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Updated: May 2, 2025
The narrative of J. Miot, commissary of the army, shows that these suggestions originated among the soldiery at Acre when threatened with the toil of transporting those unfortunates back to Egypt; and, as his testimony is generally adverse to Bonaparte, and he mentions the same horrible device, when speaking of the hospitals at Jaffa, as a camp rumour, it may be regarded as scarcely worthy of credence.
"A sad sight," say the memoirs of Count Miot de Melito, who accompanied King Joseph as he entered the town; "the houses nearly all deserted and pillaged; the furniture, smashed in pieces, scattered in the mud of the streets; one quarter, on the other side of the Arlanzen, on fire; the soldiers madly forcing in doors and windows, breaking everything that came in their way, using little and destroying much; the churches stripped; the streets crowded with the dead and dying in a word, all the horrors of an assault, although the town had offered no defence!"
As Miot squanders away his salary with harlots and in gambling-houses, and is pursued by creditors he neither will nor can pay, it was merely from charity that his wife was received among the other ladies of Madame Joseph Bonaparte's household. PARIS, August, 1805.
Unfortunately for him, after Thermidor, he is turned out and M. Miot is put in his place. With diplomatic politeness, the latter calls on his predecessor and "expresses to him the usual compliments." Buchot, insensible to compliments, immediately thinks of the substantial, and the first thing he asks for is to keep provisionally his apartment in the ministry.
The narrative of J. Miot, commissary of the army, shows that these suggestions originated among the soldiery at Acre when threatened with the toil of transporting those unfortunates back to Egypt; and, as his testimony is generally adverse to Bonaparte, and he mentions the same horrible device, when speaking of the hospitals at Jaffa, as a camp rumour, it may be regarded as scarcely worthy of credence.
Some charitable person having reported in the company of a 'bonne amie' of Miot, that his wife did not pass her nights in solitude, but that she sought consolation among the many gallants and disengaged visitors at Morfontaine, he determined to surprise her. It was past eleven o'clock at night when his arrival was announced to Joseph, who had just retired to his closet.
Yet some time elapsed before Napoleon joined the armament: and it is said by Miot that he did all he could to defer joining it as long as possible, in consequence of certain obscure hopes which he had entertained of striking a blow at the existing government, and remodelling it, to his own advantage, with the assent, if not assistance, of Austria.
See also the very remarkable conversation of Napoleon with Miot de Melito just before leaving Italy for Rastadt: "I cannot obey any longer. I have tasted the pleasures of command, and I cannot renounce it. My decision is taken. If I cannot be master, I shall quit France."
An explanation being made, Madame Miot was looked for but in vain; and the maid declared that, being warned by a letter from Paris of her husband's jealousy and determination to surprise her, her mistress had reposed herself in her room; while, to punish the ungenerous suspicions of her husband, she had persuaded Captain d' Horteuil to occupy her place in her own bed.
When the commonalty are so obsequious, any title can be taken by the one necessary man. Napoleon at first affected to doubt whether the title of Stadtholder would not be more seemly than that of Emperor; and in one of the many conferences held on this topic, Miot de Melito advocated the retention of the term Consul for its grand republican simplicity.
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