Jerry Pournelle included Poul Anderson’s “Marius” in There Will Be War and wrote this preface to it:
In every generation there are those who can lead men to Hell. There are never many, for the secrets of that kind of leadership have not been written in books. No one quite knows where the great captains come from. They appear when needed — or they do not, and homelands die.
The great captains are not immune to the temptations of power; indeed, for those who can lead men to Hell, there is always the suspicion that they might be able to lead them to Heaven. If the generals do not think this way, we can be certain they will have followers to suggest the possibility.
Great soldiers are not often great governors. Sometimes they are: Julius Caesar was certainly preferable to most of his immediate successors and predecessors, Washington was certainly an able president, Mustapha Kemal was the best governor Turkey ever had. England has had able soldier kings. Napoleon reformed French society and developed a code of laws that has spread throughout the world, making one wonder what might have happened had the Allies left him in peace after his return from Elba.
Far too often, though, the habits of military power have been ingrained, so that the great captain becomes tyrant or incompetent — or both — as head of state.
The story involves a coup, in post-World War III Europe, to replace a benevolent dictator, before strongman politics become too ingrained. The academics behind the coup understand symbolic sociology — something like Asimov’s psychohistory.
Pournelle felt that the usual understanding of the story, that the scientific faction’s win was a win for humanity, was a misunderstanding:
Pareto, whose theory of the circulation of elites makes more sense than most contemporary sociology (and is worth a great deal more study than it receives), died in 1923. He was more interested in the description of society than in prescriptions for its change; to the extent that he was on record as favoring any social scheme it was classical liberalism of the sort espoused by Dr. Milton Friedman in this era.
[...]
Pareto wrote: “Had Aristotle held to the course he in part so admirably followed, we would have had a scientific sociology in his early day. Why did he not do so? There may have been many reasons; but chief among them, probably, was that eagerness for premature practical applications which is ever obstructing the progress of science, along with a mania for preaching to people as to what they ought to do — an exceedingly bootless occupation — instead of finding out what they actually do.”
[...]
Fourre and Valti are more concerned with theory — such as how many representatives shall be sent to the United Nations — than with such practical matters as rats and plague. And thus Fourre slays his oldest friend. Which of them is Marius?
I remember this series, and the successor series Imperial Stars which Sam J has cited, quite well.
The essays and sensibility is a bit from another era now, but still agreeable.
“Marius” and “Spanish Man’s Grave” were among the best stories included. The series also introduced me to the world of Falkenberg’s mercenaries, via the story [name forgotten] that was a thinly veiled allegory of the Spanish civil war.
My favourite was Reginald Bretnor’s “To a Different Drum”, included in one of the later installments of TWBW. http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?76009
In it, a spacecraft and its sort of family-unit crew from a u/dystopian far future humanity stumble on a planet whose social structure and philosophy really, really confuses them. Their guide is a sort of Indian Gandhiesque figure who has come to different conclusions. I assume it reflected Bretnor’s own sensibilities.
Graham, you’re thinking of “His Truth Goes Marching On” — which I’ll be covering in a few days.
Yes, that sounds right.
Correction on the Bretnor: it appears from the cited link that this story appeared in volume 1 of Imperial Stars, not in the TWBW anthologies.
I remember really liking Pournelle’s Falkenberg stories, even if he did keep reworking them and re-issuing them in altered form or in longer novel forms. Eventually Falkenberg’s career seemed like a Moebius to at least this reader.
Did you ever read Harry Turtledove? I have the impression that guy has gone off the rails since he started doing endless big book series, but his early AH work and the Videssos fantasy series were excellent. And the earliest episodes in his Post-Civil War and Worldwar series were at least interesting efforts. Also, the only author to tackle a novelistic retelling of the life of now obscure Emperor Justinian II ["Justinian" written as HN Turteltaub]. That was actually pretty good.
When I was younger I loved the works of Pournelle, Turtledove, David Drake and the early Stirling, but it was the TWBW and IS series that brought me into a whole slew of earlier authors like Anderson and others. Not to mention many then-new 80s writers who I probably would not have read but I knew because one story got picked for those series.
Any attempt to apply rational analysis to human beings founders on the fact that humans are fundamentally irrational. You want to systematize things, well… You’d better find yourself a different organism. Human beings are inherently chaotic, and there’s also this lovely little Schrodinger’s Paradox-like thing, where once you’ve observed them, the act of observation changes the state of the observed human.
As well, trying to apply the rules of one culture at one point in its history to another…? That’s yet more difficult, because you intuitively think that the rules of one period should seamlessly transpose across time, when they actually don’t. Mores and values shift, sometimes openly and sometimes invisibly even to the participants in that culture/civilization.
This is why Asimov was delusional; the thought that his wonderfully omniscient hero would be able to parse out the rules and operating principles of societies that he’d never experienced or even seen…? Yeah. Not so much. Even being on the same planet at the same time didn’t help the Japanese when it came to projecting the outcome of the Pearl Harbor attack. They thought that it would somehow cow the US into giving them a free hand elsewhere in the Pacific; we all know how that worked out. Such cross-cultural miscalculation is an indicator that Asimov was nuts in thinking that there was any such thing as his vaunted “psychohistory” being even remotely possible. Humans are just too damn variable; what is acceptable behavior in one period or milieu would get you imprisoned as a dangerous psychotic in another. Think I’m wrong? Cast your minds back to what was considered good fun in ancient Rome, watching gladiatorial “games” where people were killed in front of the crowds of Roman onlookers. Transpose that out to today, and what would the likely reaction be, were you to seriously propose what would amount to staging live-action snuff films for the public…?
Yeah. Think about it. Then, tell me that it’s possible for someone back in Roman times to try to extrapolate out to what the hell we’d do in our moment of history, and tell me that any such fantasy as “psychohistory” is even remotely plausible.
Asimov was, I fear, a high-functioning autistic savant, who was great at science, but absolute shiite at people–Which was why so many of his characters were wooden and feel as though they were so many little posable figures he set up and put through their paces, allowing himself to create imaginary worlds where people did as he thought they should and actually obeyed the rules he thought existed.
The only really lasting and universal rule about human behavior is this: There ain’t no lasting and universal rules. Human behavior is plastic to an extent that is maddening, yet still contains a lot of input from fixed points in the genome and environment. You can see analogs to behaviors, between various periods and like conditions during those periods, but the actual expressions of said behavior…? All bets are emphatically off.
Graham,
Turtledove is the best example of what I’ve always termed “Michenerization” in the SF genre. Basically, he suffered the same phenomenon that bedeviled Michener and W.E.B. Griffin–The poor bastard got too big, and turned himself and his works into a friggin’ cottage industry. It’s quite the equivalent of the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew, but for adults. All of these authors are either subcontracting a lot of their work to others, or they’re churning out so much regurgatative crap that it’s not even funny. And, I wager that it’s all driven by the publishing industry executive types who are telling them “Moar! Moar of that same thing…!!!”, trying to industrialize the success of something that did well from earlier in their careers. See Stephen Kink… Errr… King, for more examples. Same-same with Georgie Rape-Rape Martin.
What is irritating as hell is that there are authors out there who have been sidelined, and who were doing middling well, but the executives decided they weren’t worth marketing, anymore. I want more Christopher Rowley, more P.C. Hodgell, and more from the team of Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. All of whom had their mainstream publishers drop them, back in the 1990s in lieu of more derivative and regurgatative crap from other, far less talented authors. Thank God that Baen at least salvaged the careers of Hodgell and Lee/Miller, or we’d never have seen the completion of their story arcs. I have no interest at all in G.R.R. Martin’s latest rape-fest, but I very much enjoy reading every one of the other author’s works, and buy whatever they produce.
The fact that this is true is a testament to how exquisitely ‘effed-up our publishing industry actually is. It’s also a cautionary tale about how badly managed it is, financially. Had they allowed Rowley to keep writing more in the Vang universe, I’d have happily kept pumping money their way–But, when they’re coming up with schlock like N.K. Jemisin…? Yeah; ‘eff that with a jagged, broken bottle.
As to the general issue raised by this post… Great Captains? LOL… Ain’t no sich thin’, laddy-o.
Every one of the supposed “Great Ones” of history has had his Achille’s Heel: Rommel? Idjit was oblivious to logistics, and just figured that some lackey from the General Staff would hand him what he needed, having magicked it up out of nothingness. Necessities not provided…? Not his fault; that’s someone else’s job. Rommel was a perfect avatar of war for the Nazis, a public-relations created creature of symbolic virtue. While he was a decent leader below about brigade or regiment level, his inability to comprehend the complexities of logistics and strategy make it plain that he was pushed far beyond his competency in a Peter Principle sort of way.
And, if you go back and look, damn near all of them suffer from similar flaws, from Alexander down to Napoleon. About the only true “Great Captain” I can think of, one who is actually capable of living up to all of the hype…? Ghengis Khan, uniter of the Mongols. The rest are merest parvenus, compared to him. And, to tell the whole truth, Ghengis was not really a “Great Captain”, so much as a “Great Leader”–He encompassed far more than mere military accomplishment.
“Great Captains” are generally actually not that great–Look at the lasting accomplishments of the various Swedish monarchs who contested with the Russians. What were they, again…? Oh, yeah–Glory, and a bunch of dead Swedes spread across the Baltics. To what end? Same with Napoleon–Where’s the lasting accomplishment that justifies all the death and destruction?
A pox on all their houses, says I. “Great Captains” are the military equivalent of the political demagogue, men whose charisma and luck, coupled with some slight military skills, usually leads to death and destruction for the men who follow them to war. I’ve got no use for them, whatsoever. Give me commanders like Grant, Slim, or Sherman; y’all can follow the idiocy of the Lees, the Rommels, and the rest of that ill-omened glory-seeking band of assholes.
Asimov certainly loved the social sciences- so much so he wrote this story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession_(novella)
which always struck me as interesting because it actually elevates the social sciences above the hard sciences. A bridge too far, even for a non-STEM guy like me who’d rather they both were kept from complete power.
For those who read through the Foundation sequels he wrote in the 80s [Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth]- I ultimately found it disconcerting that the Foundation’s planned future of a restored Galactic Empire, it’s birth and operations guided by psychohistory, ended up being the least dystopian option for humanity. The one ultimately chosen by the protagonist was for humanity to merge into a psychically linked galactic overmind. This was a defensive measure against an unclearly drawn new alien threat, likely related to the hermaphroditic posthuman lifeform the characters had found in the ruins of one of the Spacer worlds [the original human civilization in space].
Could just be me, but the implications of that scenario both fit with and seem deeply contradictory to Asimov’s liberal/progressive politics.
Kirk,
From another genre, though I think of historical fiction and SF as having many parallels — have you ever read Tides of War by Stephen Pressfield?
It came out after his most successful book, Gates of Fire. Which I thought was one of the high points of the entire HF genre for world and character building, with just enough and not too much fussy narrative structure.
At any rate, Tides of War was also quite good. It told the story of Alcibiades of Athens, Sparta, and points in between. One of the ur-examples of the type of man you cite. I thought the fictionalized version of him gave a good account of the charm and the perils of such men.
Also, if one elevates Genghis Khan to the higher civil/military status of great leader, I suggest his general Subotai for the lesser but nontrivial status of great captain. I think one of the traditional military history authors actually included him. I can’t say for sure whether it was in Liddell-Hart’s Great Captains Unveiled.
Dramatic pause for googling…
Yes, it was. He yoked [heh] Genghis and his general together in his assessment.
He also listed technicians with moments of flair like Saxe and Wolfe, stylistic tactician Gustavus Adolphus, and pioneer of both modern mercenary companies and war as pure predation Wallenstein, so the criteria for selection plainly varied. LH also at some point wrote a positive book on Sherman as an emblematic pragmatist about war, so there’s that.
The thing that elevates Ghengis Khan in my pantheon of military greats is that he didn’t do what he did for the sheer glory of it all–He was tired of the steppe nomads getting played by the oh-so-civilized and manipulative Chinese, so he “solved” that problem for his generation and a few to come. The side effect of world conquest came from the Khwarazim, who chose to treat Mongol emissaries and merchants with disrespect and thievery. It’s one of the great imponderables of history what might have happened, had the first attempt by Ghengis and his Mongols to conduct civilized and peaceful trade not run up against Islamic brutality and theft. Maybe Ghengis was a complete asshole, and deserves the reputation he has for being a world-wrecker. Then again, maybe not–He was steeped in a milieu where the Mongols were constantly victimized by their “civilized” neighbors, and what happened to those neighbors can be read as sadly karmic justice.
Despite their reputation, the Mongols did do a lot of very interesting and forward-looking things; their postal and courier systems were not improved upon until the advent of the telegraph–Even the Pony Express was a sad joke, compared to the system set up by the Mongolians. There’s a lot to unpack, when you start digging into the Mongolian histories, not the least of which is their disciplined organization for war. I would very much like to see, somehow, what the “might-have-been” would have been, had that incident with the Khwarizim not happened the way it did.
“…Rommel? Idjit was oblivious to logistics, and just figured that some lackey from the General Staff…”
Whaaaaat?
Rommel had trouble with supplies because the British were sinking all the ships bringing him supplies.
And Lee, no good…please, he kicked the shit out of people with less Men, less supplies, less everything. That he lasted as long as he did with so little was a miracle.
Genghis Khan’s whole deal was that they would rush in, fire lots of arrows, and run away. If followed they would eventually surround and kill off the chasers. Having lots of spare mounts made them fast. Just like Stonewall Jackson they got there the firstest with the mostest and could hit weak spots then run. The Russians tamed the steppes in much the same way the Americans did the American Indian. The Russians piled up a lot of supplies AND a portable fort on wagons. They continuously ran down the Mongols. When the Mongols would close with them they would throw up portable fort walls and shoot at them. Then chase them more until they wore them down.
Michael Flynn’s In the Country of the Blind is the only really good psychohistory SF I ever read. A small group of the earliest social statisticians forms a secret society that rules the world for its own good, or at least piles up some money and secrets. Flynn once said he was considering a sequel set in the Old West.
Can’t stand Asimov.
Rommel ignored supply realities and over-stretched everything thing he did in North Africa. His lack of comprehension about what was possible within his limitations turned that theater into a death-trap for the Afrika Korps.
Lee was either a complete idiot, or he wanted to lose the war for the South. My suspicion is that while it might have been the latter, it’s more likely that he thought he could win “the easy way”, and chose to lead the armies of the South to their glorious deaths. Had the South put someone in charge who actually knew what they were doing, they would have stayed the hell inside their borders and conducted a Fabian campaign of attrition against the North–Which likely would have led to Lincoln being a one-term president, and victory for their cause. Instead, they pissed away the lives of their soldiers in campaigns they had no ability to take advantage of, and Lee was the primary cause of the eventual defeat of the South, along with Jefferson Davis being a complete and utter fool. Had they chosen another path, they would have drained the North of men and resources fighting on interior lines, gained sympathy from the Europeans, and probably won their war on both the military and the political front. Instead, they went chasing after glory, and got a lot of men killed doing it. The true architect of Northern victory was Lee, if one is honest with oneself. Without him, or Davis running the political side of things, the South would likely have survived. Instead, over-extension led to destruction–Precisely the way Rommel led the Afrika Korps to its death.
As for your understanding of Ghengis Khan? Childishly simplistic and ignorant. The level of discipline and organization displayed by the Mongols was on the same level as the Romans, and the actual sophistication of their tactics was probably somewhat greater than anything extant in Western military practices until the 19th Century. For a bunch of steppe nomads to have been able to conquer the amount of terrain that they did, and to have their success against the supposedly more sophisticated Chinese and Islamic military systems and civilizations, they had to be.
Hell, to this day, even in the face of modern mechanization, the Mongols still have a better set of numbers for rates of advance and conquest than most of our modern “military geniuses”.
A long time ago — must have been the ’80s — I read a story that always stuck with me. It’s set in the Korean War, and something turns off the gunpowder and technology. A group of American soldiers have to make it back to base, and hopefully home, improvising on the way. They make crossbows using rifles and jeep leaf springs, and so on.
I had thought the story was in this series, but when I looked, I couldn’t find it. Perhaps someone here will recognize it, and let me know who wrote it.
Bruce, I agree completely.
Kirk,
There’s a great deal to be said for your analysis of the Confederate strategy, but can they really be said to have had interior lines in practice? The geography seemed to more frustrate than help them.
The Union, with its railway net, seemed far more able to move troops from eastern to western theatres, to take the biggest example. Add to that complete command of the surrounding sea and the industrial capacity to build enough brown water craft to dominate the coastal waters and the Mississippi.
The southern geography seemed to take away any genuine interior lines, the Union’s railway though technically not interior lines seemed to function as though it was, and the surrounding waters were so controlled by the Union as to make exterior lines as good or better than interior ones.
Maybe once the Confederacy really started to contract to the Georgia-Virginia belt at the end, but before that they had a huge, poorly connected territory.
Mongol military organization, and civil organization from relatively early in their empire, became a few cuts above what earlier steppe peoples [whether Iranian, Turkic or Mongolic] had been capable of. As a result they did more damage across a wider territory but also built more and shaped the culture of vaster regions more than any of their predecessors or successors.
By the time of Russia’s march eastward, they were only facing modest successor states of the Mongols, the legacy of imperial disintegration and conflict that had been going on for several centuries. And even then some of those states- the more territorially based ones like Crimea, Astrakhan, and Kazan, proved formidable barriers to Russian southward and eastward expansion, despite by then being smaller states with fewer resources than Russia. The Crimean Tatar Khanate was wise enough to get Ottoman support, but it lasted a long time. Its demise at Russian hands took place in… 1776.
This part of the basis for Muscovite Russian claims today, as it happens. I yield to no one in recognizing that the people who became Ukrainians are heirs to medieval Kievan Rus, just as much as Moscow. Moscow just happened to be the fringe principality that survived Mongol conquest most intact. But Kievan Rus never included anything as far south or east as the Don or Crimea. Those only got Slavized by the Muscovite Russians from the 17th century on.
A [very] loose analogy might be Britain, as former ruler of the eastern seaboard of America, claiming all the lands subsequently conquered and settled by the US on the strength of the former.
In practice, none of that matters now, but I find it helps to remember that your opponent isn’t always lying. And my ideal of a restored Crimean Gothic state or a set of Greek colonies therein seems far beyond reach.
I dimly recall reading The Secret History of the Mongols in high school. In English, of course. Good stuff. Can’t remember the edition, editor, or any details of whether it was an authoritative translation.
Public libraries in Toronto were really something, then. Stuff like that probably would be deacquired and tossed in the bin now in favour of more space for interactive media and contemporary YA fiction. Or books about Diversity. Not actual history of far off peoples.
Buckethead;
You’re right; it is in this series. Or, at least a story fitting your description is.
Same book, under The Fighting Philosopher, E.B. Cole.
Graham,
Vis-a-vis the “grand strategy of the Confederacy”, if there actually was something deserving of such a grandiloquent title, well… I’ve got to defer to much smarter and more knowledgeable men than I. I’m cribbing my opinion on the matter from a paper that was submitted to the Army War College back in the 1990s, which I got to read. Damned if I remember the details (might also have been done at the Command & Staff course at Leavenworth, as well…), but it detailed all the things Lee and Davis should have done, if they wanted to, y’know… Win. Attacking the North was delusional, in that it hardened sentiment and expended Southern military forces in useless campaigns. The interesting thing was, the guy who wrote it went into the whole thing as a true believer in Lee as a general. His conclusion was that Lee basically lost the war for the South, and that if it wasn’t deliberate, then Lee was incompetent to conduct war at that level. The alternative strategy that he laid out would have worked, because getting the North to invade and then crushing its armies on the borders of the Southern states would have worked better, and then if the North had persisted in driving deeper into the South, attrition would have been on the South’s side. Attacking the North also created problems with international relations, in that the South looked as though it were the aggressor; this prevented any sympathizers in the UK or elsewhere from taking their side.
It was a thorough analysis, and one that I have seen in a few other historical works about the war. That’s where my opinion of Lee comes from, and I’m in the same place that paper’s author was: Former Lee adherent who’s looked at the reality of it all, and realized the irony that one of the things that lost the war for the South was that they skimmed the cream off the top of the pre-Civil War US Army, and that’s what lured them into playing Napoleon in the North. Which, in the end, is why they lost. They started off with a much better army than the North could field, and then because of the early success that army gained them, they gambled fast-and-loose. It didn’t help that the majority of the officers they got from the US Army were mostly the ones who were locked into the “hell or glory” Napoleonic mindset, while the ones that remained in the North were the technocrats who’d become dominant in the latter half of the 19th Century. The culture in the South didn’t help, being somewhat more Scots-Irish than was good for it. Feckless seekers of glory tend to lose wars to the more pedestrian workaday types that remained on the Union side.
Kirk,
Working up a more serious and broadly agreeing response, but my main takeaway is also this bit:
“The culture in the South didn’t help, being somewhat more Scots-Irish than was good for it. ”
Yup. That was also true for the actual Scots and Irish. Soooooo many times. Almost all the time, really.
They worked best only when a little of the parsimonious, practical side was allowed into the romantic haze. My favourite moment was the incident in the Battle of Dettingen, circa 174x in the War of the Austrian Succession. George II in command, the last British king to do so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dettingen
The battle involved this colourful character:
“Notable incidents
During the battle, Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Andrew Agnew of Lochnaw warned his regiment The Royal Scots Fusiliers not to fire until they could “see the whites of their e’en”.[20] A noted wit, Sir Andrew is also quoted as addressing his regiment thus: “Lads, you see they loons (young men) on yon’ hill. Better kill them afore they kill you.” And to George II after the battle, who had (humorously) chided him for letting a French cavalry charge break into his regiment’s position: “Ay, please Your Majesty, but they didna’ gang back again.”"
We Scots-Irish tend to do better under the supervision of others, particularly when it comes to military affairs. Left to ourselves, there’s an unfortunate tendency to go haring off after personal glory and/or mindless revenge. As feudal retainers and henchmen, we do great things. Doing for ourselves…? Yeesh.
Scotland has no idea how badly it’s going to do, once it severs itself from the hated Sassenach. It won’t end well, at all…
“…Rommel ignored supply realities and over-stretched everything thing he did in North Africa. His lack of comprehension about what was possible within his limitations turned that theater into a death-trap for the Afrika Korps…”
Rommel was promised supplies that he didn’t get because the British sunk them. When he didn’t have the supplies he needed he stole the British supplies and when he didn’t have those he backed up.
You’re suggesting that Rommel should have planned his whole strategy along the lines of NOT having any supplies. While it ended up that way you can’t have it both ways. An aggressive winning general that is totally pessimistic to the core and does nothing because he will never have any supplies. You’re damning human nature and second guessing events that have already happened with information that no one could have had at the time. You’re just making shit up.
“…Lee was either a complete idiot, or he wanted to lose the war for the South…”
Same here. The South KNEW that they in no way could outlast the North in Men, supplies, transport, finances, everything. This is not a new idea. Many, many others have commented on it and it was common knowledge of the times. The push was to defeat the North in a series of battles to demoralize them. It could be said that there was a lot of demoralization of the North in the beginning but Lee, once again, ran up against limits of Men and supplies just like common knowledge said they would. Some of his attacks in the North gathered Lee up a great deal of supplies that they didn’t have and couldn’t get,(like shoes and food). You neglect to mention that as that was a main thrust of his Norther attacks.
It hardly seems fair to demonize a person for a situation that everyone knew about from the beginning. But you did it anyways.
Let’s say that the South tried it your way and lost. You in no way know that the North would have quit. You don’t have a crystal ball. You’re just making shit up. If the South had practiced a burn it all to the ground war and then lost things would have been much, much worse in loss of life. Way worse. Lee expressly DID NOT follow this path in full recognition of this. They could have done the same thing after Lee’ defeat and he chose not to for the reason I’ve given. He explicitly ordered his Men not to follow this path and ignored orders to do so.
The march of Sherman even negates the whole idea of what you profess. Why didn’t they stop Sherman? Once again they didn’t have the Men, transport or supplies to do a damn thing about it. If they couldn’t stop Sherman when it happened then what super miracle are you drawing out of your hat to change history to correct, Lee’s (the dumb ass you say), mistakes????
You are just propping up straw Men and knocking them down and have no supernatural powers to determine outcomes that didn’t happen.
“…As for your understanding of Ghengis Khan? Childishly simplistic and ignorant…”
Well that really clears things up. What a brilliant discussion of tactics, (you’re stupid). Please….my description, get there the firstest with the mostest, is the exact description of every single super successful general in history. Napoleon, Jackson, Alexander Vasiliyevich Suvorov, etc. No it’s not everything as an overwhelming amount of Men, supplies and material can always crush all opposition but it’s a universally recognized behavior among generals considered world class that others study. And once you get there first you can’t do stupid things but being first with most counts for an incredible amount and can cover up a lot of faults. If you can do this you can attack the weak points and run away from the strong points.
The Moguls had multiple ponies that were hardy and fast and with that they had good communications and were able to attack where others were not. Their supplies many times were the ponies themselves. Your damnation of simple is countered by the simple fact that, simple works.
Your “plea to authority” doesn’t impress me I have a secret plan called…ready… “common sense”. You’re going to have to do better than just calling me names while telling everyone how brilliant you are.
“… It didn’t help that the majority of the officers they got from the US Army were mostly the ones who were locked into the “hell or glory” Napoleonic mindset, while the ones that remained in the North were the technocrats who’d become dominant in the latter half of the 19th Century…”
Furthermore the “technocrats” running the Northern armies in the beginning didn’t do a damn thing. It’s only after Grant and Sherman and his “…“hell or glory” Napoleonic mindset…”
bunch took over that they ground the South down with superior amounts of Men, arms, transport and food so even your own comments don’t make sense and directly contradict itself with the facts.
Kirk, I found of copy of Imperial Stars: The Stars at War on archive.org. That story is not the story. Not even close, as it is not in Korea.
That volume does have Herbig-Haro by Turtledove, which I’ve wanted to read for a while now, so thanks.
The south would have had a better chance of pursuing the strategy Kirk outlined if they had managed, as they almost did, to eliminate the Union Army in the Seven Days Battles.
Of course, they would have had a better chance of pursuing the strategy they did pursue as well.
I can see where the analysis presented in that War College paper might be coming from, but it is not wholly convincing.
On one hand, the ambivalence of many in the Union and the early weakness of Lincoln’s position, and the wavering of Britain and France, as well as the limits on the CSA military capacity, might have suggested the value of making no aggressive moves and waiting it out. Maybe avoiding even a gruelling defensive campaign and winning politically and diplomatically, probably the only ways they could really win.
Some problems exist though.
1. I’m not clear on whether there was any chance the Union would have evacuated Sumter or other forts in anything like a timely manner. If so, then the South should have waited. The problems here would be controlling their own forces and not provoking the Union as they did. And that the Union in this case would have every reason to also be prevaricating and awaiting such provocation. This could have gone on some time and the Union could have forced open conflict by the South with supply runs at some point. [Did that actually happen?] The Union held more cards on this.
2. Once they fired, the South at least temporarily forfeited the hope of total Union inaction, so now they had to make decisions. At this point they still had some foreign sympathy but in all likelihood had to demonstrate to those potential backers that they had the capacity to fight and win. Else why back a sure loser? So now they’ve fired on Union forces at Sumter and probably elsewhere, and must show more action.
3. Once they are fighting, even though the Union has many inclined not to prosecure the war very hard, it also isn’t as inclined to a peaceful no-war secession, because there’s now been fighting. That door had closed.
4. Here is where the Napoleonic sensibility of seeking decisive battle did play in. I see that it may have been the wrong path, but I see their point also. From their point of view, the clock now favours the enemy. Whether it was right that a less aggressive strategy would have been better to persuade the Union not to invade, or it would be too costly to invade maybe but I am not so sure. Neither side would be clear on what that would look like or what it would cost, so the calculation would still be more about the politics of the Union than about the deployment of forces for a gruelling defensive war or the Union;s stomach for that.
5. Weren’t most of the early battles in the east on Virginian soil? Lee was seeking a decisive battle all right, but on defending terrain. If the issue is he spent his troops too freely in the 1862 campaign, then possibly.
6. If your main objection is the 1863 invasion of Maryland and Pennsylvania in the hope of enveloping Washington, then I see the point better.
The negatives for that are that it’s failure handed the Union a big win on home soil. It did not guarantee that Lincoln would be reelected in 1864 or that the Union would fight all the way to the win, since those were in doubt until Atlanta fell. But it capped a period of failure with what even then was a plausible sight of a turning point. Lee’s rapid retreat would have been a huge morale booster.
I could see that that strategic and symbolic failure could have long term sealed the south’s fate, as has long been assumed. It likely meant the end of any hope of foreign intervention. AS well as wasting southern manpower.
I don’t know that the men lost in that campaign would have made the invasion of the south all that much harder than it eventually proved to be. I am open to that but given how the 1864 fighting went, it doesn’t seem that likely.
The political consequences must be accounted greater but, again, even that didn’t prevent the Union from almost bailing in 1864. If the defense of the south in 1864 had been that little bit even firmer, maybe McClellan would have won. But even that seems to turn heavily on chance.
The foreign diplomatic consequences of looking like a loser after 1863 were likely the worst outcome. But that’s the problem. Foreign support was already a weakening prospect by the summer of 1863. The attempt to force a win that summer was almost made necessary by that need- winning a bunch of battles in Virginia wasn’t cutting it. They had to force the issue.
That at minimum was a gamble that failed. It seemed to come close in a sort of Barbarossa type way- if only the cavalry had been better managed, if only Lee had a better staff and coordination, etc. Given the nature of the war to that point, decisively defeating the Army of the Potomac and capturing Washington would have seemed like a possible feat, consistent with southern military performance, consistent with the similar role the Union had placed on decisive open battle [though they could have fielded another army, they too had assumed the war would be based on such battles], and aimed at what by 1863 must have seemed the last political goal left that could have won over the British and/or French to the prospect of Southern victory.
I have no idea whether that could have happened even if he had taken Washington. Or for how long he could have held it. Maybe the Union would have rallied its resources anyway and prefigured America’s response to Japan.
I’m all over the map in some ways here. It all boils down to- I can see the Union bailing if the war got too hard in 1863-4, like they almost did, but it must have been hard for the South to see it given the Union was still in after the 1862 and early 1863 pastings they had received, and with the 1864 election so far off and unknown, and the hoped for foreign recognition fading fast.
Maybe that’s what it was- assuming too much about foreign help and not playing well the politics of what had so lately been their own country.
I just don’t know- if the South hadn’t overplayed in 1863, could they have made the invasion of the South just harder enough in 1864 for Mac to win at the polls that fall? Maybe. But the Union taking Vicksburg at the same time is still happening in this scenario. The ring was already closing.
Rommel’s best case scenario would have been to be another Lettow-Vorbeck, a fellow German whose military theatricality tied down the attention of more forces than he strategically warranted. But Lettow-Vorbeck lived in a different age: all he needed was enough tsetse fly resistant bodies to port him from point A to point B in the most attention-grasping manner possible. Rommel’s war didn’t have the luxury of running on flesh and blood: he needed petroleum, petroleum, and more petroleum, and in that order. Libya’s first well wasn’t sunk until 1956 so Rommel’s fate always depended more on what happened offshore than onshore.
He may have reached Lettow-Vorbeck’s level of strategic distraction if, as Rommel perhaps unintentionally achieved in his first few months, he drew substantial Allied forces and sucked up strategic attention with just a small scratch force (and some Italians). That would have been be an effective economy of force operation even by Lettow-Vorbeck’s high standards. Preserving the ability for Axis bombers to attack Allied shipping from both sides of the Med might have had some strategic value.
Beyond that, Rommel was playing with hubris. Thinking you’re going to take Suez armed only with Jack and Diddley is not a sign that you were a great military mind cut down before your time. To cut Suez, Rommel would have had to have everything go just right. He was lucky he’d even reach El Alamein, much luckier than he deserved. He did nothing to stay that lucky.
You know those chateau generals in WWI who were always getting their troops massacred by ordering them to make this one a real battle, not just a siege? Stupid Tory Blimps, they get plenty of bad press and earned it. Lincoln gets good press because he earned it, ended slavery and won the war. But:
Lincoln left a huge paper trail and a bunch of personal memoirs of verbal orders and speeches and exhortations telling Union troops to make this one a battle, not a siege. He gave McClellan that written and verbal order repeatedly. Even when Lincoln knew he was screwing up, he couldn’t stop, he had to keep giving the order because McClellan really was too cautious. And it took Lincoln time he didn’t have to know he was screwing up. And McClellan was brilliant at raising and organizing an army. We never had a better general at that. And he was brilliant at reorganizing after defeat. We never had a better general at reorganizing after defeat. Lee gave him plenty of practice, that’s Lee maybe the best engineering soldier of the 19th century (Napier? Arguable), Lee who used Mexico City’s defenses against the defenders and built most of the Federal forts afterwards, who traveled with a pet engineering battalion that fortified every weak point until they made every battle a siege. And every time Lee won Lincoln could see on the map how close Lee was to Washington and see whipped Union troops fleeing to Washington. If Lee had ever pushed hard after a win, he might have won Washington and the Copperheads might have forced recognition of the Confederacy. It was always close.
But Lee always knew how bad he was outnumbered, and he knew that he could lose the war for the South if he overextended- cities eat troops, nobody knew that like Lee, and whipped troops can hold their ground and kill you if you push them. But every lost battle almost lost the war.
Lincoln’s gratitude to Grant, him telling Grant to run everything, I’ll back you no matter what, that wasn’t platitudes or Lincoln being nice. Grant saved the Union.
Key thing, Sam? Rommel and Lee LOST. Utterly and irrevocably. That takes them out of the running for “Great Captains”, right there.
As well, there’s copious documentation for Rommel having told the General Staff logistics officers he was seconded that providing supplies was their problem, not his. His intransigent insistence on outrunning the available logistics in the face of General Staff telling him that they simply couldn’t supply his thrusts into Egypt drove several of them into nervous breakdowns–There are reasons why most of the Afrika Korps staff had to be medically evacuated before the final denouement in Tunisia.
Fundamental point about Great Captains is that they actually, y’know… Win. And, don’t manage to destroy their forces in the doing. Xenophon–Great Captain. Alexander…? Highly questionable; but for the revolt of his troops, his attack east would likely have petered out into destruction somewhere along the Ganges or Indus rivers, and we’d have a much different history than we do.
Likewise with the rest of the fantasy “great ones” that everyone admires–What did they build and what remains of their works? Other than the graves of the men who followed their folly?
You appear to admire the “great ones” like Rommel and Lee, who put their talents to work for bad causes. Can’t help but think that’s significant…
Buckethead,
I apologize. I mis-remembered where the story was in the anthology, and gave you the wrong one to reference. The one that matches better to your description is “Pax Galactica”, by Ralph Williams.
I should have gone back and confirmed which story it was, but at least I got you to the right book… :)
Looking at Lee, he was a house divided against himself.
The engineer part of him was solid and even prescient as a tactician: he knew how to build a well-entrenched line and hold it. Think Fredricksburg, Cold Harbor, or Petersburg. That was Lee the engineer, Lee in his native element, not so far from how the better generals of WWI fought using dirt as their primary strategic weapon.
Then there was the Light-Horse Harry Lee part of his brain, the part that wanted to be like his father and run around doing cavalier deeds of derring do. This was the part that kept launching invasions of the North and, worst, kept launching charges at someone else’s entrenchments. Many of Lee’s maneuvers were Napoleonic. Chances are they would have worked. That is, if Lee had been living in the Napoleonic Age.
Many of his turning movements were quick and deep enough to outflank and even surround enemy armies…if they’d been the size of Napoleonic armies. Many times it just seemed that the Army of the Potomac or its larger bits were just too large to be surrounded by men moving at foot speed. Yet Lee kept stubbornly trying.
I think all the jibes thrown at him early in the war when he was more cautious (“King of Spades”, “Granny Lee”) got to him. For all his outward display of Stoicism, Lee seemed to have been pretty thin-skinned. He spent the rest of the war trying to compensate.
When Lee was able to maneuver and force them Yankees to attack him, he did okay. As the King of Spades, he knew how dirt could be his friend. This is the best case scenario for a Lee northern invasion: Lee invades North, Lee gets to dig in, Lee gets the U.S. Army to attack him repeatedly in a blue man sea, Lee slaughters enough Yankees to unleash Northern surrender monkeys.
He would have needed a long line of fresh Fighting Joes or Burnsides to pull that off. McClellan wasn’t going to do that. Meade wasn’t going to do that. Grant definitely wasn’t going to do that (for long).
Lee’s only chance was to draw them Yankees into 100 Nashvilles and hope for 100 Northern John Bell Hoods to impale themselves on his earthworks. He wasn’t man enough to do that. Unlike his fellow Virginian George Thomas, he wouldn’t let parts of Virginia burn in order to save the whole. He was doomed to lose, which remains his greatest historical accomplishment.
You seem to be confused. You said,”…y’all can follow the idiocy of the Lees, the Rommels, and the rest of that ill-omened glory-seeking band of assholes…”
I protested, and still do. So now you move the yardstick to,
“…Key thing, Sam? Rommel and Lee LOST. Utterly and irrevocably. That takes them out of the running for “Great Captains”, right there…”
Well the two statements are not the same at all and neither is a fair measure of the Men.
Let’s just make it as simple as possible. If either Lee or Rommel had had the same Men and resources as their foes what would the outcome have been?
I think we know the answer to this and history judges Men sometimes by not whether they won or not but by what they did with what they had. By that we measure the Man. Both Lee and Rommel accomplished a great deal with what they had.
And by the way from wikipedia,”…journalist and historian Basil Liddell Hart… concluded the 1951 text with comments on Rommel’s “gifts and performance” that “qualified him for a place in the role [sic] of the ‘Great Captains’ of history”…”
There you go, “great captain”, quantified by a historian. (I can do appeals to authority also).
Kirk,
Surely you can’t remove someone from the Great Captain’s list because they ultimately lost? That seems almost irrelevant as a criteria for membership!
Membership must surely be on how well they conducted their campaigns within the resources available. That is, how well did they do compared to anyone else in their position?
Think about it; if we used our alternate history machine to replace Lee or Manstein or Hannibal with another random general of their era; how many would achieve as much before defeat? Perhaps, after 1,000 alternate histories, you might find someone who performs better. Perhaps even to victory. But the vast majority will fail ingloriously long before the historical reality did. In this sense, we might say the Great Captains perform at 99.9% of all Captains, regardless of their ultimate fate.
One thing I will note; the role of luck. Many Great Captains may be skilled but must owe more to luck than the average captain. This is just survivor bias, in the same way that successful managers are also over-appraised. We should therefore appraise “Great” Captains less.
Sam,
Agreed. Greatness is measured by how much they accomplished given the resources they had.
A long-deferred defeat from a grossly inferior position scores much higher than a quick victory from an overwhelmingly superior one.
In fairness, I suspect if we were “picking teams” from a line-up for our final war, Kirk would be just as quick as us to finger Lee, Napoleon, Manstein, Hannibal, Mannerheim as he would Nelson, Saladin, Ataturk, Cortes, and Genghis Khan.
There’s a case to be made that ultimate victory should be the only test of a great captain. It could rightly put Grant over Lee, Wellington [for holding it together in Spain and managing his clear goals and theatre successfully, and for knowing what to do at Waterloo] over Napoleon, Kutuzov over Napoleon, Fabius and probably Scipio over Hannibal. And so on. It’s a strong case and not to be trivially dismissed. And I don’t.
There’s problems with it, of course.
One is that the great captain candidate is not always in overall control of their state’s resources, or even of overall military operations. There are other factors/players. That’s most of modern generals, and plenty even in earlier times. They can still be removed from the list if their other flaws overawe their successes, but ultimately losing the war isn’t by itself one of them.
If they are in overall control of their state, then there’s a better argument. Especially if their foreign policy just racked up more enemies than they could manage. Here all I could say is that humans love a magnificent loser who holds all at bay until the last second, even if the “all” is of his own making. Applies in many fields of endeavour. The juggler who puts too many balls in the air but keeps them flying spectacularly longer than any expect.
That, and sometimes there’s even a fairer response. Sometimes one’s goals just rack up a lot of enemies and it’s too much. But the attempt has to be made. There are people still who think Europe would have been better off under a French imperium and, on the whole, that its brief tenure was a positive political, social and legal force. I’m not predisposed to that, my people were British then, but I can see the elements of the argument.
For those who only fit the first category, it’s still fair to look at what the flaws were and see-
-how do they compare to the pluses
-how did they contribute to the ultimate loss of the war compared to how those pluses contributed to earlier victories/possible victory/delaying the inevitable, etc.
And finally there’s just the conceptual argument that provides the real gulf between perspectives. Most of the time writers defining great captains are looking at them for technical performance on points, not whether they landed the knockout. It’s clearly jarring to many, and I can see why. But it too is a tendency humans have in many fields of endeavour.
So even when sympathetic to the victory-based argument, it’s hard to fully conceive of the results as valid.
It puts Wellington over Napoleon. Not only Scipio but also Fabius over Hannibal. Not only Grant over Lee but plausibly McClellan over Lee.
SO that’s why it strikes me as valid to argue Lee’s weaknesses and whether or not or to what degree they contributed to a Southern loss presuming that was not inevitable, as it is valid to condemn Hannibal as much for his failure to understand his ultimate logistical, strategic and political problem as to praise him for his death-defying stunt of avoiding that reckoning for 16 years in enemy country. Taking them off the list of great captains for it strikes me as changing the subject/definition.
And of course I’m not convinced that either Carthage or the CSA, or many similar examples, really had a better strategy waiting in the wings.
Sidebar, and somewhat in spite of all that, it’s worth remembering that aforementioned Basil Liddell-Hart wrote full length book on Scipio Africanus, subtitled “Greater than Napoleon”. So there’s no shortage of traditional support for the winner takes all approach to this.
Graham,
As a systems engineer / analyst, the obvious experimental design is to isolate how much of the variance in outcome is explained by the Captain and NOT by circumstances beyond his control. Surely you have to control for circumstances in evaluating performance?
This is why I kind of like the mental-substitution model; flip the opposing commanders about; how would the result change, if at all? Or put another contemporary commander in stead. This goes at least some way to isolating the effect of the important variable, the commander.
Let me give one illustration of how unworthy “final outcome” is a measure of greatness. Give me rook odds and I could beat down Magnus Carlsen at Chess, with, say P(win = 0.80). This doesn’t mean my ELO is within spitting distance of him; just that I could reliably convert that sort of advantage to a win (as could thousands of other players). No one would proclaim me the greater player!
Now; how much worse in real war where the variance in starting conditions for captain’s is often much worse than “rook odds”!
The “artistic flair and personal style” version of a great captain and the “technician and/or ultimate victor” version have been in contention since the beginning, and the argument among historians and other writers has been going on in more or less such terms for at least a few centuries, if not since classical times. Consider Alcibiades. Or Hannibal, or Alexander.
In some cases, the same man is evaluated as both captain and statesman [say, dynamic ambitious dreamer aka vain ideologue versus careful state builder aka turgid plodder, to taste], sometimes putting the same man on different ends of the scale from one trade to the other, or arriving at different verdicts in each category.
Never to be settled, to my mind, but often illuminating.
I usually take sides- with the Macedonian and Greek mutineers against Alexander, beyond a certain point at least, for one example. That either makes me a defender of proportion, self-government, and liberty, an opponent of despotism and empire, or a defender of ethnocentrism and ethnic domination and an opponent of multiculturalism, diversity and inclusion [under a despot] depending on one’s taste.
I side with Roman against Carthaginian, but I’m not doctrinaire about Rome. I’m agin’ them under certain conditions. My more distant ancestors would have opposed them at one point, of perhaps plundered them, or existed in what historians might call “dynamic tension” with them. Very dynamic tension.
All that to say, there were moral or comparable issues at stake in every conflict, even if they are forgotten or opaque to us now. The custom of evaluating the opposing commander aside from all that has been with us all along, often even by participants in the war, right through the 20th century. It’s interesting that we now more and more step away from or condemn that approach. Maybe in some ways we actually are at the end of history.
Alistair,
I’m no engineer or chess player, but I believe I agree with that.
I think the strength of Kirk’s approach is to look at what weaknesses of Lee or Rommel were actually within their control, or at least existed at the level of their skills or personality, and how much they contributed to theatre or overall defeat. There’s not nothing there with which to condemn them. Ditto Hannibal. The flip side would be to really interrogate the proposed alternative strategies and consider not only whther those commanders could or should have followed them, but whether they were strategies actually realistically available to the states/armies in question and really would have worked or worked better.
I’m half persuaded by the proposed confederate strategy, but not fully. For more or less the reasons I gave above, Ican see why they felt they needed a knockout battlefield blow. Ditto Hannibal- I’ll bet there were better things for Carthage to do in that war, but I could see why they would think their only winning move was to gamble it all on invading Italy, breaking up Rome’s confederation, and wrecking them for good. They didn’t have what it took to do that, but I flip back and forth between whether they should have tried something else altogether, or just build siege engines.
I don’t actually know why they couldn’t do that. The Hellenistic age had largely invented siege weapons, I thought. Why wasn’t he capable of besieging and taking Rome, anyway?
From my perspective, that of a long-service professional soldier from the enlisted side of things, the “Great Captains” are the guys who managed to win without expending job lots of my troops in inane and pointless battles. Thus, Rommel and Lee can kiss my shiny red ass…
When I first started out, Rommel was someone who I bought into the popular myth about. Then, I encountered a rather different perspective on the man, from a former member of the Afrika Korps, a senior enlisted guy who’d been through the whole sorry cluster-f**k following Rommel. He’d been a big hero-worshiper himself, right up until he got left on the beach in Tunisia while Rommel and the rest of the glory-hound upper leaders got evacuated. After that, well… The scales fell from his eyes, and a lot of things about Rommel he’d observed from his position snapped into focus. One of which was the self-promotion and glory-seeking behavior of the man himself, along with his blithe lack of concern for whether or not his grandiose plans would be survivable for the men following him.
Interestingly, there’s a German term for officers like Rommel, one that comes up from the ranks and is entirely apt and simultaneously dismissive of that sort of officer. I can’t remember the exact turn of phrase, but the gist of it is that the term means “breast disease”, which means that whoever has it is more concerned with earning bright and shineys to put on their uniforms than they are with little details like keeping the casualty rates low.
So, no… I would not put Rommel or Lee on my list of men that I’d like to follow. I got to observe the style of leadership demonstrated by another charismatic loon, Patton’s son. He was the honorary Colonel of one of the brigades we supported at Fort Hood, and it was fascinating to observe. Even in retirement, he had a presence and a bombastic carriage that made people want to do what he wanted–But, there was a whole other side to him that I only got from a retired CSM who’d been in 2nd Armored under him, one that doesn’t speak well to the actual quality of leadership delivered by such men.
Most of the so-called “Great Captains” aren’t actually all that great, when it comes down to it. In general, they’re usually charismatics, more akin to religious figures than they are actual effective military leaders. There’s a vast world of difference between men like Slim and men like Montgomery–Montgomery was a charlatan and a flim-flam artist compared to Slim, more concerned with publicity and ego than actually winning his battles and keeping his men alive.
True “Great Captains” are men like Robert T. Frederick, the guy who was put in charge of discrediting Pyke’s ideas about arctic warfare, and who actually wound up creating the First Special Service Force, an organization that managed to out-perform just about every equivalently-sized Allied formation in WWII. Put Frederick in charge of a mission, and he’d get it done, without getting thousands of men killed to no purpose. In terms of economy of force, Frederick managed to accomplish more with less than just about anyone else, and he did it while leading from the front–Something you can’t say about a lot of other modern “Great Captains”.
So, yeah… My perspective on this is different than most. I’m not on the side of the glory hounds, and I look at most of these so-called “Great Men” with a very jaundiced eye, about like most professional soldiers on the enlisted side do. “Great” is as “Great” does, and when “Great” spends the lives of my men like water, to accomplish little besides their own self-aggrandizement…? Yeah; sod that for a game of soldiers.
Lee was a mass-murderer, TBH. Look at the “glorious” charge of Pickett’s division that he ordered, for examples–All his campaigns were similar to that abortion of an idea, writ on a larger scale. He should have remained an Engineer, and had someone else do the strategy.
Kirk has a point about “mass murder” but again, what did they have to work with? I still see this as relevant and if Lee had to “mass murder” a great deal of Men but ultimately won it would have saved many other lives that a long, slow, slog would have created an even bigger mass murder later. We can rightly consider the invasion of Normandy a mass murder but it worked.
“…One is that the great captain candidate is not always in overall control of their state’s resources, or even of overall military operations…”
This immediately made me think of the loss of Stonewall Jackson. I think it terribly likely that Lee’s fortunes would have been WAY higher had he not been killed.
From reading about Jackson I think he was autistic and I believe this was part of his success. Jackson was an artillery Man at his base and I believe his autism allowed him to immediately sum up a battlefield and place his artillery to best effect. With proper artillery and a very good man to run them it could negate some of the man power advantages of the North, (I’m on shaky ground with this thought and it may be hard to quantify but I believe it). This is what popped in my head when I saw the comment on not being able to control the situation. From
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickett's_Charge#Military_situation
“…The infantry charge was preceded by what Lee hoped would be a powerful and well-concentrated cannonade of the Union center, destroying the Union artillery batteries that could defeat the assault and demoralizing the Union infantry. But a combination of inept artillery leadership and defective equipment doomed the barrage from the beginning…”
What if Jackson had run this???
Kirk,
Have you ever seen the 1990s tv movies “Sharpe”? “Sharpe’s Eagle”, “Sharpe’s Rifles”, and many more. Featuring Yorkshire native Sean Bean as the title character and based on novels by Bernard Cornwell.
Sharpe is a rarity in fiction or life, a British officer in the Napoleonic wars made up from the ranks. A durable plot and character point in the series.
In one early encounter, his sergeant appraises him as a potentially fine “killing officer”. When Sharpe demonstrates unawareness of the term, which Harper thought all rankers would have known, Harper explains that a killing officer gets his men killed for purpose and [only implied] as little as possible. The other kind is “murdering officer”.
I have no idea if this was an accurately relayed element of army culture in Wellington’s time. It was certainly a striking dramatic device. I could see where it could have been a real way for the men to think.
It didn’t seem entirely about competence- from the fictional story one could see that a competent glory hound still fit the murdering category.
I read most of the Sharpe novels, before Cornwell turned into another Michener with them. Early on, they’re reasonably good historical fiction, but his attempt to shoehorn Sharpe into every aspect of the Napoleonic period left me with a severely strained suspension of disbelief. The TV shows and so forth pretty much destroyed that, given the really piss-poor production values and unrealistic acting. Sean Bean is not who I’d have cast in that role. And, hell… The character of Sharpe is entirely unrealistic, in the first damn place. He’s simply an acceptable viewpoint character from the modern egalitarian point of view, and as such, utterly distorts the accuracy of the works. In reality, no such British officer existed, or was possible. “Up from the ranks…” commissioned officers nearly always wound up sidelined into Quartermaster jobs, simply because they could not effectively interact with other officers due to the class differences, and because of the economic realities of their situations.
A lot of Cornwell’s history is well-researched; I don’t know enough of the nitty-gritty details to tell you whether the attitudes espoused by characters in the books are true-to-life, but I suspect that a considerable amount of modern sensibilities leak through Cornwell’s writing about the period, as he is not writing history, but trying to “interpret” it for us. Distortions are inevitable.
I like Cornwell’s writing, but as a lens to examine the periods he writes about…? Uhmmmm… No.
The Sharpe’s novels need to be viewed as being about a grade up from what you’d have to consider the James Bond books as being, in regards to accurately portraying Cold War espionage. As such, they’re useful entrance points for developing interest in the period, but… Sheesh. Nock volley guns? Dear God… That one almost had me wall the book, first time I encountered it. Afterwards, I was like “OK, Cornwell doesn’t know squat about firearms… I like the characters, though… I can ignore this…”.
Sam J.,
What separates a mass-murderer from an effective military leader are two things; the cause they fight for, and the utility of the casualties as balanced against the greater question of “Did they win…?”. Grant is justified in his decisions that resulted in the deaths because his cause was just, and he eventually won. Might he have been able to achieve a less-costly victory with more elegant strategies and tactics…? Perhaps. Elephants might fly, too–But, they mostly don’t.
I can’t accept that men like Caesar were “Great Captains”, because they were acting primarily out of ego; there was no necessity for what he did in Gaul, other than as a mechanism for acting out his ambitions. Rome gained much, but sowed the seeds of its own destruction through his efforts. The Celtic and Germanic dead, along with the Roman soldiers led off to their deaths in his adventures do not justify or even begin to compensate for what was gained.
To qualify as a “Great Captain”, you truly need to present a balance of justification, military skill, and actual attainment against the cost in lives and material; as well, you need to be accomplishing a bit more than mere personal or national glory.
That’s how I look at it, at least. Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon… None of them qualify.
Kirk, that was the one, thanks!
According to *math*, Napoleon is the greatest general in history. In fact, he is nearly 23 standard deviations above the mean. Math also proves that both Rommel and Lee are over-rated, and likely would have been outperformed by an average general in command of their armies.
https://towardsdatascience.com/napoleon-was-the-best-general-ever-and-the-math-proves-it-86efed303eeb
Interesting way of looking at things, but I have the same caveats that he addresses in his updates. Wikipedia isn’t what I’d term a reliable source for data, overall…
The whole idea of “Great Captain” is functionally a non-starter, anyway. Where would Alexander have gotten, if Phillip of Macedon hadn’t built and trained the armies he led…? Similarly, the much-hyped Swedish leaders who had the fascinating Swedish Army as a tool–Without that, no “Great Captain”. And, you will note, most of these guys ceased being “Great Captains” about the time they ran out of experienced troops to lead…
Success in war is more about the system you take to it than the leadership, in my opinion. Sure, you can look like the “All-Conquering Hero”, but what’s that based on? Is it you, or is it the mass of trained and experienced troops you manage to find? How far would Caesar have gotten at Alesia, were he leading a tribe of Celts instead of stolid and stoic Roman legionaries?
I think that to truly be a “Great Captain”, you need to be able to win anywhere with anything–And, that’s a test that most of the vaunted “Great Ones” couldn’t pass. The commander gets the credit, but the victory is earned down in the ranks–And, if the guys in the ranks are incompetent and unmotivated, no amount of “Great Captaincy” is going to change that. Likewise, you can be a complete idiot leading experienced and capable troops, and it’s gonna take some serious dedication to wind up losing your battles. Varus at Teutoberg comes to mind…
The more I think about this, the more it becomes clear to me that this whole construction of “Great Captains” is entirely specious.
It is very much a mirage of the hero-worship that these figures usually get from the pundits of their times and the historians. Does Alexander truly deserve any of the disturbingly breathless adoration he gets from historians and the general public, or should we instead look at him as a tremendous vandal that used the military tools created by his father to destroy and re-order the existing order of Greece and the East?
Likewise, with Napoleon: What part did he take in creating the military machine that he used to conquer most of Europe? Was he a good custodian of that military power, or did he perform an act of willful destruction by taking it into Spain and Russia, in search of personal glory and empire…?
I would submit that both of these characters deserve a lot less adoration, and a great deal more criticism for what they did. Not to mention, let us have a look at the tools they used to do what they did: Those military forces that they mostly led to their doom, seeking their personal glory. How many good men died in Russia, under Napoleon…? And, for what, precisely? Were the Russians invading Europe? Were they a threat…?
One of the disturbing things about a lot of the adorational types is how little weight they put on the morality of it all, with regards to their sanctified heroes. Sure, Rommel talked good game, and he did some interesting things at the battalion level in WWI, but let’s look at how the man hooked himself to the tail of Hitler’s chariot, and then leveraged that into command in Poland and France, resulting in his promotion past his Peter point. Rommel had “issues”, mostly stemming from the fact that he was not a product of the German Army selection process, and was probably unlikely to have been chosen for further military education and promotion by the establishment. His writing in Infantrie Grief An was something he did as a bit of self-promotion, and there’s been some questioning of his claims in it. As well, parts of that work show clear deficiencies in his performance and conduct, things that later showed up in North Africa. By Normandy, there were signs he was maturing, but even so… His choices to move during daylight hours, without security? The one he made to go home for a birthday, taking him off the scene for the initial invasion…?
As well, Rommel was noncommittal with regards to the Stauffenberg plot. He didn’t offer to help, but he also didn’t turn in the plotters, and as Dante would have it, the deepest parts of Hell are reserved for the trimmers, those who will not commit to either good or evil. My take on Rommel is that he was a good leader, but promoted well past his level of competency and ability for that stage of his career. He might have been great, but his talent for self-promotion and, to be blunt, ass-kissing got him promoted to positions he really shouldn’t have been entrusted with–Mostly because he wasn’t ready for them.
That seems like rather an exalted standard for assessing individual achievement or excellence though.
I get, even if not always agreeing with here, criticisms based on ultimate victory or defeat, or waste of soldiers’ lives. Even the importance of a military institution built by predecessors and comprising skilled persons. Although on that score some commanders and leaders would get bonus points for playing major roles in designing, shaping and training the armies they later used. Or making major reforms that improved their quality as instruments. Or even for taking specific steps to shape training, recruitment or generalship expectations. Here Bonaparte, Frederick II, and selected Roman commanders might stand out. Marius, for example.
But to stretch it so far that the highest honorific must be reserved to the individual who accomplished everything without help of predecessors or associates is a bit like Obama commenting to entrepreneurs, “you didn’t build that”. Scarcely anyone has ever, in any field, accomplished that much without assistance or foundations being laid.
Normally, when we have historically praised great achievement, we have understood this baseline to be true and the achiever’s work is being singled out with that understanding in place and its degree of excellence assessed against it.
Some on the left have either forgotten that, or tactically refuse to recognize it, or have tried to socialize us to thinking that they are the first to notice and inform us of this background as a shocking revelation, by way of decreasing recognition of standout accomplishment.
None of which proves Rommel or Lee or even Bonaparte deserved quite all, or any of their accolades, but even so. We don’t have to subscribe to a Randian theory of personal greatness to refrain from going too far the other way.
By way of tangent on this- in a long ago argument when the discussion was framed in what I now think is the wrong, “Individualism versus Collectivism” framework, one of my high school teachers tried to convince me that individual achievement is meaningless, because all anyone will ever remember is that humanity accomplished something. There’s something in that, and I’m all for collective pride and memory [...] but the example he chose was to me rather striking.
He cited Roger Bannister, who first broke the 4 minute mile in running. It had been considered a huge, unbreakable barrier. My teacher suggested that eventually his name would not matter.
I wondered about it. On one level, you have to watch what you are citing by way of what humanity in aggregate will remember. How many humans who are not followers of track and field events even know what the running records are now, what they were then, that 4 minute mile was long a barrier, or that it was broken or when? If they do, chances are they know it was by Roger Bannister. At the time, it was funny, because not being a sports guy I nevertheless knew his name. Scored a rhetorical point for that.
In future, if civilization and records don’t survive, perhaps his name will be lost, but then so will all the records of times and what was possible. Every time and place will determine again what is or is not possible, and neither the man nor the previous accomplishment will remain. It will always be a new feat for humanity, and each time it will be tied to one man’s name who “first” did it.
A tangent, granted. I’m not normally the one arguing for the great man approach, but there it is.