Napoleon and His Marshals Paperback – March 19, 2014

I read the hard copy about 20 years ago. THAT is still sitting on the shelf in my old room at my parents' house. When the Kindle version was offered at just $0.99, I bought it. Through this book, I decided that I needed to read more biographies on just one Marshal at a time if I wanted to learn more about the Napoleonic War. Thus, I bought one on Davout and later on Ney. I visited their tombs in Paris.Perhaps the greatest miscarriage of justice in France was making Ney the scapegoat after Waterloo. The second would be the Dreyfus affair in 1905. That one is a different story in a different era with different characters and standards. There really is nothing redeeming in the French military aristocracy under the Bourbons and the Orleans dynasties from 1789 onwards. Meritocracy always trumps bad aristocracy.

AG Macdonell's writing style and editing of this book are like nothing I've ever seen in a history text before. The chapters are short and concise and ore importantly get to the point. Macdonell does this efficiently while writing in a style I would call humorous without sacrificing any historical facts. Even though the title suggests this might be a biography about the Marshals, it gives us Napoleon's reactions to several events and takes us through the entire Napoleonic Wars.Would highly recommend this to anyone. I'm only 1/4 of the way through but I really appreciate this book.

A. G. Macdonell's seminal opus is the exception to a rather substandard writing career. However, his deliberate effort and enthusiasm shines through with this extraordinary tale of high adventure. Told with a contagiously dashing prose, witty observations, and unapologetic humor, Macdonell brings the tensions of the times to life through his articulately sketched characters. And what characters they were! If Napoleon had generals with similar skill levels of those of either Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan, there's no telling how far his successes would have reached, nor how long they could have been sustained. But that's the point that Macdonell almost uniquely makes throughout his narrative thread: that an army that inherently relied on standouts from the Enlightenment for its glory was also undone by the same tenacity of spirit that engenders all rebels, pirates, and smugglers to return to their roots as individual crusaders led by their own motives.

A rather pedestrian rehash of Napoleonic marshals...little in way of in depth or characterization but simply a general recital of the battles of the empire....R.F Delderfield in Napoleon's Marshals is more succinct and more readable...this book adds nothing new or interesting...the analogy of twilight settling on the Napoleonic era gets tedious...I saw this as a "ho hum" effort...in a word disappointing

Good book for someone who already has some familiarity with the Marshalls

There were 26 Naopleonic Marshals. Ever tried reading a Biography of all these Marshals in alphabetical order (eg Chandler's Napoleon's Marshals)? What you get is a dry potted history of each Marshal from Augureau to Victor. Their military exploits are constantly repeated. Afterall, they did interact with each other at all the battles together with Napoleon. But the context of their interaction is not obvious.This book starts with a time narrative of the Napoleonic era - beginning with when these Marshals first started to come into the Napoleonic arena. Their potted histories and their military exploits are still told, but now the interaction between them and Napoleon starts to be clearer. Their capabilites and limitations, all too obviously human, come to the fore and the story is a rich tapestry of human endeavours eventually becoming the stuff of legendary tales.To savour this book, however, one must be familiar with the overall Napoleonc lore. There are irritating phrases here and there which are ambiguous or are typo errors, but overall, an entertaining read.

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 am always wary of reading old history books; new information appears all the time, interpretations change, and old writing styles can be difficult. This book is a delightful exception. Originally published in 1934, it is written in a very light way, and is never stuffy or dry; indeed at times it is almost gossipy, sometimes very funny.It does exactly what the title suggests; rather than rehashing a biography of Napoleon, it looks at the lives of his marshals, his relationship with them, and, perhaps most importantly, their relationship with each other. Before reading this book, I could name probably five or six of these men, but in all, Napoleon appointed eighteen, and their story is well told in this work. Most were from very humble origins - a result of the meritocracy which the Emperor initiated - and their achievements were varied. Some were magnificent generals, able on their day to rival Napoleon himself, some were great staff officers, one founded a Royal House still in existence today, others were mediocre in the extreme, but rewarded for political reasons. Napoleon was not just a remarkable military leader, but a great politician and psychologist as well.But the really good reading is about their relationships with each other. Probably because of their origins (given the age in which they lived) they were mostly incredibly insecure. At best, they generally disliked one another, at worst, were happy to see a rival fail. As MacDonell shows, this played a huge part in bringing Napoleon's Empire down. His descriptions of the foibles of each of these men is immensely readable, and at times very funny.All in all, this is a very readable book. So much has been written about Napoleon, and his military successes and failures. This book reminds us that he did not work alone; even he was dependent on others, and whilst they often let him down, they also won battles for him. Yes, you need to remember that new evidence will have surfaced since this was written, but for a general overview, it is hard to beat.

This book was made very readable by the lively, "no holds barred" descriptions of Napoleon's Marshalls and what they did, but as a novice to the Napoleonic era greater background to the events would have been helped. Napoleon's army in Egypt couldn't escape by sea due to the Royal Navy and their attempt to travel back by land was blocked in Palestine. Tantalisingly, the author then moves on to other events. Perhaps the answer lies in the remainder of the book that is still to be read.

Very opinionated - I don't always agree, but he's always interesting. Some of the writing is quite dated - it was written between the two World Wars. Good, if you've read other books about the same topic - but if you're only going to read one about the Napoleonic era, it shouldn't be this one. And it details what happened to all the Marshals afterwards, which some histories don't do.

I don't know if Macdonell's portrayal of Napoleon's Marshals as a bunch of vain, petty, stupid, incompetent, self-seeking individuals is fair or accurate but it makes a very entertaining read. You get the impression of Napoleon as a harassed father trying to keep a group of unruly schoolboys in check.But there is praise where praise is due, particularly for Suchet and Ney. The tales of Ney's bravery during the retreat from Moscow are very moving.

There's better more modern books out there.