{"product_id":"warriors-isbn-9780307275684","title":"Warriors","description":"Heroism in battle has been celebrated throughout history, yet it is one of the least understood virtues. What makes some men and women perform extraordinary deeds on the battlefield? What makes them risk their lives in the pursuit of victory?Max Hastings, one of our foremost military historians, has seen combat up close and written about it for decades. In \u003ci\u003eWarriors\u003c\/i\u003e, he brings us the experiences of fourteen soldiers who fought in the wars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From an exuberant cavalry officer in Napoleon’s army to an abused orphan who in World War II became America’s youngest general since Custer, to an Israeli officer who recovered from a devastating injury to save his country, each portrait depicts a unique and remarkable story. A tribute to soldierly valor and a deeply insightful study of combat, this is an essential book for anyone who wishes to understand what it means to be at war.“Fantastically entertaining. . . . [Hastings] acts as a sort of Plutarch to the modern warrior. His ‘lives’ are splendidly done, full of compelling narrative and telling detail.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e“Hastings is an expert literary craftsman who makes the most out of stories that, however often repeated, are never less than gripping.... a first-rate piece of entertainment.”—\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post Book World\u003c\/i\u003e“Clever, absorbing and vividly written. . . Max Hasting is very good on the matter of courage.”—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e“Hastings has written a marvelous book. Wry, perceptive and engaging, it lays bare the curious mix of character traits - good and bad - that a successful warrior requires.”—\u003ci\u003eThe Sunday  Telegraph\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eMax Hastings\u003c\/b\u003e was a foreign correspondent and the editor of Britain's \u003ci\u003eEvening Standard\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Daily Telegraph\u003c\/i\u003e. He has presented historical documentaries for BBC TV, and is the author of eighteen books, including \u003ci\u003eBomber Command\u003c\/i\u003e, which earned the Somerset Maugham Award for nonfiction, \u003ci\u003eThe Korean War\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eOverlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy, 1944\u003c\/i\u003e. He is also the author of the recently published \u003ci\u003eArmageddon: the Battle for Germany, 1944-1945\u003c\/i\u003e. He is recipient of numerous British Press Awards, including Journalist of the Year (1982), Editor of the Year (1988). He lives outside of London.\u003cb\u003e    BONAPARTE’S BLESSED FOOL\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    THE WARS OF NAPOLEON produced a flowering of memoirs, both English and   French, of extraordinary quality. Each writer’s work reflects in full   measure his national characteristics. None but a Frenchman, surely,   could have written the following lines about his experience of   conflict: “I may, I think, say without boasting that nature has   allotted to me a fair share of courage; I will add that there was a   time when I enjoyed being in danger, as my thirteen wounds and some   distinguished services prove, I think, sufficiently.” Baron Marcellin   de Marbot was the model for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional   Brigadier Gerard: brave, swashbuckling, incapable of introspection,   glorying without inhibition in the experience of campaigning from   Portugal to Russia in the service of his emperor. Marbot was the most   eager of warriors, who shared with many of his French contemporaries a   belief that there could be no higher calling than to follow Bonaparte   to glory. Few modern readers could fail to respect the courage of a   soldier who so often faced the fire of the enemy, through an active   service career spanning more than forty years. And no Anglo-Saxon could   withhold laughter at the peacock vanity and chauvinism of the hussar’s   account of the experience, rich in anecdotage and comedy, the latter   often unintended.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Jean-Baptiste-Antoine-Marcellin de Marbot was born in 1782 at Beaulieu   in the Corrèze, son of a country gentleman of liberal inclinations who   became a general in France’s revolutionary army. With his round face   and snub nose, the child Marcellin was known to his family as “the   kitten,” and for some years during the nation’s revolutionary disorders   attended a local girls’ school. He was originally destined for a naval   career, but a friend urged his father that life aboard a warship   mouldering in some seaport under British blockade was no prospect for   an ambitious youth. Instead, in 1799 a vacancy was procured for him in   the hussars. The seventeen-year-old boy was delighted, and from the   outset gloried in his new uniform. His father, however, was uneasy   about his shyness, and for some time was prone to refer to his son in   company as “Mademoiselle Marcellin”—rich pickings there for a modern   psychologist. In those days when every hussar was expected to display a   moustache as part of his service dress, the beardless teenager at first   painted whiskers on his face.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Marbot met Bonaparte for the first time when accompanying his father to   take up a posting with the army in Italy. They were amazed to encounter   the hero of the Pyramids at Lyons, on his way back to Paris from Egypt,   having abandoned his army to seek a throne, a quest to which General   Marbot, a committed republican, declined to give his assistance. In   Italy, young Marcellin won his spurs. Despatched with a patrol to seize   Austrian prisoners, the sergeant in command professed sudden illness.   The boy seized the opportunity and assumed leadership of the troop:   “When . . . I took command of the fifty men who had come under my   orders in such unusual circumstances, a mere trooper as I was and   seventeen years old, I resolved to show my comrades that if I had not   yet much experience or military talent, I at least possessed pluck. So   I resolutely put myself at their head and marched on in what we knew   was the direction of the enemy.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Marbot’s patrol surprised an Austrian unit, took the necessary   prisoners, and returned in triumph to the French lines where their   self-appointed commander was rewarded with promotion to sergeant,   followed soon afterwards by a commission. He survived the terrible   siege of Genoa, where his father died in his arms following a wound   received on the battlefield. Soon afterwards the young man was posted   to the 25th Chasseurs. In 1801 he was appointed an aide-de-camp to that   hoary old hero Marshal Augereau, with whom he travelled for the first   time to the Iberian Peninsula.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    By 1805, already a veteran, Marbot was an eager young officer with   Bonaparte’s Grand Army, ready for a summer of campaigning against the   Austrians and Russians. “I had three excellent horses,” he enthused,   adding bathetically, “and a servant of moderate quality.” The duties of   aides-de-camp were among the most perilous in any army of the time. It   was their business to convey their masters’ wishes and tidings not only   across the battlefield, but from end to end of Europe, often in the   teeth of the enemy. In the period that followed, writes Marbot,   “constantly sent from north to south, and from south to north, wherever   there was fighting going on, I did not pass one of these ten years   without coming under fire, or without shedding my blood on the soil of   some part of Europe.” It is striking to notice that, until the   twentieth century, every enthusiastic warrior regarded it as a mark of   virility to have been wounded in action, if possible frequently. A   soldier who avoided shedding his own blood, far from being   congratulated on luck and skill, was more likely to be suspected of   shyness.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Marbot began the 1805 campaigning season by carrying despatches from   the emperor to Marshal Masséna in Italy, through the Alpine passes.   Then he took his place beside Augereau for what became the Austerlitz   campaign. “Never had France possessed an army so well-trained,” he   exulted, “of such good material, so eager for fighting and fame . . .   Bonaparte . . . accepted the war with joy, so certain was he of victory   . . . He knew how the chivalrous spirit of Frenchmen has in all ages   been influenced by the enthusiasm of military glory.” Seldom has there   been an era of warfare in which officers and soldiers alike strove so   ardently for distinction. If there were young blades in Bonaparte’s   army who confined themselves to doing their duty, history knows nothing   of them. In the world of France’s marshals and their subordinates,   there was a relentless contest for each to outdo the others in braving   peril with insouciance. Its spirit was supremely captured by the tale   of Ney, after the battle of Lutzen, encountering the emperor. “My dear   cousin! But you are covered in blood!” exclaimed Bonaparte in alarm.   “It isn’t mine, Sire,” responded the marshal complacently, “except   where that damned bullet passed through my leg!”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Having survived the carnage at Austerlitz, Marbot found himself among a   throng of French officers sitting their horses around Bonaparte on the   day after the battle, gazing out on the broken ice of the Satschan   Lake, strewn with debris and corpses. Amid it all, a hundred yards from   the shore they beheld a Russian sergeant, shot through the thigh and   clinging to an ice floe deeply stained with his blood. The wounded man,   spying the glittering assembly, raised himself and cried out in   Russian, “All men become brothers once battle is done.” He begged his   life from the emperor of the French. The entreaty was translated.   Bonaparte, in a characteristic impulse of imperial condescension, told   his entourage to do whatever was necessary to save the Russian. A   handful of men plunged into the icy water, seized floating baulks of   timber, and sought to paddle themselves out to the floe. Within seconds   they became clumsy prisoners of their frozen clothing. They abandoned   efforts to save the enemy soldier, and struggled ashore to save   themselves.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Marbot, a spectator, declared that their error had been to brave the   water fully clad. Bonaparte nodded assent. The would-be rescuers had   shown more zeal than discretion, observed the emperor dryly. The hussar   now felt obliged to put his own counsel into practice. Leaping from his   horse, he tore off his clothes and sprang into the lake. He   acknowledged the shock of the deadly cold, but “the emperor’s presence   encouraged me, and I struck out towards the Russian sergeant. At the   same time my example, and probably the praise given me by the emperor,   determined a lieutenant of artillery . . . to imitate me.” As he   struggled painfully amid the great daggers of ice, Marbot was dismayed   to find his rival catching him up. Yet he was obliged to admit that   alone, he could never have succeeded in his attempt. Together, and with   immense labour, the two Frenchmen pushed the wounded Russian on his   crumbling floe towards the shore, battering a path through the jumble   of ice before them. At last they came close enough for onlookers to   throw out lifelines. The two swimmers seized the ropes and passed them   around the wounded man, enabling him to be dragged to safety. They   themselves, at their last gasp, bleeding and torn, staggered ashore to   receive their laurels. Bonaparte called his mameluke Roustan to bring   them a glass of rum apiece. He gave gold to the wounded soldier, who   proved to be Lithuanian. Once recovered, the man became a devoted   follower of the emperor, a sergeant in his Polish lancers. Marbot’s   companion in mercy, the lieutenant of artillery, was so weakened by his   experience that after months in hospital, Marbot recorded pityingly   that he had to be invalided out of the service. The hussar, of course,   was back on duty next day.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Marbot saw as much of Bonaparte as any man of his rank through the   years that followed. In July 1806 he carried despatches to the French   Embassy in Berlin, and returned to report to the emperor in Paris that   he had seen Prussian officers defiantly sharpening sabres on the   embassy steps. “The insolent braggarts shall soon learn that our   weapons need no sharpening!” exclaimed Bonaparte. We may suspect that   the emperor viewed Marbot just as his fictional self viewed Gerard in   Conan Doyle’s tales—a wonderfully loyal, courageous, unthinking   instrument with less guile than a gundog. Marbot himself tells several   stories of how he was duped by treacherous foreigners with no   understanding of the nobility and dignity of war. Indeed, his contempt   for the lack of chivalry displayed by Englishmen, Russians, Austrians   and suchlike is matched only by his disdain for their military   incompetence. On those freakish occasions when he is forced to   acknowledge that lesser breeds prevailed on the battlefield, such   misfortunes are invariably attributed either to the enemy’s superior   numbers or to the folly of some French subordinate commander.   Bonaparte’s soldiers, in Marbot’s eyes, were paragons of courage and   honour. We learn little from his narrative of the trail of devastation   they wreaked across occupied Europe. To the gallant young officer, as   to most of his comrades, Bonaparte was an idol, rather than the   ruthless despot who brought misery to millions. Marcellin says nothing   in his memoirs of his elder brother Antoine-Adolphe, also a soldier,   who was arrested in 1802 for an alleged plot against the ruler of   France in favour of a republic.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Marbot fretted about receiving less than his share of glory at Jena in   October 1806, but a few months later, at the age of twenty-four, he   gained his coveted captaincy. It was in this rank that he served at   Eylau in February 1807. The battle prompted one of his most remarkable   stories, which sounds more like an experience of Baron Munchausen than   that of a French cavalry officer. Marbot was riding a mare named   Lisette, whose naturally vicious temperament he had with difficulty   suppressed. First his servant, then the captain himself, forced   sizzling joints of hot mutton into the horse’s mouth when she sought to   attack them. Since these salutory experiences, Lisette had been a model   mount. In the midst of the great engagement at Eylau, in which   Augereau’s corps suffered severely, Bonaparte sent word to the marshal   that he should try to save the 14th Infantry, whose dwindling band of   survivors held a hillock in the path of the Russian advance. Two aides   spurred forth, to be swallowed up in the chaos and never seen again.   Marbot stood next in line. “Seeing the son of his old friend, and I   venture to say his favourite aide-de-camp, come up, the kind marshal’s   face changed, and his eyes filled with tears, for he could not hide   from himself that he was sending me to almost certain death. But the   emperor must be obeyed.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Marbot dashed away. Lisette, “lighter than a swallow and flying rather   than running, devoured the intervening space, leaping the piles of dead   men and horses, the ditches, the broken gun carriages, and the   half-extinguished bivouac fires.” Cossacks turned to pursue Marbot like   beaters driving a hare, yet none could catch his racing steed. He   reached the frail square formed by the survivors of the 14th,   surrounded by dead Russian dragoons and their horses. Amid a hail of   fire, the aide passed the order to withdraw. The commanding major   shrugged that retreat was impossible. A fresh Russian column was even   now a mere hundred paces away. “I see no means of saving the regiment,”   said the major. “Return to the emperor, bid him farewell from the 14th   of the line, which has faithfully executed his orders, and bear to him   the eagle which he gave us and which we can defend no longer.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Here, couched in language worthy of Macaulay, is the very stuff of the   legend of Bonaparte’s army, which Marbot did as much as any man to   enshrine for posterity. A Russian cannonball tore through the aide’s   hat as he seized the regiment’s eagle and strove to break off its   staff, the more readily to bear it to safety. He was so badly concussed   by the impact that blood poured from his nose and ears. As the enemy’s   infantry closed upon them, doomed soldiers cried out “Vive l’empereur!”   Several Frenchmen set their backs against Lisette’s flanks, crowding   the mare so tightly than Marbot could not spur her away. A wounded   French quartermaster-sergeant fell under her legs, and a Russian   grenadier sought to bayonet the man where he lay. The attacker, drunk   as Russians always were on battlefields depicted by Marbot, missed his   aim. One thrust struck the cavalryman’s arm, another pierced his   mount’s flank. Lisette’s latent savagery reawakened, “she sprang at the   Russian, and at one mouthful tore off his nose, lips, eyebrows and all   the skin of his face, making of him a living death’s head, dripping   with blood.” Then the mare surged out of the mêlée, kicking and biting   as she went, seizing one Russian officer bodily and eviscerating him.   She bolted at full gallop, not checking until she reached Eylau   cemetery, where she collapsed from loss of blood. Marbot, himself   fainting with pain, slid into unconsciousness.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    When the battle was done, he was saved by the merest chance from the   mound of snow and corpses in which he lay, incapable of movement. A   servant of Augereau’s saw a looter carrying a pelisse which he   recognised as that of the general’s aide, and induced the man to lead   him to the spot where he had found it. Both mare and rider survived.   Marbot wrote archly: “Nowadays, when promotions and decorations are   bestowed so lavishly, some reward would certainly be given to an   officer who had braved danger as I had done in reaching the 14th   Regiment; but under the Empire, for a devoted act of that kind I did   not receive the cross [of the Legion of Honour] nor did it ever occur   [to] me to ask for it.” Poor man, he was in truth obsessed with   promotions and medals. He rejoiced mightily when at last he received   the cross from his emperor two years later, at the age of twenty-six.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46299688435941,"sku":"NP9780307275684","price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307275684.jpg?v=1767743612","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/warriors-isbn-9780307275684","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}