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Memoirs of Napoleon — Volume 07 by Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
page 59 of 105 (56%)
barbarity to stain himself with the blood of a Bourbon, the Duc
d'Enghien.

Religion might make me pardon an assassin, but the tyrant of my
people must always be my enemy.

In the present age it is more glorious to merit a sceptre than to
possess one.

Providence, for incomprehensible reasons, may condemn me to end my
days in exile, but neither my contemporaries nor posterity shall
ever have to say, that in the period of adversity I showed my self
unworthy of occupying the throne of my ancestors.
LOUIS

The death of the Due d'Enghien was a horrible episode in the proceedings
of the great trial which was then preparing, and which was speedily
followed by the accession of Bonaparte to the Imperial dignity. It was
not one of the least remarkable anomalies of the epoch to see the
judgment by which criminal enterprises against the Republic were
condemned pronounced in the name of the Emperor who had so evidently
destroyed that Republic. This anomaly certainly was not removed by the
subtlety, by the aid of which he at first declared himself Emperor of the
Republic, as a preliminary to his proclaiming himself Emperor of the
French. Setting aside the means, it must be acknowledged that it is
impossible not to admire the genius of Bonaparte, his tenacity in
advancing towards his object, and that adroit employment of suppleness
and audacity which made him sometimes dare fortune, sometimes avoid
difficulties which he found insurmountable, to arrive, not merely at the
throne of Louis XVI., but at the reconstructed throne of Charlemagne.
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