To this
unpopularity, inherited from his mother, was joined another that
was directed against the person of the emigre."
After having been one of the courtiers of the little court at
Coblenz, he had taken service for some time in Russia, and then
passed into England, where he had been one of the most intimate
confidants, and one of the most active agents of the Count
d'Artois. Sent secretly into France, with his elder brother, the
Duke Armand de Polignac, he was, like the latter, compromised in
the Cadoudal conspiracy. Their trial is remarkable for the noble
strife of devotion, in which each of the brothers pleaded the
cause of the other at the expense of his own. Armand was condemned
to death. His wife threw herself at the feet of the First Consul,
who, thanks to the intercession of Josephine, commuted the penalty
of death to perpetual confinement. Jules was condemned to prison,
and shared the captivity of his brother. Confined at first in the
castle of Ham, then in the Temple, then at Vincennes, they
obtained, at the time of the marriage of Napoleon with Marie
Louise, their transfer to a hospital. There they knew the General
Mallet, but the part they were suspected of taking in his
conspiracy was never proven. When the allied armies entered
France, they succeeded in escaping, and rejoined the Count
d'Artois at Vesoul. They penetrated to Paris some days before the
capitulation, and displayed the white flag there the 3d of March,
1814.
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