[224] See Thiébault, iv. 375; Marbot, ii. 380-1; Duchesse d’Abrantes, viii. 50. All these may be called scandal-mongers, but the lady’s presence, and the troubles to which it gave rise, are chronicled by more serious authorities.
[225] See Foy’s complaints on p. 114 of his Vie Militaire (ed. Girod de L’Ain) as to the way in which the Marshal suspected him of undermining his favour with the Emperor.
[226] See Lord Stanhope’s Conversations with the Duke of Wellington, p. 20.
[227] This comes from an eye-witness with no grudge against Masséna, Hulot, commanding the artillery of the 8th Corps. See his Mémoires, p. 303.
[228] Foy, p. 101. The Emperor, a notoriously bad shot, lodged some pellets in the Marshal’s left eye while letting fly at a pheasant. Napoleon turned round and accused his faithful Berthier of having fired the shot: the Prince of Neuchâtel was courtier enough to take the blame without a word, and in official histories appears as the culprit (see e. g. Amic’s Masséna, p. 272); for other notes see Guingret, p. 250. What is most astonishing is that Masséna was complaisant enough to affect to blame Berthier for the disaster.
[229] See the admirable summary of all this in Foy’s diary (Girod de L’Ain), p. 101. Marbot gives the same views at bottom, but with his usual exaggeration, and with ‘illustrative anecdotes,’ occasionally of doubtful accuracy.
[230] Note Pelet’s Aperçu sur la Campagne de Portugal, nearly forty pages in the Appendix to Victoires et Conquêtes, vol. xxi: for his disputes with Baron Fririon see the Spectateur Militaire for 1841. Pelet says, ignoring the chief of the staff entirely, ‘qu’il était investi de la confiance absolue du maréchal: qu’il faisait seul auprès de lui tout le travail militaire et politique, qu’il dirigeait la haute correspondance avec le major-général (Berthier) et les chefs de corps, etc., etc.’ For Fririon’s comparative impotence see a story on p. 387 of Marbot’s vol. ii, which may or may not be true—probably the former.
Pelet’s writings give a poor impression of his brain-power and his love of exact truth. He says, for example, in his Aperçu that Masséna had only 40,000 men in his army of invasion, when it is certain that he had 64,000. See Baron Fririon’s remarks on him in Spectateur Militaire, June 1841, pp. 1-5.
[231] Napoleon to Clarke, Oct. 30, 1809.
[232] See for example Jan. 20, 1810, to Berthier; Jan. 31, to same; Feb. 12, to same.