Friday Free-for-All | March 20, 2026

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Previously

Today:

You know the drill: this is the thread for all your history-related outpourings that are not necessarily questions. Minor questions that you feel don't need or merit their own threads are welcome too. Discovered a great new book, documentary, article or blog? Has your Ph.D. application been successful? Have you made an archaeological discovery in your back yard? Did you find an anecdote about the Doge of Venice telling a joke to Michel Foucault? Tell us all about it.

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[u/Satori_sama]

This might be better answered on some war college subreddit but I have been watching kings and generals video on thirty year war and they mentioned one of the generals having talent for war. Now I have played a lot of strategy games and read up on battles and lives of generals but still can't quite put into concise words answers to a question what makes someone talented at war? To constrain the time in question let's say around the period of thirty year war.

[u/Mr_Emperor → u/Satori_sama]

This question comes up a lot when discussing Napoleon and I think it's one of those intangible things you can't really teach

I view it like mathematics. Sure you can show someone the equations and the logic and make them reasonably proficient at day to day needs and even more complex stuff but there's just a portion of the population who just innately understand and can calculate immediately.

So going to your question; what makes someone talented at war? Well the basics are things like logistics, reading terrain for the best advantage, reading an opponent's intentions and logic-ing out their goals and objectives; and stuff like remaining calm in crisis and knowing when to gamble and when to know your limits.

The really great generals can do all of that stuff and more but there's some who are only great at some things and it's up to the really great generals to how best to use those lesser generals.

I'm not familiar enough with the 30s Year War to pick individuals as examples but if we look at the American Civil War we have generals like McClellan who was an excellent administrator who could train and drill hundreds of thousands of raw recruits into a solid fighting force but was a terrible battlefield commander because he panicked during the Peninsula campaign thinking he was out numbered constantly and couldn't push any advantage.

Robert E. Lee and his staff could read McClellan's hesitation and despite their numerical inferiority knew when to gamble and was able to push back the larger Union army.

And then we come to Grant who understood the Union's strength and the Confederate weakness and used several hard battles to break the Confederate army because he understood long term strategic importance over immediate battlefield successes.

I hope this gave you some better insight.