The Duc d’Enghien, son of the Duc de Bourbon, was even more unfortunate than Moreau. He also was charged with complicity in the Royalist plot, and although no evidence was produced against him, he was shot and buried in a grave dug before his trial, by a so-called special military commission, in the fortress of Vincennes. The story of the way in which the young duke’s father heard the news is pathetic. He was an exile in London, living at the time in a small suite of rooms with one valet. As breakfast did not appear at the prescribed hour one morning, and no notice being taken of his repeated ringing of the bell, he entered the kitchen and found his servant bowed down with sorrow. On the table was a newspaper containing particulars of the grim tragedy. For two hours the sorely stricken parent was overcome by agonising grief in the humble little room. The Comtesse de Boigne, one of the many French emigrants who sought a refuge in England, relates the above, in her entertaining “Memoirs,” adding that this excessive grief was “accompanied by fits of rage and cries for vengeance.”
“This was the only means I had of leaving no doubt as to my intentions, and of annihilating the hopes of the partisans of the Bourbons,” Napoleon wrote callously to his brother Joseph. “If what I have done were still to be done,” he continues, “I would do it again, and if I had a favourable opportunity I would get rid of the rest.” Fouché’s caustic comment, “it was worse than a crime, it was a blunder,” has passed into a proverb.
The conspiracy of Cadoudal and Pichegru was made a pretext on the part of the Senate for sending a deputation to the First Consul, who was told that, as he was founding a new era, he ought to perpetuate it. “We do not doubt but this great idea has had a share of your attention,” said the President during the course of his short and flattering address, “for your creative genius embraces all and forgets nothing. But do not delay: you are urged on by the times, by events, by conspirators, and by ambitious men; and in another direction, by the anxiety which agitates the French people. It is in your power to enchain time, master events, disdain the ambitious, and tranquillise the whole of France by giving it institutions which will cement your edifice, and prolong for our children what you have done for their fathers. Citizen First Consul, be assured that the Senate here speaks to you in the name of all citizens.”