Who do you guys think was the best military commander of all time...

We're taking about merit, not whether or not what they did was right or wrong.

I know, and I believe Hannibal would be able to defeat Caesar.

Manstein is as close to the god of war you can get

I study Roman History at my University but I used to read a lot of WW2 stuff when i was going through my edgy middle school fedora phase

Not him but I'm currently obsessing about WW1 AND Roman history. People can have multiple concurrent interests

Okay so how do any of you guys in this thread feel qualified to talk about the best of all time? This thread should just be about illuminating why your favorite is the best and then let people decide based on what you said. Otherwise it's just bias.

personally I just look at how they were in their own time as a judge. Obviously if Caesar appeared today and fought against someone he would probably be obliterated by the fact that there has been about 2000 years of military advancements since he was around. To me, that doesnt make him bad. I view Caesar as one of the greatest of all time because of how dominant he was in his own period and how is still studied today. I haven't heard of anybody studying Gaius Marius or Sulla in truly the same fashion

Yeah obv. I was saying that no one has a good enough knowledge of all times to make the claim that one general is the GOAT (disregarding technology) unless he studies generals exclusively.

Basilarus
Hannibal
Yi
Dunno. There are too many.

Belisarius was really OP, yeah

Subutai

Arthur Ernest Percival

not even then could one say who was the GOAT. I mean no one here was alive in Caesars timeand no one here was alive in Napoleons time. You can say nothing about the quality of these people, because you're living in another time. There are just "accomplishments" for us to study today

>A lucky muhfucker
If he was so great why did he fuck up multiple times after the carthagenian wars?

Personally for me I jump for eras of interest usually spending a month or so researching the history of it. For example, I've studied up on Napoleonic Europe, the U.S Civil War, the early to Mid Roman Republic, Early Medieval Ages, Alexander the Great, and Early Muslim Expansion. Now I don't entirely restrict myself to my new topic of research, I do tend to look at other specific historical events if they catch my interest such as the Flight of the Wild Geese and its aftermath.

Suvorov. Czarniecki, Zolkiewski, Manstein, Potemkin

GOAT general comin through

>carthagenian wars

What the fuck am I even reading?

Man of scholarly tastes.

Imagine being so good at your job, that you're genetically related to almost every human being on the planet simply because of how many women you raped during your campaign.

Why is Khalid ibn al-Walid so underrated?

reminds me of this

Because the people he fought had just finished a long and painful buttfucking.

Definitely Yang Wen-li

Nathan Bedford Forest

Over rated you mean

Napoleon, easily.
Caesar would have beaten him.
Hannibal would have beaten him.
But they did not have his military knowledge nor his knack for determining strategy, the fatal advantage of Caesar and Hannibal was they didn't play by conventional military tactics.

Napoleon
Ummm, yes it actually requires very little knowledge to know who is the best.
Who is the best hockey player of alltim? Wayne Gretzky...do i watch hockey? hell no.
There are only a few people who have achieved what Napoleon, Hannibal, Khalid ibn al-walid, and Alexander achieved...and you really only need cursory knowledge to pick the best among them...

>le ebin contrarian

GAIUS
*arm thing*
JULIUS
*arm thing*
CEE-ZUH

Cx

For me, it has to be Alexander.

People may go on about how his victories against the Persians were all-but-assured (crumbling empire and all that), but they forget just how many campaigns this fucker waged
>Climbing up a fucking mountain side to seize a super-fort
>Capturing Tyre, famously one of the most well-defended cities in the ancient world, in only 4 months
>Frequently fought against armies twice his size
>Logistics across 10,000 miles of mostly unknown territory
>Making MULTIPLE river crossings at the beginning of battle
>Taming steppe nomads across persia with heavy infantry
>Never lost a single battle
>Led cavalry charges personally

perfectly fine English general officer, for that and for all time, gave it his all, with results as expected from his kind

>Climbing up a fucking mountain side to seize a super-fort
What's this?

He was one crazy son of a bitch... in both a good and bad way.
It's funny thinking about the motivations for some of the best commanders in history and how most of the time they were pretty awful reasons.
Caesar was deep in debt and needed the cash to stay in politics. [spoiler]And he and his buddies were Alexander fanboys.[/spoiler]
Hannibal swore to his father to always be an enemy of Rome.
Alexander wanted eternal glory.

>en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sogdian_Rock
>Alexander asked for volunteers, whom he would reward if they could climb the cliffs under the fortress. There were some 300 men who from previous sieges had gained experience in rock-climbing. Using tent pegs and strong flaxen lines, they climbed the cliff face at night, losing about 30 of their number during the ascent. In accordance with Alexander's orders, they signalled their success to the troops below by waving bits of linen, and Alexander sent a herald to tell the defenders that if they looked up, they would see that he had found his winged men. The defenders were so surprised and demoralized by this that they surrendered, even though they outnumbered the mountaineers by a hundred to one

>It's funny thinking about the motivations for some of the best commanders in history and how most of the time they were pretty awful reasons.
>tfw you will never swear by your fathers dying wish to fight an enemy forever
>tfw you will never fight for eternal glory
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWHHHYYYYYY
WHY CANT MY LIFE BE LIKE AN ANIME LIKE ALEXANDER OR HANNIBAL REEEE

that fucking fag, i blame ancient persians for letting this buffon into the near east

assyria would have beat him

Nice meme

kek, i feel u

Reminds me of Pachacuti telling his enemies that the rocks were is warriors, and then having his men jump out.

If there is one thing I've gleamed from history it is that all you really need to conquer the known world are daddy issues and an Oedipus complex.

its punic wars, bro

Probably Marcus Aurelius in terms of his capitulation of his contemporaries.

its ridiculous honestly....
if you examine the behaviors of historical figures it almost seems like they're all sociopaths with ridiculous idealism on steroids

gotta be
Yi
Hannibal
Belisarius
and Augustus ii the strong for his "great" campaign against Sweden

Is subutai a meme?

Manstein, Napoleon, or Oda Nobunaga.

All had different strengths but they had incredible insight into the mechanics of warfare.

The virgin King of Kings vs the Chad Macedonian Emperor

Bernd Baltzar [spoiler]haha[/spoiler]

Nothing else exists to scratch my itch for pre-ww1/post-napoleonic war fiction

come onnnnnn~ It's like a counter meme saying Rommel is overrated. Not only was he a very good tank commander but his performance as an infantry officer in WW1 is impressive as well.

There have been plenty of good warriors; some found themselves in positions of power.... others didn't.

Naimpauliam al Bani Falt
Ghuliam Qaysar
Haifnabal Bakr
Saub bu Taif
Tauf Masjidilbar Nizam of Mahalbaruf
Iskandar Zulkarnain

In terms of land conquered Subutai is top dog
Also i think the only general who kicked the ass of an army and kicked another army of a nation in 2 days

Pic related

My man

Caesar (If the Commentaries are considered accurate), Sherman, Lee, and surprisingly, Hernan Cortes.

*

Even though he was a spoiled brat and a total fucktard, I have to admit it was Alexander, bar none.

It is not Genghis because Genghis was not even present at half the Mongols battles and his conquests are spread out to a number of his generals, not a single dude leading an army like Alexander did.

So yeah, the pompous blondie fucktard, bar none.

Caesar would smash him as Caesar took a lot of his tactics from Hannibal and Alexander, therefore he has hindsight on Hannibal already.

Not to mention that Caesars legionaries were professional soldiers, not the noob drafted peasant boys of the Punic wars.

What were his fuck ups after the Second Punic War, also known as Hannibal's war? He was a successful Suffete. When he went to the Seleucids, the main issue was that Antiochus didn't listen to him.

I never understood Phyrrus. Like, it seems all he did was get an army to Italy, barely win a couple of battles and then being forced to retreat. Why is he considered one of the greats?

>I have never read anything about Pyrrhus

it's me

Pic rel probably. Most other famous generals led armies of good quality with high discipline and good cooperation between different units. Hannibal had a bunch of mercenaries that were significantly weaker than Roman legionaries, lacked their training, discipline and morale

>Polybian legion
>Training
>Morale

Have some Koppe Kek Soup.

He was a master of logistics and really good at grand strategy. He was known for his supreme martial talent, leadership abilities, charisma, and generalship. His image is reinforced by the fact that the Romans revered and feared him and he was up for the Macedonian throne at one point so he was effectively very visible in the Hellenic world while also being a premier general.

>He was a master of logistics
What evidence is there for this, or any expertise beyond any other Diodochi warlord?

>And really good at grand strategy.
Puh-lease

>Hey, let's go to Sicily, there are a bunch of people who want me to help them overthrow their tyrant, and will join my league
>Oh, no, that's wrong.
>Let's go attack Rome
>Why? I dunno, it's kind of there.
>Oh yeah, wait, there were those southern Greek cities that wanted me to help them.
>They'll fight for me in return, right? Oh, wait, fuck.

The guy was an exemplar of rushing into wars without thinking through their strategic consequences.

This isn't the case at all. Hannibal's army was pretty elite, the core formed by veterans of the first punic war under his father. Rome at this time still had a non-professional citizen army.

de Turenne

Replace Rommel with Eric Von Manstein, Hermann Balck or pic related.

Pyrrhus wrote books on war that have since been lost and Hannibal considered Pyrrhus second only to Alexander the Great.

Neither of those prove your claims.