244 POLITICAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY

edition of his correspondence published under the auspices
of Napoleon DDL Three volumes contain his memoirs and
the "Letters from the Cape, while the fourth discusses the
campaigns of great soldiers. There was no intention of telling
the whole'story of his life, and the selections were governed
by a transparent plan. No political apologia has had such a
directly practical aim. The prisoner of Elba had regained his
throne : might there not be a second resurrection ? Eagerly
scanning the news of the royalist reaction in France, he deter-
mined to pose as the soldier of the Revolution, the standard-
bearer of the ideas of 1789. When a deadly disease gripped
him he worked no longer for himself but for his son. The
kst and not the least of his triumphs was to create the Napo-
leonic legend, which in" turn, with the aid of other influences
and accidents, created the Second Empire. " The Bourbons
will not remain," he declared a fortnight before his death; " my
son will reach the throne." The King of Rome died a few
years after his father, but a nephew stood ready to fill the gap.

The first of the three volumes describes the early exploits
of Toulon, Italy, Egypt and Syria; the second brings the
story through Brumaire to Marengo and the Concordat.
The narrator then jumps right over the Empire, returning to
earth at Elba and ending with Waterloo. At first sight it
seems curious that he should omit the glories of Austerlitz,
Jena and Friedland, and close on the note of catastrophic
defeat. But there is a method in the madness. Hoping that
Louis XVm would be overthrown by the Left, he desired to
appear as its champion. While the Bourbons represented the
nobles and the priests, he had represented the masses. Re-
membering the Terror and the Directory, he had not wished
the people to seize power, but he had been a popular ruler.
He found France in chaos: he gave her order and glory,
nationality, religion and domestic peace. The spirit, if not
the forms, of democracy had prevailed, for the humblest
citizen could rise to the highest place. The Hundred Days
symbolized the preference of France for a Liberal Empire
over the ancien regime. Waterloo was an unlucky accident,
due, not to the Emperor, but to the blunders of Grouchy and
Ney. ^ In the conversations at St. Helena the fallen ruler
occasionally admitted mistakes: in his dictated apologia never*

The most brilliant of Napoleon's lieutenants and one of
the most dazzling figures in French history left memoirs
which have added little to his stature. Talleyrand's decision