Collapse

While Napoleon was absent in Russia, General Claude-François de Malet (1754–1812) made a vain attempt to overthrow the régime in Paris by persuading the Prefect of the Seine to believe that Napoleon had died in Russia. As the following letter from a conscript to his parents shows, he also managed to convince most of the garrison commanders in Paris, who obediently followed his orders. When he shot a general who asked to see his credentials, he was seized and imprisoned. He was tried that night, along with seventeen other conspirators, and shot the next day. Although the plot never seriously threatened the régime, it had a bad impact on public opinion, demonstrating just how precarious the dynasty was.

Paris, 25 October 1812

M. Pourcelle, Bailiff at Breteuil (Oise)

My dear Papa,

At the moment I am writing to you, I am at my cousin’s from whom I asked a bed and supper, our cohort having left Versailles today. We received our marching orders this morning and that prevented me from informing you about them.

On the 23rd of this month at three in the morning we were suddenly awoken and received the order to immediately take up arms, without any exceptions.

In the blink of an eye the cohort had assembled in the courtyard of the barracks with rifles and baggage.

A general in full uniform [that is, Malet], appeared among us and read out a proclamation which in substance said that His Majesty the emperor had died under the walls of Moscow on the 7th of this month; that in order to replace him it had been considered appropriate to create a Council with General Moreau as president; that these measures had been taken to save what remained of the army; that the cohorts would be disbanded; that in the meantime troops would receive 20 sous a day; then followed a great number of promotions to superior ranks and the destitution of several people of the highest rank, notably General Count Hullin, commander of the 1st Military Division and of Paris and General Doucet, chief of the general staff.

The news of the death of our emperor made such an impression on us that we remained stupefied and speechless for several minutes. This silence was only interrupted by the almost unanimous cry of: what a tragedy!

The reading of the proclamation had hardly come to an end than the general put himself at our head and led us to several streets in Paris.

On the way, he opened the prisons of the Force and released three personalities who had long ago been proscribed and rejected by society, one of whom had been General Moreau’s aide-de-camp.

The latter then took command and led us to Their Excellencies the Prefect [Pasquier] and the Minister of Police [Savary] who were arrested and escorted to prison after they had been beaten around, without any respect for their rank.

For his part, the general [Malet] had left with a detachment of the cohort for Count Hullin’s, undoubtedly with the intention of murdering him; and in effect he fired a shot to his head and leaving him for dead retired to do the same to General Doucet, but the latter had the presence of mind to rush at him at the moment he fired and called his dragoons who ran to him, disarmed the general and chained him up.

The detachment from our cohort made no effort to defend the general.

Soon the general’s other accomplices were arrested and we have just been told that this morning’s proclamation was false and that the emperor was alive.

We received this happy news with repeated acclamations of ‘Long live the emperor,’ exclamations which proved our love for our sovereign.

We were also told that we had been deceived by conspirators and we were advised to return immediately to our barracks.

During this time the Imperial Guard had received thirty cartridges each man with orders to attack us on the Place de Grève if we showed the least delay in returning, but since we were neither rebels nor conspirators they did not need to resort to violence to make us obey; we returned to the barracks satisfied to have learnt that our emperor was well, but sorry to have been led into error by scoundrels who wanted to make us the victims of their ambitious projects; for if they had succeeded in the murders they had wanted to commit we would have seen those terrible times reappear when anarchy reigned and France would have been prey to factions and the most bloody revolution.

Fortunately the crime was discovered in time and the police was reestablished. Our cohort was the only one whose name has been marked by an ineffaceable stain. Most of our leaders have been arrested. They are accused of taking part in the plot. As for us we simply obeyed, and even though we have nothing to reproach ourselves, it is nonetheless true that fingers will always be pointed at us; the truth is, our innocence remains intact and we do not fear for one minute being reproached with unfaithfulness to our emperor and the patrie.

It is as a result of these unfortunate circumstances that we are leaving Paris only too happy if a more disagreeable punishment is not inflicted on us.

Count Hullin has not been mortally wounded. I will give you more details later; from now on write to me at Versailles.

I am well and embrace you all. M. and Mme Barthélemy and your goddaughter and her husband have asked me to tell you a thousand things.

My cousin is doing wonderfully.

My respects to mama.

[Signed] Pourcelle

Source: Jacques Godechot (ed.), ‘Lettres de conscrits de 1812 et 1813’, in Annales historiques de la Révolution française 44 (1972), pp. 627–30.https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781032618814/e9ac31eb-0a68-4fdc-b417-e6e5b1e67c6c/content/fig28_Unfig_001.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>