Once There Were Titans: Napoleon's Generals and Their Battles, 1800-1815 (review)

Kiley has done a yeoman's job of celebrating generally overlooked officers in Napoleon's armies. His Introduction, however, demands counter-fire, although his misconceptions likely will not matter to his intended popular audience.

In the Introduction, he writes: "Sweeping across Europe . . . the Titans of the French Republic and Empire had led swarming masses of volunteers, conscripts, and sullen regulars that swept the armies of the kings before them . . .." (p. 18). It did not go that way under the Republic. Kiley apparently accepts the myth of Valmy, with fervent volunteers throwing themselves like wild animals on Prussian regulars, and winning. In fact the battle was won by the French royal artillery, still intact with officers loyal to the republic. At the beginning of 1797, after five years of war, France's two largest armies (80, 000 and 79,000), under Jourdan and Moreau, had been driven from Germany by the Austrian Archduke Charles, The French Republic was saved by Bonaparte, marching from Italy on Vienna with fewer than 40,000 men.

Kiley also overestimates the impact of conscription—the levée en masse of 1793 and the 1798 law. The number of men who reached battlefields was not greater than kings could muster. He writes: "Kings . . . vowed not to let the fledgling republic survive"(p. 19). True, they vowed, but never fought together until 1813, when, without conscription, they outnumbered the French and beat Napoleon.

After the Introduction, if the reader can put Napoleon's battles in context, he will not be badly informed. The Prologue recounts the charge of the Polish Guard cavalry at the pass of Somo Sierra. A description of the Grande Armée follows. Then chapters feature heroes of Marengo, Ulm, Maida, Auerstädt, Eylau, Friedland, Essling, Albuera, the crossing of the Berezina, Dresden, the Campaign of France (1814), Quatre Bras, Ligny (1815). The book ends with chapters on Eugène de Beauharnais and Marshal Suchet, and on the side battle for Plancenoit at Waterloo.

Chapter 10, on the crossing of the Berezina River on the retreat from Moscow is excellent. It begins with praise for the disobedience of General Éblé, who had essential bridging tools that Napoleon had ordered abandoned. He was a leader who worked among his engineers in the icy water, and saved the remnants of the Grande Armée. Tragically, he died shortly after at Königsberg.

Kiley emphasizes the role at the Berezina of foreign troops, who are often assumed to have resented fighting a "French war." In addition to the Poles, whose cavalry carried the first infantry, piggyback, across the river, there are contingents from Switzerland, Westphalia, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt. and elsewhere. The Swiss and Westphalians won the most crosses of the Legion of Honor. Besides Éblé, he names three heroes: Oudinot, Victor, and Ameil (p. 199), Ney might have been added but Kiley considers the "bravest of the brave" to be "witless" (p. 222).

Kiley surely intended this tome for readers who would enjoy a dramatic, occasionally fictional account of the feats of some of Napoleon's better subordinates. That is what he has produced, with wonderful descriptive power, and prose that is almost poetic at times. To a specialist in the field, the work is laced with flaws. However, it will be read.