Great Commanders

Edited by 

Christopher R. Gabel, Ph.D.

James H. Willbanks, Ph.D.

Combat Studies Institute Press

US Army Combined Arms Center

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
Dedication

This book is dedicated to all those who have served.

The illustration on the front cover is an engraving by Emile Rouargue, entitled 

“Napoleon a la Bataille d’Austerlitz, le 2 Decembre 1805.” The scene is the central image of an engraving that is surrounded by 16 other smaller battle and victory scenes. This particular image shows Napoleon on the Pratzen Heights, which 

he just captured, looking out where the battle continues below. The engraving is 

ca. 1840 and is part of the J. David Markham Collection, who also is the President 

of the International Napoleonic Society. 
Great Commanders

Edited by

Christopher R. Gabel, Ph.D.

James H. Willbanks, Ph.D.

Combat Studies Institute Press

US Army Combined Arms Center

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
ii

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Great Commanders / Edited by Christopher R. Gabel, Ph.D. and 

 James H. Willbanks, Ph.D.

p. cm. 

Includes bibliographical references 

ISBN 978-0-9855879-7-0 (alk. Paper) 

1. Generals – Biography. 2. Leadership – History. 3. Military 

Biography. 

I. Gabel, Christopher R. (Christopher Richard), 1954- II. Wilbanks, 

James H., 1947 –

UB 200.G74 2012

355.0092’2—dc23

2012034997

Combat Studies Institute Press publications 

cover a wide variety of military history topics. 

The views expressed in this CSI Press 

publication are those of the author(s) and not 

necessarily those of the Department of the 

Army or the Department of Defense. A full list 

of CSI Press publications, which are available 

for downloading, can be found at http://usacac.

army.mil/CAC2/CSI/index.asp.

The seal of the Combat Studies Institute authenticates this document as 

an official publication of the CSI. It is prohibited to use CSI’s official 

seal on any republication without the express written permission of the 

Director of CSI.
iii

Contents

Page

Foreword................................................................................................... v

Acknowledgments................................................................................... vii

Preface...................................................................................................... ix

Introduction............................................................................................... 1

Chapter 1. Alexander the Enigma ............................................................. 5

Chapter 2. Genghis Khan........................................................................ 35

Chapter 3. Napoleon Bonaparte.............................................................. 63

Chapter 4. Warrior of the Waves: Nelson’s Legacy to Naval 

Commandership ...................................................................................... 93

Chapter 5. John J. Pershing: “The Very Model of a Modern Major 

General.................................................................................................. 123

Chapter 6. Rommel: Beyond the Desert Fox........................................ 147

Chapter 7. Curtis E. LeMay .................................................................. 171

Bibliography ......................................................................................... 199

Contributors.......................................................................................... 203

Figures

Figure 1. Alexander the Great................................................................... 6

Figure 2. Genghis Khan .......................................................................... 36

Figure 3. Napoleon Bonaparte ................................................................ 64

Figure 4. Captain Horatio Nelson ........................................................... 94

Figure 5. John J. Pershing..................................................................... 124

Figure 6. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel ............................................... 148

Figure 7. General Curtis LeMay ....................................................................... 172
iv

Maps

Map 1. Manuever of Ulm and Pursuit to Vienna, 

September-November 1805.................................................... 80

Map 2. Austerlitz, December 1805 ......................................................... 86

Map 3. Simplified Sketch of Nelson’s Battle Plan for Trafalgar ........................ 95
v

Foreword

With the publication of Great Commanders, the Combat Studies 

Institute continues its mission of publishing CGSC Faculty scholarship 

and adding to the body of historical literature the thoughts and research 

of these distinguished Professors. These analyses are both interesting and 

useful in their discussion of what attributes and circumstances yield an 

extraordinary commander of martial forces. As the editors point out, this 

volume is not a study of the “greatest” commanders; rather, it is an examination of commanders who should be considered great. The seven leaders 

examined, in the various domains of ground, sea, and air, each in their own 

way successfully addressed the challenges of military endeavor in their 

time and changed the world in which they lived. Not only should students 

of history find this volume interesting, but practitioners of warfare, who 

may be given the solemn duty and responsibility of command, may garner 

insights into the qualities and abilities possessed by those commanders 

deemed to be “great.”

CSI – The Past is Prologue!

Roderick M. Cox

Colonel, US Army

Director, Combat Studies Institute

vii

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Mr. Crosby Kemper and the Kansas City Public 

Library, Mr. Bob Ulin and the CGSC Foundation, and the National World 

War I Museum at Liberty Memorial for sponsoring the lecture series from 

which these essays were drawn. We are also grateful to the staff of the 

Combined Arms Research Library at Fort Leavenworth. And, of course, 

we are indebted to the Combat Studies Institute for agreeing to publish 

this collection.

ix

Preface

In the fall of 2010, members of the faculty of the Department of 

Military at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College met with 

Mr. Crosby Kemper, CEO of the Kansas City Public Library. The Library 

has a very aggressive public outreach program that includes a number of 

lectures series covering a wide range of areas and topics, but Mr. Kemper 

was interested in adding a new program on military history. Accordingly, 

he reached out to the Department of Military History at the Command and 

General Staff College, which has one of the largest groupings of military 

historians in the United States. The result of the discussions that followed 

was a seven-part monthly lecture series co-sponsored with the Kansas City 

Public Library by the CGSC Foundation and the National World War I 

Museum at Liberty Memorial. The lecture series began in November of 

2010 and involved monthly presentations on great military commanders in 

history. The lectures were given by subject matter experts from the CGSC 

military history faculty. The essays in this collection are drawn from those 

lectures. 

We will begin with an introduction that discusses what makes a great 

commander. The introduction will be followed by seven biographical 

essays and a selected bibliography.

August 2012

 Christopher R. Gabel, PhD

James H. Willbanks, PhD

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

1

Introduction

by Christopher R. Gabel, Ph.D.

The command of military forces in combat is unlike any other field 

of human endeavor. If war is the ultimate form of human competition, 

then the commander is the ultimate competitor. The commander operates 

in an environment of chance, uncertainty, and chaos, in which the stakes 

are, quite literally, life and death. He or she contends against an adversary 

who is using every means, fair or foul, to foil his plans and bring about 

his defeat. The commander is ultimately responsible for every variable 

that factors into military success or failure—training, logistics, morale, 

equipment, planning, and execution. The commander reaps the lion’s 

share of plaudits in victory, but also must accept the blame in defeat, 

warranted or not. Very often the line that separates fame and ignominy is 

slender indeed.

It is not difficult to identify “great” commanders, though the 

overwhelming majority of generals who win battles are never considered 

“great.” Something more than a favorable ratio of wins to losses is needed 

to establish greatness. From the perspective of history, the greatness of 

a commander also hinges upon the context within which he operated. 

Victories won against inept opponents, or victories which fail to lead 

to the attainment of greater objectives, seldom elicit much admiration. 

Victories won through the simple application of overwhelming superiority 

in numbers or materiel are often similarly discounted. The truly great 

commander is generally considered to be one who attains the unexpected 

or the unprecedented; one who stands above his contemporaries through 

his skill on the battlefield, or through the sheer magnitude of his 

accomplishments.

In selecting the seven great commanders presented in this volume, 

the contributors sought to cover a wide spectrum of military endeavor, 

encompassing a very broad time-frame, different nationalities and cultures, 

and representatives from ground, sea, and air warfare. The commanders 

selected were masters of warfare in their particular time and environment. 

Each capitalized upon the social, political, economic, and technological 

conditions of his day to forge successful military forces and win significant 

and noteworthy victories that profoundly altered the world in which he 

lived. 

In regards to social context, the societies from which these seven leaders 

sprang varied tremendously, ranging from the nomadic tribal cultures of 

Asia to American industrial-age egalitarianism. Each commander faced 
2

particular challenges in operating within the social norms of his day and 

age. These norms govern how leaders are selected, who serves in the 

military, and to what purpose military operations are conducted. The great 

commander recognizes these norms, and extracts the maximum possible 

military effectiveness from them.

Similarly, this study embraces a wide variety of political contexts. 

Each of the seven commanders herein proved adept at operating within the 

political milieu of his era, understanding if not manipulating the political 

systems of his country to best advantage. Ascension to a position of high 

command is as much a political as a military process, and the waging 

of a successful military campaign relies first and foremost upon a clear 

grasp of the political purpose underlying military operations. Three of 

the seven were not only great commanders but also sovereign rulers. It is 

probably axiomatic that any great commander is also politically astute, at 

least within the military institution that produced him.

Warfare is also closely shaped by its economic context, and the 

commanders in this study were both enabled and restrained by the 

economic world in which they lived. Ultimately, economics determines 

how many men, how much materiel, and how much treasure can be 

expended in waging any given war, and the successful commander makes 

the most of the resources his economy affords him. 

Technology is commonly thought to be one of the key determinants in 

victory or defeat, but wars won chiefly through technological superiority 

are actually rather rare in history. Of the seven commanders represented 

here, only one—Curtis LeMay—employed technology that was essentially 

unavailable to his adversary. Even LeMay found that technology alone 

does not automatically deliver victory. One mark of the great commander 

is the ability to exploit commonly-available technology with a skill and 

effectiveness that his opponent cannot match.

Finally, each of the commanders in this study demonstrated 

extraordinary qualities of leadership in the cauldron of combat. Moral 

courage, force of will, and a capacity for critical reasoning under stress are 

all required for a commander to succeed in the chaos, fog, and friction of 

war. All of the commanders represented in this volume possessed these 

traits to a remarkable degree.

In a sense, the selected commanders are intended to be representative 

rather than exhaustive. Many other generals could have been included—

some familiar names will be conspicuous by their absence. Since the 

circumstances and context of every war differ, there is no intent to prove 
3

that these are the “greatest” seven commanders ever—any attempt to 

apply a “scorecard” mentality to war as practiced in different places and 

times is essentially futile.

This volume begins with Alexander the Great, who wielded perhaps 

the finest army ever to wage war prior to the advent of gunpowder, and 

whose tactical and operational prowess bordered on genius. Born the heir 

to the throne of a kingdom on the periphery of the Greek world, Alexander 

used the military instrument forged by his father to overthrow the Persian 

empire and carry his banners to the Indus River. Alexander’s battle were 

tactical masterpieces, which is all the more remarkable considering that 

he exercised personal leadership at the decisive place and time on the 

battlefield. 

Next is Genghis Khan, who forged an effective political and military 

entity from the fractious horse-tribes of Asia and established through 

conquest one of the great empires in history. A remarkably enlightened and 

charismatic leader, Genghis Khan was also a superb strategist who set the 

conditions for victory long before the first arrow was fired. His Mongols 

were neither the first nor the last of the nomadic peoples to explode out 

of the great steppes of Asia and overthrow dynasties from China to the 

Middle East, but his conquests and those of his successors had a profound 

and lasting impact upon the destiny of the entire Eurasian landmass. 

Napoleon Bonaparte, like Alexander and Genghis Khan, was 

possessed by a seemingly insatiable appetite for conquest. Napoleon also 

was born on the periphery of the world he came to dominate, rising from 

the minor nobility, ultimately to crown himself emperor. He harnessed the 

forces unleashed by the French Revolution, creating a military instrument 

that overthrew the status quo in Europe, and whose name has become 

synonymous with aggressive maneuver warfare and battles of annihilation. 

At its apogee, the Napoleonic empire encompassed virtually all of 

Europe—with the exception of the British Isles. The fact that Napoleon’s 

empire terminated at the English Channel is due largely to the efforts of 

Horatio Nelson. 

Nelson epitomized the art of naval warfare in the age of sail, and 

through audacity, tactical prowess, and personal leadership shaped 

the destiny of Europe. Something of a maverick within the venerable 

Royal Navy, Nelson belies the stereotype of naval commanders as cold 

and calculating technocrats rather than true leaders. His courage, both 

physical and moral, was at its greatest when the stakes were highest. 
4

John J. Pershing represents a new breed of commander for the 

industrial age. He inaugurated the “American Century” by forging and 

leading the United States’ first great expeditionary army—a hastily-raised 

army of amateurs led by a handful of professionals, flung headlong into the 

greatest war the world had ever seen. The product of a sleepy constabulary 

army, Pershing created a mass industrial-age army capable of holding its 

own among the great armies of Europe. Pershing himself sat at the highest 

seats of power as one of the arbiters in the fate of Europe.

Erwin Rommel, the consummate troop leader, practiced the tactical 

level of war in that conflict. With the advent of World War II, Rommel 

made the transition from infantry to armor, winning fame as one of the 

great practitioners of “blitzkrieg.” Given an independent command, in a 

remote theater at the end of a tenuous supply line, Rommel cemented his 

reputation as a master of mechanized combined arms warfare. 

Finally, Curtis LeMay represents air power for this collection of essays. 

A pioneer of military aviation, LeMay brought pre-nuclear strategic 

bombing to its apogee in an aerial campaign that epitomized “total” war 

in the 20th Century. He carried two burdens—the task of winning a war, 

and the challenge of establishing the credibility of strategic, independent 

air power. In what is perhaps the most technologically-oriented arena of 

warfare, LeMay demonstrated personal courage, shrewd decision-making, 

and inspirational leadership.

This project originated as a lecture series presented at the Kansas 

City Public Library in 2010-2011. Both the lecture series and this book 

are intended to encourage the audience to delve further into the study of 

military history. No work of this sort can ever be the last word on the 

subject, but hopefully this volume will serve as an illustrative introduction 

to the topic of command in war, and will entice the reader to learn more 

about the individual commanders, the eras in which they lived, and the 

broader topic of military history.
5

Chapter 1

Alexander the Enigma

by Edward Bowie

The individual military achievements of Alexander of Macedon, 

styled “The Great,” are singular. No other figure in military history 

accomplished so much, at such a young age, in so short a period of time. 

He launched his career as a commander at the tender age of 16 when, 

while acting as the King’s temporary regent, he decisively subdued a 

rebellion by wild Balkan hill tribes using only such residual troops as were 

available to him while the Macedonian Army campaigned elsewhere. At 

18, he proved a stalwart and surpassingly brave deputy commander during 

the pivotal battle at Chaeronea against the last coalition of independent 

Hellenic states and personally led the assault that destroyed the cream 

of Greece’s fighting men; the fearsome Theban Sacred Band. Supreme 

Macedonian Commander at 20, he ruthlessly obliterated the remnants of 

Theban resistance, forced the majority of Greek states including proud, 

once mighty, Athens into an unequal alliance, and even intimidated the 

diminished, but still formidable, Spartans into quiescent neutrality.

At 21, he led an Army of fewer than 50,000 Macedonians and allied 

Greeks across the Hellespont into “Asia.” In three years he established 

firm control of Asia Minor, the ancient lands of the Levant, and Egypt. 

A year later, he led his forces into the heart of the vast Persian Empire, 

systematically destroyed its best armies, and made himself the head of a 

superpower. Over the following five years he extended his reach to subjugate 

the ferocious tribal states of the Hindu-Kush, the warrior kingdoms of the 

Indus Valley, and the untamed peoples of the Hormuz. He was dead at 33, 

having conquered an immense empire and actively planning additional 

campaigns of subjugation in Arabia and the central Mediterranean. 

Alexander’s is an unequalled record of military accomplishment for 

sixteen years of effort. Still, the question presents itself; is conquest alone 

sufficient to be designated a “Great Commander?”

Alexander the Great is perhaps the single most famous name in world 

history. It is a name synonymous with military glory. Most school children 

can assert with innocent exaggeration his alleged accomplishment - he 

“conquered the world.” In fact he did no such thing. He did not even 

conquer all of the Greco-centric world that his tutor Aristotle taught him 

existed. In modern geographic perspective, Alexander’s conquests would 
6

not fill all of northern Africa. From an ancient geo-political perspective, 

however, his accomplishment should not be underestimated.

In a sustained campaign lasting almost ten years (perhaps the longest 

contiguous military operation in history) he gained control of an area 

stretching further from West to East than the continental United States. 

He subjugated or usurped sovereignty over almost every significant 

civilization known to the classical Greeks. He spent virtually his entire 

adulthood from age sixteen to thirty-two at war. He fought (literally 

“fought,” as his habit was to exercise command by example in the front 

Figure 1. Alexander the Great bust in the British Museum (artist unknown) from 

2d-1st Century BC. Photo by Andrew Dunn (3 December 2004)
7

rank) hundreds of engagements great and small against scores of diverse 

enemies expert in widely different military practice - and he won them all. 

His was by far the largest empire ever created up to his own time and he 

extended the influence of Western Civilization beyond the Indus River and 

north of the Himalayas. So, despite his singular fame and achievements, 

it is surprising to discover just how much of an enigma the historical 

Alexander and his empire actually are and how little can be known about 

him or his accomplishments with certainty. No contemporaneous histories 

or chronicles concerning Alexander survive. Modern scholarship knows 

Alexander from no more than four ancient sources, the earliest reliable of 

which was written more than 300 years after his death.1

First are the so called “Romances,” also known as the “Pseudo 

Callisthenes,” after Alexander’s Athenian court historian killed by 

Alexander under suspicion of treason (suggesting the possibility of bias), 

and purporting to be based on his original writings. This work includes 

some of the most famous and popular stories about Alexander, such as 

his encounter with the philosopher Diogenes and the Gordian knot. Most 

serious scholars, however, dismiss these as a series of mostly-fanciful 

tales that began accruing in the 1st century BC and expanded through the 

medieval period, perhaps as late as the 14th century. So it is sad to learn 

that the many popular vignettes from Alexander’s life and many of his 

most famous and often repeated quotations are under deep suspicion of 

being apocryphal. Second was the work of Diodorus, a Greek historian 

writing between 60 and 30 BC, but who fails (in his surviving works) to 

cite his sources and whose status as a Sicilian-Greek scholar, a people 

long oppressed by Macedonian overlords, may have given him an axe 

to grind. Third was Plutarch, another Greek, albeit this time living in 

the rapidly-Romanizing world of the early 1st Century AD. Plutarch 

purportedly based his work on original contemporary sources consulted in 

the Great Library of Alexandria, but his biographical sketch was part of a 

comparative study in leadership, contrasting Alexander with Julius Caesar 

and therefore subject to all the narrow focus and bias such a study implies. 

Finally there was another Roman-Greek, Arrian, whose late 1st century 

AD work has the great virtue, as Arrian claimed, of being based upon then 

existing original sources, including the memoirs of Alexander’s intimate 

colleague and subordinate commander, Ptolemy. Arrian himself was a 

highly accomplished soldier and imperial administrator and was therefore 

better positioned than most commentators to evaluate Alexander from a 

military perspective. Given this paucity of reliable sources, attempting an 

objective evaluation of Alexander is a daunting and precarious task.
8

 Confusion extends even to his many titles. The appellation “Great” 

was not current in his time. Indeed, during his reign and for a long time 

after his death, Alexander was widely reviled in the Greek world and by the 

many subjects of his Eastern Empire. The several Macedonian successors 

to his fragmented empire had little incentive to venerate him lest their 

own considerable accomplishments seem diminished by comparison. It 

was the Romans of the 1st Century AD, a people historically inclined to 

celebrate empire builders, who anointed Alexander “Great.” It is, however, 

a superlative the Romans used remarkably sparingly and was a sign of 

their extraordinary esteem, having granted such title to no more than five 

individuals in history as they knew it.2

Properly he was “King Alexander III of Macedon,” born a royal 

prince of the quasi-Greek aristocracy that dominated the large and 

geographically diverse area above the Greek peninsula that, at Alexander’s 

birth, defined the porous cultural and geographical northern boundary 

of the Greek world. The thin patina of classical Greek culture adopted 

for generations by the Macedonian elite did not extend to the practice of 

monogamy and Alexander’s father Phillip had at least two wives. Nor was 

simple primogeniture a necessary guarantor of sovereign succession, so 

Alexander’s rise to power was not inevitable. Alexander was one of several 

royal princes and other contenders whom he managed to outmaneuver 

– by means honorable or otherwise – to ascend the Macedonian throne. 

Alexander also could and did claim the title “Hegemon” in as much as he 

seized leadership of the coalition of notionally independent Greek states 

forged by Phillip through war and intimidation into the League of Corinth. 

“The Invincible” was an honorific Alexander also enjoyed in his 

lifetime. Possibly, depending on the ancient source, this was a title suggested 

to Phillip by the royal augurs during the celebration of Alexander’s birth. 

Possibly it was a portent revealed, as she claimed, to his mother Olympias 

during a mystical communion with the Gods. Certainly it was a prediction 

made for him by the Oracle at Delphi during a visit Alexander made while 

engaged in his brief war to be “elected,” or at least accepted, as Hegemon 

of the Corinthian League. But since he was holding that unfortunate young 

woman literally at sword point at the time, and as she knew Alexander 

was seeking anything that would enhance his growing reputation and 

legitimacy, she may well have been telling him something she thought 

expedient. The prophecy of invincibility was repeated for him a few years 

later by the Egyptian high priests of Amon at Siwa, but by then the Delphic 

prediction had no doubt made its rounds and they too can be forgiven if 

they were simply repeating something they knew Alexander wanted to 
9

hear and that would help speed him on his way elsewhere. Whatever its 

origin, Alexander’s public reputation as “invincible” probably became his 

most controlling private motivation.

He came to be regarded by many in that pagan world as the 

personification of the amalgamated Greek/Egyptian deity “Zeus-Amon.” 

His mother Olympias, violently estranged from Philip early in Alexander’s 

childhood, told him that it was Zeus, whom she alleged came to her in 

the guise of a serpent and impregnated her with a lightning bolt, and not 

Phillip, who was his real father. The Siwa priests also reinforced this divine 

paternity, but they may again have simply been repeating a flattering and 

prudent gossip. No doubt, given Alexander’s tremendous ambitions and 

the odds arrayed against him in his attack on the Persian Empire, he found 

this to be a useful, even if fictional, report. To be thought a demigod was 

equally, no doubt, very pleasing to his oversized ego. Finally, Alexander 

could with justice claim the Persian imperial title “Great King,” won by 

right of his conquest and usurpation of the Persian Archemenid dynasty. 

Indeed, in the last years of his life, this seems to have been the title and 

role with which Alexander most closely identified –to the consternation 

and disgruntlement of his Macedonian companions.

Given all of the ambiguity, what can be said about the private Alexander 

with confidence? The combined sources suggest a man of out-sized talents 

and abilities. He became king in 336 BC following the assassination of 

Phillip by a disaffected courtier and the merciless elimination of other 

contenders - a conspiracy in which Alexander may or may not have been 

personally involved. At his ascension he was only 20 years old, but already 

an impressive, even intimidating, figure despite his youth (although this is 

something of a modern misperception for, by the standards of the ancient 

world, he was not in fact extraordinarily young – Philip had been only 

22 when he became king). Alexander had a complex and contradictory 

character, the product of a chaotic and difficult childhood. From his 

mother, a royal princess from the neighboring “barbarian” kingdom of 

Epirus, he developed a multifarious cultural identity and a penchant for 

the mystical rites and practices of the exotic nature cults to which she 

was an initiate. From Phillip he received a practical tutorial in both power 

politics and generalship from a man who was a master at both. Alexander’s 

conspicuous paranoia was probably a product of his parents’ open mutual 

hostility, the chronic and vicious intrigue of the Macedonian court, and 

young Alexander’s own tenuous and shifting status as the royal heir 

apparent. Besides which, as a Macedonian king, he was always a target 

– even paranoids have real enemies. At his mother’s encouragement, he 
10

found role models in the heroes of ancient myth, especially Achilles, 

whose legendary martial prowess and courage he consciously sought to 

emulate. Alexander acquired his Greek philosophical worldview from his 

tutor Aristotle, brought by Philip from Athens to his capital at Pella to give 

the prominent sons of Macedon some cultural polish and legitimacy. From 

all of these sources and from his own eminence and precocious abilities he 

developed his formidable and temperamental ego.3

For the analyst the problem of choosing among the many competing 

ancient and modern interpretations of Alexander and his accomplishments 

immediately presents itself. Do we embrace Alexander the builder who 

founded great cities such as Alexandria and Kandahar, or Alexander the 

demolisher who destroyed great cities such as Tyre and Persepolis? Do we 

celebrate the pious intellectually enlightened protégé of Aristotle or the 

megalomaniacal semi-barbarian whom often met any criticism or affront 

with fatal violence? Do we accept biographer Mary Renaud’s version of 

Alexander as the best and most visionary of princes - the great unifier of 

people who bridged cultures, or historian Victor Davis Hanson’s description 

of a supremely talented, but self-indulgent, dissipated, alcoholic thug – a 

man who brought death and displacement to millions and enslavement 

to thousands more? Even Alexander’s role in ushering in the so-called 

Hellenistic Age when Western and Eastern cultural influences deeply 

penetrated and profoundly influenced each other is a hotly debated subject 

of historiography.4

 Was Alexander’s legacy a golden age of cultural 

rapprochement, or murder, “ethnic cleansing,” and genocide? It is an often 

remarked phenomenon that historical interpretations tend to say more 

about the historian’s own time, bias, and personal temperament than about 

the actual historical subject. In the limited historical records the scholar 

and analyst can see in Alexander almost anything they are predisposed 

to see and so there are as many Alexanders as there are commentators 

who have interpreted him. Alexander’s personal contradictions and the 

conflicting narratives ensure he will remain an enigma.5

Fortunately, within the theme of this book, the task is more manageable 

as it need concern itself with only one aspect of Alexander’s identity – 

that is, as a “Great Commander.” The introduction established the broad 

criteria for the historical figures included in this book: “The commanders 

selected were masters of warfare in their particular time and environment. 

Each capitalized upon the social, political, economic, and technological 

conditions of his day to forge successful military forces and win significant 

and noteworthy victories that profoundly altered the world in which he 

lived.”6

 By that standard, emphatically and unambiguously, Alexander 
11

was a Great Commander. He was a charismatic, bold, and inspiring leader. 

He successfully managed the complex internal politics of a fractious and 

touchy officer corps that reached precariously across several cultures. 

He designed, executed, and sustained large military campaigns across 

enormous distances without over-stressing his state’s demographic base 

or bankrupting the economies upon which those operations depended. He 

possessed a penetrating intellect and strategic sagacity. A gifted tactician, 

he fought four major battles against competent and often numerically 

superior forces on ground of their own choosing and not only defeated, 

but utterly routed them. He was a master of military engineering, having 

conducted six sieges of major cities and dozens – perhaps scores – of 

smaller towns and fortresses. While never a focus of his action, he proved 

adept and creative in naval and amphibious operations which were an 

important adjunct to his campaigns in the Eastern Mediterranean and in 

India. A brilliant logistician, he routinely supplied his forces in very difficult 

circumstances that ranged over the entire spectrum of topographical and 

climatic conditions in Eurasia. When confronted by every military method 

or tactic that existed in his time, including terrorism and guerilla warfare, 

Alexander adapted rapidly to dominate each. In sixteen years of near 

constant military activity encompassing hundreds of separate engagements 

he never lost a fight. In terms of purely tactical success, he was arguably 

the greatest commander in history. 

Alexander was also fortunate. Luck, as both Napoleon and Clausewitz 

remind us, is a very significant factor in the achievements of any great 

commander and Alexander was extraordinarily lucky on many levels. Not 

least among these was his spectacular good fortune in inheriting the finest 

army in the world as a legacy from his father. Phillip, who himself had 

considerable claim to greatness, managed, in the space of little more than 

a generation, to transform a nation composed primarily of sheep herds 

(albeit, sheep herds inhabiting a region uniquely abundant in mineral and 

agricultural resources) into the best equipped, best organized, and most 

innovative fighting force in the hyper- militarized world of the 4th Century, 

BC.7

 In a series of impressive campaigns, Phillip used his forces to first 

secure control of the Northern Balkans and then to extend his hegemony 

south. He eventually united all of the chronically fractious independent 

city-states of classical Greece (excluding the rump state of Sparta) into 

the nominally cooperative – if fragile and resentful – League of Corinth. 

Phillip was himself fortunate to be operating in the comparatively 

permissive environment of a Hellenic world destabilized by 150 years 

of major warfare that began with the First Persian Invasion about 492. 
12

The Persian threat forced sweeping economic and political change on the 

deeply conservative Greeks. Before they could adjust fully to the new social 

realities, internecine Greek warfare reached apotheosis in twenty-seven 

years of titanic and suicidal struggle for domination between Sparta and 

Athens known as the Peloponnesian War. These conflicts left the former 

great powers of Greece diminished and vulnerable. Weakened classical 

Greek power, however, modifies, but does not entirely explain Phillip’s 

accomplishments. He still had to subdue numerous Hellenic states for 

whom war had become a near constant occupation and who could avail 

themselves of the impressive military innovations and refinements which 

desperate conflict had driven. To accomplish that, Phillip imaginatively 

combined, refined, and improved on the best military practices of his age. 

In forging the Macedonian military machine Phillip created the first 

truly professional army in the Western world and established the template 

upon which all current conventional armies are based. He standardized 

equipment within formations organized according to their intended tactical 

function. The rank and file (volunteers as well as conscripts) were issued 

their kit gratis from government-operated armories and manufactories. 

Pay and remuneration were standardized according to military rank 

and duty without excessive regard to private status. Command and 

administrative structures were rationalized and made permanent with 

reasonable opportunity for advancement and recognition based (in part) 

on merit and demonstrated ability. Institutionalized provision was made 

for the full range of support functions from commissary through medical 

services to disability and veterans’ pensions. Indirect command and 

control was exercised through a regular and consistent chain of command 

from army down to squad with orders relayed by an elaborate system 

of voice commands, visual signals, and music. In contrast to the rather 

xenophobic and ad hoc tendency of the Southern Greeks, Phillip adopted 

and institutionalized the best innovations from both Greek and barbarian 

military practice, recombining these elements into a singularly effective 

and synergistic whole.

The Macedonian tactical system was based on four fundamental 

elements: Heavy Infantry, Light Infantry, Light Cavalry and Heavy Cavalry, 

but it also made indispensible use of traditionally armed troops, artillery 

and engineers, naval forces and the specialized skills of local troops as 

they were available. Phillip modeled his Heavy Infantry after the concepts 

of the mercenary general, Iphicrates, who had extended the traditional 

hoplite seven-foot stabbing spear into an eighteen- to twenty-foot pike. 

In order to effectively manage this heavy and awkward weapon with two 
13

hands, individual body armor was greatly reduced or eliminated and the 

large hoplon shield, from which Greek infantrymen (“hoplites”) derived 

their name, shrunk to a light buckler that could be suspended from the 

neck. The members of these modified phalanxes gained protection from the 

standoff provided by the deep hedge of iron-tipped pikes. Groups of heavy 

infantrymen were organized into disciplined “syntagma” or companies 

composed of 256 pikemen arrayed in ranks and files of 16 men each. The 

heavy Macedonian phalanx had relatively little tactical flexibility and was 

slow moving, but it could generate enormous momentum in the attack and 

could establish a formidably intractable defensive base. 

Also following the ideas of Iphicrates, The Macedonians fielded large 

formations of Light Infantry – primarily missile troops called “peltasts” – 

who rapidly deployed in amorphous, but regulated formations to shower 

enemy troops with barrages of arrows, javelins, and lead sling bullets, 

relying on their own agility and mobility for protection. Light Cavalry also 

relied primarily on missiles as their primary weapons; either short javelins 

or arrows launched from composite bows. They performed the same range 

of critical tasks – scouting, flank security, envelopment, and pursuit - 

that modern armies rely upon mechanized cavalry to perform. Under the 

right tactical circumstances they could even join a general assault against 

disorganized or badly positioned infantry. 

Heavy Cavalry, although perhaps inspired by the eccentric practice of 

some wealthy steppe warriors, was Phillip’s unique military innovation 

and was a key to the Macedonian approach to set-piece battle. These were 

relatively heavily armored horseman armed with a 12-foot lance and a heavy 

slashing saber. They were mounted on large powerful horses selected for 

their aggressive spirit and conditioned through patient training to be steady 

in the confusion of close-quarters combat. Phillip used his heavy horse in 

the then-non-traditional role of mounted shock troops. He is even credited 

with developing the remarkable mounted wedge formation designed to 

penetrate and disrupt enemy infantry and cavalry lines. Although these 

heavy horsemen were originally drawn from the sons of the aristocratic 

elite (hence their famous status as “Companions”), they were eventually 

expanded to include formations comprising the “able” from more modest 

backgrounds and designated “hetairoi.” The same regularity and consistent 

command and control Phillip had imposed on his infantry was extended to 

his cavalry, which were organized into squadrons of 200-300 riders each 

divided into troops of 50-60. These innovations gave Macedonian cavalry 

a high degree of flexibility in deployment. They were capable of rapid 

changes in direction of maneuver and attack with minimal disruption to 
14

their formation. In addition to his role as overall commander, Alexander 

generally led the senior squadron of heavy cavalry as “Hipparch” and 

placed himself at the very tip of the lead assault formation.

As well as these basic tactical elements, the Macedonian system also 

comprised significant formations of medium infantry equipped similarly 

to the traditional Greek hoplite, but under more uniform organization 

and training. These medium phalanxes provided greater flexibility and 

mobility than the heavy pikemen and provided the essential connective 

link to the cavalry formations. They were also indispensible for specialist 

tasks such as leading a breach assault or escalading a wall in a siege, 

serving as marines in a naval fight, or providing a rapid infantry reaction to 

an unexpected threat or opportunity. Phillip also created the first regularly 

organized corps of engineers whose technical prowess and creativity 

transformed the ancient practice of siege craft. Under assault from the 

formidable Macedonian machines directed by highly skilled specialists, 

Phillip and Alexander successfully concluded their sieges not in months 

or years, as had been the traditional norm, but often in weeks – sometimes 

days. The equipment and techniques they developed continued to define 

siege warfare for millennia until they were eclipsed by the introduction of 

gunpowder weapons in 13th Century AD. The engineers were also critical 

in sustaining mobility over difficult terrain and bridging obstacles, an 

essential element in Alexander’s scheme of relentless, all-season warfare. 

While less frequently mentioned by historians, naval forces also 

represented a vitally important capability for power projection and 

sustainment. Although generally inferior to the largely Phoenician fleet 

which served the Persian Empire, the Macedonian and allied Greek 

fleet was nevertheless critical in securing Alexander’s supply lines and 

protecting the transport ships which were the most efficient and practical 

means of transporting the hundreds of tons of food and material required 

daily by the army in the field. 

Under Phillip, the Macedonian nobility was, for all practical purposes, 

transformed into a professional officer corps. Alexander could and did rely 

on a large group of capable subordinate commanders and staff officers. As 

complement to his own remarkable skills, Alexander was well served by a 

group of highly competent subordinate generals - many, such as Parmenion 

and Ptolemy, justly famous in their own right - and some of whom went on 

to rule powerful successor empires themselves.

Together, these elements made a military machine of unprecedented 

agility, flexibility, and sustainability capable of adapting itself to dominate 
15

virtually any tactical situation, project power across enormous distances 

and maintain a high operational tempo in difficult, poorly resourced 

environments far from its strategic base. So sophisticated was the 

Macedonian system that it even had what approached an institutionalized 

tactical doctrine in which light forces deployed to create or to deny the 

enemy tactical opportunities, the heavy infantry formed a solid base 

of maneuver, and the heavy cavalry was used as a “hammer” to smash 

through the enemy line then wheel and crush the enemy force against the 

heavy infantry “anvil.” The medium infantry formed the flexible continuity 

connecting the different formations ready to provide immediate support to 

the cavalry and missile troops or act as a reserve. Alexander appreciated 

the utility of this doctrine, but never allowed himself to be rigidly bound 

by it. He always found his army able to adjust itself rapidly to his sudden 

creative insights or unconventional inspirations.

In addition to these impressive capabilities, the Macedonian Army 

possessed one final attribute that was equally important in explaining 

Alexander’s unprecedented record of achievement. The Macedonian Army 

was a fighting force of exceptional and terrifying ferocity. The average 

Macedonian soldier was, even by the standard of his time, ruthless, 

relentless, and remorseless. Collectively the Macedonians displayed a 

singular bloody-mindedness seldom exceeded by any military force in 

history. Terror and intimidation were primary weapons in their arsenal and 

they used them with unapologetic vigor. Perhaps the only fundamentally 

original innovation of Alexander was his technique of aggressively and 

relentlessly pursuing a defeated enemy. In divergence from traditional 

Greek warfare and in stark contrast to Asiatic practice, Alexander sought 

not simply to defeat his enemies, but to annihilate them lest they later 

discover the temerity to challenge him again. It was in pursuit operations 

that the inherent ferocity of the Macedonian military found its most 

terrifying outlet. It is not the least irony surrounding Alexander that in his 

campaigns – ostensibly undertaken to restore Greek honor, liberty, and 

fortune lost in persistent conflicts with Persia - he killed more Asian and 

Greek soldiers than had died in the preceding 150 years combined.8

For all of the Macedonian Army’s extraordinary potential, to be 

effective, any military force must be well-led and directed, and it was 

the gifts of military planning and leadership that Alexander possessed in 

greatest abundance. It was a legacy of traditional Greek warfare that the 

military commander should put himself at risk by participating personally 

in combat. Alexander, in this as in so much else, took the “heroic” 

leadership model to an extreme. He generally placed himself in the thick 
16

of the most desperate fighting and plunged into the attack with reckless 

disregard for his own safety - in the process setting a powerful example for 

his men. Arrian relates that during a siege of an Indian fortress, Alexander, 

impatient with the progress of his men storming the enemy wall, 

impetuously seized a scaling ladder and clambered to the top accompanied 

by just two companions. In the mad rush to join their commander, the 

Macedonians over-crowded and broke the ladders, stranding Alexander 

among the enemy. His men implored him to jump back down into the 

many arms waiting to catch him, but, espying the enemy commander in 

the interior court, Alexander instead leaped inside and killed the Indian 

leader in personal combat. In the process, this tiny group of Macedonians 

became the focus of the defenders and they were showered with arrows 

- one penetrating Alexander’s lung. Alarmed and enraged, the remaining 

Macedonians swarmed over the wall to secure what they assumed would 

be a corpse. That he survived this commonly mortal wound says much 

about Alexander’s physical stamina and toughness (as well as the modern 

tendency to underestimate the sophistication of ancient medicine). In all, 

the various sources record that Alexander received a total of eight major 

wounds in combat - at least two of them very nearly fatal. 

Beyond courageous, Alexander was what a modern publicist might 

characterize as a “soldier’s soldier.” He extended himself to build bonds 

of personal comradeship with his men, sharing their privations and 

hardships, personally attending to their well being, generously sharing the 

spoils of conquest, and enthusiastically joining in their rough humor and 

braggadocio. This helps explain the passionate regard – even awe – in 

which Alexander was for held for so long by his men.9

 However inspiring, 

camaraderie and heroic personal leadership alone are not enough to define 

a great commander. Alexander possessed other qualities that, although less 

romantic, are even more important to a commander’s success. 

Alexander was gifted with the ability that Frederick the Great called 

“coup d’oeil,” a French term translating to the English “glimpse” or 

“glance,” as in “the stroke of the eye.” Frederick defined it as the intuitive 

(but educated) ability to nearly instantly size up the tactical possibilities 

of terrain, deployment, and circumstance and to immediately act on this 

insight to military advantage. Fairly or not, the formal set-piece battle 

tends to be regarded as the acme of a general’s skill and so it is a little 

surprising to discover that Alexander fought no more than four of them 

(Granicus, Issus, Gaugamela, Hydaspes) as overall commander of which 

his rout of Darius’ enormous army at Gaugamela is probably the best 

known example. In all of these, in one way or another, Alexander fought 
17

from a position of significant disadvantage on terrain deliberately chosen 

by the enemy. Invariably, he used his exceptional tactical perception of 

the ground, the enemy’s psychology, faults in deployment, or fleeting 

opportunities to seize the initiative and to both outfight and outgeneral his 

opponents.

Alexander’s coup d’oeil shows to best advantage in the first battle 

of his Persian invasion at the Granicus River. The local Persian Satrap 

(Governor) Artaxserpies had gathered a strong force of local infantry 

and light cavalry augmented by 18,000 Greek mercenary infantry led 

by Memnon of Rhodes who had long been an implacable opponent to 

Phillip’s expansionist policy. Memnon, well aware of Alexander’s limited 

resources and the political fragility of the Greek coalition, had cautioned 

Artaxserpies against a premature showdown with the Macedonians. He 

advised a scorched earth withdraw, intended to trade space for time, exhaust 

Alexander’s strained logistics, sap Greek moral, and allow reinforcement 

from the huge military reserves in the Persian interior. Artaxserpies, loath 

to see such damage done to his rich province and feeling honor (and 

perhaps politically) bound to a forward defense of his territory, dismissed 

Memnon’s counsel. He elected to confront Alexander from a favorable 

defensive position on the high eastern bank of the fast flowing Granicus 

River astride the Macedonian line of advance. 

Although Alexander’s force was significantly stronger, the speed 

and depth of the river made it difficult for cavalry and impractical for 

infantry or to cross in good tactical order. To the experienced Macedonian 

senior leaders, the strong defensive advantage of the high bank the 

Persians occupied seemed to render any assault of the position suicidal. 

General Parmenion (Phillip’s most trusted and experienced commander) 

strongly advised Alexander against attacking and suggested instead that 

they maneuver south to find a position in which they could exploit their 

numerical advantage, especially in infantry.

Alexander came to a different conclusion. Strategically, he knew 

that he had begun the campaign with the slimmest of financial reserves 

and he was almost out of money. With superior Persian naval forces still 

dominating the Eastern Mediterranean, his supply lines to Macedonia were 

threatened, and food and other supplies were already short. Reflecting on 

his shaky control of the allied Greek coalition, he dared show no sign of 

weakness or hesitancy in command and he knew he was being closely 

evaluated by his Macedonian and Greek troops in comparison to his father. 

A quick survey of the Persian position also convinced him that it 
18

was more vulnerable than it seemed. He noted that the Greek mercenary 

infantry were poorly deployed and not in position to oppose rapidly a 

crossing attempt. He sensed that the Persian infantrymen arrayed forward 

were inexperienced, nervous and comparatively lightly armed. He intuited 

that, as a result of long habit and their cultural pre-disposition as horse 

warriors, the Persian leaders would focus their attention on their own and 

Alexander’s cavalry formations. And he knew that none of the Persians had 

seen Macedonian heavy cavalry in action and were probably unfamiliar 

with its tactics and abilities. Finally, the Macedonians had arrived at the 

Granicus in the afternoon and the Persians expected no significant action 

to take place until the following day.

But rather than wait, Alexander called a hasty meeting with his 

commanders and staff, sketched out a simple plan and immediately 

deployed for battle. He engaged the Persian light infantry screen with 

his missile troops, while his light cavalry made a series of flanking feints 

north and south along the western bank, causing the Persians to extended 

and thin their cavalry line. Sensing the opportune moment, Alexander 

personally led his heavy cavalry in a pell-mell lunge across the river aimed 

at the junction between the Persian cavalry and infantry on the right. The 

Macedonian infantry, struggling across the swollen river in bad order but 

with resolute determination, supported their cavalry as best they could. 

Alexander and the Companions, in such formation as they could 

manage while negotiating the river obstacles, plunged deeply into the 

Persian line. Alexander personally engaged three of the enemy cavalry 

commanders before being knocked from his horse by a vicious cut to 

his neck. He was narrowly saved from a killing blow by the intervention 

of one of his Noble Companion officers, Cleitus (“The Black”) who, 

at tremendous personal risk, dismounted to defend the prostrate King 

amid the swirling mêlée. In a few minutes, the lightly equipped Persian 

cavalry broke and dispersed under the furious onslaught of the heavy 

Macedonian horsemen. Alexander remounted and wheeled his cavalry 

to attack the Persian infantry from the rear. Assailed from two sides, the 

Persians panicked. In moments, organized resistance collapsed and they 

scattered in an attempt to evade the aggressive pursuit of the Macedonian 

light forces. In the process they abandoned the relatively immobile 18,000 

Greek mercenaries who had hardly been engaged.10

Macedonian losses in the battle were between 300 and 400 dead. 

The Persians left some 4,000 on the field and lost a further undetermined 

number in the days of pursuit that followed. In a hopeless position, the 

Greek mercenaries attempted to negotiate surrender. Alexander, outraged 
19

by what he regarded, under the circumstances, as their treason and mindful 

of the message it would send, ruthlessly attacked and killed all but 2,000 

of them at no recorded loss to his own force. The surviving mercenaries 

were sent back to Macedonia as slaves for the state mines. 

The Granicus battle displays Alexander’s gifts as a tactical commander. 

It demonstrates his imaginative grasp of the unconventional approach and 

his intuitive sense of the right moment and place for the decisive stroke. 

It shows his prowess and recklessly heroic personal leadership and his 

pitiless, relentlessly aggressive endeavor to destroy any who dared oppose 

him.

In the perspective of the overarching campaign, the Granicus also 

reveals another essential attribute of the great commander; the ability to 

organize a series of tactical engagements and related actions into larger 

operations to attain a deliberate strategic result. Effective strategic vision 

is the true measure of supreme command and the most difficult and 

elusive of all military skills. The strategic commander must set realistic 

and achievable, if sometimes highly ambitious, grand objectives. He 

must accurately assess the capabilities and qualities of his own and the 

enemy’s forces. He must be able to predict with reasonable precision the 

enemy’s reactions and responses to his actions, and counter them. He must 

cope with unexpected enemy actions or unforeseen events without fatally 

compromising his own strategic design. He must craft his operations to be 

compatible with the nature and abilities of his forces and the prevailing 

social, political, and economic conditions and expectations of the larger 

society or he must alter those conditions to make them congruent with his 

objectives. The supreme commander wears many hats and must master 

much more than simple soldiering to achieve his strategic aims. With little 

practical experience, Alexander demonstrated an astonishingly firm grasp 

of strategy.

Alexander began the maneuvers that brought him to the Granicus in 

334 BC, when he continued Phillip’s plan to punish the Persian Empire 

(allegedly) in revenge for more than a century of depredations and the 

persecution of the Greek cities in Asia Minor. The stated objectives were 

to remove the immediate threat to the Greek cities on the Black Sea, 

secure navigation in the Northeast Mediterranean, humble Persian pride 

by exacting tribute, and liberate the vassal Greek cities of Asia Minor. 

Privately, Alexander held or evolved much grander ambitions. He intended 

to destroy, not merely punish, the Persian Empire, a feat that would gain 

him immeasurable military glory. He may or may not have had a vision of 

a grand “Empire of Man” uniting the peoples of the East and West, but he 
20

certainly intended to establish his personal authority over most of them. 

Beyond unprecedented martial glory, Alexander held another 

cherished dream. Aristotle had taught a model of geography that posited 

a world composed of thee small continents—Europe, Asia, and Africa—

surrounding the Mediterranean Sea and themselves bounded by a 

surrounding ocean. Greek philosophers believed the “Great Surrounding 

Ocean” was the source of all the world’s major rivers and that it could 

(theoretically) be used to navigate between them. Alexander intended to 

be the first to traverse the breadth of Asia, circumnavigate the Surrounding 

Ocean and return triumphantly down the Nile as the only man to have 

literally seen the “world.” If he had been confronted by a map of the 

planet depicting its size and continental scale as we know it to be, 

Alexander would have been stunned and deeply depressed. Based on his 

own assumptions, however, a journey of conquest across what he thought 

was a comparatively small Asia and Africa, seemed plausible (if startlingly 

ambitious). Alexander correctly perceived his greatest obstacle, as well 

as opportunity, in accomplishing this grand objective to be the vast and 

fabulously wealthy Persian Empire to the east. 

Although in decline and internally stressed, Persia was still the largest 

and, at least notionally, the most powerful empire in the world. In 336, 

after the assassination of his predecessor, Darius III assumed the title of 

“Great King” and Achaemenid Emperor. Darius was scion of a people 

known (inaccurately) in the West as Medes. He held tenuous sovereignty 

over a vast, but often very loose confederation of semi-autonomous 

Satrapies (Provinces) composed of the many varied peoples of modern 

Southwest Asia and the Middle East. Darius inherited all the military 

resources of a large, diverse, wealthy, and long established empire. The 

Persian elite were originally a Turko-Iranian horse people who migrated 

from the North during the chaos of the 11 century BC and eventually took 

control of the areas once dominated by the ancient Assyrian and Egyptian 

empires and beyond. Their principal military art derived from the light 

cavalry traditions of the Eurasian Steppe warriors who wore little or no 

body armor and whose primary weapons were the composite bow and 

light javelin. They had absorbed the various fighting techniques of their 

polyglot subjects, but the infantry of these, in keeping with dominant Asian 

tradition, were much more lightly armed and armored than Greek troops. 

Both Persian cavalry and infantry retained or adopted the preference for 

missile engagement practiced by steppe cultures. The Persian elite had 

grown to appreciate the potential of heavily armored Greek infantrymen 

and their peculiar, but effective, practice of close quarter shock attack. Such 
21

troops, however, were not available among their indigenous populations 

and they came to depend upon contingents of Greek vassal or mercenary 

infantry as their most important source of reliable infantry. Ironically, this 

is how Alexander came to kill more Greek soldiers in his campaigns than 

had died in previous Persian-Greek conflict. Although it was wanton and 

cruel, the destruction of Memnon’s men proved to be an effective shaping 

operation. Thereafter, any Greek mercenary would think twice before 

enlisting in Persian service against Alexander.11

Alexander’s operations after his victory on the Granicus River 

demonstrate his strategic ability and judgment. Rather than charge pellmell into the heart of the Persian Empire, Alexander took pains to secure 

his rear and develop a strong forward base from which to operate. His next 

step after establishing an Asian foothold was to proceed with liberating 

the Ionian Greek coastal cities. This was in keeping with the expectations 

of the allied Greek coalition and with Alexander’s own propaganda. In 

the process, Alexander also denied Darius the revenue and support of 

some of his wealthiest and most populous provinces. Simultaneously, 

seizure of the coast negated Persian naval superiority and the threat to 

allied communications by means of a land campaign that denied the 

Persian fleet secure bases in the Eastern Mediterranean. In the event, the 

major coastal cities proved less than enthusiastic about their “liberation” 

and remained surprisingly hostile to Alexander and loyal to Darius. Their 

subjugation absorbed much more time and resources than Alexander had 

hoped because they forced him to reduce by deliberate siege some of the 

most formidable fortresses in the world. These included the ancient port 

city of Tyre, regarded by conventional military wisdom as impregnable if 

vigorously defended.

Tyre was a well garrisoned and fully fortified island located almost 

one-half mile offshore, with two large harbors and no easy approaches. It 

had its own flotilla of active warships and had been lavished with every 

marvel of defensive engineering its conspicuous wealth could afford. The 

Assyrians had besieged it in the 6th century for over eleven years without 

success. But in the end, it proved simply a challenge for Alexander’s 

imagination and the skill of his engineers. During nine months of siege, 

Alexander defeated and blockaded Tyre’s naval forces, systematically 

cut it off from outside relief, constructed an enormous mole which 

converted the island into a peninsula, and repelled all counter moves. 

Alexander culminated his operation with a final assault on the breached 

walls by the ferocious Macedonian infantry. In addition to demonstrating 

his consummate engineering skill and imagination, Tyre also reveals 
22

the ruthlessness that was a large component of Alexander’s success as a 

conqueror. Perhaps 7,000 defenders, most of them private citizens pressed 

into their city’s service, were killed during the siege and final assault. 

Following the victory, the entire population, possibly 30,000 men, women, 

and children, were sold into slavery after the Macedonian troops were 

given three days of “liberty” to visit upon the hapless Tyrannians what 

they would. The rape of Tyre was an intimidating message Alexander was 

sending to any other community that thought to resist his power or chose 

to dispute him an easy victory.12

Following Tyre, Alexander made quick work of the remaining Persian 

garrisons in Egypt and ordered a short operational pause to reorganize, 

reinforce, and resupply his main force in preparation for an advance into 

the Persian interior. Meanwhile, his capable generals conducted a series 

of successful shaping operations that, in addition to securing important 

terrain and routes necessary for the main Army’s passage, yielded a 

windfall of Persian treasure and resources that greatly helped to sustain 

the momentum of the campaign. After several weeks of coastal maneuver 

to the tip of the Gulf of Issus in Anatolia, Alexander finally confronted a 

large Persian army. 

It had been assembled hastily, but it significantly outnumbered the 

Macedonian force and was led by Darius in person. Uncharacteristically, 

Alexander had badly misread the tactical situation and was surprised by 

strong Persian formations on his flanks. Undaunted, he rapidly adjusted his 

deployment, aggressively engaged the Persians, defeated and ultimately 

routed them. Darius was forced into ignoble flight and he abandoned to 

the Macedonians his camp treasury and personal entourage, including his 

mother and other members of his immediate family. In the weeks after this 

defeat, Darius made an escalating series of peace overtures culminating in 

an offer that included ransom for his family that was larger than the annual 

state revenue of Macedonia, limited independence for the Ionian Greeks, 

control of Asia Minor, marriage to a royal princess, and a treaty of perpetual 

peace and military alliance. Plutarch reports that on reviewing the final 

proposal, Parmenion said, “I would accept this offer, were I Alexander.” 

To which Alexander replied, “As would I, were I Parmenion.” Apocryphal 

or not, this exchange captures the essence of Alexander’s self-confidence, 

resolution, and his single mindedness in pursuit of his objectives. His was 

a brand of all-in gambling tempered by keen insight and cool strategic 

judgment.13

After more weeks of maneuvering, Alexander again confronted 

Darius at the head of an even larger Army at Gaugamela in Mesopotamia. 
23

The enormous Persian force was gathered from the near and far provinces 

at grave risk to the political integrity of the remaining empire. It was 

by then nearly devoid of any Greek infantry component, but greatly 

outnumbered Alexander’s field army (possibly by more than two-to-one). 

This mighty host must have seemed irresistible to Darius. And so it was 

with dismay that he watched his grand army out-maneuvered, out-fought, 

and once more routed by the Macedonians. In the face of a personal 

onslaught by Alexander at the head of his Companions, Darius again fled 

the field. Soon, in the company of his personal bodyguard commanded 

by the Bactrian Satrap Bessus, he fled the heart of his lands to the wilds 

of his vassal provinces Sogdonia and Bactria (modern Afghanistan and 

Pakistan). Alexander quickly overcame remaining resistance and occupied 

the Persian capitals of Babylon, Persepolis, and Ecbatana.

For Alexander’s allied Greek troops – as indeed for his own 

Macedonians – this was the fulfillment of the Greek dream of revenge 

and they expected to soon begin the long trek home, triumphant and very 

wealthy men. For Alexander’s personal dream, however, the capture and 

plunder of the Persian capitals was only the beginning of his quest for 

conquest and glory. Somewhere along his journey, Alexander had decided 

to not just destroy the Persian Empire, but to rule a greatly expanded version 

of it in his own right as the self-styled, self-made heir to the Achaemenid 

dynasty. Alexander quickly stabilized his new empire by assuming control 

of the existing (and uniquely efficient) Persian civil services. He wisely 

resisted any temptation to sweeping re-organization and left existing 

infrastructures intact and unmolested. He appointed Macedonian governors 

to vital positions and dispatched them with competent Asian advisers and 

trusted garrisons to maintain internal order. He honorably integrated such 

remaining Persian troops as were willing into his own service and he 

dismissed the allied Greek forces after enlisting all who choose to stay 

on as mercenaries. Alexander then gathered reinforcements from home, 

reorganized his field force, and set out on the next series of operations 

for which he had begun preparing even before his victory at Gaugamela. 

Learning of Darius’ escape into the hinterlands, Alexander decided his 

first order of business was to pursue and kill the deposed emperor and 

prevent a serious rival to his new status as “Great King.” These operations 

drew Alexander’s reduced, but still substantial army into some of the most 

difficult and hostile territory in the world – then or now. 

These are areas that should be of particular interest to modern 

Americans as they are the focal point of our recent interminable conflicts, 

and the Macedonian experience might well have served as a sobering 
24

reminder of the challenges and costs to any outsider who seeks to assert 

authority there. A common military maxim holds that “amateurs talk 

about tactics, professionals study logistics.”14 To gain further insight 

into the military genius of Alexander we have to consider the staggering 

difficulties he overcame in sustaining his army day to day as an organized 

fighting force in this barren and hostile environment. Even assuming a 

significant reduction in forces for what developed into “pacification” 

operations in the northeast of Alexander’s new dominions, we can assess 

that the problem of providing even minimal daily subsistence to his forces 

from local resources would daunt the ablest administrator due to the arid 

and undeveloped nature of the country.

Supposing a total force of no more than 35,000 combatants, 15,000 

camp followers, 10,000 cavalry mounts, and 10,000 baggage animals 

renders a calculated minimum daily requirement for 128 tons of grain, 

200 tons of fodder, and 265,000 gallons of potable water. The problem is 

exacerbated by Alexander’s need to maintain dominant mobility. As they 

moved far inland from the coasts or navigable waterways, the Macedonians 

became almost entirely dependent on pack animals – horses, donkeys, and 

crucially, camels – for bulk transport. Effectively, this limited Alexander’s 

advanced logistic parties to foraging in a 60 kilometer radius of a 

designated marching depot because the utility of grain or forage gathered 

from distances further than this would be negated by the consumption 

demands of the additional pack animals required to carry it. While they 

were operating in conspicuously fertile areas such as the Tigris/Euphrates 

Valley, sufficient local provisions were available with minimal effort. In 

more arid climes, however, movement required painstaking advanced 

logistical planning and preparation. 

In the mountains of Bactria, the climate and topography made the 

challenge of securing sufficient food and forage extreme. Alexander 

was nevertheless able to maintain a high operational tempo despite very 

limited local resources– a feat that no Persian force had ever been able 

to do. Macedonian forces apparently experienced no significant logistic 

failures or delays due to supply problems – mute testimony to Alexander’s 

military judgment and staff planning skill. It is also a reflection of the 

sheer competence and professionalism of his subordinate officers. It 

must also be noted, however, that the passing of Alexander’s Army spelt 

existential catastrophe for the inhabitants of that 38-mile-wide corridor. 

Those unfortunates would have been stripped of all sustenance and left to 

starve in a cruel winter with their denuded storehouses, fields, and flocks 

ruined even before they were needed in the coming spring.15
25

In Sogdonia, Alexander discovered the body of Darius, murdered 

and abandoned by Bessus and his own bodyguard. Alexander learned 

that Bessus had declared himself the rightful heir to the Achaemenid 

throne – a provocation that Alexander could not ignore. In addition to his 

Persian pretensions, Bessus was a Bactrian prince and he had retreated 

into what he (vainly) hoped were the safe havens of his people’s high 

mountain fortresses. In addition to the problem posed by Bessus, who 

was eventually trapped and mercilessly destroyed along with all of his 

followers, Alexander had to deal with the bewildering array of ethnic and 

tribal peoples of the Northeast. Those regions had never been more than 

nominally under Persian authority and were – then as now – fiercely jealous 

of their independence and prerogatives. This was a situation intolerable to 

Alexander who was never willing to brook any open opposition to his 

personal authority over a subject people. 

Alexander was drawn into a series of irregular operations that today 

we might characterize as an “insurgency.” That Alexander was able to 

decisively master this difficult situation in the astonishingly short period 

of three years suggests that his techniques should be carefully studied by 

the modern American military as a guide to their own operations in the 

region. Unfortunately, the tactics Alexander used would be unacceptable 

in the context of prevailing Western norms and mores. Alexander’s success 

in guerilla warfare was really only an extension of his native inclination 

to meet all challenges with pitiless aggression and overwhelming force. 

These methods dovetailed effortlessly with the character of his army that 

had long relied on its ferocity and hyper-aggression as a powerful tool 

to psychologically dominate enemies. The army’s professionalism soon 

led it to master the combat techniques of ambush, counter-ambush, and 

mountain warfare. Alexander’s conceptual approach to reconciliation 

with his discontented new subjects was to divide them politically, buy or 

otherwise seduce the powerful, terrorize the rest into grudging submission 

or destroy them with brutal violence. The alternative to peaceful obedience 

Alexander offered these discontented peoples was to offer them with an 

“eternal” peace.”16

A final and perhaps most definitive example of Alexander’s military 

genius is paradoxically one of his least remarked upon, but actually most 

remarkable achievements. Alone among the Western commander’s of 

antiquity, Alexander managed to decisively defeat a Eurasian horse army 

on its own terms and on its own ground – a feat that would seldom be 

equaled by another Western army until the age of gunpowder. To make this 

interpretation clear it is necessary to explain something more about the 
26

art of war as practiced by the various semi-nomadic horse cultures of the 

Eurasian Steppe of which the Scythians were among the larger and more 

powerful. The Scythian nobility constituted a small elite of heavily armed 

and armored horsemen capable, individually, of engaging in close combat 

with Alexander’s heavy cavalry but prevented by both small numbers and 

long habit from doing so. The vast majority of Scythian warriors were 

lightly equipped horse archers mounted on tough steppe ponies who relied 

almost exclusively on long-range missile fire to wear down and destroy 

their enemies. Their tactics of fluid movement and mobility were utterly 

asymmetric to the linear formations and tactics of infantry-based armies. 

At the Jexartes River that described the northern boundary of Sogdonia 

from the immense Eurasian Steppe beyond, Alexander was confronted 

by a horde of Scythian warriors in their characteristically amorphous 

formations of loosely grouped horsemen. At that point, the Jexartes was 

relatively deep and very wide – well beyond the range of a standard 

bowshot. The Scythian intentions were unclear, but Alexander was loath 

to retreat from them lest he leave his hard-won conquests exposed to 

attack. Nor could he risk having the Scythians fall upon his vulnerable rear 

elements during the withdrawal. He was also, perhaps, motivated by his 

reputation of invincibility and simply could not resist attempting to solve 

a new, even if avoidable, military problem. 

Giving full reign to his intuitive imagination, Alexander deployed 

his siege train and used the powerful engines as field artillery - possibly 

the first such use in recorded history. The artillery missiles drove the 

Scythian horseman away from the opposite bank and held them at bay 

while Alexander crossed over his light troops to establish a bridgehead and 

cover the Macedonian engineers, now become combat sappers (another 

possible first), while they constructed ferries to transport the heavy 

troops. In good time, the main Macedonian force was able to make the 

crossing unmolested and in good order. In this minor operation Alexander 

effectively established the tactical principles of an assault river crossing 

which endure and are taught in military schools today. 

Confronted by an unfavorable situation, the Scythians used their 

superior mobility to move, as individuals and small groups into the 

interior, tempting their enemy into a heedless pursuit, over-extending, 

and isolating the pursuers from supporting forces. On cue, the seemingly 

unorganized Scythian horsemen would subtly wheel, envelop, and destroy 

their erstwhile pursuers in a deadly trap. Alexander seemed to take the 

bait and sped his light cavalry on the heels of the “retreating” Scythians, 

unwittingly, as the enemy thought, positioning it for destruction. 
27

It was really Alexander, however, who had set the trap. The Scythians 

had badly underestimated the relative mobility of the Macedonian light 

and medium infantry and the power of Alexander’s massed heavy cavalry. 

The enveloped Macedonian light cavalry gradually fell back toward their 

advancing infantry and heavy cavalry whose flanks and rear were secured 

by the stolid phalanxes of pikemen. Too late, the enveloping Scythian 

horsemen recognized their danger and Alexander’s formations were able 

to surround and annihilate up to a full third of the total Scythian force – 

probably the worst defeat they had ever suffered or ever expected too. 

The very next day, a delegation of Scythian leaders came to Alexander 

to make terms and soon departed northeastward to seek easier foes. In 

the succeeding decades they, or the domino effect their sudden migration 

might have had upon the other Eurasian horse peoples, became a serious 

thorn in the side of the early Chinese Qin dynasty – Perhaps even inspiring 

the prodigious feats of wall building for which the Qin are celebrated. In 

any event, Alexander had strategically secured his Northern frontier and 

freed himself to continue his campaign eastward to the Indus Valley.17

Ultimately, all human ambitions have their practical limit and 

Alexander’s were no exception to this rule. In 326 BC on the banks 

of the Hyphasis River in modern India, after eight years of continuous 

campaigning, the Macedonian army had had enough. The soldiers were 

increasingly discomfited by their king’s behavior. The Alexander that the 

Macedonian soldiers served in India seemed a very different man from 

the boon warrior-companion who had led them across the Hellespont to 

Asia. For some time, Alexander had been growing more preemptory and 

contentious. He only infrequently sought the confidence of his Companions 

and he laid plans to begin arming and training selected Asian troops to 

perform the heavy infantry and cavalry roles - the unique military identity 

of the Macedonian soldiers that made them indispensible. He spent more 

and more time in the company of Asian political advisers and sycophants 

and he increasingly assumed the attire and manners of his Persian court. 

Formerly he imbibed alcohol socially and sparingly, but now he drank 

heavily and was quick to brawl with his former intimates. He declared 

himself divine and demanded that even Greeks prostrate themselves in his 

presence after the oriental custom. 

During a now-infrequent evening spent drinking with his Macedonians; 

an intoxicated Alexander began to denigrate their contributions to the new 

Empire. He speculated that, with himself as commander, he could have 

achieved all with any army including the Persian. He also dismissed the 

achievements of his father and the previous generation of Macedonian 
28

leaders, among whose sons he was speaking, as insignificant when 

compared to his own. He mocked his Companions for their limited vision 

and adherence to their Macedonian ways. Alexander praised the alleged 

sophistication and superiority of Asian culture particularly as manifest in 

their granting him what he seemed to believe was his due as the actual (not 

merely notional) son of Zeus. 

Alexander was challenged on these offensive presumptions by a 

disgusted Cleitus “the Black” – among his ablest subordinates and he who 

had risked his own life to save Alexander at the Granicus River. Cleitus 

pointed out the impropriety of the divine decree as applied to Greeks and 

the disrespect his Persian behaviors implied to the Macedonian troops and 

Companions, especially when coupled with the increasingly arbitrary and 

unpleasant duty assignments Alexander gave his Western officers. Cleitus 

made very plain his contempt for Alexander’s growing arrogance and 

haughty inapproachability. Some sober heads attempted to propel Cleitus 

forcibly out of the furious King’s presence, but, when Cleitus appeared 

again a moment later, Alexander personally killed the unarmed man in a fit 

of drunken rage.18 The soldiers, many of whom by this time had traveled 

some 15,000 weary circuitous miles in the wake of their increasingly 

volatile commander, were aware of and distressed by this incident. Cleitus 

was respected and popular. It called the King’s judgment deeply into 

question. The men were grown homesick and skeptical of where all this 

endless activity was leading. 

 They were now in country unknown to even the most learned 

Greek scholars. In the unaccustomed climate of sub-tropical India, the 

Macedonian soldiers suffered from the smothering humid heat and died 

of strange diseases. Despite winning a major victory at the Hydaspes 

River in the Punjab against the army of the Hindu King Porus, Indian 

tribal resistance to their advance remained fierce and took a constant toll of 

casualties. Under interrogation no Indian was able to tell the Macedonians 

the remaining distance to the Great Surrounding Ocean nor even seemed 

to know what they were trying to describe. The troops were done. They 

vigorously petitioned their King to abandon his odyssey and lead them 

home. They sullenly resisted all of Alexander’s passionate attempts at 

inspiration, persuasion, or promise of reward. Soon they were supported 

by most of the officers—loyal men with distinguished records who 

personally owed much to Alexander, but who had grown disenchanted 

with the commander’s quixotic dreams. For a time Alexander, having 

badly strained the formerly close bonds of comradeship he shared with his 

men, reacted with angry petulance.
29

 The tension was palpable and explosive. More than affection, the 

conviction that only Alexander could successfully extract them from deep 

within a hostile land, was probably all that stopped the mutiny short of 

regicide. Reluctantly and with ill grace Alexander agreed to abandon 

his grand vision, but first he extracted from them a concession that he 

offered as expediency. He would lead his major force home by the indirect 

route of sailing down the Indus River and back up the Persian Gulf. This 

“short” way back to Mesopotamia committed the Macedonian Army to 

further fierce and costly fighting as they slowly descended the Indus in the 

face of stubborn local opposition. Unnecessarily, the return trip required 

almost two full years. It also caused many of the soldiers to fall victim to 

Alexander’s only major lapse in operational judgment. Without adequate 

intelligence or reliable guides, Alexander inexplicably decided to lead a 

large force on foot across the Gedrosian desert of Southern Iran. In those 

empty wastes, a great many of his good veterans perished from want and 

exposure. The rest survived by the barest of margins. 

Upon finally reaching his designated capital at Babylon early in 323 

BC, Alexander addressed himself to the convoluted variety of duties 

and problems attendant to managing his enormous and unstable empire. 

Simultaneously he was planning future military campaigns against Arabia, 

Carthage, and Italy. Many noticed a marked change in him. Since the 

mutiny on the Hyphasis, he seemed even more withdrawn, contentious, and 

frequently embittered with his Macedonians. He was further depressed by 

the sudden death in Ecbatana of his best and closest friend (and probably 

lover) the adored Hephaestion. It was remarked that Hephaestion had 

always been a steadying influence on his personality, but that was over and 

Alexander was inconsolable. Grief stricken and irrational, he peremptorily 

ordered all of Hephaestion’s attending physicians to be garroted. 

Physically, Alexander never seemed fully recovered from the grievous 

wound he received in the Indian fortress. His skin was sallow and he was 

uncharacteristically indolent for long periods. Alexander complained of 

insomnia and a host of minor discomforts that previously he would have 

ignored. He was short tempered and increased his already heavy drinking. 

His orders were sometimes capricious and he was even more ruthless 

and arbitrary in dealing with those whom he believed had failed him. 

His paranoia became excessive and, on little or no evidence, he ordered 

the execution or assassination of many, including his own court historian 

Cleisthenes and the venerable Parmenion, for treason – real or merely 

suspected. His efforts to integrate and harmonize the leadership of his 

culturally diverse court were unsuccessful. In a bold attempt at Susa, he 
30

orchestrated a mass wedding of his Macedonian officers to Persian brides 

(which must have seriously annoyed their existing wives in Greece). Few 

of his officers seemed to take this seriously, however, and most treated 

their new wives, despite their noble rank and lineage, as merely additional 

mistresses. Tensions among the various ethnic factions ran high. The 

Westerners made little effort, out of Alexander’s sight, to hide their 

contempt for the Asians. 

In June, after an epic drinking binge, Alexander collapsed, lingered 

in and out of consciousness for a few days, and died just weeks short 

of his thirty-third birthday.19 Arrian claims that when, in a lucid moment 

on his deathbed, he was asked to whom he bequeathed the Empire, 

Alexander replied, “To the strongest.”20 Accurate or not, the stark truth 

is that Alexander’s domains had no logical coherence save that provided 

by Alexander. His Empire was a kind of personality cult that could hold 

together only under the fear and focus provided by Alexander himself. 

It literally did not survive the night he died, as his generals immediately 

fell into hot dispute over the succession. In the end, which was not long 

in coming, Alexander’s suffered the fate of all purely military empires. It 

fractured into a dozen violently competing successor states and launched 

decades of chronic warfare among contenders seeking to re-establish 

control over the others. 

What then are the enduring legacies of Alexander? The vast Empire 

he forged was, like the mythical Camelot, ephemeral. He could be said to 

have transformed Western warfare in the 4th century BC and set models for 

tactical engagement that redefined military practice for over two hundred 

years until they were eclipsed by the even more radical Roman system. 

But, that is arguably more Phillip’s legacy than Alexander’s and a strong 

case can made that it only accelerated an evolutionary process that would 

have happened anyway. It might be suggested that Alexander’s campaigns 

became a virtual school for strategic design. However, many theorists and 

practitioners have argued persuasively that strategic acumen is more an 

inborn talent than an acquired skill. At best it can be refined by careful 

study, but never imparted where the talent is lacking. Alexander’s role in 

ushering in the “Age of Hellenism” and the lasting effects of Hellenism 

itself are, as already noted, in profound dispute among serious scholars 

who have earned the right to an opinion. Alexander failed to found a 

dynasty or even an enduring state. He failed, ultimately, to unite the many 

antagonistic peoples of the East and West into a harmonious Empire of 

Man, nor could he be said to have made much progress in that direction. 

He failed to reach the Great Surrounding Ocean and circumnavigate 
31

the world. Can any commander who failed to meet his grand strategic 

objectives, even one possessing the demonstrable military genius of 

Alexander, truly be said to be great?

The evaluation of greatness in history inevitably depends on one’s 

own cultural, political, and personal values. It will always be determined 

according to the bias of the individual observer. If we evaluate Alexander 

exclusively from the perspective of military achievement his record is 

unrivaled. His career offers, however, sobering reminders of the dubious 

value of military success when it is uncoupled from the political objectives 

that give it purpose. For the earnest commander of any age, Alexander 

represents the apogee of military competence. For good or ill, he will 

continue to be the benchmark by which extremely ambitious soldiers 

measure themselves. Alexander fulfilled his prophecy as the Invincible 

Commander, in that eternal glory, more than any other objective, seems 

to have been Alexander’s most cherished ambition. And since we are 

still analyzing and arguing about him some 2,300 years after his death, 

we might well agree with the Romans and conclude that, as a military 

commander at least, Alexander was indeed “Great.”
32

Notes

1. For a general introduction and survey of the complex issues surrounding the original sources of Alexander historiography see Eugene N. Borza’s introduction to the classic biography by Ulrich Wilcken, Alexander the Great (New 

York: Norton & Company, 1967) xxi-xxviii.

2. For an evaluation of Alexander’s reputation in the 4th Century Greek 

world and his significance to and rehabilitation by Roman historians see Peter 

Bamm, Alexander the Great; Power As Destiny (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968) 

9-22

3. An objective and accessible integration of the competing interpretations 

of Alexander’s childhood and influences is found in Paul Cartledge, Alexander the 

Great; The Hunt for a New Past (New York: Vintage Books,) 81-90 

4. Alexander’s life, accomplishments and historical significance have generated a staggering body of literature over the centuries. Interpreters of the Macedonian can generally be grouped into three broad categories: Apologists (also 

known as Hagiographers), Moral Critics, and Neutralists. Among the more famous and influential of the modern apologists are: William Tarn (1869-1957), JFC 

Fuller (1878-1966), Mary Renault (1905-1983), and even Oliver Stone (1946- ) 

who find in Alexander a visionary and enlightened, if flawed, social idealist. The 

best known of the moral critics include: Hans Delbruck (1848-1929), Will Durant 

(1885-1981), and Victor Davis Hanson (1953- ) who, while giving full appreciation to Alexander’s military genius, regard his career and accomplishments 

as disastrous to his followers, his victims, their societies and to Western culture 

generally as having established a de facto justification of the “might makes right” 

school of international relations. Hanson pulls no punches in describing Alexander as an ancient Hitler (Hanson, The Wars of the Ancient Greeks (London: 

Cassell, 1999, p. 190). The neutralists, probably due to both the caution of their 

conclusions and the understatement of their prose, tend to be less well known. 

Excellent objective general biographers of Alexander currently in print include 

Ulrich Wilcken (1862-1944) and Paul Cartledge (1947- ) both of whose works are 

cited above.

5. For an abbreviated appreciation of the multifarious cultural identities of 

Alexander and his on-going influence in the transforming societies of the Hellenistic world see Peter Bamm, Alexander the Great; Power As Destiny (New York: 

McGraw-Hill, 1968) 24-68.

6. Christopher R. Gabel, Great Commanders (Fort Leavenworth, KS. 

2013) 2.

7. For an excellent and lavishly illustrated modern interpretation of the 

Macedonian Army and a general overview of Alexander’s campaigns see Nick 

Sekunda and John Warry, Alexander The Great; His Armies and Campaigns 334-

323 BC (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 1998) Passim. Although his conclusions on 

Alexander’s historical significance are dubious, JFC Fuller’s reconstructions of 
33

Alexander’s battles, operations, and his strategic design, reconciled from the conflicting ancient sources, remain definitive and unequaled by more recent scholars. 

See, JFC Fuller, The Generalship of Alexander the Great (New Brunswick, NJ: 

Rutgers University Press, 1960) Passim.

8. Victor Davis Hanson, The Wars of the Ancient Greeks (London: Cassell, 

1999), p. 178.

9. Lucius Flavius Arrianus (Arrian of Nicomedia),The Campaigns of Alexander (Translated by Aubrey deSelin Court, London: Penguin Books, 1958) 

313-316.

10. JFC Fuller, The Generalship of Alexander the Great (New Brunswick, 

NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1960) 147- 154.

11. An unparalleled general history of the Persian Empire and its military 

machine, refreshingly free of the cultural biases that still tend to distort Western 

oriented interpretations of the Greek experience, is provided by Tom Holland, 

Persian Fire; The First World Empire and the Battle for the West (New York: 

Anchor Books, 2007)

12. JFC Fuller, The Generalship of Alexander the Great ,206-218.

13. Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (Plutarch), Lives of the Nobel Greeks and 

Romans (Translated by Aubrey Stewart and George Long, New York: CreateSpace 

Inc., 2011) p. 238.

14. GEN Robert H. Barrow, Commandant, USMC, Annual Address to the 

Marine Corps Assoc., Proceedings, 1980.

15. The most comprehensive study of the challenges faced by Alexander in 

resourcing and sustaining his campaigns (and a masterpiece of analytical historical research) is Donald W. Engels, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the 

Macedonian Army (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978) 

16. Ancient sources made little distinction between what a modern military 

professional would consider Alexander’s conventional and unconventional wars. 

Using the parlance of his professional generation, JFC Fuller devotes a chapter 

(Fuller, Chapter 8.) to “Alexander’s Small Wars.” Among more recent analysts of 

“counter-insurgency,” a stand-out study is Robert B. Asprey, War in the Shadows; 

The Guerilla in History Vol. I (New York: Doubleday, 1975). See also Victor Davis Hanson, Carnage and Culture (New York: Doubleday, 2001, pgs. 74-90) for 

further elucidation (and condemnation) of Alexander’s tactics and techniques.

17. JFC Fuller, The Generalship of Alexander the Great , 237-242

18. Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander, 213-216.

19. Ibid., 380-395.

20. Ibid., 394.

35

Chapter 2

Genghis Khan

by Terry Beckenbaugh, Ph.D.

Of all the great commanders in human history, perhaps none rose from 

more dire straits to greater heights than Genghis Khan. Rising from the 

poverty of exile, the young boy named Temujin who eventually became 

Genghis Khan, helped his family survive the harsh steppe climate, grew to 

a strong and charismatic young man who united the disparate Mongol tribes 

into a nation, and founded what became the world’s largest contiguous 

land empire. Yet for all his accomplishments, Genghis Khan is probably 

the least well known of the great commanders. A significant reason for 

that is the fact that when Genghis Khan founded the Mongol empire, the 

Mongols had no written language.

The earliest primary sources chronicling the Mongols were the 

accounts of the peoples the Mongols conquered. Since that conquest tended 

to be brutal, the portrait of the Mongols that emerges is understandably 

not flattering. To study the Mongols one must have an extraordinary 

fluency in a variety of foreign languages. Thus, the scholar can spend a 

lifetime mastering diverse languages such as Japanese, Korean, Chinese, 

Vietnamese, Turkish, Russian, Persian, Arabic, Hungarian, German, Latin 

and Mongolian to study the Mongol conquests. An added handicap for 

people in the English-speaking world who wish to study the Mongols 

is that the Mongol conquest never reached the British Isles, nor did 

significant English-speaking elements serve within the Mongol forces or 

fight against them. This has the effect of tamping down scholarly inquiry 

in the English-speaking world, so that the English speaker must have 

reading comprehension of German and/or Russian to read the best western 

scholarship available on the Mongol empire.1

 Since very few people have 

the linguistic ability to truly master the plethora of languages necessary 

to study the Mongols, those who do overwhelmingly tend to focus on a 

region the Mongols conquered. This narrows the focus to China, Persia, 

Arabic-speaking lands of the Middle East and Russia and is much more 

manageable as a scholarly endeavor.2 Another issue that hinders the study 

of the Mongols is the state of Mongol cultural development compared to 

the subjected peoples’ cultural development.

Unlike the Persians, Greeks, Romans and Chinese, who forcibly 

stamped their culture on conquered peoples, the Mongols over time absorbed 

the culture of their more developed subjects. The Mongols’ military was 

far more advanced than the sedentary cultures they conquered, but once 
36

in control the Mongols often relied upon the administrative machinery 

of the of the defeated peoples to manage those regions. This left it to 

those conquered peoples to characterize the Mongols, and while in awe 

of Mongol military prowess, they were often less kind in describing their 

conquerors’ culture and society. As a nomadic people, the Mongols did not 

have large urban areas, or a capital complex or governing bureaucracy to 

aid in governance of the ever-expanding empire. With no capital and no 

bureaucracy, and the vast majority of Mongols being illiterate, Genghis 

Khan had no choice but to rely upon the literate members of foreign 

bureaucracies to staff and document his growing empire. Furthermore, the 

nomadic peoples of inner Asia were long tempted by the riches of their 

Figure 2. Genghis Khan portrait cropped from a page in an album depicting 

several Yuan emperors at the National Palace Museum in Taipei; 14th Century; 

author unknown
37

sedentary neighbors. This was no different with the Mongols who, now 

controlling those riches, succumbed to them. So it is accurate to say that 

while the Mongols militarily conquered many sophisticated nations, those 

same nations culturally conquered the Mongols over time.3

 This makes 

studying the Mongols a challenge for any scholar, and part of the reason 

that so much of Genghis Khan’s life is shrouded in myth and legend.

The future Genghis Khan was born into the uncertain, violent world 

of the late twelfth century. The Mongols fought among themselves and 

paid tribute to the Chin Dynasty in China. They were an impoverished 

and desperate people yearning for stability and prosperity.4

 Organized 

on a tribal basis, the various tribes engaged in a vicious cycle of raiding 

and retaliation among each other that left a trail of corpses and orphans. 

Genghis Khan’s father, a Mongol Chieftain named Yisugei kidnapped 

Genghis Khan’s mother, Ho’elun, and married her. Ho’elun was one of 

Yisugei’s many wives, but she was the senior wife. When Genghis Khan 

was born, legend states that he held a blood clot the size of a knuckle bone 

in his right hand—an augur of greatness. At the time of the birth, Yisugei 

had recently captured a Tartar named Temuchin-uge. Yisugei named the 

boy Temujin because he was born around the time of Temuchin-uge’s 

capture.5

 Of course when he was born is another matter entirely. The best 

scholarship on the matter argues that Temujin was born in the mid 1160s.6

Temujin was the first of four sons and a daughter by Yisugei and Ho’elun. 

By another wife, Yisugei had two additional sons, Bekhter and Belgutei, 

half-brothers of Temujin. It is not known whether Temujin was older than 

Bekhter; sources are incomplete on this issue. Yisugei’s extended family 

lived close to the Onon River in modern-day Mongolia, and this was where 

Temujin learned to fish, hunt, ride a horse, and shoot a bow-and-arrow. He 

also made friends with people who later played a crucial role in his rise to 

power, most notably, a boy named Jamuka. Temujin and Jamuka became 

andas, blood brothers, when they exchanged various gifts and made oaths 

pledging loyalty and friendship to each other.7

 Yisugei took Temujin on 

some of his travels. On one of these trips, Temujin was betrothed to the 

daughter of an Onggirat tribesman, Borte. Betrothal for pre-teens was 

common among Mongols. Borte’s father insisted that young Temujin live 

with the family until the couple was old enough to marry.8

 Life was going 

well for the young Temujin, but a tragedy struck that not only changed the 

boy Temujin’s life, it also had a dramatic effect upon world history.

Yisugei, Temujin’s father, was poisoned on his way back to the family’s 

camp by Tatars whom he had raided, but had forgotten. They remembered 

him and they poisoned his food while he shared a meal with them. Yisugei 
38

managed to struggle back to the family’s encampment before dying, and, 

with his last breath, directed that young Temujin should come back to lead 

the family. The death of his father fundamentally changed the direction of 

Temujin’s life. Temujin was still a boy, only nine years old by one account,9

but as the oldest boy, he was in line to take his father’s place as chief of the 

group. Because nine-year old chiefs do not inspire confidence in people, 

the rest of Yisugei’s small tribe abandoned Temujin and his family, and 

cast them out on the steppe. This heralded a very difficult period, not only 

for Temujin, but the entire family. Survival was a family effort, and all the 

children contributed to feeding and clothing the small group.10 Finding 

food and shelter on the steppe was difficult, but Temujin also had to worry 

about Tatar tribesman hunting him down so he would not take his revenge 

on them when he reached maturity. Thus, the nine-year old boy had to 

grow up fast—very fast.

Very quickly Temujin asserted his control of the family by murdering 

his half-brother Bekhter. According to The Secret History, Temujin and 

his full brother Khasar were fishing with their half-brothers Bekhter 

and Belgutei. Bekhter stole fish caught by Temujin and Kasar, having 

previously stolen birds shot by the boys. These acts proved to be too 

much for Temujin and Khasar, especially when Ho’elun refused to punish 

Bekhter for his transgressions. Temujin and Khasar ambushed Bekhter, 

shooting him with arrows until he died. Bekhter’s last words were to beg 

for the life of Belgutei, which was spared. Although Bekhter was not her 

son, Ho’elun was furious with her boys, calling them, “Killers, both of 

you!”11 Considering the family’s dire straits, the loss of Bekhter’s labor 

and fruits of his hunting and fishing would have had a catastrophic effect 

on the family—not to mention that two of the boys in the family were now 

admitted murderers. However, if there was any doubt before as to who was 

the male head of the family, Temujin’s murder of Bekhter settled things 

definitively.12 It also demonstrated that Temujin had a deep ruthless streak 

and an unsettling willingness to do anything to accomplish his goals. People 

or things that stood in his way were dealt with harshly and decisively. This 

was not a boy who equivocated. He, like the harsh environment of the 

steppe, was unforgiving, and rarely gave second chances.

Shortly after the killing of Bekhter, Temujin was captured by the 

Tayichi’ut tribe and held as a prisoner. He was held in the Tayichi’ut camp 

in a cage, guarded twenty-four hours a day. Yet somehow he managed to 

escape—throughout his life he always seemed able to work his way out 

from dire predicaments. In this instance, Temujin waited until his guard was 

a youth, overpowered him, ran to a riverbed and stayed in the river until his 
39

pursuers gave up the chase. One of his captors, Sorkan-shira of the Suldu 

tribe, helped Temujin escape the area and eventually entered Temujin’s 

service.13 This story illustrates many of the traits that made Genghis Khan 

a great commander—resourcefulness, charisma (in that Sorkan-shira saw 

the potential greatness in the boy), and an unwillingness to accept defeat 

no matter how bleak the situation. Although Temujin never received any 

formal schooling, his classroom was the steppe, his school the hard life of 

a Mongolian youth trying to survive. His bravery and charisma attracted 

followers, and the constant raiding and retaliation gave him an in-depth 

picture of nomadic politics. For much of the time Temujin was forced to 

operate from a position of weakness, and this forced him to think longterm and develop his strategic genius. He would need all those skills to 

unite a Mongol people that focused more on each person’s individual tribe 

than being part of a nation. The Mongol people needed someone to drag 

them collectively to nationhood.

Genghis Khan’s most impressive achievement was the uniting of 

the Mongol people under his rule in 1206 CE. Genghis Khan possessed 

tremendous strategic and political gifts, which made his military 

accomplishments possible. He used force when necessary, negotiation 

when possible, diplomacy and marriage when convenient, as he singlemindedly pursued his goal of the unification of the Mongol people under 

his control. To do this he had to work within the Mongol cultural and 

social system, but eventually he had to destroy elements of that system 

and become a revolutionary. Unfortunately, solid information from this 

period of Genghis Khan’s life is difficult to ascertain. There were many 

tales of bravery, stealing horses, recovering stolen horses and raiding other 

tribes, but as the numbers of Temujin’s supporters grew, he had to fight 

several conventional battles before Temujin could claim the name Genghis 

Khan.14

Before Temujin could even consider raising an army, he needed to 

ensure his survival. At the age of fifteen, he finally took Borte as his 

bride and assumed his role as the leader of his tribe, taking over for his 

late father. Even though viewed as a man by many of his tribesman, he 

was still a boy with man-size responsibilities. Realizing he needed help, 

Temujin decided to seek out a protector, but on his terms. This did not 

mean going hat in hand in the hopes that a powerful tribal chief would take 

him under his wing and nurture him until he finally was ready to lead. He 

had to prove immediately that he was a leader, and that anyone who took 

on the role of mentor understood that it was a symbiotic relationship—

having the young, charismatic Temujin as an ally was something to be 
40

desired. Temujin had gained allies in his youth, escaping from captivity 

and rescuing stolen horses. He now called upon these allies to help him, 

and went to the Kerait Chieftain Toghrul as not just a supplicant, but as a 

leader or noyan.15

Toghrul was a logical choice as an ally for Temujin. Temujin’s father, 

Yisugei, had once helped Toghrul regain his throne as the chieftain of 

the Keraits. While the relationship between Toghrul and Temujin was 

as between a lord and vassal, Temujin made sure to remind Toghrul of 

the connection between the Kerait chief and Temujin’s father. Of course, 

Toghrul had enemies as well, including the Merkits, hostile to both Toghrul 

and Temujin’s late father. The Merkits wanted to see just how deep the 

connection was between Toghrul and Temujin. Around 1184, the Merkits 

mounted a large raid on Temujin’s camp. While Temujin and the bulk of 

his family escaped, his young wife, Borte, was captured and taken back 

to the Merkit camp. Just as Yisugei had kidnapped Ho’elun, the Merkits 

avenged Ho’elun’s kidnapping by the abduction of Borte. Instead of acting 

rashly, Temujin saw an opportunity to use his relationship with Toghrul to 

force the Merkits to return his wife. Not only did Toghrul agree to help 

Temujin regain his wife, but his blood brother from youth, Jamuka of the 

Jadarat tribe, also pledged to aid Temujin. With Toghrul and Jamuka’s aid, 

the Merkits were defeated decisively and Borte was returned to Temujin. 

Upon her return it was discovered that Borte was pregnant. During her 

captivity she had been given to a Merkit as a wife. Now that she returned, 

was the child she carried Temujin’s or her captor’s? It was a question never 

satisfactorily answered, although Temujin treated the child, Jochi, as his 

own. 16 This affair demonstrated an important trait of the future Genghis 

Khan—the ability to gain acceptance of those outside his family and tribe.

Thus Temujin rose from a fatherless, poverty-stricken boy to one of 

the most powerful chieftains of the steppe. A crucial element in his rise 

was the acceptance into the “tribe” of members from other tribes who 

willingly gave up their own tribal affiliation to throw in their lot with 

Temujin. The reasons for choosing to abandon one’s tribe to follow Temujin 

undoubtedly varied widely. However, Temujin’s charisma, personal 

bravery, political acumen, and loyalty to those who helped him surely 

played a role in prompting many of these young men to switch allegiance. 

Temujin also chose several other young men as blood brothers—such as 

Jamuka—whose followers then supported Temujin. The loyalty of these 

initial followers of Temujin were rewarded by becoming generals in their 

own right, or being named members of Genghis Khan’s Imperial Guard. 

In addition to his many other gifts, Temujin proved to be a good judge of 
41

talent and character. As he built his army, the leadership capabilities of its 

officer corps were far and away superior to those of any opponent.17 That 

core of men surrounding Temujin would soon be sorely tested by one of 

their own—Jamuka.

For a year or so after the Merkit raid, Jamuka and Temujin remained 

on good terms, but it was not to last. Jamuka was a charismatic leader 

in his own right, who came from a more prestigious tribe. It was only a 

matter of time until the two old friends came to blows. Jamuka’s tribe was 

a tribe of horse-breeders, while Temujin came from sheep breeders. The 

horse breeders were higher on the steppe social hierarchy than the sheep 

breeders, and there was animosity between the two groups. Although the 

two boys were childhood friends, there was not enough room on the steppe 

to contain both men’s ambitions. Conflict between the two was inevitable. 

Temujin’s policy of treating outsiders as members of his tribe paid big 

dividends, as many dispossessed people came to him seeking shelter and 

protection, so his tribe grew accordingly. Jamuka was already head of 

one of the most powerful tribes on the steppes, the Jadarat, and he took a 

traditional view of not easily accepting members of other tribes.18 Temujin 

also understood the value of effective propaganda, and he made good use 

of it in his struggle with Jamuka. The shaman Teb-Tenegri prophesied that 

god came to him and said, “I have given the whole surface of the earth to 

Temuchin and his sons.”19 Superstition ran rife among the Mongol tribes, 

and Temujin quickly grasped the potential of this bit of propaganda, and 

used it to attract more followers. He needed to use all of his non-violent 

means to even the battlefield against Jamuka, probably the most talented 

opponent Temujin ever faced.20

Temujin first moved against Jamuka politically, calling a quriltai

(election council) to name a leader of all the Mongol tribes. Although he 

was not nearly the most powerful of the tribal chieftains, Temujin was well 

known on the steppe. Temujin decided to pit the various tribes against each 

other, positioning himself as a compromise candidate for the Khanship. 

Several of the more prominent tribal chieftains were led to believe that 

Temujin could be controlled by them. Thus, even though the quriltai did 

not include all the Mongol tribes, Temujin was elected the Great Khan 

and given the name Genghis Khan. The elevation of Genghis Khan to 

the leadership of all the Mongols—even though the title was mainly in 

name only, still gave him a powerful propaganda tool in pursuit of his 

goal of uniting all the Mongols under his rule. This new title was sure to 

antagonize Jamuka, who still dreamed of uniting the Mongols under his 

own leadership.21
42

The struggle between Genghis Khan and Jamuka for leadership of all 

the Mongol tribes reached its climax in 1206 with Jamuka’s defeat and 

execution. Jamuka initiated hostilities by raising an army from the Mongol 

tribes that were loyal to him and his tribe. The historical record is not clear 

in how many battles were fought, but it seems that Jamuka more than held 

his own against Genghis Khan. They would have fought using the same 

kinds of armies and tactics, but the difference appears to have been one 

of philosophy. Where Genghis Khan welcomed defeated former enemies 

into his ranks or tribe, Jamuka refused to do so. Thus, even when he was 

defeated on the battlefield, as long as Genghis Khan survived, he could 

rebuild his power base because of his open attitude toward members of 

other tribes, his fair treatment of them, and his rewarding of merit. Jamuka, 

who still held traditional views of who could be a tribal member, could not 

afford a defeat because of the limitations inherent in his concept of the 

tribe. Genghis Khan was trying to create a nation in the modern sense, 

where membership was open and not based solely on blood ties. The 

administration of this nation would come later, but the idea of a Mongol 

nation came from Genghis Khan—which is why Mongolians today look 

at him as the founder of the modern Mongol nation. 

The struggle between Jamuka and Genghis Khan lasted well over a 

decade before Genghis Khan was victorious. Jamuka, in one last attempt 

to defeat Genghis Khan, enlisted the powerful Naiman tribe—a nonMongol tribe which traditionally fought against the Mongols—to help him 

recover his position. Genghis Khan soundly defeated the Naimans and 

destroyed them as a tribe, but incorporated into his tribe those defeated 

elements willing to swear loyalty to him.22 With Genghis Khan’s already 

well-established reputation for ferocity toward enemies, five of Jamuka’s 

vassals betrayed him and brought him as a captive to Genghis Khan hoping 

for a reward. Furious at Jamuka’s vassals’ treachery, he reportedly had the 

men beheaded in Jamuka’s presence. Genghis Khan wanted his boyhood 

companion to once again be his friend, but Jamuka realized that as long 

as he was alive, he constituted threat to Genghis Khan. Recognizing the 

inevitable, Jamuka requested that his execution not involve the spilling of 

blood, a request which Genghis honored.23 With Jamuka’s death Genghis 

Khan was the unquestioned ruler of the united Mongol people. To ensure 

Mongol hegemony over the steppe, Genghis then embarked upon a 

vigorous program of cultural and social reform.

Genghis Khan had witnessed firsthand the evils that resulted from 

the ruinous cycle of raiding and revenge that characterized the relations 

among various Mongol groups. Accordingly, he instituted measures to 
43

discourage such practices. He decreed that no Mongol could own another 

Mongol as a slave. The practice of kidnapping wives from other tribes, 

seen sometimes as necessary because of prohibitions of marrying within 

one’s own tribe, was now punishable by death. Stealing livestock and 

horses also elicited the death penalty.24 Thus, over five centuries before 

English philosopher John Locke discussed the concept of natural rights, 

Genghis Khan moved to ensure that one of those natural rights, the right 

to property, was guaranteed to the Mongol people. These rights were 

not declared universal, as Locke’s were, but for Mongols only. Still, the 

inclusive nature of Genghis Khan’s idea of who constituted a Mongol was 

far more radical than contemporary governments in Asia and Europe.25

Much of the chaos of Genghis Khan’s youth was caused by the kidnapping 

of women for wives. Not only was his own mother kidnapped by his 

father, but his first wife was also kidnapped. Putting a stop to this practice 

was obviously a priority of the Great Khan. If his citizens were not preoccupied with the cycle of raiding and counter-raiding, they had to be kept 

busy focusing their energies elsewhere. Genghis Khan had an idea of how 

to keep the men who formed the Mongol nation busy—he turned his war 

machine against the sedentary cultures of China and Central Asia.

The Mongol army that Genghis Khan led out of Mongolia after 

1206 proved to be the best army of its time. No other force on the planet 

matched the Mongols in discipline, organization, planning, and logistics. 

While the Mongols initially lacked skill in reducing fortified cities, they 

quickly adapted and built a siege train that rivaled anything the Romans 

possessed. Genghis Khan used the basic steppe organization of the decimal 

system to build his army. A unit of ten men was an arban, a unit of 100 

men was called a jaghun, a unit of 1,000 men was a minqan, and a unit 

of 10,000 men was called a tumen. The tumen is analogous to a modernday corps, even though it was smaller and could operate independently. 

It performed the basic functions of a corps, and several tumen together 

formed a Mongol field army, or a horde.

26 To supply the tumens with men, 

horses, and foodstuffs, Genghis Khan expanded his process of breaking 

up tribes and divided the entire Mongol nation into aurugs. Each aurug 

was responsible for a set number of men, horses, and foodstuffs prior 

to a campaign. The entire Mongol administrative structure—what little 

there was in 1206—was tasked with supplying the war effort.27 In order to 

further cement his control over the Mongol nation, and ensure a minimum 

level of training for officers, Genghis Khan established the keshik.

The keshik originally served as Genghis Khan’s bodyguard, composed 

of the most trusted and skilled followers from his earliest days as a leader 
44

of men. Initially a few hundred men, it grew to 10,000 men by 1206.

The institution of the keshik was founded on Chinggis Khan’s four 

kulu’ud or heroes, who served amongst its commanders: Boroghul, 

Bo’orchu, Muqali, and Chila’un. It originally consisted of 80 kebte’ul or 

night guards and 70 turqa’ut or day guards, with an additional minqan that 

escorted Chinggis Khan into battle.28

There was evidence that at its height, the keshik not only guarded 

Genghis Khan, but it also acted as a general staff-like entity, doing much 

of the operational planning for campaigns. It also functioned as an officertraining school. The sons of unit commanders (noyad) were put forth by 

their fathers for service in the keshik. It was open to commoners as well as 

nobles, and promotion was generally by merit. Members of the keshik were 

sent to serve as staff officers for higher-ranking officers. They learned how 

the army functioned, moved, and was supplied, and how it obtained and 

processed intelligence, among other things. 29 In short, these institutions 

gave the Mongol military a basic, but surprisingly modern, military 

structure.30 Members of the keshik could give orders to any Mongol officer 

who commanded a jaghun (1,000 men), and it was considered a great 

honor to be accepted to the keshik.

31 It was also a key to the Mongols’ 

military success. In most every battle the Mongols fought against nonsteppe opponents, Mongol enemies had superior numbers, weaponry, 

technology and equipment—but woefully inadequate organization and 

discipline. The Mongols won the bulk of their battles with superior 

planning, training, execution and discipline. Part of that discipline came 

from another, political, function of the keshik.

By his destruction of the tribal structure for the Mongol military, 

Genghis Khan made the Mongol army a more egalitarian force. There 

were many who resented the loss of privilege and to ensure Genghis 

Khan’s hold on power, the boys who served in the keshik were basically 

hostages. They were well treated, but there was always the chance that an 

ambitious field officer might want to overthrow Genghis Khan and take 

the throne for himself. That possibility was made more remote when a son 

was close to the Emperor. The keshik also saw up close how the system 

of promotion by merit worked and were thoroughly indoctrinated with 

Genghis Khan’s ideas, so that when these boys came of age and assumed 

their own commands, they generally understood and supported Genghis 

Khan’s radical re-structuring of Mongol society through the Mongol army. 

So the dual purpose of the keshik proved to be absolutely crucial to the 

establishment of Genghis Khan’s conquests and sustainment of the same, 

as well as to the absolute loyalty of the army.32 But the keshik was only 
45

part of the army; it did not form the rank-and-file.

The mere act of survival on the harsh steppe was the chief school 

for the vast majority of the Mongol forces. Learning to hunt in an area 

where prey cannot be cornered required a tremendous amount of skill 

with the bow and arrow, and cooperation among hunters to corral and 

kill prey. Unfortunately, no Mongol training manual has survived—and 

perhaps none was ever written. Mongol boys would have learned to shoot 

the legendary Mongol composite bow at a young age, often learning on 

a bow with a one-hundred pound pull that they constructed themselves. 

While many steppe tribes used the bow, generally a bow similar to the 

Mongol weapon, the Mongols were famed above all others for their 

archery skills. They learned to shoot small game on the ground, and even 

birds, because one had to be skilled with the bow to survive on the steppe. 

A favorite steppe hunting tactic, practiced by the Mongols and others, was 

the nerge. A large number of hunters formed a ring, sometimes several 

miles in diameter, and then slowly converged, making sure to keep the 

game within the ring. Eventually the ring would be small enough that the 

killing could start. To perform the nerge required good communication, 

control, discipline, patience, and teamwork—all valuable military traits.33

The Mongol soldier’s ability to endure hardship was legendary. Large 

Mongol forces routinely operated in desert and steppe areas in which 

armies from sedentary cultures had extreme difficulty surviving, much 

less moving through. The environment prepared Mongol men and boys for 

hard campaigning. The steppe climate had wildly fluctuating temperatures, 

which gave the Mongols an advantage over more sedentary opponents 

unused to such harsh conditions. The Chinese and Persians were not 

migratory, and thus did not move sheep and horses over large expanses, so 

were unfamiliar with how to feed large numbers of animals on the move 

in dry conditions. The Mongols used their horse for just about everything. 

The Mongol soldier ate a yogurt made of horse milk. Kumiss, or fermented 

mare’s milk, was the national drink, and if desperate, he could drink the 

horse’s blood.34 Thus, given their small logistical “footprint,” the Mongols 

traveled light and moved faster than any other armies before the Industrial 

Revolution. But all this does not really differentiate the Mongols from any 

other steppe force, such as the Huns or Avars. What made the Mongols 

different—and far more dangerous—was their discipline.

Mongol troops were quite simply the best disciplined troops in 

the world during the lifetime of Genghis Khan. Where other steppe 

armies disintegrated when opportunities for rape and plunder presented 

themselves, the Mongols retained discipline and unit cohesion. This 
46

was largely due to Genghis Khan’s ideals and ferocious punishments 

for breaches of discipline. On the one hand, potentially great riches and 

advancement were there for the taking for the talented young trooper. 

But plundering was not the way to get ahead in the Mongol army. Even 

when requisitioning food, Mongols forces could be murderous, but still 

maintained their discipline. Because of Mongol motivation and discipline, 

Mongol tumens operated as army corps on a widely dispersed front, until 

enemy contact was made, then the tumens would concentrate on the eve of a 

battle. This gave the Mongols a tremendous flexibility that their opponents 

often did not have.35 Discipline was strict, but fair. Even Mongol princes, 

the sons and grandsons of Genghis Khan, had to obey army commanders. 

The punishment for disobedience of orders was often death. Yet it took 

more than just fear to make the Mongols the best soldiery of their day, they 

were motivated by their loyalty to Genghis Khan, and their realization that 

even if they could not attain royalty, they could still advance very high 

in the military command structure because of Genghis Khan’s egalitarian 

impulses.36 Theoretically, every male Mongol from around sixteen years 

of age until sixty was eligible for military service. In practice, that number 

was considerably smaller as enlisting every male Mongol would have 

had a devastating impact on Mongol society. A more reasonable estimate 

was that one male Mongol per family served in the military.37 As a steppe 

people, the Mongols had no industrial base with which to make swords, 

armor or anything forged. Mongols made their own bows and arrows, but 

scavenged battlefields for more sophisticated armor.38

The Mongol composite bow was quite possibly the best individual 

hand-held weapon ever to emerge in the pre-gunpowder era. The Mongol 

bow was made of horn and animal sinew glued together on a wooden 

frame, using fish glue, and then lacquered it once the glue had set.39

When unstrung, the bow looked like an oval, but the composite frame 

gave it remarkable strength. Learning to use the bow proficiently took 

years, but Mongol children—both boys and girls—practiced archery 

from early childhood and by the time they were teenagers were usually 

adept in its use.40 The bow was actually far superior to early gunpowder 

weapons in terms of rate of fire, accuracy, and expense. The problem was 

that it took years of use to become proficient in the weapon. The Mongol 

composite bow’s main competitor for the best individual weapon in the 

pre-gunpowder era was the English or Welsh longbow. They had similar 

capabilities, but the longbow was a fearsome weapon in its own right. 

The longbow was first used in Wales, and English King Edward I (ruled 

1272-1307) brought it back to England after campaigning in Wales. The 
47

longbow was made from a single piece of wood, and had an extreme range 

of 400 yards, and an effective range of 250 yards. Like the Mongol bow, it 

took years to master, but in the hands of an expert bowman it too could fire 

much faster than a crossbow or even a primitive musket, when the latter 

arrived on the scene later. The longbow could penetrate armor at around 

100 to 150 yards.41 It had one significant drawback: It could not be fired 

from horseback. In contrast, the Mongol bow had a maximum range of 

500 yards and was effective at close to 300 yards. Mongol soldiers were 

extremely skilled at its use, and it too could penetrate armor at around 

100 yards. Due to the Mongols’ method of firing, they could fire even 

faster and, likely, more accurately than their English counterparts. Mongol 

archers used a thumb ring to pull back the bowstring. English archers used 

three-fingers, the European custom. By using the thumb ring, Mongol 

archers could fire faster and more accurately with a true release of just the 

thumb, while the English longbowman had to coordinate the release of 

all three fingers simultaneously; otherwise it would negatively affect the 

shot. Like the English, the Mongols used a variety of arrowheads on the 

battlefield. Some arrowheads were specifically designed to pierce armor, 

others to whistle or have matches on them for signal purposes. Some 

arrowheads were designed specifically to stun an attacker. 

Finally, there was the Mongol bow’s ability to be fired from horseback. 

This required not only great skill with the bow, but great skill with the 

horse also. This combination of maneuverability and firepower gave the 

Mongols a significant edge on the battlefield. The composite bow was not 

a new weapon, but Genghis Khan was the first steppe warrior to use it in 

a coherent combined arms doctrine to make it reach its full potential.42

That doctrine not only made the most of the mounted archer, it made 

tremendous use of the extra mobility provided by the Mongols familiarity 

with the horse.

For the average Mongol, the horse was their means of mobility. The 

most common horse on the Mongolian steppe was the Wild Mongolian 

horse, or Przewalski horse. The Wild Mongolian horse was often smaller 

than its Chinese, Persian, or Arabic counterparts. It averaged between “12 

and 14 hands” tall, which is small for a horse.43 Although smaller and not 

as strong as other horses, the one advantage the Wild Mongolian horse 

had over its counterparts was its endurance. Mongol horses had legendary 

stamina, in large part due to the training Mongols put their horses through. 

Zhao Hong, a Song (Chinese) emissary had the following to say about 

Mongol horse training:

When their horses are only one or two years old they ride them harshly 
48

in the steppe and train them. They then maintain them for three years 

and after that mount and ride them again. Thus they train them early and 

for that reason they do not kick or bite. Thousands and hundreds form 

herds but they are silent and are without neighing and calling. When they 

dismount they do not rein them in and tether them, but they do not stray. 

Their temperament is very good.44

Horses allowed Mongols to manage their herds, made it possible for 

them to move great distances across the steppe, gave them milk for yogurt, 

and even provided fermented mare’s milk as an alcoholic beverage. As 

such, horses were highly valued in Mongol society. Mongol children were 

in constant contact with horses from the time they could walk. Because 

Mongol training of horses made them docile, they could be trusted with 

small children. Riding became second nature to every Mongol boy and 

girl. Such had to be the case, given that the early Mongol forces were 

essentially all-cavalry armies.45

The Mongols took the care and maintenance of their horses very 

seriously. Genghis Khan specifically laid out how horses were to be 

treated, when they could be led with a bit in their mouth, and so on. 

Keeping Mongol horseflesh in prime condition was a top military priority. 

Each Mongol cavalryman kept between three and five horses with him 

on campaign.46 There were even rules for when a horse could be killed. 

A horse ridden into battle could not be killed for food. If a horse survived 

a battle but could no longer be ridden in battle, it was put out to pasture. 

When a Mongol died, his horse was also killed and buried with him so he 

could ride the horse in the afterlife. The Mongols also valued horses of 

different colors. The individual units of the keshik rode different colored 

horses to differentiate themselves. White horses were reserved for royalty 

and were considered sacred.47 Mongol horses were a key element in 

Mongol society and the Mongol military. The mobility that horses gave 

the Mongols played a key role in the development of Mongol strategy, 

tactics, and logistics.

Mongol armies traveled light, which allowed them to be fast when 

necessary. The average Mongol cavalry trooper did not carry much on 

his person, and what he did carry varied by season. Dried meat was a 

common source of food, as was kumiss (fermented mare’s milk) and lots 

of dried mare’s milk when in season. The bulk of the average Mongol 

trooper’s diet consisted of dairy products, which were high in protein. 

Each arban carried a primitive mobile mess kitchen, and the majority of 

non-dairy foods consumed by the Mongols were soups or stews. Soup 

was easy to make and relatively light to carry. The combination of soup 
49

or stew, dairy products, and food scavenged from enemy populations 

or hunting allowed the Mongol trooper to maintain the necessary 3,600 

calories per day necessary for strenuous military activity. Use of the nerge

for hunting on campaign not only helped procure food, it gave the troopers 

field training.48 The procurement of weapons also figured prominently in 

Mongol campaigns.

In the early period of Ghenghis Khan’s reign, most Mongol troopers 

went into battle with little more than the Mongol composite bow. As 

time passed, the Mongols stripped enemy dead of their possessions, 

and this netted them swords, armor, lances and other forged weapons. 

However, Genghis Khan decided that it was important for the Mongols 

to start manufacturing weapons of their own when his army changed 

from an all light-cavalry force to a combined force of horse archers and 

lancers, and then later incorporated elements from sedentary societies, 

such as infantry.49 The Mongols also learned to appreciate the skills of 

Chinese and later Persian and Arab engineers. Engineers who defected to 

the Mongols were given large rewards, and when the Mongols captured 

a city, before the plunder and slaughter started, the Mongols divided up 

the prisoners into various categories. Artisans and engineers were again 

highly valued, and were sent to Karakorum to serve the Great Khan. They 

too, despite having fought against the Mongols, could become wealthy 

and influential because of their skills.50 The more the Mongols fought, 

the more they won, the more adaptable and lethal they became. Initially, 

walled cities frustrated the Mongols to no end. By capturing and luring 

engineers to serve with the Mongols, eventually fortified cities proved 

to be no match for the Mongol forces. The Chinese, Persians, Arabs and 

Europeans eventually learned this the hard way.

If there was one word to characterize Mongol tactics and procedures, 

it would be “adaptable.” The Mongols, especially in the early days of 

Genghis Khan’s reign, were always on the offensive. Even if the goal of 

an operation was defensive, the Mongols assumed the tactical offensive. 

Considering the defensive weakness of an all-cavalry force, this was 

understandable. Thanks to their superior mobility and greater articulation, 

the Mongols generally assigned one force to fix the enemy in position and 

while others struck him in the flanks. Mongol hordes usually attacked in a 

five-line formation, with the first three ranks consisting of shock cavalry, 

usually armed with a lance, and the other two lines as missile or light 

cavalry, armed with the Mongol bow. Clouds of light cavalry skirmishers 

would be in front of and on both sides of the formation to ensure that it 

would not be outflanked and also to harass the enemy with a constant 
50

stream of arrows. When a Mongol tumen came into contact with the enemy 

main body, it sent word to nearby tumens and then began an organized 

retreat as reinforcements converged. Once the Mongol force concentrated 

for a battle, it had a bewildering variety of tactics and stratagems available 

to it.51

The Mongols developed their battlefield tactics to fit the type of units 

that made up the bulk of the Mongol army—horse archers. The Mongols’ 

superior mobility allowed them to outmaneuver their foes. They often 

used the classic steppe tactic of the feigned retreat. They would entice 

the enemy into a pursuit, and when the foe was strung out, tired and 

disorganized, turn on the enemy force and annihilate it. Although the 

term “horde” often connotates a massive disorganized group, a Mongol 

horde was anything but disordered. Some of the tactics the Mongols used 

were the arrow storm and rolling barrage. When using an arrow storm 

on an enemy formation, Mongols fired at long range, not picking out 

a specific person for a target, but firing at a particular unit. This arrow 

storm had the effect of a preparatory artillery bombardment. It disrupted 

and demoralized an enemy force, and attrited it as well, softening it up 

for the heavy cavalry charge that usually followed. The Mongol rolling 

barrage was just what it sounds like—a moving arrow storm. It would be 

used preparatory to a heavy cavalry assault, or as a means of covering a 

retreat. Thanks to their superior discipline and unit cohesion, the Mongols 

had the ability to concentrate an arrow storm in a particular place, or on 

a specific enemy unit. This even extended to siege operations, where a 

specific section of wall was chosen to receive the concentrated fire of the 

besieging forces. The Mongols also used a tactic that would later be called 

by Europeans the “caracole.” It involved Mongol light cavalry moving 

up to enemy lines, shooting their arrows, and then riding back to the 

protection of their own lines. Since Mongol archers generally carried sixty 

arrows per man into battle, the number of arrows that could be fired at an 

enemy was considerable. To fight the Mongols was to face an enemy more 

disciplined, more mobile, and packing more firepower. Another favored 

tactic was the double-envelopment, an example of using the nerge to fight 

an enemy army rather than hunt prey. With the Mongols’ superior mobility 

and firepower, they usually seized the initiative. Because of the extended 

nature of the Mongol force, the enemy rarely had good intelligence on the 

size of the force facing him. Because of the bewildering nature of Mongol 

attacks, and attacks that seemed to come from all directions, the natural 

instinct of an enemy was to pause and try to decipher the situation facing 

him. That pause often proved deadly, as the Mongols often had already 
51

commenced encircling movements to crush the enemy force. 52

The Mongols even developed a procedure for taking strongly fortified 

cities by siege. If at all possible, the Mongols tried to lure the enemy force 

out into the open, annihilate it and pursue closely so that the city might 

be entered and taken without a siege.53 If a siege was unavoidable, the 

Mongols waited until the final stages of the campaign to begin a siege. Any 

cities or towns in the region that could aid or threaten the Mongols’ lines 

of communication were taken first. Then, the surrounding countryside was 

scoured for civilians to perform manual labor as the Mongols’ engineer 

corps built a wall of circumvallation around the besieged city, trapping not 

only the garrison but the city’s inhabitants inside as well. The siege train 

was brought up and a weak point ascertained in the defenses, whereupon 

the bombardment of the city began. The city was kept under constant 

attack by not only Mongol catapults, but by individual archers who swept 

the city walls to keep the defenders under a constant fire. Catapults fired 

combustible ammunition into the city to cause fires and further weaken the 

defenders’ resolve. When it appeared a breach was imminent, the Mongols 

herded together the prisoners taken from the outlying areas, and forced 

them either to fill up the defensive moat, or act as human shields for the 

Mongol troopers as they neared the city’s walls, forcing the inhabitants to 

kill their own people to get to the attackers. The Mongols also used rams 

and dug tunnels to undermine the fortifications. Once a breach was made, 

the assault was swift and brutal.54 However, the Mongols made good use 

of intelligence and psychological warfare to get cities to surrender to them 

without a siege or assault. 

Genghis Khan understood the power of propaganda and psychology. 

The Mongols, and specifically Genghis himself, had a reputation for 

bloodlust. While the numbers of people killed by the Mongols was 

certainly significant, Genghis Khan did not order killings for entertainment 

purposes. There was a method to his madness—Genghis Khan used terror 

as a tool. It certainly was a blunt instrument, and he was not afraid to 

use it. Knowing what the Mongols were capable of made conquered 

areas much less likely to rebel, and it made cities that were considering 

putting up a strong resistance think twice. If a city did surrender, Genghis 

Khan treated that city leniently—knowing that while news of a wholesale 

massacre spread quickly, news of Mongol clemency also spread rapidly. 

The choice before a city targeted by the Mongols was clear: resistance 

and annihilation or surrender and survival. Genghis Khan was also a 

firm believer in deception, and good intelligence. He had an extensive 

spy networks that provided an accurate gauge of his enemy’s strength and 
52

dispositions. The Mongols used merchants as spies, and employed the yam

(the Mongol empire’s Pony Express) to ensure a steady flow of information. 

Little wonder then that Genghis Khan and his successors guaranteed the 

protection of merchants and made sure the trade routes stayed open. It was 

safer to travel the Silk Road in the time of the Pax Mongolica than it is 

today. “Information dominance” was always a crucial element in Genghis 

Khan’s campaigns. Not only did the Mongols gather accurate intelligence 

on a potential enemy, a careful misinformation campaign kept the enemy 

guessing as to the Great Khan’s intentions and resources. Mongol spies 

routinely—again in the form of merchants—planted ridiculous numbers of 

the Mongol forces. On a campaign, it was common for each soldier to have 

a “dummy” he placed on a spare horse to mislead an opponent about the 

size of the Mongol force. Likewise, Genghis Khan often had his men light 

more campfires than were necessary, again to fool an enemy regarding the 

size of the Mongol force. Mongol scouts were sent out in advance of a field 

army to set prairie fires to obscure Mongol movements.55 To demonstrate 

how well Genghis Khan succeeded, in much of the world he was regarded 

as a bloodthirsty murderer, the epitome of barbarism. Even the word 

“horde” connotates a disorganized mass of men. The peoples defeated by 

the Mongols made up tales of the Mongols as masses of people spilling 

out of Inner Asia and overrunning everything in their path. Nothing could 

be further from the truth, as Genghis Khan’s armies were well disciplined, 

informed, supplied and often outnumbered. That enduring misperception 

alone may be the greatest legacy of Genghis Khan’s amazingly successful 

misinformation campaigns.

The first non-steppe empire to feel Genghis Khan’s wrath was the 

Jin Dynasty of northern China. The Jin had, like most Chinese dynasties, 

played the steppe tribes off each other to keep them from raiding Chinese 

territory. Spies and defectors painted the Jin Dynasty as dangerously weak, 

thus a combination of Jin weakness and riches proved to be too much 

for Genghis Khan to resist. When a new Jin emperor demanded Genghis 

Khan’s fealty, the great Khan reportedly spat on the ground and walked 

away from the Jin representatives. Such an insult meant war. Although the 

Mongol forces were steadily improving, defeating the Jin was no small 

task. The Jin military reportedly boasted 120,000 horse archers and 500,000 

infantry, while Genghis Khan mustered merely 75,000 men, all cavalry. As 

often proved to be the case, Genghis Khan was not cowed by long odds. 

He sent his tumens south in the late spring of 1211 and immediately started 

taking the outlying towns of the Jin Empire. As Genghis Khan’s forces 

pressed deeper into Jin territory, several Jin commanders defected to the 
53

Mongols’ side. The new Jin emperor sent his best general to salvage the 

situation along the frontier. He, in turn decided to send a trusted negotiator 

to Genghis Khan to broker a truce between the two sides. The negotiator 

promptly defected and joined the Mongol army. Genghis Khan accurately 

interpreted the intelligence about widespread unrest of the peoples under 

Jin control. After winning several stunning victories and killing literally 

hundreds of thousands of Jin soldiers, the Mongol hordes stood outside 

of Zhongdu (modern-day Peking). The long campaign, the extended lines 

of supply and communication, not to mention fierce Jin resistance as the 

Mongols closed around the capital, left Genghis Khan’s forces depleted 

and exhausted. Instead of insisting on the annihilation of the Jin, Genghis 

Khan accepted a peace treaty with the Jin in 1215. Still, the cost was 

steep: The Jin emperor had to give one of his daughters to Genghis Khan 

as a wife, tons of gold and silk, 500 male and female slaves, and 3,000 

horses—not to mention all the land north of the Yangtze River. Lastly, 

Zhongdu, the Jin capital, was opened for rape and pillage for a month to 

the Mongol forces. The Jin Emperor also recognized Genghis Khan as 

his overlord.56 Upon his return to Mongolia, Genghis Khan faced several 

threats to the Mongol nation. His response demonstrated that the Mongols 

could execute operational planning on a vast scale.

Several tribal groups on the Mongols’ western border were in revolt. 

Additionally, the Jin soon attempted to reverse the verdict from the first 

Mongol-Jin War. Jin Emperor Xuanzong made peace overtures to his former 

enemies, the Sung Dynasty to the south. He moved the Jin capital from 

Zhongdu to Nanjing (Kaifeng)—further south and away from the Mongol 

menace. Genghis Khan felt sufficiently threatened by developments back 

in Mongolia to remain there and allow one of his generals, Mukali, to press 

the campaign against the Jin. Mukali was given a mandate to continue the 

destruction of the Jin, while Genghis Khan’s son Jochi launched a campaign 

against the forest peoples on the Mongols’ western border.57 That these 

campaigns were conducted successfully without Genghis Khan’s presence 

on the battlefield speaks volumes about the quality of commanders coming 

out of the keshik. Mongol armies did not suffer from any significant drop 

in performance and Genghis Khan solidified his control of the Mongol 

throne. Genghis Khan also benefitted from the defection and capture of 

many Chinese administrators and engineers, who not only helped improve 

the administration of conquered territories, but the engineers built the 

fearsome siege train that later enabled the Mongols to crack fortified cities 

time and time again. The Mongol war machine was coming into its own, 

and faced an even more formidable challenge than the Jin.
54

To the west of the Mongols lay the Khwarazmian Empire, another 

significant challenge for Genghis Khan. After destroying the Kara Khitai 

Empire, the region between the growing Mongol Empire and Sultan 

Muhammad’s Khwarazmian Empire, the horde commander, Jochi, 

Genghis Khan’s eldest son, went to great pains to let Sultan Muhammad 

know that the Mongols did not seek conflict. In fact Genghis Khan wished 

to open trade with the Khwarazmian Empire. Of the items the Mongols 

wished to procure, the Khwarazmian Empire produced excellent steel 

for swords and armor which the Mongols still did not have the ability 

to produce on their own,.58 Sultan Muhammad, or Khwarazm-shah, was 

suspicious of Genghis Khan’s motives. In 1218 Genghis Khan sent a 

caravan of 450 merchants to the Khwarazmian Empire’s frontier city of 

Utrar (Otrar). The governor of the city feared that the merchants were 

spies—and considering how the Mongols used merchants as spies, the 

fears were reasonable. The governor rashly executed the entire caravan. 

Furious, Genghis Khan sent three ambassadors to demand an apology 

and punishment for the governor of Utrar. The three Mongol ambassadors 

were mistreated; one was killed outright while the other two had their 

beards shaved off. This provocation was too much for Genghis Khan and 

took the mistreatment of his ambassadors as a declaration of war. If the 

Sultan Muhammad wanted war, Genghis Khan would give him war.59

The campaign against Sultan Muhammad was Genghis Khan’s 

masterpiece. It included the destruction of an empire, the death of 

Sultan Muhammad, and carnage on an almost unimaginable scale. The 

Khwarazmian Empire was centered on modern-day Iran, but stretched east 

into Afghanistan and north into Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Russia. 

This was the Islamic heart of central Asia, and it was about to suffer an 

almost unimaginable disaster. Sultan Muhammad’s empire was restless on 

the eve of the Mongol invasion. There was widespread dissatisfaction with 

the Khwarazm-shah’s rule, and the Sultan managed to offend the Caliph in 

Baghdad, thus alienating an important segment of his population. Because 

of the offense, declaring a jihad, or holy war, against the infidel Mongols 

was no longer an option.60 Thanks to his spy network, Genghis Khan had 

an accurate picture of the Khwarazmian Empire on the eve of the conflict. 

Sultan Muhammad made a fatal mistake: not trusting his army to fight 

in the open against the Mongols, and believing them to still be unable to 

take walled cities, Khwarazm-shah ordered the bulk of his army dispersed 

around the empire, garrisoning and fortifying cities to prepare them for 

sieges. Ceding an aggressive commander like Genghis Khan the initiative 

was a catastrophic mistake; throwing away a large numerical superiority 
55

proved to be an even more calamitous decision. Not all of the Sultan’s 

advisors agreed with the decision to distribute the troops. The Khwarazmshah’s son, Jalal ad-Din, forcefully argued that the armies should be pulled 

out of the cities, and the Mongols met in the western portion of the empire 

when they were at the end of long supply and communications lines. In the 

end, he was overruled by his father.61

The Mongol armies descended on the Khwarazmian Empire like a 

thunderbolt. Realizing that Sultan Muhammad’s plan was to rely on the 

walled cities, Genghis Khan divided his army of roughly 250,000 into 

three separate wings. The largest wing remained under his personal control 

and made for Bukhara. Another wing, under Genghis Khan’s sons, Ogedei 

and Chagatai, besieged the city of Utrar, while the final wing under Jochi 

attacked the city of Khojend. Genghis Khan’s attack on Bukara was a 

masterpiece as the Mongol tumens crossed a supposedly impassable desert 

and captured Bukara with ease. This flabbergasted Sultan Muhammad, 

because Bukara was south and west of the capital, Samarkand. How on 

earth could the Mongols have gotten behind his forces already? It seemed 

as if the Mongols were attacking everywhere at once. Genghis moved his 

horde to Samarkand, where he was joined by Ogedei and Chagatai after 

their successful conclusion of the siege of Utrar. The miscreant governor 

who abused the Khan’s ambassadors paid for his crimes—he had molten 

gold poured down his throat as his means of execution.62 Chaos and fear 

gripped the Khwarazmian Empire and Genghis Khan exploited it to sow 

further confusion and terror.

One of Sultan Muhammad’s advisors defected to Genghis Khan and 

informed him of tensions within the ruling family. Genghis Khan decided 

to forge letters written by various leaders, specifically playing on the 

tensions between the Sultan and his mother. The letters were allowed to 

fall into the Sultan’s hands and the response was near panic, as the letters 

implied that large numbers of his troops were deserting because of his 

ill treatment of his mother. The ruse worked spectacularly and much of 

the organized resistance to the Mongols collapsed. As field armies further 

dispersed, Sultan Muhammad fled with a group of hand-picked troops, 

leaving Samarkand and its 60,000-man garrison to its fate. The leading 

religious figure in Samarkand, Sheikh al-Islam feared what would happen 

if the Mongols stormed the city. He too had heard the rumors and agreed 

to surrender the city on March 17, 1220. The Shaykh managed to protect 

50,000 people of Samarkand’s original 500,000, but the bloodbath was 

extensive. The city’s citadel continued to hold out, and the Mongols wanted 

to make an example of Samarkand. The fortifications were destroyed, the 
56

population was divided into groups of tens and hundreds, and the survey 

of the population began, along with the looting of the city. Genghis Khan 

added 30,000 skilled workers to the list of captives to be sent to Mongolia. 

Many more were to be used as fodder in further attacks upon fortified 

cities, and many, many more were simply executed.63 Time and time again, 

the leaders of the Khwarazmian troops fled, leaving their men to an awful 

fate. Was it any wonder that resistance to the Mongols was ineffective 

given such poor leadership? In contrast, Genghis Khan continued his 

pursuit of the routed Khwarazmian forces, who in addition to trying 

to ensure their own escape, had to deal with crowds of terror-stricken 

refugees also fleeing the Mongols. The Sultan’s own escort was whittled 

down by Mongol attacks or just plain desertion. The relentless Mongol 

pursuit followed the Sultan to an island off the coast of the Caspian Sea, 

where in December 1220 he died of natural causes.64 Although the Sultan 

was dead, the war continued.

Sultan Muhammad’s son, Jalal ad-Din, refused to surrender. He raised 

another army and tried to defeat the Mongols. Where fear and paranoia 

consumed his father, Jalal ad-Din was determined to fight the invaders. 

Jalal ad-Din raised a large army in what is now modern-day Afghanistan 

and met the Mongols head on. He defeated a Mongol force of three tumens

under the command of Genghis Khan’s adopted son Shigi-khutukhu. 

This defeat caught the full attention of Genghis Khan, who hurried into 

Afghanistan in full pursuit of Jalal ad-Din with five tumens, and the 

remnants of Shigi-khutukhu’s force. He caught up with Jalal ad-Din and 

soundly defeated him at the Battle of the Indus, destroying his army. Jalal 

ad-Din escaped capture by jumping his horse off a cliff in plain view of 

Genghis Khan, who expressed his grudging respect for Jalal ad-Din. Jalal 

ad-Din eventually made his way to India and despite a vigorous pursuit by 

the Mongols, was never captured. While Jalal ad-Din represented the last 

organized resistance of the Khwarazmian Empire, the rest of the empire 

felt the full weight of the Mongol fury.65

The number of those killed by the Mongols in the destruction of the 

Khwarazmian Empire is in dispute; what is not in dispute is that it was 

catastrophic. David Morgan’s analysis is worth discussing here. Morgan 

states:

Contemporary historians were unanimous when they wrote about 

the horrors that accompanied the Mongol invasion of Khwarazm-shah’s 

empire...the figures that these writers quote for the numbers of people 

massacred are beyond belief. Sayfi tells us that 1,600,000 were killed 

in the sack of Harat [Heart], and 1,747,000 at Nishapur. Juzjani puts the 

Harat death toll even higher, at 2,400,000.66
57

While those numbers are astounding, Morgan then continues to say 

that they cannot be taken literally. The cities could not have sustained 

populations that great, even considering it was wartime and they were 

most likely flooded with refugees seeking shelter. What can be examined 

is the Mongols’ effect on Persian agriculture and the landscape. Persians 

relied on the qanat, a system of underground irrigation channels, to ensure 

that farms received water. If the farms did not have water, the desert would 

re-take the land. The qanat requires extensive maintenance to continue 

bringing water to the cities and farmland surrounding them. The Mongol 

invasion either wrecked the qanat or so depleted the population that it 

could no longer be maintained adequately, and much of that area reverted 

back to desert. The cities of the region that survived were not nearly as 

large as they had been before the invasion. Even today, much of that land 

is still desert.67 After the destruction of the Khwarazmian Empire, Genghis 

Khan returned to Mongolia.

In the summer of 1226 CE, Genghis Khan embarked on what would be 

his last military campaign, a war against the Tangut Empire of China. The 

Mongols eventually bested the Tanguts, but Genghis Khan died during 

the campaign in August 1227. There are many stories of the Great Khan’s 

death, but none is definitive, and even the Great Khan’s gravesite is not 

known—other than that it is somewhere in modern-day Mongolia—as the 

Mongols went to great lengths to make sure his resting place remained 

undisturbed.68

Genghis Khan has to be considered one of the greatest commanders 

in human history. He built an army, a government, a nation, gave the 

Mongol nation a written language, a legal system and raised a relatively 

insignificant steppe tribe into a major world power. To do just one of those 

things would have made Genghis Khan a noteworthy individual in human 

history. To do all of them speaks volumes about his brilliance and charisma. 

He was literally centuries ahead of his enemies in terms of discipline, 

organizational structure, psychological warfare, siege warfare—and the 

list goes on and on. He combined brilliance with ruthlessness and cruelty, 

but even the cruelty had a purpose. The Mongol conquests were indeed 

ferocious and bloody. Stories of pyramids of skulls and the total razing 

of cities were not fables. One estimate suggests that Genghis Khan’s 

campaigns were responsible for approximately 40 million deaths during 

his twenty-one year reign.69 Killing, looting, and raping his way across the 

Eurasian landmass, he established an empire that eventually reached from 

Central Europe to the South China Sea, from Siberia in the north to India 

in the south, and lasted for over 200 years. Genghis Khan’s legacy is more 
58

than just as the founder of a nation, a brutal warlord, or an enlightened 

despot; it also is a record of military excellence and charismatic leadership 

that few individuals have ever equaled. 
59

Notes

1. David Morgan, The Mongols, 2nd edition (Malden, Massachusetts: 

Blackwell Publishing, 2007. Originally published in 1986), 5.

2. Morgan, The Mongols, 2nd edition, 6.

3. Morgan, The Mongols, 2nd edition, 5-8.

4. Paul Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 1991), 12. Translated into English and edited 

by Thomas Nivison Haining. Originally published in 1983 in German.

5. Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, 16-17.

6. Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, 17-19. Considering 

the other events in Genghis Khan’s lifetime, how early Mongol youth marry, and 

putting them on a timeline, Ratchnevsky’s estimate makes the most sense; Morgan, The Mongols, 2nd ed., 49. The Mongolian People’s Republic celebrates the 

year 1162 as the year of Genghis Khan’s birth.

7. Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, 19-20.

8. Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, 20-21.

9. Morgan, The Mongols, 2nd ed., 51. 

10. Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, 22-23.

11. Paul Kahn, The Secret History of the Mongols: The Origin of Genghis 

Khan (Boston: Cheng & Tsui Company, 1998), 18-20. First expanded edition, 

originally published in 1984. The quote is from page 20.

12. Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, 24.

13. Kahn, The Secret History of the Mongols, 20-25; Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, 25-27

14. Kahn, The Secret History of the Mongols, 20; Ratchnevsky, Genghis 

Khan: His Life and Legacy, 28-31; Morgan, The Mongols, 2nd ed., 49. Morgan is considerably more skeptical of The Secret History than either Kahn or 

Ratchnevsky. Much of the section describing the unification of the Mongols will 

come from Ratchnevsky.

15. Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, 31-32.

16. Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, 31-37.

17. Morgan, The Mongols, 2nd ed., 53.

18. Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, 37-38.

19. Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, 41.

20. Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, 41.

21. Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, 43-44; Morgan, 

The Mongols, 2nd ed., 54-55. Morgan says that Genghis (or as Morgan spells it, 

Chinggis) Khan means Oceanic or Universal Khan and is not sure if Genghis 

Khan received the title before his struggle with Jamuka, or after his final victory 

over Jamuka.
60

22. Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, 84-87.

23. Kahn, The Secret History of the Mongols, 109-114.

24. James Chambers, The Devil’s Horsemen: The Mongol Invasion of Europe (Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books, 2003), 53-54. Originally published in 

1979.

25. Just to be clear, the author is not arguing that Genghis Khan was democratic in his thinking by modern standards. He was not, and in a different time 

and place he would be called an Enlightened Despot. Yet for his time and place 

the ideas were revolutionary.

26. Timothy May, The Mongol Art of War (Yardley, Pennsylvania: 

Westholme Publishing, 2007), 31; R. Ernest DuPuy and Trevor DuPuy, The 

Harper Encyclopedia of Military History: From 3500 B.C. to the Present (New 

York: HarperCollins Publishing, 1993), 4th edition, 367.

27. May, The Mongol Art of War, 29-32.

28. May, The Mongol Art of War, 28. Italics are in original.

29. May, The Mongol Art of War, 32-35; DuPuy and DuPuy, The Harper 

Encyclopedia of Military History, 367-373.

30. Chambers, The Devil’s Horsemen, 51.

31. Morgan, The Mongols, 2nd ed., 79-80.

32. May, The Mongol Art of War, 33-34.

33. May, The Mongol Art of War, 46-47.

34. Chambers, The Devil’s Horsemen, 56-57.

35. May, The Mongol Art of War, 46-49.

36. May, The Mongol Art of War, 49.

37. May, The Mongol Art of War, 28.

38. May, The Mongol Art of War, 49-50.

39. Chambers, The Devil’s Horsemen, 56-57.

40. May, The Mongol Art of War, 50-51.

41. DuPuy and DuPuy, The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History, 359; 

Mike Ashley, British Kings & Queens: The Complete Biographical Encyclopedia of the Kings and Queens of Great Britain (New York: Barnes & Noble 

Books, 2000), 588-594. Originally published as The Mammoth Book of British 

Kings and Queens in 1998.

42. May, The Mongol Art of War, 50-51.

43. Louis A. DiMarco, War Horse: A History of the Military Horse and 

Rider (Yardley, Pennsylvania: Westholme Publishing, 2008), 122-123.

44. May, The Mongol Art of War, 55-56. The quote is on page 56.

45. Chambers, The Devil’s Horsemen, 58.
61

46. May, The Mongol Art of War, 54.

47. Chambers, The Devil’s Horsemen, 58-59.

48. May, The Mongol Art of War, 58-62.

49. May, The Mongol Art of War, 63-64; Jack Weatherford, Genghis Khan 

and the Making of the Modern World (New York: Crown Publishers, 2004), 94-

95.

50. Weatherford, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, 94-

95.

51. DuPuy and DuPuy, The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History, 369-

371.

52. May, The Mongol Art of War, 70-77.

53. DuPuy and DuPuy, The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History, 370-

371.

54. May, The Mongol Art of War, 77-79.

55. May, The Mongol Art of War, 69-71.

56. Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, 105-115.

57. Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, 115-118.

58. Weatherford, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, 

105-106.

59. Morgan, The Mongols, 2nd ed., 60.

60. Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, 123-125.

61. May, The Mongol Art of War, 116-117.

62. J. J. Saunders, The History of the Mongol Conquests (Philadelphia, 

Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 56-57. Originally published in 1971. See also May, The Mongol Art of War, 117. Saunders states that 

the governor of Utrar was killed by having molten gold poured down his throat, 

May says that he had molten silver was poured down his throat, and into his 

eyes and ears.

63. May, The Mongol Art of War, 119.

64. J. J. Saunders, The History of the Mongol Conquests, 59.

65. DuPuy and DuPuy, The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History, 366.

66. Morgan, The Mongols, 2nd ed., 65.

67. Morgan, The Mongols, 2nd ed., 69-71.

68. Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, 142-144.

69. Matthew White, Selected Death Tolls for Wars, Massacres and Atrocities Before the 20th Century. Accessed 5 June 2012 at [http://necrometrics.com/

pre1700a.htm#Mongol].
62
63

Chapter 3

Napoleon Bonaparte

by Mark T. Gerges

“...my argument is that war makes rattling good history; but peace is poor 

reading. So I back Bonaparte for the reason that he will give pleasure to 

posterity.”

Thomas Hardy, The Dynasts1

Napoleon Bonaparte’s legacy still resonates to this day. He is part of 

our cultural literacy, a common image still invoked to suit our own ends. 

A recent Super Bowl commercial showed a tiny French car, winding its 

way through Paris to the strains of an upbeat French tune. The voice-over 

was a computer-generated voice from a GPS, directing each turn and then 

announcing arrival at Saint Cloud. The scene then cut to a tree lined avenue, 

French Imperial Guardsmen and their horses in serried ranks, coming to 

attention as a diminutive Napoleon jumped from the vehicle, GPS in hand, 

which he suddenly thrust into his shirt, his familiar pose now complete. 

His image in the form of busts grace home design stores and provide a 

link to the French emperor that somehow denotes class and sophistication 

to our 21st century lives. The derogatory term “Napoleonic complex,” 

referring to a short person driven to high performance in compensation for 

his diminutive height is in common use despite not being at all accurate—

at five feet seven inches tall, Napoleon was of average height for 19th 

century Europe. So why does Napoleon Bonaparte, dead for almost 200 

years, still have such a draw on our popular consciousness?

In many ways, an accurate version of Napoleon remains difficult 

to determine and depends on one’s perspective. Even before his death, 

some used and manipulated his image and historical legacy for their 

own purposes. Immediately after his downfall, early writers tore down 

the image, showing Napoleon’s faults and assigning every action to 

ulterior and nefarious reasons. Later, others tried to latch onto Napoleon’s 

greatness, hoping that by copying the structure and imagery of the French 

First Empire, its greatness and glory would reflect upon their own later 

governments. The sheer number of books devoted to him is daunting—

over 200,000 volumes since his death in 1821 and 200 in the past four 

years alone.2

 One book, Peter Geyl’s masterful Napoleon: For and Against, 

is a bibliographical essay on the struggle to use Napoleon’s legacy over 

the past two centuries but as the book was written in the 1940s, a much 

expanded version is needed today. Much of what we understand in the 
64

English-speaking world about Napoleon comes from his archenemy, the 

British, who may not be the only side one should consult if attempting to 

find an accurate view of the French emperor. Yet, despite the arguments 

Figure 3. “The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries,” 1812, painting 

by Jacques-Louis David; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
65

over his legacy, the nature of his rule, and motivations for his policy, some 

common threads remain undisputed. His performance as a battlefield 

commander ranks among the greatest, and Napoleon is often the first 

mentioned among history’s finest leaders. Why?

Napoleon was born Napoleone di Buonaparte in Ajaccio, Corsica on 

15 August 1769, just a year after the Republic of Genoa sold the unruly 

island to the Kingdom of France. He was the second surviving child 

of the eight born to the family of Carlos and Lietizia Buonaparte. His 

father’s connections as a lawyer working for the new French government 

on the island allowed the family to avail themselves of the educational 

opportunities open to the minor nobility (la petite noblesse) in prerevolutionary France. At the age of nine, Napoleon followed his older 

brother Joseph to schooling on the mainland to learn French at Autun and 

five months later attended the military academy at Brienne-la-Château. 

Brienne was one of twelve military schools preparing young men for the 

military academy in Paris. Brienne consisted of 120 students; sixty from 

the older, noble families of France, le grand noblesse, and sixty from la 

petite noblesse—Napoleon was part of the latter group and attended on 

a scholarship.3

 His time at Brienne was not a particularly happy period. 

Marked by his heavily accented French, an accent he never lost, he 

focused on studies and reading. He excelled in mathematics and spent 

his free time reading history, in particular the campaigns of what were 

considered the great commanders—Frederick the Great, Alexander, 

Caesar, Marlborough, Turenne. He made no close friends at Brienne and 

was a bit of a loner during his five years there. He passed his exams in 

1784 and then transferred to the École Royal Militarie in Paris.4

 The École

Royal Militarie was a new school, founded in 1776, and designed to more 

closely align the nobility in France with service to the King. Each student 

held a warrant personally signed by the monarch to attend the school. The 

cost of living in Paris was more expensive than Brienne, and increased the 

strain on the family’s modest income. His financial straits were one of the 

reasons he completed the two-year curriculum in a single year and, after 

passing his final exams, became a lieutenant in one of the most famous 

artillery regiments in the Royal army, Régiment de la Fére, at the age of 

sixteen. 

His early career did not show any hints of the greatness that was to 

follow. He was hardworking, studious, with few friends during his time at 

the military academy. If his peers were not drawn to him as a leader, his 

teachers at least recognized his abilities and commented on them in his 

academic reports. One unusual fact does emerge, however. The schools 
66

at Brienne and later the École Royal Militaire were designed to tie the 

nobility to the Bourbon regime, and they did an admirable job of providing 

the young officers needed to run the Ancien Regime’s army. When the 

revolution came to France in 1789, of all the artillery graduates of the 

École Royal Militarie, only one, Napoleon, sided with the revolutionary 

government. Napoleon’s siding with the revolutionaries marked him as 

politically astute and not tied to the existing structure of the French state. 

None of the other officers in Régiment de la Fére joined the revolutionary 

cause.5

Were it not for the upheavals of the French Revolution, Napoleon 

Bonaparte would have remained a junior officer in the French army, a 

minor and forgotten figure. Of all the branches in the Ancien Regime’s 

army, the artillery and engineers required the most education, an 

unappealing requirement to nobility who viewed themselves as born 

to lead men. Therefore, more commoners and minor nobility went into 

these technical branches.6 As an artillery officer, Napoleon could expect 

a long career in the Ancien Regime, leaving the service as a captain, his 

further promotions blocked by his minor noble birth. After arriving at the 

Régiment de la Fére, long absences to return to Corsica marked his early 

career, with 32 months leave in the first six years.7 On leave in Corsica 

after the French Revolution began in 1789, Napoleon became involved 

in the efforts of Corsican independence. He met a childhood hero, Pauli, 

a Corsican nationalist who had fought for Corsican independence twenty 

years earlier, but after Pauli invited British troops to occupy the island, 

Napoleon and his family fled to mainland France in July 1793. During 

the siege of Toulon in 1793, Bonaparte’s rise to national prominence began. 

The summer of 1793 was a tumultuous period for France. The National 

Convention removed the king, Louis XVI, from office the previous fall, 

and sent him to the guillotine in January 1793. War loomed with all of 

Europe and civil war threatened France. The Vendée rose in rebellion, 

and several large cities, including Marseille, Lyon, and Bordeaux created 

armies to protect themselves against the revolutionary government in 

Paris. The great seaport city of Toulon, home to the French Mediterranean 

fleet, invited the British into the harbor, and soon British troops and an 

Anglo-Spanish fleet protected the rebellious town. The crisis of the late 

summer led to what became known as the Reign of Terror, or in French 

simply la Terreur, when a committee of twelve in the National Convention 

ruled France and led it to more extreme measures in order to save the 

revolution’s accomplishments. 

Napoleon, upon his return to France, wrote a pro-revolutionary tract, 
67

Supper at Beaucaire, and his pro-revolutionary ideas caught the attention 

of Representatives Augustin Robespierre and Antoine Christophe Saliceti. 

Augustin was the younger brother of Maximillien Robsespierre, the de 

facto leader of the Committee of Public Safety and Saliceti, a fellow 

Corsican. They appointed him a lieutenant colonel and commander of the 

artillery in the siege of Toulon.8 The siege’s commander, General Jean 

Baptiste François Carteaux, formerly a painter, wanted to assault the city, 

but Napoleon looked at the ground and determined that a peninsula of land, 

dominated by Mont Caire, was the key to the harbor. Napoleon believed 

that capturing the peninsula would force the British fleet to depart. The 

problem with Napoleon’s plan was that the French revolutionary army 

besieging Toulon had only four siege guns and a handful of smaller pieces, 

so he scoured southern France for artillery that he ordered to Toulon on 

his own authority.9 On 22 September 1793, Carteux, thinking this assault 

a waste of effort, gave Napoleon only 600 soldiers, and with the few guns 

collected, the young officer assaulted the peninsula. The British reacted 

first and smashed the assault, and now aware of the danger, built Fort 

Mulgrave, an earthen fort with 24 guns, nicknamed “Little Gibraltar.”10

Despite this setback, Napoleon collected the necessary supplies and 

arms to assault the position again. Carteux was relieved, and after a second 

political appointee, a doctor, was relieved, the command of the siege was 

given to a professional soldier, General Jacques François Dugommier, 

who saw the value of Napoleon’s plan. Napoleon continued to collect guns 

from across southern France. One of the elements of Napoleon’s greatness 

emerged at this juncture. His ability to understand the common soldiers and 

talk with them as comrades created intense loyalty throughout his reign. 

Scenes of Napoleon, on the eve of some of his greatest victories, sitting 

around a campfire, suffering the same hardships as his men, talking to them 

as equals despite the differences in rank, marked this talent. This ability 

to understand what motivated soldiers was on display during the siege. 

One battery, key to shelling Fort Mulgrave, was exposed to heavy return 

fire and the daily casualties made it difficult to find artillerymen willing 

to expose themselves to near certain injury. Napoleon did not react with 

speeches appealing to their bravery, nor a commitment to the revolution, 

or their peers and compatriots. He had a simple wooden sign made and 

placed at the entrance to the battery’s position. The sign read “battery of 

men without fear.” There were never problems finding volunteers for that 

battery again.11

With 100 guns scrounged to support the assault and 6,000 men from 

General Dugommier, on 17 December Napoleon acted again, this time 
68

with sufficient forces. The assault on the peninsula lasted for thirteen hours 

of bitter fighting, in which Napoleon was wounded in the thigh but Fort 

Mulgrave fell to the Revolutionary troops. The next day, the French placed 

ten cannons in the fort firing on the harbor, and realizing the hopelessness 

of their position, the Anglo-Spanish fleet abandoned Toulon, ending the 

siege.12 

The Committee of Public Safety rewarded the 24 year old with 

promotion to brigadier general, and appointment as artillery commander 

for the Army of Italy.13 Waiting for final approval of his appointment, 

army headquarters sent Bonaparte to inspect coastal fortifications along 

the Mediterranean coast. He developed a plan for an offensive against the 

Kingdom of Sardinia’s army in Piedmont. Given to the representatives 

on mission from the Committee of Public Safety, the representatives 

ordered the commander of the Army of Italy to execute the plans, which 

were successful and led to the capture of Tenti pass, key to the Maritime 

Alps.14 Through the success of his campaign plan, the army began to know 

Napoleon’s name and the government sent him to Genoa to determine the 

attitude of the rulers toward the French government. However, while he 

was there the Committee of Public Safety fell from power in the Coup of 

9 Thermidor, and his patrons, the Robespierre brothers, were guillotined. 15 Napoleon’s letters to the Robespierre brothers during his time in Genoa 

became known, and on his return to France, he was imprisoned. For two 

weeks, Napoleon did not know whether he would join the Robespierre 

brothers at the guillotine, but the fury of the Thermidorian reaction calmed 

and General Bonaparte released. 

In May 1795, while awaiting assignment in Paris, Napoleon worked 

in the Topographic Bureau, an early plans section for the French military. 

While there, he drew up a plan for an assault on Austrian and Sardinian 

positions in northern Italy, but his refusal, on grounds of ill health, to serve 

as an infantry brigade commander in putting down the Royalist revolt in the 

Vendée, caused his dismissal from the service. He and his closest friends, 

in particular future marshals of France Joachim Murat and Andoche Junot, 

spent their time in the coffee houses in Paris. After the end of the Reign 

of Terror, the government, known as the Directory, ruled France but other 

than ending the extremism of the Committee of Public Safety, did little to 

commend itself to the people. In the summer of 1795, the two-thirds law 

of Fructidor expelled 500 of the 750 members of the National Convention. 

This law in particular affected Royalist representatives who had returned 

to the Convention after the fall of Robespierre and hoped to regain power 

through the elective process. The countryside and Paris seethed at the new 
69

law, and on 5 October (13 Vendemiare) a crowd began to converge on 

the National Convention’s hall, and the members feared for their lives. 

One of the members of the Directory, Paul Barras, who as a representative 

on mission had observed Napoleon in action at Toulon, remembered the 

out-of-favor general and put him in command of the troops defending the 

National Convention. Napoleon had been in Paris when the King’s Swiss 

Guards were massacred in 1792, and remembered what a mob could do 

if not stopped. Napoleon sent a cavalry troop under Murat to bring the 

cannons near the Place de Carrousel to the Tuileries Palace. Firing on the 

approaching mob, within 30 minutes the “whiff of grapeshot” was over, 

the mob dispersed, and the Directory government saved. The cannon fire 

killed nearly 200 Royalist supporters and wounded at least that many; it 

was the first time the regular army fired on the crowd in Paris since the 

fall of the Bastille, and was an important step in bringing Napoleon to the 

attention of the government.16

Napoleon’s campaigns over the next few years showed him as a brilliant 

commander, but even then, he was still only one successful general among 

a handful of successful Revolutionary generals. Each campaign deserves 

more space than can be devoted here.17 His challenges taking command in 

Italy in 1796 were particularly stark. Then a twenty-six-year-old general of 

division, the other generals in the army saw his appointment to command 

the French Army of Italy as a political move. The army was stalemated 

in the Maritime Alps, had not been paid in six months, and was poorly 

supplied. Half the army was in the hospital or had deserted. The division 

commanders, Major Generals André Masséna, Pierre Augereau, and JeanSérurier Mathieu, all much older and experienced men, were skeptical of 

this young political general. Improving discipline within the unruly ranks, 

Napoleon’s Italian campaigns were a model of maneuver of a more agile, 

smaller force against larger ones, each time concentrating greater numbers 

on isolated Austrian detachments, defeating them in detail. At one battle, 

Lodi, Napoleon earned his nickname “the little corporal” from his soldiers 

for his role in sighting thirty-six cannons to fire on the Austrians, since the 

emplacing of the piece was normally the responsibility of a gun corporal.18

Between April 1796 and April 1797, Napoleon knocked the Piedmontese 

out of the war, captured all of northern Italy from the Habsburg Empire, 

and defeated Austrian armies attempting to regain northern Italy.

General Bonaparte was becoming very popular with the French people 

while the Directory government remained unpopular, and in 1798, the 

Directory gave Napoleon an army to invade Egypt, removing the popular 

young general from France. The Egyptian campaign was unusual because 
70

of what Napoleon brought with him--not only an army, but also160 

scholars and scientists who established the Institute of Egypt, a lasting 

and important research facility that began modern Egyptology.19 Napoleon 

closely controlled what information Paris received from Egypt, thus the 

French lauded his victories but were unaware of disasters such as the siege 

of Acre. 

Europe by 1799 was exploding. The foreign policy of the Directory 

government was aggressive, and unease over French policy, such as 

deposing the Piedmont king and incorporating his lands into France, and 

reorganizing Switzerland and the Low Countries into republics allied 

to France, led to a second coalition coalescing against France. Russian 

armies moved through Switzerland towards France, Austrian armies 

fought in northern Italy and along the Rhine, and the military conquests of 

the last four years were in jeopardy. It was into this crisis that Napoleon 

returned from Egypt, leaving behind his army and arriving with a small 

band of close advisors. Those politicians seeking to replace the corrupt and 

inefficient Directory government were looking for a “sword;” a successful 

general who could guarantee that the military would accept a coup. It is 

important to remember that at this point Bonaparte was one of a handful 

of successful Revolutionary generals, including Jean Baptiste Bernadotte 

and Jean Baptiste Jourdan, both known from their campaigns along the 

Rhine. Not all the conspiratorial dealings that caused General Bonaparte 

to be the candidate can be recounted here; the people’s joy upon his return 

to France led to the election of Napoleon’s younger brother Lucien to 

head the Council of 500, the lower house in the government. This allowed 

Napoleon to play a key role in the coup of 18th Bruimaire (9-10 November 

1799). This coup ended the Directory government and in its place created 

the three-man Consulate.

The coup of 18th Bruimaire marked the end of the French Revolution 

and beginning of the Napoleonic era with Bonaparte’s rise as one of 

the three consuls. Thirty years old in November 1799, Napoleon was 

the ‘sword’ in the new government, insuring military support. The two 

other consuls, Abbie Seiyes and Roger Ducos, were both older and more 

experienced in the tumultuous politics of the past decade and planned 

to marginalize the inexperienced general. However, they did not reckon 

on the abilities of the young General Bonaparte. The French people had 

grown tired of the constant shifts in government and ministers lining 

their pockets for personal profit; they feared that the extreme aspects of 

revolution could return without some sort of stabilizing efforts. In his 

role as counsul, Napoleon Bonaparte was not so much an innovator as 
71

someone who could improve and make efficient the existing structures. 

Most of what he did as the First Consul and later as Emperor was not new. 

What made Napoleon stand apart was his ability to look at a problem, 

determine the causes, implement changes, and systemize the procedures. 

This is what he did brilliantly in the next four years.

The immediate need was to write a new constitution to legitimize what 

had occurred on 18th Brumaire. As the debates began on the form of the 

new government, two figures emerged on opposite sides of the debate. 

Seiyes formed one side while Bonaparte opposed him. Napoleon, with 

no experience as a politician, won more and more representatives over to 

his side through the strength of his argument. The new constitution bore 

Napoleon’s personal stamp. The constitution retained the three consuls, 

but one was clearly primary—the First Consul, who approved all laws. 

This centralized the true power into the hands of the First Consul, who 

of course became Napoleon. In return for a constitution that limited 

democratic participation, the people accepted political involvement of a 

smaller electorate, built upon age and property restrictions in exchange for 

stability and an end to the violence.20 

The next four years saw a rash of activity with first a campaign into 

northern Italy to recapture the lands lost to the Austrians in 1799, which 

secured his political position after the victory at Marengo. Then Napoleon 

turned to a host of economic and societal reforms that systemized the 

accomplishments of the French Revolution. The list is impressive, and each 

item shows Napoleon’s mark: the Code Napoléon, in which he personally 

participated in over half the meetings; reform of the financial system and 

establishment of the Bank of France; peace with the Habsburgs and later 

Great Britain, which led to the first period of peace since 1792; restoration 

of the Catholic Church in French life; ending the civil war in the Vendée 

and Brittany; amnesty which encouraged émigrés and Royalists to return 

to France; reform of the education system establishing a system of lycees

and secondary schools; creation of the departments of France to simplify 

local administration; and the list goes on. These accomplishments alone 

would have marked Napoleon as one of the great statesmen of his day 

and among the greatest of France. He kept the trappings of a republic, 

but the French government by 1804 could best be termed an enlightened 

despotism, and with his coronation as emperor on 2 December 1804, any 

final pretenses of France being a republic ended with the creation of the 

French Empire. Overall, the Consulate years were beneficial. The France 

that emerged from the four years of the Consulate government had the rule 

of law again in place, most internal divisions healed, and was a strong, 
72

stable power able to take its place on the European stage—a leading role, 

as Europe was about to discover.21

The Peace of Amiens between France and the United Kingdom brought 

peace to Europe and a wave of English tourists to Paris. However, each 

side looked at the peace not as a permanent state, but as a trial armistice. 

The expectation was for further negotiations to resolve outstanding issues 

such as trade but these meetings never occurred. Each side violated 

aspects of the treaty. Great Britain refused to evacuate Malta and South 

Africa, and supported a Bourbon prince’s attempt to overthrow Napoleon, 

then the Consul for Life. France’s reorganization of the German states and 

the Low Countries hardened Great Britain’s attitudes when war resumed. 

France assembled an army along the Channel coast from Hanover to Brest, 

a threatening posture to England only a few watery miles away.22 To carry 

the army across to England, France built fifty-foot barges with a 35-ton 

carrying capacity, and all that was needed was control of the English 

Channel for a few days.23

The army that stood poised for the invasion of England reflected 

revolutionary changes in the military arts. Napoleon himself was not an 

inventor, but rather an improviser. His fame relied upon his ability to 

see what needed to be done and then innovate and adapt to overcome an 

obstacle. His methods were not new. His techniques on campaign derived 

from his extensive reading of history as a young man, which continued as 

emperor. Developments such as marching divided and then combining on 

the battlefield to overwhelm one’s opponent were discussed by writers such 

as General Pierre-Joseph Bourcet, Comte de Guibert, and Victor-François, 

duc de Broglie in the 1760s through 1780s.24 The French Revolution 

allowed these ideas to reach a receptive officer corps, desperate for any 

advantage and not hidebound by past experience. Napoleon’s greatness 

was in taking the best of these ideas and systemizing them, creating a 

regulated approach in everything he did.

With the responsive organization of the army, Napoleon could react 

when he erred, which at least one author argues is how every one of 

his campaigns began.25 The creation of all-arms formations—brigades 

and divisions with commanders at each level having their own staffs, 

and elements of infantry, cavalry, artillery, and supporting arms such as 

engineers, wagon train, and ambulances combined under one command 

were all discussed by French writers before the Revolution and then put 

into practice during the tumultuous days of the 1790s. Napoleon took 

these organizational reforms to the next logical level at the camp at 

Boulogne. He created seven infantry corps and a cavalry corps; a marshal, 
73

part of the new meritocracy of France, commanded each. For the 1805 

campaign, the Grande Armée totaled 210,000 soldiers with an additional 

but much smaller French army in Italy.26 In addition to a staff to assist 

the commander, each corps contained two to three divisions of infantry, a 

brigade of cavalry, one or two batteries of artillery, and engineer, medical, 

and transportation units. This simplified the span of command and control. 

Napoleon now issued orders to seven corps commanders, who in turn 

oversaw and commanded five to seven elements themselves. Each corps, 

with all the assets of a mini-army, moved on separate routes, separated in 

time and space by a day’s march from the nearest supporting corps. This 

eased the question of supply for an army that lived off the land for much of 

the men’s rations, but also dispersed the Grande Armée over a much larger 

area, meaning it would make contact with the enemy, and then rapidly 

concentrate. 

Formed in June 1803, the Grande Armée’s encampments, centered on 

Boulogne, were more than just a lodgment. The Grande Armée trained 

incessantly for over a year. A typical training week saw progressive larger 

unit training each day, beginning with company and battalion drill, then 

brigade and division until culminating at corps level maneuvers that 

capped the week, followed by a day of rest before repeating the cycle. 

Of the infantry, forty-three percent had combat experience, and over fifty 

percent of the cavalry were veterans. One-third of the officers and noncommissioned officers had at least six years service.27 By the summer of 

1805, the Grande Armée was the best-trained army in the world, filled 

with experienced senior officers and idealistic recruits. 

The men to command the seven corps were all experienced warriors 

from the earlier campaigns of the revolution, proven on the battlefield 

and rewarded for that success upon the creation of the marshalate in 

1802. Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte commanded First Corps. A prerevolutionary enlisted man, he was an extreme Jacobin. He made his 

name in the French Army of the Rhine during the wars of the Revolution. 

Brave, but not trusted by Napoleon, he later became the king of Sweden.28

Marshal Louis Nicolas Davout commanded the Third Corps. One of the 

greatest battlefield commanders, Davout had been a pre-revolution cavalry 

officer who stood with the revolutionaries but was then dismissed from 

the service because of his noble birth. Returning to the army during the 

crisis of 1794, he made his name along the Rhine and then in Egypt under 

Napoleon. Known as the Iron Marshal, he was a strict disciplinarian, 

incorruptible, intelligent and well studied in the art of war. His corps 

was considered the best trained in the army.29 Nicolas Jean de Dieu 
74

Soult commanded Fourth Corps. This pre-revolution non-commissioned 

officer was calm and intelligent, fair but hard and known as a skillful 

looter.30 In many ways, Marshal Jean Lannes, commanding Fifth Corps, 

epitomized the opportunity offered during the revolution. Uneducated 

as a child, he studied several hours each day, reading military history to 

improve himself. He made his name under Napoleon first in Italy and then 

Egypt, and was one of the few subordinates who dared to offer Napoleon 

frank advice—often uninvited.31 Commanding the Reserve Cavalry was 

Napoleon’s brother-in-law, and former cavalryman from the 9th Bruimaire, 

Marshal Joachim Murat.32 The final element of the Grande Armée that 

was to play an important role at Austerlitz was the Imperial Guard under 

Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bessieres. Son of a surgeon, he was known for his 

calmness and bravery, and commanded the mounted guides first organized 

to protect General Bonaparte in 1796.33 Probably the most important 

man next to Napoleon himself in pulling all these strong personalities 

together was the chief of staff, Marshal Louis-Alexandre Berthier. He had 

been a pre-revolution engineer officer and served in America during the 

American Revolution. One of the few people who could read Napoleon’s 

hurried handwriting, Berthier had an incredible attention to detail and was 

essential to the working of the French military machine.34

The French term coup d’oeil translates as the stroke of the eye. Coup 

d’oeil is the ability to take in a military situation at a glance, to recognize the 

possibilities of a position or to have an eye for ground.35 For a commander 

on the battlefield, it is the ability to see beyond the noise and confusion and 

understand what is actually happening. This ability to see and understand 

the key point was one of Napoleon’s greatest strengths. With his immediate 

grasp of the situation, he rapidly and unhesitatingly came to a decision and 

then carried through those actions without second-guessing, delaying, or 

changing the initial dispositions. To translate those directions into orders 

for the Grande Armée, Napoleon as head of state and commander-in-chief 

created an imperial headquarters that allowed him to function as both 

when on campaign. There were two sections—the maison, and the general 

staff. A third element, the Intendant Général, or quartermaster-general, 

was technically not part of the imperial headquarters, and dealt with army 

supply and logistics.36 The personal staff, known as the Maison Militaire 

de l’Empereur, was the smaller element of the two. There were three parts: 

his aides-de-camps, the cabinet, and the officers d’ordonnance. Historian 

John Elting describes the aides, all handpicked officers and experts in their 

fields as “men for all missions, leading improvised task forces to meet 

unexpected emergencies, massing artillery to support a decisive attack, 
75

clearing snarled supply lines, conducting large scale reconnaissance, and 

sometimes handling minor diplomatic assignments.”37 The cabinet dealt 

with spies and the collection of intelligence on the enemy. The cabinet 

civil also was often attached to run the civil government of the empire. 

The last element of the maison, the officers d’ordonnance, or orderly 

officers, were junior officers who conducted inspections in the emperor’s 

name, collected information, and then reported those results back to the 

emperor.38

The grand etat-major général, or army staff, was the domain of 

Berthier. The first modern staff with specialized staff functions, it was a 

large organization dealing with all aspects on intelligence, topography, 

movement, and written orders. During the 1805 campaign, the grand 

etat-major général grew to 400 officers and 5,000 men.39 It had but one 

function—turn the orders of Napoleon into clear, well-written, instructions 

for the Grande Armée. Not even Napoleon would interrupt Berthier and 

his aides as they worked on producing an order.40

The system to support Napoleon was well defined. Two hours after 

dusk, each corps sent a staff officer to the Imperial headquarters with the 

latest reports. Later more detailed corps summaries, containing the location, 

strength, logistical situation, and commander’s estimate, were due to 

Napoleon by midnight.41 Eighteen-hour work-days, both on campaign and 

at peace in Paris, were normal for Napoleon and began with the arrival of 

these summaries. Rising at midnight, Napoleon read the reports, dictated 

replies, issued changes of orders, prioritized reports, and when he finished 

near dawn, would retire for an hour’s rest. He would rise again by 6 a.m., 

dress and breakfast, then receive important personages, consider future 

movements, and then sit down at his desk where he read the carefully 

sorted documents and dictated replies.42 By 10 a.m., new documents and 

orders based on his earlier instructions were ready for signature, and 

then he would call for his horse. Napoleon would head off to visit corps 

headquarters and inspect units. These visits gave him the opportunity to 

“disperse a little more of the hypnotic attraction he could wield at will over 

almost all his men. The easy familiarity which he permitted the rank and 

file made him genuinely beloved.”43 He took soldiers into his confidence 

to tell them his plans, or recognized soldiers by name who previously 

performed some act of bravery; all this tied the soldier to him. After the 

day’s ride, he returned to headquarters, read more news, issued orders, or 

conducted interviews. The day’s meals were haphazard affairs, often taken 

in silence and rapidly eaten in under twenty minutes. By 8 p.m., he went to 

sleep for four to five hours, protected by his Mameluke servant Roustam 

sleeping across the door’s threshold.44
76

As the renewal of hostilities loomed in 1805, a new coalition emerged. 

The Third Coalition against France was the brainchild of the British Prime 

Minister William Pitt. To the British, a Europe dominated by France 

threatened British trade with the continent, their colonial interests and 

empire through the rebuilding of the French fleet. The French meddling 

in Italy and the German states had reduced the power of the Habsburg 

empire as a counter-weight to French expansion. Great Britain devoted £5 

million to subsidize other nations to oppose France.45 The first to join the 

British were the Swedes, followed soon after by a much more important 

power, the Russians. Upset at the Imperial Recess that aligned German 

states more closely with France and Napoleon’s overtones to the Shah of 

Persia, the British promise of £1,250,000 per 100,000 Russian soldiers 

fighting Napoleon sealed the deal.46 Austria joined, upset at French claims 

in Italy and Napoleon’s crowning as the king of Italy and while Great 

Britain pressured Prussia to join, the Prussian government remained 

noncommittal.

The allies knew that Napoleon had made his reputation in Italy and 

therefore decided that northern Italy would again be the main theater of war. 

Austria sent its largest army of 95,000 men under the Archduke Charles 

there to defend its interests.47 A second Habsburg army of 58,000 men 

under the nominal command of Archduke Ferdinand went to the German 

states; the chief of staff and defacto commander was Lieutenant General 

Karl Mack von Leiberich.48 This army was to be reinforced by Russian 

forces—first 38,000 under Field Marshal Mikail Kutusov, then another 

40,000 under General Fredrich Wilhelm von Buxhowden, and a final 

20,000 under Levin August, Count von Bennigsen.49 These detachments 

marched east as they organized to join with the Habsburg army near Ulm 

before commencing combined operations. A final 20,000-man army under 

the Archduke Charles was in the Tyrol, linking the two theaters of war.50

An additional 55,000 Swedish and later British troops were promised to 

join the coalition along the North Sea coast, making the total facing France 

at least 331,000 in the fall of 1805. France had 210,000 in the Grande 

Armée, and another 50,000 under Marshal Andre Massena operated in 

northern Italy, plus 20,000 in Naples, and another 30,000 that remained 

at Boulogne.51 

Once, when an aide asked Napoleon for more time to deliver a message, 

he replied, “you can ask me for anything—except time!”52 Time was the 

one unyielding aspect that Napoleon could not control, and looking at 

the situation in 1805 he knew that the longer he waited, the more time 

this gave the allies to combine their forces and increase the odds against 
77

France. Before deciding on marching to central Europe, a key aspect of the 

1805 campaign was supposed to be the French fleet. An elaborate series 

of maneuvers and feints were designed to draw the British fleet from the 

English Channel to the West Indies to protect their sugar trade. Once the 

British fell for the feint, the French fleet was to race back to Europe, win 

naval superiority in the channel, and allow the Grande Armée to cross to 

England on their barges. However, all of this took time, and Napoleon 

refused to wait. On 24 August 1805 he issued orders to his corps assembled 

at Boulogne; on 26 August they began their movement instead toward the 

Rhine River and Black Forest. It would not be until October, long after the 

army had left Boulogne and was deep inside of Habsburg territory that the 

decisive naval battle of Trafalgar occurred, smashing a combined French 

and Spanish fleet and ending any thoughts of attacking England directly. 53

Within three weeks, the Grande Armée approached the Rhine. The 

Austrian troops had not been idle; Mack, analyzing Napoleon’s early 

campaigns determined that his speed and boldness were the keys to the 

French success. Mack copied the French methods, and pushed his troops 

rapidly forward, invading the Duchy of Bavaria on 2 September and 

marched to the city of Ulm.54 However, once there they waited for the 

Russian troops who had promised to arrive by 15 October. Mack had no 

further objective, suggesting his hope that rapid marching in and of itself 

would somehow translate into a purpose. To the west of the Black Forest, 

acting as if it was screening the movement of the entire French army, was 

the Reserve Cavalry under Murat. Making contact with the Austrians 

on 6 October, aggressive patrols kept the Austrian eyes focused west. 

The Austrians expected that the French could not push large bodies of 

troops through the Black Forest until the end of November. The weather 

contributed to this impression in the first half of October. Heavy rains turned 

the roads to mud while flooded streams limited the possible crossing sites. 

Napoleon wrote “the Danube has overflowed with a violence unequalled 

in one hundred years.”55 Despite the poor weather, the Grande Armée

averaged twelve miles a day, closing the trap on Mack.56 By 10 October, 

Bernadotte’s First Corps and Davout’s Third Corps were at Munich, eighty 

miles behind Mack’s position and the fingers of the Grande Armée began 

to close around Ulm.57 

Mack became uncomfortable in his positions, and sent 25,000 men 

across the Danube River to see if the way was still clear. On 11 October, 

they ran into 4,000 French troops who held off the Austrians for an entire 

day.58 Over the next three days Mack sent out more small detachments 

from his army in various directions, but each met French units closing 
78

the noose tighter around Ulm. French bombardment and surrender 

negotiations began and on 19 October, Mack agreed to surrender if no 

support arrived within ten days. Since the Russians and Habsburgs agreed 

to be in Ulm on 15 October, Mack expected relief any day.59 What he did 

not realize at the time was that the Russians were still operating on the 

Julian calendar while the Austrians and the rest of Europe were on the 

Gregorian. According to the Russian timetable, twelve days behind the rest 

of Europe, the Russians, marching through Poland, still had time to arrive 

at the agreed-upon meeting.60 When Mack realized that no assistance was 

near, he surrendered. 

So far, the campaign had not developed according to any grand plan; 

Napoleon no more foresaw Mack’s surrender at Ulm than did Mack 

anticipate this outcome for the campaign. Historian Owen Connelly in his 

book Blundering to Glory argued that Napoleon’s greatness was not in 

his plans. Never does a campaign unfold as expected since the enemy 

is a living, thinking opponent, acting to foil one’s plans as much as one 

may act on his. Connelly argued that what made Napoleon great was his 

ability to improvise with what was at hand, reacting more rapidly than the 

enemy.61 Napoleon’s coup d’oeil gave him an advantage since the thousand 

little details did not distracted him from focusing on the truly important 

actions. In the Grande Armée, Napoleon had a tool that was more flexible 

and responsive than his opponents. This army marched more rapidly than 

expected and with units containing all arms, was able to fight outnumbered 

and hold its own against larger foes.62 Finding the Habsburgs stationary 

at Ulm, Napoleon directed the army to mass there; the individual corps 

commanders knew that French support was always within a day’s march, 

so they act aggressively, attacking much larger enemy formations. French 

soldiers, noting that the vast majority of the army had not seen the enemy, 

much less fired a round, commented “Our Emperor, said they, has found 

out a new way of making war; he no longer makes it with our arms but 

with our ‘egs [sic].”63

Over the next few weeks the French pursued the scattered Austrian 

units that escaped Ulm and chased the Russian forces who began to 

arrive piecemeal.64 Not everything went the French way. Near Braunau, 

Murat and Lannes had the opportunity to destroy an isolated portion of 

Kutusov’s forces but instead headed to Vienna.65 The Russians found a 

division of Mortier’s newly formed corps isolated of Dürrenstein, and 

nearly destroyed it—3,000 of the 5,000 French soldiers engaged became 

casualties.66 By 12 November, French troops arrived in Vienna. After 

Russian officers tricked Murat into an armistice that was then renounced 
79

by the emperor, the French pursuit continued until 23 November when 

the exhaustion of the French troops and the last chances of destroying the 

Russian forces piecemeal vanished, forcing a halt.67 

By the last weeks of November, Habsburg troops under the Emperor 

Francis and Russian troops under Tsar Alexander and Field Marshal 

Kutuzov arrived near the Moravian village of Olmütz (modern Czech 

Republic) numbering 86,000 soldiers.68 The French, dispersed for 

foraging, were near the town of Brünn (modern Brno). Napoleon faced a 

dilemma, and the situation worsened each day. The Grande Armée was at 

the end of a logistical tether that extended back to France. The area was 

not productive, making prolonged foraging impossible. The temperatures 

dipped into the 20o

s Fahrenheit, and the army was miles from any major 

city. After three months on campaign, the infantry were tired, foot worn, 

and needed rest. Napoleon needed a major victory to conclude this 

campaign and prevent additional countries, such as Prussia, from joining 

the anti-French coalition. Napoleon had to lure the allies to attack him on 

ground of his own choosing.

Central Moravia is gently rolling farmland with few dominant features. 

To the north, the Moravian mountains restrict large-scale movement. 

A major east-west road ran between Olmütz and Brünn. Just south of 

the road, a gentle plateau known as the Pratzen Heights extended from 

northeast to southwest, ending above the village of Tellnitz. The Pratzen 

Heights rose 35-40 feet above the surrounding farmland. Looking at the 

Pratzen from the east, it was a steep climb, and an excellent position for 

defense. However from the west, the plateau rose gently over two to three 

kilometers and offered no impediment to movement. As Napoleon looked 

over this terrain in the last week of November, he saw the value of the 

terrain and told his staff to study the ground carefully because it would be 

the site of a great battle. 69

Only 56,000 French troops were in the Brünn area; the rest were 

scattered across the route of the Grande Armée in occupation duties. 

Bernadotte’s corps of 10,000 was to the north, guarding the approaches 

from Prague. Davout’s corps was in Vienna, 80 miles away.70 Napoleon 

began setting the conditions for this battle by showing French weakness. 

Understanding that the Austro-Russian army would be looking for revenge 

after Ulm, he sent his aide General Anne-Jean Savary to discuss a possible 

armistice; a Russian aide Count Dolgoroukie, a young hot-headed member 

of Tsar Alexander’s entourage, came to the French camp to deliver a list 

of demands that insulted the French emperor. Dolgorouki reported to 

the Tsar that the French troops looked demoralized and weak.71 On 21 
80

November, Napoleon advanced one-third of his army towards Brünn, 

taking possession of the Pratzen Heights and Austerlitz. The majority of 

the French army was located in the north along the Olmütz road, with 

only a single division extending the line southward. On 30 November, 

Map 1. Maneuver of Ulm and Pursuit to Vienna, September-November 1805.
81

Napoleon pulled Murat’s cavalry and Soult’s Fourth Corps off the Pratzen, 

abandoning the best defensible position in the area. With 86,000 Austrian 

and Russian troops, Napoleon expected that the opportunity to destroy a 

portion of the French army would be irresistible to the allies.72

The next day, the Austro-Russian army occupied the vacant Pratzen 

Heights. The Austrian chief of staff, General-Major Franz von Weyrother, 

developed a plan that would cut the French off from Vienna, trapping 

them against the Moravian highlands, and destroying the army. It was 

a complicated plan and required the Austro-Russian army to divide in 

seven elements, timed to hit the French at various critical moments in 

the battle.73 Two small detachments from the Austro-Russian army would 

fix the French into position; one would attack along the Olmütz to Brünn 

highway and the other hold the center of the position along the Prazten 

Heights. The main body, 59,300 strong in four columns, formed on the 

Prazten, would attack the weakly held south, cutting the road to Vienna, 

and then swing north, trapping the French and destroying them against the 

mountains. 

It was a complex plan, dependant on moving columns from the Pratzen 

through a small opening between the villages of Tellnitz to Sollnitz before 

shifting north. Complicating the plan was the need to translate it from 

German into Russian and getting the orders to the commanders in time to 

execute it on 2 December. It was not until 1:00 a.m. of 2 December that 

the commanders assembled for the orders briefing. In War and Peace, Leo 

Tolstoy describes the order process in the allied headquarters that night. 

Packed into a small dining room in a simple farmhouse, dimly lit by candles, 

the Austrian chief of staff droned on in German, which the majority of the 

Russian commanders did not understand. Weyrother presented the order 

“like a college teacher reading a lesson to young scholars.”74 Sitting in 

the front row was the nominal army commander, Field Marshal Mikhail 

Kutuzov, 72 years old and sleeping through the orders brief. He lost his 

influence with the Russian Tsar because of his recommendations that they 

wait for additional troops to arrive.75 Only when the briefing ended in the 

early morning hours did the orders go to the troops; most did not reach 

the units before the time scheduled for movement to begin. Columns cut 

through stationary ones still waiting for their orders creating confusion 

before the first shot.

The scene in the French camp was vastly different, and Napoleon’s 

understanding of ground, time, space, and his enemy’s attitudes were 

key. The Austro-Russian plan to destroy the French army was exactly the 

one that Napoleon wanted them to adopt. Napoleon had sent orders on 
82

28 November for Davout’s Third Corps, 80 miles away in Vienna, and 

Bernadotte’s corps, to march to Brünn; by 1 December Bernadotte’s corps 

had arrived but not Davout.76 The rest of his army rested along the shallow 

Goldbach brook. In the north, Lannes’ Fifth Corps and the Reserve 

Cavalry defended a small hill, the Santon, oriented along the Olmütz 

Road. The center contained Bernadotte’s First Corps, the Imperial Guard, 

and Soult’s Fourth Corps, all hidden from allied view by the fog along the 

Goldbach, augmented by the campfire smoke that hung in the valley. The 

Grande Armée received its orders the previous day and spent the night 

keeping warm. Napoleon spent 1 December and part of the night visiting 

the troops, particularly after a skirmish developed in the south in the early 

morning hours. The soldiers, seeing their emperor among their camps in 

the early morning hours, cheered “Vive l’emperor” and lit straw torches 

to light his way; his aides ordered the troops to quiet down lest they alert 

the enemy to his presence. The rest of the night, he spent in the Imperial 

Guard’s camp, sitting on a bay of hay, his feet on a drum, keeping warm 

by a fire. The contrast between the hectic and confused the Austro-Russian 

camp and calm French camp was marked.

The Austrian advance began at 6 a.m. in the south with a thrust 

toward Solkonitz.77 As the pressure against the French right flank built, 

Napoleon refused to reinforce it with any troops from the center of his 

line. The line threatened to break several times, but at each moment of 

crisis, reinforcements from Davout’s corps arrived to stabilize the front. 

Third Corps had marched 80 miles from Vienna in 50 hours, and went 

into the desperate fighting often from the march.78 By 8 a.m., 12,000 

French there were holding back 35,000-40,000 allies, and additional allied 

troops moved from the Pratzen Heights to support the assault and seal 

the Austro-Russian victory.79 The fog was clearing, and from Napoleon’s 

headquarters, he could see the dense mass of Russian columns moving off 

the Pratzen as hoped. As the allied ranks pressed into a narrow, dense mass 

in the south, the French line there slowly bowed backward, and the Pratzen 

appeared nearly empty as Austrian and Russian army cleared the heights 

to add their weight to the attack in the south.80

Behind the Goldbach stream, Napoleon waited with his staff and 

Marshal Soult, whose troops would execute the main attack. The fog and 

smoke in the valley continued to hide the mass of French troops; Napoleon 

on the Zuran Hill could see the crest of the Pratzen and watched as Austrian 

and Russian forces moved south until the crest of the hill was nearly 

bare. Turning to Soult, Napoleon asked him how long it would take his 

troops to reach the crest, to which Soult replied “less than twenty minutes, 

sire.” “Then we’ll wait a further quarter of an hour,” was Napoleon’s 
83

rejoinder.81 The plateau cleared of the final allied units until just a few 

knots of headquarters personnel, watching the deployment, marked where 

the allied army had been. 

Napoleon gave the order and two divisions began to advance from 

the fog up the plateau. At that moment, the cloud cover parted and the sun 

shone through—the sun of Austerlitz was a favorable omen that many of 

the French participants would comment upon later.82 The Russian tsar and 

his staff on the Pratzen suddenly heard the French bands come alive; a few 

moments later to their amazement the lead French units appeared out of 

the fog.83 Kutusov ordered the only troops available—the Russian Imperial 

Guard, east of the heights—to attack, as well as recalling units to return 

to the Pratzen.84 It was too late. Heavy fighting both to the north between 

Lannes and Bagration as well in the center on the Pratzen itself led to 

the crisis between 9:30-11 a.m. Despite desperate fighting between the 

guard infantry and cavalry of both sides, the greater numbers and superior 

position of the French were too much. By 2 p.m., with the commitment 

of Bernadotte’s corps on the Pratzen, the allied center ceased to exist.85

After clearing the center of the heights, the French wheeled south, and 

then artillery began to fire into the flanks and rear of the now panicking 

allied troops. Some fled across the shallow fishponds to the south. The 

story of thousands of Russians and Austrians sinking to their death is 

myth; the ponds’ ice did break, but the shallow ponds contained few dead 

the next spring.86 Instead, the ponds created bottlenecks to the fleeing 

soldiers, destroying unit cohesion, therefore increasing the panic in the 

Austro-Russian army. By dusk, around 4 p.m., the battle was effectively 

over. In the north, the outnumbered French counterattacked the Russians 

along the Olmütz road; French cavalry pursued broken Allied units, 

furthering the panic and destruction. Tsar Alexander, heartbroken over 

the loss, rode away in tears and left Austrian territory. The allied army 

lost heavily—12,000 captured and 15,000 dead. Fifty stands of regimental 

colors and 180 cannons were captured compared to French losses of 8,000 

men dead and wounded.87 Napoleon spent the night in the Austerlitz castle 

where he wrote Josephine one of the great letters of understatement: “I 

defeated the Russian and Austrian army commanded by the two emperors. 

I am slightly tired...”88

Speaking to his soldiers the next day, Napoleon said “Soldats! Je 

suis content de vous.” (“Soldiers! I am pleased with you”).89 The victory 

effectively destroyed the Third Coalition. William Pitt, hearing the news 

of the victory declared, “Gentlemen, roll up that map of Europe. We will 

not need it the next ten years.”90 Austria signed a peace within the month, 
84

losing nearly one-sixth of its territory including lands in Italy given to 

the Kingdom of Italy and in the Balkans to France, and lands in Germany 

to Bavaria, Wurttemberg, and Baden. Bavaria became a kingdom as a 

reward for the duke’s support of France. The Holy Roman Empire ceased 

to exist, and the next year Napoleon created the Confederation of the 

Rhine which looked toward France for leadership. Napoleon’s soldiers 

received rewards—each man at Austerlitz received 200 francs; widows of 

the fallen received large pensions and their children, officially adopted by 

the state, received a free education and could add the name “Napoleon” as 

a baptismal or family name.91

Napoleon considered Austerlitz his greatest battle. After most 

victories, marshals who played key roles received titles to commemorate 

their efforts, but after Austerlitz no titles were given—Napoleon thought 

the battle too closely identified with himself to allow any sharing of the 

honor. The battle showed the key elements of Napoleon’s greatness. This 

included his coup d’oeil, his ability to see the terrain and understand the 

role it would play, his close personal connection with his soldiers, and his 

clear communication of orders. 

Despite humiliating the Austrians and Russians in 1805, the Prussian 

armies in 1806, and then defeating the rebuilt Russian army in 1807, peace 

in Europe was fleeting for Napoleon. The French Revolution overturned 

the old order, making France the dominant nation that other powers sought 

to counter-balance. The desire to strike at archenemy Great Britain led 

Napoleon to invade Portugal, and then observing the decadent Bourbon 

regime in Spain overthrew and attempted to rationalize that country. The 

Spanish people never accepted his brother Joseph as king, leading to a 

six-year war that Napoleon termed his “Spanish ulcer.” The Continental 

System, an economic embargo of all trade with Britain, led to war with 

Russia in 1812 and finally war in the German states in 1813. In these 

latter wars, the dynamics of warfare had changed—armies became huge, 

unwieldy, and with large supply trains since such numbers could not live 

off the land. These armies were unresponsive to the quick maneuvers that 

led to Napoleon’s earlier successes. His opponents changed too, adopting 

some of the improvements that made the French army so resilient. Only 

during the allied invasion of France in 1814, did flashes of Napoleon’s 

early brilliance return. The dynamic once again changed; the French army 

was smaller and Napoleon displayed the flexibility and rapid reading of 

the ground that made him so successful earlier in his career. However, 

the large allied armies, acting together, meant that this was a hopeless 

cause. Waterloo the next year was just as hopeless, and decisively ended 
85

Napoleon’s attempts to control France’s destiny.

Napoleon’s legacy loomed over the 19th and 20th centuries. 

Immediately after his second abdication and exile to St Helena in 1815, 

the first authors tried to distill the essence of Napoleon’s greatness. Two 

of the most significant military writers, Baron Antoine Jomini and Major 

General Carl von Clausewitz, spent their lives determining why warfare 

changed during the French Revolution and how its greatest practitioner, 

Napoleon, used it. Through their writings, Napoleon’s legacy became 

embedded in western military thought despite the fact that today, most 

soldiers would be hard pressed to identify that influence. For example, in 

1810, American Colonel Alexander Smyth wrote Regulations for the Field 

Exercise, Manoevres [sic], and the Conduct of the Infantry of the United 

States, which was nothing more than a translation of the infantry manual 

of Napoleon’s army.92 Immediately after the Napoleonic wars, the young 

American military academy at West Point sent officers to Europe to buy 

military manuals and books to create the USMA library. During the 1820s, 

the library at West Point contained more books in French than in English, 

the majority being memoirs and correspondence of French officers.93

Through this effort, Jomini and other French authors on the Napoleonic 

military shaped West Point. The USMA engineering textbook, used from 

1817 until 1838, was by a French engineer Gay de Vernon, and approved 

by Napoleon in 1810 for use in the French army’s schools.94 A Napoleon 

Club founded by students and faculty in the 1850s, studied and dissected 

Napoleon’s campaigns. Membership of this club reads like a virtual Who’s 

Who of Civil War generals.95 In the Civil War, conventional wags stated 

that officers in both armies went to war with a copy of Jomini, and by 

extension Napoleon, in their knapsack. Today, concepts such as principles 

of war, lines of operation, and center of gravity are key elements of modern 

doctrine and have a direct connection to Napoleon as seen through his 

interpreters.

Napoleon still captures the imagination. Forty major battles in the 

space of twenty years is normally what is remembered, yet his civil 

accomplishments play a key role in his legacy. The ideals of the French 

Revolution—a career open to talent instead of birth, the rule of law, the 

rationalization of civil administration and scrapping of elements from 

medieval European law were carried across Europe on the bayonets of the 

Grande Armée. Those states nearest France, and incorporated the longest 

into the French Empire had the most significant elements of the revolution 

become part of their identity. The Civil Code, or Code Napoléon, is a 

major influence on European law codes as well as those in South America 
86

and portions of North America. The Code forbade privileges based on 

birth, instituted equality before the law, insured freedom of religion, and 

required that government positions be filled based upon talent, codifying 

those ideals of the French Revolution.

Map 2. Austerlitz, December 1805.
87

Through the publication of Napoleon’s correspondence, dictated on 

St Helena before his death in 1821, and published beginning in 1823, 

Napoleon refought his battles and justified his actions. The correspondence 

was a major influence in how people immediately following his reign 

interpreted Napoleon’s legacy. In 1815 the Congress of Vienna tried to put 

the revolutionary genie back into the bottle, but the revolutions in France 

in 1830 and then throughout Europe in 1848 showed that once out, these 

ideals were impossible to suppress. The creation of the Confederation of 

the Rhine was the first and a major step on the path to German unification as 

were the reforms in Italy in leading to its unification. It is not a coincidence 

that the Italian flag mimics the French flag’s design. 

Because many of the civil reforms relate to Napoleon’s wars, they 

have lost some of their luster. Some view Napoleon as a monster, bent 

on world domination, but forget the context of European power politics. 

The other European states would not accept France’s expanded role, 

and continued to confront the French Empire.96 His legacy as a military 

commander and the glory he brought France has generally lost its appeal 

in the late 20th century revulsion to war. Napoleon’s alluring legacy 

should be of someone who, without the benefit of birth or position rose to 

the pinnacle of power by sheer talent and ambition. Though the statement 

is probably apocryphal, Napoleon supposedly said that he was not made 

emperor but rather found the crown in the gutter and picked it up with his 

sword. Perhaps his greatest legacy is showing how far a person with talent 

could rise.
88

Notes

1. Thomas Hardy, The Dynasts, (London: MacMillan and Co, 1904), Part 

First, Act II, Scene V, page 87.

2. This claim was made by Professor Charles Esdaile during his lunch 

presentation at the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era in Lakeland, Florida on 

20 February 2005. For his full presentation, see Consortium on the Revolutionary 

Era: Selected Papers 2005, (NC: High Point University Press, 2007) 1-12. 

3. Stephen Englund, Napoleon: A Political Life, (New York: Scribner, 

2004), 22.

4. Englund, 23.

5. Englund, 27.

6. David Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon, (New York: Scribner, 

1966), 8-9.

7. Chandler, 13.

8. J. C. Herold, The Age of Napoleon, (New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., 1963), 45.

9. Chandler, 22.

10. Chandler, 23.

11. In French, “batterie des hommes sans peur.” Chandler, 26.

12. Chandler, 29.

13. Englund, 65.

14. Chandler, 30-31.

15. The coup against Robespierre occurred on 9 Thermidor of the Year II, or 

27 July 1794 in the Julian calendar. In establishing a republic, the French revolutionaries thought a new era had begun, and counted from that date, 22 September 

1792. The calendar removed the Greek and Roman month names, instead replacing them with months based on the seasons and harvest, such as Thermidor (heat), 

Ventôse (month of wind-March) or month of the harvest (Fruitor, October). The 

confusion between the Julian calendar and Revolutionary calendar led to its demise in 1806 on Napoleon’s orders. Events during this period are known by their 

revolutionary calendar names.

16. Chandler, 39.

17. Chandler, 53-93, is a detailed discussion on Napoleon’s command challenges and execution of the Italian campaigns.

18. Chandler, 84.

19. Tragically, during the riots on 17 December 2011 in Egypt, the Institute 

of Egypt, located on Tahrir Square, burned, destroying many priceless and irreplaceable documents of Egyptian history. The Guardian, 19 December 2011, page 

17.
89

20. Englund, 169.

21. See Herold, 123-164, for a detailed description of the accomplishments 

of the Consulate.

22. Paul Thiébault, The Memoirs of Baron Thiébault, trans Arthur John 

Butler, (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1896), II: 123-4. 

23. Englund, 223-4, 253-6.

24. Chandler, 159.

25. Owen Connelly, Blundering to Glory, (Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc 2006), ix.

26. Chandler, 384.

27. John Elting, Swords around a Throne, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 

1988), 60.

28. Elting, 127.

29. Elting, 132-3.

30. Many of the senior officers were not above enriching themselves while 

on campaign by seizing artworks as payment for the “liberation” by the French 

army. Elting,150.

31. Elting, 136-7.

32. Etling, 143.

33. Elting, 130.

34. Elting, 125.

35. Cornélis de Witt Willcox, French—English Military Technical Dictionary, (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1917), 295.

36. Elting, 85.

37. Elting, 84.

38. Elting, 84.

39. Chandler, 367.

40. Elting, 84.

41. Chandler, 97.

42. Chandler, 374.

43. Chandler, 375.

44. Chandler, 376.

45. Herold, 169.

46. John Holland Rose, editor, Select Despatches[sic] from the British Foreign Office Archives Relating to the Formation of the Third Coalition against 
90

France, 1804-1805, (London: Spottswoode & Co., Ltd., 1904), 267; Chandler, 

330-1.

47. Chandler, 382.

48. Chandler, 382.

49. Connelly, 78; Chandler, 383.

50. Chandler, 382.

51. Chandler, 384-5.

52. R. M. Johnston, The Corsican: A Diary of Napoleon’s Life in His Own 

Words (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1910), 168. 

53. Herold, 170-1.

54. Englund, 272.

55. George Eberle, “March Performances of Napoleonic Armies,” U.S. 

Army Command and General Staff School Student Paper, (Fort Leavenworth, 

KS: The Command and General Staff School, 1934), 8.

56. Eberle, 14.

57. Chandler, 400.

58. Chandler, 399.

59. Chandler, 399-400.

60. There is an argument whether this lack of synchronization of calendars 

was the cause of Mack’s defeat. Clearly, the French army and Mack’s inaction 

were the causes of his defeat. Whether the reinforcement by the Russians would 

have changed this seems doubtful as later actions in this campaign show.

61. Connelly, ix.

62. The average of twelve miles a day in poor weather and while fighting 

skirmishes and battles is impressive. The U.S. Army’s Field Service Regulations 

of the 1930s stated a rate of eleven miles a day for a 1930s U.S. Army division 

when not in combat. Eberle, “March Performances of Napoleonic Armies,” 33.

63. Adolphe Thiers, History of the Consulate and the Empire of France 

under Napoleon, (Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen, and Haffelfinger, 1879), II: 42.

64. Connelly, 83.

65. Murat and Lannes tricked an Austrian commander by announcing that 

an armistice had been signed, and then crossed the bridge with their troops. A few 

days later, Murat failed to exploit this opportunity by signing an armistice without 

authority. Napoleon immediately renounced it. Connelly, 84-5.

66. Chandler, 406.

67. Connelly, 85; Chandler, 408.

68. Connelly, 85.
91

69. Chandler, 412.

70. Chandler, 410.

71. J. David Markham, editor, Imperial Glory: The Bulletins of Napoleon’s 

Grande Armée, 1805-1814, (London: Greenhill Books, 2003), 30th Bulletin of the 

Grande Armée, 3 December 1805, 51.

72. Chandler, 410.

73. Connelly, 86.

74. Theirs, V:159.

75. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans Ann Dunnigan, (London: Penguin 

Books, 1968), 595-601.

76. Berthier to Davout, 28 November 1805, Operations of the 3rd Corps, 

trans Scott Bowden, (Boalsburg, PA: Military History Press, 2006) 5. Davout received the order at 4:00 p.m. on 29 November.

77. Chandler, 425.

78. Davout to Berthier, 3 December 1805, Operations of the 3rd Corps, 14. 

79. Chandler, 425.

80. The Pratzen was not as empty as it appeared. A strong allied force, delayed in marching due to the confused orders, was still on the far side of the 

heights. Christopher Duffy, Austerlitz: 1805, (London: Leo Cooper, Inc., 1977), 

106. 

81. Chandler, 425.

82. Duffy, 102.

83. Chandler, 425.

84. Duffy, 135.

85. Chandler, 431.

86. Markham, 54.

87. Chandler, 432.

88. Napoleon to Josephine, 3 December 1805, as cited in Claude Manceron, 

Austerlitz: The Story of a Battle, (New York: Norton, 1966), 55.

89. Markham, 55. 

90. James Richard Joy, Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century, (New 

York: The Chautauqua Press, 1902), 3.

91. Markham, 61-2; Chandler, 439.

92. Michael Bonura, Under the Shadow of Napoleon, (New York: New York 

University Press, 2012), 44.

93. Bonura, 71.
92

94. Bonura, 76.

95. Bonura, 112.

96. Much of the demonization of Napoleon started with contemporary British sources and should be treated carefully. The political context in Europe during 

this period was much too complex to blame on one country or man—each state 

was playing power politics to maintain their status. For example, Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 was a result of Russia renouncing its Treaty of Tilsit 

obligations not to import British goods; Russia mobilization of her army began 

in 1811, before Napoleon decided on invasion. The threat of the Grand Duchy of 

Warsaw, a nascent Polish state allied to France, which existed only because the 

Napoleon took the Polish lands occupied by Russia, Prussia, and Austria in the 

1790s and returned them to Poland, threatened Russia and weakened Prussia. 
93

Chapter 4

Warrior of the Waves

Nelson’s Legacy to Naval Commandership

by John T. Kuehn, Ph.D.

The Battle of Trafalgar occurred off the coast of Southern Spain on the 

morning of October 21, 1805. As battles go, Trafalgar numbers among the 

most decisive in modern history and remains a monument to the superior 

training, tactics, organization, and—especially—the leadership of the 

Royal Navy of the period. This chapter examines the supreme commander 

of the British Fleet at Trafalgar, Admiral Lord Viscount Horatio Nelson, 

Baron of the Nile. Nelson left a profound legacy to command at sea that 

still affects how navies, and especially the United States Navy, operate 

today.1

 Nelson codified for the Royal Navy and all other navies the guiding 

principle of pre-battle centralized planning and decentralized, violent 

execution in combat. All of Nelson’s operations and battles highlight 

these simple principles, but none more so than his masterpiece off Cape 

Trafalgar over two centuries ago.

* * * * * * * * * *

In order to best understand Nelson as a commander we must fast 

forward to the eve of the Battle of Trafalgar and examine him at his 

absolute best in embodying the style of centralized personal command and 

decentralized execution. The period before the actual battle has much to 

teach us about “The Nelson Touch.”2

 Lord Nelson’s victory did not rely 

upon his personal direction of the bulk of the actual combat. Very early 

in the battle Nelson was mortally wounded and exercised little direction 

upon subsequent events; however, prior to his wounding he had ceased 

to exercise much control beyond the bridge of his flagship HMS Victory. 

To understand why we must give him the lion’s share of the credit (the 

other recipients being of course his men and ships) we must go back to the 

days before the battle, when he laid the foundation for his overwhelming 

victory.

Nelson understood, perhaps better than many of his contemporaries 

in the Royal Navy, the importance of preparation before the battle. When 

he rejoined his fleet blockading the Franco-Spanish force off Cadiz in late 

September 1805 he immediately convened a meeting with his subordinate 

commanding officers onboard his flagship. He had already sent a letter to 

all of them explaining his intention to trick the French Admiral Pierre de 

Villeneuve into battle. Once battle was imminent, he would attack with 
94

two columns of ships with the intent to break the traditional battle line 

of the enemy into three groups: the van, the main body, and the rear. Of 

these groups, those in the van would be effectively unavailable for the 

initial phases of the fight since they would have to sail back into the wind 

(tack) to reach the battle, by which time Nelson intended to have defeated 

the other two groups of ships. In this way Nelson would rectify any 

numerical superiority that the enemy might have as well as deny him the 

Figure 4. Captain Horatio Nelson, 1781, age 33; painting by J.F. Rigaud.
95

ability to refuse battle with the entire fleet (see figure 1). Nelson explained 

all of this in further detail in person aboard his flagship to his captains. 

It was a supreme example of a commander making known his intent to 

his subordinates in a collaborative and accessible fashion. It bears many 

parallels to a similar dinner that Napoleon held with his generals prior to 

Austerlitz.3

Nelson reiterated his intent in a famous memorandum written on 9 

October after his conferences and dinners aboard the Victory. Nelson’s 

memorandum emphasized the Royal Navy’s key institutional advantages 

that would bring the victory—superior gunnery and seamanship. Nelson 

outlined for his captains that he did not intend to form new lines of battle 

once they sighted Villeneuve’s fleet. In order to take advantage of superior 

British seamanship and trap Villeneuve he intended to waste no time 

forming up for battle but rather his ships’ positions—what was called their 

order of sail—would also be their order of battle. This would give him 

speed. Second, he wrote that “...no captain can do very wrong if he places 

his Ship alongside that of an Enemy.” This instruction emphasized his 

belief that his fleet was ship for ship and man for man superior to that of the 

French and Spanish. It was also written to emphasize to his captains that if 

signals could not be seen from the flagship they had complete autonomy to 

engage the enemy as they saw fit. Close combat would also maximize his 

ships’ advantage in weaponry at point blank ranges through the use of their 

Mao 3, Simplified Sketch of Nelson’s Battle Plan for Trafalgar, October 21, 

1805. Figure created by John T. Kuehn.
96

devastating carronades to inflict maximum death and destruction upon 

his enemies. Nothing Nelson ever wrote has emphasized the principle of 

decentralized execution as cogently. Finally, his intention was no mere 

victory but rather “annihilation” of the entire enemy fleet.4

Centralized planning and conveyance of his intent complete, Nelson 

turned his mind to the battle-readiness of his fleet and detached several his 

battleships to escort a convoy of supplies for the fleet bound from Malta 

through the strait of Gibraltar. In fact, procuring fresh meat and vegetables 

for his scurvy-weakened sailors consumed much of Nelson’s time as he 

attempted to get these items out to the fleet on station off Cadiz on the 

southern coast of Spain. Nelson also employed what we might today call 

operational deception.5

 Finding the fleet in a close blockade off Cadiz he 

decided to move it over the horizon so that the French and Spanish would 

not be aware of its precise location. He maintained watch on Cadiz with 

his frigates, which could also intercept and turn back snooping Spanish 

or French ships attempting to gather intelligence. Nelson meant to lure 

Villeneuve to sea, knowing that if the Frenchman could see his fleet he 

might not attempt a breakout for the Mediterranean. Once Villeneuve 

emerged, Nelson’s intention was to intercept and destroy him, but until he 

judged the wind and time ripe he would remain just out of sight over the 

horizon paralleling Villeneuve’s course.

Events conspired to cause Villeneuve to finally nerve himself to 

sortie from port. Through intelligence sources of his own he knew that 

the British force had detached several battleships and was now inferior 

to his own. He also knew that if he did not sail, he might not have a fleet 

to command in any case since he knew a replacement was on the way to 

relieve him. Napoleon had removed Villeneuve from command but his 

successor (and rival) Vice-Admiral Francois Rosily was still traveling 

via the overland route through Spain to Cadiz to take command. Now all 

was in the hands of the weather, specifically the winds. On 18 October 

the wind blew favorably and Villeneuve ordered his fleet to unmoor. On 

19 October the first ships began to leave the harbor, although the wind 

occasionally died which made it necessary for Villeneuve to have several 

of his battleships towed out of port. Nelson’s frigates signaled the good 

news that Villeneuve was finally leaving port, bound for Toulon and the 

Mediterranean in accordance with Napoleon’s orders.6

Nelson had twenty-seven battleships to thirty-three for Villeneuve, 

but this quantitative disadvantage was more than compensated for by 

the superior morale, planning, seamanship, gunnery, and, leadership 

of Nelson’s fleet. Nelson continued to stalk Villeneuve the next day as 
97

the Frenchman proceeded east-southeasterly toward Gibraltar with the 

combined fleet, however the pace of the French and Spanish advance was 

so slow that Nelson outran Villeneuve and had to bring his entire battle line 

around 360 degrees in order to fall back into a correct position vis-à-vis 

the combined fleet. Villeneuve by now had learned he was being stalked. 

Despite his numerical superiority at 0730 on the morning of 21 October 

he ordered his fleet to “wear” back toward Cadiz and began a gradual 

turn of the entire fleet back to port. This movement also gave him the 

correct disposition for battle based on the winds.7 He was literally running 

away from battle. This did not affect Nelson’s plan appreciably, the only 

difference being that Nelson’s column would strike near the main body of 

the combined fleet’s line while Collingwood’s would now strike the rear.

Nelson had prepared for the light and variable winds that made the 

collision of the two fleets an agonizingly slow process. He had directed 

his captains to approach with all sail, including studding sails (auxiliary 

sails that take advantage of every last bit of available wind for motive 

force). In this way Nelson would maximize his speed of approach to the 

enemy which would minimize the amount of time his ships were under fire 

before they could respond. Once they pierced the enemy line-of-battle the 

British sailors were to cut these sails away, which would have the double 

effect of slowing them down (for close engagement) and eliminating these 

sails from tangling up the standard rigging. Nelson also employed tactical 

deception by having his own column feint toward the enemy van of ships 

to confuse them as to his real intention and then turning at the last possible 

moment toward Villeneuve’s flagship (Bucentaure) in the main body. This 

action forced the van to maintain its line ahead and delayed its turning 

back to come to the aid of the rest of fleet (see figure 1). 

Nelson then added a final edge to his fleet’s fighting mettle when he 

sent, sequentially, two significant signals, neither of which was tactical but 

rather inspirational, as a means to give his men a combat edge. The first 

signal elicited a spontaneous outbreak of cheering throughout the fleet: 

“England expects every man will do his duty.” This signal was passed a 

quarter of an hour before the first gunfire and nearly five hours after Nelson 

had ordered the turn toward the enemy. He followed this with a signal 

for his captains: “Engage the enemy more closely.” This signal might be 

regarded as Nelson’s final turnover of the battle to the discretion of his 

captains. After this point Nelson’s fleet was now in the execution phase of 

the battle which relied relatively little on Nelson’s personal direction and 

almost wholly on his subordinates.8

 At this point a return to the start of the 

story is in order to examine how this extraordinary man got to this point 

in his life.
98

His name was Horace—not Horatio. His older brother Horatio had 

died in infancy and it was by this name, in 1777 at the age of 21, that 

Nelson began to refer to himself. Horace Nelson was born to the Anglican 

rector Edmund Nelson and his wife Catherine on 29 August 1758 in 

Burnham Thorpe, a small town located in Norfolk just inland from the 

coast. The circumstance of his birth placed him squarely in what today 

would be labeled the middle class—he earned his titles in battle rather 

than receiving them by birth. The sixth of eleven children, his mother died 

shortly after his ninth birthday. Catherine Suckling Nelson came from a 

prominent family whose illustrious ancestors had included a prime minister 

of Great Britain, Robert Walpole after whose son, Horace Walpole (also 

a prime minister), the young Nelson received his first name. Catherine’s 

brother, was Captain Maurice Suckling of the Royal Navy.9 T h e 

Sucklings were a prominent family and Maurice and William, Catherine’s 

brothers, had both done well for themselves, Maurice in the Royal Navy 

and William in the government customs service. In 1771 Maurice, a 

highly intelligent and competent officer, received command of the 64-

gun battleship Raisonable. This event prompted Edmund Nelson to send 

his son, who had already evinced a desire to go to sea, off to become a 

midshipman under his uncle’s tutelage.10

The Royal Navy that young Nelson joined in May 1771 deserves 

some description. Despite draconian discipline the fleet was very 

much “England’s Navy” and not the King’s, as was the Royal Army. 

Commissions were not purchased as in the Army, but rather obtained 

through connections and family—usually from the gentle and merchant 

classes for the non-aristocratic applicants. Advancement through the 

ranks of the naval officer corps was obtained mostly through merit and 

performance due to the requirement to master math and navigation, the 

weeding out as a result of the rigors of life at sea, and a long tradition of 

meritocracy. In Nelson’s day the Royal Navy would literally become the 

“people’s navy” much as the French Army became the “people’s army” 

during the French Revolution, although the Navy had been on this path for 

some time prior to Nelson’s arrival. The Royal Navy reflected the nation 

of Britain every bit as much as the French Army under the Revolution and 

Napoleon came to reflect France.11

Despite this national character, life in the Royal Navy was particularly 

grim for its enlisted ratings and was a harsh school for midshipmen. The 

truism that the Royal Navy ran on “rum, sodomy, and the lash” still had 

some validity in the late 18th Century. But things were changing. Captains 

and officers who did not balance discipline with enlightened leadership 
99

might find themselves like Captain Bligh, set adrift in boats in the south 

seas, or facing massive mutiny, as indeed happened infamously off Spithead 

and at Nore during Nelson’s life in 1797. The issue at Spithead, however, 

was not revolutionary fervor but pay, which had not been increased for 

over 100 years for the enlisted men. Even so, the mutineers made clear 

they would set aside their grievances and fight England’s enemies should 

the need arise.12 The captain who took care of his men while maintaining 

strict but fair discipline was as a rule more successful. Nelson embodies 

the type of command leadership that helped make the Royal Navy the 

dynamic and successful institution it was. Like Napoleon, Nelson’s men 

would revere and follow him to the gates of hell because he cared for them 

both at sea and ashore.13

But all this lay ahead of the lad in a bobbing “Johnny-boat” that now 

approached the great man-of-war commanded by his uncle. Raisonable

lay anchored in the Nore, the middle road of the Thames Estuary 

below London and site of the famous mutiny in 1791.14 War with Spain 

threatened as Suckling took the new midshipman under his wing. One of 

the key things that any successful commander must have is luck, and now 

Nelson’s connections with Suckling combined with good fortune to propel 

and develop him as both a skilled seaman and budding young leader.

The first event that might be termed luck occurred when the war 

scare with Spain over the Falkland Islands abated and the crew of the 

Raisonable was paid off. Suckling was transferred to the command of the 

larger Triumph (74).15 Suckling worried that the new midshipmen might 

get caught up in the dull routine of the larger warship in port. He also knew 

that cliques and cabals formed among the midshipmen and officers on the 

larger ships that could plague a young officer for the rest of his career. 

Accordingly he paid the apprenticing fee and sent Horace to the smaller 

merchant vessel Mary Ann shipping out for Jamaica and the West Indies. 

Nelson would serve essentially as a common sailor and “learn the ropes” 

from the keel up aboard the smaller ship without his uncle’s patronage 

influencing how he was treated. After a year he returned from the Indies 

a much saltier midshipman with real seamanship skills and a keen insight 

into his enlisted charges, because he had actually served as one.16

For the next five years, when Horace was not under his direct 

supervision, Captain Suckling continued this program of indirect 

mentorship, sending Nelson out with associates on long cruises. Nelson 

traveled into Arctic waters in 1773 and then from 1774 to 1776 he made 

an 18-month cruise aboard the frigate Seahorse (24) around the Cape of 

Good Hope to the Bengal shore and then back again and into the Red Sea. 
100

In March 1776, with war breaking out in North America, he contracted the 

first of the many chronic tropical diseases that plagued him (in addition 

to his constant problems with seasickness). It was probably malaria. 

He shipped back home, arriving in London at the end of August having 

recovered his health during the return voyage.17

Nelson’s timing and luck continued to hold. By this point Suckling had 

moved ashore as the comptroller of the navy and head of the Navy Board 

that examined qualifying midshipmen (those with six years’ service) for 

their lieutenant’s commission. Also, the war in America meant that the big 

warships now needed more officers, so the time was ripe for both action 

and opportunity. Suckling decided that Horace should study a bit more 

before standing for the exam and assigned the young man to another of his 

associates, Captain Mark Robinson, commanding the Worcester (64) as an 

“acting” fourth lieutenant.18 Robinson’s ship embarked another Suckling 

patron, Vice-Admiral Sir James Douglas, and was bound for convoy 

protection duty in the Bay of Biscay against the burgeoning American 

privateer threat. Nelson met both men, whom even at that young age he 

impressed. The harsh seas and frequent down-time allowed Nelson to both 

hone his watch skills and catch up on his studies for the lieutenant’s exam. 

In particular he impressed Robinson, at least according to Nelson, who 

wrote:

In this ship [the Worcester] I was at sea with convoys till April 2nd, 

1777, and in very bad weather. But although my age might have been 

a sufficient cause for not entrusting me with the charge of a Watch, yet 

Captain Robinson used to say, ‘he felt as easy when I was upon deck, as 

any Officer in the Ship.’19

Worcester docked at Spithead in April and Nelson immediately returned 

to London to stand for his exam, which was administered by Suckling 

and two other senior post captains. As might be expected, Nelson passed 

with flying colors and was commissioned a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, 

having already proved himself as “An Able Seaman and Midshipman.”20

Suckling immediately secured Nelson’s assignment as second 

lieutenant aboard the frigate Lowestoffe (32) commanded by the learned 

Captain William Locker, who had served under the legendary Admiral 

Edward Hawke at Quiberon Bay. It was probably from Locker, and 

indirectly from Hawke, that the young Nelson acquired his preference 

for aggressive tactics and close combat as the keys to victory in the age 

of sail. It was at this time that Nelson began to call himself by his dead 

brother’s name. Parker became Nelson’s patron and from this point on 
101

Nelson advanced rapidly, gaining his first command as a lieutenant in of 

the small brig Badger (14) at the age of nineteen.21

Thanks to Parker’s patronage, the American Revolution, and Nelson’s 

talent and luck, he rose to the rank of post captain in command of the 

frigate Hinchinbroke (28) on 1 September 1779. Nelson had just turned 

21 and became one of the youngest post captains in the service, if not the 

youngest, at the time of his appointment. His time in the Caribbean, just 

as his cruise in the Indian Ocean, was cut short by disease, probably a 

combination of typhoid fever and his recurring malaria. Parker dispatched 

him home to recover. Nelson arrived at Spithead in late 1780 and went 

immediately to Bath for further treatment. Upon his recovery, none other 

than the famous Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, appointed 

him over numerous unemployed and more senior captains to the command 

of Albemarle (28).22

From this point on until he was put on half-pay in Norfolk in 1787 

Nelson commanded only one other ship—Borias (28)—and then was 

appointed Senior Office in the Leeward Islands in 1786 while still in 

command of that ship. Most of his duty had involved convoy escorts 

protecting British trade against American, Dutch, French, and Spanish 

privateers and warships. He gained a reputation for excellent leadership 

and fearlessness as well as for putting the interests of his men first. By 

this time he had also captured his first prizes and endured a variety of 

combats, both ashore and at sea. As Senior Officer, his final command, 

he had battled vested interests and corruption in the West Indies, but had 

actually undermined his support among certain senior officers by his 

crusading. He had also found a wife. Nelson first met the young widow 

Frances (“Fanny”) Nisbet in May 1785 on the island of Nevis in the West 

Indies. Fanny had a young son and her uncle was quite wealthy. They 

waited until March 1787 to marry, with the King’s son Prince William 

Henry as best man. Shortly after, Nelson’s health again in decline, they 

both shipped home to Norfolk and Nelson went on half-pay in the postwar period of economizing under William Pitt the Younger.23

Nelson now led, by all accounts, a settled but restless life for the next 

five years, his career at a standstill during the time of extended peace after 

the American Revolution. But revolution came again, this time in France. 

By 1792 it was certain that Great Britain would become embroiled in 

the titanic changes sweeping France and rocking all of Europe. In Great 

Britain, measured support for France’s political reform and move toward 

representative government was replaced with horror when King Louis XVI 

and Queen Marie Antoinette lost their heads on the guillotine in January 
102

1793. Engaging in a sort of collective insanity, the French Republic, now 

under the control of mobs and opportunists, declared war on Great Britain 

the following month.24 The ill-fortune of Europe became Nelson’s good 

fortune. The Royal Navy constituted the nation’s first line of defense 

and now it must put to sea with newly commissioned ships and full-up 

crews—including captains.

Horatio Nelson profited directly by these events, and from his many 

influential, high ranking patrons and his good record. Recalled to active 

duty, Nelson became captain of the brand new ship-of-the line, HMS 

Agamemnon (64). This posting also meant a promotion for the still-young 

officer (34) to a fourth rank captain. Nelson’s own significant odyssey now 

began. He would command Agamemnon until June 1796 just prior to his 

first major act on the stage of history at the battle of Cape St. Vincent.25

Nelson joined the fleet of Admiral Viscount Samuel Hood. Hood, a hero of 

the American war, had become one of Nelson’s patrons while both served 

in the Caribbean and he brought Nelson into the fold of his operations 

in the Mediterranean. This theater of what became a world war would 

dominate the rest of Nelson’s life.26

The French Navy that Hood and Nelson faced was no longer the 

dangerous and sometime successful opponent they had faced fifteen years 

earlier. The Revolution hit La Marine’s officer corps, composed almost 

entirely of aristocrats, especially hard. Learning how to sail and “fight” 

ships significantly differs from the requirements of land warfare. Navies 

cannot be improvised in the same manner that the French Republic was 

able to do with its armies in the early years of the revolution. Too, social 

policies that eliminated class distinctions and hierarchy, especially the 

elimination of the “‘undemocratic rank’ of master gunner” resulted in a 

precipitous decline in French gunnery that resulted in the Royal Navy’s 

almost permanent advantage right through to Trafalgar.27

Toulon, the great French naval base, was especially hard hit by the 

policies and neglect of the Revolution and actually surrendered to Hood’s 

fleet in 1793. The analogy here might be the Confederacy’s loss of New 

Orleans to the North during the American Civil War. At one stroke Britain 

obtained the most valuable port and base on the French Riviera while 

at the same time denying the French their most important shipbuilding 

facility with all of its naval architects and specialized workers. Unlike 

the case of New Orleans, however, the captors soon lost this prize. Hood 

quickly realized that without an army to control the heights surrounding 

the city it would fall to any competently-led army. He dispatched Nelson 

to Naples to procure more troops from the British ally there. Nelson 
103

returned with 2,000 badly-led Neapolitan troops. While in Naples he 

made the acquaintance for the first time of Lady Emma Hamilton, the 

young, beautiful wife of the Ambassador Sir William Hamilton. Also, for 

the first and last time, Nelson had his only direct encounter with the man 

whose nemesis he would become—the young captain of French artillery 

Napoleon Bonaparte. Bonaparte, sent by the government in France to 

oversee the siege of Toulon, had effectively seized control of operations, 

gained control of the heights and then expertly emplaced his beloved 

cannon to blast the Royal Navy and its Spanish allies from the city. Nelson 

noted the accuracy of the shooting and in his memoir noted that, “Shot and 

shell [were] very plentiful all over the harbor.” For the first and last time 

Napoleon bested his British counterparts, driving them from the city and 

bringing a bloody “liberation” soon after. Worse, only three of the twenty 

or so French battleships that were captured when Toulon capitulated were 

brought away and what remained now served as the nucleus for a new 

French Mediterranean fleet. Toulon would remain French for the rest of 

the wars.28

Hood’s loss of Toulon compromised his position in the Mediterranean. 

He proceeded to Corsica, which was in revolt against France, in an attempt 

to re-establish a base there on Napoleon’s home island, initiating sieges of 

the fortresses of Bastia and Calvi. It was during the siege of Calvi, while 

observing the bombardment of the fortress on 8 July 1794, that Nelson 

received his first combat wound from shell fragments to his right eye. The 

damage was permanent and over time Nelson lost all useful sight in this 

eye, sometimes wearing a patch to hide the disfiguration that occurred 

due to poor medical treatment and harsh active duty after the wound. 

Calvi eventually fell, due in no small measure to Nelson’s assistance, 

although his actions at Bastia were critical to the capture of that place.29

In the meantime, Nelson missed the first major British naval victory of 

the war at which many of his later captains and admirals (e.g. Cuthbert 

Collingwood) fought—the Glorious 1st of June as it still is known to the 

British. Here, Admiral Richard “Black Dick” Howe, brother of the famous 

general Lord Howe, laid low a French fleet escorting a convoy of grain 

into Rochefort, killing more than 1200 French sailors and wounding 8,000 

more while capturing six French ships and damaging numerous other 

vessels. However, the French fleet was still very much in being and the 

British blockade still loose enough that the grain made it into port.30

At this point Admiral Hood returned to England leaving the fleet in 

the hands of Admiral William Hotham. Under Hotham’s command the 

principal goal was to prevent the still dangerous French from recapturing 
104

Corsica, and this he accomplished although he refused battle (against 

Nelson’s advice) with the superior French Fleet once it had turned back 

to Toulon. By early 1796, however, a more dynamic admiral assumed 

command of the Mediterranean Fleet and of Nelson—Sir John Jervis. 

Jervis, who had fought with Wolfe at Quebec, took immediately to the fiery 

young Nelson and soon became another of his many important patrons and 

mentors. Jervis’s presence “transformed the spirit of the Mediterranean 

Fleet.” Jervis also promoted Nelson to the most senior rank possible for a 

captain, commodore, since Nelson now routinely commanded more ships 

than just his own. Nelson also transferred his flag to a new battleship, the 

Captain (74).31

By now the Spanish had switched sides in the war and become allied 

to the French. French sea power now included the formidable Spanish 

fleet (and soon the Dutch fleet, which the French captured with a cavalry 

charge when it became unexpectedly icebound that winter). The year 1796 

was a low point for Great Britain on land as well. Bonaparte’s unexpected 

victories in Italy that year turned that theater’s operations into the decisive 

campaign. All of Italy was lost (including Naples) to the rampaging armies. 

With powerful Spanish and French fleets in play the British pulled out of 

the Mediterranean as the Austrians sued for peace in early 1797. The war 

now assumed an entirely naval character and Jervis’s fleet (and Nelson) 

now concentrated on preventing the Spanish fleet from combining with 

the French and ferrying Bonaparte’s victorious legions across the channel 

from Boulogne.32

One of the last groups of British ships to leave the Mediterranean 

belonged to Nelson. Temporarily in command of two captured French 

frigates (La Minerve and Blanche), he had miraculously sailed through 

the main Spanish Fleet at night in the fog. He then proceeded directly 

to Admiral Jervis whom he found on 13 February 1797 off Cape St. 

Vincent on the Portuguese coast (across the Gulf of Cadiz and north 

from Cape Trafalgar). He gave Jervis the critical news that the Spanish 

Fleet had entered the Atlantic. The next day Jervis made contact with 

the superior Spanish Fleet under the command of Admiral Don Jose de 

Cordoba. Cordoba outnumbered Jervis by almost two to one in battleships 

(twenty-seven to fifteen). Jervis formed line of battle and made strait for 

the approaching Spanish Fleet, saying “The die is cast and if there are 

50 sail of line, I will go through them.” The Spanish fleet was divided 

into two groups which were trying to mass, one windward (upwind) and 

one leeward (downwind) from the British. Nelson and his good friend 

Collingwood brought up the rear in Captain and Excellent (64).33
105

At the key moment in the battle Nelson’s portion of the line was closer 

to the Spanish than the head of the column as Jervis took his ships into a 

turn to keep the Spanish divided. Nelson, disobeying the famous standing 

battle orders, wore out of the line without orders and sailed straight for 

the middle of the Spanish column where the most powerful ships sailed, 

including Cordoba’s massive flagship Santissima Trinidad (140). Nelson’s 

aggressiveness and ability to act independently had been known in the 

fleet, but now they were on display for all to see. Jervis aboard the Victory

(100) saw Nelson now engage seven enemy battleships with his one. He 

approved the action and signaled Collingwood and Excellent to support 

him. He then sent out the same signal to the remainder of his ships that 

Nelson himself sent from Victory at Trafalgar, “Engage the enemy more 

closely.” Nelson’s ship should have been obliterated as he endured the 

close but inaccurate fire of the Spanish. Elated by close combat, he rammed 

San Nicholas (80) which had become fouled close aboard with another 

Spanish battleship San Josef (112) and boarded her. Nelson personally 

led the boarding party aboard San Nicholas and took her in violent closequarters fighting. The next action he took was unprecedented and sealed 

his fame—with San Josef still close aboard he continued with his boarding 

party across the San Nicholas and took the larger San Josef as well. 

Meanwhile, Collingwood had pounded three more Spanish ships to pieces 

and taken one of them. Of the four Spanish ships taken, two belonged to 

Nelson. It was a spectacular victory and earned Nelson a Knighthood (of 

the Bath) and promotion to Rear Admiral. The King made Jervis “Earl St. 

Vincent” in honor of the great victory. Spanish sea power remained cowed 

until peace was signed in 1802 at Amiens.34

There still remained French and Dutch fleets to fight as well as the 

Nore and Spithead mutinies of 1797. Once the mutinies were resolved 

Admiral Duncan managed to demolish the Dutch Fleet as a threat at 

Camperdown (11 October 1797). This was a victory nearly as great as 

Trafalgar with the British capturing 13 enemy vessels. Nelson, in the 

meantime, had been sent by Jervis on his first independent assignment 

as an admiral to seize the port of Santa Cruz on Tenerife in the Canary 

Islands. Disaster resulted. Nelson’s audacity had not yet been tempered 

with real failure and he soon found it at Tenerife. He made the classic 

mistake of underestimating his foes and overestimating his own power to 

prevail in leading what was essentially an amphibious assault. He took his 

landing force into an ambush. One of his closest friends was killed in the 

assault and Nelson almost bled to death when his right arm was shattered 

by a musket ball. He was saved only by the quick-thinking of his step-son 
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Josiah who stopped the bleeding with an improvised tourniquet. Nelson 

was rowed back to the nearest ship, ironically named Seahorse, where the 

surgeon immediately amputated the limb. Ashore things went from bad to 

worse with the remainder of the operation a bloody repulse.35 The wound 

did not heal properly and Nelson liberally imbibed opium for the pain. He 

returned to England an opium-sedated wreck who believed his career had 

ended with the loss of his right arm, writing to a friend, “I am become a 

burthen to my friends and useless to my Country.”36

Nelson arrived in England to be met at Bath by his wife Fanny and 

his father on 3 September 1797. His right eye was disfigured, his right 

arm gone, and his hair prematurely gray. Fanny immediately took to the 

task of nursing her broken husband back to health and into a fighting 

fettle. Her actions and his response to them make more difficult to 

understand his later behavior after his great victory on the Nile when 

he repudiated his devoted wife in favor of his beautiful mistress, Lady 

Emma Hamilton. All the major biographers agree, however, that Lady 

Fanny Nelson deserves the bulk of the credit for nursing her husband 

back to health and helping him recover. A.T. Mahan was among the first, 

though, of his biographers to perceptively note the relationship between 

Nelson’s recovery and subsequent cold abandonment of his wife and his 

“...unseemly susceptibility to extravagant adulation...”37 This change in 

character would manifest itself in both his personal and professional lives 

after 1797; the end result was a commander who could be extremely brutal 

and callous to those he regarded as enemies, be it the French, his wife, or 

anyone who supported her in her efforts to regain her husband’s affections.

Nelson’s record at Cape St. Vincent ensured his assignment to the 

critical theater of the war in 1798 under Jervis, the commander-in-chief of 

the Mediterranean Fleet. Nelson raised his flag on Vanguard (74) in late 

March and set sail for the Gulf of Cadiz. Jervis’s confidence in Nelson 

was unbounded. As soon as Nelson arrived to join the fleet on blockade 

duty off Cadiz Jervis detached him on an independent command with a 

small squadron to enter the Mediterranean and keep an eye on the French 

fleet in Toulon. Jervis forwarded another eleven battleships to Nelson in 

May 1798, an unprecedented command for such a junior admiral that 

caused much grumbling among the many admirals senior to him who were 

without sea command. Jervis instructed Nelson to intercept an invasion 

fleet embarking the army of Napoleon Bonaparte and suspected to be 

bound for Egypt. Napoleon’s plans to invade England had been stymied 

by the destruction of the Dutch at Camperdown and a fierce hurricane at 

Boulogne in 1797. Napoleon’s strategy focused on bringing Britain to a 
107

negotiated peace through severing her line of communications with the 

East Indies by capturing Egypt and then continuing, perhaps, on to the real 

prize—India. Nelson’s plan was simple: intercept the invasion fleet and 

destroy Napoleon and his army at sea.38

Jervis’s faith in Nelson was rewarded, but not immediately. Nelson’s 

impatience almost did him in, but he was tenacious in pursuit of his quarry. 

Nelson had been off Toulon prior to his reinforcement but had sailed 

off and then had his small squadron scattered by a storm. On May 19 

Napoleon, escorted by the French fleet under Admiral Brueys, departed. 

Nelson was desperately short of frigates (he had only 3) to provide him 

intelligence and he decided Napoleon’s destination was Naples. Napoleon 

instead went to Malta and conquered it. Nelson realized his mistake 

and decided that Napoleon’s next objective was Alexandria, Egypt. He 

rushed off arriving off Alexandria on 29 June and found nothing. Brueys 

and Napoleon had taken a different route via Crete and sailed far slower 

than Nelson imagined. Nelson missed a great chance by not waiting off 

Alexandria, second-guessing himself and sailing north to Turkey. While 

Nelson sailed north the French arrived and began to debark their troops. 

It seemed that Nelson had lost the game of cat and mouse and missed the 

golden opportunity to destroy both a French army and a French fleet.39

Nelson did not give up. Off Sicily he learned of his mistake and doubled 

back to Alexandria. Late on 1 August he arrived and found the transports 

empty, but Brueys’ thirteen battleships and many smaller warships lay 

anchored close in to shore in the shallow and treacherous (or shoal) water 

of Aboukir Bay. Brueys had unwisely sent half of his gun crews ashore to 

assist Napoleon with the land campaign (Napoleon had won his own great 

battle of the Pyramids on 21 July). He also thought himself unassailable 

so close in to the shore. The final nail in his coffin was the late hour of the 

day. Surely Nelson would not attack in such dangerous waters in the dark! 

Nelson instantly decided to attack.40

Nelson had 15 battleships to 13 of the French, but the French had the 

heavier weight of gunnery (bigger ships and bigger guns). His orders to his 

captains show both his seamanship and his confidence in theirs. He sent 

a signal that required them to engage the French by sailing in the barely 

navigable water where the French line lay anchored. As if this wasn’t hard 

enough, he instructed all of them to anchor by the stern. This meant that 

his ships would be anchoring under fire but once anchored they would be 

at a dead stop and be able to blast their opponents to pieces. Anchoring 

by the stern was not normal practice and difficult for trained crews to 

do. It was hard enough to ask seaman in that day and age to do this in 
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the daytime in normal waters, but at night, in shoal water and under fire, 

reflected a level of confidence in his men and himself that still amazes 

one today. The execution was not without some hiccups. The famous 

Captain Troubridge on Culloden ran aground just north of the French on 

the approach. Several ships performed the anchoring maneuver badly and 

paid with heavy casualties as a result of being out of position. But Nelson’s 

other captains served him well—the lead ship Goliath led part of the line 

inside the French line, creating a double envelopment of the French ships 

in the first part of the line. The French vessels further down the line were 

anchored solid and could not help them. The night sky of Alexandria lit up 

with the din and spectacle of burning French ships as Nelson pounded the 

French fleet to pieces as his ships proceeded down the line. Only Admiral 

Pierre Villeneuve in the rear escaped with two battleships and two frigates. 

The rest of the French fleet—including 11 battleships--was destroyed or 

taken. Nelson, in the thick of the fighting as usual, received a nasty head 

wound. He had not lost a single ship and had fewer than 900 casualties, 

including himself. He had effectively checkmated Napoleon’s strategy by 

stranding the French army in Egypt. When Napoleon attempted to fight his 

way through Ottoman Turkish territory in order to gain passage to Europe 

or even India, he was confounded again by that other great naval hero, Sir 

Sydney Smith, who successfully led the defense of Acre, forcing Napoleon 

to turn back. In 1799 Napoleon abandoned his army and withdrew to 

France where he took over the government in a coup d’etat.

41

After the Nile Nelson’s fame reached unparalleled heights. The Sultan 

of Turkey presented him with an elaborate diamond spray that Nelson 

wore on his impossibly large bicorn hat. The King rewarded him with a 

peerage as Lord Nelson, Baron of the Nile and his income doubled while 

he received from the grateful East India Company a ten thousand pound 

gift. He was the darling of the press and had reached what today is known 

as “rock star” status. All of the complaining against both Nelson and Jervis 

ceased, Jervis feeling more than vindicated by his decision to give the 

young admiral a chance to strike a key blow. Many historians consider 

the Nile Nelson’s most important victory, strategically and tactically. The 

British position in the Mediterranean remained secure for the rest of the 

wars to 1815. The French themselves think the Nile his greatest feat—a 

1988 scholarly study declared, “[Nelson’s victory marked] the end of the 

French navy as a force capable of counterbalancing British power. It could 

not be put together again and Aboukir carried within itself the germ of 

Trafalgar.”42

Nelson returned to Naples where he was feted by the King and 
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Queen and his friends Sir William and Lady Emma Hamilton. He had 

not seen the Hamiltons in over five years. His superstar fame now went 

to his head. Historians are agreed that his behavior now betrayed the 

ruthless and self-serving side of his character. In addition to beginning 

a very public (and thus for Fanny, humiliating) affair with the beautiful 

Lady Emma Hamilton, Nelson allowed himself to be manipulated by the 

scheming Bourbon monarchs of Naples, especially the sister of Marie 

Antoinette, Maria Carolina the Queen. In 1798 the French had completed 

their conquest of Italy and declared a republic in Naples, forcing the 

Bourbons to take refuge in Sicily and on Nelson’s ships.43 With the return 

of the Allies to Italy under Marshal A.A. Suvorov in 1799 the Bourbons 

reoccupied Naples and used Nelson to imprison, mistreat, and execute 

many political prisoners. It was possibly the lowest point of Nelson’s 

career as he carelessly trifled with his mistress while he let his men and 

ships be used for political repression and murder by the amoral and corrupt 

Bourbons. Meanwhile he had impregnated Emma, who was still married 

to Sir William. Nelson and Emma decided, after Napoleon’s victory 

a Marengo, to return to Great Britain by land through central Europe. 

Nelson relinquished his command on 12 July 1800. He and the Hamiltons, 

accompanied by a large retinue, then embarked upon a self-serving “grand 

tour” through Austria and Germany, Nelson receiving accolades wherever 

he went. The party finally arrived in England in early November. It had 

been more than two years since his great victory yet everywhere they went 

the strange ménage a trois of Nelson and the Hamiltons received wild 

and adulatory receptions. Only at Blenheim Palace were they snubbed by 

the Duke of Blenheim, scion of the famous Churchill family. Perhaps the 

best comment on Nelson comes from his former army comrade Sir John 

Moore, who remarked upon seeing him in Genoa prior to his grand tour, 

“He is covered with stars, ribbons and medals, more like the Prince of the 

Opera than the Conqueror of the Nile. It is really melancholy to see a brave 

and good man, who has deserved well of his country, cutting so pitiful a 

figure.”44

Fortunately for Nelson, French victories in Italy and then Germany 

caused the Russian Tsar, the unstable Paul I, to abandon his alliance with 

Austria and Britain and declare a League of Armed Neutrality among the 

Baltic states that was clearly aimed at the highhanded actions of the British 

Navy and the way it treated neutral ships and impressed their sailors. The 

Tsar was further irritated that the British refused to acknowledge his claim 

to Malta, which the British had recaptured from the French in 1800. Of 

these states the most important was Denmark, with a large and well trained 
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fleet of 23 battleships. Too, the Baltic region provided the balance of naval 

stores for Great Britain, thus any interruption of these supplies threatened 

the materiel basis of British naval power.45 The Admiralty recalled Nelson 

to active duty and in early 1801 assigning him as second-in-command of a 

fleet commanded by Vice Admiral Sir Hyde Parker. Parker’s orders from 

the Admiralty advised caution and instructed him to apply gentle pressure 

by way of a blockade while negotiations took place. He was to avoid 

giving offense and causing Sweden, Denmark and Russia to combine their 

fleets, which would outnumber him over four to one. Parker kept Nelson 

in the dark about his plans and refused to share his thoughts with his 

famous subordinate. Only after the Danes rejected an ultimatum to leave 

the League did Parker consult his admirals, although they had intelligence 

that the Danes were fortifying Copenhagen and preparing for battle.46

Parker and Nelson approached Copenhagen in late March in two 

divisions, the van commanded by Nelson and Parker with the main body. 

Some of the fortresses at the end of the approach shelled them, but most 

of the batteries within range remained silent as Parker and Nelson took 

stock of the situation. Between them they had 19 battleships. Nelson had 

finally gained Parker’s confidence during the voyage and Parker wisely 

gave the balance of the force, 11 battleships and 18 other smaller warships 

to Nelson, leaving the planning for an attack, should the need arise, to 

Nelson. Nelson installed himself on Elephant (74), command by the 

audacious Captain Foley who had sailed inside the French line at the Nile 

on his own initiative. Nelson’s plan to attack the neutral Danes was simple 

and violent. He would approach the anchored Danish Fleet from the south 

while Admiral Parker’s ships remained to the north to reinforce success or 

ward off the Russians and Swedes. He relied on a frigate to sound out the 

channel for the main body. The battle was very much like that at Aboukir, 

a bloody pounding at close range, but the Danes fought much longer and 

harder. During the height of the battle the worried Parker sent Nelson a 

signal of recall and Nelson famously clapped his telescope to his blind 

eye saying out loud, “I really do not see the signal!” At the same time as 

his fleet smashed the Danish ships and shore batteries to pieces his bomb 

ketches sent fiery salvos into the city, setting it afire and indiscriminately 

killing and wounding civilians along with military defenders. (This might 

be regarded as the first instance of “strategic bombing” in modern history.) 

The Danes finally agreed to a cease fire when Nelson threatened to set 

afire several floating batteries he had captured and used to hold his Danish 

prisoners. The Danes suffered forty per-cent casualties in their fleet and 

land defenses. The British suffered almost 1000 casualties, including 
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253 killed. Tensions remained high for the next five days as Nelson 

negotiated with the Crown Prince of Denmark and his advisors. After five 

days he threatened to bombard Copenhagen again, whereupon the Danes 

capitulated and signed an armistice.47

It had been a messy battle, Nelson’s sloppiest. Three of his ships had 

run aground. It had also been his riskiest, but the outcome caused the 

League of Armed Neutrality to collapse and precipitated the assassination 

of Tsar Paul, who was replaced by his son Alexander. Nelson’s willpower 

and ruthlessness were rewarded as he replaced Hyde Parker as commanderin-chief. Nelson graciously defended Parker against those who wanted a 

court of inquiry. Afterwards he returned home and during the period of 

negotiations with the French prior to the peace of 1802 commanded the 

defensive forces in the channel, launching an ill-conceived commando 

raid against Boulogne to destroy parts of the French invasion fleet and 

bateaux. The French Admiral Louis Latouche-Treville expected him and 

the result was similar to Tenerife, except that this time Nelson did not lead 

the landing force personally but remained on his flagship. Neither did he 

lose an arm. Over 150 men were killed and wounded. However, Nelson 

was so famous and beloved by this time that nothing could dim the shine 

of his star. With peace he returned to the settled domestic country house 

he had set up with Emma and their young daughter Horatia, his break with 

Fanny complete.48

The peace between Great Britain and France lasted barely a year. On 

14 May 1803 Great Britain declared war on France. Nelson was appointed 

commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean Fleet and assigned to watch 

his old enemy Admiral Latouche-Treville the same day. Two days later 

he boarded Victory (100), Jervis’s flagship at St. Vincent, and hoisted his 

flag.49 He was back with the fleet he loved and that loved him.

Napoleon’s strategy aimed at gaining temporary command of the 

narrow seas of the English Channel in order to cross with an army of 

over 150,000 of the finest troops in Europe. However, gaining command 

of the sea meant that the French Navy must defeat or damage the Royal 

Navy—or perhaps deceive it and draw enough of it away—so that the 

invasion would have a reasonable chance of success. Simply put, the 

French strategy was an invasion that would enable Napoleon to dictate 

terms to a conquered British nation. British strategy was equally simple—

to blockade the French, and later Spanish, fleets in their ports so they could 

not escort the invasion flotilla.

On 26 August 1805 Imperial French Headquarters issued orders to 
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the Grande Armée (now some 210,000 troops) to turn east and abandon 

its positions along the English Channel for the invasion of Great Britain. 

Napoleon’s decision to do this had occurred even earlier. Since Trafalgar 

was some two months distant in the future one can categorically state 

that Trafalgar was not the reason for the suspension of the cross-channel 

invasion. The Royal Navy’s blockade was the decisive element that 

defeated Napoleon’s strategy—given its art and elegance it was surely a 

military operation that the subtle Sun Tzu would have appreciated.50 The 

British strategy accomplished its successful result not with a naval battle 

for the ages, but rather with the slow, steady application of superior sea 

power over a period of two years. This in turn was augmented by the 

relentless offensive energy of admirals like Nelson, who literally hunted 

down any French or Spanish ship concentrations that managed to slip by 

the blockade into the open sea. In the end, it was the systemic effects 

of the British blockade combined with the superior training, tactics, and 

leadership of the Royal Navy that accomplished this result. 

One must give both the French Navy and Napoleon due credit for 

operationally creating the conditions which might have given the invasion 

force a fighting chance. The great operational problem for the French 

and Spanish fleets was their inability to mass due to the blockade. If the 

majority of the separate fleets at Brest, Toulon, Cadiz, and other points 

could only combine they might be able to defeat, or at least drive away, the 

British fleet guarding the English Channel. The only way to do this would 

be to try to divide the British fleet and then during the period of separation 

enter the Channel and do battle with the isolated element there. This would 

be difficult, since the British had large squadrons of battleships blockading 

all the major ports, under a number of very competent admirals: Nelson, 

Cornwallis and Keith in particular. The main British fleet—the Channel 

Fleet—was not even under Nelson but under Admiral Cornwallis with 

another strong squadron under Admiral Keith in reserve. Nelson’s task 

was to watch the French under Admiral Villeneuve bottled up in the 

Mediterranean port of Toulon on the south coast of France. Villeneuve had 

replaced the more competent Latouche-Treville who had died in August 

1804.51

Admiral Villeneuve had done battle with Nelson before—off the Nile. 

Recall that Villeneuve’s Guillaume Tell was one of only two battleships 

to escape Nelson after the battle. Upon the resumption of hostilities in 

1803 Villeneuve was in command of a squadron in the West Indies. He 

later commanded the French Squadron based out of Rochefort on the 

French Atlantic coast. He was actually junior to Admirals Denis Decrés 
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and Joseph Ganteaume. Ganteaume had the main French fleet at Brest. 

However, despite Villeneuve’s junior status and deep respect, perhaps fear, 

of Nelson, he was to be the instrument to obtain command of the sea in the 

English Channel.52

Napoleon needed a way to diminish or remove the British naval 

dominance from the Channel and devised a daring plan to divide the British 

fleet. Nelson and the Admiralty believed that Napoleon would again try to 

attack their lines of communication between Britain and the East Indies 

by attacking either Malta or Egypt (as he had done in 1798) as one way to 

distract the Royal Navy. Instead, Napoleon ordered Villeneuve to break out 

of Toulon and sail west in order to threaten the British colonies in the West 

Indies, a tactic the French had employed during the American Revolution. 

En route, Villeneuve would combine his fleet (eleven battleships and 6,400 

troops) with a Spanish fleet under Admiral Carlos Gravina. It was hoped 

that Nelson would follow Villeneuve across the globe. If all went well 

Villeneuve would combine his force with whatever other French ships had 

broken out and made it to the Indies. In the meantime, it was hoped that 

the main fleet under Ganteaume would break out and proceed into the 

channel to cover the invasion. If Ganteaume did not break out on his own 

Villeneuve’s return with a combined Franco-Spanish fleet might be the 

agent for concentration of all three fleets, which would then press into the 

Channel either for battle or to cover the invasion, whichever occurred first. 

Unfortunately, Napoleon never sat his admirals down and explained the 

entire scheme to them, so that they often knew only the bare minimum of 

the details and then only after they had put to sea and opened their sealed 

orders. This was a recipe for disaster.53

Napoleon’s plan had many moving parts and relied on almost perfect 

synchronization between the various French and Spanish squadrons in 

order to mass in the correct place and at the correct time. It also relied 

on Nelson taking the bait and proceeding to the Indies in hot pursuit 

of Villeneuve. It came very close to success in achieving the desired 

concentration. By early 1805, many of the British ships had been at sea 

for over a year and were in need of repair and the crews were in need of 

rest. It was at this opportune time that Villeneuve made his first attempt 

to execute Napoleon’s instructions. However, poor weather and the poor 

condition of the French ships, which had been cooped up in Toulon for 

over a year, forced Villeneuve to return to Toulon. However, Villeneuve’s 

first attempt had caused Nelson to make a grave error. He assumed that 

Villeneuve was sailing for Alexandria in Egypt as Napoleon had done in 

1798. By February 7, 1805 Nelson and his thirteen ships-of-the-line had 
114

arrived off Alexandria, but they were in very poor condition. This was not 

only a result of their lengthy time at sea since the outbreak of war, but also 

due to the Admiralty’s failure to perform hull-maintenance on many of 

them during the respite offered by the Treaty of Amiens. 

When the French fleet was not found, Nelson pressed back across the 

Mediterranean, still convinced that Villeneuve’s objective was Egypt. It 

was because of this notion that Villeneuve’s second attempt to break out 

and join with the Spanish succeeded. Nelson had precious few frigates 

to watch for Villeneuve and he chose to use these to watch the routes to 

the east and only one route to the west. Villeneuve cagily slipped out of 

Toulon on March 30 and then passed north of the Balearic Islands. By 

9 April his slow moving ships were in Cadiz, Spain and had combined 

with the Spanish under Gravina. This combined fleet now proceeded to 

Martinique in the French West Indies. The combined Franco-Spanish fleet 

had eighteen battleships and over 5,000 troops—a month later it was in 

Martinique.

Meanwhile Nelson had again proceeded east to pursue a phantom 

French Fleet he thought was bound for Egypt. He was in the Central 

Mediterranean when he finally received word that Villeneuve was bound 

for the West Indies. Nelson immediately gave chase and by 4 May, 1805 

he was at the Strait of Gibraltar taking on stores for an Atlantic crossing. 

Villeneuve had a month’s head start and it seemed almost sure that 

Napoleon’s plan must work. It was now that British seamanship and French 

indecision played their fateful roles. Villeneuve had secondary orders to 

attack Barbados but waited until 9 June to double back across the Atlantic 

and join up, hopefully, with Admiral Ganteaume to cross the Channel. 

Nelson and his fleet were in the meantime accomplishing the 

impossible, pressing across the Atlantic in three weeks in their leaky 

under-maintained ships—an act of incredible seamanship. They shaved 

off critical weeks from Villeneuve’s head start. In fact, Nelson arrived on 

June 4 and was already hunting for Villeneuve. Once Villeneuve learned 

of Nelson’s presence, he set course for the Bay of Biscay and a hoped-for 

juncture with Ganteaume. Although this was probably the right strategic 

move, it lowered the morale of the Franco-Spanish fleet, which saw only 

that they were again running away. Nelson soon learned of Villeneuve’s 

departure and immediately dispatched the brig Curieux across the Atlantic 

to inform the Admiralty of Villeneuve’s impending arrival, perhaps in 

the Channel itself. Again, superior British seamanship prevailed and 

Curieux passed word to the Admiralty of Villeneuve’s approach as well as 

Nelson’s own return (he had provisioned and set sail about a week after he 
115

dispatched the Curieux.) It was at this point that Nelson temporarily drops 

from the story.

With Nelson’s intelligence in hand, Admiral Cornwallis raised his 

blockade of Brest and dispatched a subordinate squadron of ships under 

Admiral Sir Robert Calder to intercept Villeneuve. Villeneuve collided 

with Calder in the fog off Cape Finisterre (northwestern Spain) on 22 July 

in a tactically indecisive action. Its results, however, were strategically 

decisive. Superior British gunnery caused the surrender of two French 

ships. This was enough to cause Villeneuve to pull back into the Spanish 

port of Vigo. Ganteaume, unaware that Cornwallis had raised the blockade 

serenely remained in port so that by late July any hope of a juncture with 

Villeneuve was gone. Ironically, Calder was criticized for his strategic 

victory because he had not captured or sunk more enemy ships. He bore 

the stigma of having not destroyed Villeneuve’s fleet for the rest of his 

career.54

Not long after these events Nelson, again sailing across the Atlantic 

quicker than a French frigate might, returned to the European waters. 

He had been constantly at sea for over two years, sailing over 10,000 

nautical miles in 1805 alone. Villeneuve and Gravina remained united 

but blockaded in Cadiz (to which they had moved on August 20) and 

Ganteaume remained under blockade in Brest. Nelson now took the 

opportunity to try to repair his worn ships and rest his tired seamen while 

maintaining his vigil off Cadiz.

Finally, it must be emphasized that Napoleon’s aggressive actions in 

Europe combined with the jealousy and resentment these created among 

the other great powers of Europe. Napoleon’s aggrandizing actions in no 

small measure contributed to the achievement of a long-term goal of British 

diplomacy—the formation a Third Coalition composed of Austria, Russia, 

Great Britain and several lesser powers to renew the continental conflict 

with France. Had this coalition not formed Napoleon might have remained 

with this army along the English Channel. However, he now had threats to 

his strategic backdoor, as it were, and had to completely recast his strategy 

in the light of new realities. The long blockade operations which stymied 

Napoleon’s strategy vis-à-vis Britain had contributed substantially to the 

favorable political environment of 1805. Nevertheless, the Royal Navy did 

not rest on its laurels and Nelson, especially, planned for the destruction of 

Villeneuve’s component of Franco-Spanish sea power.

Historians have argued that Trafalgar was won before the first shot. 

This is probably true based on the discussions above, nonetheless some 
116

hard fighting had to be done and so we return to Nelson’s masterpiece to 

see how it all played out in execution.55

The last minutes of the approach were harrowing as the lead ships 

of each column traveled under the heavy and concentrated fire of the 

combined fleet . Nelson was in Victory at the head of the northwestern 

column and Collingwood was in Royal Sovereign (100) at the head of 

the southeastern one (the French were heading north, back to port). This 

provides more evidence of the superiority of the British system since the 

loss of both ships would mean the loss of the two flag officers—however, 

they were no longer absolutely necessary for success in the overall battle 

and became more or less fighting members of the crew of the ship they 

were on. Collingwood won the race and Royal Sovereign crashed into the 

rear portion of the French-Spanish fleet just past noon. He had minimized 

his casualties by having his sailors lie down during the final minutes of 

the approach so he would have every man possible to work the guns and 

deliver the first devastating broadsides, simultaneously, into the ships on 

his left and right as he pierced Villeneuve’s line. This tactic, combined with 

the excellent British gunnery accounts for the extremely high casualties 

aboard the French and Spanish ships as the British cannonballs traveled 

the entire longitudinal expanse of their opponents’ ships. The French and 

Spanish could reply only with the relatively few guns mounted on the bow 

and stern of their vessels.56

The battle now became a melee as Nelson’s Victory plowed between 

Villeneuve’s flagship Bucentaure (80) and the battleship behind her, 

Redoubtable (74). The French gunners had had much better success against 

Victory, which lost many of her sails and had had her helm shot away, 

yet her momentum carried her ahead as planned. Victory’s point blank 

broadsides into the two French ships caused horrendous casualties. Not 

long after, a sharpshooter aboard Redoubtable (74) sighted the be-medaled 

Nelson, who had refused to take cover below decks, took a bead, and fired. 

The ball hit Nelson in the left shoulder and then ricocheted through his 

lung, finally lodging in his spine. This mortal combination of wounds led 

to Nelson’s slow and painful death. Redoubtable now prepared to board 

the ailing Victory but her boarding party was wiped out by a devastating 

broadside from the Téméraire (98), following in line behind Victory.57

Much of the remainder of the battle followed this same pattern of 

devastating close combat, but in all cases the British had the better of it 

up and down the line. Meanwhile, Villeneuve was frantically signaling 

his van under the French Admiral Dumanoir to come about to assist in 

the battle. Dumanoir did not see the initial signals due to the smoke of 
117

battle and continued sailing toward Cadiz. It was only at 3 PM that he 

came about. By this time about fifteen ships of the combined fleet had 

struck their colors (surrendered), including Villeneuve aboard Bucentaure. 

Virtually all of them were blazing charnel houses full of dead and dying 

men. What remained of the French van, unable to affect the outcome of the 

battle, fled to Cadiz. Not a single British vessel had been lost. Nelson died 

around 4:30 PM, but he died with the knowledge that his men had won 

the most complete victory at sea ever obtained by a modern sailing fleet.58

In total, the British captured ten French and ten Spanish ships, however 

a subsequent storm damaged or sank many of these and the British were 

only able to salvage four battleships and add them to the Royal Navy’s 

order of battle. British casualties at Trafalgar numbered 449 killed and 

1,241 wounded. French and Spanish casualties, including prisoners, were 

almost ten times that of the British, to include over 4,000 killed alone. 

Several days later, four of the French ships that had escaped Nelson 

sortied from Cadiz, were intercepted, attacked, and captured by the British 

Admiral Sir Richard Strachan.59 Thus the Royal Navy gained eight new 

battleships as a result of Nelson’s and Strachan’s battles.

* * * * * * * * * *

Nelson lusted for battle with his country’s enemies, there is no better 

word for it. The way he crafted his plans, inspired his subordinates, and 

executed his operations and battles also reveal a remarkable intellect. 

However, like Alexander the Great, he seemed actually to enjoy close 

combat—whether as a young lieutenant or as Britain’s most famous 

and esteemed fighting admiral near the end of his life.60 His legacy to 

admiralship, then, consists of energetic decision in action, animated by 

enlightened leadership, moral courage, calculated ruthlessness, and 

intellectual and technical mastery of the art of war at sea. This remains a 

tall order for any would-be commander, general or admiral, today and in 

the future.

However, in another way he simply represents the extreme type 

of a tradition of aggressive British admirals in the age of sail. These 

include peers like Sidney Smith, Cornwallis, St. Vincent, Duncan, and of 

course the incomparable second-in-command Collingwood as well as an 

illustrious string of earlier admirals such as Hawke, Rodney, Hood, and 

Howe. No one has ever captured this better than the defeated Villeneuve 

who remarked on the impact of Nelson’s death:

To any other nation, the loss of Nelson would have been irreparable; 

but in the British fleet off Cadiz, every captain was a Nelson.61
118

Notes

1. Julian Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy with an introduction and notes by Eric J. Grove (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press Reprint, 

1988, originally published 1911), 318. Sir Julian Corbett defines command of the 

sea in this classic work and is, along with Captain A.T. Mahan, one of the founders of modern naval theory. Corbett was among the first to imply that Nelson’s 

legacy had some long term negative effects on British naval officer corps, see 

162-163 in the same book.

2. These were Nelson’s own words for his battle plan for Trafalgar relayed 

to former British Prime Minister Henry Addington in the summer of 1805. See 

Colin White, The Nelson Encyclopaedia. (London.: Chatham Publishing, 2002), 

236; as well as the biography entitled The Nelson Touch by Terry Coleman that 

also came out in 2002.

3. See The Pursuit of Victory: The Life and Achievement of Horatio Nelson 

(New York: Basic Books, 2005), 501-508. Knight includes a picture of Nelson’s 

original hand drawn sketch for the battle. The account of Napoleon’s conference 

with his Marshals can be found in David Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon

(New York: MacMillan, 1966), 422.

4. Knight, 506-507; 139-140. Carronades were large caliber short range 

guns that could fire more rapidly than standard naval artillery and were nicknamed “smashers” in the fleet. They were useless at even medium ranges but 

deadly in close.

5. Peter Hore, The Habit of Victory (London: The National Maritime Museum, 2005), 178-180.

6. Knight, 510-511.

7. Knight, 511-512. “Wearing” is different than “tacking” into the wind, 

tacking requires better seamanship and could lead to a more confused formation if 

executed improperly. However, wearing was a slower, easier technique involving 

a gradual turn. In executing the slower maneuver Villeneuve last valuable time. 

See John Keegan, The Price of Admiralty (New York: Viking, 1988), 60. Keegan 

believes Villeneuve was trying to escape Nelson, Knight, on the other hand, assesses that the Villeneuve’s response was also the correct one based on the direction of the winds and of Nelson’s approach.

8. Knight, 514.

9. Tom Pocock, Horatio Nelson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), 1; 

Knight, 3-7.

10. Knight, 8, 11, 15. This paper uses the term battleship to apply to shipsof-the-line. These were the largest ships and the determining factor was their 

number of guns, usually any amount of 50 or more heavy guns would earn a ship 

this classification.

11. Knight, 14-15; only a third of midshipmen from 1771-1782 came from 
119

the aristocratic class.

12. Hore, 139-142.

13. Knight, xxxiv.

14. Ibid., 25-26.

15. Ibid, 26. The standard convention of listing the number of guns for ships 

in parenthesis will be used for the remainder of this paper. In this case Triumph

had 74 guns, making her a medium sized ship of the line.

16. Ibid, 26-27.

17. Knight, 27-39.

18. Ibid, 39. Lieutenant is the first commissioned rank in the royal navy 

and seniority determined pecking order. Normally a ship of Worcester’s size rated 

only three lieutenants, but with an Admiral aboard it was not uncommon to assign 

another, in this case Suckling used his connections to get Horace the job if not the 

title so as to give him real lieutenant experience that he knew would help him for 

the oral examination.

19. Knight, 25, cited from ‘Sketch of my Life’ by Rear-Admiral Lord Nelson 

and published when he became famous after the Battle of the Nile.

20. Ibid, 41, 682. A post captain is a captain of the sixth rank, that is a captain of a frigate or larger warship.

21. Knight, 43-44, 47-49. The battle of Quiberon Bay in 1759 was to the 

Seven Years’ War what Trafalgar was to the Napoleonic era. Hawke entered 

shallow and dangerous shoal waters with his fleet to defeat the French fleet that 

thought itself safe. Nelson would replicate this feat to a much greater degree at the 

Nile.

22. Knight, 54, 59, 62-64.

23. Ibid, 96-98, 114, 565-569.

24. Arthur Herman, To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the 

Modern World (New York: Harper Collins, 2004), 330-331; Knight, 118, 133.

25. Knight,144, 606.

26. Herman, 333; Knight154-155, 645. Many have said that had Hood commanded at the Virginia Capes, Yorktown might have been a hollow victory for 

Washington as Cornwallis might have escaped by sea, see A.T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 (Boston, MA: Little Brown and Co., 

1894), 476.

27. Herman, 333.

28. Herman, 333-336. Knight,157, 165. Admittedly, this nucleus was small. 

Nine French battleships were burned by Sir Sidney Smith, next to Nelson probably the second greatest British naval hero of the age. He and Nelson loathed each 

other. Hood tried to evacuate as many civilians who wanted to avoid the slaughter 
120

as possible, taking some 7500 refugees (Herman gives 15,000) with him on his 

ships that were already packed with troops.

29. Pocock, 113, 118.

30. Herman, 340-341.

31. Pocock, 121, 126-127, 345.

32. Herman, 342-343, 345. An earlier attempt to invade Ireland had been 

frustrated by a single frigate under Captain Edward Pelew of Horatio Hornblower

fame and foul weather.

33. Pocock, 128-129; Herman, 345-36. 

34. Herman, 346-349; Pocock, 130-133, 148; A.T. Mahan, The Life of Nelson: The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain, Vol, I. (Boston, MA: 

Little Brown and Co., 1897), 271-275.

35. Herman, 353; Pocock, 135-145. The British lost over 150 men killed in 

this fiasco. The Spanish were shocked at the scale of their victory and generously 

returned all Nelson’s wounded to him under a flag of truce. 

36. Cited in Mahan, The Life of Nelson, 306.

37. For representative examples see Pocock, 148; Knight, 557; and, especially, Mahan, 314-316.

38. Knight, 266-267; Herman, 353.

39. Herman, 353-356; Knight, 577.

40. Ibid., 356-357; Hore, 150.

41. See Knight, xxxi-xxxv, for a detailed description of Nelson’s famous 

signals at the Nile. See also Chandler, Part IV for a complete discussion of Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign.

42. Knight, 302-303, 307; see also Richard Natkiel, Atlas of Maritime History (New York: Facts on File, 1980), 90.

43. Herman, 360-365; Knight, 307-345.

44. Herman, 360-365; Knight, 307-345. For a discussion of Suvorov’s campaign see John T. Kuehn, ”Suvorov’s Folly, Tactics and the Second Coalition of 

1799,” in the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, 1750 – 1850, Selected Papers 

2006, High Point University Press, N.C., 2007, 156-171.

45. Herman, 365.

46. Ibid., 366; Pocock, 232-233.

47. Herman, 366-367; Pocock, 236-240.

48. Pocock, 249-251, 281-286; Herman, 367-368, 370.

49. Herman, 372-373.

50. Sun Tzu (Sunzi), The Art of War, trans. S.B. Griffiths (Oxford: Oxford 
121

University Press,1963), 77. “To Subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of 

skill.”

51. Vincent J. Esposito and John R. Elting, A Military History and Atlas of 

the Napoleonic Wars (New York: Praeger, 1966), map 45 and facing page text. 

See also Knight, 469-469. Latouche’s strategy of playing cat and mouse with a 

“fleet in being” was slowly wearing Nelson’s ships out.

52. Ibid. 

53. Knight, 480.

54. Keegan, 27-30. Hore, 169. Keegan is among those who portray Calder 

in a poor light and argue that events surrounding Villeneuve’s retreat were not 

strategically decisive. He makes no mention of the fact that Napoleon abandoned 

his invasion attempt and subsequently dispatched a replacement to relieve Villeneuve. Hore’s judgment is fairer calling Calder’s action “one of the decisive 

events of the whole war.”

55. Herman, 386, relays that the French and Spanish certainly already felt 

defeated, see also Knight, 501-507 who does not state this explicitly but implies 

it.

56. Pocock, 322: Knight, 515-518.

57. Ibid., 327-328. 

58. Knight, 519.

59. Ibid., 520.

60. See Ibid., 374, for an account of Nelson being “in the highest of spirits” 

immediately prior to his bloody victory at Copenhagen in 1801. John Keegan addresses Alexander’s lust for battle in Mask of Command (New York: The Viking 

Press, 1987), 13, 87-91.

61. Cited in Herman, 395.

123

Chapter 5

John J. Pershing

“The Very Model of A Modern Major General?”

by Richard S. Faulkner, Ph.D.

When the news of the impending Armistice reached him at his 

headquarters at Chaumont at 6 a.m. on 11 November 1918, General John 

J. Pershing had every reason to reflect upon his seventeen-month tenure as 

the commander of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in France. 

He commanded the largest American army yet assembled and oversaw 

the efforts of doughboys scattered across France from the battlefields 

of the Meuse-Argonne to the ports of Brest and St. Nazaire. Perhaps 

Pershing also considered the massive changes in warfare and generalship 

that had occurred over his thirty-two years in uniform. When Pershing 

entered active service as a cavalry officer in 1886, his world was one of 

horses, single-shot carbines and the occasional Gatling Gun or mountain 

howitzer. In those days, the army’s strength hovered around 28,000 men. 

On 11 November 1918, Pershing ‘s world was one of rapid firing artillery, 

tanks, machine guns, aircraft, and the industrial- strength logistics and 

administration of an army of two million men in the AEF alone.

When one thinks of the famous commanders in history, the image 

that often comes to mind is the “great man on horseback”: the general 

leading his army to battlefield victory by his charisma and battlefield 

presence, valor and skill. However, in the late 19th and early 20th century, 

the dramatic increase in the size of armies and the growing complexity 

of moving, supplying and leading them fundamentally changed the role 

and expectations of senior-level command in war. The era’s arch militarytechnocrat, Alfred von Schlieffen, argued—

The modern commander-in-chief is no Napoleon who stands with his 

brilliant suite upon a hill...The commander is further to the rear in a house 

with roomy offices, where telegraph and wireless, telephone and signaling 

instruments are at hand, while a fleet of automobiles and motorcycles, 

ready for the longest trips, wait for orders. Here in the comfortable chair 

before a large table, the modern Alexander overlooks the entire battlefield 

on a map. From here he telephones inspiring words, and here he receives 

the reports from army and corps commanders and from balloons and 

dirigibles which observe the enemy’s movements and detect his positions.1

In this new age, the “great captains” of war now acted less like Napoleon 

at Austerlitz and more like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and 
124

the “great captains” of industry. In fact, the American military reformer 

General J. Franklin Bell went as far to note in 1906—

Though differing in many important respects, there is a certain 

parallelism between the management of armies and the management of 

large business enterprises. The management of an army, and each of its 

Figure 5. General John J. Pershing, General Headquarters, Chaumont, 

France, 19 October 1918.

Photo by 2d. Lt. L.J. Rode
125

units, should, as far as practicable, resemble that of any large, highly 

organized business undertaking. We need to study common sense business 

methods, which have demonstrated their soundness beyond cavil.2

Although foreshadowed by Ulysses Grant’s experiences in 1864-

1865, John J. Pershing was the first American general to exemplify the 

“great managerial commander” of the modern age. 

Before diving into the subject, it is important to reiterate exactly 

what is meant by the term “great commander.” A “great commander” 

is that leader who best understands and exploits the realities of warfare 

as practiced at his time. This understanding places the commander in a 

position to craft and execute operations that achieve the strategic endstate 

of the war with the most efficient use of resources at his disposal relative 

to the enemy and the military conditions of his moment in history. The 

“great commander” has the ability to overcome or capitalize on the social, 

political and economic circumstances upon which his army is built and, 

ultimately, on his skill at using that army to defeat the enemy at the strategic 

level of war. Using this definition, Pershing falls somewhat short in some 

areas of “greatness” while clearly excelling in others.

John Joseph Pershing was born in Laclede, Missouri, on 13 September 

1860. Upon graduating from the North Missouri Normal School, he 

embarked upon a brief career as a teacher in a rural one room schoolhouse. 

In 1882, Pershing, growing weary of the staid life of a schoolmaster and 

hoping to expand his opportunities and horizons, accepted an appointment 

to the United States Military Academy. Although a rather mediocre 

scholar, his leadership abilities and military skills won Pershing the 

coveted position of cadet first captain in his senior year at the academy.3

He graduated 30th in a class of 77 cadets in 1886 and was commissioned 

in the cavalry.

During his time at West Point, Pershing became acquainted with Robert 

Bullard, Payton March and other officers who would later serve with him, 

or influence his actions as the commander of the American Expeditionary 

Forces (AEF). At West Point Pershing also developed his lifelong views of 

military discipline and the role of the commander. Pershing’s approach to 

obedience and order was best reflected in his directive, “General Principles 

Governing the Training of Units of the American Expeditionary Forces.” 

In it he directed—

All officers and soldiers should realize that at no time in our history 

had discipline been so important; therefore discipline of the highest order 

must be exacted at all times. The standards of the American Army will 
126

be those of West Point. The rigid attention, upright bearing, attention to 

detail, uncomplaining obedience to instructions required of the cadets will 

be required of every officer and soldier of our Armies in France. Failure 

to attain such discipline will be treated as a lack of capacity on the part of 

the commander to create in the subordinate that intensity of purpose and 

willing acceptance of hardship which are necessary to success in battle.4

While this unbending vision of discipline was well-suited to cadets and 

hard-bitten regulars, it was perhaps not the best way of dealing with the 

citizen soldiers who filled the ranks of the AEF. This ensured that whereas 

Pershing was a respected (and feared) commander, he never exhibited 

the warmth and “common touch” that would inspire or endear him to the 

average doughboy. 

Upon graduating from West Point, Pershing arrived in the American 

West just in time to fight the remaining Apache bands in Arizona and to 

participate in the last great Indian campaign: the Ghost Dance War of 

1890. Following this stint on the closing frontier, the War Department 

assigned Pershing to the University of Nebraska as the school’s chief 

military instructor. During this four year assignment, he also completed 

a law degree.5

The outbreak of the Spanish American War found Pershing serving 

as a tactical officer at West Point. His strict enforcement of the academy’s 

regulations, and the subsequent unpopularity that flowed from this, led his 

cadets to give him the irreverent nickname “Black Jack” for his previous 

service with the African American 10th Cavalry.6

 After wrangling a release 

from his duties at West Point, Pershing returned to the 10th Cavalry 

and accompanied it to Cuba in June 1898. Although he was acting as 

the regimental quartermaster, Pershing often found himself close to the 

action during the attacks on Kettle and San Juan Hills. The 10th Cavalry’s 

commander, Colonel Theodore Baldwin, later remarked that Pershing was 

“the coolest and bravest man I ever saw under fire in my life.”7

 

While Pershing’s service in Cuba had earned him the respect of 

many within the army, it was not until the War Department posted him to 

Mindanao in 1899 that Pershing was marked as a rising star outside the 

insular military community. In his operations against the Moro warriors 

Black Jack executed a balanced policy of “benevolent assimilation” 

and economic development coupled with a willingness to rapidly and 

ruthlessly suppress any challenge to American rule or local stability. 

Robert Bullard, who served with Pershing in Mindanao and later became 

one of Black Jack’s most trusted subordinates in the AEF, recalled that 
127

Pershing was one of the few American officers who made an effort to 

understand Moro culture and by “associating with them and studying them 

won their confidence and admiration.”8

 

The success of Pershing’s “carrot and stick” policy during his first 

tour in Mindanao and his later service as the military governor of Moro 

Province from 1909 to 1913 not only garnered the praise of his superiors, 

but more importantly, drew the attention of Capital Hill and the White 

House. In 1906, his performance in the Philippines led Theodore Roosevelt 

to promote the talented cavalryman from captain to brigadier general over 

the heads of 862 officers that ranked Pershing in seniority.9

 Of course it 

probably helped that when Pershing married Francis Helen Warren in 

1905, he also gained the support of her father, Senator Francis E. Warren, 

a member of the Senate Military Affairs Committee. 

Following his successful stint as the governor of Moro Province, 

Pershing took command of the 8th Brigade then stationed at the Presidio of 

San Francisco. He had scarcely settled into his new surroundings when in 

April 1914 he and his brigade were ordered to the Mexican border due to 

the tensions caused by the brief detention of American sailors in Tampico, 

which led to the subsequent American occupation of Vera Cruz and the 

general instability unleashed by the Mexican Revolution. Upon arrival in 

the southwestern borderland, Pershing’s command expanded to include 

all American troops posted from Sierra Blanca, Texas, to Columbus, New 

Mexico.10 Pershing’s satisfaction at commanding nearly a division of 

soldiers was quickly marred by the death of his wife and three daughters 

due to an early morning fire at their quarters at the Presidio of San Francisco 

on 27 August 1915. 11 

In 1916, events on the Mexican border gave Pershing ample opportunity 

to escape his deep grief over the loss of most of his family. After years 

of meddling with Mexico’s internal affairs, Woodrow Wilson grudgingly 

recognized Venustiano Carranza as the legitimate president of Mexico. 

To hasten the return of stability in Mexico, Wilson allowed Carranza’s 

forces to move by train through US territory to reinforce their garrison 

at Agua Prieta. This move allowed the Carrancistas to inflict a stinging 

defeat upon Pancho Villa’s army and deal a decisive blow against one of 

the last remaining challenges to Carranza’s government. Not surprisingly, 

Villa was angered by the part that the US played in his defeat and began 

a series of attacks against American citizens and interests in Northern 

Mexico. His campaign of revenge culminated on the night of 8-9 March 

1916 with a raid on the border town of Columbus, New Mexico. The raid 

killed eighteen Americans and approximately seventy-five to one hundred 

fifty of Villa’s raiders.12 
128

Retribution for Villa’s attack on United States came swiftly and 

provided Pershing another opportunity to show his mettle. On 10 March 

1916, the commander of the Southern District, General Frederick Funston, 

was directed by Secretary of War Newton Baker to—

...promptly organize an adequate military force of troops under the 

command of Brigadier General Pershing and will direct him to proceed 

promptly across the border in pursuit of the Mexican band which attacked 

the town of Columbus and the troops there on the morning of the 9th 

instant. These troops will be withdrawn to American territory as soon as 

the de facto government in Mexico is able to relieve them of this work. In 

any event the work of these troops will be regarded as finished as soon as 

Villa band or bands are known to be broken up.13

Pershing had been given command of the punitive expedition over the 

senior ranking, but mercurial, Funston because Secretary Baker believed 

that Pershing had a strong reputation for being “absolutely loyal to the 

policy of the civil authorities under whom he was serving.”14 This would 

not be the last time that Pershing’s political reliability would serve him in 

good stead. The domestic and international ramifications of any incursion 

into Mexico and the risk of an all out war between the United States and 

the Carranza government dictated that the commander of the expedition be 

ever mindful of the political minefield in which he operated. 

Pershing faced a host of challenges in his pursuit of Villa. The 

mountainous and arid terrain of Northern Mexico complicated his efforts to 

locate Villa’s dispersed band and played havoc with the Americans’ supply 

efforts. Pershing also had to contend with the anti-American hostility of 

the local population and the mounting resistance of Carrancista forces 

resentful of Washington’s apparent disregard of Mexican sovereignty. 

Black Jack was also beset by “mission creep” as the Wilson 

administration changed the goal of the punitive expedition from chastising 

Villa to pressuring Carranza to institute political reforms and safeguard 

American interests south of the border.15 By 29 April 1916, Pershing was 

able to report that while his command had failed to capture Villa, by the 

expedition’s “arduous and persistent pursuit,” the attackers of Columbus 

“have been broken into smaller bands and scattered to different sections of 

the State of Chihuahua and elsewhere.”16 However, this military success 

had not halted the growing “cold war” between Pershing’s forces and the 

Carrancistas. After an ugly skirmish between the 13th US Cavalry and 

Carrancista forces at Parral on 12 April, Pershing reminded his soldiers—

...that this expedition is operating within the limits of a friendly nation 
129

whose peaceful inhabitants should be treated with every consideration. It 

is also desirable to maintain the most cordial relations, and cooperate as 

far as feasible, with the forces of the de facto government.17

Although political considerations placed Pershing in a very difficult 

military situation, his dutiful support of policies which he personally believed wrong made a positive impression on Wilson and Baker. In February 1917, the defeat of Villa and the growing tensions with Germany 

finally led the Wilson administration to recall Pershing’s command from 

Mexico. 

Pershing’s next task was not long in coming. Soon after the United 

States declared war on Germany in April 1917, Wilson determined that if 

he was to have any say in shaping the war’s ultimate peace negotiations, 

the United States had to send a substantial army to France. The army general staff estimated that if the nation were to send an expeditionary force to 

Europe that had any hope of influencing the outcome of the war, the nation 

would have to expand the army from 18,000 officers and 200,000 soldiers 

(that was both regulars and national guardsmen) to a force of 200,000 officers and between two to four million men.18 One of the pressing questions 

for Wilson and the War Department was who would lead the legions? 

One of the major requirements for being a great commander in modern 

warfare is possessing a clear understanding of the political nature of war. 

Like it or not, senior commanders are political creatures who must have 

a sound comprehension of the social and political realities that drive their 

nations. John J. Pershing clearly understood this requirement and held the 

greatest political skill required of American generals: knowing when to 

keep his mouth shut. This skill was of vital importance in 1917. 

Although Pershing’s military record demonstrated his professional 

skills and talents, in the winter and spring of 1917, he was only one of a 

handful of capable officers who were in the running to command the AEF. 

General Tasker Bliss had a well earned reputation as one of the Army’s 

leading intellectual lights and had served as the Assistant Chief of Staff 

of the Army since 1915.Major General J. Franklin Bell had gained a solid 

reputation as a battlefield commander during the Philippine Insurrection 

and had been instrumental in the professionalization of the army and 

supporting the reforms of Secretary of War Elihu Root. Then there was 

Major General Leonard Wood. Wood had won the Medal of Honor during 

the Geronimo Campaign of 1886. He led the cavalry brigade that attacked 

on San Juan Hill during the Cuban expedition of 1898, and had served 

with distinction in the Philippines. Wood also served as the Chief of Staff 

of the Army from 1910 to 1914.
130

Of these contenders, however, Bell was too old and infirm for an active 

command. Bliss was seven years older than Pershing and lacked recent 

combat experience. That left only Leonard Wood as a serious contender 

to Pershing’s promotion. Pershing, however, did have some things going 

for him. His recent experience commanding the punitive expedition had 

demonstrated his ability to control complex operations. More importantly 

he displayed a knack for negotiating the political minefield that the 

expedition and the preparedness movement had created. On the other 

hand, from 1914 to 1916 Leonard Wood, and his close confidant Theodore 

Roosevelt, publically railed against the Wilson administration’s failure to 

prepare the nation for war. While Wood’s indiscreet comments drew a stern 

rebuke from Wilson, Pershing was the quiet and dutiful soldier who voiced 

any concerns he had about military matters through the proper channels. 

Pershing never hid the truth or manipulated facts for political effect, but he 

understood the strictures of the civilian control of the military and worked 

the system to correct the problems that he encountered. 

In the end, Pershing’s political reliability paid off in several important 

ways. Not only did he win command of the AEF, but Wilson and Secretary 

of War Newton Baker also granted him more leeway in building and 

fighting his army than perhaps any commander in American history. 

The guidance that Pershing received from his political masters prior to 

departing for France was clear in its intent and broad in the latitude that it 

gave the AEF’s commander.

On 26 May 1917, Secretary Baker gave Pershing the following 

guidance:

In military operations against the Imperial German Government, you 

are directed to cooperate with the forces of other countries employed 

against that enemy; but in so doing the underlying idea must be kept 

in view that the forces of the United States are a separate and distinct 

component of the combined forces, the identity of which must be 

preserved. This fundamental rule is subject to such minor exceptions in 

particular circumstances as your judgment may approve. The decision as 

to when your command, or any of its parts, is ready for action is confided 

to you, and you will exercise full discretion in determining the manner of 

cooperation. But, until the forces of the United States are in your judgment 

sufficiently strong to warrant operations as an independent command, it is 

understood that you will cooperate as a component of whatever army you 

may be assigned to by the French government.19

With Wilson’s backing, Pershing had the power he needed to fight 
131

off French and British attempts to place American soldiers under Allied 

command or to use them as mere replacements in their armies’ depleted 

ranks. It also provided Pershing the ability to strong-arm the Allies on 

issues of shipping US troops overseas, aiding in the training of American 

forces, and establishing an independent American Army. When going 

up against such skilled political infighters as French Premier George 

Clemenceau and British Prime Minister David Lloyd-George, Pershing 

needed all the political muscle that Wilson and Baker could give. 

When later confronted with Allied demands for amalgamating 

American troops with their own, Pershing generally had the authority to 

be as accommodating or unbending as the situation demanded. This skill 

was tested in the spring and summer of 1918 when a series of German 

offensives created a crisis on the Western Front. These attacks intensified 

calls from French and British leaders for Pershing to relinquish his control 

of American forces. 

In a tense meeting at Versailles on 1 June 1918, Allied leaders insisted 

that the military situation obligated Pershing to ship only American 

infantrymen to France and to place them under Allied command upon their 

arrival. Pershing refused to be bullied. He rightly believed that such an 

action would indefinitely postpone the creation of an independent American 

Army. When British Prime Minister David Lloyd-George threatened to go 

over Pershing’s head and refer the Allies’ demands directly to President 

Wilson, Pershing replied, “Refer it to the president and be damned. I 

know what the president will do. He will simply refer it back to me for 

recommendation and I will make to him the same recommendation as I 

have made here today.”20 Pershing, the savvy political soldier, understood 

Wilson’s intent and that for the United States to have a say in the peace, an 

American Army, under American command, would have to fight and bleed 

its way to the conference table. 

To further assess Pershing’s generalship, we must first understand his 

army and the nature of the war that he faced. The American army that 

entered World War I in 1917 was not prepared to wage a war against a 

modern battle-hardened and skillful enemy. While three years of attritional 

total war had forced the armies of Europe to evolve their weapons, doctrine 

and command structures, 1917 found the American army mired in the 

tactical paradigms of July 1914. The American Army lacked the weapons, 

manpower and “know how” to fight on the Western Front. Although the 

Punitive Expedition in Mexico was the largest force that the nation had 

fielded since the Philippine War, in reality, neither Pershing nor any other 

serving American officer had any experience commanding units larger than 
132

a brigade. In fact, one of Pershing’s massive wartime divisions contained 

more soldiers than the entire Regular Army had on its rolls in 1898. 

Although the United States pulled off a minor miracle in raising 4 

million in 19 months, and shipping nearly two million of these soldiers 

to Europe before the Armistice, this prodigious feat was only made 

possible by cutting a number of corners. The vast majority of the AEF’s 

junior line officers were products of three-month-long Officer Training 

Camps. These camps gave their so called “90 Day Wonders” only a thin 

veneer of military knowledge. To compound this leadership problem, the 

shortage of experienced NCOs meant that the draftees that reported to a 

training camp on Monday all-too-often often became the sergeants for the 

recruits arriving on Wednesday. Stateside training throughout 1917 was 

also hindered by problems that ranged from building the cantonments, 

to shortages of equipment, a lack of qualified instructors, and a general 

uncertainty over what exactly should be taught.21 

The Army itself contributed to the training problem. Ever-changing 

War Department polices led to constant transfers of large groups of soldiers 

from one unit to another. The plight of the 82d Division was a case in point. 

In August 1917, the War Department activated the division and began to 

man it with draftees from Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee. Less than two 

months later, with the division approaching full strength and already well 

into its training, the Army reversed itself and ordered most of the unit’s 

enlisted men to be transferred to other divisions. These transfers left the 

82d with a cadre of only 783 men. In October and November, the division 

was brought back up to strength with draftees from New England and the 

Mid-Atlantic states. These new soldiers brought with them other training 

problems, as a large number of the new men were recent immigrants 

unable to speak or read English. The division’s manpower challenges did 

not end there. In an effort to pool soldiers with certain industrial skills, in 

late November 1917, Washington again ordered the 82d to transfer over 

3,000 specialists from its ranks. The division’s number of trained men 

was further reduced by the forced discharge of over 1,400 men the War 

Department considered to be enemy aliens and potential security risks.22 

The 82d was far from being alone in this dilemma. The 86th Division 

was hit particularly hard by the War Department’s willy-nilly transfers. 

Between January and April 1918, over 100,000 men passed through the 

division’s ranks. This meant that some 80,000 soldiers came and went 

through a unit that was to have a deployed strength of only 28,000 men. 

With the arrival of each new levy of troops, officers faced the unenviable 

task of restarting or revising their training plans. Given this turmoil it is 
133

amazing that the unit leaders achieved anything in the way of training.23

In late 1917 and early 1918 it even seemed that nature was conspiring 

against the nation’s efforts to field the AEF. The winter of 1917-18 was 

particularly harsh. Record snowfalls, and the mud that they left behind, 

ground training to a halt in camps as far south as Camp Seiver, South 

Carolina and Camp Gordon, Georgia. On 28 February 1918, the 83d 

Division’s Intelligence Officer reported that the “unduly severe winter” at 

Camp Sherman, Ohio had so retarded the progress of the division’s training 

that they were still working on the 18th week of the War Department’s 

training plan when they were supposed to be working on the program for 

week 23. He also noted that, “trench work, of necessity, has been cut down 

to almost nil up until the present time.”24 The situation was even worse 

for the 4th Division at Camp Greene, North Carolina. The rain and snow 

in the winter of 1918 turned the post’s red clay soil into such a viscous 

mess that “the troops simply could not work out of doors” for weeks at a 

time. Between 10 December 1917 and 4 March 1918, one officer recorded 

that the division’s units experienced only 16 days where any meaningful 

outdoor training was even possible.25 Adding to the misery of weatherinduced inactivity, and further hindering training, were deadly outbreaks 

of Spanish influenza, measles, and other diseases. Disease hindered or 

halted unit training as whole companies were quarantined for weeks at a 

time to prevent the spread of the sickness. In all, the army lost 8,743,102 

days of work and training from enlisted men laid low by the epidemics.26 

It is also important to understand the nature of the war that Pershing 

faced on the Western Front. World War I was one of the greatest upheavals 

in history. It dwarfed previous wars in its scope, scale, and lethality. 

Massive armies equipped with an array of deadly weapons, such as rapid 

firing artillery, high explosive shells, bolt action magazine rifles and 

machine guns, were maintained at the front by modern state bureaucracies 

with the unprecedented ability to mobilize the human, material and 

financial resources of their nations. As these contending armies were 

generally mirror images of each other in their size, weaponry, doctrine 

and organization, none could gain an asymmetric advantage to the degree 

necessary to win a decisive battlefield victory. To make matters worse, 

the lethality of the new battlefield and the horrendous casualties of 1914 

forced the armies to dig in just to survive. The establishment of a nearly 

unbroken system of trenches from the North Sea to the Swiss border 

only exacerbated the indecisiveness of combat operations by shifting the 

advantage to the defender.

Pershing is often accused of being slow to comprehend the vast 
134

changes to warfare that had been sparked by the World War.27 There is much 

truth in this assertion. Pershing himself reinforced this perception with 

the “General Principles Governing the Training of Units of the American 

Expeditionary Forces,” issued in October 1917. These principles served 

as the guide for instructing most of the American divisions that arrived in 

1917 and 1918. It stated 

The general principles governing combat remain unchanged in their 

essence. This war has developed special features which involve special 

phases of training, but the fundamental ideas enunciated in our Drill 

Regulations, Small Arms Firing Manual, Field Service Regulations, and 

other service manuals remain the guide for both officers and soldiers.28

The instructions also made clear that—

The rifle and the bayonet are the principal weapons of the infantry 

soldier. He will be trained in a high degree of skill as a marksman both on 

the target range and in field firing. An aggressive spirit must be developed 

until the soldier feels himself, as a bayonet fighter; invincible in battle.29

Despite obvious evidence to the contrary, nothing shook Pershing’s 

fundamental belief in that the stalemate in France was an aberration that 

could be overcome by the American Army’s superior drive, morale and 

marksmanship. Once free from the trenches and into “open warfare,” the 

Americans’ greater skill and ability at maneuver would allow them to 

corner and destroy the inferior German army.30

This being said, Pershing should be judged as much by his actions as 

by his words. Much of his insistence on “open warfare” was an attempt 

to fend off British and French efforts to amalgamate American soldiers 

into their armies by claiming American exceptionalism. More importantly, 

while Pershing proclaimed the superiority of “independent infantry,” the 

organizational structure of his army shows that the AEF had embraced 

the centrality of firepower from the platoon to the corps level. Reflecting 

the lessons of the Allied and German armies, the AEF’s units possessed 

a lavish and, for the American Army, an unprecedented array of artillery, 

machine guns and other highly lethal weapons systems. 

The Great War also forever changed the parameters and expectations 

of senior army command. As previously noted, the day of the army 

commander as the great man on horseback, able to inspire his army 

by his presence on the battlefield and direct operations by on-the-spot 

inspiration, was over. Although there is some truth in the accusation that 

the commanders of the Great War were “chateau generals” callously out 

of touch with the human cost of their plans, this charge does not do justice 
135

to many of the war’s senior leaders. Although weapon technology had 

leapfrogged forward in the decades prior to the war, there was no such 

technological breakthrough in the area of command and control. The one 

great advance in this realm, instant voice communication through the use 

of field phones, was unreliable in combat and tended to fix commanders to 

their headquarters. Thus, for better or worse, Schlieffen’s prediction that 

the “modern Alexander” would fight the war “in the comfortable chair” 

overlooking the “entire battlefield on a map” was true. 

There were, of course, some underperformers when it came to high 

command, but as a whole, the armies of the Great War were not “Lions 

led by donkeys” as some historian have inferred. Keep in mind that when 

commanders, such as Pershing, came face to face with the Great War’s 

realities, they encountered a tactical and operational dilemma that nothing 

in their professional education, training or experience had prepared them 

to meet. The war’s constant drain on the home fronts also meant that senior 

commanders were under great pressure from their political leaders to find 

quick solutions to the war’s intractable challenges. 

Realities on the battlefield and the inability of senior commanders to 

rapidly communicate their orders pushed the responsibility for combat 

decision-making down to regimental, battalion, and company officers. 

Although senior commanders still influenced operational planning and 

execution, their job shifted increasingly to managing the vast human and 

material resources required to wage modern war. At the highest levels, 

senior commanders also had to become power brokers in the byzantine 

intrigues of coalition warfare. .

In modern mass warfare, senior leaders were now as much great 

managers as they were great commanders. Upon his arrival in France, 

Pershing faced the daunting task of building the infrastructure needed to 

supply, move, equip, and ensure the health of an overseas army that was 

estimated by the War Department to reach a strength of four million soldiers. 

By the Armistice, Pershing had overseen the construction and operation of 

a vast logistical empire whose 231 hospitals and convalescence camps 

could accommodate over 276,000 patients, whose bakeries could produce 

nearly three million pounds of bread daily, and whose refrigeration 

plants could make 500 tons of ice per day and store 6,500 tons of meat. 

In addition to reconditioning 2,000 locomotives and 56,000 rail cars that 

the AEF obtained from the Allies, the Americans also constructed 1,500 

locomotives and 18,000 rail cars that had been shipped in parts to France 

from the United States.31 
136

Given the challenges that confronted him in standing up the AEF, one 

of the more important attributes that Pershing brought to his command was 

his keen eye for talent. Since 1914 the scope and scale of the war had made 

clear that no one individual had the knowledge, talent or span of control 

to master all the tasks required to move, supply, and fight million man 

armies. No longer could staffs follow the Napoleonic model of taking the 

great man’s thoughts and simply turning them into orders. Pershing had a 

knack for finding individuals who had the intelligence, drive, toughness, 

and ability to handle the daunting task of building the AEF- men who often 

brought skill sets to the table that he did not possess. 

An example of Pershing’s ability to select the right man for the right 

job was the case of Charles Dawes. Dawes was a successful politician and 

businessman without an iota of military experience. Although Dawes had 

been Pershing’s friend since Black Jack’s time at the University of Nebraska, 

it was the businessman’s organizational skills and ability to solve complex 

problems that led him to invite Dawes to join his staff. Dawes quickly 

worked his way into the job of being the AEF’s Chief European Purchasing 

Officer. In this role, he was instrumental in establishing the army’s supply 

and transportation infrastructure in France.32 In fact, James Harbord, the 

AEF Chief of Staff and later Commander of the Services of Supply, was 

adamant that Dawes’ “usefulness to the American Expeditionary Forces 

can hardly be overstated.”33 Dawes never shed his civilian sensibilities and 

Pershing, a notorious stickler for protocol and appearance termed Dawes 

“the most unmilitary human that ever lived.”34 But, Pershing overlooked 

Dawes’ indiscretions because this civilian-in-uniform always delivered on 

his promises. 

Pershing also possessed that rare trait of respecting those subordinates 

who dared speak truth to power when he was hasty or wrong in his 

decisions. For example Captain George Marshall and Major General 

Hunter Liggett both questioned Pershing’s judgment and not only lived 

to tell the tale, but actually prospered due to their courage and abilities. 

On 3 October 1917, Pershing observed a tactical demonstration by units 

of General William Silbert’s 1st Division. Pershing, who already believed 

that Silbert was unfit for command, berated him for the sloppiness of the 

exercise and the inability of the division staff to organize and improve the 

unit’s training. Pershing’s angry reproach infuriated George Marshall, one 

of Silbert’s divisional staff officers. As Pershing stomped off to his car, 

Marshall tried to explain the division’s situation and the practical reasons 

for the unit’s poor showing. When Pershing angrily turned away, Marshall 

grabbed the general’s arms and heatedly, but logically, made his unit’s case. 
137

All those witnessed the altercation believed that the young officer would 

soon be on a slow boat to America. Instead, Marshall’s moral courage and 

skills as a staff officer soon landed him a key spot on Pershing’s staff.35

Marshall later noted of Pershing, “He could listen to more opposition to 

his apparent view and show less personal feeling than anyone I have ever 

seen.” Marshall maintained that Pershing’s willingness to listen to the 

council of others “was one of his greatest strengths” as a commander.36

Pershing’s willingness to overlook reasoned dissent when the man 

or the argument merited was also evident in the case of Major General 

Hunter Liggett. From the moment that he took command of the AEF, 

Pershing made it clear that he would not tolerate any officer who was too 

old or unfit to endure the stress of combat. To appease Pershing, Secretary 

Baker required generals preparing to deploy their units to France to take a 

month-long tour of the AEF. Although these tours were intended to give the 

officers a greater appreciation for what they faced on the Western Front, it 

also gave Pershing time to evaluate their abilities and physical condition. 

If a general was not to Pershing’s liking, he usually was excluded from 

returning to the AEF. When Liggett arrived in France for his tour, he was 

61 years old and quite fat. When Pershing questioned his physical abilities, 

Liggett proceeded to run up a nearby hill to demonstrate his stamina. 

When Pershing criticized the large general’s corpulence, Liggett simply 

and forcefully replied that the most important fact about his physique was 

that his fat stopped squarely at his neck, and in no way extended to his 

head. Impressed by Liggett’s earnestness and proven intellect, Pershing 

accepted him into the AEF’s fold. This proved to be a wise decision, for 

Liggett became one of the AEF’s most reliable commanders. During the 

war he rose to command the 1st Corps and eventually the AEF’s First 

Army.37 

Balancing Pershing’s well developed eye for talent was a predisposition 

to not suffer fools lightly. He was exacting in his demands for efficiency 

and discipline and strictly weighed the ability of his subordinates to achieve 

results on and off the battlefield. Major General Robert Bullard, one of 

the AEF’s senior officers who consistently met the Iron Commander’s 

rigorous standards, had worked closely enough to Pershing to understand 

the measure of the man. Bullard noted that when Pershing arrived at the 

front, he was often “good-humored” and “agreeable.” However, Bullard 

recalled, “underneath [Pershing’s] easy manner was inexorable ruin to the 

commander who did not have things right. He shows the least personal 

feeling of all the commanders that I have ever known, and never spares 

the incompetent.”38 John J. Pershing was a hard man who never allowed 
138

past friendships or attachments to influence his decisions. When asked 

about his feelings in removing an old friend, General Omar Bundy, from 

command of the 2d Division, Pershing simply said, “I don’t care. Men’s 

lives are involved.”39 

In March 1918 Pershing directed the establishment of a permanent 

Officer Reclassification and Efficiency Board in the town of Blois. This 

board was to judge officers who were viewed as being incompetent, unfit, 

or ill suited for their duties, and to determine if they were to be cashiered, 

demoted or reassigned to another branch or unit. The slang term for a 

magnificent failure or breakdown, “to go blooey,” entered American English 

from the name of the town and its reputation for ruining budding military 

careers.40 Although the majority of the officers sent to the reclassification 

center were lieutenants and captains, senior officers who failed to live up to 

Pershing’s standards also found themselves quickly packed off to Blois. In 

one 30 day period during the Meuse Argonne Offensive, Pershing relieved 

one corps commander, Major General George Cameron, and three division 

commanders: Major Generals Beaumont Buck, John MacMahon and 

Clarence Edwards. A cold ruthlessness in the quest for military efficiency 

and effectiveness is certainly a characteristic of a great commander; 

however, such moves can sometimes have unintended consequences. 

Although the times and stakes justified Pershing’s callousness in 

summarily sacking those who he perceived as incompetent leaders, his 

reputation as a headhunter created a climate of fear within the AEF . The 

dread of being “blooyed” motivated many commanders to micromanage 

their subordinates and limit any actions that might reflect badly on their 

commands. As an officer in the Inspector General section later noted, 

“Officers commenced to exhibit a degree of fear and apprehension lest 

some unavoidable event, something which they could not control, might 

operate to ruin their careers.”41 Ironically, some commanders went as far 

as to prevent their more talented junior leaders from attending needed 

technical schools because of “the danger to themselves of being relieved 

of command for some error made by the less efficient officers.”42 Thus, the 

fear that Pershing inspired in some of his subordinates somewhat hindered 

the AEF’s efforts to create an efficient and effective cadre of officers. More 

importantly, the terror of being relieved led some commanders to push 

attacks and endure mounting casualties long after the real possibility of 

success had passed. 

In addition to the climate that Pershing established within the AEF, 

his status as a great captain must ultimately rest upon an assessment of his 

performance as a battlefield commander. Although Pershing was a savvy 
139

political operator with a talent for organization and picking the right men 

for tough jobs, his record as a commander was rather mixed. It can be 

difficult to assess his performance because it was so indelibly tied to the 

unexpected events that swirled around him in the second half of 1918. It 

must be understood that from the moment Pershing landed in France, he 

viewed the AEF as an army that would not come into its own until the 

spring of 1919. Pershing believed that the AEF would not be trained and 

ready until that time, and by then the decline of the French and British 

armies would make the American army the key to an eventual allied 

victory.43 Unfortunately, as is so often the case in war, the enemy had not 

read Pershing’s plan and failed to play the part that Black Jack intended for 

him. The German offensives of 1918 threw all of the American plans into 

chaos. Rather than the progressive and rigorous training plan that Pershing 

had mandated for his arriving divisions, all American units arriving in 

France from the spring of 1918 onward found their training compressed, 

rushed, or incomplete. 

Some American units found themselves thrown into hastily planned 

and ill-supported operations. In attacks in the Aisne-Marne region in 

June, July and August 1918, inexperience, unskilled leadership and poor 

tactics led American divisions to impale themselves on German defenses. 

Although these operations also inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy, 

the attacks highlighted the fact that the Americans still needed much more 

schooling in modern warfare. While the Americans in these operations 

were under French command, Pershing tried to gain as much from these 

experiences as possible. He directed his staff to capture the “lessons 

learned” from these battles in hope of improving the overall performance 

of the AEF.44 Unfortunately, the rapid pace of events generally prevented 

the Americans from profiting from the mistakes of others.

Pershing’s true testing as a commander came with the establishment 

of the American First Army, with its own sector of the front, on 10 August 

1918. Pershing understood the grave shortcomings that plagued his army, 

but he was determined to demonstrate that the Americans could hold their 

own in modern war. If part of the definition of a great commander is his 

ability to craft and execute operations that achieve the strategic ends of the 

war with the most efficient use of resources at his disposal, then Pershing’s 

record was again mixed. 

Pershing’s desire to prove the American’s mettle at times led him to 

be somewhat short-sighted in his operational thinking. This was evident in 

his plans for the St Mihiel Offensive in mid-September 1918. Pershing’s 

staff had devoted much time and effort to ensuring that the Americans’ 
140

debut as a separate army would be a sterling success. Unfortunately, 

Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies, 

wanted the Americans to focus their efforts on an attack in the Meuse 

Argonne sector. To Foch, the Argonne Offensive was an important part of 

an orchestrated attack by all the Allied armies to sap the remaining German 

manpower reserves and place the enemy in an unwinnable attritional 

dilemma. While Foch remained dubious over the need for the St Mihiel 

operation, he bowed to Pershing’s wishes with the caveat that as soon as 

the attack was over the Americans would shift their focus and resources to 

the Meuse Argonne and launch an attack in that sector by 26 September.45

To ensure the success of St Mihiel, Pershing committed his best minds, 

resources, and, most importantly, his best divisions to the battle. The 

planning and effort paid off. The offensive caught the Germans withdrawing 

from the St Mihiel salient and cost the enemy 5,000 casualties, 13,000 

prisoners and 466 captured guns. The battle cost the Americans 2,000 dead 

and 6,000 wounded. The victory was a great boon to American morale, but 

was not, perhaps, a strong enough test of the AEF’s command and control, 

fire support and logistics systems. Nor was the battle a reliable test of the 

AEF’s doctrine. For most of the new divisions, their participation in the 

St Mihiel Offensive was not long or intense enough for them to gain the 

degree of experience required to season their officers and soldiers for the 

operations that lay before them in the Meuse-Argonne. Of the harsh shock 

his unit experienced in the Argonne drive, one 5th Division officer later 

stated, “the men still remembered the victorious rush at St Mihiel and 

dashed forward impetuously. But it was a different enemy here, one who 

was sticking till the last and fighting for every foot of ground.”46

When the St Mihiel Offensive came to a close, the AEF faced a daunting 

challenge. The American Army had to move over 300,000 men, and all of 

their equipment, 40 miles to the northeast, take over a new sector of the 

front and launch a massive attack, with all the detailed preparations that 

that entailed, within ten days. To complicate matters, Pershing’s decisions 

to use his best divisions at St Mihiel, meant that the nine divisions that 

would lead off the attack in the Meuse Argonne were inexperienced and 

under-trained. Furthermore, the planning for St Mihiel had so preoccupied 

the AEF staff, that it had made little effort to improve the Argonne’s 

limited transportation and supply infrastructure. While undertaken for 

many good reasons, Pershing’s decision to execute the St Mihiel Offensive 

later caused the AEF many problems in the Meuse Argonne.47 

As soon as the Americans began the Argonne drive on 26 September 

1918, they encountered a formidable landscape of rolling hills, thick 
141

forests and commanding heights. The area also boasted few roads. This 

was ideal defensive terrain for a skillful and determined enemy. Between 

26 September and 1 October, the initial attacks by inexperienced American 

divisions quickly degenerated into a grinding attritional struggle. Most 

notably, the failure of the green 79th Division to capture the heights of 

Montfaucon on the first day of the battle stalled the American push and 

thus gave the Germans invaluable time to strengthen their defenses and 

bring up reinforcements. To make matters worse, by 1 October, the supply 

routes behind the front lines were nearly impassible due to massive traffic 

jams. Frontline units were being starved of replacements, food, water and 

medical care. 

Faced with mounting casualties and with little to show for them, 

Pershing began a frantic effort to regain the momentum of the attack by 

replacing his battered green divisions with his more experienced units. 

Unfortunately, these measures did little to reverse the situation at the front. 

Attacks between 4 and 16 October again gained little terrain and came at 

the cost of an ever greater toll in American lives. High casualties, supply 

problems, and lack of progress brought the AEF and its commander to a 

crisis point. By mid-October, Hunter Liggett estimated that over 100,000 

Americans soldiers had absented themselves from their units and were 

wandering the army’s rear areas.48 After visiting the front and witnessing 

the confusion behind the American lines, George Clemenceau even began 

back-channel efforts to have Pershing relieved from command.49

Pershing himself was far from oblivious to the condition of his 

army and the criticism of his leadership growing in the Allied ranks. On 

12 October, he made one of his greatest and most morally courageous 

decisions. He divided his massive army into two separate armies. He 

placed the reduced First Army under the command of Hunter Liggett 

and the newly created Second Army under the charge of Robert Bullard. 

Pershing had rightly concluded that this original army was too large and 

unwieldy to be commanded by him alone. This reorganization removed 

Pershing from the direct operational command of American forces and 

allowed him to focus on overseeing the AEF’s big picture and big problems 

in France. This decision was a hard one for a proud man like Pershing, but 

perhaps one of the more important traits of a commander is the ability 

to realize his limitations and to delegate tasks to talented subordinates. 

Pershing’s organizational change and two weeks of scaled back American 

attacks, helped the AEF to regain its balance in the Meuse Argonne. When 

the Americans resumed major attacks on 1 November, the AEF’s efforts 

were still rather ham-fisted, but it was at least better positioned to use its 
142

manpower and resource advantages to grind down the remnants of the 

German forces it faced. Although the AEF was an inelegant tool, in its 

commander’s hand it accomplished Wilson’s political endstate by making 

a major contribution to the allies’ victory in 1918. 

The return of peace did not end Pershing’s service to the Republic. In 

fact what he did after the war may have had more far reaching importance 

than his time as the commander of the AEF. One of his first post-war acts 

was to establish a series of investigating boards to capture the American 

Army’s hard won lessons from the war. The Lewis and Superior Boards 

brought together officers from all over the AEF and served as a point of 

departure for later army reforms and doctrinal development in the 1920s 

and 1930s. As Army Chief of Staff from 1921 to 1924, Pershing strove 

to make the army see beyond mere tactics and weapons when it came to 

its thinking about warfare. He expanded the army’s school system and 

reemphasized the importance of professional education in the careers of 

army officers. One of these new schools, the Army Industrial War College, 

laid down the intellectual foundations that sought to solve one of the more 

embarrassing questions of the Great War—why had the world’s largest 

industrial power been forced to beg ships and modern weapons from its 

allies? The work of the Industrial War College ultimately helped to make 

the US the Arsenal of Democracy in World War II. 

Pershing’s long-term influence was also seen in the personal 

relationships he built and in the professionalism that he engendered in 

others. He continued to mentor and mold the young officers that had come 

to his notice during the Great War—men such as George Marshall and 

George Patton. Pershing, in fact, was one of the last people that Patton 

visited before leaving for North Africa in 1942. He also aided Dwight 

Eisenhower, a man who had spent the Great War training tankers at Camp 

Colt, Pennsylvania. Pershing helped shape Eisenhower’s future career 

and attitudes by sending him to France to study the AEF’s battlefields and 

by having the young officer participate in the writing of the army’s first 

studies of World War I. These Pershing acolytes readily acknowledged 

the Iron Commander’s influence in the way they fought the Second 

Great War. In a cable to Pershing sent soon after the German surrender 

in 1945, Eisenhower wrote, “As the commander of the second American 

expeditionary force, I should like to acknowledge to you, the leader of 

our first, our obligation for the part that you have played in the recent 

victory...The sons of the men that you led in battle in 1918 have much for 

which to thank you.”50

 So, in the end, does Pershing merit the title of “great commander?” 
143

Did he properly use the human and material resources at his disposal? 

Were the AEF’s accomplishments proportional to the losses it suffered? 

Marshal Ferdinand Foch may offer some insight into these questions. Foch 

is reported to have once remarked that it took 15,000 casualties to train a 

major general. While this statement sounds callous and cynical to modern 

ears, in the context of World War I, Foch’s observation was a sad but 

accurate statement of reality. Given the state of the American army and the 

situation in 1918, perhaps it took 48,000 dead to train Pershing as an army 

commander. Although Pershing never showed any great brilliance as an 

operational commander, he did show a steady growth in his understanding 

of what it took to fight and defeat a modern foe under the conditions of 

the Western Front. Foch had also noted, “There is no studying on the 

battlefield. It is simply a case of doing what is possible, to make use of 

what one knows and, in order to make a little possible, one must know 

much.”51 Like Ulysses Grant before him, Pershing accepted casualties 

because he could, and his enemy could not. In the end, it is not certain 

that Pershing was a great commander to rank among Caesar, Napoleon, or 

even Eisenhower. However, it is far from certain that any other American 

officer could have done much better if he were placed in Pershing’s shoes. 

Perhaps for World War I, with the army he had, with the situation he faced, 

and with the enemy he fought, Pershing, while not a “great commander,” 

was simply “Great War Good Enough.” 
144

Notes

1. Quoted in, Robert Heinl, Dictionary of Military and Naval Quotations

(Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1966), 132.

2. J. Franklin Bell, “Reflections and Suggestions: An Address by General 

J. Franklin Bell” 17 March 1906, Combined Arms Research Library, Special 

Collections, Ft. Leavenworth, KS, 5-6. 

3. Frank Vandiver, Black Jack: The Life and Times of John J. Pershing, 

Vol. 1 (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1977), 13-19, 36-43.

4. “General Principles Governing the Training of Units of the American 

Expeditionary Forces” included in, AEF GHQ, “Program of Training for the 1st

Division, A.E.F.,” 06 October 1917, in, World War Records, First Division, Vol. 

XX, Training First Division (Washington D.C.: Army War College, 1930), not 

paginated.

5. Donald Smythe, Pershing: General of the Armies (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1986), 1-2.

6. Vandiver, 168-172.

7. Donald Smythe, Guerrilla Warrior: The Early Life of John J. Pershing 

(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973), 52.

8. Robert Bullard, Personalities and Reminiscences of the War (New York: 

Doubleday, Page & Company, 1925), 44; also see James Arnold, The Moro War

(New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011), 40-58, 217-227.

9. Henry B. Davis, Generals in Khaki (Raleigh: Pentland Press, 1998), 

297.

10. Smythe, 205-6.

11. Smythe, 208-212, Vandiver, 592-4.

12. Andrew Birtle, US Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine (Washington D.C., Center of Military History, 1998), 200-1; Eileen Welsome, The General and the Jaguar: Pershing’s Hunt for Pancho Villa

(New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2006), 132-5.

13. Report of Major General John J. Pershing of the Punitive Expedition, 

10 October 1916, Combined Arms Research Library Archives, Fort Leavenworth, 

KS, 3.

14. Quoted in Smythe, Guerrilla Warrior, 220-1.

15. Report of Major General John J. Pershing of the Punitive Expedition , 

10-11; Birtle, 202-8.

16. Report of Major General John J. Pershing of the Punitive Expedition, 

24-5.

17. Ibid., 25.
145

18. United States Department of War, War Department Annual Report

(Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1916), 242; Leonard Ayres, The 

War With Germany: A Statistical Summary (Washington, D.C.: US Government 

Printing Office, 1919), 16-21.

19. John J. Pershing, My Experiences in the World War, Vol. I (New York: 

Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1931), 38-9.

20. Quoted in David F. Trask, The AEF and Coalition Warfare, 1917-1918

(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993), 74-5.

21. For a more detailed discussion of the challenges the United States faced 

in building its wartime cadre of officers and NCOs and the systemic problems of 

America’s mobilization for the Great War, see Richard S. Faulkner, The School 

of Hard Knocks: Combat Leadership in the American Expeditionary Forces, College Station, Texas A&M Press, 2012.

22. G. Edward Buxton, ed. Official History of the 82nd Division American 

Expeditionary Forces (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1919), 1-6; U. S. Department of War, Order of Battle of the United States Land Forces in the World War: 

American Expeditionary Forces, Vol. 2, Divisions. (Washington D.C. Government Printing Office, 1931), 349. (Hereafter cited as Order of Battle) 

23. Order of Battle, Vol. 2, 383. 

24. Report from The Acting Intelligence Officer, 83rd Division to Chief, 

Military Intelligence Section, Subject: “General Information,” dated 28 February 

1918, NARA, RG 165 Records of the General Staff, Entry 377, Correspondence 

Related to Morale at Army Installations, Box 14, Camp Sherman file. 

25. Christian A. Bach and Henry N. Hall, The Fourth Division: Its Services 

and Achievements in the World War (New York: Country Life Press, 1920), 23-4.

26. Edward M. Coffman, The War to End All Wars (Madison: University of 

Wisconsin Press, 1968), 81-84; Carol R. Byerly, The Fever of War: The Influenza 

Epidemic in the U. S. Army during World War I (New York: New York University 

Press, 2005), 8-9.

27. For example, see, Mark Grotelueschen, The AEF Way of War: The 

American Army in Combat in World War I (New York: Cambridge University 

Press, 2007), 25-36.

28. AEF GHQ, “Program of Training for the 1st Division, A.E.F.,” 06 October 1917, in, World War Records, First Division, Vol. XX, Training First Division

(Washington D.C.: Army War College, 1930), not paginated.

29. Ibid. 

30. Pershing, My Experience, Vol I, 150-4 and Vol II, 237-8.

31. James Harbord, The American Army in France, 1917-1919 (Boston: 

Little Brown and Company, 1936), 491-500; US Army Center of Military History, American Armies and Battlefields in Europe (Washington DC: Government 

Printing Office, 1992), 439-440.
146

32. Harbord, 42; Cooke, 10-11.

33. Harboard, 126-7.

34. Quoted in Smythe, Pershing: General of the Armies, 43.

35. George Marshall, The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, Vol 1, The 

Soldierly Sprit, ed. Larry Bland and Sharon Ritenour (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins 

University Press, 1981), 112-113. 

36. Forrest Pogue, George Marshall, Vol. I, Education of a General: 1880-

1839 (New York: Viking Press, 1963), 153; Smythe, Pershing: General of the 

Armies, 55.

37. Coffman, 249-250.

38. Robert L. Bullard, Personalities and Reminiscences of the War (New 

York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1925), 26-7.

39. Quoted in Smythe, Pershing: General of the Armies, 153.

40. For a deeper examination of the operation of the Blois Officer Reclassification Center, see Faulkner, The School of Hard Knocks.

41. Col. M.G. Spinks, “Major Problems of the Inspector General, AEF, and 

Their Solution,” lecture given to the Army War College, 9 October 1933, USAMHI File AWC 401-A-5, 9.

42. US Army Center of Military History, US Army in the World War, Vol. 14, 

Reports (Washington D.C. Government Printing Office, 1988), 401.

43. Smythe, Pershing: General of the Armies, 146-17; Trask, The AEF and 

Coalition Warmaking, 78-9. 

44. For example, see AEF GHQ, Notes on Recent Operations, No. 1, issued 

7 August 1918, and Notes on Recent Operations No. 2 issued on 8 September 

1918.

45. Edward Lengel, To Conquer Hell: The Meuse Argonne, 1918 (New 

York: Henry Holt and Company, 2008), 49-53.

46. The Society of the Fifth Division, The Official History of the Fifth 

Division (Washington D.C.: Privately published, 1919), 154.

47. George Marshall, Memories of My Service in the World War 1917-1918 

(New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976), 149-158., Lengel, 69-74.

48. Hunter Liggett, AEF: Ten Years Ago in France (New York: Dodd, 

Meade and Company, 1927), 207.

49. David Trask, The AEF and Coalition Warmaking, 1917-1918 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. 1993), 145. 

50. Smythe, Pershing: General of the Armies, 305-6.

51. Quoted in US Army Infantry School, Infantry in Battle (Washington 

D.C.: Infantry Journal, 1939), 137.
147

Chapter 6

Rommel: Beyond the Desert Fox

by Mark M. Hull, Ph.D., J.D., FRHistS

Perhaps unique among his contemporaries, the reputation of German 

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel is stronger now than it was when he was 

alive – and he certainly achieved star status during his lifetime, among both 

Germans and his Allied opponents. His campaigns are still studied; his 

leadership style used as a model for command, and his participation in the 

plot to kill Hitler is still admired. His name conjures colorful images of the 

desert, where Rommel’s hard-pressed Deutsches Afrikakorps fought with 

decency and no small measure of success. Among so many distinctions, 

the single greatest one might be that Rommel emerged from the ruins of 

the Third Reich with his reputation intact. For subsequent generations 

of Germans who were tainted by their country’s Nazi crimes, Rommel’s 

legacy became an important agent of social and military salvation. 

Hollywood in the 1950s did not often create movies which glorified the 

German soldiers who worked for Hitler; they made an exception for Erwin 

Rommel. However, nothing about Rommel is what it first seems.

This is the essence of the problem: to separate the truth about Rommel 

from its protective myth, and to separate the authentic Rommel from the 

Rommel that both Germans and Allies needed him to be. The true Rommel 

had flaws. He was disliked by most of his contemporaries, had a powerful 

ego and need for recognition, was out of his depth at anything beyond 

the operational level of war, and almost certainly was never an active 

member of the anti-Hitler conspiracy that so proudly listed him among its 

ranks. Essentially apolitical, Rommel nevertheless cultivated a privileged 

relationship with Hitler and enjoyed all the public and private benefits of 

that relationship until the war began to turn against Germany. His strategic 

sense was often questionable and seemingly deserted him during the 

Normandy invasion. However, the two seemingly contradictory portraits 

of Rommel are both true - and this is exactly what requires examination 

and synthesis. He emerges from that process as a less-than-Olympian 

figure, but one who still deserves his place on the list of great commanders 

of World War II. Rommel was neither perfect as a person nor as a general, 

but was almost always a talented commander who could be relied upon for 

an aggressive spirit and ingenuity, no matter what the odds against him – 

and when it counted most, he was invariably a decent man.

Since the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the ethos of the German military 

was guided by two powerful forces, the Great General Staff of Prussia 
148

and the nobility who filled the ranks of the officer corps in the several 

(and, until 1871, independent) German states. Erwin Johannes Eugen 

Rommel, born on 15 November 1891 in Heidenheim, in the Kingdom of 

Württemberg, did not belong to either group. His father, also named Erwin, 

was the headmaster at the secondary school in Aalen. The son preferred 

athletic activities to scholarly pursuits, but had an interest in mathematics 

Figure 6. Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, 1942; photo provided by the German 

Federal Archives.
149

sufficient for him to consider a career in engineering. His father thought 

otherwise and Erwin was instead enrolled as an officer cadet in the 124th

Württemberg Infantry.

Rommel learned his trade well and even early on, displayed physical 

toughness and determination, qualities that he retained for his entire 

career. In 1911, he met Lucia (called “Lucie”) Marie Mollin during his 

course at the officer cadet school in Danzig, and the two soon became 

involved. However, upon returning home (Rommel was commissioned 

as a lieutenant in January 1912), his attention shifted away from Lucie 

and toward a young woman in Weingarten, Walburga Stemmer. Stemmer 

became pregnant and they had a child, Gertrude, in 1913. Despite initial 

plans to marry, they never did. Rommel later returned to Lucie, whom 

he married in 1916. Until the birth of Erwin and Lucie’s son Manfred in 

1928, Stemmer held on to the hope that Rommel would return to her; she 

committed suicide soon thereafter.1

Rommel had little time to worry about the complications of his 

domestic situation; when World War I began on 1 August 1914, he was 

a platoon leader with the 6th Württemberg Infantry and he soon had 

the opportunity to learn whether his skills were up to the task. Initially 

assigned to an artillery battery within the regiment, he returned to standard 

infantry duties and won the Iron Cross (1st and 2d class) for courage 

under fire, was wounded in an attempt to capture French soldiers – while 

holding an empty rifle – and moved with his unit twice from France to 

Romania and then back to the Western front. Wounded several more 

times, he established a reputation for daring, persistence, and a singular 

disregard for his own safety. When his unit was transferred to the Italian 

front in late 1917, he finally had the opportunity to showcase his quality: 

during a multi-day operation in November near Longarone, an attack led 

by Lieutenant Rommel (now a company commander), fought its way 

through several echelons of Italian defenses and captured more than 8,000 

prisoners. It was a stunning achievement and earned Rommel the medal he 

had long coveted, the Pour le Mérite, Imperial Germany’s highest award 

for bravery.2

Promoted to captain, Rommel continued to serve until the final 

collapse of Germany’s military. Toward the end, he briefly held a staff 

appointment – a posting that did not please the young officer who was 

temperamentally more suited to the sound of gunfire. His vague distain 

toward essential General Staff tasks (and by extension, the professional, 

often pedigreed General Staff officers who normally performed them) 

was a recurring theme in his career, a tolerable attitude for a captain 
150

but problematic for a general. Germany’s defeat in 1918 created many 

problems for her millions of soldiers. Following the Versailles Treaty, 

the German military was stripped of most heavy weapons and aircraft, 

and limited to a miniscule 100,000 men. Given his drive, enthusiasm, 

and repeated bravery in combat, it was unsurprising that Rommel was 

included among the 4,000 officers selected to form the core of a new 

army, the Reichswehr. He held both command and instructor assignments 

(he was evidently a popular instructor) in Stuttgart and Dresden before 

being assigned to battalion command in Goslar, Saxony. There, in 1934, 

Rommel’s path took an auspicious turn when his unit was reviewed by the 

new Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler. It was their first meeting.

Rommel was soon thereafter assigned as an infantry instructor at the 

Kriegschule (essentially an advanced educational course for professional 

Reichswehr officers) at Potsdam. It was a plum job and confirmed Rommel 

as being on an accelerated career track. He enhanced this further in 1937 

when he published Infanterie Greift An (Infantry Attacks), the narrative 

version of his WWI experiences as used in his classroom lectures. Hitler 

certainly read it, and liked what he read. Rommel was very much the 

soldier’s soldier – a perspective that Hitler appreciated, contrasted with 

social and intellectual inferiority the Führer often felt when around other 

Army officers, particularly those with a General Staff background. Now a 

star on the rise, Rommel twice briefly commanded Hitler’s headquarters 

detachment during the Czechoslovakia occupation in 1939, and was 

recalled again in August 1939 – as preparations for the Polish campaign 

continued, well in advance of the “Gleiwitz Incident,” a staged German 

attack on one of their own radio stations, intended to convince the German 

people, and the world, that Poland was the aggressor. For the full month 

of campaigning, Rommel was at Hitler’s side, responsible for the multiple 

tasks, demonstrating his ability and reliability to the Führer, and witnessing 

first-hand a new style of warfare which was beyond his WWI or postwar 

experience: mobile, combined arms maneuver, subsequently referred to as 

“Blitzkrieg.”

Hitler’s patronage meant that Rommel had his choice of assignments 

after Poland, though the favoritism demonstrated on his behalf by the 

Führer began to alienate Rommel’s fellow officers. Rommel asked for 

and was given command of the 7th Panzer Division and would bring his 

background in sharp, rapid infantry attacks to the most modern tool of 

war, the tank. He had a hidden talent for it. Despite optimistic German 

predictions that the western Allies would again negotiate a solution rather 

than face the Wehrmacht themselves, the Germans prepared to turn on 
151

the Low Countries and France in the spring of 1940. “Case Yellow” was 

a surprise armored thrust through the Ardennes – spearheaded by seven 

panzer divisions, including Rommel’s 7th Panzer – that caught the Allies 

in the process of responding to an earlier attack through Holland and 

Belgium. Rommel’s part in the campaign came near disaster when 7th 

Panzer attempted to cross the Meuse River at Dinant on 12 May. After 

suffering severe casualties among the engineers and assault companies, 

and thanks to excellent close air support from the Luftwaffe, Rommel was 

eventually able to cross his division and exert relentless pressure on the 

retreating French and British forces. His command style – leading from the 

front – was a legacy from his WWI experience and had both advantages 

and disadvantages. It meant that he was able to be at the point of attack 

with his advance units and make critical on-the-spot decisions, but it also 

meant that he was often out of contact with his own operations section and 

higher headquarters and thus less able to exercise broader control of his 

subordinate units. Rommel said, “In this war, the commander’s place is 

here, right out front! I don’t believe in armchair strategy. Let’s leave that 

to the gentlemen of the General Staff.”3

 He tended to disregard supply 

issues and pushed his tanks and supporting infantry dangerously close to 

their logistical limits. This was less of a critical factor in the restricted 

operational space of France, but became a nightmare when he later applied 

the same principles in the endless North African desert.

As 7th Panzer advanced, Rommel’s continually innovative tactics 

paid off although he moved at a faster pace than his own flank units could 

maintain. Fortunately for the Wehrmacht, he was also moving faster than 

the Allied units could hope to respond. He left columns of broken French 

and British vehicles in his wake as he sliced through Cerfontaine, Avesnes, 

Cambrai, and Arras, escaping from one enemy trap after another.4

 By 10 

June, his advance units reached the coast near Dieppe. Rommel again 

made the newsreels – he was by now a national hero thanks to heavy 

attention from the Propaganda Ministry – when he accepted a mass enemy 

surrender at Saint-Valéry on the 12th. Rommel’s tactical brilliance more 

than justified Hitler’s patronage and helped create an asymmetrical situation 

among the world’s armies between those that could leverage the shock and 

speed of modern combined arms warfare (so far, only the Germans) and 

the many that could not. For his part in the Wehrmacht’s success, Rommel 

was awarded the Knight’s Cross, the first German division commander to 

receive it during the French campaign. His stunning performance and “just 

so” image was not only a gift to the German public relations machine but 

it also placed Rommel in a position to take advantage of the opportunity 

next offered to him – Africa.
152

When forecasting the likely operational reach of German forces, the 

OKW, Oberkommando der Wehrmacht – Armed Forces High Command, 

never envisioned sending troops to the desert. Italian defeat in Libya 

changed all that. By early 1941, what started as Mussolini’s ambitious 

attempt to attack British forces in Egypt, seize the Suez Canal, and secure 

the Mediterranean basin had become a disaster. The British had instead 

driven the Italians across the coast of Libya, taken Tobruk, and threatened 

Tripoli. If Tripoli fell, it would extinguish the Axis presence in Africa and 

allow the British the freedom to attack southern Europe (specifically Italy) 

at the time and place of their choosing. Rather than watch these dominoes 

collapse, Hitler determined to save the Italian position by sending a 

minimal German contingent whose initial purpose was to act as last-ditch 

safety net.5

 One German division (5th Light) was assigned, and when this 

was thought insufficient, the 15th Panzer Division was added to the menu. 

The two divisions combined into a corps – the Afrikakorps – required a 

corps commander with guile and initiative who could make something of 

a dismal tactical and operational situation. That was Erwin Rommel.

The Germans’ arrival was timely. The British commander in Africa, 

Major General Archibald Wavell, had sent a portion of his forces to help 

bolster the defense of Greece (Italy invaded Greece in October 1940, with 

Germany coming to the Italian’s rescue in April 1941). The first elements 

of Rommel’s lead formation – the 5th Light Division – arrived in February 

1941, equipped with 150 tanks (some of them the Mark III and Mark IV 

models, with 50mm and 75mm main guns, respectively) and perhaps the 

most effective anti-tank weapon of World War II, the 88mm antiaircraft 

(FLAK) gun. The Afrikakorps joined five weary Italian divisions of various 

strengths, all of which were at the end of their endurance after more than a 

year of difficult fighting, bitter retreat, and a profound shortage of essential 

supplies.6

 In the proceeding few months, the British had advanced 500 

miles across the open desert, taken over 100,000 Italian prisoners, and 

destroyed 400 tanks. The Axis position was indeed perilous. Rommel 

began considering the options.

Against Italian advice, he determined to hold the British forces where 

they were – some 250 miles east of Tripoli – regardless of the momentary 

weakness of the just-arriving Afrikakorps (5th Light would not reach full 

strength until April and 15th Panzer would not arrive until May). His plan 

was to put up a sufficient show of force in order to cause the British to 

halt and regroup which he did by sending Italian and German elements to 

hold the line at El Agheila and Sirte, having his troops make “tanks” out 

of wood, canvas, and car engines to fool Allied reconnaissance, and by 
153

staging a welcome-to-Africa parade for German troops – which featured 

panzers circling around for multiple passes, creating the impression for 

onlookers (and British spies) that his force was many times the size it 

actually was.7

 Unknown to Rommel, the British advance had reached its 

limit. The experienced British 7th Armoured Division (“The Desert Rats”) 

had been returned to Egypt for refitting, replaced by the green 2d Armoured 

Division, of which half its force had been stripped for the mission to 

Greece. The highly effective British commander Major General Richard 

O’Connor, was promoted to command troops in Egypt and replaced by 

Lieutenant General Philip Neame. Allied tanks, too, were suffering from 

the sprint across the desert.8

 British intelligence forecast that the Germans 

would be incapable of operations until amassing a sufficient force, perhaps 

by May. The German High Command agreed; it had other operational 

priorities (Greece and, secretly, Russia) which in turn meant that Rommel 

was forbidden to launch an offensive with the few units he had. Rommel 

had no intention of obeying.

He ordered an attack on El Agheila on 24 March with the available 

troops from the 5th Light, the Italian Ariete Division, and buoyed by 

dummy tanks whose job was to create dust clouds and the impression of 

columns of moving vehicles. The British defenders withdrew 30 miles to 

the east; on 30 March, Rommel attacked these British positions at Mersa 

Brega. Despite clear instructions from both the German High Command 

and the Italian Commando Supremo, Rommel was prepared to roll the 

dice and attempt to seize the entire British position in Cyrenacia. Despite 

outrunning its logistics tether – forcing the 5th Light to suspend all 

operations until it could be resupplied by truck (there was no rail line 

serving the coastal road) – the Afrikakorps continued to snap at the heels 

of the swiftly retreating British army. Bengazhi fell on April 4th amid 

much fanfare from the German propaganda apparatus.9

 British General 

Neame, having now completely lost control of the battle and unwilling to 

visit the front, was superseded by General O’Connor. In headlong retreat 

with the rest of the British forces trying to escape Derna, O’Connor and 

Neame took the wrong road in the darkness and accidentally drove straight 

into the German advance. They spent three years in captivity.

Mechili fell on 8 April to German and Italian forces which followed 

an axis of advance parallel to the coastal road. Rommel had re-conquered 

Cyrenacia. Writing later of this whirlwind offensive, he noted:

A commander’s drive and energy often count for more than his 

intellectual powers – a fact that is not generally understood by academic 

soldiers, although for the practical man it is self-evident. Later in the 
154

campaign, when I had a chance to establish closer relations with the troops, 

they were capable at all times of achieving what I demanded of them.10

Distaining the refinement or training of the General Staff, Rommel 

remained the man of action, but he was still subject to the physical realities 

of war. The all-important port city of Tobruk remained in enemy hands. 

As long the British held it, they prevented Rommel – whose supplies now 

had to travel hundreds of miles, one way, by truck from Benghazi – from 

any further significant advance toward Egypt. Even with only a portion of 

its eventual strength present, the Afrikakorps required 1500 tons of food 

and water each day, straining the German logistical system to its breaking 

point.11

Inspired by his unexpected successes, Rommel started making 

plans which dwarfed the original goal of the campaign. He never fully 

appreciated why these plans would necessarily go unrealized. By the time 

that German forces reached El Alamein in 1942, a substantial portion of 

their supplies had to be transported a distance of 1400 miles from Tripoli. 

Even factoring in the addition of Tobruk’s potential port capacity (which 

was significantly less than that of Tripoli or Benghazi), the High Command 

calculated that just one division would require 350 tons of supplies per 

day – which worked out to thirty-nine columns of thirty-two trucks each 

day, travelling a minimum distance of 300 miles – a total of 5,000 trucks. 

This was in addition to the organic transportation assets of the division. 

Transport of supplies alone consumed 50 percent of the fuel the trucks 

carried.12 There were not enough vehicles in the Wehrmacht inventory 

to satisfy the minimum needs of Rommel’s multi-division force.13 After 

the campaign was concluded, he still seemed unable to acknowledge the 

connection between supply and demand:

The reason for giving up the pursuit is almost always the quartermaster’s growing difficulty in spanning the lengthened supply routes with his 

available transport. As the commander usually pays great attention to his 

quartermaster and allows the latter’s estimate of the supply possibilities to 

determine his strategic plan, it has become the habit for the quartermaster 

staffs to complain at every difficulty, instead of getting on with the job and 

using their powers of improvisation, which indeed are frequently nil.14

Although the full impact of the logistical shortfall still lay ahead of 

him, in the summer of 1941 the conquest of Tobruk was the immediate 

task. Rommel hoped the momentum of the Axis advance would carry him 

through. British defenders occupied a 30-mile perimeter, with 220 miles of 

tank ditches, barbed wire, mines, and reinforced concrete defensive belts. 
155

Tobruk’s port also afforded the British ample supplies from the Mediterranean so long as the Royal Navy maintained superiority and the Luftwaffe 

was unable to bring the full weight of its tactical bombing to bear. Rommel optimistically expected the garrison to collapse but learned otherwise 

when the first of several attacks in April failed to break through anything 

more than the outer defenses; Rommel blamed his subordinate commanders, General Johannes Streich and Oberst Dr. Herbert Olbrich.15

The siege of Tobruk concerned Berlin, too. General Friedrich Paulus 

(who infamously discovered the tenacity of Russian defenders at Stalingrad in 1942-3) came to observe and report back to General Franz Halder, Army Chief of Staff. Halder was furious at Rommel’s disobedience 

and believed that the Afrikakorps commander was “stark raving mad,” but 

still recognized that the Hitler-Rommel bond was not to be taken lightly. 

Based upon Paulus’ report, Army Commander in Chief Walter Brauchitsch 

ordered the Tobruk attack halted. This was done just in time, as the British – far from being ready to surrender Africa – launched Operation Battleaxe on 15 June. In a series of hard-fought engagements at Halfaya Pass 

and Fort Capuzzo, the more nimble German defenders blunted the British offensive and nearly decapitated the entire force. Churchill relieved 

General Wavell as Commander in Chief Middle East, replacing him with 

Lieutenant General Claude Auchinleck. This became a familiar pattern: 

while Rommel stayed, a rotating series of British commanders arrived, 

failed, and went. Auchinleck, in turn, named Lieutenant General Sir Alan 

Cunningham as commander of the Western Desert Force, expanded and 

renamed the Eighth Army.

Eighth Army, with fresh troops and equipment, was again put to the 

job of destroying the Afrikakorps, which itself was renamed as Panzergruppe Afrika.

16 The new British offensive, dubbed “Operation Crusader” 

brought a mass of firepower in the form of XXX Corps. Seven hundred 

British tanks faced off against 400 German and Italian armored vehicles, 

of which only 250 were modern. Rommel was meanwhile planning to 

resume his own attack on Tobruk, having at last received permission from 

OKW. Crusader launched on 18 November and despite being initially 

slow in responding to the unexpected attack, Rommel counterattacked at 

selected points in overwhelming force – the fighting was fiercest at Sidi 

Rezegh – and destroyed significant portions of the XXX Corps armored 

spearheads.

Coincident with the start of Crusader, British commandos attacked the 

German headquarters detachment at Beda Littoria on the night of 17/18 

November intending to assassinate Rommel. Unknown to the attackers, he 
156

had ceased using the small, spare headquarters building there three months 

earlier and had moved closer to the fighting, now several hundred miles 

up the coast. As can so easily happen in special operations missions, a 

cascade of events went wrong. In addition to simply being at the wrong location, the men involved in this raid, code-named Operation Flipper, were 

unaware that Rommel was not even in Africa – he had gone to Rome two 

weeks prior. In the ensuing assault, the mission commander, Major Geoffrey Keyes, was killed along with four German occupants of Rommel’s 

old headquarters building. A few commandos eventually made it back to 

Allied lines, but the remainder were killed or captured. Rommel ordered 

that Major Keyes be buried with honor, in a plot next to the graves of the 

slain Germans.17

Although Rommel won the first part of Crusader, numbers (and his 

determination to continue operations at Tobruk) weighed against his force. 

After inflicting severe damage on the British despite the imbalanced force 

ratio (Eighth Army by now had four tanks to each German tank), Rommel retreated to the prepared defensive line at Gazala. Cunningham was 

relieved and replaced by Major General Neil Ritchie. Ritchie launched a 

renewed attack on Gazala in mid-December, forcing Panzergruppe Afrika

back along the coast road to El Agheila, covering the same ground it had 

seized earlier that year. However, this turn of events was typical of the 

see-saw war in Africa; the British offensive again reached the limit of its 

effectiveness and Rommel, reinforced with new panzers from home, counterattacked in early 1942, re-entering Benghazi on 28 January and resuming the Gazala position in early February. Like his predecessors, Ritchie’s 

job was in jeopardy but Auchinleck left him in command. Rommel next 

attempted to penetrate the series of British positions, called “boxes” which 

lay between the extreme southern end of the British line and the coast. 

He ran into trouble almost immediately and only Ritchie’s inexplicable 

inaction saved the German force – now re-designated Panzerarmee Afrika – from defeat. Instead, the Germans finally broke the Free French 

strongpoint at Bir Hakeim and rolled up the remaining Eighth Army positions. British losses were devastating; their Gazala positions crumbled and 

Rommel again resumed his single-minded pursuit of the main objective: 

Tobruk.

The British defenses at Tobruk were significantly weaker than they 

had been seven months earlier. British units had been repositioned to support the Gazala line and the fixed obstacles had been partially dismantled 

in connection with Operation Crusader. Following sustained Luftwaffe 

attacks, German forces broke through the hastily reassembled cordon of 
157

protective landmines. Tobruk surrendered on 21 June 1942, and 35,000 

Allied soldiers marched into captivity. The Germans captured enough supplies to fuel the drive to Alexandria. Hitler promoted Erwin Rommel to the 

rank of Field Marshal; it was the apogee of his career.

On the other hand, Claude Auchinleck’s career was at an end. He relieved Ritchie, took personal command of the Eighth Army, and retreated 

to a highly defensible position at a place called El Alamein. Although a 

mere 60 miles from Alexandria, it offered the last, best hope of stopping 

Rommel’s advance. Auchinleck, though, had run out of time. He was relieved of command in August, replaced by General Sir Harold Alexander. 

To take Ritchie’s vacant post with 8th Army, Churchill selected Lieutenant 

General Bernard Montgomery. In addition to priority of supplies and reinforcements (over 1,000 tanks arrived between August and October) Montgomery enjoyed the advantage of ULTRA intercepts – decrypts of German 

command-level messages sent via the Enigma machine. The allowed the 

British access to the entirety of German offensive plans; unit strengths and 

positions; supply situation; and even the enemy’s assessment of the British defenses (quite erroneous, as it turned out). Rommel attempted several breakthroughs, only to run into unexpected minefields or unsuspected 

British defenses. Elaborate maneuver was out of the question, the coast 

marked the northern boundary of operations, as did the impassable Qatarra 

Depression to the south. Initial attempts to push through El Alamein failed 

and the Germans had little choice but to then wait for further reinforcements before attempting a final attack to Alexandria.

Montgomery, assisted by Ultra and a particularly effective air reconnaissance force, understood the Axis situation, defensive positions, and 

supply difficulties almost at well as his opponent. In the weeks leading 

up to the second battle at El Alamein, the British received personnel and 

equipment resupply, including new American M4 Sherman tanks, which 

all but guaranteed victory in the upcoming engagement. Contrasted with 

the dismal strength of Panzerarmee Afrika (it had 500 operational tanks, 

counting both antiquated Italian models and more modern German ones), 

the Eighth Army could field over a thousand, backed by close to a thousand artillery pieces. In addition, Montgomery, in his customarily thorough style, insisted that the assault troops, who would be first to pierce the 

dense German minefields, were trained to a fine edge. The British attack 

was scheduled for 23 October.

Rommel was away. Suffering from a host of physical ailments, the 

Desert Fox was recuperating in Austria, having left General Georg Stumme 

in command of the Axis forces. When the overwhelming British barrage 
158

started on the night of the 23 October, German positions up and down the 

line were pounded in a manner and intensity not seen since WWI. Some 

positions ceased to exist, communications were severed, and none of the 

defenders knew if the British main attack was occurring in his sector. General Stumme suffered a heart attack while attempting to visit his forward 

positions and was abandoned in the desert by his oblivious driver. At the 

moment when they most needed Rommel’s clear leadership, the various 

German and Italian units were essentially on their own.

Rommel returned on the 25 October and assumed control of the defensive battle. Although the Germans inflicted savage punishment on Eighth 

Army at many points – and as usual the 88mm FLAK was stunningly 

effective – the relentless math of attrition insured resolution of the battle 

in Montgomery’s favor; the Axis could not afford to replace its losses. 

Montgomery was several times under pressure from his subordinate commanders to suspend the offensive but he instead continued the attacks. 

Rommel ordered his battered army to withdraw on 2 November. He kept 

this fact hidden from the OKW for several critical hours, only incidentally 

mentioning that ”the infantry units are already being withdrawn” in the 

text of a much longer, bleak situation report to the high command. Once 

Berlin realized the truth, Rommel’s action drew an immediate response 

from the OKW and Hitler:

With me the entire German nation is watching your heroic defensive 

battle in Egypt, with well-placed confidence in your leadership and in the 

courage of your German and Italian troops. In your situation there can 

be no thought but to persevere, to yield not one yard, and to hurl every 

gun and every fighting man available into the battle. Considerable air reinforcements are being transferred over the coming days...Superior they 

may be, but the enemy are surely also at the end of their strength...to your 

troops therefore you can only offer one path – the path that leads to victory 

or death. Sgd: Adolf Hitler.18

At this moment, if at no other time before, Rommel began to question Hitler’s orders, although he was not yet prepared to disobey them.19

Though 15th Panzer was reduced to ten tanks and 21st Panzer to fourteen, 

the Panzerarmee commander ordered his units to hold. After consulting 

with Luftwaffe commander, Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring on 

the 4 November, Rommel wired Hitler, asking for permission to save what 

was left of his army.20 When the front collapsed later that same day, he 

again ordered the retreat without waiting for a response from Berlin. Hitler 

approved the retreat that evening.21 Rommel’s action, even delayed, was 

certainly the correct one.
159

The Germans put up a stubborn retreat toward more defensible lines, 

sowing mines in their wake and engaging in local counterattacks whenever the British pursuit overextended itself. Allied air superiority meant 

that Axis convoys were hit on a regular basis. Rommel’s operational situation became even more acute when, on 8 November, American and British 

forces landed in Morocco, trapping German forces between them. Hitler 

disapproved Rommel’s request of evacuation from Africa, something that 

was quite impossible from strategic, morale, and a practical perspectives. 

A subsequent meeting with the Führer did little to alter either Rommel’s 

determination to retreat or Hitler’s waning confidence in him.22

By the time Panzerarmee Afrika arrived at the Tunisian border, the 

distance between the two halves of the Allied force was a mere two hundred miles. Rommel, staying ahead of Montgomery, halted his force at 

the Mareth Line, a series of French-built fortifications which ran from 

the Mediterranean to the Matmata Hills near the Libyan-Tunisian border. 

It was a position all-but-impossible to take by frontal assault. With the 

Americans steadily approaching from the west, and the absolute necessity of keeping the enemy forces apart, Rommel recovered enough of his 

fighting spirit to plan and conduct a limited offensive against the US II 

Corps: Kasserine Pass.23 On 14 February 1943, the Germans launched armored forces (accompanied by every available tactical air support aircraft) 

through a series of passes, and crushed the American and British units in 

their path. Although the attacks continued until 23 February, when Rommel – overcome with fatigue and caution, much to the dismay of Kesselring (now commanding all forces in the Mediterranean theater) – abruptly 

returned his forces whence they came, and refocused his attention on the 

British facing him at the Mareth Line.

Rommel had been designated as commander of Heersgruppe Afrika

(Army Group Africa), but it was an empty, meaningless title. Actual command belonged with his subordinate leaders, General Hans-Jürgen von 

Arnim (Fifth Panzer Army) and General Giovanni Messe (First Italian 

Army). 24 The Desert Fox’s days were numbered and everyone knew it. 

Sadly for his reputation, Rommel did not end his African campaign at 

Kasserine. Starting on 6 March, he launched the ill-conceived Operation 

Capri at Medenine. It was designed as a spoiling attack, to preemptively 

break up the British offensive that was coming against Mareth. German 

forces ran headlong into prepared British anti-tank and artillery positions, 

losing over fifty tanks in the process and making no appreciable gain. Although Enigma intercepts forewarned Montgomery of Rommel’s attack, 

the coordination of German forces was so poor that it likely stood little 
160

chance of success no matter the circumstances. The attack ended that same 

evening. On 9 March, three days afterward, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel 

left Africa forever.25

Heersgruppe Afrika survived until 12 May, under the command of 

von Arnim, when approximately 230,000 German and Italian troops surrendered.26 Perhaps 40,000 Axis soldiers were killed, wounded or missing 

in the last phase of the campaign, significantly fewer casualties than those 

suffered by the Allied forces against them.27 With the conquest of Africa, 

the Americans and British were free to choose their next point of attack on 

Fortress Europe – Sicily, Italy, Greece, or even Southern France.

Officially, Rommel remained a shining star in Germany’s war machine. Privately, he was in the limbo reserved for German officers who 

had failed at their task and now waited for the phone call that meant a new, 

almost certainly less glorious assignment. After recovery time in Wiener 

Neustadt, Rommel was first sent to Greece (in response to an Allied diversionary operation that suggested the next point of invasion would be 

there; it was Sicily instead), and then in August to command Army Group 

B in Northern Italy, but this soon brought him into personal and professional conflict with the ambitious Kesselring, the Mediterranean theater 

commander. This particular pond was too small for two large fish. OKW 

ordered Rommel to transfer Army Group B command headquarters to 

France, where he was now charged with preventing the successful Allied 

invasion of northern France.

Rommel immediately started a comprehensive tour of his new area, 

visiting every forward unit and position up and down the Atlantic coast. 

What he saw shocked him. Lacking precise information on where the Allies would strike – though the intelligence services were [wrongly] confident that it would be Pas de Calais – German resources were stretched 

along more than a thousand miles of coastline. Moreover, defending the 

coast of France was not among Germany’s top military priorities, given 

the fact that the tide had turned against German forces on the eastern front. 

The coastal defense units were composed of less-combat-ready personnel 

and were under strength. With the change of command, and Hitler’s growing realization that the invasion of France must come soon, physical and 

personnel priorities likewise changed.

As one might expect in the National Socialist system, personalities 

and in-fighting had unfortunate effects on military operations. Rommel 

disliked both Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt, overall German 

commander in the West, and Rundstedt’s senior panzer commander, Gen-
161

eral der Panzertruppe Geyr von Schweppenburg. The feeling was mutual. 

There were several contentious issues, but the most significant concerned 

the operational control of the panzer force reserve, which included the 

powerful 1st SS Panzer Division “Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, ” and 

Panzer Lehr Division.28 Von Rundstedt and von Schweppenburg believed 

that until the exact location of the Allied landing was established, it would 

be foolish to position Germany’s most powerful forces too far forward; if 

they were wrongly supporting the defense of the Pas de Calais and that 

landing was a feint, then Allied airpower would prevent the Germans from 

repositioning their forces to oppose the actual landing site. Using the same 

assumptions, Rommel argued for the opposite solution: because of Allied 

air superiority in the upcoming invasion, it was essential that he be given 

operational of the panzer divisions and that these divisions be staged as 

far forward as possible, to counter the landing immediately and destroy 

the Allies before they could establish a foothold on the continent. Listening to both arguments, Hitler decided on a middle course, a portion of the 

panzers would constitute an OKW reserve and be released to the theater 

commander only when the site of the main Allied landing was evident.29

When the invasion came on 6 June 1944, Rommel was on leave at 

his home in Herrlingen, hundreds of miles from Normandy. Because it 

was still uncertain that the Normandy beaches were the main effort, OKW 

refused to release the panzers until later that afternoon, well after the time 

they should have most effectively intervened. Rommel arrived back at his 

headquarters late at night on 6 June. He immediately took control of the 

battle but the critical opportunity had passed. Rommel continued to expect 

a second invasion – probably at Pas de Calais – for weeks to come.30

The Normandy battle went badly for Rommel, although his forces 

stubbornly held the British to a draw near Caen for longer than expected. 

On June 29, at a conference with Hitler at the Berghof, Rommel briefly 

attempted to inject his view that the battle was lost and that the political 

conclusions (i.e. negotiation was necessary with the western Allies) were 

self-evident.31 Hitler dismissed him from the conference but Rommel retained his command.

At the height of the Normandy battle, fate removed Rommel from 

further participation. On 17 July his staff car was strafed by a British 

fighter-bomber and the Field Marshal was seriously wounded. Three days 

later, while Rommel drifted in and out of consciousness, Oberst Claus von 

Stauffenberg set off a bomb at Hitler’s headquarters in Rastenburg, East 

Prussia. A wide-ranging investigation by the Gestapo and SD (Sicherheitsdienst – SS Security Service) followed. It uncovered a diverse group of 
162

conspirators, many revealed in the brief interval between the bomb explosion and the collapse of the “Valkyrie” plot later that same day. To Hitler’s 

dismay, many senior Wehrmacht officers were among those involved, and 

as the interrogations continued, Rommel’s name emerged.

The circumstances were suspicious and suggestive; several plotters 

were directly connected to Rommel. Chief of Staff of Army Group B, 

Generalmajor Hans Speidel, was a member of the conspiracy and Rommel’s 

name was mentioned in connection with the plotters only after Speidel’s 

arrest and interrogation. Unlike so many others, Speidel did not hang from 

piano wire at Plötzensee Prison, suggesting the strong possibility that he 

and another conspirator, Oberstleutnant Caesar von Hofacker, offered up 

Rommel to save themselves. Ultimately, Speidel benefited both from his 

association with the Feldmarschall and his membership in the 20 July plot. 

His survival meant that he became the de facto manager of Rommel’s 

legacy and was named commander of NATO ground forces in 1957.32

Hofacker was executed.

When the Gestapo investigation uncovered Rommel’s name, 

interrogation statements and the investigative report were forwarded to 

Hitler and the OKW. Rommel – perhaps because of his previous special 

relationship with the Führer, perhaps because of his esteem among the 

German people, was given a choice not available to others named in the 

plot: a public trial for treason; or suicide, which would be disguised as 

death from his wounds.33 In the latter case, his family would be spared. 

When Generalmajors Ernst Maisel and Wilhelm Burgdorf arrived at 

Rommel’s home on 14 October 1944, they brought the dossier of evidence, 

a cyanide capsule, and two options. Rommel explained the situation to 

Lucie – that General der Infanterie Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, Speidel, 

and Oberstleutnant Caesar von Hofacker had implicated him – and that he 

had already made his decision.34 He left the house with the two generals 

from Berlin. A subsequent phone call informed Lucie that her husband 

had died of a heart attack. Hitler kept his word; Rommel was given a state 

funeral in Ulm, complete with guard of honor, and von Rundstedt was 

dispatched to deliver the eulogy.

Despite the circumstances of this death, Rommel’s participation in 

the anti-Hitler conspiracy is problematic, and rests on weak evidence.35

Although Rommel had become disillusioned with Hitler and the High 

Command in the weeks after Normandy – and following his own inability 

to contain the Allied landings – there is an absence of evidence to show 

active participation in the plot, let alone joining in Stauffenberg’s decision 

to kill Hitler. He certainly mentioned to several people that a realistic 
163

appraisal of the overall situation was necessary – that is, that Hitler should 

work toward a negotiated peace before the war was lost. As time passed 

and the certainty of Germany’s defeat became clearer, Rommel became 

less cautious in expressing this view. This does not equate with Rommel 

being a member of the 20 July assassination attempt or any of the other 

collateral plots, both within and outside the Wehrmacht, to overthrow the 

Nazi regime. The evidence suggests that Rommel became vaguely aware 

of plots but neither joined them nor informed his superiors of them. That 

alone was treason, albeit of a passive kind. 

In the sensitive political atmosphere of postwar Germany, military 

heroes from the recent world war were few and far between. Except for the 

20 July conspirators, other legitimately talented senior Wehrmacht officers 

– Manstein, Guderian, Kesselring, etc. – were unsuitable role models. The 

taint of Nazism, or at least their lack of active resistance to Hitler, was 

sufficient to make them pariahs. Rommel did not fit into that paradigm; 

thanks to his able performance in Africa, Desmond Young’s highly 

readable biography and Speidel’s somewhat self-serving recollections, 

both published in 1950, the 1953 publication of The Rommel Papers,

and the fact that Rommel had been forced to commit suicide because 

of suspicion of his involvement in the assassination conspiracy, put the 

Desert Fox in a different category – an acceptable hero, essentially. This 

applied not only to the German public but likewise to the victorious Allied 

nations that defeated Rommel. They, too, needed a talented and gallant 

opponent to maximize the degree of their own success and it was evident 

that Erwin Rommel was truly both of these – talented and gallant. The 

problem, though, for both the postwar Allies and the postwar Germans 

was that for Rommel to be an acceptable hero, it was essential that he 

be separated from the immoral deeds of his Nazi masters. Hollywood 

helped: when The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel was released by 20th 

Century Fox in 1951 (it premiered in Germany in 1952), it was generally 

well-received.36 The film depicts Rommel (played by British actor James 

Mason) as an active member of the 20 July conspiracy, even trying to 

recruit von Rundstedt – a conversation that never happened. Strict 

historical accuracy is seldom the goal of filmmakers and it is perpetually 

the case that images shown on film have a magical way of seeping into 

the public consciousness; the movie narrative often becomes more of an 

indelible truth than the facts ever could be.

Rommel was portrayed on the big screen several times afterward, 

always in a sympathetic light: The Longest Day (1962), Patton (1970), and 

Raid on Rommel (1971).37 Treatments on the small screen have become 
164

increasingly more critical, with the Rommel family objecting (in advance) 

to a soon-to-be released televised film that is highly critical.38 A ZDF 

documentary production in 2007, “Rommel’s War” was likewise negative, 

although the research attempting to show that Rommel was a war criminal 

by association (“he paved the way for the machinery of destruction with 

his victories”) is patently absurd.39 The facts show otherwise.40

A fair summary of Erwin Rommel’s life and career is no easy task. To 

be sure, he had limitations; von Rundstedt once referred to him as “just a 

good division commander,” implying that Rommel’s competency ceiling 

was at that level. For many reasons, that estimation is both unfair and 

inaccurate. Rommel was a superb division commander, perhaps the best 

that Germany produced, and it is impossible to judge his handling of corps 

and army-level formations in North Africa by the ultimate result alone. 

Greatness is not merely a function of outcome – the fact that Rommel was 

beaten in Africa in 1943 does not diminish his abilities and achievements. 

For two years, he challenged the generally more numerous, better-equipped 

British and Commonwealth forces in what is perhaps the harshest climate 

on earth.

He was an intelligent, crafty, and highly adaptive commander. In the 

midst of a war characterized by brutality and crime, he came as close as 

humanly possible to fighting a war with honor and decency – although 

he willingly served a dictator who valued neither quality. Rommel’s role 

as anti-Hitler conspirator does not withstand scrutiny but neither does 

it detract from the other evidence in his favor: when it was apparent in 

1944 that continued military resistance would only lead to meaningless 

loss of life, he gradually moved to a position where he could no longer 

support Hitler’s leadership. There is, of course, a wide chasm between 

what Rommel did and what we might today like for him to have done. He 

was politically naïve, especially during the period when Hitler’s strategic 

decisions appeared to be correct, and it was fundamentally against his 

nature as a man and as an officer to be a revolutionary. However, Rommel 

finally arrived at a point where this imperative was no longer true, but 

never quite to the point of leading an insurrection or participating in a plot 

to kill the chief of state.

The best barometer of his command, and his life, might be that from 

his earliest successes in WWI through his command in Africa, to the final 

days in Normandy, Rommel earned the loyalty of his troops, even in 

defeat. They believed, with some justification, that he could do anything. 

Unlike the case with veterans of some other German wartime military 

organizations, Afrikakorps soldiers rightfully enjoyed the postwar respect 
165

of both their country and their former opponents. There is no question 

but that this is due to the quality of their commander; it was due to Erwin 

Rommel.
166

Notes

1. The Stemmer episode was a closely-held family secret until the Rommel to Stemmer letters were revealed by Gertrude’s son. Even Rommel’s son 

only knew his half-sister as “cousin Gertrude.” John Bierman and Colin Smith, 

The Battle of Alamein: Turning Point, World War II (Viking, New York, 2002), p. 

55-6. 

2. Rommel complained loudly and often about two previous occasions, 

one of them at Mount Mataiur, when his actions should have won the Pour le 

Mérite promised to the first officer to take the enemy position. David Irving, The 

Trail of the Fox, pp. 14-5.

3. Irving, p. 45.

4. Rommel made sure that there was no repeat of the incident in Italy in 

WWI where he felt proper credit was denied him. He prepared a summary dispatch of his unit’s activities and sent it directly to Hitler. When Hitler summoned 

his senior commanders on June 2 to discuss the next phase of the campaign, Rommel was the only division commander invited to meet with him (Irving, p. 48).

5. Führer Directive 22, of 11 January 1941 for the conduct of operations in 

the Mediterranean area specified the limited operational goal: “Tripolitania must 

be held” [italics added]. It was not, at least by Hitler and the OKW, envisioned as 

a major secondary theater of war.

6. Bierman and Smith, p. 67.

7. Richard Collier, The War in the Desert (Time-Life, NY, 1977), p. 61 and 

Erwin Rommel, The Rommel Papers (Da Capo, NY, 1982), p. 103.

8. Rommel, p. 104.

9. Die Deutsche Wochenshau, Nr. 554, 6 April 1941. The newsreel footage 

was accompanied by a new marching song written for the Afrikakorps: “Panzer 

rollen in Afrika vor”

10. Rommel, p. 119.

11. Collier, p. 67.

12. Jay Hatton, Logistics and the Desert Fox, http://www.almc.army.mil/ 

alog/issues/JanFeb01/MS610.htm. Despite, at times, heavy losses from Royal 

Navy and Royal Air Force attacks, the Italian Navy managed to deliver 72,000 

tons of supplies per month from July to October 1941, slightly more than Rommel’s required minimum.

13. Historian Wolf Heckmann wittily observed “The code name for the 

commitment of German troops in Africa was Sunflower. Unconsciously, someone 

had hit upon the perfect symbol: a huge and showy flower at the end of a long and 

rather fragile stem.” Rommel’s War in Africa (Konecky & Konecky, NY, 1981), p. 

24.

14. Rommel, p. 96.
167

15. Rommel, p. 125. It would be fair to say that the feeling was mutual; 

Streich did not care for Rommel, who had him reassigned to the OKW reserve, 

effective 1 June 1941. Complaints about Rommel’s command style were many 

(Irving, p. 102-3).

16. Rommel created a new division, 90th Light, and redesignated the existing 5th Light Division as the 21st Panzer Division. Now with two panzer divisional formations (21st and 15th), plus the addition of two Italian corps, meant 

that the “Afrikakorps” label was insufficient.

17. Bierman and Smith, pp. 94-5 and Rommel, p. 156. Keyes was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. His brother sold the medal – Britain’s highest 

award for courage under fire - at auction in 1995. In October 1942, Hitler issued 

the infamous “Commando Order,” which stipulated that such commandos were to 

be “killed to the last man.” Rommel refused to pass along this order to his troops. 

Heckmann, p. 232.

18. Rommel, p. 321, and more accurate translation at Irving, p. 211.

19. Ralf Georg Reuth, Rommel: End of a Legend, p. 56.

20. Rommel, p. 324. The situation was more acute than in terms of tanks 

alone; the climate and conditions took their toll. In August 1942 alone, 30,000 

Germans and Italians were evacuated from the theater, most sick rather than 

wounded (Heckmann, p. 322, n. 2).

21. Irving, p. 215.

22. Irving 225-7.

23. The offensive was aimed at multiple points along the Western Dorsal 

mountains, Fraser, pp. 402-6.

24. Von Arnim had been named commander of Fifth Panzer Army, the force 

sent to Tunisia after the Allied landings during Operation Torch.

25. Writing to Mussolini after Rommel’s departure from Africa, Hitler said, 

“Whatever posterity may judge of Field Marshal Rommel, to his troops and particularly to the German soldiers he was beloved in every command he held. He 

was always dreaded as an opponent by his enemies, and he still is.” Irving, p. 260.

26. For unclear reasons, neither government sources nor scholars agree on a 

precise number. Estimates range from 200,000 to 300,000.

27. Collier, p. 195.

28. Along with the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division and 12th SS Panzer 

Division “Hitler Jugend,” these units constituted the 1st SS Panzerkorps.

29. Fraser, p. 467. The “If only Hitler has listened to Rommel” argument has 

no foundation. Normandy was only one of several possible sites and neither Hitler 

nor Rommel correctly identified it as the exclusive Allied objective. British intelligence, using a multiple-axis approach (double agents, radio messages, dummy 

vehicles, notional units, etc) successfully convinced the German intelligence ser-
168

vices that the true target was at the Pas de Calais.

30. Fraser, p. 492. This is due to the British deception plan. FUSAG (First 

United States Army Group), an imaginary formation complete with phony unit 

patches, was central to the fake Allied order of battle that the Germans expected 

to be part of the main invasion.

31. Rommel expressed the idea to several people that he felt he could use 

his influence to broker a deal between Germany and Britain/United States, a preposterous notion at that stage in the war – although it was also an idea shared by 

the various anti-Hitler resistance groups. 

32. Irving, 398-9. Speidel also acted as a conspirator in other ways. He – by 

his own admission – withheld two German panzer divisions from the Normandy battlefield, thus denying German forces the reinforcements they desperately 

needed. When, in the 1950s, this conduct could be seen as politically counterproductive to a general quickly rising in NATO ranks, Speidel quietly omitted the 

incident it in subsequent editions of his book (Irving, 348-9).

33. Two other Field Marshals were not so lucky. Field Marshal Gunther 

Kluge committed suicide and Field Marshal Erich von Witzleben was executed 

after being subjected to many indignities at his trial before the notorious People’s 

Court.

34. Fraser, p. 551.

35. Indeed, Lucy Rommel stated that her husband was never a member of 

the 20 July plot – although it would have been advantageous for her to say the 

exact opposite (Fraser, pp. 532-3).

36. Lucie Rommel was listed as a consultant on both The Desert Fox and 

The Longest Day, although it is unclear in what way she could have contributed 

to the latter. There were some notable exceptions to the positive reaction for The 

Desert Fox. In a 28 October 1951 review, an outraged (and shrill) correspondent 

Bosley Crowther wrote “if postwar discoveries had apprised us that Rommel had 

really done some great and heroic service in the cause of democracy then there 

might be some moral justification for a soft-hearted film about him.”

37. Rommel is also periodically mentioned in the American television series 

“Rat Patrol,” which aired from 1966-1968. The series was historical in no way 

whatsoever.

38. http://www.sueddeutsche.de/medien/swr-film-ueber-erwin-rommelkoenigs drama-und-kriminalfilm-1.1145848

39. Richard Evans uses the same logic but is more careful than the false 

analogy set up by the ZDF documentary. SeeThe Third Reich at War (Penguin 

Press, NY, 2009), p. 150: “Rommel was widely regarded as a hero not only in 

Germany but even in Britain. Yet his victories opened up new opportunities for 

the Nazis and their allies to implement their doctrines of racial superiority on defenceless minorities.” Neither ZDF nor Evans produced any evidence that Rom-
169

mel had actual or even constructive knowledge of any war crimes in his area of 

operations.

40. Rommel refused to carry out the order to execute captured members of 

the Jewish Brigade (Bruce Watson, Exit Rommel: The Tunisian Campaign, 1942-

43, Stackpole Books, 2006, p. 139).

171

Chapter 7

Curtis E. LeMay

by John M. Curatola, Ph.D.

In a discussion of great commanders, one may ask, “Why is Curtis 

LeMay on this list?” He did not establish an empire, change political 

boundaries, or rule a kingdom, nor did he shape legal, social, or 

economic landscapes. LeMay’s contributions to history may not have 

been of the same magnitude as Genghis Khan or Napoleon. However, as 

the introduction of this book points out, “the truly great commander is 

generally considered to be one who attains the unexpected, who stands 

above his contemporaries through his skill on the battlefield, or through 

the sheer magnitude of his accomplishments.” With these criteria in mind, 

LeMay certainly merits inclusion. During his time in the US Army Air 

Corps, Army Air Forces, Air Force, his accomplishments not only met, 

but exceeded the requirements suggested in the introduction. Through a 

review of his life and military achievements, he stands to be counted as 

one of the truly great commanders in history.

LeMay’s enduring reputation as the “ultimate Cold Warrior,” a 

pragmatic, brutally honest, and brave leader, is often contrasted with 

accusations levied against him as being a war-criminal, murderer, and 

even madman. In 1945, during the execution of the Japanese firebombing 

raids, Time Magazine referred to him a “level-headed devoted airman.”1

However by the time of his retirement in 1965 political satirist “Izzy” 

Stone referred to LeMay as a “cave man in a jet bomber.”2

 Such contrast in 

his reputation makes LeMay a unique figure, but this dichotomy matches 

the man himself. LeMay was a figure of extremes who saw issues in black 

and white, with little room for grey. His daughter Janie noted that her 

father had “a strong sense of right and wrong.”3

 Even LeMay intimated at 

this contrast, when referring to his penchant for smoking by stating “[I] 

don’t like doing anything half-heartedly, even if it’s a wicked and selfdestructive avocation like smoking cigars.”4

LeMay served as general officer for twenty-two years and as a four-star 

general for thirteen. Despite this exceptional record of service at the highest 

levels of the U.S. military, LeMay came from the humble of beginnings. 

Born November 15, 1906 in Columbus Ohio, LeMay was the oldest of six 

children to Erving and Arizona LeMay. One of his earliest memories is 

sighting an airplane around the age of five and trying to chase it down and 

catch it. While he failed to grab hold of the airplane, the episode of trying 

to catch something elusive was a vision that stayed with LeMay his entire 
172

life.5 LeMay’s father, Erving, was a menial laborer who worked various 

jobs to support his large family. In Erving’s effort to remain employed, the 

family uprooted numerous times and, as Curtis remembered, “we moved 

like nomads.”6 Curtis thought his father was a dreamer and not a very 

practical man. Being the oldest, Curtis assumed responsibilities at a young 

age and was looked upon by some of his siblings as the figure of authority 

in the LeMay household.7

 LeMay recalls a winter episode when there was 

not enough food for dinner, so he took it upon himself to go fishing in 

order to feed the family while his father sat unconcerned by the furnace.8

His humble origins and assumed responsibilities for his siblings engrained 

a work ethic and a sense of duty that never left him. 

Figure 7. General Curtis LeMay.
173

Young LeMay showed an early interest in mechanics and electronics. 

During his high school years he built his own radio and worked various 

jobs to support his interests. He was not a sociable student in high school 

and, as he put it, “the girls stuff cost money-sodas, sandwiches and alland I thought my personal cash would be better expended in some other 

direction-something really valuable, say like a [radio] crystal set.”9

Graduating from high school in 1924 he attended The Ohio State University 

with an interest in becoming a civil engineer. While he had enough money 

to pay for his freshman year, he needed a job to cover the tuition for the 

following three years. He took a job as a steel caster working nights while 

attending classes in the day. The steel casting job paid thirty-five dollars a 

week, an ample sum of money in the 1920s. His salary allowed him to pay 

his tuition while he lived at home and also helped pay family expenses. 

Working nine hours a day, six days a week took at toll on LeMay and his 

grades. His late nights and lack of sleep resulted in his failing a class on 

“Railroad Curves” twice in a row.10

While attending Ohio State, he joined the Reserve Officer Training 

Corps (ROTC) in hopes of attaining a commission, with the additional 

goal of becoming an aviator. At the end of his junior year he opted to take 

a commission in the National Guard, applied to become a “flying cadet,” 

and decided to forgo his senior year. LeMay still needed fifteen hours to 

complete his engineering degree, but the desire to become an aviator was 

too great, and in September 1928 he was approved to enlist as a flying 

cadet. A month later he boarded a train and headed to March Field, near 

Riverside, California to begin his flight training.11 After completing the 

training at March, LeMay transferred to Kelly Field near San Antonio, 

Texas and eventually was placed into the pursuit (fighter) aviation track. 

On October 12, 1929, LeMay, along with forty-seven other members of 

his class, received his wings and a commission as a second lieutenant.12

LeMay’s initial assignment sent him to Selfridge Field, Michigan. 

While stationed there he convinced his commanding officer to have 

him assigned temporarily to Norton Field near Columbus, Ohio. In this 

arrangement, LeMay was able to attend classes at Ohio State in Columbus in 

the morning and conduct his duties at Norton in the afternoon and evenings. 

As a result he completed the remaining fifteen hours of study and received 

his engineering degree. It was at this time that a fellow officer arranged 

for a couples blind date with two coeds from the University of Michigan. 

Upon the men’s entrance into the foyer of the women’s dormitory for their 

first date, one of the two women, Helen Maitland, spied the officers from 

a distance. Not knowing either man, she told her roommate “I’ll take the 
174

fat one (LeMay).”13 After this inauspicious beginning, the two began a 

courtship that result in marriage in June 1934.

The inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933 brought 

about two brief, yet unique assignments for LeMay. The first was a 

posting in the spring of 1933 to serve as second-in-command of a Civilian 

Conservation Corps (CCC) camp near Brethren, Michigan. The CCC was 

one of Roosevelt’s initiatives to employ young men to cultivate national 

parks, forest, and assist in other infrastructure improvements as a means to 

address widespread unemployment during the depression. LeMay loathed 

the assignment as it was, to him, merely glorified babysitting. Fortunately 

for LeMay, by late summer he received orders relieving him of CCC duty 

and sending him to navigation school at Langley Field, Virginia. The 

education at Langley served him well in the upcoming years and helped 

establish his early professional reputation. 

In February 1934 Roosevelt cancelled government air mail contracts 

with civilian carriers and directed the Army Air Corps to assume the 

mission. Despite the claims of the Air Corps chief, Major General 

Benjamin Foulois, military aviators were neither trained nor equipped to 

conduct these air delivery operations in a safe and competent manner.14

After navigation school LeMay was assigned as part of the air mail effort. 

While originally sent to Atlanta, he eventually flew an assigned mail route 

which stretched from Richmond, Virginia to Greensboro, North Carolina.15

Though he suffered no accidents during this assignment he was forced 

down by weather on at least one occasion. On June 1, civilian contracts 

were renewed, but the entire episode was a disaster for the Air Corps as it 

lost twelve pilots, sixty-five aircraft, and suffered humiliation in the eyes 

of the American public.16 

Following his service in the air mail debacle, Curtis and Helen were 

married on June 9, 1934 and subsequently stationed at Schofield Barracks, 

Wheeler Field, Hawaii. Because of his training at Langley, upon arrival in 

Hawaii LeMay was assigned to establish a navigation school on Oahu.17 In 

1935 LeMay was promoted to First Lieutenant and in the following year 

transferred to Langley Field, Virginia. However, the move from Hawaii 

was not just a geographical change; it was a professional one as well. 

Since the beginning of this flying career, he had been a pursuit pilot flying 

aircraft such as the P-12 and P-26. With the transfer to Langley, LeMay 

also transferred from pursuit aviation to bombardment and began flying 

the very latest aircraft available, Boeing’s B-17 “Flying Fortress.”
175

The B-17 was a major leap in aviation design and technology. The 

Chief of the Army Air Corps, General H. H. ‘Hap’ Arnold, compared the 

B-17s importance to that of the first military aircraft built by the Wright 

brothers.18 As a result of its four engines, graceful lines, and superior 

performance, LeMay, as he put it, “fell in love with the [B]17 at first 

sight.”19 The plane was not just a technological development, but signaled 

the advent of a new primary function for the Army Air Corps--strategic 

bombing. Upon arrival at Langley, LeMay was again initially assigned to 

establish a navigation school. However, this time LeMay avoided the duty 

and was instead assigned as the operations officer of the Second Bomb 

Group under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Robert Olds. Olds 

was an exacting boss and had a great influence on LeMay’s professional 

development. 

In addition to his transfer to bombers, LeMay established a superb 

reputation as a navigator. In exercises in August 1937 he was assigned 

as the lead navigator of a group of B-17s directed to locate the USS Utah 

off the coast of California. However, in two instances the Navy gave 

LeMay erroneous coordinates that were one degree off, equating to a sixty 

mile error. In the first instance the B-17s never sighted the naval vessels. 

However, in the second instance LeMay was aware of the navigation error, 

and despite the Navy’s oversight, he successful plotted a course to the 

USS Utah. In February 1938 he was again assigned as a lead navigator, 

this time for a good-will flight to Argentina. With no reliable aerial maps 

available, LeMay used charts out of National Geographic to navigate the 

Miami-Lima-Buenos Aries route, transiting over the Andes Mountains. 

For this achievement the mission was awarded the MacKay Trophy for 

the most outstanding military aerial feat of the year. In May 1938 he 

again proved his aerial navigation skills by intercepting the Italian luxury 

liner Rex with the entire episode broadcast by NBC Radio and covered 

by New York Times reporter Hanson Baldwin. Despite having his charts 

soaked by a leak in the navigator’s window, and in exceptionally turbulent 

weather, LeMay successfully pinpointed the exact time and location of the 

interception.20

In May 1940 he was promoted to Captain with subsequent promotions 

to Major and Lieutenant Colonel in the next two years. By the time 

the United States become involved in World War II, LeMay was the 

Commanding Officer of the 305th Bomb Group at Wendover, Utah. In 

preparing his unit for aerial combat, LeMay established a rigorous training 

schedule. This emphasis on training continued when the unit arrived as 

part of the Combined Bombing Offensive (CBO) in the European Theater. 
176

It would be a hallmark of LeMay’s command philosophy throughout 

his career. During this assignment, his demanding training regimen 

and exacting standards earned him the nickname “Iron Ass” from his 

subordinates.21 While never said to his face, he was aware of the moniker, 

and even smirked when he heard of it.22 Adding to this reputation, just 

before the unit departed for Europe, LeMay came down with Bell’s Palsy 

(an ailment affecting facial nerves). The palsy caused the right side of this 

face to become numb with an accompanying loss of control of the facial 

muscles. Though he recovered much of the feeling in his face, his upper 

lip remained immobile and did not smile along with the rest of his mouth, 

thus leaving him with something of a permanent scowl.23 This only added 

to the “Iron Ass” reputation and the legend that LeMay never smiled.

As American crews arrived in Europe in 1942, the doctrine of daylight 

precision bombing was still just a theory. Could strategic bombing force 

the capitulation of Nazi Germany? With that end in mind, could the United 

States Army Air Forces (USAAF) hit a target while being shot at by enemy 

fighters and anti-aircraft defenses? Could the bomber really survive 

such an environment? LeMay was on the forefront of this grand aerial 

experiment and his ideas and practices would make a significant difference 

in the execution of the Combined Bomber Offensive—a campaign that 

involved British bombers attacking German-occupied Europe by night, 

while the Americans conducted high altitude precision bombing by day. 

The 305th arrived in England in October 1942 and was eventually 

based at Chelveston as part of the USAAF’s 8th Air Force. LeMay 

continued to execute a busy training schedule with his command, placing 

special emphasis on formation flying. He surmised that the only way to hit 

a target from high altitude was for the bomber formation to fly a straight 

and steady bomb run with no evasive action. A steady bomb run would 

provide the bombardier a stable platform for an accurate bomb drop. Up 

to that time, USAAF bomber crews initiated evasive action when attacked, 

and as a result their bombing accuracy was less than expected. On 23 

November, eight days after his thirty-sixth birthday, LeMay executed his 

fist combat mission over Nazi-occupied Europe with an attack on German 

U-boat pens at St Nazaire, France.24 Committed to being as accurate as 

possible with his bombs, LeMay instructed his crews that despite enemy 

fire, they were not to conduct any evasive action during the bomb run. 

When one airman protested the idea saying that it could not be done, 

LeMay set the example by replying, “Yes it can...and you’ll see me do it 

first because I will be in the lead plane.”25
177

LeMay led the Group steady on the bomb run for seven minutes while 

placing twice as many bombs on the target as any other group.26 The 305th 

lost two B-17s to enemy fighters, but none to anti-aircraft fire, though 

LeMay’s aircraft did take shrapnel in both wings.27 By not conducting 

evasive action and holding at a steady airspeed and altitude, the 305th 

under LeMay set a precedent for future bombing operations. Within a few 

weeks the entire 8th Air Force adopted LeMay’s non-evasive action tactic 

as standard procedure. 

This was not the only initiative of LeMay’s that would be adopted by the 

entire 8th Air Force. While the B-17 bristled with as many as ten machine 

guns for self-protection, LeMay surmised that the bomber formations 

prescribed by doctrine did not maximize available defensive firepower. 

As a result, in December 1942 LeMay discarded the widely accepted, 

and loosely defined, “box formation” used throughout the USAAF and 

developed instead the “Javelin Down” formation. This formation not only 

maximized defensive firepower, but allowed for better flexibility and was 

easier to control.28 While numerous variations on the LeMay formation 

came about, his basic defensive formation also became a standard practice 

of the 8th Air Force.29

In addition to these initiatives, LeMay also instituted a “lead crew 

school.” In this effort he teamed up the most proficient bombardiers and 

navigators, and had each team study a particular enemy target.30 When 

LeMay’s group flew a mission against one of these targets, he placed the 

lead crew specializing in that target at the spearhead for the formation, with 

the other bombers dropping their payloads when the lead crew dropped. 

This same practice survived the war and later became standard procedure 

in Strategic Air Command.31

While LeMay was the catalyst for many tactics, techniques, and 

procedures during the Combined Bomber Offensive, what stands out 

most is his leadership ability during this difficult time. As LeMay was 

taking the 305th Bomb Group into combat, and subsequently leading 

divisions, he flew in some of the first American missions against the 

German Luftwaffe. Effective German flak and fighter defenses resulted in 

exceedingly high casualties for the 8th Air Force during 1943-1944. Loss 

rates from individual missions could average around two to three percent 

of the attacking force, meaning, statistically, that crews would not survive 

their required compliment of twenty-five missions. Of the crews that 

arrived in mid to late 1942, 73 percent would not finish their 25-mission 

requirement.32 Within the first 10 months of operation, US airmen counted 

as killed or missing rose as high as 57 percent with another 16 percent 
178

seriously wounded or psychologically incapacitated.33 During the first 

six months of 1943 when the USAAF started hitting targets in Germany 

proper, bomber loss rates climbed above six percent lost with another 35 

percent damaged.34 When asked about flying such dangerous missions 

as the commanding officer LeMay replied: “How can any commanding 

officer send his people out into combat when he knows nothing about it? 

So I started out leading all missions personally. Not only did I feel that I 

ought to lead the people fighting under me, but I had to find things out...

you have to get in there and fight to find out what it is all about.”35

An example of the dangerous environment in which LeMay operated 

was the infamous Schweinfurt-Regensburg raid of 17 August 1943. In this 

mission LeMay led the 4th Bomb Wing with over 100 B-17s on a strike to 

the Messerschmitt aircraft factory at Regensburg, Germany. The mission 

was unique in that instead of heading home to England after the raid, the 

Wing was to turn south and land in North Africa to refuel. In addition to 

the 4th Bomb Wing, the 1st Bomb Wing was to take off simultaneously 

and raid the ball bearing factories at Schweinfurt, thus hopefully splitting 

the German fighter defense force. LeMay’s 4th Bomb Wing’s 146 aircraft 

took off on time and subsequently proceeded to its target while the 1st 

Wing remained grounded by fog.36 This delay on the part of the 1st Bomb 

Wing allowed Luftwaffe fighters to focus their efforts solely on LeMay’s 

bombers. With LeMay in the lead aircraft, the 4th Bomb Wing lost eighteen 

percent of the force with 240 men killed, captured, or missing.37 LeMay’s 

command returned to England after a brief stay in Africa with only eightytwo flyable aircraft.38 

Prior to the Schweinfurt-Regensburg raid, in spring 1943 LeMay had 

been promoted to Commander of a provisional bomb wing and left for his 

new headquarters at Thurleigh. This assignment was short lived as in June 

he was again promoted and placed in charge of the 3rd Air Division.39 In 

September 1943 his rank was finally reflective of his new responsibilities as 

he was promoted to Brigadier General. In his role as a division commander 

LeMay had been serving in the capacity of a general officer while still only 

a colonel. Upon his promotion, LeMay’s only response was a sardonic 

“it’s about time.”40 By November 1943, LeMay was ordered back to the 

United States to participate in “Bond Drives” to help sell the war effort to 

the American public. While public speaking was certainly not LeMay’s 

strength, the trip home allowed him to visit Helen and spend some time 

with his daughter Janie who was born in 1939. 

Returning to England, LeMay remained commander the 3rd Air 

Division and was promoted to Major General in March 1944. Three 
179

months later, shortly after the invasion of Normandy, he returned to the 

United States to assume new responsibilities. In his memoirs, LeMay 

fondly recalls his time in the European theater—“that [tour] somehow was 

the concentration of my career as an airman. I was close to the people 

with whom I worked, and I could fly along with them and share their 

perils. We felt the intimacy of proven human devotion while doing our job 

together...”41 While his tour with the 8th Air Force was most memorable, 

LeMay’s subsequent assignment in the Pacific would prove to be one that 

would make him a household name.

While LeMay was flying combat missions over Europe, the USAAF 

was developing a new bomber that would carry larger bomb loads over 

longer distances than the existing B-17 and B-24 fleet. The “Very Long 

Range” (VLR) bomber looked to carry almost twice as much payload and 

with a range of over 1000 miles further than existing bombers.42 This 

innovative and technologically advanced design eventually became known 

as the B-29 “Superfortress.” The B-29 was a high priority for General 

Henry H. (“Hap”) Arnold, chef of the USAAF. He allocated a significant 

portion of the nation’s aviation resources to this single program. The B-29 

alone constituted the biggest single expenditure of the US during the war. 

The program’s 3 billion dollar price tag exceeded the 2 billion spent on the 

Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb.43 

However, as with any radically new technology, the B-29 was initially 

fraught with a number of engineering and design problems. Especially 

troublesome were the bomber’s newly designed R-3350 engines that had 

a tendency to overheat, catch fire, and bring the whole aircraft down. 

Engines were not the only issues. The bomber suffered from landing gear 

problems, a propeller feather system that often failed, poorly designed 

cowl flaps, as well as a host of other malfunctions. Indicative of the 

larger design issues was that each B-29 coming off the assembly line in 

early 1944 needed 54 major modifications before it could be deployed.44

When first fielded, B-29 performance was much lower than expected 

and crews were concerned more with the performance of the airplane, 

particularly its ability to take off and clear the runway, than they were with 

the enemy’s defenses. LeMay knew about the design challenges of the 

B-29 and remarked, “If you ever saw a buggy airplane this was it...B-29 

had as many bugs as the entomological department of the Smithsonian 

Institution. Fast as they got the bugs licked, new ones crawled out from 

under the cowling.”45

Despite the design challenges, and with Arnold eager to strike at 

Japan, the first deployment of B-29s went to the Asian mainland as part 
180

of Operation “Matterhorn.” However, the initial results of XX Bomber 

Command flying B-29s out of the China-Burma-India (CBI) Theater were 

disappointing. Having spent so much time and effort on the Superfortress, 

and with his professional reputation on the line, Arnold was determined to 

get the plane’s problems rectified. LeMay’s accomplishments in Europe 

gave him a reputation within the USAAF as a dynamic and results-oriented 

commander. In August 1944 Arnold ordered LeMay to Asia to take charge 

of Matterhorn and assume the leadership of the XX Bomber Command.

The issues facing XX Bomber Command were not just the troublesome 

nature of the B-29, but the logistical challenges of moving fuel, bombs, and 

other supplies over the Himalayas to the bomber base at Chengtu, China. 

Some of the worst flying weather in the world surrounded the Himalayan 

Mountains, and crews were in constant peril of crashing or disappearing 

while flying over “the hump.” Upon assumption of command at his 

headquarters at Kharagpur India, LeMay received permission to fly at least 

one combat mission in order to his assess this new combat environment.46

(The Air Staff in Washington forbade LeMay from flying any more combat 

due to his rank.) After the mission he determined that Japanese air defenses 

were not as formidable as the German, but LeMay also recognized that his 

crews need more training and practice to fully exploit the capabilities of 

the B-29.47 While Arnold was impatient for results, LeMay took the more 

prudent course of “standing down” the entire XX Bomber Command to 

conduct training for both air and ground personnel. 

LeMay’s assumption of command came at the expense of his 

predecessor, Brigadier General Kenneth Wolfe, whom Arnold had 

removed. In September, a trusted subordinate of Arnold, Lieutenant 

General Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, paid a visit to LeMay’s command. In a report 

to Arnold after his visit, Spaatz wrote, “With all due respect to Wolfe, he 

did his best, and he did a grand job, but LeMay’s operations make Wolfe 

seem very amateurish.”48 Despite all the efforts to maximize the use of 

the B-29 during Operation Matterhorn, the best XX Bomber Command 

could muster was about four missions a month. The main constraint was 

the fuel supply available at Chengtu. LeMay called the entire logistical 

situation “utterly impossible.”49 Despite LeMay’s hard work, the logistical 

limitations of Matterhorn proved too formidable, and by January 1945 the 

B-29s were withdrawn from China. 

However, LeMay was quickly transferred to XXI Bomber Command 

in the Guam-Saipan area to take over from yet another commander fired 

by Arnold, Brigadier General Haywood Hansell. Hansell was one of the 

original framers of the USAAF’s daylight precision bombing theory. He 
181

was a veteran of the Combined Bomber Offensive in Europe, and tried to 

employ the same doctrine in Japan with the B-29 as he had in Europe with 

the B-17. However, much as had been the case with Matterhorn, Hansell’s 

XXIst Bomber Command was not producing the results Arnold expected. 

Winds at high altitudes, mechanical problems, and towering weather fronts 

precluded efficient precision bombing. Arnold directed LeMay’s transfer 

from China to Guam in an attempt to get the most out of the B-29.50 After 

a few weeks studying the unique nature of the Japanese weather patterns, 

target characteristics, and considering the design problems of the B-29, 

LeMay took a more pragmatic approach to bombing operations than 

Hansell had. 

Despite USAAF commitment to high altitude precision bombing, 

LeMay turned doctrine on its head and single-handedly changed the nature 

of the bombing campaign against Japan. On the night of March 9, 1945 

LeMay launched over 330 B-29s against the Japanese capital of Tokyo.51

On his own initiative and without approval from Arnold, LeMay had the 

bombers stripped of most of their defensive armament and loaded them 

with incendiary bombs instead of high explosives. Furthermore, he had the 

bombers fly at lower altitudes, staggering the airplanes from five thousand 

to fifteen thousand feet. This change in altitude increased the range of the 

planes, allowed greater payloads, reduced the stress on the problematic 

R-3350 engines, and avoided the jet stream and its exceedingly high 

headwinds. Regarding this new approach to strategic bombing, after the 

war LeMay remembered that is was, “a combination of several people’s 

ideas, but the low altitude part...was my own thinking.”52 Once the 

bombers took off, he felt “anxiety I’d not wish to experience again.”53 “I 

was nervous about it, I made the decision. I had weighed the odds. I knew 

the odds were in my favor. But still it was something new. I could have lost 

a lot of people, [and] appear to be an idiot.”54

Around 2:00 AM Guam time, the mission commander radioed in the 

initial results: “Bombing the primary target visually. Large fires observed. 

Flak moderate. Fighter opposition nil.”55 Follow-on reports echoed the 

initial one. LeMay was relieved. The raid devastated the Japanese capital. 

LeMay’s bombers dropped 1,665 tons of incendiaries and burned sixteen 

square miles of the urban landscape. 56 The incendiaries created firestorms 

the wreaked havoc upon the largely wood and paper structures of the city. 

As many as 83,000 people were killed in the raid, with another 40,000 

injured.57 Furthermore, over 270,000 structures were destroyed with 

crewmen reporting the glow from the conflagration was visible as much as 

150 miles away.58 LeMay’s gambled paid off. 
182

Upon hearing the news of the Tokyo raid, Arnold sent a laudatory 

message to LeMay: “Congratulations. This mission shows your crews have 

the guts for anything.”59 The Tokyo mission set a precedent. Days after the 

9 March attack, similar raids were conducted against Nagoya, Osaka, and 

Kobe. LeMay’s command was so busy dropping bombs that at one period 

in March it ran out of incendiaries.60 Further incendiary raids continued 

against Japan’s urban areas until the nation’s eventual surrender. After the 

war, the US Strategic Bombing Survey determined that LeMay’s command 

targeted 106 square miles of urban areas in the five largest Japanese cities, 

of which it destroyed 102 square miles.61 For all B-29 missions, up to 180 

square miles in 66 major cities were destroyed, including 600 factories, 25 

aircraft manufacturers, 18 oil production centers, and 6 major arsenals.62

LeMay understood the moral implications of the firebombing effort, 

but measured them against the larger imperative of ending the war. LeMay 

observed, “We knew we were going to kill a lot of women and kids when 

we burned a town. [It] had to be done.”63 Regarding the morality of the 

firebombing campaign he later observed, “Killing Japanese didn’t bother 

me very much at the time. It was getting the war over that bothered me. So 

I wasn’t worried particularly about how many people we killed in getting 

the job done. I suppose if I had lost the war I would have been tried as a 

war criminal...every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what 

he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you’re 

not a good soldier.”64 Present at the surrender ceremonies on the deck of 

the USS Missouri, in September 1945, LeMay arranged for 462 B-29s to 

participate in a victory flyover during the proceedings. At the ceremony 

and with the war over, LeMay simply recalled that he felt “pretty tired.”65

Following the war LeMay was assigned as the head of USAAF 

Research and Development, a job he generally disliked. Working in the 

Pentagon and having to participate in the Washington D.C. social scene 

was certainly not field command, where LeMay excelled. With the 

introduction of jet engines and rocket propulsion, aviation technology was 

advancing by leaps and bounds. LeMay understood the importance of the 

work, but loathed the political side of military procurement. Fortunately 

the assignment lasted only two years. On October 1, 1947, two weeks after 

the establishment of the independent US Air Force (USAF), LeMay was 

promoted to Lieutenant General and assigned as Commander of US Air 

Forces in Europe (USAFE).

LeMay had been in his new command for a few months when in June 

1948 the Soviet Union imposed the Berlin Blockade and shut off ground 

transportation to the British, American, and French zones of the city. 
183

General Lucius Clay, US Military Governor in the American zone asked 

LeMay if it was feasible to supply the city with coal via airlift. This first 

request was the foundation for what became the Berlin Airlift. Initially 

referred to as “LeMay’s Coal and Feed Company,” it became obvious that 

the effort required more than the organic assets and people assigned to 

USAFE.66 More crews and planes were sent to Europe and by the time the 

operation was over in 1949, the airlift had moved over 2.3 million tons of 

food and supplies to Berlin.67 The airlift became so efficient that a plane 

could be ‘turned’ every five minutes.68

While LeMay initiated airlift operations for humanitarian purposes 

during summer of 1948, he also arranged for the forward deployment 

of B-29s to Europe as a strong military message to the Soviets. While 

most B-29s were not able to carry nuclear weapons, he believed that 

the mere presence of strategic bombers would serve a strong warning to 

the communists.69 While others might call this move provocative and 

aggressive, he saw it as prudent deterrence. Despite the B-29 deployment, 

the Soviets continued with the blockade with LeMay eventually drawing 

up plans to forcibly open the city.70 LeMay and Lieutenant General 

Arthur Trudeau, Commander of the American Constabulary Force, 

devised a coordinated air and ground attack that was, fortunately, never 

implemented.71

Ever the pragmatist, LeMay understood that the logistical requirements 

for sustaining the airlift required some unique solutions. Because of postwar military demobilization, the Air Force was short of trained mechanics 

to service the cargo aircraft involved. To address this deficiency, LeMay 

hired local Germans, who had previously served in the wartime Luftwaffe, 

to maintain the American aircraft. 72 Instead of working on German 

Messerschmitt and Focke-Wulf aircraft as during the war, these mechanics 

now serviced American Douglas and Boeing cargo planes. Additionally, 

the Berlin airlift required more runways and ramp space to handle the 

dramatic rise in air traffic. Even with a substantially large number of 

aircraft, the airlift effort could ill afford to move concrete and construction 

supplies to build the new airfield infrastructure. In addressing this situation, 

LeMay’s command cut up buildings damaged in the war and used them as 

ballast for the new runways and parking aprons. Ironically, Berlin’s new 

air facilities constructed during the airlift were built from the rubble of the 

old Nazi Third Reich.73 

Following his tour in Europe, in 1948 LeMay was assigned to perhaps 

his most famous posting as the Commander of Strategic Air Command 

(SAC) at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska. When he assumed command 
184

on October 19, he inherited an organization that was lacking in airplanes, 

manpower, training, and planning. The previous commander had expended 

little energy in running the command, and internal manpower policies 

precluded effective aircrew training.74 Despite the American reliance on 

atomic weapons for post-war national security, the entire nuclear delivery 

capability of the US consisted of only twenty-three specially designed 

“Silver Plate” B-29s flown by crews that were less than fully proficient.75

In order to test his new command, in January 1949 LeMay directed a 

nighttime practice raid on Dayton, Ohio. Crews were given a picture of 

the city and directed to use their radar to “bomb” selected parts of the 

city from 30,000 feet. The entire operation was a fiasco as not one crew 

successfully carried out the mission as briefed. While many crews aborted 

their mission altogether, of the 303 bombing runs made on the city, almost 

two-thirds of the simulated bomb drops were more than 7,000 feet off 

target with the average error being over 10,000 feet.76 LeMay called 

the practice raid “the darkest night in American aviation history.”77 The 

results from this mission were a far cry from what bomber crews had been 

able to do during the war, just a few years earlier. As one senior Air Force 

officer put it, during this time “SAC was far more symbol than reality.”78

One of the first things LeMay did as Commander of SAC was to bring 

in the “right people.” 79 These were officers he had come to know and trust 

during his wartime experience in both the Combined Bomber Offensive 

and the Pacific campaigns; men who, in his opinion, truly understood 

strategic bombing. Not satisfied with the overall quality of the SAC staff, he 

removed people who he thought were a detriment to the organization, with 

one fellow officer describing this ‘cleaning house’ process as “bloody.”80

Furthermore he instilled a sense of urgency and purpose within SAC and 

made no qualms about establishing a frame of mind that affirmed, “We 

are at war now.”81 Regarding the SAC mission and its combat posture, 

LeMay ordered the command “to be ready to go to war not next week, not 

tomorrow, but this afternoon.”82 

For LeMay, effective defense required an airborne “Sunday punch” 

capability that could knock out a potential adversary in a single massive 

strike. With the advent of atomic weapons, LeMay was convinced that 

conventional warfare was a thing of the past, and believed that the nuclear 

deterrent was the best bid for a lasting peace in the Cold War world. LeMay 

was convinced that the next war would be an atomic one, asserting that 

“all conventional forces do is delay the inevitable nuclear confrontation.”83

Not a proponent of gradualism, LeMay was convinced that a strong “air 

force in-being” with a substantial nuclear capability at the onset of war 
185

was the only way to ensure national survival. Under LeMay, SAC came 

to realize the full strength of the atomic air offensive and what it meant 

for American security and for the free world. The atomic nuclear shield 

of SAC built by LeMay became a cornerstone of the American defensive 

strategy throughout much of the Cold War. LeMay reported, “My goal 

was to build a force that was so professional, so strong, so powerful that 

we would not have to fight. In other words, we had to build a strong 

deterrent force.”84 LeMay wasn’t alone in his sentiment. In a 1950 Gallup 

poll, seventy-seven percent of Americans thought we should use nuclear 

weapons in case of war.85 Similarly, seventy percent felt that the United 

States should not preclude the “first use” of atomic weapons.86

Under LeMay, SAC grew four-fold from 46,000 airmen in January 

1949 to over 200,000 by the end of his tenure as commander in 1957.87

The size of the strategic bombing fleet also grew as the mission of SAC 

became more prominent in American National Security policies as outlined 

in national security documents NSC 68 and NSC 162/2. By 1955 SAC 

had over 2,800 aircraft and maintained a series of airbases throughout the 

globe that allowed LeMay’s bombers to reach the Soviet Union.88 Under 

LeMay’s watch the command also grew significantly in capability as older 

aircraft were replaced by more technologically advanced bomber designs. 

While SAC had only a few “Silver Plate” nuclear capable B-29s after the 

war, in 1948 the Air Force began fielding the B-36 “Peacemaker” with 

its extended range and a larger bomb load. In the 1950s, LeMay oversaw 

SAC’s initial transition to an all-jet bomber force with the introduction of 

the B-47 “Stratojet” to replace the old B-29/B-50s in the medium bombing 

fleet. During LeMay’s leadership at SAC, the Air Force began designing 

an even more capable bomber, the B-52 “Stratofortress.” Initially fielded 

in 1955, this design, amazingly, remains in the Air Force inventory to 

this day. LeMay’s vision also extended beyond the development and 

employment of bomber aircraft. During his tenure at SAC, he instituted 

air-to-air refueling capabilities that significantly increased the range of the 

strategic bomber fleet.89 In this effort he advocated the employment of the 

KC-97 “Stratofreighter” and the development of the venerable KC-135 

“Stratotanker” refueling aircraft. Finally, in the last few years of his tour at 

SAC, LeMay embraced not only the introduction of the strategic missile 

fleet into SAC’s arsenal, but thermonuclear weapon as well. Under his 

charge, SAC came to provide two of the three legs of America’s nuclear 

triad—manned bombers and land-based ballistic missiles, with the Navy’s 

submarine-launched ballistic missiles constituting the third.
186

While aircraft and weapons were the most tangible manifestations of 

America’s military might during the 1950s, during this same period SAC 

also served as the center for nuclear war plan development. Having staffed 

SAC with what he referred to as the “right people,” LeMay’s command was 

one of the first organizations to establish war plans that exploited America’s 

atomic capabilities. According to LeMay, “There wasn’t anything that 

came out of Washington [D.C.]. As a matter of fact, I don’t think we got 

anything out of Washington other than a little guidance on targets that 

should be hit. We did the plan right up till the time I left in 1957.”90 As for 

national policy regarding atomic weapons, LeMay asserted, “our job at 

SAC was not to promulgate national policy...our job was to produce...We 

put America in that situation of incipient power...”91 He declared, “I never 

discussed the problem with President Truman or President Eisenhower...I 

stuck to my job at Offutt...I never discussed what we were going to do 

with the force we had or what we should do with it...Never discussed it 

with topside brass, military or civilian. All I did was to keep them abreast 

of the development of SAC.”92 

In October 1951 he was promoted to full general at the age of 44. 

However, LeMay’s advocacy of strategic nuclear bombardment made 

him a controversial figure. His belief in the atomic air offensive seemed 

simplistic and draconian to his many critics. By asserting SAC’s primacy 

in the realm of national security, LeMay placed himself in a position of 

great influence. However, the dependence on nuclear applications that 

LeMay advocated, created what critics viewed as short-sighted nation 

security strategies. Indicative of such criticism is Air Force historian 

Robert Futrell, who captured the essence of Air Force planning efforts 

during this era with the observation, “the emphasis of air planners [was] in 

making war fit the weapon-nuclear power-rather than making the weapon 

fit the war.”93 

Much as he had done when commanding the 305th Bomb Group, 

XX and XXI Bombing Commands during the war, LeMay continued to 

emphasize training and flying proficiency. Upon assuming command of 

SAC, the organization had an abysmal safety record. In 1948 SAC had 

an accident rate of some sixty-five mishaps per 100,000 hours of flight 

time.94 However, after the enforcement of Standard Operating Procedures, 

holding commanders responsible for flight safety, and publishing 

various training manuals, by 1950 SAC’s accident rate dropped to fortythree mishaps per 100,000 hours and in 1956 only nine accidents were 

reported.95 Furthermore, to instill combat readiness, LeMay conducted “no 

notice” readiness inspections. He would schedule an inspection at one air 
187

base, then cancel the planned visit, and land at another command without 

warning. Upon arrival he would then instruct the unsuspecting wing 

commander to execute his war plan immediately.96 Furthermore, LeMay 

required wing commanders to brief their assigned war plan and target 

sets personally to their superiors.97 Installing a rigorous training program 

made the command one of the most proficient military organizations in the 

world. For Air Force personnel assigned to SAC, one quipped, “Training 

at SAC was harder than war. It might have been a relief to go to war.”98

Indicative of the effective training regimen he implemented, in 

1954 LeMay ordered another bombing exercise similar to the January 

1948 debacle. The 1954 event included 150 bombers, with 133 aircraft 

successfully “hitting” their targets, with only 24 crews having to abort 

prior to “dropping” their ordnance because a number navigation systems 

failed through no fault of the aircrew.99 

While SAC became and elite organization under LeMay, other 

elements of the Air Force, such as the fighter and attack communities, 

languished. These elements complained about being “SACumcized” as 

resources and budgets were largely allocated for the service’s strategic 

mission. By the end of the 1950s SAC had grown to 538 B-52s, 1,292 

B-47s, 19 B-58s, and over 1,000 aerial refueling tankers.100 In addition the 

command had also deployed an intercontinental and intermediate range 

ballistic missile fleet. 

Despite his reputation as a tough and unrelenting taskmaster, LeMay 

understood the need to ensure the welfare of his airmen and recognize 

superior performance. In the early 1950s, he instituted within SAC a spot 

promotion program for both officers and enlisted personnel that encouraged 

initiative and proficiency in the rank and file. 101 Furthermore, in looking 

out for his subordinates he instituted significant barracks and housing 

improvements for airmen and their families while advocating support 

organizations to deal with potential family issues caused by deployments 

and long work hours.102 One subordinate of LeMay recalled that during 

the period of SAC’s major expansion in the early 1950s, the commander 

spent up to two-thirds of this time working on improving living conditions 

and family housing.103

After nine years as the commander of SAC, on April 4, 1957 LeMay 

was appointed as the Vice Chief of Staff for the US Air Force with an 

assignment to Washington DC, where he served as the deputy to General 

Thomas D. White. The two men were cordial and worked well together, 

but were not close friends. The assignment was relatively trouble-free but 
188

posed an obstacle for LeMay as he was again thrust into an environment 

he loathed, the Washington social circuit. Furthermore, LeMay, who 

saw things in absolutes, had to learn the art of negotiation and comprise. 

However, just because he was appointed as Vice Chief did not mean he was 

the heir apparent to the Chief of Staff. In 1960 John F. Kennedy assumed 

the presidency, and LeMay’s blunt style and lack of diplomatic skills stood 

in stark contrast to the new president. However, on May 22, 1961 Kennedy 

announced that LeMay would succeed White as Air Force Chief of Staff.

The formal ceremony installing LeMay as Chief was a harbinger of 

things to come. The ceremony took place with retiring General White in 

attendance, along with Senator Stuart Symington, and Vice President Lyon 

Johnson, but conspicuously absent was the Secretary of Defense Robert S. 

McNamara.104 McNamara, who had come from the Ford Motor Company, 

subscribed to mathematical analysis and was not prone to make decisions 

on gut instinct.105 When McNamara arrived as Secretary of Defense, 

he brought with him a group of young Ivy League intellectuals to help 

manage the national defense establishment. These young intellectuals 

became known as the “whiz kids” and were largely loathed by LeMay 

and other military professionals who viewed them with distrust and 

suspicion.106 When McNamara’s thirty-four year old head of Research and 

Development, Harold Brown, told LeMay which bomber the Air Force 

should buy, the Air Force Chief supposedly replied “Why that son-of-abitch was in junior high school while I was out bombing Japan.”107 Many 

uniformed military professionals hated the “whiz kids”, and the feelings 

were mutual. 

Ironically McNamara had worked as a lieutenant colonel in the 

Statistical Control Office of the 20th Air Force under for LeMay during 

the Japanese firebombing campaign. However, McNamara was now 

LeMay’s superior as the Defense chief. The two agreed on very little 

during LeMay’s tenure as Chief of Staff. The underlying problem for both 

men was a fundamental difference regarding American military posture. 

LeMay firmly believed that the only way to secure the nation was through 

overwhelming strength that would deter a potential adversary. McNamara 

looked more toward parity and rational thought as key elements in 

national security.108 The two clashed over a number of defense related 

issues, including funding for the Air Force’s new supersonic bomber, 

the XB-70 “Valkyrie,” the procurement of new B-52s and B-58s, and 

the Tactical Fighter Experimental (TFX) program. Ever the analyst, 

McNamara saw many of the Air Force’s programs as bloated, outdated 

expenditures that could be streamlined or cut entirely. Underpinning much 
189

of this disagreement was McNamara’s belief that with the advent of InterContinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), manned strategic bombers were 

becoming obsolete. 

During the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, LeMay fully 

endorsed an invasion of the island nation even at the risk of global 

nuclear war. LeMay was forceful in expressing his opinions with the 

President, but not insubordinate.109 Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, 

but in LeMay’s mind, the episode was indicative of an overall dismissal 

of military advice by the civilian leadership. LeMay believed that “the 

Kennedy Administration came in and right from the start we [military 

leaders] got the back of the hand. Get out of our way. We think nothing of 

you and your opinions. We don’t like you as people. We have no respect 

for you. Don’t bother us.”110 Given the animosity between LeMay and 

McNamara and the apparent tension between the Kennedy Administration 

and the military leaders at the Defense Department, it was a surprise to 

many in Washington when LeMay was given a one year extension as Air 

Force Chief of Staff near the end of this first tour. 111 Despite his frequent 

opposition to the civilians in the Kennedy Administration, his extension 

was based on LeMay’s popularity in the Congress, the respect he garnered 

from his military service, and his reputation as a “cold warrior.” 

As America became involved in Vietnam, LeMay again found himself 

at odds with the civilian leadership in the Pentagon and in the White House. 

While McNamara and Kennedy embraced the idea of “Flexible Response” 

and gradualism with regard to military force, LeMay believed that it 

was important to go with a strong first response instead of a piece-meal, 

incremental approach. In his 1968 book, American is in Danger, published 

years after his retirement, he criticized the policy of Flexible Response 

by stating “This doctrine has a fine-sounding ring to it, but as practiced 

it is graduated and inflexible. It is graduated in that force is brought to 

bear against an enemy in increments which never seem enough to do the 

job, and “inflexible” because we fail to apply force at places and times 

of our choosing where we can profit by our strength and exploit enemy 

weakness...and unhappily we are again pursuing it in Vietnam.”112 Much 

like his experience in the Cuban Missile Crisis, LeMay believed that the 

war in Vietnam was being run too much by the civilian leadership without 

sufficient input from the Joint Chiefs and other military commanders.113

While he did not advocate the use of atomic weapons in Vietnam, he 

did advocate expanding the bombing campaign in the north. For LeMay 

the best way to end the Vietnam conflict was to stop “pussyfooting” around 

and embrace large-scale bombing in North Vietnam by closing Haiphong 
190

Harbor completely, eliminating all power generation plants and the 

country’s industrial capacity, destroying the transportations system, and if 

necessary attacking the irrigation system to reduce agricultural output.114

While McNamara argued that the enemy cannot “be bombed to the 

negotiating table,” LeMay argued that he could see “no other sensible way 

of getting him there.”115 In December 1972 the US conducted “Operation 

Linebacker II,” the unrestricted bombing of North Vietnam. The effect of 

this wholesale bombing effort did, in effect, bring the North Vietnamese 

back to the negotiations that resulted in the Paris Peace Accords. One could 

conclude that LeMay’s vision of an effective bombing strategy eventually 

came to fruition despite McNamara’s convictions to the contrary. 

After the assassination of President Kennedy in November 1963, 

Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency. The following spring, LeMay’s 

one year extension as the Air Force Chief was due to expire. However, 

Johnson asked LeMay to stay on for yet another year-long extension. 

Observers speculated that this was a political maneuver to keep LeMay 

in the Air Force, thereby precluding him from running for elected office, 

possibly with Senator Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election. Such 

speculation aside, LeMay’s last year in uniform proved to be anti-climactic. 

It was obvious that he was a “lame-duck” to the Johnson Administration as 

he was largely ignored. LeMay focused mostly on running the Air Force 

and conducting inspection tours.116 He retired on February 1, 1965 and in 

a short speech he reminded his staff “stick to your guns and keep fighting 

for what you want.”117

In assessing his term as the Air Force Chief, it could be argued that 

LeMay was largely a failure. He lost all his battles with McNamara over 

the XB-70, FTX, and missile/bomber ratios. Furthermore the Kennedy 

and Johnson Administrations ignored much of his advice regarding Cuba, 

Vietnam, and the policy of Flexible Response. His lack of political savvy 

and inability to compromise might explain some of these failures, but in 

the historical analysis, it appears that LeMay’s opinions in many of these 

issues were simply erroneous. 

After his retirement LeMay could easily have found employment with 

some large defense contractor, but he felt that the appearance of impropriety 

was too great.118 Job offers were sparse, but he finally took a position with 

a small electronics firm. This was not the kind of employment befitting a 

man of LeMay’s caliber and he quit after two years. In 1965 he published 

his memoirs, Mission with LeMay, and three years later published America 

is in Danger. While his autobiographical work met with some success, the 

book generated controversy. One sentence dealing with the Vietnam War 
191

read, “My solution to the problem would be to tell them frankly they’ve 

got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression or we are going to 

bomb them back to the stone age.”119 While LeMay never actually voiced 

that phrase, the fact that it was published in his book will forever connect 

it to him. In fact, this singular quote is perhaps the most widely-known 

aspect of LeMay’s entire legacy. He later asserted that he had intended to 

delete that passage before publication, and that he merely failed to do so 

when proofreading the manuscript. 

In 1968, after twice being approached by George Wallace’s presidential 

campaign, LeMay agreed to be the running mate for the Alabama governor 

as part of the American Independent Party. While seemingly a bad fit for 

politics, LeMay agreed to run in hopes of splitting the Democratic Party 

vote and thus ending the policies of Johnson and McNamara by helping 

Republican candidate Richard Nixon gain the presidency. The WallaceLeMay ticket garnered only 13.5 percent of the popular vote and gained 

a mere 46 electoral votes. Ill suited for the kind of nuanced talk required 

by politicians, LeMay’s tour as a vice-presidential candidate fortunately 

lasted only a month, but was considered largely a failure. 

After the 1968 election, he returned to being a private citizen, and 

with Helen, settled in Newport Beach, California. He read, hunted, and 

developed a close circle of friends during his last years. While he gave up 

flying after his retirement, he tinkered around is home and even served on 

the board of directors for the National Geographic Society and frequently 

flew to Washington. With himself seen as an icon of the Cold War, LeMay 

lived to see another icon destroyed when the Berlin Wall come down in 

November 1989. However, less than a year later, LeMay passed on October 

1, 1990. He suffered a severe heart attack in the middle of the night and 

died a month short of his eighty-fifth birthday.120

Contemporary military strategists define war by three interconnected 

levels—the strategic, operational, and tactical. The strategic level of war 

deals with the larger political rationale for war and how it meets national 

goals and objectives. The operational level focuses on theater applications 

of war and governs campaigns or larger operations. Lastly the tactical level 

of war is associated with actual combat and the engagement of opposing 

forces. While many could argue that at the strategic level of war LeMay 

may have been ineffective as an Air Force Chief of Staff and had the 

wrong vision regarding the application of military power, the same cannot 

be said about the operational and tactical levels of war. At these two levels 

LeMay was an exceptional commander and clearly excelled. Starting with 

his command of the 305th Bomb Group in Europe and continuing through 
192

his operations with XXI Bomber Command in the Pacific, LeMay was 

unmistakably an innovative and effective leader of men at the tactical level 

of war. He trained his men thoroughly, not only to ensure success in the 

aerial battlefield, but also to help save their lives. At the operational level, 

when in command of SAC, LeMay’s vision, drive, and leadership acumen 

clearly resulted in one of the finest military organizations ever assembled. 

He built SAC into one of the most proficient, professional, and lethal 

military forces human history has ever known. 

For all his controversy and his arguably draconian ideas regarding 

national defense, LeMay stands as one of the great commanders in history. 

He was given very difficult tasks and missions during World War II, and 

through creativity and pragmatism, solved the very difficult problems 

he encountered. He led his men into combat, flew the most dangerous 

missions, and developed the most effective ways of employing his 

command. He laid the foundations for American defensive strategy for 

over forty years, while developing a capability that successfully employed 

an entirely new type of military power. Furthermore he served as an 

effective leader during a time of great social, political, technological, and 

military change. In returning to the definition of a great commander offered 

at the beginning of this book, LeMay was a commander who certainly 

attained the unexpected, clearly possessed exceptional skills in the aerial 

battlefield, and accomplished what few others could have.
193

Notes

1. “VLR Man,” Time Magazine, Aug 13, 1945.

2. Karl Weber (Editor), The Best of I.F. Stone (New York, NY: Public Affairs Publishing, 2006), 326-338.

3. Warren Kozak, LeMay: The Life and Wars of General Curtis LeMay 

(Washington D.C.: Regnery Press, 2009), 360.

4. Curtis E. LeMay and Mackinlay Kantor, Mission with LeMay: My Story, 

(Garden City, NY; Doubleday Press, 1965), 60.

5. Ibid., 14.

6. Ibid.,15.

7. Thomas Coffey, Iron Eagle: The Turbulent Life of General Curtis 

LeMay,(New York, NY: Avon Books, 1986), 194.

8. LeMay and Kantor, 30.

9. LeMay and Kantor, 30.

10. Coffey, 198. 

11. Kozak, 17; LeMay and Kantor, 45-47.

12. LeMay and Kantor, 67-68.

13. LeMay and Kantor, 79.

14. Ibid., 101; Coffey, 223.

15. LeMay and Kantor, 103; Coffey 223.

16. Coffey, 223.

17. Ibid., 228,

18. LeMay and Cantor, 130.

19. Ibid., 131.

20. LeMay and Kantor, 191; Coffey 239.

21. LeMay and Kantor, 217.; Coffey 21.

22. Coffey, 21.

23. LeMay and Kantor, 221-222; Kozak, 83-84.

24. Kozak, 107 and 109.

25. Coffey, 36; LeMay and Kantor, 241-242; Kozak 106.

26. Coffey, 37-38.

27. Ibid; LeMay and Kantor, 243.

28. Roger Freeman, The Mighty Eighth War Manual (New York, NY: Sterling Publishing Co, 2001), 40-42.
194

29. Ibid.

30. LeMay and Kantor, 256; Kozak, 121; Coffey, 50-51.

31. LeMay and Kantor, 258.

32. Donald Miller, Masters of the Air (New York, NY; Simon and Schuster, 

2006), 143.

33. Ibid.

34. Coffey, 74.

35. Ibid., 94.

36. Martin Middlebrook, The Schweinfurt-Regensburg Mission (New York, 

NY: Scribners and Sons, 1983), 257.

37. Richard G. Davis, Bombing the European Axis Powers: A Historical 

Digest of the Combined Bomber Offensive, 1939-1945 (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air 

University Press, 2006), 159; Middlebrook, 258.

38. LeMay and Kantor, 296; Middlebrook, 284.

39. LeMay and Kantor, 285; Kozak 130.

40. Coffey, 96; Kozak 148.

41. LeMay and Kantor, 310.

42. Headquarters Army Air Force, Aircraft Commanders Manual for the 

B-29 (Reprint) (Dayton, OH: Otterbein Press, 1945), 5; Jacob Vander Meulen, 

Building the B-29 (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), 16.

43. Vander Meulen, 21.

44. Curtis LeMay and Bill Yenne, Superfortress (New York, NY: Berkeley, 

1989), 70.

45. LeMay and Kantor, 321 and 323.

46. LeMay and Kantor, 329; Coffey 112-113.

47. Coffey, 113-114; Kozak 186.

48. Coffey, 122.

49. LeMay and Kantor, 332; Coffey127; Alvin Coox, “Strategic Bombing in 

the Pacific” in Case Studies in Strategic Bombardment, ed. R. Cargill Hall (Washington, DC; Office of USAF History), 292.

50. LeMay and Kantor, 347.

51. Coox, 318.

52. Ibid., 316.

53. Ibid., 318.

54. Coffey, 162.
195

55. Richard Frank, Downfall (New York, NY: Random House, 1999),66.

56. Coox, 319; Coffey, 164.

57. Coox, 321; Coffey, 164.

58. Coox, 319, 321;LeMay and Kantor, 354.

59. LeMay and Cantor, 353; Coffey 165.

60. LeMay and Kantor, 368.

61. US Strategic Bombing Survey, The Strategic Air Operation of the 

Very Heavy Bombardment in the War Against Japan Final Report (Twentieth Air 

Force) (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1 September 1946),

62. Ibid., 6.

63. LeMay and Kantor, 384.

64. Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 

21-22; Stephan Budiansky, Air Power (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2004), 

338.

65. LeMay and Kantor, 390.

66. Ibid., 416.

67. Coffey, 267.

68. LeMay and Kantor, 417.

69. Coffey, 262.

70. Ibid., 263.

71. Ibid.

72. LeMay and Kantor, 417.

73. Ibid., 419-420.

74. Joseph Harahan, Richard Kohn, Strategic Air Warfare: An Interview 

with Generals Curtis E. LeMay, Leon W. Johnson, David A. Burchinal, and Jack 

J. Catton (Washington D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1988), 74-75.

75. Walton S. Moody, Building a Strategic Air Force (Washington D.C.: 

US Government Printing Office, 1996), 125; Harry Borowski, A Hollow Threat: 

Strategic Air Power and Containment Before Korea (Westport, CT: Greenwood 

Press, 1982), 145-146.

76. Moody, 233.

77. Borowski, 167,

78. As quoted in Steven Reardon, “U.S. Strategic Bombardment Doctrine 

Since 1945” in Case Studies in Strategic Bombardment , Ed. R. Cargill Hall 

(Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1998), 389.

79. Ibid., 402. 
196

80. Harahan and Kohn, 82.

81. LeMay and Kantor, 436.

82. Budiansky, 361.

83. Mike Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals-The Problems of Air Force 

Leadership 1945-1982 (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press), 149.

84. Harahan and Kohn, 84.

85. George H. Gallup, The Gallup Poll, Public Opinion 1935-1971, Volume 

2 1949-1953 (New York, NY: Random House, 1972), 929.

86. Ibid., 839.

87. Moody, 265; As quoted in Steven Reardon, “U.S. Strategic Bombardment Doctrine Since 1945,” 403.

88. Coffey, 335; Kozak, 308.

89. Harahan and Kohn, 104-107.

90. Harahan and Kohn, 90.

91. LeMay and Kantor, 482.

92. Ibid.

93. Robert Futrell, “The Air Power Concept”, 269, as referenced in Budiansky, 371.

94. Kozak, 291; Coffey 322.

95. Coffey 322; LeMay and Kantor, 439-440.

96. Harahan and Kohn, 98; LeMay and Kantor, 446.

97. Harahan and Kohn, 99.

98. Harahan and Kohn, 97.

99. Rosenberg and Moore, Document One, “Memorandum Op-36C/jm, 

Subj: Briefing given to the representatives of all services at SAC headquarters, 

Offutt Air Force Base Nebraska,” 18 March 1954, pg

100. Office of the Historian, Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, Development of Strategic Air Command (Offutt AFB, NE; Office of the Historian, Strategic Air Command, 1976), pp 79-81.

101. Moody, 405; Coffey, 291-292.

102. Moody, 406-407; Coffey 292-293.

103. Coffey, 316.

104. Ibid, 358.

105. Coffey, 360-361.

106. Kozak, 331; Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (Stanford, CA: 
197

Stanford University Press, 1983), 255.

107. Kaplan, 256.

108. Coffey, 372-373.

109. Kozak, 350.

110. Coffey, 369.

111. Coffey, 423; Kozak, 354.

112. Curtis E. LeMay and Dale O. Smith, American is in Danger, (New York, 

NY: Funk and Wagnalls, 1968), 25.

113. Coffey, 421.

114. LeMay and Smith, 262-263.

115. Ibid., 263.

116. Kozak, 358; Coffey 343-345.

117. Coffey, 436; Kozak, 359.

118. Kozak, 360.

119. LeMay and Kantor, 565.

120. Kozak, 385-386.

199

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203

Contributors

Mr. Edward L. (“Bud”) Bowie is a Supervisory Professor in the 

Department of Military History and inter-departmental teaching team 

leader at the US Army Command and General Staff College at Fort 

Leavenworth, Kansas. In 1980, he received a Regular Commission in 

the Field Artillery as a Distinguished Military Graduate from the ROTC 

program at Washington & Lee University. He holds a Baccalaureate 

degree in Anthropology, a Masters degree in Military History, and is a 

graduate of the US Army Command and General Staff College, the Joint 

Forces Staff College, and the Defense Language Institute. While on active 

duty, Mr. Bowie served as a senior advisor for strategic plans and policy to 

the Commander of NATO troops in Bosnia and as Chief of War Plans for 

Allied Land Forces Central Europe. He retired from active military service 

in August 2004. His areas of expertise include Operational Planning, 

Military Theory and Doctrine, and Military History. 

Dr. Terry Beckenbaugh received his Ph.D. from the University of 

Arkansas-Fayetteville in 2001, where his research focused on American 

Civil War and Reconstruction, 19th Century US History and Military 

History. He earned his BA and MA in History from Shippensburg 

University of Pennsylvania in 1989 and 1993, respectively. He taught for 

four years at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, before 

moving to Washington, DC where he worked at the US Army Center for 

Military History (CMH). He is currently an assistant professor within the 

Department of Military History at the US Army Command and General 

Staff College. 

Dr. Mark T. Gerges is an associate professor of military history at the 

US Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. A 

retired armor lieutenant colonel, he has taught at the United States Military 

Academy at West Point before obtaining his Ph.D. from the Institute on 

Napoleon and the French Revolution at Florida State University. He has 

published papers on British cavalry doctrine, the cavalry under the Duke 

of Wellington in the Peninsula War, and is working on a manuscript on the 

command and control of the mounted arm under Wellington. 

Dr. John T. Kuehn is an Associate Professor of Military History at the 

US Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. He 

retired after 23 years as a naval aviator with the rank of commander in 2004. 

He was awarded his Ph.D. in History in 2007 by Kansas State University. 

He is also a distinguished graduate of the Naval Postgraduate School with 

a degree in Systems Engineering. He has published numerous. articles, 
204

reviews, editorials, and two books—Agents of Innovation (Naval Institute 

Press, 2008) and Eyewitness Pacific Theater (with Dennis Giangreco, 

2008). He was recently awarded a Moncado Prize from the Society for 

Military History in 2011 for “The US Navy General Board and Naval 

Arms Limitation: 1922-1937.” He is also an adjunct professor for the 

Naval War College Fleet Seminar Program and with the MA in Military 

History (MMH) and MA in History Programs at Norwich University, 

earning the MMH Faculty Member of the Year Award in 2010-2011.

Dr. Richard S. Faulkner served 23 years in the US Army as an armor 

officer. He received a BA in History for Kennesaw College in 1985, a masters degree in American history from the University of Georgia in 1996, 

and a Ph.D. in American history from Kansas State University in 2008. He 

taught American history at the United States Military Academy at West 

Point, New York, and has taught military history at the US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, since 2002. His book, 

The School of Hard Knocks: Combat Leadership in the American Expeditionary Forces was published by Texas A&M Press in 2012. 

Dr. Mark M. Hull is an Associate Professor with the Department of 

Military History at the US Army Command and General Staff College, 

specializing in German intelligence history and war crimes prosecution. 

Dr. Hull earned his Ph.D. from University College Cork (NUI) and is also 

an attorney. He was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society 

in 2010 and is the author of the book, Irish Secrets: German Espionage 

in Wartime Ireland (Irish Academic Press, 2004), as well as numerous 

articles on intelligence history and law.

Dr John M. Curatola is an Assistant History Professor at the US Army 

Command and General Staff College. Prior to this position he was an 

active duty Marine Corps officer and retired in 2009 after 22 years of 

service, including deployments to Somalia in 1992 and Operation Iraqi 

Freedom in 2003. Dr. Curatola received a BA in Political Science from the 

University of Nebraska. He holds a master’s degree from George Mason 

University in US History and a Master of Military Arts and Science from 

the Army Command and General Staff College in military history. He 

received his Ph.D. in US History from the University of Kansas. 
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About the Editors

Dr. Christopher R. Gabel holds a Ph.D. from Ohio State University. He 

serves on the faculty of the Command and General Staff College since 

1983, where he teaches courses on general military history, military 

innovation, the Civil War, and World War II. His publications include The 

US Army GHQ Maneuvers of 1941, studies on the Army in the World War 

II period, railroad logistics in the Civil War, and a staff ride handbook for 

the Vicksburg campaign.

Dr. James H. Willbanks is the General of the Army George C. Marshall 

Chair of Military History and Director of the Department of Military 

History at the US Army Command and General Staff College. He has been 

on the faculty since 1992 after he retired from the Army as a Lieutenant 

Colonel with twenty-three years service as an Infantry officer in various 

assignments, to include a tour as an advisor with a South Vietnamese 

regiment during the 1972 North Vietnamese Easter Offensive. He holds 

a BA in History from Texas A&M University, and an MA and Ph.D. in 

History from the University of Kansas. He is the author of Abandoning 

Vietnam (University Press of Kansas, 2004), The Battle of An Loc (Indiana 

University Press, 2005), The Tet Offensive: A Concise History (Columbia 

University Press, 2006), Vietnam War Almanac (Facts on File, 2009), and 

the editor of America’s Heroes: Medal of Honor Recipients from the Civil 

War to Afghanistan (ABC-CLIO, 2011) and The Vietnam War, a volume 

in The International Library of Essays on Military History (Ashgate 

Publishing of London, 2006). 


Combat Studies Institute Press

US Army Combined Arms Center

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 

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