Dear Mr Cornwell,
to understand Napoleon’s [over] reliance on Nay – everybody, including (sorry!) yourself overlooked one aspect. What happened to Napoleon happened later to Stalin’s generals, arrested before the WWII and then releised, when things went bad for russians: Meretskov and others – whey were internally never the same anymore (broken to some degree): after Elba , Napoleon could not be the same, and he owned to Nay (at least to some emotional degree) his ability to return to be the Emperor. These releised soviet generals and Napoleon in Waterloo had one thing in common – they subconsiously felt superiority of those who had been not arrested – and Nay had this advantage over Napoleon. Your thoughts?
Zeev