George Washington

It was a cold December morning in 1776, and in the dark just before dawn a man stood on the banks of the Delaware River. His boots were wet and his coat caked with ice.
His boots were wet, his coat caked with ice. Nearby, soldiers stood silent and shivering, their breath rising in ghostly plumes against the dark.
It had been a year of failures, of pullback after pullback, of an adversary who looked invincible. And yet here he was, poised to once again cross a frozen river with a tattered army to take on an empire that had dominated the world for centuries.
George Washington was not the greatest military strategist of his age. He was not the most experienced general. He had never commanded a large army before the revolution.