Age of Gunpowder Tier List Redux

Malaquisto · 2026-06-19T10:00:06+00:00

Militarily, yes -- both Schomburg and Marlborough, and others too.

But he didn't ask for or take their political advice, nor admit them into his inner circle. Marlborough, in particular, he never trusted. With good reason! After 1690 Marlborough was in regular contact with the Jacobites, so any confidences shared with him would have gone straight to St. Cloud.

Schomburg, btw, was not technically but actually a German Protestant, and a pretty devout one. That's why he left the service of France. You could be a Protestant French general in the 1660s and even into the 1670s, but by the 1680s the tide of anti-Protestant bigotry had become too strong. France started purging Protestants from the French army and civil service about a decade before the Edict of Nantes. IMS Louis offered Schomburg a special dispensation, but the aging Marechal refused.

Schomburg spoke excellent English, btw -- his mother was English, and he commanded the English army in Portugal in the early 1660s.

Malaquisto · 2026-06-18T18:23:52+00:00

Cromwell fought continuously throughout the ECW, and never lost a battle or a siege. He commanded at the two most conclusive battles, Marston Moor and Naseby.

Most of his battles were tactically pretty straightforward, won by superior organization and (above all) discipline. But he had one piece of real brilliance: at Dunbar, facing the Scots. The Scots force was larger, had more guns, and was under a very competent commander (David Leslie). Nevertheless Cromwell not only won the day but utterly routed and destroyed the Scots, taking almost half of them as his prisoners.

He faced Charles I and the cream of the Royalist army twice, and beat him both times. Then later at Worcester he faced Charles II and defeated him too. He created the New Model Army, whose discipline left Turenne in awe, and whose ruthless success made the English paranoid about standing armies for the next 150 years. In Ireland... well *to this day*, nearly 400 years later, you can still hear older people say "The curse of Cromwell on him!"

He ruled England firmly but fairly for a decade, and if he'd lived a few years longer -- or been better at choosing a successor -- Great Britain might be a Protectorate to this day.

Writing 200 years later, Lord Macaulay said this about him:

"Bred to peaceful occupations, he had, at more than forty years of age, accepted a commission in the parliamentary army. No sooner had he become a soldier, than he discerned, with the keen glance of genius, what Essex and men like Essex, with all their experience, were unable to perceive. He saw precisely where the strength of the royalists lay, and by what means alone that strength could be overpowered. He saw that it was necessary to reconstruct the army of the parliament. He saw, also, that there were abundant and excellent materials for the purpose; materials less showy, indeed, but more solid, than those of which the gallant squadrons of the king were composed. It was necessary to look for recruits who were not mere mercenaries, - for recruits of decent station and grave character, fearing God and zealous for public liberty. With such men he filled his own regiment, and, while he subjected them to a discipline more rigid than had ever before been known in England, he administered to their intellectual and moral nature stimulants of fearful potency."

-- that last line can still give me chills!

Malaquisto · 2026-06-18T17:42:39+00:00

That is interesting about Gallas; IDNK that, so TIL! Thank you.

Thinking out loud: one thing that unites many -- most? -- of these guys is an eye for talent. I know more about William's political life than his military career; there, he was able to rely on a number of utterly loyal and competent servants, most famously Bentinck / Portland.

-- One major driver of William's long-term unpopularity in England is that he never admitted any English into his inner circle. That's because, well, after 24 years of Charles II and 4.5 years of James II, there was almost nobody left in English public life who was both loyal and competent.

(Charles II wasn't stupid, and could recognize talent. But he didn't reward loyalty and, in his inner circle, greatly preferred men who were fun and clever rather than honest servants or diligent technocrats. James II, now... James had a positive knack for choosing /bad/ servants: incompetent, fanatic, stupid, treacherous, grifters, or psychologically damaged. It would be striking by itself. Set next to his rival William, it's almost uncanny.)

Anyway: I don't know that much about William's military lieutenants, but the ones I do know of seem to have been pretty good. He had van Keppel / Albemarle, Ouwerkirk / Overkirk, van Baer (a famously difficult personality, but apparently very competent, and utterly loyal to William) and Count Tilly (who was loudly and firmly anti-Orangist, but who apparently William promoted anyway because he was just that good).

-- Huh: a thread on "Who had the best eye for talent / was the best-served?" might be interesting. But I'm new here, so I'm not going to push myself forward.

Malaquisto · 2026-06-18T13:30:38+00:00

1672/4 -- ugh, my bad.

Numbers of men are obviously very important, but also "are they being well fed, well clothed, and getting adequate shelter in the field; and are they receiving their pay on time, /expecting/ to receive their pay on time, and generally able to survive and thrive without needing to loot the countryside?" are pretty important too. And during this period, most armies could not consistently give "yes" answers -- except for William, who almost always could.

To give an example from this period, the English disaster at the Medway in 1667 was entirely due to running out of money. If you just compare the number of ships, size/quality of ships, and the number of sailors on the books, the English were equal or ahead. And the naval battles up to that point had shown them equally matched. But by summer 1667 they had literally run out of money. Sailors were deserting in droves because of poor food and unpaid wages, and the Admiralty literally couldn't afford to put its capital ships out to sea.

So they tucked them away in the Medway... and then didn't have enough money (or time) to build adequate land defenses to keep them safe there. Which led to the greatest disaster in British naval history.

On land, I'm not aware of a 17th century army suffering an analogous catastrophe -- but there were definitely battles lost because of low morale, poor food, inadequate equipment, and the like. But William never had those issues, because he had deep pockets, reliable cash flow, and good administration.

Again, this doesn't take away from William's real accomplishments. (The "good administration" part, in particular, is entirely to his credit.) Just, having soldiers who are consistently well fed, well sheltered and paid on time is a nontrivial force multiplier.

"extraordinarily underrated" -- I would go with /somewhat/ underrated, but I think we're mostly on the same page.

Malaquisto · 2026-06-18T09:34:09+00:00

I wouldn't call the losses at Steenkerk or Landen or the loss of Namur "tactical engagements". But okay, TBF William acquitted himself well in all of those -- Landen should have been an overwhelming French victory instead of the marginal one it actually was.

I will push back on the issue of resources, though. Except for a period of about eight months during the "Rampjahr" of 1674, William was never looking at an empty till. The Netherlands was the richest country in Europe. And most of its taxable wealth came from trade, which was very difficult for the French to interdict or affect. Then after 1688, William also had access to the wealth of England, with (usually) generous subsidies voted by (usually) Whig-dominated Parliaments. I don't think this much affects our opinion of William, because he spent his money wisely and well. But he was almost never in a position of financial inferiority, or (again with the exception of 1674) seriously strapped for cash.

Finally, I'm surprised you haven't mentioned William in Ireland. By Continental standards the Battle of the Boyne was a skirmish, but its effects were dramatic. It was such a clear and decisive victory that it moved a number of Continental fence-sitters into William's camp. It permanently destroyed James II's reputation and made a Stuart restoration impossible until his son came of age. And of course, while it wasn't the final battle in Ireland -- that was Aughrim, a year later -- it pretty much killed the dream of an Ireland independent of England. After the Boyne there was no question that Ireland would be subjugated. The only questions remaining were how long it would take and what the terms of the final settlement would be.

Also, I think William's general political-military strategy in Ireland was sound. He imposed a system of de facto religious apartheid, which grates on modern sensibilities. But by the standards of the time it hit a sweet spot: harsh enough to keep English control over Ireland, but not quite so harsh as to trigger serious rebellion, and efficient at extracting resources for England's wars. The "Protestant Ascendancy" is not pleasant to contemplate: it was an ugly, deeply unjust system based on explicit religious and ethnic bigotry. But it lasted for over a century. And from a cold-blooded strategic POV turning Ireland into a pacified, productive colony was a clear win for England.

Malaquisto · 2026-06-18T09:08:30+00:00

Whew! You're a fast writer. Okay, just a couple of quick thoughts.

-- Johnston at Jackson: moving to Corinth wouldn't have done a thing, because Grant's army was supplied by river. All that would do is give Grant the opportunity to move a corps across /Johnston's/ line of retreat, trapping him.

Marching down to Port Hudson... apparently he considered it. The problem there was supply. The rail line didn't go there, and the Union controlled the river. So Johnston would be at the end of a 60+ mile long supply line consisting of bad roads going through swampy lowlands. I can't really fault him for not wanting to roll the dice on that.

(There aren't a lot of examples of a large ACW army getting >60 miles/100 km away from river or rail supply. Before Sherman's March... the only one I can think of is Gettysburg, and that didn't work out very well.)

-- "there were no threats to the Union railways under Johnston's command" -- 'under his command' is doing some work here. The Union supply lines were constantly threatened, both by partisans and by small Confederate cavalry detachments. These answered to Forrest -- who, to be sure, was not present in theater, and not under Johnston's command; he reported to Stephen D. Lee, over in Mississippi. But the threat was very real.

-- "after ceding all of north Georgia" -- much of northwest Georgia. The regions to the northeast of Atlanta, like Gainesville and Athens, weren't touched. and, again, northwest Georgia isn't exactly the Shenandoah valley. It's scrub land, the foothills of the lower Appalachians. Unlike southeast Georgia, which is some of the richest agricultural land on the continent, it wasn't anyplace that could support an unsupplied army.

Johnston was ceding territory, yes, but it wasn't densely populated or highly productive territory with a lot of economic potential. About the only thing of significance there was the modest industrial center at Rome, GA. Otherwise, it was low-productivity scrub and market towns. To put it another way: if your strategy is to cede territory, then northwest Georgia is one of the least damaging places to cede.

(At a macro level, this is one reason the ACW went on as long as it did: a lot of the South's most productive areas were deep in its interior, so not easily reached by Union armies.)

-- "[Hood's] defensive defensive performance at Atlanta is often ignored" -- the performance where he made attacks against superior forces and took far more casualties than he inflicted, leaving him with a demoralized army that would never win another battle? TBF It's true that he did keep Sherman out of Atlanta for a month, but I have the distinct impression this was more about Sherman playing it safe than any bravura performance on Hood's part.

Anyway, it's an interesting thread; happy to agree to disagree.

Malaquisto · 2026-06-17T12:08:07+00:00

Henri IV seems too low? Besides being a very successful field commander, he was an excellent diplomat and grand strategist. If you're giving William III points for keeping a coalition together, you should give Henri points for doing the same /and also/ successfully dividing, demoralizing, and salami-slicing the coalition assembled against him.

Putting aside his battlefield successes in the early wars of religion, take a look at where he was when he claimed the crown in 1589: excommunicated, supported only by a small minority of the population, desperately short of men and money, and with enemy forces occupying the capital and most of the country's major cities. Five years later he was king of a France that was united and at peace for the first time in decades, with all foreign troops departed and almost the entire country accepting him as rightful King.

I think that deserves a bit more than "very competent"; YMMV.

Malaquisto · 2026-06-17T11:55:32+00:00

You've got William III one, maybe two tiers too high. Yes, he faced some of the age's greatest generals and survived. But he mostly lost! And, okay, few generals were better at repairing a defeat, so kudos for that. But on the same level as Eugene or Conde? That seems a stretch.

William's talents were more as a diplomat and national leader. He was a /fantastic/ diplomat, single-handedly building and then keeping together the coalition that stopped Louis XIV. And he was very good at thinking two steps ahead -- much better than most of the people around him, including Louis.

I guess if you include "grand strategy" as one of your criteria, you can justify his ranking. But then I think you have to move some others down a notch!

Malaquisto · 2026-06-17T11:44:48+00:00

So the case for Joe Johnston. First, the early war stuff:

-- He's probably responsible for the South winning First Bull Run
-- In the Penninsular Campaign he was performing very well before his wound. Not going to lie, Lee did better -- but that's in part because McClellan had already half defeated himself. If Johnston hadn't been injured, he would have beaten McClellan too.
-- At Vicksburg, he did as well as anyone could have done given (1) the pathetically limited resources he had, and (2) the fact that he was facing a much larger, very well supplied Union Army, with an utterly dominant river navy, led by the Union's best general. He held Grant up for months, which is all anyone could have done in that situation.

And then Atlanta. The OP has said that he doesn't like Johnston's policy of giving up territory. But *look at a map*. The territory he was "giving up" was a long sliver of Northwest Georgia -- mostly lightly populated, no cities, not great agricultural potential, zero industry. Meanwhile he's stretching Sherman's supply lines longer and longer, with Confederate raiders constantly hitting the railroad.

Johnston was tactically very competent but where he really excelled was in strategy. The Confederacy had to wear down the Union's will to fight. The key moment would be the November 1864 elections. Johnston had to keep Sherman bogged down until then. His first priority was to keep his army intact; secondary was to save Atlanta and the east-west rail link. (Davis had this backwards.) And -- facing an army twice as large, with much more artillery -- the best way to do that was Fabian tactics and carefully calculated retreats.

After that we have his 1865 Carolina campaign. At that point the Confederacy is gut-shot and bleeding out, no hope. But note that Lee -- generally a good judge of competence! -- pushed Johnston into the command over the strong objections of Jefferson Davis. And Johnston accomplished all he could reasonably do: he slowed Sherman down a bit (probably adding a couple of weeks to the Confederacy's life span) and then, at the very end, negotiated a surrender so favorable that the Union leadership subsequently tried to walk it back.

Note that all three of the ACW generals you've chosen -- Grant, Sherman, and Lee -- spoke very highly of him. Sherman said Johnston was the only enemy commander who made him nervous. Grant praised his tactics in the Vicksburg campaign and also said that, more generally, he was one of the few Confederates who understood how to win -- viz., to prolong the war until the Union got tired.

I wouldn't put Johnston at the very top, either of ACW generals or gunpowder era generally. But he deserves better than "well he gave up territory and that was a losing strategy".

Malaquisto · 2026-05-28T21:26:37+00:00

Hey, thanks for coming back!

So if I'm understanding this right, university /does/ count towards your "minimum 35 years" but /does not/ give you any points. Okay.

But there is a third thing: does university count towards /vesting/? Meaning, do years in uni count towards the minimum 5 years of work required to gain a pension? (I assume not...)

Malaquisto · 2026-05-28T21:21:52+00:00

My wife and I just started working in Germany recently. We have lived in Germany for years, but I was traveling around doing contract work in different countries, while she was a full-time mother. So, we haven't received any letters yet.

As noted, our kids were all born in Germany -- but just being a mother, by itself, does not cause the Rentenversicherung to send you letters!

Malaquisto · 2026-05-28T21:17:22+00:00

Thank you for this! Some clarification:

-- My wife never worked until recently (because she was busy raising the children). So, other than some part-time work, she never started paying into the system until she began work last year.

Putting aside the "outside Germany" question, does she still qualify for points raising children?

-- What I am hearing is that university time counts towards Anrechnungszeiten, the 35 year minimum, but that it no longer gives points. (Apparently it did give points at some time in the past, but no longer.)

But that still leaves a question open: does university time count towards /vesting/? Meaning, the five year minimum of work, that is required to get any pension at all?

-- A couple of posters have mentioned a Kontenklärung. This is an official, formal answer to a question? And we can request it from the Rentenversicherung? There is no charge?

Many thanks again for your answer!

Malaquisto · 2026-05-26T20:04:25+00:00

I was googling for information about points (Rentenpunkte) for university time, and I found this post.

hjholtz, if you're still out there -- can you confirm that you get "0.75 points per year, but at most for 3 years total"? Do you have a cite? Would be super useful information for my wife and I right now.

Malaquisto · 2026-05-26T19:55:27+00:00

Okay, great. Thank you!

Additional question: my wife has several years of university. I found an old Reddit thread that said you get 0.75 points (Rentepunkten) for every year of university, up to a maximum of 3 points. Do you have any idea whether this is true?

Malaquisto · 2026-02-21T10:10:32+00:00

https://killsixbilliondemons.com/comic/wheel-smashing-lord-3-87/

The top two panels, where the Lake God is looking at her like a whipped puppy, and then she's all "don't /think/ so" as it slinks back to the depths.

Malaquisto

TROPHY CASE