In 1804 Napoleon created 18 'Marshals of the Empire', to serve as the senior officers of the Grande Armée. He created a further 8 before his abdication. A few were aristocrats, but others were the sons of shopkeepers or tailors. The most favoured became princes and kings. Among their ranks were legendary figures such as Marshals Lannes, Soult, Davout and Massena, but also much less well know figures like Pérignon, Brune and Moncey. Our series will explore the lives of all 26 Marshals, and rank them according to our own judgement of their achievements as Marshals.

Thank you to our series historical consultant Lt.Col.Rémy Porte, whose blog on military history (in French) you can read here: http://guerres-et-conflits.over-blog....

Images used under Creative Commons license CC BY SA 3.0:
Marshal's baton by Rama via Wikimedia Commons
Monument to Prince Józef Poniatowski in Warsaw by Adrian Grycuk via Flickr

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Themes used in this episode:
3.26 Skynet; 5.31 Kilimanjaro; 7.05 Phoenix; 9.55 Bronze; 11.59 Viking; 13.56 Steel; 16.37 Nanshan; 18.04 Dinlas; 19.50 Parbat; 23.17 Steel

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