The most successful military leader in history?

[asad71]

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Who was the most successful military leader in history?

Asked after Waterloo who he thought the greatest general of all time was, the Duke of Wellington is known to have said, without missing a beat:

In this age, in past ages, in any age: Napoleon.

And so there we have the opinion of the general who beat the greatest general of all time. The other military leaders in other answers surely have their merits, but in none of those cases was the leader's military genius so clearly manifest, that right after a battle their bitterest foe could only marvel at it.

Waterloo was a brilliant victory for Wellington and for Britain. It was a crushing defeat for Napoleon, forever ending French dreams of uniting Europe under the Tricolore, but it was close. As Wellington himself pointed out, the battle was "the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life". Except for a few elements of chance (which military historians have furiously debated since 1815), Napoleon might very well have succeeded in doing to Prussia and Britain what he had done to allied armies on numerous occasions before. Forty occasions, to be precise--the Emperor, in his back-handed humility, once remarked that, "My glory will not be the fact that I have won forty battles...Waterloo will erase the memory of so many victories." As it turns out, however, Waterloo did not erase the memory of those victories--Austerlitz, Marengo, Jena and many others--many of which are studied by professional warriors to this day.

But what makes Napoleon stand out from the myriad other possible candidates for "most successful military leader in history"? I would consider it a combination of three elements:

1. Military Innovations/Reforms: His implementation of tactical, strategic and logistical reforms defined the way the most destructive wars in history would be fought
2. Personal Charisma: Talents for organization and strategy aside, one did not advance in Revolutionary France as quickly as Napoleon did without winning over the rank and file troops with courage under fire
3. Long-lasting Legacy: The Europe--and therefore the world--that Napoleon left behind would ultimately be the same Europe that exploded into global catastrophe in 1914, which had very direct effects not just on Europe but through to Northeast Asia, Middle East and America

1. Military Innovations/Reforms
The contribution Napoleon made to advancing war into the modern age is difficult to quantify. Conceptually, many things that would be recognizable to any soldier today were either inventions of Napoleon, or ideas that he inherited from the Enlightenment-inspired French Revolutionary armies and perfected over the course of his reign. Among these:

• The use of the army corps as a significant administrative and tactical unit. Prior to the French Revolution, armies were relatively small. The introduction of mass conscription by the Republic suddenly swelled the size of the armies that commanders had to control; both to instill some order and exploit this new advantage, Napoleon made huge contributions to the organization of national armies. The combined-arms, self-contained corps, mutually supported by other corps, was a key factor that enabled the French to run rings around their enemies' more sluggish armies early in the Napoleonic Wars.
  
  
• Military logistics as a science rather than an ad hoc arrangement. Napoleon very famously said that "An army moves on its stomach", and under his leadership, the French supply systems became legendarily efficient, inventing among other things the supply depot, the canned ration and the mobile field ambulance
  
  

• The "grande batterie". Napoleon seemed less interested in outmaneuvering his enemies than annihilating them, and there is perhaps no better proof of this than his invention of massed artillery. His original training as an artillery officer showed in the effectiveness that artillery reached in the Imperial Army. Rather than scatter cannons throughout infantry units, he united all of a corps' artillery into a single unit that would concentrate its fire on one point, softening part of the enemy line for the rest of the army to storm through. The concentration of heavy artillery continues to play a prominent role in military strategy today.

A Soviet grande batterie in action against Berlin in 1945.

• The infantry column. Before Napoleon, infantry primarily attacked enemy positions in one long line, a tactic that the Dutch had started to introduce in the late 16th and early 17th centuries (Maurice of Nassau was a devout student of the linear tactics used by Alexander and the Roman legions). But the mass conscript mobs that comprised the French Revolutionary armies didn't have the training required to hold a single line during an attack, and in any case, a line could be easily broken. One innovation that Napoleon inherited from the Revolution was the use of massed columns of men, marched headlong across the battlefield into opposing forces like a huge human battering ram. It was costly, but it did the trick.
• The cavalry division. As with artillery, Napoleon was the first military leader in modern history who had both the means at his disposal and the vision to concentrate what had hitherto been a support force into a decisive strike force. As a proportion of military manpower, cavalry units in European armies declined from the 16th century to the late 1700's; upon Napoleon's ascendance at the turn of the 19th century, this trend reversed (briefly), and his use of massed cavalry charges to decisive effect would be emulated by the German panzer formations at the start of the Second World War.

The Polish Lancers ("My Best Cavalry") at Waterloo

German Panzer formation at Kursk


To the above, I would add another military concept that first developed concurrently with Napoleon, though it was a reaction to him, rather than his invention:

• Guerrilla Warfare. When Napoleon embarked on his ill-advised invasion of Spain, the out-classed Spanish quickly learned that the most effective tool of resistance against France was not their conventional army, but rather the popular resistance that sprung up from the occupiers' heavy-handed rule. The French could hold the field after every engagement, but ultimately they couldn't defeat Guerrilla--Spanish for "the little war"; this was perhaps one of the first instances in which a large, superbly trained and equipped Western military was unable to conduct a successful counterinsurgency against a relatively weak but highly motivated native population

2. Personal Charisma
While in his later years Napoleon wasn't known for leading from the front, that was probably excusable given that in those years he was not only a battlefield commander but also a head of state. As an ambitious young officer, he advanced his career at considerable personal risk, occasionally leading charges himself. At the Battle of Arcole in 1796, seeing his men falter in an attack against the Austrians, Napoleon grabbed a flag, ran out front and started to wave it in an attempt to inspire them forward (think Mel Gibson at the end of The Patriot). It didn't work, but there's no denying that it was foolishly brave--the Austrians' withering fire took down most of the officers who ran out there with him.

Performances like that one earned Napoleon a considerable amount of respect among the grunts. And while, as a military commander, he was ruthless, bloodthirsty and only too willing to throw soldiers' lives away for the next objective, Napoleon's personal interactions with them attest to the way he was able to inspire them. During the ill-fated Russian campaign of 1812, his staff found a house that was already occupied by a wounded young soldier; they began setting themselves up in the house and demanded that he get out to make room for the Emperor, but when Napoleon found out, he ordered them to let the wounded man stay there, vacated the house and found accommodations elsewhere. Another time, he asked the commander of a veteran regiment who the bravest man in the unit was; when the commander told him, Napoleon walked up to the soldier, removed the Legion of Honor medal that he was wearing, and pinned it to the man's lapel.

There aren't many well-known speeches by Napoleon, but one of them surely deserves mention. Lincoln gave the Gettysburg address, Norman Schwarzkopf gave his great speech after Desert Storm, Shakespeare beautifully imagined Henry V's "band of brothers" speech at Agincourt, and Russell Crowe had his little speech in the beginning of Gladiator. After Austerlitz in 1805 (widely considered his greatest victory), Napoleon had this to say:

Soldiers, I am proud you! In the Battle of Austerlitz you have justified all that I expected from your intrepidity. You have decorated your eagles with immortal glory. An army of one hundred thousand men, commanded by the Emperors of Russia and Austria, has been, in less than four hours, either cut in pieces or dispersed. Thus in two months the third coalition has been vanquished and dissolved. Peace can not now be far distant. But I will make only such a peace as gives us guarantee for our future, and secures rewards to our allies. When everything necessary to secure the happiness and prosperity of our country is obtained, I will lead you back to France. My people will behold you again with joy. It will be enough for one of you to say, 'I was at the battle of Austerlitz;' for all your fellow citizens to exclaim, 'There is a brave man.'

So great was his inspirational effect that the Allies considered his presence at a battlefield to be roughly equivalent to adding 40,000 men to the French forces, and indeed would eventually learn to isolate his corps commanders and force them into fights when he was least able to come to their aid.

3. Long-lasting Legacy
I think this is probably the most difficult factor to argue for, in the sense that we tend to view history as a linear process, and so it seems logical that whoever comes first must necessarily have influenced everything and everyone who came afterward.

Would Napoleon have even been possible without the brilliance of, say, Frederick the Great or Marshal Turenne before him? Perhaps not. But what is certain is that the world before and after Frederick the Great--brilliant a general as he was--wasn't nearly as radically changed as it was after Napoleon was done. I would argue that the Europe that existed in 1815 at Napoleon's defeat--the Europe that would go on to subjugate Africa and Asia, setting the stage for all of the global calamities of the 20th century--was very much one of Napoleon's making, some of it his intention, much more of it just the after-effects of his monumental imperial ambitions.

This is not to say that the military leaders who opposed Napoleon were wusses in their own right. Au contraire: on many different levels, Napoleon was brilliantly, catastrophically out-played by his opponents.

• Admiral Nelson annihilated the French Navy not once, but twice--at Aboukir Bay in 1799, and most famously at Trafalgar in 1805, forever ending the possibility of beating Britain, and paving the way for a century and a half of "Britannia, rule the waves"
• The Duke of Wellington smashed the French in Spain, and is the only general (so far as I'm aware) who batted 1.000 against Napoleon on the field
• Tsar Alexander I of Russia, a ruthless strategist with a big mouth and a very big stick, out-maneuvered Napoleon diplomatically and eventually destroyed the Grand Army in a grueling war of attrition

Still, what all three of these guys have in common is that for two decades their nations' combined efforts were devoted solely to checking the voracious monster for military conquest that was Napoleon himself. And what did those conquests result in? Well, an abbreviated list would include:

• Spanish nationalism: The atrocities committed by the French united Spain in a way that it hadn't been before
• German nationalism:Napoleon would prove to be the last French ruler who would make the small weak German states bend to his will. In the decades that followed, Prussia ("the eagle hatched from a cannonball," as Napoleon put it) would gradually accumulate more power in its efforts to check France
• Polish nationalism: In an attempt to undermine both Russia and Austria, Napoleon had restored Polish sovereignty, and even though it was again split up after his defeat, Poland would never again just accept domination by its larger neighbors. Poland's national anthem even includes a verse paying tribute to Bonaparte!
• American expansionism: Let's not forget that much of this country west of the Mississippi River came in the form of the Louisiana Purchase, which Napoleon sold to Thomas Jefferson in 1803, in order to pay off war debts
• A dominant Royal Navy: After the Napoleonic Wars ended, Britain had the mightiest navy in history, which would be put to very productive use in the next century consolidating its existing dominions, and conquering new ones
• A System of Laws: In his retirement, Napoleon could not stop talking about how wonderful his "Code Napoleon" or Civil Code was--France's first unified code of laws, and the basis for much of European law today
• Other, smaller things: Napoleon's conquests, which he sold to his subjects as "liberations" from their Russian/Austrian/Prussian masters, lit the fuse of democracy in what had previously been feudal societies, and despite the concentrated [and occasionally bloody] efforts of the Great Powers to put down those movements throughout the 19th century, they would eventually make their way to the surface. Along the way, Napoleon also introduced the metric system, the idea of putting odd and even addresses on opposite sides of the street, and over-size Cap'n Crunch hats into local wardrobes
• Latin American liberation: Inspired by the liberal values that Napoleon promulgated (but did not practice or himself believe in), and with their Spanish colonial masters seriously weakened by the fight against Bonaparte, the various conquered peoples of South America revolted and fought for independence. The guarantee of Latin American independence from Europe ("the Monroe Doctrine") would go on to be a cornerstone of the foreign policy for the nascent United States
• The Congress of Vienna: To ensure that a generalissimo as potent and aggressive as Napoleon never rose to power again, the Great Powers of Europe (Austria, Prussia, Russia and England, plus France) convened after his abdication. They agreed in principle what a Europe sans Bonaparte should look like; among other things, it enabled the Great Powers to collude in crushing democratic movements [which I alluded to above]. For a century, it was perhaps successful in averting warfare on the same scale--never mind the very real and very deadly Crimean War, and the wars Prussia waged against Denmark, France and Austria. But in any event, it contained some of the seeds of its own destruction, of which the First World War would be the most horrifying consequence

So there you have it: My long-winded case for why Napoleon was the most successful military leader in history. Again, other military leaders may have outperformed him in certain respects. Leonidas bravely fought against probably the worst odds ever recorded, leading 300 Spartans against 400,000 Medes. Alexander the Great crushed the mighty Persians at age 25 by leading a cavalry charge straight at the King of Persia. Lord Nelson won some of the most brilliant, lop-sided victories in naval history. Genghis Khan conquered the largest empire the world has ever seen. Georgy Zhukov saved Russia, and the world, from Hitler, and beat the German inventors of Blitzkrieg at their own game.

But when you look at the big picture, consider that:

1. On the battlefield, Napoleon was barely touchable
2. As a leader of troops in combat he was second to none
3. His legacy was so wide-reaching and long-lasting that it can't really be quantified, and it is still everywhere for us to see

Based on those factors, my answer is the same as Wellington's.

 

[500]

Napoleon was brilliant tactician, but HORRIBLE strategist. All his campaigns were huge FAIL:

1) Spain campaign - fail.
2) Egypt campaign - fail.
3) Russia campaign - fail.
4) Overall - fail twice.

 

[SvenSvensonov]

Lion of the North

The genius of Sweden’s ‘Lion of the North’

In the skies over a modern battlefield a joint tactical air control team is often credited for carrying their platoon’s “big gun,” or radio, as devastating airstrikes are vectored in from aircraft loitering in the battle space where friendly forces are taking fire.

Laser guided munitions, global positioning systems, joint direct attack munition technology and real-time communications make it possible for military units to shape the battlefield to their advantage.

However, coordinated efforts on an ever changing fluid battle space aren’t new concepts. In fact, credit for this military innovation, and several others, belongs to Gustavus II Adolphus, King of Sweden, whose reign lasted from October 12, 1617 until his death in battle, Nov. 6, 1632.

The Innovations

The period of warfare before Adolphus’ time lacked what in today’s terms could be called strategic thinking. Granted, there were great generals and great battles, several of which changed the known world. But, until gunpowder began to see widespread use, armies were marched directly toward an opposing force, drawn in parallel lines and the order of battle tended to consist of: archers, followed by the heavy infantry that hurled javelins as the masses continued to creep toward each other until finally the armies were in sword, hammer or pike range.

The only real fluid part of a battle space prior to gunpowder was the cavalry, which were usually concentrated on the flanks and, when possible, charged the enemy’s extreme left or right and hoped to collapse the opposition around itself.

As gunpowder began to see common and widespread use on the battlefield, Gustavus Adolphus was the first to shed old tactics and status-quo thinking.

In Adolphus’ time, firearms were just beginning to make their way into the hands of both heavy infantry and cavalry.

Another relatively new invention, gunpowder propelled artillery, changed the scope of the battlefield by shifting the range at which armies could engage one another as well as a constant need for specialized war material – chiefly powder and shot.

Armies could no longer move quickly and largely rely on foraging for raw materials to construct siege and artillery equipment.

But, until the new-age thinking of Gustavus Adolphus, the technology had changed but tactics and strategy had not.

Warfare, around the time of the Thirty Years War, was on the cusp of becoming more specialized and calculated, rather than an affair where two huge forces collided and the winner was decided by large amounts of courage and the ability to deal harsher blows about the head and shoulders to the enemy.

It was during this period of time in military history that Gustavus Adolphus would shatter the old school system of waging war.

Prior to Adolphus emerging on the scene as a battlefield innovator, European armies largely conscripted soldiers or employed large numbers of mercenaries just before marching to their objective. After the war, these conscripts and soldiers for hire were quickly mustered out of the army until politics demanded the nation fight another battle.

Gustavus Adolphus threw a wrench in 1600s European thinking by having a regular standing army that was well-trained, regularly drilled, armed with fine weaponry and were paid on time.

He also redesigned his army to take advantage of newly acquired mobility that was afforded to him by the emerging innovation of gunpowder and modern firearms. While the European army model largely consisted of forming squares or, even older, lines of phalanxes several soldiers deep of mixed musketeers and pikemen, Adolphus formed whole regiments solely of musketeers.

He also adopted a new, lighter musket, thus eliminating the need for the gunner or an assistant to carry a forked pole to rest the firearm on.

He made paper cartridges standard in his army.

He also drilled his men in the concept of rolling volley fire.

This innovation was a regiment of musketeers, usually six lines deep that closed to three before engaging the enemy.

The first rank would kneel the second would crouch and the third rank would stand all firing simultaneously.

The rate of fire Adolphus was able to maintain on a battlefield surpassed other armies of the time largely because the Swedish king reduced the traditional European manual of arms from 160 movements for firing and reloading to 95.

Adolphus disregarded the big, cumbersome cannons favored by many leaders of his day and opted for lighter and maneuverable field-pieces that could be quickly moved to give fire where his infantry needed support at a particular time.

This is a stark contrast to other European army models of the day, who fought in dense, slow maneuvering masses and tended to try to win a battle by numbers and brute force alone.

In this way, he ensured his portion of the battle space was not rendered static and motionless by fixing big artillery pieces in one spot that could not be maneuvered to support the foot soldiers.

Another innovation was a concept that today is dubbed “combined arms,” although in the 1620s the term didn’t exist. Gustavus Adolphus disregarded traditional pike squares common in European formations of the time and instead incorporated a thin pike wall in with his musketeer formations.

This innovation featured one pike for every few muskets, which was enough to keep enemy cavalry from decimating the infantry but still leaving the Swedish formation plenty of firepower to engage the enemy. Adolphus used this tactic until 1631, when he formed entire regiments comprised of nothing but musketeers.

The Swedish king also developed what today we call “cross-training.”

Infantry and cavalry units alike were trained to fire artillery. His pikemen could pick up a musketeer’s weapon, load and fire it if need be. Artillery and infantry soldiers were all trained to ride, should the battlefield occasion demand it.

In doing this, King Gustavus Adolphus ensured sub-unit integrity and unit cohesion throughout his army. The cavalry were not elevated above the infantry; rather, every soldier was cross-trained into other specialties to make for maximum efficiency on a fluid battlefield.

While King Gustavus Adolphus can be given scores of credit for innovation and forward thinking, the real measure of any commander is results in battle. This begs the question, how well did this new mode of combined arms work on early 17th-century battlefields? We will examine his most important battle.

The Results of Adolphus’ Innovations: The Battle of Breitenfield

Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden entered the Thirty Years War allied with the Protestant cause. He established lines of communication and supply with his native Sweden and moved across the Baltic Sea and into the heart of Europe in 1630.

Adolphus, trained in statesmanship all his life before assuming the throne, began to build alliances, recruit more soldiers to the Protestant cause and secure his lines as he moved toward Saxony. He met his chief rival, Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly and commander of the Catholic League’s armies, on September 17, 1631.

King Adolphus deployed his force in conjunction with his new and innovative strategy of stressing attack over defense and mobility over static lines.

He mixed his force of light and heavy infantry, dispersed with his pikemen throughout the formation to provide defense against enemy cavalry. He also deployed his light, nimble artillery consisting of three-pounder guns with his infantry instead of the old tactic of placing the infantry in front of heavy, difficult to move cannon.

In this, he assured the cannon could directly support the infantry and be quickly moved where supporting fire was needed most along an ever changing and fluid front.

The Count of Tilly’s forces were deployed in a typical European, and largely static, formations.

The troops were packed together in tight squares and were mostly heavy infantry armed with pikes. The Catholic League’s forces did have musketeers, but these were either placed in the corners of the formation squares or largely on one side. Thus, shifting fire from one direction to another involved a slow and cumbersome series of movements.

This formation did not, unlike the Swedes, incorporate supporting artillery directly with the infantry.

Both armies had cavalry units.

The Count of Tilly’s forces were trained to ride toward the enemy, fire cumbersome and short range pistols in a maneuver called the caracole, in which the rider closed to firing range and executed a half turn and fired one pistol, then executed another half turn in the opposite direction and fired his second pistol.

After this volley the rider would canter tow the back of the formation to reload and fire again.

However, this tactic would be hard pressed to work under constant repeating volley fire from Adolphus’ formations.

The Swedish cavalry still relied on the age-old tactic of riding at a full gallop and engaging the enemy with the saber; however, Gustavus Adolphus had trained his musketeers to provide fire support to the cavalry prior to a charge when at all possible.

When the two forces met, the Catholic League’s army was deployed into 17 dense square formations with the heavy cannon placed in the front.

King Gustavus Adolphus’ forces were deployed in two lines, with the bulk of their cavalry on the right side.

The two armies began with an exchange of artillery fire and it was soon obvious the Swedish gunners could achieve a far superior rate of fire with their light, three-pound guns.

The Catholic League forces cavalry charged the Swedish lines a total of six times, but each time was stopped by the combination of musket and cannon fire from Adolphus’ forces. Finally, after the seventh and final charge by County Tilly’s cavalry was beaten back yet again by the Swedes, King Gustavus Adolphus released his own cavalry against the enemy.

The already weakened Catholic League cavalry units were driven from the field by Adolphus’ cavalry and retreated 15 miles from the battlefield.

Seeing the Swedish cavalry leave the lines, Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly, ordered his remaining cavalry and infantry forward. The Swedish lines on Adolphus’ left flank began to falter under this combined attack without cavalry support.

Seeing this, King Gustavus Adolphus, thanks to his innovations of mobility, quickly shifted his lines and anchored along a new front to meet the Count of Tilly’s advance.

The European square tercio could not quickly shift to face this new front and were heavily fired upon by Adolphus’ light cannons and musketeers.

The shift in lines and new front made Adolphus’ far right flank unopposed and he personally reformed them and led them in a charge into the Count of Tilly’s forces and thus captured the enemy artillery.

Taking advantage of his forces being cross-trained, King Gustavus Adolphus began to use the enemy’s own artillery against him and fired repeatedly into Tserclaes’ exposed flank and rear.

This quickly led to the Catholic League’s forces being engaged on multiple fronts in a harrowing crossfire. Not able to withstand overwhelming firepower with no possibility of a counterattack, the Count of Tilly’s forces retreated.

As day turned into nightfall, it became clear the Count of Tilly’s force was all but annihilated. Several of the survivors deserted and some 6,000 were captured, many of which joined Gustavus Adolphus’ army.

The aftermath

The Battle of Breitenfield was the first and most important of King Gustavus Adolphus’ short career. It annihilated the Catholic League’s main fighting force during the Thirty Years War and necessitated for it to be rebuilt.

His tendency to personally lead the charge, which was certainly a factor in his death at the Battle of Lutzen in 1632, is perhaps the only reason he did not emerge on the world’s stage as a significant figure in Europe’s course after the war’s conclusion in 1648.

However, his contributions to modern warfare were such as attack emphasized over defense, sustained rate of fire, combined arms tactics and the value of cross training fighting units have been validated time and again on the globe’s battlefields after the 1600s.

His innovations and models have been admired by Napoleon, Carl von Clausewitz, and General George S, Patton.

Sweden has not forgotten her “Lion of the North,” as each Nov. 6 is celebrated as Gustavus Adolphus Day.

@AUSTERLITZ @Nihonjin1051 - thoughts?

 

[Aepsilons]

Admiral Togo Heihachiro

 

[SipahSalar]

1) Spain campaign - fail.
2) Egypt campaign - fail.
3) Russia campaign - fail.
4) Overall - fail twice.

5) Your post's quality - fail.

 

[Ray_of_Hope]

I think,the most succesful military leader in history would be Sultan Salahuddin Ayyubi.He alone crushed the crusaders in almost all battles while mostly outnumbered

 

[PurpleButcher]

US Air Force General of C&C Generals

 

[tahir195]

you forget the great leader
Sher Shah Suri

 

[500]

5) Your post's quality - fail.

Awesome argumentation. Keep it on.

 

[AUSTERLITZ]

Napoleon was brilliant tactician, but HORRIBLE strategist. All his campaigns were huge FAIL:

1) Spain campaign - fail.
2) Egypt campaign - fail.
3) Russia campaign - fail.
4) Overall - fail twice.

Bad grande strategist you could say.He invented operational strategy in the modern sense.
Egyptian campaign french navy failed him .
Spanish campaign he didn't fight himself,for a month he was there he swept aside all opposition.
And russia was a true disaster well he atleast got to moscow....hitler and charles didn't manage that.

So yeah he failed notably on various occasions due to bad logistics,ego and ignoring nationalism's power..but to say horrible is a bit over the top.

I think,the most succesful military leader in history would be Sultan Salahuddin Ayyubi.He alone crushed the crusaders in almost all battles while mostly outnumbered

He was not outnumbered nor did 'crush' the crusaders in most battles.Hattin was his greatest victory ,won more by startegy and udnerstanding of logistics than tactics alone.He also lost 2 battles to crusaders while outnumbering them badly.He was a good strategist,great leader,mediocre tactician.

 

[kaku1]

Fol is a blogger's opinion in Quora

Quora - Your Best Source for Knowledge



Who was the most successful military leader in history?

Asked after Waterloo who he thought the greatest general of all time was, the Duke of Wellington is known to have said, without missing a beat:

In this age, in past ages, in any age: Napoleon.

And so there we have the opinion of the general who beat the greatest general of all time. The other military leaders in other answers surely have their merits, but in none of those cases was the leader's military genius so clearly manifest, that right after a battle their bitterest foe could only marvel at it.

Waterloo was a brilliant victory for Wellington and for Britain. It was a crushing defeat for Napoleon, forever ending French dreams of uniting Europe under the Tricolore, but it was close. As Wellington himself pointed out, the battle was "the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life". Except for a few elements of chance (which military historians have furiously debated since 1815), Napoleon might very well have succeeded in doing to Prussia and Britain what he had done to allied armies on numerous occasions before. Forty occasions, to be precise--the Emperor, in his back-handed humility, once remarked that, "My glory will not be the fact that I have won forty battles...Waterloo will erase the memory of so many victories." As it turns out, however, Waterloo did not erase the memory of those victories--Austerlitz, Marengo, Jena and many others--many of which are studied by professional warriors to this day.

But what makes Napoleon stand out from the myriad other possible candidates for "most successful military leader in history"? I would consider it a combination of three elements:

1. Military Innovations/Reforms: His implementation of tactical, strategic and logistical reforms defined the way the most destructive wars in history would be fought
2. Personal Charisma: Talents for organization and strategy aside, one did not advance in Revolutionary France as quickly as Napoleon did without winning over the rank and file troops with courage under fire
3. Long-lasting Legacy: The Europe--and therefore the world--that Napoleon left behind would ultimately be the same Europe that exploded into global catastrophe in 1914, which had very direct effects not just on Europe but through to Northeast Asia, Middle East and America

1. Military Innovations/Reforms
The contribution Napoleon made to advancing war into the modern age is difficult to quantify. Conceptually, many things that would be recognizable to any soldier today were either inventions of Napoleon, or ideas that he inherited from the Enlightenment-inspired French Revolutionary armies and perfected over the course of his reign. Among these:

• The use of the army corps as a significant administrative and tactical unit. Prior to the French Revolution, armies were relatively small. The introduction of mass conscription by the Republic suddenly swelled the size of the armies that commanders had to control; both to instill some order and exploit this new advantage, Napoleon made huge contributions to the organization of national armies. The combined-arms, self-contained corps, mutually supported by other corps, was a key factor that enabled the French to run rings around their enemies' more sluggish armies early in the Napoleonic Wars.
  
  
• Military logistics as a science rather than an ad hoc arrangement. Napoleon very famously said that "An army moves on its stomach", and under his leadership, the French supply systems became legendarily efficient, inventing among other things the supply depot, the canned ration and the mobile field ambulance
  
  

• The "grande batterie". Napoleon seemed less interested in outmaneuvering his enemies than annihilating them, and there is perhaps no better proof of this than his invention of massed artillery. His original training as an artillery officer showed in the effectiveness that artillery reached in the Imperial Army. Rather than scatter cannons throughout infantry units, he united all of a corps' artillery into a single unit that would concentrate its fire on one point, softening part of the enemy line for the rest of the army to storm through. The concentration of heavy artillery continues to play a prominent role in military strategy today.

A Soviet grande batterie in action against Berlin in 1945.

• The infantry column. Before Napoleon, infantry primarily attacked enemy positions in one long line, a tactic that the Dutch had started to introduce in the late 16th and early 17th centuries (Maurice of Nassau was a devout student of the linear tactics used by Alexander and the Roman legions). But the mass conscript mobs that comprised the French Revolutionary armies didn't have the training required to hold a single line during an attack, and in any case, a line could be easily broken. One innovation that Napoleon inherited from the Revolution was the use of massed columns of men, marched headlong across the battlefield into opposing forces like a huge human battering ram. It was costly, but it did the trick.
• The cavalry division. As with artillery, Napoleon was the first military leader in modern history who had both the means at his disposal and the vision to concentrate what had hitherto been a support force into a decisive strike force. As a proportion of military manpower, cavalry units in European armies declined from the 16th century to the late 1700's; upon Napoleon's ascendance at the turn of the 19th century, this trend reversed (briefly), and his use of massed cavalry charges to decisive effect would be emulated by the German panzer formations at the start of the Second World War.

The Polish Lancers ("My Best Cavalry") at Waterloo

German Panzer formation at Kursk


To the above, I would add another military concept that first developed concurrently with Napoleon, though it was a reaction to him, rather than his invention:

• Guerrilla Warfare. When Napoleon embarked on his ill-advised invasion of Spain, the out-classed Spanish quickly learned that the most effective tool of resistance against France was not their conventional army, but rather the popular resistance that sprung up from the occupiers' heavy-handed rule. The French could hold the field after every engagement, but ultimately they couldn't defeat Guerrilla--Spanish for "the little war"; this was perhaps one of the first instances in which a large, superbly trained and equipped Western military was unable to conduct a successful counterinsurgency against a relatively weak but highly motivated native population

2. Personal Charisma
While in his later years Napoleon wasn't known for leading from the front, that was probably excusable given that in those years he was not only a battlefield commander but also a head of state. As an ambitious young officer, he advanced his career at considerable personal risk, occasionally leading charges himself. At the Battle of Arcole in 1796, seeing his men falter in an attack against the Austrians, Napoleon grabbed a flag, ran out front and started to wave it in an attempt to inspire them forward (think Mel Gibson at the end of The Patriot). It didn't work, but there's no denying that it was foolishly brave--the Austrians' withering fire took down most of the officers who ran out there with him.

Performances like that one earned Napoleon a considerable amount of respect among the grunts. And while, as a military commander, he was ruthless, bloodthirsty and only too willing to throw soldiers' lives away for the next objective, Napoleon's personal interactions with them attest to the way he was able to inspire them. During the ill-fated Russian campaign of 1812, his staff found a house that was already occupied by a wounded young soldier; they began setting themselves up in the house and demanded that he get out to make room for the Emperor, but when Napoleon found out, he ordered them to let the wounded man stay there, vacated the house and found accommodations elsewhere. Another time, he asked the commander of a veteran regiment who the bravest man in the unit was; when the commander told him, Napoleon walked up to the soldier, removed the Legion of Honor medal that he was wearing, and pinned it to the man's lapel.

There aren't many well-known speeches by Napoleon, but one of them surely deserves mention. Lincoln gave the Gettysburg address, Norman Schwarzkopf gave his great speech after Desert Storm, Shakespeare beautifully imagined Henry V's "band of brothers" speech at Agincourt, and Russell Crowe had his little speech in the beginning of Gladiator. After Austerlitz in 1805 (widely considered his greatest victory), Napoleon had this to say:

Soldiers, I am proud you! In the Battle of Austerlitz you have justified all that I expected from your intrepidity. You have decorated your eagles with immortal glory. An army of one hundred thousand men, commanded by the Emperors of Russia and Austria, has been, in less than four hours, either cut in pieces or dispersed. Thus in two months the third coalition has been vanquished and dissolved. Peace can not now be far distant. But I will make only such a peace as gives us guarantee for our future, and secures rewards to our allies. When everything necessary to secure the happiness and prosperity of our country is obtained, I will lead you back to France. My people will behold you again with joy. It will be enough for one of you to say, 'I was at the battle of Austerlitz;' for all your fellow citizens to exclaim, 'There is a brave man.'

So great was his inspirational effect that the Allies considered his presence at a battlefield to be roughly equivalent to adding 40,000 men to the French forces, and indeed would eventually learn to isolate his corps commanders and force them into fights when he was least able to come to their aid.

3. Long-lasting Legacy
I think this is probably the most difficult factor to argue for, in the sense that we tend to view history as a linear process, and so it seems logical that whoever comes first must necessarily have influenced everything and everyone who came afterward.

Would Napoleon have even been possible without the brilliance of, say, Frederick the Great or Marshal Turenne before him? Perhaps not. But what is certain is that the world before and after Frederick the Great--brilliant a general as he was--wasn't nearly as radically changed as it was after Napoleon was done. I would argue that the Europe that existed in 1815 at Napoleon's defeat--the Europe that would go on to subjugate Africa and Asia, setting the stage for all of the global calamities of the 20th century--was very much one of Napoleon's making, some of it his intention, much more of it just the after-effects of his monumental imperial ambitions.

This is not to say that the military leaders who opposed Napoleon were wusses in their own right. Au contraire: on many different levels, Napoleon was brilliantly, catastrophically out-played by his opponents.

• Admiral Nelson annihilated the French Navy not once, but twice--at Aboukir Bay in 1799, and most famously at Trafalgar in 1805, forever ending the possibility of beating Britain, and paving the way for a century and a half of "Britannia, rule the waves"
• The Duke of Wellington smashed the French in Spain, and is the only general (so far as I'm aware) who batted 1.000 against Napoleon on the field
• Tsar Alexander I of Russia, a ruthless strategist with a big mouth and a very big stick, out-maneuvered Napoleon diplomatically and eventually destroyed the Grand Army in a grueling war of attrition

Still, what all three of these guys have in common is that for two decades their nations' combined efforts were devoted solely to checking the voracious monster for military conquest that was Napoleon himself. And what did those conquests result in? Well, an abbreviated list would include:

• Spanish nationalism: The atrocities committed by the French united Spain in a way that it hadn't been before
• German nationalism:Napoleon would prove to be the last French ruler who would make the small weak German states bend to his will. In the decades that followed, Prussia ("the eagle hatched from a cannonball," as Napoleon put it) would gradually accumulate more power in its efforts to check France
• Polish nationalism: In an attempt to undermine both Russia and Austria, Napoleon had restored Polish sovereignty, and even though it was again split up after his defeat, Poland would never again just accept domination by its larger neighbors. Poland's national anthem even includes a verse paying tribute to Bonaparte!
• American expansionism: Let's not forget that much of this country west of the Mississippi River came in the form of the Louisiana Purchase, which Napoleon sold to Thomas Jefferson in 1803, in order to pay off war debts
• A dominant Royal Navy: After the Napoleonic Wars ended, Britain had the mightiest navy in history, which would be put to very productive use in the next century consolidating its existing dominions, and conquering new ones
• A System of Laws: In his retirement, Napoleon could not stop talking about how wonderful his "Code Napoleon" or Civil Code was--France's first unified code of laws, and the basis for much of European law today
• Other, smaller things: Napoleon's conquests, which he sold to his subjects as "liberations" from their Russian/Austrian/Prussian masters, lit the fuse of democracy in what had previously been feudal societies, and despite the concentrated [and occasionally bloody] efforts of the Great Powers to put down those movements throughout the 19th century, they would eventually make their way to the surface. Along the way, Napoleon also introduced the metric system, the idea of putting odd and even addresses on opposite sides of the street, and over-size Cap'n Crunch hats into local wardrobes
• Latin American liberation: Inspired by the liberal values that Napoleon promulgated (but did not practice or himself believe in), and with their Spanish colonial masters seriously weakened by the fight against Bonaparte, the various conquered peoples of South America revolted and fought for independence. The guarantee of Latin American independence from Europe ("the Monroe Doctrine") would go on to be a cornerstone of the foreign policy for the nascent United States
• The Congress of Vienna: To ensure that a generalissimo as potent and aggressive as Napoleon never rose to power again, the Great Powers of Europe (Austria, Prussia, Russia and England, plus France) convened after his abdication. They agreed in principle what a Europe sans Bonaparte should look like; among other things, it enabled the Great Powers to collude in crushing democratic movements [which I alluded to above]. For a century, it was perhaps successful in averting warfare on the same scale--never mind the very real and very deadly Crimean War, and the wars Prussia waged against Denmark, France and Austria. But in any event, it contained some of the seeds of its own destruction, of which the First World War would be the most horrifying consequence

So there you have it: My long-winded case for why Napoleon was the most successful military leader in history. Again, other military leaders may have outperformed him in certain respects. Leonidas bravely fought against probably the worst odds ever recorded, leading 300 Spartans against 400,000 Medes. Alexander the Great crushed the mighty Persians at age 25 by leading a cavalry charge straight at the King of Persia. Lord Nelson won some of the most brilliant, lop-sided victories in naval history. Genghis Khan conquered the largest empire the world has ever seen. Georgy Zhukov saved Russia, and the world, from Hitler, and beat the German inventors of Blitzkrieg at their own game.

But when you look at the big picture, consider that:

1. On the battlefield, Napoleon was barely touchable
2. As a leader of troops in combat he was second to none
3. His legacy was so wide-reaching and long-lasting that it can't really be quantified, and it is still everywhere for us to see

Based on those factors, my answer is the same as Wellington's.

It was Hitler, for sure, but he is also in category of most failed.

you forget the great leader
Sher Shah Suri

He was one of the greatest leader in India, bring the concept of Rupee, GT Road.

 

[500]

Bad grande strategist you could say.He invented operational strategy in the modern sense.

Operational, but not global.

Egyptian campaign french navy failed him .

He planned oversea campaign but forgot that British navy is much higher quality.

Spanish campaign he didn't fight himself,for a month he was there he swept aside all opposition.

Still failed.

And russia was a true disaster well he atleast got to moscow....hitler and charles didn't manage that.

Hitler captured in Russia territory equal to 3 Frances. Napoleon captured a narrow strip.

So yeah he failed notably on various occasions due to bad logistics,ego and ignoring nationalism's power..but to say horrible is a bit over the top.

His major campaigns have failed. How he can be called the most successful military commander in history? Influential maybe.

 

[AUSTERLITZ]

Gustavas adolphus and maurice of nassau can be truly called 'fathers of modern warfare' i agree with sven svensonov.Sadly gustav was killed before we saw more of him.Lech was a perfect river crossing operation and bretenfeld destroyed the tercios of tilly superseding shock warfare with fire superiority.I'll rank gustav as one of the most succesful but not the most.

Overall i will disagree that napoleon is the most 'succesful,i am of the opinion napoleon was the greatest battlefield commander ever,but not the most succesful because in the end he lost.Most succesful in my opinion would be one of these guys -

1.Genghis khan
or
2.Alexander the great

In modern times (after railways)
1.Helmuth von moltke
or
2.Georgy Zhukov.

 

[Srinivas]

Alexander
Ashoka
Raja Raja Chola
Gengis Khan
Hannibal Braca
Julius Ceasar

to name a few

 

[kaku1]

I think,the most succesful military leader in history would be Sultan Salahuddin Ayyubi.He alone crushed the crusaders in almost all battles while mostly outnumbered

Then you should praise- "This is SPARTA !!!".

Gustavas adolphus and maurice of nassau can be truly called 'fathers of modern warfare' i agree with sven svensonov.Sadly gustav was killed before we saw more of him.Lech was a perfect river crossing operation and bretenfeld destroyed the tercios of tilly superseding shock warfare with fire superiority.I'll rank gustav as one of the most succesful but not the most.

Overall i will disagree that napoleon is the most 'succesful,i am of the opinion napoleon was the greatest battlefield commander ever,but not the most succesful because in the end he lost.Most succesful in my opinion would be one of these guys -

1.Genghis khan
or
2.Alexander the great

In modern times (after railways)
1.Helmuth von moltke
or
2.Georgy Zhukov.

You left Otto Von Bismark?