I was looking for a different way to talk about Napoleon, and I said to myself, what better way to talk about Napoleon than about Napoleon, if not through the men and women who made the French minute general great?
Thinking it was a good idea I started looking for some material on his generals and I came across a skimpy ranking of what are his best generals, and I said to myself, why not start there, from this list of names, to tell the story of Napoleon's army seen from behind the scenes?
The generals who followed Napoleon were all exceptional, the “ Grande Armée ", The Napoleonic army, unlike any other European army of the early nineteenth century, was led by uncommon generals, men who had distinguished themselves on the battlefield and who came to the head of the armies by merit and not by right of birth. Put simply, Napoleon would never have entrusted the command of the army to his cousin's nephew, or to the crown prince of Poggibonsi, as did his enemies, at least initially.
In Austerlitz, the Grande Armée is right of its enemies, precisely because, among other things, its generals were skilled strategists who had trained on the battlefield, while, on the other hand, to have the last word on the choices. strategies to be carried out, among others, was Prince Alexander I of Russia, who, if he had studied techniques and strategies well and probably had a theoretical knowledge far superior to that of Napoleon's men, in practice had not never fought, he did not know what it meant to ride in the mud under the enemy's artillery shells and did not know what it meant to see his companion die in his arms, drowned by his own blood that slowly filled his lungs.
Napoleon, it must be said, had a special relationship with his generals, not strictly defined as a relationship of trust but rather of esteem and respect.
Napoleon knows that he cannot trust anyone, he knows perfectly well that his generals serve him faithfully and efficiently only for the return, in economic, political and prestige terms, which they have, and he knows perfectly well that if things go wrong, he could find them all against them, but he also knows that those men are soldiers, he knows they have a code of honor and he knows that as long as he kept his word, they, his generals, would do the same.
In the next seven weeks, therefore, we will start from here, from this dimension of esteem and distrust, of loyalty and opportunism, of charisma and cold decision, to take a closer look at Napoleon's seven best generals.
There are seven and not five, ten, fifteen or twenty, simply for a matter of timing, and of pre-compiled lists, as I anticipated, I will start from a "ranking" that I did not elaborate, which spoke of Napoleon's five best generals , a list to which I wanted to add two more names on my own initiative, which in my opinion deserve to be mentioned.
These generals that I am going to present to you now and that we will deepen in the coming weeks, are the "best" not in absolute terms, also because I think it is impossible to establish who was the best, however, they are the "best" on the basis of a simple statistical question , that is, they are the generals who have achieved what have been the greatest, most unexpected and important victories of the Grand Armée.
To be clear, let's talk about Napoleon's generals who overcame their enemies in Austerliz, Eylau, Jena, Hamburgo, Ulm, Valencia, Zaragoza, Zurich, etc. etc.
The first general to mention is Michel Ney, called the brave, Ney is one of the two generals I added to the list, because he is one of the very few Napoleon's generals to have achieved a significant victory during the retreat from Russia in 1812 While the other generals withdrew due to cold and hunger, Ney, together with his men besieged and conquered Smolensk.
But of Ney, who was defined by his contemporaries as the bravest of the brave, and of whom Napoleon said he was "indispensable" on the battlefield, we'll talk next week.
The second general to mention in this quick opening review, is Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult whom Napoleon called "the best maneuverer in Europe" . According to reports, Soult was instrumental in the Bonapartist victory both in Austerlitz and in Jena, and it seems that just after Austerlitz, he entered the Emperor's favor, even though he had already served as General on that occasion.
The third general we will talk about is Louis Alexandre Berthier, he is one of the very few "sons of art" we meet in the high ranks of Napoleon's army. Berthier was the son of Lieutenant Colonel Jean Baptiste Berthier of the Corps of Surveying Engineers. Luis Alexander it must be said that he was not the only Berthier to become a general of Napoleon, three of his five brothers in fact ascended to the rank of general under Napoleon, and someone could rightly question what we said at the beginning about the meritocratic career. in the Grande Armée, were it not that the Berthier brothers had proven their worth and skills in the field, during the revolution and serving under Lunkor and La Fayette, in particular Louis Alexandre Berthier had been chief of staff of Lunkor and La Fayette , and had fought side by side, shoulder to shoulder, with the young Bonaparte.
Louis Gabriel Suchet, is the other general I put on the list, he was a man totally alien to the military world, he was the son of silk workers and is the most iconic example of a soldier who makes a career in the field, to the point of becoming a general. Suchet was a volunteer in the republican army, and in 1793 he was promoted in the field, to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, by his superior who at that time needed a lieutenant colonel that the 4th battalion had and what was almost a promotion fortuitous, it marked the beginning of the career of a general who would have asserted himself above all in Spain, so to speak Suchet is one of the commanders during the siege of Toulon and during the battle of Valencia. He is a man who will spend his entire life in camps and on the battlefield and for this reason, unfortunately, we have mostly pencil portraits of him by anonymous or unknown authors.
Andrea Massena is an Italic general who served Napoleon especially in Italy, he was noticed by the future emperor above all for his resourcefulness, an element that in a "traditional" army would have penalized him and probably subjected him to numerous punishments for insubordination, but for Napoleon his successes and his loyalty to the Bonapartist cause were sufficient to forgive the initiatives of the Italic hothead. Unfortunately for him, that same resourcefulness that had allowed him to climb the ranks, was also the cause of his downfall, so, after a resounding failure in Portugal in 1810, his military career ended prematurely and he was forced to retire to private life. , at least until 1817, the year of his death.
Jean Lannes like Louis Gabriel Suchet before him, he is an excellent example of a brilliant general who had nothing to do with military life.
Lannes was the son of dyers and began his military career as a volunteer for the French National Guard, and there would be so much, too much, to say about him. Here I will limit myself to mentioning his nicknames, "The Orlando of the Army of Italy "And" The Achilles of the Great Army ".
They are two important, authoritative nicknames that refer to classical literature and the epic of chivalry, and it is no coincidence, but we will talk more about this in the post dedicated to Lannes.
We come to what the history books count as Napoleon Bonaparte's best general, namely Louis Nicolas Davout.
I think it goes without saying that this man was an infallible general, it is said that he never lost a battle, or in any case that he never suffered a too painful defeat, and that where he fought France would have found a victory.
Davout is the general who intervened in Eylau in 1807 when all seemed lost and managed to turn a certain defeat into a sort of draw, which is considered by many to be an incredible success given the disastrous start of the clash.
These are what the history books remember as some of Napoleon Bonaparte's greatest and most important generals, from this first, superficial introduction, we have already had a glimpse of how extraordinary these men were and how, their role in history, unknown. to most people it was actually decisive for the consecration of the French emperor.
Napoleon would probably be nothing without his generals, and as these same generals have taught us, they themselves would have been nothing, without the men who followed them, men who, in most cases, were volunteers, sons of peasants, millers, blacksmiths, dyers, and who had enrolled in the Grande Armée, driven by the dream of freedom and the promise that perhaps, one day, they would become great and powerful, like some of those generals, who certainly did not come from noble families. P>
Men like Davout helped deliver important victories to Napoleon, but at the same time, men like Lannes helped deliver an immense army to Napoleon, with which Lannes, Davout and Napoleon himself could have conquered Europe.
And it is important to underline and remember that the model to which Napoleon's volunteers aspired, the man with whom they identified themselves, was not the emperor who came from a good family anyway, but were men like Lannes and Suchet, in fact ordinary men. who had achieved power only thanks to their own abilities.