Having filled at different times the high offices of Minister of the
Interior, of Finance, of Foreign Affairs, and President of the Council,
M. Thiers has enjoyed facilities beyond the reach of every other
biographer of Napoleon for procuring, from exclusive and authentic
sources, the choicest materials for his present work. As guardian to the
archives of the state, he had access to diplomatic papers and other
documents of the highest importance, hitherto known only to a privileged
few, and the publication of which cannot fail to produce a great
sensation. From private sources, M. Thiers, it appears, has also derived
much valuable information. Many interesting memoirs, diaries, and
letters, all hitherto unpublished, and most of them destined for
political reasons to remain so, have been placed at his disposal; while
all the leading characters of the empire, who were alive when the author
undertook the present history, have supplied him with a mass of
incidents and anecdotes which have never before appeared in print, and
the accuracy and value of which may be inferred from the fact of these
parties having been themselves eye-witnesses of, or actors in, the great
events of the period.
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