Consul.  Of the Emperor, says Lucien, he was too much in retirement to be able to judge equally well.  But Lucien was not a fair representative of the Bonapartists; indeed he had never really thought well of his brother or of his actions since Lucien, the former “Brutus” Bonaparte, had ceased to be the adviser of the Consul.  It was well for Lucien himself to amass a fortune from the presents of a corrupt court, and to be made a Prince and Duke by the Pope, but he was too sincere a republican not to disapprove of the imperial system.  The real Bonapartists were naturally and inevitably furious with the Memoirs.  They were not true, they were not the work of Bourrienne, Bourrienne himself was a traitor, a purloiner of manuscripts, his memory was as bad as his principles, he was not even entitled to the de before his name.  If the Memoirs were at all to be pardoned, it was because his share was only really a few notes wrung from him by large pecuniary offers at a time when he was pursued by his creditors, and when his brain was already affected.

The Bonapartist attack on the Memoirs was delivered in full form, in two volumes, ‘Bourrienne et ses Erreurs, Volontaires et Involontaires’ (Paris, Heideloff, 1830), edited by the Comte d’Aure, the Ordonnateur en Chef of the Egyptian expedition, and containing communications from Joseph Bonaparte, Gourgaud, Stein, etc.’

   —­[In the notes in this present edition these volumes are referred
   to in brief ’Erreurs’.]—­

Part of the system of attack was to call in question the authenticity of the Memoirs, and this was the more easy as Bourrienne, losing his fortune, died in 1834 in a state of imbecility.  But this plan is not systematically followed, and the very reproaches addressed to the writer of the Memoirs often show that it was believed they were really written by Bourrienne.  They undoubtedly contain plenty of faults.  The editor (Villemarest, it is said) probably had a large share in the work, and Bourrienne must have forgotten or misplaced many dates and occurrences.  In such a work, undertaken so many years after the events, it was inevitable that many errors should be made, and that many statements should be at least debatable.  But on close investigation the work stands the attack in a way that would be impossible unless it had really been written by a person in the peculiar position occupied by Bourrienne.  He has assuredly not exaggerated that position:  he really, says Lucien Bonaparte, treated as equal with equal with Napoleon during a part of his career, and he certainly was the nearest friend and confidant that Napoleon ever had in his life.

Where he fails, or where the Bonapartist fire is most telling, is in the account of the Egyptian expedition.  It may seem odd that he should have forgotten, even in some thirty years, details such as the way in which the sick were removed; but such matters were not in his province; and it would be easy to match similar omissions in other works, such as the accounts of the Crimea, and still more of the Peninsula.  It is with his personal relations with Napoleon that we are most concerned, and it is in them that his account receives most corroboration.