Were there many "co-headed" commands where the senior member was younger than the junior?

score:3

Accepted answer

Actually, you can generate any number of examples by looking for cases when a prince or a young king had an experienced general as second-in-command, as some sort of chaperon.

Two examples that spring to mind: Alexander and Parmenio. Don Juan of Austria and Doria.

Upvote:1

Besides the names already provided, one obvious answer would be le Grand Condé and Turenne in the Thirty Years War.

Turenne was not only 10 years older than the Duc d'Enghien, but also Marshal of France. Despite this, d'Enghien was "Prince" so he took command of the campaign, both men conducting battles like Freiburg (1644) and Nördlingen (1645).

Upvote:4

In the Battle of Warsaw 1920 the supreme commander of Polish forces, Józef Piłsudski was born in 1867. The main and real commander was Tadeusz Rozwadowski, born in 1866.

EDIT

I made a research and found some examples like these:

I think there could be lots of such examples: young king (supreme commander) and experienced military or combined forces where the main country is leading the alliance but her commander is young and smaller members of alliance provide older generals.

Upvote:5

Perhaps German chancellor Angela Merkel and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble.

In 1999 Schäuble served not only as chairman of the Christian Democrats' faction in parliament, he was also chairman of the CDU and the front-runner to be nominated his party's candidate for chancellor. Angela Merkel was then CDU general secretary, a lesser rank in the party hierarchy. Former chancellor Helmut Kohl had officially retired but was still pulling strings in the background.

During the 1999 payola scandal affecting the CDU, Merkel stunned everyone by having an op-ed published that essentially consigned Kohl to the scrap heap of history. She had not asked Schäuble for authorization beforehand. It was an audacious move but Schäuble, who like Kohl had been compromised by the CDU's financial scandal, was too weak to punish her. From that moment, the mantle of crown prince and future chancellor was shifted from Schäuble to Merkel. The CDU won the 2005 election and ever since, Schäuble -- who is 12 years Merkel's senior -- has loyally served as a Minister in her cabinet.

More post

Search Posts

Related post