INTRODUCTION.

IT WOULD CERTAINLY BE HELD to argue either extreme affectation or the grossest ignorance to deny, at this time of day, that one of the most extraordinary personages of the eventful age in which he lived, if not the most extraordinary of them all, was Napoleon Bonaparte. The glory with which he surrounded himself in so superlative a degree was of that nature which is most apt to dazzle the great mass of mankind, to captivate contemporaries, and to win the admiration of posterity. But such were the powers and resources of his mind that, had any other combination of circumstances thrown him into a different career, it can scarcely be doubted that, whatever it might have been, he would have acquired the highest distinction to which it was capable of leading. He would have shone, had he been a statesman, a diplomatist, an actor, and nothing more. History has industriously deduced the prominent features of his character from his actions, but many minute traits have escaped its observation. Both are sketched by his own hand unreservedly in this work, which contains the Secret and Official Correspondence of this remarkable man during what may be termed his apprenticeship to power, the years between his appointment to the command of an army and his usurpation of the government to the heads of which he had ever professed the greatest deference.

In these Letters, not intended to meet the public eye, he has laid bare the sentiments and motives which influenced his actions during the busy years over which they extend, and thus raised a monumentum aere perennius—a monument more imperishable than that designed to cover his ashes in the capital of what was once his mighty empire. They display his unrivalled judgment, sagacity, foresight, and discrimination—his indefatigable perseverance, activity, industry, and that attention to the minutest circumstances, without which the success of the most ably combined plans may be endangered. But the monument, like a medal, has its reverse: There we discover the recklessness of the means employed for accomplishing ends—the duplicity, fraud, hypocrisy, perfidy, rapacity, cruelty, which cast a shade over those higher qualities that would excite unmixed admiration but for the purposes to which they were applied.

It is not the design of these introductory remarks to give an analysis of the work here presented to the public; it is, in fact, of so miscellaneous a nature, as not to be susceptible of analysis: their object is simply to refer, in a desultory manner, to a few of the subjects which it embraces, so as to enable the reader to form some idea of the pre-eminent importance, value, and interest of this collection. They shall commence with some brief notices of that instrument by which the mighty events recorded in it were achieved—the Army.

In the various wars which have carried French armies into almost every country of Europe, they have invariably contrived to earn universal execration, not merely by the most oppressive exactions and requisitions, but also by the wanton destruction of all that they could not consume or carry away. This barbarous spirit seems to have been first called forth by the inhuman devastation of the Palatinate of the Rhine, by the express command of Louvois, minister of Louis XIV., in 1689. To ensure the safety of the French frontier in that quarter, the neighbouring provinces, some of the most flourishing in Germany, were converted into a desert; and to prevent the enemy from turning the towns into fortresses, Heidelberg, Manheim, Worms, Spire, and many other cities, together with a great number of villages, were plundered and burned. In Spire, the French soldiers, ferocious as their republican successors a century later, broke open the tombs of the Salic emperors, strewed their ashes to the winds, made footballs of their sculls, and carried off their silver coffins. Madame de Maintenon called the attention of the King to these abominations, and Louis forbade the minister to burn Triers, as he had already determined to do. Two days afterwards, Louvois reverted to this measure, adding that, to spare his Majesty’s conscience any uneasiness, he had taken the whole upon himself, and sent off a courier with orders for its execution. Irritated at this pertinacity, the King snatched up the tongs, and would have struck Louvois, had not Madame de Maintenon stepped between them. The minister left the apartment in great perturbation. Louis called him back. “Send off a courier immediately,” said he, with flashing eyes, “and take care that he arrives in time; for, if a single house is burned, your head shall answer for it.” Soon afterwards Louvois provoked the King by some new contradiction to such a degree that he grasped his cane to chastise him. Still Louis had not the resolution to dismiss his troublesome minister, whose pride was so hurt by these humiliations that he survived them only two years.

Ever since the time of Louvois, pillage and devastation appear to have been almost considered as part of the duty required of the French soldier. Nor is this wonderful, prescribed as such conduct has been by the government and practised by the officers. In the Seven Years’ War, when Great Britain formed an alliance with Prussia, and France, of course, ranged herself on the side of Austria, the commander of the French forces sent to invade Hanover was directed by his government to leave nothing in the electorate, but to cut down every growing tree level with the ground. Such was the rapacity of the Duke de Richelieu during the six months in which he held the command there, that his own soldiers called him by no other name but le petit Père la Maraude; and so far was he from wishing to conceal his numberless extortions, that he built with them a splendid palace in Paris, which was denominated by the people, as it possibly may be to this day, le Pavillon d’Hannovre. Their conduct in the other countries of Germany was perfectly consistent with these directions and conduct. Hence, the victory of Rossbach was universally hailed as a national triumph over foreign hordes, which proved themselves, whether among friends or foes, more destructive than a cloud of locusts, more savage than the most ravenous beasts. “It is not the Prussians,” says a Saxon memoir of that time, “who have laid waste our fields, our vineyards, and our gardens; it is not the Prussians who have trampled down our growing crops, who have robbed on the highway, who have plundered our houses, who have carried off and destroyed our provisions; it is not the Prussians who have desecrated our churches and made a mock of all that is sacred. No—it is our friends, the French and the troops of the Empire, our so ardently wished-for deliverers, who have plunged us into these miseries.”

In continuation of these grievances, it is recorded that whatever they could not consume or carry away was destroyed or rendered useless. They broke in pieces household furniture, casks, and other vessels, tore up papers and books, ripped open beds, and strewed the feathers over the fields, and slaughtered cattle which they could not remove, and left them to putrify in the deserted farm-yards. Twenty villages around Freiburg were rendered desolate because the French had sojourned in them. Nor were the private soldiers alone to blame for these wanton excesses, of which their officers set them the example. Thus it is related that the Marquis d’Argenson, who commanded the French in Halberstadt, whenever he was about to leave a house in which he had lodged, was accustomed to break in pieces the furniture, and to destroy the looking-glasses with a diamond.

These complaints, preferred by Germans, are fully confirmed by the testimony of Count St. Germain, who commanded a division of the French army at the battle of Rossbach. Writing to a friend, he says: “I head a band of robbers, of murderers, who deserve to be broke upon the wheel, who ran away at the first musket-shot, who are always ready to mutiny.” Again: “The country is plundered and laid waste for thirty leagues round, as if fire from heaven had fallen upon it: our marauders have scarcely left the very houses standing…..They plundered, murdered, violated women, and committed all possible abominations.”

To characterize the conduct of the troops of the great nation in Germany during subsequent wars, in the time of the Republic and the Empire, would require a mere repetition of the circumstances detailed above; while the wholesale destruction and pillage carried on in Portugal and Spain by every man, from the highest to the lowest, belonging to the French armies which successively visited those countries, is too well known to need animadversion. Our business at present is with the army of Italy, while commanded by Napoleon Bonaparte.

In the very first instructions given by the Directory to the young General, they impress upon him to “make a point of maintaining rigid discipline, and sparing the inhabitants all the vexations and disasters which the scourge of war so frequently brings with it, and which order and well-regulated administrations are alone capable of repressing.” (Vol. i., p. 8.) The same injunction is repeated on several subsequent occasions, on one of which Carnot, writing in the name of the Directory, refers to a severe order which Bonaparte is supposed to have given, and an extraordinary power which he had been obliged to confer on the Generals of Division. (Vol. i., p. 51.) This passage affords undeniable evidence that the government had invested him with sufficient authority to repress...