Excerpts Made for the Article "Bourrienne"

Add a subpage to this text

Read the help page for usage.

 

Note from MECW :

These excerpts for the article “Bourrienne” (see this volume, pp. 83-84 and notes 95 and 103) are the result of Marx’s primary work on three sources. The bulk of them were made from “Bourrienne” in the Biographie universelle (Michaud) ancienne et moderne (Vol. 5, Paris, 1854) and from the article bearing the same tide in The English Cyclopaedia (Vol. V, Biography, London, 1856). Marx remarked that the two articles closely resembled each other textually. Marx made some additions and notes based on Fr. Chr. Schlosser’s Zur Beurtheilung Napoleon’s und seiner neusten Tadler und Lobredner (Frankfurt am Main, 1835).

Excerpts from the Biographie universelle are made mosdy in French and those from The English Cyclopaedia in English, with German words inserted here and there. Marx’s own remarks and the summary of some of Schlosser’s propositions are written in German. They are given in ordinary type in this volume. The rest of the text is published in small type and in cases of direct quotations in editorial quotation marks. The use of English quotations and expressions is mentioned in footnotes. p. 394

(BIOGRAPHIE UNIVERSELLE. SCHLOSSER.)

(ENGLISH CYCLOPAEDIA 1856)

Bourrienne (Louis Antoine Fauvelet de), biographer of Napoleon Bonaparte, “born in Sens, July 9, 1769, the same year as Napoleon, also entered the same year, 1778, the military school in Brienne”. Approximately 6 years together in this house. “Of the 2, Bourrienne, [...] the more promising scholar: [...] in 1783, when Bonaparte, then about to leave the school, took a prize for mathematics, Bourrienne gained 7 premiums for languages and other accomplishments.”

We find the signs of Bonaparte’s future greatness most clearly disclosed in Bourrienne in the very passages where the latter thrusts himself forward and leads us to believe that luck favoured Bonaparte when it really ought to have favoured the author of the memoirs. Bourrienne brings the greatness of his hero into full relief by constantly thrusting himself alongside him or in front of him.

“Adopting diplomacy, 1789, to Vienna as clerk or attaché to the embassy of the Marquis de Noailles, ambassador of Louis XVI, at the court of the Austrian Emperor Joseph; after a few months to Leipzig, to study international law and the English and German languages”; then to Warsaw, well received (1791) at the court of King Poniatowski; translates there, in literary fit, Kotzebue’s L’Inconnu; 1792 return to Paris ; again he meets up with Bonaparte; both of them fare poorly; talks pitifully of Napoleon’s financial difficulties. Bourrienne obtains post as secrétaire d’ambassade à Stuttgart, but scarcely arrived there, “when the overthrow of Louis XVI’s throne caused him to lose this post”.

Bourrienne evaded the dangers of the terror by a prolonged stay abroad.

Placed on the list of émigrés. 1794 marries in Leipzig. 1795 returns to Paris with his wife, Bonaparte then out of employment as general de brigade à l’armée d’Italie.

With his customary pettiness Bourrienne again misrepresents his meeting with Bonaparte in Paris.

October 5, 1795 (13th Vendémiaire) gives power to Bonaparte, “placed at the head of the army of the interior” (i.e. of Paris); Bourrienne reproaches Bonaparte saying that he “had become colder towards his friends”.

On Bourrienne’s own admission this applies only to people like him, who boasted about their acquaintanceship with Bonaparte or desired to obtain through it in an underhand way offices and posts which they did not deserve.

Bourrienne arrested (February 1796) as an “émigré, his name not having been crossed off the fatal list”. His wife turns to Bonaparte; the latter very cold. “The pity of a justice of the peace saved Bourrienne.” Bonaparte (1796) commander-inchief of the army in Italy; Bourrienne writes to him; Bonaparte invites him ; “it was at the end of the campaign of 1797, at the moment when the preliminaries of Léoben were being signed, that Bourrienne arrived at the headquarters at Gratz”.

From the first day writes at the dictation of Napoleon, follows him after the Peace of Campo Formio to Rastatt, Paris, Egypt, “returns with him”, with him during the Marengo campaign, “received the title of Councillor of State. Lodged at the Tuileries in the same apartment and almost the same room as the first consul, at all hours of the day and night he had to answer his call and the orders of the most active man”, etc. No money “was enough for the insatiable Bourrienne; he abused [...] his credit in order to obtain unlawful gains”. Bonaparte “reproaches him severely”. “Bankruptcy of the firm of Coulon, [...] who thanks to him had been charged with supplying all the equipment of the cavalry.” Bankruptcy to the tune of 3 million.

The head of the firm disappeared. “Bourrienne accused of causing his flight, and even his death, cither in order to share the deficit ‘with him or to appropriate it all for himself. A criminal action was about to be brought against him by the creditors when he was saved by the pretended disgrace with which Bonaparte punished him, and by an honourable exile to Hamburg”—1802, with the “title of French chargé d’affaires in the district of Lower Saxony. His mission in this post, according to the instructions of the Minister of Police, was above all to observe the actions and the secret relations of the royalist agents in the different cabinets of the Continent with England” (army contractors of Coulon).

Later Bourrienne in Hamburg, his mission being to implement the continental system, i.e. "to stop and seize all merchandise and capital suspected of coming from England". "Complaints against Bourrienne for extortion and embezzlement" (among the claimants Emperor Alexander himself on behalf of the Duke of Mecklenburg). Bonaparte sends M. Augier de la Sauzaye as "commissary to inquire and report".

His report "that one could safely make the chargé d'affaires return 2 millions; he [...] had apparently laid the Duke of Mecklenburg under contribution [...] for 40,000 friedrichsdors and 2 bonds for a similar amount; [...] Hamburg senate 750,000 marks banco (about 2 millions )— Napoleon reduced it [...] to 1 million". "Bourrienne [...] had to refund to the Imperial Treasury" "but he did not have much of it left; a taste for excessive expenditure, [...] imprudent speculations in commerce and on the Stock Exchange"; utterly disgraced and ruined.

Showed great joy at the fall of Napoleon.

"Was one of the first to hasten over to Talleyrand, who made him postmaster-general on April 1. [...] The Provisional Government also refunds him the million." "Louis XVIII dismisses him from that post."

But March 1815, at the rumour of Napoleon's return from Elba, Louis XVIII's prefect of police; "after a week has to flee"; by decree of Lyons March 13 Napoleon includes him among the members of the Provisional Government not affected by the amnesty. Follows Louis XVIII to Belgium, "appointed his minister in Hamburg, probably again with an observation mission". "On his return to Paris appointed" councillor; then minister of state; elected member of the Chambre introuvable by the department of Yonne; likewise 1821 to the Chamber, member and spokesman of the budget commission, seeming very strange that "a man known for his corruption and extravagance is charged with examining the finances of the state.

[...] His affairs so bad that obliged to flee to avoid the legal proceedings of his creditors" (1828). At the home of the Duchess de Brancas, at Fontaine-l'Evêque, near Charleroi, here "writes his memoirs, put in order and edited by Max de Villemarest, Paris 1829, 10 vols, in 8vo". Went mad after the July revolution, February 7 in a lunatic asylum (hospital for the insane) in Normandy, near Caen.

"He could never write the word 'Millions' without a kind of nervous agitation, and fidgeting in his chair."

(Biographie universelle. English Cyclopaedia No. 5—entirely copied from this.)