re: Bernadotte

[Chiteng]

They should be ashamed that they put a traitor and an opportunist on their throne. Propped up by English cash.

He would have let Davout and his corp die rather than
march to his aid. A whole ten miles.

He should have been shot.

[Le Tondu]

I don't know about deserving to be shot, but this is an interesting story about Bernadotte from "The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte" by Robert Asprey:

"During February [1797] the Army of Italy received 20,000 reinforcements including the veteran general (and husband of Napoleon's old love, Desiree Clary), Jean Baptiste Bernadotte, a hot headed Jacobin egoist who almost at once challenged chief of staff Berthier to a duel (quashed by Napoleon)."

I'm only at mid 1797 now and he seems quite prominent during this successful campaign. I got the impression that he led from the front.

Who knows why he did what he did. Maybe he saw enough of the horrors of war to cause him be so cautious and as protective of his soldiers as he later turned out to be.

Many men who are VERY heroic early in their wartime career turn pacifist during the same war that they are heroic in. How many dead or bloody and mangled men does it take? Everyone is different. We who are taken by the excitement of war, must not forget that we sit safely before out computer screens or table top wargames and that see none of these horrors. How would we change if we had but a taste of them? Would we quit wargaming forever?

[Chiteng]

After 20+ years of war the Marshalate was beginning to wonder
if the time would ever arrive when they could simply rest upon their laurels. That is the real reason. 20 years of war is pretty bad.

[Le Tondu]

In 1797, Napoleon wrote of Bernadotte to the Directory:

"This excellent General.... is today one of the officers [that is] most essential to the glory of the Army of Italy."

Napoleon even sent him to Paris with captured standards to present to the Directory.

But this is even more revealing:

"General Bernadotte had been sent as ambassador to Vienna [early 1798], unfortunate choice in view of his revolutionary fanaticism and known arrogance. Worsening relations reached crisis proportions when, in protes against a Viennese celebration in honor of soldiers who had fought in Italy, he hoisted an enormous tri-color flag marked 'Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite,' over his embassy and hosted a dinner to honor French victories in Italy. A furious crowd pushed into the embassy, broke windows and managed to tear down and burn the French flag. Bernadotte was ingloriously hustled out of the capital under military guard. Paris hotly protested, but after mutual saber-clanking the affair was finally settled by Talleyrand and Thugut."

Bernadotte becomes more interesting the more I read about him.