Subutai

Subutai, who lived from around 1175 to 1248, was a Mongol military commander who rose from humble origins, reportedly the son of a blacksmith near the Onon River in Mongolia, to become the principal strategic architect of the Mongol Empire's conquests under Genghis Khan and later Ogedei Khan. Over more than twenty campaigns he directed the conquest of more territory than any other commander in history, fighting across Central Asia from 1217 to 1220, against the Jin dynasty in China through the 1230s, and into Russia and Europe from 1236 to 1242. His notable victories include the Battle of the Kalka River against a coalition of Rus principalities and the 1241 Battle of Mohi in Hungary, where he used siege engines in ways that anticipated later artillery tactics. His approach emphasized coordinated movement of separated armies across vast distances and maneuvers designed to break enemy morale before delivering a decisive blow, a style of warfare that went largely unstudied in the West until the twentieth century, when military theorists including B. H. Liddell Hart, Erwin Rommel and George Patton examined his campaigns for lessons on mobility and the concentration of force. He is widely regarded as the greatest general in Mongol history and among the greatest in history generally.