ARTICLE XLI.

conceived with so much precision and usually transmitted with so much clearness; but I have had frequent opportunities of knowing that such was not the truth. The emperor was his own chief staff officer. Provided with a pair of dividers opened to a distance by the scale of from seventeen to twenty miles in a straight line, (which made from twenty-two to twenty-five miles, taking into account the windings of the roads,) bending over and sometimes stretched at full length upon his map, where the positions of his corps and the supposed positions of the enemy were marked by pins of different colors, he was able to give orders for extensive movements with a certainty and precision which were astonishing. Turning his dividers about from point to point on the map, he decided in a moment the number of marches necessary for each of his columns to arrive at the desired point by a certain day; then, placing pins in the new positions, and bearing in mind the rate of marching that he must assign to each column, and the hour of its setting out, he dictated those instructions which are alone enough to make any man famous.