5 Best Generals of All Time

In June 1941, Soviet scientists opened Tamerlane's tomb in Samarkand, and within hours Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Tamerlane never lost a battle, but is he one of the greatest generals in history? We judge five commanders on two questions: did he beat armies bigger than his own, and did what he won outlast him? From Tamerlane at Ankara and Wellington at Assaye and Salamanca to Cyrus the Great at Sardis and Babylon, Khalid ibn al-Walid at Yarmuk, and Subutai at the Kalka and Mohi. Chapters 0:00 Cold open: Tamerlane's tomb, 1941 0:59 No. 5 — Tamerlane: Ankara 4:24 No. 4 — The Duke of Wellington: Assaye, Salamanca, Waterloo 7:53 No. 3 — Cyrus the Great: Sardis and Babylon 11:20 No. 2 — Khalid ibn al-Walid: Yarmuk 14:46 No. 1 — Subutai: the Kalka and Mohi 18:58 The Verdict — Tombs and monuments Sources Richard A. Gabriel, Subotai the Valiant: Genghis Khan's Greatest General (2004) Hugh Kennedy, The Great Arab Conquests (2007) Matt Waters, King of the World: The Life of Cyrus the Great (2022) Rory Muir, Wellington: The Path to Victory 1769–1814 (2013) Justin Marozzi, Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World (2004) Where the sources disagree or rest on legend (the tomb's curse, the infant Cyrus, Croesus's oracle and Queen Tomyris from Herodotus, Khalid's desert march and last words, the fate of the princes after the Kalka, the chroniclers' army sizes), the narration says so. Numbers marked "about" are estimates. Waterloo is told from general histories; Muir's first volume ends in 1814. Footage Drone and travel footage of Samarkand (GHTravel), Gur-e-Amir and the Registan (myVideoMedia), the tomb of Cyrus at Pasargadae (NichTravel), Persepolis (Zigurat Pictures), Babylon (New Baghdad), the Mongolian steppe (HUMAN the Movie) and camels in the Kyzylkum (LifeChannel). Re-enactment footage, labelled on screen: Waterloo 2015 (Jaroslav Sochor), Mongol cavalry and horse archers in Mongolia (1passionatetraveler; Altan Nergui / Namnaa Academy). Pictures Paintings, manuscripts and photographs: the Zafarnama manuscripts of Timur's life, Stanisław Chlebowski, Mikhail Gerasimov's 1941 excavation and reconstruction, Yevgeny Khaldei (Moscow, 22 June 1941), Sir Thomas Lawrence and Robert Home (Wellington), William Sadler, Lady Butler (Scotland Forever!), Peter Paul Rubens (Tomyris), the Cyrus Cylinder (British Museum), the Myson amphora (Louvre), the Hedwig Codex (Legnica), the Jami al-tawarikh of Rashid al-Din, and modern illustrations of the period. Some photos are animated with a slow camera move. Animation: the drawn scenes (Timur in the cowshed and on the winter march, Wellesley under fire, Croesus at Delphi, the infant Cyrus, the camels at Sardis, the desert march, the walls of Damascus, the forest people, the messenger in 1241) were drawn for this video with clothing, weapons and objects based on period references, and the 3D battle maps (Ankara, Assaye, Salamanca, Yarmuk, the Kalka, Mohi) were built in Blender. Real people in the drawings are drawn, not photographed. No AI-generated photos or footage of real events are used. Grass textures: Poly Haven (CC0). Music: background bed generated with ElevenLabs Music.