At midnight the duke was again called from his bed, to attend the court which had been constituted for his trial.  It consisted of eight military officers, appointed by Murat, Napoleon’s brother-in-law, then governor of Paris.  General Hullin, president of the military commission, commanded him to listen to the charges on which he was to be tried:  of having fought against France; of being in the pay of England; and of plotting with England against the internal and external safety of the Republic.  The Duke was again examined, and the second interrogatory was a mere repetition of the first, with this addition, that the prisoner avowed his readiness to take part again in the hostilities against France, if the opportunity should present itself.  No other evidence whatever was adduced, except the written report of a spy of the police, who testified that the duke received many emigrants at his table at Ettenheim, and occasionally left the castle for several days together, without the spy’s being able to trace where he was:  a circumstance sufficiently explained by the duke’s custom of hunting in the Black Forest.

General Hullin, in his account of the proceedings,[48] says, “He uniformly maintained that ’he had only sustained the rights of his family, and that a Conde could never enter France but with arms in his hands.  My birth,’ said he, ’and my opinions must ever render me inflexible on this point.’”—­“The firmness of his answers,” continues Hullin, “reduced the judges to despair.  Ten times we gave him an opening to retract his declarations, but he persisted in them immovably.  ’I see,’ he said, ’the honourable intentions of the commissioners, but I cannot resort to the means of safety which they indicate.’  Being informed that the military commission judged without appeal, ’I know it,’ answered he, ’nor do I disguise to myself the danger which I incur.  My only desire is to have an interview with the First Consul.’”

The irregularities of all this procedure were monstrous.  In the first place, the duke owed no allegiance to the existing government of France. 2ndly, The seizure of his person was wholly illegal; it took place by means of a violation of an independent territory:  an outrage for which it is impossible to offer the smallest excuse. 3rdly, Had the arrest been ever so regular, the trial of a prisoner accused of a political conspiracy was totally beyond the jurisdiction of a court-martial. 4thly, It was against the laws of France to hold any trial at midnight. 5thly, The interrogatory was not read over to the prisoner, which the law imperatively demanded; and, 6thly, No defender was assigned to him—­an indulgence which the French code refuses not to the meanest or most atrocious criminal, by what tribunal soever he may be tried.