Napoleon couldn’t write French

Reuters: “Thirteen pages in Napoleon’s own hand, describing the triumphs and defeats–military and political–of the diminutive military genius at the dawn of the 19th century, went to a Swiss collector for 250,000 euros [at auction] on Tuesday. The memoirs reveal what numerous corrections and a vivacious writing style could not disguise — that the commander of Grande Armee that subdued most of continental Europe had a less than total command of the French language. The Corsican’s spelling was atrocious… ‘I am dying before my time, murdered by the English oligarchy and their hired assassin. The English people will not delay in avenging me.’” He’s right in a kind of twisted way: we can’t write French either.

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