as in our times, by confounding fortuitous events with consequences
resulting from preconcerted plans and well-organized designs.

Only rogues can disseminate and fools believe that the disgrace of
Moreau, and the execution of the Duc d'Enghien, of Pichegru, and Georges,
were necessary as footsteps to Bonaparte's Imperial throne; and that
without the treachery of Mehee de la Touche, and the conspiracy he
pretended to have discovered, France would still have been ruled by a
First Consul. It is indeed true, that this plot is to be counted (as the
imbecility of Melas, which lost the battle of Marengo) among those
accidents presenting themselves apropos to serve the favourite of fortune
in his ambitious views; but without it, he would equally have been hailed
an Emperor of the French in May, 1804. When he came from the coast, in
the preceding winter, and was convinced of the impossibility of making
any impression on the British Islands with his flotilla, he convoked his
confidential Senators, who then, with Talleyrand, settled the Senatus
Consultum which appeared five months afterwards. Mehee's correspondence
with Mr. Drake was then known to him; but he and the Minister of Police
were both unacquainted with the residence and arrival of Pichegru and
Georges in France, and of their connection with Moreau; the particulars
of which were first disclosed to them in the February following, when
Bonaparte had been absent from his army of England six weeks. The
assumption of the Imperial dignity procured him another decent
opportunity of offering his olive-branch to those who had caused his
laurels to wither, and by whom, notwithstanding his abuse, calumnies, and
menaces, he would have been more proud to be saluted Emperor than by all
the nations upon the Continent. His vanity, interest, and policy, all
required this last degree of supremacy and elevation at that period.

Bonaparte had so well penetrated the weak side of Moreau's character