Talks of Napoleon at St. Helena with General Baron Gourgaud

First published in its English translation in 1903, this memoir is composed from private journal entries of Gaspard Gourgaud as a result of his conversations with Napoleon I of France between June 1815 and March 1818, during the latter’s exile on St. Helena. Additionally, journal entries made by Gourgaud on his voyage to St. Helena with Napoleon are included.

“It is hoped that this record of what Napoleon said, taken down by one whose truthfulness Napoleon himself vouched for, may be found interesting by many who might have been wearied by reading the larger part of this record, although it was kept by a man who loved his master devotedly, and who had been attached to his personal service since 1812.”

“The one capital and superior record of life at St. Helena is the private journal of General Gourgaud. It was written, in the main at least, for his own eye, without flattery or even prejudice. It is sometimes almost brutal in its realism. He alone of all the chroniclers strove to be accurate, and on the whole succeeded.”—Lord Roseberry, Napoleon: The Last Phase