The writers of the eighteenth century were certainly productive of infinite good to Europe, by the spirit of moderation, and the taste for literature, with which their works inspired the greater part of the sovereigns:  it must be admitted, however, that the respect which the friends of knowledge paid to French intellect has been one of the causes which has ruined Germany for such a length of time.  Many people regarded the French armies as the propagators of the ideas of Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire; while the fact was, that, if any traces of the opinions of these great men remained in the instruments of the power of Bonaparte, it was only to liberate them from what they called prejudices, and not to establish a single regenerating principle.  But there were at Berlin and in the North of Germany, at the period of the spring of 1804, a great many old partizans of the French revolution, who had not yet discovered that Bonaparte was a much more bitter enemy of the first principles of that revolution, than the ancient European aristocracy.

I had the honor to form an acquaintance with Prince Louis-Ferdinand, the same whose warlike ardor so transported him, that his death was almost the precursor of the first reverses of his country.  He was a man full of ardor and enthusiasm, but who, for want of glory, cultivated too much the emotions which agitate life.  What particularly irritated him against Bonaparte was his practice of calumniating all the persons he dreaded, and even of degrading in public opinion those whom he employed, in order, at all risks, to keep them more strongly dependant on him.  Prince Louis said to me frequently, “I will allow him to kill, but, moral assassination is what revolts me.”  And in truth let us only consider the state in which we have seen ourselves placed, since this great libeller became master of all the newspapers of the European continent, and could, as he has frequently done, pronounce the bravest men to be cowards, and the most irreproachable women to be subjects of contempt, without our having any means of contradicting or punishing such assertions.

CHAPTER 14.

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