To-day, in the course of conversation, the name of Hoche having been mentioned, some one observed that at a very early age he had inspired great hope. “And what is still better,” said the Emperor, “you may add that he fulfilled that hope.” Hoche and Napoleon had seen each other, and had conversed twice or thrice together. Hoche esteemed him even to admiration. Napoleon did not hesitate to say that he possessed over Hoche the advantages of extensive information and the principles of a good education. There was, he said, in other respects a great difference between them. “Hoche,” said he, “endeavoured to raise a party for himself, and gained only servile adherents. For my part, I had created for myself an immense number of partisans, without in any way seeking popularity. Hoche possessed a hostile provoking kind of ambition; he was the sort of man who could conceive the idea of coming from Strasburg, with 25,000 men, to seize the reins of government by force. But my policy was always of a patient kind, led on by the spirit of the age, and the circumstances of the moment.”
The Emperor added that Hoche would ultimately either have yielded to him, or must have subdued him, and, as he was fond of money and pleasure, he doubted not that he would have yielded to him. Moreau, observed he, in similar circumstances, knew not how to decide. Thus Napoleon attached but little importance to him, and regarded him as totally wanting in ability; without however extending this opinion to his military talent. “But he was a weak man,” said the Emperor, "guided by those who surrounded him, and slavishly subject to the control of his wife: he was a general of the old monarchy.
“Hoche,” continued the Emperor, "died suddenly and under singular circumstances; and as there existed a party who seemed to think that all crimes belonged to me of right, endeavours were made to circulate a report that I had poisoned him. There was a time when no mischief could happen that was not imputed to me; thus, when in Paris, I caused Kleber to be assassinated in Egypt; I blew out Desaix’s brains at Marengo: I strangled and cut the throats of persons who were confined in prisons; I seized the Pope by the hair of his head: and a hundred similar absurdities were affirmed. However, as I paid not the least attention to all this, the fashion passed away, and I do not see that my successors have been very eager to revive it; and yet, if any of the crimes imputed to me had had any real existence, the documents, the perpetrators, the accomplices, &c. might have been brought forward.