It’s maybe not a bad title.
…
Berthier did arrive first. He did have two full demi-brigades with him, fully-manned and with enough ammunition and gear. They were also well-trained… or at least properly trained. If Joseph believed in miracles, he would have considered this nothing short of Divine intervention. Since he did not, Joseph instead worried about what would go wrong. Generally things did, in war. The trick was to make fewer mistakes than the enemy.
Speaking of mistakes, Berthier had more witch-hunters along, and they had immediately swept Kraemer and his ilk into their circle with a happy cry. In Joseph’s experience, that meant they soon would all be screaming at each other over some recondite Protestant nonsense. Or perhaps German nonsense. The two were often hard to tell apart.
He even brought it up with Berthier, over an only mildly fussy dinner meeting. “How are you finding our brave Germanic volunteers, Citizen General? I myself find their enthusiasm marvelous, but also impetuous. A certain amount of firm reproof and reminder of Revolutionary virtues seems prudent.”
