Tsar Alexander Pavlovitch (b. 1777)
The young Alexander ascended to the throne upon the assasination of his father, Tsar Paul, in 1801. Revered by his subjects, he charted a liberal course with his Polish minister Czartoryski in the early years of his reign. No general but a formidable geopolitical strategist, Alexander had never been free to guide the policy of his Empire. Between a host of intrigues at court and the virulent anti-Bonapartism of the aristocracy and clergy, he steered his course carefully.

Pierre Francois Charles Augereau (b. 1757)
The Parisian Augereau was made duc de Castiglione in recognition of his sparkling performance in the Italian campaign. Augereau had served in several foreign armies as a soldier of fortune, and could command in any language. A master of both infantry and cavalry drill, his men called him 'the big Prussian' for the thoroughness of his training and discipline. In 1806 the tough old soldier was in declining health.

Michael Andreas (Mikhail Bogdanovich) Barclay de Tolly (b. 1761)
He was born at Luhda-Grosshof in the once-Polish province of Livonia (Courland), tracing his lineage to 17th century Scotland. Barclay gained first-hand experience of the theater of operations during the Russian war against Poland in 1792-94. His rivals found the Baltic baron insufficiently Russian. His distinctive high forehead stood out above the crush of battle and his cool self-possession inspired emulation in his troops—one of the heroes of the Russian Army.

Leonti Leontievich (Levin August) Bennigsen (b. 1745)
Born of a Hanoverian family, Bennigsen entered the Russian service in 1773. Though he distiguished himself in the Polish War of 1793-94, he lead the palace revolt resulting in the assassination of Tsar Paul I. He was determined not to let his modest experience as a field commander bridle his ambition. A most complex, conflicted, and ambiguous character, he would demonstrate imagination and considerable skill as commander of the Russian Armies in 1807.

Bernadotte, Jean, Prince of Ponte Corvo (b. 1763)
Bernadotte had a powerful protector in the person of his wife, Desiree Clary, who had once been Napoleon's fiancee and whose sister was the wife of Napoleon's brother, Joseph. Commander of the I Corps of the Grande Armee, Bernadotte opposed Napoleon's rise to power and hoped to replace him as ruler of France. Over the next four years his relationship with the Emperor deteriorated, because of his failure to appear on various battlefields at important moments. To him the fact that his was the First Corps gave him precedence over the other Marshals. A hero in his own cause, he was reluctant to cooperate with the other corps commanders. In 1805, his march toward Vienna was delayed. At the battles of Auerstaedt as well as Eylau, his corps arrived too late to provide any assistance.

Alexandre Berthier, Prince of Neuchatel (b. 1753)
As Napoleon's Chief of Staff, Berthier was the main channel of communication, and the font of information on the status of the armies. A short stocky man, he had to be in attendance whenever the Emperor conducted a review, a reconnaissance or a study of terrain, and always on the day of battle. The large-headed, distinctly unprepossessing chief of staff worked and rode untiringly and chewed his fingernails whenever nervous exhaustion overwhelmed him. In 1806 he also served as Minister of War. Aged fifty-four, he had seen warfare on several continents. He accompanied Rochambeau to America during the American Revolution, and first served as chief of staff in the army of the Alps under Kellermann in 1795. Beneath Berthier were three assistant chiefs of staff and, currently, a staff of six generals and eight colonels. This staff was the machinery of Napoleon's success, and Berthier's fame rests upon it.

Gebhard Leberecht von Bluecher (b. 1742)
Born in Rostock, Bluecher joined the Swedish Army at age 14, serving against Prussia in the Seven Years’ War. Later he was captured by a regiment of Prussian hussars, a unit which he then joined. An implacable foe of Napoleon, he was still a fiery hussar fifty years later.

Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne (b. 1769)
An old friend of the Emperor, Bourrienne had witnessed the mobbing of the royal family in the Tuileries at Bonaparte's side in 1792. Bourrienne accompanied Bonaparte to Egypt as private secretary, but questionable financial dealings resulting in his removal from duty in autumn of 1802. He had been employed in the minor post of French envoy to the free city of Hamburg for the past year.

Duke Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand of Brunswick (b. 1735)
A nephew of Frederick the Great, Brunswick had distinguished himself in the Seven Years' War as a young man, and served as field marshal commanding the Prussian armies in the invasion of France in 1792-93.

Marshal Count Theodore Feodorowitch Buxhoewden (b. 1750)
The courageous but unimaginative Marshal Buxhoewden commanded the second Russian army stationed in Tilsit. This army had fought at Austerlitz eleven months before. Buxhoewden, scion of a prominent Livonian family, shouldered a name meaning, in colloquial German, 'shabby trousers.'

Armand Augustin Louis, Marquis de Caulaincourt (b. 1773)
Born into a distinguished military family from Picardy, he spent his youth at Versailles, where his mother served as lady-in-waiting. He narrowly escaped jail during the Terror of 1794, and saw Bonaparte as the alternative to bloody civil war. At the battle of Hohenlinden in 1800 Caulaincourt led the crack cavalry regiment, the 2nd Carabiniers. His father's friend, Talleyrand, employed him in Russia in 1801-02, where he greatly impressed Alexander. From 1804, Caulaincourt served at the Emperor's side, through battles and negotiations, as his calm, courteous, but somewhat austere grand equerry. The 'Master of the Horse' supervised the Emperor's all-important stable, wagon masters, outriders, coachmen, postilions, and equerries attending to the horses and couriers.

Count Pierre Antoine Noel Bruno Daru (b. 1767)
Counsellor of State Daru had performed the duty of Intendant-General of the Emperor's household since July 1805, impressing him with his 'good judgement, a good intellect, a great power of work, and a body and mind of iron.' He was also a man of letters. In 1799, while serving under Massena in Switzerland, he wrote two poems - Poeme des Alpes and the Chant de Guerre - and translated part of Horace, published in four volumes in 1804-05.

Marshal Louis Nicholas Davout (b. 1770)
At the camp of Bruges on the Belgian coast, Napoleon's ablest field commander trained the 14 regiments of III Corps for the invasion of England. Descended from a noble Burgundian family, the painstaking, scrupulously honest, stern, even pitiless commander of the III Corps evinced constant care for his troops and the strictest discipline.

General Geraud Christophe de Michel Duroc, Duc de Frioul (b. 1772)
The reserved and unambitious Grand Marshal of the Imperial Household, among Napoleon's closest advisors, knew the Prussian monarchs well, and continued the friend of the court of Berlin after their disastrous defeat.

Joseph Fouche (b.
The sallow, amoral French minister of police.

King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia (b. 1770)
Frederick the Great's unfortunate grand-nephew had grown from a repressed and solitary boy into an innately weak and vacillating young man. Returning from war against France in 1793, the crown prince fell under the spell of the ambitious seventeen-year old, Auguste Wilhelmine Amalie Luise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.

August Wilhelm Anton, Graf Neithard von Gneisenau (b. 1760)
The forty-six year old Major had led a varied career, including a year in Canada in the pay of George III during the Revolutionary War. He served on garrison duty in Silesia prior to the outbreak of war in 1806. He fought in the first action of the campaign at Saalfeld as a company commander and again at the crisis of Jena four days later.

Graf Christian von Haugwitz (b. 1752)
The Prussian foreign minister tried to sway his court toward closer ties with France in 1805 and 1806.

Field Marshal Count Kamenskoi (b. 1731)
An old lieutenant of Suvorov's, he had last fought in 1799, in Italy. With the energetic roughness of the illustrious Muscovite, but none of his decisiveness, he had served with merit in the Turkish Wars but was now out of date, an eccentric physically unfit for command of an army. Nonetheless he was placed in command of the two Russian Armies in Poland in November 1806, demonstrating perhaps too well the 'better part of valor.'

Jean Lannes, duc de Montebello (b. 1769)
Of average height and very well-built, his small eyes graced a pleasant, kind and expressive face. Impetuous in his sentiments, inclined to ill-temper, the passionate hotheaded Gascon had a keen wit, boundless ambition, extraordinary energy and undaunted courage. He commanded the V Corps of the Grande Armee until the end of December, 1806, and created a new Reserve Corps which he commanded in May and June of 1807.

Francois Joseph Lefebvre (b. 1755)
A miller's son from Alsace, Lefebvre spoke with a German accent. A hero of the revolution, Lefebvre served in the Gardes Francais. As general of division he was in the vanguard of Jourdan's army at the battle of Fleurus in June 1794. Senator in 1800, Marshal of the Empire in 1804, he carried the sword of Charlemagne at Napoleon's imperial coronation.

Lt. Gen. Anton Wilhelm L'Estocq (b. ~ 1728)
Served as an aide-de-camp to Zieten in the later part of the Seven Years War. Won fame as a hussar colonel during the Duke of Brunswick's expedition to Holland in 1787. Stationed on Prussia's frontier with Russia at the outbreak of war, L’Estocq presently assumed command of the Prussian Reserve Corps in the east.

Marchese Girolamo Lucchesini (b. 1751)
Prussian ambassador to Paris since the days of the consulate. 'A man of talent, but unsteady, insincere, living in Paris with all the enemies of the government, and being nevertheless one of the most assiduous of courtiers of M. de Talleyrand.'

Queen Auguste Wilhelmine Amalie Luise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (b. 1776)
Enchantress of the Prussian court, striking in her colonel's uniform, Luise was a leader of the 'war party' of the Prussian court. An inveterate foe of Napoleon, she used her charm to influence Friedrich Wilhelm and his advisors, and held a powerful fascination for Tsar Alexander.

Marshal Adolphe Edouard Casimir Joseph Mortier, Duke of Treviso(b. 1768)
One of the cruel epigrams concerning the towering, hearty marshal sneered, 'A big mortar has a small range.' Mortier quickly met such jibes with his Falstaffian gusts of laughter.

Marshal Joachim Murat, Grand Duke of Berg (b. 1767)
The dashing commander of the glorious cavalry reserve was married to Napoleon's sister Caroline. For all his elan, his skills as a cavalry general were mediocre - his concept of intelligence gathering was faulty, and he paid little heed to the husbanding of his mounts. 'The bravest of men in the face of the enemy, incomparable on the battlefield, but a fool in his actions everywhere else.' - Napoleon

Napoleon Bonaparte (b. 1769)
When he first came on the scene, Napoleon seemed the harbinger of a new and glorious age. His army, the best in Europe, excelled at an innovative kind of warfare based on strategic mobility. French tactics stressed quickness and flexibility, coordinating all arms and skirmishing. On the battlefield they boldly overwhelmed their opponents - the Austrians and Russians in the autumn of 1805, the Prussians a year later. More than a brilliant strategist, but with deep insight into human psychology and an irresistable magnetism and charm, he did not fear to turn the wheel of destiny: 'I saw the crown of France lying in the gutter and I picked it up.' Now well into mid-life, the Emperor's greatest days were behind him, and he already suffered from the stomach malady that would become crippling.

Marshal Michel Ney, Duc d'Elchingen (b. 1769)
An excellent trainer of troops, he commanded the VI Corps of the Grande Armee. His attack across the Danube in 1805 completed the encirclement of Ulm and gained him his title. Stubborn in the rearguard and on the defensive, Ney tended to lose his head in the advance.

Prince Jozef Antoni Poniatowski (b. 1763)
The nephew of Poland's last king was a leader of the insurrection of 1794. When the Prussians left Warsaw, he became commander of the Polish National Guard. Related through his father Andrzej to the powerful, outspokenly pro-Russian Czartoryski family.

Count Jean Rapp (b. 1771)
The blunt and often-wounded 'swiss cheese' of a cavalryman, his hair and whiskers already flecked with gray, hailed like Lefebvre from German-speaking Alsace.

Anne Jean Marie Rene Savary, Duke of Rovigo (b. 1774)
One of Napoleon's trusted aides-de-camp, who could carry out an independent mission on a moment's notice, whether to perform a reconnaissance, negotiate with the enemy, or command a garrison. Shortly before the battle of Austerlitz he carried a request for an armistice to the Tsar, a ruse which helped induce the belief that Napoleon's forces were on the point of dissolution.

Gerhard Johann David von Scharnhorst (b. 1755)
A professor at the War Academy in Berlin, a brilliant organizer and theorist, and one soldier in the Prussian service who would survive the campaign with an enhanced reputation.

Marquis Philippe-Paul de Segur (b. 1780)
Napoleon's grand master of ceremonies hailed from an ancien regime aristocratic family - his father had served in Petersburg as Louis XVI's ambassador.

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, Prince of Benavente (b. 1754)
Disliked by Louis XVI as a freethinker, he became bishop of Autun in 1789. Supported the Revolution, but later fled the Terror, first to Britain, then the United States. He returned to France just before the commencement of Bonaparte's Italian campaign in 1796. Talleyrand served as subtle Imperial Grand Chamberlain. A virtuoso of corrosive wit, the French Foreign Minister's mocking glance of cold, serene hauteur and mischievous upturned nose withered many an adversary.

Duke Carl August of Weimar (b. 1775)
The Duke was sovereign prince of the Duchy of Weimar, patron and drinking companion of the poet Goethe. A man of the people, he was always seen in an ugly old droshky that barely hung upon springs, with never more than two horses, in a worn out grey cloak and military cap, smoking a cigar. In 1806 he would take command of a corps of the Prussian army.