Bourrienne

Bourrienne, LOUIS ANTOINE FAUVELET DE, the secretary and early friend of Napoleon I., was born at Sens in 1769, and received his education in the military school at Brienne, where he formed the closest intimacy with the future emperor. In 1792 he became secretary to the embassy at Stuttgart. Deprived of this office through the breaking out of the revolutionary wars, he lived a retired life for some time, until in 1797 his former schoolfellow appointed him his secretary. He accompanied him to Italy and to Egypt, and in 1801 was nominated a councillor of state. In 1802 he was dismissed from his office for being implicated in the dishonourable bankruptcy of the house of Coulon, army contractors; but in 1804 he was appointed to a post at Hamburg. He was recalled on a charge of peculation, and had to refund 1,000,000 francs into the public treasury. He now decidedly joined the party which sought the overthrow of the emperor and the restoration of the Bourbons. After the return of the Bourbons in 1815, he sat for several years in the Chamber of Representatives, where he figured as an opponent of Liberalism. He was also for a short time minister of state. The revolution of 1830 and the loss of his fortune (occasioned by extravagance) caused his reason to give way, and he died in a lunatic asylum at Caen in 1834. His venomous memoirs on Napoleon, the Directory, the Consulate, the Empire, and the Restoration (10 vols. Paris, 1829; new ed. 1895 et seq.) are at best of doubtful authority. An Histoire de Napoléon, Manuscrit de St Hélène, &c., attributed to him are certainly spurious.