His enemies were ready enough to allow his military talents, but they wished to attribute the first success of his not very deep policy to a marvellous duplicity, apparently considered by them the more wicked as possessed by a parvenu emperor, and far removed, in a moral point of view, from the statecraft so allowable in an ancient monarchy.

But for Napoleon himself and his family and Court there was literally no limit to the really marvellous inventions of his enemies.

He might enter every capital on the Continent, but there was some consolation in believing that he himself was a monster of wickedness, and his Court but the scene of one long protracted orgie.
There was enough against the Emperor in the Memoirs to make them comfortable reading for his opponents, though very many of the old calumnies were disposed of in them.

They contained indeed the nearest approximation to the truth which had yet appeared.

Metternich, who must have been a good judge, as no man was better acquainted with what he himself calls the "age of Napoleon," says of the Memoirs: "If you want something to read, both interesting and amusing, get the Memoires de Bourrienne.