1800.
Police on police--False information--Dexterity of Fouche--Police agents deceived--Money ill applied--Inutility of political police--Bonaparte's opinion--General considerations--My appointment to the Prefecture of police.
Before taking up his quarters in the Tuileries the First Consul organised his secret police, which was intended, at the same time, to be the rival or check upon Fouche's police. Duroc and Moncey were at first the Director of this police; afterwards Davonst and Junot. Madame Bonaparte called this business a vile system of espionage. My remarks on the inutility of the measure were made in vain. Bonaparte had the weakness at once to fear Fouche and to think him necessary. Fouche, whose talents at this trade are too well known to need my approbation, soon discovered this secret institution, and the names of all the subaltern agents employed by the chief agents. It is difficult to form an idea of the nonsense, absurdity, and falsehood contained in the bulletins drawn up by the noble and ignoble agents of the police. I do not mean to enter into details on this nauseating subject; and I shall only trespass on the reader's patience by relating, though it be in anticipation, one fact which concerns myself, and which will prove that spies and their wretched reports cannot be too much distrusted.
During the second year of the Consulate we were established at Malmaison.
Junot had a very large sum at his disposal for the secret police of the capital. He gave 3000 francs of it to a wretched manufacturer of bulletins; the remainder was expended on the police of his stable and his table. In reading one of these daily bulletins I saw the following lines:
"M. de Bourrienne went last night to Paris. He entered an hotel of the Faubourg St. Germain, Rue de Varenne, and there, in the course of a very animated discussion, he gave it to be understood that the First Consul wished to make himself King."
As it happens, I never had opened my mouth, either respecting what Bonaparte had said to me before we went to Egypt or respecting his other frequent conversations with me of the same nature, during this period of his Consulship. I may here observe, too, that I never quitted, nor ever could quit Malmaison for a moment. At any time, by night or day, I was subject to be called for by the First Consul, and, as very often was the case, it so happened that on the night in question he had dictated to me notes and instructions until three o'clock in the morning.
Junot came every day to Malmaison at eleven o'clock in the morning. I called him that day into my cabinet, when I happened to be alone. "Have you not read your bulletin?" said I, "Yes, I have."--"Nay, that is impossible."--"Why?"--"Because, if you had, you would have suppressed an absurd story which relates to me."--"Ah!" he replied, "I am sorry on your account, but I can depend on my agent, and I will not alter a word of his report." I then told him all that had taken place on that night; but he was obstinate, and went away unconvinced.
Every morning I placed all the papers which the First Consul had to read on his table, and among the, first was Junot's report. The First Consul entered and read it; on coming to the passage concerning me he began to smile.
"Have you read this bulletin?"--"yes, General."--"What an ass that Junot is! It is a long time since I have known that."--" How he allows himself to be entrapped! Is he still here?"--"I believe so. I have just seen him, and made observations to him, all in good part, but he would hear nothing."--"Tell him to come here." When Junot appeared Bonaparte began --"Imbecile that you are! how could you send me such reports as these?
Do you not read them? How shall I be sure that you will not compromise other persons equally unjustly? I want positive facts, not inventions.
It is some time since your agent displeased me; dismiss him directly."
Junot wanted to justify himself, but Bonaparte cut him short--"Enough! -It is settled!"
I related what had passed to Fouche, who told me that, wishing to amuse himself at Junot's expense, whose police agents only picked up what they heard related in coffeehouses, gaming-houses, and the Bourse, he had given currency to this absurd story, which Junot had credited and reported, as he did many other foolish tales. Fouche often caught the police of the Palace in the snares he laid for them, and thus increased his own credit.
This circumstance, and others of the same nature, induced the First Consul to attach less importance than at first he had to his secret police, which seldom reported anything but false and silly stories.
That wretched police! During the time I was with him it embittered his life, and often exasperated him against his wife, his relations, and friends.
--[Bourrienne, it must be remembered, was a sufferer from the vigilance of this police.]--Rapp, who was as frank as he was brave, tells us in his Memoirs (p. 233) that when Napoleon, during his retreat from Moscow, while before Smolenski, heard of the attempt of Mallet, he could not get over the adventure of the Police Minister, Savary, and the Prefect of Police, Pasquier. "Napoleon," says Rapp, "was not surprised that these wretches (he means the agents of the police) who crowd the salons and the taverns, who insinuate themselves everywhere and obstruct everything, should not have found out the plot, but he could not understand the weakness of the Duc de Rovigo. The very police which professed to divine everything had let themselves be taken by surprise." The police possessed no foresight or faculty of prevention. Every silly thing that transpired was reported either from malice or stupidity. What was heard was misunderstood or distorted in the recital, so that the only result of the plan was mischief and confusion.
