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Updated: June 15, 2025
Checked for a time by the calculating finesse of the triumvirs, he prepared to end matters by a single blow; and, when the time had come, he occupied the strategic points of the capital, drew a cordon of troops round the Tuileries, where the Councils sat, invaded the chambers of deputies and consigned to the Temple the royalists and moderates there present, with their leader, Pichegru.
The authors, the actors, and the witnesses of the horrible prison scenes of the period are the only persons capable of removing the doubts which still hang over the death of Pichegru; but I must nevertheless contend that the preceding circumstances, the general belief at the time, and even probability, are in contradiction with any idea of suicide on the part of Pichegru.
Thus, if on the one hand the Committee by its orders made Pichegru wish to hasten the execution of his plan, on the other he had not a moment to lose; for to delay obeying the orders of the four representatives was to render himself suspected. Every consideration, therefore, called upon the Prince to decide, and decide promptly.
Pichegru is in prison, George Cadoudal awaits his trial, the Duc d'Enghien sleeps in his bloody grave; the imperial crown is prepared for the great soldier, and the great soldier's creatures bask in the noonday sun. Olivier Dalibard is in high and lucrative employment; his rise is ascribed to his talents, his opinions.
I shall now proceed to relate what I knew at the time and what I have since learnt of the different phases of the trial of Georges, Pichegru, Moreau and the other persons accused of conspiracy, a trial to all the proceedings of which I closely attended.
In 1797, as a member of the Council of Five Hundred, he headed the Jacobin faction against the moderate party, of which Pichegru was a chief; and he had the cowardly vengeance of base rivalry to pride himself upon having procured the transportation of that patriotic general to Cayenne.
York and Prince William thereupon retreated across the frontier, followed by the French under Pichegru, while another French general, Moreau, took Sluis and overran Dutch Flanders. This gave fresh encouragement to the patriot party, who in Amsterdam formed a revolutionary committee, of which the leaders were Gogel, Van Dam and Kraijenhoff.
The many plots to assassinate the First Consul especially the one that very nearly succeeded when he was on his way to the opera and the knowledge that an organized band of conspirators were in red-hot activity and, headed by the Duc d'Enghien, Cadoudal, Moreau, and Pichegru, were determined to kill the head of the State, overthrow the Government, and re-establish the Bourbon dynasty, caused the Duc to be arrested, tried by his fellow-countrymen, and found guilty of the charges brought against him, and, by the blundering of Savary, afterwards Duke of Rovigo, and the persistence of Murat, the death penalty was carried out and he was shot.
All the barriers were closed for several days, and the most drastic punishment was decreed for anyone sheltering the conspirators. From that moment it became very difficult for them to find any place of safety, and soon Pichegru, M. de Rivière and the Polignacs fell into the hands of the police.
Pichegru, with the Army of the North, had driven the invaders from French soil and had conquered the Austrian Netherlands. Jourdan, with the Army of the Sambre and Meuse, had defeated the Austrians at Fleurus in a battle decided by the bravery of Marceau, thus confirming the conquest. Other generals were likewise rising to eminence.
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