ePub The Armies Of The First French Republic; And The Rise Of The Marshals of Napoleon I. Vol II by Colonel Ramsay Weston Phipps; Colonel Charles Foskett Phipps in History

Review

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Phipps volume is a treasureBy David J. MaschekThis 1929 reprint of a rare English-language military history of the French Revolutionary Wars covers several key campaigns that Napoleon did not participate in. This is my favorite volume of Ramsay Phipps' volumes 1 to 3 because histories of the armies of the Rhine; Moselle and Sambre-et-Meuse are so obscure. Yet their campaigns were critical to the survival of Revolutionary France. Phipps set out to give the history of the men who became Napoleon's marshals; but he also focused on important army and wing commanders of the period such as Moreau; Hoche; Marceau; Desaix; Kleber; Ferino and the treacherous Pichegru. These men learned the military trade in an era when suspicious politicians were apt to send them to the guillotine on the slightest pretext. Later; as the political hysteria subsided; the French armies proved to be a match for their professionally trained opponents.