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Updated: June 15, 2025
Their man of action was Pichegru, the conqueror of Holland, who, abjuring Jacobinism, now schemed with a club of royalists, which met at Clichy, on the outskirts of Paris. That their intrigues aimed at the restoration of the Bourbons had recently been proved.
In October, Pitt stopped the supplies, and the Prussians disappeared from the war. The winter of 1794-95 was severe, and even the sea froze in Holland. In January, Pichegru marched over the solid Rhine, and neither Dutch nor English offered any considerable resistance.
The actual resources, the noisy agents of the emigration, were collected in England: there were found the chiefs of the Chouans, with Georges Cadoudal at their head; there dwelt the generals who had had the misfortune to abandon their country or betray their honor Willot, Dumouriez, Pichegru; there were hatched chimerical projects, impressed from the first with the fatal errors and the terrible ignorance which doom to inevitable sterility the hopes and the efforts of exiles.
But it may be observed that in the Buonaparte system of morality which runs through the book, nothing is considered what we call a crime, unless it be what he allows to be a fault. His proof that he did not murder Pichegru is, that it would have been useless. Le cachet de Buonaparte is as difficult to imitate as le cachet de Voltaire.
Good sense required him also to do another thing, namely, to examine without prejudice what sort of man Pichegru was, to consider the nature of the sacrifice he made, and what were his propositions. Europe acknowledged his talents, and he had placed the Prince in a condition to judge of his good faith. Besides, his conduct and his plan afforded fresh proofs of his sincerity.
Moreau was arrested on the 15th of February 1804, at which time the existence of the conspiracy was known. Pichegru and Georges were also arrested in February, and the Due d'Enghien not till the 15th of March.
Pichegru had, in his first interrogatory, exhibited a great deal of courage, and threatened, it was said, to exhibit proofs of the promises which Bonaparte had made to the Vendeans of effecting the return of the Bourbons.
He lodged Pichegru with an employé of the finance department, named Verdet, who had given the Chouans the second floor of his house in the Rue du Puits-de-l'Hermite. They stayed there three days. On the 27th, Georges took the general to the house at Chaillot "where they only slept a few nights." At the very moment that they went there Querelle signed his first declarations before Réal.
Taken as a whole, and in spite of the embarrassment caused by the persistence of two or three of the accusers, the public judicial examination was favorable to General Moreau. On being accused of having agreed to a reconciliation with the traitor Pichegru, he replied, "Since the beginning of the Revolution there have been many traitors.
He did not, as usual, ascribe it to the emissaries or gold of England, but to the secret adherents of Pichegru and Moreau amongst the brigades or divisions that had served under these unfortunate generals. He ordered, in consequence, his Minister Berthier to make out a list of all these corps.
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