Ranking Some Generals in the History of Warfare

A major problem with ranking Mongol generals (and a lot of others) in this list is that there simply aren't historical accounts of most of their battles. Yes, the Mongols did send a large scouting force into Europe which wreaked havoc that entered recorded history in several places. That was a scouting force, not anything approaching what the Mongols would have considered one of their main armies. There are some accounts of travelers finding the aftermath of some of their battles in the near east, but much of their activity went on in places that did not keep such records. Just stitching together an empire in the steppes would have required a tremendous string of campaigns that not even Chinese historians would have any knowledge of.

Another major problem with this ranking is that, in many cases, the battlefield was not "level". Sometimes literally, but also technologically, socially, etc.. For example, Napoleon's Grande Armée was quite different from any other European force in its composition, supply, and leadership. It wasn't a small group of nobles carrying on knightly traditions, like most other European countries had. It was every freakin' Frenchman that could hold a rifle. For supply its soldiers relied heavily on foraging and raiding, which allowed them to move faster than opposing armies could. Command was highly distributed and Napoleon's commanders had a lot more information and leeway to act. When big battles happened, command chains had a way of breaking down, and that put traditional, strictly top-down command structures at a disadvantage. Napoleons army was bigger, faster, and smarter (if left to its own devices) than other European forces. It's arguable that Napoleon won so many battles, not because of his own tactical performance on the battlefield, but because he built a better army than those his peers built. Is that tactics? To put it another way, would Napoleon have fared as well against other French commanders had a schism occurred and he been faced with a civil war against half of his own army?

Julius Caesar had an even more overwhelming advantage over most of his opponents, thanks to the extreme disparity in organization between Roman legions and the Gauls or pretty much anyone else who wasn't Roman. He did spend some time fighting other Romans, but which type of opponent shot him up this list? Also, Caesar is probably one of the luckiest military commanders in history. If not for his luck, Caesar and his forces could have been annihilated in a dozen different battles and history would just have said "Well, that was a poor choice". How much does Caesar's luck inflate his position on this list?

Finally, one huge difference between baseball and historical battles is the historians. You can get a pretty unbiased view of any baseball game in the last few decades because you can actually watch a recording of it. Historical accounts of battles, on the other hand, are subject to all kinds of bias, exaggeration, etc.. Just the numbers of combatants involved become notoriously unreliable in all but very recent history, if they're even reliable then. For example, casualties inflicted by U.S. forces in the Vietnam war are often thought to be wildly inflated because they were often just assumed. e.g. U.S. forces take fire from somewhere in a jungle. They call in a napalm strike. Everything burns and the shooting stops. The U.S. commanders have incentives to pad their body counts, so they assume everybody shooting them (seemed like there were hundreds of them!) was wiped out. Accounts of battles just aren't trustworthy in a quantitative sense most of the time.

This isn't a ranking of number of people killed. It's a ranking of how many battles were won given their resources. You don't necessarily win a battle by killing as many people as possible.

I think anyone who is remotely reasonable would agree that sometimes war is necessary, such as in wars of national survival like for the UK in the Second World War.

If we've agreed that war is sometimes necessary, we better make sure that we have people who are extremely good at it, which this is recognising and analysing.

On this note, Otto von Bismark might be one of the most accomplished heads of state of all time, what he managed was pretty extraordinary, but at the same time he was swimming with the historical tide, so it somewhat magnifies his accomplishments "great man" style.

I wonder how true this is of many generals as well.

In baseball, WAA is a measurement of wins above the average player and is actually a far better measurement for Hall of Fame worthiness. Even better is a variant, peak WAA, is a mathematical measure of how far above average players a player reached.

WAA helps you compare between those with long careers that weren't great players and those who were truly great players who had short careers. The author needs a WAA for this comparison, not WAR.

Can't say we have. What would be the benefit?