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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
53 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
captures the spirit of Napoleonic France,
By
This review is from: Napoleon's Marshals (Paperback)
Most of the time when you find something this interesting covering an historical period, it turns out to be 'faction' a la Michener. The fun part about Delderfield is that this is *true*.The foot soldiers and horsemen of Napoleonic France were good, to be sure, but it was their leadership that shaped their character. Delderfield gives a fair account of them all, in their finest hours and weakest moments, and enables the reader to consider what it might have been like to follow such men to war. None are overglorified and none are overmaligned. Ney is present with skill, naivete and honour. Massena's piercing eyes coolly look over advancing grenadiers and heaps of plunder. Augereau begins as a lion and ends as a mouse. Lannes fears nothing and no one. The Emperor is irascible but has that special touch that drew men to his side and held them. To be French and to read this book would surely evoke national and cultural pride, and it would be small-minded indeed to quarrel that a descendant of France's arch-enemies of the period wrote it. He did them fine justice. If, to you, war is Napoleon, then you simply must dig up a copy, even if you must charge into grapeshot to get it.
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Read,
By CE Durham (US) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Napoleon's Marshals (Paperback)
I flew through this book. The narrative style of writing lent itself to a quick and enjoyable read. I came away with a better overall picture of those who were surrounding Napoleon.
Although the subject is broad in the sense that the author tackles so many people. He none-the-less does an excelent job of rounding out a solid picture of Naploeon's marshals, their personalites, their ambitons...flaws and credits. There are several marshals that I would like to read more about based on the information gleaned from within these pages. Understandably the author could not devote as much time as he may have liked to each and every member of this group. He did, however achieve the goal of introducing us to all of them and more than just a basic glossing over. What I liked most is that the author took the events and let time itself introduce and develop the marshals rather than simply lining each one up and giving the reader an encyclopedia type synopsis of each individual. This really brought each marshal into better focus in terms of what was going on at the time and why they entered the picture whent hey did, as well as what they were doing prior to entering into the service of the Empire. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Napoleon and also intersted in getting a better feel for those around him and what drove them to thier positions.
27 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
All the King's Men,
By
This review is from: Napoleon's Marshals (Paperback)
Buy and read this book.
You will give Delderfield credit for his vision, his ambition and his broad coverage to the Age of Napoleon. This book is a synthesis of the age, and a complement to all your other Napoleonic reading. It is an enjoyable book which weaves back and forth and round and round, as the author tells about the personalities of, and interrelationships among, the 26 men who became Marshals of France. There are many reasons I like Delderfield himself. The leading reason is that he values selflessness, effort, merit and ability. Though British, he could have hardly been more American in that respect. He was not the often-encountered British snob who promotes the view that Napoleon was an ogre. I share Delderfield's view, unabashedly, because I am a Son of the American Revolution, and I hope also a true Patriot. While we owe our cultural heritage to the English in very large measure, I believe we owe our freedoms mostly to the French. Delderfield is critical about the 26 men and their Emperor when needed, but he understands the great achievements of the time. He appreciates the blows that the French made and took in the name of liberty and progress. I thought I was buying a book of biographical portraits like Aubrey's Brief Lives, Seutonius' Twelve Caesars or Plutach's Lives. What I got instead was the whole story of the Age of Napoleon retold in a dramatic serial fashion (it would be a great HBO story), and in the action story form of Delderfield's own fiction, Seven Men of Gascony. The book is organized according the normal conventions around the coalitions and campaigns. The story line begins at the end of the Age of Frederick the Great in order to bring the early lives of the oldest Marshals, such as Augereau, into focus. The story finally ends about 70 years later with the Funeral of Napoleon led by Marshal Soult to the tomb in the Invalides. The story revolves around the twelve or so basic campaigns and the role of the respective Marshals. The book is fresh and it does not repeat known erroneous myths or trite cliches. From this book, we get insights into the interacting character of the 27 men, (Napoleon included and chief among them). Very few of the faults of the Marshals are left unexposed by the end of the story. Those who achieve the highest place in Delderfield's pantheon, and remain relatively unscathed, are Davout the Iron Marshal; Ney, the Bravest of the Brave, Lannes, the Roland of France; and Poniatowski, Prince of Poland. The other Marshals are treated well and complimented for their roles and abilities -- though depreciated for their weaknesses and vanities. They are put on a lesser shelf, revealing more than anything the values of the author. I happen to agree with Delderfield that adherence to duty, bravery and loyalty are the three highest standards to judge these men. All of the Marshals have an interesting personal story. We have to give all of them credit for ability and bravery beyond the common varieties. None of them became Marshals of France because they were incompetents or cowards. The abiding values of the Napoleonic Creed were merit and joie de virve or elan. The Marshals, on the whole, personified these values. The Emperor could forgive vanity as in Murat; disloyalty as in Bernadotte, and greed, as in Messena. He forgave them all, and many times, in the name of merit (also probably in the name of necessity which is often a reflection of the same thing). I recommend this book for three reasons. First, it is organized - it gives a compact lucid picture of the chessboard of the age. It tells us about how the campaigns and politics were structured. Second, it is complementary to other work such as Gallo, Tolstoy, Chandler and so on. It provides an additive perspective on the events which can enhance and enrich your reading of all the other literature on Napoleon. Third, it is literate and enjoyable. As I have already said, I share strongly the values and sensibilities expressed by Delderfield. I suspect Delderfield's perspectives on the French and Americans were shaped by interactions in World War II and World War I. The 20th century Delderfeild, if placed in the 18th Century, would have been a political sympathizer in the American Revolution, and he might have crossed the Channel to march with Davout, Lanne, Bessieres, Oudinot or Ney. I don't mean to say he would be a traitor to England - I do not wish to dishonor him that way. What I mean is, from the benefit of perfect hindsight, he would have seen the vision of marking men by ability. He would have marched off of the old Road to Serfdom, as Hayek called it, and onto the new Road to Freedom which was then being beaten across Europe by the French. As with all books about this age, the principal subject is Napoleon himself, who by any objective standard was the greatest leader of men in battle the world has ever known. As is usually the case with a leader, you will see in this book that any given leader cannot do everything in a complex enterprise, and so must organize around himself a way that expresses his own goals, interests and competencies. By examining the complexities of the individual Marshals and their interactions, you will be looking into the heart and mind of the Emperor himself. You will see why, at Waterloo, Napoleon was no longer himself. He was no longer able to articulate his visions without his Marshals of years gone by. You can speculate, for example, that if Berthier was present at Waterloo, the calvary would have stayed in reserve for the coup de grace, and that Grouchy would have not been lost, hence blocking Blucher from the field, while Napoleon finished Wellington -- who was at the time already beaten on the hillsides of Waterloo. While Richard III would have given his kingdom for a horse, Napoleon lost his Empire for want of his Marshals.
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