Napoleon vs Caesar: Who is the greatest general ever?

[nrupatunga]

Actually Genghis Khan and his generals were very ruthless and barbaric. Of course Napoleon and Caesar were also ruthless but they were less barbaric than Genghis Khan. We should not forget that Tamer Lane and Babur,the two who attacked India, were all related to Genghis by marriage or by blood.

Also when Genghis Khan conquered Russia/Poland they were very sparsely populated compared to western Europe/Italy.

[OffTopic] His name is Chingizz khan and not genghis khan. Please ensure the correct usage. [/Offtpoic]

 

[Peter]

[OffTopic] His name is Chingizz khan and not genghis khan. Please ensure the correct usage. [/Offtpoic]

No Sir, I have been correct in using the name Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan is the same man as Chinghis/Chinghizz Khan. Generally in the vernacular history text books of WB the name Chinghis Khan appears. However ICSE/ISC board books usually use the name Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan is also used in the West to refer to that Mongol warrior. His original name is Temujin.

Genghis Khan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Genghis Khan (/ˈɡɛŋɡɪs ˈkɑːn/ or /ˈdʒɛŋɡɪs ˈkɑːn/,[5][6] Mongol: [tʃiŋɡɪs xaːŋ] Chingis/Chinghis Khan; 1162? – 18 August 1227), born Temüjin, was the founder and Great Khan (emperor) of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his demise.

Genghis Khan's name is spelled in variety of ways in different languages such as English Chinghiz, Chinghis, and Chingiz, Chinese: 成吉思汗; pinyin: Chéngjísī Hán, Turkic: Cengiz Han, Çingiz Xan, Çingiz Han, Chingizxon, Çıñğız Xan, Chengez Khan, Chinggis Khan, Chinggis Xaan, Chingis Khan, Jenghis Khan, Chinggis Qan, Djingis Kahn, Russian: Чингисхан (Čingiskhan) or Чингиз-хан (Čingiz-khan), etc. Temüjin is written in Chinese as simplified Chinese: 铁木真; traditional Chinese: 鐵木眞; pinyin: Tiěmùzhēn.

When Kublai Khan established the Yuan Dynasty in 1271, he had his grandfather Genghis Khan placed on the official record as the founder of the dynasty or Taizu (Chinese: 太祖). Thus, Genghis Khan is also referred to as Yuan Taizu (Chinese: 元太祖) in Chinese historiography.

 

[Srinivas_K]

Don't know about the "greatest" general, but I think Hannibal was one of the craziest.

He is not craziest but a general with very good tactics !!

 

[nrupatunga]

No Sir, I have been correct in using the name Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan is the same man as Chinghis/Chinghizz Khan. Generally in the vernacular history text books of WB the name Chinghis Khan appears. However ICSE/ISC board books usually use the name Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan is also used in the West to refer to that Mongol warrior. His original name is Temujin.

Genghis Khan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yes, his birth name is Temujin. He was known as Chingizz khan in his native mongolian(also in chinese). Only the west calls him genghis khan. So in every native source, he was known as Chingizz khan. So lets go by native sources.

 

[Prometheus]

Neither, it was Genghis Khan! second Alexander of Macedonia!

 

[Peter]

Yes, his birth name is Temujin. He was known as Chingizz khan in his native mongolian(also in chinese). Only the west calls him genghis khan. So in every native source, he was known as Chingizz khan. So lets go by native sources.

Actually our ICSE books also used Genghis. However I admit it is a wrong name given by west.

Anyway who is your favorite between the two???????????

 

[Peter]

Neither, it was Genghis Khan! second Alexander of Macedonia!

Genghis was a great conqueror but he falls in line with the likes of Attila the Hun,Vlad the Impaler and other such negative characters.

As for the greatest generals out there it is usually Caesar,Alexander,Napoleon etc.

 

[pmaitra]

He is not craziest but a general with very good tactics !!

I do not deny he had great tactics, but to take elephants across the Alps (where many died), just to surprise Rome, was a crazy idea. Not saying it was a bad idea. He almost defeated the Romans.

 

[Srinivas_K]

I do not deny he had great tactics, but to take elephants across the Alps (where many died), just to surprise Rome, was a crazy idea. Not saying it was a bad idea. He almost defeated the Romans.

Hannibal Barca had one thing in his mind, to conquer Rome from his childhood onwards. He took an oath in front of GOD and his father that he will conquer Rome.

He may have known the route from his scouts and engineers(military) and may have got some advice from them. He took help of fire to break huge rocks, which also points to that fact, he came prepared to Rome through Alps.

Secondly He also know about the losses he will suffer and thought of recruiting the locals as soon as he crosses the Alps which he did to boost the numbers of his army. From them on he took Rome and made it to fall to its knees. Only thing he never did is not to take Rome City thinking Rome will collapse if the surrounding areas are under his control.

This decision proved fatal to him.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

A staff ride is a combination of a field trip, an improv exercise, and a history lesson, all rolled into one; students examine a historical campaign in detail by playing a character who was a participant in the campaign. Everyone is given a chance to present as his or her character and take questions. On this staff ride, we were meant to examine Duke Wellington's Peninsular Campaign against Napoleon.

Napoleon’s Ghost – 2011 Spring Staff Ride | Sais BC Blog

This an interesting blog post about a "staff ride" concerned with the Peninsular War in Spain. The author is Indian.

I would like to see the staff ride concept perhaps pursued in other threads about past battles. Interested to see IA approach to them.
@Ray @Kunal Biswas @Bhadra

 

[W.G.Ewald]

https://www.understandingwar.org/staff-rides

 

[Ray]

The Staff Ride idea is novel.

One wonders why we don't do so.

 

[Bhadra]

Napoleon's Ghost – 2011 Spring Staff Ride | Sais BC Blog

This an interesting blog post about a "staff ride" concerned with the Peninsular War in Spain. The author is Indian.

I would like to see the staff ride concept perhaps pursued in other threads about past battles. Interested to see IA approach to them.
@Ray @Kunal Biswas @Bhadra

It is partly done in "Presentation on Military History and Campaigns" by Indian Army Formations not exactly as staff ride but as presentations and questions and answers

 

[W.G.Ewald]

The Staff Ride idea is novel.

One wonders why we don't do so.

Many current US Army staff rides are on Civil War battlefields. Google turns up a few in Europe as well.

I attended one on North Carolina at the site of the Battle of Monroe's Crossroads. This article describes another one.

FORT BRAGG, N.C. -- On March 10, 1865, Confederate cavalry overran an unguarded Union encampment that was located in what is now western Fort Bragg.

"The battle probably wouldn't have even happened, had not the Union failed to implement a basic task of soldiering," said Maj. Brian Hoffman, operations officer for a battalion of combat enablers in the 82nd Airborne Division.

When the sequestration budget cuts forced Hoffman to revisit an officer-development "staff ride" planned for the Civil War battlefield at Fredericksburg, Va., he asked his planners to look closer to home.

That's when they discovered a little-known skirmish called the Battle of Monroe's Crossroads, which occurred just south of what is today Fort Bragg's Normandy Drop Zone.

Monroe's Crossroads was ideal for more than its location and low cost, said Hoffman, who has participated in five staff rides over his 15-year career.

For one, there was peer-reviewed literature and a well-researched book, "The Battle of Monroe's Crossroads," by Eric Wittenberg, to use as source material, said Hoffman, a Citadel graduate who also holds two master's degrees.

Anthropologist Charles Heath with Fort Bragg's Cultural Resource Management Program was able to provide an overview of the battle, having assisted numerous other units conducting historical site visits of Monroe's Crossroads, he said. (Fort Bragg has over 6,000 archeological resources.)

Finally, and most importantly, his officers could walk the battlefield site.

"You can't get the real value of a staff ride unless you can walk the terrain," said Hoffman.

In late March after doing their homework, lieutenants and captains with 1st Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, did just that.

During the staff ride, each officer was assigned a historic figure, a tenet of unified land operations, or a warfighting function to follow through the battle. As the group walked the battlefield, they stopped at important points to discuss their assigned roles.

"It was a really good thing," said intelligence officer, Chief Warrant 2 Charles Lowry. "I've been here 10 years, and that was my first staff ride. You could see where they had their failings in intelligence. It was a definite example of why intelligence is critical to mission success."

Cpt. Stephen Brooks, an operations planner who has a degree in and a passion for history, said that, for him, being able to visualize actions on the battlefield made all the difference.

"The technology [of warfare] changes, but a lot of the issues -- the friction you find on the battlefield -- is often the same," he said.

Brooks noted that, after capitalizing on a Union failure to emplace pickets for security, the Confederates lost the initiative through poor communication and lack of discipline. That allowed the Union to muster a counterattack, but the delay caused by the initial attack allowed Confederate infantry to cross the Cape Fear River and burn the bridges behind them, further delaying the Civil War in the Carolinas by several weeks.

One of Hoffman's goals for the staff ride was for officers to learn that what they got out of the event depended on what they put into it.

For Brooks, that was perhaps a full day's work spread over several days.

Hoffman also wanted junior officers to learn to be less nostalgic of past armies and battles, he said.

"Whether you look at the Civil War, the Vietnam War, or even World War II, decisions were made and actions were tolerated that we wouldn't accept today," Hoffman said.

What can we pull forward and use today? he asked them.

Before the Army became involved in two lengthy wars, it was common for officers to employ several semi-formal means of officer development, including the airborne community's rite-of-passage known as a "prop blast," officer social calls, and staff rides, he said.

"Many junior leaders don't know how to be a garrison army, but they are very good at problem solving," said Hoffman. "We need to embrace those skills and be patient while they learn."

Lowry believed that Hoffman achieved his goals with the staff ride. "We built some esprit de corps and learned some military history," he said.

"No matter how complex out jobs get, you can see how it applied 150 years ago. When we wear 120 pounds of gear going on an objective, knowledge of the terrain is absolutely imperative, just as the Confederate cavalry didn't appreciate the terrain impact of mud in the Battle of Monroe's Crossroads.

Hoffman, who has nearly a dozen deployments with both special operations and conventional forces, said that he hoped other Bragg units would take advantage of the work that the battalion staff did on the Monroe Crossroads Staff Ride.

All of the operational orders required of a unit to execute the staff ride have been developed and refined, he said.

Hoffman's unit opted to build an entire day around the staff ride, including morning physical training at a downtown Fayetteville climbing gym to build team spirit, and lunch at a nearby restaurant while Heath, the anthropologist, presented a battle overview, he said.

Airborne Officer dusts off the 'Staff Ride' | Article | The United States Army

 

[W.G.Ewald]

The staff ride concept was pioneered at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in the 1890s. By 1906 the first staff ride had taken place at the Chattanooga battlefield, Tennessee. The concept continues to evolve today. The staff ride concept is meant to expand and supplement Field Manual (FM) 100-5, Operations, June 1993, by placing soldiers, well grounded in the theory of battle, on actual battle sites to study and critique the tactics and strategy of that engagement. The staff ride concept is one that takes the study of war and warfare from the theoretical to the practical by using historical examples on the actual terrain where the battle occurred.

SEAC: Featured Project

 

[W.G.Ewald]

Some good reading here.

Newsletter - CORPORATE STAFF RIDES

 

[W.G.Ewald]

West Point cadets go to India.

The staff ride itinerary is subject to change, but is projected to include the following: New Delhi (India's capital city), Fatehpur-Sikri (The City of Victory and UNESCO World heritage site, established by Akbar and capital of the Mughal Empire), Jaipur (site of the Amber palace and one of the finest examples of Rajput and Hindu architeture), Agra (the location of the Taj Mahal UNESCO World heritage site, the Red palace, and the Mughal Heritage walk), and Udaipur (the location of the Eklingji temple, a site revered by the devotes of Shiva).

Department of History - IndiaStaffRide

 

[Tactical Frog]

You shall not under estimate Caesar because he did not meet in his lifetime nations with comparable organisation and military science, like Napoleon did. But he went to battle against ... other Romans ! . Each time Caesar was challenged on the field by another Roman general, Caesar won. In Spain and Africa notably.

Still, Caesar' s fame comes from his phenomenal political career first ,not from his military prowesses. He did not give to posterity an Austerlitz or a battle of Cannae to study.

 

[Tactical Frog]

You shall not under estimate Caesar because he did not meet in his lifetime nations with comparable organisation and military science, like Napoleon did. But he went to battle against ... other Romans ! . Each time Caesar was challenged on the field by another Roman general, Caesar won. In Spain and Africa notably.

Still, Caesar' s fame comes from his phenomenal political career first ,not from his military prowesses. He did not give to posterity an Austerlitz or a battle of Cannae to study.

Backtracking on this stupid opinion after studying Alesia battle. It is actually a fantastical prowess by Caesar. Not brilliant, spectacular one day battle, but crushing , slow death victory achieved through a siege. And the unique thing with Alesia is that Romans were under siege at the same time , surrounded by ennemy .

 

[itsAurea]

Well, it basically depends on your point of view. To some, Napoleon is the greatest general while Caesar on the other hand is also the greatest general. It basically depends on a person's perspective and understanding of history. You cannot really blame a person for who she or he thinks who the best general is between these two. Also, thanks for providing videos I can watch regarding these two personalities. Will definitely find time to watch all. Well, it is also a good thing that it is on YouTube, maybe it'll be included in the recommended list of videos to watch.