Only after his defeat at Waterloo, when he'd been permanently stripped of power, did Napoleon seem to revel in its mealtime trappings. The marshal replied with tactful candor, "There is better," making the emperor and other guests smile. At camp at Boulogne, he asked a marshal at his table what he thought of the wine being served. Nor did he have a nose for fine wine, being perfectly content to drink Chambertin diluted with water. ![]() He had a soldier's impatience for fussy dinner rituals and "lacked much of eating decently and always preferred his fingers to a fork or spoon," writes his valet. When he rode out of Cairo on Christmas Eve to survey the Suez isthmus, the only provisions he took were three roasted chickens wrapped in paper. In the kitchens of his Tuileries Palace at Paris, chickens were constantly roasted on spits to suit his erratic hunger pangs. He often skipped meals, eating only when hungry - usually calling for roast chicken, a dish he seems to have enjoyed. True, Napoleon was an indifferent eater (though fastidious about bread). The late French historian Andre Castelot wrote in Napoleon that through the famine, Napoleon continued his daily repast of "white bread, Chambertin, beef or mutton, and his favorite rice with beans or lentils." But the valet Wairy claimed that his distraught master, who ranted at his officers for not securing enough rations, ate like an ordinary soldier. The buzzards were not the only ones who ate well. Through the campaign, flocks of buzzards feasted on corpses of soldiers on the roads and battlefields. With absolutely no food supplies and temperatures at 20 below zero, the ravenous men ate horseflesh seasoned with gunpowder, often fighting over a fallen horse's flank to tear out its liver, sometimes even before ascertaining whether the animal had died. The Grande Armée was annihilated more by starvation and cold than by the Cossacks. In Syria, the plague awaited them, and at the small but stubborn fortress at Acre (now in Israel), a coalition of Ottomans and English gave Napoleon his first taste of defeat, forcing him to retreat.Įqually grotesque was the 1812 Russia campaign. "The whole column burst into shouts of laughter," Wairy wrote, "and no further request was made." (As some commenters have pointed out, Wairy's Polish and Polish spelling may have been off.)Īnd all for nothing. As valet Louis Constant Wairy wrote in his memoirs, the French soldiers learned what he referred to as Polish words: Kleba? Nie ma." Meaning, "Bread? There's none." One day, as Napoleon passed a column of infantry, a hungry solider cried out, "Papa, kleba." "Nie ma," he shot back. His orders for the Grande Armée's rations were ample enough: "Soup, boiled beef, a roasted joint and some vegetables no dessert." But bad roads and poor weather often prevented supply wagons from reaching campsites in time.ĭuring the Italian campaign, in which the 27-year-old Napoleon made his name as a general by defeating a much larger Austrian army and its allies, his men simply foraged off the land or plundered nearby villages - a common military practice then.Įven while fighting the Russians in a poor country like Poland, conditions, though difficult, still allowed for humor. ![]() Though one of the greatest military generals of all time, Napoleon was surprisingly negligent about feeding his army. If he did say it, the words would have been as hollow as the stomachs of his soldiers. ![]() Just as there is no record of Marie Antoinette saying, "Let them eat cake." On the bicentennial of the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte's most celebrated statement about food and warfare - "An army marches on its stomach" - is worth recalling.Įxcept there is no record of him saying it. Napoleon Crossing the Saint-Bernard Pass, /Musee de l'Histoire de France/Corbis Planning for battle? Napoleon's your man.
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