The only substantive record we have of Varus’ pre-Germania career was the time he spent administering Syria. His record there can be interpreted multiple ways, but what does seem clear is that he was decisive and successful in quashing multiple revolts. Whatever role he may have played in perhaps inspiring some of that unrest ( it is hard to say, but he doesn’t seem to have ruled with a light hand ), he definitely seems to have earned a record as being an effective counter-insurgency campaigner. It is highly likely that is at least partially why he was given the Rhineland post, in an area that was considered at least semi-pacified.
I’m not exactly arguing against him ( or is that for him? ) by the way - I haven’t voted to eliminate him yet. He deserves to be on this list, though I don’t see him winning it. More just musing on the variety of his particular incompetence.
William Calley - 2. Just a nasty little insect when you get right down to it. Mladic should follow soon.
Gaius Claudius Glaber - 1. More to Spartacus credit than Glaber’s blazing incompetence I’d say. He wasn’t to sharp to not post better pickets, but his scratch force was caught off-guard by a pretty daring ploy. It was a single incident and while granted he might have snuffed out the rebellion then and there, it wasn’t even the most important action in the war. Certainly doesn’t compare to Carrhae IMHO.
William Westmoreland - 6
Crassus - 6
William Calley - 5
Heinrich Himmler - 2
Braxton Bragg, Carlo di Persano, Gaius Claudius Glaber, Varus, William H. Winder - 1 each
The boldfaced leader(s) above are eliminated. That leaves:
Abdel Hakim Amer: Panicked, lost Sinai in 1967
Oreste Baratieri: Routed by Ethiopians at Adowa
Braxton Bragg: Bungling, irritating Confederate general
Duke of Buckingham: Useless sycophant, incompetent military leader
Ambrose E. Burnside: Defeat from jaws of victory
Luigi Cadorna: Lost twelve consecutively; hated, cruel
Charles Alexander of Lorraine: Sustained career of incompetence
Charles le Temeraire: Rash rather than “Bold”
Carlo di Persano: Loser of Lissa
William George Keith Elphinstone: Lost an army in Afghanistan
Maurice Gamelin: Relied on the Maginot Line
Horatio Gates: Fled headlong from Camden, S.C.
Gaius Claudius Glaber: Why fortify against slaves?
Hermann Goering: Prancing figurehead misused Luftwaffe
Douglas Haig: Incompetent British WWI general
Paul D. Harkins: Ignorant, overoptimistic in Vietnam
Heinrich Himmler: Nazi botched every field command
John Bell Hood: Recklessly stupid, lost Atlanta, West
William Hull: Surrendered peacefully to inferior forces
Thom Karremans: Toasted Mladić, allowed Srebenica massacre
Hugh Judson Kilpatrick: Nicknamed “Kill Cavalry” for reason
James Ledlie: Drunk during Battle of Crater
Tiberius Sempronius Longus: Lost to Carthage at Trebia
Francisco Solano López: Almost unmade Paraguay
George B. McClellan: Timid, bungling, arrogant Union commander
Ratko Mladić: Ordered Srebenica massacre; since indicted
Napoleon III: Clobbered, captured at Sedan
Nicias: Commanded ill-fated Syracuse expedition
Arthur Percival: Surrendered Singapore to Japan
Philip VI of France: Crushed own army at Crécy
Romanus IV of Byzantium: Lost Battle of Manzikert
Zinovy Rozhestvensky: Led Russian Navy to annihilation
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna: “Napoleon of the West”? Ha!
Manuel Fernandez Silvestre: Lost badly in Spanish Morocco
Frederick William Stopford: Blunderer at Suvla Bay, Gallipoli
Publius Quinctilius Varus: Army totally annihilated in Germany
William H. Winder: Lost Upper Canada; Washington burned
Zhao Kuo: Became idiom for “bad general”
Eliminated:
Ulysses S. Grant
William T. Sherman
Pyrrhus of Epirus
Benedict Arnold
James II of England
Earl of Cardigan
Cloudesley Shovell
Douglas MacArthur
William Halsey
George A. Custer
Curtis LeMay
Lord Chelmsford
George Tryon
Geoffrey Spicer-Simson
Benjamin F. Butler
Xerxes I of Persia
Ernest J. King
Gaius Terentius Varro
John A. McClernand
Daniel Sickles
Christian de Castries
Maximilian von Prittwitz
Rodolfo Graziani
William Westmoreland
Crassus
William Calley
Same rules for the next round, which will end at noon EST on Mon. Dec. 20.
William H Winder - 2 votes. I already explained.
Carlo di Persano- 2 votes. This one has been brought up before. The battle lost here was mostly irrelevant and more lost due to an innovative tactic by the enemy.
My new target:
Charles Alexander of Lorraine: - 1 vote. OK, this guy loses 1 battle, wins against another Prussian army and then loses to perhaps one of the better generals in history. This really isn’t a qualifier for the ‘worst’ title.
One battle? One? I’m gonna quote myself ( slightly modified ) from the Greatest Military Leaders game thread where I used him as one of the reasons to tarnish Frederick the Great’s career:
*His favorite punching bag by far is perhaps the worst general to hold a long-term command. Across the three Silesian Wars ( subsumed under the War of Austrian Succession and the Seven Years War ), Charles Alexander of Lorraine clung to command because he was very popular at court with the folks who counted most. No doubt he talked a good line and sounded like a proper general, but more importantly he was the Emperor’s younger brother and the double-brother-in-law to Maria Theresa ( not only Francis Stephen’s brother, but also married and devoted to her younger sister ). He apparently was an able and well-liked administrator, but he was a crap general. Frederick won two of his three most celebrated victories ( Hohenfriedburg and Leuthen ) against Charles. He also beat him at the Battles of Chotusitz, Soor and Hennersdorf. At the Battle of Prague, the skilled Ulysses Brown was winning against Fred when he was badly wounded and removed from the field - Charles then froze in panic in ‘near catatonia’, complained of chest pains, and was himself removed, thus turning a close victory into a close defeat. At Kesselsdorf, the decisive battle of the Second Silesian War, he sat on his ass with his corps and didn’t march to aid his Saxon ally, even though he could actually hear the cannon fire. He even had the dubious pleasure of getting thrashed by the other great general of that age, Maurice de Saxe, at the Battle of Rocoux.
In all of the above battles, Charles Alexander repeatedly showed considerable incompetence. It’s not like he was even average - he was woeful. His sole claims to fame was a brilliant campaign to oust Frederick from Bohemia that he claimed credit for, but was largely conceived and executed by his nominal subordinate, Traun. That and the fairly meaningless Battle of Breslau in the Third Silesian War, where he managed to pull off a field victory with an 84,000 to 28,000 advantage.*
Additional emphasis added to point out the SEVEN field battles he lost, plus the additional eighth battle he helped lose by unhelpfully sitting on his ass :D.
Charles Alexander of Lorraine is the very archetype of the politically-connected incompetent. He was such a cream puff he stains the outstanding careers of Frederick the Great and ( to a much lesser extent ) Maurice de Saxe. Charlie Alex should, IMHO, make the top ten.
Fair enough, but let me point out that those battles were against someone who, perhaps rightly, had the word ‘the Great’ after his name. At Hohenfreidburg, the Saxons were mostly to blame for that rout. At Leuthen, Fred knew the land as it was a training area and he, like one would expect from a commander who gets called ‘the Great’, took advantage. But Fred was also quite lucky that he hit fairly disloyal Austrain troops.
The other battles? Chotusitz seems to have been partly bad luck, and partly the discipline superiority of the Prussian soldier over the Austrian. Hennersdorf wasn’t a huge battle and it seems the primary failure there was once again the Saxons. Sohr? You tell me what Charles did so wrong there? He had surprise but his troops seemed to fail him more than Charles failed the troops. As for his not coming to the aid of the Saxons at Kessledorf - welcome to 18th century politics. Stuff like that was done all the time. Fred had it done to him a few times IIRC.
I won’t deny the guy was Frederick’s punching bag, and even with Fred’s advantages at Leuthen he should have done loads better. Austria would have better even with a mediocre general and Charles is certainly pretty below average. But top 10 worst? Nope. Can’t see it.
Oh, he was both, in spades. Look, this is no Himmler - a politician brought in at the last minute to lose and take “credit” for it. Nor is this a William Calley - I regret that the man’s been voted out so soon, but I’ll admit that he was relatively small fry in this august company. (Besides, he still has hell to look forward to).
No - Mladic was the military mastermind of Republica Srpska’s military strategy in the war. He nominally answered to Karadic, probably answered more to Milosevic - but this was the guy who decided that the business of Srpska militias would be rape, pillage and murder on scales not seen in the Balkans since the Second World War. And it was a losing strategy. What more do you want? A horrible man, who performed horribly and left the world more horrible in his wake.
Mladic is top-ten material, at least. Hell can wait - he belongs to this List for a while yet.
Honestly, maybe I’m just hitting a lot of hostile sources the past few years ( Reed Browning, Franz Szabo, Christopher Clark ), but the more I read about Frederick, the more inclined I am to think of him as ‘Frederick the Sometimes Pretty Good’ ;). I’ll admit that CA is part of that equation.
No, Charles was. He failed to adequately fortify or post pickets when he settled in for the night on the Silesian plain, overly confidant that Frederick was nowhere in the vicinity. That complacency cost the whole battle when Frederick got the drop on them. The ( much smaller ) Saxon corps simply got slammed first and were rapidly overwhelmed.
Prince Charles was so embarrassed by the battle that he asked Francis Stephen to convey the news to the queen. There were some grounds for his embarrassment. During his tenure as commander the Austrian cavalry, the strongest branch of Venna’s fighting force when the war began, deteriorated in both skills and spirit…And on the eve of the battle Charles had committed his most egregious error. Rather than waiting for the next morning, he had brought his troops out of the mountains as the day faded, allowing them no opportunity to array themselves for battle is they should be challenged. General Stille summed up his account with an old and accurate aphorism: “in war mistakes are never made with impunity.” Prince Charles made many. King Frederick made few.
From The War of Austrian Succession by Reed Browning ( 1993, 1995 St. Martin’s Press ).
Less disloyal than low-quality and unreliable and not really Austrian, but rather “Imperial” contingents ( Wurtemburgers for the most part ), but yes Charles had some crap units. And he had been warned by his brother not to place them on the front line, which he did anyway, on his left flank no less. Against the advice of virtually all of his staff ( including the defensive expert Daun ), he abandoned the strong defensive position on the east bank of the Wiestritz, where Fredrick ( desperate, as he usually was, for a decisive encounter ) would have had to attack. Instead he advanced to occupy a much weaker position strung out on the main road to Breslau.
When his none-to-competent-himself subordinate Lucchesi ( the only senior commander to really back Charles ) panicked at a feint and without being seriously engaged demanded to be reinforced with the reserves, Charles ignored Daun’s ( an excellent general with a superb eye for the battlefield, fresh from handing Freddy his first clear-cut defeat at Kolin ) pleadings to hold them back and rushed them into action at exactly the wrong point. When the Austrian cavalry commander Nadasady detected the main Prussian assault rolling up the imperials on the left wing, he desperately called for support but Charles ignored him, not believing that was where the main attack was coming from and Nadasdy’s desperate attempt to stem to collapse on the left was insufficient on its own. Nadasady would resign his command in disgust that night.
Charles completed the disaster as he retreated by leaving a large, unprepared garrision in Breslau where they had no hope of holding out. Eight days later the Prussians bagged 17,000 prisoners ( including 6,000 wounded that had been left behind ) when it surrendered, adding to the 9,000 Austrian dead and 12,000 captured in the battle itself.
At Chotusitz, Charles by great luck found himself in between two outnumbered halves of the Prussian army, which had allowed itself to become divided. Instead of immediately falling on one and using his locally superior strength to maul the Prussians in detail, he hesitated, unsure what to do. While he did so the Prussians frantically raced around him to reunite and had done so by the time Charles had decided to act and launch his attack.
First he acted torpidly in the run up to the battle, instead of swiftly closing on Frederick. During the battle itself, Charles failed completely to react as he saw the Prussians hurriedly trying to pull their troops into line for an uphill assault, instead slavishly sticking to his preformed plan. Result - another defeat.
Which would be reasonable if Austria had intended to throw the Saxons under the bus. But that wasn’t the intention at all. Whatever Rutowski’s idiot vainglory, Charles plain screwed the pooch - he was supposed to engage and he failed to, despite every opportunity. Browning again:
Puzzlement over the battle does not end with Rutowski’s actions, for it was inexcusable that Prince Charles, whatever his advice from Rutowski, did not march to join his ally. The Austro-Saxon aim was to defeat the Prussians; a yoking of Rutowski’s and Charles’s forces would have virtually assured that the battle now being joined would be a victory. Once again Prince Charles’s unfitness for command - his want of ingenuity , energy, and confidence - had cost his sovereign dearly.
See, I agree he wasn’t as spectacular a failure as some ( though he was pretty sucky, really ). But we’re taking sustained excellence at sucking :p! Over three wars! Granted Maria Theresa and Francis Stephen deserve some “credit” for keeping his sucky ass in the field across almost two decades. But that kind of sustained stinking up the joint demands recognition if you ask me :).
Heinrich Himmler - 1 - Never had a chance; just a placeholder during Germany’s death throes James Ledlie - 2 - Classic weakling unable to perform, but minor player Carlo di Persano - 1 - Lissa wasn’t that severe a defeat, had no strategic consequences, and novel tactics make it less egregious William H. Winder - 1 - Although it was a humliating defeat, apparently Winder had delegated most of the defense of Bladensburg to Brigadier General Tobias Stansbury, who appears to deserve substantial blame for the defeat:
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
On 22 August, Stansbury deployed his force on top of Lowndes Hill, just to the east of Bladensburg. The road from Annapolis ran across the hill, and the road from Upper Marlboro ran to its right and rear. The roads to Washington, Georgetown, and Baltimore intersected behind it. From this position, Stansbury dominated the approaches available to the British while controlling all lines of communication.
At 2:30 a.m. on 23 August, Stansbury received a message from Winder, announcing that he had withdrawn across the Eastern Branch and that he intended to fire the lower bridge. Surprised, Stansbury was seized by an irrational fear that his right flank would be turned. Rather than further strengthen an already commanding position, he immediately decamped and marched his exhausted troops back across Bladensburg bridge, which he did not burn, to a brickyard 1.5 miles (2.4 km) miles further on. In so doing, he had thrown away almost every tactical advantage available to him.
[/QUOTE]
I am tempted to start politicking to push McClellan off the list, as he was a great organizer and good for morale, despite his inability to put the hammer down and win…and his sort-of victory at Antietam/Sharpsburg at least set the stage for freeing the slaves (something by which he personally was no doubt appalled). But his faults are many and his affect on the Union war effort was insidious, only washed out by much blood. So he stays on the list for now.
William H. Winder - 4
Braxton Bragg, James Ledlie, Ratko Mladić, Varus - 2 each
Charles Alexander of Lorraine - 1
The boldfaced leader(s) above are eliminated. That leaves:
Abdel Hakim Amer: Panicked, lost Sinai in 1967
Oreste Baratieri: Routed by Ethiopians at Adowa
Braxton Bragg: Bungling, irritating Confederate general
Duke of Buckingham: Useless sycophant, incompetent military leader
Ambrose E. Burnside: Defeat from jaws of victory
Luigi Cadorna: Lost twelve consecutively; hated, cruel
Charles Alexander of Lorraine: Sustained career of incompetence
Charles le Temeraire: Rash rather than “Bold”
William George Keith Elphinstone: Lost an army in Afghanistan
Maurice Gamelin: Relied on the Maginot Line
Horatio Gates: Fled headlong from Camden, S.C.
Gaius Claudius Glaber: Why fortify against slaves?
Hermann Goering: Prancing figurehead misused Luftwaffe
Douglas Haig: Incompetent British WWI general
Paul D. Harkins: Ignorant, overoptimistic in Vietnam
John Bell Hood: Recklessly stupid, lost Atlanta, West
William Hull: Surrendered peacefully to inferior forces
Thom Karremans: Toasted Mladić, allowed Srebenica massacre
Hugh Judson Kilpatrick: Nicknamed “Kill Cavalry” for reason
James Ledlie: Drunk during Battle of Crater
Tiberius Sempronius Longus: Lost to Carthage at Trebia
Francisco Solano López: Almost unmade Paraguay
George B. McClellan: Timid, bungling, arrogant Union commander
Ratko Mladić: Ordered Srebenica massacre; since indicted
Napoleon III: Clobbered, captured at Sedan
Nicias: Commanded ill-fated Syracuse expedition
Arthur Percival: Surrendered Singapore to Japan
Philip VI of France: Crushed own army at Crécy
Romanus IV of Byzantium: Lost Battle of Manzikert
Zinovy Rozhestvensky: Led Russian Navy to annihilation
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna: “Napoleon of the West”? Ha!
Manuel Fernandez Silvestre: Lost badly in Spanish Morocco
Frederick William Stopford: Blunderer at Suvla Bay, Gallipoli
Publius Quinctilius Varus: Army totally annihilated in Germany
William H. Winder: Lost Upper Canada; Washington burned
Zhao Kuo: Became idiom for “bad general”
Eliminated:
Ulysses S. Grant
William T. Sherman
Pyrrhus of Epirus
Benedict Arnold
James II of England
Earl of Cardigan
Cloudesley Shovell
Douglas MacArthur
William Halsey
George A. Custer
Curtis LeMay
Lord Chelmsford
George Tryon
Geoffrey Spicer-Simson
Benjamin F. Butler
Xerxes I of Persia
Ernest J. King
Gaius Terentius Varro
John A. McClernand
Daniel Sickles
Christian de Castries
Maximilian von Prittwitz
Rodolfo Graziani
William Westmoreland
Crassus
William Calley
Carlo di Persano
Heinrich Himmler
Same rules for the next round, which will end at noon EST on Weds. Dec. 22.
Oreste Baratieri 2 Votes Someone need to justify a better reason why this man is on the list. According to what I read on wikipedia, he was routed at the mentioned battle, but he was outnumbered some 6-1, and these weren’t just a bunch of spear armed native mob, but an army with some 80% carrying firearms. Oreste seemed to have advantage of better, modern artillery pieces but I doubt that would be enough. It also seems he tried to avoid engagement with the larger enemy forces until polticians at home pressured him into the battle. The fallout from his loss was immense, but it wasn’t all his fault from what I can see!
And also
Ratko Mladić -1 vote. A horrible human being, but the worst military leader? Seems doubtful.
In general I agree - it wasn’t all his fault. But he did make a couple of mistakes.
Mistake #1 - letting his junior officers talk him into attacking when Baratieri knew better. Another few days and Menelik’s huge army would have dissolved from want of supplies. But Baratieri put the decision to his four brigadiers, who blustered in a macho fashion ( particularly Dabormida and Albertone ) about the honor of Italy and demanded he attack. Discussing options is fine, but in such a position senior command should not be a democracy. Baratieri was an experienced hand in the region. He knew it was a bad idea. But he let himself be convinced against his better judgment.
Mistake #2 - when he finally realized Albertone’s predicament ( including the fact that Albertone was four miles out of position ), instead of pulling him back immediately and forming a strong defensive front ( where his superior firepower might have held the day, at least partially ), he dithered for over an hour, relying on Dabormida to retrieve Albertone’s position. Dabormida of course did exactly the opposite, for unknown reasons veering off in the wrong direction into a Custer-like annihilation.
Regardless it was a stupid decision on Baratieri’s part. Even if Dabormida hadn’t apparently gone insane, he still would have had a damn hard time stretching out to the farrrrrr out of place Albertone in that terrain. In such a situation, as outnumbered as he knew he was, Baratieri needed a complete concentration of his superior firepower. As soon as it was obvious that it was partially fucked, he should have abandoned his original plan and pulled back his units. Not doing so was yet another in a string of fatal errors that day.
That said, yeah, Baratieri is not your classic idiot. He’s on the list I’m sure because Adowa was easily the worst disgrace of European arms to a native army in Africa during the colonial period. But while he does deserve some of the discredit, both his superiors and his subordinates badly let him down.
