Memoirs of Napoleon, vol 1 | Page 6

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
Fouche, 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