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Memoirs of Napoleon — Volume 02 by Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
page 8 of 117 (06%)
operations, Napoleon was not anxious to reply immediately to all letters.
He took a fancy to do, not exactly as Cardinal Dubois did, when he threw
into the fire the letters he had received, saying, "There! my
correspondents are answered," but something of the same kind. To satisfy
himself that people wrote too much, and lost, in trifling and useless
answers, valuable time, he told me to open only the letters which came by
extraordinary couriers, and to leave all the rest for three weeks in the
basket. At the end of that time it was unnecessary to reply to four-
fifths of these communications. Some were themselves answers; some were
acknowledgments of letters received; others contained requests for
favours already granted, but of which intelligence had not been received.
Many were filled with complaints respecting provisions, pay, or clothing,
and orders had been issued upon all these points before the letters were
written. Some generals demanded reinforcements, money, promotion, etc.
By not opening their letters Bonaparte was spared the unpleasing office
of refusing. When the General-in-Chief compared the very small number of
letters which it was necessary to answer with the large number which time
alone had answered, he laughed heartily at his whimsical idea. Would not
this mode of proceeding be preferable to that of causing letters to be
opened by any one who may be employed, and replying to them by a circular
to which it is only necessary to attach a date?

During the negotiations which followed the treaty of Leoben, the
Directory ordered General Bonaparte to demand the liberty of MM. de La
Fayette, Latour-Marbourg, and Bureau de Puzy, detained at Olmutz since
1792 as prisoners of state. The General-in-Chief executed this
commission with as much pleasure as zeal, but he often met with
difficulties which appeared to be insurmountable. It has been very
incorrectly stated that these prisoners obtained their liberty by one of
the articles of the preliminaries of Leoben. I wrote a great deal on
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