Greatest general ever?

Best general?

  • Genghis

    Votes: 16 16.8%
  • Napoleon

    Votes: 16 16.8%
  • Alexander

    Votes: 20 21.1%
  • Caesar

    Votes: 7 7.4%
  • Frederick

    Votes: 10 10.5%
  • Hannibal

    Votes: 19 20.0%
  • Belisarius

    Votes: 2 2.1%
  • Subutai

    Votes: 5 5.3%

  • Total voters
    95
Based on the size of his conquests and sucess against foes with higher technology (at least at first) I voted for the great Khan. Also the fact his empire lasted for about 140 years after his death is quite impressive.
 
Based on the size of his conquests and sucess against foes with higher technology (at least at first) I voted for the great Khan. Also the fact his empire lasted for about 140 years after his death is quite impressive.

Welllll... the societies that fought against the Khan weren't really much more technologically advanced, militarily speaking. The Mongols actually had an edge in this regard, with superior weapons, training and organisation. I'll give you siege weapons as an advantage of settled societies, but then the Mongols didn't have fortified cities to attack, and the Mongols also proved themselves to be quite able at siege warefare very early on. The main advantages of settled societies over nomadic ones are in the numbers; the Mongols (at least in the beginning, before they were using subject troops en masse) were almost always outnumbered by their enemies on the battlefield.
 
Hannibal for performing so well at such a massive disadvantage

At Zama, Hannibal had numerical advantage. Yet he lost.

They are the true top generals. Everyone else sucks.
Or you haven't heard of them. :rolleyes:

Definitely the latter. And, as I wrote before, some of those from the list are actually overrated.

For example Caesar - he was not a brilliant tactician, he won his victories by stubbornness and quality of his forces rather than military genius.

If Caesar and Alexander the Great or Hannibal met in battle (with armies of comparable strength, of course), I have no doubts who would win.
 
At Zama, Hannibal had numerical advantage. Yet he lost.



Definitely the latter. And, as I wrote before, some of those from the list are actually overrated.

For example Caesar - he was not a brilliant tactician, he won his victories by stubbornness and quality of his forces rather than military genius.

If Caesar and Alexander the Great or Hannibal met in battle (with armies of comparable strength, of course), I have no doubts who would win.

You seriously believe I've never heard of Caesar, etc before?
 
(Please don't interpret this post as denigrating the abilities of Scipio soon-to-be-Africanus, but I'm simply pointing out some factors not in Hannibal's favor.) The quality of troops makes a difference: Hannibal's elite troops from Italy had taken significant losses over the years and had to be supplemented with fresh mercenaries and levies, neither of which would have been as effective as his original force. That, and the cavalry quantity and quality were much more equal in this battle despite the inferior Roman numbers.
 
I don't think its accepted the Romans had inferior numbers, Carthage and its few willing allies had already been crushed in two previous battles, what was left that Hannibal's small force of veterans could equalize the battle ? In any event, the cavalry quality and quantity were far from equal. The dominant Numidian tribe was with Scipio, and he deserves credit for that. For the first time Hannibal's cavalry were outnumbered, but they succeeded in drawing Masinissa away for awhile. Hannibal's plan was deceptively unsubtle, but he didn't have the timing to win a staged battle of exhaustion. We'll never know if his veterans could have overwhelmed the Roman center, but since all three Roman lines had advanced against their counterparts, its reasonable to assume in line abreast they would have overpowered Hannibal's infantry again. The return of Masinissa clinched it, and turned a possible defeat in to a disaster.
 
Yeah, I was a bit unclear. I was trying to say the Romans had increased in both quantity and quality, whereas in prior battles the Carthaginians had the advantage.

For some reason, I did think the numbers of Roman and Carthaginians cavalry were roughly equal, but a quick check of the references shows that to be completely off. :blush:
 
You seriously believe I've never heard of Caesar, etc before?

I'm sure the Cracked article you read to acquire your current depth of historical knowledge mentioned him, yes.
 
Dachs, I think that you are being a bit unfair about Napoleon. He was for the most part applying the standard dynastic puppeteering techniques of his predecessors. I mean, Louis XIIII was a treacherous warmongering scumbag too. And now that I think of it, so were most french kings before him. Napoleon just happened to me far more successful militarily, do he did it more.
The thing about Napoleon was his refusal to accept the norms of period European diplomacy. Sure, some other rulers bent the rules, but he shattered them into little tiny pieces. That was what defined him, after all, as a soldier and a ruler: his inability to accept limits on his power. The territorial and dynastic revolutions he brought to Europe was unparalleled in the continent's history; nothing like it had happened since the Roman Empire, and nothing like it has happened since.
innonimatu said:
Alexander's lack of statesmanship too was not that uncommon for his age. Stable monarchies didn't had much of a tradition in Greece, and we was a greek ruling a state built on greeks. He actually managed to produce a successor at least, even if he also managed to kill himself (get killed?) to soon (and if not sooner it wasn't for lack of trying).
I'm not condemning Alexander for not having been Antigonos Doson. He was what he was. And what he was, was not a statesman, in the same sense that he was not a philosopher or scientist.
 
The thing about Napoleon was his refusal to accept the norms of period European diplomacy. Sure, some other rulers bent the rules, but he shattered them into little tiny pieces. That was what defined him, after all, as a soldier and a ruler: his inability to accept limits on his power. The territorial and dynastic revolutions he brought to Europe was unparalleled in the continent's history; nothing like it had happened since the Roman Empire, and nothing like it has happened since.

Your really gonna hate on Napoleon for "breaking the norms" yet in another instance celebrate Grant and Sherman's two pronged disrespect of the norms of mid-19th c. warfare? The Union's two greatest generals broke almost every rule of warfare from prisoner exchanges to treatment of civilians and private property (and I don't mean slaves!) yet they are the good guys and Napoleon is a bad guy because he lost?
 
Your really gonna hate on Napoleon for "breaking the norms" yet in another instance celebrate Grant and Sherman's two pronged disrespect of the norms of mid-19th c. warfare? The Union's two greatest generals broke almost every rule of warfare from prisoner exchanges to treatment of civilians and private property (and I don't mean slaves!) yet they are the good guys and Napoleon is a bad guy because he lost?
No. I don't have a moral judgment on Napoleon for breaking the rules of warfare at the time. He was a man with excellent gambler's instincts that paid off for him for many years.

I'm not really even making a moral judgment on Napoleon for breaking the rules of international relations of the time. It's just that his refusal to follow those rules doomed his empire to destruction. A man whose entire foreign relations policy made the overextension and collapse of his empire inevitable cannot be considered a "statesman". Napoleon's policy for Europe was effectively the same as Hitler's was; the only difference between them was Hitler's desire to commit genocide, something that nobody in Napoleon's day would have even begun to contemplate.

So there really isn't any comparison at all with men like Grant or Sherman. But you knew that.
 
No. I don't have a moral judgment on Napoleon for breaking the rules of warfare at the time. He was a man with excellent gambler's instincts that paid off for him for many years.

I'm not really even making a moral judgment on Napoleon for breaking the rules of international relations of the time. It's just that his refusal to follow those rules doomed his empire to destruction. A man whose entire foreign relations policy made the overextension and collapse of his empire inevitable cannot be considered a "statesman". Napoleon's policy for Europe was effectively the same as Hitler's was; the only difference between them was Hitler's desire to commit genocide, something that nobody in Napoleon's day would have even begun to contemplate.

So there really isn't any comparison at all with men like Grant or Sherman. But you knew that.

But what choice did he have other than to create a new rule book. The established order would never allow any serious peace a Napoleon I France nor suffer its existence for longer than they had to. Playing by the rules would have gotten him nowhere.
 
OK Red Oni,

Just because a troll is a troll doesn't mean that the troll in question is inherently wrong.

No wait that might just be the Mtn. Dew talking.
 
But you are wrong. :p
 
At Zama, Hannibal had numerical advantage. Yet he lost.

Sadly, numerical advantages don't always equal wins now do they? At Zama - all we know is that Hannibal was facing the best Roman army in the field under a very good general - his own army was made up of disparate forces, fresh levies, and aging veterans. Had Hannibal had the cavalry advantage, I have no doubt he would have won. In my opinion he was a better commander than Scipio, and faced a lot tougher opponents and challenges in his campaigns in Italy than anything Scipio faced in Spain or Africa. Sadly, Hannibal didn't have enough time to train his army to a decent standard to face Scipio's veterans.
 
And this is, of course, just one example of many (for example in 1941 he was responsible for the disaster in the Kiev Pocket).

Not even close. That was on Stalin, and Stalin alone. Zhukov was fired as Chief of Staff for suggesting that Kiev was a trap, and should be evacuated. Also Marshal Budenny (who no one has ever suggested was a great general) saw that Kiev was a trap, and pleaded to be allowed to evacuate, only to have Stalin refuse.

Zhukov was a good planner/strategist, but IMO his weakness was that he was too stubborn - so when things went more or less according to plan (Moskva 1941, Kursk and
its aftermath 1943, Poland 1945) all was well. But when it didn't (Mars 1942, Berlin 1945) he refused to alter his plans to adapt to the situation.
 
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