and that if it did not cause, it at least hastened the success of the negotiations which England was secretly carrying on with Austria and Prussia.  Every Prince of Germany was offended by the violation of the Grand Duke of Baden’s territory, and the death of a Prince could not fail everywhere to irritate that kind of sympathy of blood and of race which had hitherto always influenced the crowned heads and sovereign families of Europe; for it was felt as an injury to all of them.

When Louis XVIII. learned the death of the Due d’Enghien he wrote to the King of Spain, returning him the insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece (which had also been conferred on Bonaparte), with the accompanying letter: 

Sire, monsieur, and dear cousin—­It is with regret that I send back to you the insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece which his Majesty, your father, of glorious memory conferred upon me.  There can be nothing in common between me and the great criminal whom audacity and fortune have placed on my throne, since he has had the barbarity to stain himself with the blood of a Bourbon, the Duc d’Enghien.

   Religion might make me pardon an assassin, but the tyrant of my
   people must always be my enemy.

   In the present age it is more glorious to merit a sceptre than to
   possess one.

   Providence, for incomprehensible reasons, may condemn me to end my
   days in exile, but neither my contemporaries nor posterity shall
   ever have to say, that in the period of adversity I showed my self
   unworthy of occupying the throne of my ancestors. 
                              Louis

The death of the Due d’Enghien was a horrible episode in the proceedings of the great trial which was then preparing, and which was speedily followed by the accession of Bonaparte to the Imperial dignity.  It was not one of the least remarkable anomalies of the epoch to see the judgment by which criminal enterprises against the Republic were condemned pronounced in the name of the Emperor who had so evidently destroyed that Republic.  This anomaly certainly was not removed by the subtlety, by the aid of which he at first declared himself Emperor of the Republic, as a preliminary to his proclaiming himself Emperor of the French.  Setting aside the means, it must be acknowledged that it is impossible not to admire the genius of Bonaparte, his tenacity in advancing towards his object, and that adroit employment of suppleness and audacity which made him sometimes dare fortune, sometimes avoid difficulties which he found insurmountable, to arrive, not merely at the throne of Louis XVI., but at the reconstructed throne of Charlemagne.

CHAPTER XXIV.

1804.