Because the Emperor always demanded absolute obedience, they were
hopeless when they had to exercise individual initiative, and in the later
years grew lazy and ill-motivated.
Nevertheless, nothing infuriated the marshals more than the sugges
tion that they had been granted vast wealth for no good reason. Lefebvre
once said to a man who had expressed envy of his wealth and status:
'Come out into the courtyard. I'll have twenty shots at you at thirty
paces. If I don't hit you, the whole house and everything in it is yours.'
When the man declined the offer, Lefebvre told him: 'I had a thousand
bullets fired at me fr om much closer range before I got this.' The honest
and punctilious Oudinot, created marshal in r8o9 but a significant
military presence long before this, fought in all major campaigns except
the Peninsular War between r8oo and r8r4 and was wounded thirty-six
times on twenty-three occasions.
Always an advocate of 'divide and rule', Napoleon actively encouraged
the many rivalries among his marshals. The nexus of intrigue and
jealousy can be inferred from a simple recital. Davout, always close to
Oudinot, loathed Bernadotte and Murat; there was a long running feud
between Lannes and Murat. Murat and Ney were the most unpopular
marshals with no friends among their peers, so it hardly needs to be
added that the two of them were also at daggers drawn. Oudinot
entertained a particular animus towards Ney, as did Massena. Ney,
indeed, seemed to have a talent at once for harbouring grudges and for
getting other people's backs up. He first swam into Napoleon's ken in
r8oz when the First Consul selected him as a suitable marriage partner
for Hortense's close friend, Aglae Augure. Once married, Ney hit on the
idea of getting his wife into bed with the First Consul so that he (Ney)
would be the real power in the land. The scheme did not work, so that
Ney nursed a grievance towards Bonaparte, presumably on the ground
that the Corsican had not agreed to cuckold him.
Ney was simply the most difficult personality in the galaxy of prima
donnas that was the marshalate. The most admirable of them was
Davout, who had been a protege of Desaix in Egypt, and had
accompanied him on the brilliant campaign in Upper Egypt. Desaix and
Davout were close friends, and since Napoleon was himself a sincere
admirer of Desaix, Davout recommended himself by this connection, by
his dislike of Kleber and by his great military talent. A true man of war,
with little time for social life, Davout was scrupulously honest in financial
matters and later made a bitter enemy of Bourrienne by revealing his
smuggling activities in Hamburg. A hard taskmaster with phenomenal
powers of concentration second only to Napoleon's, Davout did not
marcin
(Marcin)
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