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Turncoat Generals – Commanders From History Who Switched Sides

Khalid Elhassan April 3, 2025 17 min

Turncoat - Benedict Arnold — Benedict Arnold. Smithsonian Magazine

4. The Adventurous Life of an Ancient Turncoat

Few have lived as adventurously as Phanes of Halicarnassus (flourished sixth century BC). A Greek mercenary general, Phanes rose high in service to Egyptian Pharaoh Amasis II (570 – 524 BC). However, he turned on his employers, and turned coat during a war between Egypt and Persia. He abandoned the Egyptians, joined the army of Persia’s King Cambyses II, and played a key part in the defeat of his former employers and paymasters. The conflict between a then-declining Ancient Egypt and a rising Persian Empire was reportedly instigated by a disgruntled Egyptian physician in the Persian court. He was upset that Amasis had picked him, out of all of Egypt’s physicians, to get dragged away from his family and sent to Persia when Cambyses wrote the pharaoh asking for an eye doctor. So the angry ancient ophthalmologist schemed to get his revenge.

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.