Famous Threesomes by Danny Buck
The students were tasked to craft a story about a famous threesome, be they historical, whimsical, or from the kitchen cabinet. DANNY…delivers a master class on the most brilliant generals of all time
There are a lot of threesomes, trifectas, trios that are interesting. Boy oh boy, where do I even begin? The big three FromSoftware (videogame company) games, Elden Ring, Bloodborne, and Sekiro, are notable. The big three Greco-Roman gods, Zeus/Jupiter, Poseidon/Neptune, and Hades/Pluto. There are the big three chess players: Kasparov, Carlsen, and Fischer. There are the big three masterminds of psychological anime: Light Yagami, Johan Liebert, and Lelouch vi Britannia. There are the big three classical philosophers–Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. There are the big three physicists– Newton, Einstein, and Maxwell. There’s the big three of Mathematics– Pythagoras, Euler, and Gauss. I could go on for at least 30 minutes about all of the greats, but there’s a specific big three that are most flashy and historically significant.
I’ll speak on the most powerful and tactically brilliant generals of all time, which are pretty much undisputed, except for a few other guys. Some people would throw Hannibal Barca or Scipio Africanus on the list, some would argue for Frederick the Great, and some would say Khalid Ibn al-Walid… All of which are great picks. But the most brilliant, innovative, and beautiful generals of all time are: 1. Alexander the Great, the most powerful man of the ancient world. Famously undefeated, with an empire stretching from Greece to India, he’s immortalized and revered as a nigh-demigod. 2. Julius Caesar, one of the best politicians of Rome’s Republic. He’s known for his brilliant conquest of Gaul (modern-day France) with tactics and engineering. He later became the dictator of Rome before being assassinated for fear of his becoming a monarch. 3. And finally, the sublime, beautiful, magnificent, left-handed, playful, genius, ambitious, diligent, charismatic, glorious emperor Napoleon Bonaparte of the Napoleonic Empire of France.
Alexander’s most significant victory is the Battle of Gaugamela, in which he defeated the Persian king Darius III to conquer the rest of Persia, which was called the Achaemenian Empire. After Alexander patrolled their lands, he determined that any significant cavalry force would be able to defeat any Persian army. Alexander positioned himself to the right of the formation and feigned a cavalry charge to open up Darius’s line. This was for the goal of using his superior mobility to take the chance to wedge the gap (or “hit the hole” in football terms) to attack Darius directly. Darius realized what had happened and fled the battle ,resulting in heavy Persian losses and victory for the Macedonian Empire.
Caesar’s Battle of Alesia was actually a siege. It was an attack on a Gallic city in what is now eastern France against the Gallic general Vercingetorix. The brilliance of this battle is namely the engineering, in which he used a double-fortification strategy around the city, which trapped the forces. This also prevented reinforcements from being able to enter the city, which were alerted during the night while the fortifications were incomplete. An army of 250,000 was sent to reinforce the Gallic forces, while the women and children who were unfit for battle were given to the Romans. The Romans fought the Gauls for days, which eventually concluded when the Gallic forces attacked a gap in the reinforcements with an army of 60,000. The Roman cavalry decimated the Gallic forces, and a major general was captured during this incursion. After this, the Gauls who survived the slaughter on the outer wall fled, and Caesar defeated the remaining forces within the reinforcements.
Now, for Napoleon’s masterpiece of the utmost tactical brilliance. So many things were done well in this battle, like deception, mobility, prediction, encirclement, and more. It was easily Napoleon’s most decisive victory, which he called the perfect battle. The defeat was so devastating that it shook the Austrian Empire for years afterwards. A brief summary… Napoleon’s forces sat on top of the hill with the high ground. During that time, the battlefield was covered by fog, which obscured the vision of the allied forces (Austrian and Russian). They assumed that Napoleon had a weak flank, not knowing that their right flank was soon to come. The allied forces decided to charge at the center, and Napoleon’s forces feigned a retreat. Some of the allied forces were defeated, which led to the allied forces to be encircled by the French army. This led to two encirclements of the Allied army. The allied forces were trapped, and many of the forces were drowned by the firing cannons on the ice. 9,000 French troops were lost, while 27,000 allied forces were lost.
It’s a bit hard to visualize how much of a feat each one of these battles was. Each of the victories was accomplished by an outnumbered force, and the amount of cool-headedness and intelligence that each one of these victories took is staggering. It’s no wonder that these victories are still studied today. The reason why these great men are cemented as greats is much more than just these feats, but they’re definitely the big three generals of all time.