A tiresome mule...

(...) Italy was the natural battleground for him [Napoleon]. He spent the early months of 1800 reorganizing the army, then personally led a great set-piece prelude to his campaign by taking an army of 50,000, himself at its head, through the Great Saint Bernard Pass at a time of year (the third week of May) when conditions were still icy and the snow deep. This produced the finest of all Napoleonic images, captured by David, of the Man on Horseback urging on his troops amid the snow. In fact he ascended the Alps on a tiresome mule, which he cursed and belaboured as it slithered on the ice, but he did get his men safely across, though they lost much of their heavy equipment in the passage. He gloated: «We have fallen on the Austrians like a thunderbolt!»

Paul Johnson, in Napoleon

[João Silva]