Tuesday 13 January 2015

Am I a softie after all?


Grenier in his book The Difficulty of Being a Dog writes how Napoleon was once surveying a battlefield from which the dead had not yet been removed. He saw a dog beside the body of its master, howling, licking the dead man’s face. Napoleon wrote about this in his memoirs. “No incident, on any of my battlefields (note the use of my battlefields!), ever produced so deep an impression on me.” declares Napoleon who was insistent that the death of millions meant nothing to him.
“ I had, without emotion, ordered battles which were to decide the fate of the army; I beheld, with a dry eye, the execution of those operations, by which numbers of my countrymen were sacrificed; and here I was upset, my feelings roused, by the mournful howling of a dog.”

2 comments:

Whispering Walls said...

Did he or Josephine have dogs?

Eurodog said...

Yes, WW, Josephine had a pug called Fortuné. Napoleon hated it because it would not let him into the bedchamber. A bit dodgy on their wedding night!