David C. Chandler

This is a necessary book. The short biographies of Napoleon's twenty-six marshals place biographical material in the hands of the readers in a relatively compact format. The twenty-six contributors could be defined as being in the Chandler school of Napoleoniana, but that's not a bad place to be.
Placing these biographies together does destroy the idea that the Marshalate was a "Band of Brothers, and the theme that several of them had passed their "Best before date" before France needed their maximum effort to keep Napoleon's empire running. All-in-all a useful book for sampling while creating an essay.
The Weidenfield and Nicolson edition that I read has generous margins and large type.… (mehr)