I will now state all I know relative to the death of the Due d’Enghien.  That unfortunate Prince, who was at Ettenheim, in consequence of a love affair, had no communication whatever with those who were concocting a plot in the interior.  Machiavelli says that when the author of a crime cannot be discovered we should seek for those to whose advantage it turns.  In the present case Machiavelli’s advice will find an easy application, since the Duke’s death could be advantageous only to Bonaparte, who considered it indispensable to his accession to the crown of France.  The motives may be explained, but can they be justified?  How could it ever be said that the Due d’Enghien perished as a presumed accomplice in the conspiracy of Georges?

Moreau was arrested on the 15th of February 1804, at which time the existence of the conspiracy was known.  Pichegru and Georges were also arrested in February, and the Due d’Enghien not till the 15th of March.  Now if the Prince had really been concerned in the plot, if even he had a knowledge of it, would he have remained at Ettenheim for nearly a month after the arrest of his presumed accomplices, intelligence of which he might have obtained in the space of three days?  Certainly not.  So ignorant was he of that conspiracy that when informed at Ettenheim of the affair he doubted it, declaring that if it were true his father and grandfather would have made him acquainted with it.  Would so long an interval have been suffered to elapse before he was arrested?  Alas! cruel experience has shown that that step would have been taken in a few hours.

The sentence of death against Georges and his accomplices was not pronounced till the 10th of June 1804, and the Due d’Enghien was shot on the 21st of March, before the trials were even commenced.  How is this precipitation to be explained?  If, as Napoleon has declared, the young Bourbon was an accomplice in the crime, why was he not arrested at the time the others were?  Why was he not tried along with them, on the ground of his being an actual accomplice; or of being compromised, by communications with them; or, in short, because his answers might have thrown light on that mysterious affair?  How was it that the name of the illustrious accused was not once mentioned in the course of that awful trial?

It can scarcely be conceived that Napoleon could say at St. Helena, “Either they contrived to implicate the unfortunate Prince in their project, and so pronounced his doom, or, by omitting to inform him of what was going on, allowed him imprudently to slumber on the brink of a precipice; for he was only a stone’s cast from the frontier when they were about to strike the great blow in the name and for the interest of his family.”