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Memoirs of Napoleon — Volume 07 by Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
page 61 of 105 (58%)
most infamous treachery that a man can be guilty of. The official police
had at last ascertained that he was in Paris, but they could not learn
the place of his concealment. The police agents had in vain exerted all
their efforts to discover him, when an old friend, who had given him his
last asylum, offered to deliver him up for 100,000 crowns. This infamous
fellow gave an enact description of the chamber which Pichegru occupied
in the Rue de Chabanais, and in consequence of his information Comminges,
commissary of police, proceeded thither, accompanied by some determined
men. Precautions were necessary, because it was known that Pichegru was
a man of prodigious bodily strength, and that besides, as he possessed
the means of defence, he would not allow himself to be taken without
making a desperate resistance. The police entered his chamber by using
false keys, which the man who had sold him had the baseness to get made
for them. A light was burning on his night table. The party of police,
directed by Comminges, overturned the table, extinguished the light, and
threw themselves on the general, who struggled with all his strength, and
cried out loudly. They were obliged to bind him, and in this state the
conqueror of Holland was removed to the Temple, out of which he was
destined never to come alive.

It must be owned that Pichegru was far from exciting the same interest as
Moreau. The public, and more especially the army, never pardoned him for
his negotiations with the Prince de Conde prior to the 18th Fructidor.
However, I became acquainted with a trait respecting him while he was in
Paris which I think does him much honour. A son of M. Lagrenee, formerly
director of the French Academy at Rome, had been one of Pichegru's aides
de camp. This young man, though he had obtained the rank of captain,
resigned on the banishment of his general, and resumed the pencil, which
he had lad aside for the sword. Pichegru, while he was concealed in
Paris; visited his former aide de camp, who insisted upon giving him an
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