J. T. Headley was born at the very end of the convulsive period of the French revolution and Napoleonic Wars that followed, and wrote a number of volumes on the French army and its leadership of the period. An admirer of the equality and liberty that Napoleon and the Napoleonic Myth expounded, Headley takes an interesting and entertaining view of Napoleon and his Marshals. The glittering array of military talent available to Napoleon, was formed by the upsurge in manpower revolutionary levée en masse and the egalitarian principals. Whilst not an absolute meritocracy, a great number of Generals and indeed Marshals came from humble backgrounds. In this volume, the author charts the careers of Napoleon, Marshals Murat, Lefebvre, Massena, Marmont, Victor, Brune, Oudinot, Bessières, Jourdan, Bernadotte, Suchet, Poniatowski, Grouchy and Ney