Who was the greater general, Napoleon or Caesar?
There is no settled answer. Napoleon fought on a larger scale, against tougher coalitions, while Caesar changed the shape of the Western world for longer. Caesar founded a system, the road from republic to empire, that outlasted him by centuries. Napoleon left a code and a model of the modern state, but his empire fell within his own lifetime.
Two soldiers who seized a state and bent it to their will, born nearly nineteen centuries apart. Julius Caesar conquered Gaul and made himself master of Rome; Napoleon rose from revolution to rule most of Europe. Both were brilliant generals and ruthless politicians. So who was the greater? Here they are, side by side.
Head to head
| Napoleon | Julius Caesar | |
|---|---|---|
| Lived | 1769 to 18211 | 100 to 44 BC2 |
| Age at death | 51, in exile on Saint Helena3 | 55, assassinated in Rome, “in the fifty-sixth year of his age”4 |
| Years in power | First Consul from 1799, emperor 1804 to 1814 and again in 1815, about 15 years5 | Proconsul in Gaul from 58 BC; first named dictator in 49 BC; dictator for life by his murder in 44 BC6 |
| Role | Emperor of the French and general | Roman general, then dictator |
| Greatest victory | Austerlitz, 1805 | Alesia, 52 BC |
| Realm at its height | About 2.1 million km² (0.81 million mi²) for France and the lands it controlled in 1813, on Rein Taagepera's estimate7 | Gaul, roughly modern France and Belgium; Plutarch credits him with more than 800 towns taken and 300 peoples subdued there. No modern estimate measures his own conquests in km²8 |
| Battles | About 60 fought, 7 lost, by Andrew Roberts's count9 | 7 main battles won (Bibracte 58, the Sabis 57, Alesia 52, Pharsalus 48, Zela 47, Thapsus 46, Munda 45 BC); 2 lost, Gergovia 52 and Dyrrachium 48 BC10 |
| Wars | Won the wars of 1805 to 1809; lost those of 1812 to 1815 | Won the Gallic War and the civil war |
| Undoing | Russia in 1812 and the coalitions; fell at Waterloo | Assassinated in 44 BC before settling the new order11 |
| Lasting legacy | The Napoleonic Code and modern warfare | The end of the Republic and the road to empire |
Who lived first, Caesar or Napoleon?
Caesar, by almost nineteen centuries. He was born in 100 BC and killed in 44 BC; Napoleon was born in Ajaccio, Corsica, on 15 August 1769. That puts 1,868 years between their births, and Napoleon came into the world 1,812 years after Caesar left it.12
What links them across that gap is the political path: each used a loyal army to take control of a republic, and each ended it. For Caesar's own clash with the man he displaced, see Pompey vs Caesar.
Caesar: the general who became Rome
Julius Caesar made his name in the long conquest of Gaul, crowned by the siege of Alesia in 52 BC, then crossed the Rubicon and beat Pompey in a civil war fought across the Mediterranean. A master of speed, logistics and his legions' loyalty, he made himself dictator of Rome, only to be assassinated in 44 BC before he could settle the new order.13
Napoleon: the master of Europe
Napoleon rose from the French Revolution to dominate a continent, winning masterpieces like Austerlitz in 1805 and reshaping law, the state and the art of war. He fought far more battles than Caesar and against coalition after coalition, until the invasion of Russia in 1812 broke his army and Waterloo in 1815 ended him for good.14
Who was the better general, Napoleon or Caesar?
There is no single answer, because it depends on what you measure. Judged purely as a battlefield commander, Napoleon has the stronger case. He led armies many times larger than Caesar's, fought more great battles against stronger enemies and made the corps the building block of his army, a system studied ever since. Caesar wins on a different measure: he never lost a war. His defeats were setbacks he repaired, while Napoleon's last ones, at Leipzig and Waterloo, ended his reign.
The gap in scale is the heart of it. At Pharsalus on 9 August 48 BC Caesar beat Pompey with about 22,000 legionaries against some 47,000. Napoleon took more than 615,000 French and allied troops into Russia in 1812, and at Leipzig in October 1813 he had nearly 200,000 men against more than 325,000. No one man could steer forces of that size, so Napoleon split his Grande Armée into semi-autonomous corps for speed and flexibility. Caesar's battles stayed small enough for him to reach the point of crisis in person, and Plutarch shows him doing it: trying to stop a rout at Dyrrachium, running through his wavering ranks at Munda.15
The enemies differed too. Caesar fought Gallic tribes and then Roman armies trained exactly like his own. Napoleon faced the regular armies of Austria, Prussia and Russia, and in 1813 a coalition that added Britain and Sweden. Caesar's own numbers also need care, because he is often the only witness. At Pharsalus he claimed 15,000 enemy dead; modern estimates are nearer 6,000.16
How many battles did Napoleon and Caesar win and lose?
By the historian Andrew Roberts's count, Napoleon fought about 60 battles and lost 7. Caesar's record is shorter and harder to total: he won seven main battles, from Bibracte in 58 BC to Munda in 45 BC, and lost two, at Gergovia in 52 BC and Dyrrachium in 48 BC. The two counts are not like for like.17
The list for Caesar takes in only his main pitched battles. The ancient biographers tell the same story of him. Suetonius lists only three reverses in nine years in Gaul: a fleet nearly wrecked by a storm off Britain, a legion routed at Gergovia, and two of his generals ambushed and killed on the German border. In his own battles, Suetonius adds, the result was in doubt only twice, at Dyrrachium and in the last fight in Spain.18
Napoleon's seven defeats included the battles that decided his wars, Leipzig in 1813 and Waterloo in 1815; his wins cluster in the years 1805 to 1809, from Austerlitz to Jena and Wagram, ranked in our guide to the greatest Napoleonic battles.19
Their records side by side
Neither man was unbeaten. These are the battles that made, and dented, each reputation.
| Napoleon | Julius Caesar | |
|---|---|---|
| Major wins | Austerlitz 1805, Jena 1806, Friedland 1807, Wagram 180920 | Alesia 52 BC, Pharsalus 48 BC, Zela 47 BC, Thapsus 46 BC, Munda 45 BC21 |
| Defeats in battle | Aspern-Essling 1809, Leipzig 1813, Waterloo 181522 | Gergovia 52 BC, Dyrrachium 48 BC23 |
| Best win against odds | Austerlitz: about 75,000 men at hand against an allied army of about 90,000, which lost about 27,00024 | Pharsalus: about 22,000 against some 47,00025 |
| Largest army | Over 615,000 into Russia, 1812 | Six legions at the start in Gaul, twelve later26 |
| Wars | Won 1805 to 1809; lost 1812 to 1815 | Won the Gallic War and the civil war |
The pattern matters more than the count. Caesar's defeats came in the middle of wars he went on to win. Napoleon's came at the end, when the wars themselves were being lost.
Did Napoleon admire Caesar?
Yes, but critically. In exile on St. Helena Napoleon dictated a study of Caesar's wars, the Précis des guerres de César, published in 1836. Each chapter sums up a campaign and then judges it as a soldier would. He praised Caesar's results, faulted some of his moves and put him on the short list of commanders every officer should study.27
Napoleon did more than admire Caesar. He graded him. The text was written down by Marchand at the emperor's dictation and printed in Paris in 1836. Napoleon counted eight campaigns in Gaul and found that in thirteen campaigns overall Caesar was beaten three times, at Dyrrachium, at Alexandria and in Africa, "but these setbacks had no effect on the outcome of his wars."28
He was not soft on the detail. Caesar's maneuvers at Dyrrachium, he wrote, were "extremely rash, and he was punished for it": how could anyone hold siege lines six leagues long around an army that controlled the sea? It reads like one great captain marking another's homework. The maxims collected under his name say the same thing in general form. Maxim 78 tells officers to read and reread the campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus, Turenne, Eugene and Frederick, and to model themselves on them. Caesar was on Napoleon's reading list; how Napoleon measures up to another name on it is the subject of Hannibal vs Napoleon.29
How each handled his worst defeat
Caesar's hardest year in Gaul was 52 BC. At Gergovia his men pushed too far up the hill and were thrown back with the loss of 46 centurions and nearly 700 soldiers. The next day he paraded the army and rebuked it for its recklessness, then kept the campaign going, and before the year was out Vercingetorix had surrendered at Alesia.30
Dyrrachium in 48 BC was worse. His lines broke, 32 standards were lost and he was nearly cut down by one of his own fleeing men. Plutarch has him say that the enemy would have won that day "if they had had a victor in command." He slipped away to the plain of Thessaly and beat Pompey there that August.31
Napoleon's first great check came at Aspern-Essling on 21 and 22 May 1809, his first major defeat in a decade, which cost him 20,000 to 23,000 casualties and Marshal Lannes, who was mortally wounded there. Six weeks later he crossed the Danube again and won at Wagram on 5 and 6 July.32
Russia was another matter. He lost about half a million men there in 1812, yet by March 1813 he had raised a new army of 150,000 and beat the Russians and Prussians at Lützen and Bautzen. Short of cavalry, he could not exploit those wins, and Leipzig followed. Caesar's crises were single battles he could repair. Napoleon's last crisis was most of Europe in arms, and no victory in the field could repair that.33
How did Napoleon and Caesar die?
Caesar was murdered; Napoleon died of illness in exile. On the Ides of March, 15 March 44 BC, senators led by Brutus and Cassius stabbed Caesar 23 times at a meeting of the Senate in the hall of Pompey. Napoleon died on Saint Helena on 5 May 1821, aged 51; the autopsy pointed to stomach cancer.34
Caesar was 55, “in the fifty-sixth year of his age” in Suetonius's phrase. Suetonius and Plutarch both give the number of wounds, and Suetonius records a physician's view that only the second, in the chest, was fatal. The meeting hall stood within the theater complex Pompey had built. Napoleon's death has drawn theories of arsenic poisoning, based on high arsenic levels in his hair. A 2007 study led by the pathologist Robert Genta reviewed the doctors' reports and eyewitness accounts and judged the evidence for stomach cancer overwhelming, though World History Encyclopedia still calls the cause debated. How Napoleon's end compares with that of a conqueror who died on campaign is covered in Genghis Khan vs Napoleon.35
The verdict
As a battlefield commander, Napoleon was the greater of the two. He fought about 60 battles to Caesar's handful of major ones, took more than 615,000 men into Russia when Caesar won Pharsalus with about 22,000, and faced the regular armies of every great power on the continent.36
Three caveats keep this from being a rout. First, Caesar never lost a war, while Napoleon lost the last two he fought and his empire with them. Second, much of what we know of Caesar's battles comes from Caesar himself, so his record cannot be checked as Napoleon's can. Third, Caesar's political work lasted longer: the road from republic to empire outlived him by centuries, while Napoleon's empire fell in his own lifetime, though his legal code endured.37
Napoleon fought on a larger scale against tougher coalitions; Caesar built his power from less and changed the shape of the Western world for longer. Caesar faces a very different conqueror in our Genghis Khan vs Caesar comparison.
Compare more in Napoleon vs Alexander and Alexander vs Caesar, or meet the field in the greatest military commanders.
Test both men's battles in the Roman battles quiz and the Napoleonic battles quiz.
About this comparison
Each commander above has a full biography on this site, with its own sources. Judgments of who was "greater" are ours and openly a matter of debate; the facts and dates follow established histories. See our editorial policy.
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