Talk:Battle of Spicheren

Accuracy
This article, whose sources are rather unclear--why is an American civil war book used as sole source here?--contradicts specialist books, like that of Michael Howard (historian), The Franco-Prussian War, in a number of ways: [The reason for the mention of the Am. Civil War book is that the same author G.F.R. Henderson, a British officer and military historian, wrote another book entitled "The Battle of Spicheren: a Tactical Study" which is available in paperback at Barnes and Noble and Amazon and for Nook and Kindle, which are a lot cheaper. This book was advertised on the title page of the Stonewall Jackson book.] (199.127.176.208 (talk) 17:43, 19 March 2014 (UTC))
 * French losses were 2000 casualties and 2000 missing, which turned out to be POWs.
 * Starting forces are more subjective here, but Howard gives 42,900 Prussians and 54,900 Frenchmen "within 15 miles of Spicheren"
 * Kameke was not "relieved of his command". Von Zastrow, the commander of Kameke's (VII) corps, who outranked Alvensleben (cmndr III Corps), was simply happy to leave initiative to the latter because he had no more troops to commit, although this may have been just an excuse, because he was old and not that competent.
 * This is how I read it also. Von Alvensleben, as senior officer, took overall command. I changed the wording of this slightly.  The corresponding article on wikipedia.de says "übernahm der Befehlshaber des III. Armee-Korps, von Alvensleben das Kommando über die Schlacht". I also believe Kameke wasn't mentioned previously in the article. Peter Flass (talk) 11:50, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

FuFoFuEd (talk) 10:22, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Rote Berg Hill seems to be Rotherberg (spelled Rother Berg even on the 1890 German map used here). I've corrected that much.
 * The general description of the battle is pretty muddy and incorrect here. "Alvensleben decided to attack Frossard’s left flank. With a combination of overlapping infantry and artillery attacks, the Prussians were able to roll the flank, thus gaining control of the Rotherberg Hill." Rotherberg was on Frossard’s right flank, not left. The attack on Rotherberg by the VII Corps stalled, but it was successful after the III and VIII Corps joined, but these belonged to different armies. According to Howard, it was more of a case of every German division hearing the cannon fire making a bee line for the battle that achieved the local superiority rather than any prior grand plan. In contrast, the French, who correctly assessed being attacked by a numerically inferior foe for most of the battle, sent the few reinforcements they had too late. However, the loss of the Rotherberg ridge was not as decisive as presented here, according to Howard. The French still occupied an in-depth defensive position. The attempt of Prussians to exploit the initial success was repulsed; their cavalry attempting a pursuit was shot up by the depth of the French defenses. The Prussians were successful however in bringing up 8 guns up on Rotherberg thus securing it against French counterattacks. But according to Howard "All they had captured was an outwork; the main French position still lay before them on the broad slopes of the Spicheren and the Forbach heights, and to reach these it was necessary to cross a narrow neck of land swept by an artillery fire from the Pfaffenberg to which the German guns were in no position to reply." What turned the battle was non-arrival of French reinforcements on Frossard’s left flank, but this was much less glamorous than presented here. "Thus at nightfall the French front was still everywhere holding firm against superior numbers; and for this credit is due not only to the steadiness of the troops and the energy with which their officers rallied them to counter-attack, but to the skill with which Frossard and his divisional commanders had sited their positions. But this resistance had been made possible only by the commitment of almost every man under Frossard’s command; and the reinforcement from 3rd Corps on which he had counted to bolster up his left wing had still not arrived. Instead, towards 7 p.m., the advance guard of General von Glume’s 13th Division began to appear on the hills above Forbach. There were no troops to defend the town. A resourceful officer scraped together some reservists, but all his skill could not delay the enemy advance for more than an hour, and by 7.30 p.m. Frossard realised that he must abandon Forbach. [...] The troops assembled on the dark slopes behind Spicheren; the wounded and their doctors were left in the village, and the reinforcements from 3rd Corps, coming belatedly up, found the hills covered with retreating columns of bitter and exhausted men."

I thinks that this article's writer(s) used Wawro's book about his war or the sources used by Wawro in his book. As you can see, Wawro (and this article) depicts the attacks of General Francois on Rote Berg as more more complete failures than any other author. Also, Wawro stated that "General Alvensleben... relieved Kameke of his blundering command" and "This combination of overlapping infantry attacks and massed artillery barrages finally broke the French". Ti2008 (talk) 14:17, 8 June 2014 (UTC)


 * There's a book by a British author on the Internet Archive. What I Saw of the War at the Battles of Speichern, Gorze, & Gravelotte https://archive.org/details/whatisawwaratba01winngoog Peter Flass (talk) 11:50, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

I think that it's really hard to write an accurate article about this battle. Two of our best sources are Howard's and Wawro's books, and if you compare their chapter of Spicheren, you can draw conclusions that they differ with each other in many ways.Ti2008 (talk) 15:59, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I confess that I put the material here from the main F-P War page, since the battle descriptions were too long and too detailed for that page. The purpose was to save the material when those sections were severely pruned. I'm not committed to any of the material here from a scholarly point of view and working on these pages is a long-term objective, so if you prefer to remove the additions or alter them, I'll defer to your judgement. Are the differences between Waw and How matters of description or analysis? RegardsKeith-264 (talk) 16:08, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not intending to edit anything now because of the accuracy problems cited by FuFoFuFed above. That differency was the reason why this article had been questioned about factual accuracy. In sum, it led to confusion about the results of Francois's attack on the Rotherberg, Alvensleben's attack on the Forbach Berg as well as how Frossard was forced to retreat (a barely developed threat by Glumer or attacks by Alvensleben?) and about the importance of the Rotherberg position.Ti2008 (talk) 16:22, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
 * List the versions.Keith-264 (talk) 16:49, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Collection of potential sources
As the accuracy of the article is disputed, let's collect accessible sources:
 * Pictures of the battle (in french)
 * Description of the battle, maps and pictures (in german) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Micge (talk • contribs) 16:26, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Changes
I moved material here from the F-P War page so that on that page the narrative of each battle could be cut to about a couple of paragraphs. I shoehorned the material in here so it needs copy editing along with the other battle pages where I've done the same thing.Keith-264 (talk) 09:54, 14 June 2014 (UTC)