Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/July 2023/Articles

This month we feature (!) featured article blurbs that originally appeared in The Signpost, courtesy of, who seems as adept with words as he is with images...


 * Tiberius III nominated by Iazyges:
 * One of the great Byzantine emperors, or so it's supposed
 * This one would have been, were he not soon deposed.
 * ("Posed" is a perfectly good rhyme for "posed", trust me.)


 * Henry II of England, nominated by Unlimitedlead:
 * He reconquered Wales, lands in France he increased,
 * But will no-one rid him of that turbulent priest?


 * Battle of New Carthage, nominated by Gog the Mild:
 * For what else is our beloved featured article status for
 * But to promote each and ev'ry battle of each and ev'ry Punic War?
 * Seriously, though, great work, Gog! You're doing WP:MILHIST proud!


 * Al-Adid, nominated by Cplakidas (a.k.a. Constantine):
 * Who kept Egypt Shia despite Saladin ?
 * Al-Adidn't. His quest he failéd in.


 * French battleship Charlemagne (Sturmvogel 66) : Charlemagne was a pre-dreadnought battleship built for the French Navy in the mid-1890s. She was commissioned in 1899 and spent the bulk of her career in the Mediterranean Sea. Charlemagne was thoroughly obsolete when World War I began in 1914. Aside from bombarding Ottoman fortifications in 1915, she spent the war on secondary duties. The battleship was converted into a depot ship in mid-1917 and sold for scrap in 1923.


 * French battleship Justice (Parsecboy) : This article covers another French pre-dreadnought. Justice was commissioned in 1908, at which time she was obsolescent due to the revolution in design sparked by the British HMS Dreadnought. The battleship spent most of her service in the Mediterranean but journeyed to the United Sates in 1909. During World War I Justice escorted troop convoys and was used to counter the Austrian-Hungarian fleet. When the war ended she was sent to the Black Sea to oversee the surrender of German-occupied Russian warships there, and then to join the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. Justice returned to France in 1919 after her crew came close to mutinying and was decommissioned in 1921.


 * William Y. Slack (Hog Farm) : This article is Hog Farm's first biography promoted to A-class. It covers a lawyer, politician and supporter of slavery who parlayed 16 months of experience in the Mexican War into being appointed a brigadier general in the Confederate forces at the outbreak of the American Civil War. Serving with a Confederate militia and then later the Confederate Army itself, Slack fought in three significant battles and was shot in the hip in two of them. The second wound, incurred during the March 1862 Battle of Pea Ridge, was fatal. Slack's promotion to brigadier general was made by the Confederate States Senate after his death, possibly as news of it had not reached the Confederate capital at the time.


 * Maurice Suckling (Pickersgill-Cunliffe) : A Royal Navy officer of the eighteenth century, Suckling fought in only one major battle and much of his career was, as one historian puts it, "uneventful and perhaps even lacklustre". For three years before his death in 1778 he served competently as Comptroller of the Navy, enough to make him notable. What makes naval historians prick up their ears about Suckling is less to do with himself and more to do with his nephew, Horatio Nelson. Suckling was Nelson's first patron in the navy and his influence saw the young naval officer rise quickly through the ranks, such that after Suckling's premature death from illness Nelson remarked "I feel myself to my country his heir...And it shall, I am bold to say, never lack the want of his counsel".


 * Radoje Pajović (Peacemaker67) : This article covers the most prominent historian of the World War II period in Montenegro, and one of the most prominent Montenegrin historians overall. He did his PhD on the World War II Chetnik Federalist movement in Montenegro, and was on the staff of what is now the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Montenegro for forty years. He wrote or co-wrote twelve books, and railed against historical revisionism of the World War II period in Montenegro and in the former Yugoslavia more generally. He died in 2019.


 * Al-Wathiq (Cplakidas) : This article is about one of the more obscure 9th-century Abbasid caliphs, chiefly due to his short reign, from 842 to 847. It was nevertheless a reign very active in the military, political, and religious areas. The chief events of the reign were the suppression of revolts: Bedouin rebellions occurred in Syria in 842, the Hejaz in 845, and the Yamamah in 846, Armenia had to be pacified over several years and, above all, an abortive uprising took place in Baghdad itself in 846.