Historical Heros

[Steve]

Cyril, you speak of Epaminondas of Thebes. Hailed by Cicero as the Greatest of the Greeks. I have his epitaph as my sig. And I agree with placing him on the list.

We must also, of course, give attention to Themistocles, the victor of Salamis, who preserved Greece against the tyranny of Xerxes, and ensured the survival of the West to become what it is today.

Charles Martel and Don Juan of Austria deserve mention for halting the spread of Islam at Poitiers/Tours and Lepanto respectively. Don Juan particularly; he kept together the alliance of rival Italian states (the Papal States, Genoa, and Venice) with the Spanish contingent to defeat the Ottoman fleet of Ali Pasha in the bloodiest naval battle since Salamis, and freed 15,000 Christians forced to be galley slaves by the Ottomans in the process. Although the Ottoman fleet recovered, they lost several good admirals in the battle and trained warriors, especially the Janissaries, and finally, lost their chance to take a dominant role in the Mediterranean. Juan gave his share of the money won from the battle and the money given to him by the city of Messina to his poor and wounded, sailors, soldiers, and rowers).

Hernán Cortès was a murderous and greedy bastard who gladly killed thousands and probably murdered his own wife. He also destroyed the Aztec civilization, one based on the horrific ritual of human sacrifice that had, in 1487 at the inaugeration of the Great Temple of Huitzilopochtil, killed 80,400 people in a period of ninety-six hours, achieving a rate of fourteen dead per minute, higher than that of Auschwitz's greatest record. And this was not done by relatively swift gassing but by ripping the beating hearts out of the still-living victims' chests. Somewhat sickening that it took a murderous ass like Cortès to destroy an even more murderous empire like that of the Aztecs, but I'll take victories for humanity where I get 'em.

Then we get to the American Founding Fathers, specifically Franklin, Jefferson, John Adams, and Washington.

Abe Lincoln is next. Followed by Teddy Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and FDR.

That about does it. Oh wait, I forgot George W. Bush..... just kidding! Put down the mallets! AGH!!!!

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

I'm not sure about Sherman. If he hadn't done that "march to the sea", then maybe Union prisoners at Andersonville wouldn't have starved to .

Grant was a good general, but surrounded by crooks as president.

[Frank Hipper]

Queen ElizabethI, what an ironclad bitch. Admiral Franz von Hipper, Germany`s most able naval commander in WWI. Admiral Maximilian graf von Spee, Germany`s most tragic naval commander in WWI. Sir Francis Drake, my childhood hero. Cuauhtemoc, last Aztec emperor. And many, many more.....

[Steve]

I certainly wouldn't praise Lee. He fought for secession, the dissolution of the Union, slaverly, et. all.


Sherman and Grant, on the other hand, rocked arse.

Lee was a gentleman and a states' rights advocate. He may have personally disagreed with the institution of slavery and he was a firm believer in keeping the war limited to soldiers. Which is a good thing for the Union, because if he thought like Sherman who knows what he might've done....

Ultimately, however, Lee sided with the wrong people, by placing his loyalty to the Commonwealth of Virginia over his loyalty to the United States as a whole. History may remember him as a good man at heart, but the cause he supported was unjust and that will forever tarnish his memory.

And what's even more ironic is that Lee, who wanted to keep warfare out of the civilian circles, nevertheless killed more people (along with Grant, I'll add) than the sometimes reviled Sherman (even today people hate Sherman in the South, and history generally regards him as the progenitor of terror warfare against civilian populaces), who attacked the property of his enemies instead of his enemies themselves.

[Steve]

Cuauhtemoc, last Aztec emperor.

What kind of sick maniac are you?!

The Aztec Empire was an empire of terror and butchery that rivaled the Third Reich! You might as well say you admire Hitler or Himmler!

[Steve]

I'm not sure about Sherman. If he hadn't done that "march to the sea", then maybe Union prisoners at Andersonville wouldn't have starved to .

If he hadn't done the March to the Sea, thousands more would've died in Virginia and across the nation before Lee would have been forced to surrender, and to make fun of the rednecks, the South would have risen again.

It took Sherman, and the shock and terror he delivered to the planters of Georgia, to break down the Confederacy and ensure that there would be no resurrection of the South and it's antebellum way of life.

I'll also add that he liberated thousands of slaves.

[weemadando]

Dude him and Little John were Samuel L. Jackson and Harvey Kieteil they were bad asses.

"Maid Marion" showed up much later, as a camp follower (take that folks she was a pro in the old stories)

I don't recall coming across Marion in my readings on the subject. Msot scholars think that she was a 17th or 18th Century creation.

[HemlockGrey]

I don't know about slavery. IIRC, Lincoln actually offered Lee a position in the Union army, but Lee couldn't bring himself to wage war against his home state.

Exactly. Because he couldn't bear arms against precious Virginia, he brought about the deaths of hundreds of thousands in a bid to preserve a slavocratic nation built of aristocracy that was directly opposed to American ideals.

And, yes, I must add Churchill, FDR, and Martel, and Juan.

And Sir Francis Drake, of course. Daring pirate and loyal Englishman who helped keep enlightened England free from the tyranny of the Spanish king.

Also, the Marquis de Layfette. General Washington. Ethan Allen. John Paul Jones.

And Nathaniel Green, the greatest commander of the American Revolution.

David "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" Farragut. Joshua Chamberlain, who held the line at Gettysburg.

[Frank Hipper]

Cuauhtemoc, last Aztec emperor.

What kind of sick maniac are you?!

The Aztec Empire was an empire of terror and butchery that rivaled the Third Reich! You might as well say you admire Hitler or Himmler!

Yeah, they were nazis allright, but I still pity the guy for the way he died. And there`s no denying his heroics.

[Steve]

Unless he died by having his beating heart ripped from his chest (which according to VDH's Carnage and Culture, it didn't happen), then he got off too easy.

And agh! I forgot Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.!

[The Dark]

And Sir Francis Drake, of course. Daring pirate and loyal Englishman who helped keep enlightened England free from the tyranny of the Spanish king.

Privateer, technically, but it's semantics to the victims.

I would have to go with Truman, for being bold enough to go ahead and allow Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Given the evidence that Japan would have its civilians fight to resist an invasion, it was the proper choice, though a difficult one.

In a way, Vlad the Impaler, for just being so freakin' stubborn. Guy got kicked out of his own castle at least once (maybe twice, I don't remember) and came back to rule the nation again. He also stopped an invasion of Europe.

Billy Mitchell. Outspoken, abrasive, and right. He was the first person to sink a battleship with aircraft, and led to America building the aircraft carriers that defended it in WWII.

William Tecumseh Sherman. Recognized that war is not about destroying the enemy army, but the enemy will to fight. Too bad that was forgotten between the US Civil War and WWI...the Allies probably wouldn't have lost every campaign of the war if they'd fought smarter.

[CmdrWilkens]

It would have eliminated most of the barbarian threats, would have added wealth to the coffers AND if they had stopped the expansion of the Muslim Empire they stood a good chance of stopping the Mongol horde five centuries later. The Roman system for equipping its armies was just too damn efficient, someone once stated that the amazing thing about the Punic Wars wasn't that the Romans won it was that Carthage held on as long as it did.

Not only those, but the Russian steppes would have provided an excellent cropping area and would have lessened the Roman dependance on Egpyt for grain. One of the major problems in the later empire was under-production of food. This would have definately fixed that.

Hell even the hills of Germany would have been productive enough for production greater than local needs, plus in the Rhineland area the ground is very fertile with the additional benifit of being accesible by sea meaning thy could trans-ship along the entire coast of Gaul and Britain.

The only major problem would be the cost of expansion into those regions which, admittedly, the Romans were able to bear up suprisingly well adn the Rhine would be an excellent source for economic gain once properly settled.

[Next of Kin]

Morihei Ueshiba -- for translating his knowledge of daito-ryu aiki-jujitsu into modern day aikido.

Gozo Shioda -- for creating the Yoshinkan, the hard school, of Aikido.

Brilliant men!

[The Yosemite Bear]

Dude him and Little John were Samuel L. Jackson and Harvey Kieteil they were bad asses.

"Maid Marion" showed up much later, as a camp follower (take that folks she was a pro in the old stories)

I don't recall coming across Marion in my readings on the subject. Msot scholars think that she was a 17th or 18th Century creation.

The earliest stories with her in it date back to the 17th century, where she is a Prostitute who Joins Robin and Little John in their Banditry. Later she got a serious make over.

[Tosho]

My own heroes:

1.Napoleon Bonaparte I
2.Sun Wu (a.k.a. Sun Tzu)
3.Tokugawa Ieyasu
4.Toyotomi Hideyoshi
5.Oda Nobunaga
6.Ghengis Khan

[NecronLord]

Octavian, alternatively, actually built that Empire. He literally turned Rome from a modest capital to the center of the western world. The size, scope, and power of the Empire during his rule surpassed that of any other entity until the rise of the Spanish and British empires more than one and a half millenia later. had he not suffered setbacks in conquering Germany in 9 AD it is entirely conceivable that with Tiberius succeding him not but a half dozen years later the Empire would have expanded into Russia and maintained its vitality well into the early years of the second millenia. Rome, alone, of the first millenai powers would have had any chance at defending against both the expansionistic designs of the Caliphate and the Khan. In other words sans that setback it is entirely possible that the Empire Augustus built could have lasted until recent history.

Thankyou! Someone else who supports my theory. I tried arguing this with a lecturer and others at my uni, saying that if they had pushed north to the coasts of Germany etc, and east to the Urals they wouldn't have faced many of the problems that brought about the fall.

Oooh thats going into my alternate history. I was looking for a divergance point, would you like some credit for it?

[Stuart Mackey]

I have always admired W.S.Churchill. He had his faults, as do all men, but he was a great man for all that, and he was certainly the only man for Britains Finest Hour.

[IRG CommandoJoe]

I like the World War heroes. Sargeant York and Sargeant Murphy. York captured over one hundred Germans in WWI and Murphy was just a badass soldier. I read of more heroes of that caliber in both wars in other militaries, but I forgot all of them. LOL

[Dahak]

In no special order:

• Otto von Bismarck
• Gaius Julius Cesar
• Johannes Gutenberg
• Elizabeth I

[Ted]

In no special order:

• Otto von Bismarck
• Gaius Julius Cesar
• Johannes Gutenberg
• Elizabeth I

GUTENBERG???????
Hes a hero for inventing a printing press????????????

[Dahak]

In no special order:

• Otto von Bismarck
• Gaius Julius Cesar
• Johannes Gutenberg
• Elizabeth I

GUTENBERG???????
Hes a hero for inventing a printing press????????????

Well, he didn't win any battles, but he revolutionized the time back then, so IMHO he was a very important person in history.

[Ted]

In no special order:

• Otto von Bismarck
• Gaius Julius Cesar
• Johannes Gutenberg
• Elizabeth I

GUTENBERG???????
Hes a hero for inventing a printing press????????????

Well, he didn't win any battles, but he revolutionized the time back then, so IMHO he was a very important person in history.

Whats the exact definition of hero?

[Dahak]

Here's a definition

Main Entry: he·ro
Pronunciation: 'hir-(")O, 'hE-(")rO
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural heroes
Etymology: Latin heros, from Greek hErOs
Date: 14th century
1 a : a mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent endowed with great strength or ability b : an illustrious warrior c : a man admired for his achievements and noble qualities d : one that shows great courage
2 a : the principal male character in a literary or dramatic work b : the central figure in an event, period, or movement
3 plural usually heros : SUBMARINE 2
4 : an object of extreme admiration and devotion : IDOL

[Ted]

Gutenberg works quite well then.

[CmdrWilkens]

Octavian, alternatively, actually built that Empire. He literally turned Rome from a modest capital to the center of the western world. The size, scope, and power of the Empire during his rule surpassed that of any other entity until the rise of the Spanish and British empires more than one and a half millenia later. had he not suffered setbacks in conquering Germany in 9 AD it is entirely conceivable that with Tiberius succeding him not but a half dozen years later the Empire would have expanded into Russia and maintained its vitality well into the early years of the second millenia. Rome, alone, of the first millenai powers would have had any chance at defending against both the expansionistic designs of the Caliphate and the Khan. In other words sans that setback it is entirely possible that the Empire Augustus built could have lasted until recent history.

Thankyou! Someone else who supports my theory. I tried arguing this with a lecturer and others at my uni, saying that if they had pushed north to the coasts of Germany etc, and east to the Urals they wouldn't have faced many of the problems that brought about the fall.

Oooh thats going into my alternate history. I was looking for a divergance point, would you like some credit for it?

I'll take all the credityou want to give . However a notable amount of my own inspiration came from an essay scenario presented in "What If?" which is an excellent Alt. History book.