Claude François de Malet
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Claude François de Malet was born in Dôle (Jura) in an aristocratic family on June 28, 1754 and was executed by a firing squad on October 29, 1812. A general of the French Empire, he staged a failed republican coup d'état against Napoléon Bonaparte, as the latter was returning from the Russian campaign's disastrous retreat in 1812.
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[edit] Before and during the French Revolution
As fit for a young nobleman of the Ancien Régime, Malet was enlisted at age seventeen as a musketeer, but his and all other musketeer regiments are disbanded by Louis XVI in 1775 for budgetary reasons.
Malet's family disinherited him for supporting the revolution, when he became commander of the Dôle national guard and celebrated the anniversary of the storming of the Bastillein 1790. He volunteered when war erupts and is assigned to the 50th infantry regiment of the Army of the Rhine as a captain.
He was discharged in 1795, but reenlisted again in March 1797, this time first as chief of staff of the 6th division, then as chief of staff of the Army of the Alps under the command of general Championnet in 1799.
After receiving honourable citations from both Championnet and Masséna for defending the Little St. Bernard Pass in August 1799, Malet was promoted brigadier general on October 19 1799; he then fought in the Helvetian Republic throughout 1801, until peace was made with the Second Coalition by the treaties of Lunéville and Amiens in 1802.
[edit] After the Directory: portrait of a conspiring republican
After the coups of the 30 Prairial and 18 Brumaire of year VIII that replaced the Directory with the Consulate, Malet voted "no" in the referendum confirming Napoléon Bonaparte as First Consul. In the year IX, when commanding the Dijon garrison he was said to have contemplated arresting Bonaparte when he was to pass through the city.
He was relegated to Bordeaux, then to Les Sables d'Olonne, and his opposition became even more vehement. To assuage him, he was made Commander of the Légion d'honneur, but in vain.
He was discharged from active duty, then resigned in 1805 after Napoleon's coronation as Emperor. He was appointed governor of Pavia in the Kingdom of Italy, then of Rome in the Kingdom of Rome. The ruler of the latter, Eugène de Beauharnais, expelled him on allegations of black market activities and propaganda, and he was interned in the La Force prison from July 1 1807 to May 30 1808. Released without trial, he was jailed again the next year on suspicion of belonging to the Philadelphes, a republican and anti-Bonapartist free-masonic society.
From July 1810 he was kept under house arrest in a sanatorium in Paris.
[edit] Coup d'etat of 1812
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The detention lasted for four years, during which Malet conceived the bold project to try a revolution by himself, without any other means than a funeral cry of which all Paris was to make resound . The cry was: the Emperor is dead.
October 23, he attempted a coup d'état: he announced the death of Napoleon, during the French invasion of Russia, with the Lafon abbot.
He involved the gendarmerie forces of Paris (which were dissolved thereafter and formed the 134th regiment of infantry of line) and the 10th cohort of the national guard.
"What would happen," says Malet, "if it were learned suddenly that Napoleon died 600 miles from his capital? Not the Council of regency, nothing was envisaged; the Senate would be assembled at once. I will gather it; the Senate would make a proclamation, I will write it and will adopt it. The decrees which would have been necessary to tear off the Senate, it has them in its wallet. Under the terms of these decrees, the imperial government is abolished; a provisional government replaces it. General Malet, in charge of the military command of Paris, will undertake measurements of execution."
"This provisional government would be composed of Mathieu de Montmorency, Alexis de Noailles, general Moreau, vice president, Carnot, president, Augereau marshal, Bigonnet, ex-legislator, count Frochot, prefect of the Seine, Florent Guiot, ex-legislator, Destutt de Tracy, Malet himself, Truguet vice-admiral, Volney, senator, Garrat, senator."
Malet had prepared instructions for all the men who were to be his accomplices without their knowledge. This preliminary work was immense, since it was necessary to give to each a little important role, in addition to its particular instructions, of the copies of senatus consult and the proclamations. As soon as a role was completely prepared, the dispatch was closed, sealed, numbered and entrusted to the custody of a Spanish priest who lived in Saint-Gilles street, close to the barracks of the 10th cohort.
In the night of the 22 at October 23, escaping the weak surveillance under which it was held, Malet risks the adventure. This night must be enough to get all to him that it still missed: accomplices, troops, money and authority.
Dressed in his uniform of general of brigade, he presented himself at La Force prison and, using forged orders, obtained the releasing of the Generals Lahorie and Guidal; he announced them that the Emperor died on October 7 in front of Moscow, that the Senate took extraordinary measures and that it was necessary to act as quick as possible.
They went to the barracks of the gendarmerie forces of Paris; the troop was plunged in deep sleep. Malet spoke as a Master, made them beat the drum, and awoke chiefs and soldiers with his fatal news: the Emperor is dead. He held in his hand the alleged decrees of the Senate; he ordered to take their weapons. The soldiers did not reason, they obeyed; various columns were put at once moving, and the plan was carried out.
A detachment led by Lahorie went to the residence of the duke of Rovigo, Minister for the police force, took the duke by surprise and conduced him to La Force prison; another detachment arrested the prefect of the police forces; a third column went to the town hall of Paris and while the troop took position in place de Grève, its commanders took the key of the Midsummer's Day alarm bell, called the Frochot prefect and make preparation of the room which the provisional government must come to occupy.
The sun began to rise, and already the news of the night had taken effect. All Paris awoke dismayed. The death of the Emperor was believed; each one was contained in its house; it is only secretly that one dares to throw an anxious glance on the revolutionary party which seized the city. Still an hour of success and the action of the government was going to be paralysed in its principal springs. But what an obscure man did through audacity, an obscure man will thwart with a little good direction and much energy.
Malet moreover had not pressed anything than to go to settle with the district general of the Vendôme place, which offered all the desirable facilities to him to play its part of commander; Of a blow of gun, it had believed to get rid of General Hulin, commander of the Paris Garrison; it was going to have of the staff officers, the offices, of the seals, and its orders, carried from now on by ordinances, could not miss any more being recognized in all the barracks; but a military senior police officer which was there, Major Laborde, recognized in the new general of the Senate the former prisoner Malet; he didn't believe of what such a man was announcing, flinged himself at him, disarmed him and put him back in prison.
As of this moment the conspiracy is stopped. It is a body whose heart ceased beating. The troops, ashamed of the role that one made them play, were easily brought back to their barracks, and order was restored at once.
The plan of Malet was skillfully combined, it had found the weakness of the government imperial, and calculated so well the consequences of passive obedience, that the prisoner, hardly free, replaces the Emperor. In this rout of the capacity, the name of king de Rome was not even marked; each one did not think any more but of oneself. With the noise of died of the Emperor, the talisman had broken; Malet revealed a fatal secrecy, that of the weakness of the new dynasty. This coup d'état caused the anger of Napoleon I: nobody had had the idea to shout, "Napoleon died! Long Live Napoleon II!"
Generals Malet, Guidal and Lahorie, were tried on October 29, 1812 before a council of war and shot in the plain of Grenelle with twelve other people, among whom were a Corsican released from La Force prison and who had agreed to become prefect of the Seine, and Colonel Soulier, the naive commanding officer of the 10th cohort. Several unhappy officers whom the chiefs had trained were condemned with them.
The Emperor deplored this rigour and the promptitude with which one had it, exerted.
[edit] References
- Claude François de Malet Encylopædia Britannica Online.
- Henri Clarke, Minister of War, and the Malet Conspiracy Everett Dague. Originally published in Selected papers of the Consortium on Revolutionary Europe, 1996
- A propos d'un document : la conspiration Malet Dominique Contant & Robert Ouvrard.
- Malet Nicolas Juncker. Comic strip based on Malet's coup d'état.
- “Claude François de Malet”, in Biographie des célébrités militaires des armées de terre et de mer de 1789 à 1850, (Charles Mullié, 1851). Availabe online on French Wikisource
