Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne (born July 19, 1769 in Sens ; † February 7, 1834 in Caen ) was a French diplomat and politician , he was the private secretary of Napoleon Bonaparte for a long time .

Life

education

He attended the cadet school of Brienne-le-Château in Champagne with Napoleon . Despite Napoleon's lonely habits, he was on friendly terms with him. A very deep friendship, as described in Bourrienne's memoir, is not otherwise proven. After graduating from military school in 1787, Bourrienne did not seek further military training, but went to Vienna and later to Leipzig , where he studied law and diplomacy. There he also spent the first years of the French Revolution , he did not return to France until the spring of 1792.

In Paris he renewed his acquaintance with Napoléon. There the two witnesses of the further events of the French Revolution with the suspension of Louis XVI.

Career

Bourrienne received a diplomatic mandate in Stuttgart and soon his name was on a list of political refugees, from which he was not struck until November 1797. Nevertheless, he returned to Paris after the affair of the 13th Vendémiaire (October 5, 1795), where he again sought the proximity of Napoléon, who at that time was vice in the Army of the Interior and a short time later received the supreme command of the Italian Army .

Bourrienne did not go to Italy with him, but was called there by the victorious general to use his knowledge of law and diplomacy in the lengthy negotiations with Austria (May / October 1797) to draw up the Treaty of Campo Formio (October 7, 1797). to end the first coalition war .

The following year he accompanied Napoléon Bonaparte to Egypt as his private secretary . Very vivid, if not always confident, accounts of these expeditions can be found in his memoir. He also accompanied Napoléon on the adventurous return to Fréjus in September and October 1799 and helped with the coup d'état of 18th Brumaire VIII (coup d'état of November 9th, 1799). Its consequences were the end of the Directory and with it the French Revolution. Napoléon Bonaparte was the first consul to become sole ruler. Bourrienne remained at the side of the First Consul in his old authority, but in the autumn of 1802 he became displeased with questionable financial transactions.

In the spring of 1805 he was sent to the free city of Hamburg as a French envoy (see also the Hamburg French period ). There it was his duty to carry out the measures of the trade war against England known as the Continental Blockade. However, he not only viewed these tyrannical measures with displeasure, but secretly relaxed them, to the benefit of the traders. At the beginning of the spring of 1807, when Napoléon ordered a large number of military coats for the army currently in East Prussia , he decided that the only way to get it quickly would be a shipment from England. After he had made a great fortune in Hamburg, he was ordered back to France in late 1819. In 1814 he was a supporter of the Bourbon royal cause and during the Hundred Days of 1815 he accompanied Louis XVIII. to Ghent .

Bourrienne later became the Prefect of Police and then Minister of State. The July Revolution of 1830 and the associated loss of his fortune confused his mind. He died on February 7th, 1834 in Caen, after two years of mental illness.

Fonts

Bourrienne's fame is based not on any works or deeds, but solely on his memoirs, written by himself and CM de Villemarest (10 vols., Paris, 1829–1831), which have been widely published and translated. The best English edition is that of Colonel Ramsay Weston Phipps (4 vols., London, 1893); ( ISBN 0-89875-359-7 ). A new French edition was written by D. Lacroix (5 vols., Paris, 1899–1900). See also Bourrienne et ses unerurs, volontaires et involontaires (Paris, 1830), by Generals Belliard , Gourgaud, etc., for a discussion of the authenticity of his memoirs and Napoleon et ses détracteurs by Prince Napoleon (Paris, 1887; Eng.trans. , London, 1888).

Web links

• www.mlwerke.de

predecessor	Office	successor
Karl Friedrich Reinhard	French envoy to the Hanseatic cities 1805–1810	-