Tolstoy on military genius in the reflections of Prince Andrei in “War and Peace”

And why does everyone say: a military genius? Is he a genius, the man who manages to order the rusks to be brought up in good time, and to tell this one to go to the right and that one to the left? It is only because military men are clothed in splendour and power, and masses of scoundrels flatter power, ascribing to it qualities of genius that do not belong to it, that they are called geniuses. On the contrary, the best generals I have known were stupid or absent-minded men. The best is Bagration; Napoleon himself admitted it. And Bonaparte himself! I remember his self-satisfied and limited face on the field of Austerlitz. A good commander needs no genius, nor any special qualities whatever; on the contrary, he needs the absence of the best and highest human qualities: love, poetry, tenderness, philosophical, inquiring doubt. He must be limited, firmly convinced that what he is doing is very important (otherwise he will not have enough patience), and only then will he be a brave commander. God forbid that, being a man, he should come to love someone, to pity someone, to think about what is just and what is not. It is understandable that a theory of geniuses was fabricated for them long ago, because they are power. The merit of success in military affairs depends not on them but on the man in the ranks who cries out: we are lost! or cries out: hurrah! And only in those ranks can one serve with the certainty of being of use!

So thought Prince Andrei, listening to the talk...