Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte — Volume 01. Louis de Bourrienne
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might have weathered any temporary storm raised by unfounded reports as successfully as Meneval, who followed him. But Bourrienne's hands were not clean in money matters, and that was an unpardonable sin in any one who desired to be in real intimacy with Napoleon. He became involved in the affairs of the House of Coulon, which failed, as will be seen in the 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 more 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