Talk:Battle of South Harting

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The Mercurius Aulicus reports on the skirmish in 1643

• ... that according to the Mercurius Aulicus, 400 dragoons were routed by just 6 officers and a boy in 1643 during the English Civil War?

• Source: https://archive.org/details/historyofharting00gordiala - Gordon, Henry Doddridge (1877). The History of Harting. London: W. Davy. Pages 72–84

• ALT1: ... that according to the Mercurius Aulicus, in 1643 during the English Civil War, 400 dragoons were routed by just 6 officers and a boy? Source: https://archive.org/details/historyofharting00gordiala - Gordon, Henry Doddridge (1877). The History of Harting. London: W. Davy. Pages 72–84
• ALT2: ... that according to the Mercurius Aulicus, during the English Civil War, 400 dragoons were routed by just 6 officers and a boy in 1643? Source: https://archive.org/details/historyofharting00gordiala - Gordon, Henry Doddridge (1877). The History of Harting. London: W. Davy. Pages 72–84
• ALT3: ... that according to the Mercurius Aulicus, in 1643, 400 dragoons were routed by just 6 officers and a boy during the English Civil War? Source: https://archive.org/details/historyofharting00gordiala - Gordon, Henry Doddridge (1877). The History of Harting. London: W. Davy. Pages 72–84
• Reviewed:
• Comment: Added 4 total hooks as the basic underlying substance of all the hooks is by far the best thing to use for a DYK, but I'm not sure which order the information should be written to be most appealing? Use of the image is up for debate depending on if it is deemed interesting enough to be the image featured on DYK for a day. Also unsure of how to word the image caption.

Created by TheBestEditorInEngland (talk). Number of QPQs required: 0. Nominator has fewer than 5 past nominations.

TheBestEditorInEngland (talk) 19:08, 26 December 2024 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy compliance:

• Adequate sourcing: - ? I have some concerns, discussed below
• Neutral:
• Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook eligibility:

• Cited:
• Interesting:
• Other problems: - Since the Mercurius Aulicus is a newspaper, its name should be italicized

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: None required.

Overall: ~ L 🌸 (talk) 02:16, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

• I appreciate the hook options provided, but I think ALT0 remains the best: it would work with an italicized title. (The article should probably also be revised to add the italics.) I also have two other concerns: 1, "Battle of South Harting" doesn't seem like the right name for the article, since all the sources just call it "a fight". And 2, I have concerns about the sourcing, which boil down to the fact that I don't think 15th-century propaganda is a reliable source.

So, to break that down, there are five sources in the article:

1. Bacon 1878: This work of Victorian local history largely repeats the Mercurius Aulicus account (which it refers to as "a fight at South Harting"). It adds the corroboration that three soldiers were buried, but otherwise just reports that there is "a vague local tradition that there had been some fight" and hedges the Mercurius Aulicus with verbiage like "it appears..." and "it seems...".

2. Gordon 1877: This Victorian history is nearly identical to Bacon 1878, also consisting of just the parish register, a "local tradition that there was once a fight", and a transcription of the Mercurius Aulicus.

3. Thomas-Stanford 1910: Also says there was "a fight", and using the framing of "it seems", quotes the Mercurius Aulicus. It then goes on to say "The number of slain is probably exaggerated," noting that the parish register only records 3 soldiers buried.

4. Barber & Hall 1985: The only halfway modern source here, and as far as I can work out, it does not say a single word about South Harting. I assume it is used to support background information about Norton and Arundel, but the placement of the citation makes this very unclear.

5. Birkenhead & Heylin 1643: This is the acknowledged propaganda piece that started it all.

It does sound like there was a fight at South Harting which then passed into local legend and has attracted notice from later local historians. But I also think our article needs to be as careful as the sources are, in terms of highlighting which information comes from the obviously non-neutral propaganda source, and I don't think the current state of the article makes that clear enough.

Could you give it a try revising the article to have a bit more rhetorical distance from the NPOV primary source? And please ping me when you think it is ready for another look. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 02:16, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

• Thank you for looking over my DYK nomination and the article in general.

I have now added italics to Mercurius Aulicus in both the DYK nomination and the main article.

As for the title of the article being "Battle" of South Harting, the Merciurius Aulicus does not refer to it with anything similar to battle, fight, skirmish, etc, and merely recounts the events and records it as taking place in South Harting (it does refer to a "hurly-burly" having occured though, for what that is worth...). The 2nd source (Gordon 1877) firstly refers to it as "a battle at South Harting" on page 74 and from then on refers to it as a fight. Since neither force was operating under a larger body and since this was not part of a wider battle, calling it a skirmish in hindsight seems incorrect, although the second engagement at South Harting the following month certainly fits this criteria. I have changed the term "skirmish" in the article to "engagement" as I feel this better fits what occurred. I'm unsure as to what else we could title the article itself though as the contemporary source, as is often the case in the English Civil Wars, does not refer to this engagement using any words like fight, storming, battle, skirmish, etc. Many battles and other engagements at the time were referred to as fight however, and could be the origin of "fight in the Culvers" at South Harting. Off the top of my head, the Battle of Worcester was often referred to as the 'Worcester Fight'. Many of the smaller engagements and skirmishes of the English Civil War on the English Wikipedia are simply titled "Battle of [Insert Place Name Here]" as I feel contemporary naming of insignificant battles was not often recorded. Because of this, I feel like many small engagements of the English Civil War which have articles on the English Wikipedia are titled "Battle of" for the sake of simplicity and going along with the status quo. If the article was named "Fight of South Harting" or "Skirmish of South Harting" it would be the only article named as such, although it isn't the only small engagement fought during the war to have an article.

Looking at the Wikipedia article for Battle, the lede states that "A battle is an occurrence of combat in warfare between opposing military units of any number or size. A war usually consists of multiple battles. In general, a battle is a military engagement that is well defined in duration, area, and force commitment. An engagement with only limited commitment between the forces and without decisive results is sometimes called a skirmish."

The duration of this engagement was relatively short and is defined to the night of 23–24 November 1643, the area is defined as South Harting village, and the force commitment is given by Mercurius Aulicus (if we are to take the figures given at face value). It appears all the forces of each side were engaged in this and the result is given by Mercurius Aulicus as being decisively won by the Royalists. Based on this, and 2nd source firstly referring to it as a battle, I think it may be acceptable to leave the article title as Battle of South Harting, at least for now, but would like to know what you think of this.

As for reliability of the sources used concerning the engagement itself, I completely agree. It is the only source in existence, as far as anyone is aware, that relates to this engagement and is contemporary, besides the parish register entry for the 3 burials which only corroborates that some sort of engagement took place there on that date. Knowing this, I think it should be acceptable to use the Mercurius Aulicus as the primary source for the details of the engagement as long as, as you state, ample rhetorical distance is implemented and the article doesn't portray the M.A. account as being gospel. I have already done this with the lede, but will do this with the rest of the article too.

I will also fix the references so it is much clearer to understand what is being used to support what, and hopefully this will make the article appropriately unbiased so as to feature on DYK. Many thanks for your analysis and I will act on it now.

TheBestEditorInEngland (talk) 10:19, 4 January 2025 (UTC)