Thats an impressive list by Spartan, I dont think he's missed too many.

The top commanders are pretty well on the mark, they would probably be as good, if not better, then any commander in history for their individual brilliance, and the sheer size of their campaigns over many years.

A lot depends on who the opposition is and how good they are, which makes Hannibal's victories stand out, especialy the battle of Cannae . It's often viewed as the classical example of a smaller army thoroughly defeating a larger, stonger opponent, purely through the use of superior tactics on open terrain, and is still studied in most war collages today.
Rome put the largest army in it's history on the field, 80,000 well trained men against Hannibal's 40,000 Carthaginians.
On a small strip of land where the Romans were bottled up, estimates as high as 60,000 Roman corpses were piled one on top of another, slain in one day, some historians say the most men killed in a single days fighting until the 20th Century,[3 times more then the number of British killed on the first day of the Somme]
The Carthaginians lost 5,700.

A few others that deserve mention, who might not be so spectacular, but stayed the distance, no matter how hard the going, also against strong opposition, such as Vo Nguyen Giap, who fought a guerilla war for almost 30 years against powers like France and the U.S.A. and in the end defeated them.

Washington, another who held on for years against a well trained professional army until, with help from the French, winning the key battle of Yorktown.

And apart from Zhukov, who was the commander chiefly responsible for holding the Soviet Union together, and winning the most importent victories of the second world war, many other Soviet commanders are still often overlooked in the Russian recovery and eventual victory, such as Vasilievsky, Chernyakovsky, etc, and very able tank commanders like Katukov [stopping Guderian at Tula] and Rotmistrov [stopping Hauser at Kursk] being vital efforts among their many achievments.

As Spartan pointed out there really is no such indisputable title 'greatest general of all time', but again, as he said, it makes for fascinating
conjecture and debate.

Spartan!

You should place Saladin in the TOP TEN LIST!

He is one of the best muslim commanders in the history of muslim world and even respected in Europe.

He defeated the kingdom of Jerusalem and drove the christians out of the region completely.

He then resisted attacks of crusaders successfully for 4 years. At-least a total of 4 crusaders were defeated by him including the famous king of England: "Richard - The Lion hearted".

I would like to nominate one name for the not so Greatest Commander of History. Just to be a little more contemporary - I'd choose a name from modern history.........

#1 worst Commander in the entire history of man
George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States.

After all, he IS the Commander in Chief of the United States military and the ONLY reason we didn't lose the war in Iraq was NOT because of his military brilliance.

Originally Posted by Chief Bones

I would like to nominate one name for the not so Greatest Commander of History. Just to be a little more contemporary - I'd choose a name from modern history.........

#1 worst Commander in the entire history of man
George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States.

After all, he IS the Commander in Chief of the United States military and the ONLY reason we didn't lose the war in Iraq was NOT because of his military brilliance.

You're clearly not a fan of Dubya are ya? I don't think you can call him what you did though, even if I don't like the man much either. I don't think the man has the moral character nor the intelligence to be the manager of a convenience store, nevermind the Presidency of the USA.

I'll have to say that I'm surprised at how excellently Spartan did at not leaving out any of the really great commanders in military history, especially those that are so often overlooked. (Subotai and Belasarius, for instance.) On the other hand, the list is enormous. So is the history of the world though. Zuhkov probably merits to have made the list though perhaps not too far up, I'll agree with Ashes on that one. I've got to disagree with TP_PAKI on Saladin. While he was excellent, he had so many things in his favor. The Holy Land was the Arab's "home field" and he had overwhelming numbers to work with. The Crusaders and defenders of the Kingdom of Jerusalem didn't. This does not detract from what he accomplished, but putting him in the top 10 may be going too far.

Because the history of the World is so big, your going to miss some great military commanders. This goes without saying. Spartan did an amazing job and I can't think of a truly outstanding battlefield commander that he missed.

The part that absolutely kills me is that a couple jokers here might successfully hijack this completely unrelated thread and turn it into a Bush-bashing festival.

Originally Posted by godofthunder9010

I'll have to say that I'm surprised at how excellently Spartan did at not leaving out any of the really great commanders in military history, especially those that are so often overlooked. (Subotai and Belasarius, for instance.) On the other hand, the list is enormous. So is the history of the world though. Zuhkov probably merits to have made the list though perhaps not too far up, I'll agree with Ashes on that one. I've got to disagree with TP_PAKI on Saladin. While he was excellent, he had so many things in his favor. The Holy Land was the Arab's "home field" and he had overwhelming numbers to work with. The Crusaders and defenders of the Kingdom of Jerusalem didn't. This does not detract from what he accomplished, but putting him in the top 10 may be going too far.

Because the history of the World is so big, your going to miss some great military commanders. This goes without saying. Spartan did an amazing job and I can't think of a truly outstanding battlefield commander that he missed.

The part that absolutely kills me is that a couple jokers here might successfully hijack this completely unrelated thread and turn it into a Bush-bashing festival.

If you're interested, there's a fuller thread regarding this over on the history channel boards, including the author's response to my reply and an added summary by him:

http://www.simaqianstudio.com/forum/...showtopic=3278

Personally I think Spartan has covered TOO many commanders. He can't possibly have good knowledge of every single one.

Or he knows people/books/websites that do know all those commanders intimately, and consulted them before his post. In that case it would have taken days to do.

Originally Posted by Chief Bones

I would like to nominate one name for the not so Greatest Commander of History. Just to be a little more contemporary - I'd choose a name from modern history.........

#1 worst Commander in the entire history of man
George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States.

After all, he IS the Commander in Chief of the United States military and the ONLY reason we didn't lose the war in Iraq was NOT because of his military brilliance.

There is one key difference between "Commander-in-Chief" and "Commander." The President tells the Commander what to do and the Commander does it. Where President Bush has gone wrong is that he does not listen to his commanders in the field and the Pentagon who were telling him that half measures would not work and that he needed to commit more forces to Iraq. (Which means writing off some poor African nations.) Where Johnson went wrong is that he was a President with, to my knowledge, no prior military experience who was trying to micro manage a war from 10,000 miles away.

I can't really make a world wide top ten list, my limited knowledge of eastern military history means that I am probably missing at minimum 1/3 of the candidates for the top ten, so I wil just throw some honorable metions together and post them eventually.

Tsar SImeon I the great of Bulgaria notice the bulgarian state in 893 and later the teritorial gains by Simeon ..... EVENTHOUGH SPARTAN did put SIMEON in his list he should be in the top 10 lol
We had many more great commanders like Tsar Kaloyan but nevermind
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Simeon_I

[quote]Now what happened to the Great Army of Alexandra then, once he decided not to go in India[unquote]------ LEE ENFIELD

Isn't that slightly wrong?Alexander the Great, defeated the mighty King Porus on the frontiers of the Indian Plains and took him captive.When the captive King was brought in front Of Alexander, the latter asked the captive King "how would u like to be treated, now that you are an captive", King Porus replied" As one King should treat another King", the answer pleased Alexander so much, that he set free the captive King and entered into an alliance with him. And so goes the story.

Prior to further exploiting his gains and moving south towards the mighty Gangetic plains and further south still ,Alexander afflicted by home sickness decided to revisit his home.It was on his way back thathe fell ill and subsequently died and his mighty great Army slowly disintegrated.So it was not his decision 'not to go to India',that saw the breakup of Alexander's forces.He did achieve a mighty and decisive victory in India which had thrown open the gates to the hitherto unconquered Indian Sub-continent.Before pulling out he left behind his Viceroy 'Seleucus Niketor' who later on formed an alliance with the great Indian General and Statesman of his times, 'Chandra Gupta Maurya'.

Till date their is a village in the remote mountains, in the state(Province) of Himachal Pradesh in India which is part of the Great Himalayan Range, where the culture, the traditions and the ethnicity of an ancient culture are preserved and anthropologists trace these villagers as the descendants of that ancient Hellenic race who under Alexander the Great had invaded the Indian Sub-continent.Probably Alexander's greatness lies in the wisdom , courage and mil sense for one so young and what possibly seals it is his humaneness tovanquished as seen from the anecdote above.