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Updated: June 16, 2025
Amongst the thousand and one motives which have determined the Government to take this step may be reckoned his correspondence with Carnot, which has been communicated to me, and in which he treated the generals of the army of Italy as brigands. Moreau has sent the Directory a letter which throws a new light on Pichegru's treason. Such baseness is hardly to be conceived.
'You are releasing a dead man, said he, with chilly irony; 'the young man is gone, as Monsieur de Bonald says, to appear before his natural Judge. He died of apoplexy "I breathed again, thinking it was sudden illness. "'As I understand you, Monsieur le President, said Monsieur Popinot, 'it is a case of apoplexy like Pichegru's.
Besides, there exists a certain popular instinct, which is rarely at fault, and it must be in the recollection of many, not only that the general opinion favoured the notion of Pichegru's assassination, but that the pains taken to give that opinion another direction, by the affected exhibition of the body, only served to strengthen it.
Under its pressure Holland, by the aid of Pichegru's army, became the Batavian Republic, and ceded Dutch Flanders to France; while Prussia abandoned the coalition, and in the treaty of Basel, signed on April fifth, 1795, agreed to the neutrality of all north Germany.
Immediately on Pichegru's death the prisoners were informed of the circumstance. As they were all acquainted with the general, and none believed the fact of his reported suicide, it may easily be conceived what consternation and horror the tragical event excited among them.
Moreau and Pichegru had not been friends since Moreau sent to the Directory the papers seized in M. de Klinglin's carriage, which placed Pichegru's treason in so clear a light. Since that period Pichegru's name possessed no influence over the minds of the soldiers, amongst whom he had very few partisans, whilst the name of Moreau was dear to all who had conquered under his command.
I am convinced the dread excited by his manifestation of a resolution to speak out with the most rigid candour hastened the death of Pichegru. M. Real, who is still living, knows better than any one else what were Pichegru's declarations, as he interrogated him.
Holland had been detached from it by Pichegru's conquest, and the Batavian republic which he set up there was now an ally of France. In the spring Prussia bought peace at Basle by the cession of her possessions west of the Rhine. Peace with Spain followed in the summer, while Sweden and the Protestant cantons of Switzerland recognized the republic.
What stupid conceit was it for any one to suppose himself better able to command Pichegru's army than Pichegru himself! to pretend to be better acquainted with the frontier provinces than Pichegru, who commanded them, and had placed his friends in them as commanders of the towns! This self-conceit, however, ruined the monarchy at this time, as well as at so many others.
I added that he would have the 'cordon-rouge', the Chateau de Chambord, with its park, and twelve pieces of cannon taken from the Austrians, a million of ready money, 200,000 livres per annum, and an hotel in Paris; that the town of Arbors, Pichegru's native place, should bear his name, and be exempt from all taxation for twenty-five years; that a pension of 200,000 livres would be granted to him, with half reversion to his wife, and 50,000 livres to his heirs for ever, until the extinction of his family.
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