"Soldiers, you are naked, unfed; the government owes you much but has given you nothing. The patience and courage that you have shown among these rocks are admirable; but it brings you no glory—not a glimmer falls upon you. I will lead you into the most fertile plains in the world. Rich provinces, great cities will be in your power; there you will find honor, glory and riches. Soldiers of Italy, do you lack for courage or endurance?"
So began the future emperor's perhaps most famous proclamation to the Army of Italy, delivered in March 1796. It displayed a level of confidence and audacity quite remarkable for a general only 26 years old enjoying the initial days of his first true military command. It is also entirely fictitious—there is no contemporary evidence that such a proclamation was ever issued on 27 March 1796. It was composed years later, in exile on Saint Helena, and dictated to an aide writing the former emperor's memoirs. 2 It was written as part of Bonaparte's last and most successful campaign: the campaign to create for posterity the myth of Napoleon.
That Napoleon Bonaparte was the greatest eighteenth-century French master of propaganda is beyond dispute. What is most remarkable about Bonaparte's achievement, however, is the sophisticated manipulation of the press that he demonstrated from the very beginning of his public career. During his first Italian campaign, and to some extent during his Egyptian campaign, this expertise was particularly evident in Bonaparte's correspondence with the Executive Directory, in his bulletins, and in his relationship with the press of the Revolutionary era (in which these forms of propaganda regularly appeared)…."
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Armand
builds a cutter and a corsair, both in 1/1200 scale.
