Talk:Battle of Mons-en-Pévèle

French victory or draw?
The battle of Mons-en-Pévèle is described as "Decisive" French victory in the infobox but if we would believe the article it ended up in a draw, because both sides claimed victory. What is it now?? A victory or a stalemate?Tomaatje12 (talk) 10:59, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Questionable paragraph

 * "The battle confirmed what they had been witnessing for 2 years already: the Flemings and the French could not decisively defeat each other unless one side made a serious mistake. During most of the day there was a military stalemate and the heavy fighting in the evening did not do much to change that." --Verbruggen, page 230

Unfortunately, I was unable to find anything that supports said paragraph on page 230. Page 229 is about the battle of Thielt, 21 June 1128, and page 230 continues this narration. --Kansas Bear (talk) 17:45, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Huge discrepancies in the number of forces engaged and casualties.
I remember reading this article sometime in January and the figures on casualties have been dramatically altered since then. I noticed this has generated a debate over the casualties figures in the edit summaries. I can't help but notice, first, that four other-language wikipedias list the French Royal forces as under 7500 in number, the Russian wikipedia lists the French forces at 15000 strong and others, such as the German Wikipedia list the entire numbers for this battle as unknown. About the Flemish forces, three of them list them at 15000 strong, the French wikipedia lists the Flemish forces as over 7500 and the Russian wikipedia numbers them at 13000. I believe this discrepancy might be due to a confusion between the number of forces mustered for the campaign and the forces actually engaged in battle - it seems, per the accounts of the battle, that not all forces, on both sides, were engaged, while some were only engaged in parts of the battle. The Dutch-language wikipedia has a diagram of the battle that might help to visualize it:

.

The second thing I noticed is the casualties figures. The three other-language wikipedias who do list the casualties put the Flemish figures at 4200, with two of them placing the French figures at 4500 and one of them at 1700. None of these other wikipedias provide sources, though. But any analysis of the conflict will see that both sides suffered significant casualties (significant being a very broad term that doesn't reflect any numerical values).

And lastly, given the discrepancy between the sources listed on this article and other descriptions of the battle, the very widespread figures on them ranging from 1500 to 8000 - more than the entirety of the side's forces per listed on other language wikipedias - and that these sources come from the same press & seem to both stem from dutch-speakers (and are unavailable to be found online), it would be nice to see these actual sources in order to assess their credibility. An addition of another source, especially a non-Flemish one, would also be very valuable in estimating both average numbers and casualties in the battle. Upon a quick search I have heard that the French academic Elisabeth Lalou has a tally of casualties for the battle in one of her works. Maybe someone with more access to these sources could detail them in order to solve this apparent discrepancy in the English-language wikipedia.

Tagging the people who were involved in the editing of these figures:, ,. CaptainKaptain (talk) 00:33, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Hello, sorry for the late reply. I simply noticed the lower estimate of casualties on the French side referenced Verbruggen's book but Verbruggen's lower estimates were missing on this page for the Flemish side. So I added it also to the Flemish side to make it consistent.

I did not add the higher estimates, those were already present. The figure comes from DeVries and I do have his book. The referenced paragraph goes like this: "Casualties were high on both sides; modern historians estimate that the Flemings lost between seven and eight thousand men including their capable young general, Willian of Jülich, and that French losses were nearly as high." Which in turn references: "Verbruggen, Krijgskunst, p. 335 and Funck-Brentano, Philippe le Bel, pp. 476-77."

Which of course is ironic since the lower estimates on this page also reference Verbruggen. Personally I'd say 7000-8000 is quite unrealistic for a medieval european battle of that size. That usually means it was more of a massacre.

The battle itself, for a lack of a better word, was a huge mess. Both armies mostly stood still for most of the day. Then there were peace talks which failed because the French army moved their cavalry around which misinterpreted by the Flemish army. By then it was evening and indeed a part of the Flemish army left the battlefield. The other part was not aware of this and ambushed the French camp. It's during this late evening ambush that most casualties on both sides would have occured.

How many we'll probably never know for sure. Both sides tried to spin it as a victory and as such the original sources sometimes greatly inflated the numbers.

CineadAnDuine (talk) 15:21, 31 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Are the sources used reliable?(WP:RS) Do the sources reflect what is stated in the article?(WP:V) Regardless of what we think or what we know, Wikipedia is written using reliable secondary sources.


 * "I can't help but notice, first, that four other-language wikipedias..."
 * "The three other-language wikipedias..."
 * Wikipedia can not be used to reference Wikipedia articles. Therefore, what other Wikipedias state is irrelevant. --Kansas Bear (talk) 16:31, 31 May 2021 (UTC)