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I never stated that Weart's reconstruction of the institutional process was formally wrong. It is one of the possible reconstuction of the events, and it is justified by the timeline; my only problem with it is the supposed indipendence of the military in the second part of the war. the ""sent forward with ambiguous orders"" is yours or Weart's? According to my sources, this did happen in the first part of the war, when the assembly had probably a majority against the war; but not in the second part, when Napoleon knew the assembly would have backed him, although his move was uncostitional. Here, according to my sources Napoleon gave unambiguous orders. What does Weart say? "