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Examines how the military experience of three religious founders shaped their spiritual legacy.It is one of the more startling facts of military history that the founders of three of the four "great religions" - Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam - were also accomplished field generals with extensive experience in commanding men in battle. One of these, Muhammad, fought eight battles and was wounded twice, once almost fatally. Another, Siddhartha Gautama (later to become the Buddha) , witnessed so much battlefield carnage that he suffered a psychological collapse. Moses had become so much a "god-intoxicated" personality that it is a reasonable suspicion that he, like the Buddha, was murdered.Indeed, had the experiences of these men in war not been so successful, it is quite possible that their achievements as religious leaders would never have occurred.