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re: The Top 10 Greatest Generals of All-Time - According to Mathematics
Posted on 8/9/20 at 11:43 am to Porter Osborne Jr
Posted on 8/9/20 at 11:43 am to Porter Osborne Jr
Not surprising from Stonewall. From his bio he use to teach at West Point. He was an intense and strict individual.
Posted on 8/9/20 at 1:09 pm to Nobelium
quote:
Grant sustained 9,135 men killed or wounded during the Vicksburg campaign while the Confederates suffered 5,291 combat casualties. Grant only "inflicted more casualties" if you factor in surrendered enemies.
"Captured" has always been included in casualty counts, genius. He took an entire army off of the Confederate order of battle. 30,000 men the Confederacy would never be able to use again at a time when their lack of manpower was beginning to show in the conflict.
Posted on 8/10/20 at 6:51 am to dchog
You should read Rebel Yell. It’s a great look at him. He was a damn stickler at VMI.
Posted on 8/10/20 at 8:03 am to RollTide1987
Good grief, they must not have calculated casualties for Grant to be that high.
Posted on 8/10/20 at 8:19 am to RollTide1987
quote:
"Captured" has always been included in casualty counts, genius. He took an entire army off of the Confederate order of battle. 30,000 men the Confederacy would never be able to use again at a time when their lack of manpower was beginning to show in the conflict.
The difference in the Rebel armies in the west and the East was night and day. After Shiloh the South really didn’t very little with what they had available. Their forces were scattered, their leadership ineffective and they really had no chance after Shiloh.
Grant was far superior.
Posted on 8/10/20 at 8:20 am to geauxbrown
quote:
Good grief, they must not have calculated casualties for Grant to be that high.
His overall casualty count and casualty rate are both lower than Robert E. Lee's.
This post was edited on 8/10/20 at 8:21 am
Posted on 8/10/20 at 8:32 am to RollTide1987
quote:
Robert E. Lee, is so far below him on the list that he actually has a negative score.
Lee was a good general but I wouldn't truly think he should be on this list. The one major war he had the reigns on he lost. It would have been interesting to see what he did if he had command of the CSA at the beginning of the war. I think his defensive tactics were overall pretty elite, can't say the same for his offensive, and there were other areas of weakness also with Lee.
Posted on 8/10/20 at 9:05 am to windshieldman
quote:
Lee was a good general but I wouldn't truly think he should be on this list. The one major war he had the reigns on he lost. It would have been interesting to see what he did if he had command of the CSA at the beginning of the war. I think his defensive tactics were overall pretty elite, can't say the same for his offensive, and there were other areas of weakness also with Lee.
Lee didn’t lose the war. He wasn’t Jeff Davis.
In the East he reigned supreme even after the near disaster at Antietam until Gettysburg. His defensive tactics were far superior to his offensive tactics though. On defense dividing the army seemed to work much better than it did when he went on the offense.
Posted on 8/10/20 at 9:08 am to doubleb
quote:
Lee didn’t lose the war. He wasn’t Jeff Davis.
Well ultimately Davis was the one in charge so you're correct. I think Lee gets much undeserved bashing on here, and at the same time, maybe too much praise by us southerners. People like a good David vs Goliath story and Lee was the underdog who in reality put up a pretty good fight with what he had. But he doesn't deserve to be on this list is mostly what I"m saying.
Posted on 8/10/20 at 9:15 am to windshieldman
General Lee was outnumbered in every campaign. He could barely feed his men much less his horses and mules. The North had and overwhelming majority in beans, bullets, band aids, horses, mules, wagons, men and reserves. All of the Yankees had complete uniforms and generally, ate regularly.
It is non-pc to give General Lee any credit.
It is non-pc to give General Lee any credit.
Posted on 8/10/20 at 9:35 am to Sundance
quote:
It is non-pc to give General Lee any credit.
I give Lee credit and as I said, imo he was a good general. Just not top 10 of all time
Posted on 8/10/20 at 9:50 am to RollTide1987
Alexander the Great not being in the top 3 makes me irrationally angry. Also there really should be a place for Ghenghis Khan or another Mongol General on here. I think that we as Americans tend to over rank our Civil War generals as evidenced by this thread. There were no doubt some top military minds at work during it but part of the Top 10 ever? I dont think so.
Personally my top 10 would look something like this
1. Alexander the Great
2. Napoleon
3. Hannibal Barca
4. Julius Caesar
5. Subatei/Ghengis Khan
6. Khalid Ibn al-Walid
7. Heinz Guderian/Erwin Rommel
8. Gustavus Adolphus
9. Arthur Wellesley
10. Frederick the Great
I might throw Scipio in there also but I felt like I needed decent representation for the different time periods.
Personally my top 10 would look something like this
1. Alexander the Great
2. Napoleon
3. Hannibal Barca
4. Julius Caesar
5. Subatei/Ghengis Khan
6. Khalid Ibn al-Walid
7. Heinz Guderian/Erwin Rommel
8. Gustavus Adolphus
9. Arthur Wellesley
10. Frederick the Great
I might throw Scipio in there also but I felt like I needed decent representation for the different time periods.
Posted on 8/10/20 at 10:13 am to RollTide1987
quote:
Although his performance on the battlefield is clearly much better than those of his contemporaries, it should be noted that his Civil War arch-rival, Robert E. Lee, is so far below him on the list that he actually has a negative score.
Lol and after reading all these stupid arse OT "history" threads you would think REL would be #1
Posted on 8/10/20 at 10:25 am to Nigel Farage
quote:
might throw Scipio in there also but I felt like I needed decent representation for the different time periods
So you have no real criteria or method, just your feelings.
The OP list follows a certain criteria and method and that is the list that arose.
Posted on 8/10/20 at 10:59 am to magildachunks
quote:
So you have no real criteria or method, just your feelings.
The OP list follows a certain criteria and method and that is the list that arose.
Yes I threw together a casual list on a casual thread on the OT where everyone is debating the list through their own reasoning's. If you want to be all scientific and create your own model for calculating the best generals to rebuke my post go ahead. Otherwise you can kindly frick off
This post was edited on 8/10/20 at 11:00 am
Posted on 8/10/20 at 11:01 am to doubleb
Arkansas was dealt with the drunkard and womanizer of Earl Van Dorn. He lost battle after battle and helped the Union split the Confederacy in half. He was shot to death by a jealous husband in Tennessee.
Posted on 8/11/20 at 2:53 pm to RollTide1987
Where could I find that information? I know the final weeks of the war, Union soldiers were being slaughtered.
This post was edited on 8/11/20 at 2:53 pm
Posted on 8/11/20 at 3:04 pm to dchog
That is not how you win as a smaller army/country. Look at Vietnam/Iraq/Afghinstan or the u.s revolution for how to win as a smaller force. They drew out the war and caused the citizens of the other country to think it was pointless.
Posted on 8/11/20 at 3:06 pm to geauxbrown
quote:
Where could I find that information?
The late Edward H. Bonekemper III published a study entitled Grant and Lee: Victorious American and Vanquished Virginian back in 2012 with these statistics. I can quote you the figures from his book. On page 395 he cites James McPherson, the leading historian on the subject of this generation, by quoting the following: "For the war as a whole, Lee's army had a higher casualty rate than the armies commanded by Grant. The romantic glorification of the Army of Northern Virginia by generations of Lost Cause writers has obscured this truth."
From 1862-1865, Bonekemper writes, Lee's army suffered 209,000 combined casualties while Grant's suffered a combined 153,642 casualties. While Lee inflicted 55,000 casualties on Grant's army (43% of his total force) in the Overland Campaign of 1864, he did so while on the defensive and lost over 30,000 (47% of his force) of his own soldiers in the process. So while Lee inflicted more casualties on Grant, Grant took out a more sizable chunk of Lee's army in the process.
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