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