From the award-winning, Sunday Times bestselling author of Churchill and Napoleon the Great, the story of the team of rivals behind the rise and fall of history's greatest warrior.

From the award-winning, Sunday Times bestselling author of Churchill and Napoleon the Great, the dramatic story of the team of rivals who propelled the rise and fall of history's greatest warrior.

In 1804, immediately after he appointed himself Emperor, Napoleon created the Marshalate, the supreme military honour 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 courageous Ney, the flamboyant Murat, the tenacious Masséna, the iron Davout and the meticulous Berthier.

Some of them were sons of aristocrats, others of innkeepers or coopers, but all carried the baton of a Marshal of France. Napoleon and his Marshals masterfully captures their personalities and ambitions, their capacities and rivalries, and their fiery relationship with their leader.

Andrew Roberts reveals that, unlike Lincoln, who forged a team of rivals, Napoleon created a nest of vipers: one whose lust for glory descended into destructive competitiveness and mutual recrimination. For all his inspiring qualities as a leader, he manipulated and undermined those whose loyalty he most needed to survive. Ultimately, only two among the twenty-six marshals rode beside him at Waterloo.

This dramatic and hugely enjoyable book by one of Britain's most admired historians is by far the richest narrative account of these brilliant figures and the role they played in making – and undoing – one of history's most brilliant military minds.

"Ambitious ... an epic tale. Roberts brings his gift for synthesis to bear on a colossal mass of material with admirable, if not infallible, panache. One gets multiple fascinating stories for one’s money in this book … But the story that binds the whole together remains the most compelling: that of the pettiness of soul that, paradoxically, was the ultimate undoing of Europe’s paradigmatic “Great Man”, Napoleon himself" - The Times

"A lively work of unashamed military rivalry ... rattles along like a gun carriage charging into action" - Literary Review

"Roberts is perhaps our greatest expert on how leaders – and their empires – rise and fall. Napoleon and his Marshals, which draws on Napoleon’s vast personal correspondence – much of which only recently became available – to assess in more detail why such a charismatic and generous leader (Napoleon showered his 26 marshals with riches, titles and properties) found himself so fatefully abandoned by those very same people at Waterloo" - Telegraph

"Writing with the dash and vigour of a cavalry charge, having walked 53 of Napoleon’s 60 battlefields, Roberts analyses campaigns and battles from Italy in 1796, through Austerlitz, ‘the greatest victory in the history of France’, and the retreat from Moscow (ten marshals served in the Russian campaign) to Waterloo in 1815 ... a great military history" - Spectator

"Napoleon and his Marshals recounts, in sometimes gruesome detail, the violence and emotions of the relationships that turned shared ambition into rivalry, and teamwork and honour into naked greed. It’s the personal stories that come out so clearly in this book, the politics of people and place" - Financial Times

"First rate … The book draws on impressively hard and lonely work that can be underrated by those who shun the archives … Well-written, consistently interesting, and a marvellous guide to the flaws of military leadership, this is a book to enjoy" - Critic