Ordinary minds, unacquainted with his powers, credited these reports; they sanctioned the tales of the royalist party, and decried him to the people, and to the army; for they began to suspect him, and his attachment to their cause. He could not allow such an opinion to pass current, because it tended to unhinge every thing. It was necessary, at all events, to undeceive France, the royalists, and Europe at large, in order that they might know, what they had to reckon upon in him. A persecution of reports in detail never produces any thing but a bad effect, for it does not attack the root of the evil. The death of the Duke d'Enghien would decide the question, that agitated France; it would decide the character of Napoleon beyond return; in fine, it might intimidate and punish the authors of the plots incessantly contriving against his life, and against the state: accordingly he determined on it. He sent for Marshal Berthier, and this minister directed General Ord**, by an order which the Emperor dictated, and which I have _seen_, to set off post for Strasbourg; to cause General Lev** to place under his orders fifteen boatmen, three hundred dragoons from the garrison of Schelstadt, and thirty gendarmes; to pass the Rhine at Rheinan, to proceed to Ettenheim, to surround the town, and _to carry off the Duke d'Enghien, Dumourier, an English colonel, and all the persons in their suite_. The Duke d'Enghien, General Thumery, Colonel de Grunstein, Lieutenant Schmidt, Abbe Weinburn, and five other inferior persons, were arrested by a chef d'escadron of the gendarmerie, named Ch**, who was charged with this part of the expedition. Then, and then only, it became certain, that Dumourier was not at Ettenheim. General Thumery had been mistaken for him. This mistake, occasioned by the similarity of their rank, and some likeness of sound between their names, which the Germans pronounced nearly alike, had heightened the importance and criminality of the pretended plots at Ettenheim in the mind of Napoleon, and had the most fatal influence on his determination.