- “There is a tide in the affairs of men,
- Which taken in the flood leads on to fortune;
- Omitted, all the voyage of their life
- Is bound in shallows and in miseries.”
- Julius Caesar, IV. 3
- Are great men and women born or the product of their times? Is there a technique for acquiring power, and, if so, in what exactly does it consist? Is it character and initiative that brings success, or are individuals simply swept along by a current of events?
INTRODUCTION
Generalities
Of what does history consist? It consists of events — not facts nor even, necessarily, of personalities. “The world is everything that has occurrence” — not, “everything that is the case” as Wittgenstein wrote in his Tractatus since the latter has too much of a feeble logical connotation1.
But, to become ‘historical’, events need to be classified, sorted out into two piles, Important and Unimportant events, since only the latter merit the term ‘historical’. As E.H. Carr wrote in What is History?, “Caesar’s crossing of the insignificant Italian rivulet, the Rubicon, is a historical event whereas the crossings of the Rubicon by millions of people before or since are not.”
Why exactly was the crossing of the Rubicon by Caesar important? Not because Julius Caesar was ‘a great man’, or the most successful general of his time (though this does have something to do with it), since Caesar’s crossing of all sorts of other rivers in the course of his interminable campaigns were of no great significance and so are rarely mentioned in the history books. The crossing of the Rubicon with a small detachment of armed men loyal to him alone was significant because it flouted the Roman law that a commander must not enter Italy proper at the head of his troops. Moreover, Caesar did not just happen to stray across without realizing what he was doing: on the contrary, he crossed the Rubicon knowing perfectly well that this move would almost certainly precipitate civil war, which it did. It was an event, in itself trivial, but one which was likely to have enormous repercussions and that is precisely why Caesar decided on it — after some soul-searching.
More generally, putting things in a semi-scientific way, the importance of an event is not just, or even mainly, a function of its intensity but primarily a function of its position relative to other events. A major historical event, what one might call an avalanche event, triggers a vast number of event-chains that can extend over a whole era and a whole continent, even affect half the known world for centuries to come. An unimportant event, though it may be dramatic enough for those involved in it, such as a gangland murder or a storm at sea, usually gives rise only to one or two local events and its influence is soon dissipated. The capacity of an event to powerfully affect chains of other events is what I call its ‘dominance’. It is the degree of dominance of an event that makes it a ‘historical’ event and the degree of dominance depends above all on the ‘connectedness’ of the event.
What about people, though? Does this emphasis on what actually happens do away with the importance of ‘great characters’? In fact, no — much less than I had originally imagined when I started this investigation. The historians of the first half of the twentieth century, and Western intellectuals generally of this period, had no time for Carlyle’s typically Victorian dictum that “History is the biography of great men”. Instead they emphasized ‘mass-factors’, usually economic and social ones, and, up to a point, rightly so since these factors had previously been ignored or neglected. But this ‘anti-great-man’ view of history turned out to be somewhat premature since the twentieth century produced a whole plethora of ‘world historical figures’ such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Pol Pot &c. &c. who exercised far more personal power in their respective countries than practically anyone had since ancient times. By virtue of their position at the helm of important countries in transition, Hitler, Stalin and Mao ‘dominated’ the 20th century in a way that even Bismarck was not quite able to dominate the 19th. And the reason was that Hitler and Stalin had far more power than Bismarck (and maybe even than Napoleon) ever had: Bismarck was, after all, summarily removed from his functions by Kaiser Wilhelm II and was unable to do anything about it.
The important historical events — and I am talking only of human history, not the history of the planet — are, then, those that give rise to extensive and long-lasting chains of human events. A person matters if, by virtue of their position of power, they are able and willing to unleash an avalanche event and a fortiori a chain reaction of avalanche events. Of course, the significance of certain historical events does not necessarily make the doers themselves significant except, as it were, by accident. Principe, whose assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand unintentionally led to WWI, is not as significant a historical person as Hitler or Bismarck. And it is conceivable that many of the really important figures in history, judged by the events they have spawned, are relatively unknown ‘grey eminences’ or ‘powers behind the throne’ rather than the conquerors whose names are known to everyone. But I personally doubt that there were that many of these unknown eminences, at any rate in recent times. Why? Because, precisely, celebrity by itself is power, at least potentially, while obscurity considerably reduces the chances of influencing society, at least during that person’s lifetime.
We need not limit ourselves exclusively to social, economic and political events: there are also ‘mass-emotional’ and ‘cultural’ events of first rate importance as even Marx recognized, and not only those which lead on to technological advances. Certain historical personalities prioritise the role over the individual and deliberately make themselves into myths, or try to, as for example Joan of Arc and, more recently, Eva Perón. Almost all successful world-historical figures do this to some extent, especially but not only religious ones. Myths are not events and are thus not strictly speaking ‘real’ at all — but they can nonetheless give rise to vast sequences of human events, and can even come back to hit society in the face after being dormant for centuries, as for example when Norse myths got an unexpected new lease of life in 20th century Nazi propaganda.
If we are looking for some supposedly shared attributes of power figures and a possible ‘strategy of power’, it seemed to me that it would be more instructive to examine individuals who rose from nothing rather than those who happened to be born into positions of power. That is the reason why I picked Hitler and Stalin to examine rather than, say, Louis XIV and Henry VIII. I should perhaps have concentrated on religious figures above all, since any one of Christ, Mohammed and the Buddha have probably had a greater impact on the history of the human race than Julius Caesar and Alexander combined. But there have been no important specifically religious figures in recent times, except possibly Gandhi, while it is very difficult to get any reliable detail about the actual life of the historical Jesus and, in the case of the Buddha, there is nothing much that is certain at all except that he seemingly did exist during the 4th to 5th centuries BC and belonged to the Sankya tribe in north-east India.
A. Five Useful but Insufficient Attributes
1. Ruthlessness
It is often said that such people as Hitler and Stalin only got to the top because they were both extremely ruthless and extremely lucky. Certainly, they both took ruthlessness to almost unheard of levels, but as an explanation this doesn’t tell you very much. Ruthlessness is, unfortunately, not a particularly rare human trait ─ every incumbent mafiosi has it, but how many get to be controllers of nations? Moreover, not only is ruthlessness by itself not enough, but to demonstrate exceptional cold-bloodedness too early in the game is a liability, since it makes it almost impossible to form alliances which every future leader needs at some stage. Outright psychopaths don’t get to be conquerors: even Genghis Khan, who probably fits the bill better than most, spent years forging (and breaking) alliances in the complex world of Mongolian tribal politics before he was finally accepted as the ‘Great Khan’ and able to embark on his career of world conquest.
For all that, most successful statesmen and generals do exhibit extreme ruthlessness on occasion, while usually claiming afterwards that it was necessary in the circumstances — the real historical monsters are those who exhibit it casually and as a matter of course. Few people today doubt that the Unionist victory in the American Civil War was a ‘good thing’. But the ferocity of General Sherman’s ‘March through Georgia’ where all farmsteads and towns were burned and laid waste on his specific orders, would have shocked most 18th century European military commanders. The campaign was, however, sanctioned and applauded by Lincoln, the liberator of the slaves, as the only way to end the war quickly. Other examples readily come to mind, the fire-bombing of German cities in WWII, Hiroshima and countless other examples.
2. Luck
As for luck, Pasteur famously said that it ‘comes to the prepared mind’ and Macchiavelli agrees:
“You will find that they [Moses and Cyrus] were only dependent on chance for their first opportunity. They seized their chance to make it what they wanted. Without that first opportunity, their strength of purpose [virtù] would never have been revealed. Without their strength of purpose [virtù], the opportunity they were offered would not have amounted to anything” The Prince ch. 6
The above certainly applies to both Lenin and Stalin. Neither of them could exactly be called ‘lucky’, but when the chance came, they certainly seized it with both hands. As a lifelong dedicated revolutionary, Lenin was badly placed trying to mastermind the Russian movement from distant Switzerland and, because of this, he missed out completely on the 1905 uprising. The one favour Fortune did hand Lenin was, however, enough to change the course of world history. The German authorities assumed, correctly as it turned out, that Lenin’s presence in St. Petersburg would help to destabilize the country and perhaps even lead to the new government suing for peace. Consequently, they provided Lenin with transport in a sealed train to St. Petersburg via Finland.
If this had not happened, Lenin would have arrived much later if at all, and the revolution would certainly have taken a very different course. Only Lenin had the temerity to ditch Marxist orthodoxy and risk a coup even though the Bolsheviks were a tiny political party with virtually no peasant support. The ‘correct’ party line was that countries had to go through the ‘bourgeois’ revolutionary stage first: only a fully industrialized state was ripe for a ‘communist’ revolution. This was what Lenin’s Marxist rivals, the Mensheviks, preached but practically all the Bolshevik leaders agreed as well. Lenin, however, considered that the opportunity was too good to be missed. And it was Lenin also who decided that, to safeguard the revolution, Russia must be taken out of the war immediately, at any cost, and so he signed the Treaty of Brest-Livosk, which scandalized many Russians because of the extremely favourable terms given to the Germans.
As for Stalin, one could hardly call him lucky in his early life since he was always in and out of prison or lost in the frozen wastes of Siberia. It is true that he hobnobbed with convicts and dissidents who might have been useful to him in later life, but few actually were; the centre of gravity was elsewhere, with Lenin’s inner circle of émigré middle-class intellectuals who regarded Stalin as uncouth. His sole piece of luck was Lenin’s untimely death (by a double stroke) since Stalin would never have been able to seize power while Lenin lived, nor probably would he have wanted to. As it was, even then Stalin’s ascent to supreme power was slow, excruciatingly slow, taking him all of nine years: it was a triumph of silence, patience and cunning, not luck. Stalin knew how to wait.
In conclusion, every great leader probably needs at least one piece of extreme good luck but must seize it with both hands since he or she may never get another.
Ruthlessness and luck are, then, in all probability necessary elements in the career of a world-historical figure but they are neither of them sufficient and do not necessarily go together, far from it.
3. Intelligence
Although intellectuals are inclined to assume that what they themselves have in abundance is necessary for success in every sphere, military commanders, successful businessmen, explorers, rulers of nations and the like are rarely particularly intelligent, at any rate in the narrow academic sense. One could even make a plausible case for the inverse proposition, namely that ‘intelligence’ in the book-knowledge sense is more likely to be a liability in the unforgiving area of power politics. Plato, generally considered the greatest ancient philosopher, made a disastrous attempt to play a political role when he prepared Dionysius II of Syracuse to be a future ‘philosopher king’– his pupil turned out to be a sadistic monster, as did Seneca’s pupil, Nero. Intellectuals tend to be poor psychologists, since they never seem to grasp that what drives human behaviour (including their own) is, as a rule, self-interest and obscure emotional urges, not reason.
Stalin was a highly successful hit-man for the Bolsheviks (hence his nickname ‘Stalin’ which means ‘man of steel’) but his theoretical writings are laboured, lacking the clarity and precision of Lenin’s or the proverbial homeliness of Mao’s. Cromwell prided himself on his common-sense hence his approval, doubtless with himself in mind, of the “the plain russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for and loves what he knows”. Hitler, surely the most unprepossessing of all modern leaders, turned his lack of formal education and undistinguished appearance (“He looks like the house painter he once was”) into an advantage since, on the one hand, it enabled him to relate effectively to ‘ordinary people’, and, on the other, it made aristocrats and university educated people underrate him to their cost. These men were hardly academic geniuses but that did not stop them, rather the contrary.
Admittedly, Napoleon is an exception, since he was a brilliant pupil at his École Militaire and is one of the few (only?) Western rulers who was a capable mathematician. Nonetheless, it is generally accepted today that Napoleon was not a great military theorist or even innovator: he took almost all his ideas from the Maréchal de Saxe ─ “Napoleon was wise enough not to tinker with his legacy; [but] he knew how to exploit it to the full” writes Marshall-Cornwall in Napoleon as Military Commander. Napoleon was a great commander in the field, and that is what counted.
- 4. Looks
- Good looks will rarely, if ever, be a disadvantage in an ambitious person but, in most societies of the past, only seem to have been essential for a woman. The reason for this is obvious: in most traditional societies the only direct route to power for a low-born female was via the harem, or at least the bedchamber. Both the Empress Wu and the Empress Theodora were considered beauties and the Empress Irene was reputedly chosen in a ‘bride-show’, sort of beauty contest for would-be imperial wives. Even in the case of charismatic ‘religious’ figures like Joan of Arc, appearance seems to have played a part. According to her squire Jean d’Aulon, and her colleague in arms, the Duc d’Alençon (who both claimed to have seen her half naked while dressing) Joan of Arc was ‘a fine-looking girl’ and in particular had ‘beautiful breasts’ — though d’Alençon adds that she “never excited any carnal desire in me or the other soldiers”.
- Julius Caesar, however, at the time of his assassination was balding, deaf in one ear and subject to fits that modern writers think were probably epileptic. Cromwell had warts and Napoleon was fairly short and in middle age inclined to corpulence. That charisma does not depend on conventional good looks would seem to be proved by the case of Hitler.
And if we extend the meaning of ‘power figures’ to include seducers, it is worth noting that even Casanova, to judge by extant portraits, was not strikingly handsome; but he was a fascinating and highly entertaining raconteur. Mirabeau, not in the same class as Casanova but nonetheless very successful with women, even boasted publicly about his ugliness — which is one way of dealing with a disability. - 5. Sense of Mission?
- To what extent do conquerors and world-historical figures foreshadow their future greatness (good or bad) at an early age? As a romantic, I originally assumed this to be a no-brainer, but, to my surprise, after looking into the matter, I decided the answer is ‘not very often’.
- There are plenty of stories about early presages of future greatness in ancient writers like Suetonius, but one strongly suspects that such tales were made up after the event. What is certain is that the early lives of better documented figures such as Abraham Lincoln and Hitler were not so very different from the lives of millions of their contemporaries: there seems to have been nothing that marked them out to be world-movers and world-shakers until they were in their thirties at least. As we know, Hitler was twice refused entry to the Viennese School of Art and Architecture for lack of talent and, incredibly for a future war leader and strategist, he started his military career as an Austrian draft dodger ─ though he volunteered promptly enough when World War I broke out. Lincoln was an ungainly, self-educated man from the backwoods who, though a reasonably successful lawyer, only got the Republican Presidential nomination because the support for the other, much more popular, candidates was evenly divided and both parties preferred a relatively unknown individual. At the age of forty, Oliver Cromwell was a provincial squire, holding no office, local or national, and not even possessing the land on which he grazed his cattle. As for the Duke of Wellington his mother apparently said at one point, “I don’t know what I shall do with my awkward son Arthur“. The list can be extended endlessly.
- Julius Caesar, the most famous Roman of them all, though he had some minor military successes, was, up to the age of forty, notorious not for his victories but for his debts and dissipated life style ─ Curio referred to him contemptuously as “every man’s woman and every woman’s man”. And, once launched on his mature career, Julius Caesar found himself more or less obliged to remain permanently in office since he knew the minute he became a private citizen again he would be prosecuted for debt. Even in the case of military prodigies like Alexander the Great and the 17th century Charles XII of Sweden (now somewhat forgotten but hailed at the time as ‘the second Alexander’), circumstances played at least as great a part in their future celebrity as the drumroll of destiny. Both Alexander the Great and Charles XII came unexpectedly to the throne at a very young age (20 for Alexander, 15 for Charles XII). It was ‘sink or swim’ and, as it happened, their enemies, the anti-Macedon Greek states in the case of Alexander and Denmark in the case of Charles XII, got the shock of their lives when they took them on. But it was in both cases as much ‘forced to become great’ as ‘predestined to conquer’. In war and politics, it is often the case that, after a blistering early success, the only way forward is up since retreat is actually more dangerous than the attempt to scale the peak ahead. In this sense, some persons are literally ‘propelled to greatness’, the survival instinct doing the propelling.
- Summarizing so far, one might even hazard a sort of ‘zeroth law of power politics’: An early disadvantage overcome gives rise to a greater advantage than an outright advantage. Macchiavelli even makes this a sine qua non.
Nonetheless, once in full flight, most famous leaders, both ancient and modern, do seem to have been convinced that they were the vehicle for supra-human forces whether it be Providence in the case of Cromwell or the Marxist world-historical process in the case of Lenin and Stalin.
B. Five Plausible Initial Assumptions
1. Similarity of Social Context
So, if we discount intellectual brilliance, ruthlessness and an early sense of mission as absolute essentials, what does one notice about the careers of famous historical figures? The four most powerful, non-hereditary, Western leaders in recent centuries are probably Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin. Now, the first thing to note is that they all came to prominence in a fractured society near to breakdown: this gave them the chance they would never have had otherwise. Take Napoleon. Had Buonaparte been born just a few years earlier, he would never have been able to obtain a scholarship to a French École Militaire. For Corsica belonged to Genoa until 1768 and, anyway, it was well nigh impossible for someone outside the leading French families to get advancement in the army prior to the revolution ─ as it was, the teenage Buonaparte was mocked by his fellow cadets for his dreadful accent and weak claim to noble birth. Moreover, the revolution came at exactly the right time for him: all but three of the cadets of Napoleon’s year offered their services to the monarchy ─ which meant the Republic desperately needed trained officers and was eager to promote anyone who had the required knowledge. Much the same applied to Cromwell, though to a lesser extent: the Parliamentarians could not afford to overlook talent and once Cromwell’s ability as an efficient organiser of scratch troops was noticed, advancement followed.
As for Hitler, one can with difficulty see him getting anywhere at all in a different time and place, not because he had no talents but because a different environment might never have revealed them to him. He only discovered his uncanny ability as a public speaker by chance when addressing a tiny patriotic society in Munich in 1921 and, as for his military experience, he might never have had any but for the outbreak of WWI which enabled him to gain the Iron Cross 1st Class and the respect of his comrades and superior officers.
But why, we must ask, did social breakdown favour these individuals? Because there was all of a sudden a power vacuum and someone had to fill it. But this is not the only reason. A revolutionary situation drives a society close to a ‘tipping point’ and it may only require a very slight action on the part of a single individual to propel it irreversibly in a certain direction. In normal circumstances this is almost never the case: a slight action produces a slight outcome and that is that. But when a complex system is near to a ‘phase transition’ or ‘tipping point’, the effects of tiny actions are ‘non-linear’, i.e. can produce disproportionately large consequences. Principe, the Serbian nationalist who shot the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, did not, as it happens, intend to bring about a European war but this is what ensued. The five great powers were locked in a tense, complex web of alliances, so much so that what was in itself a fairly minor incident at once set off a frantic round of threat, bluff and counter bluff between Austria, Serbia, Russia and Germany which, within a couple of months, culminated in the invasion of Belgium and we know the rest.
The 9/11 attack on the Two Towers is one of those rare historical ‘avalanche events’ that really was deliberate. Without the Two Towers there would almost certainly have been no invasion of Iraq and thus none of the sequels. Bin Laden seems to have known what he was doing, his aim being not to ‘overcome’ America militarily, which was and is impossible, but to tempt it into invading an Arab country in reprisal. The Middle East then, and even more so today, exhibits all four classic attributes of a ‘complex system’ on the brink: the states involved are (1) diverse; (2) closely connected geographically; (3) interdependent; and (4) ceaselessly adapting to each other’s initiatives. 9/11 drew America directly into the fray (invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq) and this extra ingredient made the whole Middle East tip.
2. Leverage
One lesson to draw from all this is that if someone wishes to bring about really big changes in the world, they must position themselves at an ‘event hub’, somewhere that is extensively connected to diverse, rival, mutually interacting important power groups. In such a position, minor personal initiatives really can have vast consequences ─ this is Archimedes’s “Give me a fixed point and I will move the world” translated into geopolitics. Napoleon and Hitler found themselves ‘by chance’ at such an event hub, revolutionary France at the end of the 18th century and Germany in the Twenties after her ignominious defeat in WWI and subsequent hyper-inflation.
3. The Two Basic Strategies: ‘Doing’ and ‘Not-Doing’
Supposing one does find oneself at an ‘event-hub’, what then? Broadly speaking, there exist two opposing strategies for the ambitious person, the first active, deliberate, calculating, the second indirect, semi-passive, instinctive. Nineteenth century Western thinkers such as Carlyle and Nietzsche emphasized ‘will’ and ‘character’ while Clausewitz stressed the ability to concentrate force on a weak point and the importance of sheer numbers. But Eastern thinkers generally recommend the indirect approach. China’s leading military theorist, Sun Tzu, who is said to have influenced Mao, recommends systematically avoiding direct confrontation and relying instead on manoeuvre and deception. (Not that China’s history is any the less bloody than Europe’s for all that.)
To employ Taoist terms, the first method is ‘Doing’, the second ‘Not-Doing’ (wu-wei), a strange concept to our ears though it is central to Taoism. What does ‘Not-Doing’ mean in practice? ‘Not-Doing’ does not necessarily mean abstaining from action, though it can mean this ─ sometimes the best plan is simply to let things take their course and not get in the way. Sun Tzu talks a great deal about ‘momentum’ which he sees as an intrinsic property of certain sequences of events. “Skilful warriors” he writes, “are able to allow the force of momentum to seize victory for them without exerting their strength”. And this ‘momentum’ is something inherent in the circumstances, it does not depend on individuals: “Good warriors seek effectiveness in battle from the force of momentum, not from individual people”.
Sun Tzu’s belief in an inherent ‘momentum’ of events and how to use it to one’s advantage, is perhaps the most promising observation relating to the rise of power figures — or so I originally assumed. Persons who have the confidence and the insight can, as it were, ‘ride’ a wave that they did not initiate and, to change the metaphor, can, from a position of vantage, divert the current into the direction that they consider to be the most favourable to themselves and/or the cause they support. The typical world-historical figure is, according to this view, not someone who imposes his or her will on the world, but neither is he or she a passive ‘plaything of events’. The intelligent practitioner deliberately chooses to abandon himself to the course of events if this seems to be leading to a favourable outcome — but he or she must immediately withdraw as soon as the direction of the current ceases to be favourable. This withdrawing movement is usually much more difficult to carry out than the original commitment. On the one hand we have the rare gambler who knows exactly when to leave the table after he has been winning all the evening, or, alternatively, Napoleon who unnecessarily invades Russia because he feels himself to be invincible.
The most obvious case of the successful application of ‘Not-Doing’ to power politics is the career of Talleyrand, the great French aristocrat who joined the revolution, became Napoleon’s foreign minister, changed sides to aid the Bourbon Restoration, played a key role at the post-war Vienna Congress and, after all that, managed to die in his bed of natural causes in an odour of sanctity. He knew when to go with the tide and when to grasp the rocks as the tide withdrew. As an explanation for his amazing career, he wrote, “Je me mis à la disposition des évènements” (‘I made myself available to the play of events’). And again:
« Je résolus donc de ne point lutter contre le courant qu’il fallait laisser passer, mais de me tenir en situation et à portée de concourir à sauver ce qui pouvait être sauvé, de ne point élever d’obstacle entre l’occasion et moi, et de me réserver pour elle. »
Prince de Talleyrand, Mémoires
(I thus resolved by no means to struggle against the current that in any case could not be stopped, but rather to ready myself to go with it and save whatever could be saved, and not to raise any obstacles to the opportunity that might present itself while remaining always on the alert.’)
Recent American and Western interest in Sun Tzu and applied Taoism has, however, given some people the impression that ‘Not-Doing’ is the best policy in all situations, apart from being the most attractive ethically. This is an illusion. Sun Tzu, who is thought to have been a practising military leader, deplores the destructiveness of war, but he was not a pacifist. There are occasions when the direct approach is the most expeditious and also the least bloody. Of course, it is easy enough to say so today, but when Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936, Germany had not properly re-militarized and would have been helpless against a firm French armed riposte — Hitler admitted later that he spent the most anxious weekend of his life. A humiliating withdrawal would not have deterred the most fervent Nazis but, at the time, Hitler still needed the support of the middle classes and above all the Wehrmacht who would have had second thoughts about encouraging such a dangerous hothead. And there would most likely have been no World War II.
The truth seems to be that both ‘Doing’ and ‘Not-Doing’ are essential for success in practically every sphere, but above all in warfare and government. If we look carefully at European leaders, especially Cromwell and Hitler, we find that they practised both ‘Doing’ and ‘Not-Doing’ in more or less equal doses, were alternately ‘active’ and ‘passive’ and at ease in both modes. It is now known that a great deal of mental and physical activity is ‘unconscious’: in a routine situation, it is often better, and even safer, to put oneself in a state of ‘auto-pilot’. However, the rational ‘self’ must remain alert, able to step in when changing circumstances make it inappropriate to continue with a certain ingrained pattern of behaviour. Grant says that Julius Caesar’s “supreme qualities as a commander were speed, timing, and adaptability to suddenly changing circumstances” (my italics).
4. Heroic Judgment
The second of the two maxims that I have found the most useful when investigating the rise of the individual to supreme power comes from the memoirs of the Cardinal de Retz — the author was a ringleader in the important revolt against Mazarin known as the Fronde (the ‘Sling’). “Resoluteness” he writes, “ought to run parallel with judgment — I say with heroic judgment, which is able to discern the extraordinary from the impossible.”
The point is that if you want to win big, you must risk big. For the adversary will not take any precautions against what is deemed to be impossible. Guderian’s Panzer attack through the Ardennes’ forest is a case in point since informed military opinion considered it to be out of the question — even the German top brass originally dismissed the idea as suicidal.
However, nothing is more difficult than to distinguish the impossible from the extraordinary. Clarity of judgment is essential but reason will not take you all the way, ultimately you have to rely on instinct which may err. Of late, there have been several books that are sceptical about the validity of the adage, “Fortune favours the bold”. Nessim Taleb, for example, writes, “Clearly, risk taking is necessary for large success but it is also necessary for failure.” Yes, but the point is that, although Fortune may not always favour the bold, she never favours the timid.
Simply because something actually did come about, which proves it was possible, does not mean it was inevitable. For example, both Napoleon’s and Hitler’s invasions of Russia failed, while being in both cases the result of what appeared at first to be examples of de Retz’s ‘heroic judgment’. Could Napoleon have succeeded against Russia? I say, no, his lines of communication were far too overstretched for the technology of the time. Could Hitler have succeeded? I say, yes. He very nearly did succeed since at one point Guderian’s tanks were less than 20 miles from Moscow. Hitler could not decide whether to concentrate on taking Moscow or whether to send the bulk of his forces to occupy the oil fields of the Caucasus; fortunately for the world, he dithered, tried to keep both options open, got bogged down in the battle of Stalingrad and was forced onto the defensive. Thus, he lost the all-important momentum of which Sun Tzu writes.
The Spanish conquistadors Cortez and Pissarro were clearly men of ‘heroic judgment’ since the idea of taking over whole countries with a handful of armed men seemed utterly fantastic — yet it happened. And Renaissance Italy seems to have been full of individuals of heroic judgment in all sorts of areas, which is why it was such a watershed. It is troubling to think that aggressive or openly murderous individuals seem to be more capable of ‘heroic judgment’ than the benefactors of mankind, although one could argue that the industrial revolution was brought about by engineers who exhibited ‘heroic judgment’, people like Newcomen, Stevenson and Trevithick.
5. The Individual and the Zeitgeist
A revived, more plausible, contemporary version of the ‘great man’ theory of history is that certain individuals embody much better than others the ‘underlying tendencies’ of the time in which they live, a viewpoint that can be traced back to Hegel:
[In Hegel’s view] what makes an individual notable and ‘great’ is his or her ability to unleash pent-up forces ¾ the will of an age — and so enable those immeasurably greater forces to have their effect” Buchanan, Ubiquity
This reads well, and certainly seems to be true of someone whom Hegel probably had in mind, namely Napoleon. But is it generally true?
There can be no doubt that Buonaparte, at any rate during his early period, really did owe his fame and popularity to the removal of all sorts of frustrations and resentments, both individual and social, harboured by the citizens of Europe. In particular there was growing widespread political opposition to absolutism and growing impatience with the 18th century cult of ‘reason’ over emotion. In this respect Napoleon really can be said to have ‘expressed the will of an age’ and to have ‘unleashed forces that he did not himself create’. Napoleon Buonaparte was, for a while, the great romantic who was freeing the world from artificial constraints, both political and cultural, and, as such, was welcomed enthusiastically by poets and composers — at least until he made himself Emperor, at which point Beethoven tore up his dedication of the ‘Eroica’ symphony.
But how frequently does this ‘spirit of the age’ theory apply to world-historical figures generally? That remains to be seen. This is what I hoped to ascertain when I examined the cases of Cromwell, Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin, likewise four female figures, the Empress Wu, the Empress Theodora, Joan of Arc and Eva Peròn. I was especially on the look out for certain features that I expected, or did not expect, to be relevant to their rise. Were there any early presages of future greatness? To what extent were they ‘lucky’? Once given a chance for success, did they recognize it immediately as such and seize it with both hands? Did they plan from the outset to seize absolute power, or did they rather abandon themselves to a current that swept them along? Were there key moments when they exercised ‘heroic judgment’ on which their entire future career depended? Did they embody certain underlying tendencies of their time in a striking manner that ‘explain’ their rise to power? And, perhaps most important of all, did they realize what they were doing?
Postscript: Those interested in reading my studies of these eight ‘power figures’ are referred to www.academia.com where the full essay The Role of the Individual in History by Sebastian Hayes appears — what you have just read being the Introduction. In a subsequent post, I aim to give my tentative conclusions.
Sebastian Hayes 
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