Greatest Warrior and Greatest Military Genius before 1900

[sarakoth]

Im not saying otherwise.

Just saying you cant compare it to The Mongol Empire at its high. Cause of the different situations and cause of the times.

How can't we compare!!!

We controlled more land, more people, and made up a fewer percentage of the population. Also, the Mongols and their Turkic brethren were nomadic warriors while we were civilized city-dwellers.

 

[balsaboy]

how han xin of the han dynasty? undefeated, dammed rivers then unleashed them to wipe out enemies. outnumbered 1 to 7 or 8.

 

[sarakoth]

how han xin of the han dynasty? undefeated, dammed rivers then unleashed them to wipe out enemies. outnumbered 1 to 7 or 8.

I can state more impressive feats.

Zhu Ge liang defeated an army of hundreds of thousands with a small contingent of a couple thousand.

He used fire.

 

[MemmoN]

City dwellers who never heard of soap or civil rights or religious freedom. The Mongol empire actually lasted alot longer than most empires. Almost all history and negative opinion of the mongols is the old skool western propoganda system still hard at work against the barbarian at the gates.

 

[svalbard]

Ours. And yes, I may well be biased.

Look at it this way, things that grow quickly tend to die quickly. Oak trees take bloody ages to reach full size, whereas buckler fern is much swifter, and grass quicker still. But the oak lives the longest.

Mind you, Rome did pretty well too. (Although that's complicated because of the various political systems and the division of the empire).

Back to greatest general: I think the criteria shouldn't just be success, but capability. That's why Hannibal wins. He did the most with the least means. I know Alexander faced far more Persians than Hannibal did Romans, but the Persians were largely rubbish compared to the Romans who were hard as nails. In addition, the Romans learnt from their mistakes.

What was that qoute about Hannibal. I think it went along the lines of "He knew how to win a battle, but not a war" or something like that. That is why he should rank behind the likes of Alexander, Caesar, Sulla or Gaius Marius.

No one mentioned William the Conquerer. He was never defeated in battle as far as I am aware.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Yeah, and the gods giving him many gifts, but not all.

That's an unfair comment though. Would Hannibal have stood a chance of capturing Rome? It had strong defences and its people equated citizenship with military service. Hannibal had no siege engines and probably no engineers either.

Hannibal's greatest flaw was his rotten luck. When he took Tarentum the Romans won the race to the citadel, which commanded the harbour. Carthage sent far more aid to Spain than Italy.

I don't think a general should be rated according to whether they win a war or not. After all, any one of us could lead ten thousand men to victory against ten. They should be judged according to what they achieved with the means at their disposal and against whom they achieved it.

Hannibal faced the greatest enemy, and came extremely close to total victory. Cannae is still held up as a textbook perfect victory, and Trasimene is perhaps the best ambush in military history. Added to that, only Alexander had less past examples of good tactics and strategy to draw on, whereas Sulla, Marius and Caesar inherited the tactical lessons Hannibal had taught the Romans.

 

[svalbard]

Cannae was a great victory for Hannibal, but some of it could be laid at inadequecies of the Roman commanders on the day. I would still contest that if Hannibal had faced a Gauis Marius, who revolutionised the way Roman Legions fought, then he would have lost at Cannae.

I agree with all your other points re. Trasimene ad not recieving enough support from Carthage. Except for siege engines. He could have built them, there was plenty of material in Italy for them. Also a concerted assault immediately after Cannae upon Rome may have succeeded. The Romans were in disarray.

A number of years later, untrained Germanic/Celtic tribes wiped out an army of forty thousand Romans at Aurosia(sp) in the Rhone valley. Cannae was not the only severe defeat the Romans suffered in the Republic years.

 

[thaddeus6th]

I agree that a large part of Cannae's success was Varro's incompetence (think it was him). Aemilius Paulus, the other consul, was less than enthusiastic about his compatriots plan.

The Romans did suffer other crushing defeats elsewhere, but (no expert so may need correcting) I'm not sure they ever lost an army of 80,000 or so on a battlefield when they outnumbered the enemy by such a large extent. Though Varro's gungho idiocy was a blessing for Hannibal, it was Hannibal's ingenuity that allowed him to achieve not just a triumph, but a stunning victory.

Vis-a-vis building siege engines, I'm not sure if he had the expertise with him to
do so. The only siege I know of he succeeded in was Saguntum and its possible that any engineers he had with him may have died in the Alps or pre-Cannae. It would have been interesting to say the least had he built some though.

 

[Connavar]

People has so easy to fall for great european emperors like Alexander cause they won everything but Alexander unlike Hannibal took over an empire who was made a dominant force by others like Philip,Parmenion way before his birth. The historians about Macedon credit Philip and Parmenion for alot of Macedon's greatness. They made a great military that dominated Ancient Greece.


Some great military genius like Hannibal didnt have huge empire behind them. Ghengis Khan started from a hut to control the biggest empire in history and not thankst to the great empire before his time.

Dont credit Alexander,Ceasar for what people did for their empires before their time.

This is about military genius not the most lucky general to have had the biggest empire before he came to power

 

[Vladd67]

Some great military genius like Hannibal didnt have huge empire behind them

Wasn't Cathage a great power at the time?

 

[sarakoth]

City dwellers who never heard of soap or civil rights or religious freedom. The Mongol empire actually lasted alot longer than most empires. Almost all history and negative opinion of the mongols is the old skool western propoganda system still hard at work against the barbarian at the gates.

The unified Mongol Empire dided after Mongke Khan died a few decades after Genghis's death. The title of Great Khan was nonexistent after Kublai's death.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Carthage (at the time of the Second Punic War) was a major power, but it had had its navy (its strongest military arm) crushed by Rome in the First war. Also, whereas Rome was based on personal military service, Carthage was based on money. Except for very small numbers and the generals, Carthage just used mercenaries in warfare, which were drawn from a large variety of sources.

If it hadn't been for Hannibal, the Second Punic War would never have lasted so long, nor seen victories like those at the Trasimene or Cannae. Rome won because it could furnish an enormous amount of manpower fuelled with patriotic fire which allowed it to withstand such massive defeats.

 

[Connavar]

Wasn't Cathage a great power at the time?

Yeah i know that but they never were Rome,Persia or other great empires big.

I was just saying you should judge a miltary genius by what he does with his skills and not how great his empire was before his time.

Carthage before Hannibal at his peak wasnt even more powerful than a smaller Rome.

Same with Ghengis and many other great military leaders.

 

[svalbard]

People has so easy to fall for great european emperors like Alexander cause they won everything but Alexander unlike Hannibal took over an empire who was made a dominant force by others like Philip,Parmenion way before his birth. The historians about Macedon credit Philip and Parmenion for alot of Macedon's greatness. They made a great military that dominated Ancient Greece.


Some great military genius like Hannibal didnt have huge empire behind them. Ghengis Khan started from a hut to control the biggest empire in history and not thankst to the great empire before his time.

Dont credit Alexander,Ceasar for what people did for their empires before their time.

This is about military genius not the most lucky general to have had the biggest empire before he came to power

I would say that Alexander took Macedon onto a different level. Luck also plays a large part in any generalship. ALexander definetly falls into the category below.

"A bold general may be lucky, but no general can be lucky unless he is bold."
- Field Marshal Archibald Percival Wavell

 

[Connavar]

Im not saying he didnt. Alexander was great thats for sure.


Im just saying you should judge in this thread Alexander and all the others by what they did military wise. Not how great their empire was when they took power.

Think more like scholars.

There are many great generals that arent populary known to us cause their greatness couldnt do anything cause of the time they lived in. For example this guy


Flavius Belisarius was one of the greatest generals of the Byzantine Empire and one of the most acclaimed generals in history. He was instrumental to Emperor Justinian I's ambitious project of reconquering much of the Western Roman Empire, which had been lost just under a century previous.

Although comparatively less well-known than other famed military leaders such as Hannibal, Julius Caesar, or Alexander the Great, his skills and accomplishments were matched by very few other military commanders in history.

He was also the last Roman general to be granted a Roman Triumph.

 

[sarakoth]

One must also consider that not all military geniuses are generals. For example, the Chinese strategist Zhu Ge Liang is reputed to have accomplished feats that outclass anything anyone in the western world has accomplished. For example, when someone challenged him to make a hundred thousand arrows in three days, he replied "piece of cake". Also, he was able to utterly crush enemies outnumbering him by hundreds using methods ahead of his time. In comparison, the 300 Spartans and their allies were outnumbered about 30 to 1.

 

[Emu]

I would have to say Ghengis Khan.

It was not until 1206 that Genghis was named Khan of Khans or King of Kings and king of ‘all people who lived in felt tents’. With all of the Mongol tribes united and under his control he could now concentrate his forces on expanding his empire.
In 1207 he began a crusade to conquer the lands of China. At that time China was divided into three separate empires. They were the Qin, Tangut empires in the north and the Sung Empire in the South. He himself led battles against the Tangut state in what is now present day Xinjiang (northwest China), and the Qin in northern China, taking Peking in 1215. However, although most of northern China was under Mongol control Genghis's dream to dominate all Chinese territory would be achieved but occur until the reign his grandson Kublai Khan in 1279.
With northern China under his control he now turned his attention westward. In 1218, the Khwarazm (modern Uzbekistan) Shah, Mohammed II, slaughtered a Mongolian caravan and a following delegation of ambassadors. This precipitated Chinghis's attacks on Central Asia, although in any case it may well have been merely a matter of time before he attacked. Genghis sent a message to their leader Shah Mohammed, saying that the governor must be turned over to the Mongols or war would be declared on Kwarezm.
The Kwarezm Empire refused and war was declared. Genghis led an attack force of 90,000 men from the north and he sent a general with 30,000 men to attack from the east. Despite this large army he was outnumbered by the Shah's army more than 400,000 men. Genghis's army was victorious, allowing a full scale invasion and occupation of the Kwarezm Empire. From this campaign the Mongols acquired the knowledge of the "fire that flies", burning arrows. And with subsequent victories new methods of warfare were used to made his armies stronger and more deadly.

 

[sarakoth]

I would have to say Ghengis Khan.

It was not until 1206 that Genghis was named Khan of Khans or King of Kings and king of ‘all people who lived in felt tents’. With all of the Mongol tribes united and under his control he could now concentrate his forces on expanding his empire.
In 1207 he began a crusade to conquer the lands of China. At that time China was divided into three separate empires. They were the Qin, Tangut empires in the north and the Sung Empire in the South. He himself led battles against the Tangut state in what is now present day Xinjiang (northwest China), and the Qin in northern China, taking Peking in 1215. However, although most of northern China was under Mongol control Genghis's dream to dominate all Chinese territory would be achieved but occur until the reign his grandson Kublai Khan in 1279.
With northern China under his control he now turned his attention westward. In 1218, the Khwarazm (modern Uzbekistan) Shah, Mohammed II, slaughtered a Mongolian caravan and a following delegation of ambassadors. This precipitated Chinghis's attacks on Central Asia, although in any case it may well have been merely a matter of time before he attacked. Genghis sent a message to their leader Shah Mohammed, saying that the governor must be turned over to the Mongols or war would be declared on Kwarezm.
The Kwarezm Empire refused and war was declared. Genghis led an attack force of 90,000 men from the north and he sent a general with 30,000 men to attack from the east. Despite this large army he was outnumbered by the Shah's army more than 400,000 men. Genghis's army was victorious, allowing a full scale invasion and occupation of the Kwarezm Empire. From this campaign the Mongols acquired the knowledge of the "fire that flies", burning arrows. And with subsequent victories new methods of warfare were used to made his armies stronger and more deadly.

Corrections:

It's not the "Qin", it's the Jin (meaning gold) Empire.

Also, the Tangut state is known as Xixia.

 

[Emu]

Corrections:

It's not the "Qin", it's the Jin (meaning gold) Empire.

Also, the Tangut state is known as Xixia.

Thanks I guess I should have doubled checked

 

[sarakoth]

Thanks I guess I should have doubled checked

Pleasure to lend a helping hand (god this forum is so friendly)