GREAT COMMANDER AND TYRANT

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33804, 29 March 1975, Page 10

GREAT COMMANDER AND TYRANT

Napoleon. By David Chandler. Weidenfeld and Nicholson. 224 pp. N.Z. price $7.20.

The record has it that a British general of the Second World War once declared, "There have been only three great commanders in history — Alexandi r the Great, Napoleon, and myself." Whatever the merit of this claim, any attempt to make such a comparison, even if it were profitable, is beyond the scope of this review, though there is one commander who may have a slight edge on any historical rivals — the son of a poor but ancient Corsican family who went to a military college at 15, commanded a nation’s army at 25, and crowned himself Emperor of France at 35. Napoleon Bonaparte was pre-eminent in military, civil and international fields for two decades when many other notable men battled, schemed and struggled for power in the European cauldron of war. That he should be the master of them all, that his magnetic genius should dominate men, societies and nations and that his impact should still affect world patterns today after more than a century and a half is evidence of a supreme personality which classifies him as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of the world’s “all-rounders” of authority. Even Napoleon’s eventual defeat and exile, conditioned by his vast march into Russia and his retreat from its winter, and triggered by his combined

antagonists at Waterloo, do little to detract from his image.

It is natural, therefore, that the bibliography on Napoleon is legion, and that books about him should still be produced 200 years after his birth. And it is appropriate that the latest book should have been written by a foremost military authority, David Chandler, under the general editorship of Lord Chalfont. The author has already written much on Napoleon from his vantage point of deputy head of the department of war studies at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst; and Lord Chalfont, a military author in his own right and a former British Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, has long been engaged in editing and contributing to the series “The Great Commanders.”

“Napoleon” is not only a biography. It is an appreciation of all the skills and crafts, the strengths and weaknesses, the vanity and ruthlessness, and the intellectual intelligence built into an amazing man.

As a boy Napoleon was already possessed of great ambition. He was an avid reader and an apt pupil, not untouched by the revolutionary spirit of the times in France, and an opportunist whose politics as well as military successes early brought him the approbation of Robespierre and Salicetti, their patronage, and his promotions. To a large extent he planned his own advancement, and, being a young man

of purpose, never failed to achieve his objective. The accounts of Bonaparte’s successive victories in Italy, Egypt, and Austria make fascinating reading, as do those of the frustrations inflicted upon him by the English fleet off the Nile. How often have similar fleets destroyed the hopes of European militarists.

Mr Chandler unfolds the workings of Napoleon’s remarkable military mind, and emphasises his long-sighted vision in matters political. Napoleon’s eye was always for the main chance. He would sacrifice a victory, move armies from ground to ground and from country to country as expediency dictated in the seeming interest of long-term successes. Strategy and diplomacy were his allies against various combines of European armies.

In French internal politics, Napoleon practised the age-old tactics of working with confederates to seize power and then manoeuvre himself into singlehanded authority. His survival of several assassination attempts, his emergence as Consul of France, and as the “elected” Emperor by national plebiscite, coincided with ruthless elimination of all obstacles in his path at home and with his new and successful campaigns against Russia and Austria, culminating in the battle of Austerlitz in 1805

“Napoleon,” writes Mr Chandler, “is not to be judged solely as a commander, or as a national leader, or even as a man. He was one of those few men whose lives have to be seen as part of history itself, shaping and shaped by the evolution of nations, societies and ideas.”

It was, perhaps, inevitable that the brilliance of Napoleon’s progression should ultimately be dimmed, even though this was effected more by the disasters of his winter campaign against Russia than by enemy armies themselves. True, Leipzig in 1813 was a military defeat and precipitated Napoleon’s abdication, but the atrocious French losses in the previous year’s retreat from “General Winter” increased the odds against him. Even a Napoleon could not survive the loss of nearly 400,000 men in one campaign. The months of his first exile, the rallying of an army on his return and the events leading up to Waterloo are described with a susstained intensity of interest, and Mr Chandler’s merging of military history into an assessment of Napoleon’s personality adds much to what has been written before.

Lord Chalfont, in his introduction, rightly claims that although Napoleon was guilty of insensitivity, bad manners and vindictive cruelty, no-one could deny that he was a military genius and a peerless leader of men. And Mr Chandler quotes Clarendon’s description of Cromwell — “. . - a great, bad man” as thoroughly applicable to Bonaparte. “Here,” writes Mr Chandler, “was no common mortal ... in the years of his prime his abilities in both the military and civil fields were unsurpassed . . . nevertheless his eclipse was thoroughly deserved ... he became a tyrant and a bully, the victim of his own propaganda ... he closed his mind to reality . . .”