‘Living off the land’ allowed Napoleon a speed of manoeuvre that was to become an essential element of his strategy. ‘The strength of the army,’ he stated, ‘like power in mechanics, is the product of multiplying the mass by the velocity.’32 He encouraged everything that permitted faster movement, including the use of forced marches which more or less doubled the 15 miles per day a demi-brigade could move. ‘No man ever knew how to make an army march better than Napoleon,’ recalled one of his officers. ‘These marches were frequently very fatiguing; sometimes half the soldiers were left behind;
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