
Not one to let his own failings stand in the way of personal glory, Pillow submitted fanciful accounts of his actions at the Battles of Contreras and Churubusco to various newspapers, incurring the wrath of overall American commander Winfield Scott. After making a laughingstock of himself by ordering his men to entrench on the wrong side of fortifications at Camargo, Pillow bungled his role at the Battle of Cerro Gordo, making himself the low point of a resounding American victory. He first demonstrated his ineptitude during the Mexican-American War, where he had received an appointment to the rank of major general from his friend Pres. In a war that saw more than its share of unskilled politically appointed generals, Pillow was arguably the worst on either side. Pillow suffered slightly more casualties than Grant in the engagement, which possibly makes the Battle of Belmont the high point of Pillow’s military career. Grant made his Civil War debut at the Battle of Belmont against Confederate Gen. Thomas, Phil Sheridan, and William Tecumseh Sherman routinely bested their Confederate opponents. That may have been true in the east (the worst of the Union generals in that theater rates his own entry on this list), but in the west it was a much different affair. Caepio may have been a terrible general, but he was apparently an exceptional thief.Īrmchair historians often generalize that during the American Civil War, while the Union held a clear advantage in material, the Confederacy could field superior commanders. Some 15,000 talents of gold (the so-called Gold of Tolosa) had vanished under his watch, never to be recovered. Caepio reportedly lived out the remainder of his life in luxury, however. Although he managed to escape the battle unharmed, Caepio was stripped of his Roman citizenship and exiled. The Romans lost an estimated 80,000 infantry and perhaps 40,000 auxiliaries and cavalry, numbers that dwarf the staggering totals at Cannae. Maximus managed to form up his men but to no avail. The Cimbri destroyed Caepio’s force and, emboldened by their success, marched on Maximus’s camp. While Maximus was conducting negotiations with the Cimbri, a Germanic tribe that had invaded the Roman province of Transalpine Gaul, Caepio rashly attacked the Cimbri army on October 6, 105 BCE.

Consul Gnaeus Mallius Maximus was Caepio’s superior officer, but Caepio refused to obey Maximus or even put his forces into a shared camp with him. Marcus Licinius Crassus was a self-aggrandizing opportunist who started a pointless war with the Parthians, and Publius Quinctilius Varus lost three legions at Teutoburg Forest, but Proconsul Quintus Servilius Caepio manages to top them both with his actions at the Battle of Arausio. This entire list could be populated with Roman commanders, but one manages to rise above the rest with an ineptitude that defies logic. SpaceNext50 Britannica presents SpaceNext50, From the race to the Moon to space stewardship, we explore a wide range of subjects that feed our curiosity about space!.Learn about the major environmental problems facing our planet and what can be done about them! Saving Earth Britannica Presents Earth’s To-Do List for the 21st Century.Britannica Beyond We’ve created a new place where questions are at the center of learning.100 Women Britannica celebrates the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, highlighting suffragists and history-making politicians.
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