Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Battle record of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

Battle record of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington[edit]

An important question often asked by historians of the Napoleonic Wars: "How many battles did Wellington fight in?" This article aims to cover that question by objectively identifying the actions he participated in throughout his career. Accuracy is based on factual evidence, taken from sources that have solid backgrounds, as well as authors of military texts, and primary sources that give details in depth. In this way this article serves to answer the question as best it can thus attempting to clearly present the information about this important British commander. Ma®©usBritish (talk) 20:17, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have added Notes explaining the intentions of the Outcome column. It seems hard to explain the difference between Tactical and Strategic results, moreso to those who are looking to glorify or tarnish Wellington without any real understanding of how battles are studied. I am worried that without clearly explaining the columns content the table will become an easy target for people who get involved in edit wars because their interpretations of historical data opposes that of the article. If anyone has any suggestions as how I could rephrase the Notes better, it would be appreciated. I realise that the discussion page is always available for people to dispute the entries in detail, but for unregistered readers this is likely to be ignored and edits made regardless.

Ma®©usBritish (talk) 22:32, 21 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Would appreciate further feedback as to the progress of the article, so far - thanks! Ma®©usBritish (talk) 04:28, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Fifelfoo[edit]

Where is the source, preferably high quality, which establishes the notability of this topic? You suggest "An important question often asked by historians of the Napoleonic Wars...", cite someone.
While this is a list format encyclopaedia entry, and we should be slightly more forgiving regarding SYNTHESIS by collation if notability is established, you do not give inline citations for a large number of the battles.
Your webcitations need to be improved to MILMOS standards. Authors, publishers, works (ie "Wellesley") in other works (ie "Fred's Big Book of UK Commanders Online") etc... Fifelfoo (talk) 02:53, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The name "Duke of Wellington" would appear to give this notability, given his importance in British and European history - though I fail to understand why I would need a high quality source or to cite someone for a nomination - what significance is that to the article itself? Google for "Wellington's battles" you get a range of questions about his military career and various aspects of it that are nor answered clearly anywhere. If you need a name.. me.. I'm interested in how many battle he fought, lost and won. Anyone who studies history is a historian, they don't need to be a scholar or author to qualify.
"SYNTHESIS by collation" - means? A lot of the battles listed have their own articles, which in turn include detailed accounts and references. Do encyclopaedias not cross-reference? I have invested a great deal of effort citing a lot of the battles that are lesser known, than say Waterloo - I'm not sure why it would be necessary to duplicate references further? Again, if you could explain.
Your MILMOS comment was again too brief to be clear. Sounds like you're refering to secondary sources based on primary sources.. which is basically citing a source from the bibliography of a source to be cited on Wiki?

Thanks, Ma®©usBritish (talk) 03:37, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

- No worries. The notability of the topic of "Battle Record of Wellington" needs to be separately established regardless of the notability of "Wellington" himself. (The trivial example is "Blue" is notable, whereas "List of Blue Things" is not inherently notable). If historians have debated the number of battles he participated in, then you ought to cite this debate as the cause of the notability of the topic. I believe you when you say that it has been debated by scholars and is therefore notable, but this needs to be cited in the article. Add this point to the article, and cite a number of historians in the debate, and the topic is notable beyond any criticism.
- This is a list type article. For a normal type article the collation of events not mentioned in conjunction in HQRS would be synthetic original research. However, this is a list (and it justifiably and rightly) takes most battles from a major source, and then adds minor battles from other sources. Because Wikipedia is not read hypertextually, we cannot rely on other articles's citations to support this article. Each article must cite its points of fact on that article itself. The solution to this is easy, for currently uncited battles, find a scholarly hqrs from that article mentioning that Wellington was there, and cite it in your article. (I see no reason this couldn't be a Featured List btw).
- " "The Duke of Wellington". Retrieved 28 April 2011." ought to be cited as Jane Wellesley (2004) "[# The Duke of Wellington]" Articles United Kingdom: Association of Friends of the Waterloo Committee. Retrieved 28 April 2011.; Websites need to be fully cited, with authors, titles, works that item is contained in (ie: "The Duke of Wellington" in Articles) publishers, publisher location where available, year. When, and only when, elements of this are unavailable should they be left out. Many readers use the citations to determine the quality of the article, and they resent having to extract the citation data from dead weblinks. It is also a requirement of MILHIST B and A class articles that we cite correctly (and I see no reason why this couldn't climb the ladder to greatness). Fifelfoo (talk) 04:45, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Fifelfoo, someone has reviewed and rated the article as B-class recently, which is a good start. I have continued to expand, reference and update the article since then however to incluse more info on Wellington's Generalship, as supportive reading - lots of reading required to find most of these battles (few minor skirmishes missing refs atm); it would be easy enough to pick up one concise book of battles and reference that, but it stinks of bias in favour of one authors opinions to do so, hence why I have taken references from several good military historians, in some cases battles have more than one reference - all fully referenced. It would seem you have a good understanding of Quality Standards and Featured Lists, from your comments. I wondered if you could take another look at the article sometime and advise me what you think may be required to push this article higher than B-class, as you say you believe this article could achieve a high standard with the right content. Thank you. Ma®©usBritish (talk) 07:45, 7 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

P. S. Burton[edit]

I recommend making the table sortable. Done P. S. Burton (talk) 21:11, 12 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I tried making the table sortable several times in my Sandbox, but date ranges (eg 4–10 April 1808 or 25 May–3 June 1810) will not sort correctly and cause the table to produce unusual results. I have tried to find a way round this without success. Not sure if there even is a fix. It has been suggested that it is not possible to sort date ranges. Some of the other details are sortable, although most of the entries are in an order already, ie Wars and Ranks.

Ma®©usBritish (talk) 04:11, 13 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

All columns now sortable, in some cases using the "display:none" technique to hide data written in a non-standard method but resulting in correctly sorted columns. Dates sort based by opening date of battle/siege in cases where date is a range. Ma®©usBritish (talk) 08:45, 2 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

AustralianRupert[edit]

Interesting article; good work so far. I have the following suggestions for possible improvement:
- the lead needs a little work for clarity and flow. For instance "although not originally appointed as the British or Allied commander..." - this assumes in the lead that people already know who Wellesley was, when that might not necessarily be the case. It probably needs to be stated briefly who he was and what he was notable for (a sentence or two at the most); Done
- do we know what units Wellesley commanded in those battles? If possible, it might be an idea to add this to the table;
- citations needed: in the Military career section, the entire first paragraph is uncited, while the second half of the second paragraph also appears uncited - for B class and beyond and especially if aiming for FA or FL, I suggest adding more citations there and also possibly in the table; Done
- I suggest wikilinking the ranks in the table (but only on first mention), as this will give casual readers a better understanding; Done
- formatting: some of the citations appear to be in short form (e.g. "Jaques, p. 212") but then others are in long (e.g. "Fletcher, Ian; Younghusband, Tony (1997). Salamanca, 1812") is there are a reason for this? It would probably be best if they were all in short in the References section and then in long format in the Sources section; Done
- per above, I suggest moving the full bibliographic details of the Fletcher & Younghusband, Riley, Ayrton and the two Napier works to the Sources section for consistency of style; Done
- I wouldn't suggest using internal Wikilinks for references per Wikipedia:RS#Primary.2C secondary.2C and tertiary sources. It would be best to replace these with citations to sources external to Wikipedia;
- if possible author, publisher and accessdate information should be added to the web citations. AustralianRupert (talk)

Thanks for the feedback. Initial mention of each rank has been wikilinked.

- Will be looking to add further external sources in the near future, when I get time to focus on it, and find good refs per battle.
- With regards Jaques - his book was used so much I used short form entry in the References heading, and gave the full details of that book in the Sources section below - something I noted has been done extensively on the main article about Wellington due to repeated use of sources such as Holmes and Longford, seems like a practised method so I used it. Any book only used once has the long form.
- Not sure if we know what units Wellesley commanded, though it may be recorded - in most cases on the table he would be overall commander, leading the whole army, if we were to add a column just to indicate what he commanded in his first few battles, the rest of the column would be blank and might look out of place. As the article develops I feel it might me better to create a separate section/s detailing any notable points of his participation for those battles, rather than a few simplified entries in the table. It could also allow more room for expansion of this and other articles.
- Will be coming back to this article soon, its on short hold for the moment whilst I work on a few articles that the summer allows me, and to receive ample feedback and suggestions from this nomination to help push it further along.

Intothatdarkness[edit]

You might want to provide a citation for the claim that Waterloo "left him traumatized", as it seems more opinion at this point and not supported by outside citations. The flow in the first section is also a little off. You might also consider revising some of the "would remain" constructions to "remained" to give it better tone.Intothatdarkness (talk) 21:57, 17 May 2011 (UTC) Done[reply]

I read the "trauma" remark on another site and it also sounds a little opinionated there, and as its on a free tripod-hosted site not a dedicated source I'm a little hesitatnt to cite it. But I will try to find out if it was true, and have ordered Richard Holmes "The Iron Duke" book just now, which appears to be the best biog available on Wellington, and might allow me to reference that with more confidence. Although I have no doubt, personally, that any battle with 50,000 casualties lying around could break the will of even a man like Wellington I hope to shed some light on it. Ever see the end of "Waterloo" with Chris Plummer riding through the piles of bodies, reliving emotional moments of the battle, using the famous "hardest thing to a battle lost, is a battle won" quote? It is a poignant moment which may have some truth in it. Thanks for the feedback. Looking into it further as soon as possible.

Thanks. I agree with your analysis of the impact of Waterloo on Wellington, but if you're going to put that in there it's probably best to have a citation to back it up.Intothatdarkness (talk) 13:33, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Opening has now undergone various rewrites, includes citations and background info. Article expanded where appropriate. Ma®©usBritish (talk) 05:11, 28 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]