Paris, September, 1805.

My lord:—­A general officer, who has just arrived from Italy, has assured me that, so far from Bonaparte’s subjects on the other side of the Alps being contented and attached to his person and Government, were a victorious Austrian army to enter the plains of Lombardy a general insurrection would be the consequence.  During these last nine years the inhabitants have not enjoyed a moment’s tranquillity or safety.  Every relation or favourite whom Napoleon wished to provide for, or to enrich, he has saddled upon them as in free quarters; and since 1796, when they first had the honour of our Emperor’s acquaintance, they have paid more in taxes, in forced loans, requisitions, and extortions of every description, than their ancestors or themselves had paid during the one hundred and ninety-six preceding years.

Such is the public spirit, and such have been the sufferings of the people in the ci-devant Lombardy; in Piedmont they are still worse off.  Having more national character and more fidelity towards their Sovereign than their neighbours, they are also more cruelly treated.  Their governor, General De Menou, has caused most of the departments to be declared under martial law, and without right to claim the protection of our happy constitution.  In every city or town are organized special tribunals, the progeny of our revolutionary tribunals, against the sentences of which no appeal can be made, though these sentences are always capital ones.  Before these, suspicion is evidence, and an imprudent word is subject to the same punishment as a murderous deed.  Murmur is regarded as mutiny, and he who complains is shot as a conspirator.

There exist only two ways for the wretched Piedmontese to escape these legal assassinations.  They must either desert their country or sacrifice a part of their property.  In the former case, if retaken, they are condemned as emigrants; and in the latter they incur the risk that those to whom they have already given a part of their possessions will also require the remainder, and having obtained it, to enjoy in security the spoil, will send them to the tribunals and to death.  De Menou has a fixed tariff for his protection, regulated according to the riches of each person; and the tax-gatherers collect these arbitrary contributions with the regular ones, so little pains are taken to conceal or to disguise these robberies.

De Menou, by turns a nobleman and a sans-culotte, a Christian and a Mussulman, is wicked and profligate, not from the impulse of the moment or of any sudden gust of passion, but coldly and deliberately.  He calculates with sangfroid the profit and the risk of every infamous action he proposes to commit, and determines accordingly.  He owed some riches and the rank of the major-general to the bounty of Louis XVI., but when he considered the immense value of the revolutionary plunder, called national property, and that those who confiscated could also promote, he did not hesitate what party to take.  A traitor is generally a coward; he has everywhere experienced defeats; he was defeated by his Royalist countrymen in 1793, by his Mahometan sectaries in 1800, and by your countrymen in 1801.