But it was not sufficient to restore to the army the forces, of which it had been deprived; it was equally necessary, to repair its destitution: the foot wanted arms and clothing, the cavalry had neither saddles nor horses. The Emperor looked to all these things. Levies and purchases of horses were made at once in all the departments. The gendarmerie, by giving up the ten thousand horses belonging to it, which it replaced immediately, supplied the heavy cavalry with so many horses already trained, which in ten days rendered its numerous squadrons complete. Spacious manufactories of clothing, arms, and equipage, were opened at once in all parts. The Emperor caused an account of the number of workmen, and the produce of their labour, to be delivered to him every morning. He knew how long it took a tailor to finish a soldier's dress, a wheelwright to construct a carriage, or an armourer to fit up a musket. He knew the quantity of arms, in a good or bad state, contained in the arsenals. "You will find," he wrote to the minister at war, "in such an arsenal, so many old muskets, and so many broken up. Set a hundred men at work there, and arm me five hundred men a week." Such was the extent and variety of Napoleon's genius, that he soared without effort to the loftiest abstractions of the art of governing, and descended with the same facility to the minutest details of management. Extraordinary commissioners were employed at the same time to direct the repairing and fortifying of the frontier towns. They employed themselves day and night on this important business. But the slightest delay appeared to the Emperor an age of expectation, and frequently he put his hand to the work himself. He was perfectly acquainted with the nature of the fortifications of every place, the number of men it ought to contain, and the approaches necessary to be defended; and in a few hours he settled what the most experienced engineer would have found it difficult to conceive and determine in several days. And let it not be supposed, that the works he thus ordered bore any marks of precipitancy. At the head of his topographical cabinet he had one of the first engineer officers in France, General Bernard; and this general, too brave, too loyal, to be a flatterer, could never enough admire the profound knowledge the Emperor possessed of the art of fortification, and his happy and prompt application of it.