Washington Voted Britain's Greatest Military Enemy
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Makes sense, and quite an honor.
One odd thing about the story as reported by US News, however, is that they cite Saratoga as evidence of Washington's military prowess. In fact, Washington wasn't present at Saratoga...right? Gates (and Arnold, and Morgan) get credit for that victory. In fact, IIRC, Saratoga was rather a thorn in Washington's side, as there was a Gates faction that wasn't happy with Washington's Fabian strategy. They wanted more Saratogas, and thought that Granny Gates was the man to get them. (Again, from memory, and too lazy to Google, so take latter bit with grans of salt...)
Makes sense, and quite an honor.
One odd thing about the story as reported by US News, however, is that they cite Saratoga as evidence of Washington's military prowess. In fact, Washington wasn't present at Saratoga...right? Gates (and Arnold, and Morgan) get credit for that victory. In fact, IIRC, Saratoga was rather a thorn in Washington's side, as there was a Gates faction that wasn't happy with Washington's Fabian strategy. They wanted more Saratogas, and thought that Granny Gates was the man to get them. (Again, from memory, and too lazy to Google, so take latter bit with grans of salt...)
posted by Winston Smith at
6:50 PM
1 Comments:
I don't know, there's something a bit odd about this poll. Where is Robert the Bruce, for one thing? I get that he is from some place that is now part of the UK, but it wasn't at the time and he defeated the English quite handily. Both Michael Collins and George Washington were British subjects, at least initially, so it seems unfair to rule Robert out on Scotland having become "British" centuries later.
Oliver Cromwell I suppose is excluded for being English, but no one defeated more British armies than he, even if he used (better) British armies to do it.
Really, if you were going to pick Britain's "greatest" - in the sense of most successful - military opponent, wouldn't you choose someone who, say, conquered the place? William of Normandy was not British in any sense. He was a French Viking. But William's victory was so thorough that his invaders became the kernel of the Britich ruling class for the next 1000 years, which hardly seems like a fair reason to leave him out.
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