|
lover, who again advised his colleagues. Their scanty purses were
opened, and a subscription entered into for a very valuable diamond,
which, with the millions of the Arch-Chancellor, gave satisfaction to all
parties; and even Joseph Bonaparte was reconciled, upon the consideration
that Cambaceres has no children, and that, therefore, the Prince will
expire with the Grand Officer of State.
Cambaceres, though before the Revolution a nobleman of a Parliamentary
family, was so degraded and despised for his unnatural and beastly
propensities, that to see him in the ranks of rebellion was not
unexpected. Born in Languedoc, his countrymen were the first to suffer
from his revolutionary proceedings, and reproached him as one of the most
active instruments of persecution against the clergy of Toulouse, and as
one of the causes of all the blood that flowed in consequence. A coward
as well as a traitor, after the death of Louis XVI. he never dared ascend
the tribune of the National Convention, but always gave a silent vote to
all the atrocious laws proposed and carried by Marat, Robespierre, and
their accomplices. It was in 1795, when the Reign of Terror had ceased,
that he first displayed his zeal for anarchy, and his hatred to royalty;
his contemptible and disgusting vices were, however, so publicly
reprobated, that even the Directory dared not nominate him a Minister of
Justice, a place for which he intrigued in vain, from 1796 to 1799; when
Bonaparte, either not so scrupulous, or setting himself above the public
opinion, caused him to be called to the Consulate; which, in 1802, was
ensured him for life, but exchanged, in 1804, for the office of an Arch-
Chancellor.
He is now worth thirty millions of livres--all honestly obtained by his
revolutionary industry. Besides a Prince, a Serene Highness, an Arch-
Chancellor, a grand officer of the Legion of Honour, he is also a Knight
of the Prussian Black Eagle! For his brother, who was for a long time an
emigrant clergyman, and whom he then renounced as a fanatic, he has now
procured the Archbishopric of Rouen and a Cardinal's hat. His Eminence
is also a grand officer of the Legion of Honour in France, and a Pope in
petto at Rome.
LETTER XIV.
PARIS, September, 1805.
MY LORD:--No Sovereign Prince has more incurred the hatred of Bonaparte
than the present King of Sweden; and I have heard from good authority
that our Government spares neither bribes nor intrigues to move the tails
of those factions which were dissolved, but not crushed, after the murder
of Gustavus III. The Swedes are generally brave and loyal, but their
history bears witness that they are easily misled; all their grand
achievements are their own, and the consequence of their national spirit
and national valour, while all their disasters have been effected by the
influence of foreign gold and of foreign machinations. Had they not been
the dupes of the plots and views of the Cabinets of Versailles and St.
Petersburg, their country might have been as powerful in the nineteenth
century as it was in the seventeenth.
That Gustavus IV. both knew the danger of Europe, and indicated the
remedy, His Majesty's notes, as soon as he came of age, presented by the
able and loyal Minister Bildt to the Diet of Ratisbon, evince. Had they
been more attended to during 1798 and 1799, Bonaparte would not, perhaps,
have now been so great, but the Continent would have remained more free
and more independent. They were the first causes of our Emperor's
official anger against the Cabinet of Stockholm.
When, however, His Swedish Majesty entered into the Northern league, his
Ambassador, Baron Ehrensward, was for some time treated with no insults
distinct or different from those to which all foreign diplomatic agents
have been accustomed during the present reign; but when he demanded
reparation for the piracies committed during the last war by our
privateers on the commerce of his nation, the tone was changed; and when
|
|