Maybe I missed something, but this method seems sketchy. Merely by counting the number and type of troops at a battle, the author then assigns a % chance for a win on each side. Since Napoleon won numerous battles, and there was much more data for his battles than others like Alexander the Great, the author concludes he was the best general ever. And yet all he has done is look at troop numbers. What about the succession of battles in linear time? The morale of the troops on both sides (side note: Napoleon thought morale was by far the most important characteristic of an army)? The conduct of lower ranking officers? The technology that is brought to bear?
These unaddressed factors may clarify the analysis of General Lee, for instance, who was facing extremely incompetent opponents for the majority of the war, and by the end he was then facing more advanced weaponry, better supplied opponents, and another competent general in Grant. I am not on the Lee bandwagon by any stretch, I think he made some risky moves that paid off, but he also made an absolutely unforced error at Pickett's charge which completely lost him the troop number advantages gained at other battles. And if you're facing McClellan who is incapable of attacking you for months despite superior forces and odds, then you don't truly deserve heaps of accolades.
These are all crucial questions that lie far beyond the author's simplistic approach. The data simply isn't enough to warrant the conclusions, nor does the author arrive at them in a statistically sound manner.
He basically admits to most of what you have just said.
> this piece is intended as a fun thought experiment, not a definitive ranking, or a scholarly contribution to the field of military history. I believe some of the results from this project, especially Lee and Rommel, provide interesting data points for broader discussions of their tactical abilities. In no way do I claim my analysis provides the full picture, or anything close to it.
So yes, method is sketchy, is incomplete, is simplistic.
Perhaps we could change the title to something less baity? I'm tempted to suggest "Military-themed toy data science project". But if there is more interest than that in there somewhere, then maybe a title that reflects whatever that may be?
If the title were changed to something less baity it would be contrary to all the other articles on HN that go from more sensible titles to something very baity.
It’s not a proof but it’s a creative way to measure this. I’ve only seen WAR used in baseball. It’s interesting to see it applied to another domain even if there are holes in it.
Well, if it's not a proof, then it's not a proof, right? You see more interest and creativity than I do in the article here, and that's fine. But surely that doesn't affect the fact that the title's claim to have proved Napoleon was "the Best General Ever" is a) a gargantuan overstatement, and b) unhelpfully provocative. People would probably be more charitable to the article if it hadn't totally misrepresented itself in this way.
Idk, I think it is a pretty interesting thought experiment. Sure it's not focusing on overall tatics or deeper reasoning, but you can't really measure that with data.
The author is just looking at purely combat performance as some sort of way to rank them. Anything deeper wouldn't really work from a data perspective because we really don't have the best records from back then.
Sabermetrics works for things like baseball with enormous amounts of data to work with over long timescales and a very well-defined and limited domain with explicit rules and constraints. This hardly applies to war, especially over millenia. If anything, this guy's analysis just proves the point. Reminds me of the tongue-in-cheek "power rankings" people make for granola bars or hot dogs.
Simplistic analysis aside, I'd consider winning your campaigns to be a hard requirement for "best" general and this excludes Napoleon, Lee, Rommel, etc.
Excluding Napoleon due to a "winning your campaigns" criteria is a bit silly. You're weighting the loss at the end of his career instead of fairly judging the win/loss record on his entire portfolio of two decades of campaigns.
"[it is the] Berezina" is something us Frenchies say when something is a total and utter catastrophe, and it refers to Napoleon's disastrous loss in Russia. Usually Napoleon is remembered more positively for what he did in the legal area with the Civil Code, which remains the basis for civil law in France to this day.
The Civil Code, built a lot on Roman law, is very backward concerning the place of women in society, like the obligation for a wife to secure her husband's permission to work and all kind of inequalities.
That seems quite unwarranted, if two generals fight then success is correlated with the quality of general but not solely determined by it, often the better general will lose simply because the opponent has more resources.
The qualities of a general will be demonstrated both in wins and losses, and whether he's victorious in the end tells more about the military power of a country or king, not about the quality of the general.
> That seems quite unwarranted, if two generals fight then success is correlated with the quality of general but not solely determined by it, often the better general will lose simply because the opponent has more resources.
Right. Indeed, efforts have been made to quantify this that take into account the contribution of other factors (e.g., T.N. Dupuy’s Quantified Judgement Method of Analysis which check later as developed into the Tactical Numerical Deterministic Model.) And Napoleon seems to have come out pretty outstanding, as I recall, in analysis using the QJMA.
One’s skill as a general is only one, relatively minor factor to success on the grand strategic level. Manpower, economic resources, will to fight, and so forth all factor in as well. Imperial France, the Confederacy, and Nazi Germany were all significantly outclassed in almost all of these factors by the time they were defeated.
Right. Napoleon had a much lengthier career, but the manner in which Alexander won is what makes him the greatest. He didn't just win the battle, he truly conquered your entire civilization and turned you into his asset. Alexander didn't have the need to fight so many battles, and he avoided them whenever possible. Napoleon had 60 battles (probably more), Alexander, much fewer.
An analogy in my mind is calling LeBron James and his career longevity the greatest over Michael simply on career length alone. In my mind, the manner in which Michael dominated, and going 6-0 in the NBA finals is what makes him clearly the best.
I think you have to look at the environment in which Alexander fought, compared to Napoleon. Alexander fought in a world that was sparse and heterogenous. His enemies were unable to learn from their failures and they were not able to adopt the means of Alexander's success. Alexander fought asymmetric wars were he benefitted from the asymmetry.
Napoleon fought on a continent that had effectively been locked in a military stalemate for over 200 years (maybe as long as 800 years depending on how you count). The density of Europe during that time meant information about his means of victory would spread all his enemies, and the prevalence of writing helped ensure a degree of accuracy. Napoleon fought symmetric wars. He had no great advantages of culture or technology to help him. His enemies were able to learn from him and despite this he achieved incredible victories against huge numerical odds. Even his losses were incredible. The Battle of Leipzig started with Napoleon outnumbered and surrounded, then a third of his army (the germans) defected. Despite this, Napoleon inflicted more casualties then he received, and he escaped with his army in relatively good order despite the fact that an idiot colonel botched Napoleon's retreat plans.
And let's not forget that Napoleon comes right at after the French revolution. Everyone else was planning to invade France since it'd become so weak - the country was a mess. And somehow, Napoleon managed to bring it back to the scene.s
I think that's where I find him the most amazing, he was given 1990s Apple and made it 2010 Apple - on the scale of a country.
Calling MJ "clearly the best" is insane. MJ had a much better supporting cast, one of the greatest coaches of all time, and didn't have to play the most dominant team ever (Warriors) for 4 consecutive Finals.
The Bulls won 55 games during the first year of MJ's hiatus. The Cavs won 19 games the year LeBron went to Miami.
Then again, MJ never had a 2011 Finals. He also never had his counterpart at the same position when FMVPs. Jordan was the best in every single finals he showed up in. Jordan was pretty much the best in every playoff series he played in, where the couple exceptions might be Shaq or Larry Bird.
And MJ has the highest career playoff scoring average along with being tied with Wilt for career scoring average. Opposing players feared and respected Michael Jordan in a way they don't Lebron.
To piggyback on this, MJ played in a very different NBA. Today's NBA is much more offense friendly. No hand-checking, much less physical play allowed. Jordan would be shooting 50 FTs a game if he played in today's NBA.
Jordan was a below avg 3 pt shooter. He may have gotten to the line frequently today but he'd also be relying on the his classic mid range shot which is the most inefficient in today's NBA.
Russell Westbrook just averaged back to back triple doubles and won an MVP last season while being a below avg 3 pt shooter. Jordan was a lot more efficient scorer than Westbrook, while being just as explosive. Today's spacing, thanks to all that 3 point shooting, would be a huge boost to Jordan. He doesn't have to worry about all the rim protectors guarding the paint that existed during his day.
He didn't have a 2011 finals perhaps because at the same age that Lebron was in 2011 (26) Jordan was getting his behind handed to him by the pistons and not even making the finals. That's the fallacy with the "6-0" argument
Since you think the argument is fallacious, let me spell it out really simply: 6-0 is greater than 3-6.
I am so tired of the "Lebron carries teams on his back" argument. He sets it up this way. It's his own doing. The only time he didn't is when he went to the Heat.
> Now, it’s tough to identify a part of the Cavs’ basketball operation that isn’t dictated by James’s preferences. In 2015, he needled the organization into handing Tristan Thompson an onerous five-year, $82 million contract. That same year, it became clear LeBron liked assistant coach Tyronn Lue more than head coach David Blatt, with James famously ignoring a Blatt play call before hitting a game-winner in a playoff game against the Bulls. Unsurprisingly, Blatt was fired and Lue promoted to the top job in January 2016. James publicly meddled with another free-agency decision the following offseason, urging the Cavs to give Smith a four-year, $57 million contract. While ensuring his team would handsomely pay some of its midtier talents, his connection with his costar weakened: Nobody has claimed that LeBron’s relationship with Irving is the primary reason Irving demanded a trade, but it seems odd that a player who once orchestrated an alliance of superstars lost the allegiance of his best teammate.
> When Lue makes questionable decisions, remember that he’s the coach James wanted. When Smith ruins late-game possessions and Thompson appears to have no real use on the floor, remember those are players James wanted. When Jordan Clarkson falters and Rodney Hood fails to even crack Cleveland’s rotation, keep in mind that those are the guys the Cavaliers traded for due to James’s midseason malaise. The team’s general lack of depth stems from overpayments to players like Smith and Thompson, contracts that were offered to appease LeBron.
> As we consider James’s legacy—and that’s seemingly all basketball fans want to do at any given moment—we need to consider the size of the hills he’s had to climb. In Cleveland, he has helped create those hills.
Jordan was losing to a superior Pistons team while still putting up the best numbers of anyone in the series. The Heat were supposed to beat the Mavs in 2011. Lebron had a historically bad finals for an all-time great. There is no comparison here.
This is common argument that comes up in the MJ debate and easily defeated.
Besides, you can apply the same "supporting cast" argument to Lebron. Lebron pioneered the approach to forming super teams to chase championships in the modern NBA. That garbage is now rampant thanks to him. (Remember when David Stern blocked the trade of Chris Paul to the Lakers due to "competition concerns?" Boy that seems laughable now)
(All this aside -- Lebron's a great dude, great role model, etc)
Lebron has been on one 'super team', the Heat. The Cavs were never even close to a super team, and the Lakers aren't shaping up to be either.
I grew up watching Michael Jordan but I think the game is much more difficult now. It's much faster, and a little more physical. Adding Lebron to any team makes them a finals contender overnight. MJ didn't have much luck once he left Chicago. MJ wasn't as dominant after his prime, Lebron will be dominant long after his because of his size.
The Chris Paul trade was blocked for "basketball reasons" because the NBA temporarily owned New Orleans at the time and didn't want to utterly destroy the value of the franchise before finding a new owner.
I think there are a lot of good points in favor of LeBron, but I still think MJ wins out, if only slightly.
> MJ had a much better supporting cast
To what degree were Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant/Dennis Rodman "much better" than Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, or Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, and later Ray Allen? Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely bullish on Dennis Rodman, but none of Jordan's teams ever had an All-Star big man, and consistently defeated teams that did (New York, Utah, Seattle, Detroit). That was especially abnormal in the late 80's and early 90's.
> one of the greatest coaches of all time
This is the biggest point in LeBron's favor, though Eric Spoelstra is a little underrated. There's a lot of overlap between the greatest coaches of all time (Popovich, Jackson, Auerbach, Riley) and the greatest players of all time (Duncan, Jordan, Kobe, Shaq, Russell, Magic, Kareem), and LeBron is the biggest exception to that.
At the same time, the pre-Phil Jackson MJ was dubbed "God disguised as Michael Jordan" by Larry Bird and was clearly a wasted talent in search of a coach, team, and system that would make the best use of him. And the biggest criticism of Phil Jackson is that he's never succeeded without having either Michael Jordan, Shaq, or Kobe Bryant playing for him. Aside from the frankly bizarre end of his tenure as GM of the Knicks, Phil Jackson's greatest strength was the ability to manage the egos of passionate, erratic superstars.
> and didn't have to play the most dominant team ever (Warriors) for 4 consecutive Finals
Michael Jordan was the centerpiece of "the most dominant team ever" for two sets of three consecutive finals.
(And frankly, if you want to talk about "the most dominant team ever", you have to look at the 1957-1969 Boston Celtics, who won all but two titles during that span.)
> The Bulls won 55 games during the first year of MJ's hiatus. The Cavs won 19 games the year LeBron went to Miami.
This is a pretty good point. I think removing Michael Jordan from the league entirely led to greater parity overall, and the 1993-94 season had a lot of indications of that (three conference semifinals going to seven games, the 8th seed in the West knocking out the 1st seed in the first round, only one team below 20 wins, only one team above 60 wins). The Bulls without MJ were worth a second round exit, which isn't nothing, but a Cavs team with Kyrie and Love would have done just as well if not better, and the 2016 Heat also bounced back to a second round exit two years after LeBron left.
I second the missing data points, especially technology and cultural/social conditions... but I'd also point out that a lot of history is written by the winners.
Napoleon was able to win the way he did because social conditions in France permitted him to conscript as many soldiers as he wanted and basically usurp the entire economic output of the country for the war effort. He famously bragged to one opponent that he couldn't be stopped because he could afford to "spend 30,000 lives a month." Other European societies at the time hadn't yet conceived of making war that way. And, once they all finally got around to it, we ended up with World War 1.
Julius Caesar was the other major outlier but Rome was undoubtedly more technologically and socially "advanced" than the Celts he fought early in his career. Furthermore, basically everything we know about Julius Caesar's exploits comes from books written by... Julius Caesar. Surely, he had an incentive to make his victories sound as dramatic as possible.
That was called "Total war" - the entire country is engaged. Things where different elsewhere, you will be forgiven going through Jane Austin's novels and not noticing that the United Kingdom is at war with the French empire.
Sense and Sensibility (1811)
Pride and Prejudice (1813)
Mansfield Park (1814)
Emma (1815)
It took a while for war to be something waged by The State because it took a long time for people to come up with an idea of a The State at all. Before nationalism, war was something fought by one king against another king, and what vassals each could muster. They were just petty disputes between individuals and their friends, not wars between countries.
Countries were more like alliances of powerful individuals than what we now think of as a country. Power wasn't consolidated enough for kings to control the full resources of the country, and so people who had no feudal obligations to those disputes weren't At War in a meaningful way. France was the first major power to kill the kings and aristocrats whose squabbling kept any one of them from seizing control of the full resources of the country.
It was the reorganization of society into a social contract each citizen held directly with an abstract all-powerful State that led to the consolidation of power that allows for Total War to exist.
From what I've read of the wars in Europe between the end of the wars of religion and the French revolution, the battles were not so much different from the ones fought by Napoleon, just perhaps bigger battles for Napoleon with more soldiers.
Louis XIV did a good job of dominating the nobility to consolidate power, and he fought wars to show it. He was the one who said "The State is Me," which goes to show a prototypical concept of The State was already developed. But he was only able to do it by such great expenditures of wealth and willpower that it ultimately bankrupted the country and led to the Revolution.
He commanded those resources because he was supremely rich. The State's relationship with its citizens is different from a king to his subjects, and doesn't require such great expenditures of wealth to maintain consolidation. The State was developed by kings, but once mature it no longer needed kings.
It took a while still after that for The State to reach a level of domination over society that allowed it to engage the entire country in war, which wouldn't have been possible had it still been subject to a king. The State is more like God, and kings are subject to it.
Although nations were a little different to what we now know, I couldn't conceive of calling the hundred years war (1350s - 1450s) a petty dispute between individuals and their friends.
Millions of arrows, tens of thousands of longbowmen, requirement for all males to train with the bow from youth, mass production of arrows all across the kingdom (and they were used in massive numbers). Looks rather like total war, just on a smaller scale. The cavalry (knights) were there in smaller numbers and from the nobility, much as armour is there in smaller numbers to infantry today. The requirement to train, and that everyone be armed meant revolts such as the peasant's revolt were surprisingly well armed.
That, of course, completely ignores the navy of a mainly seafaring nation. Though the standing navy with all its trappings didn't come in until Henry VIII
The shape of wars though would still be recognisable today.
Thanks for bringing up one of my favorite authors, but Jane Austen should be used with caution.
1.) Generally speaking her novels focus on the direct experience of family and friends. She's cutting on issues like the hypocrisy of the clergy and the indolence of the landed gentry. Issues from society at large like the emergence of the English middle class intrude only implicitly. In fact she's commonly criticized for her narrow view. [0]
2.) Within those bounds there's a sizable military presence in both 'Pride and Prejudice' (soldiers at Meryton, Brighton, and elsewhere) as well as 'Persuasion', where many of the main characters are drawn from the English Navy and spent much of their life at sea.
I can't prove it but have long suspected the characters would have been quite different had they been published 15 years before or after. Within the scope of her concerns the society she portrays seems quite militarized.
I think that's a pretty poor way to think about the time period between the Napoleonic Wars and World War I. Napoleon won many battles but ended up losing to the military and financial power of Great Britain (the so-called fiscal-military state). Basically Britain was able to fund its fighting effort by selling bonds instead of extorting 'gifts' from the nobility. Britain may not have worked in the same way as France, but I'd argue that Britain's was better and France never really recovered.
I'd also argue that the real reason Britain won was the overwhelming power of the Royal Navy, especially after Trafalagar and the decades long blockade of Europe. Keep in mind also that Britain overcame Napoleon even while fighting the sideshow of the War of 1812 against the United States. A good book on this would be In Nelson's Wake: The Navy and the Napoleonic Wars - James Davey
Napoleon may have famously bragged that he couldn't be stopped, but he was and lived the rest of his life in disgrace on St. Helena.
I don't disagree at all, but I feel this basically just makes my broader point. Napoleon eventually lost due to the political/financial/technological might of Britain, not because he hit a better general.
>McClellan who is incapable of attacking you for months despite superior forces and odds
I know he always gets this kind of criticism, but don't think he was an idiot, he knew his advantage. I think he was genuinely reluctant to ratchet up the slaughter of his countrymen, especially when he had the clear advantage.
> I think he was genuinely reluctant to ratchet up the slaughter of his countrymen, especially when he had the clear advantage.
Yes, they were his fellow countrymen in a sense, but they had declared themselves to be another country and were, in fact, his enemies. That reluctance is a serious flaw in a general.
Agreed. But regarding your other point, it was actually the official position of the federal government (Union) that the South was still a part of the union, and that the confederate government was illegitimate and in rebellion. So, still fellow countrymen. And I imagine he still admired Lee greatly, many did.
The slaughter McClellan was concerned about, and the source of his timidity, was that of his own men. That Grant & Meade had no such compunction is precisely why Lincoln turned to them. The Union victory then became a simple matter of attrition and its willingness to bleed.
I have heard it argued that Grant's success as a general was directly tied to his alcoholism, for much the same reason. He also knew what slaughter (of his own men as well as the enemy) would be necessary to conclude the war, but drank himself numb enough to go through with it.
Hannibal - amazing general from Carthage who beat Romans early on, mentioned in the article
Vercingetorix - beat Roman legions and used scorched Earth policy until Caesar’s sheer numbers overwhelmed him
Spartacus - beat Roman legions using slave armies that he trained himself!!
This is JUST the Roman empire. Napoleon the greatest general?
Sparta - Held off an insane number of Persians with 300 men, though a lot could have been a legend
Hey, so if Montezuma and the Aztecs were beaten by 20 guys with superior weaponry this guy would conclude just by the numbers that they were even greater.
Actually if this guy’s math took into account wins where the battle didn’t take place, Temujin (Genghis Khan) would probably be #1 as he built a larger empire than Alexander and many cities fell with ZERO battles due to his similar policies of sparing cities who didn’t fight, but utterly destroying cities that did.
> Sparta - Held off an insane number of Persians with 300 men, though a lot could have been a legend
And don't forget the 700 Thespians fighting with Sparta. And the 400 Thebans. And there may have been 1000 Spartans, not 300. In any event, our historical sources don't make much tactical sense when taken literally, and there is a great deal of mythical allusion and propaganda going on here.
> Hey, so if Montezuma and the Aztecs were beaten by 20 guys with superior weaponry this guy would conclude just by the numbers that they were even greater.
The Aztecs were defeated largely by the 20,000 Tlaxcala allies of Cortes. But sure, let's ignore the importance of the natives so we can make the Europeans seem righteous and laudatory.
The argument of how few Spaniards fought in Tenochtitlan has been used in both sides.
Here in Mexico is common for pro-native and anti-hispanic proponents to try to picture the evil few Europeans who got advantage of their technology against the innocent Aztecs. But they usually fail to mention that Tlaxcala and a lot of other native kingdoms joined the Spaniards against the Aztec empire that dominated Central Mexico, it's easier to picture a war between Native vs Invaders, but that doesn't mean it's correct.
For some proponents Europeans were the good ones, for some other they were the evil ones. Evil vs good is easier to picture than trying to understand the whole story with its gray areas.
Today, probably not many. But from the 1600s to the 1940s, it was definitely the norm. And there's a lot of people who will read the self-congratulatory histories from that time period and parrot the "facts" back as unquestioned truth.
Genghis Khan's (as well as his son Ogedai) success is largely due to his lead general Subutai. The guy managed to swallow most of Asia, including the (until then) unconquerable Afghanistan and Russia (in the winter!).
He also destroyed the armies of both Hungary and Poland within 2 days of each other, over 500 kms apart. He was a gifted strategist apparently known for being able to coordinate multiple armies simultaneously and adapting his strategies to the opponent and terrain constantly. Certainly worthy of Hannibal, Vercingetorix et al.
Vercingetorix held the numerical advantage in the decisive battle of Alesia. Caesar got himself sandwiched between the town he was besieging and the relieving gallic armies. I think Roman engineering overwhelmed him.
Quite the opposite, in sports a win is a win and the rest matters only as a tiebreaker, you'll start the next game from 0:0 anyway; however, in a war every little detail absolutely matters, if you could have won with a bit less casualties, or a day earlier, or with more devastation to your enemy before the next battle, or with less atrocities to your enemy making easier to reconcile afterwards - all of that could have been a meaningful improvement over a simple win.
As Clausewitz stated, war is the continuation of politics by other means. Whether an outcome should be considered a "win" isn't decided by military factors (e.g. manpower lost or who flees the battlefield) but rather by the political outcomes, how much the battle helped to achieve the political goals.
>Quite the opposite, in sports a win is a win and the rest matters only as a tiebreaker, you'll start the next game from 0:0 anyway
If you're in a baseball game starting a series and your starting pitcher went 8 innings while the opponent went 4 (below average) you will have the upper hand in the rest of the series. The opponent will work his bullpen more and potentially his players having to rely on their offense heavily as the bullpen exhausts. Getting starting pitch counts high to exhaust or to exhaust a bullpen is a known strategy in baseball and it carries over multiple games. It's not a simple "you'll start the next game from 0:0 anyway".
You can deal an incredible amount of damage to an opposing team by winning a game by one run (especially extra innings) and have the upper hand the rest of the series. You'll actually see managers put in position players to not kill their bullpen if they are losing a game by a significant amount (9+ runs). The original comment actually has the opposite damage effect in baseball.
The "a win is a win" comment is in the context of WAR which is what we're talking about. As the season ends and approaches 162 games WAR is a good (but not perfect) metric on measuring a player's worth and amortizing situations like the one above across a season.
"is in the context of WAR which is what we're talking about"
From the context, you mean Wins Above Replacement, and the point of my original comment is that this technique should not be applied to war. It gives distorted results.
As I pointed out, Hannibal's record would end up getting under-weighted, if you only look at wins. In war, it matters how much you win by.
Another example, Germany would have had (even more) difficulty fighting a two front war, in World War I, if the Battle of Tannenberg had been less decisive. Merely winning that battle, by a small margin, would have meant a much faster German loss of the war.
Also, what many people don't realize is that Napoleon burned thru roughly 30,000 troops per MONTH !
Most countries couldn't burn through that many in total without coming to the negotiating table, but France was the first country to subscribe to the idea of Total War, where everyone in the country was oriented (more or less) towards arms. When you have a huge country supplying troops and arms to the battlefield in a conveyor belt, anyone will win a large number of battles simply because he can grind the enemy down to nothing, and then still have more troops.
So better? Maybe, but the data definitely does NOT prove it.
The bigger problem is, as he mentions (and addresses in updates), "Napoleon benefited from the large number of battles in which he led forces". That puts it mildly. When he says "the next highest performer ... had less than half the WAR accumulated by Napoleon across his battles" he somehow fails to connect that to what follows shortly after "No other general came close to Napoleon in total battles". Mousing over the interactive, the War per battle statistic he added in the updates shows that Napoleon was not particularly outstanding vs other high WAR generals.
There is some math missing. I don't remember the name now, but when something has a 2:1 positive to negative ratio of votes but only has 3 votes, and another thing also has a 2:1 ratio but has 400 votes, it's not the same ratio.
My money is still on Hannibal and Alexander as being the best generals. They both fought and won battles against huge odds. And invented amazing tactics. You know that saying: "how much a smartphone costs? A few billion for the first one in research, and few hundred for all the others."
The only thing that I heard Napoleon invented was that defeat in detail thing. I invented that on my own when playing starcraft as a kid :/
I think napoleon truly took advantage of the idea of the republic where each man owned himself and had to serve for citizenship. But I'm no expert, so yeh: some math seems to be missing.
Methodology aside, I really appreciate that Arscht went through the effort of abbreviating the metric as WAR. Reading about a general's lifetime WAR was amusing the whole time, even if the statistic computed doesn't quite match up to baseball's (as referenced in the updates).
This is worse than silly. It misleads you in the wrong direction.
If you were to follow the Art of War, a major part of generalship is intentionally not fighting battles if the situation is against you.
This only measures generals when they fight. It doesn't measure generals who knew when not to fight. Perhaps a general who knew when not to fight would not try to invade Russia when and how he did?
This is a fun exercise, but please don't take the bait about this being an actual analysis of warfare / leadership effectiveness. It's a fun way to use these stats, with an acronym that is amusing for the subject matter.
I disagree. A mathematical proof is much more rigourous than that. All that was done here is massaging numbers until one of the approach resulted in the desired outcome.
This article is an example of "data-science gone wild": a simplistic model that only considers a tiny subset of easy-to-quantify features, skipping all hard-to-quantify features regardless of their likely impact.
For example, the author counts numbers of troops, but completely neglects their quality. Anyone with passing familiarity of military history will tell you that professional soldiers can easily outperform a force of untrained fresh conscripts several times their size.
The author then uses his half-assed, data-poor model to dispute findings of actual military experts who studied all aspects of these generals' performance over many years.
Great article... to demonstrate the perils of naive, lazy, arrogant data science.
Beautifully said. I was appalled to realize the shallowness of the author’s methods. Then upon this sandpit they attempt to construct the un-caveated thesis: “Napoleon is the best general ever”.
Is WAR even useful for comparing agents with different numbers of data points?
I think they really wanted to use the Wins-above-replacement model but realised they couldn't apply it without knowing the prior probabilities of victory. I agree completely that training of troops matter, morale matters, food and water matter, terrain matters, the technology available matters just as much (steel vs bronze, longbows vs composite bows, cavalry vs infantry, pikemen vs cavalry, musketmen vs pikemen etc). But they don't have any hard data on any of these so they made a simplistic estimate based on troop numbers. An example where this breaks down is in the Battle of Zama, where Hannibal had a numbers advantage over Scipio (40k to 35k) but not in cavalry (4k to 6k). 2k Doesn't sound like much, but it made the entire difference between a small defeat and a catastrophic end to the entire war.
But there are a couple of other issues with the model
1. This model gives more points for fighting multiple small battles and winning them unconvincingly. Whereas it's obvious that a single crushing victory that completely eliminates an opponent should count for more. By that metric, Alexander's few victories should rank well above Napoleon's multiple small ones.
2. How much of the General's success can be attributed to himself and how much to having able aides? How much did Murat contribute to Napoleon's success, or Antony to Caesar's? Unlike a modern basketball team where you can measure a player's impact by seeing the team with and without them, it is difficult to quantify how much or how little Murat contributed to Napoleon's victories.
What if losing the war causing you to go into exile multiplies by 0.
Irresponsible IMO. I run a data website and I find quantifying things like Protein Per Second somewhat hard to quantify given things like Beef Jerky, McDonalds and the variable distance to a location, etc... But the claim isnt that this is 'the best ever'. The claim is that you can use the data to make your own decisions.
Too much buzzfeed quality content exists, I'm glad people are objecting to irresponsible data.
> Anyone with passing familiarity of military history will tell you that professional soldiers can easily outperform a force of untrained fresh conscripts several times their size.
And in open terrain, until at least the mid-19th century, horse nomads could utterly dominate even professional soldiers.
This is data science equivalent of looking keys under light.
Napoleon is better than Subutai because there are better records of Napoleon in Wikipedia. Subutai and Napoleon were both geniuses, but you can never settle the issue because historical records are biased in one way or another.
If you've ever got 4 hours to kill, I highly, highly recommend this documentary on Napoleon. It covers virtually everything you'd ever need to know about the man. It's narrated by the esteemed historian David McCullough, as well.
This is not really a controversial or even particularly novel analysis if you have read any biography of Napoleon and it approaches the consensus read on his military performance.
The data on win rate is also not going to tell you why his performance was so high. It's not going to explain the strategy of the central position (CTRL-F for the term in the article and get 0 results) or the political reasons as to why Napoleon often enjoyed a manpower advantage.
It's also kind of inappropriate to judge generals on the same basis as you judge sports coaches. Sports leagues do their best to regulate competition somewhat to prevent single teams from dominating forever (and don't always succeed). Nations in warfare do whatever they can to grant themselves overwhelming and uneven advantages over opponents.
Certain military forces are not necessarily 'underdogs' even if they are outnumbered. See the US in any major conflict after the Civil War.
For virtually all of Julius Caesar's military battles, the only troop numbers we have available are from Caesar himself. There's slightly more information about Napoleon's battles, but he was also legendary at self propaganda, and I'd bet a fair number of Wikipedia articles on his battles were based off biased sources.
All the other details brought up of why a great general might be misranked are avoiding the massive bias inherent in the data.
Caesar fought and defeated armies several times the size of his own. If his troops lost, it was because he wasn't commanding them at the time. He was truly the best general ever... according to Caesar himself.
Since the only records we have for the Gallic Wars is Caesar's own Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, we have no choice but to believe him. It is a great book though, especially if you're interested in how old school propaganda was done.
Interesting, but totally irrelevant today. Battles are not important. Today's leaders fight wars. Modern warfare, maneuver warfare, is all about preventing the need for the set battles. The great general today is the one that wins without the need for direct open confrontation. The greatest victory occurs not after two armies run at each other across a field, but when one side surrenders before even seeing its opponent.
Maneuver warfare defeated Napoleon. Win all the battles you want. It won't mean a thing if you are still standing in Russia when winter comes. The greatest general looses all the battles, and nevertheless wins the war.
That was very different. Armies then lived off the land, bought/stole what they needed very locally. Supply lines existed but the number of goods needed wasn't the same as today. Logistics is only part of maneuver warfare. Intelligence is more important.
Sieges were not that common. A siege needs a stronghold. There were periods where strongholds were common in some areas, but they are over-represented in the history. We have records of sieges because sieges, by definition, occurred at important locations.
That was very different. Armies then lived off the land, bought/stole what they needed very locally.
Yes. It was the medieval version of logistics -- basically everything comes from the immediate vicinity and there's frack-all by comparison for infrastructure. You could have supply lines, but it was proportionally more expensive. It's quite surprising, the amount of materials for building a castle which came from the immediate vicinity.
Sieges were not that common.
Like battles were even less common. I was given to understand that sieges were more frequent than battles.
Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, Saladin, Tamerlane, almost an endless list of greater military leaders than napoleon. People who actually won and built empires.
I'd even put george washington and Vo Nguyen Giap above napoleon.
The amount of undeserved praise napoleon gets irks me. He was handed the largest empire ( french empire ) with the greatest army and destroyed it in a few years. He is the architect of a few of the military history's greatest follies. The invasion of egypt, the invasion of russia, the continental blockade, amongst others. Every major military endeavor of his was a colossal failure.
Were it not for the artificial propaganda and myth around the guy, he'd be viewed as one of history's greatest military laughingstocks.
Napoleon's greatness wasn't in the military sphere. His genius was in the bureaucratic and legal spheres.
>When Africanus asked who, in Hannibal’s opinion, was the greatest general, Hannibal named Alexander… as to whom he would rank second, Hannibal selected Pyrrhus… asking whom Hannibal considered third, he named himself without hesitation. Then Scipio broke into a laugh and said, “What would you say if you had defeated me?”
The article leaves off Hannibal’s reply, which is
"Then, beyond doubt" he replied,
"I should place myself both before Alexander and before Pyrrhus and before all other generals"
Basically, Scipio was fishing for a compliment, and when he got that compliment he was satisfied.
Yeah totally inflated It's not like he accomplished a double envelopment of a superior force, a feat yet to be matched. Not like his victories were victories of annihilation. Not like he pierced the Roman heartland through the Alps without the endless steamroll of replacement troops that Napoleon had. Not like he brought Rome to its knees in a 16 year long campaign without so much as a resupply from Carthage.
Alexander was clearly superior, never mind that Persians had absolutely no counter to the Sarissa. Never mind that the Sarissa was so overpowered that he literally just forced marched into every battle and won anyway.
Yeah totally inflated. It's not like he accomplished a double envelopment of a superior force, a feat yet to be matched
Then isn't it more the shame that he couldn't accomplish his strategic aims?
Not like he pierced the Roman heartland through the Alps without the endless steamroll of replacement troops that Napoleon had.
So he set himself up for failure at the outset, but we admire him for the genius of his small scale moves. Amateurs study tactics, but professionals study logistics. Both Hannibal and Napoleon had key failures in this regard.
Alexander was clearly superior
He was clearly superior, in his ability to capitalize on tactical superiority to achieve strategic aims.
Yes its a shame he didn't simply walk up to Rome's walls after Cannae and simply breath in its direction. In the end Hannibal defeated himself through his reluctance to claim his prize.
Nothing small scale about crossing the alps, battle trasimene, zama, trebia and cannae. The maneuvers through the Italian countryside that forced the Romans to develop fabian tactics. They figured the only way to counter Hannibal was to simply not fight him.
Managing an multiethnic army of north africans, iberians and gauls with little to no supply lines, no national unity or loyalties and leading them from one victory to the next means Hannibal's charisma on top his strategic genius must have been nothing short of legendary.
Alexander has no feats to speak of. No examples of how he turned battles around. No proof of his strategic ability. The truth is you cant produce any. Non of Alexander's fans today can explain why he's a great general. Indeed, an army of Sarissa wielding phalanxes leaves little room for strategic ability. Its literally an army that you smash against the opposing army. The end.
Remember that Hannibal was actually defeated in a set battle on his own home soil at the battle of Carthage.
In regards to Alexander, his battles were not just having the phalanx roll through his enemies. Often the decisive point in those battles was Alexander exploiting an opportunity that opened up with his personally lead cavalry.
In addition, he could think outside the box. At the battle of Jaxartes he defeated the Scythians by having his troops cross a river while using catapults agains the archers on the other bank. This is the first know use of artillery in a manner like this. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jaxartes
In addition, as Rome would demonstrate, phalanxes were best on very flat even terrain and lost a lot of their advantages when they were not on such terrain. Alexander, however, was able too o win major battles on sorts of terrain, even when he should have been at a disadvantage.
The problem with the battle of Zama is that it was a head on pitched battle where both Scipio and Hannibal had very little input in how it actually played out. Hannibal was pressured by politics to not abandon any ground.
Alexander philes like to invent all sorts of glorious calvary charges for Alexander, but he won his victories off the point end of the Sarrisa. If we look at how the Phalanx worked, it becomes clear that operating it does not require a highly skilled driver. A rapidly advancing wall of pikeman. Opposing formations were pinned, encircled and routed. The spear wall was the anvil against which the hammer of the Hellenic calvary could smash. It was simple and effective and inflexible.
Terrain is not a major factor in almost any historical battle from antiquity. You underestimate just how wide ground can be for that scale of battle. Even in mountainous terrain. While rough terrain did play its part for the Romans fighting against Philip. The Phalangites at Cynoscephalae were actually just beaten by a much more versatile and effective formation. The Maniple System the Romans devised of checkboard like spear units could engage the Phalanx wall directly. The so-called 'phalanx with joints' could not only attack the Phalanx from the front, but it could break up its ranks and then the Gladius goes to do its work.
This is repeated again and again in history. Technological and material superiority will often lead to victories. Who knew an army of untouchable horse archers would be unstoppable in three continents? Who knew thousands of next generation tanks would break through the most heavily fortified militarized defense of its time? Many Generals have taken advantage of their side's superiority in strength and earned their place in history. But it was Hannibal who was handed every conceivable disadvantage and turned the impossible into not only victories but flawless victories in so-called battles of annihilation. That is why he is the father of military strategy and the greatest general in history.
The author developed and then iterated a simple simulation (structured like war game rules) for modeling ancient battles. Its been a while since I read the book but IIRC his goal was to create a model that was able to reproduce what actually happened in relatively well-documented battles, and then use that model to explore less well documented battles.
It's not a good cover-to-cover read, but once you understand his overall scheme, its fun to pick up and read his model for a battle or two.
127 comments
[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 253 ms ] threadThese unaddressed factors may clarify the analysis of General Lee, for instance, who was facing extremely incompetent opponents for the majority of the war, and by the end he was then facing more advanced weaponry, better supplied opponents, and another competent general in Grant. I am not on the Lee bandwagon by any stretch, I think he made some risky moves that paid off, but he also made an absolutely unforced error at Pickett's charge which completely lost him the troop number advantages gained at other battles. And if you're facing McClellan who is incapable of attacking you for months despite superior forces and odds, then you don't truly deserve heaps of accolades.
These are all crucial questions that lie far beyond the author's simplistic approach. The data simply isn't enough to warrant the conclusions, nor does the author arrive at them in a statistically sound manner.
> this piece is intended as a fun thought experiment, not a definitive ranking, or a scholarly contribution to the field of military history. I believe some of the results from this project, especially Lee and Rommel, provide interesting data points for broader discussions of their tactical abilities. In no way do I claim my analysis provides the full picture, or anything close to it.
So yes, method is sketchy, is incomplete, is simplistic.
On the other hand, anything which someone claims to have proved is a reasonable thing to expect a proof for.
I'm not the one throwing clickbait headlines around.
The author is just looking at purely combat performance as some sort of way to rank them. Anything deeper wouldn't really work from a data perspective because we really don't have the best records from back then.
The qualities of a general will be demonstrated both in wins and losses, and whether he's victorious in the end tells more about the military power of a country or king, not about the quality of the general.
Right. Indeed, efforts have been made to quantify this that take into account the contribution of other factors (e.g., T.N. Dupuy’s Quantified Judgement Method of Analysis which check later as developed into the Tactical Numerical Deterministic Model.) And Napoleon seems to have come out pretty outstanding, as I recall, in analysis using the QJMA.
An analogy in my mind is calling LeBron James and his career longevity the greatest over Michael simply on career length alone. In my mind, the manner in which Michael dominated, and going 6-0 in the NBA finals is what makes him clearly the best.
Napoleon fought on a continent that had effectively been locked in a military stalemate for over 200 years (maybe as long as 800 years depending on how you count). The density of Europe during that time meant information about his means of victory would spread all his enemies, and the prevalence of writing helped ensure a degree of accuracy. Napoleon fought symmetric wars. He had no great advantages of culture or technology to help him. His enemies were able to learn from him and despite this he achieved incredible victories against huge numerical odds. Even his losses were incredible. The Battle of Leipzig started with Napoleon outnumbered and surrounded, then a third of his army (the germans) defected. Despite this, Napoleon inflicted more casualties then he received, and he escaped with his army in relatively good order despite the fact that an idiot colonel botched Napoleon's retreat plans.
I think that's where I find him the most amazing, he was given 1990s Apple and made it 2010 Apple - on the scale of a country.
Not everything has a best or worst. This kind of reductionist thinking is wrong.
If it's something like a "just for fun" project sure fine, but this is not the way to evaluate wars and peoples.
The Bulls won 55 games during the first year of MJ's hiatus. The Cavs won 19 games the year LeBron went to Miami.
And MJ has the highest career playoff scoring average along with being tied with Wilt for career scoring average. Opposing players feared and respected Michael Jordan in a way they don't Lebron.
I am so tired of the "Lebron carries teams on his back" argument. He sets it up this way. It's his own doing. The only time he didn't is when he went to the Heat.
> Now, it’s tough to identify a part of the Cavs’ basketball operation that isn’t dictated by James’s preferences. In 2015, he needled the organization into handing Tristan Thompson an onerous five-year, $82 million contract. That same year, it became clear LeBron liked assistant coach Tyronn Lue more than head coach David Blatt, with James famously ignoring a Blatt play call before hitting a game-winner in a playoff game against the Bulls. Unsurprisingly, Blatt was fired and Lue promoted to the top job in January 2016. James publicly meddled with another free-agency decision the following offseason, urging the Cavs to give Smith a four-year, $57 million contract. While ensuring his team would handsomely pay some of its midtier talents, his connection with his costar weakened: Nobody has claimed that LeBron’s relationship with Irving is the primary reason Irving demanded a trade, but it seems odd that a player who once orchestrated an alliance of superstars lost the allegiance of his best teammate.
> When Lue makes questionable decisions, remember that he’s the coach James wanted. When Smith ruins late-game possessions and Thompson appears to have no real use on the floor, remember those are players James wanted. When Jordan Clarkson falters and Rodney Hood fails to even crack Cleveland’s rotation, keep in mind that those are the guys the Cavaliers traded for due to James’s midseason malaise. The team’s general lack of depth stems from overpayments to players like Smith and Thompson, contracts that were offered to appease LeBron.
> As we consider James’s legacy—and that’s seemingly all basketball fans want to do at any given moment—we need to consider the size of the hills he’s had to climb. In Cleveland, he has helped create those hills.
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2018/6/5/17429314/lebron-james...
Besides, you can apply the same "supporting cast" argument to Lebron. Lebron pioneered the approach to forming super teams to chase championships in the modern NBA. That garbage is now rampant thanks to him. (Remember when David Stern blocked the trade of Chris Paul to the Lakers due to "competition concerns?" Boy that seems laughable now)
(All this aside -- Lebron's a great dude, great role model, etc)
I grew up watching Michael Jordan but I think the game is much more difficult now. It's much faster, and a little more physical. Adding Lebron to any team makes them a finals contender overnight. MJ didn't have much luck once he left Chicago. MJ wasn't as dominant after his prime, Lebron will be dominant long after his because of his size.
> MJ had a much better supporting cast
To what degree were Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant/Dennis Rodman "much better" than Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, or Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, and later Ray Allen? Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely bullish on Dennis Rodman, but none of Jordan's teams ever had an All-Star big man, and consistently defeated teams that did (New York, Utah, Seattle, Detroit). That was especially abnormal in the late 80's and early 90's.
> one of the greatest coaches of all time
This is the biggest point in LeBron's favor, though Eric Spoelstra is a little underrated. There's a lot of overlap between the greatest coaches of all time (Popovich, Jackson, Auerbach, Riley) and the greatest players of all time (Duncan, Jordan, Kobe, Shaq, Russell, Magic, Kareem), and LeBron is the biggest exception to that.
At the same time, the pre-Phil Jackson MJ was dubbed "God disguised as Michael Jordan" by Larry Bird and was clearly a wasted talent in search of a coach, team, and system that would make the best use of him. And the biggest criticism of Phil Jackson is that he's never succeeded without having either Michael Jordan, Shaq, or Kobe Bryant playing for him. Aside from the frankly bizarre end of his tenure as GM of the Knicks, Phil Jackson's greatest strength was the ability to manage the egos of passionate, erratic superstars.
> and didn't have to play the most dominant team ever (Warriors) for 4 consecutive Finals
Michael Jordan was the centerpiece of "the most dominant team ever" for two sets of three consecutive finals.
(And frankly, if you want to talk about "the most dominant team ever", you have to look at the 1957-1969 Boston Celtics, who won all but two titles during that span.)
> The Bulls won 55 games during the first year of MJ's hiatus. The Cavs won 19 games the year LeBron went to Miami.
This is a pretty good point. I think removing Michael Jordan from the league entirely led to greater parity overall, and the 1993-94 season had a lot of indications of that (three conference semifinals going to seven games, the 8th seed in the West knocking out the 1st seed in the first round, only one team below 20 wins, only one team above 60 wins). The Bulls without MJ were worth a second round exit, which isn't nothing, but a Cavs team with Kyrie and Love would have done just as well if not better, and the 2016 Heat also bounced back to a second round exit two years after LeBron left.
Napoleon was able to win the way he did because social conditions in France permitted him to conscript as many soldiers as he wanted and basically usurp the entire economic output of the country for the war effort. He famously bragged to one opponent that he couldn't be stopped because he could afford to "spend 30,000 lives a month." Other European societies at the time hadn't yet conceived of making war that way. And, once they all finally got around to it, we ended up with World War 1.
Julius Caesar was the other major outlier but Rome was undoubtedly more technologically and socially "advanced" than the Celts he fought early in his career. Furthermore, basically everything we know about Julius Caesar's exploits comes from books written by... Julius Caesar. Surely, he had an incentive to make his victories sound as dramatic as possible.
Countries were more like alliances of powerful individuals than what we now think of as a country. Power wasn't consolidated enough for kings to control the full resources of the country, and so people who had no feudal obligations to those disputes weren't At War in a meaningful way. France was the first major power to kill the kings and aristocrats whose squabbling kept any one of them from seizing control of the full resources of the country.
It was the reorganization of society into a social contract each citizen held directly with an abstract all-powerful State that led to the consolidation of power that allows for Total War to exist.
He commanded those resources because he was supremely rich. The State's relationship with its citizens is different from a king to his subjects, and doesn't require such great expenditures of wealth to maintain consolidation. The State was developed by kings, but once mature it no longer needed kings.
It took a while still after that for The State to reach a level of domination over society that allowed it to engage the entire country in war, which wouldn't have been possible had it still been subject to a king. The State is more like God, and kings are subject to it.
Although nations were a little different to what we now know, I couldn't conceive of calling the hundred years war (1350s - 1450s) a petty dispute between individuals and their friends.
Millions of arrows, tens of thousands of longbowmen, requirement for all males to train with the bow from youth, mass production of arrows all across the kingdom (and they were used in massive numbers). Looks rather like total war, just on a smaller scale. The cavalry (knights) were there in smaller numbers and from the nobility, much as armour is there in smaller numbers to infantry today. The requirement to train, and that everyone be armed meant revolts such as the peasant's revolt were surprisingly well armed.
That, of course, completely ignores the navy of a mainly seafaring nation. Though the standing navy with all its trappings didn't come in until Henry VIII
The shape of wars though would still be recognisable today.
1.) Generally speaking her novels focus on the direct experience of family and friends. She's cutting on issues like the hypocrisy of the clergy and the indolence of the landed gentry. Issues from society at large like the emergence of the English middle class intrude only implicitly. In fact she's commonly criticized for her narrow view. [0]
2.) Within those bounds there's a sizable military presence in both 'Pride and Prejudice' (soldiers at Meryton, Brighton, and elsewhere) as well as 'Persuasion', where many of the main characters are drawn from the English Navy and spent much of their life at sea.
I can't prove it but have long suspected the characters would have been quite different had they been published 15 years before or after. Within the scope of her concerns the society she portrays seems quite militarized.
[0] http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/a...
I'd also argue that the real reason Britain won was the overwhelming power of the Royal Navy, especially after Trafalagar and the decades long blockade of Europe. Keep in mind also that Britain overcame Napoleon even while fighting the sideshow of the War of 1812 against the United States. A good book on this would be In Nelson's Wake: The Navy and the Napoleonic Wars - James Davey
Napoleon may have famously bragged that he couldn't be stopped, but he was and lived the rest of his life in disgrace on St. Helena.
I know he always gets this kind of criticism, but don't think he was an idiot, he knew his advantage. I think he was genuinely reluctant to ratchet up the slaughter of his countrymen, especially when he had the clear advantage.
Yes, they were his fellow countrymen in a sense, but they had declared themselves to be another country and were, in fact, his enemies. That reluctance is a serious flaw in a general.
Agreed. But regarding your other point, it was actually the official position of the federal government (Union) that the South was still a part of the union, and that the confederate government was illegitimate and in rebellion. So, still fellow countrymen. And I imagine he still admired Lee greatly, many did.
I am not a historian, don't take this as truth.
Hannibal - amazing general from Carthage who beat Romans early on, mentioned in the article
Vercingetorix - beat Roman legions and used scorched Earth policy until Caesar’s sheer numbers overwhelmed him
Spartacus - beat Roman legions using slave armies that he trained himself!!
This is JUST the Roman empire. Napoleon the greatest general?
Sparta - Held off an insane number of Persians with 300 men, though a lot could have been a legend
Hey, so if Montezuma and the Aztecs were beaten by 20 guys with superior weaponry this guy would conclude just by the numbers that they were even greater.
Actually if this guy’s math took into account wins where the battle didn’t take place, Temujin (Genghis Khan) would probably be #1 as he built a larger empire than Alexander and many cities fell with ZERO battles due to his similar policies of sparing cities who didn’t fight, but utterly destroying cities that did.
And don't forget the 700 Thespians fighting with Sparta. And the 400 Thebans. And there may have been 1000 Spartans, not 300. In any event, our historical sources don't make much tactical sense when taken literally, and there is a great deal of mythical allusion and propaganda going on here.
> Hey, so if Montezuma and the Aztecs were beaten by 20 guys with superior weaponry this guy would conclude just by the numbers that they were even greater.
The Aztecs were defeated largely by the 20,000 Tlaxcala allies of Cortes. But sure, let's ignore the importance of the natives so we can make the Europeans seem righteous and laudatory.
Here in Mexico is common for pro-native and anti-hispanic proponents to try to picture the evil few Europeans who got advantage of their technology against the innocent Aztecs. But they usually fail to mention that Tlaxcala and a lot of other native kingdoms joined the Spaniards against the Aztec empire that dominated Central Mexico, it's easier to picture a war between Native vs Invaders, but that doesn't mean it's correct.
For some proponents Europeans were the good ones, for some other they were the evil ones. Evil vs good is easier to picture than trying to understand the whole story with its gray areas.
He also destroyed the armies of both Hungary and Poland within 2 days of each other, over 500 kms apart. He was a gifted strategist apparently known for being able to coordinate multiple armies simultaneously and adapting his strategies to the opponent and terrain constantly. Certainly worthy of Hannibal, Vercingetorix et al.
If you tell me the Knicks beat the Jazz I will shrug with boredom. If you get me the final score was 131 to 84 I will be like "Whoa! What happened?"
So this method undercounts the success of Hannibal, who had 4 victories of annihilation or near annihilation.
As Clausewitz stated, war is the continuation of politics by other means. Whether an outcome should be considered a "win" isn't decided by military factors (e.g. manpower lost or who flees the battlefield) but rather by the political outcomes, how much the battle helped to achieve the political goals.
If you're in a baseball game starting a series and your starting pitcher went 8 innings while the opponent went 4 (below average) you will have the upper hand in the rest of the series. The opponent will work his bullpen more and potentially his players having to rely on their offense heavily as the bullpen exhausts. Getting starting pitch counts high to exhaust or to exhaust a bullpen is a known strategy in baseball and it carries over multiple games. It's not a simple "you'll start the next game from 0:0 anyway".
You can deal an incredible amount of damage to an opposing team by winning a game by one run (especially extra innings) and have the upper hand the rest of the series. You'll actually see managers put in position players to not kill their bullpen if they are losing a game by a significant amount (9+ runs). The original comment actually has the opposite damage effect in baseball.
The "a win is a win" comment is in the context of WAR which is what we're talking about. As the season ends and approaches 162 games WAR is a good (but not perfect) metric on measuring a player's worth and amortizing situations like the one above across a season.
"is in the context of WAR which is what we're talking about"
From the context, you mean Wins Above Replacement, and the point of my original comment is that this technique should not be applied to war. It gives distorted results.
As I pointed out, Hannibal's record would end up getting under-weighted, if you only look at wins. In war, it matters how much you win by.
Another example, Germany would have had (even more) difficulty fighting a two front war, in World War I, if the Battle of Tannenberg had been less decisive. Merely winning that battle, by a small margin, would have meant a much faster German loss of the war.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ourxp/what_...
Also, what many people don't realize is that Napoleon burned thru roughly 30,000 troops per MONTH !
Most countries couldn't burn through that many in total without coming to the negotiating table, but France was the first country to subscribe to the idea of Total War, where everyone in the country was oriented (more or less) towards arms. When you have a huge country supplying troops and arms to the battlefield in a conveyor belt, anyone will win a large number of battles simply because he can grind the enemy down to nothing, and then still have more troops.
So better? Maybe, but the data definitely does NOT prove it.
It was the only military in Europe that appointed and promoted officers based on merit.
-Field Marshall Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, 1815 (After defeating Napoleon at Waterloo)
If you torture the data enough you can get it to say anything you want.
My money is still on Hannibal and Alexander as being the best generals. They both fought and won battles against huge odds. And invented amazing tactics. You know that saying: "how much a smartphone costs? A few billion for the first one in research, and few hundred for all the others." The only thing that I heard Napoleon invented was that defeat in detail thing. I invented that on my own when playing starcraft as a kid :/ I think napoleon truly took advantage of the idea of the republic where each man owned himself and had to serve for citizenship. But I'm no expert, so yeh: some math seems to be missing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_rule
If you were to follow the Art of War, a major part of generalship is intentionally not fighting battles if the situation is against you.
This only measures generals when they fight. It doesn't measure generals who knew when not to fight. Perhaps a general who knew when not to fight would not try to invade Russia when and how he did?
This is a fun exercise, but please don't take the bait about this being an actual analysis of warfare / leadership effectiveness. It's a fun way to use these stats, with an acronym that is amusing for the subject matter.
I disagree. A mathematical proof is much more rigourous than that. All that was done here is massaging numbers until one of the approach resulted in the desired outcome.
For example, the author counts numbers of troops, but completely neglects their quality. Anyone with passing familiarity of military history will tell you that professional soldiers can easily outperform a force of untrained fresh conscripts several times their size.
The author then uses his half-assed, data-poor model to dispute findings of actual military experts who studied all aspects of these generals' performance over many years.
Great article... to demonstrate the perils of naive, lazy, arrogant data science.
Is WAR even useful for comparing agents with different numbers of data points?
But there are a couple of other issues with the model
1. This model gives more points for fighting multiple small battles and winning them unconvincingly. Whereas it's obvious that a single crushing victory that completely eliminates an opponent should count for more. By that metric, Alexander's few victories should rank well above Napoleon's multiple small ones.
2. How much of the General's success can be attributed to himself and how much to having able aides? How much did Murat contribute to Napoleon's success, or Antony to Caesar's? Unlike a modern basketball team where you can measure a player's impact by seeing the team with and without them, it is difficult to quantify how much or how little Murat contributed to Napoleon's victories.
What if losing the war causing you to go into exile multiplies by 0.
Irresponsible IMO. I run a data website and I find quantifying things like Protein Per Second somewhat hard to quantify given things like Beef Jerky, McDonalds and the variable distance to a location, etc... But the claim isnt that this is 'the best ever'. The claim is that you can use the data to make your own decisions.
Too much buzzfeed quality content exists, I'm glad people are objecting to irresponsible data.
And in open terrain, until at least the mid-19th century, horse nomads could utterly dominate even professional soldiers.
> Missing data!
This is data science equivalent of looking keys under light.
Napoleon is better than Subutai because there are better records of Napoleon in Wikipedia. Subutai and Napoleon were both geniuses, but you can never settle the issue because historical records are biased in one way or another.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrbiSUgZEbg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_McCullough
The data on win rate is also not going to tell you why his performance was so high. It's not going to explain the strategy of the central position (CTRL-F for the term in the article and get 0 results) or the political reasons as to why Napoleon often enjoyed a manpower advantage.
It's also kind of inappropriate to judge generals on the same basis as you judge sports coaches. Sports leagues do their best to regulate competition somewhat to prevent single teams from dominating forever (and don't always succeed). Nations in warfare do whatever they can to grant themselves overwhelming and uneven advantages over opponents.
Certain military forces are not necessarily 'underdogs' even if they are outnumbered. See the US in any major conflict after the Civil War.
All the other details brought up of why a great general might be misranked are avoiding the massive bias inherent in the data.
Since the only records we have for the Gallic Wars is Caesar's own Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, we have no choice but to believe him. It is a great book though, especially if you're interested in how old school propaganda was done.
Maneuver warfare defeated Napoleon. Win all the battles you want. It won't mean a thing if you are still standing in Russia when winter comes. The greatest general looses all the battles, and nevertheless wins the war.
It was also true in medieval and classical times. Battles were the exception. Sieges were far more common. What are sieges about? Logistics.
Sieges were not that common. A siege needs a stronghold. There were periods where strongholds were common in some areas, but they are over-represented in the history. We have records of sieges because sieges, by definition, occurred at important locations.
Yes. It was the medieval version of logistics -- basically everything comes from the immediate vicinity and there's frack-all by comparison for infrastructure. You could have supply lines, but it was proportionally more expensive. It's quite surprising, the amount of materials for building a castle which came from the immediate vicinity.
Sieges were not that common.
Like battles were even less common. I was given to understand that sieges were more frequent than battles.
I'd even put george washington and Vo Nguyen Giap above napoleon.
The amount of undeserved praise napoleon gets irks me. He was handed the largest empire ( french empire ) with the greatest army and destroyed it in a few years. He is the architect of a few of the military history's greatest follies. The invasion of egypt, the invasion of russia, the continental blockade, amongst others. Every major military endeavor of his was a colossal failure.
Were it not for the artificial propaganda and myth around the guy, he'd be viewed as one of history's greatest military laughingstocks.
Napoleon's greatness wasn't in the military sphere. His genius was in the bureaucratic and legal spheres.
The article leaves off Hannibal’s reply, which is
"Then, beyond doubt" he replied, "I should place myself both before Alexander and before Pyrrhus and before all other generals"
Basically, Scipio was fishing for a compliment, and when he got that compliment he was satisfied.
Alexander was clearly superior, never mind that Persians had absolutely no counter to the Sarissa. Never mind that the Sarissa was so overpowered that he literally just forced marched into every battle and won anyway.
Then isn't it more the shame that he couldn't accomplish his strategic aims?
Not like he pierced the Roman heartland through the Alps without the endless steamroll of replacement troops that Napoleon had.
So he set himself up for failure at the outset, but we admire him for the genius of his small scale moves. Amateurs study tactics, but professionals study logistics. Both Hannibal and Napoleon had key failures in this regard.
Alexander was clearly superior
He was clearly superior, in his ability to capitalize on tactical superiority to achieve strategic aims.
Nothing small scale about crossing the alps, battle trasimene, zama, trebia and cannae. The maneuvers through the Italian countryside that forced the Romans to develop fabian tactics. They figured the only way to counter Hannibal was to simply not fight him.
Managing an multiethnic army of north africans, iberians and gauls with little to no supply lines, no national unity or loyalties and leading them from one victory to the next means Hannibal's charisma on top his strategic genius must have been nothing short of legendary.
Alexander has no feats to speak of. No examples of how he turned battles around. No proof of his strategic ability. The truth is you cant produce any. Non of Alexander's fans today can explain why he's a great general. Indeed, an army of Sarissa wielding phalanxes leaves little room for strategic ability. Its literally an army that you smash against the opposing army. The end.
In regards to Alexander, his battles were not just having the phalanx roll through his enemies. Often the decisive point in those battles was Alexander exploiting an opportunity that opened up with his personally lead cavalry.
In addition, he could think outside the box. At the battle of Jaxartes he defeated the Scythians by having his troops cross a river while using catapults agains the archers on the other bank. This is the first know use of artillery in a manner like this. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jaxartes
In addition, as Rome would demonstrate, phalanxes were best on very flat even terrain and lost a lot of their advantages when they were not on such terrain. Alexander, however, was able too o win major battles on sorts of terrain, even when he should have been at a disadvantage.
Alexander philes like to invent all sorts of glorious calvary charges for Alexander, but he won his victories off the point end of the Sarrisa. If we look at how the Phalanx worked, it becomes clear that operating it does not require a highly skilled driver. A rapidly advancing wall of pikeman. Opposing formations were pinned, encircled and routed. The spear wall was the anvil against which the hammer of the Hellenic calvary could smash. It was simple and effective and inflexible.
Terrain is not a major factor in almost any historical battle from antiquity. You underestimate just how wide ground can be for that scale of battle. Even in mountainous terrain. While rough terrain did play its part for the Romans fighting against Philip. The Phalangites at Cynoscephalae were actually just beaten by a much more versatile and effective formation. The Maniple System the Romans devised of checkboard like spear units could engage the Phalanx wall directly. The so-called 'phalanx with joints' could not only attack the Phalanx from the front, but it could break up its ranks and then the Gladius goes to do its work.
This is repeated again and again in history. Technological and material superiority will often lead to victories. Who knew an army of untouchable horse archers would be unstoppable in three continents? Who knew thousands of next generation tanks would break through the most heavily fortified militarized defense of its time? Many Generals have taken advantage of their side's superiority in strength and earned their place in history. But it was Hannibal who was handed every conceivable disadvantage and turned the impossible into not only victories but flawless victories in so-called battles of annihilation. That is why he is the father of military strategy and the greatest general in history.
Scrub 0-1 WAR
Role Player 1-2 WAR
Solid Starter 2-3 WAR
Good Player 3-4 WAR
All-Star 4-5 WAR
Superstar 5-6 WAR
MVP 6+ WAR
There are 162 games in a baseball season, how many a player contributes to may vary based on player condition or other life circumstances.
If you want to say Napoleon was the most efficient at violently defeating opposing forces that sounds about right.
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Battles-Reconstructing-Clashes-A...
The author developed and then iterated a simple simulation (structured like war game rules) for modeling ancient battles. Its been a while since I read the book but IIRC his goal was to create a model that was able to reproduce what actually happened in relatively well-documented battles, and then use that model to explore less well documented battles.
It's not a good cover-to-cover read, but once you understand his overall scheme, its fun to pick up and read his model for a battle or two.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ieaDfD_h6s
(If you go by a phenomenal win-loss record, and by the change in effectiveness of his forces when he was present vs. when he was absent.)