La Bataille de Prusse 1809

The Age of Napoleon’s Most Successful Man

The Age of Napoleon is bursting with heroic figures; tragic characters; and many, to put it simply, sad figures whose careers were filled with misfortune and defeat. There are few figures that could be truly considered successful in all of their endeavors. Among the truly successful, there are some Frenchmen—Davout and Rapp are but a couple of examples. There are some Englishmen—Wellesley and Nelson come to mind— who might meet the description of the truly successful figures. However, even these figures had flaws in their life tales. Davout’s career, post-Waterloo campaign, was one of a Bourbon imposed disgrace and substantial financial difficulty in his few remaining years. Rapp’s career post 1815 was also short-lived, as the Alsatian count painfully passed after bout with stomach cancer, no doubt enhanced by Rapp’s extensive history of battlefield wounds. Nelson, of course, had no post Napoleonic career, having died at Trafalgar. And Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington and victor of Waterloo, eventually became the British Prime Minister by the 1830’s, only to suffer political failure during that decade. His personal life reveals a miserable marriage (and thus no heirs). He did have a bevy of mistresses. However, the Duke of Wellington did have one of the greatest funeral of te Nineteenth Century.

Jean Baptiste Bernadotte as Marshal of France

There is one figure, however, who despite his long roster of flaws, stands out as the obvious choice as the most successful figure of the Napoleonic Age---and that is Jean Baptiste Bernadotte, victor of Halle and liberator of Lubeck.

Bernadotte came from especially humble beginnings. His father was descended from a long line of tailors and weavers and was desperately trying to crawl his way into the bourgeois as an attorney when Jean was born. His father’s plans were to have young Jean follow in his footsteps as an attorney, but the elder Bernadotte passed away when his son was but 14, forever ending his legal aspirations. Instead in 1780, at age 17, Bernadotte entered the army. By 1790, Bernadotte had reached the highest rank a commoner could reach in the army of the Ancien Regime . But by then, the Ancien Regime was disintegrating and the young dandy Bernadotte was caught up in the maelstrom of the revolution. By 1794, Bernadotte was a general and distinguished himself in several

Marshal Enterprises

Page 1 of 4