Letter 058 — LVIII
Original French
Weimar,le 16 octobre 1806.
M. Talleyrand t’aura montré le bulletin, ma bonne amie; tu y auras vu mes succès. Tout a été comme je l’avais calculé, et jamais une armée n’a été plus battue, et plus entièrement perdue. Il me reste à te dire que je me porte bien, et que la fatigue, le bivouac, les veilles m’ont engraissé. Adieu, ma bonne amie, mille choses aimables à Hortense et au grand M. Napoléon.
Musean translation
Machine-assisted Musean English translated from the French of the 172 Napoleon letters selected from Tancrède Martel, ed., Œuvres littéraires de Napoléon Bonaparte, tome 1 (Albert Savine, Paris, 1888). French Wikisource contributors supplied the scan-backed transcription: https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Livre:Bonaparte_-_Œuvres_littéraires,_tome_1,_1888.djvu (page histories credit contributors). The transcription is CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/; this adapted text and translations are shared under the same license. Extraction removes markup and editorial notes; selected transcription repairs were checked against print images.
Weimar, October 16, 1806.
M. Talleyrand will have shown you the bulletin, my good friend; you will have seen my successes in it. Everything happened as I had calculated, and never was an army more thoroughly beaten and ruined. It remains for me to tell you that I am well, and that fatigue, bivouacking, and sleepless nights have made me fat. Goodbye, my good friend, a thousand kind thoughts to Hortense and the great M. Napoléon.
Plain English translation
Independent machine-assisted Plain English translation from the 1888 Martel French edition, not a historical English translation. French Wikisource contributors supplied the scan-backed transcription: https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Livre:Bonaparte_-_Œuvres_littéraires,_tome_1,_1888.djvu (page histories credit contributors). The adapted transcription and translation are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. Extraction removes markup and editorial notes and makes documented transcription repairs. French-source model review is not human specialist certification or a complete scan collation.
Weimar, October 16, 1806.
Mr. Talleyrand will have shown you the bulletin, my dear friend, and you will have seen my successes in it. Everything went as I had planned, and no army has ever been more thoroughly defeated and destroyed. All that remains is to tell you that I am well and that fatigue, bivouacking and sleepless nights have made me gain weight. Goodbye, my dear friend; many affectionate messages to Hortense and the great Mr. Napoléon.
About this section
Letter 058 — LVIII is part of Letters to Josephine by Napoléon Bonaparte. This page sets the French original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is part 58 of 172 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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