Talk:Battle of Albuera/Archive 1

message: Hi all, I've just added I bit from the British side of the battle including the famous Quote "Die Hard" by Col. Ingils of the 57th. Nice info from the polish lancer perpective. Marc 8/4/05
Who won?
The Anglo-Portuguese-Spanish had the better of it. 
a) losses were marginally in their favour
b) tactically Despite the initial success of the French flanking move, an infantry attack by Cole's division stopped and threw back the French in disorder.  But there is a fair suspicion that before then Soult had got himself into a winning position and failed to exploit it decisively.  Soult allegedly claimed subsequently "The British were completely beaten and the day was mine, but they did not know it and would not run" 
c) strategically Soult had advanced to attempt to lift the siege of Badajoz.  After the battle, he retreated, without relieving Badajoz
But in the course of the battle 5 regimental colours were lost (on the standard British definition of colours as the flag, not the flag staff), and the Anglo-Portuguese-Spanish forces had been engaged piecemeal (or not at all) and units involved had taken a pasting ( to quote Wellington "another such battle would ruin us" )
In some instances that arose because of incompetent/unfortunate officering  (Stewart's brigade lost 3/4 of their strength when they were charged from the rear by the Polish cavalry, without time to form square, and in the middle of a rainstorm, which meant there was no chance of firing anything beyond charges already in their muskets).  In some instances, the high casualties came from the sheer stickability of the troops.  ('Cole's division threw back the French' involves a 20 minute fire fight at musket range, during which 50% of the men of British regiments involved became casualties : regimental officer casualties were even higher)  Rjccumbria 23:54, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Just sorting out the TOC and adding . Carre 11:26, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Older contents 

message: I have parked this here for the benefit of those particularly interested in the Polish aspects of the battle (or why the British Army suddenly decided it would like to have a few Lancers of their own).  On other aspects, I suspect it suffers from its immediate source being preoccupied with the Polish aspects.  A few points which suggest this are: 
# Barrosa is normally accounted a British victory (it was the first time in the Peninsular War the British captured a French eagle)
# Badajoz had fallen to Soult, not Massena 
# Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida are separate fortresses : Almeida is in Portugal; CR is its opposite number on the Spanish side of the border  
# 'the Spanish General Colborn' is - I would rather suspect - in fact the British Lieutenant-Colonel Colborne commanding the 1st Brigade of the 2nd Division
# if the reason Beresford did not bring his siege guns with him was that he was confident Badajoz would fall, then he could have brought them up once he got to Badajoz, rather than strip the walls of Elvas of a miscellaneous collection of Portuguese antiques.  He didn't bring them, because he didn't have any - neither did Wellington in front of Almeida The British never had much of a siege train during the Peninsular War - hence the famous and bloody stormings of barely practicable breaches (Badajoz, Ciduad Rodrigo) that punctuate the campaign 
  Rjccumbria 19:44, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Previous text of main article 

message: In Oman's work a British officer of Colborne's brigade is quoted.  He was being led captive to the French rear by two French infantrymen when a Polish lancer rode up, cut him down with his sabre and deliberately made his horse trample the prone man. 
I'll look up the quote.  
Throughout the wars when the British came into conflict with lancers, Poles or French, there is a litany of complaints that they were unnecessarily brutal to the wounded.  Jaquinot's French lancers at Waterloo were similarly denounced.  Perhaps the greater reach of the lance tempted their weilders to spear fallen men when a sword armed cavalryman would not have bothered.
Urselius 15:06, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  One Polish lancer and one prisoner. 

message: Folks,
Just a notice that I'm in the middle of rewriting (offline) this entire article.  Normally, I'd just go ahead and do away with the existing text, but it seems that the article is still slightly active, so I decided to alert interested parties here.
To date, I have rewritten the Background section (taking the narrative from the Lines of Torres Vedras through to Soult's expedition into Extremadura, the taking of Badajoz, and Soult's return to Andalusia), and created a new section "Prelude to battle", which follows the French activities around Badajoz following Soult's departure, Beresfords army moving against the French, and various Spanish & Portuguese actions.  These two sections are completely referenced, with inline citations, using Gates, Glover, Weller, Fortescue and Oman.  As the rewrite progresses, I hope to also bring in Esdaile and possibly others.
Now, since the article is still a bit active, I thought I may just introduce each new bit, a piece at a time, to see what the reaction is.  Unfortunately, the citation style I use may look a little odd with the (few) references already here, and the detail in my new bits will definitely look out of place compared with the Battle section.  Therefore, I'm suggesting one of 4 courses:
# put my changes in a bit at a time, and live with the slight oddities for a few days (the whole article should be done by the end of this week);
# wait until I've finished, and then overwrite the whole article... seems a bit arrogant, to me;
# wait 'til the rewrite is done, then post it in entirety as a subpage either in my userspace, or under this article's space, then wait to see what people think;
# do nothing, and leave this under-referenced article as it is!
If people are worried about what I may do to their hard work, you could look at the Battle of Barrosa article, which was my last major work - taken from stub to A class, and FA candidate, in the space of a month.  This one is a little harder, because there is some good work I want to try and keep, especially in the Battle section, but hopefully it'll work out fine.  Thoughts?
If there aren't any responses either way in the next few days, I'll just be bold and go ahead in any case.  Thanks for your time. Carre 18:14, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Apologies for the use of the  template, but I noticed an edit to the article after I'd put the previous note up, and was concerned no-one was aware of the impending change.  The rewrite is done now, so just waiting a few more days before replacing existing content. Carre 14:08, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: All done, anyway. Carre 07:55, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rewrite