Clash of the Best Historical Armies

[Elfwine]

Thanks. I like to play the contrarian sometimes.

People underestimate early guns because they only think about what the top 1% of bowmen were capable of. They say "this bow has a 200 yard range and can fire 7 shots a minute!" While disregarding that even for the best bowmen, they won't hit squat at 200 yards because on an even mildly windy day their arrow will blow many yards if not tens of yards off target, and that firing seven shots a minute with a bow is not something someone, anyone, not the strongest man on earth, could keep up for more than a few minutes (go fire 20 arrows in 3 minutes and find out how your arm feels!) .

And massed bowfire is not aimed at individual targets, so this is not nearly as big a deal as it sounds like.

Guns on the other hand are not nearly as effected by wind, and have a much lower training time and a simpler manual of arms, plus they are scary and create wounds which are more likely to lead to a causality, by which I mean, a musket ball bill definitely take someone out of a battle if it hits them, and arrow may find a shield and stick of bounce off of a piece of armor. Economically though if you lose one bowman you've lost multiple years training him if he's any good; if I lose one musketeer I can have him 100% replaced in a week or two, and that's all I've lost. It's essentially economic, musketeers have a lower marginal cost to achieve effectiveness. A bowman with two weeks training would be practically useless

No, you can't. You might be able to train him with a musket quickly - although there early muskets can be complicated - but as a useful soldier? No.

It's instructive to remember that it was Europeans carrying flintlock and percussion cap muskets/rifles that colonized a sizable chunk of the world. Well trained and drilled men with muskets (especially flintlock or PC, I admit) are the deadliest pre-modern force there is, it's a style of warfare which maximized destruction to the point that armies avoided battles because even a win meant you lost 30-40% of your men. Imagine an army like this coming into contact with one that didn't maximize destruction in this way? I'll stop now though because I'm beginning to project a later version of warfare onto this.

In a specific Mongol versus Tercio scenario the Mongols hold many advantages, chief among them the low number of guns among the Spanish.

Not much to add to this, however.

 

[Arachnid]

Do they really, as of the early 1860s? On the officer corps, that is.

And what numerical superiority?

Prussia has 200,100 men in 1860 - the US armies in the ACW are up to a million men strong total (figures for Prussia based on the Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, which lists "military personal", but given Prussia's minor navy, we can it barely counts).

Now, I don't know if that's counting all the reserves Prussia can call up, but it seems it took a while for that to be set up in full.

So you are comparing the peacetime Prussian Army of 1860 with the wartime Union army of 1864?

That is hardly fair, you've got to compare like with like

1859: Peacetime Prussians vs. Peacetime Union=Prussian victory by a massive margin.

1862: Peacetime Prussians vs. Mobilised Union= Union Victory, thanks to superior numbers and experience.

1870: Mobilised Prussians vs. demobilised Union= Easy Prussian victory.

The only fair question is to compare the Union Army at it's height i.e. 1864/5 and the Prussian Army at it's height in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War. And considering the Prussian had a clear tactical and technological advantage thanks to having learnt the lessons of not only the ACW but also the Schleswig War, the Austro-Prussian War and the Franco-Prussian, coupled with a large professional, long service officer corps of much higher social standing (and thus quality) than the Union Army I think it's a clear Prussian win.

 

[Elfwine]

So you are comparing the peacetime Prussian Army of 1860 with the wartime Union army of 1864?

I don't have figures for 1863 (the year I'd use, not 1864, for the Union army), if you do, I'd be a happy clam.

That is hardly fair, you've got to compare like with like

1859: Peacetime Prussians vs. Peacetime Union=Prussian victory by a massive margin.

1862: Peacetime Prussians vs. Mobilised Union= Union Victory, thanks to superior numbers and experience.

The point is, Prussia in the early 1860s (as distinct from late 1860s) isn't quite such a military giant - thus the 1862 situation and my point that Prussia is outnumbered. It's not about quality, since I vote for Prussia (if not as a cakewalk), just quantity.

[quoet]
1870: Mobilised Prussians vs. demobilised Union= Easy Prussian victory.

The only fair question is to compare the Union Army at it's height i.e. 1864/5 and the Prussian Army at it's height in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War. And considering the Prussian had a clear tactical and technological advantage thanks to having learnt the lessons of not only the ACW but also the Schleswig War, the Austro-Prussian War and the Franco-Prussian, coupled with a large professional, long service officer corps of much higher social standing (and thus quality) than the Union Army I think it's a clear Prussian win.[/QUOTE]

Fair? If we're going to be picking armies separated by centuries, "fair" has nothing to do with it.

So would I take to the 1863 Prussian army over the 1863 Union army? With reservations.

Picking Prussia in 1870 over the US in 1863 (or 1864, whatever) is like picking 1814 France for Napoleon's army, only the other way around.

 

[thrashing_mad]

Actually it was exactly the opposite. Polish/Hungarian infantry of XVI century was much more shooty than Spanish exactly because of Eastern-style opponents. In fact when Stefan Batory created the "Chosen" Infantry (Piechota Wybraniecka) in 1570s he did not bother at all with pikes. Also since the very beginning of the century polish infantry banners were equipped with noticably larger amount of firearms than western ones as a counter to Tatar threat.

It is true that usually Tatar raids were engaged with cavalry, but it was mostly due to their speed and the fact you had to catch them; something Infantry was poorly equipped for. However general rules for engagement against Tatars were to use as much firepower as possible because they were very vulnerable to it, much more than to pure cavalry attacks; thats partially why Tatars were more often than not avoiding pitched battles - with large amount of firearms they were next to useless, even in the era when they were familiar with them (see how easily Tatar attacks were repulsed by polish centre at Berestechko on 3rd day or battle of Kamieniec Podolski in 1634 as examples).

Though I am not sure if Genghis-Khan Mongols would share this vulnerability to firearms (even though most nomad armies did).

What I meant was that while PLC utilised western style infantry (German/Scottish mercs) and cavalry (rajtaria) it was used mostly against European opponents, not on the 'Wild Fields'. Of course, majority of PLCs army was quite different. Post Bathory Polish-Hungarian infantry didn't bother with pikes because cavalry was decisive force on the battlefield, not because they were effective at winning battles.

 

[Benjamin XVIII]

No, you can't. You might be able to train him with a musket quickly - although there early muskets can be complicated - but as a useful soldier? No.

As long as he can march in a line and pull a trigger he will be more useful than a bowman with comparable experience up to a certain point. At a certain point the musketeer will top out in effectiveness, but a man with two weeks training with a musket is still more useful than a man with to weeks training with a bow. Though I will also add that I was overemphasizing to make a point with the whole "two weeks" thing. A decent, useful soldier would probably need to have a couple months of training to be effective. However, I would still say that a bowman would need more training, much more, than what people are always saying is the "maximum range" and "maximum number of shots a minute" that certain bows are claimed to have. To be able to make that number of shots, aimed or not, in a minute is extremely taxing on the body.

And massed bowfire is not aimed at individual targets, so this is not nearly as big a deal as it sounds like.

On the aim part I can grant you, in a volley it wouldn't be a big deal if the arrow was off target, but the rate of fire is a big deal in a one - on one confrontation. Of course the mongols have the ability to ride away and change for other troops, which I admit makes this somewhat pointless in this exact scenario, but in the above post (that you quoted) I was simply trying to speak generally about the advantages of guns over bows. Please forgive me if I've strayed from the topic at hand.

For me, the end game is this, the Mongols stand a good chance of winning an engagement, but if the Spanish are smart and can maximize the advantages they have (cannon being chief among them, as well as command of the sea). That's not to say that they will do this, but they might get lucky or someone with a lot of skill may take over.

I find the idea of a "war" much more intriguing TBH. If we say, stuck 1541 century Spain (and her empire) into say, 1241 and had them do something egregious enough to make the mongols want their blood, how would this play out? If they can fortify the mountains heavily enough (with cannon) or draw the mongols into a confrontation close enough to the sea for ships to come into play, it's a very different ball game. What do you guys think?

 

[Elfwine]

As long as he can march in a line and pull a trigger he will be more useful than a bowman with comparable experience up to a certain point. At a certain point the musketeer will top out in effectiveness, but a man with two weeks training with a musket is still more useful than a man with to weeks training with a bow. Though I will also add that I was overemphasizing to make a point with the whole "two weeks" thing. A decent, useful soldier would probably need to have a couple months of training to be effective. However, I would still say that a bowman would need more training, much more, than what people are always saying is the "maximum range" and "maximum number of shots a minute" that certain bows are claimed to have. To be able to make that number of shots, aimed or not, in a minute is extremely taxing on the body.

Oh aye, a bowman is definitely in need of more training. I'm just trying to say that you can't just literally pull anyone off the farm, give them a musket, and they're as good as your veterans.

And agreed on the demands of archery. Bows might still have an advantage, but we're looking at 3-4 shots, not 12-15, to a musket's one.

On the aim part I can grant you, in a volley it wouldn't be a big deal if the arrow was off target, but the rate of fire is a big deal in a one - on one confrontation. Of course the mongols have the ability to ride away and change for other troops, which I admit makes this somewhat pointless in this exact scenario, but in the above post (that you quoted) I was simply trying to speak generally about the advantages of guns over bows. Please forgive me if I've strayed from the topic at hand.

No worries, and a valid point made.

For me, the end game is this, the Mongols stand a good chance of winning an engagement, but if the Spanish are smart and can maximize the advantages they have (cannon being chief among them, as well as command of the sea). That's not to say that they will do this, but they might get lucky or someone with a lot of skill may take over.

I find the idea of a "war" much more intriguing TBH. If we say, stuck 1541 century Spain (and her empire) into say, 1241 and had them do something egregious enough to make the mongols want their blood, how would this play out? If they can fortify the mountains heavily enough (with cannon) or draw the mongols into a confrontation close enough to the sea for ships to come into play, it's a very different ball game. What do you guys think?

All in agreement, especially on that as a more interesting scenario. It makes this a contest of trying to maximize advantages and minimalize disadvantages, which there's no way "open field battle" (which is not "perfectly even for both sides") can do as well.

Also, campaigns are just more fun to discuss.

 

[Benjamin XVIII]

All in agreement, especially on that as a more interesting scenario. It makes this a contest of trying to maximize advantages and minimalize disadvantages, which there's no way "open field battle" (which is not "perfectly even for both sides") can do as well.

Also, campaigns are just more fun to discuss.

Yes sir they are... I am tempted to open a discussion of this campaign in the ASB section.

 

[Elfwine]

Yes sir they are... I am tempted to open a discussion of this campaign in the ASB section.

I hope you do. I don't know enough about the tericos to comment intelligently (I know some but hardly enough to do this justice), but I would love to see it.

 

[Snake Featherston]

1) Caesar will kick Alexander to the curb. Alexander didn't fight any competent enemies so he wouldn't know what to do with one if he fought one.

2) The Rashiduns win. In terms of that timeframe and disparity of knowledge, there is only one real exception to the rule, and IIRC the Parthian system was not exactly structured for what the Rashidun-era Islamic army would represent.

3) The Crusaders stomp Trajan's legions into the ground. Medieval weaponry and tactics are superior to that of the Roman era.

4) Genghis Khan wins primarily because his full panoply of power was structured on modern lines, while these guys will be thinking nomads = disorganized mob. They have no preparation for an organized, skilled nomadic army structured on a modern-style command structure. It's this combination that's the Mongol ace in the hole with any pre-modern enemy.

5) Napoleon kicks Frederick the Great to the Curb. The simple size of his armies and of his artillery alone would do this.

6) Prussia would defeat the Union Army the same as it did all its other opponents in the 1860s: superior organization and command structure. The US Military in no era will ever win points in a military sense for either organization or clarity of command.

7) The BEF defeats the 1920s Red Army on grounds of superior weaponry, organization, and discipline.

 

[Snake Featherston]

The Spanish will probably win against the Mongols, their guns and cannons will scare the Mongols as well as give them a pretty good advantage when actually fighting them.

The Mongols introduced gunpowder to much of Central Asia and Eastern Europe. It won't scare them at all. By contrast Spanish military tradition of fighting nomads is used to the relatively poorly organized Native Americans, not the huge, disciplined forces of the Mongols.

I can't beleive people are voting Mongols over the Spanish... Horse archery tactics destroy disorganized cavalry and especially ones as well
organized as the Mongolians horse archers can take down many a force. But the bane of horse archers is men on foot with missle weapons. Musketeers protected from cavalry by pikemen PLUS relatively light cavalry armed with sabers and muskets/crossbows/pistols is a recipe for disaster for an army that relies primarily on horse archers and light lancers; not to mention the spainish having a high degree of organization themselves; which was OTL the Mongols
Main advantage.

Thing is what the Spanish are used to fighting in nomadic terms is rather disorganized, loosely-federated peoples who don't have any kind of real command structure. When they fought powerful Native American states their victories were due to exploiting local politics. Which isn't possible against the full Mongol army. The Mongols had gunpowder weapons of a primitive sort, so there's no surprise factor, and ancient guns couldn't hit the broad side of a barn at point-blank range, so.......

 

[Snake Featherston]

Have you ever fired a gun or had one fired at you? 16th century guns weren't all that reliable, but there is a reason that they replaced bows... It's quite the myth that early muskets were "useless." if the Mongols concentrated enough to be effective they would be vulnerable to volleys, which would tear them apart.

And they would have a much harder time with Spanish cavalry armed as light lancers as they were themselves or with pistols or crossbows. You have to think of the morale element in all this. Guns are scary, especially "ineffective 16th century ones" because they make a big morale dent, especially in an army with no experiance of them.

Yes, namely that early guns are cheap to manufacture, with the limitation here being supplies of powder. Guns also required less training to teach people how to use, bows and arrows, OTOH, required rather long-term training. The Mongols had gunpowder and kicked the ass of the one society of their time that made very good use of it, the Song Dynasty. Spaniard psychological tricks won't save them, it'd have to be a serious, straight-up fight.

If the exact situation you described above happened then they would win. But anyone could describe any situation like that, I could describe one were the Mongols do something retarted and end up in trouble too.

As far as the bow is concerned. Have you ever fired a bow? That "twice the range" stuff is crap, except under ideal conditions and even then it's hard to pull off. I know that the Mongol horsemen were excellent at what they did, but hitting a target from the back of a horse with a bow is hard, and not achievable at the supposed "max" ranges of a certain kind of bow. I fired recurve bows at targets at fifty yards and could manage after four months of training everyday to consistently hit the bullseye... Standing in one spot, in nice weather, and NOT being shot at by a gun and NOT on the back of a horse.

The numbers is a good point though :0

My point is that it would come down to location and objectives. If the Mongols had to take a certain place, they might end up in trouble in say the alps. If the Spanish are in totally open terrain they would probably also be in trouble.

To be honest I was just sniffing some Mongol fanboyism and felt the need to adress it

Actually the most crucial element here is that this is the Mongols under Genghis Khan, a man who won every single battle he ever fought. It's his leadership of the Mongols that'd be the decisive element. As far as the rest of it..........under his successors the Spaniards pull off an Ain Jalut. Under Genghis, the Mongols pull off a coup akin to the defeat of the Song.

The Mongols have indeed made extensive use of their bows and would not need to be hitting individuals. The Spanish don't need to hit individuals either, just pull the trigger and watch Mongols horses freak out and run.
I'm happy to admit their are situations in which the Mongols could win, but they aren't guaranteed a victory against an enemy with a 300 year tech advantage, that's all.

And I wasn't comparing myself to them, just pointing out that people tend to hand wave "the Mongols could do it!"

The Mongols have experience with gunpowder and use of gunpowder shock. They, after all, defeated the Song dynasty which made plenty of use of it. So if the Spaniards think that gunpowder shock, i.e. psychological employment of heavily inaccurate firearms, is going to save them, they're wrong. The Mongols have a modern-style command structure, and by modern I mean akin to the 20th Century's armies. A 16th Century army is too rigid in some senses to cope well with a more modern structure of that sort, though this is counterbalanced by the Mongols being centuries behind. Under Genghis, they win. Under one of his successors? The Spaniards kick ass and take names.

 

[Snake Featherston]

Thanks. I like to play the contrarian sometimes.

People underestimate early guns because they only think about what the top 1% of bowmen were capable of. They say "this bow has a 200 yard range and can fire 7 shots a minute!" While disregarding that even for the best bowmen, they won't hit squat at 200 yards because on an even mildly windy day their arrow will blow many yards if not tens of yards off target, and that firing seven shots a minute with a bow is not something someone, anyone, not the strongest man on earth, could keep up for more than a few minutes (go fire 20 arrows in 3 minutes and find out how your arm feels!) .

Guns on the other hand are not nearly as effected by wind, and have a much lower training time and a simpler manual of arms, plus they are scary and create wounds which are more likely to lead to a causality, by which I mean, a musket ball bill definitely take someone out of a battle if it hits them, and arrow may find a shield and stick of bounce off of a piece of armor. Economically though if you lose one bowman you've lost multiple years training him if he's any good; if I lose one musketeer I can have him 100% replaced in a week or two, and that's all I've lost. It's essentially economic, musketeers have a lower marginal cost to achieve effectiveness. A bowman with two weeks training would be practically useless.

It's true that some master bowmen could beat some musketeers. It's also true that those master bowmen could have to face the same force (not the exact same force obviously) again in a week because those men would have been replaced.

It's instructive to remember that it was Europeans carrying flintlock and percussion cap muskets/rifles that colonized a sizable chunk of the world. Well trained and drilled men with muskets (especially flintlock or PC, I admit) are the deadliest pre-modern force there is, it's a style of warfare which maximized destruction to the point that armies avoided battles because even a win meant you lost 30-40% of your men. Imagine an army like this coming into contact with one that didn't maximize destruction in this way? I'll stop now though because I'm beginning to project a later version of warfare onto this.

In a specific Mongol versus Tercio scenario the Mongols hold many advantages, chief among them the low number of guns among the Spanish.

And in reality the gunpowder empire was not just a European phenomenon. The Muslims actually did the "We have cannons and guns, you have bows. Our turn, now" thing first, while the Qing were the odd one out in being a polytheistic gunpowder empire instead of a Muslim gunpowder empire. Where the Muslim dynasties failed in the long term was in sufficient adaptation of new variants of infantry tactics and modern small arms, they were the originators of most of the gunpowder meets arrows, gunpowder overruns arrows concepts. When Europeans colonized the planet, they did so with Maxim guns, not gunpowder. The machine gun was much more decisive as it put up far too much firepower for an attack to be feasible.

Two most interesting ones for me are Trajan vs the Crusaders and the USA Civil war forces vs Prussia. I believe that Trajan would have no problem. His forces were a professional army. The best of the best. The Crusaders were a mob with some very good heavy horse soldiers. For the Civil war Union soldiers vs Prussia. Are Grant, Sherman and Sheridan, leading the Union? If so it is no contest. The Union wins hands down. If Burnsides or Pope is leading the Union the Prussians I would think could pull it off. I have though read many accounts of the Unions great grandsons beating the Prussans great grandsons not once but twice in the next 80 years. Many an army has under estimated the fighting ability of the American military.

I disagree with that. Grant, by European standards, is a skilled maneuverer of some imagination but he's purely a competent general, not a truly brilliant one. I would not qualify any Confederate general for a Top 10 list of Greatest 19th Century generals, and Grant would only qualify as 16 at the most. Neither side in the US Civil War as much to speak about in terms of organization or military skill.

 

[mowque]

Neither side in the US Civil War as much to speak about in terms of organization or military skill.

Well we just threw huge hordes of poorly trained conscripts at each other in human waves.

 

[Snake Featherston]

Are we talking the Union Army of 1862 or Sherman or Grants armies of late 1864?
If we are talking the 1864 armies we are talking about armies that could stand against withering fire, accept huge casualties and continue advancing. You are talking about an army that taught the rest of the world how to use railroads (and both repair and destroy them) I don't think the Prussian army had the experience of having to press on after huge casualties that the Union Army did. I don't think the Prussian army had to move the distances that the Union Army showed itself capable of operating over.

I think the Union Army in 1864 was one of the greatest armies of all time (Along with the Soviet Army of 1944-45 and The German army of July 1941 among others)

I think that this is a vast overstatement, in terms of the Union Army. Any statement praising the Soviet Army must be qualified by the reality that its most brilliant feats were possible only by virtue of a huge quantity of US trucks. The late-phase Soviet army reflects on the coalition nature of WWII and the overall vast superiority of the Allied coalition over the Axis than it does on the Soviet Army by itself, which 1941-3 is the best arbiter of (and where it did in the event grind up the Wehrmacht but never showed the ability to take half a continent without major help).

The argument that winning a long civil war makes one a juggernaut curiously is never applied during this timeframe to the Qing dynasty, which defeated the Taiping Rebellion.

 

[Snake Featherston]

Well we just threw huge hordes of poorly trained conscripts at each other in human waves.

More accurately everyone except Grant and Thomas on the Union side did that, and in terms of shortening the death toll, paradoxically, it's Thomas, who sought annihilation of enemy armies who would have done better than Grant. Primarily because a shorter war with fewer, but bloodier battles saves all the lives that died from things like cholera and dysentery caused by the lousy sanitation practices of the time. It's forgotten that quite a few Civil War deaths weren't from combat but from disease. And that in war terms this only started to change in WWI and even held true in individual fronts of WWII (chiefly New Guinea).

 

[Vingilótë]

The argument that winning a long civil war makes one a juggernaut curiously is never applied during this timeframe to the Qing dynasty, which defeated the Taiping Rebellion.

Well, at least the United States wasn't balkanized with the help of European powers following their civil war.

 

[Kaiphranos]

7) The BEF defeats the 1920s Red Army on grounds of superior weaponry, organization, and discipline.

Superior weaponry in terms of average quality of personal weapons and the like, right? The Red Army will presumably have an advantage in armor and aircraft, even though their other problems may not allow them to use these to their fullest potential. Also, it seems like the Reds would have a numerical advantage...

 

[Benjamin XVIII]

I hope you do. I don't know enough about the tericos to comment intelligently (I know some but hardly enough to do this justice), but I would love to see it.

I opened a discussion which can be found here:

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?p=5953906#post5953906

My knowledge of Tercios is mostly from books I read over 3-4 years ago, so sketchy is fair to call it. Earlier in this thread I couldn't believe how off I was about the early 16th century ratio of muskets to pikes. I KNEW that, but I forgot it. So it will hopefully be a refresher course for me

I hope you all will participate!

 

[historyfool]

I´ll comment only on those contested I really have knowledge about. Caesar and the BEF have simply far to big an advantage and about the others my knowledge is not big enough:

Traian is facing exactly that opponent the Roman army had real problems with. In an open field battle the classic Roman legion has simply nothing to oppose heavy cavalry. Whenever Parthians or Sarmatians clashed with them in a fair fight they won. The crusaders are simply an improved version of those armies. If the Romans have luck with the weather, can prepare a position or they meet in rough terrain, they have a fair chance. But even then you have to remember that even infantry in most crusader armies tended to be more "professional" than your average medieval western army since their local subjects tended to be very unreliable against their classical enemies and they had to "import" mercenaries. Also they have quite a lot of weapons to crush even heavy armour, while the Roman helmets even had problems with Dacian Longswords. Thus the crusaders have imo depending on circumstances a slight to very large advantage.

The clash between Napoleon and Fritz is pretty equal. Purely from the leaders Fritz is imo the slightly better, but I admit that is subjective and they are really almost equal. But the improvements, as small as they seem at the first view, of twenty or thirty years mean that Nappy has a big advantage, not least because he can replace his soldiers easier and can use them more boldly. France wins without a doubt.

And finally US army against the Prussians. Their support structure should be about equal, since both are among the pioneers in using railroads in warfare. The real differences are in quantity and quality. The Union fielded in the civil war a total of 2.8 million men, as opposed to the German 1.4 million men (sadly I have no breakdown by state at hand to take Prussia seperatly) had mobilised at the end of the war with France without problems. But while many Union soldiers were volunteers without previous training, every Prussian called up was a trained reservist. And this training included the Auftragstaktik, which one US observer during the war with France viewed as a chaotic behaviour in the Prussian lines instead of a quick reaction by a subordinate officer. Which leads directly to the leadership question. While the Union had some good, even outstanding officers and ousted the really bad ones during the war, they had a small trained officers corps. The Prussians otoh had probably the best trained officer corps in the world and a (for its time) very good staff system. Both together allowed even a sub-average commander to perform adequatly and made someone like Moltke even more efficient. Equipment-wise the Prussians also have a significant advantage. They have breechloading rifles since the early 40s, which means that even reserve units are equipped with it by now. But the true war winner are their breechloading, rifled steel guns introduced since 59 for field and siege.
In a war between only those two additional factors would have to be considered as well, like strategic depth, the nearly untouched Prussian manpower in the cities or the role of the American South, but since such a war is probably asb lets assume they simply meet in a battle: Overall the Prussians have the better chances to win unless they get pinned down in a close quarter fight where only numbers count very early. But somehow I can´t imagine that any half competent Prussian officer willingly gets his army dragged into what would be a gigantic pubbrawl.

 

[Snake Featherston]

Well, at least the United States wasn't balkanized with the help of European powers following their civil war.

True, but the reality is that Zheng Guofan did much of the same things for China Grant did for the USA in our own Civil War. His name never tends to get a mention in the 19th Century generals list, though he was the founder of the Beiyang Army and with it modern Chinese military traditions. The reality of US Civil War generals is that only three of them displayed real-for-true skill on a tactical level, Grant, Thomas, and Lee. Of the three, Lee acted like a stereotypical Union general without the resources to make that up and bled his army white to win his brilliant victories.

Thomas was perhaps the only one able to really end the ACW in a shorter, less gruesome fashion......with the price of fewer but much bloodier and more destructive battles to go with it.

Grant, however, was a brilliant maneuverer, the extremely rare combination of strategist and tactician, and it's this reason that led him to rise to the top. The problem was that his ability to deliver military victories was almost the political ruin of the Lincoln Administration because civil wars are inherently political by nature.

So if we put Thomas v. von Moltke, that's actually an interesting match, given Thomas's own string of powerful attacks and great successes to go with them.

Grant v. von Moltke is a more complex question, and it would depend on who outmaneuvers whom.

Anyone else on the Union side bar Rosecrans at his best? Fuggedaboutit, there's not going to be a battle but a massacre.

Prussia's army has superior organization and leadership at a battle-fighting level.