Pyrrhus - 2
Benedict Arnold - 1
Cloudesley Shovell - 1
Douglas MacArthur - 1
Pyrrhus - 2. Hand-to-mouth adventurer lacking in focus or even an iota of political sense. But nonetheless a much feared battlefield commander - far to good for this list.
Benedict Arnold - 1. Treasonous and contentious, but militarily competent.
Cloudesly Shovel - 1. Competent officer with a distinguished career. His one serious black mark an accident outside of combat, that was just as likely due to the screwups of others.
George Tryon - 1. Meh. Passable career. Probably screwed up himself, but it wasn’t even during wartime. Peacetime navigational accidents don’t impress ( in terms of levels of suckitude 
).
2 for Hull - didn’t get much support from his superiors… got out witted by a highly skilled general
1 for Pyrrhus for reasons stated above
1 for Varus, he was more of a governor than a general and ended up in an no win situation
1 for the Earl of Cardigan… if the heavy brigade would have followed the light brigade like they were supposed things might have been different
ya I copied and pasted…
The results of our 2nd round of voting:
Pyrrhus of Epirus - 20
Benedict Arnold - 16
James II of England - 6
Douglas MacArthur, Cloudesley Shovell - 5 each
Earl of Cardigan - 4
Lord Chelmsford - 3
William Hull, George Tryon - 2 each
Ernest J. King, George B. McClellan, Publius Quinctilius Varus, Xerxes I of Persia - 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
Benjamin Franklin Butler: “Beast” hated in New Orleans
Luigi Cadorna: Lost twelve consecutively; hated, cruel
William Calley: Ordered, led My Lai Massacre
Earl of Cardigan: Charge of the Light Brigade
Christian de Castries: Dien Bien Phu loser
Charles Alexander of Lorraine: Sustained career of incompetence
Charles le Temeraire: Rash rather than “Bold”
Lord Chelmsford: Zulu dawn at Isandlwana
Crassus: Army pincushioned by Parthians
George Armstrong Custer: Cavalryman lost at Little Big Horn
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
Rodolfo Graziani: Trounced in North Africa
Douglas Haig: Incompetent British WWI general
Bill Halsey: Leyte Gulf errors; two typhoons
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
James II of England: Surrendered throne without a fight
Thom Karremans: Toasted Mladić, allowed Srebenica massacre
Hugh Judson Kilpatrick: Nicknamed “Kill Cavalry” for reason
Ernest J. King: Anglophobe disastrously opposed Atlantic convoys
James Ledlie: Drunk during Battle of Crater
Curtis LeMay: Reckless, nuke-happy SAC chief
Tiberius Sempronius Longus: Lost to Carthage at Trebia
Francisco Solano López: Almost unmade Paraguay
Douglas MacArthur: Dismissed from Korea by Truman
George B. McClellan: Timid, bungling, arrogant Union commander
John A. McClernand: Useless political hack hurt Union
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
Maximilian von Prittwitz: Peed his pants in Prussia
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!
Cloudesley Shovell: Wrecked his fleet on Scilly Isles
Daniel Sickles: Almost lost Gettysburg single-handedly
Manuel Fernandez Silvestre: Lost badly in Spanish Morocco
Geoffrey Spicer-Simson: Naval commander undone in Africa
Frederick William Stopford: Blunderer at Suvla Bay, Gallipoli
George Tryon: Sunk his flagship on maneouvres
Gaius Terentius Varro: Blamed for defeat at Cannae
Publius Quinctilius Varus: Army totally annihilated in Germany
William Westmoreland: Brutal, unimaginative technocrat
William H. Winder: Lost Upper Canada; Washington burned
Xerxes I of Persia: Epic blunders in Greece
Zhao Kuo: Became idiom for “bad general”
Eliminated:
Ulysses S. Grant
William T. Sherman
Pyrrhus of Epirus
Benedict Arnold
Same rules for the next round, which will end at noon EST on Mon. Nov. 22.
Douglas MacArthur 2
Going to have to do some reading over the weekend to figure out who else deserves to be rescued.
Could someone make the case in a bit more detail for the Earl of Cardigan?
For keeping him in the pit or for letting him out?
James II of England, for the reasons stated earlier - 2
George Tryon, since a navigational screwup - even a comically inept one - shouldn’t keep anyone on this list of losers - 2
Cloudesley Shovell, ditto - 1
Either. Both! 
Lord Chelmsford:2 redeemed at Ulundi
hmmm it gets harder now,
I’m going to scratch off the duds who were mostly political
so…
Hermann Goering 2
Heinrich Himmler 1
Yay! Round 3!
OK, I am changing things up in my voting:
George Armstrong Custer = 2 Votes. Custer was rash, and he got suckered into Little Big Horn, but part of that was poor intelligence about the number of Indians out there. Plus his rashness had served him well in the past. Many folks don’t know how he probably saved the Union line during Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. Little reason to call him ‘worst’ by any means.
Douglas MacArthur - 1 Vote. I am by no means a fan of “Dugout Doug”, and he has a lot of mistakes on his hands - plus he got more lucky at Inchon than anything else. But he did seem to learn from his mistakes.
Rodolfo Graziani - 1 Vote. It was not his idea to take the unmechanized Italian army up against British tanks in the desert with no supply lines, and I believe he said as much. Maybe a genius could have pulled it off somehow, but leaders far from being the worst would have failed.
Earl of Cardigan - Vote. Seriously. The man does not belong here.
From wikipedia’s description of the Charge of the Light Brigade:
As you can see, it was not Cardigan’s fault given the poor orders, the poor instructions from Nolan, and Lucan’s given the order and failing to support him.
A good book to read is ‘The Reason Why’. It was stunning how all these character’s lives were tied together. The remake of ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ in the 60’s was based on that book - not the Flynn adventure movie of old - and it was very accurate.
No reason to change my votes.
**James II of England **2 votes. He had no hope in England, was outnumbered in Ireland but fought well in Europe.
Earl of Cardigan 2 votes. I agree, he wasn’t good but wasn’t the worst.
Ernest J. King 1 vote. There is still much debate about his actions. His support of the Pacific campaign I believe was clearly correct. The lack of support for Convoys had more to do with his lack of available escort ships than his Anglophobia from what I understand. The man was an ass and clearly made mistakes but I don’t think he is the worst.
Again, a cite on those 10 Destroyers and I will withdraw my vote.
Cloudesley Shovell - 2
James II of England - 2
Earl of Cardigan - 1
Since Xerxes isn’t getting any traction, I’ll vote to eliminate the front-runners whose cases have been made most convincingly:
Douglas MacArthur – 2 points (even though I nominated him, I don’t truly consider him one of the “bottom five” any more than I thought he should have been a member of the elite quintet in the previous game)
James II of England – 2 points (not primarily a military figure, and not a total loser on the battlefield)
Earl of Cardigan – 1 point (interesting how the Crimean War lives on in so many fashion references; see also balaclava and Raglan sleeve)
Cloudesley Shovel - 2. Victim of an accident after a solid career.
George Tryon - 2. Peacetime navigational fuckup. Meh, I say again. MEH!
Reserving my last vote for a bit as I ponder which other loser is the least loserly.
Luckily for the British it was during peacetime. Imagine what a debacle it would have been if Tryon had waited until a war to ORDER HIS SHIPS TO RUN INTO EACH OTHER!!!
Not that I particularly care whether Tryon is voted out soon, but I can’t stress enough that Tryon’s accident was in no way analogous to Shovell’s. Shovell wrecked in stormy weather because he lacked the technology necessary to accurately navigate. Tryon wrecked because he gave a stupid order that caused another ship to run directly into him (see this graphic; the HMS Victoria is in red). I don’t care that it was a minor mistake in the grand scheme of things, I just think it’s such a stunning display of incompetence by a high-ranking officer that he deserves all the derision he gets.
Imagine if Chester Nimitz, after winning at Midway, had crashed his remaining carriers into one another, sinking one and seriously damaging the other, and fouling up America’s naval operations for the remainder of 1942. Wouldn’t we be deriding him today for being such a colossal bonehead?
2 for Hull - didn’t get much support from his superiors… got out witted by a highly skilled general
1 for Varus, he was more of a governor than a general and ended up in an no win situation
2 for the Earl of Cardigan… if the heavy brigade would have followed the light brigade like they were supposed things might have been different
Poppycock - if the Heavy Brigade had followed, they’d have suffered the same fate. The Light Brigade were not ravaged by the guns they were attacking (and succeeded in reaching, incidentally), but rather by the Russian troops on the ridge overlooking the “valley of death”. More cavalry would have just meant more targets.
If Cardigan had actually had any sort of military qualifications, he would have known better than to leave his flank so exposed. Apparently, he seemed to think that “tactics” were for infantry and other muck.
And what was he supposed to cover his flank with? He was given an order to charge the guns (albeit misinterperted)