Customer Reviews

Napoleon and His Marshals (Prion Lost Treasures)

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If all history books were written in A.G. Macdonell's style, there would be a lot more amateur historians about! For my money, this book is far more entertaining than most of the fiction I have read, and I felt that odd mixture of emotions when I finally closed it: awe and amazement at the incredible feats of that unique band of men, amusement at some of the tricks they got up to, and a deep regret that the story was over. The only book that I can compare to this one is Fletcher Pratt's "A short history of the American Civil War", a longer and perhaps even more ably-written overview of events some 60 years later. They really do not write that way any more!

If "Napoleon and his Marshals" could be summed up in a single word, it would have to be "humanity". Its pages are crowded with the best and worst of human nature: fantastic bravery, rich imagination, unbelievably hard work and dogged persistence, rubbing shoulders with spite, arrogance, jealousy, occasional cowardice, and - surprisingly enough - sheer downright incompetence. Even Napoleon was far from perfect: on one occasion, he put first Berthier, then Murat, in charge of the Grande Armee and its nearly 200,000 men; and then forgot both appointments and tried to run the show himself. Confusion reigned, with three sets of orders flying around and corps commanders jerked around like puppets on strings. Then there was the almost unbelievable folly of leaving over 200,000 men achieving next to nothing in Spain, while invading Russia 2000 miles away - the very antithesis of Napoleon's basic principle of war, concentration.

The first surprise is how many marshals there were: 18 in all, including less-well known names such as Moncey, Brune, Mortier, and Bessieres, as well as illustrious ones like Murat, Massena, Ney, and Davout. According to Macdonell, Davout was the best of them all and "the only pupil Napoleon ever had". Massena, the victor of Zurich in 1799, was next. Murat was the greatest cavalry leader who ever lived, while Ney, "the bravest of the brave" was the most loyal and unyielding (until his loyalty was tried too far).

On one level it is a fabulous, riotous tale of grand strategy, clever tactics, forced marches, massive battles, and coups d'etat. Cunningly interwoven with the main story, Macdonell gossips away delightfully, giving us pen-portraits of all the marshals as well as many others, and highlighting the individual weaknesses that counterbalanced their great strengths. After a while it begins to look as if the whole rise and fall of Napoleon was a moral lesson in the nemesis that is inevitably attracted to character flaws. But it also becomes clear that, for Macdonell at least, the whole enterprise was fundamentally unsound and contained the seeds of its own destruction. The more battles Napoleon won, the more he had to win. By marrying his family off to European royalty and nobility, and scattering titles in an attempt to set up a new dynasty, he created unbearable stresses that eventually tore his Empire apart before it got out of infancy.

If you have the slightest interest in history, military matters, or just the peaks and valleys of human nature, this book is a must-read!

I have just finished reading a 1934 hardback edition of A.G. MacDonell's "Napoleon and his Marshals". Bearing in mind that this book was first published over 70 years ago I found it immensely enjoyable. It does not offer a detailed account of Napoleon's great battles nor in-depth detail of movements, strategy & tactics but offers an interesting insight into the men Napoleon created as Marshals during his reign over the battlefields of Europe.

I would have liked to have read more of the battles of Eylau and Friedland and other great Napoleonic battles in the book but I still came away after finishing the story deeply satisfied and happy that I had indeed taken the time to read this account. The author makes no claims to providing a full and descriptive account of Napoleon and his Empire; the book is too small for that. However in 370 odd pages he brings to life the period between 1796 and 1852, the date of the death of the last Marshal, Auguste Frederic Louis Viesse de Marmont, Duke of Ragusa.

This is a great story, easy to read, full of information and accounts of some of the greatest soldiers of France. As some of the previous reviewers have mentioned, the chapter dealing with what happened to these great men after 1815 is at times saddening and I found, deeply moving. This book is well worth the time to sit down and enjoy and I think anyone who has an interest in the Napoleonic period will find this title a gem to keep in his or her library.

This is an excellent account of Napoleon's elite generals. It is every bit as good as Delderfield's book ("Napoleon's Marshals"), albeit written in a different spirit. MacDonell's prose is unrestrained with passion and quite partial, trumpeting out who's actions are valiant or ignoble, which marshals are loyal to Napoleon and which are mere opportunists, which generals are brilliant on the battlefield and which are incompetent. Delderfield's writing is deliberate and more objective, giving the reader more opportunity to judge for himself the actions of these men who served under Napoleon. Yet it is plain that both authors were quite enthusiastic about these marshals, and what is more, both succeed in transferring this passion to the reader. What a story to be told and what a telling ! Both books have indexes, by the way.

I thoroughly enjoyed both books and recommend getting both. However, I was quite unhappy with my 1996 Prion paperback version of "Napoleon and his Marshals": the book cover is flimsy to the point of being nonfunctional. I felt compelled to mount an adhesive book jacket to the cover before I dared to begin reading.

I've long been fascinated by the Napoleonic era, but I've always been put off by Napoleon himself. If you have similar sentiments, you'll enjoy this book. The author turns the spotlight on the remarkably colorful and diverse band of military leaders who accompanied Napoleon throughout his career, in the twenty-two years from Toulon to Waterloo, and won his battles for him. Originally published in 1934, the book is written in a rather mannered style which might not be to everyone's taste. Scholars will be startled by the author's cavalier approach to notes and bibliography. But it's a lively and entertaining read, which introduces some fascinating characters, whom I now want to learn more about. It's also a handy overview of the whole Napoleonic era. What's most poignant is how the surviving marshals conducted themselves during the first Bourbon restoration in 1814, the Hundred Days in 1815, and the second restoration after Waterloo, which I found to be a haunting precursor to what happened after France's defeat in 1940.

The best thing about "Napoleon and His Marshals" is MacDonnell's description of how the Marshals interacted with eachother and with Napoleon. Unfortunately, A.G. MacDonnell writes poorly and provides no context for his arguments or support for many of his claims.

Books about Napoleon can be classified on two characteristics:
1)degree of military analysis vs general commentary and 2)author's overall assessment for or against Napoleon.

Napoleon Bonaparte was a brilliant general who built a vast empire and left a legacy in France's modern legal and political system, but he was also an egomaniac who covered France and Europe with death and destruction for 20 years. He was charming but could be very cruel and made massive military blunders.

Most biographers struggle to achieve balance with such a complex subject, and this book fails miserably on that score, as it is light on analysis and wildly pro-Bonaparte. The author tells us that Bonaparte was a brilliant military mind (which he was) and says Davout was the only Marshal to grasp that brilliance, but fails to show why Bonaparte succeeded when he did.

Worse, like most French historians, MacDonnell blames Bonaparte's military failures (notably Waterloo) on anyone and anything but Bonaparte. This flies in the face of strong evidence that Napoleon's own mistakes, overconfidence and tendency to improvise played a major role in his defeats. MacDonnell gives no credit to Wellington, Blucher, Kutuzov, or any of the other generals who opposed Napoleon.

I found the writing wordy. This example from page 56 is typical: "On October 30th Bonaparte threw off the aimlessness which had concealed a penetrating and exhaustive summing up of the political situation and joined Sieyes, and the intensive work began."

MacDonnell observes that the Marshals were younger than their defeated opponents, but fails to develop a thesis. He includes controversial observations from biased, contemporary accounts (for example, a French noblewoman claiming, "If Napoleon had had two [Marshal] Suchets, he would have captured and kept Spain,")but makes no effort to prove them as long as they support his view.

Important battles like Austerlitz and Waterloo are swept aside with glib generalizations or even totally unjustified comparisons, such as, "At Waterloo the Emperor resorted to the methods of Austerlitz and Borodino." If Napoleon had planned and executed Waterloo with the same subtlety he showed at Austerlitz, the outcome might have been different!

I'd recommend anything by John Keegan, David Chandler or Gunther Rothenburg over this book for a better-written understanding of Napoleon the general. Those interested in an account of Napoleon the man should read Alan Schom's scathing but well-documented "Napoleon Bonaparte". "The Black Room at Longwood" is a very pro-Bonaparte but well-written non-military account of the man by French journalist Kaufmann.