grape-shot, had been placed upon the road; the victims were numerous, and
the assassins escaped.

The general fright was of use to the anger and emotion of the First
Consul. The enemies of Fouche denounced a police everywhere favorable to
the old Jacobins. The suspicions of Bonaparte were all directed against
these known and furious enemies of his person and his policy. He was
enraged in his irritation, and disdained, according to his custom, the
legal forms and the justice of the tribunals. "We must make the number of
the convicted equal to the number of their victims," he said, "and
transport all their adherents. I will not have all quarters of Paris
successively undermined. There are always Septembrisers, miscreants
covered with crimes, in square battalion against every successive
government. It is necessary to make an end of them." Fouche, silent but
imperturbable, for a long time on the traces of the conspiracy, persisted
in seeing in the infernal machine the work of the agents of Chouannerie.
The Council of State proposed to institute a military commission and
authorize the First Consul to remove the men who appeared dangerous.
Bonaparte was irritated by this slowness of justice. "The action of a
special tribunal will be slow," said he; "it will not get hold of the
truly guilty. It is not a question of judicial metaphysics. There are in
France 10,000 miscreants who have persecuted all honest men, and who are
steeped in blood. They are not all culpable in the same degree, far from
it. Strike the chiefs boldly and the soldiers will disperse. There is no
middle course here; it is necessary to pardon all, like Augustus, or else
there must be a prompt and terrible vengeance proportionate to the crime.
It is necessary to shoot fifteen or twenty of these miscreants, and
transport 200 of them. I am so convinced of the necessity of purging
France from these sanguinary dregs that I am ready to constitute myself
sole tribunal--to bring forward the guilty, examine them, judge them, and