In an age of seemingly endless wars where nations can no longer even way when they’ve achieved objectives, let alone satisfying victories, it’s tempting for military students to look to the past. Historians have drawn us neat, definitive maps and provided definitive starts and end dates. What’s more, it brings with it the vicarious sense of power and accomplishment to anyone who projects themselves onto the victors.
This is TopTenz’s salute to those monarchs with the largest lands to survey. Whether restricted to one continent or encircling the entire globe. We won’t only discuss the conquests of nations that became part of the standard curriculum. It’s surprising just how many times militaries steered the course of human history and then drifted out of the cultural memory. But not for now.
10. The Rise of the Parthians
We all know the name Alexander the Great, and as a result, his conquest of the Persian Empire and invasion of the Indian Empire are common knowledge. Much less well-known is what happened to Alexander’s immense Greco-Persian Empire after he died in 323 BC without a named heir. Consequently, civil wars broke out which would endure for decades on and off. The most successful of any claimants to the empire was Seleucus I Nicator. By 300 BC, his armies had taken most of modern Turkey through modern Pakistan. Unlike Alexander’s empire, the Seleucid Empire endured for centuries, spreading a religiously tolerant and financially vibrant trade hub. Yet by 247 BC, a kingdom known as the Parthian Empire emerged with its capital in Nisa which over roughly the next 160 years conquered most of the Seleucid Empire. Afterward, the Parthian Empire would be the most prominent force in the Middle East for centuries, eventually falling in 223 AD.
The real enduring relevance of the Parthian Empire was its role as a rival to the Roman Empire. After Parthian armies demonstrated they could annihilate far larger Roman forces at Carrhae in 44 BC, the Parthian Empire took the initiative for Eastward expansion away from Rome and spent the next few centuries bleeding Rome white, leaving it vulnerable to such invaders as the German tribes. Although the Roman Empire outlasted it by centuries, the Parthians did as much to bring about Rome’s downfall as any barbarian army.
9. Ashoka The Great
Ashoka took the throne of the Mauryan Empire in 268 BC. He inherited a realm that stretched from the Hindu Kush through much of modern Northern India along the Ganges River to the Subarnarekha River. By the end of Ashoka’s reign in 232 BC, it stretched down all but the tip of the Deccan Peninsula and from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal. The human toll of this conquest was vast, even by the standards of the time. At the Battle of Kalinga alone, Ashoka’s army was said to have killed 100,000 people while also suffering tremendous losses themselves due to the valor of the Kalingas allowing them to nearly win the day. With those losses in mind, it’s not so surprising that the Mauryans were willing to force a reported 150,000 women and child prisoners into slavery.
Today Ashoka is at least as celebrated for his alleged attempt at redemption after his conquests left such flows of blood in their wake. He greatly improved the infrastructure of the Mauryan Empire (particularly regarding roads). He not only promoted religious tolerance but helped legitimize Buddhism. Most important of all, he was credited with laws abolishing slavery during his reign.
8. The Swedish Empire
After staying neutral for World Wars I and II, Sweden isn’t thought of as a military powerhouse. But in the 1600s, Sweden was one of the most prominent powers in Central Europe. Beginning in 1560, Sweden fought several wars with Denmark for dominance of the Baltic Sea and came out massively ahead. By 1618 when Ferdinand II of Bohemia attempted to reinstitute absolute Catholic rule in Central and Eastern Europe, the Swedish military had been honed into a disciplined, well-compensated, and well-equipped modern military. It would defeat Poland over a four-year war from 1625 to 1629, defeat Denmark again, and then win over Germany to reject the authority of the Catholic League. By its height in 1658, Sweden had gained control of most of modern Finland, middle Norway, Estonia, and lucrative territory in modern Northern Germany such as Bremen-Verden.
Sweden had the good luck of being ruled by a couple of military geniuses. First, there was Gustavus Adolphus, who in addition to his numerous battlefield victories reformed Swedish trade and industry to allow a flow of foreign capital and trade so that Swedish weaponry became the envy of much of Europe. His greatest single victory was at the battle of Breitenfeld in 1631, where his mobile infantry and artillery ruined the previously undefeatable Catholic League army under Count Tilly. It was only his death at his second greatest victory in 1632 at Luetzen that stopped him from creating a preeminent unified German nation centuries early and forming a league with Sweden that could dominate Europe.
After Adolphus came Charles XI. He reformed the entire Swedish government into a combination of absolute monarchy and parliament, which held the economy together and with it Sweden’s many territorial acquisitions, though even in these Charles XI needed to put down rebellion after rebellion. He also overhauled the Swedish Navy so that it became one of the finest in the world.
7. The Conquest of the Aztecs and Beyond
Hernán Cortés first arrived in Hispaniola (modern Cuba) in 1504. After rising through the ranks through taking part in completing the conquest of that island, in 1519 he disobeyed orders from Governor Velazquez and sailed with 500 men and eleven ships to the Mexican mainland. Over the next two years, he made local allies through feats of arms among a collection of roughly 200 anti-Aztec communities called the Tlaxcala. With them at his back, in 1519 Cortés’s men entered the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan under initially cordial terms, and then had to shelter with them after the Aztecs soured on the Spanish and then attempted to kill them. In 1520 the Tlaxcala sided with Cortés as he confronted Conquistador Narvaez, who’d been sent by Velazquez to displace Cortés. Instead, the Cortés-Tlaxcala alliance defeated and absorbed the new army that had been sent to put them in line, then marched on the Aztec capital again, which they sacked in 1521.
This is a well-covered piece of history, but much less known is what happened next. In 1527, viceroys that the Spanish crown had sent to help administer New Spain accused Cortés of poisoning them, forcing him to return to Spain to defend himself. Even though he was acquitted, while he was away he was stripped of his governorship. This was a real pity for the Spanish Empire, as Cortés’s men had been enthusiastically moving through modern Mexico and beginning to settle in Alta California, modern California. However the initiative for northern expansion was slowed greatly, and thus American settlers were able to outsettle and eventually overwhelm Spanish settlers in the 19th Century. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to be a maverick conqueror.
6. The Forging of the Russian Empire
Today Russia is not only the largest nation in the world, at 6.6 million square miles it’s nearly twice the size of Canada, the second largest. This is a nation that in 1462 when it was known as Muscovy was scarcely larger than modern Germany. How did that happen?
The story Russia first swelling into a giant power begins with two Ivans. The first was Ivan III who took the throne in 1462 and by the end of his reign had more than tripled the size of the nation by annexing several small principalities and in 1478 annexing the Republic of Novgorod. In 1480, the Mongolian Golden Horde came to confront the rising power and was sent packing.
What’s particularly notable about Ivan III’s successes was how bloodless many of them were. For example in seizing Novgorod, he mostly exploited internal rivalries to win over the territory without a major battle. When confronting the Mongols, the Horde’s military was sent retreating without a fight at all. One of his greatest conquests wasn’t another principality, it was the Princess Sofia Paleologue of the Byzantine Empire. That offered tremendous wealth and legitimacy to the rising Eastern European power.
Then there was the 1547 ascension of Ivan IV, not for nothing better known as “the Terrible” for his purges and draconian treatment of all rebels. His military career was decidedly mixed, such as the 24-year-long Livonian War to conquer modern Estonia and Lithuania that ended with at best a stalemate and was marked by Moscow being burned. Still, he was successful with such major territorial gains as the major cities across the Volga River (while driving the Mongols away from Astrakhan without a fight) and the first conquests outside of the Slavic areas.
The single largest conquest that expanded the size of Russia was begun in 1581 when Cossack cavalry under the command of Yermak invaded Siberia. As it happened, the invasion was in retaliation to raids by Mongols under Kuchum as part of an effort to reinstate a great Khanate. Instead of uniting a new empire, Kuchum set his communities to infighting. Yet again infighting greatly aided the Russians in the short term as they established forts throughout Siberia, and also left Siberians much more amenable to rule from Moscow to end the constant raids on each other. Also, the Russian government immediately made Siberian leaders part of the Russian government itself instead of semi-independent colonies as European powers did in such places as the Americas. It also helped that as with colonizations in so much of the world during the Age of Exploration, the Russians brought extremely deadly diseases with them. By 1742, the last of the rebel indigenous groups, the Chukchi, was put down. It seems more than the French Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte, the rise of the Russian Empire was characterized by dividing and conquering.
5. Japanese Empire
By 1905, the expansionist ambitions of Japan got a massive validation when it destroyed the Russian Navy at the Battle of Tsushima Straits. By 1910, it had added Korea to its holdings. For the next couple of decades there was a lull in new conquests as the Meiji Dynasty dealt with such internal matters as putting down a socialist movement, dealing with massively destructive Earthquakes, and reorganizing a largely agrarian economy into a more industrial one.
The conquests restarted dramatically in 1931 when under the pretext that the Chinese military attempted to bomb a civilian train, it invaded and annexed the Manchurian Province, which was particularly shocking as the invasion had been carried out without the approval of the Japanese civilian government. A similarly flimsy pretext of the disappearance of two Japanese soldiers on the border to China would be used in 1937 to justify another Sino-Japanese War wherein most of the Kiangsu and Inner Mongolian provinces were seized, putting such significant cities as Shanghai, Hong Kong, and the capital city of Nanking under Japanese control. By 1942, the high-water mark for the empire, was Burma, Thailand, most of Malaysia and Indonesia, and the Philippines. In less than half a century an island nation of less than 150,000 had swelled to 2.68 million square miles.
The Japanese Empire was particularly aggressive in cultural erasure. For example in Korea, not only did 100,000 Japanese people move to Korea while many Koreans were taken to Japan. Korean historical documents were destroyed en masse. Even forests of native Korean trees were clear-cut so that they could be replaced by Japanese trees. Even today, Japan has many descendants of slaves from its imperial age who attempt to conceal their heritage.
4. The Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates
It can hardly be overstated just how much the arrival of Islam energized the Middle East. After the Prophet Muhammad died in 632 AD, the Rashidun Caliphate began when Abu Bakr was elected his successor and finished the conquest of the Arabian Peninsula that the prophet started. He finished the conquest of the region but did not have long to enjoy it as he died in 634. His successor Umar waged war on modern Iran, and although he died by assassination in 644 they would conquer Iran by 651 under his successor Uthman, who also conquered Armenia. Uthman was assassinated in 656, and his successor was Ali, whose reign would bring Egypt, Libya, and a portion of modern Turkey into the fold. This was all accomplished by a military force that never numbered over 100,000 troops in total.
As indicated by the line of rulers who died shortly after taking power, trouble was brewing in the caliphate from its conception. Not only did the schism of Sunni and Shia Muslims that continues to this day emerge during this time, but Ali was ousted in 661 and replaced by the Umayyad Caliphate. The change in management did nothing to slow down the expansion. By 700, the Caliphate conquered modern Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco in the West. In the East, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan were absorbed and India itself invaded. By 711, the Iberian Peninsula was invaded, and Portugal and almost all of Spain would fall. It wasn’t until the 732 Battle of Poitiers during a raid deep into France that the tide would begin to turn against the Caliphate. In that time, it had reached 5.79 million square miles and was approaching a third of the world’s population at the time.
3. Timur the Lame/Tamerlane
It is surprising how little discussed Tamerlane is today despite being such a colorful and successful figure in military history. Born in 1336 into a minor noble family in modern-day Uzbekistan, he collaborated with the Mongols and by 1364 had distinguished himself both as a mercenary and helped the Mongols conquer the region of Transoxiana. Then he joined forces with his brother-in-law Amir Husayn and conquered Transoxiana for himself by 1366. It was also during this period that he received the infected arrow wound that would leave him incapable of using his right arm and leg properly, hence his “lame” nickname.
Despite betraying a Mongol leader being key to his rise to power, Tamerlane styled himself as a sort of fusion of Mongol power and Islam, and to that end, he married his sister-in-law Saray Mulk Khanum, a supposed descendant of Genghis Khan. He certainly emulated the Mongol reliance on cavalry and tendency to treat cities horribly to the point of destroying landmarks if they resisted as was the case with Herat while generously sparing cities that didn’t such as Tehran. Considering that the lands that he conquered by 1405 included Modern Afghanistan, half of modern Pakistan, Turkmenistan, all of Iran, most of Iraq including Baghdad, the Caucasus Region, and much of Western Turkey, you’ve got to admit it was a working strategy for him.
2. The Mongol Empire
TopTenz has devoted lists to the Mongol Empire before, but it’s time for a rundown of their conquests. In 1206, Temujin united the Steppe (i.e. plateau) people of central Asia, and by 1209, they had conquered Xi Xia, a kingdom on the Northern border of China. War with China came shortly after and by 1215 they had conquered the capital Beijing. In 1219 the Genghis’s wrath moved to the West when the Khwarezm Empire (modern Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Iran) insulted the Khanate first by attacking a caravan under Mongol protection and then by murdering the emissary that the Mongols sent in response. Genghis Khan died in 1227, four years before the Mongols completed crushing the Khwarezm. He was still alive when the Mongols penetrated modern Russian territory in 1223, which started a remarkably successful campaign, even by Mongol standards.
By 1240, the Mongols would add most of modern Russia and Ukraine, most significantly sacking Kyiv. In 1242 they invaded modern Eastern Europe including Poland and Bulgaria. A very inconveniently timed death of the Khan Ogodei spared much of Central Europe from being crushed under the Mongol horse hooves. By 1258, they shifted their sights to the Middle East and conquered Baghdad in a particularly horrific manner. It would be in 1260 in Egypt that they were thoroughly repulsed for the first time and fate turned against the Mongols with a series of defeats, including Vietnam and Japan. It had reached a height of 12 million square miles, incontestably the largest contiguous empire in World history.
1. The “Sun Never Sets” Empires
The United Kingdom did not have the first empire that could claim the sun never set on it. The Portuguese Empire reached that milestone first, having colonies in Africa, India, and the Portuguese East Indies as a result of Vasco Da Gama’s voyage in 1497 and Brazil in 1500. Then it was overshadowed by the rise of the Spanish Empire under the very incestuous Philip II, which with the aforementioned conquest of the Aztecs owned huge portions of North and South America, Equatorial Guinea in Africa, the Philipines, the Cananary, Mariana, and Caroline Islands. Close to home, it could also claim portions of Italy, Austria, and the Netherlands. Unfortunately for Spain Philip II also made the grievous mistake of sending the Spanish Armada to the English Channel in 1588, which would result in a catastrophic defeat that cost half the 130, and the initiative swung massively to Britain’s favor.
Control of India began in the 1600s, with the acquisition of the major trading centers of Madras in 1639 and Bombay by 1661. In 1763, the Treaty of Paris at the end of the French-Indian War would yield control of Canada and give the Kingdom massive holdings in North America even after the American colonies left in 1783. Around that time in 1788, 736 convicts were landed in Australia. In Africa, colonization started in 1787 when 300 freed slaves who had been loyal to Britain during the American Revolution and 70 white prostitutes were landed in Sierra Leone. From that awkward beginning, control expanded to include lands from South Africa in 1820 to Egypt by 1899. By that time, in 1841, Britain had acquired the extremely lucrative islands of Hong Kong and Taiwan. By the time Britain reached its greatest size in 1920 with territorial concessions from Germany and the Ottoman Empire, it was 13.71 million miles, and 412 million people, a quarter of the world’s population, lived in it. Let’s hope we don’t live to see another nation try to top that.
Dustin Koski’s horror comedy Return of the Living which he co-wrote with Jonathan “Bogleech” Wojcik will be the seed of a literary empire to rival any of these empires.