"Best General Ever? Huh! My frozen butt, he is."
Posted on 01/05/2018 9:50:10 AM PST by C19fan
Like Hannibal, I wanted to rank powerful leaders in the history of warfare. Unlike Hannibal, I sought to use data to determine a general’s abilities, rather than specific accounts of generals’ achievements. The result is a system for ranking every prominent commander in military history.
(Excerpt) Read more at towardsdatascience.com ...
Napoleon was ultimately defeated therefore he was NOT the best general ever.
My vote would go to General George Patton.
Seems to me many generals throughout history had long careers without more consistent records of success.
"Best General Ever? Huh! My frozen butt, he is."
Patton never retreated. Ever.
That makes him number 1. You may not have liked working for him, especially training for him, but you loved not dying, and you loved killing tons of Germans.
The first to coordinate close air support with armor.
I wonder if the troops he left to die on the tundra-like plains of Russia in 1812, while he slinked away to Paris with his tail between his legs, would agree with that assessment.
https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/posters
Probably the best statistical graphic ever drawn, this map by Charles Joseph Minard portrays the losses suffered by Napoleon's army in the Russian campaign of 1812. Beginning at the Polish-Russian border, the thick band shows the size of the army at each position. The path of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow in the bitterly cold winter is depicted by the dark lower band, which is tied to temperature and time scales. Exquisitely printed in two colors on fine archival paper, 22” by 15”.
If I was a general, and I lost this many men in a single campaign, I would go down as a monster, or a criminal.
Napoleon had some great victories, but he also had some epic defeats.
Heinz Wilhelm Guderian was the best of the bests.
What about Alexander.
After watching Gettysburg and doing some research, I lost all respect for Lee.
George Washington won a war that nearly everyone thought was impossible.
He defeated the greatest power in the world and saw off internal treachery using only his own courage and stragetic nous
Thanks C19fan. This should get some blood circulating.
One of the first books I read in my husband’s library was “A Genius for War” and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in General Patton!
I wonder how Napoleon's air force fared in the analysis...
Interesting exercise. One would have to wade through the details to see if this approach makes sense. My first take is that it reminds me of the bean counters in the corporate world trying to measure everything and employees gaming the system by upping their stats with meaningless “wins”. But that’s just my skeptical side.
Not all battles are equal and hopefully this approach takes all that into account.
Since when does a general lead 650,000 into Russia and come home with 65,000 and get labeled anything other than a piss poor total failure as a leader?
Idiot author writes about an idiot general.
A bit off topic, but in many ways Napoleon reminds me of Hitler. Both brought great suffering and death to Europe. So yeah, I never quite understood the romantic fascination some folks have with Napoleon.
I'll go with George Washington.
Just getting the French to march forward may have made Napoleon one of the greats. I didn't see whether the author accounted for the number if battles fought.
Patton.
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