Tag Archives: History

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (5) Persian Wars – Alexander’s Conquest of the Persian Empire

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Alexander the Great on his horse Bucephalus in the Battle of Issus against Darius III – from the Alexander mosaic in the House of the Faun, Pompeii (public domain image)

 

(5) PERSIAN WARS –
ALEXANDER’S CONQUEST OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE (336-323 BC)

The Macedonian-Persian Wars of my namesake, Alexander the Great – the one exception to actually defeat and conquer the Persian Empire among the various Persian Wars, those recurring definitive wars of classical history fought by Greeks and Romans against successive Persian Empires over a millennium.

Of course, that was because Alexander’s conquest of the Persian Empire involved one of the finest fighting forces in history, the Macedonian phalanx, led by one of finest military leaders of history, without a defeat to his name, usually against numerical odds. That’s right – I’m an Alexander the Great and Gaugamela fanboy.

In fairness, Alexander was lucky, particularly in the opening of his campaign against the Persian Empire – narrowly escaping death at the Battle of the Granicus River. As the saying goes however, fortune favors the bold and Alexander was certainly bold, indeed to the point of personal recklessness, while the Persians were unlucky with their emperor, Darius III, who seemed cautious to the point of cowardly, notoriously fleeing his two big set-piece battles with Alexander at Issus and Gaugamela.

In fairness, Alexander was also legendary. Unable to untie the legendary insoluble Gordian knot of which it was prophesied that whoever untied it would conquer Asia? No problem – just cut it with your sword and go on to conquer Asia.

Faced with threat of the Persian navy which can strike at Greece behind your lines? No problem – just conquer the coastline of the Persian empire. Where’s your navy now, Persia?

Darius offers to surrender half his empire to you and your wimpy general Parmenion says you should accept? Sneer at him “I would too, if I were you”, then proceed to demonstrate you’re Alexander the Great by conquering the other half as well, while showing the Persian emperor he can run but he can’t hide.

Alexander’s conquest of the Persian Empire is also one of those wars that I style as adventurous wars – wars that resemble or evoke a tale of epic adventure, charismatic leaders and small heroic bands of warriors fighting against the odds to win. Indeed, Alexander and his conquests became just that – a historical and legendary source for tales of epic adventure

“Alexander became legendary as a classical hero in the mould of Achilles, featuring prominently in the historical and mythical traditions of both Greek and non-Greek cultures. His military achievements and unprecedented enduring successes in battle made him the measure against which many later military leaders would compare themselves, and his tactics remain a significant subject of study”.

Other wars in my Top 10 Wars that might be similarly styled as ‘adventurous’ wars are the Mongol Conquests and the Spanish Conquest of the Americas – to which one might also add my special mentions for the Arab Conquests and Viking Invasions.

Of course, this sets aside the distinctly unadventurous nature of wars to those at the pointed end of their destruction, usually on the other side, but also those who end up as casualties on the same side. Alexander’s conquests were no exception – infamously, he personally killed Cleitus the Black in a drunken altercation, the man who had saved his life at Granicus.

Of those wars I’ve styled as adventurous wars, I’d have to rank the Spanish conquest the highest in terms of just how lopsided or overwhelming the numerical odds were against it (for the Aztecs and even more so the Incas), victories unparalleled in history, even by Alexander. That said, Alexander did face overwhelming odds against him and his Greek or Macedonian forces, both in individual battles and the conquest of the Persian Empire as a whole.

In fairness, Alexander also probably started in the best position of all the leaders in those adventurous wars, having inherited the Macedonian state and its phalanxes honed to one of the finest fighting forces in history by his father Philip – although on the other hand, it is hard to imagine that Philip or any other Macedonian leader had the audacity or acumen to achieve Alexander’s conquest of the whole Persian Empire.

ART OF WAR

Let’s face it – Alexander the Great would have kicked Sun Tzu’s ass, cutting through all that mystic Taoist poetry like the Gordian knot. I know it and you know it. Did I mention this as an Alexander the Great fan account?

WORLD WAR

I think it would be overstating to it to claim that Alexander the Great fought and won the first world war, but you know he would have kept going through India if his army hadn’t wimped out on him.

STILL FIGHTING THE PERSIAN WARS

Alexander’s conquests might be done and dusted – indeed, pretty much after he died as so much relied on his personal charisma. However, the Persian empire was replaced by Greek kingdoms founded by Alexander’s generals, which would cast a long shadow in history even as they ultimately crumbled and the Persian empire rebooted against the Romans.

GOOD GUYS VS BAD GUYS

Sorry Persia – I know you’re one of the great civilizations of ancient history, but the Greeks and Alexander the Great will always be the good guys to me.

RATING: 4 STARS*****
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Top Tens – History: Top 10 Books (5) Geoffrey Blainey – A Short History of the World

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(5) GEOFFREY BLAINEY –

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD (2000)

 

“The most prolific, wide-ranging, inventive, and, in the 1980s and 1990s, most controversial of Australia’s living historians” – that last epithet was for his commentary on public affairs, so naturally I like him.

Geoffrey Blainey is Australia’s leading historian – and the leading historian of Australia itself, coining the definitive phrase for that history in the famous title of his book The Tyranny of Distance.

Wide-ranging indeed – upon graduating, Blainey initially eschewed academia for the private sector as a freelance historian, studying and writing the history of a mining and railway company in Tasmania.

He subsequently ranged through Australian history, with a focus on thematic history “organized around the exploration of the impact of the single factor (distance, mining, pre-settlement Aboriginal society)”.

Of particular interest to me, his range extended to the “rhythms” of global history – “two centuries of conflict in The Causes of War (1973)”, “examining the optimism and pessimism in Western society since 1750 in The Great See-Saw”, the history of Christianity, and the “tempestuous” 20th century.

And of course this book – which with my interest in global history I tend to regard as his magnum opus, apologies to The Tyranny of Distance.

What distinguishes Blainey in my eyes, both generally and in his book, is his eye for theme – especially themes outside the usual political or military history to which history is slanted, particularly global history.

A single volume history of the world must necessarily be compact yet Blainey not only achieves this but also seamlessly works in chapters on themes that elude other such histories.

For example, a chapter on the historical impact of the night sky on humanity. Or a chapter on the conquest of night by artificial lighting. Or of time itself by mechanical clocks in western civilization.

Or such resonant images or phrases that stick in the mind like Venice as the Silicon Valley of Renaissance Italy – through its glass-making as the cutting edge of technological innovation such as lenses for telescopes or microscopes, which I’m tempted to add to the conquest of time and night as the conquest of light.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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Top Tens – History: Top 10 Empires (6) Persia – Achaemenid Empire

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Achaemenid Empire (at its greatest extent under Darius the Great 522-486 BC) by Cattette for Wikipedia “Achaemenid Empire” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en

 

(6) PERSIA – ACHAEMENID EMPIRE (550 – 330 BC)

“The empire that kicked off all the other empires” – the largest empire in history up until that point and first of the world empires, in impact rather than literal global extent. Best known in Western history as the liberators of the Jewish exiles in Babylon and recurring antagonists of the Greeks, not surprisingly reflecting the two predominant sources of Western culture.

The Persians originally started off as nomadic vassals of the preceding Median Empire, the extent and nature of which is disputed but apparently laid much of the groundwork for the latter Persian Empire in forming a powerful Iranian state. Cyrus the Great then founded the first Persian or Achaemenid Empire, by rebelling against and supplanting the Medes before then conquering the Neo-Babylonian Empire in Mesopotamia and kingdom of Lydia in Anatolia.

Ultimately the borders of the Persian Empire extended from central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan in the east, to the Nile, Black Sea and Balkans in the west – although famously the Greek city states successfully resisted it in the Greek-Persian Wars. It was so big it had four capitals – Babylon, Ecbatana, Susa and Persepolis.

The Persian model of governance – “a successful model of centralized, bureaucratic administration via the use of satraps; its multicultural policy; building infrastructure, such as road systems and a postal system; the use of an official language across its territories; and the development of civil services, including its possession of a large, professional army” – essentially set the template for subsequent empires, particularly in the Middle East – influencing not only the Greeks and Romans, but also the Arabs and the Abbasid Caliphate. For the latter, it “left a dream of the Middle East as a unit, and a unit where people of different faiths could live together.

Its ultimate nemesis was Alexander the Great – apparently an admirer of Cyrus the Great, but who just took the empire from Cyrus’ more pathetic descendant Darius III. Oh well – he wasn’t using it anyway. And the legacy of Cyrus suited Alexander better, including that title of the Great.

However, the first Persian or Achaemenid Empire might have been swept from history, but Persia itself continued to be a seat of empires – it revived under the Parthian and Sassanid empires, both recurring antagonists of the Romans until the Sassanids were conquered by the Arabs. Even then, Persia managed to revive itself under Islamic or Turkic dynasties.

 

Standard of Cyrus the Great

DECLINE & FALL

For tenacity in decline…yes and no. The Achaemenid Empire itself collapsed with indecent haste, conquered by Alexander as he pursued Darius III from one corner of the empire to the next like a Macedonian Terminator. However, the Persians proved quite adept at the long game of reviving themselves while under the nominal satrapy of their conquerors, whom they ultimately overthrew to revive their empire in even more enduring and tenacious form.

THE ACHAEMENID EMPIRE NEVER FELL

Well yes, the Achaemenid Empire fell rather dramatically to Alexander the Great, but Persia kept bouncing back, the zombie franchise of empires – as the Parthians, Sassanids, Safavids and the ironic ideological empire of the latter day Islamic Republic.

THE SUN NEVER SETS

Persia was the first of a long line of what can be termed world empires, as opposed to global ones – that is, in terms of their enduring influence and impact rather than a literal geographic global extent.

Although interestingly the Persians may well have been the origin of the claim for their empire as the empire on which the sun never sets. According to Herodotus’ Histories, Xerxes made the claim before invading Greece – “We shall extend the Persian territory as far as God’s heaven reaches. The sun will then shine on no land beyond our borders.”

EVIL EMPIRE

Well, with their mutant armies and war rhinoceri…wait – that was the film 300. Outside of that film’s depictions of the Persian Empire as the Mordor of its time, which reflects Greek accounts of them as antagonists to some degree, the Persians do reasonably well in avoiding the evil empire tag – although obviously they didn’t build and maintain an empire of that size by being nice.

And they do pretty well in their Biblical portrayals, due to Cyrus’ liberation of the Jews from Babylonian exile – while Babylon is immortalized by the Bible as the symbol of evil, Cyrus is praised by it and even hailed as messiah, a term that used to be more generic for one anointed by God.

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (6) Punic Wars – Second Punic War

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Hannibal crossing the Alps into Italy, 1881 or 1884 book engraving used as public domain image Wikipedia “Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps”

 

(6) PUNIC WARS –
SECOND PUNIC WAR (218-201 BC)

“Carthago delenda est” – Carthage must be destroyed!

The wars that defined the Roman Republic and its empire.

Also the most famous historical duel between two rival powers, with the stakes of supremacy to the victor and destruction to the vanquished.

Also arguably the most fiercely fought of Rome’s wars – and the closest it came to defeat in its rise to empire under the republic, with one of its worst defeats in battle of Cannae.

Also a nice polar opposite to the Hunnic Wars in my previous entry (even down to the resonance of their names) – with the rising republic of the Punic Wars at one pole and the falling empire of the Hunnic Wars at the other.

As for the Punic Wars defining the Roman republic and its empire, I know the Punic Wars took place well before the formal Roman empire, but they defined the Roman Republic as an imperial power and laid the foundations for the Empire in its most famous duel for Mediterranean supremacy.

As for that duel, such was its historical fame and potency of its imagery that the Punic Wars have continued to provide metaphors for modern history. “The wars lasted for more than a hundred years (264-146) and were analogous in many respects to later great hegemonic rivalries like the Anglo-French rivalry of the 18th Century and the Cold War, filled as it is with military arms-races, proxy-wars, attacks on regional states, at the end of which there was only a unipolar political landscape”.

Or in other words, the Mediterranean wasn’t big enough for the two of them.

Even in its defeat and destruction by Rome, Carthage provided the metaphor of Carthaginian peace – for “any brutal peace treaty demanding total subjugation of the defeated side” or terms that “are overly harsh and designed to accentuate and perpetuate the inferiority of the loser”, even more so for the subsequent legend that Rome salted the earth. Most famously, it was used by John Maynard Keynes for the Treaty of Versailles after the First World War – inaccurately in my view as a Versailles fan, and dangerously so as it undermined enforcement of the treaty. It’s a pity the term didn’t prompt more like one wry response to Keynes’ usage of it – “Funny thing, you don’t hear much from the Carthaginians these days”.

“Carthage must be destroyed” was the famous catchphrase of Roman senator Cato the Elder, who concluded all his speeches with it, whether it was relevant or not. It’s certainly an ice-breaker. I’m thinking of throwing it into all my conversations as well, or hijacking other people’s conversations with it.

Of course, by the time Cato was using it, it was really kicking a man when he was down. Rome had soundly defeated Carthage in the Second Punic War, essentially reducing Carthage to a small harmless shadow of its former territory – and a satellite state under the Roman thumb.

But to Cato, grumpy old curmudgeon that he was, the Carthaginians didn’t have the decency to be poor after their defeat, having far too much wealth when he visited it as a member of a senatorial embassy. And eventually he got his way with the Third Punic War (149-146 BC) and Rome crushed Carthage completely.

The Third Punic War was the somewhat anti-climactic conclusion to the trilogy of Punic Wars. The First Punic War (264-241 BC) was obviously not decisive but certainly interesting with the Romans wrestling Sicily from Carthage – as well as their impressive feat of throwing together a navy mostly from scratch, laying the foundations for Roman naval supremacy, even if that was mostly done through the neat trick of using ships as boarding platforms for infantry combat.

The Second Punic War (218-201 BC) was the big one . You know, the one with the elephants – in the famous crossing of the Alps into Italy, although only one elephant survived.

So while the elephants may not have loomed as large as had been hoped, what did loom large was the Carthaginian invasion of Italy , striking fear into the heart of Rome itself, and even more so the legendary Carthaginian general Hannibal, one of the greatest military commanders in history, with his textbook victory against the Romans at Cannae.

Sadly for Carthage, however, Hannibal was one of my top 10 great military leaders who were actually losers, because he didn’t know to go hard or go home – or rather, to go Rome or to go home, instead wasting his dwindling time and army d*cking around Italy, something of a running theme in that top ten.

Of course, it’s a lot more nuanced than that (particularly when it comes to the role of Hannibal’s leadership) but the Roman general Quintus Fabius avoided major battles and chipped away at Hannibal’s forces in Italy through attrition, while Hannibal’s rival and nemesis, Roman general Scipio Africanus, pulled a Hannibal in reverse by attacking the Carthaginians in Spain and Africa itself.

The Second Punic War also features some of the most famous battles in history – Cannae of course, but also the battles of Trebinia and Lake Trasimene for Carthaginian victories, as well as the battles of the Metaurus, Ilipa and Zama for Roman victories.

 

ART OF WAR

Obviously the Romans excelled in the art of war in their empire as a whole, perhaps even more so the Byzantines in Sun Tzu’s definition of the art of war as winning without fighting. An empire doesn’t survive a millennium without a few tricks of political diplomacy or playing enemies against each other up its sleeve.

However, facing Hannibal on their home territory in Italy was not their finest demonstration of the art of war. Reading Roman military history often prompts me to see the Romans as the Soviet Union of ancient history – winning through the manpower to replace one lost legion after another – and never more so than in the Second Punic War against Hannibal, which is eerily reminiscent of a Roman parallel for the Soviets in Barbarossa. Just ask Pyrrhus – who gave the world the term Pyrrhic victory because the Romans could just soak up their losses and keep coming.

This is something of a caricature for the Romans as well as the Soviets winning through brute force of manpower – both of which were as capable of finesse in the right circumstances, usually a combination of good leadership combined with well maintained or experienced forces. And the Roman legion was the finest fighting force of its time, with a discipline and tactical superiority that allowed it to outfight opponents that outnumbered it – as in the Battle of Alesia or Battle of Watling Street. Although one of the greatest strengths of the Roman legion was not so much its skill in fighting but in engineering, again as at Alesia.

WORLD WAR

It’s a bit hard to label the Punic Wars as a world war, even if was fought between two continents and had global consequences in the rise of the Roman Empire. However, as mentioned before, it had parallels to subsequent global hegemonic conflicts between rival powers

STILL FIGHTING THE PUNIC WARS

Well if there’s one thing a Carthaginian peace is good for, it’s for not fighting any more Punic Wars

GOOD GUYS AND BAD GUYS

Who were the good guys? The Romans obviously! Yes, it’s a bit more nuanced than that – with perhaps not too much to distinguish one from the other, and much to admire about Hannibal. But to quote the Youtube channel Pax Romana, child sacrificer says what? There’s a reason that the name for Moloch has passed into English as a pejorative term – and part of that reason is Carthaginian child sacrifice. No more Moloch!

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Top Tens – History: Top 10 Books (6) J.M. Roberts – The Triumph of the West

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(6) J.M. ROBERTS –

THE TRIUMPH OF THE WEST: THE ORIGIN, RISE & LEGACY OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION (1985)

 

Greatly expanded from the BBC TV series he presented of the same title, this book similarly looks at what is Western civilization and its titular ambigous triumph.

Roberts was a classic old school British historian – and by old school I mean Oxford, ultimately returning to his alma mater as Warden of Merton College, an academic title like many others that evoke those of a fantasy novel.

Apart from his academic distinctions, he had many published works for which he was hailed as “a master of the broad brush-stroke” – or in other words that thematic style of history which is my favorite.

That style is on display in what I regard to be the crowning achievement of any historian – a history of the world, particularly if it also spans all of history, as Roberts did with his History of the World published by Penguin (usually as the Penguin History of the World).

Given the scale, it’s obviously not light reading – but is demonstrative of Roberts’ style that pithy phrases from it still resonate in my mind many years after reading it. Roberts evoking most modern wars in the Middle East as the wars of Ottoman succession for example, or Romanticism as a secularized Protestantism.

Roberts’ style and mastery of broad brush strokes is even more on display in The Triumph of the West, perhaps not surprisingly given its origin in the television series he wrote and presented (for which prose style and mastery of broad brush strokes are effectively sine qua non for engaging an audience) as well as its shorter volume than his world history.

The chapters – corresponding to the episodes of the TV series – effectively showcase its presentation of “the origins and evolution of Western civilization, and the transformative challenges and influence it has exerted on the rest of the world”:

  • 1 – One World (TV episode – Dangerous Gifts: the benefits and costs of Western influence)
  • 2 – A Sense of Direction (TV episode – A New Direction: Influences from Ancient Graeco-Roman and Judeo-Christian Culture)
  • 3 – Birth of the West (TV episode – The Heart of the West: The Middle Ages and Orbis Christiani)
  • 4 – The World’s Debate (TV episode – The World’s Debate: Islam and Christianity)
  • 5 – Defining a World (TV episode – East of Europe: Byzantium and Russia)
  • 6 – An Exploring Civilization (TV episode – The Age of Exploration)
  • 7 – New Worlds (TV episode – same)
  • 8 – A New Age (TV episode – Age of Light)
  • 9 – History Speeds Up (TV episode – Monuments to Progress: The Long Nineteenth Century)
  • 10 – The Confident Aggressors (TV episode – India: The Ironies of Empire)
  • 11 – Responses and Repercussions (TV episode – The East is Red: China in the Twentieth Century)
  • 12 – A Sense of Decline (TV episode – The Decline of the West :Two World Wars and The Great Depression)
  • 13 – A Post-Western World? (TV episode – Capitulations: Third World countries learn the price of dependency on the West)

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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Top Tens – History: Top 10 Empires (7) Arab – Umayyad Caliphate

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Expansion of the caliphate, 622–750 CE: (Muhammad, 622–632 CE; Rashidun caliphate, 632–661 CE; Umayyad caliphate, 661–750 CE) – public domain image Wikipedia “Caliphate”

 

(7) ARAB – UMAYYAD CALIPHATE (661-750 / 756-1031)

The Arab conquests were a nigh-unstoppable historical explosion, once previously divided tribes in a historical backwater had been united under Mohammed – conquering one of history’s largest pre-modern empires (indeed the seventh or eighth largest in all history) in about a century or so, a blitzkrieg by horse, sail…and camel!

Mohammed had essentially conquered the Arabian peninsula, but his death left his successors – the three great Arab caliphates – only at the start of extending his empire to even wider conquests.

Now it might be said that I am somewhat inconsistent between empires in my entries, as I classify some, such as the Arab caliphates, as separate empires by different dynasties, while others I essentially classify as single empires despite their dynastic succession or fragmentation.

And the answer is, as usual, that I make my own rules and break them anyway – some empires have historical unity to them, if only in culture or theme, that appeals to me, while the different Arab caliphates appeal to me as distinct polities.

The Rashadun Caliphate, immediate successors to Mohammed, did most of the heavy lifting of empire as they broke out of the Arabian peninsula. Two formidable empires blocked their path, the Persian Empire and the eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, but the Arabs conquered the former and routed the latter back to Anatolia.

However, it was under their successors, the Umayyad Caliphate, that Arab empire reached its greatest extent, westwards from the north African shore to Europe itself – conquering Spain (well, not quite all, in a manner similar to the famous caveat to the Roman conquest of Gaul in Asterix comics) and famously invading France before being turned back at Tours by Charles Martel. Eastwards, they also extended beyond Persia through central Asia to the fringes of India and China – the latter of which presented even the Tang Empire some difficulty resisting their advance.

The Umayyads were mostly overthrown by the third Arab caliphate, the Abbasid Caliphate, who then presided over what is often regarded as the Golden Age of Islam from their capital in Baghdad – but for all that became increasingly vestigial in the empire they had inherited from the Umayyads as it fragmented into separate dynasties. The Abbasids did revive their political authority somewhat in Mesopotamia and Persia – only to be crushed along with Baghdad by the Mongols, although they continued to limp along in even more vestigial form in Egypt until the Ottomans replaced them as caliphate. Ha! That’s what you get for messing with my boys, the Umayyads!

Nor were the Umayyads done with history just yet – the Umayyads managed to pull a Taiwan, with an Umayyad prince in the role of Chiang Kai-Shek, fleeing into exile across the Mediterranean to Spain and continuing the Caliphate as the Emirate of Cordoba independent from the Abbasids, even with their own rival golden age of Islam in the fabled Al Andalus of Spain.

The Umayyads endured for almost three centuries before finally falling again in 1031 – but true to karmic form, once again cursed their successors with fragmentation, as Islamic Spain broke up into minor states and principalities, weakening it to Christian reconquest.

 

The Umayyads actually used a plain white flag!

 

DECLINE AND FALL

You have to rank the Ummayads high for tenacity in their decline and fall – even in defeat by the Abbasid Revolution, they pulled a Taiwan to rule in Spain, partying it up in Ibiza like an English tourist .

THE UMMAYAD CALIPHATE NEVER FELL

Well it obviously did, although perhaps not in its enduring influence in Spain, and even more so in the dreams of caliphate by Islamic political extremists in the twenty-first century.

THE SUN NEVER SETS

One of the top 10 largest empires in history – although the sun literally set on them, they can be ranked among the world empires of history.

EVIL EMPIRE

To be honest, I don’t know much about the brutality of Arab conquests or repression, although there seem to be a number of revolts against them, not least the Abbasid revolution itself.

But they do have to rank highly in evil empire stakes for one thing – the Arab slave trade, which was of a scale at least equal to, if not exceeding, the more notorious Atlantic slave trade by European empires – not as intense perhaps, but of a longer duration. As in only abolished (when it was formally abolished) in the twentieth century.

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (7) Hunnic Wars – Hun Invasion of the Roman Empire

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Total War Attila game box art

 

(7) HUNNIC WARS –
HUN INVASION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (440-453)

Yet another horse blitzkrieg of mounted nomadic tribes from the Eurasian steppes and the most formidable one prior to the Mongols, founding an empire that should be ranked as the fourth great empire of late antiquity and menacing the other three – Persian Empire as well as eastern and western Roman empires – in turn.

To be honest, purely on their own merits of military conquest, I’d rank the Mongols over the Huns. It’s hard to argue with the world’s largest contiguous land empire – and second largest empire in all history. While both shared the historical infamy of being extremely barbaric and ruthless towards their adversaries, albeit almost a millennium apart, the Mongols seemed to rely more on strategy than savagery. Both the Huns and Attila acquired such a reputation for savage barbarism that Kaiser Wilhelm sought to invoke it for his German soldiers in the Boxer Rebellion – which of course backfired as the Allies happily used it as a pejorative term for the Germans in the world wars. Although I have to admit Attila being identified as the Scourge of God earns him badass points. The Mongols also seem more diversified in the number of their skilled leaders and commanders beyond Genghis Khan and his death – while the success of the Huns seems largely focused through the charismatic leadership of Attila himself, with the Hunnic empire rapidly disintegrating after his death.

On the other hand, I have this chronological ranking going among the top tier entries of my top ten – and the Huns do predate the Mongols. However, it’s more than a matter of mere chronology – the Hunnic Wars also overlap with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, itself ranking as god tier special mention to my top ten, arguably more so than any other war. To pit the Mongols against the Romans is often the ultimate fantasy match of military history – I always recall that very proposal in a pulp science fiction novel of my youth – and the Hunnic Wars is the closest you get to that scenario, albeit the Roman Empire in terminal decline rather than its prime. (Spoiler – the Mongols actually did overlap with the Roman Empire, as in the surviving eastern Roman Empire or Byzantine Empire, but more as allies). And from a Eurocentric perspective, the Hunnic Empire was more in Europe itself, with both a seat of power and range of penetration much further west than the Mongols ever did.

I also have a romantic soft spot for the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains in Gaul or France as the heroic last stand of the Roman Empire, although that may be more legend than history – on par for me with the final battle of King Arthur against Mordred at Camlann, particularly as depicted in the film Excalibur, to the stirring choral music of Carmina Burana and Arthur thankful for the mist so that their enemy “may not see how few we are”. Aetius as Arthur, yo! Although in fairness, that was few in Romans, with Aetius relying less on mystical mist and more on his Visigoth and other Germanic allies to make up numbers.

Although truth be told, the real heroic stand and final battle that doomed the Hunnic Empire was the Battle of Nedao in 454, where they were defeated by their former Germanic vassals. The Huns took one last shot at the eastern Roman Empire under one of Attila’s sons in 469, vanishing from history with their defeat.

Their origin is even more mysterious – with some theories resembling an extent almost as wide as the Mongols, particularly those theories that linked them to the Xongniu and other nomadic peoples that menaced China, often stylized as Huns, such as in the Disney version of Mulan. They are also often linked to other nomadic tribes, sometimes also stylized as Huns, that menaced the Persian Empire and even India.

The only clear history of the Huns seems to be that they emerged east of the Volga from about 370, soon conquering the Goths and other Germanic tribes to forge a vast dominion essentially along the Danube on the borders of the Roman Empire – ironically driving the fall of the Roman Empire even before they invaded it, as the various Germanic tribes that invaded or settled in the Roman Empire were fleeing the Huns.

Ultimately however the Romans had to face off the fearsome Huns themselves – and that is where my romantic soft spot for last stands come in, as the Romans managed to mobilize themselves one last time to hold off the Huns. Firstly, however, the Huns turned on the more robust eastern Roman Empire, invading the Balkans and threatening the capital Constantinople, with little to stop them until the emperor opted for the pragmatic policy of paying tribute for peace. The Huns then invaded the western Roman Empire in 451, with Attila claiming the sister of the western Roman emperor as his bride and half the empire as his dowry – with some fairness, as she had swiped right on him in preference to her betrothal to a Roman senator. However, there the Huns encountered the general Flavius Aetius, often hailed as “the last of the Romans”. That’s right – this is an Aetius fan account.

Ironically, Aetius had effectively risen to power by relying on the Huns as his allies. Now he had to face off against his former allies as Attila invaded Gaul, drawing on the waning resources of an increasingly vestigial empire to field one of its last major military operations in alliance with the Visigoths and its other Germanic allies – and won, defeating the Huns at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains.

Or not, as historians dispute how conclusive a victory it was. Certainly Attila and the Huns withdrew from Gaul, only to invade Italy the following year – with there was little Aetius could do to stop them there, except for the Pope to ask Attila nicely if he would leave without sacking Rome.

Surprisingly, it worked – Attila left Italy (albeit more for lack of supplies and expectations of tribute), never to return as he died the following year, aborting his plans for a further campaign against the western empire – as with the Mongols, Europe was saved from invasion by a fortunately timed death (from Attila partying too hard celebrating his latest wedding to his hot new bride)

ART OF WAR

Certainly the Huns demonstrated the art of war, despite their reputation for savage barbarism. At a tactical level, they had the usual mobility, speed, surprise and shock of the steppes horse blitzkrieg – while strategically, they also sought out ways of winning without fighting through tribute and political alliances.

As for the Romans, they might have excelled in the art of war at the height of their empire, perhaps even retained their tactical skill towards the end, but just had too few legions as they struggled to mobilize any army.

WORLD WAR

The decline and fall of the Roman Empire – and the Migration Period or barbarian invasions – might be considered to be on the scale of a world war, but is a little too piecemeal in space or time.

I also like to think the Huns might also qualify as precursors of the Mongols on a similar world scale, but their origins – and links – to people identified as Huns in China, central Asia, Iran and India is not clear

STILL FIGHTING THE HUNNIC WARS

Well, not so much the fighting the Huns, vanishing as they did from history, but perhaps still living in the decline of empire…

GOOD GUYS VS BAD GUYS

Sorry Huns – that reputation for savage barbarism may be unfair and overstated, but when it comes to classical history, I usually side with the Romans, particularly in the fifth century

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Top Tens – Top 10 History Books: (7) John Ellis – Brute Force: Allied Strategy & Tactics in the Second World War

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Cover as published by Viking 1990

 

(7) JOHN ELLIS –

BRUTE FORCE: ALLIED STRATEGY & TACTICS IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR (1990)

 

Quantity has a quality all of its own.

Stalin is reputed to have said this, aptly enough about the Soviet armed forces in the Second World War. It’s probably apocryphal but I like to think that the fact it and other zingers are attributed to him implies an ability to drop one-liners unparalleled by any other war leader than Churchill – and certainly far exceeding Hitler. It amuses me to think that above all else, the Allies won the war of one-liners, the most important war of all. In modern internet parlance, you might say the Axis couldn’t meme.

More relevantly, if you were to sum up this book’s theme and thesis in one line, Stalin’s would do nicely, except that for both his Soviet forces and those of the Allies, it was a somewhat poor quality – the brute force of the title, grinding to a slower and more costly victory than might otherwise have been the case. In other words, war by attrition – and often not too different from the bloody attrition of the First World War for which that conflict’s military leadership is often faulted.

I obviously like Ellis as a historian – his Social History of the Machine Gun was similarly illuminating and insightful – although sadly his books seem somewhat neglected these days and can be elusive to find.

This book remains my favorite by Ellis – as well as one of my favorite general or thematic histories of the Second World War, exceeded only by my entry in top spot, which might arguably be paired together as alternatives (or correctives) to each other.

It certainly was an eye-opening look at Allied strategy and tactics in the war – and his critiques of their lack of finesse, proficiency or skill are persuasive, as for example with RAF Marshal Sir Arthur Harris’ area bombing dogma, a common subject of historical (and moral) criticism.

On the other hand, such critiques are easy to overstate in hindsight, particularly as opposed to the contemporary reality where each theater competed with the others, demanding troops and resources in very different ways and that could not be used elsewhere – or planning or production line decisions well in advance but which took substantial periods of time to change to battlefield requirements.

As opposed to my top spot entry (as something of an antidote), the book does lean into a historical pet peeve of mine – that tendency, dubbed in some internet circles as ‘wehraboo’ (a play on Wehrmacht and ‘weeaboo’ as slang for excessive or obsessive anime fandom), to disparage the Allies compared to so-called German military ‘excellence”.

While I would accept arguments that the Germans were the most consistent in their tactical proficiency throughout the war, albeit not so much in their strategy, much of the critiques Ellis makes about Allied “brute force” might also be made about German military successes.

In fairness, Ellis does make much of the same critiques about the Germans, particularly as the wheels started to fall off their blitzkrieg. However, the book overlooks the extent to which initial German successes relied not just on good luck and timing in a somewhat narrow window of opportunity, but also on significant advantages over their adversaries at the outset – advantages which arguably weren’t effectively matched by the comparable advantages in manpower and materiel by the Allies against them until 1944, at which point the Germans collapsed in a rapid manner similar to their own initial adversaries.

It also overlooks that the Germans owed their endurance in defense, at least in part, to the improvements in defensive firepower from that at the outset of the war, as well as their undoubted tactical proficiency in defense that enabled them to outfight numerically superior enemies until 1944.

I also took away from the book something else from the “brute force” of its title about Allied superiority – just how foolhardy the three major Axis nations in general were and Germany in particular was to decide on war in the first place, resembling nothing so much as a twentieth century version of the ghost dance seeking to conjure victory out of “triumph of the will”.

Germany and Japan even sought to make a virtue out of necessity by vaunting their so-called martial and psychological superiority over the material strength of their adversaries. History generally has a name for nations that do so – losers.

It also overlooks that Allied superiority was hard-earned. Material strength doesn’t just, well, materialize but takes a very real achievement in mobilizing manpower and materiel – one in which the Allies massively outclassed the Axis and one which is highlighted further by the fact that Germany had managed to occupy a productive potential in Europe to rival the United States but was still massively out-produced by the latter.

Italy is often disparaged for its performance in the war, particularly compared to Germany, but the underlying reality was not too different between them, albeit kept at bay for longer by Germany’s greater industrial base and tactical proficiency – such that I like to adapt the late Cold War quip about the Soviet Union being “Upper Volta with rockets” to Germany being “Italy with rockets”, in a very literal sense.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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Top Tens – History: Top 10 Empires (8) Ottoman Empire

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Map of Ottoman Empire in 1683 by Chamboz for Wikipedia “Ottoman Empire” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

 

(8) OTTOMAN EMPIRE (1299 – 1922)

The empire that conquered Constantinople and besieged Vienna – twice.

As the latter, the last non-European empire to invade and conquer significant parts of Europe (unless you count the Americans or Soviets), although Vienna was their high water mark – and as the former, the power that finally conquered (and saw itself as inheriting) the last of the Roman Empire.

Ironically, the Ottomans often resembled the Roman Empire, firstly in its rise from one of numerous non-descript warring tribes on a peninsula, albeit the Anatolian rather than Italian peninsula (although as further irony, the Romans traced themselves from that peninsula as well, with their mythic origin from Troy). And secondly, in its tenacity in decline.

It is also intriguing how much of the origins of modern history might be traced to the looming presence of the Ottoman Empire in Europe and the Mediterranean – such as the discovery of the New World from seeking to find alternate trade routes to Asia and so on.

The rise of the Ottoman Empire rivals the conquests by the Arab caliphates it ultimately replaced in predominance in the Middle East – and indeed replayed much of the same history. The Ottoman Empire may have lacked the range and speed of the Arab conquests, although it made up for that in the extent to which it invaded and conquered within Europe.

With its conquest of the Byzantine Empire (as well as Constantinople as its newly conquered capital) and control of the Mediterranean basin, the Ottoman Empire was a transcontinental empire at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa for six centuries.

Egypt was of course the jewel in the crown of their African empire – but it extended westwards from Libya to Morocco (and briefly into the Atlantic with the Canary Islands), becoming the basis of the fabled Barbary corsairs or pirates which even fought the United States, although these were only nominally under Ottoman control. The Ottomans also extended southwards to the Horn of Africa – and into naval wars in the Indian Ocean.

In Asia, they inherited the caliphate and its predominance in the Middle East, extending south through the Arabian peninsula, although held at bay by a resurgent Persia under their own Turkic Safavid dynasty.

And in Europe, they conquered the Balkans, extending to Crimea with the Crimean Khanate or Tatars, successors to the Mongol Golden Horde, as their vassal state, and also reached to the heart of Europe to besiege Vienna. Although apart from its defeats when besieging Vienna, it encountered significant holdouts or resistance elsewhere – Croatia, Dracula or Vlad the Impaler, Venice and the naval Battle of Lepanto.

It faced its waning tide of decline in the aftermath of its second defeat at Vienna, steadily losing its conquests in the Balkans even as it was propped up by Britain against Russia, resulting in it being styled as the “sick man of Europe” in the nineteenth century – somewhat overconfidently, as the Allies were to find out in WW1, although ultimately it collapsed in that war.

 

DECLINE & FALL

Ironically, the Ottomans might be compared favorably to the Romans they supplanted in their tenacity in decline. They did not endure for so many centuries as did the Romans – but then modern history moves a lot faster.

Of course, they were helped by European powers propping it up against each other, particularly Britain propping it up against Russia.

And against the apparent odds, they and their predominance in the Middle East endured until the First World War – and they might well have endured beyond that if they had remained aloof from that war and not chosen the losing side. Even in that war, they proved a resilient adversary, and even in defeat, they cast a long shadow – historian J.M. Roberts refers to most wars in the Middle East thereafter as the wars of Ottoman succession, up to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE NEVER FELL

On the other hand, their imperial core Turkey, to which they were shorn after the First World War, has also had a remarkable resurgence, rebounding almost immediately after its defeat from that war against further incursions, and newly emerging as a regional power in the Middle East, extending its influence and military presence through much of its former imperial territory

THE SUN NEVER SETS

Well, the sun did literally set on the Ottoman Empire in pure geographic terms – for example, it did not extend as far eastwards into Asia as its Arab caliphate predecessors. However, it can properly be ranked as a world empire in its influence, extending across three continents and reaching even further beyond that.

EVIL EMPIRE

As I said, the Ottomans get a lot of historical hate from certain circles – but sadly, I do have to rank them highly in the evil empire stakes. To be honest, I don’t know quite how brutal they were in maintaining their conquests, but they were notorious for their patronage of piracy and slavery, particularly through the Barbary corsairs.

What earns them their high ranking in evil empire stakes is their actions against ethnic minorities in the empire’s dying days – notably the Armenians – that gave the definition to genocide in the twentieth century

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (8) Mongol Conquests – Mongol Invasion of Europe

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The Battle of Legnica (Liegnitz or Wahlstatt) on 9th April 1241 during the first Mongol invasion of Poland – copper engraving by Matthäus Merian the Elder 1630 (public domain image – Wikipedia “Mongol Invasions and Conquests”)

 

(8) MONGOL CONQUESTS –
MONGOL INVASION OF EUROPE (1236-1242)

The Mongols were essentially a horse blitzkrieg across Eurasia, achieving a mobility and speed on land, exceeded only by modern mobile warfare using the internal combustion engine.

The horse blitzkrieg was a recurring feature mounted (heh) by nomadic herding tribes, particularly by those from the steppes of central Asia, to such devastating effect against more sedentary or settled agricultural states throughout history. I can’t resist the memorable quote by the Pax Romana Youtube channel that “history is mostly a matter of hoping those psychos on horseback don’t attack this summer, steal the grain and take the slaves”.

None were more supremely effective at it than the Mongols, one of the most proficient and versatile military forces in history – one that was also supremely adaptable at coopting its conquered people for further conquests and for strategies of war beyond their horse blitzkrieg. It’s surprising how small the actual Mongol component was of their forces.

The founder of the Mongol Empire – Temujin, better known as Genghis Khan – was the best military and political leader of his era, or arguably any era. He succeeded in unifying the Mongol tribes as the nucleus of his empire, which at his death stretched from northern China through Central Asia to Iran and the outskirts of European Russia. In doing so, the Mongols conquered glittering states along the Silk Road in central Asia that barely anyone remembers because the Mongols wiped them out so thoroughly – the Khwaraziman Empire of Iran and the Qara Khitai.

However, it is the wars of his successors that are particularly fascinating to me as they advanced into almost every corner of Eurasia.

In the Middle East, they besieged and sacked Baghdad, the center of Islamic power for half a millennia, occupying as far as parts of Syria and Turkey, with raids advancing as far as Gaza in Palestine, where they were stopped in the battle of Ain Jalut by the Mamluks of Egypt.

In East Asia, the Mongols did not face a unified China but two warring states, the Jin in northern China and the Sung in southern China. Genghis had largely defeated the former – his successors finished it off and conquered the Sung as well. The latter was most famously by Kublai Khan – and in Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree.

The Mongols also invaded Korea, Burma and Vietnam. It’s interesting to think of the Mongol Vietnam War, which as Vietnam Wars usually go, resulted in defeat for the Mongols. It’s also interesting, given the definitive horse blitzkrieg of the Mongols, that the Mongols launched naval invasions of Java and Japan, but perhaps not surprisingly neither did well – the latter giving rise to the Japanese word kamikaze or divine wind for the storms that scattered the Mongol invasion fleets.

However, I’m giving this entry to the campaigns of his successors most familiar to me from my Eurocentric perspective – the Mongol invasion of Europe, commanded in the field by one of the best Mongol generals, Subutai. The Mongols rolled over European Russia – over much of which they would remain ruling as the Golden Horde until the fifteenth century – and invaded central Europe, decisively defeating Poland and Hungary.

They were poised to strike into the heartland of Europe and the Holy Roman Empire, indeed raiding the latter (and the Balkans), with little to stop them but the English Channel – but fortunately for Europe, the Great Khan Ogedai died, so the Mongol armies withdrew back to Russia while their leaders returned to Mongolia to select the new Great Khan. Or so the story goes – historians vary on whether that was the true cause for the Mongols to desist from their invasion.

Even so, the Mongols continued to cast a long shadow of terror into Europe, reinforced by further raids in the thirteenth century (such that the raids of the 1280’s are sometimes styled as the second Mongol invasion) and fourteenth century.

And traumatizing Europeans with steak tartare, based on the popular legend of Mongol or ‘Tartar’ warriors tenderizing meat under their saddles and eating it at night after it had been ‘cooked’ by the heat and sweat from the horse.

ART OF WAR

Forget Sun Tzu – the true Art of War was written by Genghis Khan and the Mongols…in conquest. A friend and I used to observe the irony of Sun Tzu’s Art of War originating in China – a country that historically has gotten its ass kicked as often as not. (The same irony for Machiavelli’s The Prince originating in Italy – a country known for its political chaos).

But seriously – an army that conquered the world clearly excelled in the art of war. Ruling their conquests on the other hand…although in fairness any empire that size at that time was doomed to fragmentation.

WORLD WAR

The Mongol Conquests were nothing short of what should be described as a world war to create the largest contiguous land empire in history, and one that is still only exceeded by the British Empire – perhaps the most serious contender for the first true world war.

STILL FIGHTING THE MONGOL CONQUESTS

One of the few wars we’re not still fighting, even though we live in a Mongol-made world. The rising Russian state, with long memories of the Golden Horde, saw to that by conquering the steppes and various residual khanates (into the nineteenth century), but arguably inheriting their legacy and former territory as the new horde.

GOOD GUYS VS BAD GUYS

History has tended to overlook the positive or even progressive aspects of the Pax Mongolica – but it is also difficult to cast them as good guys, given the destruction they wrought, exceeding even the Second World War relative to world population.

RATINGS: 4 STARS****
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