Napoleon the Great

by Andrew Roberts

After the battle of Ratisbon, a grognard asked Napoleon for the cross of the Légion d’Honneur, claiming that he had given him a watermelon at Jaffa when it ‘was so terribly hot’. Napoleon refused him on such a paltry pretext, at which the veteran added indignantly, ‘Well, don’t you reckon seven wounds received at the bridge of Arcole, at Lodi and Castiglione, at the Pyramids, at Acre, Austerlitz, Friedland; eleven campaigns in Italy, Egypt, Austria, Prussia, Poland …’ at which a laughing emperor cut him short and made him a chevalier of the Légion with a 1,200-franc pension, fastening the cross on his breast there and then. ‘It was by familiarities of this kind that the Emperor made the soldiers adore him,’ noted Marbot, ‘but it was a means available only to a commander whom frequent victories had made illustrious: any other general would have injured his reputation by it.’27