Another of our generals, and the richest of them all who are now serving under Bonaparte, is his brother-in-law, Prince Murat.  According to some, he had been a Septembrizer, terrorist, Jacobin, robber, and assassin, long before he obtained his first commission as an officer, which was given him by the recommendation of Marat, whom he in return afterwards wished to immortalize, by the exchange of one letter in his own name, and by calling himself Marat instead of Murat.  Others, however, declare that his father was an honest cobbler, very superstitious, residing at Bastide, near Cahors, and destined his son to be a Capuchin friar, and that he was in his novitiate when the Revolution tempted him to exchange the frock of the monk for the regimentals of a soldier.  In what manner, or by what achievements, he gained promotion is not certain, but in 1796 he was a chief of brigade, and an aide-de-camp of Bonaparte, with whom he went to Egypt, and returned thence with him, and who, in 1801, married him to his sister, Maria Annunciade, in 1803 made him a governor of Paris, and in 1804 a Prince.

The wealth which Murat has collected, during his military service, and by his matrimonial campaign, is rated at upwards of fifty millions of livres.  The landed property he possesses in France alone has cost him forty—­two millions—­and it is whispered that the estates bought in the name of his wife, both in France and Italy, are not worth much less.  A brother-in-law of his, who was a smith, he has made a legislator; and an uncle, who was a tailor, he has placed in the Senate.  A cousin of his, who was a chimneysweeper, is now a tribune; and his niece, who was an apprentice to a mantua-maker, is now married to one of the Emperor’s chamberlains.  He has been very generous to all his relations, and would not have been ashamed, even, to present his parents at the Imperial Court, had not the mother, on the first information of his princely rank, lost her life, and the father his senses, from surprise and joy.  The millions are not few that he has procured his relatives an opportunity to gain.  His brother-in-law, the legislator, is worth three millions of livres.

It has been asserted before, and I repeat it again: 

“It is avarice, and not the mania of innovation, or the jargon of liberty, that has led, and ever will lead, the Revolution—­its promoters, its accomplices, and its instruments.  Wherever they penetrate, plunder follows; rapine was their first object, of which ferocity has been but the means.  The French Revolution was fostered by robbery and murder; two nurses that will adhere to her to the last hour of her existence.”

General Murat is the trusty executioner of all the Emperor’s secret deeds of vengeance, or public acts of revolutionary justice.  It was under his private responsibility that Pichegru, Moreau, and Georges were guarded; and he saw Pichegru strangled, Georges guillotined, and Moreau on his way to his place of exile.  After the seizure and trial of the Duc d’ Enghien, some doubts existed with Napoleon whether even the soldiers of his Italian guard would fire at this Prince.  “If they hesitate,” said Murat, who commanded the expedition in the wood of Vincennes, “my pistols are loaded, and I will blow out his brains.”