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Updated: May 3, 2025
Even after they had sent Delessart a State prisoner to Orleans, his inveteracy continued, and in September the same year he went to Versailles to enjoy the sight of the murder of his former master.
They were brothers in arms two years ago and served together under the greatest military genius the world has ever known. Napoleon has sent the man on as an emissary, but Delessart will not allow him to speak. "I mean to do my duty," he declares. But in his voice too there has already crept that note of sullenness which characterised the sapeurs from the first.
The Girondists, accordingly, accused Delessart, the minister for foreign affairs, of compromising the honour and safety of the nation by the tone of his negotiations with foreign powers, by his procrastination, and want of skill.
As for the rest, 'tis in the domain of history; every phase of it has been put on record: Delessart worried in his mind that he had not been able to obey Général Marchand's orders and destroy the bridge of Ponthaut his desire to communicate once more with the General; his decision to await further orders and in the meanwhile to occupy the narrow defile of Laffray as being an advantageous position wherein to oppose the advance of the ogre: all this on the one side.
Even after they had sent Delessart a State prisoner to Orleans, his inveteracy continued, and in September the same year he went to Versailles to enjoy the sight of the murder of his former master.
Under the Ministry of Vergennes, of Montmorin, and of Delessart, Mehee had been employed as a spy in Russia, Sweden, and Poland, and acquitted himself perfectly to the satisfaction of his masters. By some accident or other, Delessart discovered, however, in December, 1791, that he had, while pocketing the money of the Cabinet of Versailles, sold its secrets to the Cabinet of St. Petersburg.
Each step forward taken by Austria aggravated the warlike feeling in the French legislature. But Delessart, through whom the government communicated with foreign powers, mitigated everything, and avoided provocation. Even the note of the 17th, which was delivered at Paris on the 27th, produced no immediate commotion.
Delessart's men are sullen and silent; a crowd of men and women from Grenoble have followed them up thus far; they work their way in and out among the infantrymen: they have printed leaflets in their hands which they cram one by one into the hands or pockets of the soldiers copies of Napoleon's proclamation. Now an officer of the Old Guard is seen to ride up the pass. Delessart recognises him.
In the subsequent discussions, which took place in 1792, and which embraced at the same time all the other points of jealousy which had arisen between the two countries, the declaration of Pilnitz was referred to, and explained on the part of Austria in a manner precisely conformable to what I have now stated; and the amicable explanations which took place, both on this subject and on all the matters in dispute, will be found in the official correspondence between the two Courts, which has been made public; and it will be found, also, that, as long as the negotiation continued to be conducted through M. Delessart, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, there was a great prospect that those discussions would be amicably terminated; but it is notorious, and has since been clearly proved, on the authority of Brissot himself, that the violent party in France considered such an issue of the negotiation as likely to be fatal to their projects, and thought, to use his own words, that 'war was necessary to consolidate the revolution'. For the express purpose of producing the war, they excited a popular tumult in Paris; they insisted upon and obtained the dismissal of M. Delessart.
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