【作死贴】The appearence and dual character英文版

卡佩

Brief introduce :Marshal Ney was born in Saarlouis on 10 January 1769.The name Ney is common in this place.

His father Peter Ney was a veteran with German background has strongly sympathetic towards France and had fought with the army of Louis XV against Frederick the Great.The marshal is his second son.

Many historians described the marshal as being “curde” “boorish” “ill-educated”and “scarcely literate” and so on but none of them is true. He grew up to be a bilingual, fluent in two languages French and German.

Height:About the height there are some argument about six feet one between five feet eight but there is also some information from the prison register who wrote the signalement of Ney after he was arrest in Bessonis which showed the height of the prisoner is five feet nine.And the six feet one is a official measurement taken after the execution but there is no proof that the measurer did not begin at the big toe instead of the heal.Some historians who insist on saying the marshal was five feet eight give the following theories: plus one and a half inches of boot-heel, his broad-shouldered, barrel-chested make him looks more imposing.

Appearance:About the physical point of that man, Baron Gerard’s oil-painting and Houdon’s head model can show it well.He had an unusually high forehead which the combing forward and across of his wavy hair only partly disguises.This gives the impression of a long face and the face gradually just forward giving the chin defiant look.The eyes is blue and large but somewhat heavy-lidded (but feel repose) while nose is longish and slightly concave. By the way Ney is a good build for hussar with the body rather short and the legs long.

Hair:As a child,Michel was obviously extremely fair.Instead of bright red or carroty which people always describe it his hair was a rich chestnut color.The mistake may derives because of his nickname “Le Rougeaud”.But it’s not a word to describe the hair color.In French call the “red hair man”is “un rouge”.In Gerard’s artwork also give the man a very high color it may tell us during the war his blood was up.

Negative:Some Napoleon admirers may think nothing can compared with the ones which have reged about his character and subsequent actions.”Hot-headed”is the frequent word use to describe him.Others directed against him have been “a turncoat” “a traitor”, “a brave soldier, but a muddled thinker who never got his priorities right” and the most terrible accusation from St.-Helena “Ney was the principal cause of France defeat at Waterloo”.

Character:I will explain “Hot-tempered” first. Michel Ney was a quick-tempered man, but there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that he was a bad tempered one. Moreover his anger, when it blew up, no more than two things——either incompetence of another officers or against some act which touched upon his honour. Ney was never a vindictive person, and there is only one instance (in Galicia in 1809) he took illogical against his enemy. In fact Ney cooled down almost as quickly as he blew up-balanced with his qualities of forgiveness, warmth and generosity he goes a long way towards explaining why he was loved by his troops and even his opponents. Although as a demanding leading, he would show his men precisely what they must do by setting an example; and the man always acted quite naturelly in their midst.

As to Ney, there is no hard for him to keep the own honour which he had won by fighting in battles. In addition he must maintain the honour attached to the rank of marshal, to his family’s position in society and above all to the France he had become a part of and believed he represented.

“Hot-headed”would also do to cover certain other superficial aspects of Ney the person, his sudden enthusiasms, for instance and the occasions when he acted rashly or impulsively. If the latter occurred in battle, and despite everything he succeed, then it would be attributed to his personal bravery. If not he was said to have “blundered badly”.

If describing deeper, one can find “hot-headed”fails totally. He was born in a frontier town which mix with dual character, although sharply divided, the two sides also twinned and allowing Ney to be both unpredictable and consistent, of alternating moods and yet always himself. Furthermore it was the part of him which supplied the motives.

Soldier on battlefield:Michel Ney possessed so strongly the romantic spirit. His favourite reading matter is Chanson de Roland or perhaps he simply heard the legends locally as a child.

The Saar had formerly belonged to the old Frankish empire of Charlemagne and people took great pride in this fact so as Ney, in several of his letters and speeches as a general and marshal Ney keeps referring back to Charlemagne. It may reasonably sure of Ney grew up to have a firm moral sense, embracing justice, a soldier’s devotion to duty and his personal integrity but at the same time with a code of behaviour closely akin to the Age of Chivalry. And this characters he applied equally to his life in both war and peace and completely without reserve. As an officer Ney was one of the fiercest fighters is military history. And like Napoleon he fought to win. He was a brave, forceful and inspiring commander but never a bloodthirsty man. He went to war with the desire to be a hero: courageous and unrelenting in pursuit of victory, steadfast when the going rough and magnanimous towards his opponents. Ney was a man of deeds and fewer words—but the deed had to be right.

Like the front says Ney like a person who comes from the Age of Chivalry, it wouldn’t have occured him—to ill-treat or feed prisoners any differently to his own men, he also regarded plunder does a contagious disease. Above all thought he loved the grand gesture in war.

Maybe there are further echoes of Roland here, he was proudly refusing to below the great horn until the last minute. One can always find him seizing a rifle and bayonet and dashing in a mongst his hard-press infantry; or galloping across at his peril to turn a dangerous charge; or again shaking hands with and inviting to dinner the general who has just surrendered to him and such senses are what he felt fight ought to consist of instead of what by experience he know it to be.

Obviously the romance part of Ney served him for better in war than it did in peace. It made him somewhat like a kind of nineteenth century paladin, a shining example of courage and fair-play when so much going on around him was brutal and squalid. But away from the wars, unfortunately, it was a different story. Everyone may think the nineteenth century was a romantic one but there are only small part such as literature , a lesser extent art. In the field of politics and the court there are all was self-seeking, intrigue and corruption. As it still is today.

In politics:That’s why Ney periodically expressed his disgust with life in Pairs. People may think he is competely misunderstood politics, on the contrary if at times he appears some what naive, there are some occasions he seems to know what is going well. That’s all false, in fact he hate politicans so much, he would only deal with them in an extreme situation. He wants to eliminate them but he can’t, and therefore he preferred to avoid them. He would rather pay attention upon the ideal of France: of the land and the nation’s continuing existence and greatness than the transient sordidness of its politics. Peter-Ney’s dinner table talk made remarkable effectiveness.His second son became far more than a Francophile and a marshal in the service of his adopted country. If one only has such romantic and have no balanced thing, he would have been lucky to survive one battle let alone over a hundred. In reality, Ney was smart and became a knee student of warfare: of its techniques, its tactics and its strategy, he also interested in some small details. The idea that he couldn’t be bothered with anything not promising to add to his store of glory is again false. He wanted to be the master of his craft, and would go to great lengths to unravel the problems of logistics, use of terrain, even how much an infantryman could carry in his pack and still move quickly. He also widly-read in military history and by the time went on he delved deeply into the actual theories of war.The result was a soldier of tremendous fighting qualities who also an extremely resourceful one. This became obviously as the Empire’s fortunes declined and the marshals were forced to exchange glory for a war of national defence. After his romantic inclinations had taken a bad knock and he was forced to lean upon their reverse side—“the real” quite heavily. It appeared an amazing strength and resilience, buttressing his whole personality through the difficult days until everything went well.

At Waterloo both the romantic and realist had gone down, but in the aftermath to the battle his equilibrium was gradually restored, so that made the tragedy in December. Time could be relied upon to sort out his reputation as a French patriot and hero.

To some extent what was best in Ney’s character had retarded his advancement. He was no fortune hunter. He had none of the spirit of intrigue that led others to push their way to the front at the expense of their comrades, and he was quite free from brigand touch that made so many of the soldiers of the Empire enrich themselves with almost upon peculation and plunder.

All in all, as Berthier said, Ney is a figure comes from the Age of Chivalry.

大兵团的那个贴，把英文也整理出来了，有不少是我自己写的，难免生硬