Having now established the responsibility of British officials in this, the most famous plot of the century, we return to describe the progress of the conspiracy and the arts employed by Napoleon to defeat it.  His tool, Mehee de la Touche, after entrapping French royalists and some of our own officials in London, proceeded to the Continent in order to inveigle some of our envoys.  He achieved a brilliant success.  He called at Munich, in order, as he speciously alleged, to arrange with our ambassador there the preparations for the royalist plot.  The British envoy, who bore the honoured name of Francis Drake, was a zealous intriguer closely in touch with the emigres:  he was completely won over by the arts of Mehee:  he gave the spy money, supplied him with a code of false names, and even intrusted him with a recipe for sympathetic ink.  Thus furnished, Mehee proceeded to Paris, sent his briber a few harmless bulletins, took his information to the police, and, at Napoleon’s dictation, gave him news that seriously misled our Government and Nelson.[290]

The same trick was tried on Stuart, our ambassador at Vienna, who had a tempting offer from a French agent to furnish news from every French despatch to or from Vienna.  Stuart had closed with the offer, when suddenly the man was seized at the instance of the French ambassador, and his papers were searched.[291] In this case there were none that compromised Stuart, and his career was not cut short in the ignominious manner that befell Drake, over whom there may be inscribed as epitaph the warning which Talleyrand gave to young aspirants—­“et surtout pas trop de zele.”

Thus, while the royalists were conspiring the overthrow of Napoleon, he through his agents was countermining their clumsy approach to his citadel, and prepared to blow them sky high when their mines were crowded for the final rush.  The royalist plans matured slowly owing to changes which need not be noticed.  Georges Cadoudal quitted London, and landed at Biville, a smuggler’s haunt not far from Dieppe, on August 23rd, 1803.  Thence he made his way to Paris, and spent some months in striving to enlist trusty recruits.  It has been stated that the plot never aimed at assassination, but at the overpowering of the First Consul’s escort, and the seizure of his person, during one of his journeys.  Then he was to be forcibly transferred to the northern coast on relays of horses, and hurried over to England.[292] But, though the plotters threw the veil of decency over their enterprise by calling it kidnapping, they undoubtedly meant murder.  Among Drake’s papers there is a hint that the royalist emissaries were at first to speak only of the seizure and deportation of the First Consul.

Whatever may have been their precise aims, they were certainly known to Napoleon and his police.  On November 1st, 1803, he wrote to Regnier: