Great Military leaders of History? - Page 18

On February 16 2011 01:37 MoltkeWarding wrote:


Not that I dispute your point, but the examples you use are skewed.

In 300 AD the schism of the Empire was caused by the nominal reign of two Caesars and two Augusti in the respective halves of the Empire. The Greeks and Ptolemaics had been conquered over three centuries ago by that point. The Empire as a whole was regarded as a single empire under two administrations. Take the Empire as a whole, most estimates I've seen put the figure at around 40 million, although how one comes by these figures is beyond me.

In the 2nd Punic War, Rome was still a Republic whose only Imperial possessions were Sicily and Sardinia. Naturally the population of Italy was much smaller than Han China's. What is astonishing was the manpower Rome managed to levy out of that base during the Punic and Pyrrhic wars, despite repeated catastrophes.

As for China being a continuous civilization, all non-Sinomaniacs have to understand that you are debating a particular Chinese concept. The notion of Chinese civilizational exceptionalism is the very core of Chinese identity. It transcends the rise and fall of empires, dynasties, religions or even cultures. Chinese civilization is synonymous with the very concept of China. It's founded on traditional Chinese attitudes of ethnocentrism, the idea that China is not a, but the model of civilization, and that all things which fall outside of this civilization is barbaric. Hence Mongols and Manchus can overthrow Chinese dynasties and governments, but they cannot overthrow Chinese civilization, because of its innate superiority to all other forms. Chinese civilization is hence made invincible by its very concept and definition, and the encroachments of European ideas 200 years ago have made more dents in that smug self-sufficiency than any nomadic invader of the past millenia.

On February 15 2011 23:58 GGTeMpLaR wrote:


This post leads me to believe that you misunderstand the civil war and the political situation the country was in from the start of the war.

It's one thing to say the southern generals are overrated but it's another to say they were inferior to the northern ones (which is just absurd).

That analogy isn't correct either. A more accurate analogy would be Lee being Jaedong and his opponent being some C+ player (whichever of the many failed Union generals you would choose) on ICCUP who has the handicap of being able to field a 600 supply army, starts with all upgrades/research, an extra command center and 12 more workers. There was nothing genius or spectacular about what grant did in the sense that there's nothing genius or spectacular about an army of 60 dragoons with upgrades being able to slowly defeat an army of 40 dragoons without upgrades. What is spectacular and brilliant is the commander who can time and time again defeat the upgraded army of 60 dragoons with 40 un-upgraded dragoons.

Also, if you seem to think that nothing would have happened had the south won Gettysburg, you drastically underestimate the north's unified resolve to win, even fight the war. Lincoln did many unconstitutional things in his time and basically is the closest any president has ever come to a dictator in US History. Had the south actually won Gettysburg and gone on to capture D.C., there are so many things that could have chain-reacted from such a significant event that the only conclusion to make would be southern independence. In fact, there are so many tiny events that could have gone differently, ranging from the USA almost firing on British trade ships which would have drastically increased the chances of if not causing UK intervention, to an enlist failing to obey orders and not effectively burning Lee's battle plans for Antietam (which makes it all the more funny that the north couldn't even secure victory with the enemies battle plans, only a draw)

On February 16 2011 01:37 Jibba wrote:

What? This isn't true at all. By Caesar's account they were barbarians, but by historical accounts the Gauls were fairly advanced and the Romans took and used several of their military advancements, especially their armor.

And your assessment of Grant shows a complete lack of understanding. You might have studied battles, but you never studied war. I wouldn't put him in a top 10 list, but he was the best general in the Civil War.

I can't believe this thread has been degraded into a stupid numbers argument. Moltke, would you tell people to read some Clausewitz?

On February 16 2011 01:17 StorkHwaiting wrote:


First off, Rome didn't have a higher population in the BC era, and I highly doubt they were a richer state than the Han dynasty.

On February 16 2011 01:17 StorkHwaiting wrote:
If you take a census from even 300 AD (which is 300 years after when I was talking):
http://www.tulane.edu/~august/H303/handouts/Population.htm
The Total Western Empire was about 22 million people. (You can't include Eastern Roman Empire because Rome hadn't conquered the Greeks or Ptolemaic Dynasties yet.

Han Population:
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Census
The world's oldest extant census data comes from China during the Han Dynasty. Taken in the fall of 2 C.E., it is considered by scholars to be quite accurate. At that time there were 59.6 million living in Han China, the world's largest population.

So, Han dynasty was almost triple Western Roman Empire's population and their census was taken 300 years earlier. Also, take into consideration that Rome's legionnaires were drawn from their citizens and allies, not the entire male population, so you can reduce their pool of recruits even more.

On February 16 2011 01:17 StorkHwaiting wrote:
Second, here is an example of the field armies of Han vs Rome.

Han Army:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiongnu#War_with_Han_Dynasty
"In 119 BC both Huo and Wei, each leading 50,000 cavalrymen and 100,000 footsoldiers (in order to keep up with the mobility of the Xiongnu, many of the non-cavalry Han soldiers were mobile infantrymen who traveled on horseback but fought on foot), and advancing along different routes, forced the chanyu and his court to flee north of the Gobi Desert."

So, that shows the Han dynasty could field two armies of 150,000 men to pincer the Xiongnu. This does not include the many other garrisons and conquered territories of the Han as well. This is merely their deployment against the Xiongnu, their enemies to the north.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Han_map.jpg

There's a picture of Han dynasty's territory and how large the Xiongnu were by comparison.

There are other numerous examples of armies being fielded even larger than this in PRE-Han dynasty era as well.

(205 BC) Battle of Jingxing: Zhao Xie (King of Zhao) and his chancellor Chen Yu led a 200,000 strong army to resist the Han forces.

(204 BC) Battle of Wei River: Xiang Yu sent Long Ju to lead a 200,000 strong army to help Tian Guang.


Roman Army:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_army#Roman_army_of_the_mid-Republic_.28ca._300_-_107_BC.29

During the earlier phase, the normal size of the levy (including allies) was in the region of 40,000 men (2 consular armies of ca. 20,000 men each).

Basically, a normal field army for Romans was 20,000 men....

At the height of 2nd Punic war, Roman deployment reached a peak of ca. 240,000.

AKA, the entire Roman armed forces numbered 240,000 men during a war that they were fighting for their survival.

By comparison, Han dynasty could send 300,000 men as an invading force for the purposes of attacking nomads and taking over horse pastures.

On February 16 2011 01:49 xDaunt wrote:


This was made explicitly clear to me when I visited the War Museum in Beijing. The sheer sense of shame that the Chinese feel from what happened when it was more or a less a European colony is very strong.

On February 16 2011 01:17 chenchen wrote:


I think any modern historian would agree that not only was China far more developed agriculturally and industrially (it could like what . . . produce three times as much food on the same amount land and ten times as much iron) . . . . it CLEARLY fielded much larger armies due to these advantages.

Your Eurocentric education prevails once again.

On February 16 2011 01:55 Sm3agol wrote:

Grant as a leader....ok, he was good at that. But he was really a horrific tactician. In basically every battle he won, he brute forced with superior numbers and equipment, often losing more men than he killed. He was exactly what the North needed, a tough, don't give a crap general. But he was not "good" in any sense of the word. If he had the inferior army and equipment, he would have been roflstomped. He had several absolutely horrific battles that he got away with merely because he had many more men. I don't understand how you say Grant was good general. Cold Harbor alone completely invalidates him as even a competent general. It makes me sad to even think about what he did there.

On February 16 2011 01:59 mcc wrote:

Lets start with wealth. That is hard to decide because of many factors like conquests etc. There are only indices like order of magnitude higher production of gold, silver and some other metals.


Why would you use numbers from 300AD, after devastating civil wars and epidemies ? Conservative estimates for the reign of Augustus, most of which is BC, is 55-65mln, some 80mln and in my opinion exagerrated ones 100+mln. Do you actually know ancient mediterranean history ? Basically whole Eastern part of Roman Empire was already part of the Empire in 27 BC. That population can be considered growing until about 180AD. So your arguments are false, and triple population claims are actually laughable.

Again, please read about Roman army, legionaries were not limited to citizens at that point in time, and legionaries were definitely not even the majority of Roman army. Romans also fielded a lot of auxillaries from "allies".


How are those Han numbers reliable, especially considering that as I have shown the populations were at least similar, and Roman probably larger. Also standing Roman army in the 3rd century was about half a million. At the end of the civil war (Augustus v Antonius) probably even higher.

Second Punic War was in 200BC and at its height Romans were losing tens of thousands of soldiers very often, no wonder they could not field a big army, also at that time Rome consisted of not a whole Italy and Sicily. At the end of the Civil war (still BC) Roman army had 50 just legions.

And if we are throwing unsure numbers in 255BC Rome lost in few days 100000 men in a sea storm, yet was able to continue to fight for another 13 years with loses much exceeding this. And that was at the time when Rome was limited to not even the whole Italy.

On February 16 2011 02:12 WhiteDog wrote:

Diamond is not an authority on history, his book goes from the eden to nowadays, he is a troll in this regard. But his analysis on the rise and fall of nation is respected at least. If you consider "Europe" as a country (with comparable size to china and also comparable demography) it's rather easy to understand that there always was a disparity in competition. Just take a look at the number of names the french people takes: gauls, celts, gallo-romans, franks, normans, french. Now note that it is almost the same for Germany.
All those change in names are historic "beaccon" for differents change in the economy of powers of each of these nation. They prove how harsh the competition was in this (small) part of the globe.