Talk:Battle of Reading (1688)

I have always known this battle as the 'Battle of Broad Street'. Is this just a local thing? Can anyone provide any references to it as the 'Battle of Reading'? Verica Atrebatum 16:07, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Further research indicates that the 'Reading Skirmish' is the most commonly used term. If there are no objections, I shall move the article there. Verica Atrebatum 20:14, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Losers

600 lost to 250? That sounds embarrassingly impossible. Surely, the soldiers may have been split up, or perhaps the 250 were armed with flintlock firearms and the Irish weren't? At Boyne they had to deal with old fashioned matchlock muskets.Tourskin 02:54, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Royalists

The article uses the term "Royalists". I'm sure whoever wrote this has a .. particular .. point of view about which side he/she was referring to, but this is 1688, not the 1640s or the 1920s. Both sides were royalists. Mk270 (talk) 18:16, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

External links modified

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Analysis of Defoe's account

I removed this from the article, as it appears to be an analysis of Defoe's account of the battle, and seeing as how it's not cited to any source, it's possibly original research. —howcheng {chat} 00:50, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

In Defoe's account, the Irish dragoons are portrayed as wild and violent men who would have pillaged Reading and murdered its people if they had not been scattered. He then goes on to describe how, after the battle, they regrouped and made their way towards London, again threatening to burn the towns and kill the inhabitants in their way. Rumours of the atrocities that the Irish soldiers would commit, or indeed already had committed, preceded them, although these were clearly exaggerated and it seems as if the men were largely dispersed after meeting – and declining to fight – another force, this time loyal to James, at Colnbrook. Writing more than 30 years after the events he describes, Defoe paints a picture of a terror spread by the threat of the Irish dragoons far in excess of any acts they actually carried out.