Forgotten Generals

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The greatest general of the Byzantine Empire captured Carthage and was thus granted the very last Triumph. Blinded by the Emperor, he spent his last years in poverty. Who was he? The answer is Belisarius, who became known to history as ‘the last of the Romans’. But how many can honestly say they know much about this man, who, as well as being the victor at the Battle of Dara that brought peace to Persia, suppressed an uprising at the hippodrome in Constantinople by massacring 30,000? The same can be said of Albrecht von Wallenstein, Supreme Commander of the Habsburg Armies during the bloody Thirty Years War – the first ‘World War’ – and Maurice de Saxe, Marshal of France, one of the most successful generals of the eighteenth century.

Author Dorian Bond’s meticulous selection of military leaders reveals what it is to be a general – and how circumstance can write even the greatest out of history. Count Suvarov, the last Generalissimus of the Russian Empire, never lost a battle. Ennobled by both Catherine the Great and the Emperor Joseph II and undoubtedly one of the greatest commanders in history, he was exiled before being recalled to fight the French revolutionary forces in Italy to great effect, but died forgotten in St Petersburg in 1800.