Great Military leaders of History? - Page 15

On February 15 2011 22:39 RvB wrote:
Michiel de Ruyter admiral from the dutch fleet in our golden age although I am biased and he is maybe not THE best but he is definetly noteworthy imo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michiel_de_Ruyter

On February 15 2011 23:20 sc4k wrote:
Say whatever you want about the Frenchies on land...we kicked their lilly arses from here to Putney Bridge on the sea

The great Lord Horatio Nelson, terror of the French. Completely singleminded and obsessed with dominating the frenchy scourge.

On February 15 2011 23:23 Mentalizor wrote:


Just wrote him in, just 4 posts up

On February 15 2011 15:14 Adaptation wrote:
1 Temujin (Genghis Khan) 1167 1227
2 Alexander the Great 356 BC 323 BC
3 Napoleon Bonaparte 1769 1821
4 Hannibal Barca 241 BC 183 BC
5 Timur 1336 1405
6 Khalid ibn al-Walid 584 642
7 Aleksandr Suvorov 1729 1800
8 Jan Žižka 1370 1424
9 Belisarius 505 565
10 John Churchill (Duke of Marlborough) 1650 1722
11 Subotai 1176 1248
12 Gustav II Adolf 1594 1632
13 Scipio Africanus the Older 237 BC 183 BC
14 Gaius Julius Caesar 100 BC 44 BC
15 Eugene of Savoy 1663 1736
16 Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne de Turenne 1611 1675
17 Heraclius 575 641
18 Sir Arthur Wellesley (Duke of Wellington 1769 1852
19 Frederick II of Prussia 1712 1786
20 Maurice, comte de Saxe 1696 1750

This is a subject i know A LOT of, and it almost always comes down to ''what is best''. I can tell you that its important to always look at strategics as well as tactics. The famous saying ''amateurs study tactics, while professional study logisitics'' is very true. You cannot just look at actual battle. Take for example Frederick II of prussia. His country fought austria, sweden,russia and france all at the same time(thats getting attacked north,south,east,west!). Although he fought brilliantly in these battles, it was poor grand strategy by him and in the end the war got him 0 result and back where he started, minus all the men he lost during the war.



You also have to take in account the amount of control one has on his own fate. Im sure Hannibal would have not fought scipio africanus in his last battle but he was forced and he lost.

Other things to take in account is siege warfare, strategics, grand strategy. Its more then just battlefield tactics. I actually have a top 100 list and a rating guide that explains my reasoning.

Edit: in terms of admiral, i can tell you that its clearly Yi-sun-sin of... KOREA!
Yes the ancestor of slayer boxer and Oops reach! He's the only guy i put ahead of Admiral Nelson. Take time to research what this guy has done and believe me, he's your no.1 admiral. Way Way ahead of his time.

On February 15 2011 23:26 StorkHwaiting wrote:


You know a lot yet you don't have a single Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Southeast Asian general in there. Hmm...

On February 15 2011 23:23 Azarkon wrote:
Most ancient generals' achievements were overly glorified by their latter day myth makers, unfortunately. It is not clear to me that many of the people listed here were ever the main strategists/tacticians of their armies, as opposed to powerful politicians acting as "chiefs of staff," so to speak. The generals who lived closer to the modern day are better documented, and it shows that their decisions were rarely based on singular strokes of genius, and in fact were often of questionable value (debates rage on regarding the contributions of even highly successful generals like MacArthur).

In my opinion, wars are not often made or broken by the brilliance of generals, but by the social, political, economic, cultural, and technological factors serving as background. Take this away, and many of the "greatest generals of all time" seem less than impressive. For example, the Mongols' victory over their foes, while not pre-ordained, was in no small part due to their nomadic life-style in which every man was trained as an expert horse archer from birth. Put that up against your average peasant conscript army, as the Mongols faced in many of the regions they conquered, and it's pretty obvious who would win. Similarly with Alexander the Great's Macedonian phalanxes, which out-armed and out-trained just about anything in the declining Persian empire, not to mention most of his battles were greatly embellished (see, for example, the Battle of the Persian Gate, where the Greek historians claimed that the Persians had a force of 40,000 when in actuality the Persian numbers were probably closer to 2000). With such imbalance, maybe they should make a show about it.

To this end, I'd suggest that if you are going look closely into the question of who the best general of all time is, that you would examine the aspects of that general's actual leadership and tactical ability as opposed to the achievements attributed to his time and country.

On February 15 2011 23:26 StorkHwaiting wrote:


You know a lot yet you don't have a single Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Southeast Asian general in there. Hmm...

On February 15 2011 21:45 mofisto wrote:



Lol, yeah mate.

I just know that what most people believe about the french military is completely false. I mean even we would have been invaded by the nazis if it hadn't been for the channel. We would not have stood a chance

On February 15 2011 23:43 Resistedx wrote:
Haven't seen any love for Charlamagne, you gotta love a guy who was so great he ascended out of being French and into the Holy Roman Empire.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Frankish_Empire_481_to_814-en.svg


Fairly modest in comparison, but still good.

On February 15 2011 23:35 SlyinZ wrote:
http://www.peachmountain.com/5star/French_military_history.aspx
/thread

After seven years of faithful, uninterrupted service to the American cause, on October 13, 1783, Kościuszko was promoted by Congress to the rank of brigadier general. He also received American citizenship, a grant of land near present-day Columbus, Ohio, and was admitted to both the prestigious Society of the Cincinnati and the American Philosophical Society. When he was leaving America, he wrote a last will, naming Thomas Jefferson the executor and leaving his property in America to be used to buy the freedom of black slaves, including Jefferson's, and to educate them for independent life and work. Several years after Kościuszko's death, Jefferson pled an inability to act as executor, an action deprecated by the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and Jefferson historian Merrill Peterson. The U.S. Supreme Court awarded the estate to Kościuszko's descendants in 1852, ruling that he had died intestate despite the four wills he had made. During the legal proceedings between the date of his death and the Supreme Court decision, the value of his estate decreased substantially; this was attributed by a case attorney to Colonel George Bomford's use of the estate for his own purposes. None of the monies that Kościuszko had earmarked for the manumission and education of African-Americans were ever used for that purpose.