The Man who Killed the King Read online

  The Peace of Versailles in 1783 had put an end to a desperate war, in which Britain had stood alone against the world and fought it to a standstill. France, Holland and Spain had actively combined against her to aid the American colonists in their War of Independence, while Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Prussia and Austria had ranged themselves with the enemies of the mother country in a pact of Armed Neutrality. It was in the December of that year that young Billy Pitt had assumed the reins of government. Britain lay exhausted, nearly bankrupt and entirely isolated.

  With his genius for figures he straightened out the finances, and with incredible industry set about the revival of commerce. Britain was soon selling more goods to her late enemies in the new United States than she had ever done before, and a commercial treaty was entered into with France, which, but for the Revolution, might have for ever buried the hatchet between these two great hereditary enemies. By firmness at the right moment a war over the Dutch Netherlands was averted and that country was, together with Prussia, bound to Britain in a Triple Alliance that once more secured a balance of power in Europe. Again at the risk of war Pitt had curbed the ambitions of Spain and secured the Canadian Pacific coast for future British colonists. By adopting a strong policy at the Convention of Reichenbach he had stopped a war between Austria and Prussia, then by a skilfully conceived blend of inducements and threats he had in turn persuaded Russia and Sweden to make peace at Werelö, Austria and Turkey at Sistova, and Russia and Turkey at Jassy. In eight years of remarkable government he had brought the blessing of peace to all Europe and restored Britain to a marvellous prosperity, making her once again the most powerful and respected nation in the world.

  He was still only a little over thirty: a tall, thin, shy, retiring man, who presented to the world a cold, aristocratic mien. No woman played any part in his life, and even those brief periods of relaxation that he permitted himself, when in the company of his few intimates he showed humanity and charm, were becoming rarer as the years went by. Success could not spoil him, because from his earliest youth he had felt a conviction that he would succeed his great father at the helm of the ship of state and that he was born only to rule. Yet his now unassailable position had made him still more dictatorial in manner.

  Nevertheless, he greeted Roger courteously, waved him to a chair and, as was his custom, poured him a glass of port. Then he said briskly. “May I take it, Mr. Brook, that your coming here today indicates your willingness to receive my instructions?”

  Roger bowed. “I have been too long inactive, sir, and in view of my past refusals am the more grateful to you for the renewed offer to re-enter your service. I am willing to go wherever you may choose to send me.”

  “Good! We will forget then the disappointments you have caused me in the past two years. Your earlier activities, coupled with a flair for handling difficult situations skilfully, provide a combination peculiarly suited to the matter I have in mind; and to be honest I know of no one else who would stand even a chance of succeeding in this delicate business.”

  “Indeed, you flatter me, sir.”

  Mr. Pitt coldly waved the suggestion aside. “I am not given to such practices. Without belittling your courage and resource, I am influenced principally by the fact that in the past you have acquired a personal background which I believe can now be exploited to serve my ends. Your knowledge of the genesis and opening scenes of the Revolution in France is so extensive that I need waste no time in going over old ground. It suffices to state that since you left that country no change has occurred to affect vitally the limited authority that remained vested in the Monarchy, or in the situation of the Royal Family. In October ’89 you were a witness to their being forcibly brought from Versailles to Paris by a multitude of their rebellious subjects, to become virtually prisoners in the Palace of the Tuileries. There, for close on three years, they have remained, and by a servile complaisance to the wishes of the National Assembly the King has, to all appearances, succeeded in gradually regaining the affections of his people. I have, however, recently received reliable information that a new and alarming turn of events is expected to take place in Paris towards the end of this month.”

  Roger’s eyes widened with sudden apprehension. With the Prime Minister’s next words the bombshell fell.

  “Therefore, as soon as your affairs permit, I desire you to proceed to France.”

  * * * * *

  “France!” ejaculated Roger. “Sir, pray allow me to remind you of the circumstances in which I left that country.”

  “I remember them well,” replied the Prime Minister calmly. “You had, a few days previously, denounced to the mob the Spanish Envoy Extraordinary, upon which they hanged him from a lamp-post. A horrible affair, but one that enabled you shortly afterwards to render a signal service to Britain.”

  “Yes, yes. I know!” Roger’s words came tumbling out in a spate of agitation. “But surely you realise that hideous business makes my return impossible?”

  “Why so?”

  “Because it will have caused all decent people there to regard me as a murderer.”

  “Then you will find yourself in a great company, since half the public men in France have stained their hands with blood since ’89.”

  “Perhaps, but in the vast majority of cases only indirectly. In any event, the manner in which I brought about the death of Don Diego Sidonia y Ulloa is bound to prove the most appalling handicap in any business I might attempt.”

  “I judge you mistaken in that. In the two years since he died scores of unfortunate people have been murdered by the Paris mobs. The details of your affair will have been forgotten by now, except by those to whom as a matter of policy you might think fit to recall them deliberately.”

  “My reappearance in Paris would recall them to everyone. I beg you, sir, to make use of me in some other country—to send me anywhere in the world, but not to France.”

  The Prime Minister shook his head. “No, Mr. Brook. France it must be, since ’tis there that lies the work for which I cannot find any other man so well qualified as yourself. William Augustus Miles, whom you will recall, still serves me conscientiously with reports of the doings at the Jacobin Club and a Colonel George Munro now furnishes my cousin Grenville with even more lively commentaries on events in France; but you alone have personal contact with the minds that direct both the Royalist and Revolutionary policies.”

  “But, sir,” Roger pleaded, “you speak of the past. Is it not obvious to you that by my act I rendered the greater part of those contacts of no value whatever for the future?”

  “In that I do not agree,” came the quiet reply. “Unless marriage has rusted your imagination you will soon think of a story to explain away that old affair to those who may hold it against you. On the other hand it should serve you as a trump card in swiftly gaining the confidence of the extremists. In fact I had this last promising possibility particularly in mind when I sent for you.”

  Roger shrugged unhappily. “Distasteful as the rôle would be, I could easily present myself as a blood-stained sans-culotte if that is all you require of me.”

  “By no means! In ’89 you were persona grata with Queen Marie Antoinette. I desire you to see her in secret and urge a certain policy upon her.”

  “The Queen! God forbid, sir! She must not only know what I did, but must attribute it to the basest personal vengeance. She’d not forgive me in a thousand years, and I’d stand no more chance than a wild beast of being admitted to her presence.”

  “Again I disagree. Since she left Versailles the pride of that poor Austrian princess has been sadly chastened. In her dire extremity she even formed a secret alliance with Mirabeau, despite the previous horror she had publicly proclaimed at his profligacy and venality.”

  Momentarily forgetting his distress, Roger gave a quick smile and remarked, “As I had the honour to be the first to inform you, sir—although you refused to credit so astounding a development at the time.”

  “True! I admit it
,” the Prime Minister smiled back. “But she has gone further since, in accepting the services of Barnave and the Lameths: men who all participated in hounding on the mob to commit the first excesses of the Revolution. I tell you, much water has flowed under the bridges of the Seine since you brought about Don Diego’s death. Marie Antoinette will not have forgotten your past services to her, and she is most desperately in need of friends. I’ll warrant you that she’ll be quick enough to dismiss all thought of the Spaniard from her mind when you announce yourself to her as my personal emissary.”

  Roger was now in a frightful quandary. No project could have been more distasteful to him than a return to France, but Mr. Pitt had swept aside what he felt to be his reasonable objections, and ever since he had totted up his bills he had been secretly harassed by his urgent need for money. After a moment’s hesitation, he said:

  “You remarked, sir, a few moments back, that you wished me to proceed to France as soon as my affairs permit. Unfortunately, the financial side of them is far from healthy. Unless I can shortly lay my hand on a quite considerable sum of money I fear I may find myself in Newgate.”

  “It is a new departure for you to attempt to drive a bargain with me, Mr. Brook,” replied the Prime Minister, giving a tight-lipped smile. “However, I am in the unique position of being able to pay the debts of anyone except myself. As your past record suggests that in this particular business you may accomplish more than any other person known to me, I am willing to buy your services. How much do you require?”

  “A thousand pounds would enable me to leave with my mind at rest,” murmured Roger rather shamefacedly. Then, in an endeavour to cover his embarrassment, he added with a sudden grin, “But in order to reach the Queen I may have to resort to bribery, and when M. de Talleyrand-Périgord arrived here last January he made no secret of the fact that he had brought with him forty thousand with which to grease the palms of people who might prove useful to him.”

  “I hardly think,” said Mr. Pitt a trifle acidly, “that the National Guards at the Tuileries are likely to prove as avaricious as our Whig politicians. A draft on the secret funds for fifteen hundred pounds should meet your requirements, for the moment at all events. Apart from special activities, your personal reports to me on general matters have always proved valuable, so I am willing to give you a generous credit for them. Should you need more for some particular purpose, you can later apply to Lord Grenville for it through the usual Foreign Office channels.”

  Roger bowed. “I am deeply grateful to you, sir, and I had no serious intent to compare my situation with that of M. de Talleyrand.”

  “Have you seen that disreputable friend of yours lately?”

  “No, sir. Not since his return to France and his reappearance here on a second mission in April. As you must be aware, he consorts principally with Lord Holland, Lord Lansdowne and others in strong opposition to the Government, and, greatly as I admire him personally, my loyalty to you prevents me from moving happily in such circles.

  “I appreciate your delicacy, yet find it difficult to understand how you can admire an apostate priest and renegade noble who has betrayed both his own orders to become the servant of unscrupulous demagogues.”

  “I owe much to his patronage when I was first in France as a youth, and in his dealings with me since he has always proved both honourable and kind. May I enquire if his present mission here has any bearing on that with which you propose to charge me?”

  “It has, so I will inform you of the events that led up to it. The most reactionary of the French nobility, including the King’s younger brother, d’Artois, fled abroad in ’89. As was not unnatural, they at once attemped to stir up trouble for the new French Government at numerous foreign courts. At first they met with little success, except that King Gustavus of Sweden declared himself the champion of the royal cause and ready to lead a crusade against the revolutionaries if his fellow monarchs would support him. On their refusing, it was he who through his agent, the Comte de Fersan, last summer instigated the attempt of the Royal Family to escape to Metz. The King’s other brother, de Provence, succeeded in getting away to Brussels, thereby greatly strengthening the influence of the émigrés, but the sovereigns were, as you will know, caught at Varennes, and brought back to Paris in circumstances of the greatest indignity.

  “The insults they suffered then did what the émigrés had so far failed to achieve. The Queen’s brother, Leopold of Austria, felt in honour bound to make at least a show of taking up his sister’s cause, and that excitable monarch Frederick William of Prussia also began to threaten France with hostilities. However, Leopold exercised his usual caution, and both of them were anxious to make certain of the attitude of Britain before committing themselves. The British people, having long enjoyed a constitutional monarchy, had shown in no uncertain manner their sympathy with the efforts of the French people to secure a similar liberty, so the German autocrats had some reason to fear that we might declare ourselves as the champions of France’s new-won freedom.

  “As my highest aspiration has ever been the maintenance of peace in Europe, I would go no further than to reaffirm our reluctance to interfere in French domestic affairs, thus leaving them still in doubt of our attitude in the event of a new situation. That proved sufficient to check their ardour for the moment. Then, on the 1st of September last, King Louis formally accepted the new constitution presented to him by the National Assembly. Leopold, who was much more concerned about Russian and Prussian designs against Poland than about events in France, at once seized on that as an excuse to declare that the King’s act having been voluntary, foreign intervention was no longer called for.”

  The Prime Minister took a drink of port, and went on, “All might then have continued well, but for the attitude of the French themselves. A great part of them, alas, have become drunk on their new-found liberty, and with a missionary zeal send agents to propagate their radical doctrines in other countries. The obvious repercussions ensued. The German monarchs began to fear for their own security. Gustavus again urged them and Spain to combine with him in the forcible suppression of this revolutionary fever that might, if unchecked, destroy the whole fabric of European society—and in that he had a better case. In January preparations for a war began, and it was then that M. de Talleyrand was sent to England on an unofficial mission to make a bid for our support against the Royalist coalition.”

  “That much I gathered,” Roger nodded. “And at least you may count him honest in his endeavours to bring about an alliance between France and Britain, for I know well that such a project has long been his dearest ambition.”

  “You think so?” Mr. Pitt made a gesture of distaste. “He is an opportunist of the first order and as slippery as an eel; neither my cousin Grenville nor I trusts him an inch. In any case, His Majesty has been profoundly shocked by the indignities the French people have put upon their sovereigns and feels a righteous horror at the atheistic legislation of the Assembly, so nothing would induce him to countenance an alliance with such a Government.

  “But to continue; in the spring three events occurred to encourage the bellicose attitude of the French zealots. In Spain, Floridablanca was replaced as First Minister by d’Aranda, who at once made it clear that his country would not join a coalition against France; on the 9th of March the Emperor Leopold quite unexpectedly died, and a week later King Gustavus was assassinated. The National Assembly had already forced King Louis to sanction measures depriving the émigrés of their property, and was threatening the Elector of Treves, under whose protection they had set up their headquarters at Coblenz. Both parties sent troops to the frontier. The Elector appealed to Austria for support and Leopold’s son, young Francis II, promised it to him. But it seems that with Spain and Sweden out of the ring the hotheads in France were now bent on war in any case, for they declared it on the Princes and their backers on the 20th of April.”

  “It was then that M. de Talleyrand was sent on his second mission to London, was i
t not?” Roger commented.

  “Yes. Knowing the prime importance that England has always attached to the Low Countries, Talleyrand came with an offer that France would refrain from invading the Austrian Netherlands if we would declare ourselves strictly neutral in the new war.”

  Having accepted the fact that he was now fully committed, Roger was beginning to enjoy himself. He smiled and said, “I imagine that suited your book admirably, sir?”

  “It suited mine,” came the prompt reply. “For however regrettable the situation of the French Royal Family may be, I would never consent to plunging this country into war solely on their behalf. Yet a great change has occurred in public opinion here during the past year. Even moderate men feel that the Revolution in France has gone far enough and are disgusted with the excesses which have taken place. They no longer see in it a comparison with our own Great Rebellion, but begin to fear it as a menace to property and the established order in our own land. The violent writings of such radical agitators as Tom Paine have been largely responsible for that, and, as you must know, the country is now swarming with French émigrés. Many of them are agents sent by the Princes from Coblenz, and their influence on our aristocracy is considerable; so much pressure has been brought on me by my own party to take up the Royalist cause.”

  “Yet you are resolved not to do so, sir?”

  “I regard war as the antithesis of civilization, and would resort to it only if I were convinced that this country’s security was threatened. That being my secret policy, I allowed the Whigs whom de Talleyrand has bribed so lavishly to appear to get the better of me, and he owes far more to me than he is aware. I will admit, though, that no man lacking his brain and charm could have handled his own end of the business so successfully.”

  About de Talleyrand’s qualities Roger needed no telling, and it had always been one of his regrets that Mr. Pitt so greatly distrusted the gifted Frenchman. He made up his mind now to see de Talleyrand at the earliest opportunity, as he felt that there was no one who could better bring him up to date with affairs in France.