Beloved though he was by the majority of the nation, Napoleon had enemies. Several attempts were made to take his life. In one of these, he narrowly escaped being blown to pieces by an infernal machine in the Rue St Nicaise, the plot being promoted by the Royalists of La Vendée. Napoleon showed his vindictive nature by seizing the opportunity to teach a lesson to the Jacobins, who had no hand whatever in the affair, and a hundred and thirty innocent persons were sentenced to transportation for life. Another Royalist conspiracy was that of Georges Cadoudal and Pichegru. These men tried to implicate Moreau, but without success. The famous Republican general, however, was arrested, with the ringleaders; Pichegru was found strangled in prison, Georges Cadoudal was guillotined, and Moreau was banished to America. The last was entirely innocent, but he had the misfortune to be Napoleon’s rival, and that was sufficient condemnation. He had won his spurs in the early days of the Revolution by placing himself at the head of a battalion of Breton volunteers, and he was popular with the army. An instance of his sterling integrity, one of many which redound to his credit, may be given. When the landed property of the aristocracy was sold as belonging to the nation, an estate owned by M. d’Orsay, adjoining that of Moreau, was sold to the Republican general at an absurdly low figure. Not only did the new owner inform his former neighbour of the transaction, but he insisted on paying him what he considered was a legitimate price. The Duc d’Enghien, son of the Duc de Bourbon, was even more unfortunate than Moreau. He also was charged with complicity in the Royalist plot, and although no evidence was produced against him, he was shot and buried in a grave dug before his trial, by a so-called special military commission, in the fortress of Vincennes. The story of the way in which the young duke’s father heard the news is pathetic. He was an exile in London, living at the time in a small suite of rooms with one valet. As breakfast did not appear at the prescribed hour one morning, and no notice being taken of his repeated ringing of the bell, he entered the kitchen and found his servant bowed down with sorrow. On the table was a newspaper containing particulars of the grim tragedy. For two hours the sorely stricken parent was overcome by agonising grief in the humble little room. The Comtesse de Boigne, one of the many French emigrants who sought a refuge in England, relates the above, in her entertaining “Memoirs,” adding that this excessive grief was “accompanied by fits of rage and cries for vengeance.”