Or Xenophon

That is straight fact!

I believe there was a Marshal Massena. Some time before, during a recreational bird-hunting shooting, Napoleon fired his shotgun and one of the pellets took out Massena's eye. Massena, however, did not complain about this mishap, demonstrating admirable self-control and consciousness of his military career prospects. It must have paid off because later on down the road, Napoleon eventually promoted capable General Massena to Marshal. According to history, Marshal Massena remained a capable military leader and during his time as general and marshal became a wealthy man. At a later point Marshal Massena contemplated retirement to a life of ease, comfort, and luxury. Not a bad ambition after so many wars. Napoleon, however, had other plans for Marshal Massena. Despite Massena's reluctance, Napoleon pressured Marshal Massena into taking over command of all French army forces in Spain. Earlier French generals had failed to bring the Spanish to heel. Napoleon himself had to take personal command in Spain and achieved a shaky victory in Spain but the populace and defeated Spanish Army survivors began forming guerilla and partisan bands which harried the French throughout Spain. Napoleon, however, needed to return to France as his enemies were organizing another hostile coalition against him. Napoleon placed Marshal Massena in charge of Spain. Marshal Massena must have known the quagmire Napoleon was throwing him into. In modern terms, Spain had fast become France's Vietnam and Afghanistan, bogged down in a huge country fruitlessly trying to control it amidst an aroused Spanish population striking at the French everywhere and disappearing as quickly. Worse, the Spaniards were inflicting atrocities upon French soldiery which the French reciprocated, turning the conflict ever more savage and interminable. Understandably, Marshal Massena preferred retirement but he could not escape Napoleon's authority. Long story short. Marshal Massena takes up command in Spain and finds himself no more successful than his predecessors before Napoleon. Eventually Massena does get his wish to retire under conditions of ill health, but it is not a glorious retirement as he had hoped for before his ill-fated Spanish posting.

Or lannes

Or both or all of them lol

Marshall lannes also needs mentioned ,he was killed at the battle of aspern esling on1809.

​@@jeffyoung60everything you said there is true and good I'm just wondering why you said all that to his ordinal comment? Massena was great but by the time he was in Spain he wasn't the same him in Italy though was truly great

Another good one is his ADC asked him why he never seemed afraid and he said " i don't have the time"

And Lannes in the first day of the battle

@@Flo-pl5mg Agree :)

Punks, all of them . They did nothing, while he fought 100 battles for France.

Earned it well before, although he could be a bit reckless. Napoleon said Ney was only good for leading 10,000 men into battle so I find it really confusing why he was put in charge for the hundred days.

And he was German not French.

@@tanksouth "Je suis Français et je resterai Français!" - Michel Ney. He was French to the core, far more French than Napoleon himself.

​@@tigerwoods373A lot of Napoleon's appointments for the 100 days were head scratchers at best.

​@@tanksouth french french french and french

The greatest example of courage and honor, which is difficult to imagine in our nowadays world...

Why repeat Napoleonic wars twice

@@LemonHead-sq5ws same because idk

Me too!

Completely agree. I read the story about Marshal Ney when I was a teenager. I was impressed and overwhelmed... Many times in my life in difficult circumstances I remembered the life and fate of this extraordinary man as a true example of courage, honor and heroism. And at the same time - a sad confirmation of the staggering injustice that exists in our world.

Hey survived every mission thought. He only died to execution.

Purchase Moscow 1812. Goes into detail if the campaign especially the retreat!

To survive all of them required extreme luck or wit or combination of both.

Eh. Davout was more reliable

You forgot Lannes, Davout and Suchet

There’s a thing called loyalty, whether it’s to a country, a cause or an individual, values trump politics every time.

Not the greatest tactician but a man of undoubted courage

Regrettably, this is a wishful thinking. People are always willing to believe in the victory of good over evil, and in the victory over the death. Those words are written by one historian in the biography of Marshal Ney. You need to read his biography to understand, why Marshal Ney certainly did not escape. Because he was the great man, to whom his honor had the highest value, much higher than his own life.

German blood, French soul ❤

Casimir Pulaski 🇵🇱🇺🇸

Emiliano Zapata🇲🇽

​@@markmierzejewski9534 Can you tell me something about him

​@@NarcisoGonzalez1 Can you say me something about him

Milosevic? Seriously? He is more like fly shit in comparison to the others

100% agree. The trial and execution of Marshal Ney actually was a political assassination and the biggest injustice ever committed in the history of France.

I strongly disagree with your statement that Marshal Ney was a mediocre leader. Such opinion is pierced by the blind admirers of Napoleon, who unfairly blamed Ney for his own blunders. The true reason is that Napoleon could not forgive Marshal Ney for his role in Fontainebleau in April 1814 forcing the Emperor to abdicate. In reality the French defeat in Waterloo was a complete fault of Napoleon himself, not to mention the disastrous Russian Campaign. I have read numerous historical sources - thousands of pages in three languages (English, French and Russian), and sincerely suggest you to read at least one of the most detailed and reliable source - the Memoirs of French general and historian Philippe-Paul de Ségur, who personally participated in this disastrous Russian Campaign - "Histoire de Napoléon et de la Grande Armée pendant l'année 1812". It would help better understand the deeds and merits of Marshal Ney. France feels pangs of conscience for the most shameful sentence in history when France condemned to execution its greatest military leader of all times. That is why the French often seek to undermine the merits of Marshal Ney.

I appreciate the detailed response. I have great admiration for Ney. I will read the book that you listed. I made a photocopy of Military Studies by Marshal Ney when I was in college. It was thought that Jomini was behind that book. P.S. The execution of Ney was a travesty. Moncey was a good man for refusing to condemn him.

@@pauldesjardins8166 Merci beaucoup!❤ However, I have a slightly different opinion about Marshal Adrien de Moncey (and his famous letter to King Louis XVIII). His first priority was his own honor and reputation - but not the fate of his doomed comrade in arms. Marshal Moncey, appointed to preside over the court-martial, had every opportunity to acquit Marshal Ney and convince his fellow judges, or at least sentence Ney to exile. However, Marshal Moncey did not dare to do this, taking care of his own fate. Marshal Pierre Augereau, appointed as a judge at this court-martial, who died shortly in 1816, said the heartbreaking truth before his death: "We were despicable cowards! We had every opportunity to acquit Ney or at least sentence him to exile, but we dared not! I cannot forgive myself for that and I leave this world with a guilty conscience."

@@Marguerite-tv4tq You sound like a historian on this subject alone. I have read books on this issue but have not come across anyone with your knowledge. Your breadth is amazing. Are you related to Ney? I have read Chandler's "Campaigns of Napoleon," and he is someone I would say is the apogee of expertise on the subject.

​​​​@@pauldesjardins8166 I‘m pleased with your comment 😊 I‘m not related to Marshal Ney, I just have some knowledge of history, in particular the period of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. I understand your point of view, because I‘ve also read „Campaigns of Napoleon“ of David Chandler, who is known as one of Ney’s critics. Another such critic is Eric Perren in his book "The Bravest of the Brave“, which literally made me furious with its undue bias. However, other authors present the completely different picture: Raymond Horricks "Marshal Ney. The Romance and the Real“; Ronald Frederick Delderfield "The March of the Twenty-Six / Napoleon's Marshals“ and "Retreat from Moscow“, also a huge number of Russian historians (some of books are written in the old pre-revolutionary Russian alphabet, so it‘s not very easy to read), but all of them portraying Marshal Ney as the hero, the honorable man and brilliant tactician, despite of the fact that he was the enemy, the commander of the invaders army, his courage and devotion was highly respected even by the enemies. The undeniable fact that Ney achieved everything himself: he wasn't a protégé of Emperor unlike the Napoleon‘s close friends Marshal Lannes and Marshal Marmont; he never sought wealth or titles and never looted the conquered lands - unlike Marshal Soult, who was famous for his looting; and had no cruelty unlike Marshal Murat. I‘ve also read the memoirs of people who personally knew Ney for many years (additionally to my previously mentioned Philippe-Paul de Ségur): Ney‘s aide-de-camp Octave Levavasseur ; Napoleon‘s minister of Posts general Antoine de Lavalette (who was sentenced to death by a firing squad after the Hundred Days, imprisoned in the notorious Conciergerie prison in the adjacent cell to Ney, but managed to miraculously escape on the eve of his execution), and also the memoirs of Ney‘s mistress Maria Elselina Versfelt, a pseudonym Ida Saint-Elme 😊 The famous writer Henri Beyle, known under his pseudonym Stendhal, who in his youth served in La Grande Armée and participated in the 1812 Russian Campaign, also wrote about Marshal Ney. Had he ever done mistakes in the battlefield? Yes, of course, he did. He was just a man, not the God. But this does not give us the right to criticize one of the greatest man and military commander ever. Ernest Hemingway has said the perfect quote: "Critics are men who watch a battle from a high place, then come down and shoot the survivors.“ France behaved disgracefully, condemned to death its greatest countryman, and obviously tries to forget this deplorable fact. Foreign tourists visiting the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris wonder that there is no sign at all to the place of the eternal rest of Marshal Ney, as if he was just one of many thousands of ordinary people. When there is no justification for the past injustice, French are willing just to forget this fact of their history.

Completely agree! ❤

The people of Saarland chose to be Germans. Should we have kept their land against their will?

Jusqu'en 1814 la Sarre était française et ce depuis 150 ans (Louis XIV). Le Congrès de Vienne n'a pas demandé aux Sarrois ce qu'ils voulaient, et certainement pas d'être annexés non pas à l'Allemagne qui n'existait pas mais à la Prusse, état protestant du nord sans aucun lien avec la Sarre à cette époque. Cette annexion non démocratique, correspondait à une politique d'expansion territoriale nationaliste de la Prusse vers l'ouest. Avec la rive gauche du Rhin annexée en 1814 aussi (Palatinat, Pfalz )son projet d'expansion était clair. Avec l'ouverture des mines sarroises au 19° siècle, la Sarre a été submergée d'une population venant de Prusse, ce qui explique qu'après une politique de germanisation et nazification, les deux référendums de 1935 et 1955 aient donné une majorité pour rester allemands.

mikhail, the fox of the north.

I thought the same 😂

He was excellent!