One of the army’s jokes was that the entire Polish language could be reduced to five words – ‘Chleba? Nie ma. Woda? Zaraz!’, ‘Bread? There is none. Water? Immediately!’ – so when an infantryman in a column near Nasielsk shouted out to Napoleon: ‘Papa, Chleba?’, he immediately called back ‘Nie ma’, whereupon the whole column roared with laughter.
