Who is the greatest military leader of the medieval period?

I vote for Belisarius too.

By the way the leaders and nations who ruled western Europe later were all the subordinates of Attila. (Orastes and his son, Odoaker, the Merovings etc. Those who resisted him fell. That's why he has so bad reputation.

"the greatest military leader of the medieval period" is too general a criteria, i think. Not to mention the medieval period, which is a huge pool to catch THE fish, if you know what i mean.

Definitely, all of the above were great in a way or the other. Someone said here a big truth before: one leader's greatness might be justified exactly by the lack of a huge army to command and a great state/country to gather resources from. Therefor, i'd like to act as overpatriotic and mention at least one great romanian military leader from the mentioned period: Stefan cel Mare (Stephen the Great being the most used english name for him). He led Moldavia for 47 years, defending it against the Ottoman Empire (Mehmed the Second, Beyazid the Second), the Hungarian Empire (Matthias Corvinus) and Polish Empire (i'll be back with the name of their leader). All this battles had one aspect in common: the Moldavian army was significantly less numerous. Add this to the huge cultural heritage he left behind (check UNESCO for refferences).

It's about prestige. It's about propaganda. Half the graduates from foreign schools outside The Balkans hardly know where Romania is on the map, let aside its history or capital city. Throughout history, foreign countries understood the role of marketing, you know. Making national history sell itself: in books, in movies, in merchandise and whatnot. Romania is best known by Vlad Dracul (thanks, Bram Stoker) alone. Other countries managed to have influence around their neighbours, having raveging wars accompanied by expansionist periods. We managed the survive all our neighbours without loosing too much of our country's lands.

I'd be rather curious how many people around this forum can name some other romanian leaders, beside Vlad Dracul and Stefan cel Mare

how about Ion Antonescu and Nicolae Ceausescu?

True, but i was thinking of medieval leaders mainly. Nevertheless, it pleases me to see some answers to my question

I highly disagree, since when does one owe their victory to the one they've defeated? He used different weapons, had less junk to lug around, was faster and better at arching and encircled his opponent' army from the outside in! Pretty genious if you ask me which is why he succeeded so well.

Tough choice but when I think of Belisarius' defence of Rome it becomes easier.  I think someone made a remark about belisarius doing more with less, I wonder how much more he could have accomplished had Justinian given him more resources and support (or any). 

Also, an honorable mention to those mongol generals, not just Genghis Khan.  The forces they went up against were normally much bigger and they completely destroyed them.