Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Atlantic campaign of May 1794/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 17:19, 7 March 2008.

[edit] Atlantic campaign of May 1794

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The final article in the (hopefully soon to be featured) topic on the Glorious First of June, a major naval battle of 1794. This article covers the month of campaigning which lead to the battle. The article has passed GA and been extensively copyedited by User:Carre and User:EyeSerene. All comments welcome. Jackyd101 (talk) 19:27, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

  • By spring of 1794 the First French Republic was not only at war with all its neighbours, but was also in the grip of The Terror.
    • Dubious English; include the before spring.
Typo, done.
    • Misleading; the Law of 22 Prairial was on the 10th of June (perhaps better cited as a consequence of this campaign?)
Whilst you are quite correct in the date of the law, The Terror itself as a phenomenen had been continuing in France since September 1793 (and even earlier according to some sources). See Reign of Terror.
Reign of Terror is an appalling article, a hotbed of competing POVs. If you're going to summarize French revolutionary history, it would be much better to consult, say, R. R. Palmer directly than to rely upon that mishmash of Kautsky and R. J. Rummell. In any case, this comes across like C. S. Forester; it would be better to say nothing than this. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:31, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Now I'm very confused. I have numerous sources which indicate dates earlier for these as the origin of the Terror (one text suggesting January 1793, around the time of the execution of Louis XVI). Suffice to say, France was in the grip of severe political repression and violence during 1793-1794, embodied in the Navy by massive purges of the officer corps in late 1793. Most sources I have consulted refer to these purges as being part of The Terror, and so have I. I am aware there is some controversy here but did not feel that this article was the place to go into a close debate on The Terror itself as the events were not directly consequential (the campaign does not appear to have influenced the later law directly by the way). What exactly are you objecting to? Is it the use of "The Terror" to describe this period? If so, why?--Jackyd101 (talk) 15:52, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
It would be better to avoid the phrase; there is a reasonable distinction between the earlier phases and the summer of 1794, which routinely executed those who were neither in service to the Republic nor in arms against it; sometimes "the Terror" and "the Great Terror". Not a point which needs much explanation here; I will see if I can devise clearer wording. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:40, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
OK, looks good, thankyou.--Jackyd101 (talk) 19:37, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
  • At 09:24 on the morning of 1 June, Howe sent his ships into action using the novel tactic of simultaneously turning each ship in his line northwest to bear down individually on Villaret's fleet.
    • Advancing in line abreast was novel in 1794? Source? If I recall Mahan correctly, it was far from new; neither was its failure.
    • If this means something else (as individually may be intended to do), please be clear.
The British fleet was not advancing in line abrest. They were each indiviually turning to towards the French so that, if the plan had gone as intended, every British ship would have broken the French line simultaneously. I have attempted to clarify this in the article. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:05, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
Thankyou for your comments. The issues you have raised have been addressed, let me know if this is satisfactory. If you have any further comments please let me know. Regards.--Jackyd101 (talk) 09:08, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
  • dismissed the service may be outdated; we should write British English here, but of the twenty-first century, not the eighteenth. But I leave this for a native to discern. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:09, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Dismissed the service may be nautical jargon, but I wouldn't consider it outdated. Is there an issue with understanding the term, or is its meaning clear?--Jackyd101 (talk) 23:10, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Not for me, but I've heard it before; would dismissed from the service be less forbidding? (and that is a question, for your consideration)
Yes, I see your point. I'll change it.--Jackyd101 (talk) 10:21, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose at least until the FA reviewers and the contributors to this article figure out what a "mile" is in this context. Gene Nygaard (talk) 11:35, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Do you mean the difference between a mile and a nautical mile? There isn't any controversy about this in the article, this is the first time it has been raised. Basically when used in the article it means the standard mile, if it meant nautical mile then it would say "nautical mile". Can you make your concern a little clearer?--Jackyd101 (talk) 12:04, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
On the contrary; in this context, if for some strange reason a land mile happens to be used, that is the one which needs to be explicitly—and most likely visibly—disambiguated. It is unlikely that this is the case in this article, however. Rather, it is much more likely that a number of those "miles" are merely misconverted. Gene Nygaard (talk) 13:50, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Basically, in writing this article I stuck to the sources (principally in distances, this means William James) which use the term "mile" without qualification. I don't feel that I can make assumptions on their behalf as to which they meant. Whether this means that the figures should not be converted into km due to this uncertainty is a question I would appreciate wider input before deciding on. I have looked through James's work for some qualification of which "miles" he means, so far without success.--Jackyd101 (talk) 14:12, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Including a conversion is identifying them. Misidentifying them, here. But basically, this is simply a matter of interpreting what your sources say, something we need to do all the time, for all sorts of ambiguities. Gene Nygaard (talk) 14:28, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
I have had a more thorough search of my edition of William James and have been unable to discover which version of "miles" he means. Do you suggest that I remove all of the conversions until this can be cleared up?--Jackyd101 (talk) 15:50, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
If you do, you will get opposes from the metric faction. Gene, the source here is a quasi-official history from 1827; I see no real doubt that nautical mile is meant, and the conversions should simply be fixed. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:51, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
I will have to take your word for it, because that was what I originially thought, and then was throughly confused by the article nautical mile which seems to say that the actual length of a British nautical mile has changed several times since 1827 (or maybe I'm just misunderstanding the article).--Jackyd101 (talk) 23:02, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Any variations and uncertainty in the definition of the nautical mile are insignificant at the precision of the measurements in this article—unlike the 15%+ difference between sea miles and land miles. Yes, we know it wasn't the international nautical mile 1852 m definition, but by the 1820s it was already standardized as 6080 ft for the British nautical mile .
Like Sepentrionalis/PMAnderson says, we can reasonably assume that a naval historian is using nautical miles for distances involving ships at sea. To say otherwise would be like having a source on the history of Britain which mentions "Rugby", but saying that you can only link to the Rugby disambiguation page, because the source doesn't explicitly say that it isn't Rugby, North Dakota.
Or, it is like saying that when William James says that a gun weighed x cwt., you couldn't convert that to kilograms because he doesn't explicitly tell you that he thinks "hundred" is written in digits as "112". Gene Nygaard (talk) 15:51, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
(ec)The changes are on the order of one part in a thousand, and should not affect conversions (the picky may have opinions on whether 10 miles is best expressed as 18 km, 19 km, or 18.5 km, but we'll deal with that if they do; the half-km is less than the precision of the distance anyway.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:06, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
OK, if we are going to assume nautical miles then that is fine. Can someone help with changing the conversions, since I have no idea how to do that.--Jackyd101 (talk) 16:21, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
That {{tl:convert}} template is an extremely complicated one, but for this situation it is simply a matter of changing the parameter name from mi to nmi. I changed the other two conversions to nautical mile conversions without explicitly identifying the miles, you can tinker with the best way to do that. I didn't bother with "approximately ten miles" (20 km would probably be best there, even if it were statute miles rather than nautical miles) or half a mile (1 km appropriate for its precision); the only one where it makes a significant difference in what the readers will understand is the 400 nmi figure. Gene Nygaard (talk) 17:03, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

More pressing, perhaps, is the question of what the sources are.

  • The whole business about the Terror causing famine is from a book published by The Times in 1907; Edwardian Tory histories are simply not reliable sources on the French (or the American) Revolution, least of all on causation. It might be better to say that war and rebellion caused the Terror and the famine: The Vendee revolted in March 1793; the Terror, even as a general policy, began in September. It is difficult to imagine any course, short of immediate capitulation, which would have saved that harvest.
This is actually a minor point in regards to the article, and given the confusion it has already caused, I am quite happy to remove the suggestion of causality. As far as I can make out (and I have consulted other sources, that one was cited in this particular instance largely because it agreed with others and I wanted to utilise a range of sources in the article). I could find another source to reference this, but given that it is a point of controversy and a minor issue, I'll try and find a way to not imply a direct causal link. (The actual wording of one source was that the Terror had caused the harvest to rot in the fields, so at least one source was implying a direct link, but in this case it doesn't seem worth a lengthy debate).--Jackyd101 (talk) 23:02, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
  • William James wrote in 1827; doubtless he is fuller in detail than most later sources, but that is not everything. Try a modern naval history; or try The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812. If they tell the same story, well and good; they probably will in general, but not in specifics. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:51, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
More modern histories were consulted, but were so sketchy on detail that I found myself repeatedly coming back to James. More detail was avaliable on the Glorious First of June itself, but the camapign was generally ignored as a topic. I will try to look at the book you have suggested, but it won't be for a few weeks at least I'm afraid.--Jackyd101 (talk) 23:02, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Does the "Ed." mean that Tracy and Williams were named Edward, or that they were editors? If the latter, this is not how to format it; I believe {{cite book}} has arguments to cover the case, but it is really not that difficult to format citations by hand. (This is a minor complaint, and none of these are an oppose.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:32, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
It means they were the editors. Williams does not give contributors names while Tracy's primary sources are given in the individual footnotes. I will investigate the ways to deal with this.--Jackyd101 (talk) 23:02, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
I would deal with this by taking the references out of {{cite books}}. (I'd be willing to do this, if you agree.) It is possible to say "Tracy, p. xx, citing DOCUMENTNAME", but it's only worth doing if the reader is likely to care which primary source is being used - usually a question of reliability. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:13, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Please do, that would be fine as long as all relevant informaton is retained.--Jackyd101 (talk) 16:21, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment. My main concern is uniformity of style, so I have spent time just now editing the article with that in mind. A question: what purpose is served by linking dates, like this: 2 April? I changed a couple of these, to link to sections within the article that have headings of exactly that form. Those links are now useful: but I see no point at all in the others. Anyway, generally an efficient little article that should get FA status after some polishing. I'll do more, if asked to.– Noetica♬♩ Talk 04:22, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Linking dates like 2 April is, as I'm sure you're well aware, in compliance with WP:MOSDATE, specifically Autoformatting and linking. Your change to the two dates, though making the links more high-value, is not compliant – specifically to Do not use piped links for date elements that cause date formatting problems. Pending an agreed and released solution to the famous autoformatting "bug", the options open through MOS are to unlink all non-relevant dates, leaving the high-value ones such as those you've changed; or to revert to having all dates autoformatted and linked to the low-value date articles. Carré (talk) 09:12, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Thank you, Carré. No, I haven't kept abreast of all that. Tied up with other MOS-issues, in recent times. It seems quite absurd to me! Do the two high-value changes that I made really cause problems? If so, the two sections in question are themselves anomalously named, and should be renamed slightly to enable such useful internal links. A section ought surely to have a name that will permit linking to it.
But in fact, looking at the detailed provisions at WP:MOSNUM, I don't see a problem for those internal links. They are of the form [[#number month|number month]], and nothing with # appears among examples of problem cases. Is that right?
– Noetica♬♩ Talk 12:14, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
The problem, of course, is that when you use those piped links, you don't get autoformatting. So some people are going to get most of the dates in one format, and those two dates incongruously jumping out at them in a different format. The problem isn't with the links, they work fine; it is with the notion of using linking as the mechanism to achieve autoformatting, the same problem you run into with "year in aviation" and "year in music" links and the like. Gene Nygaard (talk) 15:13, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Since we cannot achieve both, the tradeoffs must be considered, and a choice as to which is most important in the particular context. That is not something that we should even expect a Manual of Style to be able to determine in all cases. Noetica's choice is a reasonable one in the circumstances. Not the choice everyone would make, but certainly a defensible one, and the choice whould be based on what is most helpful as least disruptive to the article, not on some artificial rules. But remember also, those links aren't particularly helpful because they are Easter egg links; no reader of the article is likely to expect that one of the ubiquitous Wikipedia date links is going to take them to a particular section of the article which they are reading. If you are going to do that, it might well be better to use something which does clearly indicate this to the reader, such as "see the [[#28 May|28 May]] and [[#29 May|29 May sections]] below". Gene Nygaard (talk) 15:32, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Or "as on 28 May, [[#28 May|below]] and 29 May [[#29 May|further below]]". The point is to be clear to the reader that there is a link. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:13, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

[←] PMA's suggestions seems a very reasonable and workable suggestion here. Gene has it spot on with the piped links – that's exactly what I was on about. Noetica's intent was what we should all be aiming for: to get high-value dates linked, and low-value ones not linked. But until either the conflation of autoformatting and linking goes away, or the autoformatting brigade accepts that date links are irrelevant for the vast majority of wikipedia users, FAs are going to have to find some compromise if they're to comply to WIAFA and MOS. And any particular FAC is not the place to have that discussion. Carré (talk) 18:45, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Summary of changes

Hi all, thanks for your interest. I have been unexpectedly busy in RL and thought it best to follow this page's progress without becoming heavily involved in debate until I was more free, as I now am. Below is a summary of the changes done or needed for the article from the text above.

  • Septentrionalis has disputed the use of the term The Terror for the period it is used to discuss. Although this is sourced, this is clearly quite a controversial issue historiologically and given the minor importance of the term within the article I have agreed that it should not be use. I do however have an issue with some of the changes made to the first paragraph. Although I have changed what I percieve to be the problems in the article itself, I have copied the paragraph below to demonstrate what I have taken issue with so that my intentions are clear.

In the winter of 1793–94, war and external disorder had combined with bad weather, and France faced starvation. The Vendee had rebelled in March 1793, and the northwest of France, except for the ports, was still effectively a foreign country; Lyons had rebelled for the Girondins in May, and was taken in October; the Terror had begun in September, and was not yet at its height (not until June 1794). The Navy had become disorganised through equality brought on by the Revolution. Louis XVI had decreed that only pure-blood noblemen could be officers; but the Republic had promoted experienced seamen, and the two groups had quarrelled. Two members of the Committee of Public Safety had been reorganizing the fleet, and restoring morale, since October.[1]

Firstly surely it should be internal disorder rather than external disorder (that factor is covered by the word "war"). Secondly the paragraph has no causal links - why are rebellions in the Vendee and Lyons mentioned? I am guessing that they are brought up to explain the starvation, but this is not made clear and I think it would be best just to talk about internal rebellion without discussing which ones were most at fault and mention political repression without stepping into the potential minefield of The Terror. The sentance on the "equality" of the revolution is highly loaded and I'm very uncomfortable with it as presented. Whilst it is certainly true that more experienced seamen were promoted, it does not follow that these men were better at their jobs - in fact it is certain that many weren't, an experienced merchant seaman or bosun does not a naval captain make. Many of the "pure-blood noblemen" (another loaded phrase) who were executed or dismissed were excellent officers of many years standing and their loss was (and this can be sourced) a disaster for the French navy. It is true that the groups quarrelled, but to site their quarrels as a primary cause in the deterioration of the French Navy at this time is overly simplistic and a fuller debate is not, I feel, within this page's remit. To say that the men from the commitee were "reorganizing the fleet, and restoring morale" without qualification is also very loaded - they may have been attempting or intending this, and did make some achievements towards it, but their purges and proclamations had some very negative effects on the Navy as well. To sum up, this new paragraph has numerous problems and I'm far from convinced by its accuracy or in many respects its relevancy. If the source is saying what is listed here unqualified then I am afraid that I am highly suspicious of it. I would also appreciate if the individual facts listed could be sourced to a single page number rather than all the references grouped at the end of the paragraph so I can see what is attributed to what. I do not mean to be unpleasant, I hugely appreciate the interest and effort put into this paragraph, but I have extensively remodelled it so that it conforms a better to brillant prose, NPOV and relevancy requirements.
  • The nautical mile issue. This has now been dealt with thanks to Gene Nygaard, and relevant measurements now convert nautical miles into km.
  • I have no problem with Noetica's edits, even the disputed dates issue, but I feel that this is not really the place to hold this debate. Carré is quite correct, barring some change in MoS, these links should not be piped but linked and on the basis of this I am changing them back. If a reasonable MoS based argument is made I have no prejudice against changing them again, —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jackyd101 (talk • contribs) 22:10, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Strongly Oppose External was a typo. I don't see that the condition of France needs to be mentioned at all; but if it does, it should not be based on Tory sources from 1827 and 1907. I summarized a distinguished (American) historian of the Revolution, whose view of the Jacobin regime is on balance substantially negative, but is more nuanced than the tradition of the Ogre Robespierre, which the article now represents.
I am not prepared to edit war over this; but this is unacceptable as FA; which is to say, it is an embarassment to Wikipedia. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:11, 7 March 2008 (UTC)


You are entitled to your oppose but I take great exception to you calling this article an embarrassment to Wikipedia. Your edits were not well written, your sources were unclear and I'm afraid that I strongly suspect that you are incorrect in your comments about the dates of The Terror (and the state of that article should have no bearing on this one. The Terror article says that the Terror started in 1793, as do my sources (biased though you may consider them to be). You are challenging this rather small aspect of the article on what appears to be a minor point of historiography. Rather than argue the point with you I dropped the link and the phrasing from the article, but I could not let your edits stand in the manner in which you had made them as frankly they did not make sense. Rather than enter into a debate on these relatively minor aspects I simplified the whole section whilst still retaining your sources (which I am sure are perfectly acceptable). I appreciate the work and interest you have put in, and I feel that once tidied up, your edits were a positive influence on the article but you seem a little fixated on this Terror business. One of the "Tory" sources I used described the huge purge of the Navy in late 1793 as being part of The Terror. The Wikipedia article seemed to confirm that the Terror was ongoing at this point, and I therefore conflated the purge (which definitely happened and has been attested by numerous sources) with the Terror in general. In this I was apparently mistaken and this has been corrected. I did not, and have no intention of ever, mention Robespierre, or make value judgements about the French government beyond "they purged their naval officer corps which had a negative effect on the French Navy", a fact attested not just by a string of sources but also by the dismal fighting record of the French Navy throughout the war. To be frank, this is a tiny part of the article and to brand the entire thing an "embarrassment to Wikipedia" because you don't like a historiographical footnote which I have made attempts to accomodate you with already is excessive in the extreme.--Jackyd101 (talk) 00:51, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I notice that there is now a POV tag on the article. Since you have felt this necessary, please explain, clearly and simply either here or at the article talk exactly what it is in the article which you believe violates NPOV so I can fully understand what you are having problems with beacause it is not self evident to me from this page.--Jackyd101 (talk) 00:57, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • In the winter of 1793, war and internal disorder had combined with poor weather to leave France facing starvation.[1] The collapse of the harvest due to widespread revolt across France and heavy-handed political repression from the National Convention had caused a breakdown in the French agricultural system.
    • Palmer should not be cited for an interpretation with which he disagrees.
I do not have a copy of Palmer and you did not cite him so I could tell which page number was for which fact. Please break these page numbers up so it is clear what they are citing.
We are not in the business of catering for the incompetent. I cited four whole passages from Palmer; deal. As it happens, pp. 205 and 209 directly discussed the fleet at Brest, rather than the general background; but if you don't have access to Palmer, what difference does it make? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:36, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
You cited Palmer badly because when I tried to clean up the edits you had made, I was unable to tell which of the page numbers you had given related to which of the titbits of information you had inserted without context. That is why you need to break page numbers up.--Jackyd101 (talk) 03:12, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
No, you needed to read Palmer. If you had, you would not be contending for nonsense below. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:49, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
    • The heavy-handed political repression began in September and was institutionalized in October; that is to say, it was begun with the harvest, not before it.
Fine, remove the political repression all together, it isn't important.
Look, I am sorry but what you inserted here was your own POV (based on sources) that political repression did not cause the failure of the harvest. I needed to demonstrate at the start of the article that there was a potential famine looming in France. In more than one source I consulted the famine was, at least in part, blamed on political repression in France at the time, so I gave that as a reason. You complained about this and rather than argue the toss on such a minor issue I simply removed the phrase entirely whilst I was tidying up your edits (which did not make sense for the reasons I outlined above) I did not revert to anything, check the diff.--Jackyd101 (talk) 03:12, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
    • Palmer is the middle of the road; this article now represents the right margin; if we had wished to include the left margin, we could have cited the even more distinguished Albert Mathiez on Robespierre and the Jacobins as the true democratic Rovolution, betrayed to perfidious Albion by the bourgeoises of Thermidor.
I didn't say Palmer wasn't the middle of the road, I merely resented your representation of my sources as "Tory" without much justification, aparently because the main one is contemporary English. I have not read Albert Mathiez but I am sure he is very eminent (I follow naval history, not political), but if he does indeed say things like "perfidious Albion" and the "true democratic Revolution" (guillotine and all I guess) I would be even more sceptical of him than anyone else mentioned (sounds an awful lot like historical revisionism seen through a political kaleidoscope).
Precisely. Mathiez's view is one extreme, although it is a widely held current of opinion held by reliable sources (the article on the Terror should acknowledge it, but that's another problem); you are parroting the other extreme; neither is desirable. It is not our business to be "skeptical" of one side or the other, but to neutrally reflect all. (Which source are you claiming is contemporary English, btw?) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:36, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Kindly do not accuse me of "parroting" anything. The version I laid down in this article was in no way extreme and am still struggling to understand why you think it is because you have still not really explained exactly what wording in the article you object to. The version you gave, whether you meant to or not, implied that the failure of the harvest and the disorganisation of the Navy happened despite the best attentions of the National Convention as opposed to, at least in part, because of them. This is a major change in direction for the paragraph performed without consultation and using a source which I have not seen. Just as you are sceptical (and dismissive) of my "Tory" sources, I have every right to be sceptical of yours. (I was giving James as contemporary English, I know he was published over 30 years later, but his accounts were partly based on discussion and interviews with officers who served in the actions described).--Jackyd101 (talk) 03:12, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, and that gives him the weaknesses of any primary source; including, it would seem, the weakness of most official histories: they don't gather data from the other side, and when they do, they don't give it equal weight. The assertion that the National Convention desired the disorganization of the Navy casts them as pantomime villains; they were fighting a war, after all. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:49, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I am aware of the records of the French admirals, but there were a number of captains in the French fleet at the GFOJ who were ex-merchant captains, brought in to replace long-serving officers executed or arrested in the purge of late 1793. What these purges did was to behead the French Navy and erase cohesive leadership, which was further divided by political commissars like Jean Bon Saint Andre. This is one of the reasons the French Navy was disorganised in 1794, not because there were quarrels between aristocratic officers and recent promotions (there were no officers remaining who promoted their aristocratic birth, Saint-Andre saw to that).
Nonsense. Non-aristocratic officers were promotable, and promoted, as of 1789-90. Saint Andre and Prieur dismissed, and executed some of, the aristocratic ones (although not all, as "Villaret de Joyseuse" shows), because of the resulting factionalism. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:36, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Made into decrees, April 22 and 28th, 1791. This is not the Terror; it is not even the National Convention, but its grandfather, the Constituent Assembly.. (F.M.Thompson, The French Revolution, p. 466); the same source reports that Saint Andre sent six prisoners off for execution after the mutiny; hardly the twenty-first century meaning of "purge". Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:28, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
What are you talking about? Saint-Andre and Prieur were appointed in response to the mutiny in late 1793 in which the Atlantic Fleet was taken over by its enlisted sailors and brought into Brest due to lack of pay and food. Officers were not initially dismissed or executed because of their aristocratic roots (although this inevitably played some part), but because of their percieved failures during the mutiny. In the months which followed, Saint-Andre et al replaced a large number of officers and senior seamen of all stations of birth, according to my sources for percieved lack of revolutionary ardor. These men (who included most of those of aristocratic birth) were replaced by those of sufficient revolutionary reputation and this number included many ex-merchant seamen, junior officers and even some men who'd never served at sea before at all. I also didn't say there were no aristocratic officers, I said there were none who "promoted their aristocratic birth" by 1794. --Jackyd101 (talk) 03:12, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
      • Is Vanstabel another sign of a dated history, with limited access to French records? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:48, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
The spelling of Vanstabel varied a lot, so ultimately I went with the spelling here (which was repeated elsewhere) [1] largely because this one is in French. If I am wrong I'll happily change it.--Jackyd101 (talk) 02:10, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Fundamentally, the entire dispute here results from the clear fact that Jackyd has happened across two extremely dated sources, and has not consulted either the current literature on the Revolution (any of it), or the current literature on the campaign. I will not argue his points further; but it really is no longer consensus that the National Convention were blood-drinking ogres, who intended to destroy their own fleet and to starve their own country, including the "virtuous citizens" loyal to the Republic. Right-thinking Englishmen thought so in 1827, but that was 180 years ago. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:19, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

::I've had enough of this. The dispute here is not really about my sources (numerous modern scholarship about the campaign can be seen in the footnotes). What Septentrionalis dislikes is that I am not allowing him to absolve the French government of the time of all responsibility for the destruction of their naval officer corps (through prejudice and incompetence, not deliberately) several months before the campaign began. This is a minor point of the article and a minor historiagraphical point which I do not feel the article really needs to deal with in any depth.--Jackyd101 (talk) 08:47, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I am pleased to see this is struck. It is in error, both about what I proposed, and about the literature. I did not "absolve" the National Convention of anything, except to omit the chronologically impossible; in its place I added the sack of Lyons. That Jackyd believes this to be "revisionism" says more than I can hope to do about his own deep-rooted biases. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:24, 7 March 2008 (UTC)


OK, I have removed my comment above not because I don't think it is valid, but because it is not constructive. What is needed is some kind of compromise here between the sources presented. As this is a minor aspect of the article I am sure that we can come to some sort of arrangement satisfactory to both of us. I suggest we both take time off from the discussion here to come up with compromise solutions seperately and then put them together to see if we can reach agreement. I would ask however that you use your sources in accordance with the other sources given, i.e. present each fact with its respective page number. You have introduced this source during FAC and it is up to you to present it correctly. I will get a copy of this book from my local library next tuesday and see what is actually said to try and work with you on this. I apologise for any offence I may have caused you, but I also take great exception to your tone and language. When we next speak please try to write more clearly and control your temper and I will do likewise--Jackyd101 (talk) 11:52, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I have a source for you to consider: Naval Blunders by Geoffrey Regan, published in 2001, has a passage on the French Navy at this period on pp.87-88 which says among other things, "Everywhere senior officers were deposed by committees of sailors and replaced by more popular men, regardless of rank or ability", "political commissars were given the task of running French ports - with what result can best be left to the imagination" and, following the 1793 mutiny, "The admiral (Morard de Galles) was helples to impose discipline and was promptly arrested on the grounds of his noble background and imprisoned by Deputy St Andre. The deputy then rounded up all the men who had obeyed the admiral's orders and sent them to Paris where they were guillotined. He then dismissed all officers of the fleet who had served before 1789." On the subject of the officers at the Glorious First of June, he writes "of the 26 captains one had been a common sailor and another a boatswain; the rest came from the merchant service and had no experience of commanding a warship in action". These statements come from a modern (albeit popular) historian and seem to confirm the earlier sources which you have criticised. I would be interested to hear some quotes from your source to see how they match up to these and others I can provide.--Jackyd101 (talk) 15:06, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Of course the Tory view still exists; so does the socialist view of Mathiez. But neither is consensus any longer. The disruptive practice of demanding extensive quotations is tiresome; Palmer is still in print and widely available, and I have provided citations. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:28, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
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