9 Worst Generals in History

This entire list could be populated with Roman commanders, but one manages to rise above the rest with an ineptitude that defies logic. Marcus Licinius Crassus was a self-aggrandizing opportunist who started a pointless war with the Parthians, and Publius Quinctilius Varus lost three legions at Teutoburg Forest, but Proconsul Quintus Servilius Caepio manages to top them both with his actions at the Battle of Arausio. Consul Gnaeus Mallius Maximus was Caepio’s superior officer, but Caepio refused to obey Maximus or even put his forces into a shared camp with him. While Maximus was conducting negotiations with the Cimbri, a Germanic tribe that had invaded the Roman province of Transalpine Gaul, Caepio rashly attacked the Cimbri army on October 6, 105 BCE. The Cimbri destroyed Caepio’s force and, emboldened by their success, marched on Maximus’s camp. Maximus managed to form up his men but to no avail. The Romans lost an estimated 80,000 infantry and perhaps 40,000 auxiliaries and cavalry, numbers that dwarf the staggering totals at Cannae. Although he managed to escape the battle unharmed, Caepio was stripped of his Roman citizenship and exiled. Caepio reportedly lived out the remainder of his life in luxury, however. Some 15,000 talents of gold (the so-called Gold of Tolosa) had vanished under his watch, never to be recovered. Caepio may have been a terrible general, but he was apparently an exceptional thief.

Armchair historians often generalize that during the American Civil War, while the Union held a clear advantage in material, the Confederacy could field superior commanders. That may have been true in the east (the worst of the Union generals in that theater rates his own entry on this list), but in the west it was a much different affair. Outstanding commanders such as George H. Thomas, Phil Sheridan, and William Tecumseh Sherman routinely bested their Confederate opponents. Ulysses S. Grant made his Civil War debut at the Battle of Belmont against Confederate Gen. Gideon Pillow. Pillow suffered slightly more casualties than Grant in the engagement, which possibly makes the Battle of Belmont the high point of Pillow’s military career. In a war that saw more than its share of unskilled politically appointed generals, Pillow was arguably the worst on either side. He first demonstrated his ineptitude during the Mexican-American War, where he had received an appointment to the rank of major general from his friend Pres. James K. Polk. After making a laughingstock of himself by ordering his men to entrench on the wrong side of fortifications at Camargo, Pillow bungled his role at the Battle of Cerro Gordo, making himself the low point of a resounding American victory. Not one to let his own failings stand in the way of personal glory, Pillow submitted fanciful accounts of his actions at the Battles of Contreras and Churubusco to various newspapers, incurring the wrath of overall American commander Winfield Scott. Pillow faced a court-martial for stealing a Mexican cannon and attempting to spirit it home in his personal baggage, but Polk intervened to clear Pillow’s record. Scott claimed that Pillow was ''the only person I have ever known who was wholly indifferent in the choice between truth and falsehood.” When talk of secession reached Pillow’s home state of Tennessee, he helped organize the state militia and was appointed a brigadier general in the Confederate army. After his performance at Belmont—a spectacular success by Pillow standards—he was tasked with the defense of Fort Donelson, a key strongpoint on the Mississippi River. Grant had encircled the fort. After an initial attack drove back Grant’s troops, Pillow snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by retreating to the fort rather than breaking through Union lines to Nashville. Pillow escaped during the night, leaving Simon B. Buckner to surrender the fort and 15,000 Confederate troops. The loss of Fort Donelson opened the door to Kentucky and Tennessee to Union forces and marked the beginning of the end of Confederate resistance in the west.

Find Paraguay on a map of South America. See the vast swaths of land to the north and south that aren’t Paraguay? Francisco Solano López managed to stumble into a war with pretty much all of that. López was the son of Carlos Antonio López, a dictator who had done much to modernize Paraguay in the mid-19th century. The elder López had bequeathed to his son a relatively powerful military by regional standards but had cautioned Francisco against using it to settle diplomatic issues. This was heeded about as well as any piece of parental advice, anywhere ever. By December 1864 Paraguay was at war with Brazil, and, when Argentina denied a request for the transit of a Paraguayan army across its territory, López declared war on that country as well. Argentina, Brazil, and the Brazilian puppet government in Uruguay formed an alliance, and on May 1, 1865, they declared war on Paraguay. The War of the Triple Alliance devastated Paraguay. Its prewar population was reduced by more than half, and perhaps 90 percent of Paraguay’s fighting-age men perished. López, possibly in a fit of madness, ordered the execution of hundreds of people, including some of his own family members. He was killed in combat on March 1, 1870.

World War I provided a forum for any number of truly horrible commanders to assert themselves. The inept Luigi Cadorna of Italy fought a dozen battles on the Isonzo before his army completely collapsed at Caporetto. Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf of Austria couldn’t decide which country he wanted to invade, so the German General Staff eventually took his armies away. The Western Front was a much bigger stage upon which to fail, however, and British commander Douglas Haig made the most of the opportunity. Haig had largely dismissed the effect of the machine gun on the battlefield, believing that previous Allied failures owed to something other than an impenetrable wall of lead traveling at ballistic velocity. Thus, on July 1, 1916, Haig ordered his men to go over the top at the First Battle of the Somme, and 20,000 of them had the audacity to die almost immediately (there were 60,000 total British casualties on the first day of the attack). Having amassed roughly twice as many losses in a single day as Arthur Wellesley, 1st duke of Wellington, had suffered during the entire Peninsular War, Haig saw no reason to change tactics. He continued to view attrition as the most effective strategy for defeating Germany; the British lost some 420,000 men at the Somme. The next major British offensive came at Passchendaele (July 31–November 6, 1917), where Haig lost another 275,000 troops in a battle whose name became synonymous with pointless slaughter. After the war, the phrase “lions led by donkeys” came to be associated with the British army for what should be obvious reasons.

On the other side of the trenches in World War I was Erich Ludendorff, commanding the armies of Germany. Ludendorff is one of history’s greatest examples of a general who can win battles but still loses the war. In fact, he did a lot to ensure that Germany would find itself in another war that it couldn’t win, but, since he died in 1937, he gets extra credit for being a bad World War II general from beyond the grave. In the opening month of World War I, Ludendorff and Paul von Hindenburg scored a crushing victory over the Russians at Tannenberg. However, Ludendorff and German General Staff chief Helmuth von Moltke had altered the Schlieffen Plan—Germany’s overall battle plan for fighting a two-front war—in a way that had weakened the attacking army on the Western Front. Instead of sweeping around the French defenses in a massive flanking movement, the Germans were checked at the First Battle of the Marne. With a few relatively minor changes, that’s just about where they stayed for the next four years. This might have ended okay for Germany, provided they didn’t do something like provoke a previously neutral country with Allied sympathies and an effectively bottomless war chest. Of course, that is what they did when Ludendorff pushed for the use of unrestricted submarine warfare against Allied shipping. The United States entered the war, forcing Ludendorff to accelerate his time line for a conclusive battle against the Allies on the Western Front. The Second Battle of the Somme was the first of a series of successful German offensives, but Ludendorff had failed to integrate these tactical victories into a broader strategic plan. Ultimately, he was denied his final showdown with the Allies by German political leaders who realized that the Americans could produce soldiers faster than Germany could produce bullets. As the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles crippled Germany, Ludendorff effectively sabotaged the Weimar Republic by propagating the belief that he and his armies had been undefeated on the battlefield. The “stabbed in the back” myth did much to propel the ascent of Adolf Hitler, and Ludendorff was a key participant in the Beer Hall Putsch. He served as a National Socialist member of the German parliament before authoring a book about how humanity exists in a state of perpetual war and why that is a good thing. Although he eventually disavowed Hitler, by that point Ludendorff had become so deeply involved with mysticism that few took him seriously.

George McClellan is one of those generals who really looks great on paper. He graduated second in his class at West Point (well ahead of classmates Stonewall Jackson, George H. Gordon, and George Pickett). His work as an observer during the Crimean War gave him insight into the importance of logistics for an industrialized army, and years spent as the chief of engineering for the Illinois Central Railroad made him aware of the transformative nature of rail transport. “Little Mac” would prove himself to be a superb organizer who kept his army well supplied, efficiently run, and happy. He was also supremely gifted at overestimating the size of his opponents’ armies to a degree that beggared belief. Because he never wanted to face a superior force, he refused to fight. This is, obviously, a problematic quality when one’s title is general-in-chief of the entire Union army. After months of inactivity, McClellan was finally spurred to action by Pres. Abraham Lincoln. The resulting Peninsular Campaign (April–July 1862) was a marvel of planning but something of a farce in execution. Eschewing a direct overland march to the Confederate capital of Richmond, McClellan orchestrated an impressive amphibious landing of more than 100,000 troops at Fort Monroe, at the southeast end of the peninsula between the James and York rivers. In stereotypically McClellan fashion, he was promptly checked by a vastly inferior force under John Bankhead Magruder. Although he outnumbered Magruder’s Army of the Peninsula 10-to-1, McClellan settled in for a monthlong siege. By the end of May 1862, Confederate commanding Gen. Joseph E. Johnston had withdrawn his forces to Richmond, and McClellan was close enough to the Confederate capital to hear its church bells ringing. Johnston was wounded on the first day of the Battle of Seven Pines, six miles east of Richmond, and he was replaced by Robert E. Lee. Lee demonstrated an immediate grasp of McClellan’s demeanor, and, during the Seven Days’ Battles (June 25–July 1, 1862), Lee drove back the Union armies from Richmond’s doorstep. Lincoln relieved McClellan but reinstated him after the devastating Union defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run. Once again, McClellan worked his organizational magic, restoring the morale of a shattered Union army. And once again, at the Battle of Antietam, McClellan’s terminal case of “the slows” (as Lincoln called it) prevented the exploitation of a possible war-ending vulnerability in Confederate defenses. He ran as a Democrat against Lincoln in the 1864 presidential election. A key plank in the Democratic platform that year was, appropriately, “not fighting,” and McClellan lost in a rout.

How does an admiral make a list of the worst generals? You start by being the only thing that can frustrate Napoleon more than a Russian winter. Pierre de Villeneuve had his first brush with history when he bravely ran away at the Battle of the Nile. His was one of just two French ships of the line to escape the destruction of the French fleet there. He retreated to Malta but was captured when that island fell to the British. He was soon released, however, and, as more capable French admirals either died or somehow incurred Napoleon’s disfavor, a path to the top echelons of command was opened for Villeneuve. In the autumn of 1804 he was placed in charge of the French fleet at Toulon and tasked with drawing the British fleet under Horatio Nelson to the Caribbean. Villeneuve was then to return in secret and help establish naval dominance of the English Channel in preparation for a land invasion of Britain. Disobeying orders, he sailed for Cádiz instead of the Channel, allowing Nelson’s fleet time to return and effectively scuttling Napoleon’s plans for a cross-Channel invasion. The British blockaded the port at Cádiz with a numerically inferior force, and Villeneuve, upon learning that he was to be relieved of command, rashly struck out at Nelson’s fleet. Nelson’s victory at the Battle of Trafalgar was so complete that it established British supremacy on the high seas for more than a century. Villeneuve lost 20 ships, while Nelson lost none. Although Nelson was killed in combat at Trafalgar, Villeneuve outlived him only by six months. After being taken prisoner (again) by the British, Villeneuve was released but committed suicide rather than face Napoleon’s wrath.

Mexican general Antonio López de Santa Anna probably wished that everyone really did remember the Alamo, because: (1) he actually did win that battle (he outnumbered his opponents between 10- and 30-to-1); and (2) during the 13-day siege, he somehow resisted the urge to betray all his allegiances and change sides. Loyalty to himself and himself alone would be something of a running theme in the narrative of Santa Anna’s life, and his rise to power in Mexico was characterized by near-constant vacillation and betrayal of his allies. After his defeat by the Texans at the Battle of San Jacinto, Santa Anna was captured. He effectively pledged to become an agent for the U.S. but found that he had been deposed upon his return to Mexico. His prestige restored by his conduct during the Pastry War with France, Santa Anna once again claimed dictatorial powers. Driven into exile in 1845, he contacted U.S. Pres. James K. Polk upon the outbreak of war between Mexico and the U.S. and offered to become an agent for the U.S. (again). A U.S. ship conveyed him to Mexico, and upon his arrival—to the surprise of virtually no one—he executed a volte-face and took charge of the Mexican troops. Routed by U.S. forces under Winfield Scott, Santa Anna was again driven into exile. When the French deposed Benito Juárez and installed Maximilian as emperor of Mexico, Santa Anna, now 70, reached out to the U.S. for support in deposing the emperor. Simultaneously, he contacted Maximilian to offer the young emperor his services. Having several decades of duplicity to draw on at this point, everyone had a pretty good idea of how any such deal would turn out, and the aging general was rebuffed by both parties.

The deplorable conduct of Charles Lee at the Battle of Monmouth has been immortalized by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Benedict Arnold’s name is synonymous with traitorous behavior. However, not even they managed to get themselves court-martialed and sentenced to death for ineptitude on the battlefield. That dubious distinction falls to William Hull, the only general officer in American history to be ordered before a firing squad for cowardice and dereliction of duty. Hull had served with distinction in the Revolutionary War and was appointed governor of the Michigan Territory in 1805. When the War of 1812 began, Hull was commissioned a brigadier general and tasked with defending Michigan and invading Upper Canada. To say that he failed in both regards is to dramatically understate the case. Approaching his 60th birthday and exhibiting a timidity that had no place in a general about to lead an invasion, Hull also had the misfortune of facing two of the most gifted commanders ever to operate in North America. British Gen. Isaac Brock possessed a remarkable ability to anticipate his opponents’ moves and reactions, and it was not long before he had taken full measure of Hull. Allied with Brock was the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, who was head of the most formidable pan-Indian military force the continent had ever seen. Hull was thoroughly outclassed. While Hull dithered, Brock captured Fort Michilimackinac, establishing British control of the Straits of Mackinac. Hull responded by ordering the evacuation of Fort Dearborn, and the garrison was promptly massacred by a Potawatomi war band upon leaving the fort. At this point, things somehow got worse for Hull. His invasion of Canada came to an abrupt halt when he failed to capture Fort Malden, a British position that was a laughably short distance from Hull’s headquarters at Fort Detroit. Hull withdrew after a series of harassing attacks by Tecumseh’s highly mobile raiding parties. At Brownstown, south of Detroit, two dozen warriors under Tecumseh routed more than 200 American militiamen escorting a supply column intended for Detroit. Hull’s nerve was shattered. Brock, sensing an opportunity, advised an immediate march on Fort Detroit. On the night of August 15, 1812, Tecumseh led his forces across the Detroit River, and Brock followed the next morning. While British cannons shelled the fort from the Canadian side of the river, Tecumseh marched his warriors through a forest clearing in an endless parade. Hull, convinced that he was hopelessly outnumbered (he wasn’t), surrendered Fort Detroit and its 2,000-man garrison without firing a shot. The British gained control of the fort, dozens of cannons, the brig USS Adams (recommissioned the HMS Detroit), and virtually the entire Michigan Territory. Hull was taken prisoner by the British and was court-martialed upon his return to the United States. He was found guilty of 11 counts, and only the intervention by Pres. James Madison spared him from execution.