"He knows he is dependent; he has lost his independence, his freedom. And small incidents may give him some taste of the reality he is going to face in the future.

"Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated by Nelson, but in fact the credit should not go to Nelson. Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated by a small incident in his childhood. Now history does not look at things in this way, but to me it is absolutely clear.

"When he was just six months old, a wild cat jumped on him. The maidservant who was looking after him had gone for something in the house; he was in the garden in the early morning sun and the fresh air, lying down, and the wild cat jumped on him. It didn't harm him – perhaps it was just being playful – but to the child's mind it was almost death. Since then, he was not afraid of tigers or lions – he could have fought a lion without any weapons, with no fear – but a cat? That was a different affair. He was absolutely helpless. Seeing a cat he was almost frozen; he became again a small six-month-old child, with no defense, with no capacity to fight. In those small child's eyes that cat must have looked very big – it was a wild cat. The cat may have looked into the eyes of the child.

"Something in his psyche became so much impressed by the incident that Nelson exploited it. Nelson was no comparison to Napoleon, and Napoleon was never defeated in his life; this was his first and last defeat. And he would not have been defeated, but Nelson had brought seventy cats at the front of the army.

"The moment Napoleon saw those seventy wild cats his mind stopped functioning. His generals could not understand what had happened. He was no longer the same great warrior; he was almost frozen with fear, trembling. He had never allowed any of his generals to arrange the army, but today he said, with tears in his eyes, 'I am incapable of thinking – you arrange the army. I will be here, but I am incapable of fighting. Something has gone wrong with me.'

"He was removed, but without Napoleon his army was not capable of fighting Nelson, and seeing the situation of Napoleon, everybody in his army became a little afraid: something very strange was happening."