The Best General in History
- Thread starter Damnyankee
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justinian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justinian perhaps the best Byzantine emperor, also with a little help from Belisarius
Keroro
Dororo: Ninja Frog
Well he brought it to its knees in Ireland, but I'm not sure whether he had much of an effect on the Empire anywhere else.
Again we have to ask whether we are talking about a General or a head of state. AFAIK there is little evidence of Justinian being much of a General, though Belisarius was enough of a genius to make up for that shortcoming.
IMHO Belisarius was not only the best and most loyal General Byzantium ever had, but also the best Emperor it never had.
Honestly the empire fell apart after that Ireland was the first and only country to leave the Commonwelth
after that India got Independence followed by most of their African Colonies
But Michael Collins did it by millitaristic means
Keroro
Dororo: Ninja Frog
The British always had more trouble dealing with its 'celtic fringe' than it did in maintaining far-flung overseas possessions. It's very interesting that you believe that the Empire fell apart after Michael Collins. You conveniently avoid mentioning the massive economic and political pressure that was brought to bear in the post WW II situation by the US. It was the US that forced the British Empire to fragment, not the loss of Southern Ireland.
India would have got independence anyway, it should have become a dominion at about the same time as Australia and Canada except for the racist attitude of some colonial administrators.
Collins is a major inspiration to guerilla and resistance movements, I will not dispute that. Resistance movements from the Israelis to the Palestinians to the Iraqis owe him a debt of gratitude for pioneering radical military tactics.
I can see where ur comin from on the US side but Britain always felt that Ireland was the most important of its colonies, they put huge resources and troops into keeping Ireland. Nearly all of their veterans from ww1 went into the war of independence in Ireland hence the black and tans
Collins had a few hundred unarmed untrained men and he beat thousands of victorious British war veterens job well done if you ask me
Collins had a few hundred unarmed untrained men and he beat thousands of victorious British war veterens job well done if you ask me
onejayhawk
Afflicted with reason
Belisarius is a principle reason to think LESS of Justinian. His treatment of a loyal general is a guide book in how not to do things.
In addition the attempt to reconquer the west and redecorate the east put an enormous strain on the empire. When a plague broke, there were no resources left.
J
Mon Mauler
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I'm not sure if I've posted on this board before, but, in my mind, there can be no discussion over who the top 5 military commanders of all-time were. They were Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, and Hannibal.
Alexander the Great began as the ruler of Macedon, more a confederation of deeply divided by factions than a true nation in the wake of the assassination of his father, Philip II. After his father's death he quickly subdued the Macedonian possessions and then executed the invasion of Persia, which his father had been planning previous to his death. In a life of war Alexander almost always fought against numerically superior opponents, vanquished them all, and brought each of his enemies into the folds of the Macedonian Empire. A legitimate detraction can be assessed against him because he fought with an army that was organized and outfitted mostly by Philip, and the phalanx is widely considered to be the ultimate fighting force of its time; however, Alexander still needed to use strategic brilliance to conquer the vast Persian empire and utilized revolutionary tactics at Guagamela, Issus and the Hydaspes. Another legitimate complaint is that Alexander lost control of his army after the Battle of the Hydaspes, and was forced to terminate his plans to invade India. Nevertheless, Alexander did have the forsight to perceive mutiny and prevented it by turning back at the appropriate time. Alexander excelled at sieges, as the Siege of Tyre can attest. Tactically, he had no equal in his time, as his success at Guagamela stands amongst the greatest military feats in history. Logistically he had no equal as he spread his supply lines across the Asian continent and into India. Alexander is one of the special few military commanders that fought in every imaginable condition and terrain, almost always against numerically superior foes, without ever being defeated. He conquered the known world.
All of the five men at the top of my list are conquerors, and Napoleon is certainly that. When he assumed command of the Army of Italy, it was an undersupplied and ragged bunch of malcontents that had been demoralized by contant defeat at the hands of the Austrians, and France itself was besieged a coalition of European nations bent on its destruction. From there, Napoleon conquered the whole of Italy, and that campaign is widely cited as one of he greatest ever conducted in the history of the world. Then he requested to go to Egypt for glory, and the Directory complied simply to get the popular general out of their hair. On his way there he took Malta from the Knights of St. John, which they had ruled for 250 years, before vanquishing the Mamelukes at the Pyramids. Only the stupidity of Brueys and the talent of Nelson prevented a crushing French victory, for Napoleon won every land battle in Egypt before sneaking past the English to return to France. There he set out to meet the third coalition that had aligned against France and won one of the most decisive victories in the history of war against the combined forces of Russia and Austria, under the command of Alexander, at Austerlitz. When the Fourth Coalition came to tear him down he stood strong at Eylau and won ultimate victory at Friedland. Then he conquered Spain. The Fifth Coalition didn't fare much better than the Fourth, and after a bloody fight at the twin battles of Aspern-Essling he took Wagram thereby conquering Austria, which had been France's greatest enemy during the Napoleonic Wars. Of course, his invasion of Russia is widely considered one of the greatest military blunders in history, but it didn't need to end up that way. Napoleon had his army positioned for a crushing and decisive victory at Borodino, but failed to pull the trigger and missed a myriad of opportunities to extinguish the Russian threat and remove them from European affairs for decades to come. He was very ill at the time and failed to show any of the flair that marked his previous campaigns. Even after retreating from Russia, the Sixth Coalition seemed doomed to the same fate as the others when he won another decisive victory at Dresden before finally suffering a crushing defeat at Leipzig, where he was outnumbered by at least a factor of 2 to 1. By then it was apparent that Napoleon would never regain the empire he had so brilliantly and meticulously conquered in the fifteen years between his assumption of command in Italy and his invasion of Russia. Blucher and Wellington finally delivered the death blow at Waterloo after Napoleon escaped from Elba, raised a strong army, and set out to reclaim his empire. Like Alexander, Napoleon can be criticized for overstretching his means. But unlike Alexander Napoleon never lost control of his army. Even after sustaining a hard march across Russia, in which the Russian army repeatedly and prudently refused to give battle, the army remained loyal. After he had been vanquished and exiled French soldiers overwhelmingly came to help him reclaim the French empire. The other legitimate complaint against the Emperor is that many of his marshals were military geniuses in their own right, but it is hardly an indictment of Napoleon that he saw the innate talent of his subordinates and utilized those talents to great effect. Napoleon was a master of dividing his enemies, concentrating his attack, and defeating them in detail. His battles are studied assiduously by every major military institution in the world. Like Alexander, Napoleon fought in every imaginable condition and terrain. He usually fought against numerically superior opponents with comparable, if not better, military technology, and he rarely lost. In all the nations of Europe aligned to send five separate coalitions against him specifically and he defeated all but the last. In the end, Napoleon's influence over the world was so great that the entire epoch has assumed his name.
Genghis Khan started his military career in the worst possible situation of any of the leaders in my top 5. When he was still very young, his father, the leader of his clan, was assassinated. The tribe would not stand to be ruled by the young Tejumin (who would later accept the name Genghis Khan), and exiled both him and his mother. As he grew into his teenage years he recruited less than a dozen hardy men to start raids on the clan that had exiled him. After avenging his father's death and assuming control of the tribe he subdued all of the tribes enemies and united the disparate tribes of the Mongol plains. Then he made war against the long-standing overlords of the Mongol tribes, the Jin and Western Xia of modern day China. Tactically, Genghis emphasized mobility and espoused the use of horse archers as well as the feigned retreat. From the Chinese he learned how to construct many technologically advanced siege weapons and adopted them for mobilized deployment on campaign so that he did not need to construct his siege engines during battle. After bring the Chinese to heel, he set out to destroy the Khwarezemid Empire (modern day Persia), which militarily outnumbered him by a factor of at least 4 to 1. The sieges of Bukhara, Samarkand, and Urgench attest to his military ability. He was feared by all of his foes, and after being decimated when sallying from their fortress of Samarkand, the Persians refused to give battle to Genghis on open ground. After bringing the Khwarezmids into the folds of his growing empire, he returned to Mongolia and set out to commit the final subjugation of Western Xia. He died aptly, on his horse, on campaign, as his forces struck the final blow at the Chinese forces. f course, it is a legitimate detraction of Genghis to attribute some of his military success to his "dogs of war," specifically Subutai and Jebe. Specifically, although Genghis planned the invasion of the Kara-Khitan Khanate, it was Jebe that executed the subjugation of those peoples. Furthermore, it was Subutai and Jebe that devised the Great Raid against Volga-Bulgaria, and they conducted it successfully without the leadership of Genghis. However, Genghis excelled at information gathering, and built one of the largest spying operations to that day. It operated mostly along the Silk Road and provided him with the amount of information needed so that he could meticulously plan his campaigns. Genghis Khan also organized his forces on the order of ten, which closely resembles most modern armies. His mobile tactics, specifically the use of pincer attacks, were emulated by Guderian and Manstein in devising the brutal German Blitzkreig that come some seven hundred years later. He was a pioneer in the new use of military technology, strategy, tactics and psychological warfare. Like any great conqueror, Genghis Khan soundly defeated generally numerically superior opponents in a variety of terrain and conditions. Like Napoleon, he operated on a system of meritocracy and gave his generals the freedom to operate to the highest level of effectiveness. Like Alexander he conquered a vast and sprawling empire. Like Caesar he built the foundation for one of the greatest Empires that has ever risen in the history of man. Today he is revered as a national hero of Mongolia, Turkey and China, while the Soviet Union long considered him to be the most vile man in history. It is a testament to his ability that most Muslim nations consider him the greatest threat they have ever faced, for just as the new religion was gaining ground through military conquest that is when Genghis came to tear them down. In the end, perhaps the best way to explain Genghis' ability as a leader of men is with the following statement...
When he was nine he was thrust out of his tribe to live as an impoverished nomad, when he was sixteen he commanded a force of four men and nine horses, and when he died he controlled the better part of Asia.
The true military ability of Julius Caesar is usually lost somewhere in the bloody pomp and succor of the birth of the Roman Empire. Most people also don't know that Caesar's original choice of profession was that of a priest, but that didn't quite work out, and after a myriad of political manuevering, he was given command of four legions in Northern Italy, the Western Balkans and Southern France. With these forces he set out to conquer the Gallic tribes, and did so in a brilliant ten year campaign that has been studied as a matter of course in virtually every military institution since the completion of the campaign. In those ten years he defeated an estimated three hundred tribes and conquered over eight hundred cities. Specifically, in the Battle of Alesia he besieged an army of 80,000 in the hilltop town and fought off a relief force of 250,000 that came to their aid. His dual lines of contravallation and circumvallation have become textbook techniques for besieging a position under duress. At Uxellodonum he accomplished the feat most military commanders can only dream of when he successfully drilled through the cliffs below the besieged town, diverted the town's only water source, and forced surrender without giving fight. When he was ordered back to Rome to disband his army, Caesar crossed the Rubicon in violation of Pompey's dictates, and Pompey resolved war. At Dyrrhachium, Caesar faced the more competent, Roman, forces and was barely able to save his forces from a crushing defeat before moving on to Pharsalus, where he was abundantly more prepared for what he would face. There, Caesar used superior deployment and tactics to soundly defeat Pompey, who was forced to flee to Egypt where he was assassinated by Ptolemy XIII, thereby ending the wars of the First Triumvirate. With his first serious Roman threat put down he proceeded to make war on Pharnaces of Pontus, who he defeated in short order at the Battle of Zela, sending the famous words back to Rome upon his victory, "Veni, Vidi, Vici." After that he wished to extinguish the remaining threat that existed from Pompey's supporters, Metellus Scipio and Cato the Younger, and he met them in battle at Thapsus. Both would end up slain as a result of Caesar's decisive victory in which he only lost 1000 men to the Optimates' 30,000 losses. His last battle, in which he slayed Titus Labienus at Munda, was one of his most difficult, but when it was done he had consolidated the rule of Rome under one man. And the Roman Empire would soon grow to be the most powerful and influential in the history of the world. Of course, after he was done conquering, like most conquerors, Julius Caesar had outlived his purpose and was assassinated by the senate. It is true that Caesar inherited an extraordinarily strong army equipped with some of the best infantry and cavalry of their day. It is also true that a lot of that reputation is due to the feats, training and organization Caesar imposed on his men. Furthermore, Caesar excelled at military engineering as the sieges of Alesia and Uxellodonum attest. Also, like the others on my list Caesar generally fought, at least early in his career, at a significant numerical disadvantage, and throughout his career he bested opponents in every imaginable weather condition and terrain. Finally, when he was forced to face Roman forces trained and equipped similarly to his own, he defeated them through tactical and strategic superiority. In the end, Caesar built the foundation for the world's greatest empire on the scope of his military genius, the strength of his will, and the discipline of his soldiers.
Any top five list of military commanders is ridiculously incomplete without the inclusion of Hannibal. Hannibal Barca, son of Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca, is famed in highschool textbooks as the man that led an army of elephants across the alps, and surely this is one of the greatest military feats in history, but it was only Hannibal's first. Carthage, at the time, was embroiled in a bitter war with the Romans, and before setting out Hannibal promised never to make peace with Rome. After successfully crossing the Alps with most of his numbers intact, the respected Roman General, Sempronius, sought a battle with Hannibal at Trebia. There, Hannibal was outnumbered by some 14,000 men, but he held a significant advantage in elephants and cavalry compared to the Roman cavalry, and Hannibal succeeded in soundly defeating the Roman army. Sempronius thusly returned to Rome, where the Romans drew up plans to meet Hannibals threat and placed Flaminius at the head of the Roman army. Flaminius then set out to meet Hannibal in a pitched battle at a location, time and condition of his choosing. However, Hannibal devestated the Italian countryside and successfully used a feigned retreat to goad Flaminius' army into following a portion of his army into a tight defile along the banks of Lake Transimene. Hannibal had hidden most of his forces in the trees around that reached up from the Lake, and as soon as the whole of Flaminius' army entered the defile, Hannibal's soldiers broke from their position and quickly routed the Roman army, rounding up some 30,000 dead, wounded and captured compared to only 1500 losses for the Carthaginians. Flaminius was slain, the Roman army had been annhilated, and Rome had to quickly reorganize another army to meet the Carthaginian commander. The Romans would find him on the field of Cannae, where the Roman forces more than doubled the Carthaginian. Realizing his weakness in numbers, Hannibal arranged his lines convexly, with the most unreliable and greenest troops in the center and most exposed. When the Roman forces, under Paullus, attempted to join battle, Hannibal's center permitted contact but slowly fell back, allowing their lines to become thinner, until the Carthaginian lines had become concave, with the numerically superior Romans trapped inside the arc. Meanwhile, Hannibal's cavalry engaged and defeated the Roman cavalry on the right before swinging around to the rear of the Roman position and attacking, thereby creating the first instance of intentional envelopment. It was the costliest battle Rome had ever fought. At the end of the day, Paullus laid slain on the field of battle along with two consuls, two quaestors, 28 of Rome's 49 military tribunes, and some 87,000 more dead, wounded or captured. Due to the loss many traditional Roman allies wavered and joined the side of Hannibal, and Rome resolved never again to meet Hannibal in a pitched battle. For the next several years Hannibal would ravage the Roman countryside at will, occassionally defeating small dispositions of Roman forces. However, he was incapable of capturing Rome itself, and Rome refused to enter into peace talks with Carthage. When Scipio Africanus sailed to Carthage at the head of an army, Hannibal was recalled after nine years of campaigning in Italy, as it was apparent that he would not succeed in capturing Rome or forcing peace. At the Battle of Zama Hannibal met Scipio. And on that day Scipio emerged victorious by emulating the tactics Hannibal pioneered at Cannae. For Hannibal this effectively ended his military career. Hannibal is famed for gaining victory but not knowing how to utilize it. This is the short-sighted view. Rather, Hannibal achieved considerable military success without much support. After crossing the Alps, Hannibal was effectively alone, without financial support, supplies or reinforcements from his masters in Carthage. For nine years he lived off the land and succeeded in winning every major battle of the campaign with a ragtag group of mercenaries and conscripts against the world's foremost military power. In doing so he set down the tactics that would be emulated until the present day. The Battle of Cannae is widely considered to be "the perfect battle." There Hannibal used the first recorded intentional pincer movement in battle. And from that point, nearly every military commander would try to duplicate Hannibal's feat of double-envelopment while in battle. At the Cowpens in the American Revolutionary war Daniel Morgan successfully emulated Hannibal's tactics to score a decisive victory against the British and force them back to Yorktown (this is loosely depicted in the film "The Patriot," starring Mel Gibson). Later, Dwight D. Eisenhower would say, "Every ground commander seeks the battle of annihilation; so far as conditions permit, he tries to duplicate in modern war the classic example of Cannae." von Schlieffen famously used Cannae as the catalyst for what became known as the "Schlieffen Plan," and a little more than a decade ago General Norman Schwarzkopf used Cannae as the foundation on which he built Operation Desert Storm, which succeeded in utterly destroying the Iraqi army. So it is that although Hannibal did not conquer the lands of Alexander or build the empire of Caesar, he did lay the foundations under which war would be fought forevermore.
Ultimately, it is a point of debate over the specific placement of these men in the top five. For my part, I favor Alexander for the top spot. After all, if conquer more land than anyone else and do not lose a battle, what else is there that you could have done? Of course, many other men are justifiably renowned for their military prowess. I, for one, have a ranked list and brief bio of 162 generals, all of them supreme in their own right. But these five men shine above them all.
Alexander the Great began as the ruler of Macedon, more a confederation of deeply divided by factions than a true nation in the wake of the assassination of his father, Philip II. After his father's death he quickly subdued the Macedonian possessions and then executed the invasion of Persia, which his father had been planning previous to his death. In a life of war Alexander almost always fought against numerically superior opponents, vanquished them all, and brought each of his enemies into the folds of the Macedonian Empire. A legitimate detraction can be assessed against him because he fought with an army that was organized and outfitted mostly by Philip, and the phalanx is widely considered to be the ultimate fighting force of its time; however, Alexander still needed to use strategic brilliance to conquer the vast Persian empire and utilized revolutionary tactics at Guagamela, Issus and the Hydaspes. Another legitimate complaint is that Alexander lost control of his army after the Battle of the Hydaspes, and was forced to terminate his plans to invade India. Nevertheless, Alexander did have the forsight to perceive mutiny and prevented it by turning back at the appropriate time. Alexander excelled at sieges, as the Siege of Tyre can attest. Tactically, he had no equal in his time, as his success at Guagamela stands amongst the greatest military feats in history. Logistically he had no equal as he spread his supply lines across the Asian continent and into India. Alexander is one of the special few military commanders that fought in every imaginable condition and terrain, almost always against numerically superior foes, without ever being defeated. He conquered the known world.
All of the five men at the top of my list are conquerors, and Napoleon is certainly that. When he assumed command of the Army of Italy, it was an undersupplied and ragged bunch of malcontents that had been demoralized by contant defeat at the hands of the Austrians, and France itself was besieged a coalition of European nations bent on its destruction. From there, Napoleon conquered the whole of Italy, and that campaign is widely cited as one of he greatest ever conducted in the history of the world. Then he requested to go to Egypt for glory, and the Directory complied simply to get the popular general out of their hair. On his way there he took Malta from the Knights of St. John, which they had ruled for 250 years, before vanquishing the Mamelukes at the Pyramids. Only the stupidity of Brueys and the talent of Nelson prevented a crushing French victory, for Napoleon won every land battle in Egypt before sneaking past the English to return to France. There he set out to meet the third coalition that had aligned against France and won one of the most decisive victories in the history of war against the combined forces of Russia and Austria, under the command of Alexander, at Austerlitz. When the Fourth Coalition came to tear him down he stood strong at Eylau and won ultimate victory at Friedland. Then he conquered Spain. The Fifth Coalition didn't fare much better than the Fourth, and after a bloody fight at the twin battles of Aspern-Essling he took Wagram thereby conquering Austria, which had been France's greatest enemy during the Napoleonic Wars. Of course, his invasion of Russia is widely considered one of the greatest military blunders in history, but it didn't need to end up that way. Napoleon had his army positioned for a crushing and decisive victory at Borodino, but failed to pull the trigger and missed a myriad of opportunities to extinguish the Russian threat and remove them from European affairs for decades to come. He was very ill at the time and failed to show any of the flair that marked his previous campaigns. Even after retreating from Russia, the Sixth Coalition seemed doomed to the same fate as the others when he won another decisive victory at Dresden before finally suffering a crushing defeat at Leipzig, where he was outnumbered by at least a factor of 2 to 1. By then it was apparent that Napoleon would never regain the empire he had so brilliantly and meticulously conquered in the fifteen years between his assumption of command in Italy and his invasion of Russia. Blucher and Wellington finally delivered the death blow at Waterloo after Napoleon escaped from Elba, raised a strong army, and set out to reclaim his empire. Like Alexander, Napoleon can be criticized for overstretching his means. But unlike Alexander Napoleon never lost control of his army. Even after sustaining a hard march across Russia, in which the Russian army repeatedly and prudently refused to give battle, the army remained loyal. After he had been vanquished and exiled French soldiers overwhelmingly came to help him reclaim the French empire. The other legitimate complaint against the Emperor is that many of his marshals were military geniuses in their own right, but it is hardly an indictment of Napoleon that he saw the innate talent of his subordinates and utilized those talents to great effect. Napoleon was a master of dividing his enemies, concentrating his attack, and defeating them in detail. His battles are studied assiduously by every major military institution in the world. Like Alexander, Napoleon fought in every imaginable condition and terrain. He usually fought against numerically superior opponents with comparable, if not better, military technology, and he rarely lost. In all the nations of Europe aligned to send five separate coalitions against him specifically and he defeated all but the last. In the end, Napoleon's influence over the world was so great that the entire epoch has assumed his name.
Genghis Khan started his military career in the worst possible situation of any of the leaders in my top 5. When he was still very young, his father, the leader of his clan, was assassinated. The tribe would not stand to be ruled by the young Tejumin (who would later accept the name Genghis Khan), and exiled both him and his mother. As he grew into his teenage years he recruited less than a dozen hardy men to start raids on the clan that had exiled him. After avenging his father's death and assuming control of the tribe he subdued all of the tribes enemies and united the disparate tribes of the Mongol plains. Then he made war against the long-standing overlords of the Mongol tribes, the Jin and Western Xia of modern day China. Tactically, Genghis emphasized mobility and espoused the use of horse archers as well as the feigned retreat. From the Chinese he learned how to construct many technologically advanced siege weapons and adopted them for mobilized deployment on campaign so that he did not need to construct his siege engines during battle. After bring the Chinese to heel, he set out to destroy the Khwarezemid Empire (modern day Persia), which militarily outnumbered him by a factor of at least 4 to 1. The sieges of Bukhara, Samarkand, and Urgench attest to his military ability. He was feared by all of his foes, and after being decimated when sallying from their fortress of Samarkand, the Persians refused to give battle to Genghis on open ground. After bringing the Khwarezmids into the folds of his growing empire, he returned to Mongolia and set out to commit the final subjugation of Western Xia. He died aptly, on his horse, on campaign, as his forces struck the final blow at the Chinese forces. f course, it is a legitimate detraction of Genghis to attribute some of his military success to his "dogs of war," specifically Subutai and Jebe. Specifically, although Genghis planned the invasion of the Kara-Khitan Khanate, it was Jebe that executed the subjugation of those peoples. Furthermore, it was Subutai and Jebe that devised the Great Raid against Volga-Bulgaria, and they conducted it successfully without the leadership of Genghis. However, Genghis excelled at information gathering, and built one of the largest spying operations to that day. It operated mostly along the Silk Road and provided him with the amount of information needed so that he could meticulously plan his campaigns. Genghis Khan also organized his forces on the order of ten, which closely resembles most modern armies. His mobile tactics, specifically the use of pincer attacks, were emulated by Guderian and Manstein in devising the brutal German Blitzkreig that come some seven hundred years later. He was a pioneer in the new use of military technology, strategy, tactics and psychological warfare. Like any great conqueror, Genghis Khan soundly defeated generally numerically superior opponents in a variety of terrain and conditions. Like Napoleon, he operated on a system of meritocracy and gave his generals the freedom to operate to the highest level of effectiveness. Like Alexander he conquered a vast and sprawling empire. Like Caesar he built the foundation for one of the greatest Empires that has ever risen in the history of man. Today he is revered as a national hero of Mongolia, Turkey and China, while the Soviet Union long considered him to be the most vile man in history. It is a testament to his ability that most Muslim nations consider him the greatest threat they have ever faced, for just as the new religion was gaining ground through military conquest that is when Genghis came to tear them down. In the end, perhaps the best way to explain Genghis' ability as a leader of men is with the following statement...
When he was nine he was thrust out of his tribe to live as an impoverished nomad, when he was sixteen he commanded a force of four men and nine horses, and when he died he controlled the better part of Asia.
The true military ability of Julius Caesar is usually lost somewhere in the bloody pomp and succor of the birth of the Roman Empire. Most people also don't know that Caesar's original choice of profession was that of a priest, but that didn't quite work out, and after a myriad of political manuevering, he was given command of four legions in Northern Italy, the Western Balkans and Southern France. With these forces he set out to conquer the Gallic tribes, and did so in a brilliant ten year campaign that has been studied as a matter of course in virtually every military institution since the completion of the campaign. In those ten years he defeated an estimated three hundred tribes and conquered over eight hundred cities. Specifically, in the Battle of Alesia he besieged an army of 80,000 in the hilltop town and fought off a relief force of 250,000 that came to their aid. His dual lines of contravallation and circumvallation have become textbook techniques for besieging a position under duress. At Uxellodonum he accomplished the feat most military commanders can only dream of when he successfully drilled through the cliffs below the besieged town, diverted the town's only water source, and forced surrender without giving fight. When he was ordered back to Rome to disband his army, Caesar crossed the Rubicon in violation of Pompey's dictates, and Pompey resolved war. At Dyrrhachium, Caesar faced the more competent, Roman, forces and was barely able to save his forces from a crushing defeat before moving on to Pharsalus, where he was abundantly more prepared for what he would face. There, Caesar used superior deployment and tactics to soundly defeat Pompey, who was forced to flee to Egypt where he was assassinated by Ptolemy XIII, thereby ending the wars of the First Triumvirate. With his first serious Roman threat put down he proceeded to make war on Pharnaces of Pontus, who he defeated in short order at the Battle of Zela, sending the famous words back to Rome upon his victory, "Veni, Vidi, Vici." After that he wished to extinguish the remaining threat that existed from Pompey's supporters, Metellus Scipio and Cato the Younger, and he met them in battle at Thapsus. Both would end up slain as a result of Caesar's decisive victory in which he only lost 1000 men to the Optimates' 30,000 losses. His last battle, in which he slayed Titus Labienus at Munda, was one of his most difficult, but when it was done he had consolidated the rule of Rome under one man. And the Roman Empire would soon grow to be the most powerful and influential in the history of the world. Of course, after he was done conquering, like most conquerors, Julius Caesar had outlived his purpose and was assassinated by the senate. It is true that Caesar inherited an extraordinarily strong army equipped with some of the best infantry and cavalry of their day. It is also true that a lot of that reputation is due to the feats, training and organization Caesar imposed on his men. Furthermore, Caesar excelled at military engineering as the sieges of Alesia and Uxellodonum attest. Also, like the others on my list Caesar generally fought, at least early in his career, at a significant numerical disadvantage, and throughout his career he bested opponents in every imaginable weather condition and terrain. Finally, when he was forced to face Roman forces trained and equipped similarly to his own, he defeated them through tactical and strategic superiority. In the end, Caesar built the foundation for the world's greatest empire on the scope of his military genius, the strength of his will, and the discipline of his soldiers.
Any top five list of military commanders is ridiculously incomplete without the inclusion of Hannibal. Hannibal Barca, son of Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca, is famed in highschool textbooks as the man that led an army of elephants across the alps, and surely this is one of the greatest military feats in history, but it was only Hannibal's first. Carthage, at the time, was embroiled in a bitter war with the Romans, and before setting out Hannibal promised never to make peace with Rome. After successfully crossing the Alps with most of his numbers intact, the respected Roman General, Sempronius, sought a battle with Hannibal at Trebia. There, Hannibal was outnumbered by some 14,000 men, but he held a significant advantage in elephants and cavalry compared to the Roman cavalry, and Hannibal succeeded in soundly defeating the Roman army. Sempronius thusly returned to Rome, where the Romans drew up plans to meet Hannibals threat and placed Flaminius at the head of the Roman army. Flaminius then set out to meet Hannibal in a pitched battle at a location, time and condition of his choosing. However, Hannibal devestated the Italian countryside and successfully used a feigned retreat to goad Flaminius' army into following a portion of his army into a tight defile along the banks of Lake Transimene. Hannibal had hidden most of his forces in the trees around that reached up from the Lake, and as soon as the whole of Flaminius' army entered the defile, Hannibal's soldiers broke from their position and quickly routed the Roman army, rounding up some 30,000 dead, wounded and captured compared to only 1500 losses for the Carthaginians. Flaminius was slain, the Roman army had been annhilated, and Rome had to quickly reorganize another army to meet the Carthaginian commander. The Romans would find him on the field of Cannae, where the Roman forces more than doubled the Carthaginian. Realizing his weakness in numbers, Hannibal arranged his lines convexly, with the most unreliable and greenest troops in the center and most exposed. When the Roman forces, under Paullus, attempted to join battle, Hannibal's center permitted contact but slowly fell back, allowing their lines to become thinner, until the Carthaginian lines had become concave, with the numerically superior Romans trapped inside the arc. Meanwhile, Hannibal's cavalry engaged and defeated the Roman cavalry on the right before swinging around to the rear of the Roman position and attacking, thereby creating the first instance of intentional envelopment. It was the costliest battle Rome had ever fought. At the end of the day, Paullus laid slain on the field of battle along with two consuls, two quaestors, 28 of Rome's 49 military tribunes, and some 87,000 more dead, wounded or captured. Due to the loss many traditional Roman allies wavered and joined the side of Hannibal, and Rome resolved never again to meet Hannibal in a pitched battle. For the next several years Hannibal would ravage the Roman countryside at will, occassionally defeating small dispositions of Roman forces. However, he was incapable of capturing Rome itself, and Rome refused to enter into peace talks with Carthage. When Scipio Africanus sailed to Carthage at the head of an army, Hannibal was recalled after nine years of campaigning in Italy, as it was apparent that he would not succeed in capturing Rome or forcing peace. At the Battle of Zama Hannibal met Scipio. And on that day Scipio emerged victorious by emulating the tactics Hannibal pioneered at Cannae. For Hannibal this effectively ended his military career. Hannibal is famed for gaining victory but not knowing how to utilize it. This is the short-sighted view. Rather, Hannibal achieved considerable military success without much support. After crossing the Alps, Hannibal was effectively alone, without financial support, supplies or reinforcements from his masters in Carthage. For nine years he lived off the land and succeeded in winning every major battle of the campaign with a ragtag group of mercenaries and conscripts against the world's foremost military power. In doing so he set down the tactics that would be emulated until the present day. The Battle of Cannae is widely considered to be "the perfect battle." There Hannibal used the first recorded intentional pincer movement in battle. And from that point, nearly every military commander would try to duplicate Hannibal's feat of double-envelopment while in battle. At the Cowpens in the American Revolutionary war Daniel Morgan successfully emulated Hannibal's tactics to score a decisive victory against the British and force them back to Yorktown (this is loosely depicted in the film "The Patriot," starring Mel Gibson). Later, Dwight D. Eisenhower would say, "Every ground commander seeks the battle of annihilation; so far as conditions permit, he tries to duplicate in modern war the classic example of Cannae." von Schlieffen famously used Cannae as the catalyst for what became known as the "Schlieffen Plan," and a little more than a decade ago General Norman Schwarzkopf used Cannae as the foundation on which he built Operation Desert Storm, which succeeded in utterly destroying the Iraqi army. So it is that although Hannibal did not conquer the lands of Alexander or build the empire of Caesar, he did lay the foundations under which war would be fought forevermore.
Ultimately, it is a point of debate over the specific placement of these men in the top five. For my part, I favor Alexander for the top spot. After all, if conquer more land than anyone else and do not lose a battle, what else is there that you could have done? Of course, many other men are justifiably renowned for their military prowess. I, for one, have a ranked list and brief bio of 162 generals, all of them supreme in their own right. But these five men shine above them all.
Captain2
ಠ_ృ
you know... i couldnt do that for a project, let alone just to prove a point
Mon Mauler
Warlord
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2005
- Messages
- 274
Thanks, Captain. I appreciate your sentiments. As you can tell this is a subject that is absolutely fascinating to me. In general, though, all of my posts are quite long, and they tend to kill threads. This is part of the reason I only have a measly 100 posts.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
Napoleon is the most overrated general in history. Though he did win more battles than Hannibal, Alexander and Genghis, that's only because he fought more than all of them. In reality, his track record was horrible. He lost to Egypt, "beat" Spain but couldn't crush the rebels, had an embarrassing defeat to England, and was finally massacred at Russia. Don't forget his loss at Waterloo, too.
I'll go with Hannibal.
I'll go with Hannibal.
Captain2
ಠ_ృ
however, considering frances geographical location, even losing to Russia is impressive
He won in Egypt, but his supply float was destroyed, so he had to come back to France. You know, a naval defeat is generally lost by admiral, not general.
In Spain, Napoleon won he was there, although his marhalls were not so efficient. In Russia, he was to far to keep good supply lines as the Russians refuses to fight until they outnumbered him seriously. He lost Leipzig, but against an army much bigger than his, and the treason of Saxony in the middle of the battle... That's not so bad, don't you think?
BEHIND_THE_MASK
A Liar... A Cheat...
- Joined
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- Messages
- 1,840
Hannibal is my personal favorite with Mr. Bonaparte a close second.
The major diffrence was that Napoleon could use his victories while Hannibal seemed to cautious.
civverguy
Emperor
I think the was a pretty good general also. Almost as good as Alexander
. I can't believe not many people mentioned him.@estrongblade: It was never your choice I had a problem with - it's the criteria you used that I had a problem with. I couldn't care less about whether you liked Marshall or not. My problem solely lies in your criteria, which was: "Because he had more fingers in the world pie". Based on your criteria, Bill Gates deserves to be the greatest general. I see that as flawed logic, pure and simple.
I'd have to say that I generally agree with Mon Mauler; Napoleon, Genghis, Alex, and Hannibal are definitely in my top five. However, I'd have to say that Frederick the Great, although not a conqueror per se like Julius Caesar, is definitely as skilled or more so than the latter.
Frederick's military career started auspiciously with one of the only examples of strategic surprise ever, in the rapid defeat of the Austrian forces in Silesia in 1740. He easily smashed the Austrian attempt to regain the province at Mollwitz the following year, and kicked off the War of the Austrian Succession. Although his involvement in the war was sporadic, dependent mainly on the Austrian fortunes against the French and other allies, his victories in that war, chiefly at Hohenfriedberg, Kesselsdorf, and Sohr, are models of tactical supremacy and genius. The Seven Years' War, though, was the chief example of his tactical mastery and strategic insight. He defeated Saxony in a few weeks, and managed to gain victory at Prague by exploiting the Austrian dispositions. His twin great victories of 1757, Rossbach and Leuthen, were pure genius; Rossbach was an example of subterfuge and rapid movement to gain victory over twice the number of allies, and the great Napoleon himself considered Leuthen, where Frederick's 30,000 Prussians smashed 80,000 Austrians led by the competent Charles of Lorraine, as a "masterpiece of maneuver and resolution". Frederick staved off the Germanic states, Austria, France, Sweden, and Russia for nearly a decade of continuous war with only sporadic incompetent British assistance (such as at Minden). His mastery of technique was ranked by Clausewitz as equal to Napoleon's; most military historians rank him as a Great Captain, along with the above conquerors and others such as Cyrus, Belisarius (who is extremely close to the above in sheer skill - possibly even greater - but who never got the resources to show it), Heraclius (who took the Eastern Empire from defeat on the Bosphorus to innermost Persia and thence to great victory at Nineveh in a short six campaigns), and Gustavus Adolphus.
Frederick's military career started auspiciously with one of the only examples of strategic surprise ever, in the rapid defeat of the Austrian forces in Silesia in 1740. He easily smashed the Austrian attempt to regain the province at Mollwitz the following year, and kicked off the War of the Austrian Succession. Although his involvement in the war was sporadic, dependent mainly on the Austrian fortunes against the French and other allies, his victories in that war, chiefly at Hohenfriedberg, Kesselsdorf, and Sohr, are models of tactical supremacy and genius. The Seven Years' War, though, was the chief example of his tactical mastery and strategic insight. He defeated Saxony in a few weeks, and managed to gain victory at Prague by exploiting the Austrian dispositions. His twin great victories of 1757, Rossbach and Leuthen, were pure genius; Rossbach was an example of subterfuge and rapid movement to gain victory over twice the number of allies, and the great Napoleon himself considered Leuthen, where Frederick's 30,000 Prussians smashed 80,000 Austrians led by the competent Charles of Lorraine, as a "masterpiece of maneuver and resolution". Frederick staved off the Germanic states, Austria, France, Sweden, and Russia for nearly a decade of continuous war with only sporadic incompetent British assistance (such as at Minden). His mastery of technique was ranked by Clausewitz as equal to Napoleon's; most military historians rank him as a Great Captain, along with the above conquerors and others such as Cyrus, Belisarius (who is extremely close to the above in sheer skill - possibly even greater - but who never got the resources to show it), Heraclius (who took the Eastern Empire from defeat on the Bosphorus to innermost Persia and thence to great victory at Nineveh in a short six campaigns), and Gustavus Adolphus.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
My top generals:
25. Saladin
24. Gaius Marius
23. Charlemagne
22. Heraclius
21. Bai Qi
20. Cyrus the Great
19. Timur
18. Scipio Africanus
17. Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
16. Douglas MacArthur
15. Shaka Zulu
14. George S. Patton
13. Subutai
12. Leonidas
11. Erwin Rommel
10. Napoléon Bonaparte
9. Robert E. Lee
8. Frederick II
7. Flavius Belisarius
6. Sun-Tzu
5. Julius Caesar
4. Alexander the Great
3. Genghis Khan
2. Khalid ibn al-Walid
1. Hannibal Barca
Ahmad Shah Massoud, Ashoka the Great, Attila the Hun, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Pericles should probably also be on there somewhere.
25. Saladin
24. Gaius Marius
23. Charlemagne
22. Heraclius
21. Bai Qi
20. Cyrus the Great
19. Timur
18. Scipio Africanus
17. Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
16. Douglas MacArthur
15. Shaka Zulu
14. George S. Patton
13. Subutai
12. Leonidas
11. Erwin Rommel
10. Napoléon Bonaparte
9. Robert E. Lee
8. Frederick II
7. Flavius Belisarius
6. Sun-Tzu
5. Julius Caesar
4. Alexander the Great
3. Genghis Khan
2. Khalid ibn al-Walid
1. Hannibal Barca
Ahmad Shah Massoud, Ashoka the Great, Attila the Hun, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Pericles should probably also be on there somewhere.
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