to America, an application which had been refused. There was nothing extraordinary, then, in de Berenger’s visit. His lordship, again, claimed that de Berenger’s call on him, instead of going straight to the Stock Exchange to commence operations, indicated that he had weakened in his plot, and did not see how to carry it through. “Had I been his confederate,” says Lord Cochrane in his affidavit, “it is not within the bounds of credibility that he would have come in the first instance to my house, and waited two hours for my return home, in place of carrying out the plot he had undertaken, or that I should have been occupied in perfecting my lamp invention for the use of the convoy, of which I was in a few days to take charge, instead of being on the only spot where any advantage to be derived from the Stock Exchange hoax could be realised, had I been a participator in it. Such advantage must have been immediate, before the truth came out; and to have reaped it, had I been guilty, it was necessary that I should not lose a moment. It is still more improbable that being aware of the hoax, I should not have speculated largely for the special risk of that day.”

We may take Lord Cochrane’s word, as an officer and a gentleman, that he had no guilty knowledge of de Berenger’s scheme; but here again the luck was against him, for it came out in evidence that his brokers had sold stock for him on the day of the fraud. Yet the operation was not an isolated one made on that occasion only. Lord Cochrane declared that he had for some time past anticipated a favourable conclusion to the war. “I had held shares for the rise,” he said, “and had made money by sales. The stock I held on the day of the fraud was less than

I usually had, and it was sold under an old order given to my brokers to sell at a certain price. It had necessarily to be sold.” It was clear to Lord Cochrane’s friends—who, indeed, and rightly, held him to be incapable of stooping to fraud—that had he contemplated it he would have been a larger holder of stock on the day in question, when he actually held less than usual. On these grounds alone they were of opinion that he should have been absolved from the charge.

Great lawyers like Lords Campbell, Brougham, and Erskine have commented on this case, all of them expressing their belief in Lord Cochrane’s innocence. Lord Campbell was of opinion that the verdict was “palpably contrary to the first principles of justice, and ought to have been reversed.” The late Chief Baron, Sir Fitzroy Kelly, in criticising the trial, ends by expressing his regret that “we cannot blot out this dark page from our legal and judicial history.” These are the opinions of legal luminaries who were in the fullest mental vigour and acumen at the time of the trial. They were intimately acquainted with all the facts, and we may accept their judgment that a great and grievous wrong had been done to a nobleman of high character, who had not spared himself in the service of the State. Their view was tardily supported by the Government in restoring Lord Cochrane to his rightful position in the Navy.

The part taken by the late Lord Playfair in the rehabilitation of Lord Dundonald has been told by Sir Wemyss Reid in his admirable “Memoirs” of Playfair. Lord Dundonald died in October, 1860, and by his last will bequeathed to his grandson, the present gallant earl, whose brilliant achievements as a cavalry leader in the great Boer War have shown him to be a worthy scion of a warrior stock, “all the sums due to me by the British Government for my important services, as well as the sums of pay stopped under perjured evidence for the commission of a fraud upon the Stock Exchange. Given under my trembling hand this 21st day of February, the anniversary of my ruin.”

Lord Playfair was an intimate friend of the much-worried admiral, and while he was a member of the House of Commons he made a strenuous effort to carry out the terms of the above will by recovering the sums mentioned in it. He moved for a Select Committee of the House, which could not be refused, “as,” to quote Playfair, “the whole world had come to the conviction that Dundonald was entirely innocent.” The Committee was appointed, and was composed of many excellent men, including Spencer Walpole, Russell Gurney, and Whitbread.

What followed shall be told in Playfair’s own words. “I declined to go upon the Committee,” he writes in his Autobiography, as edited by Sir Wemyss Reid, “as my feelings of friendship were too keen to make me a fair judge. The Committee felt perfectly satisfied of Lord Dundonald’s innocence, but they hesitated as to their report from lack of evidence; at the critical point an interesting event occurred.

“In 1814 Lord Dundonald and Lady X were in love, and though they did not marry, always held each other in great esteem for the rest of their lives. Old Lady X was still alive in 1877, and she sent me a letter through young Cochrane, the grandson, authorising me to use it as I thought best. The letter was yellow with age, but had been carefully preserved. It was written by Lord Dundonald, and was dated from the prison on the night of the committal. It tried to console the lady by the fact that the guilt of a near relative of hers was not suspected, while the innocence of the writer was his support and consolation.

“The old lady must have had a terrible trial. It was hard to sacrifice the reputation of her relative; it was harder still to see injustice still resting upon her former lover. Lord Dundonald had loved her and had received much kindness from her relative, so he suffered calumny and the injustice of nearly two generations rather than tell the true story of his wrong.

“I had long suspected the truth, but I never heard it from Lord Dundonald. The brave old lady tendered this letter as evidence to the Committee, but I declined to give it in, knowing that had my friend been alive he would not have allowed me to do so. At the same time I showed the letter to the members of the Committee individually, and it had a great effect upon their minds, and no doubt helped to secure the report recommending that the Treasury should pay the grandson the back salary of the admiral.

“The interesting letter itself I recommended should be put in the archives of the Dundonald family, and this I believe has been done.”

Part III.

POLICE—PAST AND PRESENT.

CHAPTER V.

EARLY POLICE: FRANCE.

WHEN men began to congregate in communities, laws for the good government and protection of the whole number became a necessity, and this led to the creation of police. The word itself is derived from πὁλις (“city”), a collection of people within a certain area: a community working regularly together for mutual advantage and defence. The work of defence was internal as well as external, for since the world began there have been dissidents and outlaws, those who declined to accept the standard of conduct deemed generally binding, and so set law at defiance. Hence the organisation of some force taking its mandate from the many to compel good conduct in the few; some special institution whose functions are to watch over the common weal, and act for the public both in preventing evil and preparing or securing good. From this the police deduces its claim to such interference with every citizen as is necessary to maintain order and ensure obedience to the law. It is easy to see that by excessive development the police system may become too paternal, and that under the great despotisms it may be and often is a potent engine for the enslavement of a people.

These ideas, perfect enough in the abstract, are contained in the definitions of police as found in dictionaries and the best authorities. The Imperial Dictionary calls it “a judicial and executive system in a national jurisprudence which is specially concerned with the quiet and good order of society; the means instituted by a government or community to maintain public order, liberty, property, and individual security.” Littré defines police as “the ordered system established in any city or state, which controls all that affects the comfort and safety of the inhabitants.” “Police,” says a modern writer, “is that section of public authority charged to protect persons and things against every attack, every evil which can be prevented or lessened by human prudence.” Again: “To maintain public order, protect property and personal liberty, to watch over public manners and the public health: such are the principal functions of the police.” Although we English people were slow to adopt any police system on a large or uniform scale, the principle has ever been accepted by our legists. Jeremy Bentham considered police necessary as a measure of precaution, to prevent crimes and calamities as well as to correct and cure them. Blackstone in his Commentaries says: “By public police and economy I mean the due regulation and domestic order of the kingdom, whereby the individuals of the State, like members of a well-governed family, are bound to conform their general behaviour to the rules of propriety, good neighbourhood, and good manners; to be decent, industrious, and inoffensive in their respective stations.”

The French kings were probably the first, in modern times, to establish a police system. As early as the fourteenth century Charles V., who was ready to administer justice anywhere, in the open field or under the first tree, invented a police “to increase the happiness and security of his people.” It was a fatal gift, soon to be developed into an engine of horrible oppression. It came to be the symbol of despotism, the plain outward evidence of the king’s supreme will, the bars and fetters that checked and restrained all liberty, depriving the people of the commonest rights and privileges, forbidding them to work, eat, dress, live, or move from place to place without leave. Louis XIV., on his accession, systematised and enormously increased the functions and powers of the police, and with an excellent object, that of giving security to a city in which crime, disorder, and dirt flourished unchecked. But in obtaining good government all freedom and independence was crushed out of the people.

The lieutenant of police first appointed in 1667, and presently advanced to the higher rank of lieutenant-general, was an all-powerful functionary, who ruled Paris despotically henceforward to the great break-up at the Revolution. He had summary jurisdiction over beggars, vagabonds, and evil-doers of all kinds and classes; he was in return responsible for the security and general good order of the city. Crimes, great and small, were very prevalent, such as repeated acts of fraud and embezzlement; for Fouquet had but just been convicted of the malversation of public moneys on a gigantic scale. There were traitors in even the highest ranks, and the Chevalier de Rohan about this period was detected in a plot to sell several strong places on the Normandy coast to the enemy. Very soon the civilised world was to be shocked beyond measure by the wholesale poisonings of the Marchioness of Brinvilliers, Voisin, and other miscreants. In the very heart of Paris there was a deep gangrene, a sort of criminal Alsatia—the Cour des Miracles—where depredators and desperadoes gathered unchecked, and defied authority. The streets were made hideous by incessant bloodthirsty brawls; quarrels were fought out then and there, for everyone, with or without leave, carried a sword—even servants and retainers of the great noblemen—and was prompt to use it. The lieutenant-general was nearly absolute in regard to offences, both political and general. In his office were kept long lists of suspected persons and known evil-doers, with full details of their marks and appearance, nationality and character. He could deal at once with all persons taken in the act; if penalties beyond his power were required, he passed them on to the superior courts. The prisoners of State in the royal castles—the Bastille, Vincennes, and

the rest—were in his charge; he interrogated them at will, and might add to their number by arresting dangerous or suspected persons, in pursuit of whom he could enter and search private houses or take any steps, however arbitrary. For all these purposes he had a large armed force at his disposal, cavalry and infantry, nearly a thousand men in all, and besides there was the city watch, the chevaliers de guet, or “archers,” who were seventy-one in number.

La Reynie.

The first lieutenant-general of police in Paris was Gabriel Nicolas (who assumed the name of la Reynie, from his estate), a young lawyer who had been the protégé of the Governor of Burgundy, and afterwards was taken up by Colbert, Louis XIV.’s Minister. La Reynie is described by his contemporaries as a man of great force of character, grave and silent and self-reliant, who wielded his new authority with great judgment and determination, and soon won the entire confidence of the autocratic king. He lost no time in putting matters right. To clear out the Cour des Miracles and expel all rogues was one of his first measures; his second was to enforce the regulation forbidding servants to go armed. Exemplary punishment overtook two footmen of a great house who had beaten and wounded a student upon the Pont Neuf. They were apprehended, convicted, and hanged, in spite of the strong protests of their masters. La Reynie went farther, and revived the ancient regulation by which servants could not come and go as they pleased, and none could be engaged who did not possess papers en règle. The servants did not submit kindly, and for some time evaded the new rule by carrying huge sticks or canes, of which also they were eventually deprived.

The lieutenant-general of police was the censor of the Press, which was more free-spoken than was pleasing to a despotic government, and often published matter that was deemed libellous. The French were not yet entirely cowed, and sometimes they dared to cry out against unjust judges and thieving financiers; there were fierce factions in the Church; Jesuit and Jansenist carried on a bitter polemical war; the Protestants, unceasingly persecuted, made open complaint which brought down on some of their exemplary clergy the penalty of the galleys. The police had complete authority over printers and publishers, and could deal sharply with all books, pamphlets, or papers containing libellous statements or improper opinions. The most stringent steps were taken to prevent the distribution of prohibited books. Philosophical works were most disliked. Books when seized were dealt with as criminals and were at once consigned to the Bastille. Twenty copies were set aside by the governor, other twelve or fifteen were at the disposal of the higher officials, the rest were handed over to the paper-makers to be torn up and sold as waste paper or destroyed by fire in the presence of the keeper of archives. Many of the books preserved in the Bastille and found at the Revolution were proved to be insignificant and inoffensive, and to have been condemned on the general charge of being libels either on the queen and royal family or on the Ministers of State. Prohibited books were not imprisoned until they had been tried and condemned; their sentence was written on a ticket affixed to the sack containing them. Condemned engravings were scratched and defaced in the presence of the keeper of archives and the staff of the Bastille; and so wholesale was the destruction of books that one paper-maker alone carried off 3,015 pounds weight of fragments. Seizures were often accompanied by the arrest of printers and publishers, and an order to destroy the press and distribute the bookseller’s whole stock.

Although la Reynie used every effort to check improper publications, he was known as the patron and supporter of legitimate printing. Under his auspices several notable editions issued from the press, and their printers received handsome pensions from the State. He was a collector, a bibliophile who gathered together many original texts; and he will always deserve credit for having caused the chief manuscripts of the great dramatist Molière to be carefully preserved.

Society was very corrupt in those days, honeycombed with vices, especially gambling, which claimed the constant attention of a paternal police. La Reynie was most active in his pursuit of gamblers. The rapid fortunes made by dishonest means led to much reckless living, and especially to an extraordinary development of play. Everyone gambled, everywhere, in and out of doors, even in their carriages while travelling to and fro. Louis XIV., as he got on in life, and more youthful pleasures palled, played tremendously. His courtiers naturally followed the example. It was not all fair play either; the temptation of winning largely attracted numbers of “Greeks” to the gaming tables, and cheating of all kinds was very common. The king gave frequent and positive orders to check it. A special functionary who had jurisdiction in the Court, the grand provost, was instructed to find some means of preventing this constant cheating at play. At the same time la Reynie sent Colbert a statement of the various kinds of fraud practised with cards, dice, or hoca, a game played with thirty points and thirty balls. The police lieutenant made various suggestions for checking these malpractices; the card-makers were to be subjected to stringent surveillance; it was useless to control the makers of dice, but they were instructed to denounce all who ordered loaded dice. As to hoca, it was, he said, far the most difficult and the most dangerous. The Italians, who had originated the game, so despaired of checking cheating in it that they had forbidden it in their own country. La Reynie’s anxiety was such that he begged the Minister to prohibit its introduction at the Court, as the fashion would soon be followed in the city. However, this application failed; the Court would not sacrifice its amusements, and was soon devoted to hoca, with lansquenet, postique, trou-madame, and other games of hazard.

The extent to which gambling was carried will be seen in the amounts lost and won; it was easy, in lansquenet or hoca, to win fifty or sixty times in a quarter of an hour. Madame de Montespan, the king’s favourite, frequently lost a hundred thousand crowns at a sitting. One Christmas Day she lost seven hundred thousand crowns. On another occasion she laid a hundred and fifty thousand pistoles (£300,000) upon three cards, and won. Another night, it is said, she won back five millions which she had lost. Monsieur, the king’s brother, also gambled wildly. When campaigning he lost a hundred thousand francs to other officers; once he was obliged to pledge the whole of his jewels to liquidate his debts of honour.

Nevertheless the games of chance, if permitted at Court, were prohibited elsewhere. The police continually harried the keepers of gambling hells; those who offended were forced to shut up their establishments and expelled from Paris. The king was disgusted at times, and reproved his courtiers. He took one M. de Ventadour sharply to task for starting hoca in his house, and warned him that “this kind of thing must be entirely ended.” The exact opposite was the result: that and other games gained steadily in popularity, and the number of players increased and multiplied. The king promised la Reynie to put gambling down with a strong hand, and called for a list of all hells and of those who kept them. But the simple measure of beginning with the Court was not tried. Had play been suppressed among the highest it would soon have gone out of fashion; as it was, it flourished unchecked till the collapse of the ancien régime.

Hérault.

It would be tedious to trace the succession of lieutenants-general between la Reynie and de Crosne, the last, who was in office at the outbreak of the French Revolution. One or two were remarkable in their way: the elder D’Argenson, who was universally detested and feared; who cleared out the low haunts with such ruthless severity that he was known to the thieves and criminals as Rhadamanthus, or the judge of the infernal regions; his son, D’Argenson the younger, who is held responsible for the law of passports which made it death to go abroad without one; Hérault, who persecuted the Freemasons, and was so noted for his bigotry and intolerance. Of him the following story is told. In one of his walks abroad he took offence at the sign at a shop door which represented a priest bargaining about goods at a counter, with this title, “L’Abbé Coquet.” Returning home, he despatched an emissary to fetch the Abbé Coquet, but gave no explanation. The agent went out and picked up a priest of the name and brought him to Hérault’s house. They told him the Abbé Coquet was below. “Mettez-le dans le grenier” was Hérault’s brief order. Next day the abbé, half-starved, grew furious at his detention, and Hérault’s servants reported that they could do nothing with him. “Eh! Brulez-le et laissez-moi tranquille!” replied the chief of police, whereupon an explanation followed, and the Abbé Coquet was released.

D’Ombréval.

D’Ombréval, again, was a man of intolerant views. He especially distinguished himself by his persistent persecution of the mad fanatics called the convulsionnaires,[10] whom he ran down everywhere, pursuing them into the most private places, respecting neither age nor sex, and casting them wholesale into prison. Two of these victims were found in the Conciergerie in 1775 who had been imprisoned for thirty-eight years. The convulsionnaires successfully defied the police in the matter of a periodical print which they published secretly and distributed in the very teeth of authority. This rare instance of baffled detection is worth recording. The police were powerless to suppress the Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques, as the paper was called. A whole army of active and unscrupulous spies could not discover who wrote it or where it was printed. Sometimes it appeared in the town, sometimes in the country. It was printed, now in the suburbs, now among the piles of wood in the Gros Caillou, now upon barges in the River Seine, now in private houses. A thousand ingenious devices were practised to put it into circulation and get it through the barriers. One of the cleverest was by utilising a poodle dog which carried a false skin over its shaved body; between the two the sheets were carefully concealed, and travelled safely into the city. So bold were the authors of this print that on one occasion when the police lieutenant was searching a house for a printing press several copies of the paper still wet from the press were thrown into his carriage.

Berryer.

Berryer, a later lieutenant-general, owed his appointment to Madame de Pompadour, whose creature he was, and his whole

aim was to learn all that was said of her and against her, and then avenge attack by summary arrests. At her instance he sent in a daily statement of all the scandalous gossip current in the city, and he lent his willing aid to the creation of the infamous Cabinet Noir, in which the sanctity of all correspondence was violated and every letter read as it passed through the post. A staff of clerks was always busy; they took impressions of the seals with quicksilver, melted the wax over steam, extracted the sheets, read them, and copied all parts that were thought likely to interest the king and Madame de Pompadour. The treacherous practice was well known in Paris, and so warmly condemned that it is recorded in contemporary memoirs: “Dr. Quesnay furiously declared he would sooner dine with the hangman than with the Intendant of Posts” who countenanced such a base proceeding.

M. de Sartines.

Perhaps the most famous and most successful police Minister of his time was M. de Sartines, whose detective triumphs were mainly due to his extensive system and to the activity of his nearly ubiquitous agents. Two good stories are preserved of de Sartines’ omniscience.

One of them runs that a great officer of State wrote him from Vienna begging that a noted Austrian robber who had taken refuge in Paris might be arrested and handed over. De Sartines immediately replied that it was quite a mistake, the man wanted was not in Paris, but actually in Vienna; he gave his exact address, the hours at which he went in and out of his house, and the disguises he usually assumed. The information was absolutely correct, and led to the robber’s arrest.

Again, one of de Sartines’ friends, the president of the High Court at Lyons, ventured to deride his processes, declaring that they were of no avail, and that anyone, if so disposed, could elude the police. He offered a wager, which de Sartines accepted, that he could come into Paris and conceal himself there for several days without the knowledge of the police. A month later this judge left Lyons secretly, travelled to Paris day and night, and on arrival took up his quarters in a remote part of the city. By noon that day he received a letter, delivered at his address, from de Sartines, who invited him to dinner and claimed payment of the wager.

A great coup was made by this adroit officer, but the interest of the affair attaches rather to the thieves than to the police. It was on the occasion of the marriage of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette in 1770. During the great fêtes in honour of the event an extraordinary tumult arose in the Rue Royale, where it joins the modern Champs Élysées. A gang of desperadoes had cunningly stretched cords across the street under cover of the darkness, and the crowds moving out to the fêtes fell over them in hundreds. The confusion soon grew general, and a frightful catastrophe ensued. Men, women, and children, horses and carriages, were mixed up in an inextricable tangle, and hundreds were trampled to death. Some desperate men tried to hack out a passage with their swords, children were passed from hand to hand over the heads of the

crowd, too often to fall and be swallowed up in the struggling gulf below. No fewer than 2,470 people are said to have perished in this horrible mêlée. It was, of course, a time of harvest for the thieves. Apparently only one of the confraternity suffered from the crush, and on him fifty watches were found and as many chains, gold and silver. Next day de Sartines and his agents made wholesale arrests. Some three or four hundred noted thieves were taken up and sent to the Conciergerie, where they were strictly searched. Large quantities of valuables were secured—watches, bracelets, rings, collars, purses, all kinds of jewels. One robber alone had two thousand francs tied up in his handkerchief.

De Sartines kept a few criminals on hand for the strange purpose of amusing fashionable society. It became the custom to have thieves to perform in drawing-rooms. De Sartines, when asked, would obligingly send to any great mansion a party of adroit pickpockets, who went through all their tricks before a distinguished audience, cutting watch-chains, stealing purses, snuffboxes, and jewellery.

This famous chief of police was the first to use espionage on a large scale, and to employ detectives who were old criminals. When reproached with this questionable practice, de Sartines defended it by asking, “Where should I find honest folk who would agree to do such work?” It was necessary for him to protect these unworthy agents by official safe-conducts, which were worded as follows:—

Lenoir.

Lenoir, who succeeded de Sartines, carried espionage still farther, and employed a vast army of spies, paid and unpaid. Servants only got their places on the condition that they kept the police informed of all that went on in the houses where they served. The hawkers who paraded the streets were in his pay. He had suborned members of the many existing associations of thieves, and they enjoyed tolerance so long as they denounced their accomplices. The gambling-houses were taken under police protection; with the proviso that they paid over a percentage of profits and reported all that occurred. People of good society who had got into trouble were forgiven on condition that they watched their friends and gave information of anything worth knowing. One fashionable agent was a lady who entertained large parties and came secretly by a private staircase to the police office with her budget of news. This woman was only paid at the rate of £80 a year.

De Crosne.

Thiroux de Crosne was the last lieutenant-general of police, and the revolutionary upheaval was no doubt assisted by his ineptitude, his marked want of tact and intelligence. While the city was mined under his feet with the coming volcanic disturbances he gave all his energies to theatrical censorship, and kept his agents busy reporting how often this or that phrase was applauded. He was ready to imprison anyone who dared offend a great nobleman, and was very severe upon critics and pamphleteers. The absurd misuse of the censorship was no doubt one of the contributing causes of the Revolution. The police were so anxious to save the king, Louis XVI., from the pollution of reading the many libels published that they allowed no printed matter to come near him. In this way he was prevented from gauging the tendency of the times, or the trend of public opinion. At last, wishing to learn the exact truth of the vague rumours that reached him, he ordered a bookseller, Blaizot, to send him everything that appeared. He soon surprised his Ministers by the knowledge he displayed, and they set to work to find how it reached him. Blaizot was discovered and sent to the Bastille. When the king, wondering why he got no more pamphlets, inquired, he learnt that Blaizot had been imprisoned by his order!

The monarchical police was quickly swept away by the French Revolution. It was condemned as an instrument of tyranny; having only existed, according to the high-sounding phrases of the period, to “sow distrust, encourage perfidy, and substitute intrigue for public spirit.” The open official police thus disappeared, but it was replaced by another far more noxious; a vast political engine, recklessly handled by every bloodthirsty wretch who wielded power in those disastrous times. The French Republicans, from the Committee of Public Safety to the last revolutionary club, were all policemen—spying, denouncing, feeding the guillotine. Robespierre had his own private police, and after his fall numerous reports were found among his papers showing how close and active was the surveillance he maintained through his spies, not only in Paris alone, but all over France.

Under the Directory the office of a Minister of Police was revived, not without stormy protest, and the newly organised police soon became a power in the Republic as tyrannical and inquisitorial as that of Venice. It had its work cut out for it. Paris, the whole country, was in a state of anarchy, morals were at their lowest point, corruption and crime everywhere rampant. The streets of the city, all the high roads, were infested with bands of robbers with such wide ramifications that a general guerilla warfare terrorised the provinces. We shall see more of this on a later page, when describing the terrible bandits named Chauffeurs, from their practice of torturing people by toasting their feet before the fire until they gave up their hidden treasure.

Fouché.

Nine police Ministers quickly followed each other between 1796 and 1799, men of no particular note; but at last Barras fixed

upon Fouché as a person he imagined to be well qualified for the important post. He thus gave a first opening to one whose name is almost synonymous with policeman—the strong, adroit, unscrupulous manipulator of the tremendous underground forces he created and controlled, the man who for many years practically divided with Napoleon the empire of France. The emperor had the ostensible supremacy, but his many absences on foreign wars left much of the real power in his Minister’s hands. Fouché’s aptitudes for police work must have been instinctive, for he had no special training or experience when summoned to the post of Police Minister. He had begun life as a professor, and was known as le Père Fouché, a member of the Oratory, although he did not actually take religious orders. Born in the seaport town of Nantes, he was at first designed for his father’s calling—the sea; but at school his favourite study was theology and polemics, so that his masters strongly advised that he should be made a priest. Something of the suppleness, the quiet, passionless self-restraint, the patient, observant craftiness of the ecclesiastic remained with him through life.

The Revolution found him in his native town, prefect of his college of Nantes, married, leading an obscure and blameless life. He soon threw himself into the seething current, and was sent to the National Convention as representative for La Nièvre. It is needless to follow his political career, in which, with that readiness to change his coat which was second nature to him, he espoused many parties in turn, and long failed to please any, least of all Robespierre, who called him “a vile, despicable impostor.” But the Directory was friendly to him, and appointed him its minister, first at Milan, then in Holland, whence he was recalled by Barras, whom he had obliged in various matters, to take the Ministry of Police. He had always been in touch with popular movements, knew men and things intimately, and, it was hoped, would check the more turbulent spirits.

Fouché saw his chance when Bonaparte rose above the horizon. He was no real Republican; all his instincts were towards despotism and arbitrary personal government. It may well be believed that he contributed much to the success of the 18th Brumaire; this born conspirator could best handle all the secret threads that were needed to establish the new power. He has said in his Memoirs that the revolution of Saint-Cloud must have failed but for him, and he was willing enough to support it. “I should have been an idiot not to prefer a future to nothing. My ideas were fixed. I deemed Bonaparte alone fitted to carry out the changes rendered imperatively necessary by our manners, our vices, our errors and excesses, our misfortunes and unhappy differences.” When the Consulate was established, Fouché was one of the most important personages in France. He had ample means at his disposal, and he did not hesitate to use them freely to strengthen his position; he bought assistance right and left, had his paid creatures everywhere, even at Bonaparte’s elbow, it was said, and had bribed Josephine and Bourrienne to betray the inmost secrets of the palace. The strength and extent of his system—created by necessity, perfected by sheer love of intrigue—was soon realised by his master, who saw that Fouché united the police and all its functions in his own person, and might easily prove a menace to his newly acquired power.

So Fouché was suppressed, but only for a couple of years, during which nearer dangers, conspiracies threatening the very life of Napoleon, led the emperor to recall the astute, all-powerful Minister, who meanwhile had maintained a private police of his own. Fouché had his faithful agents abroad, and showed himself better served, better informed, than the emperor himself. He proved this by giving Napoleon an early copy of a circular by the exiled Bourbon king about to be issued in Paris, the existence of which was unknown to the official police. When Fouché returned to the Prefecture, it was to stay. For some eight years he was indispensable. The emperor seemed to rely upon him entirely, passing everything on to him. “Send it to Fouché; it is his business,” was the endorsement on innumerable papers of that time. The provincial préfets looked only to Fouché; the Police Minister was the sole repository of power, the one person to please; his orders were sought and accepted with blind submission by all. He might have remained in office to the end of the imperial régime but that he became too active and meddled with matters quite beyond his province; and his downfall was hastened by a daring intrigue to bring about a secret compact with England and secure peace.

Savary.

Fouché’s successor was General Savary, one of Napoleon’s most devoted and uncompromising adherents, an indifferent soldier and a conceited, self-sufficient man. He will always be stigmatised as the executioner of the Duc d’Enghien, one ready to go any lengths in blind obedience to his master’s behests. His appointment as chief of the police caused universal consternation; it was dreaded as the inauguration of an epoch of brutal military discipline, the advent of the soldier-policeman, whose iron hand would be heavy upon all. Wholesale arrests, imprisonments, and exiles were anticipated. Savary himself, although submissively accepting his new and strange duties, shrank from executing them. He would gladly have declined the honour of becoming Police Minister, but the emperor would not excuse him, and, taking him by the hand, tried to stiffen his courage by much counsel. The advice he freely gave is worth recording in part, as expressing the views of a monarch who was himself the best police officer of his time.

“Ill-use no one,” he told Savary as they strolled together through the park of Saint-Cloud. “You are supposed to be a severe man, and it would give a handle to my enemies if you were found harsh and reactionary. Dismiss none of your present employees; if any displease you, keep them at least six months, and then find them other situations. If you have to adopt stern measures, be sure they are justified, and it will at least be admitted that you are doing your duty.... Do not imitate your predecessor, who allowed me to be blamed for sharp measures and took to himself the credit of any acts of leniency. A good police officer is quite without passion. Allow yourself to hate no one; listen to all, and never commit yourself to an opinion until you have thought it well over.... I removed Monsieur Fouché because I could no longer rely upon him. When I no longer gave him orders, he acted on his own account and left me to bear the responsibility. He was always trying to find out what I meant to do, so as to forestall me, and, as I became more and more reserved, he accepted as true what others told him, and so got farther and farther astray.”