I watch my war on television

April 26, 2008 9:15 PM

When did our leaders stop going to war?

I've been watching Rome and was struck by the fact those those seeking or holding power were the first to fight it out for it. Also thinking of European history where kings fought the battles with their armies. Now I know that even then these leaders were well protected compared to the average soldier, but still leaders did fall in battle. When did this practice come to an end? When did our leaders (across the world) get the authority to be able to send others to die from the safety of being somewhere else?

posted by ilikecookies to law & government (23 comments total)

I don't know about other countries, but George II was apparently the last English monarch to lead his troops into battle, in 1743.
posted by phoenixy at 9:35 PM on April 26, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I was always under the impression that Napoleon was the last European head of state to do this (1815), with Cetshwayo being the final frontline head of state (1879). Military history isn't my specialty, though.
posted by StrikeTheViol at 9:36 PM on April 26, 2008

Well, according to Wikipedia, George II was the last British king to lead his forces in battle. And that was 1743.
posted by TrashyRambo at 9:37 PM on April 26, 2008

I doubt you'll find a single moment when the concept came to an end. But I'll tell you how it came to an end -- when communication capabilities were sufficient to allow someone to remotely effect real-time tactical changes on the battlefield, greater specialization was able to evolve, allowing the leaders to lead from protection, where their specialized knowledge/ambition/chutzpah could be preserved and put to use more effectively. In other words, when battlefield communication became less about how loud the king could shout and more about how the king could move generals, sergeants, archers and swordsmen around the battlefield, that's when it ended.

When the leaders lead and the soldiers soldier, you create a more effective unit. Adam Smith extrapolated this idea -- specialization allows greater efficiency -- to economics in The Wealth of Nations.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:40 PM on April 26, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

The French Emperor Napoleon III was captured by the Prussians at the Battle of Sedan in 1870.
posted by McSly at 9:44 PM on April 26, 2008

I remember someone mentioning the July 1864 Confederate raid on Washington, DC as being the last time an American President (Lincoln in this case, of course) was under enemy fire in time of war. Not the same as Octavian or Antony leading armies in the field, but it could have resulted in a leader falling in battle.
posted by gimonca at 9:58 PM on April 26, 2008

It is disingenuous, I think, to suggest that Saddam Hussein, or Yitzhak Rabin, or Anwar El-Sadat did not lead their nations into battle, or at least in the case of the latter two, that their deaths could not be characterized as deaths in battle. So, I do not think that the practice is quite over yet.
posted by ikkyu2 at 9:59 PM on April 26, 2008

At the risk of de-rail ....

Anwar El-Sadat was assassinated by members of a group who had not declared war on the state of Egypt and at the time of the killing he can hardly be said to have been involved in leading Egypts troops into battle (he was reviewing a military parade) so I beg to differ on that one at least.
posted by southof40 at 10:27 PM on April 26, 2008

Castro led and fought at the bay of pigs I believe.
posted by damn dirty ape at 10:49 PM on April 26, 2008

When did our leaders (across the world) get the authority to be able to send others to die from the safety of being somewhere else?

When it was realized that letting political leaders also lead in war resulted in more, longer, and more bloody wars, because the leaders often were intoxicated by it.

Napoleon, for instance, was only really happy when he was in the field campaigning. That's probably the biggest reason why France was at war almost the entire time he was emperor. (I think 1811 might have been the only year he didn't spend at least some time campaigning.) He certainly wasn't the only one. Alexander the Great was like that. There have been many others, and usually their wars go on until they themselves are killed.

Napoleon wasn't killed in battle, of course, but France had to be utterly defeated twice and Napoleon exiled to a rock in the south Atlantic and held under close guard to end his wars.

It was America's own Robert E. Lee who said, "It It is well that war is so terrible — otherwise we should grow too fond of it."

And it is well that those who decide whether there should be a war not be tempted by being in front line command. Otherwise they might choose to go to war because they enjoy battle. Such leaders are far more dangerous than those you clearly think of as "chickenhawks".

That's the reason why the American system specifically places the decision to go to war in civilian hands. It's the reason why the President, a civilian, is commander in chief. The founders knew that there were too many cases in history where military heads of state went to war just because they loved war.

The decision to go to war is far too important to trust to those who will do the fighting.
posted by Class Goat at 11:12 PM on April 26, 2008

Class Goat, I see your point. But I also think its worth considering that many leaders would not send their lower classes into war, if they also had their OWN lives to risk.

The decision to go to war is far too important to trust to those who will NOT do the fighting.
posted by hal_c_on at 11:48 PM on April 26, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Well, someone has to make that decision, and historically it's been found to be better to let civilians do it.
posted by Class Goat at 12:03 AM on April 27, 2008

To clarify that a bit more: historically, letting that decision be made by a civilian dictator is just as bad as letting the military make the decision. (e.g. Saddam, Hitler, Stalin, Kaiser Wilhelm, etc.)

Historically, the best answer has been to let the decision be made collectively by elected civilian leaders, thus the cabinet in the UK, or Congress in the US.
posted by Class Goat at 12:07 AM on April 27, 2008

The rifle stopped all that.

No point prancing about on a dashing white stallion if an uneducated bucked tooth yokel can knock you off from a mile away.

That, and armies became steadily more professional and the leadership more politically focussed. Strategy of a different kind.
posted by mattoxic at 4:47 AM on April 27, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Franco-Prussian war 1870-1871 was the last time, althought they weren't in command. However, the Prussian King did make a key observation and ordered his troops to move faster at the final battle of Sedan, where, as mentioned above, Napoleon III was captured.
posted by Ironmouth at 5:15 AM on April 27, 2008

From the ever-reliable Wikipedia.

...only two presidents, George Washington and James Madison, have [assumed battlefield command]. Washington personally led a federalised militia force of approximately 15,000 troops to quell the Whiskey Rebellion during his second term, although he was not present during any of the skirmishing in the relatively bloodless conflict.

During the War of 1812, President Madison was under enemy fire on August 24, 1814, when American forces were routed by British troops in Bladensburg, Maryland. Madison, incensed by the American commanding general's incompetence, was on the scene and personally assumed command of the only remaining American force, a naval battery commanded by Commodore Joshua Barney. He did so to stall the British invasion of the American capital, but his efforts were unsuccessful, and the British burned Washington over the next two days.

During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln considered personally assuming battlefield command of the Union Army, and studied military texts when he became frustrated by the incompetence and lethargy of his generals. He actually came under enemy fire in 1864 during the Confederate attack on Fort Stevens in the District of Columbia, but did not exercise battlefield authority as commander-in-chief at any time.

posted by Jahaza at 5:24 AM on April 27, 2008

"When did our leaders (across the world) get the authority to be able to send others to die from the safety of being somewhere else?"

They've pretty much always had that authority. Even when they chose to go to battle themselves, nothing was forcing them in.


"But I also think its worth considering that many leaders would not send their lower classes into war, if they also had their OWN lives to risk."

Hooray for unquantifiable suppositions. I disagree. I think most would and, further, if this were some kind of requirement, we would need to elect a wholly different kind of leader -- one who was willing to die in war for the country and, therefore, was probably more predisposed to going to war in the first place. It might cause some to be "more careful", but it might also lead others to start wars just so they could fight in them or not carry out a necessary war for fear of their own mortality.

In short, it's is a lot more complicated than you let on.
posted by toomuchpete at 7:39 AM on April 27, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

The notion that the political leaders should be kept off the field of battle is not new. More than two thousand years ago, Sun Tzu explained the strategic problems associated with allowing an untrained ruler to direct troops in combat: "He whose generals are able and not interfered with by the sovereign will be victorious." This is relevant to a scenario where, for example, a king by succession overestimates his tactical aptitude and takes charge of the army to his detriment.

But it's a separate issue to talk about how it is a security risk to permit a political leader who is also the military general to lead from the front lines. Where a ruler gains power as a result of conquest, it wouldn't make sense to take him out of the battle strategy process at the point when his military ability leads to political control. In this situation, the answer is really that, as other posters have suggested, such leaders still command their armies today, but are able to do so from a position of safety through advances in technology.
posted by padjet1 at 8:32 AM on April 27, 2008

It could be said that we are in the process of re-entering an age where leaders are well protected compared to the average soldier, but still able to fall in battle.
posted by andythebean at 1:15 PM on April 27, 2008

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posted by andythebean at 1:16 PM on April 27, 2008

If you're talking about the Romans, your impression probably derives ultimately from Nathan Rosenstein's Imperatores Victi, which, despite the title, is about the Republic in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE. Imperator simply means "commander" in Latin, and the emperors, who were notional supreme commanders, took it as a title, along with strings of terms indicating the peoples their armies had conquered (Britannicus, Parthicus, Dacicus, etc.)

In the middle Republic, Roman aristocrats were indeed expected to lead and fight, and a surprising number of them died that way. In the late Republic (last century BCE), this changed; commanders such as Pompey and Julius Caesar were exceptions, as they liked campaigning in person, but many aristocratic commanders were not expected to. Cicero, who held a command briefly in Cillicia (Asia Minor), liked to boast "cedant arma togae," "let weapons yield place to speeches" (the toga was the business suit of the day, worn by the political upper classes). Of course, his career was built upon oratory.

This demilitarization continued during the Empire. Octavian (later the Emperor Augustus) was not much of a soldier; during his reign Augustus assigned military commands to members of his family, such as the future emperor Tiberius, and took the credit himself. Claudius, when he conquered Britain, did so through his generals; he himself was too elderly and lame to fight. The emperor Trajan (early second century CE), was a military man and led his campaigns in person, as his Column in Rome shows. As for the Roman aristocracy (which had turned over several times during the civil wars of the late Republic), some still held nominal military commands but were not encouraged to take the initiative, a challenge to imperial authority.

In the Later Empire, however (from the mid-third century CE onwards), when the empire was under attack, emperors at least down to Theodosius I (378-395) did campaign and fight in person. The emperor Julian (361-3) died that way; he was another classical leader obsessed with imitating heroes of the past.

The aristocracy of the later Empire (which was not that of the early Empire; it had turned over several times more) contained a large number of career military men. If you look at the art of the period, men's clothes appear quite "medieval" (tunic and close fitting trousers), but this was third- and fourth-century CE military dress. The historian Ammianus Marcellinus (390s) writes with astonishment of a certain pretender to the purple that he was "innocent of bloodshed," he had never fought in battle.
posted by bad grammar at 2:26 PM on April 27, 2008

It's worth noting that combat oriented leadership doesn't make war less exciting. It just means the people who get the job are gung ho about trotting off to have wars.
posted by Phalene at 2:45 PM on April 27, 2008

touchmepete:

When you put down "unquantifiable suppositions", and your next statement starts out with "I think most would...", you kinda run over yourself.

You also bring up the idea of "necessary war". What is that?

Besides a war against genocide, wars benefit only the wealthy citizens directly. But its the lower classes that have to risk their lives. There's a huge gap between risk and reward for the classes.

The wealthy has very little to risk, but much to gain in war, and the poor have a lot to lose (their lives), and little to gain.
posted by hal_c_on at 12:27 AM on April 28, 2008