Help with French translation needed
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.
Thanks for that. I was familiar with bidon meaning a water bottle. I hadn't seen petits bidons specifically before and as the context was weapons I just wondered. Doubt was also put in my mind as both my French dictionaries against the entry for bidon include, inter alia, bidon à huile. Bidon also occurs in the correspondence when writing about cooking pots and pans to be issued to units 'les bidons et les marmites', and I wondered about this too, and thought could it meant mess tins but I would expect mess tins to be gamelles. All very interesting but bidons will be water bottles, until I'm told diferently. Thanks again.