Napoleon Picks the Top Generals II
Tuesday, May 12, 2020
Last time, we looked at four of the seven military men most admired by the great French leader Napoleon Bonaparte. They are somewhat obscure: Prince Eugene of Savoy; King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden; King Frederick the Great of Prussia, and Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne. Few general readers will have heard of any of these men (outside of this column, at least!).
But the last three of Napoleon's "picks" are probably familiar to most readers, and would easily make my list of Greatest Generals of All Time.
3. Hannibal Barca (247-183 BCE). A general from Carthage, which is modern Tunisia in Northern Africa, he was the scourge of the Roman Empire in his days. His most noteworthy feat was his crossing of the Alps from the north, an audacious move for which the Romans were not prepared. He was a brilliant strategist whose army, according to the Roman historian Polybius, killed 70,000 Romans in just one battle.
2. Julius Caesar (100 BC-44 BCE). The Roman general and later ruler, he was also a historian who wrote books about his campaigns and the people he had conquered. He also coined a famous saying, just three words in Latin, which translated mean, "I came, I saw, I conquered."
1. Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE), King of Macedonia in modern Greece. Napoleon once told his secretary, "I place Alexander in the first rank. My reason for giving the preference to the king of Macedon is on account of the conception, and above all, for the execution of his campaign in Asia"--meaning the Middle East and India. Alexander died in Babylon, Mesopotamia, at age 32.
It's obvious that the men Napoleon admired were all Europeans, with the exception of the African Hannibal--and he was famous for the havoc he wreaked in Europe. This is an accident of history: Napoleon had probably read little of leaders like Qin Shi Huang, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan, Suleiman I, or Ieyasu Tokugawa simply because the contact between Europe and Asia in his day was tenuous at best.
And of course, some of the greatest military strategists and "leaders of men" had yet to be born when Napoleon died in 1821. "History" is still being made!