Book Review: Military Maxims of Napoleon, ed. Chandler

This small hardback collects together 78 (I think?) maxims, of the man so often described, as indeed he is on the dust jacket blurb of this book, as 'history's greatest military commander'. 

But, as noted by W. E. Cairnes in his introduction to the 1901 edition of this collection 'Napoleon ... frequently violated his own maxims, sometimes with success, sometimes with disastrous results.' Maxim XVI, for example, finds him pointing out that one shouldn't do what he did at Waterloo or Borodino: 'A field of battle ... which he [the enemy] has previously studied and reconnoitred, should be avoided', and 'never attack a position in front which you can gain by turning'.

Borodino, as pictured by Lejeune.

But as Cairnes points out at another point in his intro, Napoleon's military genius was such he could as often achieve victory by burning the rule book as by following it. But it is perhaps sobering to note that where he went wrong he was usually contravening one or more of his own states principles. Napoleon himself also once said, and his own martial career proved him right, that great military leaders usually have a limited shelf-life, in terms of unmitigated success. 

The older Napoleon. Past his use-by date?

The maxims the themself are pithy and intriguing, and nicely presented in this edition (as pictured at the top of this post). Cairnes' turn of the century reflections - he looks at the then recent history of the Boer War through the lense of Boney's ideas - are also very intriguing. Chandler's intro is, one might say (a tad cynically, perhaps?), rather cursory, and possibly just an excuse to get his name on yet another interesting Napoleonic dust-jacket.

Although this is a lot less in-depth, nevertheless, I found it a lot easier to read and generally more satisfying than Jay Luvaas' ostensibly or potentially similar Napoleon On The Art Of War.

Book Review: Napoleon on the Art of War - Jay Luvaas

Boney Was A Warrior [1]... Not A Philosopher!

When I first read this book, I must confess I found it both annoying and disappointing. And as a result I posted a pretty luke-warm review of it on the Amazon UK website (which can be read here, if desired). A minor irritation was the rather stodgy prose, whilst a more serious annoyance arose from the fragmented and sometimes repetitive feel of the texts. It was disappointing because, for all Napoleon's much vaunted expertise on the battlefield, it really didn't come across here like the pithy distillations of military wisdom I had been hoping for.

However, having recently re-read the book, I'm persuaded to revise that earlier judgement. The problems mentioned above remain, albeit perhaps not as acutely as I first thought. But Jay Luvaas' achievement in creating a fairly unified and ordered synthesis, from the voluminous outpourings of a commander who not only excelled on the battlefield, but was also a very prolific correspondent, really is something commendable. Some of the issues that created my initial disappointment have to do with the challenging job Luvaas faced; synthesising and distilling something comprehensive and ordered from the huge inchoate mass of Napoleonic texts.

A letter from Napoleon.

Napoleon dictating on St. Helena.

And by this I don't mean the vast library of books about the man or the era that bears his name, but his own writings; from the multiple volumes of his correspondence, orders, bulletins and other proclamations, to his final attempts at self-mythologising on St Helena. This volcanic outpouring from the charismatic Corsican is one of the many things about him that so impressed Andrew Roberts, author of the fairly recent doorstop of a book, Napoleon The Great. Indeed, one wonders what changes Luvaas might now make to his book, since the recent updating of Napoleon's correspondence took place, compiling a mammoth archive of something like 33,000+ documents. [2]

Anyway, whilst I think Luvaas deserves five Boney Bicornes for effort, the actual result, in terms of readability and information, remains somewhat disappointing (rather like the Somerset de Chair edition of Napoleon's Memoirs that I'm currently slogging through), hence just 3.5 bicornes!

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NOTES:

[1] Long before I knew that this phrase was derived from a sea-shanty, I had encountered, as a child, a character called Boneywasawarriorwayayix, in the Asterix adventure, Asterix in Corsica!

Here's the text of the sea shanty:

Boney Was A Warrior
Boney was a warrior,
Wey, hay, yah
A warrior, a tarrier,
John François

Boney went to school in France.
Wey, hay, yah
He learnt to make the people dance
John François

Boney fought the Rooshians.
The Austrians and Prooshians

He beat the Prooshians squarely.
He beat the British - nearly

Boney went to Moscow,
Lost his army in the snow

Moscow was on fire then.
So  Boney he came home again,

They sent him off to Elbow.
He came back to make another show

We beat him at Trafalgar Bay.
Blew his main topmast away

On the plains of Waterloo
The Iron Duke he put him through

Boney went a-cruis-eye-ing.
Aboard the Billy Ruffian

The sent him off to Saint Helenn
He never never came back again

The sent him into exile.
He died on St Helena's isle

Boney broke his heart and died
On Corsica he wished he'd stayed

Boney was a general,
A rorty, snorty general,

Boney was a warrior,
Wey, hay, yah
A warrior, a tarrier,
John François

... which I found here: http://www.shanty.org.uk/archive_songs/boney.html

[2] To learn more about this colossal project, click here.

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In the course of preparing this post I found this concise but useful webpage:

http://www.clausewitz.com/readings/Bassford/Jomini/JOMINIX.htm#CLAUSEWITZ