Louis de Bourrienne
Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte — Complete
Though Bonaparte had no reason to be satisfied with the treatment he received from his comrades, yet he was above complaining of it; and when he had the supervision of any duty which they infringed, he would rather go to prison than denounce the criminals.
I was one day his accomplice in omitting to enforce a duty which we were appointed to supervise. He prevailed on me to accompany him to prison, where we remained three days. We suffered this sort of punishment several times, but with less severity.
In 1783 the Duke of Orleans and Madame de Montesson visited Brienne; and, for upwards of a month, the magnificent chateau of the Comte de Brienne was a Versailles in miniature. The series of brilliant entertainments which were given to the august travellers made them almost forget the royal magnificence they had left behind them.
The Prince and Madame de Montesson expressed a wish to preside at the distribution of the prizes of our college. Bonaparte and I won the prizes in the class of mathematics, which, as I have already observed, was the branch of study to which he confined his attention, and in which he excelled. When I was called up for the seventh time Madame de Montesson said to my mother, who had come from Sens to be present at the distribution, "Pray, madame, crown your son this time; my hands are a-weary."
There was an inspector of the military schools, whose business it was to make an annual report on each pupil, whether educated at the public expense or paid for by his family. I copied from the report of 1784 a note which was probably obtained surreptitiously from the War Office. I wanted to purchase the manuscript, but Louis Bonaparte bought it. I did not make a copy of the note which related to myself, because I should naturally have felt diffident in making any use of it. It would, however, have served to show how time and circumstances frequently reversed the distinctions which arise at school or college. Judging from the reports of the inspector of military schools, young Bonaparte was not, of all the pupils at Brienne in 1784, the one most calculated to excite prognostics of future greatness and glory.
The note to which I have just alluded, and which was written by M. de Kerralio, then inspector of the military schools, describes Bonaparte in the following terms:
INSPECTION OF MILITARY SCHOOLS
1784
REPORT MADE FOR HIS MAJESTY BY M. DE KERALIO
M. de Buonaparte (Napoleon), born 15th August 1769, height 4 feet 10 inches 10 lines, is in the fourth class, has a good constitution, excellent health, character obedient, upright, grateful, conduct very regular; has been always distinguished by his application to mathematics. He knows history and geography very passably. He is not well up in ornamental studies or in Latin in which he is only in the fourth class. He will be an excellent sailor. He deserves to be passed on to the Military School of Paris.
Father Berton, however, opposed Bonaparte's removal to Paris, because he had not passed through the fourth Latin class, and the regulations required that he should be in the third. I was informed by the vice-principal that a report relative to Napoleon was sent from the College of Brienne to that of Paris, in which he was described as being domineering, imperious, and obstinate.
—[Napoleon remained upwards of five years at Brienne, from April 1779 till the latter end of 1784. In 1783 the Chevalier Keralio, sub-inspector of the military schools, selected him to pass the year following to the military school at Paris, to which three of the best scholars were annually sent from each of the twelve provincial military schools of France. It is curious as well as satisfactory to know the opinion at this time entertained of him by those who were the best qualified to judge. His old master, Le Guille, professor of history at Paris, boasted that, in a list of the different scholars, he had predicted his pupil's subsequent career. In fact, to the name of Bonaparte the following note is added: "a Corsican by birth and character—he will do something great, if circumstances favour him." Menge was his instructor in geometry, who also entertained a high opinion of him. M. Bauer, his German master, was the only one who saw nothing in him, and was surprised at being told he was undergoing his examination for the artillery. —Hazlitt.]—
I knew Bonaparte well; and I think M. de Keralio's report of him was exceedingly just, except, perhaps, that he might have said he was very well as to his progress in history and geography, and very backward in Latin; but certainly nothing indicated the probability of his being an excellent seaman. He himself had no thought of the navy.
—[Bourrienne is certainly wrong as to Bonaparte having no thought of the navy. In a letter of 1784 to the Minister of War his father says of Napoleon that, "following the advice of the Comte de Marbeuf, he has turned his studies towards the navy; and so well has he succeeded that he was intended by M. de Keralio for the school of Paris, and afterwards for the department of Toulon. The retirement of the former professor (Keralio) has changed the fate of my son." It was only on the failure of his intention to get into the navy that his father, on 15th July 1784 applied for permission for him to enter the artillery; Napoleon having a horror of the infantry, where he said they did nothing. It was on the success of this application that he was allowed to enter the school of Parts (Iung, tome i. pp. 91-103). Oddly enough, in later years, on 30th August 1792, having just succeeded in getting himself reinstated as captain after his absence, overstaying leave, he applied to pass into the Artillerie de la Marine. "The application was judged to be simply absurd, and was filed with this note, 'S. R.' ('sans reponse')" (Iung, tome ii. p. 201)]—
In consequence of M. de Keralio's report, Bonaparte was transferred to the Military College of Paris, along with MM. Montarby de Dampierre, de Castres, de Comminges, and de Laugier de Bellecourt, who were all, like him, educated at the public expense, and all, at least, as favorably reported.
What could have induced Sir Walter Scott to say that Bonaparte was the pride of the college, that our mathematical master was exceedingly fond of him, and that the other professors in the different sciences had equal reason to be satisfied with him? What I have above stated, together with the report of M. de Keralio, bear evidence of his backwardness in almost every branch of education except mathematics. Neither was it, as Sir Walter affirms, his precocious progress in mathematics that occasioned him to be removed to Paris. He had attained the proper age, and the report of him was favourable, therefore he was very naturally included among the number of the five who were chosen in 1784.
In a biographical account of Bonaparte I have read the following anecdote:—When he was fourteen years of age he happened to be at a party where some one pronounced a high eulogium on Turenne; and a lady in the company observed that he certainly was a great man, but that she should like him better if he had not burned the Palatinate. "What signifies that," replied Bonaparte, "if it was necessary to the object he had in view?"
This is either an anachronism or a mere fabrication. Bonaparte was fourteen in the year 1783. He was then at Brienne, where certainly he did not go into company, and least of all the company of ladies.
CHAPTER II
1784-1794.
Bonaparte enters the Military College of Paris—He urges me to embrace the military profession—His report on the state of the Military School of Paris—He obtains a commission—I set off for Vienna—Return to Paris, where I again meet Bonaparte—His singular plans for raising money—Louis XVI, with the red cap on his head— The 10th of August—My departure for Stuttgart—Bonaparte goes to Corsica—My name inscribed on the list of emigrants—Bonaparte at the siege of Toulon—Le Souper de Beaucaire—Napoleon's mission to Genoa—His arrest—His autographical justification
—Duroc's first connection with Bonaparte.
Bonaparte was fifteen years and two months old when he went to the Military College of Paris.
—[Madame Junot relates some interesting particulars connected with Napoleon's first residence in Paris: "My mother's first care," says she, "on arriving in Paris was to inquire after Napoleon Bonaparte. He was at that time in the military school at Paris, having quitted Brienne in the September of the preceding year.
"My uncle Demetrius had met him just after he alighted from the coach which brought him to town; 'And truly.' said my uncle, 'he had the appearance of a fresh importation. I met him in the Palms Royal, where he was gaping and staring with wonder at everything he saw. He would have been an excellent subject for sharpers, if, indeed, he had had anything worth taking!' My uncle invited him to dine at his house; for though my uncle was a bachelor, he did not choose to dine at a 'traiteur' (the name 'restaurateur' was not then introduced). He told my mother that Napoleon was very morose. 'I fear,' added he, 'that that young man has more self-conceit than is suitable to his condition. When he dined with me he began to declaim violently against the luxury of the young men of the military school. After a little he turned the conversation on Mania, and the present education of the young Maniotes, drawing a comparison between it and the ancient Spartan system of education. His observations on this head he told me he intended to embody in a memorial to be presented to the Minister of War. All this, depend upon it, will bring him under the displeasure of his comrades; and it will be lucky if he escape being run through.' A few days afterwards my mother saw Napoleon, and then his irritability was at its height. He would scarcely bear any observations, even if made in his favour, and I am convinced that it is to this uncontrollable irritability that he owed the reputation of having been ill-tempered in his boyhood, and splenetic in his youth. My father, who was acquainted with almost all the heads of the military school, obtained leave for him sometimes to come out for recreation. On account of an accident (a sprain, if I recollect rightly) Napoleon once spent a whole week at our house. To this day, whenever I pass the Quai Conti, I cannot help looking up at a 'mansarde' at the left angle of the house on the third floor. That was Napoleon's chamber when he paid us a visit, and a neat little room it was. My brother used to occupy the one next to it. The two young men were nearly of the same age: my brother perhaps had the advantage of a year or fifteen months. My mother had recommended him to cultivate the friendship of young Bonaparte; but my brother complained how unpleasant it was to find only cold politeness where he expected affection. This repulsiveness on the part of Napoleon was almost offensive, and must have been sensibly felt by my brother, who was not only remarkable for the mildness of his temper and the amenity and grace of his manner, but whose society was courted in the most distinguished circles of Paris on account of his accomplishments. He perceived in Bonaparte a kind of acerbity and bitter irony, of which he long endeavoured to discover the cause. 'I believe,' said Albert one day to my mother, 'that the poor young man feels keenly his dependent situation.'" ('Memoirs of the Duchesse d'Abrantes, vol. i. p. 18, edit. 1883).]—
I accompanied him in a carriole as far as Nogent Sur Seine, whence the coach was to start. We parted with regret, and we did not meet again till the year 1792. During these eight years we maintained an active correspondence; but so little did I anticipate the high destiny which, after his elevation, it was affirmed the wonderful qualities of his boyhood plainly denoted, that I did not preserve one of the letters he wrote to me at that period, but tore them up as soon as they were answered.
—[I remember, however, that in a letter which I received from him about a year after his arrival in Paris he urged me to keep my promise of entering the army with him. Like him, I had passed through the studies necessary for the artillery service; and in 1787 I went for three months to Metz, in order to unite practice with theory. A strange Ordinance, which I believe was issued in 1778 by M. de Segur, required that a man should possess four quarterings of nobility before he could be qualified to serve his king and country as a military officer. My mother went to Paris, taking with her the letters patent of her husband, who died six weeks after my birth. She proved that in the year 1640 Louis XIII. had, by letters patent, restored the titles of one Fauvelet de Villemont, who in 1586 had kept several provinces of Burgundy subject to the king's authority at the peril of his life and the loss of his property; and that his family had occupied the first places in the magistracy since the fourteenth century. All was correct, but it was observed that the letters of nobility had not been registered by the Parliament, and to repair this little omission, the sum of twelve thousand francs was demanded. This my mother refused to pay, and there the matter rested.]—
On his arrival at the Military School of Paris, Bonaparte found the establishment on so brilliant and expensive a footing that he immediately addressed a memorial on the subject to the Vice-Principal Berton of Brienne.
—[A second memoir prepared by him to the same effect was intended for the Minister of War, but Father Berton wisely advised silence to the young cadet (Iung, tome i. p. 122). Although believing in the necessity of show and of magnificence in public life, Napoleon remained true to these principles. While lavishing wealth on his ministers and marshals, "In your private life," said be, "be economical and even parsimonious; in public be magnificent"
(Meneval, tome i. p. 146).]—
He showed that the plan of education was really pernicious, and far from being calculated to fulfil the object which every wise government must have in view. The result of the system, he said, was to inspire the pupils, who were all the sons of poor gentlemen, with a love of ostentation, or rather, with sentiments of vanity and self-sufficiency; so that, instead of returning happy to the bosom of their families, they were likely to be ashamed of their parents, and to despise their humble homes. Instead of the numerous attendants by whom they were surrounded, their dinners of two courses, and their horses and grooms, he suggested that they should perform little necessary services for themselves, such as brushing their clothes, and cleaning their boots and shoes; that they should eat the coarse bread made for soldiers, etc. Temperance and activity, he added, would render them robust, enable them to bear the severity of different seasons and climates, to brave the fatigues of war, and to inspire the respect and obedience of the soldiers under their command. Thus reasoned Napoleon at the age of sixteen, and time showed that he never deviated from these principles. The establishment of the military school at Fontainebleau is a decided proof of this.
As Napoleon was an active observer of everything passing around him, and pronounced his opinion openly and decidedly, he did not remain long at the Military School of Paris. His superiors, who were anxious to get rid of him, accelerated the period of his examination, and he obtained the first vacant sub-lieutenancy in a regiment of artillery.
I left Brienne in 1787; and as I could not enter the artillery, I proceeded in the following year to Vienna, with a letter of recommendation to M. de Montmorin, soliciting employment in the French Embassy at the Court of Austria.
I remained two months at Vienna, where I had the honour of twice seeing the Emperor Joseph. The impression made upon me by his kind reception, his dignified and elegant manners, and graceful conversation, will never be obliterated from my recollection. After M. de Noailles had initiated me in the first steps of diplomacy, he advised me to go to one of the German universities to study the law of nations and foreign languages. I accordingly repaired to Leipsic, about the time when the French Revolution broke out.
I spent some time at Leipsic, where I applied myself to the study of the law of nations, and the German and English languages. I afterwards travelled through Prussia and Poland, and passed a part of the winter of 1791 and 1792 at Warsaw, where I was most graciously received by Princess Tyszicwiez, niece of Stanislaus Augustus, the last King of Poland, and the sister of Prince Poniatowski. The Princess was very well informed, and was a great admirer of French literature: At her invitation I passed several evenings in company with the King in a circle small enough to approach to something like intimacy. I remember that his Majesty frequently asked me to read the Moniteur; the speeches to which he listened with the greatest pleasure were those of the Girondists. The Princess Tyszicwiez wished to print at Warsaw, at her own expense, a translation I had executed of Kotzebue's 'Menschenhass and Reue, to which I gave the title of 'L'Inconnu'.
—[A play known on the English stage as The Stranger.]—
I arrived at Vienna on the 26th of March 1792, when I was informed of the serious illness of the Emperor, Leopold II, who died on the following day. In private companies, and at public places, I heard vague suspicions expressed of his having been poisoned; but the public, who were admitted to the palace to see the body lie in state, were soon convinced of the falsehood of these reports. I went twice to see the mournful spectacle, and I never heard a word which was calculated to confirm the odious suspicion, though the spacious hall in which the remains of the Emperor were exposed was constantly thronged with people.
In the month of April 1792 I returned to Paris, where I again met Bonaparte,
—[Bonaparte is said, on very doubtful authority, to have spent five or six weeks in London in 1791 or 1792, and to have "lodged in a house in George Street, Strand. His chief occupation appeared to be taking pedestrian exercise in the streets of London—hence his marvellous knowledge of the great metropolis which used to astonish any Englishmen of distinction who were not aware of this visit. He occasionally took his cup of chocolate at the 'Northumberland,' occupying himself in reading, and preserving a provoking taciturnity to the gentlemen in the room; though his manner was stern, his deportment was that of a gentleman." The story of his visit is probably as apocryphal as that of his offering his services to the English Government when the English forces wore blockading the coast of Corsica,]—
and our college intimacy was fully renewed. I was not very well off, and adversity was hanging heavily on him; his resources frequently failed him. We passed our time like two young fellows of twenty-three who have little money and less occupation. Bonaparte was always poorer than I. Every day we conceived some new project or other. We were on the look-out for some profitable speculation. At one time he wanted me to join him in renting several houses, then building in the Rue Montholon, to underlet them afterwards. We found the demands of the landlords extravagant—everything failed.
At the same time he was soliciting employment at the War Office, and I at the office of Foreign Affairs. I was for the moment the luckier of the two.
While we were spending our time in a somewhat vagabond way,
—[It was before the 20th of June that in our frequent excursions around Paris we went to St. Cyr to see his sister Marianne (Elisa). We returned to dine alone at Trianon.—Bourrienne.]—
the 20th of June arrived. We met by appointment at a restaurateur's in the Rue St. Honore, near the Palais Royal, to take one of our daily rambles. On going out we saw approaching, in the direction of the market, a mob, which Bonaparte calculated at five or six thousand men. They were all in rags, ludicrously armed with weapons of every description, and were proceeding hastily towards the Tuilleries, vociferating all kinds of gross abuse. It was a collection of all that was most vile and abject in the purlieus of Paris. "Let us follow the mob," said Bonaparte. We got the start of them, and took up our station on the terrace of the banks of the river. It was there that he witnessed the scandalous scenes which took place; and it would be difficult to describe the surprise and indignation which they excited in him. When the King showed himself at the windows overlooking the garden, with the red cap, which one of the mob had put on his head, he could no longer repress his indignation. "Che coglione!" he loudly exclaimed. "Why have they let in all that rabble! They should sweep off four or five hundred of them with the cannon; the rest would then set off fast enough."
When we sat down to dinner, which I paid for, as I generally did, for I was the richer of the two, he spoke of nothing but the scene we had witnessed. He discussed with great good sense the causes and consequences of this unrepressed insurrection. He foresaw and developed with sagacity all that would ensue. He was not mistaken. The 10th of August soon arrived. I was then at Stuttgart, where I was appointed Secretary of Legation.
At St. Helena Bonaparte said, "On the news of the attack of the Tuilleries, on the 10th of August, I hurried to Fauvelet, Bourrienne's brother, who then kept a furniture warehouse at the Carrousel." This is partly correct. My brother was connected with what was termed an 'enterprise d'encan national', where persons intending to quit France received an advance of money, on depositing any effects which they wished to dispose of, and which were sold for them immediately. Bonaparte had some time previously pledged his watch in this way.
After the fatal 10th of August Bonaparte went to Corsica, and did not return till 1793. Sir Walter Scott says that after that time he never saw Corsica again. This is a mistake, as will be shown when I speak of his return from Egypt.
—[Sir Walter appears to have collected his information for the Life of Napoleon only from those libels and vulgar stories which gratified the calumnious spirit and national hatred. His work is written with excessive negligence, which, added to its numerous errors, shows how much respect he must have entertained for his readers. It would appear that his object was to make it the inverse of his novels, where everything is borrowed from history. I have been assured that Marshal Macdonald having offered to introduce Scott to some generals who could have furnished him with the most accurate, information respecting military events, the glory of which they had shared, Sir Walter replied, "I thank you, but I shall collect my information from unprofessional reports."—Bourrienne.]—
Having been appointed Secretary of Legation to Stuttgart, I set off for that place on the 2d of August, and I did not again see my ardent young friend until 1795. He told me that my departure accelerated his for Corsica. We separated, as may be supposed, with but faint hopes of ever meeting again.
By a decree of the 28th of March of 1793, all French agents abroad were ordered to return to France, within three months, under pain of being regarded as emigrants. What I had witnessed before my departure for Stuttgart, the excitement in which I had left the public mind, and the well-known consequences of events of this kind, made me fear that I should be compelled to be either an accomplice or a victim in the disastrous scenes which were passing at home. My disobedience of the law placed my name on the list of emigrants.
It has been said of me, in a biographical publication, that "it was as remarkable as it was fortunate for Bourrienne that, on his return, he got his name erased from the list of emigrants of the department of the Yonne, on which it had been inscribed during his first journey to Germany. This circumstance has been interpreted in several different ways, which are not all equally favourable to M. de Bourrienne."
I do not understand what favourable interpretations can be put upon a statement entirely false. General Bonaparte repeatedly applied for the erasure of my name, from the month of April 1797, when I rejoined him at Leoben, to the period of the signature of the treaty of Campo-Formio; but without success. He desired his brother Louis, Berthier, Bernadotte, and others, when he sent them to the Directory, to urge my erasure; but in vain. He complained of this inattention to his wishes to Bottot, when he came to Passeriano, after the 18th Fructidor. Bottot, who was secretary to Barras, was astonished that I was not erased, and he made fine promises of what he would do. On his return to France he wrote to Bonaparte: "Bourrienne is erased." But this was untrue. I was not erased until November 1797, upon the reiterated solicitations of General Bonaparte.
It was during my absence from France that Bonaparte, in the rank of 'chef de bataillon', performed his first campaign, and contributed so materially to the recapture of Toulon. Of this period of his life I have no personal knowledge, and therefore I shall not speak of it as an eye-witness. I shall merely relate some facts which fill up the interval between 1793 and 1795, and which I have collected from papers which he himself delivered to me. Among these papers is a little production, entitled 'Le Souper de Beaucaire', the copies of which he bought up at considerable expense, and destroyed upon his attaining the Consulate. This little pamphlet contains principles very opposite to those he wished to see established in 1800, a period when extravagant ideas of liberty were no longer the fashion, and when Bonaparte entered upon a system totally the reverse of those republican principles professed in 'Le Souper de Beaucaire.
—[This is not, as Sir Walter says, a dialogue between Marat and a Federalist, but a conversation between a military officer, a native of Nismes, a native of Marseilles, and a manufacturer from Montpellier. The latter, though he takes a share in the conversation, does not say much. 'Le Souper de Beaucaire' is given at full length in the French edition of these Memoirs, tome i. pp. 319-347; and by Iung, tome ii. p. 354, with the following remarks: "The first edition of 'Le Souper de Beaucaire' was issued at the cost of the Public Treasury, in August 1798. Sabin Tournal, its editor, also then edited the 'Courrier d'Avignon'. The second edition only appeared twenty-eight years afterwards, in 1821, preceded by an introduction by Frederick Royou (Paris: Brasseur Aine, printer, Terrey, publisher, in octavo). This pamphlet did not make any sensation at the time it appeared. It was only when Napoleon became Commandant of the Army of Italy that M. Loubet, secretary and corrector of the press for M. Tournal, attached some value to the manuscript, and showed it to several persona. Louis Bonaparte, later, ordered several copies from M. Aurel. The pamphlet, dated 29th duly 1793, is in the form of a dialogue between an officer of the army, a citizen of Nismes, a manufacturer of Montpellier, and a citizen of Marseilles. Marseilles was then in a state of insurrection against the Convention. Its forces had seized Avignon, but had been driven out by the army of Cartesna, which was about to attack Marseilles itself." In the dialogue the officer gives most excellent military advice to the representative of Marseilles on the impossibility of their resisting the old soldiers of Carteaux. The Marseilles citizen argues but feebly, and is alarmed at the officer's representations; while his threat to call in the Spaniards turns the other speakers against him. Even Colonel Iung says, tome ii. p. 372, "In these concise judgments is felt the decision of the master and of the man of war..... These marvellous qualities consequently struck the members of the Convention, who made much of Bonaparte, authorised him to have it published at the public expense, and made him many promises." Lanfrey, vol. i. pp. 201, says of this pamphlets "Common enough ideas, expressed in a style only remarkable for its 'Italianisms,' but becoming singularly firm and precise every time the author expresses his military views. Under an apparent roughness, we find in it a rare circumspection, leaving no hold on the writer, even if events change."]—
It may be remarked, that in all that has come to us from St. Helena, not a word is said of this youthful production. Its character sufficiently explains this silence. In all Bonaparte's writings posterity will probably trace the profound politician rather than the enthusiastic revolutionist.
Some documents relative to Bonaparte's suspension and arrest, by order of the representatives Albitte and Salicetti, serve to place in their true light circumstances which have hitherto been misrepresented. I shall enter into some details of this event, because I have seen it stated that this circumstance of Bonaparte's life has been perverted and misrepresented by every person who has hitherto written about him; and the writer who makes this remark, himself describes the affair incorrectly and vaguely. Others have attributed Bonaparte's misfortune to a military discussion on war, and his connection with Robespierre the younger.
