Spies and Secret Service: The story of espionage, its main systems and chief exponentsGrant, Hamil
History
Spies and Secret Service: The story of espionage, its main systems and chief exponents
Grant, Hamil
Secret service; Spies
Schulmeister was presented to the notice of Napoleon by his patron
Savary in 1805. "Here is a man who is all brain and no heart, Sire,"
said the General. Our spy has left a short description of Napoleon of
those days, which contains, as far as the writer knows, the only record
of the quality of the great soldier's voice, a more important index
of personality than is generally supposed. According to Schulmeister,
Napoleon's voice was high-pitched, but crisp and with a certain
stridency, while his habit of speaking through the teeth seemed also
to give his utterances a peculiarly hissing sound. For the rest, the
spy does not appear to have carried away a marked impression of the
conqueror's personal appearance. The great soldier seems to have
treated the spy with a playful interest and kindliness, and by the
spring of 1805 we find that Schulmeister had received a commission
from him to report upon the coastal towns of the south of England.
It is also said that the spy visited Ireland, where he made it his
business to become acquainted with the remnants of the rebels of 1798,
who still placed a somewhat simple trust in Napoleon's vague promise,
expressed, if at all, through third parties, that he would some day
consider the question of attacking England through Ireland, granting
her independence to the latter. Whether or not the English and Irish
visits were ever paid, it is certain that Napoleon, in thinking out
the campaign of 1805, especially remembered the existence of Karl
Schulmeister—in itself a rare tribute to the spy's ability from a
master-judge of clever and useful agents. Napoleon, as we gather
from historical writers like Paul Muller, did not place an absolute
confidence in the reliability of non-military spies. "The spy is a
natural traitor" was his expressed view of the species. As a rule the
Emperor trusted to his military intelligence department to supply him
with all that information upon which he based his complex strategic and
tactical calculations. The Austerlitz campaign in view, not so much
of the momentous political contingencies inherent in the whole event,
differed from others, however, as to the character of some of the most
prominent actors engaged. It was on this account that an apparently
insignificant person like Schulmeister came to play, in the stirring
political drama of 1805, a rôle which in its way was almost as helpful
to Napoleon as his own genius in elaborating that memorable episode.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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