# Greatest Military Leader elimination game (game thread) **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [August 12, 2010, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-military-leader-elimination-game-game-thread/550010 "2010-08-12T02:50:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-military-leader-elimination-game-game-thread/550010/121 "2010-08-31T14:15:12Z")
For me, this list is still too long; I feel like I’m casting about randomly. I think it will be more interesting when we’re down to the top 25 and start voting off people like Attila or Wellington. Richard H. O’Kane - 2 Charles de Gaulle - 2 George Washington - 1 (Not a great tactical leader, though strong politically and strategically. Tactically, he was brilliant at retreating - which is not a slam, without his retreat across the East River the war could have finished the other way - but not so good on the attack.) ---
**Author:** ![MOIDALIZE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@MOIDALIZE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MOIDALIZE)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-military-leader-elimination-game-game-thread/550010/122 "2010-08-31T14:45:51Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > **MOIDALIZE** , I would love to hear who you think did more with less than Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck. I don’t know…Giap? But what did Vorbeck accomplish, really? I get that he was outnumbered and “never lost,” but so what? He was a successful raider in a non-priority theater of the war, fighting against British officers famed for being incompetent buffoons. Nothing he did would have changed the outcome of the war, and he only seemed to have fought only two major engagements (Tanga, where he repelled a badly executed amphibious landing made mainly by poorly trained Indian troops, and Mahiwa, which was a Pyrrhic victory), which suggests to me that he was either overly cautious with his force, or didn’t have the manpower and supplies to affect the situation any more than he did. A fine leader, but not particularly exceptional. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-military-leader-elimination-game-game-thread/550010/123 "2010-08-31T14:52:30Z")
> [@Tom\_Scud](#): > > … > George Washington - 1 (Not a great tactical leader, though strong politically and strategically. Tactically, he was brilliant at retreating - which is not a slam, without his retreat across the East River the war could have finished the other way - but not so good on the attack.) I disagree. Trenton, Princeton and Yorktown were all decisive victories. An earlier discussion of Washington’s generalship: [Was Washington a good general? - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=532183) ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-military-leader-elimination-game-game-thread/550010/124 "2010-09-01T17:10:56Z")
The votes in our seventh round: **Richard H. O’Kane - 14 Charles de Gaulle - 8 Paul von Hindenburg - 5** Flavius Aetius - 4 Marc Mitscher - 3 Vo Nguyen Giap, Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck, Pyrrhus, Yamamoto Isoroku - 2 each Mehmet the Conqueror, George Washington, Orde Wingate - 1 each The top three are now gone. That leaves: Akbar the Great: Conquered much of India Alexander the Great: Conquered the known world Attila the Hun: Scourge of God, and Rome. Belisarius: Justinian’s hammer Napoleon Bonaparte: Conquered most of Europe Sir Isaac Brock: Saved Canada against overwhelming odds Arthur Currie: Vimy Ridge; only sane WW1 leader? Moshe Dayan: Eye-patched Israeli commander Michiel Adriaenszoon de Ruyter: Dutch admiral, naval star Hugh Dowding: Won Battle of Britain Dwight D. Eisenhower: Defeated Nazis in Western Europe Flavius Aetius: Scourge of Attila Frederick the Great: Prussian king and battlefield genius Gaius Marius: Most important military reforms ever? Genghis Khan: Built the perfect war machine Vo Nguyen Giap: Won Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam Ulysses S. Grant: Won final victory for Union Gustavus Adolphus: Made Sweden a great power Hannibal: Greatest tactical genius? Henry V: Warrior-king; won at Agincourt Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson: Embodiment of maneuver and offense John Paul Jones: Great American, Russian naval commander Julius Caesar: Rome’s most brilliant commander Khalid ibn al-Walid: Architect of the Arab conquests. Kong Ming/Zhuge Liang: Great Chinese tactician Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck: Evaded the British in Africa Erich von Manstein: His plan conquered France Duke of Marlborough: Master of early modern war Mehmet the Conqueror: Took Constantinople Marc Mitscher: Master of operational carrier warfare Bernard Montgomery: British commander at El Alamein Lord Nelson: Royal Navy admiral; Trafalgar victor Oda Nobunaga: First great unifier of Japan George Patton: Armored warfare advocate Phillip II of Macedon: Alexander’s father, set the stage Pyrrhus: King of Epirus; opposed Rome Erwin Rommel: Germany’s Desert Fox Scipio Africanus: Stopped Carthage and Hannibal Philip “Little Phil” Sheridan: Grant’s troubleshooter; Indian fighter extraordinaire William Tecumseh Sherman: Logistics, maneuver as strategic warfare Subutai: Genghis Khan’s top general Themistocles: Victor of Marathon, Artemisium, Salamis Timur-e-Lang: The scourge of Western Asia Togo Heihachiro: Japanese naval victor against Russians Tsao Tsao (also Cao Cao): Chinese emperor, general Sebastien Le Prestre de Vauban: Great French military engineer George Washington: Determined general; won American independence Duke of Wellington: Successes in India; thrashed Napoleon Orde Wingate: Unorthodox leader in Africa, Asia Yamamoto Isoroku: WW2 Japanese naval leader Yi-Sun Shin: Noteworthy Korean admiral Georgy Zhukov: Led from Moscow to Berlin Eliminated so far: George B. McClellan Charles the Bold Hernan Cortez Douglas MacArthur Pompey Magnus Carl von Clausewitz Robert E. Lee Josip Broz Tito Zachary Taylor John S. McCain Sr. Titokowaru Albert Kesselring Curtis Le May Sun Tzu Gabriel Dumont Charles Upham Richard H. O’Kane Charles de Gaulle Paul von Hindenburg The next round will conclude at noon EST on Fri. Sept. 3. Same rules as before. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-military-leader-elimination-game-game-thread/550010/125 "2010-09-01T17:32:32Z")
Marc Mitscher - 2 Sherman - 2 Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck - 1 ---
**Author:** ![MOIDALIZE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@MOIDALIZE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MOIDALIZE)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-military-leader-elimination-game-game-thread/550010/126 "2010-09-01T20:09:17Z")
**Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck** - 2 **Orde Wingate** - 2: I suppose he should get some credit for daring to take a significant force deep behind enemy lines, but it seem senseless to waste such crack special forces troops in an isolated operation, unsupported by any sort of offensive by the regular army. **Hugh Dowding** - 1: I may not keep this vote, and am putting it here to spur debate, as I have a difficult time evaluating the performance of an air war leader. It seems to me that the Battle of Britain was likely unwinnable for the Germans from the outset, so I’m not sure how much credit Dowding should get for leading the winning side. ---
**Author:** ![Sternvogel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Sternvogel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sternvogel)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-military-leader-elimination-game-game-thread/550010/127 "2010-09-01T21:04:30Z")
Sticking with: Flavius Aetius – 2 Marc Mitscher – 2 Returning to: Pyrrhus – 1 ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-military-leader-elimination-game-game-thread/550010/128 "2010-09-01T22:27:30Z")
> [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > It seems to me that the Battle of Britain was likely unwinnable for the Germans from the outset, so I’m not sure how much credit Dowding should get for leading the winning side. If the Germans had kept hitting the radar and airfields then it would have been very difficult indeed. But they made a strategic error in switching to bombing cities and Dowding capitalised on that to beat them. ---
**Author:** ![SecretaryofEvil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e95f7d/32.png) [@SecretaryofEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SecretaryofEvil)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-military-leader-elimination-game-game-thread/550010/129 "2010-09-01T22:46:58Z")
Damn! I’m too late to give a defense of Cortez (his skills as a military leader that is, not his morals). Well I’m going to give him one anyway. I think people are making the conquest of the Aztecs seem a bit easier than it was. Exploiting your enemy’s weaknesses, procuring allies and mercenaries, possessing superior technology and strategy, these are things that many of the leaders on this list used to achieve success. Just briefly glancing over the list, Aeutius, Atilla, Julius Caesar, Hannibal, all fall into that category. Nobody has yet to complain that Julius Caesar had better armor than the Celts, or that Atilla had stirrups and his opponents did not. Obviously Cortez’s technological advantage was more extreme, but so were the numbers he was fighting against. Cortez won some of his early victories when he was outnumbered 50 to 1, and he did so with no native allies, few horses, and less than 50 firearms. He also nearly flawlessly defeated a Spanish force that outnumbered him 4 to 1, and had more horses and gunpowder. I don’t think he deserves the top seat, but it’s hard to deny his skills as a military leader. Ulysses S. Grant— 2 I think he was more of a capable leader than a great one. He recognized that he had vastly superior resources, and he applied them effectively. Vo Nguyen Giap—2 As someone else has said, guerrilla wars are more lost than won. The Vietnamese victories were due more to resolve than any brilliant strategy. I think he was a good military leader, but not in the league of these other gentlemen. George Washington—1 This was hard. Washington showed occasional tactical prowess and consistent strategic success. But he had occasional tactical failings as well, and like Vo Nguyen Giap, his ultimate victory was due to resolve, as well as the efforts of others. ---
**Author:** ![MOIDALIZE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@MOIDALIZE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MOIDALIZE)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-military-leader-elimination-game-game-thread/550010/130 "2010-09-01T22:54:39Z")
> [@SecretaryofEvil](#): > > Vo Nguyen Giap—2 As someone else has said, guerrilla wars are more lost than won. The Vietnamese victories were due more to resolve than any brilliant strategy. I think he was a good military leader, but not in the league of these other gentlemen. I’ll have an impassioned defense for Giap when the time comes, which I don’t believe is now, but your version of Giap’s accomplishments completely overlooks the First Indochina War against France. ---
**Author:** ![lisiate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-military-leader-elimination-game-game-thread/550010/131 "2010-09-01T23:36:31Z")
> [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > > [@SecretaryofEvil](#): > > > > Vo Nguyen Giap—2 As someone else has said, guerrilla wars are more lost than won. The Vietnamese victories were due more to resolve than any brilliant strategy. I think he was a good military leader, but not in the league of these other gentlemen. > > I’ll have an impassioned defense for Giap when the time comes, which I don’t believe is now, but your version of Giap’s accomplishments completely overlooks the First Indochina War against France. I don’t think you should hold back too long, the small numbers of voters at the moment put him at risk. Anyway here are my votes: Marc Mitscher - 2 votes Tsao Tsao (also Cao Cao) - 2 votes. I hadn’t heard of him before what I could find seems shrouded in myth and it seems he was defeated by Kong Ming/Zhuge Liang who’s also on the list. Mehmet the Conquerer - 1 vote ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2010, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-military-leader-elimination-game-game-thread/550010/132 "2010-09-02T01:11:06Z")
Pyrrhus - 2 Mehmet the Conqueror - 2 Orde Wingate - 1 ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2010, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-military-leader-elimination-game-game-thread/550010/133 "2010-09-02T01:36:58Z")
> [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > I don’t know…Giap? But what did Vorbeck accomplish, really? I get that he was outnumbered and “never lost,” but so what? He was a successful raider in a non-priority theater of the war, fighting against British officers famed for being incompetent buffoons. Nothing he did would have changed the outcome of the war, and he only seemed to have fought only two major engagements (Tanga, where he repelled a badly executed amphibious landing made mainly by poorly trained Indian troops, and Mahiwa, which was a Pyrrhic victory), which suggests to me that he was either overly cautious with his force, or didn’t have the manpower and supplies to affect the situation any more than he did. > > A fine leader, but not particularly exceptional. The other German colonies were quickly crushed or surrendered, the German East African governor and Berlin itself told him to surrender yet he took 2600 German recruits and 2500 African’s on a world wind four year tour of hassle for the British government. Fed up, in march 1916 the British tried to finish him off with Gen. J.C. Smuts and 45,000 men. Which were men that could have been badly needed in Gallipoli 2 months earlier. At Mahiwa he lost 520 men killed or wounded to the British 2,700 killed or wounded. But the best part of Lettow-Vorbeck’s strategy is that he DIDN’T fight many battles, he just led his pursuers around while the African countryside killed off their support animals. According to [here](http://www.tokencoins.com/gea04a.htm), “More than 300,000 troops were deployed during the course of the war to hem in and defeat Lettow’s army, yet he did not suffer a single defeat. The Allies suffered sixty thousand casualties including twenty thousand British and Indian dead in East Africa during the war.” ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2010, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-military-leader-elimination-game-game-thread/550010/134 "2010-09-02T06:09:34Z")
> [@SecretaryofEvil](#): > > Nobody has yet to complain that Julius Caesar had better armor than the Celts The Celts invented chainmail, which was later adopted by the Romans ;). > [@](#): > > or that Atilla had stirrups and his opponents did not. Oft-stated but unproven. In fact as far as I know there is not a shred of archaeological evidence that the Huns used stirrups. The earliest evidence for _paired_ stirrups in Europe is in 7th century Avar grave sites. One argument that the Huns didn’t have them is that we don’t really see their use in Europe until Carolingian times ( after contract with the aforementioned Avars ), despite the facts that Germanic armies that fought for and against them made extensive use of cavalry and would have seemed likely to adopt them. For that matter Flavius Aetius lived with the Huns as a hostage and made heavy use of Hun troops in some of his campaigns and the late Romans certainly didn’t adopt them either. Of course current thinking is that stirrups weren’t as profound an advance as was once thought. > [@](#): > > Cortez won some of his early victories when he was outnumbered 50 to 1, and he did so with no native allies, few horses, and less than 50 firearms. Well, the first _major_ engagement he fought ( when he had a couple hundred Totonac porters, but apparently few warriors ) was against the Tlaxcalans and according to the eyewitness Castillo, the Spaniards were very nearly [wiped out by the younger Xicotencatl](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xicotencatl_the_Younger). It wasn’t Cortes’ skill that saved the day, but dissension in the Tlaxcalan ranks. Cortes then advanced into Cholula with an initial force of 1,000 Tlaxcalteca ( more than twice as many native warriors as there were Spaniards ). By the time the several hundred Spanish troops had first arrived in Tenochitlan they were backed by a purported 3,000 native troops ( as opposed to 400-odd Spaniards at that point ). His night ambush of Narvaez was quite successful and good thinking. But it involved rushing in under cover of night and a rain storm, bulling through a few guards, then grabbing Narvaez and threatening to kill him if he didn’t surrender, which he promptly did - it wasn’t really a battle. Meanwhile the expulsion of the Spanish from Tenochitlan shortly thereafter was a bloody debacle, with very heavy casualties. What seems to be what really destroyed the Aztecs in the end was smallpox, particularly in densely populated Tenochitlan, where it annihilated almost half the populace. While Cortez seems like a brave, quick-thinking leader, given the huge helping hand of disease in particular in the Aztec conquest, I can’t help feeling he is perhaps a bit overrated as a great conqueror. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2010, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-military-leader-elimination-game-game-thread/550010/135 "2010-09-02T14:33:11Z")
Agreed. For a great fictionalized, but very well-researched, account of Cortez’s campaign in Mexico, check out Gary Jennings’s _Aztec_, one of my favorite historical novels. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2010, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-military-leader-elimination-game-game-thread/550010/136 "2010-09-02T14:46:15Z")
What’s the case for voting off Mitscher? ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2010, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-military-leader-elimination-game-game-thread/550010/137 "2010-09-02T15:27:19Z")
> [@Tom\_Scud](#): > > What’s the case for voting off Mitscher? Mitscher is my nomination. As I understand it, the complaint is that at Midway he misdirected his airstrike, which appears to be the case. Possibly it was a case of micromanagement; other carrier battles don’t seem to mention the head guy specifically ordering the attack planes to fly a narrow vector. However, it bears mentioning that up until Midway, almost _everyone_ mishandled carrier strikes. Aircraft carriers were still a new weapons system – and particularly using them as principal instruments of fleet engagement and power projection, as opposed to just scouting. The Pearl Harbor attack couldn’t help missing the American carriers, perhaps, but failing to make an additional strike to get the strategic oil reserve was a huge mistake. Coral Sea was still a case of fumbling with the new weapon system. At Midway, only Spruance deserves any credit for decisionmaking (specifically his decision to split the “all or nothing” strike and order away the aircraft already aloft, to save critical fuel) and that assessment includes the Japanese. But the success of the Dauntless dive bombers was largely the result of their pilots and squadron leaders, not the air bosses and admirals. But Mitscher learned fast. By the start of 1944, his task force struck the heavily fortified Truk atoll in a high-speed raid, launching _thirty_ airstrikes, _each_ larger than the Pearl Harbor strike, and took Truk right out of the war. Only mastery of the continuous flow of aircraft landing, refueling, re-arming, launching, wind and weather, and fleet maneuvering allowed Mitscher to accomplish this much sheer activity while still traveling at high speed and not snarl everything up in some kind of gigantic accident. American losses were minimal, mostly due to heavy flak. Later he showed humanity and a good judgment of risk when he ordered his carriers to turn on all their lights at the Battle of the Philippine Sea, to land his pilots in the dark. This was contrary to the thinking of the times, which was that the submarine and night-bomber threat to the carriers was too great to ever risk illumination at night, but Mitscher correctly judged the threat of waning Japanese naval power to be less than the loss of his best pilots. About 80 aircraft were lost anyway, but most of the human beings were pulled form the water and lived. In that same battle, Spruance was heavily criticized for being overcautious, by the way. The days of carrier-to-carrier combat have passed, and with satellites we will never have that same “feeling for each other blind” dynamic in (surface) naval combat, but for the brief period of its heyday, Mitscher mastered a these new technologies and new ways of thinking about war, and delivered enormously complex, large-scale, high-speed attacks with efficiency. Admiral Alrleigh Burke called Mitscher “the preeminent carrier force commander in the world.” . ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2010, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-military-leader-elimination-game-game-thread/550010/138 "2010-09-02T15:32:34Z")
Good overview of Mitscher, thanks. > [@Sailboat](#): > > …The days of carrier-to-carrier combat have passed, and with satellites we will never have that same “feeling for each other blind” dynamic in (surface) naval combat… Weeeeeeeell, I wouldn’t say never. With antisat weapons, countermeasures and jamming, it just might be that satellites won’t be as all-knowing or reliable in the next major war. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2010, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-military-leader-elimination-game-game-thread/550010/139 "2010-09-02T15:34:18Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > With antisat weapons, countermeasures and jamming, it just might be that satellites won’t be as all-knowing or reliable in the next major war. Hey! You could put somebody’s eye out with those things! ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2010, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-military-leader-elimination-game-game-thread/550010/140 "2010-09-02T15:42:55Z")
Thanks, Sailboat. I’ll go for a couple whose military virtues aren’t well-documented: Flavius Aetius - 2 Tsao Tsao (also Cao Cao) - 2 and add a vote for Philip Sheridan - 1 (I don’t think the US Civil War had 4 of the top 50 military leaders of all time involved; I’ll go for the lowest-ranked). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-military-leader-elimination-game-game-thread/550010.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-military-leader-elimination-game-game-thread/550010.md?page=8)