This Gendral Ney, who is now one of the principal commanders under Bonaparte in Germany, was a bankrupt tobacconist at Strasburg in 1790, and is the son of an old-clothes man of Sarre Louis, where he was born in 1765.  Having entered as a common soldier in the regiment of Alsace, to escape the pursuit of his creditors, he was there picked up by some Jacobin emissaries, whom he assisted to seduce the men into an insurrection, which obliged most of the officers to emigrate.  From that period he began to distinguish himself as an orator of the Jacobin clubs, and was, therefore, by his associates, promoted by one step to an adjutant-general.  Brave and enterprising, ambitious for advancement, and greedy after riches, he seized every opportunity to distinguish and enrich himself; and, as fortune supported his endeavours, he was in a short time made a general of division, and acquired a property of several millions.  This is his first campaign under Bonaparte, having previously served only under Pichegru, Moreau, and Le Courbe.

He, with General Richepanse, was one of the first generals supposed to be attached to their former chief, General Moreau, whom Bonaparte seduced into his interest.  In the autumn of 1802, when the Helvetic Republic attempted to recover its lost independence, Ney was appointed commander-in-chief of the French army in Switzerland, and Ambassador from the First Consul to the Helvetic Government.  He there conducted himself so much to the satisfaction of Bonaparte, that, on the rupture with your country, he was made commander of the camp near Montreuil; and last year his wife was received as a Maid of Honour to the Empress of the French.

This Maid of Honour is the daughter of a washer-woman, and was kept by a man-milliner at Strasburg, at the time that she eloped with Ney.  With him she had made four campaigns as a mistress before the municipality of Coblentz made her his wife.  Her conduct since has corresponded with that of her husband.  When he publicly lived with mistresses, she did not live privately with her gallants, but the instant the Emperor of the French told him to save appearances, if he desired a place for his wife at the Imperial Court, he showed himself the most attentive and faithful of husbands, and she the most tender and dutiful of wives.  Her manners are not polished, but they are pleasing; and though not handsome in her person, she is lively; and her conversation is entertaining, and her society agreeable.  The Princesse Louis Bonaparte is particularly fond of her, more so than Napoleon, perhaps, desires.  She has a fault common with most of our Court ladies:  she cannot resist, when opportunity presents itself, the temptation of gambling, and she is far from being fortunate.  Report says that more than once she has been reduced to acquit her gambling debts by personal favours.