Well 2016 is in the books and 2017 looms ahead of us full of many interesting things. Histroria Militaris will be with you several times a week a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

Below is the most popular post of 2016 with a total of 196 views. Far and away the most. With no further ado I present or re-present Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard (P.G.T).

The Little Creole, The Little Napoleon, Bory, Felix, The Hero of Fort Sumter, P.G.T., and too himself just G.T. The man had many names and many different roles during his life time. He graduated from the US Military Academy as an Engineer and served in the Mexican War.

In 1861 he was the Superintendent of the Academy when South Carolina seceded. He reigned his post and the US Army and became the first brigadier general in the Confederate Army where he led the defenses of Charleston and was victorious against the Union forces at Ft. Sumter. A couple of months later he led the CSA in battle at Bull Run in Virginia and beat the Union Army.

Soon after he was sent to the Western theater and led armies at Shiloh and the Siege of Corinth in Tennessee. In 1863 he went back Charleston and defended the city from a number of attacks by Union forces and perhaps in his greatest achievement he managed to keep Petersburg from falling into Union hands, preventing the Union Army from attacking Richmond.

So one of the most successful Confederate generals, maybe one of the best, so why do we not know his name like we do Jackson, Lee, Longstreet and the others? Most likely it was because he was not that great at the political aspects of generalship and did not play well with others. Including the president and the rest of the high command.

After the war he was offered positions in the armies of Brazil, Romania and Egypt, all of which he declined instead focusing his energy on free the South from the Union occupational forces by speaking out for civil rights and the ability to vote for recently freed slaves. Ran a railroad and invented cable cars. He was also a proliferate author relying on his experiences in the war.

In 1889 when Jefferson Davis passed, Beauregard was asked to head the funeral procession for his former president. He turned it down saying, “We have always been enemies. I cannot pretend I am sorry he is gone. I am no hypocrite.”