BOOKS.

MEMOIRS OF COUNT MIOT DE MEL1T0.*

NtiMEROl and important as have been the works recently pub- lished, in English, French, and German, which profess to throw, from private sources, a flood of light upon the history of the First French Revolution and the First Empire, there, perhaps,

is none that will compare, in ordinary English eyes, as a revela- tion of the character of the author, with these two volumes.

Count Miot de Melito, whose " Notes " of the events that came under his eye in France are here given to the public by his son- in-law, cannot say of these eveuts, Magna pars fill. He was associated with the First Napoleon, who respected him, even although he was sometimes rude to him, as he was to every one who ventured to indicate that he had a mind of his own. But Napoleonism neither dazzled nor demoralised him ; it did not even tempt Miot to an imitation of its modes of conduct- ing life generally by cutting its Gordian knots. He seems rather of that sober, reliable, departmental stuff, of which good officials, of the sort Mr. Trollope is so fond of, are made, which might supply aide-de-camps to a Wellington, but hardly to a Bonaparte. But it is the very simplicity and sobriety of the man and of his narrative that will please the English reader ; it seems to be impossible to doubt his veracity. Besides,

M. Miot has few scandals of the Goldsmith or of the Bourrienne class to give ; he seems to have gone through life " gently scan- ning," not only his brother-man, but—an exceptional act for a Frenchman—his " sister-woman." To complete the accepta- bility of these Memoirs to English readers, they have been trans- lated so admirably by Mrs. Cashel Hoey and Mr. John Lillie, that one altogether forgets in reading that he has not an original

work in his hand.

The future Count Miot was born at Versailles in 176:2, and was intended by his parents for a military life. His instincts and tendencies were, however, essentially diplomatic, and the only event of importance which he noted in his purely military career is the discontent of the French troops considerably before the period of the Revolution, on account of the attempts made to remodel the army after the Prussian pattern, and which seemed to have helped to make it utterly untrustworthy when the shock of Revolution actually did come. Before and during the " Terror," Miot appears to have been almost a neutral-tinted poli- tician, holding, no doubt, as all sound departmentalists do, that " whate'er is best administered is best." Probably, however, he had Royalist leanings all through the Revolution and the Empire, and it is certain that he was denounced and very nearly lost his life during the "Terror," as being a "Moderate." Still he con- tinued to rise as a military diplomatist, holding in succession the offices of Comptroller-General in the administration of Military Affairs, Secretary-General in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and " Commissioner of External Relations." M. Miot and his narrative do not become of special value till 1795, when he became French Minister at Turin. There he came into close contact with Bonaparte, at that time the victorious General in Italy and the mad lover of his wife Josephine, but scarcely con- sidered as yet more than a formidable rival to Moreau. He was frank enough in imparting his personal designs to the Minister of the Republic :-

" I was aroused at half-past two in the morning of the 28th. Bona- parte had just arrived, and while the dinner that had been prepared for the preceding evening was being got ready, I remained for an hoar by the fireside alone with the General. From notes I made at the time, I will now give an exact account of our interview. He took up the conversation almost where he had dropped it on the occasion_ of our last interviews at Milan. He defended the resolution he had taken to support the 18th Fructidor, by arguments which I have already recorded. ' But do not imagine,' continued he, that I re- solved on so doing because of any conformity of ideas with those of the men whom I supported. I did not choose that the Bourbons should return, especially if brought back by Moreates army and by Pichegrn. The papers found in D'Entraignes' portfolio had sufficiently enlightened me as to the projects of those two Generals. I do not care to play the part of Monk ; I will not play it myself, and I do not choose that others shall do so. But those Paris lawyers who have got into the Directory understand nothing of government. They are poor creatures. I am going to see what they want to do at Rastadt ; but I doubt much that we shall understand each other, or long agree together. They are jealous of me, I know, and notwithstanding all their flattery, I am not their dupe ; they fear more than they love me. They were in a great hurry to make me General of the army of England, so that they might get me out of Italy, where I am the master, and am more of a Sovereign than commander of an army.

• Memoirs of Count Miot de Melito. Edited by General Fleischman. From the French, by Mrs. Cashel Hoey and Mr. John Lillie. 2 vole. London Sampson Low and Co. 1881.

They will see how things go on when I am not there. I am leaving Berthier, but he is not fit for the chief command, and I predict will only make blunders. As for myself, my dear Miot, I may inform you I can no longer obey ; I have tasted command, and I cannot give it np. I have made up my mind, if I cannot be master I shall leave France ; I do not choose to have done so much for her, and then hand her over to lawyers.' "

At Turin, Miot formed an opinion of Bonaparte's character and designs, from which he never swerved. He considered him as an absolutely selfish man, who, almost from the beginning of his military career, had conceived the design of overthrowing the Republic, and establishing his own dynasty on the French throne. He confirms, however, the general belief as to Bona- parte's fatalism and superstition, and seems to hold, as does Professor Seeley, that, after the expedition to Egypt, which saturated Bonaparte with Orientalism, he dreamed of playing the role of a Mahommed.

Otherwise there was nothing very remarkable in Miot's life in Turin. He was succeeded, in 1798, by Ginguen6, a Repub- lican philosephe, of whom and of Garet, who was sent as Ambassador to Naples, he gives a description which is not inapplicable to some of the politicians that have come to the front in France under the present Republican regime :—

" They were both clever men, but in proportion as I took pleasure in conversing with them on literary and philosophical subjects, I was surprised at their diplomatic language, and their strange ideas of the functions which they were about to fulfil. They were quite in the clouds; they were preceptors of kings, and not ambassadors. As they had never had any experience of the difficulties which the habits and prejudices of peoples oppose to innovators, they seemed to be un- aware that time only wears out errors, that they must be sapped at their bases by the patient spread of instruction in the lower classes of society, and that to attack prejudices in the front is to give them new strength. Not such were the means which these gentlemen pro- posed to employ. They were resolved to respect neither public nor private manners or customs, to conform to no usages, and, above all, to withstand the etiquette of Courts. They intended to be as in- flexible in outward forms as in principles, and brought philosophical intolerance to the overthrow of religious intolerance. I soon per- ceived that I could not attain to their height, and that they pitied my simplicity and the timid course I had observed."

When Miot returned to Paris in that same year, he found the way prepared for Ctesarism by the weakness of the Directory, and the dissoluteness of the society of which Barras had been the appropriate leader. His account of the revolution which ended in Napoleon being made First Consul is very interesting. Miot confirms the view, insisted on with vehemence by De Quincey, in the remarkable essay in which he contrasts Charlemagne and Bonaparte, that Napoleon was on that memorable occasion altogether unnerved, and that it was Lucien, not he, who " grasped the skirts of happy chance, and breasted the blows of circumstance."

Miot had now become diplomatically attached to, and person- ally intimate with, Joseph Bonaparte, and it was through him that he became acquainted with his brother's various intentions.

The whole book, indeed, tends somewhat to raise one's opinion of Joseph. He seems, of all the Bonapartes, to have had most heart and conscience, though that certainly means very little. but he was weak, and above all, he was no soldier ; and one of the most characteristically cynical outbursts of Napoleonism recorded here consists of what Napoleon said of Joseph's military prospects. " He must get promotion, a decent wound, and a reputation. It is not so difficult as you might think. I shall do for him what I did for Moreau ; I will give him a bigger army than the enemy's. He shall have everything, that is to say ; I shall keep the rest to myself. With all this he can win a

battle, and then he is on a line with the other military leaders." Yet, after a fashion, Napoleon loved Joseph,—

perhaps, as he once said, from habit, and because he was his elder. Joseph certainly obtained a larger measure of his confidence than any other member of his family ; and he did more by sheer tenacity than Lucien, with all his temper, to obstruct his designs and arouse his wrath. As Joseph was appointed to a high place in the camp at Boulogne, formed for a descent on England, we get from his Achates, Miot, some fresh light on that extraordinary design, and we are in- clined to believe, from these " Notes," that the formation of that camp was not, at least at first, a ruse to throw the military Powers on the Continent off their guard, but that Napoleon really contemplated an invasion, until he was dissuaded from it, as being impracticable, by his engineers, and until the defeat of the Spanish fleet near Corunna came to clinch their arguments. On one point, however, Miot seems decided,—Napoleon did not intend personally to lead the expedition. Another fact which Miot tells us for the first time, and which he obtained from Joseph Bonaparte, has a curious historical interest :-

" One confidence has led to another, and lastly Joseph Bonaparte revealed a very singular circumstance. About three months ago,' said he, ' the First Consul received from the Pretender (Louis XVIII.) a letter of four pages, written entirely in his own hand. It contains a kind of renunciation of the throne ; but at the same time calls upon Bonaparte to consider whether, since he has been so great a benefactor to France, it would not be consonant with his greatness, his generosity, nay, even his humanity, to recall the true heir of this ancient monarchy to the Sovereign power, by securing to him the position that would become vacant on the death of the present head of the Government. The letter also contains warm praise of our First Magistrate, and states that commands have been laid on all Royalists dwelling on French soil to remain perfectly quiescent, and neither to plan nor attempt anything against the existing Government.' Our informant had seen this letter, but it was not in his possession. I did not, therefore, see it myself ; but I can affirm that if this state- ment be untrue, the falsehood cannot be laid to the charge of Joseph Bonaparte."

If this is tree—and Miot expresses himself confidently on that head—it will certainly account adequately for Napoleon's peculiar conduct to the Emigres.

After the development of the First Consulship into the Empire, and with the beginning of the second volume, the historical interest in these " Notes " begins to flag. Although Miot saw Talleyrand, Follette, and others of the secondary characters of the Empire, he did not come so close to them as to be able to give original portraits ; at the same time, he evidently takes the now almost universally accepted view of Talleyrand, that he was just such another as Napoleon—with a Jesuitical twist—and that he had very largely to do with Napoleon's final fall. Miot does not believe that the declaration by Napoleon of the Empire was a wise step, on the personal side. It was not genuinely popular, and necessitated a continuance of those military de- signs which really proved his ruin, and caused Europe to cry out " Assez de Bonaparte," and even France herself to join in the cry. What made these military adventures all the more heinous is, that Napoleon himself knew they were not required iu the interest of France, and undertook them solely for dynastic reasons. During the crisis of the Empire, Miot was not in Paris, but with Joseph Bonaparte in Spain. He was not engaged in the military operations, and his narrative of the Peninsular War might with advantage have been compressed by the editor. Still, it is fair and clear, and does full justice to the English troops, and particularly to Sir John Moore and his command at Corunna. Miot witnessed the downfall of the Empire, and aided in the withdrawal of his friend and patron Joseph to America, where, indeed, lie visited him in 18=25, at which time Joseph was established, under the title of the Count de Survilliers, as oue of the largest land- holders in the State of New York. But with the battle of Waterloo, these memoirs in reality come to an end. Although from a purely historical point of view and as an elucidation of Napoleonic history, they cannot be considered equal to the Memoirs of Madame de Rgmusat—a comparison of the accounts of the execution of the Due d'Enghien will show what we mean —they are only second to these, and not a few people will find them more generally pleasing reading.