Talk:John French, 1st Earl of Ypres

Untitled

John French was born in Ripple, Kent - see for example this reference. Also, there is no such place as Ripple Vale in Kent... Sliggy 18:22, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Style issue discussion

There is a discussion going on here whether or not the first sentence of a biographical article should contain the full name of the individual and include any post nominal initials (eg. VC, KCB, OBE) or whether these should be relegated to later in the article. I have tried to point out that this is standard style and part of their full titles but there are “readability” concerns. This arose because of the Richard O’Connor featured article and one possible solution, a biobox, is now in place on that page. Please make your opinions known.Dabbler 12:27, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Date of French's relief

The article says that it was Sept. 1915 *and* Dec. 1915, which seems wrong. Anybody know? --Andersonblog 01:16, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

December. Nunquam Dormio 08:15, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

The fall of 1915- after Loos and Third Artois according to Meyer in "A World Undone". Remarkably, he states the Brits killed in the second advance at Loos; 7,861 troops and 385 officers, while the Germans killed; 0. He also says that Joffre used subterfuge to have the Brits continue the offensive when the co-ordinated French attack had been called off. Bad show. Bostoneire 14:37, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Family

I'm quite sure he's descended from the de Freyne French's of Frenchpark? Anyone else know of this? --Counter-revolutionary (talk) 00:30, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, Sir John was from a cadet branch of the family - his grandfather Fleming French moved back to England in the eighteenth century and died at Ripple in 1818. Sir John regarded himself as "Irish" and bought land in what he regarded as his ancestral home after WW1, but because of the political situation was never able to live there.Paulturtle (talk) 13:13, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Context of content

The details of the Ashtown Ambush, while colorful and informative, tend to veer off course from the essentials of this subject. It may be better that the Ambush stand alone in its own article. Awabrams (talk) 17:03, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. I have removed some of the material which was either unsourced or not directly relevant. Dormskirk (talk) 21:37, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Military Career

In the book "To End All Wars", the author Adam Hoshschild describes John French as an arrogant incompetent soldier, who only because of personal relationships got command. Whom only because of avoiding bad publicity wasn't demoted, but taken away from the battle side and sent to a fancy post. Why is nothing about it in this article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by MEMORIO (talk • contribs) 15:26, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Probably because it sounds like an opinion rather than fact and therefore would not comply with WP:NPOV. Dormskirk (talk) 20:34, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Lots of historians have taken a dim view of French, and some of these are listed in the bibliography. The treatment of WW1 - 1915 in particular - needs expansion but the article does mention that Sir John fell out with Kitchener and was moved to CinC Home Forces - in fact he had to be threatened with outright public sacking if he refused to "resign". Failed commanders-in-chief usually are moved to another post like that rather than demoted. Briefly, French had his limitations - his lack of ability at staff work and political schmoozing made him unsuitable as CinC of the vast force which the BEF was becoming by 1916. On the other hand, he was a natural leader, whose men loved him (in both respects, the antithesis of Haig, it might be noted). His Boer War command experience made him Britain's leading soldier in 1914 (Ian Hamilton was his only rival, and Kitchener had been doing top-level quasi-political jobs since the Boer War). It is an exaggeration to call him "incompetent" or say that he was appointed purely on the basis of connections.MissingMia (talk) 22:48, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Honours

In the official London Gazette of 6 September 1918 (see here), he is listed as follows: Field-Marshal The Right Honourable John Denton Pinkstone, Viscount French, K.P., G.C.B., O.M., G.C.V.O., K.C.M.G.
This shows that he had already been awarded the G.C.V.O., whereas the start of the Wikipedia article only shows him as a K.C.V.O. recipient. I will therefore update the start of the Wikipedia article to show him as a G.C.V.O. recipient. Since the London Gazette lists him as Field-Marshal The Right Honourable, I will add The Right Honourable to the top of the infobox, which is the norm in infoboxes for peers. Also, the start of the Wikipedia article has incorrect piped links to the Canadian versions of 2 post-nominals, so I will correct those. -- Blairall (talk) 21:43, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

As per my comments below, I have almost no interest in "gongs" and a certain detached amusement at the way in which generals and civil servants bicker about being awarded a rank commensurate with their services. However, I appreciate they are of interest to others. A quick perusal of the article reveals that he started getting them on his return from the Boer War and was upgraded to GCVO in 1907, coinciding (whether exactly or more-or-less) with his promotion to Inspector-General of the Army.Paulturtle (talk) 11:58, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Article size

Someone is so proud of a paper they wrote, presumably for school, that they uploaded it verbatim to Wikipedia. Much of it is simply copied from one source - Holmes. This article is longer than Churchhill's, FDR's and considerably more wordy than the article on Jesus. It's length makes it effectively inaccessible to the average reader and its involuted style makes the essential information most of us want hard to find. We don't need the details of French's assignments great and small....I think Boer War, WW1 and 'other' is sufficient. Can we agree to shorten this?65.34.85.13 (talk) 03:37, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Actually, somebody who left school a number of decades ago and has been studying the First World War all his life, decided to write detailed articles of permanent record about the generals. And no, we can’t “agree” just to chop stuff out because it’s more detailed than you personally would like, or because you think we “don’t need” this or that, as that would be obviously unconstructive behaviour. People get their info from the internet nowadays and you simply don’t know what somebody else is going to find interesting or useful (e.g. analysis of his role in the pre-1914 Army Reforms, or in the Curragh Incident, or an example of the career path of a talented if flawed late Victorian cavalry officer … each man in his life plays many parts as the man said). For what it’s worth, I found myself losing the will to live whilst writing up the guerrilla phase of the Boer War and some of the Edwardian bits, but I stuck at it for that reason, and to make sure the coverage was reasonably even. Personally, I couldn’t care less about the medals which generals and civil servants award one another for sitting behind desks (a medal won for bravery as a young officer is a different story), but I’m not going to remove information about the "gongs" after his name which someone has taken the trouble to look up and add. Put bluntly, blanket deletion of information (other than utter trivia) from articles almost always in my experience reflects ignorance on the part of the person who “doesn’t see why that’s important”.

Most, but not all, of the narrative, is copied from the late Richard Holmes as he was a solid and reliable historian. The other modern biographer of note is Cassar of which I have a copy but have never got around to spending a couple of weekends ploughing through to see if there are any major points of difference. If you look at the First World War section (the most important bit) and at the analysis and conclusions section, the views of quite a number of other historians are presented – certainly enough for a coherent and consistent picture of the man to emerge.

Articles split like amoebae and I certainly wouldn’t raise any objection if somebody wanted to start hiving off chunks into sub-articles (e.g. his role in the Boer War). That has already started to happen with Churchill – an article on which I’ve worked a bit on recent months and which is pitched much more at the general reader than this one … because it’s consulted by thousands of people a day, whereas this one is consulted by 100 a day. I’ve also just added an easy-to-read introduction summarising his career for the benefit of schoolkids & general readers, which for one reason or another I had never got around to writing.Paulturtle (talk) 06:55, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Rp citations

Would anyone have a strong objection to me consolidating references using Rp tags? This would reduce the number of footnotes by roughly 300, and would make the list much less unwieldy. Nick Number (talk) 15:04, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Doesn't bother me, provided information isn't lost.Paulturtle (talk) 21:42, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi - Personally I would prefer to see the existing referencing system retained. Rp tags are really rather rare and the current referencing system is much clearer. Dormskirk (talk) 22:05, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Well, they're rare because articles with more than 100 footnotes are rare. As the Rp docs state, "This template is only intended for sources that are used many times in the same article, to such an extent that normal citation would produce a useless line in <references /> or too many individual ones."

To me, this article is a textbook case of where they would be useful, as reducing the number of entries in the References section by about 300 is pretty significant, and I don't see that there would be any loss of clarity. However, I will not move forward with changing the style without consensus. Nick Number (talk) 15:57, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

One source

A look at the References makes it clear that this article is in large part based on Holmes, Richard (2004) The Little Field Marshal: A Life of Sir John French. Given the large number of books listed in the "Further Reading" section, it would seem that there are numerous other sources which can be relied upon to make certain that the article isn't skewed to represent Holmes' view of French. Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:10, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

That's a good idea, though as Richard Holmes was a leading military historian it can be assumed that the biography is pretty good. Nick-D (talk) 10:15, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

At the risk of sounding a bit arsey, I can see why somebody might think that, but it’s not really true.

The article was almost entirely written by me back in 2013-14 (I had time on my hands then for various reasons – I wrote up Wully Robertson, Henry Wilson and Hubert Gough to a similar level of detail at the same time, along with a few lesser generals; Rawlinson, Plumer and Sir Douglas himself remain projects on the “To Do” list - I've been writing more about politicians for the last couple of years).

I like to write at a pretty comprehensive level of detail (with an introduction to keep the article accessible) as it keeps the amateurs at bay, and if people want to start a discussion about article-splitting I’m not stopping them. What’s in the bibliography has already been combed through, apart from older period pieces like Gerald French’s books about his father which one would obviously not use as a Reliable Source, or not at any rate without checking controversial claims against a more up-to-date book.

The late Richard Holmes was, as has been noted above, a solid and reliable historian with sensible opinions about most things. The Little Field Marshal was, I think, the book that really made his reputation.

The other biography of note, also dating from the early 80s, is Cassar of which I have a copy but have never got round to spending a week or two ploughing through. Really, the fact I’ve never got round to doing so is very largely a function of the fact that it’s probably not actually going to alter the article very much.

I really don’t think you are going to find anything significant on the Boer War or the Edwardian Army. Those sections are indeed largely lifted from Holmes but then he was writing up his narrative from older books. I went through the books I have on the Boer War and didn’t come up with anything more than a few index entries which didn’t add anything significant.

Once you get on to the First World War – my pet period and the core of the article- you’ll see that quite a few other historians have been used. All the key and controversial episodes – the Curragh Incident just before the war, his clash with Lanrezac, his (presumed, as it happened behind closed doors) bollocking from Kitchener, the Race to the Sea/First Ypres, the Shells Scandal (Holmes is more accurate on this than Asquith’s biographers are), Robertson's and Haig's intrigues to remove him – are all covered. The only other book which I have plans to plough through one of these days is Nick Lloyd’s excellent 2006 book on Loos which has a bit more material on Sir John’s illness that autumn (stress-related, one suspects, as the job was just too big for him), but we are just talking points of detail here.

Same with the assessments section. Quite a few historians have been quoted, but we are talking nuances of detail here, eg his views about deploying the BEF to Antwerp. I don’t think after all these years anybody is going to come out with any significantly different view of Sir John French (that he was a brave man who had been a successful commander of a cavalry division, but lacked the administrative and political skills to command a national force of Army Group size), and as so often in history the historians are just rehashing arguments which were perfectly clear to contemporaries.

So that just leaves the Irish War of Independence, a topic about which I don’t profess to any more than a general reading knowledge. Again, I’ve kept an eye open in more recent books but we’re not talking more than just the occasional trivial index entry here.Paulturtle (talk) 14:29, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

This is a very well written article thanks to the extensive efforts of Paulturtle. New editors to the article are welcome but I do not believe that drive-by tagging is helpful: I have removed the tag. Dormskirk (talk) 22:43, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

I am not attacking the quality of the article or the writing, nor the effort put into writing it by Paulturtle, but for an article of this length and importance to essentially be backed up by a single source is just not right. Paulturtle: as you know this subject intimately, no one is in as good a position as you to fortify it with additional citations. I can go through my library collection of books on WWI and laboriously insert new information, or confirming references, or contradictory opinions, but it would be much, much easier if you would do it. In that way, the structure of the article would be maintained, and yet it would reflect a more diverse set of views about French.

Again, I'm not suggesting that the article be stripped or skewed in any particular way, just that it is not the essence of Wikipedia's methodology that we take a single work and translate it into an article. I hope you can understand that, and, if you want to take on the task of revitalizing the article, I have no objection to your taking down the tag while you do so. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:52, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Dormskirk: you removed my tag without discussion or consensus, please don't do that again, or your behavior will be brought to the attention of admins. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:54, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

I spent a huge amount of time of time in 2012 improving this article, introducing additional sources and getting it independently sourced to "B class". Paulturtle further enhanced it after that. Under the principle of WP:BRD you made a bold edit, I reverted that edit and a discussion is now taking place. To add the tag a second time before the discussion has been concluded breaches WP:BRD. Dormskirk (talk) 23:07, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

BRD doesn't really apply to clean-up tags. They are simply supposed to be supported by discussion on the talk page, and I started one immediately after I placed the tag. You have no way of knowing that I personally abhor drive-by tagging, so I placed it only after considerable introspection. Further my lack of pervious editing to the article doesn't mean that I am uninterested in the subject, or know nothing about it. (I actually have one extremely insignificant edit in May 2014.) As for your contributions to the article, I commend you. It is a good article, and I never said anything different. It simply needs more diverse sourcing. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:16, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

You assert that "BRD doesn't really apply to clean-up tags" but do you have any evidence for that? You have certainly caused a stir by your actions(s) and caused at least two of us who have worked so hard on improving the quality of this article some angst. Dormskirk (talk) 23:30, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

There should be no angst, I'm not asking that the article be eviscerated, just that it be improved is a specific manner central to the Wikipedia methodology. Please stop thinking that you're being attacked, you are not. Any energy being put into this discussion would be better off used to improve the article. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:36, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

I think that we can do without the tag: it's really intended to be used in circumstances where the source in question is problematic (biased, old, etc). The article drawing heavily from a recent professionally published biography by a leading military historian isn't something we need to warn readers about. Nick-D (talk) 10:28, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

I have also looked at the citations. While it may "draw heavily" on one source, I would concur with Nick-D. The article identifies and reports "matters of fact" and where discrepancies appear to occur with the primary (and other) sources it identifies these. Furthermore, on matters of analysis (as opposed to the reporting of fact), the article engages multiple sources and, thereby, provides a balanced representation of the sources. IMHO Cinderella157 (talk) 11:34, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

I think that seems to be a pretty clear consensus that the tag, which creates a mistaken impression that there is something wrong with the article, is not justified (I'm not saying that there isn't room for improvement - there always is - but the article is fine for the moment). As NickD points out, a Reliable Source (the leading biography in the field by a well-respected historian) is by definition reliable unless proven otherwise. As Cinderella157 points out, I've done my best to flag up debates, discrepancies, other opinions etc where appropriate. (Forgive my egotism, but according to the pie charts on the Revision History page, 80% of the text is composed by me, which is even more than I thought it would be).Paulturtle (talk) 13:58, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

The consensus seems to be that the tag is somewhat deceptive, so if no one had done so already, I'll remove it. I do hope, though, that it doesn't stop the discussion here about possible expansion of the sources used. Beyond My Ken (talk) 16:24, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

The only other point I'd really add to this - and I say this as somebody who reads with biro in hand, gleefully correcting errors in books - is that on rereading something one wrote a few years ago, or comparing a different writer's account of the same events, one often comes across mistakes which one made, often inaccurate paraphrasing about things which the first writer did not discuss in any great detail. So that is a case for consulting the other biographies (Cassar and the ODNB article), one of these days. Of course there are bound to be new points of detail or minor differences of emphasis here and there. But any errors in the article are more likely to be from my inaccurate paraphrasing or transcribing of information, rather than Holmes' summary of old bickering about who-said-what-to-whom two generations before the early 1980s when his book was initially published.Paulturtle (talk) 03:10, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

If you can bear to go over the article again in that way, it might be an opportunity to consult another source on a particular matter, and cite it if in agreement with what you originally, or to offer it as an alternative interpretation if that's appropriate. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:41, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Further Development

Following on from the discussion above.

As discussed, I'm happy to be proved wrong but I doubt there is anything significant to be found on Sir John's role in the Boer War, the Edwardian Army or the Irish War of Independence, other than the odd index entry here and there. I dare say somebody may have written a PhD thesis on Sir John's role in one of these but we don't really need to go looking for it.

Spears' classic Liaison 1914 and John Terraine's short classic if somewhat dated 1960s work on 1914 (Mons to the Marne) have been gone through, as have the works on the Marne which came out a couple of years ago (Ian Senior, Max Hastings). I don't really think the British Official History is going to say anything which hasn't already been channelled by Terraine and Holmes.

For "new" stuff:

Amongst biographies there is Cassar and also his ODNB entry, which from memory is by Ian Beckett.

Travers The Killing Ground remains a classic. Heavily reliant on bitchy stories told to one another by people like Liddell Hart, Edmonds etc in the 1930s. The gossip does not bear the weight of theory which Travers erects on it, but even where exaggerated cannot be dismissed altogether. Most of the stories about Sir John will doubtless show him as a petulant and peevish man.

Nick Lloyd's 2006 book on Loos discussed above. This will have quite a bit of material on how Kitchener was clipping his wings by the second half of 1915 - he was pretty much ordered to undertake the Loos offensive - and his shaky grip on power by then.

Philpott's 1996 work on the British obsession with Antwerp and the Low Countries during WW1. Philpott is also apparently editing an edition of Sir John's War Diaries, but that is obviously not yet out.

Can have a plough through some books on War Grand Strategy: Paul Guinn's 1960s classic 1960s book and Volume I of David French (no relation) but I doubt this will shed much light as it was mostly above Sir John's pay grade and is going to be full of stuff about the Dardanelles and Salonika.

Elizabeth Greenhalgh's books – Victory Through Coalition and Foch in Command will be worth a plough through. She relies heavily on French sources so provides a refreshingly different perspective to the standard British milhist.

Roy Prete' work on 1914. Again, a Commonwealth historian working from French sources. I think I used this a bit but did not plough through it completely.

There are a few books about the structure of the BEF but most of these don't really impinge on Sir John. They are relevant to, say, Robertson who as Chief of Staff BEF in 1915 (before he got promoted to CIGS at the end of the year) presided over the growth of the organisation.

We are talking here about taking the granularity of the article - which is already beyond an introductory level, although it does have an introduction to keep it accessible to the general reader who wants a quick overview - up another notch. I am not promising that this is necessarily going to happen any time soon.Paulturtle (talk) 14:23, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

I understand that the kind of work you're talking about is going to take some time and a good amount of effort on your part, and I very much appreciate your beginning to think about possible other sources which can be utilized. That's a good start. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:43, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Too long?

An editor has tagged the page as "too long to read and navigate comfortable". I am removing the tag as I think, in this case, the length is not unreasonable and fragmenting the flow of the article would be unhelpful. I happy to consider proposals from a willing editor as to how they propose to spilt it. Dormskirk (talk) 09:38, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately at over 29k words of readable prose, the length is entirely unreasonable - see WP:SIZE and WP:SUMMARY. The article would benefit from significant summarization to make it more accessible to the general readership. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:48, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

As already indicated above, I disagree. Are you prepared to do the work to condense it? If not this seems to be a case of WP:DRIVEBY and the tag should not be readded. Dormskirk (talk) 15:09, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I am absolutely willing to work on it. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:23, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Great. In which case that's fine. Please go-ahead. Many thanks, Dormskirk (talk) 15:27, 26 December 2023 (UTC)