Togo Heihachiro - 2
Bernard Law Montgomery - 1
George S. Patton - 1
Gaius Marius - 1
Going to cast the first vote to exile Marius. In my admittedly brief look at his accomplishments I see that he crushed the Teutones lopsidedly, but apparently they impetuously attacked his prepared position before reinforcements, and then their reinforcements walked into a trap and they were defeated in detail. The most important reason he’s on this list is his military reforms – the most important to Rome being expanding the recruiting pool for Roman armies. While this was a huge boon for Roman troop strength and a driver of social mobility (although social reform probably lies outside the scope of our interests in this thread), it’s not like other armies didn’t also think of making “every man a soldier.” Most of the “barbarian” cultures the Romans faced recruited from almost all males of the appropriate age. I don’t mean to say Marius’ reforms merely gave the Romans some of the advantages the barbarians already had…there was reorganization and standardization as well.
However, perhaps more to the point, the reforms are the core of his legacy and military reformers and organizers have been poorly represented on this list – this is a fighting list. Sure, Phillip II of Macedon made the list for Father-Son Day; but Jackie Fisher is missing, and George B. McClellan was unceremoniously booted early on.
Marius did win a campaign and did vastly improve Rome’s army, and belongs on the list. But probably not for many more rounds. We are starting to face tough decisions.
Arthur Currie should probably go soon too – but I have a soft spot for any nominally sane WWI general and respect his standing up for his men (with the possible exception of his controversial end-of-war offensive).
edited to add: Although I am booting Montgomery in favor of keeping Manstein, I have to admit Monty passes my criterion of facing (and beating) high-quality opposition. Rommel (twice!) among others.
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Hey, apropos of nothing, while searching for something else entirely I blundered across a previous defense I had made of Sherman’s March.
It’s kind of overkill to bring it up, since I’ve pretty much already gone to the mat for Sherman , but here it is for anyone interested in more blather about the topic.
I can’t believe Giap is gone while some obscure Asian admirals and Bernard freaking Montgomery are still here. The man who built an army out of scratch (the same army that swept through South Vietnam in a matter of months after the US had pulled out), who understood better than any of his opponents the political nature of the conflict (you think he might have had some helpful advice for the US in combating insurgency before we went into Iraq and Afghanistan?), the man who mired the French in a bloody, fruitless war before beating them at their own game!!! AND outlasted an America force that was qualitatively superior in nearly every aspect (except perhaps leadership)…this man deserved better, I think.
Anyway…
Togo - 2 Bernard Montgomery - 2 Attila - 1
As for Gaius Marius, I don’t think that expanding the pool of recruits was the most important aspect of the reforms. The tactical and organizational reforms were much more important. Prior to the reforms the Roman army was a mish-mash of poorly equipped young infantrymen, a core of veteran heavy infantry, and the triarii fighting with spears and using hoplite tactics. This was an unwieldy force. Standardizing the heavy infantry made the legions much more effective, even in the hands of less than competent generals (it’s been said that the Macedonian phalanx was better than the Roman legion, but required a skilled commander to use effectively; how common are truly skilled commanders?), and reducing the size of the logistical tail by requiring each soldier to carry most of his equipment and supplies made them more mobile. It’s not for nothing that the Romans achieved their greatest levels of success and conquest in the aftermath of these reforms.
As an aside, here’s a fun little blog post and comments regarding the apparent strategic shortcomings of the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars.
For what it’s worth, I considered putting him on the spot in the previous rounds then called it off : when all is said and done, I don’t know squat about him beyond the reforms. His wiki page lists one outstanding victory, one fairly marginal one against outclassed opponents, a few marginal defeats and one big civil war defeat but hopelessly outclassed himself. Not spectacular, but not too bad either. He seems to have been quite the skeevy politician though.
But mostly I was on the fence on whether the reforms should count towards his leadership cred or not. On the one hand, they were a strictly off-the-field, indirect, bureaucratic and social matter. On the other hand, it takes a savvy strategist, not to mention a cunning politician, to not only figure out how to leverage the most might out of one’s society, culture and zeitgeist ; but also to get such a sweeping motion enacted in spite of the Old Guard. Considering the triarii, that is to say the richest and most influential class, got buggered the most by the reforms, manoeuvring past them definitely looks like an achievement to me.
But is that achievement political, military, or military-through-politics ? I can’t decide, and that bugs me.
@**Quartz **: I wouldn’t go so far as dubbing Market Garden a wild success. It was, at best, a Pyrrhic victory, especially considering the war had pretty much devoluted into a mop up operation by that point. Had Germany still been in any sort of fighting strength, the Allies could have paid dearly for it. Then again, had Germany been in any sort of fighting strength, there wouldn’t have been an MG I suppose…
But still : if your mark of infamy is a not-quite-victory, you’re ahead of the game in my book
Bernard Montgomery - 1. I still just don’t see Manstein as inferior to Patton or Montgomery, other than having played for the losing team. As for Patton vs. Montgomery - Montgomery seemed a tad more imaginative but also had more flubs, so he gets the first chop.
Yi-Sun Shin : 2. Tamerlane’s points notwithstanding, I have to attribute much of Yi’s success to Japanese inferiority in naval warfare. In the only Japanese naval victory of the war, the Koreans were exhausted, heavily outnumbered, and commanded by a cavalry officer in his first naval engagement. That said, Myeongnyang was impressive, assuming it happened the way it is reported. I’ve always been extremely skeptical of the historiography of the Imjin War, which makes it hard for me to credit Yi too highly.
Attila the Hun - 13
Togo Heihachiro - 12
Bernard Montgomery - 11
Erich von Manstein - 6
George S. Patton - 5
Philip II of Macedon, William T. Sherman, Yi-Sun Shin - 2 each
Gaius Marius, U.S. Grant - 1 each
The three boldfaced leaders above are now gone. That leaves:
Akbar the Great: Conquered much of India
Alexander the Great: Conquered the known world
Belisarius: Justinian’s hammer
Napoleon Bonaparte: Conquered most of Europe
Arthur Currie: Vimy Ridge; only sane WW1 leader?
Frederick the Great: Prussian king and battlefield genius
Gaius Marius: Most important military reforms ever?
Genghis Khan: Built the perfect war machine
Ulysses S. Grant: Won final victory for Union
Gustavus Adolphus: Made Sweden a great power
Hannibal: Greatest tactical genius?
Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson: Embodiment of maneuver and offense
Julius Caesar: Rome’s most brilliant commander
Khalid ibn al-Walid: Architect of the Arab conquests.
Erich von Manstein: His plan conquered France
Duke of Marlborough: Master of early modern war
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
Erwin Rommel: Germany’s Desert Fox
Scipio Africanus: Stopped Carthage and Hannibal
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
George Washington: Determined general; won American independence
Duke of Wellington: Successes in India; thrashed Napoleon
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
Marc Mitscher
Flavius Aetius
Mehmet the Conqueror
Pyrrhus
Orde Wingate
Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck
Sebastien Le Prestre de Vauban
Tsao Tsao (also Cao Cao)
Hugh Dowding
Yamamoto Isoroku
Sir Isaac Brock
Moshe Dayan
Michiel Adriaenszoon de Ruyter
Phil Sheridan
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Kong Ming/Zhuge Liang
Henry V
John Paul Jones
Vo Nguyen Giap
Attila the Hun
Togo Heihachiro
Bernard Montgomery
The next round will conclude at noon EST on Mon. Sept. 20. Same rules as before.
Is it possible that Khalid ibn al-Walid, architect of the Arab conquests, is even half the man his Wikipedia page claims him to be?
I am aware that he is a figure of religious significance and he’s also a cultural icon. And I am aware that Wikipedia is subject to editing by anyone, fan or fanatic. But that page describes him as tall, muscular, athletic, a master of numerous weapon styles, and admired – all in his childhood, before he went on to become a Companion of the Prophet and beat the Byzantine and Persian empires, Syria, and other Arab tribes.
It further specifies [bolding mine for applicability to this thread]:
If this page is a fair representation of his career he’s a shoo-in for the top three finalists at the very least. Or is there some hagiographic exaggeration going on here? I’m not disputing that the whirlwind conquests of Islam are a wonder of military history; what’s been eye-opening to me is the idea that they might be the achievements of one man and not of a more general synergy between a military system and a motivating ideology.
I’m fairly certain there is, it would have been pretty typical for the period, especially for someone so heavily and successfully involved in the early imperial expansion. It’s likely a number of those 100 battles ( if that figure is even accurate ) amounted to minor skirmishes and it’s really hard to say just what were the disposition of forces in events like the Ridda Wars - it may well be that rebel strength was exaggerated to play up the eventual victory of Islam. Arab sources from that period were not infrequently contradictory and/or sparse in details. Certainly Khalid was not outnumbered by 200k to 3k at Mu’ta ;). However…
I think his success on the battlefield is fairly incontrovertible. It does seem that he was key to unhinging the Byzantine front in Syria, setting the stage for Yarmuk ( for example his capture of Bostra, which sources seemed to agree happened in part due to his attack from an unexpected vector ). And whether the exact strategy used at Yarmuk was his or not ( or Abu Ubayda’s or a combination of the two ), we know from multiple sources that he was the commander of the key cavalry engagement that exploited a momentary tactical failure of the Byzantines to seize a gap that broke the Byzantine army in two ( and we should note that at the time, the Arab armies were not particularly cavalry-oriented ) and also, shortly thereafter, the action that separated the main army from its base camp. Reconstruction by Kaegi ( based also in part by those of Caeteni ), including in person battle site visits and non-Arab sources like Fredegarius, more or less backs the Arabic accounts of that particular engagement. Much of this by the way from Walter E. Kaegi’s Byzantium and the Early Islamic Conquests* ( 1992, Cambridge University Press ).
The Ridda and Persian campaigns can perhaps be taken with bigger grains of salt as above. But nonetheless, he seems to have been the go-to guy in both the Ridda Wars and the early Persian campaigns and we know he did win. Whether the reconstruction of his tactics are correct, his winning certainly is and considering his slightly better-attested success in Syria, I’m inclined to grant his sources a fair bit of leeway/credit in that direction.
While the Persian and Byzantine states were exhausted and uniquely vulnerable at that precise moment in history, you have to give the Arab forces an awful lot of props. Both states were still capable of fielding substantial veteran field forces ( one side effect of that long devastating war between the two, is that the survivors of the elite mobile field armies would have been tough as nails ) that almost certainly outnumbered the Muslim armies arrayed against them. I don’t think religious zealotry ( which had to be somewhat incomplete at least in the beginning ) can fully account for Muslim success.
Khalid gets the most credit of all the early Arab commanders, some of whom like the quite sucessful Amr ibn al-As and Abu Ubayda must have surely have had their own cheering squads. This despite the fact that, unlike those other two, he fell from grace due to trouble with the Rashidun Caliph Umar I, one of the most respected figures in the history of Sunni Islam, which one would presume would have put a brake or at least partially checked tendencies towards hagiography. He’s a somewhat obscure figure to western audiences, like several of those Asian commanders on this list. But probably unfairly so.
Well, he didn’t win at Mu’ta - at most he sucessfully conducted a fighting retreat. He may not deserve blame for the defeat as he wasn’t the senior commander at the start of the battle, but a victory it was not. That aside his record does seem fairly impressive.
I think this is a contentious claim. For example IF we accept one secondary source on Mu’ta, a 13th century Muslim military manual which was using who knows what primary source ( maybe long since lost ), the Arab force performed very credibly as a regular army, rather than as a mob of raiders. But while Khalid’s tactics in retreat are praised it is worth noting that he was de facto 5th in command at the start of the battle, the senior three commanders bought it in the fighting and #4 ceded command to Khalid. So was the 5th in command responsible for turning them into a semi-professional fighting body before the battle? Maybe, but it seems less likely.
I’m curious as to Pratt’s source for this. I know Hugh Kennedy ( who scarcely mentions Khalid at all in his Armies of the Caliphs ) notes that the Arab primary sources were typically a bit light on tactics. There were other early Arab commanders and one must also address how much may have been done cooperatively vs. the initiative of one individual.
Arguable, but with a kernel of truth. The Arab armies did indeed enjoy a certain degree of superior strategic mobility compared to their more settled opponents. This was down to the fact that the early Arab armies tended to consist largely of the functional equivalent of hobilars. They rode on horse or camel-back to battle, but the bulk would then dismount and fight as infantry. The proportion of actual cavalry rose steadily in later decades but it wasn’t until the Abbasid revolution that they became the dominant arm ( initially Persian-style heavy cavalry, later the Turkish horse-archer ). Interestingly enough, while the Byzantines and Sassanians almost certainly made used of mounted archers, the early Arabs did not.
However I have seen no indication that this was an innovation of Khalid’s. More reasonable to say that it seems he successfully exploited this pre-existing advantage.
I think giving one man all the credit would be overstating things, even if all his probable bits of hagiography proved out. Folks like the above noted Amr ibn al-As and Abu Ubayda and others seem to have been quite competent themselves and did not always operate under his umbrella.
Interesting - did the early Arabs live in areas conducive to the use of mounted archers? My understanding, which could be way off, is that mounted archers were most effective in areas like the Asian steppes - large, flat plains with plenty of grazing. The other factor that could make it hard to field a mounted archer force is time - you really can’t just go from zero to a substantial force of mounted archers in a few months, or a year, or five years. Effective mounted archers are trained from childhood - so if you don’t already have them, you can’t get them in a hurry.
Sternvogel, is there really no one else worse remaining, such that you want to vote against one of your nominees?
Erich von Manstein, for the reasons already stated - 2
Gaius Marius, a noteworthy reformer but not a battlefield leader on the level of others still in the running - 2
Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson - erratic, overly secretive with his own top subordinates, and treasonous - 1
Yeah, Arabia has some grazing of course, but it is fairly sparse compared to a region like Azerbaijan. Considering the ubiquity of camels ( decent for transportation, not so much for mounted warfare ) in the Arabian milieu, one can assume that maintaining large strings of horses was simply not feasible for any but the very wealthy. It is clear the the early Arabs mostly fought on foot, a cultural tradition that circumstantially supports this notion.
It is thought based on some descriptions ( but it is uncertain, no early material survives ) that the Arab bow may have been lighter than the recurved Persian equivalent and also longer, much more suited to a foot archer. In fact the Arabs placed a great emphasis on archery and unlike the case in contemporary western armies, the role of the archer attached high esteem. Arab infantry seems to have had a relatively high proportion of their combat strength equipped with bows compared to their principal opponents. But horse-archers don’t seem to have really been a factor in early Muslim armies until the introduction of elite Turkish slave ( and mercenary ) soldiers from the steppes starting for the most part with the Abbasid Caliph al-Mu’tasim ( r. 833-842 ).
I mentioned Hugh Kennedy’s book above - The Armies of the Caliphs:Military and Society in the Early Islamic State ( 2001, Routledge ). Perused it again this morning re:Arab sources - they are quite voluminous with very colorful narratives ( many purportedly first-hand accounts ), but are also highly contradictory and as a consequence somewhat untrustworthy. By contrast Byzantine and Persian accounts to compare them with are mostly very sparse, hence the issue. A couple of interesting quotes:
*Many of the details turn out to be topoi, formulaic accounts that can be transferred from one conquest to another. The tellers of these tales often had good reason to claim that certain individuals in certain tribes participated in certain conflicts. It was not only a question of tribal or personal honour; it was a question of serious money. When the conquests were over, those who had particpated in great battles like Qadisiya in 636, which led to the conquest of Iraq, were entitled to much higher wages than those who had not…
This is not to say that the accounts were all fabrications. Obviously the Muslim conquests did occur and it is clear beyond a reasonable doubt that the main battles happened when they did ( though the exact chronolgy is much more problematic ). We can assume to that some of the individuals and groups mentioned did in fact take place in the campaigns to which they are ascribed and that some of the incidents did actually occur. The trouble is that it is very difficult to tell which. This in turn means it would be quite unsafe for the historian to search these accounts for examples of Muslim strategy, tactics, composition of armies or even of the weapons they carried…*
Kennedy takes note of one case involving a siege situation where we have a very straightforward, linear account in Syriac to juxtapose with multiple Arab accounts:
…If this account is compared to with the much longer Muslim narratives, some interesting conclusions can be drawn. All of the important features of the Syriac narrative can be found in one or more Arabic accounts. However, none of the Arabic accounts contain all of the material found in the Syriac and they all contain extraneous material. Without the Syriac, we would have no idea which of the various Arabic traditions was closest to being a factual account of what occurred at Shustar…
So all of the above adds up to a few more substantial bags of salt to be taken with accounts of Khalid ibn al-Walid’s campaigns. But I’ll still put forth a further argument for him ;).
There seems to be at least a loose scholarly consensus on some of the facts surrounding the early Islamic conquests:
1.) The Arabs did not enjoy any numerical superiority, but rather seem to have been most likely outnumbered at the largest, decisive engagements at the very least. Probably at most of them.
2.) Early on the Arabs had at best a technological/material parity and for the most part probably an inferiority relative to the Byzantines and Persians. Certainly body armor would probably have been rather more rare in the Arab ranks.
3.) The Arabs likely enjoyed some superiority in morale. Both as a consequence of religious zealotry, snowballing success and the long, exhausting Byzantine-Persian Wars. I’m guessing this would have been much more pronounced with the Persians, who were in absolute political chaos, as opposed to the Byzantines who had established a measure of fragile stability under Heraclius.
4.) The Arabs had unity of purpose, which helped nullify Heraclius’ greatest weapon - his ability to exploit divisions in enemy ranks ( as a field general he’s overrated IMHO ).
5.) The Arabs enjoyed some advantage in strategic mobility. Also interior lines - Medina was only a week’s ride from either front line and there is decent evidence of the rapid transfer of troops from one front to the other. Some centralized coordination by the Caliphs is actually feasible, if not certain.
6.) The Byzantine and Persian states were in an advanced state of foment and were exhausted - their ability to rapidly recover from major defeats was minimal.
7.) Nonetheless, the two empires still fielded core, mobile, fairly professional armies composed of battle-hardened veterans and Arab manpower was limited. Strong victories at Yarmuk and Qadisyia at least would probably have crushed the Islamic eruption.
The question than becomes why did outnumbered, less professional, less well-equipped Arab forces triumph so thoroughly and so consistently? I find simple superior elan ( or farther afield into the mystical, the will of God ) unconvincing as an answer. Mobility and a strong strategic position are only helpful if properly exploited. Circumstantially I think I have to argue that truly superior generalship was if perhaps not THE key, a very major factor.
Khalid’s individual exploits may be called into question, but we have to assume that given the great mulitplicity of narratives that at least some are true in their broad outlines. He seems to given the most credit of any of the very early Arab generals, despite political difficulties with Umar. If we can’t be sure if he really built the early Muslim army and gifted it with his strategic vision and tactical doctrine ( though he may have ), we can be reasonably sure that he fought and won most of at least the non-Ridda encounters ascribed to him - they seem to be mostly a matter of general record, exact chronology aside. We have fairly reasonable evidence of his quick-witted and decisive tactical actions at Yarmuk in particular. That in itself is a pretty impressive legacy.
I don’t think I’d put him in the top 3. But he probably should be up there a bit.
Patton - 2. I remain unconvinced he was in any way superior to Manstein.
Gaius Marius - 1. I’ll roll with the consensus here.
Akbar the Great - 2. Probably has skated too far already. A fascinating character and an enlightened despot in a very relative sense. But as successful as he was in expanding his state, as a general he wasn’t particularly innovative, spectacularly brilliant or ever fought an opponent that was slugging at the weight of the Mughal state. In fact many of his armies were not led by him in person.
I don’t know…what did Manstein really do? The Manstein Plan bears his name, but I always thought that was more Guderian’s plan. His notable successes during the war were Sevastapol, which seems like a fairly unremarkable siege, and 3rd Battle of Kharkov, which was a pretty impressive counterattack. We could also give him partial credit for mostly upholding his end during Citadel. It was probably Kharkov that informed his belief that Germany needed to adopt an elastic defense in the east to wear down the Russians, which surely would have worked better than the defense that was actually conducted, but alas. He was certainly a busier general than Patton, but were his achievements really more impressive?
