Talk:War of the Mantuan Succession

Proposed merger

(All text from War of Mantuan Succession has been incorporated into this text. Further editing of duplications is needed.)

• I support the merger. No reason to have two articles on the same topic. Havard 13:19, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
• I also support the merger. A bot, Alphachimpbot, just passed overhead— carrying Toto to the Wicked Witch of the West no doubt— and automatically renewed the merge notice. --Wetman 14:25, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Recent edits

@Nihlus1:

(a) Analysis shows 60% of Wikipedia users never go further than the Lede and for those who do, the more detailed an article is, the less likely they are to read it. I've invested considerable energy in reducing my own wording to make it easier for the general reader.

That is the central challenge of Wikipedia editing ie interesting to me versus useful to the reader. What is the relevance in a general article about the war of knowing how many tercios the Spanish raised for the war, who paid for them and their nationality? If you look at the number of Sources I've used, I've left out acres of content on that basis, so I'm not asking others to do anything I'm not.

(b) I can see from elsewhere that casualties and troop strengths are an area of interest for you but as an historian of the 17th century, they are notoriously difficult to estimate for various reasons and nearly always overstated by between 30-50% (per Parrott, Wilson and Stradling). There are various reasons for that; as a sense check, in the 1630s the three most powerful nation states/empires of the period (Spain, France and Austria) could support a maximum field army of 40,000 troops at any one time (actually France was closer to 20,000). In 1625, supporting an army of 25k (much of it financed by other nations) nearly bankrupted Denmark in less than 12 months. The battles of the Thirty Years War involved armies of roughy 13,000 - 15,000 on each side (average). So there is no way Savoy or Venice could fund an army of over 20,000 each; the numbers just don't work.

(c) When using Sources, we have to be very careful about copyright and some of the wording is very similar to that provided by Hanlon. Who is writing a 400 page book and therefore is somewhat more detailed.

Happy to discuss these issues and there is more work to be done on the numbers (and Belligerents, which is very specifically defined by Wikipedia - all 17th century armies were multinational, supplying troops does not make you a Belligerent). Robinvp11 (talk) 10:15, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

To (a), absolutely none of what I've listed is extraneous: it's concise and brief descriptions of the armies involved in a war, which has always been valid material. To (c), none of the wording is plagiarism. Simply repeating numbers does not count as such. To (b), this is both completely wrong (the Spanish, French, and Imperial armies averaged in the six digits in the 1630s, while Hanlon notes in detail several times - with citations - that northern Italian states like Venice routinely fielded armies equivalent to two percent or more of their populations throughout the 16th and 17th centuries) and irrelevant. Your justifications for removing sourced and relevant data are bunk and indicative of you trying to push a partisan view, to the point of both misquoting sources and simply deleting ranges that you don't like.--Nihlus1 (talk) 17:15, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

I keep forgetting that with 95% of editors, being reasonable doesn't help. My bad.

(a) Could you explain which "partisan view" you think I'm pushing? Given I've done most of the work on this article and provided 13 different Sources (you've used one), that seems odd. Plus answering the question 'How is this content relevant?" by saying "Because it is" doesn't seem especially neutral to me.

(b) I'm not clear why you feel able to simply state my figures are wrong, still less irrelevant. I have looked at a variety of Sources (not just for this article, I've done a lot of work on other 17th century conflicts) to arrive at a consensus. So apparently my multiple Sources (which you haven't read) are wrong and thus irrelevant, your single Source (which I have read) is both right and relevant. I'm not following that logic.

(c) Rather than accusing you of bias, distortion, "bunk" (whatever that means), let me explain my reservations about Hanlon. He is primarily a behaviouralist, not a military historian; this matters because his interest is the impact of war on wider society, rather than military operations per se. One major criticism of his work (which he himself admits) is lumping untrained citizen militia into his figures (because its about the influence of militarisation). His book on Farnese is primarily a character study; nothing wrong with that (one of my best friends has a similar area of specialisation) but its a very specific perspective

(d) As a point of accuracy, there are a number of instances where Hanlon qualifies statements you then include in the article without the qualification (eg a large part of the "14,000" raised by Nevers was untrained militia, Tuscany and Parma failed to produce anything like the number of troops requested). Leaving those out is misleading, which I'm sure you agree is incorrect.

(e) You've done what the vast majority of Wikipedia editors do ie read a book, then inserted that learning into an article, rather than asking "Is it relevant?" To be fair, that does tie into your User page which states you use Wikipedia to capture notes on books you've read, although that doesn't really address the issue of relevance. We don't need to discuss it further, although an apology would be nice. Robinvp11 (talk) 12:13, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

To (a), your partisan view is that certain armies were of a certain size. I do not care if you add other sources with different figures and note such. I do care if you delete conflicting data and then misrepresent what the sources say. (b) You know well the sources and figures I refer to, from edits on related pages such as the Thirty Years War and Franco-Spanish War. While the amount of effectives in any one place was limited by the primitive state of 17th century logistics, the major powers of France, Spain, and the HRE consistently maintained armies in the six digits in this period throughout their whole establishments, while northern Italian states like Savoy and Venice routinely raised multiple tens of thousands despite their small populations. It is not accurate to say "France could only support a field army of 20,000" nor "there is no way Venice could support an army of 20,000." In fact Hanlon cites other sources showing that the Venetians had an army of 37,000 in 1571, not counting militia or ship crews, and more generally his works (including both "Twilight of a Military Tradition" and "Hero of Italy") emphasize the unusual ability of the small northern Italian states to sustain militaries equivalent to 2% or more of their populations. (c) Your reservations about Hanlon are irrelevant. You do not have the authority to simply dismiss him as usable, as his books fit the barometer of a reliable source by this website's definition. Moreover, this is a red herring; Hanlon isn't producing these numbers by any calculation of his own (like, say, Parrott and Corvisier do when they speculate how much paper strength translated to effective strength), he's simply compiling a secondary source that cites preexisting figures. (d) The misleading thing is stating "a large part of the 14,000 was untrained militia" when Hanlon never actually says that. What he actually says is "it is uncertain how much of this was militia", which is almost the exact opposite sentiment. (e) How, exactly, are the sizes and composition of armies (adding at most a few sentences to a multi-thousand word article) not relevant to a page about a war?--Nihlus1 (talk) 19:24, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

(a) The most relevant point is the Wikipedia requirement to assume Good Faith and be polite. So far, you have accused me of distortion, partisanship, being a liar and a few others. I have remained polite and done my best to incorporate changes. I think you should take a good look in the mirror.

(b) I have not dismissed Hanlon, in fact I have done my best to retain salient points. I have challenged the wholesale incorporation of chunks of his text into this article (as was originally done) and the apparent assumption anything he says is right, when it is challenged by a variety of equally qualified historians.

(c) My Source for saying France could not support a field army of more than 20,000 in 1630? Richelieu. I suspect he knew what he was talking about. Robinvp11 (talk) 18:32, 30 June 2021 (UTC)