BARON THIEBAULT.
[TO TRH EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR-1
SIR,—I do not know that it is any part of a translator's duties to take up the cudgels in support of his author's credibility; but you will forgive me for saying that your review in the Spectator of October 17th of General Thiebault's "Memoirs" in their English form seems to have been written on the principle of " What I know not is not knowledge !" A reference to so accessible a source of information as the "Nouvelle Biographie Generale" would have shown the writer that the person whom he calls " a certain La Salle " was one of the most brilliant of Napoleon's Generals, who if he had not been shot through the head at Wagram would have been a Marshal by the time he was thirty-five; and that feats are recorded of him—his capture of Stettin, for in- stance, with two regiments of hussars—quite as incredible a priori as the prank related by Thiebault. "One Gassicourt" again was Napoleon's body-druggist (if the term may be allowed), and a very conspicuous man both in science and literature. As to the story of the dog, it must be remembered that there was no Spectator then, and that even now cruelty to animals is not regarded abroad quite as Englishmen would desire to see it. Louis XVI. was probably no more brutal than the average of commonplace people at that time, though such an act might disgust a cultivated young man.—I am,
[The story as to the dog is told by Thiebault as a specific proof of Louis XVI.'s brutality. If it disgusted the soldier it ought to have disgusted the King.—ED. Spectator.]
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