Napoleon and his Marshals: Victory, Rivalry, Betrayal with Andrew Roberts

Join the award-winning, bestselling historian, Andrew Roberts, for the story of Napoleon and the elite generals who built him up and ultimately led to his ruin.

About the event

Andrew Roberts reveals a story of military greatness, vaulting ambition, rivalry, and destruction that speaks both to the struggles of Napoleon’s era and the challenges of leadership in our time.

In 1804, immediately after his coronation as Emperor, Napoleon created the Marshalate, the supreme martial rank of the empire. Over the next decade, he elevated to it some of his most outstanding generals, who played leading roles in his extraordinary campaigns – including the brave Ney, the flamboyant Murat, the vain Massena, the iron Davout and the logistics master Berthier.

Some of them were sons of aristocrats, others of innkeepers or coopers, but all carried the baton of a Marshal of France. But unlike Lincoln, who forged a team of rivals, Napoleon created a nest of vipers whose lust for glory descended into destructive competitiveness and mutual recrimination. For all his inspiring qualities as a leader, he manipulated and controlled those whose loyalty he most needed to survive, and ultimately only two of them rode beside him at Waterloo.

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About the speaker

Andrew Roberts (Lord Roberts of Belgravia) is a biographer and historian of international renown who has written several award-winning history books. Roberts is a Fellow of the Royal Societies of Literature and the Royal Historical Society, and a Trustee of the National Army Museum. He also is currently Visiting Professor at the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London.