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
