num_pages: 288
description:  A soldier as dashing in appearance as Murat as brave as Ney as eagle-eyed as Massna. At the time this biography was written over half of Europes reigning monarchs numbered among their ancestors the Gascon Sergeant Bernadotte. Jean Bernadotte served as King Louis XVIs Regiment of Marines. In the ranks of nobility Bernadotte was the most complex personality of all Napoleons marshals. A staunch Jacobin Bernadotte convinced himself that he should be King of France; though an undoubted hero he nonetheless narrowly missed some of the famous battles. He was a political intriguer but he was willing to accept a walk-on part in the major drama of a restless decade. His personal life was equally full of anomalies not least that strange mutual loyalty which preserved a marriage to Napoleons first love Desire Clary through a dozen years of separation. Bernadotte was in France while Napoleon fought in Italy. From there Palmer writes of his struggles with the Consul Emperor and generalissimo of the battles of Austerlitz and Wagram and of Leipzig where as the elected Crown Prince of Sweden he fought against his old chief. He then became the King of Sweden under the title Carl XIV Johan. Alan Palmers detailed portrait was the first comprehensive English biography in over half a century and draws from a great deal of contemporary research by French and Swedish biographers. Praise for Alan Palmer A fine piece of narrative history a combination of suspense and scholarship which actually makes you wonder will he make it? ANTONIA FRASERS BOOK OF THE YEAR Sunday Times Alan Palmer has done justice to [the] epic events with a lively vivid narrative written with the appropriate style and panache LAWRENCE JAMES The Times A superb account of the 1812 campaign and its aftermath Observer Alan Palmer was Head of the History Department at Highgate School from 1953 to 1969 when he gave up his post to concentrate on historical writing and research. He has written some thirty narrative histories historical reference books or biographies. In 1980 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. 
language: English
title: Bernadotte: Napoleon's Marshal, Sweden's King
publisher: Endeavour Media