CHAPTER IX.

1802.

Proverbial falsehood of bulletins—­M.  Doublet—­Creation of the Legion of Honour—­Opposition to it in the Council and other authorities of the State—­The partisans of an hereditary system—­ The question of the Consulship for life.

The historian of these times ought to put no faith in the bulletins, despatches, notes, and proclamations which have emanated from Bonaparte, or passed through his hands.  For my part, I believe that the proverb, “As great a liar as a bulletin,” has as much truth in it as the axiom, two and two make four.

The bulletins always announced what Bonaparte wished to be believed true; but to form a proper judgment on any fact, counter-bulletins must be sought for and consulted.  It is well known, too, that Bonaparte attached great importance to the place whence he dated his bulletins; thus, he dated his decrees respecting the theatres and Hamburg beef at Moscow.

The official documents were almost always incorrect.  There was falsity in the exaggerated descriptions of his victories, and falsity again in the suppression or palliation of his reverses and losses.  A writer, if he took his materials from the bulletins and the official correspondence of the time, would compose a romance rather than a true history.  Of this many proofs have been given in the present work.

Another thing which always appeared to me very remarkable was, that Bonaparte, notwithstanding his incontestable superiority, studied to depreciate the reputations of his military commanders, and to throw on their shoulders faults which he had committed himself.  It is notorious that complaints and remonstrances, as energetic as they were well founded, were frequently addressed to General Bonaparte on the subject of his unjust and partial bulletins, which often attributed the success of a day to some one who had very little to do with it, and made no mention of the officer who actually had the command.  The complaints made by the officers and soldiers stationed at Damietta compelled General Lanusse, the commander, to remonstrate against the alteration of a bulletin, by which an engagement with a body of Arabs was represented as an insignificant affair, and the loss trifling, though the General had stated the action to be one of importance, and the loss considerable.  The misstatement, in consequence of his spirited and energetic remonstrances, was corrected.

Bonaparte took Malta, as is well known, in forty-eight hours.  The empire of the Mediterranean, secured to the English by the battle of Aboukir, and their numerous cruising vessels, gave them the means of starving the garrison, and of thus forcing General Vaubois, the commandant of Malta, who was cut off from all communication with France, to capitulate.  Accordingly on the 4th of September 1800 he yielded up the Gibraltar of the Mediterranean, after a noble defence of two years.  These facts require to be stated in order the better to understand what follows.