I’ve toured the Petersburg battlefield, including the site of the Crater (just an open clearing now, although the mouth of the miners’ tunnel remains, with a brick gate). Properly led and executed, I think the Crater explosion and immediate followup attack clearly could have rolled up the Confederate defensive line, leading to the fall of the city and, not long thereafter, the fall of Richmond, too. It would’ve been a masterstroke, if Grant had taken care to make it so. Instead, trench warfare there ground on for another eight months.
The movie Cold Mountain has a pretty good opening scene of the Battle of the Crater, incidentally.
Ambrose Burnside, knew the limits of his skills and did his best - 2
Maurice Gamelin, for the reasons stated earlier - 2
Douglas Haig, probably not as bad as he’s long been thought - 1
Ambrose Burnside - 4
Gaius Claudius Glaber - 3
Douglas Haig - 3
Duke of Buckingham, Ambrose Burnside, Maurice Gamelin, Horatio Gates, Gaius Claudius Glaber, James Ledlie - 2 each
Braxton Bragg, Nicias - 1
The boldfaced leader(s) above are eliminated. That leaves:
Abdel Hakim Amer: Panicked, lost Sinai in 1967
Braxton Bragg: Bungling, irritating Confederate general
Duke of Buckingham: Useless sycophant, incompetent military leader
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.
John Bell Hood: Recklessly stupid, lost Atlanta, West
James Ledlie: Drunk during Battle of Crater
Tiberius Sempronius Longus: Lost to Carthage at Trebia
Francisco Solano López: Almost unmade Paraguay
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
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
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
William H. Winder
Ratko Mladić
Paul D. Harkins
Oreste Baratieri
Romanus IV of Byzantium
Varus
Hermann Goering
Zinovy Rozhestvensky
William Hull
George B. McClellan
Judson Kilpatrick
Thom Karremans
Ambrose Burnside
Gaius Claudius Glaber
Douglas Haig
Same rules for the next round, which will end at noon EST on Mon. Jan. 17.
Braxton Bragg - 2
Horatio Gates - 2
Tiberius Sempronius Longus - 1 - hey, he lost to Hannibal.
Tempted to vote for Ledlie, and probably will start doing so soon, because he was so relatively small-scale a loser; but his failure was so absolute and comprehensive in his one chance that I just can’t do it yet.
Nicias is interesting in that he did oppose the expedition, but nonetheless agreed to command it. And the expedition was quite possibly the single greatest military disaster in history,
(1) being voluntarily entered into
(2) representing an overcommitment of resources
(3) at a time when Athens was locked into a war with a dangerous opponent already
(4) with no clear advantage to be gained even if everything had gone well
(5) and ending as badly as it possibly could have
(6) with the more or less direct result of Athens losing the war, its empire, and its independence
Nicias was somewhat responsible for the overcommitment, and (as commander) has to be held responsible for the terrible ending.
My bad. I failed to notice that Glaber already got the boot in the last round. Sorry, Tamerlane, if I misled you.
The results of our 23rd round of voting:
Braxton Bragg - 4
Duke of Buckingham - 4
Maurice Gamelin - 4
Ambrose Burnside, Horatio Gates, Tiberius Sempronius Longus, Nicias - 2 each
James Ledlie - 1
The boldfaced leader(s) above are eliminated. That leaves:
Abdel Hakim Amer: Panicked, lost Sinai in 1967
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
Horatio Gates: Fled headlong from Camden, S.C.
John Bell Hood: Recklessly stupid, lost Atlanta, West
James Ledlie: Drunk during Battle of Crater
Tiberius Sempronius Longus: Lost to Carthage at Trebia
Francisco Solano López: Almost unmade Paraguay
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
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
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
William H. Winder
Ratko Mladić
Paul D. Harkins
Oreste Baratieri
Romanus IV of Byzantium
Varus
Hermann Goering
Zinovy Rozhestvensky
William Hull
George B. McClellan
Judson Kilpatrick
Thom Karremans
Ambrose Burnside
Gaius Claudius Glaber
Douglas Haig
Braxton Bragg
Duke of Buckingham
Maurice Gamelin
Same rules for the next round, which will end at noon EST on Weds. Jan. 19.
I want to go with Santa Anna…but he had such a long career of loserdom…that couts for something…hmmmm…Bragg is gone and that was who I was going with next.
Horatio Gates - 2
Tiberius Sempronius Longus - 2
Frederick William Stopford - 1
(I edited my last vote from James Ledlie - it seems the case against the two men is about equal, and Ledlie’s deriliction was more serious - if the OP wants to count that as a vote for Ledlie, that’s fair.)
Personally I feel that the moment the battle of the crater was lost was the moment after the explosion was triggered.
Accounts I recall say that the Union troops were as flabbergasted as anyone else at the titanic column of dirt and smoke, and it was ten minutes before anyone began the assault. The Confederates who survived were stunned longer than that, and the neighboring units were mightily impressed by the blast, but had ten minutes to recover and start to organize a defense.
This is similar to the problem the Americans had in Operation Cobra in WWII…the heavy bombers pulverized the German line and thoroughly disoriented the surviving German soldiers, but the ground assault took so long to develop that the Germans were able to partly recover and offer considerable resistance. When you blow the hell out of the enemy you need to jump all over him and press that advantage, not dawdle.
The Crater was mismanaged in other ways, notably in allowing troops to go into the hole and stop. But the pattern for failure was set when everyone stood around rubbernecking during the golden period when the enemy was disoriented and confused.
I agree that a penetration of the line followed by large-scale followup would probably have ended the war – that’s exactly what happened to end the war, eventually.
There is no way I can go with Santa Anna. His career or self-promotion (Napoleon of the West, seriously?!), sleazy opportunism, inept presidential rule, and utter failures on the battlefield should have him in the finals IMHO. He is everything people mentioned in the criteria.
That said:
Manuel Fernandez Silvestre - 2 Votes Just not enough to be on the list this late Nicias - 2 votes - I still have a hard time calling anyone who wasn’t keen on the battle in the first place ‘worst’.
and a new one:
Zhao Kuo - 1 vote. Simply on the basis that I don’t know anything about him but a rather sparse write-up on wikipedia and he seems to have lost one battle, badly.
Tiberius Sempronius Longus, Nicias, Manuel Fernandez Silvestre - 4 each
Abdel Hakim Amer - 2
James Ledlie, Arthur Percival, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, Frederick William Stopford, Zhao Kuo - 1 each
The boldfaced leader(s) above are eliminated. That leaves:
Abdel Hakim Amer: Panicked, lost Sinai in 1967
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
John Bell Hood: Recklessly stupid, lost Atlanta, West
James Ledlie: Drunk during Battle of Crater
Tiberius Sempronius Longus: Lost to Carthage at Trebia
Francisco Solano López: Almost unmade Paraguay
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
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
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
William H. Winder
Ratko Mladić
Paul D. Harkins
Oreste Baratieri
Romanus IV of Byzantium
Varus
Hermann Goering
Zinovy Rozhestvensky
William Hull
George B. McClellan
Judson Kilpatrick
Thom Karremans
Ambrose Burnside
Gaius Claudius Glaber
Douglas Haig
Braxton Bragg
Duke of Buckingham
Maurice Gamelin
Horatio Gates
Same rules for the next round, which will end at noon EST on Fri. Jan. 21.
Tiberius Sempronius Longus - 2
Frederick William Stopford - 2
James Ledlie - 1
We’re pretty much down to army-killers and war-losers now, so I’m ready to vote for the failures who nonetheless were only responsible for a small part of the action.
