Memoirs of Napoleon, vol 1 | Page 9

astray on many points. His account of the
conversation of Josephine after the death of the Due d'Eughien may be
compared with what we know from Madame de Remusat, who, by the
way, would have been horrified if she had known that he considered
her to resemble the Empress Josephine in character.
We now come to the views of Savary, the Due de Rovigo, who
avowedly remained on good terms with Bourrienne after his disgrace,
though the friendship of Savary was not exactly a thing that most men
would have much prided themselves on. "Bourrienne had a prodigious
memory; he spoke and wrote in several languages, and his pen ran as
quickly as one could speak. Nor were these the only advantages he
possessed. He knew the routine of public business and public law. His
activity and devotion made him indispensable to the First Consul. I
knew the qualities which won for him the unlimited confidence of his
chief, but I cannot speak with the same assurance of the faults which
made him lose it. Bourrienne had many enemies, both on account of his
character and of his place" (Savary, i. 418-19).
Marmont ought to be an impartial critic of the Memoirs. He says,
"Bourrienne . . . had a very great capacity, but he is a striking example

of the great truth that our passions are always bad counsellors. By
inspiring us with an immoderate ardour to reach a fixed end, they often
make us miss it. Bourrienne had an immoderate love of money. With
his talents and his position near Bonaparte at the first dawn of greatness,
with the confidence and real good-will which Bonaparte felt for him, in
a few years he would have gained everything in fortune and in social
position. But his eager impatience mined his career at the moment
when it might have developed and increased" (Marmont, i. 64). The
criticism appears just. As to the Memoirs, Marmont says (ii. 224), "In
general, these Memoirs are of great veracity and powerful interest so
long as they treat of what the author has seen and heard; but when he
speaks of others, his work is only an assemblage of gratuitous
suppositions and of false facts put forward for special purposes."
The Comte Alexandre de Puymaigre, who arrived at Hamburgh soon
after Bourrienne had left it in 1810, says (page 135) of the part of the
Memoirs which relates to Hamburg, "I must acknowledge that
generally his assertions are well founded. This former companion of
Napoleon has only forgotten to speak of the opinion that they had of
him in this town.
"The truth is, that he was believed to have made much money there."
Thus we may take Bourrienne as a clever, able man, who would have
risen to the highest honours under the Empire had not his short-sighted
grasping after lucre driven him from office, and prevented him from
ever regaining it under Napoleon.
In the present edition the translation has been carefully compared with
the original French text. Where in the original text information is given
which has now become mere matter of history, and where Bourrienne
merely quotes the documents well enough known at this day, his
possession of which forms part of the charges of his opponents,
advantage has been taken to lighten the mass of the Memoirs. This has
been done especially where they deal with what the writer did not
himself see or hear, the part of the Memoirs which are of least valve
and of which Marmont's opinion has just been quoted. But in the
personal and more valuable part of the Memoirs, where we have the
actual knowledge of the secretary himself, the original text has been
either fully retained, or some few passages previously omitted restored.
Illustrative notes have been added from the Memoirs of the successor

of Bourrienne, Meneval, Madame de Remusat, the works of Colonel
Iung on 'Bonaparte et Son Temps', and on 'Lucien Bonaparte', etc., and
other books. Attention has also been paid to the attacks of the 'Erreurs',
and wherever these criticisms are more than a mere expression of
disagreement, their purport has been recorded with, where possible,
some judgment of the evidence. Thus the reader will have before him
the materials for deciding himself how far, Bourrienne's statements are
in agreement with the facts and with the accounts of other writers.
At the present time too much attention has been paid to the Memoirs of
Madame de Remusat. She, as also Madame Junot, was the wife of a
man on whom the full shower of imperial favours did not descend, and,
womanlike, she saw and thought only of the Court life of the great man
who was never less great than in his Court. She is equally astonished
and indignant that the Emperor,