



Produced by David Widger





MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF ST. CLOUD

By Lewis Goldsmith

Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London




Volume 2



LETTER XII.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--Bonaparte has been as profuse in his disposal of the Imperial
diadem of Germany, as in his promises of the papal tiara of Rome.  The
Houses of Austria and Brandenburgh, the Electors of Bavaria and Baden,
have by turns been cajoled into a belief of his exclusive support towards
obtaining it at the first vacancy.  Those, however, who have paid
attention to his machinations, and studied his actions; who remember his
pedantic affectation of being considered a modern, or rather a second
Charlemagne; and who have traced his steps through the labyrinth of folly
and wickedness, of meanness and greatness, of art, corruption, and
policy, which have seated him on the present throne, can entertain little
doubt but that he is seriously bent on seizing and adding the sceptre of
Germany to the crowns of France and Italy.

During his stay last autumn at Mentz, all those German Electors who had
spirit and dignity enough to refuse to attend on him there in person were
obliged to send Extraordinary Ambassadors to wait on him, and to
compliment him on their part.  Though hardly one corner of the veil that
covered the intrigues going forward there is yet lifted up, enough is
already seen to warn Europe and alarm the world.  The secret treaties he
concluded there with most of the petty Princes of Germany, against the
Chief of the German Empire which not only entirely detached them from
their country and its legitimate Sovereign, but made their individual
interests hostile and totally opposite to that of the German
Commonwealth, transforming them also from independent Princes into
vassals of France, both directly increased has already gigantic power,
and indirectly encouraged him to extend it beyond what his most sanguine
expectation had induced him to hope.  I do not make this assertion from a
mere supposition in consequence of ulterior occurrences.  At a supper
with Madame Talleyrand last March, I heard her husband, in a gay,
unguarded, or perhaps premeditated moment, say, when mentioning his
proposed journey to Italy:

"I prepared myself to pass the Alps last October at Mentz.  The first
ground-stone of the throne of Italy was, strange as it may seem, laid on
the banks of the Rhine: with such an extensive foundation, it must be
difficult to shake, and impossible to overturn it."

We were, in the whole, twenty-five persons at table when he spoke thus,
many of whom, he well knew, were intimately acquainted both with the
Austrian and Prussian Ambassadors, who by the bye, both on the next day
sent couriers to their respective Courts.

The French Revolution is neither seen in Germany in that dangerous light
which might naturally be expected from the sufferings in which it has
involved both Princes and subjects, nor are its future effects dreaded
from its past enormities.  The cause of this impolitic and anti-patriotic
apathy is to be looked for in the palaces of Sovereigns, and not in the
dwellings of their people.  There exists hardly a single German Prince
whose Ministers, courtiers and counsellors are not numbered, and have
long been notorious among the anti-social conspirators, the Illuminati:
most of them are knaves of abilities, who have usurped the easy direction
of ignorance, or forced themselves as guides on weakness or folly, which
bow to their charlatanism as if it was sublimity, and hail their
sophistry and imposture as inspiration.

Among Princes thus encompassed, the Elector of Bavaria must be allowed
the first place.  A younger brother of a younger branch, and a colonel in
the service of Louis XVI., he neither acquired by education, nor
inherited from nature, any talent to reign, nor possessed any one quality
that fitted him for a higher situation than the head of a regiment or a
lady's drawing-room.  He made himself justly suspected of a moral
corruption, as well as of a natural incapacity, when he announced his
approbation of the Revolution against his benefactor, the late King of
France, who, besides a regiment, had also given him a yearly pension of
one hundred thousand livres.  Immediately after his unexpected accession
to the Electorate of Bavaria, he concluded a subsidiary treaty with your
country, and his troops were ordered to combat rebellion, under the
standard of Austrian loyalty.