The greatest pair of generals who faced each other in battle?

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You missed who won?

Obviously the seige continues. She sends out her minions, the cat destroys them with his paw. The sun sets, upon the morrow the battle heats up anew.

Soon Ender Wiggin will intervene and all will be will.
 
Okay, at first I thought that these two never opposed each other in a battle, but apparently they were both in command of forces at Caporetto, so the obvious answer that has somehow eluded everyone else in this thread is: Luigi Cadorna and Conrad von Hötzendorf.

Dunno... Luigi Cardona is obviously military genius, he is one of the few land commanders whom were namesakes of major naval vessels. But Conrad only achieved a medical service center named after him. Do you think that qualifies as being one of the greatest?
Santa Anna, the Napoleon of the West faced similar problems... never really met a peer in the battlefield.
 
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Napoleon vs Kutuzov
 
I don't think a single pair can be picked, the wars of hannibal and scipio were entirly diffrent to Napoleon and Wellington,

That said for modern front warfare it has to be Rommel and Monty.
 
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I'm going to be sengoku contrarian and place Tokugawa vs. Hideyoshi above Takeda and Uesugi.
 
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When did they fight each other? Tokugawa fought Oda a bit, but Nobunaga wasn't in charge at the time on the other side, was he? Hideyoshi and Tokugawa were in conflict with each other after Hideyoshi took out Katsuie, but did they actually battle?

Tokugawa vs Takeda Shingen definitely happened. But I don't think there's much evidence that Ieyasu was a particularly gifted general, is there? He had great retainers and was good at politics and administration. I'm not sure there's a battle where his personal military leaderships stands out though.

But admittedly with all the sengoku romantizations it's kinda tough to keep a level head about any of those guys. If you believe the Japanese, 17 of the Top 10 generals of all times fought during that era ...
 
When did they fight each other? Tokugawa fought Oda a bit, but Nobunaga wasn't in charge at the time on the other side, was he? Hideyoshi and Tokugawa were in conflict with each other after Hideyoshi took out Katsuie, but did they actually battle?

Tokugawa vs Takeda Shingen definitely happened. But I don't think there's much evidence that Ieyasu was a particularly gifted general, is there? He had great retainers and was good at politics and administration. I'm not sure there's a battle where his personal military leaderships stands out though.

But admittedly with all the sengoku romantizations it's kinda tough to keep a level head about any of those guys. If you believe the Japanese, 17 of the Top 10 generals of all times fought during that era ...
I'm not sure if Tokugawa and Nobunaga were ever on the exact same battlefield, but they were definitely on opposing sides during the same campaign (for instance during Imagawa's invasion that led to Okehazama). I guess it comes down to the extent of how you want to describe battles vs. campaigns (this is even bigger for Hideyoshi vs. Ieyasu, who definitely opposed each other as supreme commanders in a fairly large-scale campaign with multiple battles, but I'm not sure if they were ever both on the same battlefield at the exact same time).

But yes, Sengoku stuff is massively romanticized, just like most major wars in a country's identity. I wouldn't even consider any American Civil War leaders for this list, but there are plenty of people who would swear by Lee/Jackson (and Grant is increasingly getting his due in more recent years), WWII has its own share (Yamamoto is probably the single most overrated naval commander of all time, and I saw people in this very thread mention Montgomery vs. Rommel, both of whom are subject to a ton of mythmaking for propaganda purposes), etc.
 
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Zhuge Liang vs. Cao Cao. :D
I thought about suggestion Zhuge Liang vs Sima Yi.

But this links back to what @Rubidium says - romantication aside - those two were more strategists than necessarily front line generals. So they might have been involved in the same campaigns but I'm not sure they were ever in direct battle so to say with each directly controlling troops.
 
I thought about suggestion Zhuge Liang vs Sima Yi.

But this links back to what @Rubidium says - romantication aside - those two were more strategists than necessarily front line generals. So they might have been involved in the same campaigns but I'm not sure they were ever in direct battle so to say with each directly controlling troops.

I just want to emphasize that my suggestion was 100% based on the romance characters.

But that aside, battle is a broad term and it's sometimes used for whole campaigns rather than just specific instances of pitched battle. I would't quite agree that Chief of Staff types are disqualified.
 
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I'm going to be sengoku contrarian and place Tokugawa vs. Hideyoshi above Takeda and Uesugi.

If Tokugawa Ieyasu was such a great general then why was Mikatagahara a thing?