Eriba-Marduk
Battle of Lesnaya edit
Hello! It's me again, thank you for your kind words over at the talkpage of the Lesnaya battle. As you might have noticed I found the sources which our mysterious anonymous author used in the battle of Grodno (1706), claiming there were 41,000 Russian troops, 24,000 Swedish. With 3,000 Swedish casualties and not 100 etc. To my surprise the source was listed in the article all along, and it was this one. Same thing in the article of the battle of Krasnokutsk–Gorodnoye where the same, or most likely same, user (using a different IP) claimed there were 774 Russian casualties and not as the English article suggested, 1,200 based on a Swedish source. The source used here was this one also listed in the article all along (I added the Russian numbers to the article). With this said, I believe the user uses links already provided in the article when giving his numbers, so the strange numbers about Russian forces at Lesnaya is probably taken out of an online source listed there. Now, I checked most of them, and translated the ones I could. However, I couldn't translate this one, it's listed as reference in the Russian article, but I can't seem to find the text about Lesnaya in it.
I think the source this "anonymous user" used is connected with that one of A. Gordon, saying the Russians were 28,000 men strong, only Gordon didn't go that much into detail (so there's probably a first hand source which is unknown to us). Alexander Gordon says, on page 274 that the initial army of Peter I in the battle was 20,000 men strong, at page 277 the army is said to have been 28,000 men strong, meaning Bauer brought with him about 8,000 soldiers according to Gordon. Now, if we are to accept the numbers of Russian regulars to 12,000-13,000 in the beginning of the battle, that means about 7,000-8,000 irregulars were present in it. And if we accept that Bauers division was 5,000 men strong reinforcing the Russians later in the battle, including those left at Propoisk that would mean he had about 3,000 irregulars with him. So in all, 9,000-11,000 irregulars. This seems to go well into the description of the Russian article at least:
"При этом необходимо понимать, что это официальное изречение российского государя, и как было отмечено выше, ни на каком этапе сражения царские войска не насчитывали численно меньше, чем войска шведского короля. На первом этапе боя 12622 чел. регулярных сил "Корволанта" и нескольким тысячам иррегулярной калмыцко-казацкой конницы противостояло 7-8 тыс. шведов. На втором этапе боя хотя к шведам вернулась часть войск из посланных к Пропойску (3 тыс.чел.), что увеличило силы Левенгаупа примерно до 9-10 тысяч с учётом потерь, но к силам Петра I постоянно присоединялись части корпуса Боура (всего он насчитывал незадолго до битвы у Лесной 14840 чел.) и основные силы иррегулярной кавалерии казаков и калмыков (до 10 тыс. чел.)."
If it's not bothering you, I'd like to ask for your help once again. The source noted above, this one, which I couldn't translate, can you see if it says anything about the battle at Lesnaya and in short what, as far as numbers are concerned? Imonoz (talk) 20:34, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- Hej, trevligt att se dig här igen. It's great that you have finally found the source where all those puzzling numbers came from. “However, I couldn't translate this one, it's listed as reference in the Russian article, but I can't seem to find the text about Lesnaya in it.” I'll be happy to help you with this issue. Perhaps you might have searched for the article on the battle of Lesnaya on p. 201, between “Lezgians” and “Leissègues”, however, in the pre-reform Russian orthography the word “Lesnaya” contained the now superfluous letter “yat” (ѣ) and therefore is presented in the latter part of the book, on p. 358 (or p. 344 in the edition of 1855, which is available for download from here). The numbers provided in that article, written by the notable 19th-century Russian historian Modest I. Bogdanovich, are as follows:
- Strength
- Sweden: 16,000 “with a huge wagon train filled with food and military supplies”, “up to 7,000 wagons”. The wagons were guarded by a 3,000-men-strong convoy. Russia: 12,000 under Peter I (10 battalions, 10 dragoon regiments), 4,000 under Bauer + 1,000 sent to Propoisk. The remaining forces are either not mentioned there in the short description of the battle or their exact numbers are not ascertained.
- Losses
- Sweden: “...more than up to 2,000 men, 17 guns, 34 banners, 10 heraldic standards and the entire wagon train, consisting of 7,000 wagons”. Russia: “The damage sustained by our forces was also very significant, but is not reflected anywhere in detail”. Eriba-Marduk (talk) 21:12, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
- Yes, all but the one for Lesnaya has been found, which I'm happy for. Very interesting piece of information you give to me here, this must be the reason why I'm having so much trouble searching for older Russian sources. Well, with that one checked as well, it's at least not any "online link" provided in the Russian article of the battle of Lesnaya, like it was in the Grodno and Krasnokutsk but probably another source, either very modern and fresh, or old and "forgotten". It's also possible that the source the "anonymous" user had is a Russian translated version of Gordon's work, kindly suggested to me by Nick Dorrell, the author being reference in the article which I've contacted. He said that he only knew of guesswork (out of estimations of available irregulars in total, the geography of the battle etc) concerning the irregulars at Lesnaya, and that it was possible that they were 900 men few, but also 10,000 men high (among other things, he gave me some other suggestions as well, why it can be hard to find information in old Russian sources etc, very interesting). However, the only interesting results I'm getting out of searching is from common forum posts, with no real source or anything. Like this one, although, it doesn't seem possible to contact the author there and get to know where those 4,000 Kalmyks came from, so yes, I'm currently stuck on this for the moment.
- However, concerning the 9,600 men in Werden's divsion, according to the anonymous source, I got some matching results from Swedish sources, saying Russian officers reported that a "10,000 men Russian force had arrived at the battle-site" (refereeing to the division under Werden) some time after the battle was over and the Swedes stood in their battle formations awaiting a renewed attack, which did not come. However, when hearing this they decided to keep going with the march and not take up the fight the next day. I don't know if there's any connection between these two, 9,600 - 10,000. Perhaps, only time will tell, this is the only thing I got on it so far. As you might have noticed I've done some changes to the article (of Lesnaya), first of all, I (once again) added the source of Gordon, claiming there were 28,000 men fighting force at Lesnaya (20,000 initially with Peter, and 8,000 reinforcements coming later), putting the irregulars at 900 (Bespalov) to 10,000 (Gordon), only Gordon doesn't directly say these extra soldiers were irregulars, even though it probably were, because 10,000 extra regulars (out of the original 18,000) would be unlikely in my opinion. However, I decided to sweep both of these sources, Bespalov and Gordon, from the infobox, adding only Dorrell's estimation, but instead decided to have them mentioned in the article itself under opposing forces. As I see it there's some major benefits to this, apart from the infobox being way cleaner, with a more precise estimates, like those initially with Peter and those at Propoisk etc, it also is neutral, neutral in that aspect that it uses more sources from all sides of the action rather than only a majority from one. Another would be that it's the newest one we got on the subject of irregulars, I really hope you agree with me on this, as previously noted, Bespalov and Gordon also has two important notes on this, and so gets to stay in the article itself. I've also made it more clear in the infobox where each number of soldiers were during the day, Lesnaya, Propoisk etc, and that the division under Werden probably wasn't a big engaging force in the battle itself (still a deciding factor in the decision to not take up the fight the next morning, from the Swedes), since they arrived very late, perhaps even after the battle, which is why they are put under "on the march". Lastly, I've decided to add the estimation from Artamonov to the Swedish casualties in the battle, instead of the 3,500, reason for this is that it's not far from 3,500 to 3,873, and that 3,873 is a better sourced number, than 3,500 (issue here is that I don't have his page number concerning these Swedish casualties, which is why I have to put his online article as reference). With the later tweaks to the infobox, at least I think it looks more clean, informative and healthy overall, with about 3 English/American, 1 Swedish, 1 Russian, 1 Scottish/Russian and 1 Russian/Swedish source put as reference. What do you think? Imonoz (talk) 20:29, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
- Not at all, thanks alot for the detailed information on your edits and your further research. It goes without saying that you can always ask me for help if you have some old or modern Russian text to translate (even if dates back to the Middle Ages, as I'm quite familiar with the literary language of medieval Russia). Currently, I'm trying my best to contact Pavel Konovalchuk in order to ask that respected and well-informed writer about the number of troops and their casualties, although it seems extremely unlikely, if not impossible, that he will somehow support the strange and dubious figures that were added by the anonymous user. In all his messages published on history-related forums Konovalchuk usually cites the work by Artamonov as the basis for his calculations and tends to agree with him. So far, I believe that the estimates provided by Artamonov, who used a large number of first-hand documents while writing his book, are probably the most accurate to date, but I won't mind if we also add Dorrell to the expanding list of secondary sources. “it doesn't seem possible to contact the author there and get to know where those 4,000 Kalmyks came from”. Fortunately, it doesn't. After checking that source I have to say that it is obviously not worth our attention, since it's nothing more than a ridiculous comment left by a user with poor knowledge of history (or lack thereof) and blunt statements of his extreme nationalist bias, where he uses offensive terms, claims that the Kalmyks were the best cavalrymen in the world, whereas the Russians rode on cows (this one is truly hilarious), etc. That is a funny curiosity at best, but definitely not a good source of information. As for the infobox, I think it's quite good now and hope that it will become even better. Eriba-Marduk (talk) 14:05, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
- I'm very happy that you're willing to translate those hard bits for me, I appreciate it a lot. I've dropped my research trying to find the strange figures, for the moment, hoping they will soon appear in newer works, if authors find them somewhat reliable to even consider. I have to agree with you, Artamonov seems to be the best guy at this subject, do you know if he's the last Russian historian who has done own research on the battle or if there's any recent ones? Konovalchuk didn't provide any figures concerning the irregulars from what I can remember in his- and Lyth's book about the battle, and like you say, he probably won't find the number of 9-11,000 irregulars that reliable, either. Well, as long as it remains mysterious without any direct source, it's quite useless. How does the events and descriptions of the battle, provided in the article from Lyth and Konovalchuk's book, fit with the book written by Artamonov, is there any major differences somewhere that you can remember? Well, that's funny, if that would've been the case, that the Russians truly rode and managed to fight on cows, they surely, without a doubt, must have been the best riders in the world. But no, I agree with you, he's probably not the most reliable guy out there to get in touch with. Imonoz (talk) 21:27, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
- Same here, I, too, hope that modern researchers will shed some light on that matter in the nearest future. I have a substantial number of newer Russian scholar works on the Great Northern War, articles and books alike, many of which have been made available online and include some recently made discoveries, therefore being essential reading, but it will take some time, which I'm currently a bit short with, for me to obtain the necessary information from them and donate it to Wikipedia. Still, however, the newest Russian work to date that covers the battle of Lesnaya in detail is the one that was written by Artamonov a few years ago. I'll try my best to compare it with the book by Konovalchuk and Lynn to see if there are any noteworthy differences between these works and how much their approaches fit together, as I haven't read the latter work for a while and can't say for sure right now. And again, if you need to get an exact page number or a bit of information from a Russian book or translate anything from Russian, you can always ask me on this page. I'm sort of busy, as usually, but will try my best to help. Eriba-Marduk (talk) 16:31, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
- I'm happy to hear that Russian literature about the war is still coming, and excited to hear what it has to bring in the near future, in Sweden there's not a lot of new stuff, authors repeating the work of previous authors without doing any detailed research of their own, either historians have gotten somewhat lazy, or the people somewhat ignorant of their history, probably a mix of the two. Like you said earlier, Konovalchuk probably used much of his material from Artamonov, which should, with some expectations, result in at least a somewhat similar description but with some more "Swedish views" from Lyth's writing on the book. I'm happy to hear that and I wish to offer the same kind of service to you, if you would happen to need it. Imonoz (talk) 14:14, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
- Same here, I, too, hope that modern researchers will shed some light on that matter in the nearest future. I have a substantial number of newer Russian scholar works on the Great Northern War, articles and books alike, many of which have been made available online and include some recently made discoveries, therefore being essential reading, but it will take some time, which I'm currently a bit short with, for me to obtain the necessary information from them and donate it to Wikipedia. Still, however, the newest Russian work to date that covers the battle of Lesnaya in detail is the one that was written by Artamonov a few years ago. I'll try my best to compare it with the book by Konovalchuk and Lynn to see if there are any noteworthy differences between these works and how much their approaches fit together, as I haven't read the latter work for a while and can't say for sure right now. And again, if you need to get an exact page number or a bit of information from a Russian book or translate anything from Russian, you can always ask me on this page. I'm sort of busy, as usually, but will try my best to help. Eriba-Marduk (talk) 16:31, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
- I'm very happy that you're willing to translate those hard bits for me, I appreciate it a lot. I've dropped my research trying to find the strange figures, for the moment, hoping they will soon appear in newer works, if authors find them somewhat reliable to even consider. I have to agree with you, Artamonov seems to be the best guy at this subject, do you know if he's the last Russian historian who has done own research on the battle or if there's any recent ones? Konovalchuk didn't provide any figures concerning the irregulars from what I can remember in his- and Lyth's book about the battle, and like you say, he probably won't find the number of 9-11,000 irregulars that reliable, either. Well, as long as it remains mysterious without any direct source, it's quite useless. How does the events and descriptions of the battle, provided in the article from Lyth and Konovalchuk's book, fit with the book written by Artamonov, is there any major differences somewhere that you can remember? Well, that's funny, if that would've been the case, that the Russians truly rode and managed to fight on cows, they surely, without a doubt, must have been the best riders in the world. But no, I agree with you, he's probably not the most reliable guy out there to get in touch with. Imonoz (talk) 21:27, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
- Not at all, thanks alot for the detailed information on your edits and your further research. It goes without saying that you can always ask me for help if you have some old or modern Russian text to translate (even if dates back to the Middle Ages, as I'm quite familiar with the literary language of medieval Russia). Currently, I'm trying my best to contact Pavel Konovalchuk in order to ask that respected and well-informed writer about the number of troops and their casualties, although it seems extremely unlikely, if not impossible, that he will somehow support the strange and dubious figures that were added by the anonymous user. In all his messages published on history-related forums Konovalchuk usually cites the work by Artamonov as the basis for his calculations and tends to agree with him. So far, I believe that the estimates provided by Artamonov, who used a large number of first-hand documents while writing his book, are probably the most accurate to date, but I won't mind if we also add Dorrell to the expanding list of secondary sources. “it doesn't seem possible to contact the author there and get to know where those 4,000 Kalmyks came from”. Fortunately, it doesn't. After checking that source I have to say that it is obviously not worth our attention, since it's nothing more than a ridiculous comment left by a user with poor knowledge of history (or lack thereof) and blunt statements of his extreme nationalist bias, where he uses offensive terms, claims that the Kalmyks were the best cavalrymen in the world, whereas the Russians rode on cows (this one is truly hilarious), etc. That is a funny curiosity at best, but definitely not a good source of information. As for the infobox, I think it's quite good now and hope that it will become even better. Eriba-Marduk (talk) 14:05, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
- However, concerning the 9,600 men in Werden's divsion, according to the anonymous source, I got some matching results from Swedish sources, saying Russian officers reported that a "10,000 men Russian force had arrived at the battle-site" (refereeing to the division under Werden) some time after the battle was over and the Swedes stood in their battle formations awaiting a renewed attack, which did not come. However, when hearing this they decided to keep going with the march and not take up the fight the next day. I don't know if there's any connection between these two, 9,600 - 10,000. Perhaps, only time will tell, this is the only thing I got on it so far. As you might have noticed I've done some changes to the article (of Lesnaya), first of all, I (once again) added the source of Gordon, claiming there were 28,000 men fighting force at Lesnaya (20,000 initially with Peter, and 8,000 reinforcements coming later), putting the irregulars at 900 (Bespalov) to 10,000 (Gordon), only Gordon doesn't directly say these extra soldiers were irregulars, even though it probably were, because 10,000 extra regulars (out of the original 18,000) would be unlikely in my opinion. However, I decided to sweep both of these sources, Bespalov and Gordon, from the infobox, adding only Dorrell's estimation, but instead decided to have them mentioned in the article itself under opposing forces. As I see it there's some major benefits to this, apart from the infobox being way cleaner, with a more precise estimates, like those initially with Peter and those at Propoisk etc, it also is neutral, neutral in that aspect that it uses more sources from all sides of the action rather than only a majority from one. Another would be that it's the newest one we got on the subject of irregulars, I really hope you agree with me on this, as previously noted, Bespalov and Gordon also has two important notes on this, and so gets to stay in the article itself. I've also made it more clear in the infobox where each number of soldiers were during the day, Lesnaya, Propoisk etc, and that the division under Werden probably wasn't a big engaging force in the battle itself (still a deciding factor in the decision to not take up the fight the next morning, from the Swedes), since they arrived very late, perhaps even after the battle, which is why they are put under "on the march". Lastly, I've decided to add the estimation from Artamonov to the Swedish casualties in the battle, instead of the 3,500, reason for this is that it's not far from 3,500 to 3,873, and that 3,873 is a better sourced number, than 3,500 (issue here is that I don't have his page number concerning these Swedish casualties, which is why I have to put his online article as reference). With the later tweaks to the infobox, at least I think it looks more clean, informative and healthy overall, with about 3 English/American, 1 Swedish, 1 Russian, 1 Scottish/Russian and 1 Russian/Swedish source put as reference. What do you think? Imonoz (talk) 20:29, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
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