The returning Louis XVIII received him warmly, nevertheless he promptly lost his position. When Napoleon escaped from Elba Bourrienne was appointed Prefect of Police. Napoleon issued an amnesty for all but thirteen individuals; one of them was Bourrienne. He spent the Hundred Days (1815) with Louis XVIII in Ghent. After that he did not play a notable part in public affairs. In 1830 he published his book and that revolution cost him his fortune. He died at Caen on February 7, 1834, after spending two years in an asylum. The Memoirs His book gives a vivid, intimate, detailed account of his interactions with Napoleon and his mother, brothers and sisters; with his first wife Joséphine de Beauharnais and her children; with notable French politicians; and with the marshals, he was especially friendly with Jean Baptiste Jules Bernadotte, the future King of Sweden, when they both were in Northern Germany. His narrative is invigorated by many dialogues, not only of those in which he was a speaker but even of conversations that he only was told about by others. Their exactitude may be suspect but surely they give a memorable portrait of his times. Many judgments are supported by quotes from his stockpile of documents. Naturally his narration is colored by his complicated relationship with his subject: close friendship, working together intimately for years, followed by dismissal and humiliating rejection. He tries to be balanced and gives many examples of Napoleon's brilliance, his skill at governance, and his deft political maneuvers, while deploring his inexorable grabs for personal and familial power and wealth, his willingness to sacrifice French lives, and his abhorrence of a free press. Military campaigns are left for professional judges. One of his bombshells is the claim that the Grand Army based at Boulogne was never meant to invade England, too chancy an enterprise: it was a diversion to keep British forces at home. Of course the book infuriated devoted Bonapartists; two volumes of criticisms were published promptly to attack his credibility. Controversy was still raging half a century later. His book is not a source in which to check particular facts, but as Goethe wrote: "All of the nimbus, all of the illusions, with which journalists and historians have surrounded Napoleon, vanishes before the awe-inspiring realisms of this book…". References Sources External links 1769 births 1834 deaths People from Sens Prefects of police of Paris 18th-century French