Following the historian Niall Ferguson, France is the country that won the most military battles

by Louping_Madafakaz

46 comments

  1. I’m surprised France has more than UK, tho I wonder how many colonial guns vs spears “battles” were taken into account

  2. Big Niall also wrote a massive book about what a shame it was Britain didn’t join Germany in 1914

    Truly an elite scholar

  4. Now check where it ends up once you remove the 900+ battles france fought against france.

  7. In any case, despite all their victories, the French did not have such a vast and lasting empire as the English, the Spanish or the Romans…

    that means that winning a battle does not mean winning the war! 🙄
    (Napoleon won many battles… in the end, his empire just lasted less than 10 years…)

    (And I have a serious doubt about these numbers… 😅 But I guess it’s french historians)

  8. At what point are they starting the count for „Germany“? 1871?

  9. And you still ended up being Fr*nce, what a shame 🤢🤮

  11. Such numbers are always sus. So many variables and uncertainties.

  12. Are they counting the battles between Spain and Spain as victories or defeats?

  13. You know as the new kid. I’m pretty impressed we got that many wins.

  14. Bah oui ! Why the fuck do you think we are still relevant ??? Because we are nice and people like us ?

  16. Yeah how about winrate? Most battles won is kinda meaningless

  17. France and the British constantly had like 5 on 5 man skirmishes, their number is heavily inflated

  18. Stat padding from England and France. They invaded and unvaded each other for centuries and even had a 112 years war.

    One battle, you win, you get the land.

  20. What is a ‘battle’ in this context? Is it any skirmish? Do wars between a king and his vassals count for the French? What battles did they use for Rome? because I’m pretty sure this isn’t counting the Byzantines who despite the memes were pretty succesful military power for most of their existence.

    So many questions, yet so few answers 🙁

  21. Well of course. Where do you think words “general”, “colonel”, “liutenant”, “gendarme” come from, and why?

  25. Kind of hard to define a “battle”. Rome definitely fought a lot more than 259 battles. The gunpowder age had tons of skirmishes that often didn’t even make it into the history books. Germany doesn’t seem to be counting all of the pre-unification battles Germans fought.

    Mostly a useless list.

  26. We gotta do something about that.

    Can’t let France be in the Lead

  27. “Ferguson writes and lectures on [international history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_history_(field)), [economic history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history), financial history and the history of the [British Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire) and [American imperialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_imperialism).[^([4])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niall_Ferguson#cite_note-4) He holds positive views concerning the [British Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire).”

    Probably completely unbiased list. Just a coincidence that UK (and through them France) and USA tops the list.

    Yeah, I am sure USA won more battles than Rome…

  30. I think the win rate would be a lot more interesting, if France would finally stop fighting France for once they’d have a lot less victories

  31. US third despite having 250 years of history, totally legit ranking.

  32. Any single Chinese battle has more deceased combatants and civilians than all the other battles of history combined.

    “Siege of Bing Chilling, started because a farmer pretended to be Jesus’s brother. 875422 combatants dead 6780086542 trillion civilians eaten, decisive Tang Victory. The country is unified. The following year the country breaks apart in 8 factions.”

  34. I am a bit surprised at the low rank of Rome. For a country existing so long and being in constant war for the most time of its existence 259 won battles doesnt sound right

  35. Considering the high numbers, I would like to know that didn they consider battles, specially seeign the large amounth of german battles for a country that barely has 150years or Turkey, a country even younger.

  36. France is a little bit like the team that makes the final every season but still hasn’t won the trophy.

  37. Sometimes I think my fellow countrymen forget on which sub they are on.

    In other words, LMAO LOOK AT THOSE PUNY COUNTRIES UNDER GERMANY!
    CHINA?? ROME?!?
    How long did these “””empires””” last again??

    Germany/Prussia/HRE big numbah 1#* 💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻💪🏾💪🏻🇩🇪🇩🇪🇩🇪🇩🇪🇩🇪

    *#5

  38. Well we are in the middle of the Europe battleground and so we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t won some stuff.

  39. Always wonder with these lists, how do they track the German states fighting against each other. W for Germany? Or just not at all?

  40. I’ve spoken about Niall Ferguson before. Essentially, this entire list is nonsense. It includes civil conflicts and is actually more about battle and war participation as opposed to victories or battles won. It’s also not even based on accurate data in the first place. There is currently no real answer as to who or what polity or entity is the most successful militarily in any capacity.

    A good example of how absurd it is is that Rome is ranked. Well how does that really work? Shouldn’t Greece take some credit for Byzantine and Eastern Roman victories? Does Britain get credit for victories with primarily British sourced legions fighting for Rome? Should Italy take credit for all of Rome’s victories? How is participation even ranked? What about semi-autonomous client states or vassals of Rome? Are they their own category or not?

    It even counts Roman civil wars, fyi. Which in of itself is ridiculous. It means every civil conflict results in a win and a loss for the same entity by default. Unless it’s a stalemate.

    Secondly, what even is the source data for all of those battles? We don’t even know how many Rome actually fought or realistically won. The entire thing is farcical and a horrible, horrible attempt at history. The man is a fraud and needs to be mocked out of the profession for the absolute nonsense he peddles that does nothing but sully people’s understanding of history. He already IS by most academics, but it needs to be more understood as a whole.

    Also, I want to point out that he actually promotes a lot of pro-British nationalist ideas, of the Empire, of how Britain essentially made the modern world etc. As a British nationalist and patriot myself, I would generally be sympathetic to that. However once you engage in nonsensical analysis of history, faulty interpretations and so on then we have to be objective and honest. I’m putting that out there to point out my acknowledgement of any potential bias.

  42. Some of these “countries” have existed longer than others.

    Give me a “battles per year” statistic and we can talk.

    (I’ll take any petty excuse to give NL some semblance of a chance)

  43. What timeframe or how many years are we talking in each case? an average per century would be nice

  45. Are you counting every Spanish civil war? That’s like half of the battles and Spain always wins if it’s battling itself

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