Meanwhile the police were on the tracks of Pichegru and Georges.  On the last day of February the general was seized in bed in the house of a treacherous friend:  but not until the gates of Paris had been closed, and domiciliary visits made, was Georges taken, and then only after a desperate affray (March 9th).  The arrest of the two Polignacs and the Marquis de Riviere speedily followed.

Hitherto Napoleon had completely outwitted his foes.  He knew well enough that he was in no danger.

“I have run no real risks,” he wrote to Melzi, “for the police had its eyes on all these machinations, and I have the consolation of not finding reason to complain of a single man among all those I have placed in this huge administration, Moreau stands alone.” [295]

But now, at the moment of victory, when France was swelling with rage against royalist assassins, English gold, and Moreau’s treachery, the First Consul was hurried into an enterprise which gained him an imperial crown and flecked the purple with innocent blood.

There was living at Ettenheim, in Baden, not far from the Rhine, a young prince of the House of Conde, the Duc d’Enghien.  Since the disbanding of the corps of Conde he had been tranquilly enjoying the society of the Princess Charlotte de Rohan, to whom he had been secretly married.  Her charms, the attractions of the chase, the society of a small circle of French emigres, and an occasional secret visit to the theatre at Strassburg, formed the chief diversions to an otherwise monotonous life, until he was fired with the hope of a speedy declaration of war by Austria and Russia against Napoleon.  Report accused him of having indiscreetly ventured in disguise far into France; but he indignantly denied it.  His other letters also prove that he was not an accomplice of the Cadoudal-Pichegru conspiracy.  But Napoleon’s spies gave information which seemed to implicate him in that enterprise.  Chief among them was Mehee, who, at the close of February, hovered about Ettenheim and heard that the duke was often absent for many days at a time.

Napoleon received this news on March 1st, and ordered the closest investigation to be made.  One of his spies reported that the young duke associated with General Dumouriez.  In reality the general was in London, and the spy had substituted the name of a harmless old gentleman called Thumery.  When Napoleon saw the name of Dumouriez with that of the young duke his rage knew no bounds.  “Am I a dog to be beaten to death in the street?  Why was I not warned that they were assembling at Ettenheim?  Are my murderers sacred beings?  They attack my very person.  I’ll give them war for war.”  And he overwhelmed with reproaches both Real and Talleyrand for neglecting to warn him of these traitors and assassins clustering on the banks of the Rhine.  The seizure of Georges Cadoudal and the examination of one of his servants helped to confirm Napoleon’s surmise that he was the victim