The friendship between Bonaparte and Bourrienne began in boyhood, at the
school of Brienne, and their unreserved intimacy continued during the
most brilliant part of Napoleon's career. We have said enough, the
motives for his writing this work and his competency for the task will be
best explained in M. de Bourrienne's own words, which the reader will
find in the Introductory Chapter.

M. de Bourrienne says little of Napoleon after his first abdication and
retirement to Elba in 1814: we have endeavoured to fill up the chasm thus
left by following his hero through the remaining seven years of his life,
to the "last scenes of all" that ended his "strange, eventful history,"
--to his deathbed and alien grave at St. Helena. A completeness will
thus be given to the work which it did not before possess, and which we
hope will, with the other additions and improvements already alluded to,
tend to give it a place in every well-selected library, as one of the
most satisfactory of all the lives of Napoleon.

LONDON, 1836.







PREFACE

BY THE EDITOR OF THE 1885 EDITION.