Wonderful is the effect upon soldiers
of such enduring and separate remembrance, which operates always as the
most touching kind of personal flattery, and which, in every age of the
world, since the social sensibilities of men have been much developed,
military commanders are found to have played upon as the most effectual
chord in the great system which they modulated; some few, by a rare
endowment of nature; others, as Napoleon Bonaparte, by elaborate
mimicries of pantomimic art. [Footnote: In the true spirit of Parisian
mummery, Bonaparte caused letters to be written from the War-office,
in his own name, to particular soldiers of high military reputation in
every brigade, (whose private history he had previously caused to be
investigated,) alluding circumstantially to the leading facts in their
personal or family career; a furlough accompanied this letter, and they
were requested to repair to Paris, where the emperor anxiously desired
to see them. Thus was the paternal interest expressed, which their
leader took in each man's fortunes; and the effect of every such letter,
it was not doubted, would diffuse itself through ten thousand other
men.]
Other modes he had of winning affection from the army; in particular
that, so often practised before and since, of accommodating himself
to the strictest ritual of martial discipline and castrensian life. He
slept in the open air, or, if he used a tent (papilio), it was open at
the sides. He ate the ordinary rations of cheese, bacon, &c.; he used
no other drink than that composition of vinegar and water, known by the
name of _posca_, which formed the sole beverage allowed in the
Roman camps. He joined personally in the periodical exercises of the
army--those even which were trying to the most vigorous youth and
health: marching, for example, on stated occasions, twenty English miles
without intermission, in full armor and completely accoutred. Luxury of
every kind he not only interdicted to the soldier by severe ordinances,
himself enforcing their execution, but discountenanced it (though
elsewhere splendid and even gorgeous in his personal habits) by his
own continual example. In dress, for instance, he sternly banished
the purple and gold embroideries, the jewelled arms, and the floating
draperies so little in accordance with the-severe character of "_war
in procinct_" [Footnote: "_War in procinct_"--a phrase of Milton's
in Paradise Regained, which strikingly illustrates his love of Latin
phraseology; for unless to a scholar, previously acquainted with the
Latin phrase of _in procinctu_, it is so absolutely unintelligible as to
interrupt the current of the feeling.] Hardly would he allow himself
an ivory hilt to his sabre. The same severe proscription he extended to
every sort of furniture, or decorations of art, which sheltered even
in the bosom of camps those habits of effeminate luxury--so apt in all
great empires to steal by imperceptible steps from the voluptuous
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