Reading Foucart's Jena, which I'm doing to exercise the grey-cells and my inadequate French, there is a passage in one of the dispatches from Napoleon to Bessieres on 12 September 1806 thus: "Ayez soin qu'on retrempe les armes qui en auraient besoin, qu'on arrange les épinglettes, qu'on complète les tire-bourre et les petits bidons, tant pour la cavalerie que pour l'infanterie".
I understand the words 'épinglettes', 'tire-bourre' and 'petits bidons' well enough, I think, but I'm having difficulty with their meaning in the context of the passage in its entirely, except that it is clearly about preparing the weapons and equipment of the cavalry and infantry prior to embarking on campaign. I wonder if there are a French speakers out there who could help with the passage.
Many thanks.
I am not a French native speaker, but I read "retrempe" in the sense of repair & complete. And yes, N. was a micro-manager as well as a manager at the highest (macro) level. I have the impression, that in his later years this broke his neck, since great military chances escaped him (e.g. at Valutina Gora, where he could easily destroy the Russian 1st Western Army, but missed the chance since he stayed back in Smolensk - burdened with administrative work - and his subordinates, e.g. Junot, doing blunder). The general N. could only be beaten by the politician N., as Count Yorck v. Wartenburg stated (in "Napoleon as a general" / "Napoleon als Feldherr")...