Napoleon's greatest enemy were those who had served him, some for their own profit, and who turned on him in 1814. Especially virulent were those who wrote, or had written, bogus 'memoirs' to curry favor with the Bourbons. And many careless authors used them afterwards to insist, and thus mistakenly illustrate, the 'evil' Napoleon, also known as 'The Corsican Ogre.' Unfortunately, that species of author is still with us.

'The most misleading truth twisting, however, came from people who served him to their profit, but-in hopes of making an equally profitable peace with the Bourbons who supplanted him after Waterloo-turned to defaming him. Prominent among them were former close associates of Napoleon such as Louis Antoine de Bourrienne, the Duchess of Abrantes, Claire de Remusat, and Marshal Auguste Marmont. The memoirs such people wrote, or had ghostwritten, were accepted as indispensable reference works by too many writers, though most of them are worthless and even the better ones contain much untrustworthy material.'-John Elting, The Superstrategists, 139.