Round 3-Napoleonic Bracket

[Meneldil]

Well, Napoleon obviously. It's not called Napoleonic era for nothing, d'oh.
Though one have to admit that his opponents were all in all, quite poor leaders and generals (with some exceptions like Wellington).
He had little contenders during his battle for Europe, and that precisely explains why most of his defeats and ultimately, his fall, were caused not by large scale battles, but by guerilla and exhaustion wars.

He lacked International statesmanship utterly.

Quite untrue, half of Europe joined him in his fight against the other half. How is that a lack of statesmanship ?

The fact that so many coalitions were brought against him so many times is ample example of that.

Or maybe the fact that all these kings, archidukes and tsar were affraid of him ? Most likely because, despite his lust for power and his title of Emperor, Napoleon was a son of the French Revolution. You know, when people started to cut their Kings' heads. He brought with him ideas of democracy, freedom of opinion, republic and what not (though Imperial France wasn't a democratic republic, as I'm sure you would have pointed out).

He posessed better commanders that any other leader at the time.

Arguable, a few were indeed brillants, many were totally overrated. Most of those betrayed him when things turned bad.

Stupidly invaded Russia, what an idiot, obviuosly his head ad grown too large

How is that stupid ? May I remind you that back then, Russia wasn't considered undefeatable ? It's precisely Napoleon's failure (and Hitler's one) that gave birth to this myth.

According to you, Napoleon was just an idiot, with little charisma, that sucked at leading his men to war, but who somehow achieved to rule over Europe and to have all european monarchs bow to him, just, well, cause he had some luck ? How objective that is
It's quite funny seeing how some people (mostly brits) have trouble dealing with Napoleon :D

Yeah, Wellington was a great general, saying otherwise would be stupid. But ranking him higher than a man who ruled most of Europe for more than a decade ? C'mon, if that's not a propaganda coup, what else is ?