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Leading lights

Introduction

Guerrilla tactics

Leading lights

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Albert Dieudonné as Napoleon Bonaparte
(BFI)

Leon Trotsky
(Mary Evans Picture Library)

• Alexander the Great (356-323BC)

When he was nearly 20, he became king of Macedonia and set about destroying rebels in Illyria and Greece. His military command enabled the state’s territory to expand into Persia, crushing all before it, and then India.

• Julius Caesar (100-44BC)

Through his campaigns, the Roman Empire expanded through Europe and Africa. Unlike the other generals of his period he left extensive written evidence of his rule.

• Richard I (the Lion Heart) (1157-99AD)

Although he was King of England for 10 years, he spent almost all of that period on crusades or in other battles. His campaigns, such as to Jerusalem and the capture of fortresses in Palestine, were celebrated throughout the Christian world of the time.

• Henry VIII (1491-1547)

As the second son of Henry VII, he launched himself on the military stage by joining the Holy League formed by Spain and the pope against France. After invading France he won the Battle of Spurs. His key strategy, with Cardinal Wolsey, was to encourage France and Spain to maintain a balance of power.

• Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

He turned a demoralised, disorganised French army into the most fierce fighting machine the world had ever seen. His rise through the military and political ranks was rapid and he astutely used every opportunity, even the French Revolution itself, to his own advantage.

• Leon Trotsky (1879-1940)

The Marxist became one of the key leaders of the revolutionary Bolshevik movement in Russia. He set up the Red Army during the revolution, commanding it throughout a protracted period of civil war. Famously he moved rapidly from battle to battle on an armoured train.

• Mao Zedong (1893-1976)

He led the Chinese revolutionary movement from the 1920s through the founding of the Communist Peoples Republic of China in 1949. Militarily he is remembered for The Long March which kept his movement alive in the face of attacks from Chiang Kai-shek.

• Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969)

Directed successful military operations first against the French between 1946 and 1954 and then later against the Americans from 1963 until his death. The US fled Vietnam in 1975.

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