THERE have been many historians and memoir writers of Napoleon and his Times, but we question if any one has yet given so characteristic a sketch of the Emperor and his system as these "Confidential Letters" present. They form, not only a history of Napoleon, but more, a history of his mind, during those fifteen years pregnant with the fate of kingdoms.

The letters given are selections from the "Memoirs of King Joseph," lately published. The correspondence is divided throughout into several epochs, prefaced with a brief explanation of the principal events of that date. So many of the letters of Joseph, and official reports of different affairs are included, as are necessary to serve as a context to those of Napoleon; while the whole forms one of the most interesting, characteristic, and faithful historical sketches of the time yet published.

No matter upon what subject Napoleon writes, one is struck, either with the sound common sense, the thorough knowledge of human nature, the keen appreciation of individual character, the cool judgment, or the rapid decision he commonly displays. He seems to have inherently possessed, in a remarkable degree, the power of judging quickly and rightly-a happy union of thought and impulse and though these letters do not excite in us any higher admiration for his moral character, they incontestably bear out his claims to capacity of the highest order.

Yet many a reputation has been wrecked by the publication of private memoirs; and, in some measure, Buonaparte's will suffer by these " Confidential Letters." Not that they depreciate his great military genius, or throw a doubt upon his energy and power of mind, but they expose the defects of his character, and inflict no little injury upon his reputation as a profound politician.

The apologists of Napoleon claim for him a profound system of beneficial policy for Europe, had he been permitted time to work out his views, and Europe is blamed as shortsighted, in ridding itself of his intolerable tyranny, and exclaiming against his despotic ambition. But these letters will prove to us that his views were not simply to establish a solid European peace, and secure the independence of France, the only aim he could justly lay claim to. and one which he had frequent opportunity of attaining,-and, also, that he was not necessarily compelled,-step by step, from Marengo to Waterloo, to create,

and attempt to uphold by war, that gigantic power which overwhelmed Europe, in order, as he affirmed, to regenerate it, or found a universal peace.

With peace and liberty perpetually on his lips, there was a perfect contradiction between his principles and their application. He was determined that the world should be persuaded by his reason or conquered by his bayonets, and that halo of heroism which for some time has blinded the eyes of Europe to the false policy and injustice of his system is now torn aside, and we see here what a pyramid of robbery, corruption, and cruelty, made up that gigantic Empire. A pyramid reversed, with a Napoleon, it is true, for its apex, but with no other solid stone throughout the building.

What ulterior benefits he might have intended for the conquered states is not the question. "La proprieté c'est le vol," was his maxim with respect to the other European sovereigns, and so he forthwith robbed them wholesale. The permanent benefits which it is asserted he conferred upon the conquered peoples were compensated for by the vast injustice and tyranny by which they were accompanied, and the slight beneficial effects upon the people themselves is proved by the rapidity of Napoleon's fall. In 1814 there was not a man out of France whose hand was not against him, and when his divisions were withdrawn from the conquered countries at any time previous in his reign his kings could not maintain themselves an hour. It was the weight of his arms, not his profound and be neficial system of policy, which kept Europe crouching at his feet for fifteen years, and the rebound was terrible in proportion.

The Letters commence in 1795. He was then on half-pay, living in comparative poverty in Paris, morose and bitter in spiritdoubtful of the present-and gloom as to the future. Full of jaundiced views of life, writing in '95, he says, Life is a flimsy dream,

soon to be over."-After the affair of the sections, though emerging from obscurity, aud having obtained the command of the army of the West, he writes:

As for me, little attached to life, contemplating it without much solicitude, constantly in the state of mind in which one is on the day before a battle, feeling that, while death is always amongst us to put an end to all, anxiety is folly-everything joins to make me defy fortune and fate in time I shall not get out of the way when a carriage comes. I sometimes wonder at my own state of

mind. It is the result of what I have seen and what I have risked.

At the first flush of real success, however, all this passes away, and he is soon overwhelmed with business and sees nothing in the future" but what is agreeable. Were it otherwise one must live in the present. A brave man despises the future."

Then the Italian campaign follows, and we soon see how his views of personal aggrandizement swell out. But his intervals of leisure are few, his letters are brief and relate merely to official matters. He sends money to his family, gets Lucien appointed commissary to the army of the Rhine, and Joseph as ambassador to Rome. Peace and the Egyptian expedition follow, but there is only one characteristic letter worth quoting.

At Cairo, some news had reached him of Josephine's inconstancy, he writes in a thoroughly misanthropic tone:

I have much domestic distress. Your friendship is very dear to me. To become a misanthropist I have only to lose it, and find that you betray me. That every different feeling towards the same person should be united in one heart is very painful.

Let me have on my arrival a villa near Paris or in Burgundy. I intend to shut myself up there for the winter. I am tired of human nature. I want solitude and isolation. Greatness fatigues me; feeling is dried up. At 29 glory has become flat. I have exhausted everything. I have no refuge but pure selfishness. I shall retain my house, and let no one else occupy it. I have not more than enough to live on. Adieu, my only friend. I have never been unjust to you, as you must admit, though I may have wished to be so.

Beyond these few passages his earlier let ters present no very interesting features. Even from his return to Paris from Egypt in '99, to his election as Consul, and his seizure of the throne, his letters are few and simply official. Then his true character breaks forth. Flushed with victory, his whole being vibrates with the most gigantic aspirations; he plots the foundation of a vast centralized system of empire by firmly planting his family upon the petty thrones of Europe. Every aggression is then committed; every war is then undertaken, not for the independence of France, but with a fixed view of universal dominion. His first step after the campaign of 1805 was to decree that the House of Braganza had ceased to reign," and to direct the seizure of Naples for his brother's throne.

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From this date the interest of the correspondence increases, for the principles of 'the system" are first put fairly into practice against Naples.

Napoleon's announcement of his intention to seize Naples was simple and characteristic. He writes to Joseph from Munich, Dec. 31, 1805:

I intend to take possession of the kingdom of Naples. Marshal Masséna and General Saint-Cyr are marching on that kingdom with two corps-d'armée.

I have named you my Lieutenant commanding-in-chief the army of Naples.

Set off for Rome forty hours after the receipt of this letter, and let your first dispatch inform me that you have entered Naples, driven out the treacherous Court, and subjected that part of Italy to our authority.

Again from Stutgardt, June 19, 1806

You will make no truce, you will hear of no capitulation my will is that the Bourbons shall have ceased to reign at Naples. I intend to seat on that throne a prince of my own house. In the first place you, if it suits you; if not, another.

When Joseph entered Naples, the first thing that Napoleon orders him to do is "to levy a contribution of ten millions on the town, disarm the populace, and send away all strangers and Jesuits." A few days later Napoleon impresses upon Joseph the necessity of vigorous measures. "Lay a contribution of thirty millions on the whole kingdom. Your conduct wants decision." Joseph's ideas of government were opposed to such harsh measures. He wrote "that he could maintain himself only by the assistance of public opinion." Take care," replies Napoleon, "that there are mortars in the forts and troops in reserve; for in all your calculations assume this, that a fortnight sooner or a fortnight later, you will have an insurrection. It is an event of uniform occurrence in a conquered country

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Keep your artillery in positions where the mob cannot seize them. Reckon on a riot or a small insurrection. I wish that I could give you the benefit of my experience in these matters, but I see from the little that Tascher tells me that you will get well out of them.

Again, we have more injunctions of the beneficent policy to be adopted :

If you do not begin by making yourself feared, you will suffer for it. The imposition of a land-tax will not produce the effect which you apprehend; everybody expects it, and will think it quite natural. At Vienna, where there was supposed not to be a farthing, and they hoped that I should not levy a contribution, a few days after my arrival I levied one of one hundred millions: it was thought very reasonable. Your proclamations have not enough the style of a master; you will gain nothing by spoiling the Neapolitans. The people of Italy, and in fact of every other country, if they do not feel that they are mastered, are disposed to rebel and to murmur. Your administration in Naples is too feeble. You treat that populace with too much consideration. I cannot imagine why you do not execute the laws. Every spy should be shot; every lazzarone who stabs a soldier should be shot. The property of all those who belonged to the Court should be confiscated; and, if what the papers say be true, that you have arrested that wretched Castelcicala, send him under a good escort to Fenestrelle, and confiscate his jewels and estates.

Later he writes that he should like much to hear of a revolt as a salutary symptom :You will never be their master till you have made an

example of them. Every conquered country must have its revolt. I should see Naples in revolt as a father sees his children in the small-pox; the crisis is salutary, proIvided it does not too much weaken the constitution. It is for this reason that your forts should be armed and provisioned.

Writing on the 8th March, 1806, we see shadowed forth the principles of the system by which he hoped to root his power into Europe:

You must establish in the kingdom of Naples a certain number of French families, holding fiefs either carved out of domains of the Crown, or taken from their present possessors, or from the monks by diminishing the number of convents. In my opinion your throne will have no solidity unless you surround it with a hundred generals, colonels, and others attached to your house, possessing great fiefs in the kingdom of Naples and Sicily. Bernadotte and Masséna should I think be fixed in Naples, with the title of princes, and with large revenues. Enable them to found great families: I do this in Piedmont, the kingdom of Italy, and Parma. In these countries and in Naples 300 or 400 French military men ought to be established with property descending by primogeniture. In a few years they will marry into the principal families, and your throne will be strong enough to do without a French army: a point which must be reached.

Shortly after Joseph is in want of money, and in proof of Napoleon's scrupulous honesty when an object was to be obtained, we find him replying to Joseph in Naples :

Grant no pardons; do military execution on at least 600 rebels; they have murdered a greater number of my soldiers. Let the houses of thirty of the principal heads of villages be burnt, and distribute their property among the troops. Disarm all the inhabitants, and pillage five or six of the large villages which have behaved worst. Desire the soldiers to treat well the towns which have remained faithful. Confiscate the public property of the revolted villages, and give it to the army; above all, disarm vigorously.

Since you compare the Neapolitans to the Corsicans, recollect that when Niolo was taken forty rebels were hung upon the trees, and such alarm was spread that not a person ventured to stir afterwards. On my return from the Grand Army, Placenza rebelled; I sent thither Junot, who sent me reports full of French cleverness, and de

clared that no rebellion had taken place. I ordered him to burn two villages, and to shoot the ringleaders, among whom were six priests. This was done, the country was subdued, and will remain so for a long time.

You will never succeed in changing and reforming a country by weak measures; extraordinary and vigorous expedients are requisite. As the Calabrians have assassinated my soldiers, I myself will issue a decree confiscating for the benefit of my army one-half of the reve nues of the province, both public and private. But if you begin by asserting that Calabria is not in revolt, and that it has always been attached to you, your kindness, or, in other words, your weakness and timidity, will be very mischievous to France.

The way in which he confounds strict justice with all this cruelty is singular :

You must not forget that the kindness of kings consists in strength and in strict justice. You confound the kindness of a monarch with that of a private individual. I am waiting to hear how many estates you have confiscated in Calabria, and how many rebels you have executed. You should shoot in every village three of the ringleaders. Do not spare the priests more than the others.

Joseph was now settled in Naples, but he was not always to carry on war in such pleasant quarters. The Campaigns of 1806-7 were soon over. Peace with Russia and Prussia was made, and Spain was next invaded.

Napoleon offered the Crown at once to Joseph, who, dazzled by his brother's success, had not the wisdom to refuse. In fortyeight hours he left Naples, and was on the road to Madrid. But before he had been had more of thorns than roses. "My position," there ten days he found the throne of Spain he writes to Napoleon, "does not frighten me, but it is one in which a king never was before. I have not a single partizan." To which Napoleon replies, "You ought not to be surprised at having to conquer your kingdom. Be happy; do not allow yourself to be so easily affected, and do not doubt for an instant that everything will end sooner and more happily than you think." But it is no easy thing for Joseph to be happy. Already his generals acted independently of him. He bores Napoleon with petty complaints, to which Napoleon replies curtly, begging to be spared a “page of twaddle." Joseph is nettled, and replies in a curiously prophetic strain :

are.

The honest people are as little on my side as the rogues No, Sire, you are deceived. Your glory will be shipwrecked in Spain. My tomb will be a monument of your want of power to support me, for no one will suspect you of want of will.

The Emperor briefly answers, and with superlative pride:

The style of your letter of the 24th does not please To die is not your business, but to live and to conquer, which you are doing, and shall do.

me.

I shall find in Spain the Pillars of Hercules, but not the limits of my power.

A day or two later he writes :

Whatever reverses fortune may have in store for you, do not be uneasy; in a short time you will have more than 100,000 men. All is in motion, but it must have time. You will reign; you will have conquered your subjects, in order to become their father. The best kings have passed through this school. My orders were given three weeks ago. Health to you, and happiness; that is to say, strength of mind.

It is a fair matter for speculation whether Napoleon would not ultimately have completely conquered Spain, had he not engaged in the Austrian campaign of 1809. The first attempt to seize Spain and Portugal had been eminently disastrous. The French armies were everywhere defeated either by the English or Spaniards. They had capitulated at Cintra and Baylen, and had retired beyond the Ebro. On the 3rd Nov., 1808, Napoleon reached Bayonne, in less than six weeks he was in Madrid, and in three months, beyond a mere guerilla warfare in the Southern provinces, all resistance was, for the time, suppressed.

The treatment of Spain was the old story of shooting and hanging over again. The same system was adopted towards every country that resisted Napoleon's rule. He begins, in 1808 :

You should order the five or six persons arrested at Bilbao by General Merlin to be shot, especially the man who was designated as commander-in-chief by the proclamation of the Junta. If you do not perform some acts of rigour these disturbances will never end.

To Berthier:

Write to General Belliard, to express my displeasure at the want of firmness displayed by his government: every day Frenchmen are assassinated in Madrid, and he does nothing. Tell him that thirty of the worst characters in the town must be arrested and shot.

To Joseph :

I am not satisfied with the order which is kept in Madrid; Belliard is too weak; with the Spaniards it is necessary to be severe. I have arrested here fifteen of the worst characters, and I have ordered them to be shot. Arrest thirty at Madrid. When I left it there had been an inquiry, and the police were on the point of making a seizure. If you treat the mob with kindness, these creatures fancy themselves invulnerable; if you hang a few, they get tired of the game, and become as submissive and humble as they ought to be. .

You must haug at Madrid a score of the worst characters. To-morrow I intend to have hanged here seven notorious for their excesses. They have been secretly denounced to me by respectable people whom their existence disturbed, and who will recover their spirits when they are got rid of. If Madrid is not delivered from at at least 100 of these firebrands, you will be able to do nothing. Out of this 100, hang or shoot twelve or fifteen, and send the rest to France to the galleys. I had no peace in France, I could not restore confidence to the respectable portion of the community, until I had arrested 200 firebrand assassins of September, and sent them to the colonies. From that time the spirit of the capital changed as if by the waving of a wand.

I think it essential that your government, particularly

at first starting, should show some vigour against the mob. The mob loves and respects only those whom it fears; and it is only by being feared by the mob that you will acquire the love and esteem of the rest of the nation.

You must show some severity, and excite no false or premature hopes; or the men whose arms you restore will assassinate the French, and turn those arms against you on the first hope of success. It is a pity that when the members of the council of Castile were arrested they were not permitted to come to France. A residence of two or three years in France would have changed their ideas, and they might have been turned into useful citizens.

All this severity, hanging, shooting, and confiscation proves how hollow was the system, for with it, and 100,000 men to back him, Joseph could not settle easily. After eight months rule, he writes with a subdued hankering after his love of liberty:

I am king of Spain only through the force of your arms; I might be so through the love of the Spanish people, but for that purpose I must govern them in my own way. I have often heard you say, every animal has its instinct and ought to follow it. I will be such a king as the brother and friend of your Majesty ought to be, or I will return to Mortefontaine, where I ask for no happiness but to live without humiliation and to die with a good conscience.

Only a fool remains long in a false position. In forty years of life I have learnt only what I knew almost at the beginning, that all is vanity except a good conscience and self-esteem.

If there is on earth a man whom you esteem or love more than you do me, I ought not to be King of Spain, and my happiness requires me to cease to be so.

In July, 1809, the battle of Talavera was fought, and so shameful was the defeat of the French that both Joseph and Jourdan appear to have sent Napoleon false reports of the battle.

The Emperor writes from Schönbrunn :

In the despatch of the English General Wellesley you will see that we have lost twenty guns and three standards. Express to the king my surprise, and to General Jourdan my displeasure, at not being made acquainted with the real state of things, instead of receiving from them schoolboys' stories; I wish to know who were the artillerymen who abandoned their guns and the infantry regiments that allowed them to be taken. In your letter to the king hint that I disapprove his order of the day; that it tells the soldiers that they are conquerors; that this is ruin to the troops; that I am in want of correct information; that I wish to know the number of killed and wounded in each regiment, of guns and standards taken, &c. Say that in Spain affairs are undertaken without reflection or knowledge of war; and that on the day of action there is neither union, nor plan, nor decision. Write to General Sebastiani that the King has sent to me his report; that it is not the report of a soldier describing what has been and what is; that it is full of nothing but fine speeches; that I had rather that he had told me his real opinions, and had given an exact and faithful account of what happened. In short, I have a right to be told the truth; it is necessary for the good of my subjects.

The correspondence from this period con

sists principally of instructions from Berthier and Napoleon to the different generals in command. Joseph appears to have been completely ignored. French marshals, with sovereign powers, commanded in the different provinces, levied contributions and absorbed the revenues of the State. The King's position at Madrid became insupportable; and in August, 1810, he writes to Napoleon :

Sire, My position in this country, always difficult, often deplorable, is now such that it cannot continue under the arrangements which have been made and are threatened.

I shall endeavour to let the answer which I hope from your Majesty find me in Madrid, but I implore you not to make me wait long for it, for things are stronger than men; and on the day when I shall be completely abandoned by my guard, by my servants, and by all that constitutes a government, my only course will be to return to France to put myself at the disposition of your Majesty, requesting you to allow me to join my family, from which I have been separated for six years, and to find in obscurity and domestic affection a peace of which the throne has robbed me, without giving me anything in exchange. I find it a seat of punishment, from which I look passively on the devastation of a country which I had hoped to make happy.

I am here surrounded by the ruins of a great nation, I have a guard, I have depôts, I have hospitals, a garrison, a household, a ministry, a privy-council, refugees from all the other provinces, &c. &. Even if my honour, if the sentiment of what is due to me allowed me to maintain so humiliating a position, this state of things could not last two months. For, in fact, if the army of Andalusia is taken from me, what shall I be? The porter of the hospitals of Madrid and of the depôts of the army, and the jailor of the prisoners.

I implore your Majesty to see in this letter only what I have endeavoured to put into it-the simple truth, dictated by the fraternal friendship which attached me to you in your cradle, and, whatever may happen, will accompany me to my tomb. Can the emotion which I feel at this instant, and which interrupts my writing, be caused by personal feelings or by selfish regret? No, Sire, it is not so. I weep over the weakness of human nature; over the dispersion of a family once so united; over the change in the heart of my brother; over the gradual diminution of an immense glory, which would have been better preserved by generosity and heroism than by any extension of power.

Sire, if the conclusion of my letter does not recall to you the tender and valued friend of your infancy; if it does not tell you that I am to you what no other man can be, I have nothing to do but to retire.

To this Napoleon returns no reply, but continues his correspondence upon details of organisation with Berthier.

These few letters sufficiently illustrate the nature of the treatment to which Europe generally was subjected. Napoleon, flushed with incredible successes, seized upon State after State; tyrannized over Central Europe; drained Italy; oppressed Spain; made war maintain war; engaged in the most gigantic enterprises, and exhausting the resources of France, found himself at the first reverse almost without men, straitened in means, and

with the whole of Europe in arms against him. In such a system it is not surprising to find that the subordinate agents robbed for themselves, and occasionally cheated their master. In 1806 Napoleon writes to Joseph at Naples :

Let Masséna be advised to return the 6,000,000. To do so quickly is his only salvation. If he does not I shall send a Military Commission of Inquiry to Padua, for such robbery is intolerable. To suffer the soldiers to starve and to be unpaid, and to pretend that the sums destined for their use were a present to himself from the province, is too impudent. Such conduct would make it impossible to carry on a war. Let S be watched. The details of their plunderings are incredible. I learn them from the Austrians, who themselves are ashamed of them. They allowed corn to go to Venice. The evil is intolerable. The remedy I will apply. I order Ardent to be arrested. He must be in Paris or in Milan. He is an agent of S If he should be at Naples have him arrested, and sent under a good escort to Paris. You have seen that Flachat has been condemned to a year's imprisonment in irons, and that his transactions have been declared void.

He was badly served, too, in other respects. Numerous letters appear, complaining of the robbery and villany going on, on all sides. On his arrival at Bayonne, in 1808, he finds his army of 50,000 men with only 1,400 coats, 7,000 great coats, and 15,000 pairs of shoes among them He writes to Déjean, "My army is naked. I have spent a great deal which is money thrown into the sea:—

What I want are great-coats and shoes. I should want nothing if my orders had been executed; not one has been executed, because the Commissary cannot be relied on, and because he has been dealing with rogues. You must send to Bayonne a commissary above suspicion. I will have no contracts; you know that contracts produce nothing but robbery. . . Every contractor is a thief.

Of Napoleon's attention to minute details, no matter upon what subject, there are many curious instances in these letters. In 1806 he writes from St. Cloud to Joseph at Naples :

You sent me a short return, dated the 28th of August, in which the men on detachment and those that are in the hospitals are put into the same column. There is too much difference between them to admit of their being confounded together. For instance, the 52nd is reported as having 898 men effectives and 1000 at the hospitals or detached. This confusion makes the return useless; it gives me no idea of the state of my army.

My fifteen gendarmes are not well treated at Naples; send them to Milan. This is of great importance, because they write to their comrades; and I am inclined to feel hurt that my kindness in sending men out of my own guard to Naples should be thus repaid.

When the monthly returns of my armies and of my fleets, which form twenty thick volumes, are sent to me, I give up every other occupation in order to read them in detail and to observe the difference between one monthly return and another. No young girl enjoys her novel so much as I do these returns. It shocks me to see your corps scattered in different provinces.

Your newspapers contain nothing but petty details of assassinations and murders. This suits admirably the