Joachim Murat (King of Naples)

Joachim Murat (1767–1815) was Napoleon's flamboyant cavalry master and King of Naples (1808–1815). The son of an innkeeper in Gascony, Murat married Napoleon's sister Caroline Bonaparte. Renowned across Europe for his daring equestrian charges, theatrical uniforms, ostrich-plumed hats, and golden sabers, Murat was the premier cavalry pursuit general in the Napoleonic Wars.

His immortal moment occurred during a blinding blizzard on February 8, 1807, at the Battle of Eylau: with the French center pierced by Russian columns, Napoleon turned to him, asking: 'Will you let those fellows swallow us up?' Murat assembled eighty squadrons of heavy cavalry and cuirassiers—over 10,700 horsemen—and led the largest cavalry charge in recorded European history, smashing right through the Russian infantry lines, reforming, and charging back through them to save the French army. Captured in Calabria in 1815 attempting to reclaim Naples, he commanded his firing squad: 'Spare my face, aim for the heart!'