The first, signed by General Dupont, War Minister, authorised M. de Maubreuil to make use of the army, which was to obey all his demands, and commanded the authorities to furnish him with all the troops he might require, as he was charged with a mission of the highest importance. The second, signed by Anglès, Minister of Police, ordered all the police force throughout the kingdom of France to lend assistance to M. de Maubreuil to the same end. The third, signed by Bourrienne, Director-General of the Posts, ordered all post-masters to supply him with whatever horses he should require, and to consider themselves personally responsible for the least delay they might occasion him. The fourth, signed by General Sacken, Governor of Paris, enjoined the Allied troops to assist M. de Maubreuil. Finally, the fifth, which was in Russian, was addressed to those officers who did not understand French and who could not therefore have obeyed the preceding orders. From these documents Me. Couture argued that the king's council alone must have had cognisance of M. de Maubreuil's mission, and alone ought to decide the case.
After having replied to Me. Couture's pleading, the king's procurator set forth his reasons for regarding the _tribunal correctionnel_ as incompetent in the present case, since the charges brought against the Sieur de Maubreuil constituted a crime, and were not those of a simple misdemeanour; that it was a question of a robbery under arms committed on the highway, and not merely a case of breach of confidence. For it was vain, he said, to try to allege the unlimited power with which the prisoner was vested; no power could authorise a citizen to run counter to existing laws; for if such a contention could be maintained it could be pursued to its logical conclusion and, in that case, it might be excusable to commit a murder or burn down a village. "As a matter of fact," continued M. de Vatimesnil, "we are advised that Maubreuil, acting as a Government agent, was endowed on that very count with a far graver responsibility, and the law ought to be set in force against him with the greater severity. No mission could excuse a man for having ill-treated a person travelling on the highways with a passport, and his crime assumed still graver proportions when that person happened to be an august princess, sprung from an illustrious house, allied to all the crowned heads of Europe, and travelling under the protection of a passport from her illustrious cousin, the Emperor of Russia, a princess who was entitled to double respect, both from her rank and because of the reverses of fortune she had recently experienced." "And," exclaimed the king's counsel, "with what indignation ought we to be seized, when we hear the accused uttering such libellous fables to avoid the course of justice! Who are those Frenchmen he addresses, whom he invokes to his aid? What faith could be put in such an unlikely story, as that he had received a mission against a person travelling under the safeguard of the most solemn treaties, signed by all the allied sovereigns? and if he did accept such a mission, was it not doubly mean to have accepted money for carrying it out, and then to have deceived those whom he pretended had given it him? Should he not be regarded henceforth as one of those hateful creatures known of all men, who, under pressure of an accusation, hatches conspiracies, and denounces unknown fellow-citizens, to the sole end of arresting or diverting justice?"