“What a life, where I must ever be trembling for you!”

The infernal machine did not kill the first consul, but it gave to liberty and to the republic a fatal blow; it scattered into fragments what remained of the revolutionary institutions from the days of blood and terror.  France rose up in disgust and horror against the party which made of assassins its companions, and consequently this conspiracy failed to accomplish what its originators had expected.  They wanted to destroy Bonaparte and ruin his power, but this abortive attempt only increased his popularity, enlarged his power, and deepened the people’s love for him who now appeared to them as a protecting rampart, and a barrier to the flood of anarchy.

France gave herself up trembling, and without a will of her own, into the hands of the hero to whom she was indebted for fame and recognition by foreign powers, and through whom she hoped to secure domestic peace.  France longed for a strong arm to support her; Bonaparte gave her this arm, but it not only supported France, it bowed her down; and from this day he placed the reins on the wild republican steed, and let it feel that it had found a master who had the power and the will to direct it entirely in accordance with his wishes.

Bonaparte was determined to put an end to the seditions and conspiracies of the republicans, whom he hated because they had for their aim the downfall of all legitimate authority; and in turn was hated by them because he had abandoned their standard and turned against the republic with the faithlessness of a son who attacks the mother that gave him birth.  Bonaparte maintained that it was the republicans who had set the infernal machine on his path, and paid no attention to the opinion of Fouche, who ascribed to the royalists the origin of the plot.  Bonaparte wished first to do away with his most violent and bitter enemies, the republicans of the year 1789; he desired to possess the power of punishing such, and to render them harmless, and now the horror produced by this criminal act came to his assistance in carrying out this plan.

The council of the state adopted the legislative enactment that the consuls should have “the power to remove from Paris those persons whose presence they considered dangerous to the public security, and that all such persons who should leave their place of banishment should be transported from the country!”

Under this law, George Cadoudal, Chevalier, Arena, Ceracchi, and many others were executed; and one hundred and thirty persons, whose only crime was that of being suspected of dissatisfaction toward the administration of the consuls, and considered as Bonaparte’s enemies, were transported to Cayenne.

Such were for France the results of this infernal machine, the object of which was to assassinate the Consul Bonaparte, instead of which it had only the effect of destroying his enemies and strengthening his power.