BOURRIENNE, LOUIS ANTOINE FAUVELET DE (1769-1834), French diplomatist, was born at Sens on July 9, 1769, and died at Caen on Feb. 7, 1834. He was educated at the military school of Brienne, where, he asserts, he was a friend of Napoleon Bonaparte, and later pursued legal and diplomatic studies at Vienna and at Leipzig. He returned to Paris in the spring of 1792, and renewed his acquaintance with Bonaparte.
He next obtained a diplomatic post at Stuttgart, from which he returned, in 1794, to find his name on the list of political émigrés, though it was eventually removed by Bonaparte's influence. Bourrienne was called to Italy by the victorious general at the time of the long negotiations with Austria (May—Oct. 1797), when his knowledge of law and diplomacy was of some service in the drafting of the terms of the treaty of Campo Formio (Oct. 17) . In the following year he accompanied Bonaparte to Egypt as his private secretary, and left a vivid, if not very trustworthy, account of the expedition in his memoirs, and also accompanied him on the adventurous return voyage to Frejus (Sept.—Oct. 1799). In the autumn of 1802 he incurred the displeasure of the first consul owing to his very questionable financial dealings. In the spring of 18o5 he was sent as French envoy to the free city of Hamburg. There it was his duty to carry out the measures of commercial war against England, known as the continental system ; but he secretly relaxed the rules in favour of those merchants who plied him with douceurs. After gaining a large fortune, he was recalled to France in disgrace in 1813. In 1814 he embraced the royal cause, and during the Hundred Days (1815) accompanied Louis XVIII. to Ghent.
The fame of Bourrienne rests, not upon his achievements or his original works, which were insignificant, but upon his Memoires, ed. M. de Villemarest (io vols., 1829-31) , frequently republished and translated. The best English edition of the Memoires is that by Col. R. W. Phipps (1893) ; a new French edition was ed. by D. Lacroix (5 vols., See Bourrienne et ses erreurs, volontaires et involontaires (183o) , by Generals Belliard, Gourgaud, etc., for a discussion of the genuineness of his memoirs; also Napoleon et ses detracteurs, by Prince Napoleon (1887 ; Eng. trans., 1888) .