teen _chefs
de bataillon_, and nineteen captains. The pay claimed amounts to
L3,110 15_s._[286] That some, at least, of our Admiralty officials
also aided Cadoudal is proved by a "most secret" letter, dated
Admiralty Office, July 31st, 1803, from E. N[epean] to Admiral Montagu
in the Downs, charging him to help the bearer, Captain Wright, in the
execution of "a very important service," and to provide for him "one
of the best of the hired cutters or luggers under your orders."
Another "most secret" Admiralty letter, of January 9th, 1804, orders a
frigate or large sloop to be got ready to convey secretly "an officer
of rank and consideration" (probably Pichegru) to the French coast.
Wright carried over the conspirators in several parties, until chance
threw him into Napoleon's power and consigned him to an ignominious
death, probably suicide.

Finally, there is the letter of Mr. Arbuthnot, Parliamentary Secretary
at the Foreign Office (dated March 12th, 1804), to Sir Arthur Paget,
in which he refers to the "sad result of all our fine projects for the
re-establishment of the Bourbons: ... we are, of course, greatly
apprehensive for poor Moreau's safety."[287]

In face of this damning evidence the ministerial denials of complicity
must be swept aside.[288] It is possible, however, that the plot was
connived at, not by the more respectable chiefs, but by young and
hot-headed officials. Even in the summer of 1803 that Cabinet was
already tottering under the attacks of the Whigs and the followers of
Pitt. The blandly respectable Addington and Hawkesbury with his
"vacant grin"[289] were evidently no match for Napoleon; and
Arbuthnot himself dubs Addington "a poor wretch universally despised
and laught at," and pronounces the Cabinet "the most inefficient that
ever curst a country." I judge, therefore, that our official aid to
the conspirators was limited to the Under-Secretaries of the Foreign,
War, and Admiralty Offices. Moreover, the royalist plans, _as revealed
to our officials_, mainly concerned a rising in Normandy and Brittany.
Our Government would not have paid the salaries of fifty-four royalist
officers--many of them of good old French families--if it had been
only a question of stabbing Napoleon. The lists of those officers were
drawn up here in November, 1803, that is, three months after Georges
Cadoudal had set out for Normandy and Paris to collect his
desperadoes; and it seems most probable that the officers of t