Napoleon was the first commander to employ a chief-of-staff in its modern sense, Andrew Roberts explains (in Napoleon: A Life), and he couldn’t have chosen a more efficient one:
With a memory second only to his own, Berthier could keep his head clear after twelve hours of taking dictation; on one occasion in 1809 he was summoned no fewer than seventeen times in a single night. The Archives Nationales, Bibliothèque Nationale and the Archives of the Grande Armée at Vincennes teem with orders in the neat secretarial script and short concise sentences that Berthier used to communicate with his colleagues, conveying Napoleon’s wishes in polite but firm terms, invariably starting ‘The Emperor requests, general, that on receipt of this order you will…’
[…]
His special ability, amounting to something approaching genius, was to translate the sketchiest of general commands into precise written orders for every demi-brigade. Staff-work was rarely less than superbly efficient. To process Napoleon’s rapid-fire orders required a skilled team of clerks, orderlies, adjutants and aides-de-camp, and a very advanced filing system, and he often worked through the night. On one of the few occasions when Napoleon spotted an error in the troop numbers for a demi-brigade, he wrote to correct Berthier, adding: ‘I read these position statements with as much relish as a novel.’
To me this post is disconcerting. On reading it I experienced a strong sense that I had read it once before. What a selcouth déjà vu moment.
“Selcouth” is not a word you see every day. It’s unusual.
Re: “Selcouth” is not a word you see every day. It’s unusual.
Ok. Strike
selcouthand substitute eldritch.“It’s unusual.”
One might say it’s “unwonted.”