General Tacticus
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General Callus Tacticus is a legendary soldier and military leader in Terry Pratchett's Discworld fantasy series. He can be thought of as the Discworld's equivalent of Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great.
He was a soldier of the Ankh-Morpork Empire, and is widely proclaimed to be the greatest general of all time. In fact, on the Discworld the word 'tactics' was derived from his name. Though he is dead at the time of the events contained in the series, his legacy lives on.
He is an amalgamation of various historic characters, including Alexander the Great, Marcus Aurelius and Julius Caesar, which latter can be seen in the title of his autobiography, VENI VIDI VICI: A Soldier's Life. "Veni Vidi Vici" - "I came, I saw, I conquered" is arguably the most famous thing Julius Caesar ever said and "A Soldier's Life" seems to be a popular title for a number of military biographies and autobiographies. Tacticus' name, while possibly related to the Roman historian Tacitus, is most likely a reference to two early Greek writers on the art of war: Aeneas Tacticus and Aelianus Tacticus (who gained the name through being tacticians; the Discworld etymology reverses this). Much of the advice in the autobiography reflects Sun Tzu's The Art of War, as well as comments made by General Patton.
Tacticus conquered a large area of the Discworld, both around the base city of Ankh-Morpork and well into the hubward continent of Klatch. As his campaigns were as expensive as they were effective, the rulers of Ankh-Morpork tried to get rid of Tacticus in an appropriate way. This is why when at one point the far-flung city of Genua, having run out of royalty of their own, asked Ankh-Morpork for a Duke, Tacticus was promoted and sent there. Immediately upon becoming a Genuan citizen, he evaluated the military threats posed by other nations, and thus declared war on Ankh-Morpork, which was the reason why Ankh-Morpork lost its large empire. (This later career is reminsicent of that of General Jean Baptiste Jules Bernadotte, later King Charles XIV John of Sweden.)
When Vimes got a copy of Tacticus' autobiography from the Librarian, he formulated a very Vimes-like opinion as to why history did not particularly like Tacticus (because he didn't get a huge number of his men killed out of his own arrogance and incompetence). Snippets of Tacticus advice turns up in various Discworld chronicles, and it can be gathered that he was a very realistic general (The section of his autobiography entitled "What to Do When One Army Occupies a Well-Fortified Fortress on Superior Ground and the Other Does Not" begins with the sentence "Endeavour to be the one inside.") It is most likely because of this that otherwise "honorable" generals found him to be a dishonest and dirty fighter, as evidenced by his quote, "We must grab history by the scrotum".
In Jingo his name is given as Gen. A. Tacticus. In Wintersmith, however, his first name is given as Callus.
