I might laugh if I got this letter but the recipient probably didn’t
Napoleon was angry with Belliard for retreating from Madrid, I think on behalf of Joseph. He dictated this hilarious letter for Berthier to send as though coming from him.
My cousin, write to General Belliard to express my dissatisfaction with the false direction he gives to the affairs of the Army of the Center. Answer General Belliard that you have not put his letter in front of me; that he had doubtless lost his mind when he wrote it, that to offer his resignation for not having carried out my orders, is to declare that one does not want to obey; that it is having incurred the death penalty; that these 3,000 men and 1,200 horses could have saved the army of the South; that he is very guilty; that he could have evacuated Cuenca or any other point, but that he had to carry out the Emperor's orders; that there are two or three passages in his letter which are not from a soldier; that, if you had put them before His Majesty's eyes, he would have had him arrested and would have made an example of this breach of military discipline; that, for the sake of his former services and the friendship you show him, you did not let the Emperor know these unseemly phrases, and that you confined yourself to saying that my orders had been carried out; that this affectation of feelings of honor and personality is the height of ridicule and military indiscipline; that the honor of a general consists in obeying, in keeping subordinates under his orders in the path of probity, in ensuring good discipline, in devoting himself exclusively to the interests of the State and of the sovereign, and in disdaining entirely his personal interests; that you see, by the tone he takes, that he has unlearned France, and that, when it comes to carrying out the Emperor's orders, he thinks he has to speak to the King of Spain.
Préceptes et jugements de Napoléon recueillis et classés by Lieut.-Col. Ernest Picard (1913).
