I cannot offer you any assistance on this subject and it appears that you have it well in hand. I would be very interested in reading the final result and I am glad serious research is being done on this subject because -- as I have stated so many times before on this Forum -- the true face of Bonaparte's regime does not lie in fancy titles/uniforms/parades it lies in the behaviour of his troops in the Iberian peninsula in 1808-1813, particularly in Portugal in 1810-1811.

Certain persons on the Forum have stated that Massena issued orders to prevent the kind of devastation you have admirably summed up but those orders have never been reproduced on the Forum, although frequent mention is made of them.

A few days ago I cited the relevant basis of French military law during the period, the Code Militaire and the Code Penal, the first of which forbids the mistreatment of civilians and the second of which authorizes penalties up to and including capital punishment for soldiers found guilty of such offences. Clearly, the French were not enforcing their own military law.

The question is why weren't they?

dg