Who was Napoleon's greatest general?
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Fries, fresh for everyone. Restrictions apply. See site for details. They said he will start a war. I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars. I recognize the challenges from Ukraine to Gaza to Sudan and beyond. War, hunger, terrorism. I just find bombs and I find dead people. But it's a really scary thing. My name is Roland Oliphant and this is Battle Lines.

Now David Knowles, the founder of this podcast, had one particular conversational gambit that he liked to roll out again and again in almost any social situation. And the question was, who is your favourite of Napoleon's marshals? When David sadly died earlier this year, we realised that he himself had never actually answered the

the question. It seems he took his own view of Napoleon's generals to his grave. But the more I pondered this question in the aftermath of David's funeral, it began to raise more and more. Who were the marshals? What was so special about them? Why did they and Napoleon exert such a grip on the imagination today? And of course, what is the right answer to David's question?

who was the best marshal. So we decided the best way to resolve this was, of course, as David would have wanted, with a podcast. We have assembled a Napoleonic dream team. Across the table from me is Assistant Comment Editor of The Telegraph, Francis Durnley. To my right is Matilda Gregg, the National Army Museum's resident Napoleonic historian. And joining us remotely is Zach White, himself a historian and the host of the Napoleonicist podcast.

It's the Napoleonic Wars podcast now. We did a rebrand. Sorry. It's now called the Napoleonic Wars podcast, perhaps because of the difficulty of getting that word out. Matilda, could I start with you by setting the scene? The Marshal appears in 1804.

What's the scenario in France and in Europe when Napoleon creates the rank of Marshal of the Empire? Who are these people? Why does he need them? Absolutely. So to understand 1804, I think you need to imagine Napoleon at the brink of the most powerful years of his rule. So at the edge of his sort of five-year golden age, that's a position that's solid in some ways, precarious in others.

He's just declared himself emperor. He's no longer even under the pretence of sharing power with two other consuls. He has multiple successful military campaigns under his belt and in the five years to come he's about to win some of his most famous battles humiliating Germany, Austria and Russia. France's power is going to stretch from the English Channel all the way to the Russian border.

At the same time, he still needs allies at home. So France has just endured 15 years of political upheaval. The revolutionaries have executed the king, abolished the nobility, nationalized church lands, declared the principle of social equality. So Napoleon coming in here as an emperor of France, a hereditary dynastic emperor, needs to recreate some of these ancient elites to bolster him. Basically, as an emperor, he needs an imperial court established.

So he makes his members of his family princes and princesses, he gives out hereditary titles to his collaborators, and he re-establishes an old royal rank that the revolution has got rid of, of marshal or marechal. So it's into this context of imperial dynasty that the marshals are born.

About 18 generals, military generals, are elevated to this rank in 1804, as you said. Eight will later be added over the course of his reign. And it's basically a social position equivalent about to duke. Many were therefore given dukedoms and principalities in vassal countries under Napoleon as sort of recompense and acknowledgement of that.

And some of these are honorary appointments, but most of them are to an active group of generals who are going to carry out Napoleon's orders in the battlefield, as well as support him in his sort of imperial coterie.

And it's to this small group of men that some of these most famous names belong. Assena, Ney, Lan, Murat, Davout, etc. OK, so the appearance of the Marshalé, it marks a kind of political moment of change, right? So France has had the revolution. There's this amazing kind of crazy Republican moment. It's very bloody. There's all kinds of idealism about, you know, the rights of man and so on.

out of all that emerges Napoleon 1804. He basically seizes power, does away with it. He goes from being a Republican to a to a self-proclaimed emperor, a monarch, basically. And so the creation of the marshals represents that point. Yeah, it's part of a much wider, almost reimagining of France by Napoleon from the civil to the legal to the political, military, everything. So it's one part of this massive program of

Zach, just for coming for a bit more context to you here, of course, it's a period of a hell of a lot of war. I mean, there were the revolutionary wars that then become the Napoleonic Wars, which we talk about a long time. But essentially, France has been at war continuously since 1789, I suppose. So 15 years of solid fighting. The people he picks for marshal are

in military terms, what makes a marshal different to a general? And are these guys really the best candidates for the job? I think what's quite interesting when you compare the marshals is that there are certain sort of collections of traits that seem to filter through, but each marshal brings something very specific in their own right. There is no sort of universal trait across all of the marshals.

that very clearly defines who these people were. Some were fundamentally cronies. It's not an accident that people like Murat are individuals who marry into Bonaparte's family.

You've got some who are political appointees. You've got others who are appointed because they have absolutely served Bonaparte loyally, Berthier being the most famous one, his chief of staff, fundamentally his right-hand man. Without Berthier, there is essentially no Napoleon. You've also got some people who are appointed who seem to get that elevation because

because sometimes it's a good idea to keep your potential enemies close. Bernadotte is a classic example of this, somebody who in many respects was regarded as a potential rival for Bonaparte and had a prickly relationship with him, and we'll perhaps talk more about that later. But in terms of their skill sets, all of these people had served France militarily and were

well respected and well regarded in terms of that service. There was nobody amongst the Marshalate who got elevated and everybody was sort of quietly whispering, why the hell has that moron managed to get the post? There were definitely cases where friends got elevated to the Marshalate. Matilda was talking about how the list gets added to in 1809, Marshal Marmont gets elevated and that is a moment where even Marmont is slightly surprised

that he's got that promotion. And there's a famous comment that Marmont was fundamentally sort of friendship's choice. Napoleon himself turns around and says, well, you haven't quite done enough yet to earn this, but I think you're pretty much there. And Marmont was essentially Napoleon's protege. So they are a very mixed bag. Some of them are very harsh disciplinarians. Others are inveterate looters. Some of them are very principled. Others are absolute rogues.

They're a real mixed bag. And I think it's that kind of breadth of personality that contributes to the reason why we are so interested in this group of people. So before we go on, I'm going to go around the table asking people to answer that question of David's. Who is your favourite Marshall? How many were there in total? There were 18 at the beginning. 26.

So we're talking about 26. They're all men. Yes. 26 men, all of them elevated by Napoleon in this year, this kind of coterie around him. And the question is, who is your favourite? Who would like to go first? I don't have a mind. Francis is raising his hand. Francis, who is your favourite of Napoleon's marshals?

Well, the reason I've said that I'm happy to go first is because I've chosen the most basic answer, which is probably the Marshall that most people would be familiar with, which is Marshall Ney. Who's first, then?

Michel. Michel. Michel Ney. So, I'll come a little bit to his life story briefly. I'll just give a very, very quick overview as to why the bravest of the brave, as he was known, was such an extraordinary man. But just I wanted to pick up something that Matilda and Zach both referenced, which is, I think when you're looking at the Napoleonic period, it's often oversimplified as being...

Napoleon is the Enlightenment on horseback. You know, he is this figure of modernity. And yet there is a huge tension point between him being this great modernizing figure and actually a figure of tradition and trying to represent some of the symbolism, at least, of the Enchante regime so that he has legitimacy in the eyes of Europe.

And so to Matilda's point, the appointment of marshals and the appointment of figures who have the regalia in some degree of the Anchon regime is really, really important to his legitimacy in the eyes of the Tsars, the monarchs who still exist in Europe. And indeed, it's really interesting when you read Napoleon's memoirs, how he tries to legitimize the invasion of Russia in 1812. It's not about territory. It's about for him, he claims, and it's important to say he claims territory.

to try and make the point that France was a threat to Russia and indeed that it was to be considered a threat for long after Napoleon's death in the eyes of the Tsars in terms of Napoleon's own successors. And of course he wanted to forge his own bloodline like a monarchy. So I just wanted to make that point because I think too often when people reflect on the military history

of Napoleon and how he changes his armed forces and makes such an effective fighting force. Yes, he's a great moderniser, but he's also a traditionalist too. And I think you need to see the conversation around Marshalls as part of that. But who was Ney then? Well...

I think also he's a really good example of why you've got somebody quite extraordinary here. He's pretty humble origins. I'm not going to say he's poor. He's not lower class. He's middle class. But importantly, he's not a member of the aristocracy. And that's, of course, who you would have expected to have been running the armed forces throughout the entirety of most of French history, one could argue. He's born in 1769. So he's a pretty young man when the revolution happens. And I think that's also another point here is that many of the marshals are young men.

by the time that they're in these very, very important roles in world history. Something we have a tendency to forget. Sorry to interrupt you, isn't that the same age as Napoleon, in fact? Yes. Born in 1769. There you go. So they are the same age. And indeed, I think part of the reason that Napoleon sees...

so kindly is not only his incredible military ability as a strategist but also leading from the front but also because they do have that relationship in age and so I

I don't want to go through the whole of the life story of Ney because we would be here forever, but I think it's important to understand that he rises up through the ranks of the Revolutionary Army when the Revolutionary Wars begin. This is before Napoleon takes formal command of all of the armies of France. And he's there, he's a pivotal player at Austerlitz, at Jena, many of the most important battles, most notoriously, I would argue, at Waterloo, and we'll get to that in a moment.

but he is really known for his tactical nous, which seems to be instinctive quite a lot of the time. Again, that will cause issues later on. When you say tactical, you're talking about decisions made literally on the battlefield, in the heat. Yes, absolutely. Not talking about where you march an army on the map, but what's going on when you're right in the thick of it. No,

of it Napoleon quite often spoke about this sense of the moment that a battle changes and I think Ney is one of those figures who got that that he senses the energy of the field and then makes a snap decision and often that decision saves the day

And that's why he was known as the bravest of the brave, because he was leading from the front in the fray himself. And it's a miracle that he lives for as long as he does. And indeed, he lives all the way to pass Napoleon's second exile and indeed is executed.

by the Bourbon restoration after the Napoleonic Wars and has an incredible moving story of where he basically, he had betrayed the state he promised allegiance to after Napoleon's downfall. And so in a sense, he was legitimately tried for treason. But he was executed very controversially and he ordered his own men to shoot him.

And there's this great sort of moving scene where he basically says, do, you know, do what must be done and points at his heart, don't hesitate. And they do shoot him, which again lives up to this reputation of his bravery. But it was very controversial at the time because many other marshals and other important military figures in the wars were pardoned.

but he was not because he was seen as such a symbolic figure. But just to go through the rest of his career, so he's this hugely successful figure, and then we get to the period, of course, of 1812, the Russian campaign. I think sometimes that the moment that makes Né so extraordinary is articulated by his decisions on the Russian campaign because he is in the rear guard during the retreat.

And that's basically the one place you didn't want to be because it was so bleak on the retreat from after Borodino. And yet he...

incredibly manages to hold the line, a way to keep the Russians back so that many, many thousands of French soldiers can retreat. But it's a bloody mess. But it, again, is an example of Ney's extraordinary bravery. But, and I think this is an important thing, why do I like him? Well, for simple facts, I think he represents just extraordinary personal heroism. And I think that if we are to like any...

of this period and I think that's a question we'll get to later because I think there are ethical questions here to be made but I think his personal attributes his tactical nous and everything else make him one of the most extraordinary figures of the entire period sort of a ginger haired demon I think would be the way of seeing him as far as the British and others are concerned on the battlefield but

But I'm always inclined when I think about Ney of a line that they say about Robert E. Lee in the American Civil War. So he was also a brilliant, brilliant general, far more strategically brilliant than Ney, I think, in many ways. But he didn't lead from the front, which is what makes Ney so extraordinary.

But he also meets his Waterloo, as it were, Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg, when the attributes that made him such a brilliant, brilliant figure also cost him so dearly. And he sends the Confederate Army at picket's charge into the Union lines, thinking that they're going to break, and they don't. And it costs, basically, the Confederate Corps. It takes a couple of years, but it's the high watermark of the Confederacy, as it's known.

famous historians said that the price the Confederacy paid for the brilliance of Robert E. Lee was Gettysburg. And I think you can say the price that France pays for the brilliance of Ney is the calamity at the end of Waterloo. So take us into that moment. It's very famous. If anyone's ever seen Bondarchuk's magnificent epic of Waterloo, there is this fantastic scene of, you know, Marshal Ney with his redhead flying just

charging in and then Napoleon wakes up. He's been there or comes back to the battlefield and he just exclaims, nay, what are you doing? This is lunacy. Take us to that moment. What is this moment? Well, Waterloo is, of course, I think it was Wellington who said it was the finest run thing you ever saw in your life. I mean, I think that possibly is because it...

I think that's possibly a little bit of an exaggeration because at the end of the day, even if France had managed to hold the field and push the British back, there probably would have been another battle the next day or in subsequent days that would have led to a similar calamity. But it's all because it was all self-contained, like the perfect story in one day. But at that moment, you've got France

France trying desperately to break through Wellington's lines on the famous ridge of Waterloo. And they're not able to break through. It's not going well. And Ney just decides, seemingly in a moment of spontaneity that served him so well throughout so many brilliant campaigns, to send in the cavalry to try and break through at that moment before the Prussians arrive.

But of course, Wellington is very, very well prepared. It's why he's picked the battlefield that he has. He forms square so that those cavalry are immediately being swamped by musket fire. And it's just devastating. And very, very quickly, the cavalry gets bogged down and slaughtered.

And so any decisive charge that could have been made later in the battle perhaps is completely negated by this strategic move. And really at this point, many people say that it was impossible for Napoleon to win that battle.

So some of the attributes that made Ney so brilliant cost Napoleon so dearly at Waterloo. And I think that you could say that if, as some historians argue, Waterloo is perhaps the most decisive engagement, that's not necessarily my view, but the most decisive engagement, then you could say that Ney to some degree loses that battle for Napoleon. I wonder if I could add a little to your Ney tribute. I think there's...

There's this other element as well, isn't there? And you were talking so eloquently about this amazing sort of tragic hero at Waterloo. And I think it's this idea of the tragic doomed hero that also really helps to capture people's imagination about him. And it's not just today. It's also all these famous novelists of the last couple of centuries. So you have he's in the Charterhouse of Parma. He's in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. I think he is in Tolstoy's War and Peace, in which he's depicted as this sort of battle mad, like,

so wounded streaming in blood, like almost wants to be killed on the battlefield like a Viking warrior. Part of this narrative tragedy around him as well is that he doesn't go out the way he would have liked to in a blaze of glory, but is instead executed by his own men later on.

Even Hemingway, a famous writer of martial masculinity and achievement, I think lives in Paris near the statue of Ney and sort of talks about that. I've been to the cafe that Hemingway used to frequent and in the square is Martial Ney's statue. Absolutely. So I think you can't talk about Martial Ney without also talking about this like...

of slightly Shakespearean tragic heroism around him. Wow. So even a legacy well beyond the battlefield, a kind of cultural one there. There was even a myth that formed after the wars that he'd actually survived and escaped to America. But I don't think historians believe that. Similar to Napoleon himself, I guess. Marshal May is running a burger joint somewhere around Texas. Mays.

That's a very strong case for Michelle Ney. Thank you very much. Zach? Can I just strengthen that case, actually, by picking up on... You're not meant to do that. You're meant to be backing somebody else. Clearly I didn't get the brief for this one, but Francis picks up on the Waterloo criticism, which is the one that Ney regularly gets hammered from. And actually, in many respects, when it comes to Waterloo, Ney is a victim of Napoleon's propaganda.

Napoleon, of course, during his time in St Helena is the exception to the rule that the victors get to write the history because Napoleon gets that chance whilst he's musing on St Helena following his second exile post-Waterloo to blame anybody and everybody for the failings that he perceives in his regimes and his campaigns. And unsurprisingly, Napoleon is never at blame. It's always somebody else.

He puts forward this kind of concept that Ney kind of loses all tactical awareness and charges headlong in and it's all sort of folly and that's the reason why Napoleon loses Waterloo. But actually, the reason Ney charges when he does is because it's meant to be a diversionary attack.

Ney's attack with the cavalry is meant to pin Wellington in place whilst reinforcements move up for a second infantry assault on Wellington's left flank. Now that infantry assault never materializes because the Prussians come sweeping over the hill and start threatening Napoleon's rear and what it means is that that infantry has to be diverted and Ney's cavalry attack is basically sort of left in the ether with nothing to do. You know they've gone forward

But then the problem with Ney is that he doesn't draw on local infantry support and local artillery support to make this a cohesive combined arms attack that could have achieved anything. And he had troops available to do that.

but that's not the bit that people tend to pick up on. So Ney does deserve some criticism, but nowhere near as much criticism as he gets for what happens at Waterloo because Napoleon's myth-making has just swept the reality before it. Okay, I'm wondering if any of the other candidates have stand a chance at this point because everyone seems to love Ney. But on that note, Zach, I'm going to come to you. I'm going to pitch David Noel's question. Who is your favourite of Napoleon's marshals?

In many respects, my choice is quite unconventional because I've gone for a guy called Bernadotte, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte. He's born in 1763. So as Francis was saying, sort of one of the contemporaries in terms of age to Napoleon. And like Ney, this is a guy who works his way up through the ranks. He's from relatively humble origins, joins in the 1780s and within eight years was a sergeant major.

By 1791, though, he's been promoted lieutenant because of these sweeping changes that come through the French army as a result of the revolution. And I think it says a huge amount that less than three years later, this guy is a general of division. So straight away, you have somebody who's very clearly hugely competent.

has a reputation as a very strict disciplinarian, is particularly noted for his ability to inspire his men through rousing speeches and hated looting. Fundamentally, integrity was at the core of how Bernadotte sought to operate. And he has a varied career. He serves as an ambassador at varying points. He actually marries Napoleon's former girlfriend,

Desiree Claret in August 1798. Poor Desiree has a horrendous life, basically gets pushed around from Napoleon, Napoleon's brothers to Napoleon and then on to Bernadotte in time. Bernadotte briefly serves as Minister of War and when Napoleon famously enacts his coup in Brumaire

Bernadotte is actually one of the names as the potential figurehead. What a lot of people don't realise about Napoleon's coup is that Napoleon is the figurehead of it, but there were multiple contenders as to who was going to be that figurehead. And Bernadotte was one of those people. He had a reputation, very popular with the army, had experience in government, and so was a very strong kind of threat in many respects to Napoleon. And I think that's part of why they have quite a prickly relationship.

He's seventh on the list of marshals for quite what that means. There is a strong sense that the guy at the top is Berthier and that's very clearly the most compelling choice in terms of the foremost marshal. But Bernadotte being seventh on the list clearly indicates that he wasn't perhaps an afterthought. His military record is quite checkered, partly because he doesn't really get independent command.

because Napoleon doesn't entirely trust him. There's a lot of kind of suggestions that he drags his heels on certain occasions. There's no question that his troops are always on a very tight leash and very strictly disciplined. He will not allow them to overstep the mark if he can prevent it. With all of that in mind, if he hasn't got this sort of brilliant military record, why do I suggest that he's my favourite marshal and arguably the greatest marshal? Well,

Bernadotte is unique, in fact, in the fact that he ends up being placed on a throne

and then keeps that throne following the collapse of the Bonaparte regime. There's a Swedish succession crisis and in 1810 Bernadotte is elected as crown prince, the heir apparent effectively. That's a complex process, Napoleon is consulted, he's asked to put forward a marshal. Bernadotte already has a good reputation with the Swedes at this point

not least because when he captured some Swedish troops, he was very careful to make sure that they were properly looked after. And that kind of, that principle seemed to resonate and was respected. So when Bernadotte is put forward, he's very popular and he plays a very deft game. He's very careful not to get too involved in internal politics. He supports kind of peaceful foreign policies where possible. He's very much focused on what is in Sweden's best interests.

Now that leads to a collision course with Napoleon.

because Napoleon wants Bernadotte to be a puppet. He sees Bernadotte as a tool through which he can control Sweden, just like he's controlled the other nations of Europe by placing his cronies, his brothers, his sisters, other marshals on these varying thrones, whether it's Murar in Naples, whether it's Joseph on the throne of Spain. He thinks he can use these familial connections to create a sort of Napoleonic system

across the European landscape, Bernadotte refuses to play ball. Bernadotte had warned Napoleon beforehand, if you put me on this throne, my priority is what is in Sweden's interests and not what is in your interests. Why is that? What's his motive there? Is it that he's simply a principled man or is there some kind of personal animus? Partly it is the principle.

But I think also it's about survival for Bernadotte. This is a guy who has seen the turmoil of the revolutions. He knows that monarchs can lose their heads and he doesn't want to join that list of people who have been overturned by a mass revolution. So I think it's a two-pronged thing. Would it be fair to say, Zach, also that he's, at least I've seen some

supposition that he was hoping he might be able to replace Napoleon if Napoleon eventually falls. He's kind of thinking the monarchs of the great powers are going to be looking around for someone, a stable pair of hands to put in charge of France, and there I'll be, great king of Sweden. I think there's absolutely something in that. I think there comes a point where Bernadotte realises that he can't be that person, in part because he ends up joining the Allies. And so it would have been a very kind of

complex set of emotions, I think, for many in the French army. You know, here is a former marshal, somebody we exalted, who then goes and fights against us and then comes back and becomes king. And I think Bernadotte is savvy enough to realise that. But in the early stages, I think there's absolutely that question mark of could he be a successor in time? And so at the core of why I put Bernadotte above the other marshals is

is really in terms of thinking about him beyond his military career. He is quite Machiavellian at heart. He is very pragmatic. And these are traits that we prize in Napoleon.

He's not the greatest marshal. Tactically or strategically, he doesn't get his chance to shine. But in the diplomatic arena, he was probably much better than Napoleon. House Bernadotte has survived in Sweden for more than two centuries. The House of Bonaparte barely manages to survive a decade. So to put it another way, Bernadotte won the Napoleonic Game of Thrones. Yeah.

And ultimately, which is a better measure, to be Napoleon's best subordinate or to be the marshal who acquired a crown and then kept it long after Napoleon lost his? That's incredibly... Shots fired. Let's just be clear, the House of Bernadot is still on the throne of Sweden. It is indeed. This is the man who won the Napoleonic Wars, essentially. The long game. It's a long game. That's an incredibly strong...

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While we deliver your groceries. Fries, fresh for everyone. Restrictions apply. See site for details. Okay, I suppose it's my turn. Francis, would you like to ask me David's question? With pleasure. Roland Oliphant, who is your favourite Napoleonic marshal?

My favourite Napoleonic marshal is a guy called Andre Massena. I'm not even sure if I'm pronouncing his name correctly. It could be Massena. I'm not sure how long is the S or the E there. I'm afraid to say, I haven't really thought this out so much. It's almost like...

You know, you end up supporting a football team because it's the first team you saw win or something. Maybe you could say it's instinctive, rather like Messina's type of tactical... Thank you very much. It is instinctive. He was a brilliantly instinctive general, partly because he hated reading. Napoleon was famously bookish and learned a huge amount from reading Caesar and everything else since. Messina wasn't having any of that. He was interested... He wasn't interested in literature. He was interested in money, which is really his...

really the fly and the ointment of the case I'm about to make. Why do I like him? One of the reasons I like him is because this is a guy who comes from very humble origins and climbs through pure military merit, really, to be one of those first original marshals. And at the time, the historians in the room may correct me, but as far as I understand, at the time, you know, seen as brilliant as Napoleon himself, certainly in that...

in the early year of the Revolutionary Wars and so on. So André Messonnier is from Nice in the south of France.

I believe this is actually of Italian extraction. His father was a shopkeeper. So again, not exactly working class, but of the kind of petty bourgeoisie. His father died when he was six. At 13, he ran away to sea. And there's two versions of this. One is because, you know, it was a tough life and he just, you know, wanted to get out and find a career. The other, which you'll find in the kind of older, more Victorian kind of accounts of the marshal, says that he always had this instinctive desire

kind of lust for adventure and the career and life of a shopkeeper was not for him and he knew he wanted to get out and see the world. So he spends four years from the age of 13, you know, sailing around the Mediterranean Sea. He goes down to the Caribbean and back a couple of times, comes back. This is still while France is a monarchy. He joins France's Royal Italian Regiment, I think partly because France

his uncle or someone was a sergeant and could help him out. So an instinct for nepotism there early on. But he never makes it beyond sergeant. He's a good soldier. He never makes it beyond sergeant because of his humble origins. Quits the army in 1789, marries, opens a shop. The shop is a front for a smuggling operation.

He's always been a bit of a rogue, this guy. You know, they do say what he learnt about the smuggling routes around that part of the Mediterranean, the coast around there, that all stood him in really good stead later on for the career he was going to take. After the revolution, he ends up in the army. He's one of these people who quickly climbs the ranks because he's just good at it.

He's good at generalship, good at fighting. And by the time of the late 1790s, if I'm correct, because I am fudging this a little bit, he's one of France's great generals. And this is the first moment of greatness for him, really, is the Second Battle of Zurich. It's another reason why I like him, because this is where he basically goes up against the Russian general, Alexander Suvorov.

who is another fascinating character and because of my kind of Russian history background I find him interesting. He's basically unbeaten and Masséna basically chases him out. What was his relation to Kutuzov? Is he an underling of Kutuzov? He's much older than Kutuzov and he's actually brought out of retirement. It's a 1980s action movie scene. He's had a quarrel with the Tsar. He's gone off to his country estate.

And, you know, a man shows up in dress uniforms and says, we've got one last job. And he says, well, I'm not interested. And eventually persuades, he's persuaded to come out of retirement because he's the only man for the job. The only one man can do it is a Soviet agent. In the end, Zvolov has to conduct what is actually an absolutely brilliant fighting retreat through Switzerland to escape.

from Masséna and he remains pretty much undefeated and one of the very interesting things I'm going on a complete um on a complete footnote kind of side alley here but but one of one of the great unanswered questions of what would have happened if Suvorov had met Napoleon in battle um ever and when Suvorov died he said that's my one regret never never got to fight Napoleon himself um he was a very old man by this point anyway um

So essentially the revolutionary armies are fighting in Switzerland. The Austrians have essentially kicked the French out of Zurich, occupied it. They're waiting for Russian reinforcements to arrive who are marching through the Alps. And when they get there, it's going to be trouble for the French. Essentially, André Masséna strikes first. He creates diversions. He marches divisions up there and down there. The operation is going to involve fording a river. So he builds a pontoon bridge there.

I think to the south of Zurich where the Austrians can see it and then at night in one night clears up picks it up marches it over the mountain puts it down another place and then attacks across the bridge in a completely separate place it's a masterful bit of planning straight out of the Julius Caesar playbook it's remarkable he basically flattens the Austrians and the Russians pushes them out of Zurich in short order the one fly on the Ottoman here is he kind of lets them go he doesn't quite close the circle but this basically saves the Republic and

It is a brilliant victory and I was in Zurich recently actually and kind of because I knew we were going to do this podcast ambling around and reading the Wikipedia page of the battle. You were talking about Marshall Ney and how Marshall Ney was a tactician, a guy right in the middle of battle who could do stuff.

In Zurich and in other places, you get a sense of the scale of Napoleonic battlefields. We often think of battlefields as something you can, you know, it's kind of a field, basically, you know. But in actual fact, you know, he's marshalling divisions that are kind of literally, literally miles apart. And you kind of stand in the middle of Zurich and go, OK, so he was sending those guys over there and that guy on the horizon over there, marshalling an operation that was, you know, I don't know, 10, 15, 30 miles across.

at some point. So basically he's doing what Napoleon became very good at doing as well. So that's one of his claims to fame. The second one is in...

I believe it's in 1800 when Napoleon crosses the Alps and wins his famous victories at Marengo and gets a big painting made of him crossing the Alps, pointing his finger and so on. And Napoleon makes a great big thing about his great victory over the Austrians. But that couldn't have happened if Andre Massonard wasn't sitting in Genoa

besieged by the Austrians, forcing the Austrians to devote a huge amount of their manpower to holding him there and refusing to surrender well after he'd run out of food.

It was an absolutely horrible, horrible season. You had a British fleet at sea stopping anything coming in that way. Eventually, he does have to surrender. But after holding out, I think about 10 days or a week more than Napoleon asked him to. And that's long enough for Napoleon to get over the Alps, get down, win that battle. And Austrian general told him later that...

the Marengo campaign was actually won in front of in front of Genoa and the thing that appealed to me about this is there's this little tidbit that this broke Messina's health he never really recovered from that because he was on the same rations as his men and like Sieges throughout history it got to the point where you're literally kind of you know

eating the rats. It was a horrific, horrific siege. He showed great determination. He went in the same rations as men and in the end he was allowed to keep his weapons and march out with honour because everybody recognised what a great job

he had done. So that's point number two for André Masséna. Point number three comes much later in 1809 at the Battle of Aspen-Essling. These two battles that took place in Vienna, 1809. The first one, of course, is a bit of a disaster, but he's the one who holds it together and instructs his men back across the Danube. But

But he's injured, and then in the follow-up battle, he can't walk because he's been injured in the leg, so he commands his troops from a coach and four. It's an obvious target to every artilleryman on the battlefield. And he ends up leading a cavalry charge in this thing, or at least rallying his troops in this thing. So his men start to retreat. He orders his...

He orders his carriage, pulled by four white horses, to charge forward to stop this column wavering, shouting, you scoundrels, you get five sous a day. I'm worth 600,000 francs and you're making me go ahead of you. He's quite lucky the revolution had been over for a while by then. Yes, he is. Because I think the response might have been different. And I think we'll get to that. So he gets...

I believe he gets a title from Napoleon for that. Now, I've noticed when I've been looking around reading about people's favorite marshals, not many people mention André Messina. And I think it's because it's partly because of what happens later in the peninsula. So Napoleon, at this point, he's known as the darling child of victory. Napoleon's talking about him. He's the greatest of all my generals, all of this. And then Napoleon persuades him to go down to run the peninsula war.

in Portugal and Spain. And he says, I'd really rather not.

Please don't. And he's kind of persuaded and cajoled and kind of, you know, Napoleon says, my dear Messina, what are you talking about? Once you're there, I'll be fine. You know what you're doing. You just miss it a bit. You know, come on. What's this self-doubt? Come on. And I think really he knew that he was past it. I think he was sick. I think he didn't really have the energy. And I think he was aware of how difficult that campaign was going to be because of the conditions that existed. Nonetheless, he does go down to Spain.

He does manage to chase Wellington all the way back to the lines of Torres Vedras. There it all falls apart, of course, because he can't get through the lines of Torres Vedras. And in retrospect, we all say that a brilliant stroke by Wellington of preparing that. But I suppose Wellington can't have known that was going to work.

He must have had a pretty good idea. He must have hoped it was going to work. But he hangs out. He tries to draw Wellington into battle. Wellington's far too canny for that. And eventually he has to retreat. There is a final battle with Wellington, which very, very nearly went the French way. And for various reasons, it didn't. But it was extremely close, perhaps even closer than Waterloo. And Wellington remarked afterwards, if Boney had been there himself, we would have been done for.

So Masséna is probably the marshal who came closest, I think, to defeating Wellington himself. And Wellington's the guy who beat Napoleon. So I wonder what would have happened if Masséna, in his prime, had gone up against Napoleon himself in his prime. Because I think they both possessed that capacity, not only for that seizing the moment on the battlefield, which they certainly had, and people talk about Masséna as... Oh, is it Napoleon himself, I think, mentioned this about him, that...

the more intense the battle became and the more desperate the situation became, the calmer Messina got and the kind of more content and happier he was. And he never performed better than when, you know, his cannon shot going all over the place. You can't see anything because there's, you know, there's a smoke across the battlefield. There's a column collapsing over there. Everyone's saying, what the hell is going on? And at that moment, he was always in his element, you know,

He had a massive gift for it. He was a man who came from nothing and clawed his way up. I can't mention him without mentioning the case against, which I'm sure everyone else was, which is that he was possibly the most infamous looter of the entire Napoleonic Wars, to the point that Napoleon himself said, we should all learn to steal like Masséna. To the point that he was once sent down to Italy to take command of French troops in the Papal States.

The troops were already in mutiny because they had a lot of Republican sentiment. They were fed up with corruption. They were fed up with their wages disappearing. They were fed up with the sense that there was a bunch of bureaucrats who seized control of the Republican powers and didn't care about them. They said, OK, we're sending you this great general to sort this out. And as soon as they heard it was Massena, the men and the officers got together, put together a petition, said, this guy encapsulates all of that and there is no way we're dealing with him. And he had to go back to Paris.

That said, he wasn't the only one who indulged in this kind of thing. And he wasn't without honor. When Napoleon returned, he didn't get involved in the Waterloo campaign, but he was asked to try Marshall Ney.

And he was amongst the generals who was asked to do that and refused to do so. They said, there is no basis for us to try this man, recused themselves. And so they had to find other people to sentence Marshal Ney to death. That's my take on André Masséna. It's quite an emotional kind of thing. I like him. I think there's a lot to say against him. But I think he was a brilliant general. And I think he's one of these characters who deserve to be remembered more, but overshadowed by Napoleon himself.

Speaking to your point, Roland, about the looting, it was so rife during that period. I think I'm right in saying that there's only 4% of the art left in Venice today than there was before Napoleon conquered Venice in 1798. I think there's also...

It's worth making the point as well that when we talk about looting and plunder, we're not just talking about art, we're also talking about human cost. So, Mersenne, although I love the case you've made for him, and I think he really is a great character to highlight because he exemplifies so much of this, the dark and light,

of this period that are sort of bound up together a lot in stories we tell of it and is part of the fascination but for example when he's camped out in Portugal in front of these lines I mean the lines are basically a sort of scorched earth policy by Wellington which means that Massena's left in a countryside that's already been ravaged and burned and the peasants turned out their homes and he has to feed and supply his army which the French army under Napoleon famously did by requisitioning

So there's a lot of work being done at the moment, looking at things like sources kept by Portuguese priests on the impact this had on the local villages, which was not only in terms of food, but also in terms of very bored French soldiers doing sort of whatever they wanted. So yeah, I think that angle needs to be... I think it's a really, really important angle. Maybe we should come to that point now, actually.

For the benefit of listeners, we're going to ask Matilda to be our jury on this. Well, let's ask you. Matilda, you've heard three cases. You have three people to choose. Who are you going to choose if you had to choose one of the three? Or do you think it's all a ridiculous exercise in nonsense? I was going to give you the really annoying historian's answer, which is to say all of these have different balancing factors. Zach is laughing. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that the three you've picked are really good examples. I'll give the judge being like, well done, good choices of selection. Because they're all very different and they all exemplify these different archetypes of hero that the 19th century public imagination loves, the 20th century loves, the 21st century imagination loves. I was doing a bit of reading into...

who is your favourite Marshall? And there's quite a few different communities. There was a GQ article, sort of investigation published into this last year about the obsession with Napoleonic Marshals. And I think in general, I mean, I think it would be fair to say that

in general, for most people listening even perhaps, the marshals are eclipsed in public fascination by Napoleon himself, who is such a massive chameleon figure. He can sort of be, you know, from his own attempts at propaganda during his lifetime, which paint himself as

as various different types of person to all the sort of propaganda against and for him over the years since and the massive sort of commodification of his image into the fact that we now have him appearing in the Minions movie. LAUGHTER

to like the fact you can buy Napoleon perfume. Also, quick shout out, you can see what remains of one of his horses at the National Army Museum. This sort of fascination of him, I think, does dwarf the knowledge of the marshals themselves. But I think they're also an interesting microcosm of the way that people like to relate to this type of period, which is

It's sort of seen as a slightly safer or more sanitized version of war than the First World War, perhaps, arguably. I think culturally, whether I don't, I think historians would argue that this there's no sort of historical basis necessarily for saying this is a nicer war. I'm doing air quotes. I mean, there's been a lot of work actually showing it's maybe the first total war war.

But I think culturally we have a vision of the Napoleonic period that is sort of colourful. It's the age of gallantry, of bravery. This is these amazing, especially masculine, hero archetypes. And I wonder if I could provocatively suggest there is something in the fact that most of the communities who are interested in picking their favourite marshal are men.

I also wonder whether there is a slight... I mean, we're all having quite a lot of fun here. I think we're all also acknowledging the many dark and negative sides of Napoleon's reign and of his marshal's deeds. But I think it also has this aspect, again, culturally, of almost playing something like Top Trumps or Pokemon. I might be ageing myself. But even in the way we were talking about, like,

you know, would Massena have done well against Napoleon or like if I use my Blastoise against your Charizard? If I could just say, by the way, that that,

the ancient Romans were just as guilty as doing this. Plutarch imagines if Caesar had fought Alexander the Great what would have happened. So, Pokemon, Plutarch. I actually wanted to touch on this really seriously because of course what we do on this podcast, what David did in Ukraine the Latest, talk about in very gritty detail about contemporary wars and

And the troubling thing that I had when I was looking at Andre Messina, because, you know, I first came across him in Andrew Roberts' history of Napoleon and the fact that he'd basically broken his own health to win this campaign for Napoleon and Napoleon hadn't acknowledged him. That kind of appealed to me as the underdog, you know. But I'm pretty sure he'd be a war criminal. This is something the Duke of Wellington wrote from the peninsula.

and seems to stand up compared with other contemporary voices. The British people, I'm certain, wouldn't believe the indecent behaviours of the French after their retreat. I have never seen, nor heard, nor read of such behaviour, and I'm convinced their actions have no equal in world history. You will hear several shocking accounts which should be told to the world at large. They killed all the country folk they found.

Every day we found the bodies of women, young and old, who were either stabbed or shot. Since we were near Condexia, they regularly sent patrols to fetch all girls over the age of 10 to the camp to satisfy the soldiery. Every child we met was in tears, mourning the death of a parent. The houses were systematically burnt, they dug up and looted the graves. Two days ago, one of our patrols entered a village where they found 36 corpses, most of whom were in their beds.

That kind of thing, if we were reporting that today, there would be no jolliness about who's the best of Putin's generals in Ukraine, for example. Is there something distasteful about how we talk about this period of history? I think even just to complicate that even further, imagining you as journalists back in that time period, that's also something the British army was guilty of doing.

a lot of British sources talk about French looting, the amount of evidence suggests that the majority of it must be true. But there's also, unfortunately, it's almost a universal set of atrocities, basically, especially after sieges. There are some really famous ones where the British army does similar things. At the moment where the towns are sort of broken and the army enters, there's this sort of

mass of terrible things happening, essentially. And if I can just add to that, Matilda's absolutely right to raise this. Part of my doctorate was on exactly this point. And I've looked into the more pertinent perhaps question, which isn't why does it happen so much as what is actually done about it?

And within the British example, absolutely nothing is done in the wake of the looting of Theodore Rodrigo, looting of Baderhof. There's a little bit done in the wake of San Sebastian, but the British army does not prosecute for those kinds of crimes. It has the facility to do so, but chooses not to.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us. I just want to finish on this note, since we're talking about what the Napoleonic Wars meant for ordinary people. Zach, I believe you've got a new project connected with remembrance of this period. Could you tell us a little bit about that? Sure. So in 2021, I founded an organisation called the Napoleonic and Revolutionary War Graves Charity, and it sought to do three main things. The first was to educate people about the conflict, the kinds of things we've been doing today.

The second was to try and turn the graves of those who made it back, because the majority did survive the Napoleonic Wars, into local sites of memory.

If you want to commemorate the First World War, the Second World War, there are very obvious and well-known memorials that you can go to. We don't have that equivalent for the Napoleonic era. And I've always passionately believed that service matters regardless of which war it took place. But the fundamental reason that we founded the charity was because increasingly we found that veterans were being disinterred and nobody knew what to do next.

This is just a product of urbanization, essentially. And people are building on battlefields and they're finding mass graves. And then the questions start to emerge about what do we do now? And there is no consensus.

If somebody is found on a World War I battlefield, everybody knows that the relevant War Graves Commission, in our case the CWGC, will step in and will ensure that the individual has their marked place in the earth. For veterans of this conflict, that is not the case. And you see situations where bodies are being placed on display.

people are being left in cardboard boxes awaiting further research. And the point of the charity was to get in touch with the local stakeholders and say, how do we work with you so that this individual who died in the service of their country, and we quite rightly can debate the morality of why these wars were fought, but nonetheless, these individuals pay that ultimate sacrifice for doing what they are ordered to do in these conflicts,

And they don't get that dignity of a marked place in the earth. Quite often people will say, well, isn't this sort of terribly woke or kind of, you know, taking modern principles of remembrance and putting them on a different period of history. And in some respects, yes, it is.

But there's plenty where we look back on the past and sort of say, well, that wasn't okay, and there are better ways of approaching this. And fundamentally, I think all of these people expected, if nothing else, a place in the ground. They thought they would rest in peace. And essentially, the Napoleonic Revolutionary War Graves Charity seeks to facilitate that. Brilliant. Zach White, Matilda Gregg, Francis Durnley, thank you very much indeed.

For more reading material on why we're so fascinated by all things Napoleon, Matilda is the co-editor of the upcoming book, Napoleonic Objects and Their Afterlives, Art, Culture and Heritage, 1821 to Present. It's coming out in February and available to pre-order from Bloomsbury now. I'm Roland Oliphant.

Thank you.

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