He admits to Massena that "that little bastard of a general frightened him." He cannot "comprehend the ascendancy which made him feel crushed right away."[1140] Extraordinary and superior, made for command[1141] and for conquest, singular and of an unique species, is the feeling of all his contemporaries.

Those who are most familiar with the histories of other nations, Madame de Stael and, after her, Stendhal, go back to the right sources to comprehend him, to the "petty Italian tyrants of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries," to Castruccio-Castracani, to the Braccio of Mantua, to the Piccinino, the Malatestas of Rimini, and the Sforzas of Milan.

In their opinion, however, it is only a chance analogy, a psychological resemblance.

Really, however, and)historically it is a positive relationship.

He is a descendant of the great Italians, the men of action of the year 1400, the military adventurers, usurpers, and founders of governments lasting their life-time.