Sir George Rumbold, the British minister at Hamburg, escaped that consummation still more narrowly. During the night of the 23rd October a party of French soldiers passed the Elbe, as Ordonner and his gang had crossed the Rhine on the 14th of March, and boldly seized Rumbold within the territory of an independent and friendly state. He was hurried to Paris, and confined in the fated dungeons of the Temple: but none of his papers afforded any plausible pretext for resisting the powerful remonstrance which the King of Prussia thought fit to make against an outrage perpetrated almost within sight of his dominions; and, after a few days, Sir George was set at liberty.
Meantime, while all the princes of Europe regarded with indignation (though few of them, indeed, cared to express the feeling openly) the cruel tragedies which had been acted in France, the death of Pichegru had suppressed effectually the hopes of the royalists in that country, and the exile of Moreau deprived the republicans of the only leader under whom there was any likelihood of their taking arms against the Chief Consul. He resolved to profit by the favourable moment for completing a purpose which he had long meditated; and, on the 30th of April, little more than a month after the Duke d'Enghien died, one Curée was employed to move, in the Tribunate, "that it was time to bid adieu to political illusions--that victory had brought back tranquillity--the finances of the country had been restored, and the laws renovated--and that it was a matter of duty to secure those blessings to the nation in future, by rendering the supreme power hereditary in the person and family of Napoleon."--"Such," he said, "was the universal desire of the army and of the people. The title of Emperor, in his opinion, was that by which Napoleon should be hailed, as best corresponding to the dignity of the nation."
This motion was carried in the Tribunate, with one dissenting voice, that of Carnot; who, in a speech of great eloquence, resisted the principle of hereditary monarchy altogether. He admitted the merits in war and in policy of the Chief Consul--he was at present the Dictator of the Republic, and, as such, had saved it.--"Fabius, Camillus, Cincinnatus were dictators also. Why should not Buonaparte, like them, lay down despotic power, after the holding of it had ceased to be necessary to the general good? Let the services of a citizen be what they might, was there to be no limit to the gratitude of the nation? But at all events, even granting that Buonaparte himself could not be too highly rewarded, or too largely trusted, why commit the fortunes of posterity to chance? Why forget that Vespasian was the father of Domitian, Germanicus of Caligula, Marcus Aurelius of Commodus?" In effect Carnot, colleague as he had been of Robespierre, and stained as he was with the blood of Louis XVI., was a sincere republican; and, after his own fashion, a sincere patriot. He was alone in the Tribunate--the rest of whose members prolonged, during three whole days, a series of fulsome harangues, every one of which terminated in the same implicit agreement to the proposal of Curée.