Ramsay Weston Phipps Ramsay Weston Phipps ( 10 April 1838 – 24 June 1923 ) was an Irish - born military historian and officer in Queen Victoria ' s Royal Artillery . The son of Pownoll Phipps , an officer of the British East India Company ' s army , he was descended from the early settlers of the West Indies ; many generations had served in the British , and the English military . Phipps served in the Crimean War , had a stint of duty at Malta , and helped to repress the Fenian uprising in Canada in 1866 . Phipps is known for his study of " The Armies of the First French Republic and the Rise of the Marshals of Napoleon I " , a five volume set published posthumously from 1926 – 1939 by Oxford University Press . He also edited L . A . Fauvelet de Bourrienne ' s " Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte " , a three volume work published in 1885 and Madame Campan ' s " The private life of Marie Antoinette , queen of France and Navarre ; with sketches and anecdotes of the courts of Louis XVI , " published in 1889 . Family . Ramsay Weston Phipps descended from generations of military and political men . Colonel William Phipps , a Yeoman of Lincolnshire , raised a regiment of horse for Charles I . Another of his ancestors was Lord Chancellor of Ireland in the reign of Queen Anne . Captain James Phipps settled the Island of St . Christopher , in the West Indies in 1676 . The family was rewarded for its loyalty with titles and lands in Ireland . Ramsay Phipps was also a cousin of the Earls of Mulgrave . In 1791 , Phipps ' grandfather , Constantine ( 1746 – 1797 ) , rented the Hotel d ' Harcout in Caen , France , from the Duke of Harcourt ; in 1793 , he returned briefly to England in 1793 for the wedding of one of his daughters , leaving eight of his children in France . When War of the First Coalition broke out in 1793 , the children were separated from their parents . Ramsay Phipps ' father , Pownoll Phipps ( 1780 – 1858 ) and his siblings grew up in the French city during the French revolution , and lived under the threat of anti - English violence . Only after the Treaty of Campo Formio could the children return to England , arriving on 2 October 1798 , all of them fluent in French ; Pownoll Phipps reportedly spoke with French - accented English for the rest of his life . By the end of October , Pownoll had a commission as a lieutenant and joined the Bengal Army of the East India Company . The following June , he embarked for India on the Bombay - built ship " Britannica " . Upon arrival in India , Pownoll Phipps joined the force under command of Colonel Arthur Wellesley . He participated in Sir David Baird ' s expedition from India to Egypt in 1801 , for which participation he eventually became a Knight of the Crescent . Phipps married Henrietta Beaunpaire ; orphaned by the French Revolution , she had taken refuge with him and his siblings at the Hotel d ' Harcout , on 10 August 1802 , in Calcutta . Pownoll Phipps ' second wife , Sophia Matilda Arnold , was Benedict Arnold ' s daughter . Phipps retired from the East India Company service on 1 July 1825 , with the rank of colonel . Living for a time in London , he was a popular regular at Exeter Hall events . A well - versed , informed and articulate speaker and storyteller , Phipps was a gallant gentleman , readily at ease in all society , and very friendly : " a tall , stout , officer - like person , about 60 - years of age , with white hair , short , sharp features , and a pleasant cast of countenance . " He also had a strict sense of honor . In 1857 , a year before his death , he wrote a letter to the Editor of The Times , in which he asserted his belief in the good character and quality of the Sepoy s , despite the popular outrage against the them during the Indian Mutiny . Pownoll Phipps developed bronchitis after presiding over the closing of an art exhibit in Clonmel , Ireland ; he died in November 1858 . His funeral was attended by Protestant and Catholics , and the procession was over a mile long . Ramsay Weston Phipps was the second son of Pownoll Phipps and Phipps ' third wife , the Irish - born Anna Charlotte Smith . Born at the family estate , Oaklands , in Tipperary , Ireland , he was named Ramsay in honor of an uncle who pioneered slave emancipation in the West Indies , and Weston after another uncle , a scientific clergyman . By 1841 , his father had returned to England , to reside in Kent , where the family lived in Yalding . They lodged at the " Parsonage " with a local farmer , Ramsey Warde ; Ramsey Warde was also a relative of Phipps ' mother . The family of four included three - year - old Ramsay , his older brother , Pownoll ( age five ) , his mother ( age 30 ) and his father . Eventually , two more children joined the family : Henrietta Sophia and Robert Constantine , twins born 23 September 1841 . The boy died 9 October , but Henrietta lived into adulthood , marrying Lieutenant - Colonel William Smith . After suffering a bout of measles in spring 1847 , Ramsay Phipps attended Mr . Barron ' s School at Stanmore with his older brother , Pownoll , with the intent to following his brother in a year or two to Rugby in Warwickshire . Military career . Before he could enter Rugby , Phipps was offered instead a cadetship and entered the government preparatory school at Carlshalton , in Surrey . In 1849 , at the age of 11 , he put on a uniform , and he wore it , or a variation of it , until his retirement in 1887 . Phipps later attended the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich . After his graduation , he expected a commission in the Royal Artillery , and while awaiting it , he lived for a few months with his uncle at Carragh , Ireland ; his lieutenant ' s commission arrived , dated 1 August 1855 , and with it instructions him to join his Royal Artillery unit at Woolwich , for service in the Crimean War . He reached the Crimea in November 1855 , and participated in the Siege of Sevastopol . Assigned to the Matthew Dixon ' s 5th Company , 9th Battalion , he was part of the right siege train , and his chief occupation was blowing up the Sevastapol docks . He was still small for his age , and looked very young , which drew teasing from his company . The siege work was difficult and the living conditions were brutal ; he recounted to his brother that the soldiers were plagued not only by the Russian fire , but by dysentery , bad food , and wintering in tents . He returned to England the following year on the " Imperatrice , " arriving in March 1856 . Although he was given a medal to wear when Queen Victoria reviewed the troops , it was later collected from him ; the decision was made at higher commands that only those who had landed in the Crimea prior to September 1855 would be awarded the Crimea Medal . After his return to England , Ramsay Phipps was quartered at the Tower of London . After this assignment , he was sent to Plymouth , serving at the Prince of Wales Redoubt . In 1861 , Phipps was stationed in South Shoebury , Essex . He was promoted to the Royal Artillery ' s unique rank of second captain on 7 April 1864 , and appointed brigade adjutant on 14 October 1868 . The brigade adjutant functioned as the staff officer for the brigade commander : he supervised all brigade books and records , monitored the execution of orders , supervised the education and training of subaltern s , prosecuted in all courts - martial proceedings , and accepted and transmitted all orders . Ramsay Phipps married Anne Bampfylde , the daughter of a Bath physician , in September 1864 . With a few exceptions , most of Phipps ' posts included garrison duty in southern England in the vicinity of the Royal Artillery barracks at Woolwich . Phipps traveled to the United States , arriving in Boston on 30 April 1866 ; he went to Canada to participate in operations against the Fenian uprising . In 1869 , his brother and a friend sought to climb the Zermatt and the Schreckhorn , during which climb the friend fell over to bottom of the Lauteraar glacier . In the emergency , Ramsay Phipps joined his brother in Grindelwald while guides recovered the body . In 1881 , Phipps was stationed in Ireland ; his wife remained in Bath , living in the prestigious Royal Crescent ( No . 19 ) , with her three children , a female cousin , and several servants . Phipps was promoted to major on 12 April 1873 , to brevet lieutenant - colonel on 1 July 1881 , and substantive lieutenant - colonel on 26 April 1882 . Phipps had little tolerance for foolishness and retained a professional soldier ' s dislike of civilian interference in military affairs , and ineffective administration , whether from civilians or government . In 1887 , shortly after his retirement , he wrote a letter to the editor of " The Times " addressing some of the highly publicized problems of desertions from the ranks . " War Office civilians , " he wrote , " like the plan of indiscriminate enlist , as it swells their list of recruits . Then , when the list of deserters grows , they put on long faces , and say , ' it must be those wicked officers . ' The officers would stop this plan in a day if they were allowed . " The problem with recruiters , Phipps maintained , lay in the need for quantity , not quality . " What fools you civilians are to pay for these blackguards , " he wrote . " If you would let the officers select their men , for the first year or so , you would have fewer men on paper , fewer men in prison , and just as many men for service . . . I will then give you another hint for saving money . . . why not do away with the Inspector - General of Recruiting , and spend his pay in horse artillery , who would be very ornamental and very serviceable ? What use is the Inspector General ? " He had retired from active service in 1883 , and Phipps fully retired in 1887 , after attaining the rank of colonel . Phipps and his wife had seven children , five of whom survived into adulthood . The first son , Edmund , born 1867 , died less than two months later while the family was stationed at Plymouth . During a short stint on Malta in 1869 , a daughter Mary was born and died immediately . Edmund Bampfylde was born in 1869 , and followed a career in education ; he attended New College , Oxford , and became a Deputy Secretary on the Board of Education . In 1906 , he married Margaret Percy Phipps , who was Mayor of Chelsea for two terms . In 1916 , he was appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath , followed by a knighthood in 1917 ; he served in the Ministry of Munitions during the latter part of World War I . Charles Fossett , born in 1872 , and Henry , the youngest son , pursued military careers . Charles and Henry were awarded the Distinguished Service Order for their roles in the British Expeditionary Force in 1914 . Charles attained the rank of lieutenant - colonel in the Royal Garrison Artillery during World War I , assigned to the VI Corps Heavy Artillery , and in 1918 moved to Parkgate , in Dublin . Henry married Lorna Campbell in 1906 , and they had three children . Henry eventually attained the rank of lieutenant - colonel in the Royal Artillery , and died on 24 August 1949 . The youngest , Gertrude Annie , was born on 13 December 1876 . She married in 1907 to Lieutenant Colonel E . C . Sandars , CMG , also a Royal Artillery officer ; the couple had a daughter , Elizabeth . Phipps ' wife died in October 1885 . In 1888 , Phipps settled with his three youngest children at Chalfont St Giles . The 1891 Buckingham census shows Phipps on the Royal Artillery retired list and living at a country manor house , " The Stone " , with his sons , 21 - year - old Edmund , a student at Oxford University , and 16 - year old Henry , a student at Wellington , and 14 - year - old Gertrude . Four servants supported this small family , including a cook , a lady ' s maid for Gertrude , a housemaid , and a scullery maid . In 1901 , Henry had left the family household , but Edmund and Gertrude still lived with their father in St . Giles . Phipps remained at " The Stone " until 1920 . Career as military historian . Chalfont St Giles lies from London , and about the same distance to Oxford , maintained a foot in the social world of London and the academic world of Oxford . Phipps was chairman of the magistrates for the Burnham division , sitting at Beaconsfield , and was a member of the County Standing Joint Committee and the County Licensing Committee . He also attended annual Diocesan Conferences at Oxford . Phipps pursued his life - long interest in the Napoleonic Wars . In 1885 , he edited a revised edition of what was then the standard authority on Napoleon , Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne ' s " Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte . " He also wrote the revision ' s chapters XXIV and XXVI . Subsequently , he edited a new edition of the surgeon Barry Edward O ' Meara ' s " Napoleon at Saint Helena " , another Napoleonic Wars classic , to which he wrote a new introduction : O ' Meara had been Napoleon ' s doctor on Helena . Historians praised Phipps ' introduction as a convincing exposition against the treatment of Napoleon on Helena . In 1889 , he edited a revised edition of Jeanne - Louise - Henriette Campan ' s " The private life of Marie Antoinette , queen of France and Navarre ; with sketches and anecdotes of the courts of Louis XVI " , which was also well received . Creation of his " magnum opus " . Initially interested in the ministers of the Empire , Phipps was diverted to a deeper interest in Napoleon ' s marshals , primarily by the difficulty of obtaining facts about them . He capitalized on the growing interest of both Britons and the French in the Napoleonic period by purchasing , as they came out , the many personal memoirs published by the descendants of the participants . Indeed , by 1920 , he had acquired over 2 , 000 volumes , plus sundry maps and letters . That year , in failing health , he moved to the house of his son , Charles , in Carlyle Square ( 21 ) , Chelsea , London . There was no room for the books at his son ' s house , so Phipps gave them to All Souls College , Oxford ; the majority of them were placed in the Codrington Library . He selected All Souls for its established reputation in military history , and for the Codrington ' s collection left to it by Sir Foster Cunliffe , who had been killed in action in 1916 . The collection , called the Phipps Collection , numbered more than 2 , 000 volumes , and includes Napoleon ' s published correspondence , that of the marshals , and has been kept up to date with modern works issued by the Historical Department of the French General Staff . By the 1920s , there was still little published in English about the French marshals , and Phipps ' proposed " Lives of the Marshals " was enthusiastically anticipated by scholars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars . Despite his diligent activity on the project , Phipps ' work was complicated by the regular appearance of new material , which he felt he had to read , verify , and digest ; he sometimes incorporated the new material into his own work , and sometimes counter - balanced it with other material . Phipps was convinced of the importance of his subject , particularly the experience of the future marshals in the Republican armies . The French field armies of the Revolutionary Wars ( 1793 – 1800 ) formed the military education of the future marshals . Although there was great interest in the marshals , little had been published in either French or English about their early military experience . Phipps called these revolutionary armies the Schools for Marshals . Furthermore , he postulated , " the Consulate and the Empire cannot be judged until the Revolutionary period has been studied in detail . " Consequently , the scope of his work expanded . On the one hand , Phipps wished to avoid rehashing the same information that was available , but the careers of the marshals required some duplication . The published works were often filled with inconsistencies , not only in the French sources , but from the French to the English sources . The French sources frequently misinterpreted the English sources , and vice - versa . Phipps wrote both an introduction to his work and a summary of the histories of the armies of the Republic and the Consulate , from 1791 to 1804 , and at certain points in his narrative , he paused to review the positions of the various future marshals and other well - known generals . He reflected on the development of their experience , the characteristics of their leadership , and the relationships to one another and to Napoleon . Critically , he posited that generals rarely improved with practice . Ultimately the work that emerged was a massive typescript unfinished upon Phipps ' death in June 1923 . It included an introduction , a summary of the armies , a detailed history of the armies and the " coup d ' etat " in Paris , a complete history of the French armies in Spain 1808 – 1814 , plus accounts of Napoleon ' s 1814 campaign in which the marshals played such an important role and an account of the marshals during the First and Second Restorations . It also included material on the lives of the individual marshals and notes on the ministers of the Empire , who had been the subjects of Phipps ' original plan . At some point in the compilation of this typescript , Phipps realized that he would not live to finish his work . He hoped that his children might be able to prepare it for publication , and he made some provision for the publication of all or a part of his manuscript . After Phipps ' death , with the assistance and encouragement of Charles Oman , the authority on the Peninsular War , his son , Charles F . Phipps , supervised the publication of the first three volumes . Charles died in June 1932 before proofing the final galleys of volume three and prior to the publication of volumes four and five . Volumes four and five were left in the hands of Phipps ' " very capable granddaughter " and literary executor , Elizabeth Sandars . Reception . Phipps ' effort , and that of his literary executors , was well received as both interesting and informative . " The narrative is that of a gallant gentleman whose life was spent as a ' soldier of the Queen ' and in contributing to the greatness of the British Empire , who narrates to his listeners the facts which he has gathered , after his retirement from the army , in the pursuit of his favorite hobby . " The narrative itself is informal and charming , not only full of analysis , but also relaying interesting stories and anecdotes about the marshals themselves . Other reviewers found the narrative clear , but undistinguished and " fatigued . " In the first volume , Phipps ' analysis covers a categorization of the marshals , although the narrative itself is largely confined to the Armée du Nord . In the beginning , he points out , the French army was well disciplined and the class of non - commissioned officers was " especially good . " As the integration of the so - called volunteers — the revolutionary conscripts — into the units of regular troops undermined morale , discipline , and conditions , the army ' s cohesion fell apart . Phipps highlighted in particular the problems of armies moving without magazines or supplies . His analysis of the classes of marshals — citizen , soldier , officer — offers a noteworthy and solid refutation of the marshals as a class of leadership rising from the rough soldiery ; his criticism of the French Revolutionary army system resulting from the two amalgamations is acute , targeted and well - documented . However , by limiting his sources to only those in English or French , in which he also was fluent , Phipps necessarily restricted his details , ignoring the actions of the Austrians and the Russians . The evidence , though , is always well assembled , even though , by volume three , it becomes much more sparse . Of the five volumes , the second may be the most interesting : it dealt with more interesting times , and more consistent military operations . The army of the north was a " bad army , " and the story of its command is one of " honest and brave men hurried in turn to the guillotine , or of less honest men going over to the enemy . " Some of Phipps ' own eccentricities also appear in volume two ; he frequently lapses into sarcasm , revealing his disdain for civilian administration of military affairs , and there are points at which he fails to follow through fully on his criticism ; for example , he holds back on his critique of Jean Victor Moreau despite his assertion that he wanted to demolish once and for all the myth that Moreau was as great a soldier as Napoleon . Phipps adeptly describes the game of cat and mouse that Moreau , Jean Baptiste Jourdan , and the Archduke Charles played with one another in the summer of 1796 as their armies criss - crossed south - western Germany ; neither general came to grips with the other until October , and even then , after the Battle of Schliengen , Charles was content to chase Moreau and Jourdan over the Rhine , not to demolish the French army . They were lacking , Phipps postulated , the instinct and nerves of Napoleon . The problems associated with Phipps ' lack of professional training as an historian become clear by the third volume . Despite his reading of newly published works , Phipps ' idea of what constituted new material included the publications of memoirs and journals of the participants , not the extensive secondary literature and array of historiographical material in the periodic literature written by professional historians seeking to understand the French revolution and the Napoleonic Wars . Consequently , Phipps ' perceptions of the French revolution remained rooted in the outdated theories of Archibald Alison , Adolphe Thiers , and others , while ignoring some of the new theories of Albert Sorel , François Victor Alphonse Aulard and Albert Mathiez . His military background emerged clearly in his hostility to the meddling of the French government in the affairs of soldiers . Despite his amateur standing , Phipps plowed through an alarmingly confusing mass of material , especially that covering the 1796 – 1797 campaigns in Ireland and the Pyrenees . He hacked through a tangle of French material to provide a path for the English language reader . This feat in itself made volume three a useful tool ; furthermore , Phipps offered an even - handed treatment of the suppression of Lyon and Toulon , two French cities whose revolts alarmed the Revolutionary government . Despite his lack of professional training , Phipps provided a valuable assessment to these widely studied revolts . Reviewers also gave credit to Elizabeth Sanders , Phipps ' granddaughter and literary executor , for her skillful handling of the last two volumes . The purpose of the work becomes even more apparent and direct under her management and editing of the material . The role of the future marshals becomes more clear in the campaigns of 1797 , and especially in the Italian campaign ; her handling of the material kept it fully focused on the future marshals Massena , Augereau , Berthier , and Brune . By the time of the publication of the final volume , Phipps ' work had established for itself a place in the pantheon of Napoleonic literature . It " will always be regarded as a valuable source , " well - known to students of the Napoleonic era , and the last volume , critics maintained , was " as interesting as its predecessors . " Not only did Phipps achieve his goal of creating a record of the development of the marshals , but his volumes have become a useful history of the progress of the wars themselves , from 1792 to 1799 . The true value of the first volume , and indeed the subsequent four , lies in its repeated use as a reference work .