Napoleon's Marshals, Ranked (All Parts)

Sure! Here’s a sanitized version of the provided YouTube transcript, with sensitive or inappropriate content removed or modified for a general audience:

—

“Terror belli…decus pacis.” Terror in war…ornament in peace. The words inscribed on every French Marshal’s baton. In France, the title of Marshal, or Maréchal, goes back at least to the 13th century. It represents the highest possible position of military authority – authority symbolized by a marshal’s baton. The title was abolished during the French Revolution, as incompatible with the egalitarian spirit of the age. But in 1804, Napoleon founded a new empire and restored the ancient rank. That year he picked 18 of France’s best generals and made them ‘Marshals of the Empire’. Eight more were created in the years that followed. The Marshals outranked everyone in the new empire apart from Napoleon’s family, princes, and ministers of state. They came from every background: sons of aristocrats, inn-keepers, professional soldiers, and those who’d learned on the job; old school republicans, and Bonaparte loyalists; the youngest…just half the age of the oldest. And though Marshal was a civil title, not strictly a military rank, the men known to the army as Les Gros Bonnets, ‘the big hats’, were arguably the most extraordinary, diverse, brilliant, and flawed group of military commanders in history. The most favored were showered with titles and wealth. But the price, too, was high: half were wounded, three were killed or died of wounds, two were executed.

This is Epic History TV’s guide to Napoleon’s Marshals. All 26 have been ranked according to our own evaluation of their achievements as Marshals, with expert guidance from retired Lieutenant Colonel Rémy Porte, former chief historian of the French Army. More than 2,000 French generals served in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Many were brilliant leaders. A few probably deserved to be Marshals more than some who were. Any selection can only be difficult and highly subjective, but here’s our pick of twelve of the best:

1. Bertrand, Napoleon’s faithful aide-de-camp, who commanded Fourth Corps at the Battle of Leipzig.
2. Clauzel, a veteran commander of the war in Spain.
3. Desaix, Napoleon’s close friend killed at Marengo aged 31.
4. Prince Eugène, Napoleon’s adopted son, a hero of the Russian retreat.
5. Gérard, one of Napoleon’s best corps commanders by 1814, made a Marshal by King Louis-Philippe in 1830.
6. Gudin, whose infantry division bore the brunt of the fighting at Auerstedt in 1806; died of wounds near Smolensk in 1812.
7. Junot, who first served with Napoleon at Toulon in 1793; probably committed suicide after his fall from favor in 1813.
8. Lasalle, the ‘Hussar General’, among the best light cavalry commanders of the Napoleonic Wars, killed at Wagram aged 34.
9. Maison, who told his division on the morning of Leipzig that they must win that day or all be killed, made Marshal by King Charles the Tenth in 1829.
10. Nansouty, the heavy cavalry commander, who died of wounds and exhaustion, aged 46.
11. Saint-Hilaire, hero of Austerlitz, died of wounds received at Aspern in 1809.
12. Vandamme, of whom Napoleon once said, “If I had to invade Hell, I’d want him commanding the vanguard.”

And now, Napoleon’s 26 marshals, ranked in order of merit.

**26. Marshal Pérignon.** When Napoleon created the first 18 Marshals, four were ‘Honorary Marshals’, recognized for past service to France. Pérignon was one of these. A former officer in the royal army, he’d won fame in the Revolutionary Wars, fighting the Spanish on the Pyrenees front. He later served as ambassador to Spain. After a brief retirement, he was sent to Italy and commanded the French left wing at the disastrous Battle of Novi, where the army was routed by Suvorov’s Russians, and Pérignon was badly wounded and captured. His appointment as Honorary Marshal in 1804 was a political move by Napoleon – a way to win acceptance for his new empire, by emphasizing continuity with the Revolution, by rewarding its military heroes. Pérignon never held active command as a Marshal but served as governor of Parma, and later Naples. His eldest son Pierre was a cavalry officer, killed at Friedland in 1807. Pérignon retired in 1813 but refused to support Napoleon when he returned from exile in 1815, and was stripped of his Marshals’ baton. His rank was later restored by King Louis the Eighteenth.

**25. Marshal Brune.** Brune was another Marshal whose appointment owed much to politics. As a fiery republican and former close ally of Revolutionary leader Georges Danton, his support was politically useful for Napoleon. Brune joined the army during the Terror – the most extreme period of the Revolution. His political connections ensured rapid promotion, and he was sent to help put down a counter-revolutionary revolt in Bordeaux. In 1795, as a 30-year-old brigadier general, he helped Napoleon disperse a royalist mob in Paris, with the famous ‘whiff of grapeshot’. Brune then served with Napoleon in Italy, fighting in several of his famous early victories. He won a reputation as a fierce divisional commander and enthusiastic plunderer of Italian towns and churches. In 1798, he commanded the French occupation of Switzerland, while extorting 200,000 francs from the wealthy Swiss communes, the equivalent of several million dollars today. It was said that Brune’s personal carriage was so laden with gold when it left Switzerland that it immediately broke down. The next year he won his most important victory while commanding French forces in Holland, defeating an Anglo-Russian army at the Battle of Castricum, and saving France from invasion. But a short, calamitous spell commanding the Army of Italy convinced Napoleon that Brune was not fit for high command. Instead, he sent him to be ambassador to the Ottoman Empire – where in 1804 he learned that he’d been made a Marshal. But Brune’s lack of delicacy, combined with a towering sense of self-importance, did not make him a successful diplomat. He was recalled to France, but as Governor of the Hanseatic Ports, blundered again, drafting a treaty with Sweden that failed to make any mention of the French Emperor. Whether a deliberate insult or act of incompetence, Napoleon was furious, and Brune was sacked. Brune spent the next seven years at his country estate. He bitterly opposed the return of the Bourbon monarchy in 1814 and rallied to Napoleon when he returned from exile the next year. But in the tumult following Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, Brune was cornered by a royalist mob in Avignon, murdered, and tossed into the River Rhône.

**24. Marshal Sérurier.** Sérurier was another of the four Honorary Marshals, whom Napoleon wished to recognize for past service. In contrast to Brune, Sérurier was a professional soldier of the old school, a veteran of the Seven Years’ War, and a stern disciplinarian. This background was not necessarily an asset during the French Revolution, when any officer who’d served in the royal army was viewed with suspicion. But Colonel Sérurier’s training and diligence were soon recognized as assets to the new French republic. By 1795 he was a general serving with Napoleon in Italy, where his stand against corruption and looting won him the nickname ‘the Virgin of Italy’. Sérurier was a reliable if unspectacular commander, who won an important victory at Mondovi, at a crucial moment in Napoleon’s rise to fame. The following year, he accepted the Austrian surrender at the end of the long siege of Mantua. Two years later, fighting under General Moreau’s command, Sérurier and his division were cut off by the Russians and forced to surrender. Released on parole, he was back in Paris in time to support Napoleon’s coup d’état of 18 Brumaire. Sérurier then retired from active command, but Napoleon, remembering his past service, made him an Honorary Marshal and Governor of Les Invalides, the retirement home and hospital for old soldiers. There, shortly before the fall of Paris in 1814, Sérurier oversaw the burning of more than a thousand captured flags and standards, to prevent them falling into Allied hands.

**23. Marshal Kellermann.** Kellermann was another Honorary Marshal, the oldest at 68, and famed throughout France as the ‘Saviour of the Revolution’. A career soldier from a middle-class background, he’d seen distinguished service as a cavalry officer in the Seven Years War. At the beginning of the Revolutionary Wars, he was a general commanding a frontier army at the moment of greatest crisis – when it seemed foreign invasion was about to stamp out the Revolution and restore the ancien régime. But at Valmy, in September 1792, Kellermann’s Army of the Centre stood its ground, and with a ferocious artillery barrage, persuaded the Prussian army to withdraw. Valmy was not a stunning tactical victory, but it was a turning point of history, that saved the infant French republic. When the Revolution took a more radical turn, even a war hero like Kellermann became suspected of royalist links and spent a year in prison under the threat of the guillotine. Acquitted and restored to command, he was poised to launch a new offensive in Italy when he was sidelined, first by General Schérer, then in favor of a rising new talent, General Bonaparte. Kellermann later specialized in army administration and training, a role he continued to perform under Napoleon, whilst also entering politics and serving as president of the Senate. His son, General François Étienne Kellermann, followed in his father’s footsteps, serving as one of Napoleon’s best cavalry commanders.

**22. Marshal Grouchy.** When Napoleon returned from his first exile in 1815, he created one last Marshal for the upcoming campaign – Emmanuel de Grouchy. Although now infamous for failing to march to Napoleon’s aid during the Battle of Waterloo, up to that moment, Grouchy had had a long and distinguished military career. An aristocrat who embraced the French Revolution, Grouchy served with distinction throughout the Revolutionary Wars, fighting counter-revolutionaries in the Vendée, and serving in Italy, where he was wounded and captured at the Battle of Novi. Under the Empire, Grouchy excelled as commander of a dragoon division in Marshal Murat’s Cavalry Reserve. He was praised by the Emperor for his part in the great French charge at Eylau, played an important role buying time for Napoleon at Friedland, and expertly covered the French right wing at Wagram. For the invasion of Russia, he commanded Third Cavalry Corps and was wounded at Borodino. He survived the horrors of the retreat, but was left so exhausted it took him several months to recover. He returned for Napoleon’s 1814 campaign in France and was wounded twice more. Grouchy was made a Marshal at the start of the Hundred Days campaign and commanded Napoleon’s right wing at Ligny. After the battle was won, he was ordered to pursue the retreating Prussians, to prevent them joining up with Wellington’s Anglo-Allied army. Two days later, as the Battle of Waterloo raged 10 miles to the west, Grouchy made the fateful decision to follow his written orders, rather than march to join Napoleon – and has been widely blamed for the French Emperor’s defeat ever since. Grouchy’s vilification is not wholly fair, not least because Napoleon rarely encouraged his Marshals to show initiative and often flew into rages if they deviated from his written orders. Nor should one blunder obscure the distinguished record of one of the Grande Armée’s best cavalry generals. Grouchy fled to America after Napoleon’s defeat to escape royalist reprisals, but was pardoned and returned to France in 1820.

**21. Marshal Moncey.** Moncey ran away from home to join the army at the age of 15. After 20 years of uneventful service, he’d risen no higher than the rank of Captain. But then came the French Revolution. Most French officers were aristocrats, who, if they did not actively oppose the Revolution, were nevertheless regarded as politically suspect. The result was that three-quarters of them either fled the country or were dismissed from the army. Moncey – a middle-class officer with no strong political views – reaped the benefit, with meteoric promotion. By 1794, General Moncey was leading the Army of the Western Pyrenees to victory over the Spanish, on what was, admittedly, a relative backwater of the Revolutionary Wars. In 1797 he was dismissed for alleged royalist sympathies, but reinstated in time to support Napoleon’s coup of 18 Brumaire. By his own admission, Moncey was a sensitive officer – honest, honorable, but lacking a ruthless streak or iron will to succeed. Napoleon was aware of his limitations as a general but made him a Marshal in 1804, as part of his emphasis on continuity between the republic and his new empire. Moncey was appointed inspector-general of the gendarmerie – France’s militarized police force – and spent most of the rest of his career commanding reserve troops. He only held one field command again – in light of his victorious record against the Spanish, he was given command of a corps for the 1808 invasion of Spain, operating in the south of the country with mixed success. In 1809 he was replaced by General Junot and returned to France. Moncey’s finest hour came in the dying days of the empire, leading the National Guard of Paris in a courageous but doomed defense of the French capital. In 1815 the restored King of France, Louis the Eighteenth, ordered Marshal Moncey to preside at the trial of Marshal Ney, for treason. Moncey regarded Ney as a hero for having saved so many French lives in Russia and refused, declaring “If I am not allowed to save my country, nor my own life, then at least I will save my honor.” After a short spell in prison, Moncey was allowed to resume his military career, becoming governor of Les Invalides, in which role he presided over the repatriation of Napoleon’s remains from Saint Helena in 1840. At the end of the ceremony, the 86-year-old Marshal Moncey announced: “And now, let us go home to die.”

**20. Marshal Poniatowski.** Prince Józef Poniatowski was the King of Poland’s nephew, but his military career began as a cavalry officer in the Austrian army, even serving as aide-de-camp to Emperor Josef the Second himself. In 1789 he transferred to the Polish army with the rank of major-general, but could not save Poland from partition by its rapacious neighbors – Russia, Prussia, and Austria. By 1795 Poland had vanished from the map, swallowed up by its rivals. After Napoleon’s defeat of Prussia in 1806, Poniatowski decided loyal service to the French Emperor was the best way to win Poland’s restoration, although he never fully trusted Napoleon’s aims. Sombre, serious, and brave, Poniatowski proved an able commander of Duchy of Warsaw forces in Napoleon’s service. When war broke out with Austria in 1809, while Napoleon advanced on Vienna, Poniatowski waged a brilliant, supporting campaign against a larger Austrian army in Galicia. For the invasion of Russia, he commanded the Polish Fifth Corps. He and his troops distinguished themselves first at Smolensk and again at Borodino, leading the attack on the right wing. Poniatowski and his corps performed heroically throughout the campaign, motivated in part by their old animosity towards Russia. But by the end of the retreat, Fifth Corps had been virtually destroyed. Poniatowski remained loyal to Napoleon, even though the disaster in Russia paved the way for the Russian re-occupation of Poland. He rejoined Napoleon in Germany in 1813 and was given command of the Polish Eighth Corps. On the eve of the Battle of Leipzig, he was made a Marshal by Napoleon, in recognition of his service, and to inspire his Polish troops. Poniatowski was the only non-Frenchman to receive this honor. He and his troops fought with their usual tenacity and skill at Leipzig, holding key villages on the southern front against the Austrian and Prussian onslaught. At the end of the battle, Poniatowski commanded part of the rearguard. But their only escape route, a bridge over the Elster River, was blown up too soon. Badly wounded, Poniatowski tried to escape by riding his horse across the river. But he was swept from his saddle and drowned. He had been a Marshal for just four days. In the short term, Poniatowski’s loyalty to France achieved nothing, as, following Napoleon’s defeat, Russia occupied Poland for the next century. But Poniatowski’s legend lived on: a model of Polish patriotism that inspired future generations.

**19. Marshal Jourdan.** As a young French private, Jourdan saw combat in Georgia during the American Revolutionary War. But he then caught a fever that led to his discharge and plagued him for the rest of his life. When the French Revolution began, he was elected captain of his local National Guard unit, fought at the battles of Jemappes and Hondschoote, and was rapidly promoted to general. In 1794 he made his name defeating Coalition forces at the Battle of Fleurus. This was a crucial victory of the Revolutionary War, which handed France control of Belgium for 20 years. It was also notable for the French army’s use of balloon reconnaissance – the first effective use of an aircraft in military history. Jourdan became a prominent politician under the Directory, lending his name to a law that formalized France’s policy of mass conscription. As a committed republican, Jourdan refused to support Napoleon’s coup of 18 Brumaire, but his fame as ‘the victor of Fleurus’ was enough to ensure he became a Marshal in 1804. Jourdan was on good terms with Napoleon’s elder brother Joseph. When Joseph became King of Spain in 1808, Jourdan went with him as his military advisor. But the situation in Spain would prove beyond Jourdan’s military skills to solve. He faced stubborn resistance from the Spanish and Portuguese, supported by the British – and an equally stubborn refusal to cooperate from other French Marshals in Spain – theoretically under Jourdan’s command, but who repeatedly ignored his orders and openly questioned his competence. Marshal Soult in Andalucia was a prime offender, while Marshal Victor’s insubordination at the Battle of Talavera contributed directly to the French defeat. Struck by another bout of ill health, Jourdan went home to recover. Two years later he returned to Spain,