"Did you know ?" Topic

No, you didn't know that? So watch this video.

link

That's a laugh.

… and the source is (drum roll)

… Wikipedia

Would think the French in Napoleonic times alone would have over 400 battles won.

Zimbabwe is not even indicated ?

JMcCarroll, but haven't won one since then.

@Steve A Miller

Wargames?

Yeah, not saying this because I live in the UK but it is sourced from Wikipedia!

It would be great to see an academic study. for example, what counts as a skirmish and what counts as a battle?

MY BLOG:
Just Add Water Miniature Painting and Wargaming Blog:
justaddwater-bedford.blogspot.com

In addition some nations as Zimbabwe is not even indicated?
And France has certainly won more battles than that; according to some, it has won at least 80% of its wars and could also have won many of those it lost.

I know lots of things. Some of them are even true.

Hey shouldn't we get points for Confederate victories as well as Union? What about Loyalist victories? Indian victories? I mean they still live here. I demand a recount! We should appeal this! 😉

The French trot this out every decade or so. As my dad used to say there are lies, damn lies and statistics.

@donlowry
You know a lot of things and some of them are even true?

So you're like everyone else?

@35thOVI
Yes it is true, but it seems that victories during civil wars do not count for current nations nor those of certain nations which were independent states in the Middle Ages and which are no longer so now.

Who won more battles during the ACW, the Confederates or the Federals?

@Mark J Wilson
It's not the result that is wrong, but the number of victories…

Major land battles about equal.

"The South, also known as the Confederacy, won 10 of the 23 major battles throughout the 4 years of the war from 1861 to 1865. Also, three battles were considered a draw. Though the North won in the end, the Confederacy won about the same number of major battles."

The Confederacy is counted as 17th rank with 128 victories, more than United Provinces/Netherlands or Portugal

Germany existing since 1871 is counted also as Holy Roman Empire, but Saxony Bavaria Würtemberg Hesse and Prussia have their own rank not to mention of course Austria

Chouannerie Vendée and Emigrés appear together curiously with their own rank/army, glad to learn they won 90 battles (25th rank)…and with all that they were unable in 22 years to restore Louis XVI or Louis XVII or Louis XVIII before 1814 thanks to invading Austrian (11th rank, 209 victories) and Prussian (15th rank 135 victories) Armies

Viêt Nam/Đại Việt at war for centuries, only 49 victories…

quite weird that some short-lived or young states born in 1776 in America or Commonwealth Dominions can present a such huge number of victories than oldest countries of Europe or Asia who seem, given their ratio of victories for centuries, more peacefull or losers than a neutral state…

@35thOVI
It's strange but it seems that the generals and the "human material" were better in the south than in the north?

If the south had had the industrial power of the north, they would have obtained their independence in less than 4 years?

@Lilian
Two problems, they do not give the dates and do not explain what they call a battle, without forgetting that having calculated this they should have given the name of these battles…

Chouannerie Vendée and Émigrés have indeed won many skirmishes and fights on the "blues", but as for the battles, we should know from how many men confronting each other we can speak of a battle?

When there are fewer combatants we say a "combat" not a battle and when there are very few combatants, we say a "escarmouche".

We also need to know who is designated as the winner of a battle , a combat or a escarmouche?

The one who remains master of the terrain or the one who had the fewest losses?

@All
Please if someone responds to one of my old or very old topics as happened recently, it will be nice to notify me by pm by putting a link on the topic concerned, so that I can resume the thread of the conversation because on TMP, alas, there is no automatic system to notify members that a response has been posted on a topic.

from the author Cottereau

Rules
• Battles are only included if they have a Wikipedia article
• Each country can only have one predecessor state at a time (for example, the United Kingdom's predecessor is England, but not Scotland).

Methodology:
I used Wikipedia as a battle directory:

1. I created a query with Wikidata Query to get the list of all articles marked as "battle" by Wikipedia. This gives me around 12,000 battles*

2. I downloaded the data included in the table at the top right of each of these Wikipedia articles. I did this for the following versions of Wikipedia: English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Greek, Turkish, Serbo-Croatian, Japanese, Danish, Norwegian, Slovak, Dutch, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Hindi, Hebrew, Basque, Bulgarian, Romanian, Catalan, Finnish, Swedish, Vietnamese, Persian, Indonesian, Korean

3. I cleaned the data on Excel to remove duplicate entries:

4. I created an index of countries with their predecessor states:

Limitations:
- Missing data. You have probably noticed that Europe concentrates the majority of battles. Possible explanations include Wikipedia being used more in Europe, its banning in China or Turkey, or the lack of documentation of military archives in some countries. Nonetheless, Wikipedia remains one of the most comprehensive sources available.

*the full list of battles here
link

"@35thOVI
It's strange but it seems that the generals and the "human material" were better in the south than in the north?"

1) Don't lock on the Eastern Theater. West of the allegheny mountains, it was pretty much a consistent string of Northern victories, both on land, sea and river. Too many lock on the Army of the Potomac and The Army of Northern Virginia.

2) even with industry, the South lacked the manpower. Similar to the Ukraine.

@Lilian
So as the calculation system is honest, the result is also honest.

"@35thOVI
It's true that we shouldn't lock ourselves into on the Eastern Theater.

West of the Allegheny Mountains, it was perhaps the northern human material that was better ?