The Campaigns of Napoleon

Autorentext
David G. Chandler is Head of the Department of War Studies at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, and a Fellow of both the Royal Historical and the Royal Geographical societies. He is President of the British Commission for Military History and a Vice- President of the Commission International d'Histoire Militaire.

During his researches for The Campaigns of Napoleon, Mr. Chandler made considerable use of primary sourcesincluding the thirty-two volumes of Correspondence de I'Empereur Napoleon Iier and consulted many contemporary memoirs and military commentaries. (This he did with some caution, for such material is often far from reliable.) He also examined many of the most revealing and interesting studies that have been written by soldiers and scholars over the past 145 years, and he incorporated extracts from recently discovered sources in the hope of illuminating still further the well- trodden paths of Napoleonic studies.

The author of a dozen works on early eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century military history, David G. Chandler is a recognized authority in the Marlburian and Napoleonic periods. His other publications include A Dictionary of the Napoleonic Wars, 1979, WaterlooThe Hundred Days, 1980, An Atlas of Military Strategy, 1980, and Napoleon's Marshals, (editor), 1987. He has also contributed a chapter to Volume VI of the New Cambridge Modern History as well as numerous articles and reviews to magazines and journals. Chandler lives in Yately, Hampshire, England.

Klappentext

In this “engrossing,” (The New Yorker) vivid, and intensively researched volume, esteemed Napoleon scholar David Chandler outlines the military strategy that led the famous French emperor to his greatest victories—and to his ultimate downfall.

Napoleonic war was nothing if not complex—an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of moves and intentions, which by themselves went a long way towards baffling and dazing his conventionally minded opponents into that state of disconcerting moral disequilibrium which so often resulted in their catastrophic defeat.

The Campaigns of Napoleon is a masterful analysis and insightful critique of Napoleon's art of war as he himself developed and perfected it in the major military campaigns of his career. Napoleon disavowed any suggestion that he worked from formula (“Je n'ai jamais eu un plan d'opérations”), but military historian David Chandler demonstrates this was at best only a half-truth. To be sure, every operation Napoleon conducted contained unique improvisatory features. But there were from the first to the last certain basic principles of strategic maneuver and battlefield planning that he almost invariably put into practice. To clarify these underlying methods, as well as the style of Napoleon's fabulous intellect, Chandler examines in detail each campaign mounted and personally conducted by Napoleon, analyzing the strategies employed, revealing wherever possible the probable sources of his subject's military ideas.

“Writing clearly and vividly, [Chandler] turns dozens of persons besides Napoleon from mere wooden soldiers into three- dimensional characters” (The Boston Globe) and this definitive work is “a fine book for the historian, the student, and the intelligent reader” (The New York Review of Books).

Leseprobe
Chapter 1

PREPARATION

Almost nine years of commissioned service already lay behind Citoyen-capitaine di Buonaparte when he penned Le Souper de Beaucaire. A great deal happened to the young Corsican during this considerable period of time, and many of his early experiences were destined to have important repercussions on his later career. Above all, most of his notions on the art of war and military affairs in general were formulated during this period, and it is important to study the early influences if we are to acquire any real insight into his future greatness and ultimate fall.

Napoleon was born on August 15, 1769, at Ajaccio in Corsica, the second surviving son of Carlo and Marie-Letizia Buonaparte. Many generations back the family was of Italian extraction, but by the 1760s the Buonapartes had found a patrician niche in Corsican life and had become regarded as an important and influential -- if not very wealthy -- pillar of local society. Several ancestors had played a part in the chaotic history of the island. His father was rather a restless and extravagant lawyer, with a penchant for poetry, constantly embarrassed for money and forever seeking social advancement, besides being closely associated with the rebel-patriot, Paoli. His mother was a natural beauty with a character of granite, who never forsook the simple ways of her upbringing and took good fortune and bad with the same calm detachment. To the very end of her life Madame Mère was a formidable and dignified figure of noble appearance, ruling her remarkable brood with a rod of iron. No member of the family was allowed to forget the respect due to the matriarch, no matter how exalted his position. A story is told (probably apocryphal) of how Napoleon held out his hand for his mother to kiss shortly after his coronation. One version states that the spritely old dame actually slapped his face; another (less probable) that she bit his hand. Whatever the truth of this tale, there is no doubt that Letizia was a power to be reckoned with and remained so to the very end of her life. She died aged eighty-six in 1836.

Childhood in Corsica could hardly have been lonely for the future Emperor of the French. The family eventually comprised eight children, besides a further five who died in infancy. Of the five surviving boys, four were in due course to wear crowns: Joseph, the eldest -- rather a frivolous character who took up the duties of head of the family after their father's death in 1785 and who always received a degree of deference from his younger brother -- became first King of Naples (1806) and two years later King of Spain; Louis, the fifth born, was made King of Holland (1806); Jerome, the baby of the family, was crowned King of Westphalia in 1807; and, lastly, Napoleon himself, who for good measure combined in his person the Emperor of the French and King of Italy. Only Lucien, the child born next after Napoleon, never received a throne -- but this was not through lack of opportunity or invitation. Of the three girls, one, Caroline, placed herself in line for a future crown as a Queen-consort when she married Joachim Murat, eventually crowned King of Naples in succession to Joseph. The other two, Elisa (whom Napoleon disliked for her bitter tongue) and Pauline (whom he adored), found dukes and generals for husbands.

Even if this grandeur and social importance still lay far ahead in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the Buonaparte ménage in Ajaccio attracted guests of fair importance, perhaps the most significant of them being General de Marboeuf, French governor and military commander of Corsica and a family friend of long standing. Scurrilous gossip has suggested that he was Napoleon's father, but there is no evidence whatsoever to support this theory. Nevertheless, de Marboeuf undoubtedly played an important part in Napoleon's early life by being instrumental in gaining him a place at the school at Brienne in France. It took time to prove that the Buonapartes possessed the necessary four generations of nobility to qualify for entry, but eventually the young Napoleon was notified that a place awaited him. It is interesting to note that education at Brienne was free for most of the students, the state footing the bills, and that Napoleon thus received his first real schooling through the aegis of a kind of welfare state -- albeit one wholly designed for aristocrats. However, local conditions in Corsica had not been particularly favor…