he had a strong, if a mistaken, belief that it was becoming that he should be placed in charge of the second. His record rendered the idea absurd, but this he was the last to understand, being of an overweening and self-confident disposition. He was stupid enough to regard Masséna as his supplanter, and to show sullen resentment. Of the three chiefs of the army corps about to invade Portugal, Reynier was the only one on decent terms with his Commander-in-Chief, but even he was not reckoned his friend[229]. [227] This comes from an eye-witness with no grudge against Masséna, Hulot, commanding the artillery of the 8th Corps. See his _Mémoires_, p. 303. [228] Foy, p. 101. The Emperor, a notoriously bad shot, lodged some pellets in the Marshal’s left eye while letting fly at a pheasant. Napoleon turned round and accused his faithful Berthier of having fired the shot: the Prince of Neuchâtel was courtier enough to take the blame without a word, and in official histories appears as the culprit (see e. g. Amic’s _Masséna_, p. 272); for other notes see Guingret, p. 250. What is most astonishing is that Masséna was complaisant enough to affect to blame Berthier for the disaster. [229] See the admirable summary of all this in Foy’s diary (Girod de L’Ain), p. 101. Marbot gives the same views at bottom, but with his usual exaggeration, and with ‘illustrative anecdotes,’ occasionally of doubtful accuracy. Masséna’s chief of the staff was Fririon, a scientific soldier and a man well liked by his colleagues; but it is said that he was not so much in the Marshal’s confidence as Lieut.-Colonel Pelet, the senior aide de camp of his staff. Complaints are found, in some of the letters and memoirs of the time, that Masséna would talk matters over with Pelet, and issue orders without letting even his chief of the staff know of his change of plan or new inspiration. Pelet’s own indiscreet statements on this point seem to justify the complaints made by others against him[230]. There was friction, therefore, even within the staff itself, and all that the Marshal did, or said, was criticized by some of those who should have been his loyal subordinates, under the notion that it had been inspired by others, who were accorded a more perfect confidence by their common chief. Exact knowledge of the disputes in the _État Major_ is hard to obtain, because, when the campaign was over, every man tried to make out that its failure had been due to the advice given to Masséna by those of whom he was jealous. At the bottom, however, all this controversy is not very important--there is no doubt that the Marshal himself was responsible for all that had happened--he was not the man to be led by the nose or over-persuaded by ambitious or intriguing underlings.