James Lacey - Gods of War: historys greatest military rivals

At the end of On War, Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz makes a supremely ironic comment: No one starts a waror rather, no one in his senses ought to do sowithout being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it. And that is precisely the point; rarely if ever do statesmen, their advisers, or their military leaders think through the consequences of what will transpire after they have launched their military forces into war. Even when fought for the noblest of reasons, war and the battles that result from its conduct represent the darkest of human impulses. As the Duke of Wellington aptly commented, Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won. War is the great destroyer, leaving in its wake a path of wanton destruction, rapine, and death, with the bodies and minds of those who survive broken by its savagery. Yet men have pursued its tarnished glory throughout the ages, beginning in our written history with Achilles choosing a young and glorious death in battle against the Trojans over the possibility of a long and comfortable life.

Sometimes these wars are fought by men of talent, but not often, as military genius is a rare commodity. The context and circumstances of the political, military, and social milieu must be right for military genius to emerge in full flower. Had Napolon been born fifty years earlier, he would have retired as a captain of artillery in an army dominated by the great nobles of France. Similarly, had the Civil War happened ten years earlier or later, it is hard to imagine Grant emerging as a major figure. That said, it is perhaps a good thing that military genius has been so rare in history. Unfortunately, those few who have possessed its attributes too often have found themselves driven by a restive impulse to employ their talents in search of conquest and personal glory. In effect, that search has led them to ignore Clausewitzs dictum that war isa continuation of political activity by other means in pursuit of their own dreams. Thus, they have pursued their own personal glory instead of the larger needs of not only their soldiers but their societies as a whole.

All great generals, no matter how noble their cause and their persona, must in the end possess a certain ruthlessness. For some the pursuit of military genius, driven by their demons, has turned into a hardness that knows no bounds. Walking over the desolate landscape of the Battle of Eylau, Napolon commented to one of his marshals as he kicked over the frozen bodies of his dead soldiers, Small change. Marshal Neys comment when he saw that same terrible battlefield, in which the eminent historian David Chandler estimated the French may have lost as many as twenty-five thousand men killed or wounded with their enemies losing a further fifteen thousand casualties, was, Quel massacre! Et sans resultat.What a massacre! And without result.

One also must note that the pursuit of glory by military genius has in many cases brought little benefit to mankind. Rather, it has all too often led emperors, kings, and generals to attempt to emulate the glory of those who have gone before them. Genghis Khan and his successors wrecked much of China and western Asia all the way to eastern Europe, setting Russian civilization back by at least two centuries and permanently scarring the psyche of Russias people. But in the end the Mongolian invaders left little in their wake except massive destruction and death, only the pyramid of skulls they built in Baghdad in A.D. 1258 as a monument to their military genius. Alexander the Great destroyed the great Persian Empire, but his own empire blew away with the sands of Mesopotamia. As he lay dying, his one possibility of saving it disappeared, when he replied to the query of his generals as to who was to succeed him: To the strongest. The result was nearly two centuries of interminable wars that lasted until the Romans brought their concept of political order to the Eastern Mediterranean.