Memoirs," he would place before you without hesitation a book in thirteen volumes written in French, and entitled "Mémoires tirées des Papiers d'um Homme d'Etat," of which the catalogue declared Hardenberg to be the author. It is certain that not Alison only but most other writers on that period both in England and France have used this work freely, nay for German affairs, more freely than any other book, and generally as the work of Hardenberg. Especially the first two volumes, which profess to explain the causes of the first coalition against revolutionary France, have mainly contributed to form the current opinion on the subject; and the book is a forgery!
The fact is that this book has the great advantage of being in French, and that some of these writers would have been compelled to remain in ignorance of German affairs altogether if the knowledge had had to be sought in German books. And yet there was a certain difficulty in writing the history of the Napoleonic age without any of this knowledge. In these circumstances the belief that one of the most conspicuous and necessarily best-informed German statesmen of the period had written his memoirs in French, and that these memoirs had been published, was too consoling and precious to be parted with. Yet it is somewhat difficult to understand how they can have entertained the belief in good faith. On a closer inspection we find that at least one of them actually did not. Alison, who, as we have said, is so lavish of his "Hard.," actually has the following note, which perhaps few of those who consult his voluminous work remark. After declaring himself happy to agree with "the able and candid Prussian statesman who concluded the treaty of Basle," and introducing a quotation from the "Mémoires," etc., with the words "says Prince Hardenberg," he remarks on the next page, "These able memoirs, though written by the Count d'Allonville, were compiled from Prince Hardenberg's papers" (vol. ii. p. 926). Now even if it were true, as Alison supposes, that there was reason for regarding the memoirs as founded upon the papers of Hardenberg, it is surely unjustifiable, and betrays a very lax historical conscience, to refer to them habitually, without qualification of any kind, as Hardenberg's memoirs. But there was no such reason. It is indeed not improbable that the compiler had access to documents of some kind, and his statements, sifted with proper caution, may in some cases have their value. But even before the book appeared, and when the advertisements of it which spoke of a Prussian statesman seemed to point at Hardenberg, it was shown by Scholl that there was imposture at work, and that the papers, if there were any, were certainly not Hardenberg's. Accordingly D'Allonville and his accomplices did not venture in any positive way to declare that they were. It was not necessary to do so. The world, that is, in England and France, jumped at the bait, which was scarcely even held out to it, and the forgery has been "Hardenberg's Memoirs" to our historians ever since. Yet they have not even had the excuse that the exposure of it was only to be found in a language which they did not read, for a most complete examination and detection of the forgery is to be found in Barbier's French "Dictionnaire des Œuvres Pseudonymes."
Meanwhile the Germans have submitted to this injury with most magnanimous meekness. They have probably felt that they had no remedy, for though they have the ear of Europe on questions of learning or science, and certainly of history also, when the history is remote enough to have become the property of savants, on recent history it matters not what they say or what they prove, since no one either in France or England reads it. Accordingly Von Sybel merely remarks, without a word of complaint or indignation, that the current notion of German affairs in that age has been taken chiefly from the spurious memoirs of Hardenberg; and Von Ranke now, in introducing the genuine memoirs to the world, merely remarks in the same placid tone that the "Memoires tirées," etc. have no connection with them whatever.
This explanation may convey to the reader a new impression of the importance of the publication before us. It finally dissipates a cloud of illusion which has hung over the period for about half a century — for the first two volumes of the "Memoires tirées," etc., appeared in 1828, and at the same time it opens a new source of knowledge, the importance of which we may measure by the authority which the mere name of Hardenberg gave to the forgery now exploded. It is to be added, that in addition to the memoirs of Hardenberg, this work gives us the conclusions drawn by Von Ranke from a collection also made by Hardenberg, and now first applied to historical purposes, of original documents bearing on Prussian history.
Our inquirer will in fact find that he has
