Greatest Military Leaders of all Time

Caesar faced eles in north africa as well (with Pompeys veteran army mind you) Also Persian chariots were worthless against Greek phalanx and immortals are no "elite" infantry. Darius fled the battle field as soon as things started to heat up and so did his entire "mighty" army.

Alexander faced far more inferior armies compared to what Caesar faced. Bad quality, low morale, not though, less trained, lacking in good equipment or leadership. I may also point out that his men made Alexander quit and go home, this has never happened to Caesar.

I can, because so did Caesars.

Caeser's army didn't stay with him as long, and fight as far from home for seemingly no reason other then their generals ego.

That being said, my list, in no particular order (but Placing Napoleon on top)

Hanibal Barca (really, no love, he would have wiped the floor with any of the ancient era generals)
Alexander
Napoleon
Tamerlane
Atilla

honarble mentions:
Gustavus adolphus
Fredrick the great
Guderian
J.C.
Ghengis Kahn
Sherman

@Byzantine

Spain, Gaul, Germany, Britain, Roman civil war (All across Italy, Greece, North Africa, Mid east & Spain) & Egyptian Civil war.


@Youri

Do I have to come to this again? Alexander was born to throne, where as Caesar had to get to power (He was 32 when he got some notability) and was restricted by politics & senate.


@Pedro

Alexanders men had much higher moral goals may I assume? What ever the truth is, its irrelevant.

Not at all what I meant by that. Merely trying to dismiss the "Alexander's troops abandoned him" argument. Just saying we can't really compare the two armies on those grounds because Alexander's men fought with him, and Phillip, for the better part of 15-20 years, many miles away from home, for almost no discernible gains. Caeser's men really only had the question raised do you want to cross the Rubicon, which they did, but completely different scenario.

Like my list said, I have great respect for JC, but don't place him on the same caliber as Alex (I'm using purely tactical and strategic judgments)

Oh okay, thanks for clarification. I think I've argued enough on this so I just leave my arguments why I think Caesar was better and leave it at that.

- He faced the very same troops he was using, meaning you cant claim that he had advantage in men themselves.
- He beat these men over and over again
- He was not born king, unlike Alexander
- Superior engineering skills (To be fair this was much later than Alexanders time, so I guess this is no 100% valid argument)
- Extremely charismatic man
- Did not decline, unlike Alexander (Babylon)


PS. Do you mean tactical and strategic judgments on battlefield alone or in like everything? Provided that we are talking purely on battlefield people I wont bash Napoleon (Losing 400 000 men walking around is not really a great feat)

Strategic meaning basically how much did you conquer and in what manner did you do so, tactical meaning the manner in which you won your battles. Even after the Russian campaign Napoleon was still tactically brilliant. His hundred days campaign rivals his Italian campaign. He lost the war mainly because the allies refused to fight him head on until they destroyed his lesser Marshall's. Even in Russia he lost most men due to logistics, which you could of course blame on a strategic oversight on his part, but his battlefield record is impeccable.

On this I totally agree. Looks like we value different aspects in general. For me, a general who loses more men due to attrition (or what have you) than to enemy is a failure already. (Excluding Napoleon though, simply because of his in battlefield skills, yet they wont surpass his flaw, in my mind)

Founding Brittish Iles was same for people that day as finding a new world by Columbus and would be same to us if we would find aliens. We should also take terrain into account. Alexander had allot of plains, desserts & steppes where as Caesar in this situation had almost exclusively forests. I think you can compare.

But yeah, lets agree that we disagree.