Knowing the moral power of great and striking qualities, he would have no leader without them. In this he showed his consummate knowledge of human nature, especially of Frenchmen. Enthusiasm, and the reliance on one they never trusted in vain in battle, will carry an army farther than the severest discipline. A company of conscripts would follow Ney as far as a body of veterans a common leader. So would a column charge with Lannes at their head when with a less daring and resolute man they would break and fly.
Moral power is as great as physical, even where everything depends on hard blows.
The truth of this was witnessed and proved in our struggle with the parent country. Jean Lannes was born in Lectoure, a small town in Normandy, in April, 1769. His father was a humble mechanic, and, designing his son for a similar occupation, he bound him out at an early age as an apprentice. In ordinary times young Lannes would probably have remained in the humble station in which his birth had placed him, and become in time, perhaps, a passable shoemaker or carpenter. But the call which the Revolution sent forth for the military talent of France could not be resisted, and young Lannes ran away from his master and enlisted as a common soldier in the army.