ished to secure the
revolutionary party, by contracting with it an alliance of blood. An
old jacobin, when he heard the news, exclaimed, "So much the better!
General Bonaparte is now become one of the convention." For a long
time the jacobins would only have a man who had voted for the death
of the king, for the first magistrate of the republic; that was what
they termed, giving pledges to the revolution. Bonaparte fulfilled
this condition of crime, substituted for that of property required
in other countries; he thus afforded the certainty that he would
never serve the Bourbons; and thus such of that party as attached
themselves to his, burnt their vessels, never to return.

On the eve of causing himself to be crowned by the same men who had
proscribed royalty, and of re-establishing a noblesse composed of
the partisans of equality, he believed it necessary to satisfy them
by the horrible guarantee of the assassination of a Bourbon. In the
conspiracy of Pichegru and Moreau, Bonaparte knew that the
republicans and royalists had united against him; this strange
coalition, of which the hatred he inspired was the sole bond, had
astonished him. Several persons who held places under him, were
marked out for the service of that revolution which was to break his
power, and it was of consequence to him that henceforward all his
agents should consider themselves ruined beyond redemption, if their
master was overturned; and, finally, above all, he wished at the
moment of his seizing the crown to inspire such terror, that no one
in future should think of resisting him. Every thing was violated in
this single action: the European law of nations, the constitution
such as it then existed, public shame, humanity, and religion.
Nothing could go beyond it; every thing was therefore to be dreaded
from the man who had committed it. It was thought for some time in
France, that the murder of the Duke d'Enghien was the signal of a
new system of revolution, and that the scaffolds were about to be
re-erected. But Bonaparte only wished to teach the French one thing,
and that was, that he dared do every thing; in order that they might
give him credit for the evil he abstained from, as others get it for
the good they do. His clemency was praised when he allowed a man to
live; it had been seen how easy it was for him to cause one to
perish. Russia, Sweden, and above all England, complained of this
violation of the Germanic empire; the German prin