Note 339 — Chapter I

The question about the Army of the North is a very curious one. The authorized copy of the dispatch of May 16, printed in Napoleon’s correspondence and in Ducasse’s Correspondence of King Joseph, certainly omits its name. But the King declared that in his original copy of it Dorsenne and his army were mentioned as put under his charge. In one of the intercepted dispatches in the Scovell Papers, Joseph writes angrily to Berthier, giving what purports to be a verbatim duplicate of the document, and in this duplicate, which lies before my eyes as I write this, the Army of the North is cited with the rest.