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 ...
I'd rank Julius above Nappie, and not just because he reads better; but Napoleon was best of his era, of that I wasn't in doubt before reading about this study. OTOH, I might rank Pompey the Great above Caesar, even though Caesar ultimately defeated Pompey -- both however added plenty of territory to the Roman Empire, and both were treated like dirt by the corrupt, lying jackasses of the Roman Senate.
Yep. Lee stuck with Napoleonic tactics much to long after it had become apparent that they had become obsolete. Malvern Hill and Fredricksburg should have made it abundantly clear that Pickett's Charge was a fools errand. Longstreet tried to warn him but he wouldn't listen.
Probably shouldn't have saved that caveat for an afterthought. The analysis is useful, yes, but it says more about analysis than it does military prowess. Anyone with acquaintance with sabermetrics knows full well how wildly controversial each measurement is within the field - that's part of the fun - and that the real challenge isn't the analysis, it's turning data into information first.
Consider that baseball, the home of sabermetrics, is, contrary to military operations, very finely structured and loaded with set parameters: nine innings, 27 outs, more or less, three strikes, four balls, nine players on the field; these things provide a skeleton for data structure that no military operation ever has or will. Such unquantifiable minutiae as the degree of difference conferred by the "soft-ball" era or the PED era turn out to be major factors in attempting to compare performance over time ("Barry Bonds versus Babe Ruth? Really?"). If you're down to that, you have a beautiful if still imperfect template within which to calculate such derivative statistics as WAR. The calculation of which, by the way, is a delightful way to start a furious argument among sabermetricians.
Military operations analysis isn't like that, or rather it is in a gaming situation but not in the real world. It's fairly well known that certain generals (or Colonels, or Captains) are nigh unbeatable in war games but fail miserably when confronted with the messy grab bag of variables that is real battle. And so to one of the author's initial considerations: is a "great" general one who never loses, or one who best utilizes the resources at hand to result in an outcome more favorable than another general might? This is why the calculation of an artificiality like WAR is useful, but it's only useful in the classroom.
It boils down to the old question of whether this is a simulatable system. Any system with an infinite number of variables - the consistency of the mud between the Russian border and Moscow over time, for example - is going to be impossible to simulate by its very nature. Your guess gets rougher as the number of variables grows. Does one take the culture of the soldiers into consideration? Thucydides certainly did, but if so, how does one quantify that? Can one assign a number to morale, and if so, is it meaningful, and if not, can one afford to discard morale altogether? (A rhetorical question - the answer is a screaming "NO!")
It is from this ultimately formless, essentially unsimulatable system that a general's performance must be derived. Good luck with that. You're trying to level the playing field so you get an objective comparison and you can't really do that. Nevertheless, it's fun. Best not to take it too seriously.
The trouble with Caesar is that the only record we have of his Gaelic campaigns are Caesar’s own commentaries, which are generally considered to be very self serving. You can’t deny, though, that he did ultimately prevail. Much the same with his civil war commentaries. I still put him in the top 5 based on his results, but I would need some contemporary, third party corroboration of his battles to put him at number 1.
Well put! As I've complained before, one would think that Napoleon, with his interest in antiquity, would have looked at Herodotus' account of the failed Persian attempt to invade the Scythian territory and say, hmm, this won't work. But after Napoleon's failure, there's really no excuse for the Germans not having learned that mistake, especially the second time. In WWI the terrain in the east meant more forces in the east, and that led to large occupied territories, and a long front. In WWII, Hitler appeared to be mitigating that problem by the non-aggression pact -- but that was just a feint, followed by the elimination of the western front (through 1944), and then the resumption / replay of the WWI scenario. Hitler wasn't a general, but also wasn't a strategic thinker. Not much of a tactical thinker, either.
Why are Napoleon, Alexander and Hannibal recognized by their first names and Washington, Lee, Patton and Grant by their last names?
MacArthur
Quite true. Due to inadequate communication technology, the command of armies across large fields of battle stretched the abilities of commanders in the Civil War. Often, units got misdirected or failed to attack as ordered. Lee though seemed to have a picture of the battle in his head and could order and adjust his plans rapidly. Grant had the same ability — and a larger and better equipped army.
The only corroboration likely to become available is from archaeology; by the same standard, everything attributed to Alexander the Great may or may not have happened, since the contemporary sources haven't survived other than by paraphrase from perhaps a primary source (or not) by authors over a century after his death. So I have to disagree.
The record on Hannibal is pretty thin, and none of it from Carthaginian sources (apparently the later burning the city to the ground put a damper on recordkeeping), but he's given props for Cannae; the truth is, he managed to stay a step ahead of Roman forces, and remained a mobile threat (in the form of a large gang of highwaymen) in Italy for 16 years -- but he didn't conguer any more of Italian territory than was needed at the moment for his camp. Overall, he was a miserable failure, wound up accomplishing nothing but pissing off the Romans, handing his hometown the first of a series of defeats, fled into exile, committed suicide, and doesn't belong even on a top 100 list of commanders (ancient, or all-time).
“romantic fascination some folks have with Napoleon.”
Well, he was pretty much the only general in France to have a claim to real success since Charles Martel/The Hammer...
Agreed-Patton, with George Washington a near tie-we need more macho men like that today...
Lee foolishly thought Pickett’s men could deliver the impossible, that Southern muskets and bayonets could redeem the mess of a battle that Gettysburg had become. Lee would have been better served by either withdrawing or maneuvering into a better position so as to force Meade into a disadvantageous attack.
Disagree with what? I pretty much agreed with you and I agree with this last post. Granted, most of what we know about Alexander is based on accounts written hundreds of years after fact but the Hellenistic transformation of the middle east testifies to the scope of his victories. As with Caesar, his results have got to put him in the top five given what he accomplished and the time in which he accomplished it. I agree with you 100% on Hannibal. He was a brilliant tactician but a failure as a strategist.
And the fact that his army was prepared to mutiny against him if he didn't. They were tired of campaigns and wanted to go home. In a fit of pique he marched them through a desert after turning around and lost a large part of them.
A good Historical Board Wargamer would tell you that a lot of being a good general is just luck.
All of them, Lee, Nappy, Patton, Alexander, J. Caesar...we’re all masters of reacting to situations; outside the box thinkers. They created their own luck.
Washington was good at this too, but, his troops were rather poor at fighting until they got the training they needed, then they were just fine.
Bragg was a terrible General, but, at Chickamaugua(sp) when Gen. Wood moved his troops just as Longstreet was charging, Bragg looked like a genius. Matter of being in the right place at the right time.
Anyway, the best plans fall apart once the first projectile (arrows, cannonballs, or, bullets) start flying.
I would not disagree with that placement. Lee won some stunning victories. The defense of Richmond in 1862, Chancellorsville, Second Manassas. Only the victories outside of Richmond had a significant strategic benefit.
the other two great wins, did not aid the strategic
position of the Confederacy in any way. The two campaigns Lee conceived and executed, in 1862 and 63, both ended in failure. Within 6 weeks of the start of the Overland Campaign in 1864, Lee’s army was pinned up in Petersburg like a genie in a bottle.
You’re biased because you’re such an old soul.
Here is the video I referred to. I find this guy’s analysis on other matters quite interesting. He admits there isn’t a lot of hard facts out there regarding “what destroyed the most armor?” another otherwise, I have not investigated this particular question in detail
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5DcY8TmOpA
“Within 6 weeks of the start of the Overland Campaign in 1864, Lee’s army was pinned up in Petersburg like a genie in a bottle.”
Well put. Without demeaning Lee in any way, he hadn’t met a general like Grant before. Grant knew that capturing Richmond wouldn’t end the war - destroying the Army Of Northern Virginia would.
That’s why he embarked on the Overland Campaign. He battered the ANV (with the exception of Cold Harbor) at ever chance he could get. When he couldn’t win a battle outright, he sidestepped Lee and forced the latter to retreat south and try to intercept Grant. Lee couldn’t replace his losses. Grant could.
And when the siege of Petersburg took place, Grant slowly but surely extended his lines westward, cutting Lee off from most supplies and stretching his lines past the breaking point.
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