First published 2026
Napoleon Bonaparte created the rank of Marshal of the Empire and filled it with twenty-six of his most capable generals. Andrew Roberts, a biographer known for getting inside flawed and driven men, uses these soldiers as a lens to examine Napoleon himself. He traces how Napoleon deliberately set his marshals against one another, stoking competition for titles, wealth, and glory. The result was not a loyal inner circle but a fractious, jealous elite whose rivalries undermined the empire they had built. Roberts follows Napoleon from the chaos of the French Revolution, through the construction of a legal and governmental order that outlasted him, to the catastrophe at Waterloo, where only two of his marshals stood beside him. More than a quarter of the twenty-six died violently. Roberts asks whether Napoleon was a genius or a tyrant and argues the answer is both. The book offers readers a ground-level view of how one of history's most commanding leaders inspired extraordinary valor while sowing the seeds of his own destruction.
Genres: biography, history, european-literature, military-history, 19th-century, historical-drama
Vibes: ambitious, analytical, character-driven, dramatic, thought-provoking
Tropes: internal-conflict, rise-and-fall, rivalry-and-competition, tragic-downfall
Setting: France, Europe
Period: 19th century, Napoleonic Era
704 pages · Hardcover · Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Content warnings: death, violence, war