which always appeared to me very remarkable was, that
Bonaparte, notwithstanding his incontestable superiority, studied to
depreciate the reputations of his military commanders, and to throw on
their shoulders faults which he had committed himself. It is notorious
that complaints and remonstrances, as energetic as they were well
founded, were frequently addressed to General Bonaparte on the subject of
his unjust and partial bulletins, which often attributed the success of a
day to some one who had very little to do with it, and made no mention of
the officer who actually had the command. The complaints made by the
officers and soldiers stationed at Damietta compelled General Lanusse,
the commander, to remonstrate against the alteration of a bulletin, by
which an engagement with a body of Arabs was represented as an
insignificant affair, and the loss trifling, though the General had
stated the action to be one of importance, and the loss considerable.
The misstatement, in consequence of his spirited and energetic
remonstrances, was corrected.

Bonaparte took Malta, as is well known, in forty-eight hours. The empire
of the Mediterranean, secured to the English by the battle of Aboukir,
and their numerous cruising vessels, gave them the means of starving the
garrison, and of thus forcing General Vaubois, the commandant of Malta,
who was cut off from all communication with France, to capitulate.
Accordingly on the 4th of September 1800 he yielded up the Gibraltar of
the Mediterranean, after a noble defence of two years. These facts
require to be stated in order the better to understand what follows.

On 22d February 1802 a person of the name of Doublet, who was the
commissary of the French Government at Malta when we possessed that
island, called upon me at the Tuileries. He complained bitterly that the
letter which he had written from Malta to the First Consul on the 2d
Ventose, year VIII. (9th February 1800), had been altered in the
'Moniteur'. "I congratulated him," said M. Doublet, "on the 18th
Brumaire, and informed him of the state of Malta, which was very
alarming. Quite the contrary was printed in the 'Moniteur', and that is
what I complain of. It placed me in a very disagreeable situation at
Malta, where I was accused of having concealed the real situation of the
island, in which I was discharging a public function that gave weight to
my words." I observed to him that as I was not the editor of the
'Moniteur' it w