Imagine that you are an instructor at a modern military academy. You will teach individuals who will one
day be officers charged with leading others, possibly into battle. As part of the curriculum, you decide to use the
life of a past military commander to instruct your students. Select an individual who was a significant military
leader from the last 500 years, and write a paper about the lessons that this individual’s life might impart to your
students. In your paper, you might focus on one topic, such as leadership qualities, or you might focus on a variety of topics: for example, leadership, training, ability to adjust to changing technology, relationship to the troops, other officers, or superior officials. You might also consider the blunders a military commander has
committed as providing lessons in what not to do can also be valuable. The preceding are just suggestions, and I encourage you to develop your ideas. Just be sure you make each point in the paper clear
and support it with well-developed, specific examples from your chosen military figure’s life.
Your paper should have a well-developed introduction that draws in the reader, previews the main topics to be
developed, and contains a clearly defined argument that the rest of the paper supports. The paper should also
include an overall conclusion summarizing the more significant lessons to be learned from this person’s life.
Format:
Five full pages to six pages in length
Title page
12-point font size, Times New Roman Font
Use of footnotes for citations
Typed, double-spaced between lines in the body of the paper
Number all pages, except the title page
One-inch margins on all sides
Bibliography page
DO NOT use parenthetical citations
Example:
Sample footnote entries.
First full entries for a source:
1
David McCullough, Truman (New York: Random House, 1992), 78-82.
2
Richard H. Kohn, “The Newburgh Conspiracy,” Journal of the Early Republic 20 (July 1972): 232-234.
Subsequent footnote entries for a source already cited once in full:
3
McCullough, Truman, 96.
4
Kohn, “Newburgh Conspiracy,” 229.
Please follow and read these instructions carefully. The historical figure you will be analyzing is Michel Ney. The biography is titled, “Napoleon’s Marshal the Life of Michel Ney by John Foster”. Let me know if you have any questions about the assignment.
