Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte — Complete
The principles contained in the declaration were in almost all points
conformable to the principles which formed the basis of the charter.
Even so early as 1792, and consequently previous to the fatal 21st of
January, Louis XVI., who knew the opinions of M. de Clermont Gallerande,
sent him on a mission to Coblentz to inform the Princes from him,
and the Queen, that they would be ruined by their emigration. I am
accurately informed, and I state this fact with the utmost confidence. I
can also add with equal certainty that the circumstance was mentioned by
M. de Clermont Gallerande in his Memoirs, and that the passage relative
to his mission to Coblentz was cancelled before the manuscript was sent
to press.
During the Consular Government the object of the Royalist committee
was to seduce rather than to conspire. It was round Madame Bonaparte
in particular that their batteries were raised, and they did not prove
ineffectual. The female friends of Josephine filled her mind with ideas
of the splendour and distinction she would enjoy if the powerful hand
which had chained the Revolution should raise up the subverted throne.
I must confess that I was myself, unconsciously, an accomplice of the
friends of the throne; for what they wished for the interest of the
Bourbons I then ardently wished for the interest of Bonaparte.
While endeavours were thus made to gain over Madame Bonaparte to the
interest of the royal family, brilliant offers were held out for the
purpose of dazzling the First Consul. It was wished to retemper for him
the sword of the constable Duguesclin; and it was hoped that a statue
erected to his honour would at once attest to posterity his spotless
glory and the gratitude of the Bourbons. But when these offers reached
the ears of Bonaparte he treated them with indifference, and placed no
faith in their sincerity. Conversing on the subject one day with M.
de La Fayette he said, "They offer me a statue, but I must look to the
pedestal. They may make it my prison." I did not hear Bonaparte
utter these words; but they were reported to me from a source, the
authenticity of which may be relied on.
About this time, when so much was said in the Royalist circles and
in the Faubourg St. Germain, of which the Hotel de Luynes was the
headquarters, about the possible return of the Bourbons, the publication
of a popular book contributed not a little to direct the attention of
the public to the most brilliant period of the reign of Louis XIV. The
book was the historical romance of Madame de la Valloire, by Madame de
Genlis, who had recently returned to France. Bonaparte read it, and I
have since understood that he was very well pleased with it, but he
said nothing to me about it. It was not until some time after that
he complained of the effect which was produced in Paris by this
publication, and especially by engravings representing scenes in the
life of Louis XIV., and which were exhibited in the shop-windows. The
police received orders to suppress these prints; and the order was
implicitly obeyed; but it was not Fouché's police. Fouché saw the
absurdity of interfering with trifles. I recollect that immediately
after the creation of the Legion of Honour, it being summer, the
young men of Paris indulged in the whim of wearing a carnation in
a button-hole, which at a distance had rather a deceptive effect.
Bonaparte took this very seriously. He sent for Fouché, and desired him
to arrest those who presumed thus to turn the new order into ridicule.
Fouché merely replied that he would wait till the autumn; and the First
Consul understood that trifles were often rendered matters of importance
by being honoured with too much attention.
But though Bonaparte was piqued at the interest excited by the
engravings of Madame de Genlis' romance he manifested no displeasure
against that celebrated woman, who had been recommended to him by MM.
de Fontanes and Fievee and who addressed several letters to him. As this
sort of correspondence did not come within the routine of my business
I did not see the letters; but I heard from Madame Bonaparte that they
contained a prodigious number of proper names, and I have reason to
believe that they contributed not a little to magnify, in the eyes of
the First Consul, the importance of the Faubourg St. Germain, which, in
spite of all his courage, was a scarecrow to him.
Bonaparte regarded the Faubourg St. Germain as representing the whole
mass of Royalist opinion; and he saw clearly that the numerous erasures
from the emigrant list had necessarily increased dissatisfaction among
the Royalists, since the property of the emigrants had not been restored
to its old possessors, even in those cases in which it had not been
sold. It was the fashion in a certain class to ridicule the unpolished
manners of the great men of the Republic compared with the manners of
the nobility of the old Court. The wives of certain generals had several
times committed themselves by their awkwardness. In many circles
there was an affectation of treating with contempt what are called the
parvenus; those people who, to use M. de Talleyrand's expression, do not
know how to walk upon a carpet. All this gave rise to complaints against
the Faubourg St. Germain; while, on the other hand, Bonaparte's brothers
spared no endeavours to irritate him against everything that was
calculated to revive the recollection of the Bourbons.
Such were Bonaparte's feelings, and such was the state of society during
the year 1802. The fear of the Bourbons must indeed have had a powerful
influence on the First Consul before he could have been induced to take
a step which may justly be regarded as the most inconsiderate of his
whole life. After suffering seven months to elapse without answering
the first letter of Louis XVIII., after at length answering his second
letter in the tone of a King addressing a subject, he went so far as
to write to Louis, proposing that he should renounce the throne of his
ancestors in his, Bonaparte's, favour, and offering him as a reward for
this renunciation a principality in Italy, or a considerable revenue for
himself and his family.
--[Napoleon seems to have always known, as with Cromwell and the
Stuarts, that if his dynasty failed the Bourbons must succeed him.
"I remember," says Metternich, "Napoleon said to me, 'Do you know
why Louis XVIII. is not now sitting opposite to you? It is only
because it is I who am sitting here. No other person could maintain
his position; and if ever I disappear in consequence of a
catastrophe no one but a Bourbon could sit here.'" (Metternich, tome
i. p. 248). Farther, he said to Metternich, "The King overthrown,
the Republic was master of the soil of France. It is that which I
have replaced. The old throne of France is buried under its
rubbish. I had to found a new one. The Bourbons could not reign
over this creation. My strength lies in my fortune. I am new, like
the Empire; there is, therefore, a perfect homogeneity between the
Empire and myself."--"However," says Metternich, "I have often
thought that Napoleon, by talking in this way, merely sought to
study the opinion of others, or to confuse it, and the direct
advance which he made to Louis XVIII., in 1804 seemed to confirm
this suspicion. Speaking to me one day of this advance he said,
'Monsieur's reply was grand; it was full of fine traditions. There
is something in legitimate rights which appeals to more than the
mere mind. If Monsieur had consulted his mind only he would have
arranged with me, and I should have made for him a magnificent
future'" (Metternich, tome i, p. 276). According to Iung's Lucien
(tome ii. p. 421), the letter written and signed by Napoleon, but
never sent, another draft being substituted, is still in the French
archives. Metternich speaks of Napoleon making a direct advance to
Louis XVIII. in 1804. According to Colonel Iung (Lucien Bonaparte,
tome ii. pp. 4211-426) the attempt was made through the King of
Prussia in 1802, the final answer of Louis being made on the 28th
February 1803, as given in the text, but with a postscript of his
nephew in addition, "With the permission of the King, my uncle, I
adhere with heart and soul to the contents of this note.
"(signed) LOUIS ANTOINE, Duc d'Angouleme."
The reader will remark that there is no great interval between this
letter and the final break with the Bourbons by the death of the Duc
d'Enghien. At this time, according to Savory (tome iii. p. 241),
some of the Bourbons were receiving French pensions. The Prince de
Conti, the Duchesse de Bourbon, and the Duchesse d'Orleans, when
sent out of France by the Directory, were given pensions of from
20,000 to 26,000 francs each. They lived in Catalonia. When the
French troops entered Spain in 1808 General Canclaux, a friend of
the Prince de Conti, brought to the notice of Napoleon that the
tiresome formalities insisted on by the pestilent clerks of all
nations were observed towards these regal personages. Gaudin, the
Minister of Finance, apparently on his own initiative, drew up a
decree increasing the pensions to 80,000 francs, and doing away with
the formalities. "The Emperor signed at once, thanking the Minister
of Finance." The reader, remembering the position of the French
Princes then, should compare this action of Napoleon with the
failure of the Bourbons in 1814 to pay the sums promised to
Napoleon, notwithstanding the strong remonstrances made at Vienna to
Talleyrand by Alexander and Lord Castlereagh. See Talleyrand's
Correspondence with Louis XVIII., tome ii. pp. 27, 28; or French
edition, pp. 285, 288.]--
The reader will recollect the curious question which the First Consul
put to me on the subject of the Bourbons when we were walking in the
park of Malmaison. To the reply which I made to him on that occasion I
attribute the secrecy he observed towards me respecting the letter just
alluded to. I am indeed inclined to regard that letter as the result of
one of his private conferences with Lucien; but I know nothing positive
on the subject, and merely mention this as a conjecture. However, I
had an opportunity of ascertaining the curious circumstances which took
place at Mittau, when Bonaparte's letter was delivered to Louis XVIII.
That Prince was already much irritated against Bonaparte by his delay
in answering his first letter, and also by the tenor of his tardy reply;
but on reading the First Consul's second letter the dethroned King
immediately sat down and traced a few lines forcibly expressing his
indignation at such a proposition. The note, hastily written by Louis
XVIII. in the first impulse of irritation, bore little resemblance to
the dignified and elegant letter which Bonaparte received, and which I
shall presently lay before the reader. This latter epistle closed
very happily with the beautiful device of Francis I., "All is lost but
honour." But the first letter was stamped with a more chivalrous tone of
indignation. The indignant sovereign wrote it with his hand supported on
the hilt of his sword; but the Abbe Andre, in whom Louis XVIII.
reposed great confidence, saw the note, and succeeded, not without some
difficulty, in soothing the anger of the King, and prevailing on him to
write the following letter:
I do not confound M. Bonaparte with those who have preceded him.
I esteem his courage and his military talents. I am grateful for
some acts of his government; for the benefits which are conferred on
my people will always be prized by me.
But he errs in supposing that he can induce me to renounce my