When d’Enghien’s execution became public, a shocked Europe almost universally recalled the Corsican penchant for vendettas, and Pelet recorded that Parisians worried that Napoleon had ‘fallen into the evil ways’ of Robespierre.69 Liberals across Europe started to perceive Napoleon differently: this was the moment when René de Chateaubriand and Benjamin Constant turned against him. In reply to a Russian protest over the execution, Napoleon ordered his ambassador to St Petersburg, General d’Hédouville, to call for his passports, which he did on June 7, inaugurating a period of very bad
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