The Duke d'Enghien's execution took place on the 21st March; on the 7th April following, General Pichegru was found dead in his prison. A black handkerchief was wrapped round his neck, which had been tightened by twisting round a short stick inserted through one of the folds. It was asserted that he had turned this stick with his own hands, until he lost the power of respiring, and then, by laying his head on the pillow, had secured the stick in its position. It did not escape the public, that this was a mode of terminating life far more likely to be inflicted by the hands of others than those of the deceased himself. Surgeons were found, but men, it is said, of small reputation, to sign a report upon the state of the body, in which they affirm that Pichegru had died by suicide; yet as he must have lost animation and sense so soon as he had twisted the stick to the point of strangulation, it seems strange he should not have then unclosed his grasp on the fatal tourniquet, which he used as the means of self-destruction. In that case the pressure must have relaxed, and the fatal purpose have remained unaccomplished. No human eye could see into the dark recesses of a state prison, but there were not wanting many who entertained a total disbelief of Pichegru's suicide. It was argued that the first consul did not dare to bring before a public tribunal, and subject to a personal interrogatory, a man of Pichegru's boldness and presence of mind--it was said, also, that his evidence would have been decisively favourable to Moreau--that the citizens of Paris were many of them attached to Pichegru's person--that the soldiers had not forgotten his military fame--and, finally, it was reported, that in consideration of these circumstances, it was judged most expedient to take away his life in prison. Public rumour went so far as to name, as the agents in the crime, four of those Mamelukes, of whom Buonaparte had brought a small party from Egypt, and whom he used to have about his person as matter of parade. This last assertion had a strong impression on the multitude, who are accustomed to think, and love to talk, about the mutes and bowstrings of Eastern despotism. But with well-informed persons, its improbability threw some discredit on the whole accusation. The state prisons of France must have furnished from their officials enough of men as relentless and dexterous in such a commission as those Eastern strangers, whose unwonted appearance in these gloomy regions must have at once shown a fatal purpose, and enabled every one to trace it to Buonaparte.[63] A subsequent catastrophe, of nearly the same kind, increased by its coincidence the dark suspicions which arose out of the circumstances attending the death of Pichegru.