Complete Project Gutenberg Collection of Memoirs of Napoleon eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 3,263 pages of information about Complete Project Gutenberg Collection of Memoirs of Napoleon.

Complete Project Gutenberg Collection of Memoirs of Napoleon eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 3,263 pages of information about Complete Project Gutenberg Collection of Memoirs of Napoleon.

The commander of the principal guard of the Temple was General Savory, and he had reinforced that guard by his select gendarmerie.  The prisoners did not dare to communicate one with another for fear of mutual injury, but all evinced a courage which created no little alarm as to the consequences of the trial.  Neither offers nor threats produced any confessions in the course of the interrogatories.  Pichegru, in particular, displayed an extraordinary firmness, and Real one day, on leaving the chamber where he had been examining him, said aloud in the presence of several persons, “What a man that Pichegru is!”

Forty days elapsed after the arrest of General Pichegru when, on the morning of the 6th of April, he was found dead in the chamber he occupied in the Temple.  Pichegru had undergone ten examinations; but he had made no confessions, and no person was committed by his replies.

All his declarations, however, gave reason to believe that he would speak out, and that too in a lofty and energetic manner during the progress of the trial.  “When I am before my judges,” said he, “my language shall be conformable to truth and the interests of my country.”  What would that language have been?  Without doubt there was no wish that it should be heard.  Pichegru would have kept his promise, for he was distinguished for his firmness of character above everything, even above his qualities as a soldier; differing in this respect from Moreau, who allowed himself to be guided by his wife and mother-in-law, both of whom displayed ridiculous pretensions in their visits to Madame Bonaparte.

The day on which Real spoke before several persons of Pichegru in the way I have related was the day of his last examination.  I afterwards learned, from a source on which I can rely, that during his examination Pichegru, though careful to say nothing which could affect the other prisoners, showed no disposition to be tender of him who had sought and resolved his death, but evinced a firm resolution to unveil before the public the odious machinery of the plot into which the police had drawn him.  He also declared that he and his companions had no longer any object but to consider of the means of leaving Paris, with the view of escaping from the snares laid for them when their arrest took place.  He declared that they had all of them given up the idea of overturning the power of Bonaparte, a scheme into which they had been enticed by shameful intrigues.  I am convinced the dread excited by his manifestation of a resolution to speak out with the most rigid candour hastened the death of Pichegru.  M. Real, who is still living, knows better than any one else what were Pichegru’s declarations, as he interrogated him.  I know not whether that gentleman will think fit, either at the present or some future period, to raise the veil of mystery which hangs over these events, but of this I am sure, he will be unable to deny anything I advance.  There is evidence almost amounting

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