(5) ON THE FRENCH ORDNANCE USED DURING THE CAMPAIGN OF 1813 and 1815
by Steven Klauber
I have a hard time accepting your articles stating in some past issues of EEL that, after the huge losses of the Campaign of Russia, the French army, having lost most of its artillery during the retreat, was able to find enough Year XI system guns to reequip its practically brand Grand Army and did not find it necessary to reuse its Gribeauval guns. After all, a number of sources among which are Colonel Rogers Napoleon's Army and Terence Wise's Artillery Equipment of the Napoleonic Wars assert the contrary.
AN ANSWER TO THE ABOVE
by Jean A. Lochet
We once again have a case, in which one has to make his own choice on whom to believe. As mentioned in many past issues of EEL, a great deal of unreliable data has been published in some secondary sources. Over the years, EEL has been working very hard to debunk many myths. In the past, many myths have been perpetuated in America because of the lack of non-British source documents and the general inability of many Americans to read original foreign language source documents. Fortunately, a new generation of historians, Americans as well as English, has been correcting that deficiency and new English-language, reliable books using foreign language documents have begun to appear (Note 4).
The articles on the ordnance used by the French army during the Campaign of 1813 mentioned above by Steven are certainly the articles published in EE&L 108. (Volume 1) The articles were based on data traceable to French archival materials.
To contest the validity of such primary sources as archival material by comparing it with secondary sources of questionable reliability is simply not acceptable to EE&L.
As mentioned above, EE&L knows only one way of curing falsehood when one is in doubt. It is simply to go back to material in archives or reliable secondary sources and not to depend on previously printed material of dubious reliability. Apparently, that is not always done and it is most unfortunate.
Note 4: Some of these authors include Jim Arnold, Scott Bowden, Colonel Elting, Paddy Griffith, Phillip Haythornthwaite and George Nafziger among others. (Fortunately, the list is far from exhaustive!)
On the Reliability of Data Napoleonic Investigations
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