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In spite of the numerous police agents scattered over France, it was only discovered by the declarations of Bouvet de Lozier that three successive landings had been effected, and that a fourth was expected, which, however, did not take place, because General Savary was despatched by the First Consul with orders to seize the persons whose arrival was looked for.
I acknowledge that when I read his Memoirs I saw with great impatience that in many matters he had voluntarily assumed responsibilities for acts which a word from him might have attributed to their real author. However this may be, what much pleased me in Savary was the wish he showed to learn the real truth in order to tell it to Napoleon. He received from the Emperor more than one severe rebuff.
Savary knew better than any one the fallacious measures of Fouche's administration, since he was his successor. Fouche, under pretence of encouraging men of letters, though well aware that the Emperor was hostile to them, intended only to bring them into contempt by making them write verses at command.
"Well, yes," exclaimed Savary, "you have no proof, but there cannot be the least doubt as to the intrigues which he is bold enough to plot. The opportunity is too favorable that he should not endeavor to embrace it.
He must have been a very foolish person to set his will against that of the Emperor. I had seated myself, sick and dazed, upon the settee, for scenes of bloodshed were new to me then, and this one had been enough to shock the most hardened. Savary gave us all a little cognac from his flask, and then tearing down one of the curtains he laid it over the terrible figure of my Uncle Bernac.
The ruin of commercial interests was nought to him; and when Savary ventured to hint at the discontent caused in French mercantile circles by these steps, he received a sharp rebuke: " ... The cackling of the Paris bankers matters very little to me. I am having Hamburg fortified. I am having a naval arsenal formed there. Within a few months it will be one of my strongest fortresses.
The Emperor of the French had been kept well informed by Savary, and knew that the Tilsit alliance, being distasteful to the Russian people, hung on the personal good will of their sovereign. He would have been glad to put Alexander off with some slight rectification of the border-line between Russia and Turkey and with further indefinite promises, but he dared not.
Rapp and Savary, the aides-de-camp of Desaix, remained plunged in the most despairing grief beside the body of their chief, whom they called their father, rather to express his unfailing kindness to them than the dignity of his character. Out of respect to the memory of his friend, the general-in-chief, although his staff was full, added these two young officers in the quality of aides-de-camp.
"In this letter," said he, "you will felicitate the emperor on his arrival, and you bear witness that I have the same sentiments with regard to him that you have always shown." Anger and distrust remained very powerful in the little court of Aranjuez. Ferdinand VII. set out on the 10th of April, accompanied by General Savary, who lavished upon him the royal titles rigorously refused by Murat.
In spite of the numerous police agents scattered over France, it was only discovered by the declarations of Bouvet de Lozier that three successive landings had been effected, and that a fourth was expected, which, however, did not take place, because General Savary was despatched by the First Consul with orders to seize the persons whose arrival was looked for.
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