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Es un pobre general que perdió su ejército.

Es un pobre general que perdió su ejército.
He is an unfortunate general who lost his army.
From Lesson 308:Meaning-changing adjectives·Spanish (Spain)

Questions & Answers about Es un pobre general que perdió su ejército.

Why is pobre placed before general in this sentence?
When pobre comes before the noun, it means "unfortunate" or "pitiful". If it were placed after the noun (un general pobre), it would mean the general has no money. Because this general lost his army, we want to express that he is unfortunate, not necessarily broke!
Why use the preterite perdió instead of the imperfect perdía?
Losing the army is viewed as a single, completed event in the past, which triggers the preterite tense. If we used the imperfect (perdía), it would sound like he was in the process of losing it or used to lose his army on a regular basis!
Can we use quien instead of que for "who" here?
In this type of sentence, no. Although quien means "who", Spanish uses que as the standard relative pronoun to directly attach defining information to a noun. You would generally use quien if there were a preposition (like con quien) or if the clause was just extra, non-essential information separated by commas.
Since being "unfortunate" feels like a temporary state, why do we use Es instead of Está?
The verb is actually connecting the subject to the noun phrase un pobre general. In Spanish, we always use the verb ser (here as Es) to identify who or what someone is, regardless of the adjectives attached to that noun.

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