User talk:Marshalb
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[edit] Battle of Albuera
Hi Marshalb,
Re your changes to Battle of Albuera: I reverted your edits (don't panic yet!), because you broke a reference, and also contradicted a couple of cited sources in places. However, having done the revert, I went back through and re-applied the changes I agree were corrections to the previous version (Soult's name, timing of 4th division coming up from Badajoz, and Kemmis being stranded). BTW, Sherer is referred to as either Joseph or Moyle Sherer, but I once dug out his memoirs, and his name was actually Joseph Moyle Sherer :)
The one thing I'm still uncertain about is Lumley taking Long's position as commander of the Allied cavalry. Oman is pretty explicit that Beresford replaced Long with Lumley as a result of Long's hasty retreat from the French cavalry. Yes, Lumley was senior to Long, but at the time Lumley had command of an infantry brigade in 2nd Division – he was a former light dragoon, so had experience of commanding horse. You, however, changed the article to suggest this was an agreed-upon plan, and I'm afraid I'd want a source for that suggestion, since it contradicts what Oman says. Have you such a source? Perhaps I should check Fortescue too, since he was much more in favour of Long than Oman was (Fortescue largely following Napier's account of the battle).
Thoughts, opinions, discussions always welcome. Carre (talk) 21:24, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
- Ah, having checked Fortescue, I see where you get the Long/Lumley change from. That's interesting. Fortescue cites a couple of d'Urban's letters for his account – I'll see if I can find those letters, and if they check out, will apply that change to the article (with citation) then.
- Thanks for the corrections to the article, anyway! Such editing is good to see (although you need to be careful not to break stuff that's already referenced). Carre (talk) 21:44, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi Carre
I just found this post by you on my Talk Page after leaving a post for you on your page. As I said, I am not very familiar with the workings of Wikipedia, but I think it is very odd to conduct a correspondence by means of "edits" to Talk Pages.
Marshalb (talk) 23:32, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
- Hello again,
- Got your note – if you check the article now, the Long/Lumley thing is discussed more completely, with both versions reported by historians covered (by the way, Fortescue supports the version that the replacement was due to seniority).
- On sources, I'm not too trusting of d'Urban, for the simple reason that Oman et al use d'Urban letters to support the "incompetent" reason for the replacement, while Fortescue et al ALSO use d'Urban letters to support the other view. However, since we have 4 sources supporting "seniority" (d'Urban, Long, Fortescue and Fletcher), and another 4-5 supporting "incompetent" (d'Urban, Napier, Oman, Weller, Glover), it was worth putting in both views with the note that historians differ. Primary sources are generally frowned on, because it's too easy to fall into Original Research, but in this case there's plenty of secondary sources too.
- The bit about Lumley not arriving until late is still up in the air, to an extent, since several sources are quite explicit about him being in command of an infantry brigade in 2nd Division, until taking command of the cavalry, but this is probably too much detail for the article.
- As to the "best" way to communicate changes like this: normally, you do exactly what you did, and just edit the page. The only time it becomes necessary to communicate via talk pages is when there's disagreement in the content, as was the case here. The best way to go about it then is to use the article's own talk page, rather than an editor's (see Talk:Battle of Albuera, the discussion on this matter is in there).
- Anyway, I think all your major changes are now incorporated in the article, although in a slightly different way, so thanks for pointing out the mistakes :) Carre (talk) 08:59, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
