Talk:Truce of Malestroit

GA review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Truce of Malestroit/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Gog the Mild (talk · contribs) 21:38, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Reviewer: Harrias (talk · contribs) 21:43, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

I'll take a look at this. Harrias ^{(he/him) • talk} 21:43, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Sources

2. Verifiable with no original research:

1. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline;
2. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose);
3. it contains no original research; and
4. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism.

• 2a. Mostly good, a few queries below.

• "Bombi, Barbara (2019)" doesn't provide a publisher location, contrary to all the other sources. For consistency, suggest adding the location to the latter.

Ah, the joys of copying and pasting. Good spot. Fixed.

• In a similar vein, some of the sources give "Location, County"; eg "Woodbridge, Suffolk". For obvious examples like Oxford, Cambridge, London, New York, I can agree with omitting these, but why isn't it provided for New Haven and Fakenham? Just following the source?

Good point. Done.

• "Fowler, Kenneth Alan (1969)" – looking at the copy on archive.org, it looks like this should use |sbn=389 01003 0, rather than the ISBN13 provided.

That's what my hard copy has in it too. But millions of pre-ISBN books have had 13-number ISBNs issued retrospectively and it is usual to use them rather than the archaic identifiers allocated to them when they were printed.

• 2b. All content cited inline.
• 2c. Pretty much all the sources are offline. I found a few different version of books online, but even in these cases multiple sources tended to support statements, so it was impossible to ascertain for certain. Nevertheless, happy to AGF for an established editor.

Cheers, but let me know if you want copies of pages.

• 2d. As above.

Images

6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:

1. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content; and
2. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.

• 6a. All the images used are suitably licensed.
• 6b. All the images used are relevant and have suitable captions.

Prose review to follow. Harrias ^{(he/him) • talk} 16:16, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

Prose

1. Well-written:

1. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct; and
2. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.

• 1a.

• It would be nice to link "dukes of Brittany" to List of rulers of Brittany at the start of the Breton Civil War section. Also, as "Duke of Brittany John III" isn't a proper term of address, I think you might have to add some dreaded commas to make it: "When the Duke of Brittany, John III, died on 30 April 1341..."
• "English reinforcements took a long time to arrive. Edward planned to land in Brittany himself with a substantial force, after the expiry of the Truce of Espléchin in June, but the English had extreme difficulty in assembling ships. Eventually the English impressed 440 ships, but then contrary winds caused the English departure to be repeatedly put back." – Can we reduce the number of instances of "English": four times in two lines is a bit much.
• "..the major city of Vannes, the second most populous settlement in Brittany with a good harbour and strong walls." Was Vannes the second most populous settlement in Brittany, or merely the the second most populous settlement in Brittany that also had a good harbour and strong walls? If the first, I'd suggest rephrasing to "..the second most populous settlement in Brittany, which had a good harbour and strong walls." If the latter, no concerns.
• "..but was defeated, with Robert being fatally wounded." Avoid the noun plus -ing construction. Maybe "..but was defeated, during which Robert was fatally wounded."
• "..marched unopposed some 120 miles (190 km) through southern Brittany without opposition.." They marched unopposed without opposition? Makes sense, I guess.
• "Vannes suffered from a severe and deadly outbreak of illness in 1342, which.." For clarity recommend "Vannes had suffered.."
• "..as they had agreed at Malstroit." Typo.
• "by John of Offord, Edward's Lord Privy Seal and a seasoned diplomat, the lawyer Thomas Fastolf, William Bateman, the dean of Lincoln, Hugh Neville and Nicolino Fieschi." As it is ambiguous whether William Bateman is the dean of Lincoln or they are different people in the list, I'd recommend using semi-colons to split people, and commas within that.
• No details of who represented the French at Avignon?
• "..long before the truce was due to expire in September 1346,[70] During the summer.." Comma, then a capital letter.
• "During the summer of 1343 Olivier of Clisson, a senior Breton lord, was invited from England to a tournament on French soil. As he was protected by the treaty he attended, but on John's orders was arrested and executed without trial." Maybe a me issue, but I've lost track; which John?

• 1b.

• Make a decision about which is your primary measurement. The article uses both kilometres and miles in different places.

3. Broad in its coverage:

1. it addresses the main aspects of the topic; and
2. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).

4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.
5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.

Scope

• 3. My main concern here, is to what extent do we really need both this article and Edward III's Breton campaign? The two cover very very similar areas with a slight bias for inclusion one way or the other for the two articles, but duplicate much. Even the section on the Truce itself is extremely similar, the main difference just seems to be having paragraph breaks in different places!

Harrias, I started on this one, given that if it fails the rest is moot. As I tried to address it, I realised that I don't actually know what your concern is. Is the problem that you think it may not pass criteria 3a or criteria 3b. Ta. Gog the Mild (talk) 18:46, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Including it in criteria 3 was really for the sake of putting it somewhere, and this seemed the most reasonable. I don't have a huge issue with the scope of the article as written. But my concern is that essentially in their current forms Edward III's Breton campaign and Truce of Malestroit should be merged into one article (logically Edward III's Breton campaign), and the other redirecting to that. GA isn't a suitable place to test that, but I'd rather raise it here for at least initial discussion than slap a {{merge}} tag on it. (Which would be a de facto criteria 4 issue anyway.) Harrias ^{(he/him) • talk} 20:24, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

You have me scratching my head here. I mean, as Joanna Russ wrote "I believe that everything is connected to everything, so it doesn't matter where I begin" which would mean anything could be merged with anything. To cases, I have written plenty of truce and treaty articles. Eg I wrote Treaty of Lutatius, which is an integral part of First Punic War, undetachable from it and only writable in its context. But you supported it at ACR and FAC without a murmur of "merge". First Treaty of London could - probably should - on this logic be merged into Edwardian phase of the Hundred Years' War, yet it was the last FAC you reviewed and you supported promotion without even giving me a hard time. I could make a similar point about Truce of Calais or Treaty of Guînes, both FAs.

This article seems to me to have less connection to Edward III's Breton campaign than either of the pair you supported. The campaign - the English plan, Edward lands, does various things for 11 weeks, negotiates a truce for a week, agrees it, the campaign ends, Edward leaves. The truce - French and English emissaries negotiate for a week, Philip and Edward seal it, both parties are dragged to a peace conference (Russia and Ukraine come to mind), they ill-temperedly negotiate in bad faith, the talks fail, Edward abrogates the truce. Total overlap - one week, the negotiation bit. It seems a lower bar than my admittedly quick glance at WP:MERGE suggests. You could argue that there should be less material on the truce in EII'sBC, or less of the background and prelude in ToM; but it seems to me easier to argue that EII's BC should subsumed into Breton Civil War than the case you are making.

So, help me out, what am I missing? And/or what has changed since you cheerfully supported 1stToL two months ago? Gog the Mild (talk) 22:31, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

I have no issue with this type of article in general, nor in fact this article specifically. Take the First Treaty of London article for example, as you raised it. That article gives a lot more detail around that subject that the parent article, Edwardian phase of the Hundred Years' War. So if I was reading the latter, and wanted to know more about the treaty, I could click through and find a more detailed article about that subject.

In this case however, it is my opinion that if I was reading Edward III's Breton campaign, and I clicked on the Further information: Truce of Malestroit link, I would be disappointed to find no real extra detail about the Truce. A bit more about the wider background of the Hundred Years' War, and certainly more about the peace conference at Avignon, but around the Truce itself? Pretty close to a copy and paste between the two articles. Harrias ^{(he/him) • talk} 13:24, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Got you. I see the Avignon conference, a major part of the truce agreement, as an integral part of the article. You don't. Fair nuff. Would the matter substantially go away (I would want to review the background stuff with a view to thinning it out) if the article were moved to "Avignon peace conference (1344-1345)"? There are a few additional bits and pieces on the mechanics of the conference I could add it that was the new focus. Gog the Mild (talk) 13:34, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

I think this is the right line of thinking, but it might not be necessary to go so far as changing the article title. Yet, at least. If you see the Avignon conference as a major part of the truce agreement, which sounds reasonable, then how about starting with making the Peace conference section a sub-section of Truce? Along with some content re-balancing, this might help to demonstrate the focus of this article. Harrias ^{(he/him) • talk} 18:02, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do. Gog the Mild (talk) 18:22, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

• 4. No concerns.
• 5. No concerns.

Miscellaneous

• I've just noticed that there is a text marker for Beauvoir-sur-Mer on the locator map in the Vannes section, but it displays at the bottom of the caption for me. Unless this is a display issue my side, remove it.

There we go. My main concern is that of the large cross-over with the Edward III's Breton campaign article. While a fair amount of overlap is always present between sub-articles of wars and campaigns, this seems a lot, in my opinion. Harrias ^{(he/him) • talk} 15:21, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by SL93 talk 17:56, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that in 1343 the French and English armies marched to within 18 miles (29 km) of each other, then agreed a three-and-a-half year truce?

• Source: Wagner, John A. (2006). Encyclopedia of the Hundred Years War. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Greenwood. ISBN 978-0-313-32736-0 page 207: "Concluded on 19 January 1343 and intended to run until 29 September 1346, the Truce of Malestroit ..." This source says the French were 20 miles from Vannes, while Sumption, Jonathan (1990). The Hundred Years War 1: Trial by Battle. London: Faber & Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-13895-1 page 407 gives 18 miles from the English army.

• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Downtown Amman
• Comment: I am happy to email copies of the sources, or to consider alternative hooks.

5x expanded by Gog the Mild (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 85 past nominations.

Gog the Mild (talk) 22:51, 21 March 2025 (UTC).

• General eligibility:
• New enough:
• Long enough:
• Other problems:

Policy compliance:

• Adequate sourcing:
• Neutral:
• Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:
• Other problems:

Hook eligibility:

• Cited:
• Interesting:
• Other problems:

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

QPQ: Done.

Overall: @Gog the Mild: Everything looks fine to me in terms of the article's quality. I did a quick check and fixed a minor spelling error (strongly pre-French -> strongly pro-French). I have an idea for a hook that might be more intereseting: "... that Vannes, Brittany, was meant to be administered by the Avignon Papacy according to the Truce of Malestroit, but the residents expelled their garrison the same year?" Jon698 (talk) 16:56, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

• Thanks for the rapid review. Personally I find ALT1 a little long, not as interesting as ALT0 and a bit away from the main topic of the article; but I am probably a tad too close to judge any of those objectively. Gog the Mild (talk) 17:05, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

• @Gog the Mild: That's fine. It was interesting reading the article and I found the papacy getting kicked out so quickly rather funny. I am okaying the DYK since I was just waiting for your comment. Jon698 (talk) 17:19, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

Names of the cardinals

Hi Sheila1988 and thanks for adding the names of the cardinals. Do you have a source for the information? Thanks. Gog the Mild (talk) 13:43, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Added now Sheila1988 (talk) 19:31, 10 April 2025 (UTC)