Project Gutenberg's Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Volume 2,
by Lewis Goldsmith

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Title: Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Volume 2
Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London

Author: Lewis Goldsmith

Release Date: December 4, 2004 [EBook #3893]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COURT OF ST. CLOUD ***

Produced by David Widger

MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF ST. CLOUD

By Lewis Goldsmith

Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London

Volume 2

LETTER XII.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--Bonaparte has been as profuse in his disposal of the Imperial
diadem of Germany, as in his promises of the papal tiara of Rome. The
Houses of Austria and Brandenburgh, the Electors of Bavaria and Baden,
have by turns been cajoled into a belief of his exclusive support towards
obtaining it at the first vacancy. Those, however, who have paid
attention to his machinations, and studied his actions; who remember his
pedantic affectation of being considered a modern, or rather a second
Charlemagne; and who have traced his steps through the labyrinth of folly
and wickedness, of meanness and greatness, of art, corruption, and
policy, which have seated him on the present throne, can entertain little
doubt but that he is seriously bent on seizing and adding the sceptre of
Germany to the crowns of France and Italy.

During his stay last autumn at Mentz, all those German Electors who had
spirit and dignity enough to refuse to attend on him there in person were
obliged to send Extraordinary Ambassadors to wait on him, and to
compliment him on their part. Though hardly one corner of the veil that
covered the intrigues going forward there is yet lifted up, enough is
already seen to warn Europe and alarm the world. The secret treaties he
concluded there with most of the petty Princes of Germany, against the
Chief of the German Empire which not only entirely detached them from
their country and its legitimate Sovereign, but made their individual
interests hostile and totally opposite to that of the German
Commonwealth, transforming them also f