Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte — Complete
when a people fight for their homes and their liberties the invading
army must gradually diminish, while at the same time the armed
population, emboldened by success, increases in a still more marked
progression. Insurrection was now regarded by the Spaniards as a holy
and sacred duty, to which the recent meetings of the Cortes in the Isle
of Leon had given, as it were, a legitimate character, since Spain found
again, in the remembrance of her ancient privileges, at least the shadow
of a Government--a centre around which the defenders of the soil of the
Peninsula could rally.
--[Lord Wellington gave Massena a beating at Fuentes d'Onore on the
5th of May 1811. It was soon after this battle that Napoleon sent
Marmont to succeed Massena. Advancing on the southern frontier of
Portugal the skillful Soult contrived to take Badajoz from a
wavering Spanish garrison. About this time, however, General
Graham, with his British corps, sallied out of Cadiz, and beat the
French on the heights of Barrosa, which lie in front of Cadiz, which
city the French were then besieging. Encouraged by the successes of
our regular armies, the Spanish Guerillas became more and more
numerous and daring. By the end of 1811 Joseph Bonaparte found so
many thorns in his usurped crown that he implored his brother to put
it on some other head. Napoleon would not then listen to his
prayer. In the course of 1811 a plan was laid for liberating
Ferdinand from his prison in France and placing him at the head of
affairs in Spain, but was detected by the emissaries of Bonaparte's
police. Ferdinand's sister, the ex-Queen of Etruria, had also
planned an escape to England. Her agents were betrayed, tried by a
military commission, and shot--the Princess herself was condemned to
close confinement in a Roman convent.--Editor of 1836 edition.]--
The Continental system was the cause, if not of the eventual fall,
at least of the rapid fall of Napoleon. This cannot be doubted if we
consider for a moment the brilliant situation of the Empire in 1811,
and the effect simultaneously produced throughout Europe by that system,
which undermined the most powerful throne which ever existed. It was the
Continental system that Napoleon upheld in Spain, for he had persuaded
himself that this system, rigorously enforced, would strike a death
blow to the commerce of England; and Duroc besides informed me of a
circumstance which is of great weight in this question. Napoleon one
day said to him, "I am no longer anxious that Joseph should be King of
Spain; and he himself is indifferent about it. I would give the crown to
the first comer who would shut his ports against the English."
Murat had come to Paris on the occasion of the Empress' accouchement,
and I saw him several times during his stay, for we had always been
on the best terms; and I must do him the justice to say that he never
assumed the King but to his courtiers, and those who had known him only
as a monarch. Eight or ten days after the birth of the King of Rome,
as I was one morning walking in the Champs Elysees, I met Murat. He was
alone, and dressed in a long blue overcoat. We were exactly opposite the
gardens of his sister-in-law, the Princess Borghese. "Well, Bourrienne,"
said Murat, after we had exchanged the usual courtesies, "well, what are
you about now?" I informed him how I had been treated by Napoleon, who,
that I might not be in Hamburg when the decree of union arrived there,
had recalled me to Paris under a show of confidence. I think I still
see the handsome and expressive countenance of Joachim when, having
addressed him by the titles of Sire and Your Majesty, he said to me,
"Pshaw! Bourrienne, are we not old comrades? The Emperor has treated
you unjustly; and to whom has he not been unjust? His displeasure is
preferable to his favour, which costs so dear! He says that he made us
Kings; but did we not make him an Emperor? To you, my friend, whom I
have known long and intimately, I can make my profession of faith. My
sword, my blood, my life belong to the Emperor. When he calls me to the
field to combat his enemies and the enemies of France I am no longer a
King, I resume the rank of a Marshal of the Empire; but let him require
no more. At Naples I will be King of Naples, and I will not sacrifice to
his false calculations the life, the well-being, and the interests of
my subjects. Let him not imagine that he can treat me as he has treated
Louis! For I am ready to defend, even against him, if it must be so, the
rights of the people over whom he has appointed me to rule. Am I then
an advance-guard King?" These last words appeared to me peculiarly
appropriate in the mouth of Murat, who had always served in the
advance-guard of our armies, and I thought expressed in a very happy
manner the similarity of his situation as a king and a soldier.
I walked with Murat about half an hour. In the course of our
conversation he informed me that his greatest cause of complaint against
the Emperor was his having first put him forward and then abandoned him.
"Before I arrived in Naples," continued he, "it was intimated to me that
there was a design of assassinating me. What did I do? I entered that
city alone, in full daylight, in an open carriage, for I would rather
have been assassinated at once than have lived in the constant fear
of being so. I afterwards made a descent on the Isle of Capri, which
succeeded. I attempted one against Sicily, and am curtain it would have
also been successful had the Emperor fulfilled his promise of sending
the Toulon fleet to second my operations; but he issued contrary orders:
he enacted Mazarin, and unshed me to play the part of the adventurous
Duke of Guise. But I see through his designs. Now that he has a son,
on whom he has bestowed the title of King of Rome, he merely wishes the
crown of Naples to be considered as a deposit in my hands. He regards
Naples as a future annexation to the Kingdom of Rome, to which I foresee
it is his design to unite the whole of Italy. But let him not urge me
too far, for I will oppose him, and conquer, or perish in the attempt,
sword in hand."
I had the discretion not to inform Murat how correctly he had divined
the plans of the Emperor and his projects as to Italy, but in regard to
the Continental system, which, perhaps, the reader will be inclined to
call my great stalking-horse, I spoke of it as I had done to the Prince
of Sweden, and I perceived that he was fully disposed to follow my
advice, as experience has sufficiently proved. It was in fact the
Continental system which separated the interests of Murat from those
of the Emperor, and which compelled the new King of Naples to form
alliances amongst the Princes at war with France. Different opinions
have been entertained on this Subject; mine is, that the Marshal of the
Empire was wrong, but the King of Naples right.
The Princes and Dukes of the Empire must pardon me for so often
designating them by their Republican names. The Marshals set less value
on their titles of nobility than the Dukes and Counts selected from
among the civilians. Of all the sons of the Republic Regnault de St.
Jean d'Angély was the most gratified at being a Count, whilst, among the
fathers of the Revolution no one could regard with greater disdain than
Fouché his title of Duke of Otranto; he congratulated himself upon its
possession only once, and that was after the fall of the Empire.
I have expressed my dislike of Fouché; and the reason of that feeling
was, that I could not endure his system of making the police a
government within a government. He had left Paris before my return
thither, but I had frequent occasion to speak of that famous personage
to Savary, whom, for the reason above assigned, I do not always term Duc
de Rovigo. Savary knew better than any one the fallacious measures
of Fouché's administration, since he was his successor. Fouché, under
pretence of encouraging men of letters, though well aware that the
Emperor was hostile to them, intended only to bring them into contempt
by making them write verses at command. It was easily seen that Napoleon
nourished a profound dislike of literary men, though we must not
conclude that he wished the public to be aware of that dislike. Those,
besides, who devoted their pens to blazon his glory and his power were
sure to be received by him with distinction. On the other hand, as
Charlemagne and Louis XIV. owed a portion of the splendour of their
reigns to the lustre reflected on them by literature, he wished
to appear to patronise authors, provided that they never discussed
questions relating to philosophy, the independence of mankind, and
civil and political rights. With regard to men of science it was
wholly different; those he held in real estimation; but men of letters,
properly so called, were considered by him merely as a sprig in his
Imperial crown.
The marriage of the Emperor with an Archduchess of Austria had set all
the Court poets to work, and in this contest of praise and flattery it
must be confessed that the false gods were vanquished by the true God;
for, in spite of their fulsome verses, not one of the disciples of
Apollo could exceed the extravagance of the Bishops in their pastoral
letters. At a time when so many were striving to force themselves into
notice there still existed a feeling of esteem in the public mind for
men of superior talent who remained independent amidst the general
corruption; such was M. Lemercier, such was M. de Chateaubriand. I was
in Paris in the spring of 1811, at the period of Chenier's death, when
the numerous friends whom Chateaubriand possessed in the second class of
the Institute looked to him as the successor of Chenier. This was more
than a mere literary question, not only on account of the high
literary reputation M. de Chateaubriand already possessed, but of the
recollection of his noble conduct at the period of Duc d'Enghien's
death, which was yet fresh in the memory of every one; and, besides,
no person could be ignorant of the immeasurable difference of opinion
between Chenier and M. de Chateaubriand.
M. de Chateaubriand obtained a great majority of votes, and was elected
a Member of the Institute. This opened a wide field for conjecture
in Paris. Every one was anxious to see how the author of the Genie du
Christianisme, the faithful defender of the Bourbons, would bend his
eloquence to pronounce the eulogium of a regicide. The time for the
admission of the new Member of the Institute arrived, but in his
discourse, copies of which were circulated in Paris, he had ventured to
allude to the death of Louis XVI., and to raise his voice against the
regicides. This did not displease Napoleon; but M. de Chateaubriand also
made a profession of faith in favour of liberty, which, he said, found
refuge amongst men of letters when banished from the politic body.
This was great boldness for the time; for though Bonaparte was secretly
gratified at seeing the judges of Louis XVI. scourged by an heroic
pen, yet those men held the highest situations under the Government.
Cambacérès filled the second place in the Empire, although at a great
distance from the first; Merlin de Douai was also in power; and it
is known how much liberty was stifled and hidden beneath the dazzling
illusion of what is termed glory. A commission was named to examine the
discourse of Chateaubriand. MM. Suard, de Segur, de Fontanes, and two
or three other members of the same class of the Institute whose names I
cannot recollect, were of opinion that the discourse should be read; but
it was opposed by the majority.
When Napoleon was informed of what had passed he demanded a sight of the
address, which was presented to him by M. Daru. After having perused it