Old Boney, of course
But first, a few historical rectifications.
Originally posted by Gazrok
That's like assuming Britain's "Indian armies" were Indians.
For the most part, and most of the time, they were.
The army of the British East India Company recruited primarily from Muslims in the Bengal Presidency (which consisted of Bengal, Bihar and Uttar
Pradesh), and high caste Hindus recruited primarily from the rural plains of Oudh. These troops had been predominant in the Indian Mutiny [of 1857]
allegedly due to crass and insensitive treatment by British officers evident in the rush to reinstate the Mughal king Bahadur Shah II at Delhi.
Post-Mutiny recruitment switched to what the British called the "martial races," particularly Rajputs, Sikhs, Gurkhas, Pashtuns, Garhwalis, Mohyals,
and Dogras. Jats and Balochis also provided many soldiers.
Source* * *
Originally posted by cassini
Do generals count as great warriors? If they do Xenophon the greek gets my vote. His exploits can be read in The Persian Expedition...
...which he wrote himself. Not that this is an automatic disqualification; Caesar's
Gallic Wars is generally reckoned pretty hot stuff.
Xenophon isn't. Historians have established that his works were self-servingly distorted and suffered badly from having been written many years after
the events they describe, when Xenophon was an old man. Great reading, though. Real
Boys' Own stuff.
Originally posted by Illmatic67
you still havent told me where I'm wrong about Napolean.
Well, you could get his name right, for a start: it's Napoleon, as in Bonaparte.
Further information, in condensed form, can be found in this
excellent biographical
summary.
If you want the full story, you'll find all you could wish for
here.
If the term 'warrior' means 'one who makes war', Napoleon Bonaparte was without question the greatest and most successful warrior of the last
millennium. He took on all the Great Powers of Europe at once and trounced the lot of them. Only the Russian winter was too much for him; and his
eclipse on Elba weakened France and allowed her enemies to regroup, leading to his final defeat by Wellington and Blucher.
Throughout his career, his strategy and tactics were unrivalled, leaving his enemies confused and off-balance. His exploits helped inspire the
greatest military textbook of all time, Clausewitz's
On War and
Beethoven's first great symphony. Military historians generally acknowledge his pre-eminence among warriors since Alexander.
* * *
If anyone was to ask me who to name the greatest warrior after Napoleon, I might say Ho Chi Minh. He did not invent guerrilla warfare but perfected
it. He kicked the world's largest military power out of his country and laid the foundations of a stable and increasingly prosperous modern state.
Ho, in a sense, completed the reinvention of warfare for the third millennium.
Another great was
Marshal Zhukov; no other Allied (or Axis) general of the
Second World War could hold a candle to him.
[edit on 19-11-2008 by Astyanax]
