Roman Relic
MICHEL NEY, Marshal of France and Prince of the Moskowa, resembled nothing so much, both in his excellences and his defects, as a Centurion of Rome. A loyal subordinate, he would under- take anything he was asked if only his orders were plain and his objective immediate : superb as a fighting man, he was never so happy as when personally commanding a small body of troops and looking positively down the throats of his enemies : a real leader (as opposed to general) he could all but raise the dead by his mere physical presence. On the other hand, he knew nothing of strategy and little of tactics, reserving a stubborn distaste for any manoeuvre other than a head-on rampage with death or glory as the goal. Again, he was an imbecile in matters of politics, a child in matters of administration, and a peasant where there was any question of diplomacy or address. In tracing the Marshal's career from his days as a recruit to the morning of his execution, J. B. Morton has made all this commendably plain. He has also emphasised the important truth that, for all Ney's coolness in the hand-to-hand turmoil of close battle, he was only too apt, in any crisis of a strategic or national scale, simply to lose his head.
Napoleon himself once remarked that he should have left Ney as a mere General of Division. But Ney had got where he was through his sheer prestige, in the New Army open to the talents, as a fighting man of Homeric stature, as a Colossus of unquenchable loyalty and courage. And so how, asks Mr. Morton, did this paragon of soldierly virtue come to commit such abominable acts of treachery in the year 1814-15? His answer, to establish the validity of which the whole book is
designed, is that Ney, plain son of the people and peerless in battle, simply could not cope at all with the larger issues of political and international negotiation. For these purposes, he might just as well have been the sergeant-majdr which he still. in many ways resembled. In a word, he lost his grip—and also his honour—because he had a quick, honest temper and a guileless heart. If this is not excuse enough, says Mr. ,Morton, then in any case Ney must be forgiven; forgiven because .of his legendary and far-flung acts of heroism, forgiven, above all, for his endurance and gal- lantry in the retreat of 1812. (Mr. Morton's account of the Russian campaign is a model of swift, clear and often very moving narrative.) But
since, the argument proceeds, Ney was neither excused nor forgiven, we have here the spectacle of one more soldier being done down by vin- dictive, time-biding politicians. Mr. Morton's plausible description of Ney's trial and death lends conviction to this view (and it is entertaining to find the Iron Duke coming out, for once, in rather shabby colours). But I am not sure the persistent contrast between the bluff soldier and the in- triguing statesmen does not become wearisome by the end of the book; and I looked hopefully but in vain for a little of Beachcomber's pointed frivolity—which might have made a happy silver tinkle to offset the monotonous clanking of Mr.
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