Note 230 — SECTION XIX: CHAPTER III

Note Pelet’s Aperçu sur la Campagne de Portugal, nearly forty pages in the Appendix to Victoires et Conquêtes, vol. xxi: for his disputes with Baron Fririon see the Spectateur Militaire for 1841. Pelet says, ignoring the chief of the staff entirely, ‘qu’il était investi de la confiance absolue du maréchal: qu’il faisait seul auprès de lui tout le travail militaire et politique, qu’il dirigeait la haute correspondance avec le major-général (Berthier) et les chefs de corps, etc., etc.’ For Fririon’s comparative impotence see a story on p. 387 of Marbot’s vol. ii, which may or may not be true—probably the former.

Pelet’s writings give a poor impression of his brain-power and his love of exact truth. He says, for example, in his Aperçu that Masséna had only 40,000 men in his army of invasion, when it is certain that he had 64,000. See Baron Fririon’s remarks on him in Spectateur Militaire, June 1841, pp. 1-5.