re: The Top 10 Greatest Generals of All-Time - According to Mathematics

Marcus Aurelias

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Truth be told I don’t particularly enjoy the American civil war.

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Same here. I don’t know why. Too emotional for some people so there’s often such a bias. Too muddled.

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Wrong and wrong. You don’t know much about history do you?

And I never said he wasn’t an interesting general. I’m not gonna deny the man his place in history. But to put him over Alexander? Over The great Khan? Hell Shaka Zulu might rank above him.

Being one of the first to get to use new weaponry does not make one great, especially not top 10 great.

He wasn’t a master tactician. He wasn’t some innovative genius. He had the budget and the manpower to overwhelm the south. In a roughly equal matchup he doesn’t hold a candle

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This is the truth and why I posted the factors I did above.

I'll preface my comments by saying that two of my history electives at the Citadel was a two course series on Patterns of Warfare To 1985 and Patterns of Warfare After 1865. They were two of the best classes I took while I was there. They were ages ago but form the foundation of my thoughts on the matter.

The simple fact of the matter is EVERY civil war general fought with antiquated tactics due to the advancement of rifle technology in the years leading up to the war. They used Baroque/Napoleonic era tactics with these new weapons of war. It's why the death tolls for those battles were so massive. None of these supposedly great generals ever evolved their tactics beyond lining up against each other in relatively open country and slugging it out. It was simply a battle of attrition that the south was never adequately equipped to win.

It wasn't until Vicksburg where we saw the emergence of fighting from entrenched positions (that foreshadowed the fighting in WWI) did the tactics evolve to keep troops from getting slaughtered. (And it wasn't the generals that came up with the tactics, it was the foot solders.)

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making light of general grants accomplishments and boiling them down to "all he had was a numerical and financial advantage" and that had he fought on equal footing with the south, he would have gotten crushed

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By suggesting that he wasn’t better than ALEXANDER THE frickING GREAT!?

And his success did come from numerical and industrial advantage. It’s a proven fact. The greatest commanders in history were able to win in spite of those.

Hell, I’d put Vercingeterix before Grant. He was able to Almost beat a Roman army under Caesar.

if you put both Alexander and Grant in control of an equally matched army, do you think Grant wins?

Hell no. It isn’t a contest. and that’s how one should judge historical commanders.

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Wrong and wrong. You don’t know much about history do you?

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You are 100% wrong and I do know more history than you.

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He wasn’t a master tactician. He wasn’t some innovative genius

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Utterly idiotic. Grant was the first to recognize that the would be different. The telegraph and train had made much of prior military doctrine obsolete. Grant had a vision of how he wanted to fight. He had two key innovations. The first innovation was waging war year-round, which represented a major departure from typical warfare. His other innovations was that he the sheer tempo of operations, which taxed the South's supply lines, and mitigated their defensive advantage. He was able to implement this strategy across 3 major theaters of the war.

That Grant could conceive that the war would be fought differently is completely underrated. It was visionary, in fact, to organize a new, cogent strategy on the ground that recognized that the older way of fighting was obsolete, and that the new way required unification of tactical, strategic, and operational elements was utterly revolutionary. The notion he wasn't a good tactician is also not based in fact. His work at Missionary Ridge with the frontal assault was based on a cogent strategy of weakening Bragg's flanks. Grant's work at Vicksburg is still studied today.

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And his success did come from numerical and industrial advantage. It’s a proven fact. The greatest commanders in history were able to win in spite of those.

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Grant was responsible for building his army, imposed 37k more casualties on his opponents than he took over the course of the war, and was victorious in three theaters of the war, forcing the surrender of three Confederate armies. He imposed 41k casualties in the Vicksburg Campaign, while only taking 9k. This pattern is repeated throughout all his campaigns. In the Western Theater, he caused 84k Confederate causalities, and only took 37k. His armies were successful because he built them to be successful. Other Union commanders had the same resources, and were not nearly as successful, despite the same manpower and resource advantages.

People should judge commanders with objectivity. I'm skeptical that you can achieve any objectivity with respect to this topic.

Hannibal and Napoleon are the elite two.

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People dont realize french inches were different than American inches

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Most women get this.

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No, but France had been in a constant state of war since the revolution kickstarted... i think the OP was right when he said...
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Amazing case study of what happens when literally everyone invades you and you fight them off for a decade plus, simply because they don't like your government.

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OP is verifiably wrong.

France wasn’t invaded from approximately 1797 to 1813. This isn’t an opinion. It’s a verified fact.

“Literally everyone” didn’t invade France for approximately 16 years. In fact, no country invaded France during the second, third, fourth, and fifth coalition wars. France did the invading, of course.

I don’t know how much more black and white it can be.

France expelled invaders and then became one. It’s not hard to comprehend.

Now, I’m not saying France wasn’t invaded after the revolution or during the first coalition war. I’m also not saying France didn’t have war declared on her. Those are correct observations. However, OP didn’t say that.

There is also no debate France‘a opponents In the Napoleonic wars did not Approve of the republican or empire. But that doesn’t mean France was invaded as OP indicated.