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Dramatic Assassination Plots from History and Their Outcomes

Khalid Elhassan October 29, 2020 34 min

Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand - Austria-Hungary — The arrest of Gavrilo Princip after his shooting of Franz Ferdinand and his wife. BBC

7. The Man Who Created the Military Machine That Made Alexander the Great a Great Conqueror

In the first half of the 4^th century BC, Thebes and Sparta vied for the dominance of Greece. While they fought each other, a new power was rising in the north that would soon eclipse both. In 359 BC, 23-year-old Philip II (382 – 336 BC) ascended the throne of Macedon. Within two decades, he would change the face of Greece, and warfare would never be the same again.

Greeks viewed Macedon as a barely civilized kingdom that spoke a barely intelligible Greek dialect. The kingdom had a lot of potential, both in manpower and resources that far exceeded those of any Greek city state, but had yet to realize its potential. Philip unified Macedon’s fractious tribes, and transformed them into the world’s most respected and feared military machine.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.