12 Military Leaders In History That Committed Catastrophic Fails

The old saying about how hindsight is 20/20 rings painfully true for the military leaders that made this list. It can be hard to maintain one’s wits when you’re in the pits of literal insanity, and it’s no excuse if you end up mucking things up to a completely disastrous degree. The following military leaders are remembered throughout history for their own completely disastrous failures.

1. Francisco Solano Lopez

Francisco Solano Lopez was the leader of Paraguay, who started a war with Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. All at the same time. The conflict ended up being so completely disastrous that it would cost Paraguay 60% of its population, leaving it with only 28,000 men in the entire country. They lost a quarter of their whole territory to the victorious nations as well. Just let that sink in.

2. Luigi Cadorna

Luigi Cadorna was responsible for leading the Italian army to its defeat in WWI. Cadorna would end up commanding his men to charge to their deaths eleven times at Isonzo. What a complete disaster.

3. Ala al-Din Muhammad

Ala al-Din Muhammad did not last too long when under the command of Genghis Khan. They ended up responding to Genghis Khan’s demands by killing the messenger and all of their merchants. You can imagine how things went for them from there.

4. Whoever Took on New Zealand’s Emu Birds

Seriously though. There was a time in history when an army in New Zealand would end up losing to the Emu bird. It seems like it’s only a matter of time before a Netflix documentary comes out on the event.

5. Tsar Nicholas II

Tsar Nicholas II was so blinded by his ego that he would only accept being able to lead the army himself instead of letting a qualified general take on the responsibility. He also managed to leave his German wife in charge while they were fighting the Germans.

6. Douglas Haig

Douglas Haig had a rough, rough go during WWI. Haig lost 425,000 soldiers at the Somme, 275,000 at Passchendaele, and ended up playing a part in the British Army creating their moniker for a while that goes, “lions led by donkeys.”

7. Pierre Charles Jean Baptiste Silvestre de Villeneuve

For the sake of brevity we’ll just call him Pierre. Pierre insisted on heading out to battle at the absolute most terrible moment, because he’d learned that he was about to be fired. He was adamantly told by everyone that it was a terrible idea, but disregarded all the warnings. If he’d but waited a day more, many argue that this could meant victory because of an incoming storm that could’ve swept the British fleet away.

8. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna

Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna engineered his own defeat following the fall of the Alamo and the Golia Massacre by allowing himself and his soldiers to partake in a midday nap on April 21, 1836. Some very upset Texans happened upon them while they were sleeping, and the rest is in the history books with that lapse in judgment.

9. Lord Kitchener

Lord Kitchener really didn’t like to have any of his orders written down. As you might never have guessed this is because he didn’t want any of his subsequent whims of the moment to be vulnerable to being contradicted by anything at all. Clearly, all very rational.

10. Emperor Caligula

Emperor Caligula had no trouble making plenty of very bizarre decisions during his reign. One of these decisions was to literally declare an all-out war upon the god of the sea, Neptune. He angrily demanded that his soldiers storm the beach and stab the sea and waves with their swords. Okay then.

11. Dareios

Dareios vastly underestimated Alexander the Great at Issos in 333 BCE. As you can imagine that was not someone to underestimate during those times. This act was followed by the complete destruction of the Persian Empire, all because he assumed there was no need to protect Persepolis.

12. Brutus

Brutus was responsible for helping assassinate Caesar. Brutus then fled off to Greece instead of trying to take control of a weakened Rome. Meanwhile, while Octavian and Antony were busy fighting, statesman Cicero wrote numerous letters to Brutus, pleading him to bring his army into the mix to help finish off Rome. Brutus refused, Octavian and Antony eventually stopped fighting, and then they banded together and stormed Greece to kill Brutus and the other conspirators.