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Napoleon Was the Best General Ever

135 points by Ftuuky 8y ago

WhompingWindows 8y ago
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.
- m0nty 8y ago
  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.
  - zazen 8y ago
    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?
    - Topgamer7 8y ago
      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.
    - almost_usual 8y ago
      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.
      - zazen 8y ago
        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.
        almost_usual 8y ago
        Can you prove it's a "gargantuan overstatement"?
        zazen 8y ago
        I think you know that's not a reasonable thing to ask for a "proof" for. 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.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Simplistic analysis aside, I'd consider winning your campaigns to be a hard requirement for "best" general and this excludes Napoleon, Lee, Rommel, etc.
  - kochb 8y ago
    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.
    - Marazan 8y ago
      His grand strategic strategy that aided him in winning many battles resulted, in the end, in the massive career defining loss.
      - VSerge 8y ago
        "[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.
        baud147258 8y ago
        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.
        williamdclt 8y ago
        None of that is enforced today, those are stale laws if they still exist.
        8y ago
- jimmy1 8y ago
  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.
  - tynpeddler 8y ago
    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.
    - barkingcat 8y ago
      So maybe, just maybe, there isn't a thing such as "best general" and to try to create such a title is a misguided viewpoint on history. 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.
- dbatten 8y ago
  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.
  - sorokod 8y ago
    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)
    - philipov 8y ago
      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.
- Isamu 8y ago
  >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.
  - sverige 8y ago
    > 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.
    - Isamu 8y ago
      >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.
    - not_weev 8y ago
      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.
      - philwelch 8y ago
        "I can't spare this man--he fights."
  - lmkg 8y ago
    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. I am not a historian, don't take this as truth.
- EGreg 8y ago
  Bringing to mind guys like: 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.
  - jcranmer 8y ago
    > 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.
    - elboru 8y ago
      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.
- baud147258 8y ago
  Even if such statement flaters my chauvinism, I agree with you.
- samstave 8y ago
  Your comment intrigued me, and so I went looking for more info on morale... and I found this interesting reddit comment in askHistorians https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ourxp/what_was_done_to_maintain_morale_in_armies_during/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ourxp/what_...
- lkrubner 8y ago
  The other thing that is missing is the percent by which someone won. 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.
  - almost_usual 8y ago
    A win is a win. WAR doesn’t measure the point disparity, works fine in baseball (which has way more stats than basketball).
    - PeterisP 8y ago
      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.
      - almost_usual 8y ago
        >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.
- MR4D 8y ago
  I think you're spot on. 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.
- Steko 8y ago
  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.
- Maybestring 8y ago
  Perhaps most importantly, Napoleon was at the helm of the first citizen-army with a modern sense of nationalism. It was the only military in Europe that appointed and promoted officers based on merit.
nradov 8y ago
"They came on in the same old way and we defeated them in the same old way." -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.
- foobarian 8y ago
  Great demo: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/p-hacking/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/p-hacking/
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 8y ago
  So, lets collect stats on interrogators who won the interrogation.
sorokod 8y ago
As always, you can prove anything with statistics
ssarah 8y ago
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.
- greedo 8y ago
  Not sure that Napoleon was first to understand defeat in detail. The Mongols were quite good at that, as was Alexander.
  - Ftuuky 8y ago
    They attribute the concept of "divide and rule" to Phillip II of Macedon, Alexander's father. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_rule
- Marazan 8y ago
  The revolution of Napolean's Corp system cannot be understated.
deleted 8y ago
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myleshenderson 8y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15864806 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15864806
timerol 8y ago
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).
rrmm 8y ago
Headline writing was the worst thing to happen to science ever: And the math I did proves it.
- LanceH 8y ago
  Rmmm does the math and DESTROYS headlines - Publishers hate him.
babesh 8y ago
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?
sailfast 8y ago
(2017 / on the front page already 8 months ago) 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.
stickfigure 8y ago
That fool! He fell victim to one of the classic blunders!
nitrix 8y ago
"and the Math Proves It". 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.
_m96l 8y ago
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.
- chairmanwow 8y ago
  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?
- nindalf 8y ago
  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.
nabla9 8y ago
>UPDATE 12/6: > 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.
keiferski 8y ago
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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrbiSUgZEbg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrbiSUgZEbg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_McCullough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_McCullough
j-c-hewitt 8y ago
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.
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boomboomsubban 8y ago
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.
- nindalf 8y ago
  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.
dingoegret 8y ago
This is absolutely the stupidest statistical ‘proof’ I’ve seen yet. Not even going to mention how asinine it is to attribute army victories to generals without looking at specific contributions those generals made. What did Napoleon contribute to his victories, tactically and strategically? Very little, his army was leagues better than his opponents. What did Hannibal Barca contribute? Everything. Every detail of his victories is traced back to his decision making and the force strength of his opponents vastly outweighed his.
tribesman 8y ago
In fact, Ashoka can be considered far better using this methodology.
anm89 8y ago
This kind of: make some subjective value judgement statement + "{ math | science } proves it" format is click bait for idiots. I can't even be bothered to read it and find out what the actual argument is.
greedo 8y ago
Stats are just lies wrapped up in theory. Anything that shows Subotai as less than a top 3 general is inherently flawed. Relying on Wikipedia for data is also folly.
sandworm101 8y ago
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.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Battles are not important. Today's leaders fight wars. It was also true in medieval and classical times. Battles were the exception. Sieges were far more common. What are sieges about? Logistics.
  - sandworm101 8y ago
    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.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      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.
chrisweekly 8y ago
I'd posit Genghis Kahn has a better claim to the title, given he is a direct ancestor of a sizable percentage of the world's population.
- DanielGee 8y ago
  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.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
>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.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Hannibal's inflated opinion of himself and Pyrrhus is emblematic of the problem of tactical myopia.
  - dingoegret 8y ago
    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.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      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.
almost_usual 8y ago
If anyone is interested in the baseball WAR categorization buckets.. 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.
everdev 8y ago
Some would argue that the best generals are the ones that avoided war altogether. If you want to say Napoleon was the most efficient at violently defeating opposing forces that sounds about right.
jbattle 8y ago
For those interested in models comparing armies across time and space (at least in the ancient world), this book is worth a look ... https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Battles-Reconstructing-Clashes-Ancient/dp/0826430155 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.
stcredzero 8y ago
Napoleon was the best general ever, but Admiral Yi was the best military commander ever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ieaDfD_h6s 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.)
stepik777 8y ago
> For instance, French Emperor Napoleon gained .49 WAR for his victory at the Battle of Borodino. Yes he won that battle and probably all other battles in that war. But he has lost the war. Does it make him a good general?
Leary 8y ago
The key to being the best general ever is apparently fighting many battles!

135 points by Ftuuky 8y ago

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.

m0nty 8y ago
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.
- zazen 8y ago
  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?
  - Topgamer7 8y ago
    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.
  - almost_usual 8y ago
    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.
    - zazen 8y ago
      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.
      - almost_usual 8y ago
        Can you prove it's a "gargantuan overstatement"?
        zazen 8y ago
        I think you know that's not a reasonable thing to ask for a "proof" for. 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.
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
Simplistic analysis aside, I'd consider winning your campaigns to be a hard requirement for "best" general and this excludes Napoleon, Lee, Rommel, etc.
- kochb 8y ago
  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.
  - Marazan 8y ago
    His grand strategic strategy that aided him in winning many battles resulted, in the end, in the massive career defining loss.
    - VSerge 8y ago
      "[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.
      - baud147258 8y ago
        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.
        williamdclt 8y ago
        None of that is enforced today, those are stale laws if they still exist.
      - 8y ago
jimmy1 8y ago
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.
- tynpeddler 8y ago
  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.
  - barkingcat 8y ago
    So maybe, just maybe, there isn't a thing such as "best general" and to try to create such a title is a misguided viewpoint on history. 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.
dbatten 8y ago
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.
- sorokod 8y ago
  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)
  - philipov 8y ago
    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.
Isamu 8y ago
>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.
- sverige 8y ago
  > 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.
  - Isamu 8y ago
    >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.
  - not_weev 8y ago
    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.
    - philwelch 8y ago
      "I can't spare this man--he fights."
- lmkg 8y ago
  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. I am not a historian, don't take this as truth.
EGreg 8y ago
Bringing to mind guys like: 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.
- jcranmer 8y ago
  > 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.
  - elboru 8y ago
    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.
baud147258 8y ago
Even if such statement flaters my chauvinism, I agree with you.
samstave 8y ago
Your comment intrigued me, and so I went looking for more info on morale... and I found this interesting reddit comment in askHistorians https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ourxp/what_was_done_to_maintain_morale_in_armies_during/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ourxp/what_...
lkrubner 8y ago
The other thing that is missing is the percent by which someone won. 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.
- almost_usual 8y ago
  A win is a win. WAR doesn’t measure the point disparity, works fine in baseball (which has way more stats than basketball).
  - PeterisP 8y ago
    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.
    - almost_usual 8y ago
      >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.
MR4D 8y ago
I think you're spot on. 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.
Steko 8y ago
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.
Maybestring 8y ago
Perhaps most importantly, Napoleon was at the helm of the first citizen-army with a modern sense of nationalism. It was the only military in Europe that appointed and promoted officers based on merit.

nradov 8y ago

"They came on in the same old way and we defeated them in the same old way." -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.

foobarian 8y ago
Great demo: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/p-hacking/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/p-hacking/
0xdeadbeefbabe 8y ago
So, lets collect stats on interrogators who won the interrogation.

sorokod 8y ago

As always, you can prove anything with statistics

ssarah 8y ago

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.

greedo 8y ago
Not sure that Napoleon was first to understand defeat in detail. The Mongols were quite good at that, as was Alexander.
- Ftuuky 8y ago
  They attribute the concept of "divide and rule" to Phillip II of Macedon, Alexander's father. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_rule
Marazan 8y ago
The revolution of Napolean's Corp system cannot be understated.

deleted 8y ago

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myleshenderson 8y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15864806 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15864806

timerol 8y ago

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).

rrmm 8y ago

Headline writing was the worst thing to happen to science ever: And the math I did proves it.

LanceH 8y ago
Rmmm does the math and DESTROYS headlines - Publishers hate him.

babesh 8y ago

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?

sailfast 8y ago

(2017 / on the front page already 8 months ago) 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.

stickfigure 8y ago

That fool! He fell victim to one of the classic blunders!

nitrix 8y ago

"and the Math Proves It". 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.

_m96l 8y ago

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.

chairmanwow 8y ago
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?
nindalf 8y ago
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.

nabla9 8y ago

>UPDATE 12/6: > 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.

keiferski 8y ago

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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrbiSUgZEbg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrbiSUgZEbg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_McCullough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_McCullough

j-c-hewitt 8y ago

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.

deleted 8y ago

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boomboomsubban 8y ago

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.

nindalf 8y ago
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.

dingoegret 8y ago

This is absolutely the stupidest statistical ‘proof’ I’ve seen yet. Not even going to mention how asinine it is to attribute army victories to generals without looking at specific contributions those generals made. What did Napoleon contribute to his victories, tactically and strategically? Very little, his army was leagues better than his opponents. What did Hannibal Barca contribute? Everything. Every detail of his victories is traced back to his decision making and the force strength of his opponents vastly outweighed his.

tribesman 8y ago

In fact, Ashoka can be considered far better using this methodology.

anm89 8y ago

This kind of: make some subjective value judgement statement + "{ math | science } proves it" format is click bait for idiots. I can't even be bothered to read it and find out what the actual argument is.

greedo 8y ago

Stats are just lies wrapped up in theory. Anything that shows Subotai as less than a top 3 general is inherently flawed. Relying on Wikipedia for data is also folly.

sandworm101 8y ago

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.

stcredzero 8y ago
Battles are not important. Today's leaders fight wars. It was also true in medieval and classical times. Battles were the exception. Sieges were far more common. What are sieges about? Logistics.
- sandworm101 8y ago
  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.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    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.

chrisweekly 8y ago

I'd posit Genghis Kahn has a better claim to the title, given he is a direct ancestor of a sizable percentage of the world's population.

DanielGee 8y ago
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.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago

>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.

stcredzero 8y ago
Hannibal's inflated opinion of himself and Pyrrhus is emblematic of the problem of tactical myopia.
- dingoegret 8y ago
  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.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    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.

almost_usual 8y ago

If anyone is interested in the baseball WAR categorization buckets.. 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.

everdev 8y ago

Some would argue that the best generals are the ones that avoided war altogether. If you want to say Napoleon was the most efficient at violently defeating opposing forces that sounds about right.

jbattle 8y ago

For those interested in models comparing armies across time and space (at least in the ancient world), this book is worth a look ... https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Battles-Reconstructing-Clashes-Ancient/dp/0826430155 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.

stcredzero 8y ago

Napoleon was the best general ever, but Admiral Yi was the best military commander ever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ieaDfD_h6s 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.)

stepik777 8y ago

> For instance, French Emperor Napoleon gained .49 WAR for his victory at the Battle of Borodino. Yes he won that battle and probably all other battles in that war. But he has lost the war. Does it make him a good general?

Leary 8y ago

The key to being the best general ever is apparently fighting many battles!