Quote: A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon (attrib Napoleon)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Garson, I was unfamiliar with the quotation before seeing it in Tyler
Boudreau's _Packing Inferno_ (2008). Like Heinl, Boudreau is a former USMC
officer.

The conjunction of three things makes me suspicious:

1. GB reveals nothing before Heinl, 1966.

2. The date of July 15, 1815, is the very day Napoleon boarded the
Bellerophon for the trip to exile on St. Helena. It seems like an odd thing
to say under the circumstances.  (Captain Frederick Lewis Maitland was in
command and the presumed interlocutor.)

3. I don't find the quote in J. M. Shafritz's collection_Words on War_
(1990), which quotes Napoleon more than 75 times.

JL

On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 7:07 PM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Quote: A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of
> colored
>               ribbon (attrib Napoleon)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Perhaps Jon Lighter or another list member can help with a quotation
> attributed to Napoleon that I have been asked to explore. Here is an
> instance in a book of military quotations of variable accuracy:
>
> Cite: 1966, "Dictionary of Military and Naval Quotations" edited by
> Robert Debs Heinl, Category: Awards, Quote Page 22, Column 2, United
> States Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland. (Verified on paper)
> [Begin excerpt]
> A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.
> Napoleon I: To the Captain, HMS Bellerophon, 15 July 1815
> [End excerpt]
>
> I have not performed many searches yet. Here is a similar type of
> quotation many years after the death of Napoleon.
>
> Cite: 1916, Potential Russia by Richard Washburn Child, Quote Page 6,
> E. P. Dutton and Company, New York. (Google Books full view)
> http://books.google.com/books?id=bYUbAAAAMAAJ&q=ribbon#v=snippet&
> [Begin excerpt]
> And whether we would prefer to believe it or not, war teaches man that
> he is willing to die for a bit of colored ribbon, if he believes,
> rightly or wrongly, that that bit of ribbon represents the good of his
> kind.
> [End excerpt]
>
> The Legion of Honour was established by Napoleon Bonaparte. H. G.
> Wells writing in "The Outline of History" referred to Napoleon and
> bits of ribbon.
>
> Cite: 1921, The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and
> Mankind by H. G, Wells, Edition 3, Section: The Career of Napoleon
> Bonaparte, Quote Page 900, The MacMillan Company, New York. (Google
> Books full view)
> http://books.google.com/books?id=k6g-AAAAYAAJ&q=ribbon#v=snippet&
> [Begin excerpt]
> Another great achievement which marks his imaginative scope and his
> estimate of human nature was the institution of the Legion of Honour,
> a scheme for decorating Frenchmen with bits of ribbon which was
> admirably calculated to divert ambitious men from subversive
> proceedings.
> [End excerpt]
>
> Garson
>
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