I will preface my post by saying that you should not underestimate the amount of rage I wanted to pour into this...
ChupathingyX said:
Well, why should he be there?
Exactly... I would go further and ask that if Zhuge Liang was so great, how come Cao Cao still ended up winning anyway?!
Most of what's 'known' about him is romantic and propaganda, and even then most of it can't be confirmed by primary sources. In any case, all that he came up with were strategems which, in the grand scheme of things, are nigh-on insignificant to the goals that a military leader must have.
BlackSaint09 said:
Greetings my fellow escapists.
So there is this local History magazine here in Estonia where i live that has many many wonderful articles regarding history in it. However when browsing through this months edition of said article i came across an article that was called "Top Ten Military leaders".
The list went as follows:
10:George Patton
09:Jeanne D'Arc(Forgive me if i misspelled it)
08:Attila
07:Genghis Khan
06:William the Conqueror
05:Georgi Zukov
04:Saladin
03:Hannibal
02:Alexander the Great
01:Napoleon Bonaparte
I'll say something nice now before you think I'm a total jerk, but your English is fine.
Now to the vitriol:
Why in fuck's name is Patton on that list?! The man was a fucking ponce who's only defining attribute was his big mouth. I'll conceded that while his post-war conduct was actually admirable (even if not at the time), he had virtually no clue about logistics, his strategic judgment was lacking to be almost non-existent and didn't seem to understand the word 'cooperation'. He's just Montgomery, replacing the caution with profane bombacity! However, I'll be damned before I start dismissing his skill as a tactician, but even then, were he to be in the Germans' position, I doubt he would've fared half as well. Look at the numbers, he always won from a numerical, aerial and technological advantage.
As for Joan of Arc...
' her ideas were hardly new, but at least they were invigorating, and if that was supposed to be a list of military leaders based on initial chance they'd actually be one, she'd be right at the top. However, she had insufficient wit to realise the jealousies of her fellow French commanders (all of whom were ancient nobles) and Charles VII probably did nothing because of their sycophancy. She definitely had charisma and force of personality, but the medieval concept of 'chivalry' was taken a tad too far at the expense of the other, debatably more important, aspects of leadership. So, for the time? No question, she was good, but in the grand scheme of history, she kinda sucked.
Having said that, I'd replace her on that list with Prinz Eugen von Savoy. Undoubtedly had a better chance of being a high ranking soldier at first blush (for rather 'duh' reasons), but he was passed over for service by the Roi Soleil for being of a sickly constitution. He was set up to be a priest FFS. However, in HRE service, he made a shit system work, the average Austrian soldier was probably the shittest in Europe (of the Great Powers at the very least, and that includes Spain and the Netherlands). He beat first the Turks and then the French/Bavarians, with help of course, but that shouldn't detract from the fact that he made the HR army competitive against the French, alongside the English.
As for the others in bold, one question: how did they lose?
As much as I admire Hannibal, he was a terrible strategist and, on close inspection, supremely unwilling to take risks. He had a number of opportunities to move on Rome but didn't until it was too late. People have argued about this to hell and back, but I just contend that he didn't want to risk it. He knew Carthage had no real skill at siege-assaults and so didn't want to bother, even though Rome was ripe for the taking after Trasimene (never mind Cannae). Also, he wasn't that good a diplomat, hardly understanding the ins and outs of the Gallic desire for independence from Rome viewing them only as a source of mercenaries. And he hardly endeared himself towards the cities of Magna Graecia by trashing everything south of the Apennines in their entirety in an effort to piss Fabius off. And lastly, in a point that I will pick up on later, he couldn't trust any of his subordinate commanders to do anything right, took it all upon himself and left him too jaded to be able to think straight for Zama (which I believe he could've won given timing).
Now Napoleon... eesh, where to start with him. Russian campaign, a misadventure if there ever was one, too obvious? OK then, Bautzen. Why in hell did he agree a ceasefire?! In those few months, he must've realised he couldn't out-recruit and out-train his enemy (which consisted of Russia, Prussia, Britain, Sweden and, upon persuasion, Austria), and while his armies were tired and mauled, his enemy's armies were in an even worse state. Then there's Waterloo. Contrary to popular belief, the mobilisation of the French army (which, granted, was elite to the n'th degree) was disorganised, slow and confused. And Napoleon had little to no control over the general commitment of the wings of his army unless he took upon himself to do so. He failed to follow up after Ligny and the Prussians (widely accepted to have the shittest troops to be involved in the 100 Days) sorted themselves out within hours of getting their butts kicked while Napoleon just pottered about. Plus, while the hell did he leave the follow up to Grouchy? In fact, most of Napoleon's conduct and orders during the campaign were counter-intuitive to the way he naturally made war.
OK, now onto who I think
should be on that list:
One of the BAMFs of Nazi Germany: Erich von Manstein; Erwin Rommel; & Heinz Guderian are the obvious ones, though I'm always going to favour von Manstein over the others primarily because he was way more adaptive and had skill across all scales of warfare. Rommel and Guderian, as field commanders were both excellent tacticians and the latter was a very good theories, but von Manstein was also a brilliant strategist. With available resources, I'd say he was better than Patton. Fall Gelb (obviously), Unternehmen Trappenjagd & Third Battle of Kharkov come to mind...
And against Napoleon, I'll place Wellington. Oh sure, he had the help of fifty thousand Prussians at about six in the evening at Waterloo, but he was marginally outnumbered, though heavily outnumbered in artillery, his army was multinational and mostly Dutch/Belgian/Brunswick militia based with relatively few professional regiments and his cavalry were good for show and little else. But one must direct the critic towards the Peninsular War, his record there and his ability to command and delegate to first the Portuguese and then the Spanish as well. Every strategic decision taken in this theatre was well calculated and succeeded in its intentions. And Salamanca, which showed he could attack with skill as well as defend.
Close to this era, Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke (aka Moltke the Elder). The overseer of the Wars of German Unification ('cos fuck Bismarck, s'why!) and the proponent of the staff structure, he is the origin of the modern German stereotype (i.e. precision in all things and turning manoeuvre war into an art). The German General Staff was at its best when he was the Chief of Staff. Economy of force, use of technology and transport to its logical extreme, Auftragstaktik, devolution of command and so on and so forth. Good lord, if the Union had the Prussian Officer corps and staff/logistical organisation, the American Civil War would've been over within six months. His concepts of the dynamism of the command hierarchy made the Prussian/German army of the era literally unbeatable. And his decidedly Spartan mentality, combined with English liberalism made him probably the ideal C-in-C, provided you let him do as he wanted. Political interference is the biggest obstacle to military endeavour.
For a more recent commanders: Chester W Nimitz. With inferior forces, he checked the IJN's advance in the southern pacific before reversing it entirely. Midway is touted as the turning point of the War in the Pacific, and I'm inclined to agree. Made the most of two and a half carriers (tehlulz, Yorktown was crocked bad but damn, what a fine send-off) and a second choice admiral, I hold him responsible for victory in the Pacific theatre. That and his trumpeting of changes to American naval doctrine amongst other things.
Frederick the Great... yes, I love me German military history. The man who made Leuctra look like a re-enactment gig (Leuthen) and turned the echelon advance a hallmark of early Prussian manoeuvres. OK, he wasn't that great, but I like Old Freddie anyway! And the same cursory mention for John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough, not for his victories, but the lead up to them, Blenheim in particular, being about to cheat four hundred miles out of his enemy is no mean feat for a column almost ten miles long and moving at barely that amount each day.
And at the top of that list: Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Major. Apart from tactics, to which he was barely inferior, he was superior to Hannibal in every way. 1. Strategy, hitting strategic targets in Spain and milking them for all their worth (moral and material) had a much greater effect than Hannibal's running around in southern Italy which pissed the southern tribes off and made a lot of Romans increasingly dismissive of him as the war wore on. 2. Diplomacy, signing alliances first with Syphax, and when that failed, Masinissa, being the obvious one since Masinissa's Massylians were one of the deciding factors at Zama, but also Mandonius, Andobales, Edeco and Allucius of the northern Iberian tribes (including the Ilergetes) meaning he didn't have to worry about anything except the Carthaginians in Spain. On the other hand, Hannibal only had one diplomatic success: Macedon, who were questionable at best when they concluded the Peace of Phoenice and left Hannibal to fend for himself. That and the fact that Hannibal viewed the Macedonian mercenaries under his command with a certain distaste. 3. Following up a victory, with Hannibal winning so many times in Italy and reducing Rome's adult male population by a third within two years, you really have to ask how in hell did he lose?! On the other hand, Scipio takes Carthago Nova, within six months one third of Spain is on his side and anything the Carthaginians try to do to reach the Pyrenees can be countered, and nor can they dislodge Scipio's position. Ilipa was followed up by the capture of Gades (and consequently the entire Iberian peninsular) and Mago's escape to Minorca which it doesn't take much to realise how irretrievable this is (pssst, the silver mines, all of Barca's merc-money originated in Spain). 4. Trust of his subordinates, because I literally cannot think of a single battle in which any Carthaginian commander other than Hannibal won... except the Upper Baetis and that was only because Hasdrubal bribed the Cornelii's Celtiberians. However, Scipio had the presence of mind and wisdom to delegate secondary actions to Laelius, Silanus, Masinissa and his brother Lucius while he concentrated on more pressing issues. The victories were almost guaranteed thanks to a combination of knowledge of the relevant commander's personality, their inherent skill, and the current political mood and level of public morale prior to battle. I can't say the same for Hannibal.
Hmmm... sorry for the treatise...
