"Scott Bowden" Topic

glenn,
sorry. i didnt relize humor was banned in the forum. bad manners arent, though.

Raducci -

Like many people on this forum I have found the Hollins-Kiley exchanges compelling reading. You don't need to be an expert on the Austrians, or on artillery, or whatever to be fascinated by the debate on how a military historian should use sources, for example, or to what extent he can use his own judgement and experience to 'fill in' gaps in his material to reconstruct events.
Bearing in mind the nature of 18th and 19th century record-keeping there will never likely be a cast-iron version of events. There will always be acrimony. There will always be debates on sources. There will always be squabbles on interpretation. And, given the passion which is almost an obligatory quality for those who decide to follow the thankless path of being a published military author, there will always be foot-stamping, fist-waving, sabre-rattling and eye-gouging - it's the nature of the beast.
Some people, of course, tire of it - the same arguments over and over again, hijacking unrelated threads, all the issues covered in the NHK thread. There is nothing to stop them holding that opinion, expressing it and defending it. They have that right. They are making a valid point about the way they wish the Napoleonic boards to be.
What no-one (I presume) wishes to see is the breakout of a 'drive-by' culture in relation to these debates, where both or either of the protaganists are subjected to personal attacks.
Mr Seery, according to the archive, has not made any contribution to a Hollins-Kiley debate. He has not posted an opinion, asked a question, challenged a point or in any way engaged in the GHKW until his unfortunate post above. This, incidentally, was posted a full 10 days after the last Dave Hollins post. If Mr Seery wished to tackle Dave over his debating style, or any 'issues' he thought he had detected, he could have challenged him on the NHK topic, the Grande Armee artillery topic or the First Empire/Pedlow topic, all of which were still 'current' at the time. Quietly slipping a sneering reference to alleged mental health problems on the end of a 'dead' topic was simply out of order.
I didn't find it funny, I still don't and I think it would have been far better left unsent. No-one wants TMP to start looking like the BME topics at Frothers, or many of the threads over at napoleonshandbags.
Let's keep it friendly.

'There will always be debates on sources. There will always be squabbles on interpretation. And, given the passion which is almost an obligatory quality for those who decide to follow the thankless path of being a published military author, there will always be foot-stamping, fist-waving, sabre-rattling and eye-gouging - it's the nature of the beast.'

Glenn,
Fortunately, it doesn't have to be that way and usually isn't. I've had many a conversation with other authors/historians that in no was approach what is usually seen here and on other forums.
As they say in mathematics, the use of central tendency to be exact, your example is an outlier (one that doesn't fit with the usual or the group).

Sincerely,
Kevin

Glenn, I appreciate your comments, but don't worry. I am off to Hungary next week to talk to a pan-European meeting (plus Jack Gill!) about the Austrian staff - Romain Baulesch is putting me up in Vienna, I shall be doing some work in the Bildarchiv and KA (inter alia to help a Croat and an Italian) with the help of their staffs; then I am off to raid Prince Esterhazy's wine cellars, as I can get 20% off as I have been working with his estate staff at the lovely Schloss Forchtenstein and in Eisenstadt in recent years. Then on to Papa to meet up with all these guys and the delightful Hungarian Anita, for whom I sahll be buying a drink to thank her for an amusing car journey in Raab/Gyor a few years ago. Then, Vlado Brnadic (author of MAAA299 and chum of Darko Pavlovic, who has just done the plates for my 18th century Grenzer MAA) will be giving me a lift back to Graz. In December, I shall probably be working on the staff at Austerlitz and you can see the wide range of people I work with in the front of my Ospreys.

I will take lessons from these few American public sector workers only when things get a really bad! As well as his fantasy piece on Gribeauval's 1762 report and failure to read a single German source, Kevin seems to be struggling with his maths stats techniques as I seem to recall he was DHed recently for abusing Sam Mustafa. To paraphrase the late Colonel Elting, if you do new work, you will get a bit of flak from a few, but that should not put you off!

LOL...I just finished reading the entire line re: Bowden...all I can say is "Thank God!" I decided to go into researching Colonial Era Orders of Battle instead of all this Napoleonic junque...saves on wear and tear!

It depends how you want things - I expect most modern OBs are up-to-date and casualties accurately recorded, whgereas we often do not have clue how many really participated in ancient battles. It is halfway in Napoleonics, hence the apparently tortuous debates.

Gentlemen, I am appalled by some of the comments made on this board about Scott Bowden and other historians I have long respected. Attacking their work and sources, backed up with evidence, is of course entirely justified, it moves us all forward and just that little closer to the truth. Labelling people however just bring us as wargamers, historians, or whatever, into disrepute. Mud slinging is not a substitute for a clear, point by point rebuttal or critique of an author's work. If such a critique is conducted with courtesy it is more likely to elicit a response from the author being criticised, allowing people to reach their own conclusions. All of the above is just common sense, it is a shame it needs stating in this forum.
Regards
'Ticker'
Ralph Hart