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Home / People / Jean-de-Dieu Soult

Historical person

Jean-de-Dieu Soult

1769–1851

Jean-de-Dieu Soult rose from an infantry private to become a marshal of France under Napoleon. He fought with distinction at Austerlitz, commanded in Spain and Portugal and served as Napoleon’s chief of staff during the Waterloo campaign. After the Restoration he adapted repeatedly to changing regimes and later served as war minister and prime minister. His long career combined tactical skill, political flexibility and a controversial reputation for acquiring art during the Peninsular War.

Soult appears throughout Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series and in Simon Scarrow’s Revolution quartet. Historical fiction often casts him as a formidable French opponent, particularly in stories of the Peninsular War and the Pyrenees. His later political survival also allows novelists to challenge the idea that Napoleon’s marshals belonged only to the battlefield.

Griff Hosker’s Chasseur À Cheval places Jean-de-Dieu Soult within a narrative shaped by family, marriage and personal loyalty and military command and battlefield decision-making. Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe’s Revenge places Jean-de-Dieu Soult within a narrative shaped by military command and battlefield decision-making and family, marriage and personal loyalty. Other novels featuring Jean-de-Dieu Soult include Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe’s Havoc, Adrian Goldsworthy’s Whose Business Is to Die, Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe’s Storm, Griff Hosker’s 1808, and Griff Hosker’s Bloody Badajoz.

Historical context

Historical periods linked to Jean-de-Dieu Soult

Peninsular War 1807–1814 CE Waterloo Campaign 1815-06

Series

Series featuring Jean-de-Dieu Soult (3 series)

Napoleonic Horseman in Order

by Griff Hosker 10 books 4.4

Napoleonic Horseman follows a cavalryman through the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The series moves between French and British service, espionage, the Peninsular War, sieges and Waterloo, using mounted warfare to show how individual soldiers are pulled through the largest conflicts of the age.

All books in this series

Sharpe in Order

by Bernard Cornwell 26 books 4.3

The Sharpe series follows Richard Sharpe from service as a private soldier in India to command in the British Army during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The novels place him at the Siege of Seringapatam, Battle of Assaye, Siege of Gawilghur, Battle of Trafalgar, British attack on Copenhagen,…

All books in this series

Napoleonic Wars in Order

by Adrian Goldsworthy 6 books 4.3

The Napoleonic Wars series follows officers and soldiers of the fictional 106th Regiment of Foot through Wellington’s campaigns. The novels move from the first British intervention in Spain through Moore’s retreat to Corunna, Talavera, Ciudad Rodrigo, Cádiz and Albuera, showing the war through ordinary officers rather than generals…

All books in this series