“Bonaparte told O’Connor, when speaking of the prospect of a continental War, ’la Russie peut-etre pourroit envoyer cette annee 100,000 hommes contre la France, mais j’ai pour cela assez de monde a ma disposition:  je ferois meme marcher, s’il le faut, une armee contre la Russie, et si l’Empereur d’Allemagne refusoit un passage a cette armee dans son pays, je la ferois passer malgre lui.’  He afterwards said—­’il y a plusieurs moyens de detruire l’Angleterre, mais celui de lui oter Irlande est bon.  Je vous donnerai 25,000 bonnes troupes et s’il en arrive seulement 15,000, ce sera assez.  Vous aurez aussi 150,000 fusils pour armer vos compatriotes, et un parc d’artillerie legere, des pieces de 4 et de 6 livres, et toutes les provisions de guerre necessaires.’

“O’Connor endeavoured to persuade Bonaparte that the best way to conquer England was first to go to Ireland, and thence to England with 200,000 Irishmen.  Bonaparte said he did not think that would do; d’ailleurs, he added, ce seroit trop long.  They agreed that all the English in Ireland should be exterminated as the whites had been in St. Domingo.  Bonaparte assured him that, as soon as he had formed an Irish army, he should be Commander in Chief of the French and Irish forces.  Bonaparte directed O’Connor to try to gain over to his interest Laharpe, the Emperor of Russia’s tutor.  Laharpe had applied for a passport to go to St. Petersbourg.  He says he will do everything in his power to engage the Emperor to go to war with Bonaparte.  Laharpe breathes nothing but vengeance against Bonaparte, who, besides other injuries, turned his back on him in public and would not speak to him.  Laharpe was warned of O’Connor’s intended visit, and went to the country to avoid seeing him:  The Senator Garat is to go to Brest with O’Connor to write a constitution for Ireland.  O’Connor is getting out of favor with the Irish in France; they begin to suspect his ambitious and selfish views.  There was a coolness between Admiral Truguet and him for some time previous to Truguet’s return to Brest.  Augereau had given a dinner to all the principal officers of his army then at Paris.  Truguet invited all of them to dine with him, two or three days after, except O’Connor.  O’Connor told me he would never forgive him for it.”

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FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 1:  From a French work, “Moeurs et Coutumes des Corses” (Paris, 1802), I take the following incident.  A priest, charged with the duty of avenging a relative for some fourteen years, met his enemy at the gate of Ajaccio and forthwith shot him, under the eyes of an official—­who did nothing.  A relative of the murdered man, happening to be near, shot the priest.  Both victims were quickly buried, the priest being interred under the altar of the church, “because of his sacred character.”  See too Miot de Melito, “Memoires,” vol. i., ch. xiii., as to the utter collapse of the jury system in 1800-1, because no Corsican would “deny his party or desert his blood.”]