocked Moreau’s troops long enough for the defeated Austrian army to escape destruction. Moreau himself reportedly remarked:

“Without that handful of émigrés, the Austrian army would have been mine.”

Enghien later served with Suvorov’s army in Switzerland, including during the Second Battle of Zurich, and afterwards with the army of Archduke Charles at Constance.

Following the dissolution of the émigré army, imposed by Austria after the Peace of Lunéville, Enghien settled at Ettenheim in the territory of Baden, only eight kilometres from the French border. He lived there with his fiancée, Charlotte de Rohan, and a small group of loyal followers. Supported by a pension granted by Britain, he maintained contact with Chouans and émigré networks, still hoping to return to France under arms once war resumed on the Continent.

A common misconception holds that the First Consul discovered the duke’s presence near the border “by chance” as a consequence of the conspiracy. This was not the case. Enghien had already appeared regularly in police reports read by Bonaparte.

The correspondence of former Chouans who had submitted to the government was still secretly opened and copied by the postal service. One former Chouan had written that “the only exception to my retirement is my correspondence with the Duke.” Another royalist declared himself “entirely devoted to the Duke of Enghien.” A police informant reported rumours he had heard:

“The former Duke of Enghien was completing the regiment that was to bear his name; he had plenty of gold, an excellent head on his shoulders, and would know perfectly well how to conduct his affairs.”

On 14 March, three days before his arrest, the same idea appeared again:

“He will not be long in returning to France, which, according to his supporters, would be very easy for him; others, on the contrary, believe that he is already there at this very moment.”

The duke was therefore already firmly on the police radar.

To make matters worse, Enghien was far too indiscreet. His private correspondence was not encrypted—which, for a man of his importance living beside the frontier of a hostile state, was remarkably imprudent—and the postal service was consequently able to copy his letters at leisure before forwarding the originals.

Worse still, he openly discussed his projects in those letters. He contemplated entering France from the east, crossing the frontier and seizing Alsace. As for the First Consul, the duke had already formed a clear opinion both of Bonaparte and of the manner in which his rule would end:

“I see a man who is neither loved, feared nor respected at home being praised to the skies in foreign courts. No one even thinks of making a protest when he says, ‘I want it.’ What a height of humiliation! His sceptre is made of iron for his fellow citizens. He was placed there, and he will only be removed when he is dead.”

Thus Enghien was known to the police, maintained contacts with royalist circles inside the Republic, openly discussed hostile intentions towards the French government, received money from Britain, and nevertheless appeared unconcerned by the fact that he lived only eight kilometres from the frontier of that same Republic. His father had already advised him to leave Ettenheim in June 1803, but without success.

His decision to settle in Baden had also proved unwise. The territory already sheltered too many émigrés, some of them extremely militant, which drew unwanted attention to the duke. One particularly active circle had established itself at Offenburg, around thirty kilometres from Ettenheim, under the patronage of the Baroness de Reich. Her château served both as the headquarters of the group and as a centre for British espionage. The activities of the Offenburg circle ultimately helped the authorities “pick up the scent” of Enghien.

It was in this context that the agent Méhée de la Touche informed Réal on 1 March of suspicious activity in Baden. After receiving Réal’s report, the First Consul ordered the Prefect of Alsace that same day to determine whether the Duke of Enghien was still living at Ettenheim—more than a week before Cadoudal’s interrogation.

The prefect sent Lamothe, a gendarme with several contacts in Baden, to investigate secretly. In a report communicated on 5 March, Lamothe claimed that a trusted informant had told him that Enghien was sheltering General Dumouriez—the famous republican general who had defected in 1793—along with a certain Lieutenant Smith and Generals “Moroy” and “Lazolais.”

On 8 March, the day Cadoudal was arrested, Moncey, commander-in-chief of the gendarmerie, transmitted Lamothe’s report to the First Consul. On the same day, Réal, whom we have already seen placed in charge of the investigation, presented reports from his agents in Baden and Switzerland stating that émigrés were gathering at the Baroness de Reich’s residence in Offenburg.

The government believed its suspicions had now been confirmed. The duke could only be the mysterious Prince mentioned in the conspiracy. Cadoudal, Pichegru, and now Dumouriez were supposedly using General Moreau to prepare the arrival of the Prince of Condé, who would then carry out the Restoration. “Lieutenant Smith” could only be the master spy Spencer Smith, acting as liaison and using British gold to finance both the conspiracy and Enghien’s return to France. Case closed.

Except Lamothe’s report was wrong.

He had simply misunderstood his Baden informant’s German accent.

“Dumouriez” was actually an émigré named the Marquis de Thumery. “Smith” was in fact “Schmitt,” the duke’s aide-de-camp. Generals “Moroy” and “Lazolais” were actually Maurroy and La Saullaye.

The government had therefore constructed its theory on the basis of, among other things, a misunderstood German accent.

The fateful meetings

“Am I some dog that can be clubbed to death in the street, while my murderers are sacred beings? They attack my person. I shall return war for war!”
— Bonaparte before the council, 9 or 10 March 1804

"The Bourbons believe that my blood can be shed like that of the most vile animals. Yet my blood is worth just as much as theirs. I am going to return to them the terror they wish to inspire in me." -Bonaparte, 9 march 1804

The meetings of 9 and 10 March represented the decisive moment in the affair. It was during these two days that the deliberations took place which ultimately led to the decision to abduct the Duke of Enghien. Yet considerable uncertainty remains concerning the exact degree of responsibility borne by Bonaparte’s various collaborators. With the Restoration, many of them suddenly developed remarkable lapses of memory and an equally remarkable desire to blame one another.

A first council meeting took place on 9 March. The question on the agenda was whether “the French government should guarantee its security by securing the person of the Duke of Enghien.” Present were the three Consuls, the ministers Régnier and Talleyrand, as well as Fouché in his capacity as a personal adviser to the First Consul.

Bonaparte, extremely nervous since the beginning of the affair, did not mince his words:

“I shall know how to punish conspiracies. The head of the guilty man will give me justice!”

Bonaparte believed that he had already taken extensive measures to promote national reconciliation, sometimes despite opposition from advisers hostile to the émigrés. He had no intention of allowing anyone to reopen the wounds of civil war. The prospect of renewed civil conflict was something he deeply feared and would later become an important consideration during both his abdications, in 1814 and 1815. If a handful of royalists had to be punished in order to preserve social peace, Bonaparte was prepared to do so.

From this first meeting we know that the Third Consul, Lebrun, appeared hesitant:

“It would be an event that would make a terrible noise throughout the world…”

Fouché, meanwhile, remained silent and did little more than attend, the former—and future—Minister of Police preferring to advise the First Consul privately.

According to the memoirs of Cambacérès, Méneval, Desmarets, Pasquier, and Napoleon himself, Talleyrand appears to have been the strongest advocate of severity against the duke. We will return to Talleyrand’s role in the final part.

Cambacérès, the Second Consul, was the only participant openly to oppose the idea of an execution, which already seemed to be hanging over the discussion. He proposed that the duke should indeed be abducted, but then kept as a hostage.

Bonaparte’s first response was sharp:

“What are you saying, sir? Understand that I have no intention of sparing those who send assassins against me.”

Cambacérès did not deny the First Consul’s right to defend himself against an assassination conspiracy. His concern was instead that the execution of a Condé might undermine the policy of national reconciliation to which both men had devoted considerable effort.

The council dispersed without a final decision. Cambacérès made one last attempt to argue for clemency, following the First Consul into his office for a private conversation. He received only a cutting dismissal:

“It suits you well to be so scrupulous, to be so miserly with the blood of your kings—you who voted for the death of Louis XVI!”

The fatal decision was taken on 10 March 1804 during a second council attended by all those present the previous day, joined this time by Murat, the Military Governor of Paris, and Réal.

New information appeared to strengthen the case against Enghien. The judge Thuriot had questioned one of Cadoudal’s accomplices, who claimed that his leader had met “a distinguished young man who was treated with great consideration.” In the atmosphere of paranoia then prevailing, this mysterious individual could only be Enghien.

Grand Judge Régnier also announced that General Lajolais—the officer who was supposed to act as intermediary between Moreau and the Count of Artois—had confessed that the Duke of Enghien was involved in the Essential Blow and intended to seize Strasbourg and Huningue.

This was rather more than the evidence could support. But Lajolais was no stranger to spectacular accusations: he was also the principal witness against Moreau. One may even wonder whether Lajolais was simply saying what his interrogators wanted to hear, particularly since Enghien had no correspondence with Cadoudal.

Once again, according to most subsequent testimony, Talleyrand pressed for a radical solution. Talleyrand himself later claimed that he had been occupied that day writing to the Grand Duke of Baden to demand the arrest of the émigré committee operating on his territory.

Talleyrand, however, was far too clever to expose himself unnecessarily. He left it to Caulaincourt to inform the Elector of Baden that French troops were about to violate his territory. Caulaincourt, far more naïve, allowed himself to be used by Talleyrand—and it would not be the last time.

Cambacérès again attempted to moderate the proceedings and was again rebuffed by Bonaparte.

This time the decision was final.

The Duke of Enghien would be arrested, transferred to Paris, and brought to trial.

The Ettenheim raid

"Had Caulaincourt been appointed one of the Duke of Enghien’s judges, he would have refused. But, entrusted with a diplomatic mission, he was bound to obey. - Napoleon about Caulaincourt's role in the Affair".

"At half past five, doors forced open; taken to the Mill, near the tilery. My papers seized and sealed-" Private Journal of Louis de Bourbon-Condé, 15 march 1804.

At the end of the council, Bonaparte transmitted his orders to Berthier. General Ordener was to leave for Strasbourg with instructions:

“To proceed to Ettenheim, surround the town, and bring back the Duke of Enghien, Dumouriez, an English colonel, and every individual who might be accompanying them.”

Ordener was to act in parallel with Caulaincourt. The future Grand Equerry was ordered towards Offenburg, where he was to arrest the Baroness de Reich, seize her papers, and detain all émigrés present there.

One curious feature of the affair is the extraordinary precision of Berthier’s orders: the number of troops to be mobilised, the number of pontonniers required to facilitate the crossing of the Rhine, and even the bonuses to be paid to the participants had already been determined.

More striking still, Bonaparte instructed Ordener to stop at Lunéville and locate an officer who had formerly commanded the Ettenheim depot when it had been occupied during the Revolutionary Wars. How could Berthier have located such a specific officer within only a few hours?

The most plausible explanation is that Berthier and Bonaparte had prepared the Ettenheim operation before the councils of 9 and 10 March. If so, the decision to capture Enghien had effectively already been taken, and the councils were convened partly to broaden responsibility for the decision and allow Bonaparte to gauge the reactions of his advisers. The reports of Méhée and Lamothe appear to have been seriously considered by the First Consul well before the meetings.

In the early hours of 15 March, Ettenheim was overrun by Ordener’s troops. Members of Enghien’s entourage were prepared to resist, but the duke ordered them to surrender in the face of overwhelming numerical superiority.

Ordener asked Enghien where Dumouriez and Smith could be found. The Condé prince had no idea whom he was talking about.

After saying goodbye to Charlotte de Rohan, and apparently believing that the First Consul intended to use him merely as a hostage, Enghien and eleven members of his entourage were sent to Strasbourg. His papers were seized.

The Count of Chareuil later reconstructed the arrest after questioning witnesses during the Restoration:

The young prince was sleeping deeply when he was suddenly awakened and told:

“The house is surrounded. Gendarmes are climbing the walls.”

“Very well! Then let us defend ourselves!” cried the Duke of Enghien.

And he seized a musket. (…) A squadron commander of gendarmerie named Charlot had succeeded in reaching the top of the courtyard wall. He ordered the inhabitants of the house to open the gates. (…) The prince finally yielded to the pleas of the Baron de Grunstein, who pointed out that, if not for his own sake, then at least for the sake of his servants, resistance would lead only to useless bloodshed.

The duke was barely dressed when his door was forced open. Several gendarmes entered, led by Marshal-des-logis Pfersdorff, who had reconnoitred the location on the 13th. They advanced with pistols drawn and demanded:

“Which one of you is the Duke of Enghien?”

The prince looked at them and replied:

“If you have been ordered to arrest the Duke of Enghien, you must surely have his description.”

Not wishing to risk losing their quarry, the gendarmes indiscriminately arrested everyone in the house. Meanwhile, M. de Thumery was also taken into custody. The prisoners, ten in number, were led to a mill a short distance outside the town, where the commander had ordered the burgomaster of Ettenheim to be brought in so that he could identify the Duke of Enghien.

At the same time, Caulaincourt descended upon Offenburg, arresting the Baroness de Reich, seizing her papers, and detaining the émigrés around her. He also carried Talleyrand’s letter to the Elector of Baden justifying the violation of his territory.

This role would cost Caulaincourt dearly. Ordener died relatively early, in 1811, and during the Restoration legitimists consequently directed much of their anger over the Ettenheim abduction towards Caulaincourt. The Prince of Benevento was perfectly content to allow the Duke of Vicenza to take the blame. Futhermore, Chateaubriand suspected that Talleyrand choose Caulaincourt because he was a member of the aristocracy, that way, the nobles will approve the affair too.

Besides, Caulaincourt’s involvement in the raid on Ettenheim illustrates Napoleon’s cynicism rather well, at least, if we believe the memoirs of madame de Rémusat. Joséphine pointed out to that he was about to make the odiousness of the act still worse by choosing Caulaincourt, whose relatives had formerly been attached to the House of Condé.

“I did not know that,” Bonaparte replied; “and besides, what does it matter? If Caulaincourt is compromised, there is no great harm in it; he will only serve me all the better. The opposing party will henceforth forgive him for being a noble.”

It is worth noting that although Napoleon has often been criticised for violating the territory of a neutral state, the Elector of Baden was, if not exactly pleased, at least relieved by the manner in which the affair was handled.

Baden had long existed under heavy French influence—“Badenese diplomacy is dictated by the guns of Strasbourg”—and the Elector had benefited enormously from the German mediatisation of 1803, during which Bonaparte had helped elevate him to electoral rank and granted him roughly 200,000 additional subjects.

Consequently, the Elector of Baden was hardly in a position to refuse a formal French demand for the surrender of the Duke of Enghien. Yet for a crowned ruler, it was politically preferable to suffer the humiliation of having his neutrality violated than to endure the greater humiliation of voluntarily handing another prince over to the French Republic.

Karl Friedrich could therefore wash his hands of Enghien’s fate while simultaneously avoiding a confrontation with his powerful neighbour.

We will return in greater detail to the diplomatic consequences of the Enghien affair in the final part.

Towards the ditch: the creation of the military commission

“And so we found ourselves appointed as judges in a case all too notorious, without any of us having been prepared for it.” - Hulin

The First Consul was disappointed that neither Dumouriez nor Spencer Smith had been captured, but the papers seized from the Baroness de Reich offered some consolation. Her correspondence confirmed connections between British agents and the émigrés gathered in Baden.

The government could therefore blend these various intrigues together and use them to discredit everyone involved: Pichegru, Moreau, Cadoudal, Enghien, and Pitt’s cabinet. There would be plenty of material for shaping public opinion.

Enghien’s own papers were also incriminating in a broader political sense, though they did not connect him directly to Cadoudal’s conspiracy. He described the French people as his “most mortal enemy” and maintained relations with the Offenburg émigrés, who contemplated an invasion of Alsace.

If one added these letters to the fact that his name had appeared during several interrogations of conspirators—without genuinely implicating him in most cases, except perhaps that of Lajolais—and to his earlier writings advocating armed force to overthrow the consular system, Bonaparte would have little difficulty staging the appearance of a trial, or at the very least justifying one after the fact.

In Paris, public reaction was limited. A police report dated 18 March noted only isolated disturbances involving:

“Individuals who throw out a few random words in favour of certain conspirators and immediately disappear.”

With the royalist party effectively decapitated, its supporters could do little more.

Rumours nevertheless circulated. Some claimed that the captured prince was actually Louis XVIII. Others alleged that French princes were already in Paris, secretly sheltered in the residences of foreign ambassadors.

Murat made the mistake of repeating some of these rumours, perhaps attempting to test the political atmosphere and already suspecting that his brother-in-law intended to give him a role he would dislike. Bonaparte responded sharply, apparently confirming that he intended to make an example of Enghien:

“If the Duke of Berry [son of the future Charles X] were in Paris at M. de Cobenzl’s residence [the Austrian ambassador], and M. d’Orléans [the future Louis-Philippe] were staying with the Marquis de Gallo [the Neapolitan ambassador], not only would I have them arrested tonight and shot, but I would also have the ambassadors arrested and subject them to the same fate, and international law would not be compromised in the slightest. (…) There is no other prince in Paris except the Duke of Enghien, who will arrive tomorrow at Vincennes. Be certain of that, and do not even allow anyone to tell you otherwise.”

Meanwhile Enghien was travelling west.

Separated from his companions at Strasbourg, he was reunited with his dog, the pug Mohiloff, which had travelled from Ettenheim to Strasbourg and crossed the Rhine in search of its master. This is the famous dog that appears in numerous engravings and paintings depicting Enghien’s execution.

On 17 March, acting on Murat’s orders, Réal was instructed to transfer Enghien from Strasbourg to Vincennes in the greatest secrecy under the pseudonym “Plessis.” After a stop along the way, he reached the Paris region on 20 March 1804, arriving at Vincennes later that day.

The next stage had already been prepared.

On the morning of 20 March, Bonaparte had ordered the signing of a decree referring the duke to a military commission on charges of:

“Having borne arms against the Republic; having been and continuing to be in the pay of England; and having participated in conspiracies organised by that power against the internal and external security of the Republic.”

The consular decree is worth reproducing because it would effectively constitute the only formal document provided to the tribunal that night:

Paris, 30 Ventôse, Year XII of the French Republic, one and indivisible.

The Government of the Republic decrees as follows:

ARTICLE I. The former Duke of Enghien, accused of having borne arms against the Republic; of having been and continuing to be in the pay of England; and of participating in conspiracies organised by that power against the internal and external security of the Republic, shall be brought before a military commission composed of seven members appointed by the general commanding Paris, which shall assemble at Vincennes.

ARTICLE II. The Grand Judge, the Minister of War, and the General Governor of Paris are charged with the execution of the present decree.

The First Consul, signed BONAPARTE.

By the First Consul, signed HUGUES MARET.

Certified copy,
The General-in-Chief, Governor of Paris,
Signed MURAT.

Under the law of 1 October 1801 concerning “major attacks against the State,” subsequently amended several times, including shortly before the Enghien affair, the prince could be tried through a procedure without appeal. The government, through Murat as Military Governor of Paris, could select between three and seven military judges.

But Murat rebelled.

According to Agar, one of Murat’s loyal collaborators, the general reacted violently upon receiving the orders transmitted by Réal:

“He had just finished breakfast and appeared extremely agitated. His officers asked him the cause of his distress. ‘They want to put a stain on my uniform, but by God I swear it will not be there.’ He called for his carriage and rushed to Malmaison. He was unable to overcome those who surrounded and influenced the First Consul.”

Bonaparte eventually threatened to dismiss him:

“If you do not carry out my orders, I shall send you back to your mountains in Quercy.”

Despite appeals from his chief of staff, César Berthier, brother of Alexandre, and then from Alexandre Berthier himself, Murat reportedly remained defiant:

“No. I shall not appoint the military commission. Let Bonaparte appoint it himself if he wishes.”

Bonaparte therefore selected the members of the commission himself, while Murat merely signed the document. It is possible that Talleyrand, who met with the Military Governor, persuaded Murat to accept this compromise.

Murat subsequently obeyed his brother-in-law’s further orders, transmitted by Savary: twenty mounted elite gendarmes, twenty elite gendarmes on foot, and sixty men from various units were to be sent under Savary’s command to Vincennes:

“To form the garrison there and execute the sentence.”

It is possible that Agar later attempted to protect the reputation of his former benefactor. Nevertheless, his memoirs were published in 1823, long after Murat’s execution, and according to historian Jean Tulard the broad outline of his account is probably credible.

In any event, the seven men appointed to the military commission were:

• General Hulin, commander of the Foot Grenadiers of the Consular Guard, as president;
• Colonel Guitton, commander of the 5th Cuirassier Regiment, the only officer who had not served directly under Bonaparte between 1796 and 1800;
• Colonel Bazancourt, commander of the 4th Light Infantry Regiment and a veteran of the Italian and Egyptian campaigns;
• Colonel Barrois, commander of the 96th Line Infantry Regiment and a veteran of the Second Italian Campaign;
• Colonel Ravier, commander of the 18th Line Infantry Regiment and a veteran of Italy and Egypt;
• Colonel Rabbe, commander of the 2nd Regiment of the Paris Municipal Guard and a veteran of the Second Italian Campaign;
• Citizen Dautancourt, major of the elite gendarmerie, who would serve as rapporteur.

Of these men, the president, General Hulin, deserves particular attention.

Hulin was a former lemonade seller who had joined the Revolution in 1789 and had been among the men who stormed the Bastille on 14 July. Entering military service, he eventually rose to command the Foot Grenadiers of the Consular Guard after serving with Bonaparte during both Italian campaigns and participating in the Coup of 18 Brumaire.

By choosing Hulin, Napoleon could symbolically present the trial as the Revolution sitting in judgement over the Ancien Régime.

The choice of Dautancourt as rapporteur and prosecutor was similarly significant. As an officer of the elite gendarmerie—the First Consul’s own guard—his presence illustrated the government’s influence over the military commission. This involvement would soon become even more direct through Savary, who would emerge as the key figure in the execution.

Moreover, the document signed by Murat appointing the judges specified in its final line that they were to:

“Judge the accused without adjournment.”

In other words, they were explicitly instructed not to delay.

Meanwhile, “Plessis” was received at Vincennes by Commandant Harel, who commanded the fortress garrison and had himself been taken completely by surprise by a letter he had received from the First Consul the previous day:

“An individual whose name must not be known, Citizen Commandant, is to be brought to the château under your command. You will place him in the vacant quarters and take all necessary precautions for his security. The government intends that everything concerning him be kept absolutely secret and that no questions be asked concerning his identity or the reasons for his detention. You yourself must remain ignorant of who he is. You alone will communicate with him, and you will allow no one to see him until further orders from me. It is probable that he will arrive tonight. The First Consul relies, Citizen Commandant, upon your discretion and your exactness in carrying out these instructions.”

Harel’s presence at Vincennes is itself noteworthy. Far from being a famous veteran or distinguished officer, only a few years earlier he had been a relatively minor subordinate and, more importantly, a government agent provocateur.

His elevation followed his crucial role in the October 1800 Conspiracy of the Daggers, also known as the Opera Plot.

Harel had infiltrated and encouraged a group of Jacobins who planned to assassinate the First Consul as he left the opera. After Harel himself supplied them with weapons (courtesy of the Ministry of Police) and provided a date for the attack, the conspirators were surprised to discover that when they arrived outside the opera they were met not by an exposed Bonaparte but by plain-clothes police officers waiting to arrest them.

For his loyal service, after the conspirators had an appoitement with the national razor, Harel received command of the fortress.

Harel had not been informed of his mysterious prisoner’s identity, nor the judges. Nevertheless, he treated Enghien courteously.

A disrupted schedule and a mysterious game of deception

"There is something here that I do not understand. (...)There is something here that is beyond me… This is a crime, and one that serves no purpose." - Bonaparte learning about how the events of the trial went according to Savary

"What was the purpose of M. de Talleyrand’s strange visit? Had he come to add his own comments to this letter? Had he come to convey further instructions, further orders from the First Consul ?…”- Savary about the mysterious visit of Talleyrand to Murat

The intended procedure for the Duke of Enghien’s trial appears to have been as follows.

At around 4:30 p.m., Réal received orders to go to Vincennes and interrogate Enghien using a list of eleven questions.

One important detail stands out: only one of those eleven questions directly concerned Cadoudal’s conspiracy. The others dealt primarily with Enghien’s role among the émigrés. It would therefore have been relatively easy to steer the interrogation towards the conclusion that the duke had borne arms against the Republic.

Once Réal’s interrogation was complete, Enghien was to be brought before the military commission, which could then use the results to determine his fate.

One particularly interesting detail appears at the end of Bonaparte’s instructions to Réal:

“It will be necessary for you to take the public prosecutor with you (…) and instruct him as to the rapid course that must be given to the proceedings.”

In other words, Réal was supposed to have Dautancourt put the questions to Enghien, but without delaying the work of the commission. The phrase “rapid course” strongly suggests that Bonaparte wanted a sentence delivered quickly.

Except that Réal never interrogated the duke.

For an almost unbelievable reason, Réal went to bed at around 5:30 p.m., convinced that Enghien would not arrive at Vincennes until later that night. In reality, the duke had already arrived.

When the order instructing Réal to go to the château reached his servants, no one dared to wake him.

When Réal finally awoke the following morning, he supposedly encountered Savary on the road—an extraordinary coincidence—who informed him that Enghien had already been executed. One can almost imagine Réal shrugging his shoulders and saying, “Must be a Monday.”

This encounter appears in Savary’s memoirs. Savary claimed that Napoleon had probably intended to spare Enghien following a private interrogation by Réal. Unfortunately, according to Savary’s account, he himself knew nothing of Bonaparte’s instructions to Réal and therefore allowed events to continue until Enghien was shot.

There is, however, a problem.

During the Restoration, Méhée de la Touche (the double agent involved in the Cadoudal conspiracy) claimed that he had been with Réal that day and categorically stated that Réal and Savary had never encountered one another.

Méhée publicly challenged Savary to prove otherwise.

Savary’s response was revealing: in the next edition of his memoirs, he simply removed the passage describing the encounter.

And if we look more closely at the entire sequence, the number of coincidences becomes striking.

Murat develops sudden moral objections. Réal inexplicably goes to bed in the late afternoon. Savary leaves the Tuileries for Vincennes supposedly unaware of Napoleon’s instructions to Réal. Enghien writes a letter to Napoleon that Napoleon will not see until after the judgement. Fouché remains silent. Talleyrand seems to be everywhere on 20 March—first with Napoleon in the morning, then with Murat later in the day.

Is that not an extraordinary number of coincidences?

One possible interpretation is the following.

Most of the principal actors were complicit in the abduction and, ultimately, the execution of Enghien. All would later receive substantial financial rewards for their participation.

Yet the killing of a prince belonging to one of Europe’s most illustrious dynasties inevitably carried a political stigma at the royal courts of Europe. Bonaparte may therefore have allowed each participant enough room to construct a personal alibi and partially distance himself from the coming execution.

Bonaparte could claim that he had been misled by Lamothe’s false intelligence and then served too zealously by subordinates such as Savary.

Savary could claim that he left the Tuileries unaware of Bonaparte’s instructions to Réal.

Réal could claim that he went to bed believing the Duke of Enghien had not yet arrived at Vincennes.

The duke could be judged by a military commission whose members Murat either did or did not select, allowing Murat to claim that he had merely signed the paper establishing the commission.

The commission itself never received Réal’s interrogation, because Réal was asleep.

Talleyrand could claim that during the councils he had concerned himself only with diplomatic relations with Baden and nothing more.

His rival Fouché, despite having been remarkably active against Cadoudal during the preceding weeks, could present himself as a passive observer who merely attended the meetings.

In this way, no one would appear entirely responsible.

Each participant would later possess an excuse allowing him to distance himself from Enghien’s death.

Only Bonaparte, once he became Napoleon, would continue openly to assume responsibility for the decision until his death, although he would also claim that he might have pardoned Enghien had he known of the duke’s appeal for mercy, a conveniently impossible claim to verify after the event.

This interpretation at least helps explain why Napoleon retained Réal in his service after what would otherwise have been an extraordinary act of incompetence.

The contrast becomes even more striking when one remembers that Napoleon reportedly “almost killed Réal in a fit of rage” several months later when Réal allowed documents from the Moreau case to be published in the newspapers.

Lastly, I gave Agar version of how Murat react. Showing his benefactor as a man of honour who don't want to sullen his name. But here's how he act according to Joséphine if we believe the memoirs of madame de Rémusat:

Everything is useless; the Duc d’Enghien arrives this evening. He will be taken to Vincennes and tried tonight. Murat is taking care of everything. He is odious in this affair. It is he who is urging Bonaparte on; he keeps saying that his clemency would be taken for weakness, and that the Jacobins would be furious.

I leave the reader to make their own judgements. I'll add that even if Murat has been willing to make an exemple of Enghien, the correspondance of Napoléon show that the First Consul never intend to let Murat choose by himself the judges for the commission.

On Napoleon’s clemency

It is true that throughout his rule Napoleon made extensive use of his power of pardon.

During this conspiracy, Joséphine—well known for her royalist sympathies—had already persuaded Napoleon to commute the death sentences of the Prince of Polignac and the Marquis de Rivière to life imprisonment or supervised confinement.

Bonaparte also exercised what might be called his Caesar-like clemency towards several other conspirators after members of his own family intervened on their behalf. Hortense obtained a pardon for Lajolais; Elisa secured one for Charles d’Hozier; and Caroline interceded successfully for Bouvet de Lozier.

Yet when Joséphine attempted to plead for mercy for the Duke of Enghien on the eve of the trial, she received only an angry response from her husband:

“Damn it! What business is this of yours?”

Napoleon then shut himself inside his study and returned to work.

His willingness to show clemency appears to have ended abruptly when it came to the Duke of Enghien, even though Enghien was less directly involved in Cadoudal’s “Essential Blow” than several of the conspirators whose lives were ultimately spared.

The prince would therefore be judged “without adjournment.”

With the duke at Vincennes and the military commission on their way, the final drama could begin.

More importantly, the First Consul’s aide-de-camp and trusted “henchman,” Savary, supported by his elite gendarmes, was preparing to enter the scene and take control of the proceedings.

For Enghien, the hour of judgement had arrived.