The ruin of Moreau, and the confusion alike of French royalists and of the British Ministry, could now be assured by the encouragement of a Jacobin-Royalist conspiracy, in which English officials should be implicated.  Moreau was notoriously incapable in the sphere of political intrigue:  the royalist coteries in London presented just the material on which the agent provocateur delights to work; and some British officials could, doubtless, with equal ease be drawn into the toils.  Mehee de la Touche has left a highly spiced account of his adventures; but it must, of course, be received with distrust.[284]

Proceeding first to Guernsey, he gained the confidence of the Governor, General Doyle; and, fortified by recommendations from him, he presented himself to the emigres at London, and had an interview with Lord Hawkesbury and the Under-Secretaries of State, Messrs. Hammond and Yorke.  He found it easy to inflame the imagination of the French exiles, who clutched at the proposed union between the irreconcilables, the extreme royalists, and the extreme republicans; and it was forthwith arranged that Napoleon’s power, which rested on the support of the peasants, in fact of the body of France, should be crushed by an enveloping move of the tips of the wings.

Mehee’s narrative contains few details and dates, such as enable one to test his assertions.  But I have examined the Puisaye Papers,[285] and also the Foreign and Home Office archives, and have found proofs of the complicity of our Government, which it will be well to present here connectedly.  Taken singly they are inconclusive, but collectively their importance is considerable.  In our Foreign Office Records (France, No 70) there is a letter, dated London, August 30th, 1803, from the Baron de Roll, the factotum of the exiled Bourbons, to Mr. Hammond, our Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, asking him to call on the Comte d’Artois at his residence, No. 46, Baker Street.  That the deliberations at that house were not wholly peaceful appears from a long secret memorandum of October 24th, 1803, in which the Comte d’Artois reviews the career of “that miserable adventurer” (Bonaparte), so as to prove that his present position is precarious and tottering.  He concludes by naming those who desired his overthrow—­Moreau, Reynier, Bernadotte, Simon, Massena, Lannes, and Ferino:  Sieyes, Carnot, Chenier, Fouche, Barras, Tallien, Rewbel, Lamarque, and Jean de Bry.  Others would not attack him “corps a corps,” but disliked his supremacy.  These two papers prove that our Government was aware of the Bourbon plot.  Another document, dated London, November 18th, 1803, proves its active complicity.  It is a list of the French royalist officers “who had set out or were ready to set out.”  All were in our pay, two at six shillings, five at four shillings, and nine at two shillings a day.  It would be indelicate to reveal the names, but among them occurs that of Joachim P.J.  Cadoudal.