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former seminarian was a brilliant field leader but nakedly ambitious and often reckless to a dangerous degree. He commanded the Grande Armée’s cavalry units.
    At the head of III Corps, Michel Ney was known even before Russia as “the Bravest of the Brave.” His father was a poor cooper who couldn’t afford to set him up in a profession, so Ney took up arms. Imperturbable, vulgar, badly educated, he rose by a native talent for battlefield strategy and sheer fearlessness. One of his typical exploits dated from 1799, when Ney entered a town occupied by enemy Austrian units disguised as a Prussian civilian. Wandering the streets, he took note of every guard post and every tent, then strolled back across the picket lines to plan his offensive. Had he been caught, he would have been executed as a spy, but Ney seemed indifferent to the danger. The outnumbered French regiment attacked the next day and took the town easily.
    A peasant in the best sense, Ney was also difficult to command and sometimes rash in his hurry to engage the enemy, but the emperor couldn’t resist his toughness. “That man is a lion,” he remarked to his staff at the Battle of Friedland as Ney marched by with his troops. From the emperor, it was high praise.
    One key player without a marshal’s baton was Jean-Andoche Junot, who had been with Napoleon from 1793, and had been seriously wounded in the head at Lonato in 1796. Erratic, fearless, and loyal, Junot hated the fact that he had never become a marshal. Some said that the head wound had altered his personality. But Napoleon stood by him. It would prove to be a risky decision.
    The men Napoleon had assembled to lead the Grande Armée in Russia had all proved themselves in battle and believed in daring over caution. Napoleon had no pure theorists or rear-echelon generals in his key commands. His leaders had risen largely through their own instincts, and they, like their leader, loved risk. They were an apt expression of his reign, and no one had been able to match them.
    T HE MAKEUP OF DIFFERENT units varied based on availability of men, casualties, illness, and the role of the particular force, but certain parameters were common throughout the Grande Armée. The smallest infantry unit was the company of 100-140 men. Six companies on average formed a battalion, which averaged around 600 men (but which could fluctuate down to 300 and up to 1,200). Four battalions made up a regiment of approximately 2,500 men. Two regiments on average made a division of 5,000 men or so, including an attached artillery unit. The largest force in the Russian campaign was the corps, made up of several divisions, allied with cavalry units and artillery.
    The size of the corps varied from the 10,000-strong force under Prince Eugène, Napoleon’s stepson (from his marriage to Josephine) and ruler of Venice, to Murat’s 40,000 cavalrymen to Davout’s mammoth I Corps, which fielded 70,000 men at the start of the campaign, more troops than many armies had put into the field a generation before, and a force that underlined Napoleon’s confidence in the Iron Marshal. Attacks were most often carried out at the corps and division level, depending on how broad the field of battle was.
    Napoleon was the undisputed head of the Grande Armée. Beneath him on the command chart was his chief of staff, Louis-Alexandre Berthier, who was closer to an exalted secretary, dispensing his orders and running the organization. Under Berthier were the marshals and a few high-ranking generals, each commanding one of the eleven corps put into the field. Each marshal or corps commander had a complete hierarchy under him: generals, majors, down to the commanders of the individual infantry battalions, artillery units, and cavalry regiments.
    In all, Napoleon commanded 522,300 infantry, 94,000 cavalry, 47,000 artillery, and 21,000 miscellaneous troops. Some 449,000 of these were first-line troops intended for battle.
    The deeper statistics were