"A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon" which seems to imply the former.

The full quote from Napoleon from Antoine Claire Thibaudeau's Mémoires sur le Consulat is:

You call these baubles, well, it is with baubles that men are led… Do you think that you would be able to make men fight by reasoning? Never. That is only good for the scholar in his study. The soldier needs glory, distinctions, and rewards.

Assuming Thibaudeau's memoirs are correct, the full quote adds a good deal of context to Napoleon's quote. More often than not, a number of popular accounts of Napoleon use "with baubles that men are led," quote alone to imply that Napoleon was cynical about the men under his command. Much like Wellington calling his men "scum of the earth," the full context of Napoleon's sentiments lend themselves to a different interpretation of his sentiments that is less derisive. The "baubles" aspect of the Napoleon's quote according to Thibaudeau stemmed from Napoleon's inner circle during the Consulate objecting to the creation of the Legion of Honor because it summoned up images of the Bourbon ancien regime and its decorations. As with other aspects of Napoleon's relationship with his men, he recognized the powerful appeal of military culture and he positioned himself as both the exemplar and arbiter of proper military virtues.

One of the important impacts the Revolution had upon the French military was that it opened up new definitions of why soldiers fought and served. Whether for patrie or nationalism, for the regimental history, or for a soldier's own personal edification, the Revolutionary Wars provided a number of new motivations and incentives for soldiers to fight. Additionally, the mass levies and purges of the old guard noble officers also opened up the prospect of advancing through the ranks. Rhetoric about every French soldier having a marshal's baton in his knapsack never quite lived up to reality; most of the Republic and Consulate's generals tended to come from the minor nobility with a smattering of men from the middling and lower classes. Nonetheless, this was a powerful image within the army and the idea that a lowly soldier could rise far above the station to which he was born was one Napoleon tried to cultivate.

Napoleon often fused these Revolutionary traditions with older ones like the ancien regime's use of decorations and titles to create a new hybrid of both epochs' military cultures. The new Napoleonic nobility was biased heavily towards the military and titles were rewards for bravery or service. But unlike the ancien regime, titles were usually not hereditary unless a particular family had consistently demonstrated their worthiness through their actions. Imperial regalia and standards also became the new focus of regimental honor and signs of their service to the Consulate and Empire. While this regimental culture was not unprecedented in European military history, there was in the Napoleonic period a newfound appreciation for the specific actions of the regiment. Napoleonic battle ensigns frequently had their battle honors stitched into them as well as Napoleonic regalia and symbols of victory like oak garlands. Men within these regiments could find themselves rewarded for actions in battle regardless of rank including being promoted to officer or NCO status.

Of course, Napoleon tried to make himself indispensable to this military system of honor and reward. He reserved a degree of approval for battle honors and decorations and naturally Napoleon often tried to look the part of the concerned commander in chief who ate the same food as his men and understood their lot. Although Napoleon's portraiture sometimes expressed a neo-Charlemagne grandeur, such as this famous painting, there was a strong tendency in Napoleonic portraiture to depict the Emperor wearing the simple uniform of a line officer, such as David's famous painting The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries where he wears a simple uniform of the Guards. Napoleonic era uniforms may look elaborate in 2017, but the lack of ostentatious display was notable in Napoleon's manner of dress. Napoleon's personal revues of his troops also tried to thread the needle between portraying the Emperor as a remote figure above reproach and as a who was not that much different from the rest of his men.

All of this does though lead to the fundamental question of whether or not Napoleon really did care for his men. This is naturally trickier for a historian to answer than analyzing the political symbolism of Napoleonic portraiture. On one hand, Napoleon did twice abandon his armies when they were in dire straits. Both in 1799 and in 1812, Napoleon did leave the Army of the Orient in Egypt and the Grande Armee in Poland for metropolitan France. "Abandonment" though is perhaps too strong a word though in both cases; Napoleon did delegate authority to men he believed were competent subordinates-Jean-Baptiste Kléber and Joachim Murat respectively- and there were real political justifications for Napoleon leaving the scene. However, neither case endeared Napoleon to those officers left holding the bag of a losing situation. He would also be quite zealous in guarding honors for victory especially if they showed Napoleon's command in a negative light. Napoleonic propaganda often linked the battles of Jena and Auerstadt together even though Napoleon's victory at Jena was incredibly minor compared to Davout's and the two battles occurred mostly because of Napoleon's own confusing orders to his corps commanders. Napoleon also notably hogged all of the credit for the victory at Austerlitz; as David Chandler noted, Austerlitz was the Emperor's battle, not any of his lieutenants.

Napoleon did institute some of the first real reforms of battlefield medicine. The French reforms tended to build upon preexisting experiments in battlefield medicine of the Revolutionary period. Under the auspices of Dominique Jean Larrey, the French Army of the Rhine had begun experiments with ambulances volantes (flying ambulances) with special vehicles for battlefield organization and a more regimented system of medical personnel. Larrey's personal connection to Napoleon allowed Larrey to implement some elements of his reforms into the Grande Armee. Although Napoleon showered much praise upon Larrey and his fellow reformer Pierre-François Percy, the French emperor tended to underfund the medical services and ambulances volantes were much more the exception rather than the rule for battlefield medicine. Nor was Napoleon amenable to the creation of a permanent surgical corps or allow surgeons to hold rank within the army. Although Wellington allowed for the use of prefabricated hospitals to accompany the army's baggage train in its advance in 1813/14, the British commander balked at specialized ambulances like the French. Medical personnel in both the British and French armies were often short of material and personnel, and despite the reforms of the likes of Larrey and the British McGregor, medical care was still very much ad hoc and a low priority for all Napoleonic era generals, and Napoleon here was no exception. Likewise, Napoleon's initiatives for the care of veterans an other disabled soldiers likewise was often in arrears and incapable of withstanding the constant uptick of applicants.

While Napoleon's personal affection for his men is unclear, all of his gestures and treatment of the army did have an impact on the ranks' loyalty to Napoleon. News of Napoleon's injury in 1809 did create a wave of panic among the local troops and Napoleon did make a show of appearing intact and in good health. Diaries, letters, and memoirs from 1812 tend to recall soldiers complaining about Napoleon's incompetence and then alternating to concern when there were rumors the Emperor was captured. Much of the Napoleon cult within the army itself found fruit among the educated officer classes, the people who were intellectually and socially most primed to take advantages of the Napoleonic system of reward and promotion. There always was a strata of Napoleonic loyalists in the lower ranks, especially among the Guard formations, but it there was also an increasingly stronger form of compulsion to service in the form of harsher penalties for desertion and cowardice as the Napoleonic Wars dragged on.

Napoleonic veterans did form the cornerstone of the Napoleonic cult in the post-1815 period, especially as successive French governments found the memory of military gloire useful for the purposes of state. As for Napoleon himself, he too mobilized news his men's accomplishments to his own personal ends. Napoleon's baubles comment shows that he did have an appreciation for how soldiers thought and how French military culture operated. And Napoleon certainly did privilege the army within the French state system and the bulk of his rewards for state service were parceled out to military men. While it is unclear where his affections lay for his men, a number of soldiers did believe that Napoleon did care for them which made issues like his leaving the army in the lurch in 1812 a bitter pill for some grognards to swallow.

Sources

Chandler, David G. On the Napoleonic Wars: Collected Essays. London: Greenhill Books, 1999.

Forrest, Alan I. Napoleon's Men: The Soldiers of the Revolution and Empire. London: Hambledon Continuum, 2006.

Hughes, Michael. Forging Napoleon's Grande Armée: Motivation, Military Culture, and Masculinity in the French Army, 1800-1808. New York: New York University Press, 2012.

Muir, Rory. Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1998.