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The Emperor's Friend: Marshal Jean Lannes. By Margaret Scott Chrisawn. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001. ISBN 0-313-31062-9. Maps. Notes. Index. Pp. xiii, 259. $55.95.
The Napoleonic period abounds with curious characters, but few are more enigmatic or colorful than Marshal Jean Lannes. Though born into the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum, he rose to become a living example of the "baton in knapsack" ideal, a soldier of rare capability, and one of Napoleon's true friends.
Lannes has had his share of biographers in French, but English language scholars have only discussed his life within the ambit of survey histories of the marshalate. As the first full-length biography of Lannes in English, Margaret Scott Chrisawn's The Emperor's Friend: Marshal Jean Lannes...