Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte — Complete
notes, at the time of his disgrace; and in October 1802 he was called on
to hand over his office to Meneval, who retained it till invalided after
the Russian campaign.
As has been said, Bourrienne would naturally be the mark for many
accusations, but the conclusive proof of his misconduct--at least for
any one acquainted with Napoleon's objection and dislike to changes in
office, whether from his strong belief in the effects of training, or
his equally strong dislike of new faces round him--is that he was never
again employed near his old comrade; indeed he really never saw the
Emperor again at any private interview, except when granted the naval
official reception in 1805, before leaving to take up his post at
Hamburg, which he held till 1810. We know that his re-employment was
urged by Josephine and several of his former companions. Savary himself
says he tried his advocacy; but Napoleon was inexorable to those who, in
his own phrase, had sacrificed to the golden calf.
Sent, as we have said, to Hamburg in 1805, as Minister Plenipotentiary
to the Duke of Brunswick, the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and to the
Hanse towns, Bourrienne knew how to make his post an important one.
He was at one of the great seats of the commerce which suffered so
fearfully from the Continental system of the Emperor, and he was charged
to watch over the German press. How well he fulfilled this duty we learn
from Metternich, who writes in 1805: "I have sent an article to the
newspaper editors in Berlin and to M. de Hofer at Hamburg. I do not
know whether it has been accepted, for M. Bourrienne still exercises an
authority so severe over these journals that they are always submitted
to him before they appear, that he may erase or alter the articles which
do not please him."
His position at Hamburg gave him great opportunities for both financial
and political intrigues. In his Memoirs, as Meneval remarks, he or his
editor is not ashamed to boast of being thanked by Louis XVIII. at St.
Ouen for services rendered while he was the minister of Napoleon at
Hamburg. He was recalled in 1810, when the Hanse towns were united,
or, to use the phrase of the day, re-united to the Empire. He then hung
about Paris, keeping on good terms with some of the ministers--Savary,
not the most reputable of them, for example. In 1814 he was to be found
at the office of Lavallette, the head of the posts, disguising, his
enemies said, his delight at the bad news which was pouring in, by
exaggerated expressions of devotion. He is accused of a close and
suspicious connection with Talleyrand, and it is odd that when
Talleyrand became head of the Provisional Government in 1814, Bourrienne
of all persons should have been put at the head of the posts. Received
in the most flattering manner by Louis XVIII, he was as astonished as
poor Beugnot was in 1815, to find himself on 13th May suddenly ejected
from office, having, however, had time to furnish post-horses to
Manbreuil for the mysterious expedition, said to have been at least
known to Talleyrand, and intended certainly for the robbery of the Queen
of Westphalia, and probably for the murder of Napoleon.
In the extraordinary scurry before the Bourbons scuttled out of Paris
in 1814, Bourrienne was made Prefet of the Police for a few days, his
tenure of that post being signalised by the abortive attempt to arrest
Fouché, the only effect of which was to drive that wily minister into
the arms of the Bonapartists.
He fled with the King, and was exempted from the amnesty proclaimed
by Napoleon. On the return from Ghent he was made a Minister of State
without portfolio, and also became one of the Council. The ruin of his
finances drove him out of France, but he eventually died in a madhouse
at Caen.
When the Memoirs first appeared in 1829 they made a great sensation.
Till then in most writings Napoleon had been treated as either a demon
or as a demi-god. The real facts of the case were not suited to the
tastes of either his enemies or his admirers. While the monarchs of
Europe had been disputing among themselves about the division of the
spoils to be obtained from France and from the unsettlement of the
Continent, there had arisen an extraordinarily clever and unscrupulous
man who, by alternately bribing and overthrowing the great monarchies,
had soon made himself master of the mainland. His admirers were
unwilling to admit the part played in his success by the jealousy of his
foes of each other's share in the booty, and they delighted to invest
him with every great quality which man could possess. His enemies were
ready enough to allow his military talents, but they wished to attribute
the first success of his not very deep policy to a marvellous duplicity,
apparently considered by them the more wicked as possessed by a parvenu
emperor, and far removed, in a moral point of view, from the statecraft
so allowable in an ancient monarchy. But for Napoleon himself and his
family and Court there was literally no limit to the really marvellous
inventions of his enemies. He might enter every capital on the
Continent, but there was some consolation in believing that he himself
was a monster of wickedness, and his Court but the scene of one long
protracted orgie.
There was enough against the Emperor in the Memoirs to make them
comfortable reading for his opponents, though very many of the old
calumnies were disposed of in them. They contained indeed the nearest
approximation to the truth which had yet appeared. Metternich, who must
have been a good judge, as no man was better acquainted with what he
himself calls the "age of Napoleon," says of the Memoirs: "If you want
something to read, both interesting and amusing, get the Memoires de
Bourrienne. These are the only authentic Memoirs of Napoleon which have
yet appeared. The style is not brilliant, but that only makes them the
mere trustworthy." Indeed, Metternich himself in his own Memoirs
often follows a good deal in the line of Bourrienne: among many formal
attacks, every now and then he lapses into half involuntary and indirect
praise of his great antagonist, especially where he compares the men
he had to deal with in aftertimes with his former rapid and talented
interlocutor. To some even among the Bonapartists, Bourrienne was not
altogether distasteful. Lucien Bonaparte, remarking that the time in
which Bourrienne treated with Napoleon as equal with equal did not last
long enough for the secretary, says he has taken a little revenge in his
Memoirs, just as a lover, after a break with his mistress, reveals all
her defects. But Lucien considers that Bourrienne gives us a good enough
idea of the young officer of the artillery, of the great General, and
of the First Consul. Of the Emperor, says Lucien, he was too much in
retirement to be able to judge equally well. But Lucien was not a fair
representative of the Bonapartists; indeed he had never really thought
well of his brother or of his actions since Lucien, the former "Brutus"
Bonaparte, had ceased to be the adviser of the Consul. It was well for
Lucien himself to amass a fortune from the presents of a corrupt court,
and to be made a Prince and Duke by the Pope, but he was too sincere
a republican not to disapprove of the imperial system. The real
Bonapartists were naturally and inevitably furious with the Memoirs.
They were not true, they were not the work of Bourrienne, Bourrienne
himself was a traitor, a purloiner of manuscripts, his memory was as bad
as his principles, he was not even entitled to the de before his name.
If the Memoirs were at all to be pardoned, it was because his share was
only really a few notes wrung from him by large pecuniary offers at
a time when he was pursued by his creditors, and when his brain was
already affected.
The Bonapartist attack on the Memoirs was delivered in full form, in
two volumes, 'Bourrienne et ses Erreurs, Volontaires et Involontaires'
(Paris, Heideloff, 1830), edited by the Comte d'Aure, the Ordonnateur
en Chef of the Egyptian expedition, and containing communications from
Joseph Bonaparte, Gourgaud, Stein, etc.'
--[In the notes in this present edition these volumes are referred
to in brief 'Erreurs'.]--
Part of the system of attack was to call in question the authenticity
of the Memoirs, and this was the more easy as Bourrienne, losing his
fortune, died in 1834 in a state of imbecility. But this plan is not
systematically followed, and the very reproaches addressed to the writer
of the Memoirs often show that it was believed they were really written
by Bourrienne. They undoubtedly contain plenty of faults. The editor
(Villemarest, it is said) probably had a large share in the work, and
Bourrienne must have forgotten or misplaced many dates and occurrences.
In such a work, undertaken so many years after the events, it was
inevitable that many errors should be made, and that many statements
should be at least debatable. But on close investigation the work stands
the attack in a way that would be impossible unless it had really been
written by a person in the peculiar position occupied by Bourrienne.
He has assuredly not exaggerated that position: he really, says Lucien
Bonaparte, treated as equal with equal with Napoleon during a part of
his career, and he certainly was the nearest friend and confidant that
Napoleon ever had in his life.
Where he fails, or where the Bonapartist fire is most telling, is in the
account of the Egyptian expedition. It may seem odd that he should have
forgotten, even in some thirty years, details such as the way in which
the sick were removed; but such matters were not in his province; and
it would be easy to match similar omissions in other works, such as the
accounts of the Crimea, and still more of the Peninsula. It is with his
personal relations with Napoleon that we are most concerned, and it is
in them that his account receives most corroboration.
It may be interesting to see what has been said of the Memoirs by other
writers. We have quoted Metternich, and Lucien Bonaparte; let us hear
Meneval, his successor, who remained faithful to his master to the end:
"Absolute confidence cannot be given to statements contained in Memoirs
published under the name of a man who has not composed them. It is known
that the editor of these Memoirs offered to M. de Bourrienne, who had
then taken refuge in Holstein from his creditors, a sum said to be
thirty thousand francs to obtain his signature to them, with some notes
and addenda. M. de Bourrienne was already attacked by the disease from
which he died a few years latter in a maison de sante at Caen. Many
literary men co-operated in the preparation of his Memoirs. In 1825 I
met M. de Bourrienne in Paris. He told me it had been suggested to him
to write against the Emperor. 'Notwithstanding the harm he has done me,'
said he, 'I would never do so. Sooner may my hand be withered.' If M.
de Bourrienne had prepared his Memoirs himself, he would not have stated
that while he was the Emperor's minister at Hamburg he worked with
the agents of the Comte de Lille (Louis XVIII.) at the preparation of
proclamations in favour of that Prince, and that in 1814 he accepted the
thanks of the King, Louis XVIII., for doing so; he would not have said
that Napoleon had confided to him in 1805 that he had never conceived
the idea of an expedition into England, and that the plan of a landing,
the preparations for which he gave such publicity to, was only a snare
to amuse fools. The Emperor well knew that never was there a plan more
seriously conceived or more positively settled. M. de Bourrienne would
not have spoken of his private interviews with Napoleon, nor of the
alleged confidences entrusted to him, while really Napoleon had no