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Napoleon’s Military Genius

Excerpt from How Wars Are Won: The 13 Rules of War—From Ancient Greece to the War on Terror, by Bevin Alexander, page 329

Napoleon Bonaparte’s military genius burst on the world like a meteor. He was only 25 years old and inexperienced in war when he mounted cannons at the harbor mouth of the great French naval base of Toulon in 1793. By threatening to bottle up British warships in the harbor, he forced the British to abandon their occupation of the base. His action now looks like an obvious solution. Yet others at the time had not seen it. While all great ideas are simple, the gift of Napoleon and other military geniuses is to see the obvious when others do not.

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