At this crisis the publication of the Warsaw manifesto, and of the duke's response, made his continued residence at Ettenheim a subject of still greater inquietude to his friends; but he remained, and spent much energy in forming plans to invade France through Alsace. As the probabilities of war on the Continent grew stronger, he again applied to the English court for a commission, this time through Stuart, the British envoy to Vienna. He now desired employment on the mainland, either in an allied army or with the first English troops which should disembark on the Continent. Meantime the activity of the English residents at the minor German courts intensified his purpose to raise a regiment of men from the anti-Bonaparte elements of central Europe, to be officered by the scattered veterans who had fought under the second Condé but had been dismissed from the Austrian service after the treaty of Lunéville. The news of Moreau's arrest and of Cadoudal's conspiracy came like a thunderbolt, and the duke, though conscious of no guilt, made ready to withdraw to Freiburg in the Breisgau; but in order to mask his uneasiness he instituted a hunt and other festivities which lasted a whole week.
Bonaparte's first intention had been to seize Charles of Artois on his arrival in France; but a thorough supervision of the shore made it evident that the prince's caution had again got the better of his courage. Disappointed in this quarter, the police agents began to develop an intense activity on the German frontier. They professed to have discovered in Offenburg, with which the Duc d'Enghien was in constant communication, the existence of a body of emigrants who were not there. They reported that the young prince sometimes came down to Strasburg to attend the theater; they represented two harmless visitors at Ettenheim to be officers of the Prince of Condé arrived from England; still worse, they declared an emigrant friend of the duke who lived near by--the aged Marquis of Thuméry, whose name in German mouths had a remote resemblance to that of Dumouriez--to be that dangerous general himself. This occurred a few days before March ninth, and almost simultaneously Bonaparte received from an agent in Naples an extract from one of Dumouriez's letters to Nelson, urging a concerted plan not merely of defense, but of offense. No one then doubted that Dumouriez himself was on the Rhine, busy with Enghien in perfecting this very plan.