Note 178 — BOOK III

According to several historians, the Marquis de Maubreuil was a needy adventurer, as destitute of scruples as of money, who is supposed to have been charged by Talleyrand, in April 1814, to assassinate Napoleon. Dupont, the Minister for War, Anglès, the Minister for Police, and Bourrienne, the Postmaster-General, the commanders of the Russian and Austrian troops, the Emperor of Russia, the Emperor of Austria himself are said to have approved of the mission entrusted to Maubreuil. All this is an abominable calumny.

The royalist zeal of which Maubreuil had given signs, after the entry of the Allies into Paris, had earned for him the good graces of M. Laborie, the assistant-secretary to the Provisional Government; but his protector, failing to procure him a post, he invented a stroke of the boldest character.

Under the pretext that he was going in search of a portion of the Crown diamonds, which had been removed from Paris and were not to be found, on the 21st of April, at the village of Fossard, near Montereau, he waylaid the Queen of Westphalia, who was returning to Germany, and seized eleven cases containing the Queen's jewelry and diamonds and 80,000 francs in gold. When the news of this great stroke reached Paris, the Sovereigns, and the Emperor Alexander in particular, displayed the liveliest annoyance and demanded the punishment of the culprits. Maubreuil, meantime, had returned to Paris, on the night of the 23rd of April; he carried to the Tuileries the cases which he had taken, one of them, according to him, having been broken and its contents scattered on the road. At the same time, he handed over four sacks, containing gold, he said. The next day, when the cases were opened by the locksmith who had made the keys, they were found to be almost empty; the sacks contained silver pieces of twenty sous, instead of gold pieces of twenty francs. The police, before long, had proofs that the broken case, which was just that which had contained the most precious objects, had been opened at Versailles, in a room at an inn, by Maubreuil and his accomplice, a certain Dasies. Moreover, in one of the apartments occupied by Maubreuil in Paris—he had three or four—they found on the bed a magnificent diamond which had belonged to the Queen of Westphalia. The evidences of the theft were incontestable. Maubreuil put a bold face upon it. He declared that he had left Paris with the mission to assassinate the Emperor; that this mission had been given him by M. de Talleyrand; that, in spite of the horror with which it inspired him, he had accepted it for fear lest it should be given to another. "He had," he continued, "arranged everything to deceive the criminal intentions of those who had employed him, and he had sought, by bringing them a treasure and contenting their greed, to appease their dissatisfaction." This could not stand proof; but, in the then circumstances, those lies might have produced the most deplorable and baleful effects among the public, particularly the soldiers. The Government thought it the wisest course to hurry nothing, to keep the accused in prison, and to await aid and counsel from time and the progress of events. Cf. the Souvenirs du comte de Semallé and Vol. II. of the Mémoires du chancelier Pasquier.—B.