BOURRIENNE, LOUIS ANTOINE FAUVELET DE (1769-1834), French diplomatist, was born at Sens on the 9th of July 1769. He was educated at the military school of Brienne in Champagne along with Napoleon Bonaparte; and although the solitary habits of the latter made intimacy difficult, the two youths seem to have been on friendly terms. It must, however, be added that the stories of their very close friendship, as told in Bourrienne’s memoirs, are open to suspicion. Leaving Brienne in 1787, and conceiving a distaste for the army, Bourrienne proceeded to Vienna. He was pursuing legal and diplomatic studies there and afterwards at Leipzig, when the French Revolution broke out and went through its first phases. Not until the spring of 1792 did Bourrienne return to France; at Paris he renewed his acquaintance with Bonaparte. They led a Bohemian life together, and among other incidents of that exciting time, they witnessed the mobbing of the royal family in the Tuileries (June 20) and the overthrow of the Swiss Guards at the same spot (August 10). Bourrienne next obtained a diplomatic appointment at Stuttgart, and soon his name was placed on the list of political émigrés, from which it was not removed until November 1797. Nevertheless, after the affair of 13th Vendémiaire (October 5, 1795) he returned to Paris and renewed his acquaintance with Bonaparte, who was then second in command of the Army of the Interior and soon received the command of the Army of Italy. Bourrienne did not proceed with him into Italy, but was called thither by the victorious general at the time of the long negotiations with Austria (May-October 1797), when his knowledge of law and diplomacy was of some service in the drafting of the terms of the treaty of Campo Formio (October 17). In the following year he accompanied Bonaparte to Egypt as his private secretary, and left a vivid, if not very trustworthy, account of the expedition in his memoirs. He also accompanied him on the adventurous return voyage to Fréjus (September-October 1799), and was of some help in the affairs which led up to the coup d’état of Brumaire (November) 1799. He remained by the side of the First Consul in his former capacity, but in the autumn of 1802 incurred his displeasure owing to his very questionable financial dealings. In the spring of 1805 he was sent as French envoy to the free city of Hamburg. There it was his duty to carry out the measures of commercial war against England, known as the Continental System; but it is known that he not only viewed those tyrannical measures with disgust, but secretly relaxed them in favour of those merchants who plied him with douceurs. In the early spring of 1807, when directed by Napoleon to order a large number of military cloaks for the army, then in East Prussia, he found that the only means of procuring them expeditiously was to order them from England. After gaining a large fortune while at Hamburg, he was recalled to France in disgrace at the close of 1810. In 1814 he embraced the royal cause, and during the Hundred Days (1815) accompanied Louis XVIII. to Ghent. The rest of his life was uneventful; he died at Caen on the 7th of February 1834, after suffering from a mental malady for two years.
The fame of Bourrienne rests, not upon his achievements or his original works, which are insignificant, but upon his Mémoires, edited by C.M. de Villemarest (10 vols., Paris, 1829-1831), which have been frequently republished and translated. The best English edition is that edited by Colonel R.W. Phipps (4 vols., London, 1893); a new French edition has been edited by D. Lacroix (5 vols., Paris, 1899-1900). See Bourrienne et ses erreurs, volontaires et involontaires (Paris, 1830), by Generals Belliard, Gourgaud, &c., for a discussion of the genuineness of his Memoirs; also Napoléon et ses détracteurs, by Prince Napoleon (Paris, 1887; Eng. trans., London, 1888).
(J. Hl. R.)
BOURRIT, MARC THÉODORE (1739-1819), Swiss traveller and writer, came of a family which was of French origin but had taken refuge at Geneva for reasons connected with religion. His father was a watchmaker there, and he himself was educated in his native city. He was a good artist and etcher, and also a pastor, so that by reason of his fine voice and love of music he was made (1768) precentor of the church of St Peter (the former cathedral) at Geneva. This post enabled him to devote himself to the exploration of the Alps, for which he had conceived a great passion ever since an ascent (1761) of the Voirons, near Geneva. In 1775 he made the first ascent of the Buet (10,201 ft.) by the now usual route from the Pierre à Bérard, on which the great flat rock known as the Table au Chantre still preserves his memory. In 1784-1785 he was the first traveller to attempt the ascent of Mont Blanc (not conquered till 1786), but neither then nor later (1788) did he succeed in reaching its summit. On the other hand he reopened (1787) the route over the Col du Géant (11,060 ft.), which had fallen into oblivion, and travelled also among the mountains of the Valais, of the Bernese Oberland, &c. He received a pension from Louis XVI., and was named the historiographe des Alpes by the emperor Joseph II., who visited him at Geneva. His last visit to Chamonix was in 1812. His writings are composed in a naïve, sentimental and rather pompous style, but breathe throughout a most passionate love for the Alps, as wonders of nature, and not as objects of scientific study. His chief works are the Description des glacières de Savoye, 1773 (English translation, Norwich, 1775-1776), the Description des Alpes pennines et rhétiennes (2 vols., 1781) (reprinted in 1783 under the title of Nouvelle Description des vallées de glace, and in 1785, with additions, in 3 vols., under the name of Nouvelle Description des glacières), and the Descriptions des cols ou passages des Alpes, (2 vols., 1803), while his Itinéraire de Genève, Lausanne et Chamouni, first published in 1791, went through several editions in his lifetime.
(W. A. B. C.)
BOURSAULT, EDME (1638-1701), French dramatist and miscellaneous writer, was born at Mussy l’Évêque, now Mussy-sur-Seine (Aube), in October 1638. On his first arrival in Paris in 1651 his language was limited to a Burgundian patois, but within a year he produced his first comedy, Le Mort vivant. This and some other pieces of small merit secured for him distinguished patronage in the society ridiculed by Molière in the École des femmes. Boursault was persuaded that the “Lysidas” of that play was a caricature of himself, and attacked Molière in Le Portrait du peintre ou la contre-critique de l’École des femmes (1663). Molière retaliated in L’Impromptu de Versailles, and Boileau attacked Boursault in Satires 7 and 9. Boursault replied to Boileau in his Satire des satires (1669), but was afterwards reconciled with him, when Boileau on his side erased his name from his satires. Boursault obtained a considerable pension as editor of a rhyming gazette, which was, however, suppressed for ridiculing a Capuchin friar, and the editor was only saved from the Bastille by the interposition of Condé. In 1671 he produced a work of edification in Ad usum Delphini: la véritable étude des souverains, which so pleased the court that its author was about to be made assistant tutor to the dauphin when it was found that he was ignorant of Greek and Latin, and the post was given to Pierre Huet. Perhaps in compensation Boursault was made collector of taxes at Mont-luçon about 1672, an appointment that he retained until 1688. Among his best-known plays are Le Mercure galant, the title of which was changed to La Comédie sans titre (1683); La Princesse de Clèves (1676), an unsuccessful play which, when refurbished with fresh names by its author, succeeded as Germanicus; Ésope à la ville (1690); and Ésope à la cour (1701). His lack of dramatic instinct could hardly be better indicated than by the scheme of his Ésope, which allows the fabulist to come on the stage in each scene and recite a fable. Boursault died in Paris on the 15th of September 1701.
The Oeuvres choisies of Boursault were published in 1811, and a sketch of him is to be found in M. Saint-René Taillandier’s Études littéraires (1881).