The Memoirs of General Baron de Marbot, Volume I: From Cadet to Captain: Campaigns of a Young Hussar under Napoleon

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.

In his memoirs, Baron Jean-Baptiste Antoine Marcellin de Marbot looks back on a life that spanned one of the most turbulent and extraordinary periods in European history. Born in 1782 in Corrèze, France, Marbot grew up amid the storms of the French Revolution. He witnessed the fall of the monarchy, the rise of the Republic, the glory and collapse of Napoleon’s Empire, and the return of the Bourbons.


He served with distinction on the staffs of Napoleon’s most celebrated marshals—Bernadotte, Augereau, Murat, Lannes, and Masséna. He met emperors, kings, and princes. He marched in some of the greatest campaigns of the age, survived the fall of empires, and endured exile. Through it all, he remained both soldier and observer, a man whose loyalty to family and sense of fortune never faltered, even in times of hardship.


Unlike official histories, Marbot’s memoirs are intimate and vivid. They reveal not only the grand sweep of war and politics, but also the personal, the humorous, and the tragic episodes that shaped his destiny. They are written, as he tells us, not with the flourish of a historian, but with the plain voice of a man speaking to his wife and children—a soldier leaving behind his truth for the next generation.