"Having attained a somewhat advanced age, and enjoying good health, disabused of many of the illusions which enable me to bear the storms of life, and replacing those illusions by that tranquillity of soul which results from a good conscience, and from the security which is afforded by a country admirably constituted, I regard myself as having reached the port. Before disembarking upon the shores of eternity, I wish to render an account to myself of the long voyage, and to search out the causes which have borne so high, in the ranks of society, my family, and which have terminated in depriving us of that which appertains to the humblest individual—a country which was dear to us, and which we have served with good faith and devotion.
"It is neither an apology nor a satire which I write. I render an account to myself of events, and I wish to place upon paper the recollections which they have left behind. There are some transactions which I now condemn, after having formerly approved of them; there are others of which I to-day approve, after having formerly condemned them. Such is the feebleness of our nature, dependent always upon the circumstances which surround us, and which frequently govern us—a thought which ought to lead every true and reflective man to charity.
"I venture to affirm that it is the love of truth which leads me to undertake this writing. It is a sentiment of justice which I owe to the man who was my friend, and whom human feebleness has disfigured in a manner so unworthy. Napoleon was, above all, a friend of the people, and he was a just and good man, even more than he was a great warrior and administrator. It is my duty, as his elder brother, and one who has not always shared in his political opinions, to speak of that which I know, and to express convictions which I profoundly cherish. I am now in a better situation to appreciate what were the causes foreign to his nature, which forced him to assume a factitious character—a character which made him feared by the instruments which he had to employ, in order to sustain against Europe the war which the oligarchy had declared against the principles of the revolution, and which the British Cabinet waged against that France whose supremacy it could prevent only by exciting against her Continental wars and civil dissensions, and those despotic principles of government which no longer belonged to the nation or the age in which we lived."
CHAPTER VI
THE SPANISH PRINCES.
1807-1808
Toward the close of the year 1807 brigandage was entirely suppressed, all traces of insurrection had disappeared, and tranquillity and prosperity reigned throughout the kingdom of Naples. In July Joseph wrote from Capo di Monte to Queen Julie, who was then at Mortfontaine, as follows:
Letter to Julie.