Did Napoleon say: “The people who do not want to feed their army will soon feed someone else's”?

The French emperor and the commander often attribute the phrase that the state should not skimp on the support of its armed forces. We checked the reliability of this quote.

A statement supposedly belonging to Napoleon can be found not only on numerous sites with quotes, but also in social networks - for example, in "VKontakte", Twitter And Facebook. The phrase is popular among high -ranking officials. Her mentioned, in particular, Vladimir Putin during a large press conference in 2017, and two years earlier Vladimir Medinsky, who then held the position of Minister of Culture, Published An article called "who does not feed his culture will feed someone else's army." However, in the last two cases, the expression is mentioned without communication with the French emperor.

Despite the popularity of this quote on the Russian -speaking Internet, it was not possible to find its mention along with the reference to Napoleon in French or English. The quote closest in meaning, also sometimes attributed to the French emperor, is “the army marching on its stomach”, however, its authorship, Napoleon, apparently does not belong. As the portal The Quote Investigator found out, for the first time I attributed Bonaparte only in 1862 a small American newspaper, although four years before, historian Thomas Carlisle put the same phrase in the mouth of the Prussian king Friedrich II of the Great, who lived in the XVIII century.

Culturologist Konstantin Dushenko, exploring the origin of expressions popular in mass culture, in the collection "Quotes from World History" Gives A very meager comment regarding the verified phrase. He reports that “in Russia of the last decades of the XX century” it was “attributed to Napoleon I, however, in foreign reference books, this saying is absent”. In the 1990s, such an attribution was indeed quite popular: the French emperor was attributed, for example, a magazine "Army" in 1993, Vladimir Zhirinovsky in 1994 and Aman Tuleyev in 1999.

Moreover, in recent decades of the 20th century, such an attribution has not been total. In one of the numbers of the newspaper "Capital" for 1991 was Published Note “Samizdat of General Rodionov”, apparently, dedicated to a brochure, which was released by the future Minister of Defense and deputy of the State Duma Igor Rodionov. The correspondent of the publication wrote: “From the very first lines, the author calls for his assistants world military authorities. Clausewitz really warned: "A people who do not respect their army will feed someone else's." And Napoleon, which is known, believed that "four newspapers could do more than the hundred thousandth of the army." Probably, later the first phrase underwent some changes, and its authorship passed to the commander mentioned in the next sentence-after all, he is much more famous for his contemporary and military theorist Karl von Clausewitz. Note that in the works of the latter we could not find the verified expression, but a year earlier the “Young Guard” represented These words as a generalized “Clausewitz Thought”, not a quote. By the way, the phrase about four newspapers Napoleon became attribute Only at the end of the 19th century, and in the original, printed publications are compared with the “thousand bayonets”, and not with the “hundred thousandth army”.

Even before the publication of the pamphlet Rodionov and the follow -up in the “capital”, the quote was mentioned at all without authorship. For example, in one of the materials in the journal "Soviet Pedagogy" in 1990 appeared Such a fragment: "Historical experience shows that a society that does not respect its army is doomed to feed someone else's." In the same year, without a ligament with Klausevitsa or Napoleon, the expression was mentioned, in particular, in magazines "Neman" And "Communist of the Armed Forces", and in the second case, the expression is called "old, but not aging wisdom."

Moreover, back in 1989, at a meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, one of the deputies when discussing amendments to the law “On Cooperation” declared: “And at the same time, the same academicians advocated five years ago for the establishment for the newly created infrastructure of cooperators 3-5% of deductions, and they say, they will fill us with food and feed our country. Not fed. If this is how it goes further, then, probably, not only cooperators, but also someone else's army will have to feed. ” Shortly before, in the newspaper Moscow writer published a resolution of the Union of Writers of the RSFSR "On the Relations to the Army", in which It was said: “The history of our Fatherland shows that in Russia there was no title above the title of defender of the Motherland. The hired army is a sign of the inevitable collapse of society and its moral degradation. A people who do not respect their army are doomed to feed someone else's army. ” The authors do not refer neither to the Clausewitz, nor to Napoleon.

With a high degree of probability, it can be argued that the verified phrase is a kind of processing of expression in the late 1980s, in which the “respect” to the army was replaced by its “feeding”. Although soon it began to attribute it to the relatively well -known military theorist of the 19th century, the clause, quite quickly authorship was “handed over” to the much more familiar to Napoleon. We repeat that in this case, this expression in connection with the French emperor is not used in any authoritative source in French or English.

Incorrect attribution of quote

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. The Quote Investigator. An Army Marches on Its Stomach
2. Oxford Essential Quotations. Napoleon I