The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost—From Ancient Greece to Iraq

by Victor Davis Hanson

  When we are safe, we value consensus and resent troublesome gadflies who claim the enemy is already on the horizon, our strategies wrong and prescriptions for defeat. We do not wish to hear that we are spending too little on defense or that a dangerous complacency has set in among the populace. But when war is upon us, we blame yesterday’s timidity. We abruptly borrow what we do not have for war—and in extremis seek out a different sort who can offer us hope of victory when few others dare. In other words, Themistocles no longer seems just a half-Thracian braggart. We call once more out of retirement an aged Belisarius to stop the Huns, take a second look at the despairing William Tecumseh Sherman, send Matthew Ridgway back out to the front from his Pentagon office, or summon a David Petraeus from his classrooms at Fort Leavenworth.

  War Is Unchanging

  Human nature, even in this sophisticated age of neurology, genetic engineering, improved diet and material circumstances, and advanced brain chemistry, is unchanging. The result is unfortunately threefold in its implications: there will be future wars; history will continue to be a guide to present conflicts; and we will thus often see in many wars initial ebullience, replaced by despair, and then panic as certain defeat looms. That latter fact will be even more true in Western consensual societies, whose affluent and leisured publics will not tolerate wars abroad that do not immediately turn out as they were advertised and in which a demand to cut war’s costs rather than to ensure victory will very quickly predominate.

  Do not believe that high technology and globalized uniformity have made military leadership, especially eccentric leadership, outdated or even rare. Instead, in the future age of robotic soldiers, fleets of drones, and deadly computer consoles, there will always be commanders waiting in the shadows for their moment, different sorts of people who thrive on chaos and ignore criticism. Whether they will be listened to next time—and whether lost wars are to be saved—hinges on how well we have learned from savior generals of the past.

  Acknowledgments

  I thank my agents of nearly a quarter century, Glen Hartley and Lynn Chu, who freely offered their valuable advice about the manuscript. My editor, Peter Ginna, at Bloomsbury provided many helpful suggestions, as did Peter Beatty of Bloomsbury as well. Friends Jennifer Heyne and Bruce Thornton of California State University, Fresno, read the entire manuscript and caught a number of errors. I thank Dr. David L. Berkey, a research analyst at the Hoover Institution, for help with editing and preparing the final version of the manuscript. Copy editor Emily DeHuff offered insightful changes. Tom Church, Curtis Eastin, and Ian Hughes aided with the maps and illustrations. Dr. John Raisian, the director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, generously provided me with research support, made possible through the kindness of Martin Anderson and his family. I have dedicated this book to my three children, Pauli, Sus, and Bill, in recognition of their constant encouragement and unlimited optimism.

  Notes

  Chapter One: Athens Is Burning

  1. See Plutarch, Themistocles, 10.5. In classical literature (much of it reactionary), the older city of Athenian hoplite farmers is associated with virtue—and to be contrasted to the post–Persian War radical democracy of rootless sailors who came into their own after Salamis.

  2. On the details of the evacuation of Attica, see Herodotus 8.36–43; Plutarch, Themistocles, 8–12. Cf. Strauss, Salamis, 73–77, for the evacuees on Salamis itself.

  3. On the wall at the Isthmus, cf. Herodotus 8.71.

  4. Plutarch, Themistocles, 10.2; Herodotus 8.53–57, 60–63. It is rare in military history that the decision how—or even whether—to fight an existential war finally hinged upon an ad hoc, pre-battle shouting match between two rival generals.

  5. For a version of the debate, cf. Diodorus, 11.15.2–4; and for Themistocles’ sagacity at Artemisium, 11.12.4–7. See Strauss, Salamis, 11–30, for a review of the Artemisium campaign. The Persians may have lost over half of their fleet of some 1,300 triremes to storms and in battle; the degree to which those losses were made up by eleventh-hour reinforcements from Ionia, or repairs on the damaged hulls coupled with new crews, is unknown. Yet those earlier losses have great bearing in determining how large the Persian fleet really was a month later at Salamis.

  6. See Plutarch, Themistocles, 11. Themistocles was not far off the mark, since there were probably at least 180 Athenian triremes in the Greek fleet, and perhaps more. He emphasized the irony that the people without a city were still those with the strongest forces in the Greek coalition.

  7. The various ancient accounts of Herodotus, Plutarch, Diodorus, and Nepos concerning the great Greek debate before the battle cannot be quite reconciled, though Herodotus’ version does not show too much rancor between Themistocles and Eurybiades, at least to the point of violence. Rather the chief friction originates between the Corinthians and the Athenians, especially given the now stateless status of Themistocles. Cf. Grote, Greece, 5.123; cf. Herodotus 8.58–9.

  8. For the campaign and battle, especially the date, strategy, and the numbers of combatants involved, see the controversies reviewed in Lazenby, Defence of Greece, 46–64.

  9. Agrarian conservatives always claimed exclusive credit for Marathon; see Hanson, Other Greeks, 323–27. For the “Marathon fighters,” see Aristophanes, Clouds, 986.

  10. On Themistocles’ foresight, see Plutarch, Themistocles, 3.3–4. Most Greek generals sought to best use the existing resources their societies put at their disposal; Themistocles, in contrast, ensured that his society would have the wisdom and capability to put the right resources at his disposal.

  11. Thucydides, writing perhaps seventy years after the battle, made precisely that point that Persian error as much as Greek skill had led to their failure. He has the Corinthians a half century later argue, in self-serving fashion, that the Persians lost the war—perhaps both at Marathon and later at Salamis and Plataea—largely because of their own mistakes (1.69.5) rather than Athenian genius.

  12. On the role between military service and political clout in the Greek city-state, see Aristotle, Politics, 4.1297b23–4.

  13. On the new silver find at Laurium and the disbursement, Hale, Lords of the Sea, 8–14, has a good discussion. Apparently, wealthy private citizens were entrusted with much of the newly minted silver; they, in turn, would use such public funds to oversee the building of a ship. Cartledge, Thermopylae, 98–99, explores briefly the decision not to distribute the treasure among the citizenry.

  14. Cf. Podlecki, Life of Themistocles, 11: “Themistocles’ purpose in eliminating his opponents one by one was the realization of a scheme he had cherished at least since his archonship, the transformation of Athens from a second-rate land power to the leading maritime state in Greece.”

  15. The so-called Naval Bill of Themistocles rests on good ancient authority (cf. Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 22.7; Herodotus 7.143–44; Plutarch, Themistocles, 4.1–2; and especially Thucydides 1.14.3). But we are not sure whether 100 ships were built in 482 to augment an existing 70–100, or whether up to fully 200 were ordered newly constructed from the revenues—only that the Athenian fleet that was ready at Salamis two years later numbered some 180–200 triremes. Cf. again Hale, Lords of the Sea, 10–15.

  16. Herodotus 8.79–82. The nature of these various decrees and their relationship to the texts of Herodotus and Plutarch are under dispute. These earlier resolutions probably concerned general contingency efforts and the recall of exiles, while the famous subsequent “Themistocles’ Decree” belonged to late summer 480 and in more precise detail outlined the nature of the evacuation of Attica. We still do not know whether the decree accurately reflects a preemptory and long-planned Athenian decision to leave the city to fight at Salamis before the loss of Thermopylae, or was simply a later compilation that drew from several authentic decrees, and thus is at odds with a more accurate Herodotean account that the evacuation of Athens was a somewhat more ad hoc, last-ditch effort after Thermopylae was unexpectedly breached. The det
ails of the provisions of the Themistocles decree, and their relationship with the text of Herodotus, were first set out long ago by its discoverer, Michael Jameson. The historical ramifications of the decrees are covered in M. Jameson, “The Provisions for Mobilization in the Decree of Themistocles,” Historia 12 (1963): 385–404.

  17. For discussion of the contradictory numbers in ancient sources, cf. Strauss, Battle of Salamis, 42. Hignett, Xerxes Invasion of Greece, 345–55, in detailed fashion, reviews the literary evidence, arriving at a low estimate of a Persian army of some 80,000, and a naval force of about 600 ships (that might require some 120,000 seamen).

  18. Herodotus (8.25.2) believed that there were 4,000 Greek dead left on the battlefield, which, if true, would mean that almost 60 percent of Leonidas’ original force perished at the pass. Apparently that figure would have had to include large numbers of dead on the first two days of battle from the original force of 7,000, together with the vast majority of those (the 400 Thebans, 700 Thespians, 300 Spartans, and some Phocians and helots) left behind with Leonidas.

  19. Themistocles at Artemisium, cf. Diodorus 11.12.5–6. There is a good account of the battle and its aftermath in Hale, Lords of the Sea, 46–54.

  20. Cf. Plutarch, Themistocles, 9.3; Herodotus 7.33–4.

  21. Cf. Herodotus 49–50. Lenardon, The Saga of Themistocles, 64–65, discusses the various interpretations of the famous oracular reply.

  22. On Demaratus’ advice, see Herodotus 7.235.3. The historian wrote during the initial years of the later Peloponnesian War, and we do not know to what degree, if any, Herodotus put his own ideas about the strategies from a contemporary war into the mouths of his historical characters. For the evacuation and the circumstances around the decree, cf., again, Lenardon, Saga of Themistocles, 69–72.

  23. For the few who stayed behind either in the Attic countryside or at Athens, see Green, Graeco-Persian War, 156–60. A year after Salamis, the Greeks would win a glorious infantry victory at Plataea over Mardonius. But that battle came after careful preparation, was prompted in part by the retreat of King Xerxes and his fleet back to Asia after their defeat at Salamis, and was waged with near equal numbers on both sides. Fifty years after Salamis, the Athenians were still claiming that the sea victory alone broke the Persians’ back (cf. Thucydides 1.73.2–5).

  24. On the Greeks’ desire to vacate Salamis, see the synopsis in Diodorus 11.15.4–5.

  25. Herodotus 8.62; cf. Plutarch, Themistocles, 11. We have no reason to doubt this improbable threat, given that it seems to have been accepted by most ancient authorities.

  26. Green, Graeco-Persian War, 159–60, discusses the operational authority among the Greek generals at Salamis. In general, Grundy over a century ago laid out the main controversies surrounding the numbers, tactics, and topography of the battle; cf. Grundy, Great Persian War, 379–95.

  27. There were far more ships, and probably far more sailors, than at either the Roman-Carthaginian battle at Ecnomus (256 B.C.) or Lepanto (1571)—two similarly huge “clash of civilizations” sea battles that pitted the proverbial West against the non-West. On the numbers of Greek and Persian ships at both Artemisium and Salamis, see again the review in Hignett, Xerxes’ Invasion of Greece, 345–50; cf. Green, Graeco-Persian War, 162–63, who conjectures an allied fleet of about 311 triremes, corrected for probable losses from the retreat from Artemisium. Herodotus (8.66) implies that the Persian land and sea forces had made up all the prior losses at Thermopylae and Artemisium and were about the same size as when they had crossed into Europe the prior spring. Grote offered the best synopsis of the numbers in various ancient sources; cf. Greece, 5.111–12.

  28. Herodotus—writing two generations after the battle—believed that the Greek ships were the “heavier.” Scholars usually interpret that he meant that they were either water-logged, built of unseasoned, denser timber, or simply larger and less elegant—and thus less maneuverable but sturdier—than the Persians’ triremes. Whatever the true case, it was clearly in the Greeks’ interest not to go out too far to sea, where they would be both outnumbered and outmaneuvered, but to stay inside the straits where their ramming in heavier ships would have far greater effect. In this regard, we should remember that almost no major Greek battle was ever fought in the open seas far from land.

  29. Plutarch, Themistocles, 12.3–5; and cf. Diodorus 11.17.2. Many scholars doubt the veracity of the Sicinnus ruse. See the lively account of the trick in Holland, Persian Fire, 312–16; but cf. Grote, Greece, 5.128. The Persian redeployment of the Egyptian fleet is not found in Herodotus.

  30. Aeschylus, Persians 371; 412–13; 425–26. Aeschylus, a veteran of the battle, may have meant as well that dozens of Persian ships in the middle of the fleet simply never were able to come into contact at all with the Greeks attacking at the periphery, a sort of naval Cannae in which thousands of combatants were not able to commit to battle for quite some time, if at all. Certainly the idea that scores of Persian ships could not get at the enemy, or, in turn, fouled one another during battle as the winds and currents increased, seems a key component in the Greek success. On the sounds and confusion of the battle, see Strauss, Salamis, 162–73, who has a graphic account of the battle based on ancient literary sources.

  31. Aeschylus, Persians, 274–76, 282–83. On the losses, see Grundy, Great Persian War, 404–5. Herodotus gives no exact figures. Diodorus (11.19.3) says forty Greek ships were lost (i.e., 8,000 men if all the crews were killed) and “more than” 200 Persian ships (in that case perhaps more than 40,000 drowned), not counting those captured. Given the enormous size of the Persian fleet and Herodotus’ view of utter destruction, Xerxes’ losses were probably far above 40,000, while far less than 8,000 were lost on the Greek side, given their rowers’ ability to swim and friendly troops on the shores of the island. As at Lepanto, there is a likelihood that few prisoners were taken, the Greek idea being that any killed in the waters of Salamis would not fight again the next year. See Hanson, Carnage and Culture, 46–51, for the motif of eleutheria (freedom) that the poet Aeschylus celebrated at Salamis and the role it played in galvanizing the Greeks.

  32. On the allied weariness with the overly confident hero of Salamis, cf. Plutarch, Themistocles, 22. Of course, we need to remember much of this animosity was elite-driven and did not reflect Themistocles’ continued popularity with the Athenian dêmos that would continue to invest in his leadership; cf. Aeschylus, Persians, 591–94. Aeschylus records (402–5) that the Greeks rowed into battle chanting cries of “Free your children, your wives, the images of your fathers’ gods and the tombs of your ancestors.”

  33. On the virtual disappearance of Themistocles after Salamis, cf. Lazenby, Defence of Greece, 209, and especially Grundy, Great Persian War, 413–17, who discusses various charges of corruption and Medizing, as well as a general distaste for his imperiousness after Salamis—considerations that eventually led him to either cede or be fired from the allied post-Salamis fleet.

  34. The historian Thucydides (1.138) felt that Themistocles died of natural causes, most probably disease, despite the more sensational accounts of suicide alluded to in Aristophanes (Knights, 83–84) and stated as fact in the much later account of Plutarch (Themistocles, 3.1). We are still unsure why many in the ancient world believed that the rather harmless blood of a bull was lethal to humans; in general, cf. Diodorus 11.58; Nepos, Themistocles, 2.10.

  35. For the complex itinerary of Themistocles seeking a secure refuge during his exile, see the discussions of Podlecki, Life of Themistocles, 71; Lenardon, Saga of Themistocles, 108–52; and cf. Diodorus 11.55–58.

  36. Plutarch, Themistocles, 28.3. The dates of Themistocles’ exile and wandering are endlessly under dispute by modern scholars; cf. the review of the problems in Lewis, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. V, 66–67.

  37. Plutarch, Themistocles, 21–22. Ostracism, exile, execution, and confiscation of property were the usual deserts for both politicians and generals throughout the Greek city-states.
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  38. On the famous Themistoclean ruse of deceiving the Spartans while his countrymen fortified the city, see Thucydides 1.90–91; Diodorus 11.40. While it could take a week to reach Athens and another to return home, it seems incredible that the Spartans had no information concerning Athens’s massive wall building while Themistocles conducted his deceptive diplomacy. On Themistocles and Athens’s various fortifications, cf. Nepos, Themistocles, 2.6–8.

  39. For ancient conservative outrage at the nexus between sea power, walls, radical democracy, and evacuation, see the critique of the so-called Old Oligarch, 2.2–14, an anonymous conservative who wrote a near-contemporary treatise on the insidious nature of Athenian democracy.

  40. Plato, Laws, 4.706; cf. Plutarch, Themistocles, 4. To conservatives, Marathon was the last time that Athenian infantrymen fought gloriously in Attica for their own land—in part thanks to scoundrels like Themistocles.

  41. Plato, Laws, 4.706. Much of Plato’s criticism of democracy assumes insidious efforts of lowborn demagogues to emasculate the wellborn militarily, economically, and politically.

  42. Plutarch, Themistocles, 19.3–4. Almost all extant Greek literature is antidemocratic, in the sense of emphasizing the dangers of allowing a majority of citizens in Athens to set policy by simple majority vote without either constitutional restraints, the checks and balances of parallel but more oligarchial bodies, or the influential presence of senior landowning conservatives.

  43. For the bust of Themistocles, see J. Boardman, Cambridge Ancient History: Plates to volumes V and VI (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), vol. VI, 25, 26a.

  44. On the Spartan effort to have the Athenians ostracize Themistocles, see Diodorus 11.55–56.

  45. Thucydides 1.138.3; Plutarch, Themistocles, 1.1–3, 2.3. “Serpentine”: Holland, Persian Fire, 165. The ancient notion that Themistocles was as much a political partisan as a patriot makes it hard even today to offer an accurate assessment of his strategic vision in the context of the times.