Book Review: The Iron Marshal, Gallagher

Having just finished this excellent account of the life of Louis Davout, I feel I have to remark on how surprisingly good so much Napoleonic history is. I'm constantly reading in this vast subject, and frequently encountering an author who's new to me. And, by and large, most of what I read is very good.

John G. Gallagher is such an author, i.e. new to me, and his biography of Louis-Nicolas Davout, The Iron Marshal, is better than merely very good, it is superb. We get the whole story, from his birth into a thoroughly military family of the lesser nobility, through the upheavals of the Revolution, and on into the glory years of the Napoleonic era, finally passing to the restoration of the Bourbons and, not long after that, Davout's decline and death.

Louis-Nicolas Davout, Prince Eckmuhl, Duc d'Auerstedt.

Gallagher perfectly balances all the elements, writing in an easy going yet authoratative manner, with a turn of pace brisk enough to keep the read exciting, and thorough enough to keep it fascinating. Of course the major interest for readers like myself are Davout's great successes, chief of which is Auerstedt. But all his campaigns and battles are adroitly covered. 

After the Russian debacle Napoleon perhaps fails to employ Davout, arguably his most capable lieutenant, to best advantage. Firstly leaving him stranded in Hamburg as the Allies sweep westward, prior to his first abdication. And then choosing to employ him in Paris as Minister of War, during the 100 Days Campaign, when he might've been better employed in the field, and thus perhaps hastening his second and final abdication?.

Vanquished Prussians retreat after Jena-Auerstedt (R. Knotel).

If not universally loved, then certainly greatly and widely respected, Davout emerges as a capable and judicious leader. Not as colourful or ambitious as your Murats or Bernadottes, perhaps, but instead a more devoted and more principled man, less self-interested and more duty-bound, whose belief in discipline and organisation meant troops under his care were second only to the Guard. 

Gallagher's book has proven to be the perfect way for me to learn more about one of Napoleon's most capable commanders. Highly recommended.

Davout in the Kremlin, Moscow, 1812 (V. Vereshchagin).

Book Review: Clisson & Eugenie - Napoleon Bonaparte

An interesting little historical curio. Gallic Books have done all of us Napoleonic buffs a great service in making this foray into the literary milieu, by a very young Napoleon Bonaparte, easily available. It's also very attractively presented, and supplemented by critical and historical commentary.

Reading this product of the young Napoleon's imagination is both fascinating and informative, in all manner of ways. But, as others have already noted elsewhere (in the newspaper reviews, and reader reviews at Amazon, etc.), the Clisson and Eugénie story itself is a rather slight affair, of about only 18 or so pages, and was never even actually finished by Napoleon. 

This slim paperback edition attempts to 'complete' the story, using several fragments of Bonaparte's writings and, as already mentioned, is bulked out by critical commentary and other notes.

The younger Désirée Clary (or Bernardine Eugénie Désirée Clary, to give her name in full), who Napoleon fell in love with, and was even engaged to, and who gives her name to the female lover in Napoleon's story.

Clisson and Eugénie's main themes are love and war, themes that would remain central in Napoleon's real historical life. But, rather sadly perhaps, Bonaparte's treatment of these ever-fascinating themes in a literary context does not achieve, or even come close to in my estimation, great literature. Still, the story does give an intriguing view into the mind of this amazing man.

It's clearly draws on aspects of his real life: the central character, Clisson (a name taken from a childhood colleague) is a military man, and yet also a yearning romantic, and clearly stands for Napoleon. The story, such as it is, concerns his struggle between choosing to love Eugenie, and his mission to be a warrior. 

It's intriguing that in his real life he would, by marrying Marie-Louise for example, do as his character in this story does, and prioritise the 'destiny' of his career over personal love. Is this life imitating art? Certainly Napoleon viewed himself like a classical hero, a fact borne out in both this book and his actual career.

Whilst the feel of the story is quite pseudo-classical at times, in the sense of aspiring to certain heroic ideals, much of it is also, both stylistically and thematically, quite mundane. One of the prosaic facets is the way in which Napoleon takes names such as Eugénie and Clisson from his real life experience.

In his story Napoleon grants himself a period of pastoral idyll with his beloved. This rather expands upon the barer and more mundane truth of the frustrated or compromised romance he actually had with one Desirée Eugénie Clary. 

She was his sister-in-law, via the marriage of her sister, Marie Julie Clary, to Napoleon's elder brother, Joseph. Napoleon was actually engaged to her for a while, only breaking off the engagement to marry Joséphine de Beauharnais. Fortune certainly appeared to favour the Clary sisters at this time! Ultimately fickle fate favoured Desirée most of all, as she wound up Queen of Sweden, starting a dynasty that survives to the present.

Queen Desideria, or the lady formerly known as Désirée Clary, who did rather well for herself by marrying Charles XIV John of Sweden, or the man formerly known as Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte. 

As Andrew Roberts continually points out in his recent book Napoleon the Great, Bonaparte certainly was a man of letters, at least in one respect; his correspondence was volcanically prodigious. But despite several stabs at literary genres, including this effort and an even earlier entry for an essay competition, he never really became what's classically meant by the term 'man of letters'.

If I were scoring this purely for historical interest, or even quality of presentation, I might well give it five bicornes. On the other hand, if I were scoring it for literary interest, merit, or enjoyment, then I would only give it two. So, by way of compromise and balance, I'll settle for three: it's okay! 

The way the text has been editorially 'completed' is quite intriguing; using a process akin to Christopher Tolkien's, as when he syncretised a superb completion of his father's tale about Hurin (and as he has done for numerous other unfinished works by his illustrious forbear, including The Silmarillion). But the core text is less interesting in and of itself, any value or fascination lying with the fact of who the author was, and what it therefore reflects about his mind and ideas, etc.

Napoleon dictating to Las Cases on St. Helena: he was always a keen dictater! And was always better at (never happier, perhaps?) dictating to others.

Some have said that Napoleon's greatest work of fiction (or works of fiction, as there are several post-Waterloo writings attributed to him, transmitted to posterity via the hands of other writers [2]) are his St. Helena memoirs. Certainly they make better and more substantial reading than this slight effort.

Anyway, whenever I would come across references to Clisson & Eugenie in other books, as one occasionally does, I always thought to myself, 'I must read that!' So I'm glad Gallic Books have made it easy to get hold of. But as to the text itself, compared with Napoleon's other achievements, or at least the history that he helped write via his actions, it's pretty disappointing. I'd say this is one for the most desicated of Napoleonic buffs only!

----------

NOTES:

[1] Bernadotte's life is amazing: he travelled a long and winding road, from private in the French royal army, via Marshal of France under Napoleon, to King of Sweden. Indeed, the House of Bernadotte still reigns in Sweden!

[2] These works include memoirs by several close to Napoleon in his last years on St. Helena, including both Bourienne and Las Cases. The former's rendering of his master's memoirs can be read for free online, at Project Gutenberg:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3567/3567-h/3567-h.htm

There's also a useful and (I think) quite attractive paperback - country cousin to a de-luxe fine book edition - in which 'editor Somerset De Chair organized Napoleon's random dictated memoirs into an historically useful sequence' (that quote comes from an AbeBooks listing). I have that on my 'to read ASAP' shelf, and will doubtless post a review here when I do finally get round to reading it!

Book Review - Napoleon in Egypt: Paul Strathern

A gripping and exciting read.

In a rare instance of books living up to dust-jacket hype, Paul Strathern's book is indeed 'remarkably rich and eminently readable.' (This is from my edition, which is a Bantam hardback, as pictured above.) Several other reviewers have already covered a number of key points of interest in this excellent book, so I'll just mention a few things that struck me as particularly intriguing. For one thing, considered in conjunction with his Italian exploits, undertaken just prior to this Egyptian adventure, these episodes of Napoleon's early life might be taken as a premonitory microcosm of his larger career, a fact Strathern himself reflects upon near the books close.

Having taken on the Mamelukes and put them to flight, bringing Egypt more or less to heel, Napoleon had to deal with the aggravated landlords; Egypt was part of the Ottoman Empire at this point. The 'Turks', as they were then known, had been French allies, but they now joined with England, and even their own traditional enemy Russia, to oust the Republican infidels. The consequent French expedition to Syria, to meet this threat, has interesting parallels with that to Russia, inasmuch as Napoleon's and Berthier's much vaunted organisational skills don't seem at their peak. Just as Napoleon's normal modus operandi unravelled in Russia, so in Syria he failed to see every eventuality. This last fact stands in contrast with the myth of Napoleon's omniscience [1], a facet of Napoleon's genius much trumpeted by many writers, including Strathern himself (as on p 19: 'he learned to consider all the options ...', etc.).

Another image from the Fitzwilliam Museum Napoleonic prints

exhibition, currently on display in Cambridge. This one showing

Bonaparte in Egypt. Apologies for the poor quality of my photo!

However, with an ominous foreboding of what would later happen in Russia, Napoleons's troops, and even more so his horses, were not adequately prepared for conditions in Syria. In what Strathern calls 'a classic military mix up' French forces were finally issued with lightweight clothing, suitable to their initial theatre of operations, just as they embarked on a new campaign, during a change of season and under very different conditions: having sweated it out in the Egyptian delta wearing heavy European cloth, they were destined to endure the cold and wet conditions of winter along the eastern Mediterranean seaboard clad in lightweight summer fabrics!

The parallels with Russia extend beyond mere lack of preparedness in the clothing department, in that the crossing of the Sinai desert, closely followed by the siege of El Arish, found the French running out of supplies. As in Russia, living off the land frequently simply wasn't viable. One anecdote which illustrates this in a way both amusing and horrifying, whilst sounding uncannily like countless 1812 stories, is the mention of a major who, on awaking, discovers his troops have eaten his horse during the night! Everyone was suffering, again just as in Russia, but particularly the luckless equine contingent, whose reward for being long-suffering undernourished beasts of burden would often be to end up as dinner themselves.

The current UK edition looks like this.

Having noted all this, overall the expedition had been going reasonably well, the one major exception being Nelson's resounding defeat of the French fleet at the Battle Of The Nile (the one aspect of the campaign English readers are likely to be most familiar with). Despite this, Egypt had been successfully occupied and largely pacified, with Desaix's campaign into Upper Egypt, a model of success, forming the fascinating core of several chapters mid-way though this superb book. Napoleon's foes were regularly and soundly beaten, a serious rebellion in Cairo was successfully contained and put down. Certainly the clash of two very different cultures, namely Enlightenment-influenced post-revolutionary France, and the Mameluke ruled primitive conservatism of Islamic Egypt, looked very tricky to resolve. This mismatch remained at all times, barely below the surface, threatening to undo anything the French might achieve very rapidly, as ultimately proved to be the case. Had the French held on to this part of their empire longer, who knows what the global geopolitical outcomes might have been?

One of the many areas Strathern does an admirable job of covering, an area one might expect the more military buff type writer to perhaps gloss over, was the role of the 'savants'. Napoleon was inordinately proud to have been elected a member of the Institute of France. So much so that this part of his official title preceded his military rank during this period. Not only is this interesting in itself but, via a passing reference to how Napoleon was modelling his exploits on those of one of his heroes, Alexander The Great, we also learn that Ancient Greek 'natural philosophy' was closer to modern science in some respects than is often made out. A fascinating example is the savants collecting flora and fauna as they move through territories that are being occupied, sending samples back (to Cairo in this instance), much as Alexander had done in sending back specimens to Aristotle. Fascinating!

Gillray mocks the French savants in Egypt.

Strathern occasionally speculates on aspects of Napoleon's character, sometimes in what sounds like semi-Freudian pop-psychology terms, but fortunately he doesn't go in for too much of this, and what little there is is couched in purely speculative and gently understated terms. Of all such instances, the most striking is when he refers to Boney's annoyance and frustration during the slow-moving attrition of the Syrian campaign, noting that the setbacks he faced didn't undermine his sense of destiny, which, in Strathern's words, 'was his substitute for self knowledge.' 

The massacres perpetrated at Jaffa are horrifying to read about, and went on for about a week, starting with the drunken bloodbath after the initial breach and only ending with three days of systematic butchery, as the remnants of the garrison (who'd holed up in the citadel, and then surrendered to Napoleon's aides, Beauharnais and Crosier) were put to death. In typical dictator fashion Napoleon manages to justify his actions to himself, but many of his compatriots are all too aware that this could not be whitewashed. At the same time the bubonic plague was striking and, in marked contrast to his actions in ordering the massacre, Boney visited his sick troops: 'Is it mere accident that this hazardous and selfless act should have come just a day after he had been responsible for the most cold-blooded atrocity he would ever commit?' [2]

This was a gripping, exciting read. Now that I'm finished I've got a need for more!

Gillray received detailed instructions from his Tory paymasters

as to the composition and content of this incredible image.

----------

Notes:

[1] I don't mean to say in using the term myth that these ideas are totally unfounded, merely that in celebrating heroic charisma they are sometimes overstated.

[2] Strathern comments on what he regards as Napoleon's 'erroneous belief in willpower and ... overweening self-belief', hinting that Napoleon felt himself, as a man of destiny, safe from the contagion of plague. True or not, Bonaparte was both brave and foolhardy to take such a risk.