Warfare: Generals Who Shaped How Battles are Fought From Ancient Times Through the Gunpowder Age

Warfare: Generals Who Shaped How Battles are Fought From Ancient Times Through the Gunpowder Age

Khalid Elhassan - January 26, 2025

Warfare has probably existed since the first band of hominids cracked the heads of a rival band with sticks and stones and handy bones to chase them off a desired spot. The art of cracking heads, literally and figuratively, has come a long way since then. Warfare evolves constantly, to adapt to new conditions. The evolution tends to be gradual, but sometimes warfare witnesses rapid changes that are, on a historical time scale, sudden and revolutionary. When that happens, it is usually thanks to creative generals who stepped outside the box to come up with ideas that changed warfare. Below are seventeen things about such generals who shaped warfare from the days of spears and swords, to the dawn of the age of firearms and cannons.

17. Taking on Ancient Greece’s Scariest Army

Warfare: Generals Who Shaped How Battles are Fought From Ancient Times Through the Gunpowder Age
Spartan warriors. History Skills

Sparta and Thebes went to war in 378 BC, and the Thebans, led by Epaminondas (died 362 BC) had their work cut out for them. Other Greek city states staffed their phalanxes with citizen soldiers – civilians who temporarily took up arms during wartime. By contrast, Sparta’s citizens were professional soldiers who left home at age seven for a brutal military academy, and spent the rest of their lives training for war. Sparta could afford that because of massive slavery. It conquered neighboring Messenia in the eighth century, BC, then turned the entire Messenian population into state slaves, known as Helots. To control the Helots, who outnumbered the Spartans ten to one, Sparta became a military state and society. It also became a police state, with a secret police known as the Krypteia, to terrorize the Helots and kill any who seemed restive or showed leadership potential.

16. Fighting the Spartans With Elite Gay Warriors

Warfare: Generals Who Shaped How Battles are Fought From Ancient Times Through the Gunpowder Age
Epaminondas defends fellow Theban leader Pelopidas. Plutarch’s Lives for Boys and Girls

Spartan policy was lebensraum writ small – the Nazis actually looked to Sparta when they drew their plans to conquer Eastern Europe and enslave the locals. The end result of Sparta’s policy was an elite Spartan phalanx unmatched in discipline and toughness. By the fourth century BC, Sparta was Greece’s scariest state, and the Spartan phalanx was one that nobody wanted a piece of. Then Epaminondas showed up, and broke the spell of Spartan invincibility by breaking the Spartans at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC. There, he led a Theban army of 7000 hoplites, plus 600 cavalry, against a bigger Spartan army of 10,000 hoplites, plus 1000 cavalry. In the rival armies, Thebe’s elites were a unit of 300 warriors known as The Sacred Band, comprised of 150 pairs of homosexual lovers. Sparta’s elites were a unit of 1000 full Spartan citizens, trained for war since childhood.

15. A Tactical Innovation That Revolutionized Warfare

Warfare: Generals Who Shaped How Battles are Fought From Ancient Times Through the Gunpowder Age
The Battle of Leuctra. Kosmos Society

The Greek norm was to place the best troops at the right side of the line. As such, it was rare for the best troops of both armies to come into contact with each other. Epaminondas changed that, and put his best troops on the left side of his line, directly opposite the Spartan elites. Then he introduced two innovations that revolutionized warfare. First, he abandoned the norm of lines of a uniform depth – usually 8 to 12 men deep. Instead, he stacked the left side of his formation 50 deep, by thinning the rest of his line. That is, he concentrated force at the decisive point. Second, rather than advance in line abreast, Epaminondas echeloned his army so that his powerful left was the first to reach the enemy, and his weaker right was the last.

14. Crushing the Spartans

Warfare: Generals Who Shaped How Battles are Fought From Ancient Times Through the Gunpowder Age
Epaminondas crushed the Spartan phalanx at the Battle of Leuctra. Igor Dsiz

The idea – or hope – behind Epaminondas’ formation was that the battle would already be decided by his powerful left smashing its opposition, before his weaker and more vulnerable right got into the fight. The Spartan right, stacked twelve deep, was shattered upon impact with Epaminondas’ left, fifty deep. It lost 1000 men, including 400 of the Spartan elite citizenry, including Sparta’s King Cleombrotus I. Epaminondas’ innovations formed the bedrock of King Philip II of Macedon’s military principles, and those of his son, Alexander the Great. The myth of Spartan invincibility never recovered. Epaminondas went on to invade Sparta and free the Helots, who formed an independent state. Since its society and economy had depended on slave labor, Sparta was forever after reduced to minor player status. Epaminondas died in 362 BC, killed while dealing Sparta another crushing defeat.

13. The Unheralded King of Macedon

Warfare: Generals Who Shaped How Battles are Fought From Ancient Times Through the Gunpowder Age
Philip II of Macedon. Pinterest

While Thebes and Sparta fought to dominate Greece in the first half of the fourth century BC, 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 Macedon’s throne. Within two decades, he changed the face of Greece, and warfare was never the same again. Greeks viewed Macedonians barely civilized folk, who spoke a barely intelligible Greek dialect. Macedon 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.

12. Transforming Part Time Warriors Into Full Time Professional Soldiers

Warfare: Generals Who Shaped How Battles are Fought From Ancient Times Through the Gunpowder Age
Philip II improved the Macedonian phalanx with longer spears known as sarissas, and lighter armor. The Collector

Philip made soldiering a full-time, highly professional, and well paid occupation. That enabled him to drill his men regularly, ensuring discipline and unit cohesion. He built upon Epaminondas’ deep phalanx innovation, and improved upon it by arming his men with a longer spear, the sarissa. He also increased mobility by reducing his men’s armor, and furnishing them with smaller and lighter shields. That gave them a marching speed that few other armies could equal. Philip also made Macedon’s cavalry the world’s best, by recruiting the sons of the nobility into what came to be known as the Companion Cavalry. He equipped them with long lances that gave them greater reach than their opponents, and trained them in shock tactics. To break enemy lines, Philip taught the Companion Cavalry to ride in wedge formations well suited to penetrate enemy lines, in addition to being more maneuverable than riding abreast.

11. An Unstoppable Military Machine

Warfare: Generals Who Shaped How Battles are Fought From Ancient Times Through the Gunpowder Age
The Kingdom of Macedon and surrounding region in 336 BC, at Philip II’s death. Wikimedia

Philip also created a corps of engineers to design and build new war instruments. Additionally, he coordinated different troop types to support each other, creating combined arms tactics. Heavy infantry, light skirmishers, archers, slingers, cavalry, and engineers, all worked together. That made their whole greater than the sum of their parts. Philip’s signature tactic came to be known as the “hammer and anvil”, with the phalanx fixing an enemy in place (anvil), and the cavalry closing in with shock tactics, acting as a hammer to shatter the foe. Philip’s army was unstoppable, and by 338 BC, he had mastered Greece. He then began preparations for his life’s ambition: invading the Persian Empire. However, just before setting out to conquer Persia, Philip was assassinated at a wedding. It would be his son, Alexander the Great, who would use Philip’s military machine and tactics to become the Ancient World’s greatest conqueror.

10. The General Who Fought the Perfect Battle

Warfare: Generals Who Shaped How Battles are Fought From Ancient Times Through the Gunpowder Age
Hannibal’s army crossing the Alps into Italy. The New Yorker

Hannibal Barca (247 – ­circa 182 BC) elevated the role of strategy in warfare. He led a Carthaginian army out of Spain, through southern France, and across the Alps into Italy. That brought the Second Punic War (218 – 201 BC) to enemy territory. In Italy, he perfected battlefield tactics, and consistently defeated bigger Roman armies. Hannibal inflicted a series of humiliating defeats upon the Romans. That shook Rome’s hold on her Italian allies and client states, many of whom either joined Hannibal or declared neutrality. His greatest victory came in 216 BC, when the Romans amassed their biggest army to date, 87,000 men, and marched off to crush Hannibal. He met them with 40,000 men at Cannae, and crushed them in a military masterpiece that is still studied as an example of the near-perfect battle.

9. Transforming a Mishmash of Warriors Into an Elite Army

Warfare: Generals Who Shaped How Battles are Fought From Ancient Times Through the Gunpowder Age
Hannibal Barca. Wikimedia

Hannibal’s army was a mishmash of ethnic units of differing abilities. It excelled because of Hannibal’s ability to deploy each group so as to maximize its strengths, while minimizing its weaknesses. A significant part of his army consisted of Gaulish levies recruited from northern Italy. While brave, they were not as professional as Hannibal’s African infantry and Greek mercenaries. So at Cannae, he placed the Gauls in the center, in a formation that bulged outwards. To either side of the Gauls, Hannibal placed his more professional African heavy infantry. On the flanks, Hannibal positioned his cavalry. When combat commenced, Hannibal expected that the Gauls would be forced backwards under relentless Roman pressure. Eventually, their formation which had started off bulging outwards, would bend and bulge inwards, forming a bowl shape or sack. The confident Romans, scenting victory as their foe gave ground, would push into the sack.

8. Dealing the Romans Their Worst Defeat

Warfare: Generals Who Shaped How Battles are Fought From Ancient Times Through the Gunpowder Age
The Battle of Cannae. Dickinson College

Hannibal’s plan was that once the Romans were in the sack, the African infantry positioned to the Gauls’ sides would wheel inwards and attack the Roman flanks. By then, the Carthaginian cavalry should have defeated their opponents. It would then turn around, and attack the enemy infantry’s rear, thus completely encircling the Romans. Things worked out exactly as Hannibal had planned. In a battle viewed ever since as the gold standard for tactical generalship, the Romans were nearly wiped out. Only 10,000 out of 87,000 Roman escaped, with the remainder either slaughtered or captured.

7. Ancient Rome’s Boogeyman

Warfare: Generals Who Shaped How Battles are Fought From Ancient Times Through the Gunpowder Age
Hannibal Barca. Pinterest

Hannibal won at Cannae and in many other battles, but he did not win the war. The Romans learned their lesson, and avoided open battle with Carthage’s military genius. They kept Hannibal bottled up in southern Italy for years, while they attacked the Carthaginians on other fronts, seizing their empire in Spain, and defeating their allies in Sicily. Eventually, Roman general Scipio Africanus led a counter-invasion against Carthage itself, and Hannibal was recalled to defend the homeland. There, he lost the climactic battle of the war at Zama, in 202 BC. Hannibal was eventually forced into exile, and took his own life circa 182 BC in Bithynia, in today’s Turkey, to avoid capture by vengeful Romans.

6. The Gunpowder Revolution

Warfare: Generals Who Shaped How Battles are Fought From Ancient Times Through the Gunpowder Age
El Gran Capitan, Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordoba. Wikimedia

Gunpowder revolutionized warfare, but not overnight. It took centuries before gunpowder weapons, first used in the fourteenth century, came to dominate warfare in the sixteenth century. Cannons were the first to leave their mark in the late fifteenth century. Charles VIII of France invaded Italy in 1494, and used mobile artillery to breach numerous castle walls. Firearms, held back by their slow rate of fire, took longer. Enter Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordoba (1453 – 1515), a Spanish general known as “El Gran Capitan” (Great Captain). He innovated tactics that enabled firearms to dominate battlefields ever since. Firearms had been used for centuries before Cordoba, but infantry armed with such weapons were handicapped by the length of time needed to reload. After discharging, firearms took so long to reload that cavalry, or even swift footed infantry, could close in and chop up firearms users before they managed to get off another shot.

5. Creating Battlefield Tactics for the Age of Gunpowder

Warfare: Generals Who Shaped How Battles are Fought From Ancient Times Through the Gunpowder Age
A Spanish tercio, combining arquebusiers and pikemen, at the Battle of Nieuwpoort, 1600. Wikimedia

Cordoba fixed firearms’ weakness at the Battle of Cerignola in 1503 via liberal use of arquebuses and arquebusiers. In that engagement, El Gran Capitan led an army of 6300 men, including 1000 arquebusiers and 20 cannons. They faced a French army of 9000 men, mostly heavy cavalry and elite Swiss pikemen, supported by 40 cannons. Cordoba deployed his arquebusiers behind a ditch and field fortifications. From that shelter, they won an upset victory by shooting the attackers to pieces. Battlefields were dominated by firearms-bearing infantry from then on. Cordoba furthered that revolution by creating formations that allowed infantry equipped with firearms to operate without the benefit of fortifications. The result was the Tercio, a formation that combined pikemen with arquebusiers, allowing the latter to shelter behind the pikes of the former while reloading. Spanish infantry in Tercio formations went on to dominate European battlefields for the next century.

4. The Man Behind the Modern Military

Warfare: Generals Who Shaped How Battles are Fought From Ancient Times Through the Gunpowder Age
Maurice of Nassau. Chateau de Versailles

Maurice, Count of Nassau (1567 – 1625), became Prince of Orange and stadtholder of the Dutch Republic from 1585 until his death. In that span, he led his Protestant countrymen’s fight for freedom from Catholic Spain, and secured the Dutch Republic’s de facto independence. He revolutionized warfare with radical innovations in military strategy and tactics, laying the foundations for what came to be known as The Military Revolution. There were early signs: since childhood, Maurice had been fascinated by all things military, such as ballistics, engineering, and mathematics. A bookworm and history buff, he developed military theories that he was eager to put in practice. As soon as he was confirmed as Prince of Orange in 1585, at age eighteen, Maurice proceeded to energetically implement his innovations.

3. An Emphasis on Drill

Warfare: Generals Who Shaped How Battles are Fought From Ancient Times Through the Gunpowder Age
The army of Maurice of Nassau with its smaller and more flexible battalions at the Battle of Nieuwpoort. War History

Maurice’s first step was to reorganize the Dutch army. He then led it in what came to be known as the Ten Glory Years in capturing vital fortresses and towns from the Spanish. His victories rounded out his country’s borders, and made it more defensible. That solidified the Dutch cause, and established Maurice as his era’s greatest general. Many generals who rose to prominence a generation later during the Thirty Years War and the English Civil War, learned their trade while serving under Maurice. At the heart of his reforms was an emphasis on drill, streamlined logistics, and simplified battlefield tactics. Maurice was an avid student of Roman and Byzantine military history. He read about the role of rigorous training in the success of Rome’s legions, and drew lessons from classical authors such as Vegetius, Aelian, Frontinus, and Emperor Leo VI of Byzantium.

2. The Template for Modern European Armies

Warfare: Generals Who Shaped How Battles are Fought From Ancient Times Through the Gunpowder Age
Maurice of Nassau pioneered drill by the numbers. Imgur

Maurice pioneered the decentralization of units. He made his infantry more maneuverable and flexible by splitting large Spanish style tercio regiments, of about 3000 men each, into smaller battalions of 580 men. He also simplified logistics by reducing his artillery to just four basic calibers. In 1599, Maurice went a step further and had the entire Dutch Republic’s army reequipped with muskets of the same caliber and size, greatly easing the lives of quartermasters. His key reform, however, was drill and discipline. Maurice trained his men constantly, and introduced drills to reduce tasks, such as loading and discharging cannons or firearms, to rote. Routine motions became operations that were, literally, done by the numbers. That enabled soldiers to function in the heat and chaos of battle, and perform their tasks by falling back on muscle memory from repetitive drilling. Maurice’s system of discipline and drill became the model for European armies for centuries to come.

1.     A Military Revolution That Went Beyond the Military

Warfare: Generals Who Shaped How Battles are Fought From Ancient Times Through the Gunpowder Age
Maurice of Nassau. Pinterest

Maurice’s Military Revolution had knock-on effects beyond the military. The new way of fighting relied on high levels of training, expertise, discipline, and organization. That could only be provided by professional, fulltime soldiers, who had to be maintained even in peacetime. It made them far more expensive than earlier armies, cobbled together from hastily recruited and hastily trained conscripts, who were discharged soon as the war was over. Paying for the new standing armies required higher taxes, which in turn required an expansion in the authority and administrative machinery of governments. Gone were the days when fractious aristocrats could challenge the crown by raising armies from their retainers and peasants. Such ad hoc private forces stood little chance against the central government’s professional armies. From then on through the present, only other governments could afford to raise, equip, and pay standing armies of similar quality.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Biography – Philip of Macedon

Encyclopedia Britannica – Gonzalo de Cordoba, Spanish Military Commander

Encyclopedia Britannica – Maurice, Stadholder of the Netherlands

Hanson, Victor Davis – The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny (2001)

History Collection – Geriatric Glory: Historic Figures Who Did Amazing Things in Their Old Age

History of Macedonia – Philip II of Macedonia

History Today, Volume 44, Issue 11, November 1994 – An Army of Lovers: The Sacred Band of Thebes

Lamb, Harold – Hannibal: One Man Against Rome (1958)

Livius – Hannibal Barca

Nimwegen, Olaf van – The Dutch Army and the Military Revolutions, 1588 – 1688 (2010)

Purcell, Mary – The Great Captain: Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordoba (1962)

World History Encyclopedia – Epaminondas

Worthington, Ian – Philip II of Macedonia (2008)

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