Sent, as we have said, to Hamburg in 1805, as Minister Plenipotentiary to the Duke of Brunswick, the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and to the Hanse towns, Bourrienne knew how to make his post an important one.  He was at one of the great seats of the commerce which suffered so fearfully from the Continental system of the Emperor, and he was charged to watch over the German press.  How well he fulfilled this duty we learn from Metternich, who writes in 1805:  “I have sent an article to the newspaper editors in Berlin and to M. de Hofer at Hamburg.  I do not know whether it has been accepted, for M. Bourrienne still exercises an authority so severe over these journals that they are always submitted to him before they appear, that he may erase or alter the articles which do not please him.”

His position at Hamburg gave him great opportunities for both financial and political intrigues.  In his Memoirs, as Meneval remarks, he or his editor is not ashamed to boast of being thanked by Louis XVIII. at St. Ouen for services rendered while he was the minister of Napoleon at Hamburg.  He was recalled in 1810, when the Hanse towns were united, or, to use the phrase of the day, re-united to the Empire.  He then hung about Paris, keeping on good terms with some of the ministers—­Savary, not the most reputable of them, for example.  In 1814 he was to be found at the office of Lavallette, the head of the posts, disguising, his enemies said, his delight at the bad news which was pouring in, by exaggerated expressions of devotion.  He is accused of a close and suspicious connection with Talleyrand, and it is odd that when Talleyrand became head of the Provisional Government in 1814, Bourrienne of all persons should have been put at the head of the posts.  Received in the most flattering manner by Louis XVIII, he was as astonished as poor Beugnot was in 1815, to find himself on 13th May suddenly ejected from office, having, however, had time to furnish post-horses to Manbreuil for the mysterious expedition, said to have been at least known to Talleyrand, and intended certainly for the robbery of the Queen of Westphalia, and probably for the murder of Napoleon.

In the extraordinary scurry before the Bourbons scuttled out of Paris in 1814, Bourrienne was made Prefet of the Police for a few days, his tenure of that post being signalised by the abortive attempt to arrest Fouche, the only effect of which was to drive that wily minister into the arms of the Bonapartists.

He fled with the King, and was exempted from the amnesty proclaimed by Napoleon.  On the return from Ghent he was made a Minister of State without portfolio, and also became one of the Council.  The ruin of his finances drove him out of France, but he eventually died in a madhouse at Caen.