At other times the exile of St. Helena told a shorter and a plainer tale.  “I was assailed,” said he, “on all hands by the enemies whom the Bourbons had raised up against me:  threatened with air-guns, infernal machines, and stratagems of every kind.  There was no tribunal to which I could appeal for protection; therefore I had a right to protect myself.  By putting to death one of those whose followers threatened my life, I was entitled to strike a salutary terror into all the rest.”

The princes of the House of Bourbon, so far from stimulating assassins to take off the usurper of their throne, never failed, when such schemes were suggested, to denounce them as atrocities hateful in the sight of God and man.  As to this part of their conduct, the proofs are abundant, clear, and irrefragable.  But it is very possible that Buonaparte entertained the foul suspicion on which he justifies his violence.  And indeed it is only by supposing him to have sincerely believed that the Bourbons were plotting against his life, that we can at all account for the shedding of D’Enghien’s blood.—­Unless Josephine spake untruly, or her conversation has been wilfully misrepresented, she strenuously exerted her influence to procure mercy for the royal victim; and so, unquestionably, did his venerable mother.  But it demanded neither affection for Napoleon’s person, nor regard for his interest, nor compassion for the youth and innocence of the Duke d’Enghien, to perceive the imprudence, as well as wickedness, of the proceeding.  The remark of the callous Fouche had passed into a proverb, “It was worse than a crime—­it was a blunder.”

A few days after the execution of the Duke d’Enghien (on the morning of the 7th of April) General Pichegru was found dead in prison:  a black handkerchief was tied round his neck, and tightened by the twisting of a short stick, like a tourniquet.  It could not appear probable that he should have terminated his own life by such means; and, accordingly, the rumour spread that he had been taken off in the night by some of the satellites of Savary; or, according to others, by some Mamelukes whom Napoleon had brought with him from the East, and now retained near his person, as an interior body-guard of the palace.  This is a mystery which has never been penetrated.  The recent fate of D’Enghien had prepared men to receive any story of this dark nature; and it was argued that Buonaparte had feared to bring Pichegru, a bold and dauntless man, into an open court, where he might have said many things well calculated to injure the Consul in public opinion.[49]

The other prisoners were now brought to trial.  There was not a shadow of evidence against General Moreau, except the fact, admitted by himself, that he had been twice in company with Pichegru since his return to Paris.  He in vain protested that he had rejected the proposals of Pichegru, to take part in a royalist insurrection; and, as for the murderous designs of Georges Cadoudal, that he had never even heard of them.  He was sentenced to two years’ confinement:  but, on the intercession of his wife with Josephine, or rather on finding that a great part of the soldiery considered so eminent a commander as hardly used, the Chief Consul ere long, commuted this punishment for two years of exile.