Being something of a Russian-history maven, I would have to say that Peter the Great deserved the title (and not just because he stood head-and-shoulders over his contemporaries and was strong enough to astound anybody). Without him, or someone like him, Russia may well have ended up going the route the Ottoman Empire did---trying too late to modernize, and being gobbled up, piece by piece, by its neighbors.
I have thought about writing an alternate-history fic where Sultan Murad IV (who was also a giant and enormously strong) lived longer and got interested in Western techniques, instead of dying relatively young and being succeeded by his insane brother Ibrahim. An Ottoman "Peter the Great" -type figure would have been a huge change. But then, I've started reading the "Investigator Yashim" mysteries, following the adventures of an eunuch solving crimes in early nineteenth-century Constantinople. The first one involves him dealing with the blowback from the "Auspicious Incident,"where the Janissaries, who had become obscurantist Praetorians and parasites, got blown up in favor of a more Westernized army.
And Frederick got the title mainly for his generalship, whatever you or I may think of his wars' justifications. On this, I have to defer to one Napoleon Bonaparte, who told his marshals to doff their hats when visiting Frederick's tomb: "If that man were alive, we would not be here."
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Date: 2013-04-09 12:24 am (UTC)I have thought about writing an alternate-history fic where Sultan Murad IV (who was also a giant and enormously strong) lived longer and got interested in Western techniques, instead of dying relatively young and being succeeded by his insane brother Ibrahim. An Ottoman "Peter the Great" -type figure would have been a huge change. But then, I've started reading the "Investigator Yashim" mysteries, following the adventures of an eunuch solving crimes in early nineteenth-century Constantinople. The first one involves him dealing with the blowback from the "Auspicious Incident,"where the Janissaries, who had become obscurantist Praetorians and parasites, got blown up in favor of a more Westernized army.
And Frederick got the title mainly for his generalship, whatever you or I may think of his wars' justifications. On this, I have to defer to one Napoleon Bonaparte, who told his marshals to doff their hats when visiting Frederick's tomb: "If that man were alive, we would not be here."