Belief is a powerful force that gives meaning to life beyond the mundane existence for most common people, making people push themselves to their limit. Moses, Hannibal and Maozedong knew how to tap into these powerful forces and pull off the impossible but it is also a dangerous force that can wreak destruction beyond imagination.

Egyptian and the Way Out from Slavery With Moses

Moses was the leader of the Israelites, an enslaved minority working under the Egyptian Pharaoh building his pyramids and other megastructure projects.

The Pharaohs need more smart slaves like the Hebrews to be able to finish his megastructure projects faster but when there are too many of them then their numbers might result in disobedience and even a revolution. The guards build nothing and consume more resources than the slaves so it does not make sense to have too many guards either.

To limit the strength of the slaves within the Egyptian empire, the Pharaoh ordered all new born Hebrew boys to be killed or turned into XO female in order to assimilate the Hebrew into the Egyptian identity, to make the Hebrew looking more like the Egyptian. By reducing the number of Hebrew baby boys, more XY and XO Hebrew marriages and more inter-marriages between the Egyptian man and Hebrew women, the Pharaoh would make few Hebrew leaders looking more like them and be able to use them as middle managers to direct the Hebrew slave population.

People have the tendency to comply and follow the people who look like them in the pre-tele-vision era. Most animals do not attack or eat their kinds. Allying with the people who look like you is a natural evolutionary tendency of most animals. Howerver, these tendencies have heavily reduced with people screentime and constant bombardment of American media via Television and smartphone devices.

One theory is that after the Pyramids were finished, Moses, an Egyptian-Israelite mixed boy, led the unemployed slaves away from the Niles through the deserts to a dry mountain called Mount Sinai to die so they are no longer a threat to the Egyptian empire.

Modern infantry training is 40 km a day running. So a trip from Giza to Mount Sinai of 463 km would take at least 12 days or more. They are marching with women, children and the elderly so it probably will take much longer and they are marching away from water sources to a dry mountain with no water.

Another theory is that Moses marched his followers from one isolated settlement to others with goats as water supply and food to recruit more followers into one single strong force. They marched from Giza to Sinai and came back to the Pyramids of Giza as a snowballed army to take on the Pharaoh and his guards.

People would join them along the way, weaker elders and childrens would die and by the time they got to Mount Sinai, only stronger men, women and older children would survive. They would be fit for services, free of dependents and ready to take the Pyramid of Giza. However without any supply from Red Sea port, longterm water and food supply will still be a major issue for this newly found Hebrew army.

That is kind of what happened in the Egyptian myth where Moses marched to Mount Sinai and came back with God 10 commandments, rained hells down to Giza, and liberated the Egyptian slaves. Moses drafted his army by walking from one small community of free Israelites in the desert to the others with the escaped Israelite slaves. The group kept getting larger and stronger and by the time they get back to Giza, they would be a stronger fighting force than the Egyptian army. One thing for sure is that no one can build a nation from Mount Sinai and they need to come back to the Nile.

Hannibal and the Impossible March Toward Rome

After millions of years of random tectonic plates movement, somehow the Western civilization was awarded the largest bay on earth: the Mediterranean with the Baltic sea came in second. The Mediterranean served as a Kid swimming pool for the infant empires of the Western world to iterate their ocean fairing equipment design and made the infantanic first steps in sea explorations. It is like a massive mother womb with plenty of salts and spaces.

From 300 BC, Carthage and Rome were the two main powers of the Western civilization. Carthage is the capital of modern day Tunisia. She was rewarded with a fertile delta of the Medjerda river as well as a Northern African port at the center of the Mediterranean. Carthage arable land allowed the early traders to quickly grow their settlement population and have surpluses for trading with other city states in the Mediterranean.

With trading boats and vessels as the main low energy per mile mode of transportation via the ocean natural highways and the Mediterranean calm sea, Carthage quickly became the largest metropolis in the world. Profitable trading with city states and colonies around the Mediterranean sea allows Carthage to build the largest navy in the Mediterranean and inevitably come into conflict with Rome for the dominance of the Mediterranean sea and its trading routes.

Carthage, the trading empire, strength lies in its superior ability to negotiate and trade with different ethnic groups who spoke different languages and have different traditions. Carthage income sources come from its superior capability to build and control ocean faring vessels and make favorable trades with other city states. It's like the Inter-Milan.

Rome, a militaristic empire, strength lies in its systematic thinking and a well-structured and well-trained infantry force. No wonder why Mos-Cow, who called itself the third Rome, started with the MOS - Man Operating System and ended with COW - Commanding Officer Woman. Rome income comes from its ability to subdue city states like a Mafia and get regular tributes from the rich city states for protection. It’s like the AC-Milan.

Even with a superior navy at the beginning of the Punic war, the ramping tactic via superior ship control of Carthrage’s navy failed to secure their dominance at sea against the new infantry-first design of the Roman naval ship. And then by picking the battlefield location of Sicily in the expected all-out war between Rome and Carthage, Rome was able to minimize Carthage naval advantages while maximizing its Infantry advantage and won the first Punic war.

Carthage lost their naval superiority after Rome destroyed and ravaged their ships and their capital during the first Punic War. Hannibal is the son of a Carthage general who failed to capture the crucial strategic island of Sicily in the struggle between Carthage and Rome for the dominance of the Mediterranean sea. Hannibal was born and raised to take on Rome.

He was trained from childhood to lead a land coalition of flexible, diverse forces from all corners of Carthage Empire whose skills and tactics are exotic and unpredictable to take on Rome's rigid military structure. Carthage had to evolve itself from a Naval and Trading Empire whose main mission is to protect trade routes and maximize profits to a combined land force of Libyan infantry and French Gallic infantry, Spanish horsemen and African elephants to take on the Roman shield walls.

Carthage could have focused on upgrading their naval ships with the infantry, horse and elephant transport ability. However, as a naval trading empire with little engineering and science capability, the ability to evolve their ship design quickly during war would not be possible. So instead of building an amphibious landing force and retaking Sicily and using it as a stepping stone to take on Rome, Hannibal used their silver and negotiation skill to create a massive combined army and march on Rome through Spain on land.

The African elephant was added to the combined army of Carthage to serve as the tank of the Ancient era. However, half of Hannibal's army perished and no siege equipment or elephants survived long after the march through the mountainous Alps of Switzerland. The uphill battle of Carthage culture and civilization could have just ended there at the city of Milan where the weakened army of Hannibal can not be resupplied.

The good news is Hannibal is having his back against the massive wall of the Alps mountain so no worry about being outflanked. The previous Roman expansion campaigns in France and Switzerland also made a lot of enemies for them in the North. It is unclear whether through trading or personal charisma or common grudges toward Rome, many French Gallic and Swiss warriors as well as Northern Italian tribes who did not speak Latin, joined Hannibal and his forces through his march across the Alps as well as supplying them with warriors, weapons, food and intelligence.

Whether the Roman army did not really have a lot of friends in Italy outside of their city walls or Hannibal had a massive network of spies in Italy before and during his campaigns, the Roman legions kept being outmaneuvered and ambushed in their own backyard. Hannibal's more mobile army and his understanding of Italian terrain kept getting him victories after victories, destroying Roman legion after legion from North to South of Italy. Roman Legion structure is the same across all Roman armies so if you figure how to crack one, you can kinda keep cracking all the others.

However, without siege equipment, Hannibal can not take on Rome directly with his horses and elephants. Rome is also too well supplied so the under-supplied Hannibal army can not surround and starve out Rome either like smaller city states and towns in Italy. So Hannibal continued his strategy of parading from around Italy, liberating one Italian tribute city state after the others and making Rome look bad. Rome will then have to send more legions chasing after his more mobile army with their heavy shields and armors.

After destroying close to 20 Roman legions with his army and allies across Italy, Hannibal sent messengers to Rome to ask for their surrender of the Sicily island as well as messengers to Carthage for reinforcements and supplies.Bad news for Hannibal, the Roman senates would not negotiate because they knew in the long run it is very difficult for Hannibal to resupply his army across Spain and the Alps as well as through the Mediterranean sea while Rome can resupply itself indefinitely through its seaport and its naval fleet.

The continued threats from the Roman navy and their forward forces in Valencia, Spain also made the Carthage senates less confident in sending the rest of their army and navy to resupply Hannibal force in Italy while the capital was still being raided directly from Sicily. So in the end after destroying so many Roman legions, the army of Hannibal was still bleeding slowly and declining in numbers. Eventually, Hannibal had to set sail back to Carthage with a small surviving force and never be able to come back to Italy.

Mao Zedong and The Long March to North West China

The #LongMarch or #TrườngChinh was the famous military maneuver that propelled #MaoZeDong into becoming the leader of the #CCP and their #RedArmy. The #LongMarch saved the party from total annihilation by the #KMT and put their peasant army beyond the reach of the #KMT logistic supply line.

In the early 1900, the #Qing dynasty after centuries of stagnation finally collapsed with #Puyi, a 2 year old, as their last emperor. #Puyi did survive through WW2 and the Civil War though to become a conversation partner of #MaoZeDong inside #Beijing #ForbiddenCity. After the #Qing collapse and the founding of the #RepublicOfChina, all the #Ports of China are now open for #Western power influences.

The Chinese #KMT military started to follow Japan's footsteps by adopting Western military structures, clothings, weapons and tactics. Chinese coastal cities are quickly urbanized with Western building architectures, railways and cars. Both the Communism and Facism ideologies as well as weapons, ammunition and gasoline were traveling from Europe and their colonies North from the port of Canton, Fujian and Shanghai.

The struggle between the 1000s year of Chinese cultures and identities and newly imported Western cultures and influences turned the once united Qing dynasty whose map did not look like a chicken into fragmented warring states once again. Someone once said “Chaos is the Ladder” and Mao Zedong were super good at climbing that very fragile ladder. The CCP was founded by Chinese Abroaders who studied in Soviet secret universities but their influences on Chinese affairs and the CCP faded away after the Long March.

While the upper classes, urban coastal cities service workers and #KMT militaries quickly gained wealth and influence after their newly adopted identities through Chinese industrialization. The peasants and scholars in the Chinese interior cities had little to gain from the newly chaotic state of Chinese affairs.

By moving the fragile Chinese Red Army and their supporters on foot and horses, who had unlimited range as long as they had food and water, to the Chinese interior provinces and mountainous terrains, now the KMT gasoline-powered war machine had a range problem.

KMT and the Empire of Japan had a shared ideology but after the rape of Nam Kinh, two Western-influenced Industrialized military became mortal enemy. Both the Empire of Japan and KMT failed to reach the CCP strong base of highly elevated delta of Xian during the Chinese modern Three Kingdom period of the 1940s.

While #KMT and #EmpireofJapan were erosing each other strength, the Red Army was being restocked with supplies, weapons and ammunition to full strength through the narrow of passes of #Xian mountain range. After WW2, the RED army being supplied directly from #SoViet #TranSiberian railway in the north quickly overran the #KMT #Canton-based UK-backed army.