I have had dealings with a host of famous celebrities in the military, the Church, politics, the judiciary, the arts and sciences. La France et les Colonies, Illustré - Onésime Reclus (p14, 1887) Having camped in the cabins of Iroquois, and beneath the tents of Arabs, in the wigwams of Hurons, in the remains of Athens, Jerusalem, Memphis, Carthage, Granada, among Greeks, Turks and Moors, among forests and ruins after wearing the bearskin cloak of the savage, and the silk caftan of the Mameluke, after suffering poverty, hunger, thirst, and exile, I have sat, a minister and ambassador, covered with gold lace, gaudy with ribbons and decorations, at the table of kings, the feasts of princes and princesses, only to fall once more into indigence and know imprisonment. I have explored the seas of the Old World and the New, and trodden the soil of the four quarters of the Earth.
I have traversed in succession the empty years of my youth, the full years of the Republican era, the splendours of Napoleon and of the reign of the Legitimacy. I have formed one of an unprecedented triumvirate: three poets of different interests and nationalities, found themselves, almost at the same moment, Foreign Ministers: myself of France, Mr Canning of England, and Señor Martinez de la Rosa of Spain. I have met almost all the men who have played a large or small role, both abroad and in my own country, from Washington to Napoleon, from Louis XVIII to Czar Alexander, from Pius VII to Gregory XVI, from Fox, Burke, Pitt, Sheridan, Londonderry, and Capo-d’Istria, to Malesherbes, Mirabeau, etc from Nelson, Bolivar, Mehemet Ali, Pasha of Egypt, to Suffren, Bougainville, La Pérouse, Moreau, etc. I recount in what has been completed, and will recount in what has only been sketched out so far, my childhood, my education, my youth, my entry into the service, my arrival in Paris, my presentation to Louis XVI, the opening scenes of the Revolution, my travels in America, my emigration to Germany and England, my return under the Consulate, my occupations and works under the Empire, and finally the complete history of that Restoration and its fall. The Mémoires, at whose head this preface is placed, embrace or will embrace the entire course of my life: they were begun in the year 1811, and have been continued down to today.
Conditions and Exceptions apply.Īs it is impossible for me to foresee the moment of my death as, at my age, the days granted to man are only days of grace, or rather of hardship, I intend, for fear of being taken by surprise, to explain the nature of a work destined to beguile for me the boredom of these last lonely hours, that no one wants, and that one does not know how to employ. This work may be freely reproduced, stored and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose. Kline © Copyright 2005 All Rights Reserved