Efficient staff-work helped Napoleon to ‘recognize’ old soldiers from the ranks, but he also had a phenomenal memory.
’I introduced three deputies of the Valais to him,’ recalled an interior minister, ‘he asked one of them about his two little girls. This deputy told me that he had only seen Napoleon once before, at the foot of the Alps, as he was on his way to Marengo.
”Problems with the artillery forced him to stop for a moment in front of my house,” added the deputy, “he petted my two children, mounted his horse, and since then I had not seen him again.”
The encounter had taken place ten years earlier.
Source:
Roberts, Andrew. "Victory." Napoleon: A Life. New York: Penguin, 2014. 136-37. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Chaptal, Souvenirs p. 337.
Further Reading:
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