Marshal Soult

Soult’s first ambition was to become a soldier and he joined the ranks of the French army as a private. Rather bizarrely he then left to pursue a career as a baker until someone managed to persuade him back to a military path. He quickly rose through the ranks and was eventually given command of IV corps in Napoleon’s Grande Armee.

At Boulogne he proved a stickler for training and sometimes had the corps out for 12-hour stints on manoeuvres. He even commissioned a bronze monument to the Grande Armee and greatly annoyed his officers by demanding that they all contribute to the cost. He was not much loved by the other marshals and generals and bickered constantly, having run-ins with Ney in particular (one time in Spain this led to a full-blown fight between the staffs of the two marshals).

FN/357 MARSHAL SOULT, in uniform of Colonel-General of Chasseurs

During the early part of the Austerlitz campaign, he and Murat felt that the army should retreat but they didn’t want to say this directly to the emperor so somehow convinced Lannes to do the dirty work. Napoleon didn’t take the suggestion well saying, “This is the first time that Lannes has ever advised a reteat!”. Seeing how the conversation was going, Soult chipped in to say he couldn’t understand why Lannes would say such a thing. Lannes, being rather miffed, then challenged him to a duel, although nothing came of it.

Soult’s finest moment came at Austerlitz where his men stormed the Pratzen Heights to seal Napoleon’s brilliant victory, although he forever thought the battle his own personal triumph. Later in Spain his work was mostly mediocre due in part to his preoccupation with acquiring vast amounts of loot - his HQ in Andalusia was said to resemble an art gallery.

The horse is FNH/10 which I painted as a chestnut before noticing that the Hinton Hunt painting instruction sheet actually specified it as black

Following the abdication Soult became a Royalist and was given command in Brittany until he was sacked by the king for a misdemeanour. He re-joined Napoleon for the Hundred Days where he served as chief-of-staff giving a less than impressive performance. After Waterloo he fled to Berg after a tip-off he was on the allied ‘hit list’ for execution.

Eventually Soult managed to worm his way back in with the Bourbons becoming both Minister of War and Prime Minister and was always popular with the French public. He represented France at Queen Victoria’s coronation where Wellington snuck up behind him and laying a hand on his shoulder said, “Aha, I’ve got you after all these years!”. He died in 1851 at the age of 82, the last but one of Napoleons marshals (Marmont, the last, died the following year).