"My name," said he, "my rank, my sentiments, and the peculiar distress of my situation, lead me to hope that this request will not be refused." At midnight the duke was again called from his bed, to attend the court which had been constituted for his trial.

It consisted of eight military officers, appointed by Murat, Napoleon's brother-in-law, then governor of Paris.

General Hullin, president of the military commission, commanded him to listen to the charges on which he was to be tried: of having fought against France; of being in the pay of England; and of plotting with England against the internal and external safety of the Republic.

The Duke was again examined, and the second interrogatory was a mere repetition of the first, with this addition, that the prisoner avowed his readiness to take part again in the hostilities against France, if the opportunity should present itself.

No other evidence whatever was adduced, except the written report of a spy of the police, who testified that the duke received many emigrants at his table at Ettenheim, and occasionally left the castle for several days together, without the spy's being able to trace where he was: a circumstance sufficiently explained by the duke's custom of hunting in the Black Forest.
General Hullin, in his account of the proceedings,[48] says, "He uniformly maintained that 'he had only sustained the rights of his family, and that a Conde could never enter France but with arms in his hands.