Array Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - The Collected Works of Napoleon Bonaparte

"At sight of the evils that beset us, England's joy was great. Her hopes knew no bounds. She offered our finest provinces as a reward for treachery. As a condition of peace she proposed the extinction of this beautiful empire; which was in other terms a proclamation of perpetual war.

"The energy shown by my people under such grave circumstances, their devotion to the integrity of the empire, the love they have shown me, have dissipated all these chimeras and have brought our enemies to a more just appreciation of affairs.

"The misfortunes occasioned by the severity of the frosts demonstrated to their full extent the grandeur and solidity of this empire, founded upon the exertions and love of fifty million citizens, and upon the territorial resources of the most beautiful countries in the world."

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"I have suppressed your address, it was incendiary. I called you round me to do good—you have done ill. Eleven-twelfths of you are well intentioned, the others, and above all, M. Lainé, are factious intriguers, devoted to England, to all my enemies, and corresponding, through the channel of the advocate Désege, with the Prince Regent, Return to your departments and feel that my eye will follow you; you have endeavored to humble me, you may kill me, but you shall not dishonor me. You make remonstrances; is this a time, when the stranger invades our provinces, and two hundred thousand Cossacks are ready to overflow our country? There may have been petty abuses; I never connived at them. You, M. Renouard, you said that Prince Massena robbed a man at Marseilles of his house. You lie! The general took possession of a vacant house, and my minister shall indemnify the proprietor. Is it thus that you dare affront a marshal of France who has bled for his country, and grown gray in victory? Why did you not make your complaints in secret to me? I would have done you justice. We should wash our dirty linen in private, and not drag it out before the world. You call yourselves representatives of the nation. It is not true; you are only deputies of the departments; a small portion of the State, inferior to the Senate, inferior even to the Council of State. The representatives of the people! I am alone the representative of the people. Twice have twenty-four millions of French called me to the throne—which of you durst undertake such a burden? It had already overwhelmed ( écrasé ) your Assemblies, and your Conventions, your Vergniands and your Guadets, your Jacobins and your Girondins. They are all dead! What, who are you? nothing —all authority is in the throne; and what is the throne? This wooden frame covered with velvet? No, I am the throne. You have added wrong to reproaches. You have talked of concessions—concessions that even my enemies dared not ask. I suppose if they asked Champagne, you would have given them La Brie besides; but in four months I will conquer peace, or I shall be dead. You advise! how dare you debate on such high matters ( de si graves interêts )! You have put me in the front of the battle as the cause of war. It is infamous ( c'est une atrocité ). In all your committees you have excluded the friends of the Government, extraordinary commission, committee of finance, committee of the address, all, all my enemies. M. Lainé, I repeat it, is a traitor; he is a wicked man, the others are mere intriguers. I do justice to the eleven-twelfths; but the factious I know and will pursue. Is it, I ask again, is it while the enemy is in France that you should have done this? But nature has gifted me with a determined courage—nothing can overcome me. It cost my pride much, too,—I made that sacrifice; I—but I am above your miserable declamations. I was in need of consolation, and you would mortify me,—but, no, my victories shall crush your clamors; in three months we shall have peace, and you shall repent your folly. I am one of those who triumph or die .

"Go back to your departments. If any one of you dare to print your address, I shall publish it in the Moniteur with notes of my own. Go, France stands more in need of me than I do of France. I bear the eleven-twelfths of you in my heart. I shall nominate the deputies of the two series which are vacant, and I shall reduce the legislative body to the discharge of its proper duties. The inhabitants of Alsace and Franche-Comté have a better spirit than you; they ask me for arms. I send them, and one of my aides-de-camp will lead them against the enemy."

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"Soldiers: The enemy has stolen three marches on us, and has made himself master of Paris. We must drive him thence. Frenchmen, unworthy of the name, emigrants whom we have pardoned, have mounted the white cockade and joined the enemy. The wretches shall receive the reward due to this new crime. Let us swear to conquer or die, and to enforce respect to the tri-colored cockade, which has for twenty years accompanied us on the path of glory and honor."

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"The allied powers having decided that the Emperor Napoleon is the only obstacle to the reëstablishment of peace in Europe, the Emperor Napoleon, faithful to his oath, declares that he is ready to descend from the throne, to leave Europe, and even to lay down his life for the welfare of his country, which is inseparable from the rights of his son, those of the regency of the Empress, and the maintenance of the laws of the empire."

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"Soldiers of my old guard, I bid you farewell. For twenty years I have constantly accompanied you on the road to honor and glory. In these latter times, as in the days of our prosperity, you have invariably been models of courage and fidelity. With men such as you our cause could not be lost; but the war would have been interminable; it would have been civil war, and that would have entailed deeper misfortunes on France. I have sacrificed all my interests to those of the country. I go, but you, my friends, will continue to serve France. Her happiness was my only thought. It will still be the object of my wishes. Do not regret my fate; if I have consented to survive, it is to serve your glory. I intend to write the history of the great achievements we have performed together. Adieu, my friends. Would I could press you all to my heart." Napoleon then ordered the eagles to be brought, and, having embraced them, he added: "I embrace you all in the person of your general. Adieu, soldiers! Be always gallant and good."

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"Frenchmen: The defection of the Duke of Castiglione (Augereau) delivered up Lyons without defense to our enemies. The army, the command of which I had entrusted to him, was, by the number of its battalions, the courage and patriotism of the troops that composed it, in a condition to beat the Austrian troops opposed to it, and to arrive in time on the rear of the left flank of the army which threatened Paris. The victories of Champ-Aubert, of Montmirail, of Château-Thierry, of Van Champs, of Mormons, of Montereau, of Craonne, of Rheims, of Arcis-sur-Aube, and of St. Dizier, the rising of the brave peasants of Lorraine and Champagne, of Alsace, Franche-Comté and Burgundy, and the position which I had taken in the rear of the hostile army, by cutting it off from its magazines, its parks of reserve, its convoys, and all the equipages, had placed it in a desperate situation. The French were never on the point of being more powerful, and the élite of the enemy's army was lost without resource; it would have found a tomb in those vast plains which it had so mercilessly laid waste, when the treason of the Duke of Ragusa delivered up the capital and disorganized the army. The unexpected misconduct of these two generals, who betrayed at once their country, their prince, and their benefactor, changed the fate of the war; the situation of the enemy was such that, at the close of the action which took place before Paris, he was without ammunition, in consequence of his separation from his parks of reserve. In these new and distressing circumstances, my heart was torn, but my mind remained immovable; I consulted only the interests of the country; I banished myself to a rock in the middle of the sea; my life was yours, and might still be useful to you. Frenchmen: In my exile I heard your complaints and your wishes; you accused my long slumber; you reproached me with sacrificing the welfare of the country to my repose. I have traversed the seas through perils of every kind; I return among you to reclaim my rights, which are yours."