Posted on 01/05/2018 9:50:10 AM PST by C19fan
Like Hannibal, I wanted to rank powerful leaders in the history of warfare. Unlike Hannibal, I sought to use data to determine a general’s abilities, rather than specific accounts of generals’ achievements. The result is a system for ranking every prominent commander in military history.
(Excerpt) Read more at towardsdatascience.com ...
He had to get his butt kicked in order to figure it out, but figure it out he did. And once he knew he'd have the naval support of France, he hustled down into the south, brought superior force to bear, then cornered and beat the best (and one of the most merciless) general in the British army. Of course, I'm sure he doesn't rate in this study of computer data. :^)
This analysis in Wins against Replacement is an interesting thought exercise.
The provides a metric that is quantifiable in the overall effectiveness of a particular leader.
The measure does not take into account the level of daring/risk versus result.
Obviously, for Napoleon, he had many more battles and as such had a larger sample size thus yielding a better WaR value. One would have to devise a method to “normalize” the number of battles to level the playing field a little to give a more accurate representation. One would have to consider the mean value for the number of battles for all generals successful or not, and then apply that normalized mean to Napoleon to correct the data from a lopsided participation level. Even this would be subject to criticism and would not necessarily produce a more accurate measurement.
Sorry, I’ll go with some of the Roman Generals, Julius Caesar for example. War is 80% logistics ability and 20% luck. You can make up for a General with bad luck, but you can’t make up for a General with no thought on logistics.
He learned from his mistakes!
Something most people find hard to do no matter what they are doing.
My understanding of George Washington was that he was not known as a brilliant war tactician. But he was remarkable in his resolve to stay out in the field for years when he would much rather have been back in Mount Vernon. He spent his time begging his troops to stay when their time was up and writing letter after letter to congress begging for more supplies. He was basically a one-man source of inspiration for keeping the war going until finally things converged for a victory.
It is hard to analytically measure things like that.
US armor was recovered and repaired and re-manned with new crews, then sent back in combat 2, 3, and 4 times. German armor after Normandy and Italy? Almost never.
Russian air-ground attacks were much more effective than German Stuka attacks after the 41 campaign; which declined even more in the 42 summer campaign and almost vanished after 44. In Africa, it depended on whether the UK (then later poor US armor with little fighter-bomber support) was fighting Italian or German forces, and whether the fighting was close to Tunisia or close to Alexandria, and whether those Italian or German forces had aviation fuel or not.
So the yearly ratios in each front are very different as well.
I certainly agree.
My money is on Julius Caesar. Never defeated which is more than Napoleon can say.
And his generalship at Alesia where he build a double wall to keep the Gauls on the mountaintop besieged while fighting off a numerically superior force on the outer wall at the same time has NEVER been done before or since. Not to mention, he personally rode to the rescue his troops at a point in the battle where his legions were endanger of breaking.
And the Germans wrote the book on close air support -- Von Manstein used coordinated air support at least as early as 1942. More generally, the USSR tank losses were largely due to Germany infantry tactics and artillery, rather than armor-to-armor clashes; Soviet tank losses due to Luftwaffe probably exceeded losses to German tanks.
Napoleon ONLY did very well against the "well-organized" British, Italian and Central European combined armies that France fought in set-piece battles on ground of their choosing. In other words, he won battles played by generals playing war games.
“There are too many considerations and too many different weightings of those considerations to accept one metric.”
Agree. And how do you compare a battlefield commander like Patton with Marshall and Eisenhower who did the logistics and strategic planning, which is ultimately how we won WWII.
For Napolean critics, Patton and all the rest would have studied his campaigns at West Point because the US Army recognized his brilliance.
Gettysburg and especially Picket’s Charge probably did Lee in statistically.
I think Lee was a good but not a great general. Much of his reputation was the result of the horrible generals he often fought against. He was overly reckless and didn't learn from his, and others, mistakes. He he been fighting against any half way competent general at Antietam, the civil war would have ended right then and there. He is often referred to as being a great tactician but no campaign he fought came close to the tactical brilliance of Grant's Vicksburg campaign.
The problem with the analysis is that you can lose most of the battles in a war but so long as you win the last battle then you also win the war.
I would also add that his campaign in Egypt was an absolute disaster.
He's The Great for good reason. :^)
I think the reason he turned back from India east of the Indus was the obvious size of the population and the distances involved. He put together an alliance with his vanquished foes and returned to Babylon, scouting the countryside for much of the return trip.
The Alexandrian successor states persisted in Central Asia for a good long while.
The big what-if, of course, is, what if he'd not gotten sick and died at 32 in Babylon? Conquest of the Med basin probably would have been next, as he could expect to find and conquer many colonies of Greeks, plus Carthage and other Phoenician colonies.
Yet Lee deserves great credit for refusing Jefferson Davis's order to engage in guerrilla warfare. Lee's surrender at Appomattox was his single best decision and his greatest service to the country.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
