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rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_690b9536-723e-5578-9a8a-9bd332f70594">[227] Tandy, addressing Elliot, said:—

      The illiberal attack which you have made upon me in your speech of the 24th of November last, in the British House of Commons, is the cause of my troubling you with this. My 'ignorance and insignificance,' which you have painted in such glowing colours, ought, with a man of sense, to have been my protection; but you have proved yourself as deficient in this, as in point of good manners, which is the true criterion of a gentleman.

      You cannot, sir, but know (for you pretend to be a man of information) that I hold a high rank in the army of this great and generous nation, which places me upon a footing with the proudest peer of your island. You know, also, that the honour of a soldier is dearer to him than life; yet, with these facts before you, you have dared to traduce my character, and have attempted to affix a stigma to my name which nothing can now wipe out but the blood of one of us. A French officer must not be insulted with impunity, and you, as well as the country which gave me birth, and that which has adopted me, shall find that I will preserve the honour of my station. I, therefore, demand of you to name some town on the Continent where you will be found, accompanied by your friend and your pistols—giving me sufficient time to leave this, and arrive at the place appointed.

      Napper Tandy, General of Division.

      Bourdeaux, December 12, 1802.

      Eight weeks elapsed. Elliot failed to reply, and Tandy, in accordance with the fashion of the day, proclaimed him 'a calumniator, a liar, and a poltroon!' This fierce climax was preceded by a more temperate tone.

      The question in debate [he said, when Elliot assailed him] was for laying a tax on Great Britain, in which I, as a French citizen, could not possibly be implicated, and, therefore, it is evident that I was wantonly dragged in for the sole purpose of calumny and abuse. Such conduct was unmanly, as no brave man would attack a defenceless person, much less an absent one.

Ignorant of the source to which his betrayal was due, it did not occur to Tandy that the speeches of Elliot and others may have aimed at diverting suspicion from their real informant. Tandy, in reply, advanced merely the suspicion that the charge of being an informer was fulminated to excite the jealousy and disgust of his adopted country France, which, unlike America, had opened her arms to afford him protection.[228]

      

The wearing worry of Tandy's later life had sapped his strength, and left him sensitively open to hostile shafts, which his conduct provoked. His vanity was commensurate with his patriotism, and in his stoutest day was easily wounded. He gradually sank, and died at Bordeaux in 1803. 'His private character,' writes Barrington, 'furnished no ground to doubt the integrity of his public one.' He died, as he had lived, a staunch Protestant.[229]

      Much has been written of the wonderful escape from Kilmainham Gaol of Corbet, afterwards a general in the French service, and one of the prisoners captured with Tandy at Hamburg, and thence removed to Dublin. Miss Edgeworth was so much struck by this romantic escape, that she made it the leading incident of her best novel. But, considering the subtle international difficulties that had arisen, and with the suggestion of Under-Secretary Marsden before us, it is a question how far Corbet's escape may not have been connived at by Castlereagh.

      The sermon which Napoleon preached to the Hamburg deputies on their infringement of the law of nations was in the mouths of his admirers for years after; but it lost in impressiveness by his own violation of the neutral territory of Baden, when, on the night of March 17, 1804, he sent a strong guard to seize and carry off to France the Duc d'Enghien. After a hasty trial by court-martial, and on unproven charges of conspiracy, he was cruelly put to death in the Castle of Vincennes. In the heated discussions to which this outrage gave rise, Buonaparte more than once quoted the case of Tandy, and feebly sought to find in the past conduct of Hamburg a precedent and justification.

      Thomas Addis Emmet accused him of coldness and indecision as regards the long threatened invasion of Ireland, because, instead of steering for Erin in 1798, he changed his plan and went to Egypt. The arrest of Tandy in Hamburg rekindled Napoleon's hostile feeling, and shortly after the death of that general he resolved to carry out comprehensively his oft-mooted design.

The 'Correspondence of Napoleon'[230] contains a letter to Berthier, dated September 27, 1804. He says that an expedition to Ireland had been decided upon; that 18,000 men for that purpose were ready at Brest; that a simultaneous landing was to be attempted in Kent; while in Ireland the French army would march straight on Dublin. Meanwhile 200,000 men were encamped at Boulogne; but hostile plans collapsed with the smash of the French fleet at Trafalgar. A few weeks later the so-called 'Army of England' traversed the banks of the blue Danube instead of the Thames. General Mack capitulated at Ulm; Francis of Austria fled, and Napoleon's legions entered Vienna.

      FOOTNOTES:

       Table of Contents

      [190] The words of the French writer will be found at p. 78, infra.

      [191] The London Courier of September 14, 1799, displays the following translation of a letter addressed to a Paris journal: 'Citizens—The Redacteur has said, and many other Journalists have repeated it, that Napper Tandy had been given up by the Senate of Hamburg. I declare to you, Citizens, that not a word is said of this in any letters received in any of the Banking houses in Paris, nor in those which I myself have received. I hasten to give you this information, because the Public ought never to be deceived.

       (Signed) 'Daniel C. Meyer,

       'Consul General from Hamburgh.'

[192] Castlereagh Papers, i. 405. The letter, of which this is a bit, was written by a spy who contrived to accompany Tandy as a sort of aide-de-camp, and was on board the 'Anacreon' during the voyage. Wickham divulges merely his initial, 'O,' but the reader will find his name and career successfully traced in the Appendix.

[193] Cox's Irish Magazine, January 1809, pp. 32−4.

[194] It will be shown, later on, that an Irish spy named 'Durnin' resided at Hamburg.

[195] See letter to Talleyrand, ante, p. 27. Some persons supposed that because Duckett lived at Hamburg like Turner, he used that great gangway to France for espionage. In the Castlereagh Papers (ii. 6) Duckett is described as 'Secretary to Léonard Bourdon.' Bourdon is noticed in the Nouvelle Biog. Génèrale, was 'l'agent du Directoire à Hambourg, d'où il fit partir les émigrés.'

[196] Sir James Crawford, British minister at Hamburg from 1798 to 1803. Crawford afterwards filled a similar post at Copenhagen, where Reynolds, the Kildare informer, is also found acting as British consul. Reynolds's betrayals were long subsequent to those of Turner, and of a wholly different sort. His evidence was given in court publicly. The editor of the Cornwallis Papers states that Crawford died on July 9, 1839; but Mr. Ross confounds him with an utterly different man. The Black Book, published in 1820, records (p. Скачать книгу