Found this glib, soundbytey bit of info in the Sunday Times Magazine (p7, Apr 24th, '05). It's aptly under their regular "Listomania" feature. I've just typed it up word for word. But who's missing?:

"Listomania"

The Men Who Conquered The Most Miles

Genghis Khan (c1162-1227): 4,860,000 sq miles, including northern China, Mongolia, southern Siberia and central Asia.

Alexander the Great (356-323BC): 2,180,000 sq miles, including southern Balkan peninsula, Asia Minor, Egypt and the entire Middle East.

Tamerlane (c1336-1405): 2,145,000 sq miles, including most of the Near East.

Cyrus the Great (c600-529BC): 2,090,000 sq miles, including the Median Empire, Babylonia, Assyria, Syria, Palestine, the Indus Valley and southern Turkistan.

Attila (c406-453), King of the Huns: 1,450,000 sq miles, encompassing most of central and eastern Europe and the western Russian plain, but not Gaul.

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945): 1,370,000 sq miles, including most of continental Europe - extending from the English Channel to the outskirts of Moscow and from North Africa to Norway - all of which he lost within 3.5 years.

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821): 720,000 sq miles, including France, Belgium, Hollan, Germany, Poland, Switzerland and Spain.

I don't think you can include Hitler, unlike the others, he didn't take part of any of the campaigns.

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821): 720,000 sq miles, including France, Belgium, Hollan, Germany, Poland, Switzerland and Spain.

Napoleon didn't "conquer" France, he was their consul/emperor. Nor did he conquer Belgium and Holland, the campaign that captured those was before his time of political power and he wasn't involved. You could add Italy but only parts of Germany to that list though depending on how you classify conquering. Now if you mean areas under his political control then that's fair enough.

Plus you could add large parts of Russia, Poland and Austria, to the Napoleon part of the list.

Woot for Central Asian horsemen!


edit: I should read the Times' Magazine more often. I get driven away by all the fashion ads.

Alexander the Great (356-323BC): 2,180,000 sq miles, including southern Balkan peninsula, Asia Minor, Egypt and the entire Middle East.

Their definition of the Middle East seems awfully liberal ...

Can we include any British generals at the time of the Empire in this thread?

What about Ivan IV (the terrible)?

Can we include any British generals at the time of the Empire in this thread?

Probably be more relevant I guess to include Victoria as head of state, but she wasn't a man of course :D

OK - I didn't deliberately leave anyone off the list. Like I said, I typed it up word for word. So this isn't a quiz. But there were a number of fellows who I thought should have got up there, as shakey as grounds for creating such a list are in the first place.

I thought initially of Darius III. His empire was HUGE!!! But alas most of it was created by his greatgranddaddy(?) Cyrus, who does get a mention. Worth pointing out though that the only reason Alexander got up to number 2 is that he took out Darius and in turn gained his massive empire.

The other person I thought of was the greatest Mauryan Emperor, Ashoka, in India (c.100 years after Alexander's time). He fits the bill perfectly. His empire actually was conquered by his own hands and it spanned all over modern day India, except for the extreme south. Now that's a landmass the size of Europe, so he's gotta be above Attila the Hun or at least Adolf. Was also responsible for the spread of Buddhism after feeling such remorse for having conquered and slain so much and so many. So he probably conquered more souls than the listed guys!

@Rambuchan: I think you're confusing Darius the Great, who restored, reorganized, and enlarged the Achaemenid Empire after Cambyses's murder, and Darius Codomanus, who, a century and a half later, lost the same empire to Alexander.

What about Ivan IV (the terrible)?

He did expand Russia but not much, his only "achievement" was the number of people that he killed. :p

He did expand Russia but not much, his only "achievement" was the number of people that he killed. :p
There was one Russian Czar that I heard conquered like 40 or 50 miles a day. Or maybe it was 4 or 5... :hmm:

He did expand Russia but not much, his only "achievement" was the number of people that he killed. :p
Well, I'd not call the conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan "not much", but certainly, he's not in the league of Genghis Khan or Cyrus the Great.

Hi guys,

Didn't Cyrus the Great suffer a defeat at the hands of the Queen of the MassaGetae? Tomyris?

Wooooooooooooo Getae tribes pwn all!

regards,

He did expand Russia but not much, his only "achievement" was the number of people that he killed. :p

Yeah, but after all, isn't that what it's really all about? ;)

Wonder how many julius Ceasar racked up--had to retake most of the roman republic plus marched back and forth across gaul 4 billion times.

but certainly, he's not in the league of Genghis Khan or Cyrus the Great.

That's what i meant. He not comparable to Ghenghis and the other on that list.

There was one Russian Czar that I heard conquered like 40 or 50 miles a day. Or maybe it was 4 or 5...

Well considering that Peter the Great (200 years after Ivan the Terrible) was the first Russian Czar, it could have been Peter that you meant, but i honestly don't know if some Russian Czar ever conquered that much a day.


Yeah, but after all, isn't that what it's really all about?

You can expand an empire by not even killing that many people. It's just more tricky to do if you use the pen instead of the sword.

For instance a German merchant claimed the whole of Namibia as a German colony without killing anyone and within the space of 30 days. (Not sure about the time it took him, but i think it was 30 days.)

http://www.ehistory.com/world/ListPreviewOnly.cfm?LID=43&PreviewOnly=yes&public=yes&track=front

Francisco Pizarro and Hernando Cortez, which are on that list, make sense.
There was one Russian Czar that I heard conquered like 40 or 50 miles a day. Or maybe it was 4 or 5...
Maybe Peter the Great?

heraclius of Byzantium reconquered the levant and Egypt, then went on to capture persepolis

Hi guys,

Didn't Cyrus the Great suffer a defeat at the hands of the Queen of the MassaGetae? Tomyris?

Wooooooooooooo Getae tribes pwn all!

regards,
Yes he did, but the Massagetae - a tribe in Central Asia - had very little to do with the Getae, a tribe in the Balkans.

Hi TLC,

ThracianGetae, MassaGetae etc. are all part of the Getae family are they not?

regards,

Justinian conquered most of the old Western Roman Empire.

Realistically, we'd need to work out a value system that incorporates:
1. Population (P)
2. Wealth (W)
3. Mineral resources (M)
4. Total land area (D)

...If you were to try to objectively list conquerors.

Let's see...
Divide important mineral resources (not counting those unavilable/useless at the time) into 3 groups depending on value. With the most valuable being 3 and least being 1.
Multiply the number of tonnes (this would have to be a rough estimate, of course) of this resource by the group number. This'd give M.

Wealth can be calculated in $, with exchange rates between past and present being based upon bread prices. This'd give W.

Land area can be in KM/H.

Population could be in numbers, or percentages.

P x W x M x D = Total conquest value

This'd require more research, and would still be fairly approximate but would mostly get the job done. :)

He did expand Russia but not much, his only "achievement" was the number of people that he killed. :p
Simply wrong. Ivan the IV was the one under which Russia became what she is now. You can't really count him as a general cuz he did not participate in most campaigns (unlike Napoleon, but like Hitler), but he did conquer a lot.
http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/russia/RusI4.jpg
After which Russia moved into Syberia..... and thats a lot of land.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a9/1533-1896.gif

In fact he started killing people when he stopped expanding. Sort of like "Loius the Sun God"....

In hindsight, the Total Conquest Value would need to be divided by, say a million to get a more manageable number.

What about Lord Horatio Kitchner

Egypt (Protectorate vs Mahdi)
Sudan (Protectorate vs Mahdi)
South Africa (Boer War)
India (Top general)
WW1 (Gallipolli)

Gallipoli doesn't rank highly on the scale of human conquest.

And the top 4 seem more like holding actions than conquests...

Mahmud of Ghazni's up there somewhere.
Asoka didn't conquer the whole empire. The empire was started by Chandragupta.
I wonder how much Attila could have conquered since the Hunnish empire was pretty good sized before him. The Huns conquered the western Russian plain before he was born.