Details
NAPOLEON I (1769-1821)
Letter signed ('Votre affectioné pere Napole') to Prince Eugène Napoleon, St Cloud, 24 May 1806, 2 pages, 4to (signed with a defective pen nib, causing the ink to spatter; integral leaf removed).
Brisk instructions for pursuing the campaign in Dalmatia, where Prince Eugène is to send a battalion of eight hundred Italians, and all the gunboats and cheben which he has at Venice except the frigates. Ragusa should be attacked so that the enemy will have much to do to defend the mouth of the Cattaro. Eugène is to reply to Generals Lauriston and Molitor, whose letters are full of fantasies. Interestingly, Napoleon ridicules the latters' apparent fear of the Russians, 'les Russes ne sont pas en Valachie, qu'ils sont bien loin dela, & qu'ils ne pourraient y entrer, sans s'attirer toue l'Europe sur le bras; que loin d'avoir 18000 hommes disponible a Corfou, ils n'en ont pas 5000. Leurs lettres sont plein de romans. Ils n'ont rien a craindre en Dalmatie'.
Napoleon's strategy for the defence of Venice is to keep three frigates there in a state of readiness, 'toujours tenues en rade et pretes a appareiller' and in the Adriatic to control the islands. 'Vous devez etre maitre de tout en les iles; ayant l'arsenal, vous devez pouvoir [reunir?] tant de petits batimens que les gros vaisseaux Russes doivent etre rendus nuls, malgré leur superiorité'.
An example of Napoleonic control from afar. The campaign in Dalmatia and the Adriatic followed the defeat of Austria and Russia at Austerlitz the previous December. Napoleon besieged Prince Eugène with orders on every detail, sometimes rebuking him for exceeding his brief. He had been particularly angered by Eugène's apparently contradicting one of his own instructions to Lauriston for the invasion of Dalmatia three months before, accusing him then of 'legerete inexcusable'.
Letter signed ('Votre affectioné pere Napole') to Prince Eugène Napoleon, St Cloud, 24 May 1806, 2 pages, 4to (signed with a defective pen nib, causing the ink to spatter; integral leaf removed).
Brisk instructions for pursuing the campaign in Dalmatia, where Prince Eugène is to send a battalion of eight hundred Italians, and all the gunboats and cheben which he has at Venice except the frigates. Ragusa should be attacked so that the enemy will have much to do to defend the mouth of the Cattaro. Eugène is to reply to Generals Lauriston and Molitor, whose letters are full of fantasies. Interestingly, Napoleon ridicules the latters' apparent fear of the Russians, 'les Russes ne sont pas en Valachie, qu'ils sont bien loin dela, & qu'ils ne pourraient y entrer, sans s'attirer toue l'Europe sur le bras; que loin d'avoir 18000 hommes disponible a Corfou, ils n'en ont pas 5000. Leurs lettres sont plein de romans. Ils n'ont rien a craindre en Dalmatie'.
Napoleon's strategy for the defence of Venice is to keep three frigates there in a state of readiness, 'toujours tenues en rade et pretes a appareiller' and in the Adriatic to control the islands. 'Vous devez etre maitre de tout en les iles; ayant l'arsenal, vous devez pouvoir [reunir?] tant de petits batimens que les gros vaisseaux Russes doivent etre rendus nuls, malgré leur superiorité'.
An example of Napoleonic control from afar. The campaign in Dalmatia and the Adriatic followed the defeat of Austria and Russia at Austerlitz the previous December. Napoleon besieged Prince Eugène with orders on every detail, sometimes rebuking him for exceeding his brief. He had been particularly angered by Eugène's apparently contradicting one of his own instructions to Lauriston for the invasion of Dalmatia three months before, accusing him then of 'legerete inexcusable'.
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