‘In my position,’ he had written in a general note to his senior commanders only a week earlier, ‘any plan where I am not myself in the centre is inadmissible. Any plan which removes me to a distance establishes a regular war in which the superiority of the enemy cavalry, in numbers, and even in generals, would completely ruin me.’27 Here was an open recognition that his marshals couldn’t be expected to pull off the coups necessary to win battles against forces 70 per cent larger than theirs – indeed that most of them to his mind were barely capable of independent command.
