Note 40 — THE END.
Reading edition
Footnote 40: The ascendancy he possessed over the minds and courage of the soldiers was truly incomprehensible. A word, a gesture, was sufficient, to inspire them with enthusiasm, and make them face with joyful blindness the most terrible dangers. If he ordered them mal-à-propos, to rush to such a point, to attack such another, the inconsistency or temerity of the manœuvre at first struck the good sense of the soldiers: but immediately they thought, that their general would not have given such an order, without a motive for it, and would not have exposed them wantonly. "He knows what he is about," they would say, and immediately rush on death, with shouts of "Long live the Emperor!"[Back to Main Text.]