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[quote=NJGOAT;20683952]Scipio Africanus is certainly a name worth discussing and being listed among the greatest. He certainly meets Napoleons criteria as far as I can tell. Perhaps Napoleons decision to not include him was based on the fact that Scipio studied Hannibal, his contemporary and merely devised a strategy to negate Hannibal's elephants (debatable whether Scipio really invented it) and then defeated Hannibal's forces piecemeal with his cavalry. For the last part, I am merely trying to think of a critique of Scipio as to why Napoleon, who obvisouly knew of him, wouldn't have included him.
NG,
A whimsical answer might be that Napoleon anticipated a book like Liddell Hart's titled Scipio Africanus: Greater than Napoleon. Seriously, though, it's easy to see how an author could become so enthralled with the person that objectivity is sometimes lost and opens the author up to accusations of hero worship and bias, as happened to Liddell Hart for his perceived lavish portrayal of Scipio Africanus and Theodore Ayrault Dodge's equally unabashed admiration for Hannibal. In an over 100-year-old history that I have, the author is very critical of Carthage and its meager legacy to mankind, but of Hannibal he is very generous: "No general in any age or time has ever surpassed, many soldiers believe that none have ever equalled, the military attainment of the master mind of Hannibal."
As an aside, the double-envelopment or pincers movement used by Hannibal at Cannae probably wasn't its first use, but must have been the most dramatic. After the battle, over 50,000 Roman soldiers lay dead and thousands more were taken prisoner. A few more thousands, including Scipio Africanus, managed to escape. Hannibal's losses are thought to have been about 6,000. I read that a variation of the double-envelopment maneuver was used to great effect by Khalid al Walid against the Sassand Persian Empire in the battle of Walaj in 633 AD. Apparently Walid knew nothing of Hannibal's and developed his plan independenly.
More recently in history, Generals Zhukov and Chuikov did the same at Stalingrad in Operation Uranus, which has been called "Zhukov's trap." It would be unrealistic to think that the German High Command were unaware of the possibility of a giant Soviet pincers movement. Hitler's arrogance and penchant for 'snatching defeat from the jaws of vistory' led him to make a disastrous decision, and of course, we know the outcome.
Washington. First, his failings: he wasn't a great strategist or tactician except he chose a hybrid war and especially in the middle colonies the British were not able to deal with that type of warfare. He failed to appreciate the southern theater at first.
On the plus side: he knew his limits, and by putting von Steuben as Inspector General made perhaps the most important decision of his generalship.
Despite having the most modern army of the era, the British commanders could not defeat him and his judgement, political skills with a rowdy group of bickering states, his diplomatic skills enabled the US to win.
By the summer of 1781, the US was on the verge of collapse; there were Continental Army mutinies in NJ and PA, yet he gambled at Yorktown, the rest is history; he did what Napoleon could not do: defeat the British.
Logistically, Yorktown was much about how Washington had grown as a general. He had to coordinate with the French fleet which would not go north of the Chesapeake, deploy part of his army with the French Army, move them south, link them up with forces in the south, transport troops by ship and land, and all the while get food for his troops and horses with worthless currency. For the logistics at Yorktown: https://transportation.army.mil/hist..._Logistics.pdf
Why no Alexander Suvorov? Most contemporary, and have most detailed and accurate info on Suvorov's work, plus Suvorov more relevant to Napoleon's era of warfare.
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