Dossiers

The people

Commanders, monarchs, a professor, an empress, a history teacher, a slave-soldier who became a sultan. The walks of life behind the battles.

47 dossiers

Miltiades

Field commander · c. 550–489 BC

Tyrant of the Chersonese who returned to Athens as a general

1 engagement

Darius I

Monarch · c. 550–486 BC

Usurper who became the great administrator of the Persian Empire

1 engagement

Alexander III of Macedon

Monarch · 356–323 BC

King, cavalry commander, and self-fashioned heir of Achilles

1 engagement

Darius III

Monarch · c. 380–330 BC

Late-chosen Great King facing the collapse of an old world

1 engagement

Hannibal Barca

Field commander · 247–c. 183 BC

Son of a general, raised in Spain, bound by a childhood oath

1 engagement

Gaius Terentius Varro

Statesperson · fl. 216 BC

Novus homo consul who answered a frightened republic

1 engagement

Cao Cao

Field commander · 155–220

Chancellor, poet, and warlord who held the emperor as a card

1 engagement

Zhou Yu

Field commander · 175–210

Young admiral and musician, the southern coalition’s fighting brain

1 engagement

Zhuge Liang

Strategist · 181–234

Recluse scholar pulled into war as Liu Bei’s chief counsellor

1 engagement

William of Normandy

Monarch · c. 1028–1087

Bastard duke who claimed a crown and built a kingdom on it

1 engagement

Harold Godwinson

Monarch · c. 1022–1066

Earl of Wessex who took the throne in a year of three kings

1 engagement

Saif ad-Din Qutuz

Monarch · d. 1260

Former slave-soldier who seized a sultanate to fight the Mongols

1 engagement

Baybars

Field commander · c. 1223–1277

Kipchak slave-cavalryman, then sultan of a new order

1 engagement

Kitbuqa Noyan

Field commander · d. 1260

Nestorian Christian general in Mongol service

1 engagement

Mehmed II

Monarch · 1432–1481

Young sultan who made a city into an imperial capital

1 engagement

Constantine XI Palaiologos

Monarch · 1405–1453

Last Roman emperor, who died in the streets of his city

1 engagement

Tokugawa Ieyasu

Field commander · 1543–1616

Hostage-child of the civil wars who outlasted every rival

1 engagement

Ishida Mitsunari

Statesperson · 1559–1600

Civilian administrator who tried to hold Hideyoshi’s coalition

1 engagement

John III Sobieski

Monarch · 1629–1696

Elected king and working cavalry general

1 engagement

Kara Mustafa Pasha

Field commander · c. 1634–1683

Grand vizier who gambled an empire on one city

1 engagement

Horatio Nelson

Admiral · 1758–1805

Clergyman’s son, one-eyed, one-armed, the navy’s most aggressive admiral

1 engagement

Pierre-Charles Villeneuve

Admiral · 1763–1806

Aristocrat-turned-republican admiral, trapped between Napoleon and Nelson

1 engagement

Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

Field commander · 1769–1852

Anglo-Irish officer who learned war in India, then unmade Napoleon

1 engagement

Napoleon Bonaparte

Monarch · 1769–1821

Artillery officer who became emperor, then a man running out of time

1 engagement

Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher

Field commander · 1742–1819

Aging hussar general who kept a promise on a ruined army’s legs

1 engagement

George G. Meade

Field commander · 1815–1872

Career engineer given an army three days before its greatest battle

1 engagement

Robert E. Lee

Field commander · 1807–1870

U.S. Army engineer who chose Virginia over the Union

1 engagement

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

Scholar-soldier · 1828–1914

Rhetoric professor who learned infantry command on the job

1 engagement

Menelik II

Monarch · 1844–1913

King of Shewa who forged a modern Ethiopian empire

1 engagement

Taytu Betul

Empress · c. 1851–1918

Empress, diplomat, and the will behind the camp

1 engagement

Oreste Baratieri

Field commander · 1841–1901

Garibaldian volunteer turned colonial governor

1 engagement

Tōgō Heihachirō

Admiral · 1848–1934

Satsuma samurai’s son trained in a British training ship

1 engagement

Zinovy Rozhestvensky

Admiral · 1848–1909

Gunnery specialist given an impossible voyage

1 engagement

Philippe Pétain

Field commander · 1856–1951

Infantry officer who became the organizer of Verdun — and later of Vichy

1 engagement

Erich von Falkenhayn

Field commander · 1861–1922

Prussian war minister who tried to bleed France white

1 engagement

Hugh Dowding

Field commander · 1882–1970

Reserved air marshal who built the world’s first integrated air-defense system

1 engagement

Keith Park

Field commander · 1892–1975

Artillery gunner turned fighter controller, a colonial in the RAF

1 engagement

Hermann Göring

Field commander · 1893–1946

WWI ace who ran a political air force

1 engagement

Chester W. Nimitz

Admiral · 1885–1966

Submariner from a German-Texan hill town, given the Pacific

1 engagement

Yamamoto Isoroku

Admiral · 1884–1943

Harvard-educated gambler who warned against a long war with America

1 engagement

Georgy Zhukov

Field commander · 1896–1974

Peasant cavalryman who became Stalin’s indispensable general

1 engagement

Vasily Chuikov

Field commander · 1900–1982

A worker’s son who learned to fight inside a dying city

1 engagement

Friedrich Paulus

Field commander · 1890–1957

Staff officer given a field army he was not allowed to save

1 engagement

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Field commander · 1890–1969

Kansas farm boy, staff genius, coalition chairman of Overlord

1 engagement

Erwin Rommel

Field commander · 1891–1944

Infantry officer who became the Wehrmacht’s most famous field commander

1 engagement

Võ Nguyên Giáp

Field commander · 1911–2013

History teacher and journalist who taught himself a people’s war

1 engagement

Christian de Castries

Field commander · 1902–1991

Cavalry aristocrat given a valley he could not hold

1 engagement