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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Battle of Waterloo/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted 00:50, 10 May 2008.

Battle of Waterloo edit

Nominator: Last year, I was involved in successful a drive to get the article to GA status. At that point we worked to a peer review that was more stringent than required for GA, with a view to eventually reaching FA. Since then, the core contributors have made quite a few minor changes and tweaks, and the idea of nominating it for FA has been thrown around. Here's the nomination. Even if unsuccessful, this is likely to drive work to bring the article to FA status. (Also, given the topic, this is an article that really should be one Wikipedia's best.) Kieran (talk) 15:49, 1 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The contributor of that image, Frank Schulenburg, is a fairly prominent WP member (on the board for de). I've dropped him a message on his talk page to ask for details on the picture's origins. In the worst case, we could remove it, or find a verified alternate source. (Obviously the underlying painting is out of copyright, but we need to ensure that the 2-dimensional representation was taken in a country where this does not generate a new copyright, or if not that the originator released it under a WP-compatible license.) -Kieran (talk) 01:06, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Herr Schulenberg came through. ЭLСОВВОLД talk 20:05, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments (forgive my typing, I'm on the road with an unfamiliar laptop keyboard)

I'm on the road again, and the link checker tool doesn't like this hotel's ISP, I am getting a LOT of timeout errors, which I suspect are related to the hotel ISP. Ealdgyth - Talk 02:29, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the Orders of Battle refs, there is a wiki page Order of Battle of the Waterloo Campaign so referencing this page might be more internally consistent.

I can certainly defend the reference to the Napoleon Series site http://www.napoleon-series.org/index.html, it is without doubt the premier web-site for Napoleonic History. Its editor-in-chief is a published author in the field and many other published authors, including academics, have contributed articles to the site or are regular habitues of the discussion pages. The level of scholarship of the content of the site is second to none.

http://home.iprimus.com.au/cpcook/letters/pages/waterloorha.htm contains a verbatim extract from a book written by an eyewitness of the battle (Captain Cavalie Mercer of the Royal Horse Artillery). However, the whole book is on Googlebooks so the reference could be switched to this and give page numbers quite easily.

Urselius (talk) 08:58, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Ref 10 changed to one with page number.

Urselius (talk) 14:27, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

on this one, I don't honestly know. I retain some concerns that the sourcing isn't showing a great deal of newer sources, nor academic sources. This is the Battle of Waterloo, I'm pretty sure it's been studied by academic historians recently? But, this is well past my own field of study or my own interests. I'm not a Napoleonic scholar or student, and thus I can't for sure say that the sourcing isn't the best that it could be. I'm still on the road, so I can't do any sort of checking in my own library, so I'm going to leave these out for other reviewers to decide for themselves. The book sources used are certainly fine, although I'm not entirely sure about the website Napoleon Series, it does sound at least somewhat reliable. I'd like to see some third party coverage of the site as being reliable/noteworthy/etc. Ealdgyth - Talk 04:18, 3 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am concerned by the list of sources as well. I haven't gone through and matched each note to each sentence yet, but I will later this weekend. I was wondering if the editors could describe how they did their research? The first list of "suggested books" I turned to failed to include these nineteenth-century sources and did include many more twentieth-century sources. If we could know something about the research methodology that went into the article, perhaps we would be reassured. Thanks. Awadewit (talk) 16:25, 3 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Each of the editors will have to speak for him/herself. I myself used Peter Hofschroers works on the subject, as a basis for adding the sections about Prussian participation then cross checked with Col. Chesney's work, then back referenced to Barbero's work on the subject. One of the tougher things about this subject is the amount of bad history that has been done on it. One has only to look at the history channel to be sorely disappointed in a most recent example. National bias is another problem with this battle and everything has to be checked against various books to be sure nothing has been erm... slanted. The article use to be one of raging blogs on the editing section when the editors stood together and insisted that nothing would be added to the article without citation and that editorial comments would be kept to a minimum and insisting on a "just the facts" presentation without elaboration and with accurate citation. The authors that I chose were Hofschorer 20th century(German sourcing unavailable in most books), Chesney (19th century Chair of the Sandhurst Military College), and Barbero 21st century (Head of the History department of an Italian College). If any of these were debateable Hofschroer would be that source because of his approach that Germanic speaking populations were mostly to be credited for the victory (ie 75% of the troops involved on the allied side) which was not embraced by the English historians all that warmly. Even in this case I found him to be balanced in his approach and his sources were Prussian regimental histories not available but through his works in English and even in this case it was checked against Chesney and Barbero for accuracy and weight lent on who had the best sourcing available. In some cases this was Chesney as he still had access to the German General Staff's histories that were mostly lost at the end of WW2, in most others it was Hofschroers. In no case was a novel view allowed into the article but rather only when there was in a broad sense a concurence did I go forward. Tirronan (talk) 18:00, 3 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The whole subject is a minefield of varying bias, often nationalistic in origin, by historians and authors. Anyone writing an encyclopaedic treatment is continually treading a tightrope. Recently there has been controversy over a book by David Hamilton-Williams (Waterloo: New Perspectives: The Great Battle Reappraised) over veracity of sources. The same could be said of Hofschroer in regards to his reappraisal of how Wellington treated his Prussian allies and how early he knew of Napoleon's advance across the Belgian frontier. Thus even recent works cannot be viewed as canonical. The treatment of the work of earlier historians is also moot, W. Siborne wrote his history of the Waterloo campaign in the 1840s, Hamilton-Williams regards him as being unreliable at best and deliberately anti-Dutch-Belgian at worst, whilst Hofschroer thinks highly of his work. Barbero's book, he being an Italian, is refreshingly free of nationalistic bias, though I consider it has a number of mistakes of interpretation and a few instances of factual error. There is no particular merit in the referencing of more recent works over referencing older ones, once due consideration for jingoism in older books is taken into account, indeed the older works would be written when their audience included veterans of the battle and woe betide any author who made a blunder as rebuttals would come thick and fast in contemporary journals. In short any encyclopaedia entry written must be a mosaic of sources in order for a balanced, or reasonably balanced, view to be obtained. Urselius (talk) 12:53, 4 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you for these very lucid answers. I am the process of digging up reviews of the various books listed in the bibliography. This will take me a while.
  • I've now read a bibliographic essay on sources important for Napoleonic history. It points to Chandler's Campaigns of Napoleon (which this article uses) and calls it the standard work on Napoleonic military history but notes that "on the whole [it] puts a favourable gloss on Napoleon's genius as a commander". Apparently Chandler also wrote a supplementary volume entitled On the Napoleonic Wars not used here. The article lists several other important works not used in the article: Owen Connelly's Blundering to Glory (1988), which presents Napoleon in a less favorable light than Chandler, and Charles Esdaile's The Wars of Napoleon, which deals with the structure of the armies and the the "wider, political, social, and economic repercussions of the wars" across Europe, something missing from the article.
  • The essay also describes recent trends in Napoleonic historiography, such as the revisionism that began around 1969 and 1970. This revisionism, which affected French Revolution historiography as well, "tended to shift the emphasis more towards the underlying structure of the Napoleonic regime....it is now fashionable to view the Revolutionary and Napoleonic 'experience' not so much as a succession of ruptures which ended in military dictatorship, but more as an evolving process with important themes of continuity across the whole period". This change in historiography was so important that it was taught in my undergraduate class. I am curious how this affected the coverage of the Battle of Waterloo in particular. Does anyone know? I haven't the time to dig through all of the books listed in the essay here. Thanks! Awadewit (talk) 16:34, 4 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
To put another POV, why should we care to note in the battle article much about the regime of an international outlaw who usurped power for less than 100 days? --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 08:26, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Review of modern sources
  • Adkin: I question the use of Adkin, which according to a review I read by Clifford Harmon from VMI in the Journal of Military History, is a coffee table book without references and an unhelpful bibliography. According to the review, the bibliography also reveals "an almost total lack of French sources" which handicaps Adkins analysis. While the reviewer says that the book has its good points - bringing history alive - I'm not sure that this is the type of source we want to be using.
  • Barbero: Not reviewed in academic journals.
  • Chandler: Recommended as standard history of Napoleonic military history in Geoffrey Ellis's bibliographic essay.
  • Longford: At the time Longford's book came out, it was praised for its readability and its attention to the private details of Wellington's life. Her ability to portray battles accurately was at times questioned. I do not know what the current opinion is of this book or whether it has been surpassed, but I'm not sure this is the best Wellington book to be using for the Waterloo article. Thoughts?
  • Hofschroer: Acknowledging the nationalistic bias problem, reviewers have noted that Hofschroer has done an important service in bringing the German sources to light but point out that he argues his case is a bit too strongly, saying that "no serious British historian has ever sought to deny the fact that Wellington's army was in its majority German, Dutch, and Belgain....In consequence, Hofschroer doth protest too much, whilst he is at times as parti pris as the writers he criticises". It seems to me that the editors have tried to cancel out these biases.
  • Roberts: Not reviewed in academic journals.
  • Weller: Not reviewed in academic journals.

I will look for non-academic reviews of these other books, but it does not fill me with confidence that there are no academic reviews of them. Awadewit (talk) 17:39, 4 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comments - I have read the article over once and am now reading it again, much more slowly as I look at the notes. Here are my initial comments.
  • The lead needs to be rewritten - it is choppy, especially at the end. This is Waterloo! Let's be eloquent.
  • I would suggest a copy edit by Roger Davies. He writes military history articles and is a good copy editor.
  • There is next to nothing in the article explaining the battle's political significance. I would suggest adding a "Background" section on the Napoleonic Wars so that readers know what is ending with Waterloo. I would also suggest expanding the "Aftermath" section. This battle was a major event in society - that needs to be emphasized and explained. Societies that been at war for a generation suddenly were not anymore (this is currently covered in a tiny paragraph).
  • I would suggest adding an "Overview" section so that the reader knows where the article is going. It is a bit hard to follow everything without some sort of guide.
  • There are too many large quotations - cut some of them out and integrate the others into the article more thorough. Many of them are just sitting there without much explanation. Also, they are all call-out quotes. According to WP:MOSQUOTE, they should only be blockquotes.
I hope these suggestions help. Awadewit (talk) 17:00, 4 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Adkin has received a generally good reception amongst those active in writing within the field. I would admit that his bibliography and references are not the finest; as an accessible synthesis it is probably the best single volume available - I think it is far better and more detailed than Chandler's Waterloo volume. Generally the Napoleonic Wars are a field in which the "talented amateur" is recognised as having a valuable role, it isn't seen as being the sole preserve of the academic (unlike certain other periods of history knowledge of extinct languages is not a prerequisite).
As to the wider implications you cite I would emphasise that this is an entry on the battle itself, there is a separate wiki page on the Waterloo Campaign (or 100 Days - I can't remember the exact title) which should, in my opinion, be the place for wider political comment and background.
Urselius (talk) 19:28, 4 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I've changed the quotes to be blockquotes. (I think we decided we liked the way the cquotes looked, but I see that that formatting is only intended for real call-out quotes). As for length and number - the purpose of many was to convey a sense of the battle, to make the article more accessible. Some convey fact, but quite a few convey a very human and often poetic sense of the events of the battle. But, if the consensus is to winnow them down, we winnow them down.
I've also done a minor copyedit of the lead, but it probably needs more work to be truly eloquent. It's occurred to me that, while the article deals mostly with the events of the battle, only 1/4 of the lead does so, suggesting that it maybe needs some rebalancing?
I wonder if an overview might not be a bad idea. Are there examples of a good one? I've found allusions to it in the style guide, but not very concrete suggestions as to how it should be structured. (e.g. should it follow "This article begins with a discussion of ..." form)
If background were to be added, I think it should be very brief. Perhaps a summarised version of the Napoleonic Wars article, drawing heavily on the content in the lead? -Kieran (talk) 00:39, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure if this is what Awa meant, but my similar comments below did not mean the wider context of the whole Napoleonic Wars, but the very specific context of Waterloo. For example there is no link to (our very poor stub on) Waterloo Day, which was virtually a national holiday in Britain for most of the 19th century, nor to the famous disruption on the financial markets, and the Rothschild's coup with the pigeons. Hundred Days will be no use here either. For FA, with such an epoch-making battle, a narrow military historical approach is not enough. Some highlights from the predictably poor Waterloo in popular culture should go in a final section, and the Prince Regent's shameless claims to have participated are another indicator of the battle's status in the British psyche, which was nearly matched in that of the French - diplomatic awkwardnesses around both Waterloo Station, terminus until now of the Eurostar, and the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor, both regularly feature in the British press. Johnbod (talk) 16:23, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I've started work on this section, as suggested. It still needs some POV-balancing (very anglo-centric so far) and some more sources (I can't get at most of the historical articles on the topic of the cultural/sociological impact of the battle). It's a start, though. -Kieran (talk) 00:01, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think it is a mistake. There is an article Waterloo in popular culture. All that is needed in this article, if anything is one small paragraph to introduce the article Waterloo in popular culture, otherwise why not put back all that is in Waterloo in popular culture, because who judges what is important to add in this section? I think it is better off as a line in the See also section. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 08:26, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Because what (I think) the several reviewers who have raised similar points are after is not a list of computer games featuring Waterloo but an attempt at a brief encyclopedic treatment of the enormous impact of the battle on the rest of the 19th century outside the sphere of pure military history. Johnbod (talk) 13:30, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
And I think it opens up a can of worms, better to add any such points to aftermath. Because thinks like "The fact that Waterloo Station was, from 1994 until 2008, the landing point for French visitors to the country arriving on the Eurostar, was found insulting by some French even in modern times." and "with references in modern literature, including Asterix," is not the sort of think we need in this article. But I suggest we discuss this further on the talk page of the article. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 14:03, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Note: A family issue has very suddenly arisen that requires my attention. I will not be able to continue reviewing this article until about a week from now. I'm very sorry. Awadewit (talk) 15:27, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've looked at Chandler as a source but found his work to be rather the light weight compared to other authors already covered here. Although a noted era author on the period when it came to this article it has very much got to be to the point of "this unit at this time did this to this effect" to be terribly useful. Perhaps another look at the overview will be required though this is covered in the Waterloo campaign. Tirronan (talk) 05:12, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Very good, but needs a thorough check over. I have copy-edited some points, but one of the specialists should go over it.
  • "Wellington's misapprehension" needs explaining. This has been expanded Tirronan (talk) 05:14, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "In the centre about the road south of the inn La Belle Alliance..." does "about" mean "on both sides of"?
  • "Twelve hours later Grouchy, still following his orders, defeated ..." Later than what? This has been rewriten Tirronan (talk) 05:14, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have desized some of the pictures, per MoS, but without using "upright". They look ok to me, but upright could be used to reduce them. Others are still very small, and more commons images could be added. Personally I would make the map of the battle full-size across the screen.
  • Something about the Rothschilds and their pigeons? The reception of the news in general? In general the article could do with a wider scope - I had to add Lord Uxbridge's leg to see also.

Johnbod (talk) 03:19, 4 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment Web references need to be formatted consistently and fleshed out (author, publisher, retrieval dates). BuddingJournalist 23:58, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment (Sorry for my poor English, I'm French). Very good narrative of the battle, but in my opinion the article lacks : 1) A part about the historiography of the battle - there is much to say about how the battle has been seen by academic researchers and taught in school (in England as in France). 2) A part about the paintings depicting the battle, pop culture (ABBA...) - I know there is a specific article, but it's only a list and it should be summarized in the main article. --Bsm15 (talk) 08:10, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Commenting on recent historiography could open a can of worms. Law suits have been filed by some of the authors involved in recent spats, we might not want to go there! Urselius (talk) 08:51, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • I didn't mean commenting, but quoting appropriately the main authors on the subject and putting in perspective their theses ; it will provide a global perspective on the battle the article lacks of now, IMO. --Bsm15 (talk) 10:17, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think that is a very bad idea. If ever there was a battle where nationalism still plays a very strong hand this is it. All you will be doing is summing up these different views: The Brits won the battle despite their other allies, with a little bit of help late in the day from the Prussians to help mop up. The British were loosing until the Prussians turned up and won the Battle. The French lost only because the Emperor -- the finest general who has ever graced a battlefield -- was unwell and his dull subordinates failed to execute his brilliant plan properly. What about the Dutch? AND DON'T FORGET THE BELGIANS! --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 16:44, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Actually I've always liked Brigadier Gerard explanation "So high was the spirit of France at that time that every other spirit would have quailed before it; but these people, these English, had neither spirit nor soul, but only solid, immovable beef, against which we broke ourselves in vain. That was it, my friends! On the one side, poetry, gallantry, self-sacrifice--all that is beautiful and heroic. On the other side,beef. Our hopes, our ideals, our dreams--all were shattered on that terrible beef of Old England." --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 16:44, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - Now what? Most (or all?) of the minor issues (references, copy, images) seem to have been addressed. However, we seem to be at an impassé about histiography and/or popular culture. The FA reviewers have requested sections dealing with this, while the main contributors to the article are opposed. Certainly, looking at other featured battles the Waterloo article as it stands seems to fit with the structure of these without delving into histiography. Can we have some discussion to decide whether or not it is necessary, as this seems to be the only sticking point now? -Kieran (talk) 23:07, 9 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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