The stereotype of the arrogant WWI general sipping his wine and sending young men to their deaths for the sake of his ego is a popular one, but how accurate was it?

Its not accurate at all. 'Bloody Red Tabs' by Davies and Maddocks deals with casualties of the rank of Brigadier and above of which they cite 1257 served and 232 casualties, giving an overall rate of 18.5%.

Of the 78 who were KIA

43% were killed by shellfire 28% were killed by small arms fire (at least half by snipers) 3 Generals drowned, 2 were killed in accidents, and the of the remainder no cause of death is known but we can safely assume the majority were by small arms and shellfire.

The interesting point here is the surprisingly high proportion killed by small arms and snipers. Overall, its commonly accepted that roughly two thirds of all casualties were caused by artillery. The high proportion of Generals killed by small arms is indicative of the fact that they were obliged to expose themselves to a disproportionate extent, presumably in attempts to reconnoiter the ground over which their forces would soon be fighting.

The accusation of "Chateaux Generals" is grossly unfair. A General could hardly command a large body of men from a front line trench, that could only be done by an adequate HQ into which were fed the various lines of communication.

Those who worked at GHQ put in extraordinary hours, waking early and working late into the night. Its very hard to see how they could have spared to time to take a jaunt up to the front for a spot of getting shot at for no reason.

Its important to note that Sir John French was actually too close to the front at Loos, where he was unable to be contacted. As a result of this, hours were lost in the deployment of reserves and a glittering opportunity squandered. He quite rightly lost his job because of that.

Also worth noting that the BEF in 1914 was losing Staff Officers at such a high rate, they had to issue an order explicitly forbidding them from getting too close to the action.

Was there anything that military leadership could have feasibly done differently?

That's maybe a matter of opinion, but bear in mind that these men represented the highest echelons of the foremost military powers of the era. It would therefore be extraordinary to infer that all of them were somehow deficient.

As it was, the pace of technological and tactical change during the war was extraordinary. What John Terrain called the "White Heat" of innovation in his eponymous book.

The point being that they were constantly doing things differently. After each engagement, lessons were learned. Tactics were adjusted by the attacking side and parallel innovations made by the defence.

New technologies streamed in - Squad automatic weapons, chemical warfare, tanks, strategic bombers, air superiority fighters, aerial re-supply, CAS, flash spotting and sound ranging, predicted artillery fire, flamethrowers, instantaneous fuses, the mortar (as we now know it), hand grenades (as we now know them), rifle grenades, electronic warfare and countermeasures.... the list goes on....

The challenge for those whose position is that the Generals should have done something different, is to state, without the benefit of hindsight, and taking into account all factors, exactly what those different things are that all of the foremost military minds of the era failed to come up with.

EDIT: An aside on casualties in WWI.

Yes, the absolute number of casualties was staggering, but its important to note that the casualty rates were not unprecedented. They were equaled and exceeded before and have been equaled and exceeded regularly since. Even the casualty numbers, in absolute terms, were easily exceeded by the second war.

Its true that there were examples in WWI of entire battalions being virtually wiped out, but again, this had happened many times before - the 44th at Gandamak, the 24th at Isandlwana, three of the four battalions of Colborne's brigade at Albuera, while Hoghton lost two-thirds of his brigade in the same battle.

The French at Waterloo lost almost 60% of their entire army in a single day.

To quote John Terraine in The Smoke and The Fire

No one questions the Duke of Marlborough's claim to be considered a 'great captain' - despite the fearful losses of Malplaquet. The Duke of Wellington, in Spain and at Waterloo, presided over scenes of awful carnage -bad enough at Waterloo to bring tears to his eyes. Many of Napoleon's battles were sheer blood-baths. General Robert E. Lee, often considered an outstanding military genius, never hesitated to accept heavy casualties in the pursuit of victory. The Soviet marshals of 1939-45 were undismayed by the veritable massacre of their men in the same quest - but nobody hounds their memories as the generals of the Great War have been hounded.

No one who has read Mercer's account of the aftermath of Waterloo can fail to be viscerally affected by it. I'm not sure any war can reasonably claim a monopoly of horrors.

Its simply a matter of perception, particularly in the English speaking world, that the Great War was somehow unique in its horror and carnage, and that's simply because it was the war in which the English speaking people played the largest role - that of engaging and defeating the main body of the main enemy on the main front of a general war, and therefore paid a price commensurate with that role.