Soult: Napoleon's Maligned Marshall

by Peter Hayman

Not only was Marshal Soult an outstanding military commander and prime architect of Napoleon's Grand Armee, but he was France's longest-serving head of Government and a statesman of great note. His reputation has been damaged by his "acquisition" of art treasures from the countries he fought - a fault not ignored by this book - but this cannot detract from his long and significant influence on European military and political history.

Genres: History

240 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1990

Reviews

[Peter Harrison · Rating 2 out of 5]

This isn't so much a history or a biography as a hagiography. In the introduction Hayman makes his close relationship with Soult's family clear and while this obviously helped with access to the Marshal's papers it does feel like he has fallen under Soult's spell.

In practice this means that every part of the story is given the most positive possible gloss. Soult can do no wrong. Every incident is explained to make it clear that Soult's motives were pure and his plans were defeated by the inaction or incompetence of others. Hayman makes the case for Soult as one of Napoleon's most significant and talented marshals, and it more convincing if he felt more even handed in his approach.

As it stands this feels like special pleading, out of kilter with much of the rest of what has been written (at least in English) about Napoleon's marshals. To truly 'correct the record' as the author clearly aims to do it would need to engage more critically Soult's record.

In short a reasonable brief introduction to the life of one of the more significant marshals, marred by an uncritical approach.

[Leo Bond · Rating 4 out of 5]

I agree with the other reviewer to an extant that this is like a hagiography and I was certainly skeptical of the fact that the author was so close to Soult's descendants. I mean come on, are they really going to be truly objective about him?

But honestly I wouldn't go as far as to say that Soult was being fully glazed. The author definitely tries well to show both sides/perspectives. Previous to this book I actually read "The Gentle Bonaparte" by Owen Connelly and while reading it I disliked Soult. From Joseph's perspective he seemed like a loose cannon who just cared about himself. But honestly this seemed to be by and large the situation for EVERYONE in Spain and this book explained away a lot of the reasons that Soult had conflicts with Joseph that being that Soult had much more military experience and explains the strategy he had envisioned for winning the war in Spain which made more sense than Joseph's plans in the short run. Joseph was more focused on nation building but Soult was right that the war had to be won before any of that could truly begin.

The author does try to explain away that Soult wasn't robbing necessarily or that he wasn't doing worse than anyone else and sure I'll take the argument he wasn't doing worse than anyone else but he was certainly stealing art. But this was the times.

Overall for what it is, I think the book is quite fair in its judgement of Soult. Keep one eye open to the potential biases. Writing style it was quite enjoyable, it didn't feel like a slog. There were some moments of "This corps goes here, this division goes there" which personally to me is harder to follow without a clear map and the map here of Spain has really small text so that certainly could've been done better. A few battle maps that are more legible, would've been better perhaps with some arrows showing movements.