Fouche, the grand investigator of the secrets of Europe, did not fail, on the first report of the agitations in Spain, to address to me question on question respecting the Comte de Rechteren, the Spanish Minister at Hamburg, who, however, had left that city, with the permission of his Court, four months after I had entered on my functions.  This was going back very far to seek information respecting the affairs of the day.  At the very moment when I transmitted a reply to Fouche which was not calculated to please him, because it afforded no ground for suspicion as to the personal conduct of M. de Rechteren, I received from the amiable Josephine a new mark of her remembrance.  She sent me the following note: 

“M.  Milon, who is now in Hamburg, wishes me, my dear Bourrienne, to request that you will use your interest in his favour.  I feel the more pleasure in making this request as it affords me an opportunity of renewing the assurance of my regard for you.”

Josephine’s letter was dated from Fontainebleau, whither the Emperor used to make journeys in imitation of the old Court of France.  During these excursions he sometimes partook of the pleasures of the chase, but merely for the sake of reviving an old custom, for in that exercise he found as little amusement as Montaigne did in the game of chess,

At Fontainebleau, as everywhere else, his mind was engaged with the means of augmenting his greatness, but, unfortunately, the exactions he imposed on distant countries were calculated to alienate the affections of the people.  Thus, for example, I received an order emanating from him, and transmitted to me by M. Daru, the Intendant-General of the army, that the pay of all the French troops stationed in the Hanse Towns should be defrayed by these towns.  I lamented the necessity of making such a communication to the Senates of Bremen, Lubeck, and Hamburg; but my duty compelled me to do so, and I had long been accustomed to fulfil duties even more painful than this.  I tried every possible means with the three States, not collectively but separately, to induce them to comply with the measure, in the hope that the assent of one would help me to obtain that of the two others.  But, as if they, had been all agreed, I only received evasive expressions of regret.

Knowing as I did, and I may say better than any one else, the hopes and designs of Bonaparte respecting the north of Germany, it was not without pain, nor even without alarm, that I saw him doing everything calculated to convert into enemies the inhabitants of a country which would always have remained quiet had it only been permitted to preserve its neutrality.  Among the orders I received were often many which could only have been the result of the profoundest ignorance.  For example, I was one day directed to press 3000 seamen in the Hanse Towns.  Three thousand seamen out of a population of 200,000!  It was as absurd as to think of raising 500,000 sailors in France.  This project being impossible, it was of course not executed; but I had some difficulty in persuading the Emperor that a sixth of the number demanded was the utmost the Hanse Towns could supply.  Five hundred seamen were accordingly furnished, but to make up that number it was necessary to include many men who were totally unfit for war service.