Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly

Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly commanded the Catholic League's forces through the Thirty Years' War's bloodiest decade. Between 1620 and 1631 he delivered crushing victories at White Mountain, Wimpfen, Höchst, Stadtlohn, and across the Palatinate; he destroyed a Danish army at Lutter and held the Protestant cause at bay through sheer tactical dominance. The sack of Magdeburg in 1631 killed some 20,000 of the city's 25,000 inhabitants, defenders and civilians alike, and became the war's blackest symbol. That same year Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden crushed Tilly's army at Breitenfeld, ending the aura of inevitability. A Swedish bullet caught him at the Battle of Rain on 15 April 1632; he died in Ingolstadt two weeks later, age 73, one of two supreme commanders of the Holy Roman Empire's war effort and, by one military historian's measure, among the most notable leaders of the modern era.