Georgy Zhukov - 2. Good. But not top o’ the heap good.
Lord Nelson - 2. The archetype of the great admiral, but punching above his weight at this point.
I’m going to reserve my final vote as well.
I hope I’m not committing ethnocentrism by saying I have been swayed by some of the arguments Tamerlane made here and here that Khalid’s reputation may be somewhat exaggerated (although as I have noted before that’s probably true to some degree of every one of our candidates), that he did not innovate as much as some of our other candidates (Nelson, Khan, Alexander, even Scipio), and that he may be sponging some credit off other less well-known Arab commanders.
That said, I do find Tamerlane’s sharply-observed point that Khalid’s reputation survived his falling out of official favor compelling.
I am trying to keep my mind open on the man; this is not one of the periods about which I can claim to be well-read.
I would have said, stalemated by the Cunctator (and as an aside, I can’t make up my mind whether that’s the least or the most badass of the nicknames given to the professional killers on our list.)
Ah yes, as so eloquently formulated by that great strategist, Rogers.
War is hell.
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I’ll just repost my picks from last round:
Subutai – 2
Lord Nelson – 2
Georgy Zhukov – 1
I’m not a military expert by any means, but I’ve been wondering if Genghis and Subutai did not get a considerable advantage in technology over their opponents that makes their generalship less impressive than it seems. That is, the recurve bow and horsemen trained pretty much from birth to ride and shoot accurately gave them a tremendous advantage over their adversaries … their armies could move faster than their opponents’ armies, and fire more accurately and about as fast as their stationary enemies, while they themselves were moving targets.
When you have a tool like that, and your opponent has nothing like that, does it take as much generalship to win?
I’m not voting because I don’t know enough to vote intelligently, but I have been thinking about this as I read the debates about Khan and Subutai.
I have had my ignorance about Khalid well fought. But he’s in pretty august company here. And my judgement is that he’s not as good as some of the others.
Not particularly. The recurve bow was not unique to the Mongols. It pre-dated them by millenia and was in use by most of their adversaries.
Also, remember that many of said adversaries were quite mobile as well. The Qangli ( Kankali ) Turks that fought for the Khwarizm Shah and the Kipchak Turks ( Cumans/Polovsty ) of the Russian steppe were of related stock and fought in the same manner as the Mongols and other steppe nomads ( in a very general sense ) and with essentially the same equipment. The similarity becomes all the more apparent when one considers the rapidity with which they were incorporated into the Mongol polity and its armies. So too, the Seljuqs of Rum ( ultimately unsuccessful against the Mongols ) and the Mamluks ( successful ) - dedicated cavalry, emphasis on the horse-archer.
The Jurchen of the Jin dynasty and the Europeans, both heavy cavalry-centric societies, were a bit more cumbersome. As were the armies of the Sung. But they had substantial superiority in other areas such as body armor. No lightly armored Mongol trooper on his short little pony was going to be a match for them in melee, one on one. Which of course is why the Mongols avoided those situations unless they had every other advantage.
No it was discipline, organization, discipline, excellent leadership and, of course, discipline, that made the difference. The combination of parade-ground precision and an excellent officer corps allowed them to transform bog-standard nomad tactics that dated back to the Scythians into something a step above. But the basic equipment and tactics they used wouldn’t have seemed unusually advanced a thousand years earlier ( gunpowder excepted, I suppose ).
Duke of Marlborough - 2
Lord Nelson - 2
Subutai - 1
Veeeeeeery interesting.
Khalid ibn al-Walid - 2
Subutai - 2
Duke of Marlborough - 1
Well, this is an issue not limited specifically to technology and not just to the mongols. By this point in the elimination, many of the survivors possessed military instruments with significant advantages.
Alexander the Great is probably the archetypal example. In particular his infantry, equipped with massed long pikes (the Macedonian sarissa), initiated a military system that would be used with great success all the way through the Renaissance and even beyond, if you count bayonets. His cavalry tactics were extremely advanced for the age, and if his missile troops weren’t exceptional, his “artillery park” was – the (new) development of torsion catapults led to very effective siegecraft. The use of these arms together – the first significant experiment in combined arms – was a tactical puzzle to which no one had the answer. Alexander was brilliant and aggressive, but also armed with an incomparable instrument (almost literally – no army of the day was anything like a match for the Greek/Macedonian).
The Romans left on the list, Caesar and Scipio, had Roman legions at their command, talk about a first-rate military instrument.
Hannibal had war elephants for at least some of his battles.
Wellington’s Indian campaigns were characterized by the total superiority Western gunpowder armies usually showed against more loosely organized Eastern armies. Simply put, even musket-equipped Eastern armies with rough technological parity proved to be no match for the closely ordered, carefully-directed Western troops, who stood under fire and took their losses to deliver close-range, devastating volleys. The results were typically fantastically one-sided – at the Battle of Adgaon the British took either 346 or 361 casualties (killed, wounded, or missing) and killed 5000 foes outright (I haven’t found a count of the wounded)…at Assaye, Wellington (who was then known as Wellesley) had 9500 trops and 17 cannon against 50,000 troops and 100+ cannon, and despite being hugely outnumbered, inflicted 6000 casualties and took 98 cannons at the cost of 1602 casualties of his own (and voiced regret his losses had been so high!).
Quite a few of these gentlemen had superb militaries. I don’t quite know if puts them all on a level playing field or not, but it should be borne in mind. That doesn’t take away from their achievements – in many cases, they themselves are responsible for creating the military advantage or for using it in novel ways.
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Almost all those who are left had superb militaries. Part of being a great military leader and not just a great general is developing and maintaining a superb military. Generalship itself is not enough. Wellington and Caesar really score here; Khalid and Hannibal don’t.
Not sure I agree. For Khalid as we discussed earlier, he’s been given a lot of hard to verify credit for developing tactical doctrine and imparting professional organization to the early Arab armies. One can partially dismiss that for that lack of verifiable evidence, but I wouldn’t completely throw the notion out. Somebody turned a bunch of Bedouin and tribal desert townfolk into an actual army of conquest.
Hannibal meanwhile actually did an excellent job turning a sometimes scratch, disparate force into an effective fighting machine. Iberian, Balearic, North African ( Gaetulians, Libyans, Libyo-Phoenicians and Numidians ) and Gallic troops, many essentially units of barbarians. While the Hellenic kingdoms also relied heavily on mercenaries, they tended to be primarily Greek and much more standardized ( i.e. predominantly hoplites ).That Hannibal was able to weld this far more multi-national group into an army efficient enough to pull of three of the most startlingly complete victories against the more homogeneous and professional forces of the Romans and their allies was really a remarkable feat ( one of several ). It’s one of the reasons I rank him above Scipio.
Last moment
**Wellington - 2
Nelson - 2
Subutai - 1 **
Concur. Caesar made an already-crack military perform better; Hannibal defeated that same military system repeatedly with a mongrel force he’d trained himself. His main problem was that the Roman system could absorb defeat after defeat after defeat and keep coming.
Sailboat, sorry, just a bit too late!
The votes in our 23rd round:
Lord Nelson - 8
Khalid ibn al-Walid, Subutai - 4 each
Scipio Africanus, Duke of Marlborough, Georgy Zhukov - 3 each
Hannibal - 2
The boldfaced leader(s) above are now gone. That leaves:
Alexander the Great: Conquered the known world
Genghis Khan: Built the perfect war machine
Hannibal: Greatest tactical genius?
Julius Caesar: Rome’s most brilliant commander
Khalid ibn al-Walid: Architect of the Arab conquests
Duke of Marlborough: Master of early modern war
Scipio Africanus: Stopped Carthage and Hannibal
Subutai: Genghis Khan’s top general
Duke of Wellington: Successes in India; thrashed Napoleon
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
Erich von Manstein
George S. Patton
Philip II of Macedon
Gaius Marius
Akbar the Great
Arthur Currie
Yi-Sun Shin
George Washington
Oda Nobunaga
Erwin Rommel
Belisarius
U.S. Grant
Timur-e-Lang
Stonewall Jackson
Frederick the Great
Napoleon Bonaparte
Themistocles
Gustavus Adolphus
William T. Sherman
Lord Nelson
The next round will conclude at noon EST on Weds. Oct. 13. Same rules as before.
Scipio Africanus 2
Duke of Wellington 1
Duke of Marlborough 1
Subutai 1
Voting for my own nominee (Marlborough). I was going to give a vote to Hannibal, but have been convinced by some of the extravagant praise to leave him off for the moment.
Duke of Marlborough - 2
Subutai - 2
Scipio Africanus - 1
If Nelson was still here you could put your telescope to your blind eye and disobey orders!
Ah well, I have the day off and was playing with my dogs earlier, so it was time well spent. 
Also, Nelson was on my short list anyway. Too bad we didn’t talk about him very much, as he was a cool guy, but guess a very well-known quantity to the participants in the thread.
It’s worth noting, by the way, that we are now officially down to the top ten.
I’ve got to disagree. Hannibal faced Rome’s legions before the legion system was re-organised by Marius and Sulla. Further, the legions were often green. Plus, of course, Scipio had allies too.
Looks like get to repeat my votes:
2 - Hannibal
2 - Khalid
1 - Subutai
These are not aspersions on any of them, but rather recognition that others are better.
Khalid ibn al-Walid - 2
Subutai - 2
Duke of Marlborough - 1