Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, allother inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spellinghas been maintained.
Accessibility: Expansions of abbreviations have been provided using the <abbr> tag, and changes in language are marked.Speech rendering will be improved if voices for the following languages are available: Fr(a few words with De, Pt, Es, Ru, It).
Ingrata patria, ne ossa quidem habes. Scipio.
Ex-Secretary of the Emperor Napoleon and of his Cabinets, Master of Requests to the Council of State, Baron, Officer of the Legion of Honour, and Knight of the Order of Reunion.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE-STREET.
1820.
The revolution of the 20th of March will form unquestionably the mostremarkable episode in the life of Napoleon, so fertile as it is insupernatural events. It has not been my intention, to write thehistory of it: this noble task is above my powers: I have onlyattempted, to place Napoleon on the stage of action, and oppose hiswords, his deeds, and the truth, to the erroneous assertions ofcertain historians, the falsehoods of the spirit of party, and theinsults of those timeserving writers, who are accustomed to insult inmisfortune those, to whom they have subsequently paid court.
Hitherto people have not been able to agree on the motives andcircumstances, that determined the Emperor, to quit the island ofElba. Some supposed, that he had acted of his own accord: others, thathe had conspired with his (p. vi) partisans the downfal of theBourbons. Both these suppositions are equally false. The world willlearn with surprise, perhaps with admiration, that this astonishingrevolution was the work of two individuals and a few words.
The narrative of Colonel Z***, so valuable from the facts it reveals,appears to me to merit the reader's attention in other respects. Onstudying it carefully, we find in it the exhibition of those defects,those qualities, those passions, which, confounded together, form thecharacter, so full of contrasts, of the incomprehensible Napoleon. Weperceive him alternatively mistrustful and communicative, ardent andreserved, enterprising and irresolute, vindictive and generous,favourable to liberty and despotic. But we see predominant above all,that activity, that strength, that ardour of mind, those brilliantinspirations, and those sudden resolves, that belong only toextraordinary men, to men of genius.
The conferences I had at Bâle with the mysterious agent of PrinceMetternich have remained to this day buried in profound secrecy.(p. vii) The historians, who have preceded me, relate, without anyexplanation, that the Duke of Otranto laid before the Emperor, at themoment of his abdication, a letter from M. de Metternich; and thatthis letter, artfully worded, had determined Napoleon to abdicate, inthe hope that the crown would devolve to his son. The particularsgiven in these Memoirs will entirely change the ideas formed of thisletter, and of its influence. They confirm the opinion too, prettygenerally prevalent, that the allied sovereigns deemed the restorationof the