Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Battle of Hochkirch

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article promoted by AustralianRupert (talk) via MilHistBot (talk) 22:06, 7 April 2017 (UTC) « Return to A-Class review list[reply]

Battle of Hochkirch[edit]

Nominator(s): Auntieruth55 (talk)

Featured article candidates/Battle of Hochkirch/archive1

I am nominating this article for A-Class review because...this was an important battle of the Seven Years' War, among several, and the follow up to the battle, or lack of it, meant the Austrians lost their initiatve. auntieruth (talk) 14:49, 18 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

File:Menzelhochkirch.jpg needs a US PD tag. Same with File:Saxonia_Museum_für_saechsische_Vaterlandskunde_I_27.jpg. Nikkimaria (talk) 21:45, 18 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

done. Thank you, Nikki. auntieruth (talk) 19:34, 19 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments. As always, feel free to revert my copyediting. - Dank (push to talk)

"who apparently started their days": Would "who started their days" be wrong? If so, why?
"On the positive side, though, Retzow's corps": I think I'd prefer "Only Retzow's corps" (if true), but it's your call.
This would be fabulous at FAC, I hope you'll bring it there.
Support on prose per my standard disclaimer. These are my edits. - Dank (push to talk) 02:43, 20 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

your edits are fine. I'll think about Retzow's corps. Plan is to bring this and Battle of Leuthen to FAC, but I cannot get Leuthen past GA yet. auntieruth (talk) 16:31, 20 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by K.e.coffman

Interesting article! Minor c/e suggestions / comments:

The lead includes "Feldzeugmeister (Lieutenant Field Marshal) Leopold Josef Graf Daun ..." where Feldzeugmeister redirects to "General of the Branch". Later in the article the same commander is called "Field Marshal", so there's some inconsistency here.

took out the link to the German. Just referred to hi, as lieutenant field marshal. I'm not prepared to rewrite the other article yet.

"One of the greatest blunders... " sounds judgmental and / or colloquial; perhaps replace with "defeat"?

the historians all call it blunders.

Section "Prelude" could be split into two paras, for readability.
"...around Frederick's flank, to enclose him" -- perhaps "encircle"? Or is perhaps enclose is terminology I'm not familiar with?

Daun would have said "enclose"...but I've linked it to encirclement.

"...known today as Blood Alley (Blutgasse)... -- italics are unneeded around Blood Alley, as it's in English. Y
"There was no one to blame but himself." -- this sounds like editorialising.

it is cited.

"The costly Austrian victory decided nothing." -- costly to the Prussians or to the Austrians? Y

K.e.coffman (talk) 04:29, 2 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! Actions taken. auntieruth (talk) 16:22, 2 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Support per recent improvements. K.e.coffman (talk) 02:27, 3 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Support
Looks good. My only suggestion is that you link lieutenant field marshal Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:29, 3 April 2017 (UTC) Y auntieruth (talk) 13:39, 4 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Ruth, good o see you back around these parts. Comments:

I admire a concise lead (it's something I struggle with), but do you think one fairly short paragraph might be a little too concise?

LOL. Expanded slightly

I'd love to see a modest background section here. The prelude section sets the scene nicely but the reader shouldn't have to go somewhere else to find out what the Seven Years' War was all about ("the balance of power in Europe", like just about every other war in Western Europe for a couple of centuries either side!) and what the Prussians and Austrians were disputing.
Do we know the distance between Frederick's east and west flanks? unfortunately not. I've calculated it might have been 3 miles.
30,000 hand-picked troops I doubt a monarch has time to personally vet 30k soldiers; do you mean the units they belonged to were hand-picked?

well, how about selected?

his own cannons, captured by the Austrians, started to fire on his own camp. The repetition of "own" could probably be trimmed.
You've suggested elsewhere that your interest in this articles is related to your interest in Frederick the Great, but I wonder if that might have unduly influenced the article. Almost the entire article is written from the Prussians' perspective, covering their great loss and the effect it had on them. Now it might be that that's the approach taken by the sources given that the battle had little impact beyond the immediate victory for the Austrians, but that leads me to my next concern.

fixed.

Your bibliography is dominated by works about Frederick the Great. In half an hour's digging around the web discovered several books (example) about Austria and Maria Theresa that mention Hochkirch (mostly in passing, but possibly still worth citing for background and to satisfy our A1 and A2, "the relevant body of published knowledge"/"comprehensive, factually accurate, [...] neglects no major facts" and 1c of the FA criteria, "a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature", if you're heading that way). I'd also be much happier if a couple of the main texts about the Seven Years' War in general were cited.

Okay, updated, expanded. The mentions of Hochkirch in Austria specific books are limited, basically they say nothing new, and some of them say little at all. But I did include some other material.

Sorry to disagree with KEC above, but I disagree with the removal of "costly". I think it's important to point out that the battle wasn't a complete success for the Austrians: they suffered heavy casualties for what they gained (which was not a lot), the Prussian counter attacks had some success in mitigating the disaster, and the Austrians were unable or unwilling to press home their advantage. Indeed, Blanning says "that Hochkirch should have brought so little reward naturally led to sharp criticism of Daun, but not from the two people who mattered most: Kaunitz and Maria Theresa". He goes on to mention that Maria Theresa praised Daun and handsomely rewarded him, and she was still optimistic about the war. I'm not fluent with the source material like you are, I got that from a couple of hours' reading around looking for background, but those seem like details that would be useful in the article.

Yes she did. I had already included that.

—Hope this helps. It's an interesting subject and I ended up spending longer on it than I'd planned! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:55, 4 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks much! HJ Mitchell auntieruth (talk) 19:19, 6 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent work! Everything is in order as far as I'm concerned so support, and hopefully we'll be seeing this at FAC shortly. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:20, 7 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.