Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud (Being secret letters from a gentleman at Paris to a nobleman in London) — Volume 6 by Stewarton
page 48 of 71 (67%)
page 48 of 71 (67%)
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Prince Regent not only admitted him to the royal table, but stood sponsor
to his child by a wife who had been two years his mistress before he was divorced from his first spouse, and with whom the Prince's consort, a Bourbon Princess and a daughter of a King, was also obliged to associate. Avaricious as well as unprincipled, he pursued, as an Ambassador, his former business of a smuggler, and, instead of being ashamed of a discovery, proclaimed it publicly, deserted his post, was not reprimanded in France, but was, without apology, received back again in Portugal. His conduct afterwards could not be surprising. He only insisted that some faithful and able Ministers should be removed, and others appointed in their place, more complaisant and less honest. New plans of Bonaparte, however, delivered Portugal from this plague; but what did it obtain in return?--another grenadier Ambassador, less brutal but more cunning, as abandoned but more dissimulating. Gendral Junot is the son of a corn-chandler near the corn-market of this capital, and was a shopman to his father in 1789. Having committed some pilfering, he was turned out of the parental dwelling, and therefore lodged himself as an inmate of the Jacobin Club. In 1792, he entered, as a soldier, in a regiment of the army marching against the county of Nice; and, in 1793, he served before Toulon, where he became acquainted with Bonaparte, whom he, in January, 1794, assisted in despatching the unfortunate Toulonese; and with whom, also, in the autumn of the same year, he, therefore, was arrested as a terrorist. In 1796, when commander-in-chief, Bonaparte made Junot his aide-de-camp; and in that capacity he accompanied him, in 1798, to Egypt. There, as well as in Italy, he fought bravely, but had no particular opportunity of |
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