Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Army of the Rhine and Moselle/archive2

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was archived by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 09:06, 14 October 2018 [1].

Army of the Rhine and Moselle

Nominator(s): auntieruth (talk) 15:59, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about the Army of the Rhine and Moselle, a French army during the French Revolutionary War. I had submitted it earlier, but realized thanks to Tony that it was not ready for prime time. It has been radically revised. Please feel free to share your comments. Cheers, auntieruth (talk) 15:59, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Fitzcarmalan

General observation:

I noticed a fair amount of text that doesn't seem to follow WP:WTW, including idioms, euphemisms and stuff that frankly seems to be meant for a secondary school textbook, which doesn't feel right in an encyclopedia largely targeting adult readers (couldn't express that in any other way, sorry). I will mark those throughout my review by a spade symbol (♠), for the sake of brevity, followed (possibly) by an alternative suggestion of mine. And I won't use wikilinks in my suggestions to avoid confusion, so don't forget to re-add them.

Lead

"crushing [...] drubbed" - Suggest "defeated" instead.

Background

I'm not seeing the words "France" or "Germany" (as in the regions) mentioned anywhere in the 'Geography' section, which is strange. Suggest introducing them in the Rhine knee sentence.
"The Empire included more than 1,000 entities" - Was it during this campaign? I assume you meant in general throughout its history. In that case I would suggest adding "at various points" or anything with the same meaning.

Purpose and formation

"learned when his troops lynched him" - ♠ - Suggest "such as the case of Théobald Dillon who was lynched by his troops in 1792".
"and the fédéré volunteer battalions" - Suggest linking to Fédéré.
"and a tricolour cockade}}" - This redirects to Flag of France. Suggest linking to Symbolism in the French Revolution#Tricolore cockade instead.
"was an appointment with Madame guillotine" - ♠ - "...implied disloyalty, which often resulted in execution by the guillotine"
": several of the highest ranking generals [...] were killed" - Suggest replacing the colon with a period, and "killed" by "executed".
"the Hussards du Saxe and the 15éme Cavalerie (Royal Allemande) regiments" - Suggest linking to Hussards de Saxe and Régiment Royal-Allemand and slightly rewording the second one to "15^e cavalerie (Royal-Allemand)".
Reorganization: Would you consider relocating the first three paragraphs in this section, from "By 1792" to "survived intact" (along with their 'Military challenges' subsection header), to the 'Background' section right above 'Geopolitical terrain'? The rest, beginning from "By 1794-95", can stay as it is under the 'Purpose and formation' section.
"into task forces" - Suggest finding a more contemporary alternative to "task force", which is kind of ahead of its time as it stands.
"currency called the Assignat" - Suggest lowercasing and italicizing.
"after April, pay was made in metallic value, but pay was still in arrears" - Repeated word.

Campaign of 1795

"The French Army of the Sambre and Meuse [...] while the French Army of Rhine and Moselle" - Suggest de-linking, per MOS:DUPLINK. And no need to keep mentioning that they're French, as it's already made clear in the section right above.
"The French fumbled away" - ♠ - "mishandled"
"Pichegru bungled at least one" - ♠ - "Pichegru had at least one opportunity to take over Clerfayt's supply base in the Battle of Handschuhsheim, but did not seize it."
"Clerfayt gave Pichegru a drubbing" - ♠ - "Clerfayt defeated Pichegru"
"or bad generalship" - I'm sorry but this doesn't really strike me as NPOV, though I could be wrong. Considering the fact that the Directory wouldn't execute Pichegru and even offered to appoint him as ambassador to Sweden, it becomes clear that something was going on and/or they still thought highly of him and his military career (either he accomplished something in the initial phase of this campaign or he was still a national hero because of his previous successes in the Low Countries). What does the source actually say about this? Because that part could use some extra detail, as it is also very relevant to this article. A footnote might help.

Campaign of 1796

"began with Jean-Baptiste Kléber's attack" - It should be made clear earlier that he was commanding a flank (which one?) of the Army of the Sambre and Meuse. Suggest: "Jean-Baptiste Kléber, who commanded the left (northern) flank of the Army of the Sambre and Meuse, opened the Rhine Campaign of 1796 with an attack south of his bridgehead at Düsseldorf."
"Moreau lent credence [...] When Archduke Charles" - Suggest writing their full names and wikilinking, since that is their first occurrence in the body. And of course de-link in the following paragraph.
"troops in Fürstenberg’s corps" - Same as above.
"from the free imperial cities" - Suggest de-linking (duplink).
"between Karlsruhe and Darmstadt" - Suggest wikilinking.
"Neither Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé's Army of Condé in Freiburg nor" - Suggest referring to it as a "counter-revolutionary" or "royalist" army both here and throughout the article to avoid confusion with revolutionary armies.
"Ferino executed a full crossing" - Suggest writing his full name, the flank he was commanding and wikilinking.
I have one major concern regarding this entire section. Starting from the second paragraph onward, focus suddenly shifts towards Imperial troop movements, their placement along the HRE's French and Italian frontiers, etc. For example, there isn't a single mention of the Army of the Rhine and Moselle in that very same paragraph, which is a rather bulky one (the one that begins with "The armies of the First.."). There are also sentences like "The Swabian militia consisted of recruits provided by the members of the Swabian Circle and most of them were literally raw recruits", which I believe has very little to do with an article about a French army. Another concern is how that same French army is being twice referred to as Charles' "opposition"; if anything it's the French who should be referred to in this article as "Moreau's army" and Charles as the opposition, not the other way around. And if I was looking for a strategic and logistical analysis of this campaign from a Habsburg perspective (e.g. which army would be fast enough to relieve some isolated contingent), it would be easier for me to read your Rhine Campaign of 1796 article instead, which is broader in scope and is actually supposed to deal with such things. So, as I'm currently reading much more about Imperial operations and much less about the French ones, I am unfortunately going to recommend that you significantly cut down some of these parts, then either 1) merge them into the Rhine Campaign article (I assume they're already there), or 2) convert them to footnotes. I prefer the second option.

Summer of 1796

"At the Battle of Neresheim on 11 August, Moreau crushed Charles' force" - I don't think "crushed" is an appropriate word. The relevant article seems to describe the outcome differently. What does the source say about this?
"Charles inflicted another defeat on the French" - The first one being...?
"were cut to pieces" - ♠ - Thought of "scattered" initially but I don't know if it's more appropriate. Up to you, I guess.
"The tide now turned in the Coalition's favor." - Suggest adding "however", in contrast to the French victory mentioned right before that.
"Both French Armies" - Suggest lowercasing "Armies" (not a proper name).
"what the French had tried to do to Charles and Wartensleben" - Suggest adding "earlier".
Third paragraph: Again, I'm seeing the same amount of excessive detail mentioned above (e.g. numbers of squadrons and troops) with much less detail of the sort about the French and their flanks. Don't get me wrong here, I find such information valuable to understanding the situation on the ground, but not so prominently to the point of being off-topic. Which is why I'm suggesting footnotes.
"Archduke's force" - Definite article missing?
"between Riegel and Emmendingen" - Suggest wikilinking.
"Frölich" - Suggest writing full name and redlinking.
"ambush St.-Cyr's advance [...] attacked Beaupuy" - Suggest writing their full names and wikilinking, while de-linking in the following section and avoiding "St." in favor of his actual surname.
"was but earth and ruins" - ♠ - "was in ruins"
"victory at the Battle of Schliengen" - Suggest wikilinking.
(caption) "{{xt|and pathways treacherous" - ♠ - I really love the fact that you added a panorama, which I believe should be done more often in MILHIST articles. Not entirely fond of "treacherous" though. Suggest "challenging" instead.

Organizational and command problems

"brilliant actions" - ♠ - Not really a fan of this word on Wikipedia, per MOS:PUFFERY. Perhaps "well-executed actions"?
"As a hero of the Revolution captured Mannheim but inexplicably he" - Suggest "As a hero of the Revolution, he captured Mannheim but inexplicably..".
"throughout 1796, his machinations in Paris" - Suggest mentioning that he became a member of the Council of Five Hundred (despite his treason).
"into Bavarian and toward Vienna" - Typo?
"extraordinary young officers" - ♠ - "distinguished"?
"In 1895, Richard Phillipson Dunn-Pattison" - Suggest wikilinking.
"François Joseph Lefebvre [...] Michel Ney [...] Massena [...] Jean Baptiste Bessieres" - Suggest wikilinking.

Order of battle

No issues found. Just wanted to note that my earlier suggestions to de-link second occurrences don't apply to this section.

I strongly recommend that you look into my main concerns regarding the weight given to Imperial troops in the prose. Best of luck. Fitzcarmalan (talk) 08:09, 6 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Coordinator comments - Auntieruth55, it looks like you haven't been around much since these comments, but I'm looking for your initial response. Since we're already in the "older nominations" and substantial issues have been raised, I'm of a mind to archive it so they can be addressed outside of FAC without the nomination sinking to the bottom in the meantime. Fitzcarmalan, I hate to be a pain but please remove the xt templates from your comments per the FAC instructions at the top. They cause lots of issues with the page now and after archiving. --Laser brain (talk) 15:58, 10 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Laser brain: Thanks for pointing that out; all dealt with now. It's just that I tend to write a lot of stuff and felt like the green text makes it less confusing for the nominators. Is there an alternative that would be acceptable for any future reviews?

@Auntieruth55: I recommend previewing the older revision, though it's up to you of course. Fitzcarmalan (talk) 22:19, 10 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Fitzcarmalan: Anything that doesn't use templates. Supposedly the templates slow the FAC page down when it tries to load them all at once. --Laser brain (talk) 00:54, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This review has been open almost a month and the initial (extensive) comments are still to be addressed, so I think we'll need to archive and try again at a later date. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 09:05, 14 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Closing note: This candidate has been archived, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Ian Rose (talk) 09:06, 14 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.