Napoleon's Letters to Josephine, 1796-1812. Emperor of the French Napoleon I
Copies of Eight Letters in the handwriting of Napoleon Bonaparte to his wife Josephine."
The author introduces them with an interesting preface, which shows that then, as now, the interest in everything connected with Napoleon was unabated:—
"Long after this fleeting book shall have passed away, and with its author shall have been forgotten, these documents will remain; for here, perhaps, is to be found the purest source of information which exists, touching the private character of Napoleon Bonaparte, known, probably, but to the few whose situations have enabled them to observe that extraordinary man in the undisguised relations of domestic life. Although much already has been said and written of him, yet the eagerness with which every little anecdote and incident of his life is sought for shows the interest which still attaches to his name, and these, no doubt, will be bequests which posterity will duly estimate. From these it will be the province of future historians to cull and select simple and authenticated facts, and from these only can be drawn a true picture of the man whose fame has already extended into every distant region of the habitable globe.
"I will now proceed to relate the means by which I am enabled to introduce into this journal fac-simile copies of eight letters in the handwriting of Napoleon Bonaparte, the originals of which are in my possession. Had these been of a political nature, much as I should prize any relics of such a man, yet they would not have appeared in a book from which I have studiously excluded all controversial topics, and more especially those of a political character. Neither should I have ventured upon their publication if there were a possibility that by so doing I might wound the feelings of any human being. Death has closed the cares of the individuals connected with these letters. Like the memorials of Alexander the Great or of Charlemagne, they are the property of the possessor, and through him of the public; but not like ancient documents, dependent upon legendary evidence for their identity and truth.
"These have passed to me through two hands only, since they came into possession of the Empress Josephine, to whom they are written by their illustrious author. One of the individuals here alluded to, and from whom I received these letters, is a Polish nobleman, who attached himself and his fortunes to Bonaparte, whose confidence he enjoyed in several important diplomatic negotiations."
This book and these letters were known to Sir Walter Scott, who made use of some of them in his History of Napoleon. M. Aubenas, in his Histoire de l'Impératrice Joséphine, published in 1857, which has been lavishly made use of in a recent work on the same subject, seems to have known, at any rate, four of these letters, which were communicated to him by M. le Baron Feuillet de Conches. Monsieur Aubenas seems never to have seen the Tennant Collection, of which these undoubtedly form part, but as Baron Feuillet de Conches was an expert in deciphering Bonaparte's extraordinary caligraphy, these letters are very useful for reference in helping us to translate some phrases which had been given up as illegible by Mr. Tennant and Sir Walter Scott.
(2nd) The Collection Didot. This enormously valuable collection forms by far the greater part of the Letters that we possess of Napoleon to his wife. They are undoubtedly authentic, and have been utilised largely by Aubenas, St. Amand, Masson, and the Correspondance de Napoléon I. They were edited by Madame Salvage de Faverolles. As is well known, Sir Walter Scott was very anxious to obtain possession of these letters for his Life of Napoleon, and his visit to Paris was partly on this account. In Archibald Constable and his Literary Correspondents, edited in 1873 by his son, we find the following:—
"Letter from Archibald Constable to Sir Walter Scott.
August 30, 1825.
"I have had various conversations with Mr. Thomson on the subject of Napoleon's correspondence with Josephine. Mr. Thomson communicated with Count Flahault for me in the view of its being published, and whether the letters could not, in the meantime, be rendered accessible. The publication, it seems, under any circumstances, is by no means determined on, but should they be given, the price expected is five thousand guineas, which I should imagine greatly too much. I have an enumeration of the letters, from whence written, &c. I shall subjoin a copy of it."
When they were finally published in 1833, they seem to have been stimulated into existence by publication of the Mémorial de Saint-Helène, better known in England as Las Cases. Doubtless Hortense only allowed such letters to be published as would not injure the reputation of her mother or her relations. In the Preface it is stated: "We think that these letters will afford an interest as important as delightful. Everything that comes from Napoleon, and everything that appertains to him, will always excite the lively attention of contemporaries and posterity. If the lofty meditation of philosophy concerns itself only with the general influence of great men upon their own generation and future ones, a curiosity of another nature, and not less greedy, loves to penetrate into the inmost recesses of their soul, in order to elicit their most secret inclinations. It likes to learn what has been left of the man, amid the preoccupations of their projects and the elevation of their fortune. It requires to know in what manner their character has modified their genius, or has been subservient to it.
"It is this curiosity that we hope to satisfy by the publication of these letters. They reveal the inmost thought of Napoleon, they will reflect his earliest impulses, they will show how the General, the Consul, and the Emperor felt and spoke, not in his discourses or his proclamations—the official garb of his thought—but in the free outpourings of the most passionate or the most tender affections. … This correspondence will prove, we strongly believe, that the conqueror was human, the master of the world a good husband, the great man in fact an excellent man. … We shall see in them how, up to the last moment, he lavished on his wife proofs of his tenderness. Without doubt the letters of the Emperor Napoleon are rarer and shorter than those of the First Consul, and the First Consul writes no longer like General Bonaparte, but everywhere the sentiment is fundamentally the same.
"We make no reflection on the style of these letters, written in haste and in all the abandon of intimacy. We can easily perceive they were not destined to see the light. Nevertheless we publish them without changing anything in them."
The Collection Didot contains 228 letters from Napoleon to Josephine, and 70 from Josephine to Hortense, and two from Josephine to Napoleon, which seem to be the only two in existence of Josephine to Napoleon whose authenticity is unquestioned.
(3rd) The fugitive letters are collected from various sources, and their genuineness does not seem to be quite as well proved as those of the Tennant or Didot Series. We have generally taken the Correspondence of Napoleon I. as the touchstone of their merit to be inserted here, although one of them—that republished from Las Cases (No. 85, Series G.)—is manifestly mainly the work of that versatile author, who is utterly unreliable except when confirmed by others. As Lord Rosebery has well said, the book is "an arsenal of spurious documents."
We have relegated to an Appendix those published by Madame Ducrest, as transparent forgeries, and have to acknowledge with thanks a letter from M. Masson on this subject which thoroughly confirms these views. There seems some reason to doubt No. I., Series E, but being in the Correspondence, I have translated it.
The Correspondence of Napoleon I. is a splendid monument to the memory of Napoleon. It is alluded to throughout the Notes as The Correspondence, and it deserves special recognition here. Its compilation was decreed by Napoleon III. from Boulogne, on 7th September 1854, and the first volume appeared in 1858, and the last in 1870. With the first volume is inserted the Report of the Commission to the Emperor, part of which we subjoin:—
"Report of the Commission to the Emperor.
"Sire—Augustus numbered Cæsar among the gods, and dedicated to him a temple; the temple has disappeared, the Commentaries remain. Your Majesty, wishing to raise to the chief of your dynasty an imperishable monument, has ordered us to gather together and publish the political, military, and administrative correspondence of Napoleon I. It has realised that the most conspicuous (éclatant) homage to render to this incomparable genius was to make him known in his entirety. No one is ignorant of his victories, of the laws with which he has endowed our country, the institutions that he has founded and which dwell immovable