How to underpromise, overdeliver, Napoleon style

"he knew better than to allow his countrymen to be stoked up after his departure from Paris [to the Italian theatre]. Angry that the newspapers there were claiming he had predicted he would capture Milan within a month, he wrote on May 19, ‘That is not in my character. Very often I do not say what I know: but never do I say what will happen.’ 12 He ordered that ‘a jocular note’ to that effect be inserted in the [state-controlled newspaper] Moniteur. In fact, he was indeed in Milan within a month of leaving Paris."

From Andrew Robert's Napoleon
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