Your favorite military commanders thoughout history?

[Gaelic Celtia]

Tokugawa Ieyasu, Sun Tzu, Cao Cao, Vercingetorix, Buddug, William Wallace...just to name a few

[Neu Preussische Republik]

Feldmarschall Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel: He was one of, if not the best military commander Hitler had, and one of the only German generals during WW2 to openly earn General George S. Patton's respect, ultimately the only real severe problem he had was that throughout the course of Hitler's reign, he progressively began hating him more and more, and ended up being part of a plot to assassinate Hitler, which he was discovered of being part of it, and was given the options to either commit suicide, or they would torture and kill his entire family in front of him, then torture and kill him, so he did meet an unfortunate end.

Hannibal the Carthaginian: This man was one of the sliest military leaders of all history, this man escaped capture more times than most people thought humanly possible, and although he ultimately ended up defeated, he was by far one of the hardest military leaders Rome ever had to fight, because he did a whole lot more than running away.

Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke: If you know anything about this man, you should know that he was a genius strategist, and that his military reforms in co-operation with Bismarck were some of the best military reforms in European history, as well as being a key commander in both the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, as well as the Franco-Prussian war.

Prince Aleksandr Vasil‘evich Suvorov.: The man who fought 64 battles in his life, and won every single one of them, known for his book "The Science of Victory", as well as having been a count in the Holy Roman Empire, he was one of the greatest military leaders in history, as well as being known for having not only cared for his men, but having been friendly with them, often joking with them as well.

If any information here is incorrect, please do correct me, politely, I tried not to use Wikipedia for much, but I ended up having to use it for a couple of the names.

[Norjagen]

My goodness.. Where to even begin?
Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson is certainly on the list. Despite fighting for the Confederacy, he's regarded as one of the most talented military leaders in US history. His ability to work together with Lee was a quality that, following his death through friendly fire at Chancellorsville, was never really replaced by any of the South's other generals. He was a brilliant and bold tactician who was able to fill in and execute the details of Lee's often vague overall plans. In fact, Lee often preferred to focus on the goals that needed to be met, and let Jackson decide how best to meet them.

He also had some of the best parting words upon his deathbed.
Dr. McGuire wrote an account of his final hours and his last words:

A few moments before he died he cried out in his delirium, "Order A.P. Hill to prepare for action! Pass the infantry to the front rapidly! Tell Major Hawks"—then stopped, leaving the sentence unfinished. Presently a smile of ineffable sweetness spread itself over his pale face, and he said quietly, and with an expression, as if of relief, "Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees."

I fully expect to revisit this topic once I've thought of some others, but for now, Jackson will do nicely. lol

[The Archregimancy]

Ptolemaic Egypt and the Seleucid Empire lasted three centuries after Alexander's death, and there were still Hellenistic kings on the Indus in 10 AD.

His single unified empire may have fallen apart fairly quickly after his death, but the successor states lasted centuries; and the cultural legacy of Alexander's conquests was also incalculable - if not necessarily always planned.

As good a modern general as Vo Nyguyen Giap was, let's wait another couple of centuries before we judge both his broader legacy and communist Vietnam's contribution to global civilisation.

The Indo-Greeks, and err...Bactrian Greeks are so little known, but immensely fun to read about...not that there's a whole to read...I've got a handful of books on the subject, and have been meaning to reread them for a while now.

One thing I've always wondered about is what happened to all the Greeks and Macedonians in the East after the Seleucids declined and lost power. More specifically, the men trained as phalangites. Was any of this knowledge passed down for another generation or two in certain areas of the former Seleucid State, in declining skill? Could the Parthians, theoretically called up a quasi-phalanx from Greek/Macedonian settlers say, 20 years after the conquered an area? 40 years? etc? How long would such knowledge be passed along, and would it be allowed to be passed on?

Ah, but the Indo-Greeks and the Bactrian Greeks aren't quite the same thing, though they are related; and the former are arguably even more remarkable than the latter. It's a common point of confusion, so it's worth elaborating here slightly.

The Greco-Bactrian Kingdom lasted from roughly 250 BC through 125 BC, and was formed when Diodatus - the Seleucid satrap of Bactria - seceded from the Seleucid state. As to what happened to them, they seem to have become the first Classical European state (in cultural terms, though not in geography) to discover that static European infantry formations are no match for mass invasions of Central Asian nomad cavalry. The precise details are sketchy, and rely largely on Chinese records, but they seem to have succumbed to mass invasions of a group known in Chinese records as the Yuezhi (subsequently the founders of the Kushan Empire), who were themselves fleeing the nomad confederation known as the Xiongnu. If - as some speculate (and it is wholly speculation for now) - the Xiongnu were the core of the same group of people that Europe would later refer to as the 'Huns', this makes the Greco-Bactrian state the very first Classical state to fall victim to the steppe nomad population displacements brought about by the Huns.

The likely fate of the Greco-Bactrians is revealed by one of my favourite archaeological sites, Alexandria on the Oxus in what's now northern Afghanistan. A thriving Hellenistic city for some 200 years, it seems to have been simply wiped out during the Yuezhi invasions in c.145 BC, and was wholly and totally abandoned after c.130 BC.

As to your question about the Parthians... they frequently hired Greek mercenaries after their initial victories over the Seleucids, and those mercenary phalanxes proved just as ineffective against the Yuezhi as the Bactrian experience might lead us to expect.

The Indo-Greek Kingdom (more accurately, kingdoms plural, since they weren't always a united entity, especially after c.130 BC), on the other hand, was founded when Demetrius I - a son of Euthydemus I of Bactria - invaded the Indus Valley to found his own state in c. 180 BC. Over the next 50 years, the Greco-Bactrian and Greco-Indian states would even fight the occasional war against each other. The Indo-Greek Kingdom would reach its peak under Menander I. This remarkable and little-known monarch - who seems to have converted to Buddhism - appears to have invaded the Ganges Valley as far as Pataliputra, a campaign mentioned in both Greek and Indian sources, thus making it much further into India than Alexander ever did.

However, the destruction of the Greco-Bactrian state cut off the Indo-Greek Kingdom from the rest of Hellenistic Civilisation at the same time that Menander died. From this point onwards, the Indo-Greek kingdom went into a slow but steady decline. At this point we lose access to Hellenistic sources, and are forced to largely rely on epigraphic and numismatic evidence, but the kingdom seems to have been fragmented, and then picked off piecemeal by a combination of Indian, Kushan, and Scythian conquests. The last definitely known Indo-Greek monarch was Soter II (alongside his son Soter III) who was minting coins in the Punjab up until c. 10 AD, though there's limited evidence that he may not have been the very last Indo-Greek ruler.

As to what happened to the Indo-Greeks... they never seem to have been as numerous as the Bactrian Greeks, and lacked the urban polis structure of the latter. While there were likely some established Greek communities around the Indus prior to , the Indo-Greek rulers were likely a fairly small ruling class who established themselves over the local Hindu and Buddhist Indian populations. Many of the them converted to Buddhism, and they were likely simply swallowed up into the much larger native population after their states were destroyed. Indo-Scythian coins initially follow the Indo-Greek convention of using Greek on one side and Indian languages on the other, and Greco-Buddhist art has had a surprisingly long and important influence, eventually influencing styles as far away as Japan. But ultimately there simply weren't enough of them to make a permanent demographic impact.


I'm ill today, and have the day off, so I have a little more time for historical threads than has usually been the case recently.

[The Archregimancy]

I'll just let the article speak for itself.

That article's a little... exaggerated.

Ivailo's rise to power was astonishing, what it fails to point out is that he only managed to establish himself on the Bulgarian throne for one year - largely because of the support of Byzantine Princess Maria Cantacuzena, mother of the legitimate emperor, rather than his own inherent badassery - and even then as (in the medieval Byzantine style) co-emperor with Michael Asen II. He was finally deposed by John Asen III's brother in law George I, at which point Ivailo promptly went to the Mongol Khan Nogai for support, and Nogai no less promptly had him assassinated.

So Ivailo had a remarkable run for about 2 years; but ended up deposed, powerless, and dead.

[The Grey Wolf]

Tokugawa Ieyasu, Sun Tzu, Cao Cao, Vercingetorix, Buddug, William Wallace...just to name a few

William Wallace, George S. Patton, Tomoyuki Yamashita, Erwin Rommel, Stonewall Jackson, and Karl Dönitz for me.

[Sedikal]

Rommel, Slim, Zhukov, Scipio Aemilianus are some that come to mind as well as Patton and de Wiart as well.

[Saint-Thor]

Hannibal Barca.

Grant, Sherman, and Guderian. Grant and Sherman just made such an awesome team, and I love them for beating up those sleazy Confederates. Sherman could be a bit of jerk (or a lot of a jerk) but he was OUR jerk dammit!

Grant the butcher... right. And a butcher for his own men, not the enemy. But we all have our own opinions don't we?

Also, anyone could explain why we have so many Rommel? I know the Rommel legend was made much by the Brits as by the Americans (for his status of "good nazi" mostly) but I would like to understand why.

[Mirkana]

Alexander the Great, Subotai, Jeanne d'Arc, Gustavus Adolphus, John F. Reynolds, George S. Patton, and David Petraeus.

[Arglorand]

Hannibal.

Because fuck Rome, that's why.

[OMGeverynameistaken]

Prince Aleksandr Vasil‘evich Suvorov.: The man who fought 64 battles in his life, and won every single one of them, known for his book "The Science of Victory", as well as having been a count in the Holy Roman Empire, he was one of the greatest military leaders in history, as well as being known for having not only cared for his men, but having been friendly with them, often joking with them as well.

If any information here is incorrect, please do correct me, politely, I tried not to use Wikipedia for much, but I ended up having to use it for a couple of the names.

He was also responsible for the epic quote:
"Hair powder is not gunpowder, curls are not cannons and I am not a German!" Directed at Emperor Paul I in response to said emperor's 'reform' of the Russian infantry to mid-18th century Prussian standards.

I'm also a fan of "death before the defensive," and "When the enemy is driven back, we have failed, and when he is cut off,
encircled and dispersed, we have succeeded."

[Pope Joan]

Benedict Arnold was a great strategist.

But he became a sort of free agent without a team.

[Ultrapia]

Vespasian, Commanded the 2nd Augusta Legion in Rome's conquest of Britain and would later become emperor.

[Ayreonia]

Washington? Seriously?

Yeah, I think it's safe to say that without his leadership in the Revolutionary War we would have been completely screwed. Granted he made a number of strategic errors early on in the war, but he more than made up for them after Trenton, and on the whole, it's safe to say we were far better off with him in command than we would've been with Gates.

He was a good Commander-in-Chief. Or whatever that silly term you Americans use is. On the field, he lost more often than won.

[Augarundus]

As a voluntarist, I tend to dislike military commanders out of principle.

I suppose I personally admire Napoleon Bonaparte, and I think Hannibal Barca is incredibly fascinating (I also used to have a fetish for military history, and I read books about his battles, especially Cannae). I also personally admire Arminius, (maybe Robert E. Lee?) and Saladin, I guess. Assholes like Cortez get a little credit just for being so ballsy.

[Trollgaard]

The Indo-Greeks, and err...Bactrian Greeks are so little known, but immensely fun to read about...not that there's a whole to read...I've got a handful of books on the subject, and have been meaning to reread them for a while now.

One thing I've always wondered about is what happened to all the Greeks and Macedonians in the East after the Seleucids declined and lost power. More specifically, the men trained as phalangites. Was any of this knowledge passed down for another generation or two in certain areas of the former Seleucid State, in declining skill? Could the Parthians, theoretically called up a quasi-phalanx from Greek/Macedonian settlers say, 20 years after the conquered an area? 40 years? etc? How long would such knowledge be passed along, and would it be allowed to be passed on?

Ah, but the Indo-Greeks and the Bactrian Greeks aren't quite the same thing, though they are related; and the former are arguably even more remarkable than the latter. It's a common point of confusion, so it's worth elaborating here slightly.

The Greco-Bactrian Kingdom lasted from roughly 250 BC through 125 BC, and was formed when Diodatus - the Seleucid satrap of Bactria - seceded from the Seleucid state. As to what happened to them, they seem to have become the first Classical European state (in cultural terms, though not in geography) to discover that static European infantry formations are no match for mass invasions of Central Asian nomad cavalry. The precise details are sketchy, and rely largely on Chinese records, but they seem to have succumbed to mass invasions of a group known in Chinese records as the Yuezhi (subsequently the founders of the Kushan Empire), who were themselves fleeing the nomad confederation known as the Xiongnu. If - as some speculate (and it is wholly speculation for now) - the Xiongnu were the core of the same group of people that Europe would later refer to as the 'Huns', this makes the Greco-Bactrian state the very first Classical state to fall victim to the steppe nomad population displacements brought about by the Huns.

The likely fate of the Greco-Bactrians is revealed by one of my favourite archaeological sites, Alexandria on the Oxus in what's now northern Afghanistan. A thriving Hellenistic city for some 200 years, it seems to have been simply wiped out during the Yuezhi invasions in c.145 BC, and was wholly and totally abandoned after c.130 BC.

As to your question about the Parthians... they frequently hired Greek mercenaries after their initial victories over the Seleucids, and those mercenary phalanxes proved just as ineffective against the Yuezhi as the Bactrian experience might lead us to expect.

The Indo-Greek Kingdom (more accurately, kingdoms plural, since they weren't always a united entity, especially after c.130 BC), on the other hand, was founded when Demetrius I - a son of Euthydemus I of Bactria - invaded the Indus Valley to found his own state in c. 180 BC. Over the next 50 years, the Greco-Bactrian and Greco-Indian states would even fight the occasional war against each other. The Indo-Greek Kingdom would reach its peak under Menander I. This remarkable and little-known monarch - who seems to have converted to Buddhism - appears to have invaded the Ganges Valley as far as Pataliputra, a campaign mentioned in both Greek and Indian sources, thus making it much further into India than Alexander ever did.

However, the destruction of the Greco-Bactrian state cut off the Indo-Greek Kingdom from the rest of Hellenistic Civilisation at the same time that Menander died. From this point onwards, the Indo-Greek kingdom went into a slow but steady decline. At this point we lose access to Hellenistic sources, and are forced to largely rely on epigraphic and numismatic evidence, but the kingdom seems to have been fragmented, and then picked off piecemeal by a combination of Indian, Kushan, and Scythian conquests. The last definitely known Indo-Greek monarch was Soter II (alongside his son Soter III) who was minting coins in the Punjab up until c. 10 AD, though there's limited evidence that he may not have been the very last Indo-Greek ruler.

As to what happened to the Indo-Greeks... they never seem to have been as numerous as the Bactrian Greeks, and lacked the urban polis structure of the latter. While there were likely some established Greek communities around the Indus prior to , the Indo-Greek rulers were likely a fairly small ruling class who established themselves over the local Hindu and Buddhist Indian populations. Many of the them converted to Buddhism, and they were likely simply swallowed up into the much larger native population after their states were destroyed. Indo-Scythian coins initially follow the Indo-Greek convention of using Greek on one side and Indian languages on the other, and Greco-Buddhist art has had a surprisingly long and important influence, eventually influencing styles as far away as Japan. But ultimately there simply weren't enough of them to make a permanent demographic impact.


I'm ill today, and have the day off, so I have a little more time for historical threads than has usually been the case recently.

Great post! That was an awesome refresher on the Bactrian and Indo-Greeks.

I have a coin minted by Menander I, and that coin led to the purchase of several books on the subject of Indo-Greeks and the Bactrian Greeks.

[The UK in Exile]

Hannibal Barca.

Grant, Sherman, and Guderian. Grant and Sherman just made such an awesome team, and I love them for beating up those sleazy Confederates. Sherman could be a bit of jerk (or a lot of a jerk) but he was OUR jerk dammit!

Grant the butcher... right. And a butcher for his own men, not the enemy. But we all have our own opinions don't we?

Also, anyone could explain why we have so many Rommel? I know the Rommel legend was made much by the Brits as by the Americans (for his status of "good nazi" mostly) but I would like to understand why.

Lee's casualties were far higher than Grants as a percentage of his army. The only reason Lee isn't considered a butcher is because he couldn't find enough men to throw up cemetery ridge. As a private soldier you were better off in the Union army than the Confederate one. Yet Lee is the Genius and Grant ends up the Butcher.

Also "Stonewall" Jackson. He and Lee were by far and away the most talented generals in the Civil War, in my opinion.

Jackson is extremely overrated. He was good at inspiring his men, but bad at coordinating with other Confederate generals. Some people grossly overestimate his abilities because they want to blame his death for causing the Confederacy to lose.

Lee, Grant, and Sherman were all better. There was a reason they kept getting promoted.

In Lee's case, it was because everyone above and below him kept getting shot.

[Quintium]

Napoleon Bonaparte, Charles Martel, Michiel de Ruyter.

[Herrebrugh]

Napoleon Bonaparte, Charles Martel, Michiel de Ruyter.

Oh, right, Michiel de Ruyter.

I'd add Piet Hein for the whole silver fleet thing.

[The Grey Wolf]

While I admire Rommel, I do think he was too reckless. Don't get me wrong, that probably won him a lot of battles, he was almost like lightning personified. But he was a nightmare for the High Command, and he cost them a lot because of that recklessness.

Rommel was pretty cool, but he gets more than his share of attention because of how he died. Everyone loves a martyr.

I think that, in the minds of the Allies, he was the Hector of their Iliad.

[Farnhamia]

Rommel was pretty cool, but he gets more than his share of attention because of how he died. Everyone loves a martyr.

I think that, in the minds of the Allies, he was the Hector of their Iliad.

Explain that one, will you?

[Hollorous]

Hannibal Barca.


Grant the butcher... right. And a butcher for his own men, not the enemy. But we all have our own opinions don't we?

Also, anyone could explain why we have so many Rommel? I know the Rommel legend was made much by the Brits as by the Americans (for his status of "good nazi" mostly) but I would like to understand why.

Lee's casualties were far higher than Grants as a percentage of his army. The only reason Lee isn't considered a butcher is because he couldn't find enough men to throw up cemetery ridge. As a private soldier you were better off in the Union army than the Confederate one. Yet Lee is the Genius and Grant ends up the Butcher.

Jackson is extremely overrated. He was good at inspiring his men, but bad at coordinating with other Confederate generals. Some people grossly overestimate his abilities because they want to blame his death for causing the Confederacy to lose.

Lee, Grant, and Sherman were all better. There was a reason they kept getting promoted.

In Lee's case, it was because everyone above and below him kept getting shot.

You could make the case that Grant's one real unnecessary "butchering" was the attack on Cold Harbor, which failed miserably and caused something like 10,000 Union casualties. He even admitted in his memoirs that it was a complete mistake and a needless waste.

[Napkiraly]

Hannibal Barca.

Grant, Sherman, and Guderian. Grant and Sherman just made such an awesome team, and I love them for beating up those sleazy Confederates. Sherman could be a bit of jerk (or a lot of a jerk) but he was OUR jerk dammit!

Grant the butcher... right. And a butcher for his own men, not the enemy. But we all have our own opinions don't we?

Also, anyone could explain why we have so many Rommel? I know the Rommel legend was made much by the Brits as by the Americans (for his status of "good nazi" mostly) but I would like to understand why.

Grant followed a war of attrition against Lee. The North could soak up the casualties, the South could not. Waging a war of attrition does not a bad general make (automatically).

[The UK in Exile]

I think that, in the minds of the Allies, he was the Hector of their Iliad.

Explain that one, will you?

It harks back to an age of Heroic warfare where the valour of a combatant was a direct reflection of his opponent.

or for a more cynical take:

Rommel spent a lot of the North Africa Campaign kicking the Allies arse. After the War neither the Allies, The Germans or Rommel's family were very interested in an accurate appraisal of Rommel's skills and the Russians, who actually had fought Germany's best generals didn't care about setting the record straight. So the Allies made him into a superman, because no-one likes admitting that they struggled against an average opponent.

[The Federal Bureau of Investigation]

1.George Washington
2.Mehmet II
3.Genghis Khan
4. Khalid Ibn Walid
5. Alexander the Great