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A new thread in keeping with the new year and the newer members.

My top 15 (with one dishonorable mention) list of Greatest Generals in the pre-1900 era follows. Who would you rate on this list?

1) Temujin of the Borjigin, aka Genghis Khan. This guy won every single battle in his career, and overran a larger area in one lifetime than anyone outside Alexander the Great. Enough said.

2) Alexander Suvorov. Never lost a battle in his career, even in the start of the Napoleonic Era. Enough said.

3) Alexander the Great. Whatever may be said about him stealing Daddy's army to fight Daddy's war, it was Alexander who actually fought the battles. And he also never lost a battle in his entire career.

4) Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty. One lifetime and he conquered more than the entire Roman Empire at its height, putting China's boundaries in the westernmost extent it would achieve until the Tang Dynasty.

5) King Zheng of Qin, also known as Shi Huangdi, the unifier of China. He created a state in his conquests that has lasted to the present day, a conquest thus more successful than anything else that preceded or succeeded it.

6) Huayna Cupak Inka, conquered the most of any of the Inkas of Tawantinsuyu. That giant space-filling Empire? He made it.

7) Tsar Peter the Great. Poltava set Russia on a path of progressive expansion into the heart of Europe. And that is all.

8) Khalid Ibn Al-Walid. *The* man that made the Caliphates. His conquests began the largest string of conquests in human history, and certainly one of the most enduring.

9) Gaius Julius Caesar. However much of an absolute prick he was he certainly deserves his battlefield fame.

10) Belisarius, the man that for a time reconstructed the Roman Empire.

11) Erich von Moltke the Elder-a man who justly made Prussia's reputation, and unlike Frederick the Great won almost all his battles. Also the man that in the contingent circumstances of OTL unified Germany.

12) Ulysses S. Grant, the man that took a country where the largest army before his war was in the low tens of thousands, and at the peak of his career directed the first national war in US history and took the laws of war, chewed them up, spat them out, then stepped on the spittle-colored detritus.

13) Robert E. Lee, for being the one man who actually did come the closest of any person in the USA to single-handedly undoing the emergence of the USA as a united state and superpower.

14) Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu-took 100 years of war and all ended it in one lifetime. Badass to the bone.

15) Theodosius the Great-the last man to rule the full-sized Roman Empire, won by feat of arms.

Dishonorable Mention-Mikhail Kutuzov, who never won a battle in his entire career but was the only man to actually annihilate an entire army in the Napoleonic Wars. :rolleyes:

Your picks? Admirals are also welcome. ;)
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