10 replies to this topic

[Firebat]

I am beginning to learn History in whatever form has to be taken with a grain of salt.

 

 

Remember the old story if you line up 50 people and whisper a fact into the first persons ear, who passes it to the next etc., it will come out different at the other end.

 

 

That is what I like about what we do here. If someone is researching a project you can run it through the mill here and get an array of sound advise to help the project along.

[valmy33]

I have often commented about the mistakes in horse poses and even anatomy caused by sculptors copying paintings without doing their own research.  Of course the same can be said of history in general.  Of course this is primarily a problem for black power age and earlier but there is no doubt that many historical paintings provide a distorted view of the scenes they are supposed to be representing.  I thought it might be interesting for us to share some of our favorite distortions in this tread.

 

To start, here is a well known painting of the supposed charge of Cuirassiers at Waterloo.  Notice how close so many are to the Highlander square here.  The fact is that simply did not happen and while a few may have gotten within a few yards, the bulk most certainly did not.  Contrary to popular myth, horses do not charge into squares and to be in full gallop as close as the front line shown here would have been pointless suicide.  But it certainly looks valiant, which I guess is the point.

 

 

So who has some other distorted history painting examples?

A cavalry charge at Eylau : The Colonel Chabert movie

 

See and listen. We don't listen artillery and other weapons

 

 

 and now the reality :

 

 

 

The cavalry charges were rather slow and were made at a trot (the gallop being taken only for hundred in last two hundred meters): it was necessary to keepindeed at the same time certain alignment to increase the violence of the final shock the horses which were to be able to charge until ten or fifteen times ! in a long movement of flow and ebb. Frames and riders, asking a front of troops, had to suffer first of all the firing of the artillery (from eight hundred meters, then in grapeshot below four hundred meters), then face the shooting of the infantry (below hundred meters) and, by avoiding their knocked over companions, to throw against bayonets. Finally, in theory, because, in practice, horses refused to come.

 

Spit is totally right :  It's nice but it's not true

[Phantom]

# obvious ones are the flag which didn't exist at the year of the crossing; horses on the small boats; and the bright sky - the crossing took place in the rain in pitch dark.

 

Terry