A recent study of Napoleon's Grande Armée finds that a lot of its campaigns were highly improvised, with corruption, looting, arrears in pay and low morale hitting it and affecting its performance years before the disastrous Russian campaign of 1812.

XREF: Challenges the romanticized image of Napoleon's army as an efficient war machine, parallel to how the book dismantles romanticized views of Mehmed Ali's army. SEED: A counter-narrative essay on famous armies' improvised, corrupt realities could challenge popular military-history mythmaking.

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 894