The Duc d’Enghien: a Murdered Duke

20 Monday May 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in 19th-Century France, History, Literature

Tags

Alexandre Dumas, Émigrés, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Duc d'Enghien, French Revolution, Honoré de Balzac, Leo Tolstoy, Les Chouans, Napoleon, Quibéron

Un Épisode de l’affaire de Quibéron, 1795 by Paul-Émile Boutigny (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On 21 March 1804, aged 31, His Serene Highness, the Duke of Enghien, born on 2 August 1772, was executed by single firearm. He was an émigré, but dragoons captured him and brought him to Strasbourg on 15 March 1804. He was the grand-son of Louis XIV, by Madame de Montespan, and the son of Louise Marie Thérèse Bathilde d’Orléans, the Duke of Orléans’ sister. Philippe duc d’Orléans, or Philippe Égalité, the duc d’Enghien’s uncle, voted in favour of his brother’s, Louis XVI, execution, by guillotine.

A Portrait of the Three Consuls, from left to right, Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès, Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles-François Lebrun, duc de Plaisance (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Duc d’Enghien was a prince of the blood (Prince du Sang) and, therefore, a possible heir to the throne of France. He was accused of participating in a Royalist plot (Cadoudal -Pichegru) to defeat the Consulate (18 Brumaire [9 November] 1799 –1804), part of the Napoleonic era (c. 1795 – 1815 [Congress of Vienna]). He was tried for the sake of appearances, Napoleon having decided he had to be eliminated. D’Enghien had been the commander of a corps of émigrés during the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802), but he had not played a role in the above-mentioned 1804 conspiracy. By the time the duke was captured, he had married Charlotte de Rohan (25 October 1767 – 1 May 1841), privately and in near secrecy, and the couple lived in Ettenheim, in Baden, on the Rhine. (See Duc d’Enghien, Wikipedia.)

Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon-Condé, duc d’Enghien (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There were of course many Royalists among the French during the French Revolution (1789-1794). Particularly noteworthy is a failed invasion of France called l’affaire Quibéron portrayed above by artist Paul-Émile Boutigny (1853 -1929). On 23 June 1795, émigrés landed at Quibéron to lend support to the Vendéens, who had long fought Revolutionary forces, and the chouannerie, royalist uprisings. The émigrés hoped they could raise support in western France, end the French Revolution and re-establish the monarchy. By 21 July 1795, they had been routed.

As for the duke, nothing could be done to save him. If Joséphine de Beauharnais,[i] Napoléon I‘s first wife, could not dissuade her husband, born Napoleone Buonaparte, no one could. Joseph Fouché, 1st Duc d’Otrante (known as the Duke of Otranto), Napoleon’s chief of police, said of the execution that “it was worse than a crime, it was a mistake:” “C’est pire qu’un crime, c’est une faute.“ The crime, for it was a crime, was imputed, probably wrongly, to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, one of history’s foremost survivors. However, if the murder of the young duc d’Enghien is remembered to this day, it is as an obvious injustice, one that lingered in the mind of great writers.

The “Chouans” and the Duke in literature: Balzac, Dumas and Leo Tolstoy

In Les Chouans, a 1829 novel, French writer Honoré de Balzac (20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) immortalized the royalist chouannerie, uprisings in western France and, by the same token, the royalist Vendéan insurrection. For his part, the duc d’Enghien was bestowed life eternal by Leo Tolstoy (9 September 1828 – 20 November 1910), Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy. In the first book of War and Peace, Tolstoy has the vicomte de Mortemart, a French émigré, say that:

“‘[a]fter the murder of the duc, even the most partial ceased to regard [Buonaparte] as a hero. If to some people he ever was a hero, after the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and one hero less on earth.’ The vicomte said that the duc d’Enghien had perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were particular reasons for Buonaparte’s hatred of him.”

There is an anecdote according to which, during one of his fainting spells,[ii] Napoléon was at the mercy of the duke of Enghien who spared him. The execusion of the duc d’Enghien who spared him. The execusion of the duc d’Enghien might well have been Napolèons’ brief put personal French Revolution. He needed to kill an aristocrat. Alexandre Dumas, père (24 July 1802 – 5 December 1870) featured the duc d’Enghien in his The Last Cavalier (Le Chevalier de Sainte-Hermine), unfinished at the time of Dumas’ death, but now published and translated into English:

“[T]he dominant sentiment in Bonaparte’s mind at that moment was neither fear nor vengeance, but rather the desire for all of France to realise that Bourbon blood, so sacred to Royalist partisans, was no more sacred to him than the blood of any other citizen in the Republic.

‘Well, then’, asked Cambacérès,[iii] ‘what have you decided?’

‘It’s simple’, said Napoleon, ‘We shall kidnap the Duc d’Enghien and be done with it.'”[iv]

Let these words be the conclusion of this post. The duc d’Enghien was a scapegoat.

Henri de La Rochejacquelein at the Battle of Cholet in 1793 by Paul-Émile Boutigny (10 March 1853 – 27 June 1929), Musée d’art et d’histoire de Cholet.

_________________________

[i] Napoleon divorced Joséphine in 1810 so he could marry Marie Louise d’Autriche, the future Duchess of Parma, who gave him a son. Napoléon wanted un ventre, a fertile woman.

[ii] Napoleon had epileptic seizures. One of Talleyrand’s duties was to remove Napoléon from public sight when seizures occurred.

[iii] Jean-Jacques Régis de Cambacérès, 1st Duke of Parma, is the author of the Napoleonic Code, a fine document still in use in Quebec.

[iv] See Duc d’Enghien, Wikipedia.

Hector Berlioz (11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869)

Grande Messe des Morts

: Crop of a carte de visite photo of Hector Berlioz by Franck, Paris, c. 1855 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

20 May 2013

WordPress

The Louisiana Purchase Treaty

19 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in United States

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

France, Louis Jolliet, Louisiana, Louisiana Purchase, Monroe Doctrine, Napoleon, Paris, United State

Ceremony at Place d’Armes, New Orleans* marking transfer of Louisiana to the United States, 10 March 1804, as depicted by Thure de Thulstrup.

*Jackson Square

Thure de Thulstrup (April 5, 1848 – June 9, 1930), born Bror Thure Thulstrup

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

France controlled this vast area from 1699 until 1762, the year it gave the
territory to its ally Spain. Under Napoléon Bonaparte, France took back the
territory in 1800 in the apparent hope of building an empire in North America. Here are the main dates:

Louisiana Purchase Treaty: 30 April 1803

The territory Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette, S.J. (a Jesuit) explored in 1673 and claimed for France would be controlled by France from 1699 until 1762.[i]
In 1762, the French gave the territory to Spain.
Napoleon took it back in 1800, hoping to build an Empire in North America.
Three years later, in 1803, Napoléon sold Louisiana to the United States.

In 1673, explorers Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette traveled down the Mississippi to within 435 miles (700 kilometers) of the Gulf of Mexico and claimed both sides of the River (all the way to the Rocky Mountains) for France. The territory was given to Spain in 1762, but reclaimed by Napoléon in 1800.

However, a mere three years after the territory was reclaimed by France, it was sold to the United States for 15 million dollars. The Louisiana Purchase Treaty was signed on April 30, 1803 during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826), the third President of the United States. The Treaty’s main American negotiator was Robert R. Livingstone, then US Minister to France. This is what he had to say after the Treaty was signed:

We have lived long, but this is the noblest work of our whole lives… From this day the United States take their place among the powers of the first rank.

(please click on the picture to enlarge it)

Louisiana (green overlay)

The Story

Upon learning that Napoléon sold Louisiana, one is baffled. Moreover, given that Napoléon sold it for 15 million dollars, one can easily jump to the conclusion that Napoléon knew nothing about real estate and made terrible mistakes on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet, it may be that Bonaparte did what he had to do.

When the US approached Napoléon, which it did, all it was asking for was a right of way or a strip of land to the south of Louisiana which would have linked the eastern part of the current United States to its western part. The US was somewhat landlocked. However, Napoléon reflected that the United States could buy not only the very south of Louisiana, but all of it, for what we would call “peanuts,” i.e. very little money.

In fact, one wonders whether or not Napoléon had discussed the matter with Talleyrand. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, prince de Bénévent, then prince de Talleyrand (1754–1838), was Napoléon’s éminence grise or right-hand man. Well, Talleyrand actually negotiated the Louisiana Purchase Treaty.

It would appear that Napoléon needed to purchase ships so he could conquer the world, with the exception of what would become the United States of America. Fifteen million dollars could buy him a fleet. It also appears France had debts to repay. However, we cannot exclude early warning signs of the development of the rather pompous “Manifest Destiny.” In the not-so-distant future, the territory France sold would probably have been conquered by an expansionist United States, in which case France would have lost Louisiana. It at least earned itself a consolation prize.

(please click on the picture to enlarge it)

Louisiana extending to the Rocky Mountains

The Monroe Doctrine (1823)

For instance, on December 2, 1823, the United States introduced a policy known as the Monroe Doctrine, after President James Monroe (April 28, 1758 – July 4, 1831). The Monroe Doctrine was a document authored by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams (July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) who succeeded James Monroe as President of the United States (POTUS) between 1825 and 1829. The document stated that European countries, or any other country for that matter, could no longer colonize South or North America. Could he have been so bold had the US been considerably smaller? I doubt it.

Therefore, the Louisiana Purchase Treaty, signed on April 30, 1803, may have led, in part, to a somewhat inflated view on the part of the United States concerning its place among nations. When Livingstone stated that “[f]rom this day the United States take their place among the powers of the first rank,” he was giving the US a glorious future. I do not know whether or not this notion has been expressed in textbooks on the history of the United States, but by selling Louisiana, Napoléon played a major role in empowering the United States of America.

Conclusion

In 1763, under the of Treaty of Paris, France chose to keep Guadeloupe and ceded Canada, Acadie and territory east of the Mississippi to the British. Later, in 1803, under the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, at fifteen million dollars, France chose to “give,” or nearly so, Louisiana to the United States.

Père Marquette and Louis Jolliet would have felt betrayed by the Treaty of Paris (1763)and the Louisiana Purchase Treaty. Napoléon Bonaparte removed from North America all that was left of France’s presence on the North-American continent, a continent French explorers, missionaries and Canadiens voyageurs had opened in its near totality, or almost.

* * *

Paris at the very end of April is a delightful city. All that was old is new again. But Mr Livingstone, with all due respect, could you really tell your fellow nation crafters that acquiring Louisiana was “the noblest work of [y]our whole lives?” I would agree, however, that April 30, 1803 was a very fine day in the history of the United States of America and that all parties involved had something to gain, except for the people whose motherland ceased to be France, for better of for worse, with the stroke of a pen.

Territories Gained by the United States

Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska; parts of Minnesota that were west of the Mississippi River; most of North Dakota; most of South Dakota; northeastern New Mexico; northern Texas; the portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Continental Divide; Louisiana west of the Mississippi River, including the city of New Orleans; and small portions of land that would eventually become part of the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.