Napoleon

230 Pages·1973·22.569 MB·English

by  David Chandler

Napoleon
by David Chandler
Napoleon Bonaparte was the
outstanding soldier of modern history.
He shares fame as one of the greatest
commanders of all time with Alexander
the Great, Hannibal and Genghis Khan.
For almost twenty years he was
unchallengeable as a strategist and
grand tactician, and for half that time
he was the arbiter of the fate of
Europe as well as the dominant
personality on the world scene.
This biography traces Napoleon’s
career from his youthful days of
Corsican nationalism; to his
introduction to French warfare at
Toulon, and his triumphant campaigns
in Italy and Egypt; to his phenomenal
rise to power through the military
machine, when, at the age of thirty,
he became the de facto ruler of France.
The author, David Chandler, an
acknowledged authority on Napoleon,
retells in a lively narrative, the
soldier-genius’s hard-fought battles
at Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena-Auerstadt
and Friedland; the Spanish encounters,
the Russian campaign and Waterloo.
Napoleon’s sixty battles left an indelible
mark on Europe causing several million
deaths and incalculable misery, but his
military ability is indisputable. He
revolutionised warfare, and his sweeping
changes and his promise of ‘honour,
glory and riches’ kindled the imagination
of the neglected rank and file and, in fact,
ushered in the modern nationalistic age.
16 pages of color plates
ioo illustrations in black and white

Napoleon
David Chandler
Saturday Review Press
New York
For my three sons
© David Chandler 1973
Paul, John and Mark
All rights reserved. No part
of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or
by any means electronic,
mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission
of the copyright owner.
Designed and produced for
George Weidenfeld and
Nicolson Limited
Filmset and Printed Offset
Litho in Great Britain by
Cox & Wyman Ltd,
London, Fakenham and
Reading
ISBN O-8415 O254-4
Library of Congress
Catalog No 73-75721
Saturday Review Press
201 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10003
Contents
Introduction 6 5 Defeat and Abdication 1813-15 138
Preface 8 6 Napoleon and his Art of War 168
1 Preparation and Promise J769-95 10 Select Bibliography 217
2 Italy, Egypt and Brumaire Ijg6-g 24 Acknowledgements 218
3 The Years of Achievement 1800-j 50 List of Illustrations 219
4 The Path to Failure 1808-12 102 Index 222
Introduction
his book is about one of the most remarkable military
1 leaders in the history of war. Drawing up lists of the
great commanders is a highly subjective occupation. There is
room for more than one opinion about the qualifications of
Tamurlane, Wellington or Mao Tse-tung. Some great
battlefield commanders had only the shakiest grasp of grand
strategy; and some of the most brilliant staff officers would
have been hard put to it to command a troop of boy scouts on
a bird-watching patrol. But no serious military historian would
contest the claim of Napoleon Bonaparte to a pre-eminent
place in the soldier’s pantheon. Indeed, one contemporary
British general has declared with definitive candour ‘There
have been only three great commanders in history: Alexander
the Great, Napoleon and myself.’
If a historical novelist were to invent such a character, he
would be accused of fantasy. Born into a poor Corsican family
of ancient lineage, Napoleon Bonaparte went to school in
France at the age of eight. When he was fifteen he went to the
Ecole Militaire in Paris. Ten years later he was a General
commanding the French Army of the interior; and at the age
of thirty-five he was crowned Emperor of France. At his side
was his Empress, Josephine, the beautiful widow of a French
aristocrat. Such things do not happen to ordinary men; and it
is illuminating to analyse the qualities which lifted Napoleon
so rapidly and so spectacularly to the commanding heights of
power.
A study of the careers of great military leaders reveals the
notably unsurprising fact that they are all different. They are
fat and thin, graceless and elegant, practical and imaginative,
sensitive and crude. Both Genghis Khan and Ulysses Grant
were great leaders; but it is difficult to imagine that they had
much else in common. Yet it is possible to identify a number
of qualities which emerge again and again in any analysis of
the characters of successful military commanders. They include
single-mindedness, ruthlessness, a remarkable capacity for
6
sustained hard work, and above all that strange, indefin¬
able magnetism of personality which is nowadays described,
inaccurately but vividly, as charisma. Some great leaders
got by with only one of these qualities; some possessed two
or more in varying degrees. Napoleon had them all. To
study his life and his campaigns is something like watching
the operation of a computer programmed for relentless success
as a leader. If you press the button marked Man Management
or Human Relations, out comes the Little Corporal, moving
among the veteran troops whom he called his children, using
his phenomenal memory to address them each by name.
Indicate Single-Mindedness and there appears the image of
General Bonaparte deciding dispassionately that it was more
important for him to be in Paris in the autumn of 1799,
furthering his own ambitious plans, than to be conducting
abortive military operations in Egypt. He therefore quite
simply went home, handing over his Army to an enraged sub¬
ordinate. No one who has read the story of the operations in
Egypt and Syria would doubt his ruthlessness when, after the
fall of Jaffa on 7 March 1799, five thousand prisoners were
slaughtered on the pretext that they had broken parole. His
capacity for work was phenomenal — he apparently made do
with four or five hours sleep each day and was capable of
dictating simultaneously to several secretaries, changing con¬
stantly from one subject to another without losing his train
of thought in any of them. In the matter of charisma, it
would seem churlish to doubt the powers of a man who, in
spite of a somewhat unpromising physical appearance, suc¬
ceeded in enchanting successively Josephine de Beauharnais,
Marie Walewska and Marie Louise, daughter of the Emperor
of Austria; but it was not only women who were captivated by
Napoleon.
Napoleon, as is often the fate of giants, has been the target
of constant attack by pygmies. It has been suggested that he
suffered from hysteria, epilepsy, satyriasis, piles and sundry
other ailments. He has been accused of insensitivity, bad
manners and vindictive cruelty — and it has to be conceded
that he was often guilty of all these. But no one who knows
the history of war has ever denied that he was a military genius
and a peerless leader of men. His place in history is secure and
the story of his life makes irresistible reading.
Lord Chalfont
7
Preface
N
apoleon bonapartE must be regarded as the pre¬
eminent soldier of modern history. He must be placed
among the four greatest commanders of all time, sharing the
foremost honours in the Halls of Valhalla with Alexander the
Great, Hannibal and Genghis Khan. For nigh on twenty
years he was virtually unchallengeable as a strategist and
grand tactician, and for half that spell he was in effect the
arbiter of the fate of Europe and the dominant personality on
the world scene. Here was a genius — and the fact that he was
ultimately condemned to die an exiled captive does not
materially detract from his greatness.
In the years of his prime, Napoleon’s abilities in both the
military and the civil fields were unsurpassed. Massive legal
and administrative achievements balance to a considerable
extent the several million deaths and incalculable misery
caused by the long series of wars inevitably associated with his
name. More than any other man, he left an indelible print on
Europe, ushering in the modem nationalistic age which is
only slowly giving place today to international co-operation
and schemes of union — a concept of which Napoleon, too, had
dreamed in his greatest years. More than any other soldier
since the invention of firearms, he revolutionised the conduct
of warfare, replacing the outdated eighteenth-century con¬
cepts of siege and stately manoeuvre with a form of blitzkrieg,
conducted over a dozen campaigns and resulting in some sixty
battles, which has dominated warfare down to the present day.
Even if modern preoccupations with nuclear stalemate and the
problems of guerrilla or revolutionary struggles have some¬
what dimmed the significance of large field armies and
challenged the all-importance of the major battles, Napoleon’s
contribution to the art of war remains central and relevant.
Nevertheless, his eclipse was thoroughly deserved — there
were decided limits to his greatness, and later years brought
out the perversions of the qualities that first marked him out
from among his fellow men. He was, to borrow Clarendon’s
8