Memoirs of Napoleon — Complete eBook

Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,767 pages of information about Memoirs of Napoleon — Complete.

Memoirs of Napoleon — Complete eBook

Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,767 pages of information about Memoirs of Napoleon — Complete.
stopped in a cabriolet on the Place de l’Odeon, whither he had no doubt been directed by the police agent, who was constantly about him.  In not seizing him at his lodgings, the object, probably, was to give more publicity to his arrest, and to produce an effect upon the minds of the multitude.  This calculation cost the life of one man, and had well-nigh sacrificed the lives of two, for Georges, who constantly carried arms about him, first shot dead the police officer who seized the horse’s reins, and wounded another who advanced to arrest him is the cabriolet.  Besides his pistols there was found upon him a poniard of English manufacture.

Georges lodged with a woman named Lemoine, who kept a fruiterer’s shop in the Rue de la Montagne St. Genevieve, and on the evening of the 9th of March he had just left his lodging to go, it was said, to a perfumer’s named Caron.  It is difficult to suppose that the circumstance of the police being on the spot was the mere effect of chance.  The fruiterer’s daughter was putting into the cabriolet a parcel belonging to Georges at the moment of his arrest.  Georges, seeing the officers advance to seize him, desired the girl to get out of the way, fearing lest he should shoot her when he fired on the officers.  She ran into a neighbouring house, taking the parcel along with her.  The police, it may readily be supposed, were soon after her.  The master of the house in which she had taken refuge, curious to know what the parcel contained, had opened it, and discovered, among other things, a bag containing 1000 Dutch sovereigns, from which he acknowledged he had abstracted a considerable sum.  He and his wife, as well as the fruiterer’s daughter, were all arrested; as to Georges, he was taken that same evening to the Temple, where he remained until his removal to the Conciergerie when the trial commenced.

During the whole of the legal proceedings Georges and the other important prisoners were kept in solitary confinement.  Immediately on Pichegru’s death the prisoners were informed of the circumstance.  As they were all acquainted with the general, and none believed the fact of his reported suicide, it may easily be conceived what consternation and horror the tragical event excited among them.  I learned, and I was sorry to hear of it, that Louis Bonaparte, who was an excellent man, and, beyond all comparison, the best of the family, had the cruel curiosity to see Georges in his prison a few days after the death of Pichegru, and when the sensation of horror excited by that event in the interior of the Temple was at its height, Louis repaired to the prison, accompanied by a brilliant escort of staff-officers, and General Savary introduced him to the prisoners.  When Louis arrived, Georges was lying on his bed with his hands strongly bound by manacles.  Lauriston, who accompanied Louis, related to me some of the particulars of this visit, which, in spite of his sincere devotedness to the first Consul, he assured me had been very painful to him.

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Memoirs of Napoleon — Complete from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.