in this way.
After the fatal 10th of August Bonaparte went to Corsica, and did not
return till 1793. Sir Walter Scott says that after that time he never
saw Corsica again. This is a mistake, as will be shown when I speak of
his return from Egypt.
--[Sir Walter appears to have collected his information for the Life
of Napoleon only from those libels and vulgar stories which
gratified the calumnious spirit and national hatred. His work is
written with excessive negligence, which, added to its numerous
errors, shows how much respect he must have entertained for his
readers. It would appear that his object was to make it the inverse
of his novels, where everything is borrowed from history. I have
been assured that Marshal Macdonald having offered to introduce
Scott to some generals who could have furnished him with the most
accurate, information respecting military events, the glory of which
they had shared, Sir Walter replied, "I thank you, but I shall
collect my information from unprofessional reports."--Bourrienne.]--
Having been appointed Secretary of Legation to Stuttgart, I set off for
that place on the 2d of August, and I did not again see my ardent young
friend until 1795. He told me that my departure accelerated his for
Corsica. We separated, as may be supposed, with but faint hopes of ever
meeting again.
By a decree of the 28th of March of 1793, all French agents abroad were
ordered to return to France, within three months, under pain of being
regarded as emigrants. What I had witnessed before my departure for
Stuttgart, the excitement in which I had left the public mind, and the
well-known consequences of events of this kind, made me fear that I
should be compelled to be either an accomplice or a victim in the
disastrous scenes which were passing at home. My disobedience of the law
placed my name on the list of emigrants.
It has been said of me, in a biographical publication, that "it was as
remarkable as it was fortunate for Bourrienne that, on his return, he got
his name erased from the list of emigrants of the department of the
Yonne, on which it had been inscribed during his first journey to
Germany. This circumstance has been interpreted in several different
ways, which are not all equally favourable to M. de Bourrienne."
I do not understand what favourable interpretations can be put upon a
statement entirely false. General Bonaparte repeatedly applied for the
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