"The military historians say you are wrong, so who cares what you think?"
It is totally mindless to claim that it was well led without being able to say why it was well led.
You have the reasons why I believe it was nothing but butchery, you tell my why you believe it wasn't - and you agree free to quote any historian to back you up by showing they claim is wasn't as I described.
You have lost any right you might ever have had to claim the authority of historians with the most outrageously stupid statement on history anybody has ever made - that all past historians have been made irrelevant by modern ones - that is tantamount to claiming we must now burn all books written by past historians.
Nobody in the history of scholarship has ever made such a suggestion.
No historian has ever had his or her entire work debunked because is was wrong - not one - yet this is what you have suggested - mindless twaddle.
George Bernard Shaw once joked that he was a better playwright than Shakespeare because he had read everything he had written - Shaw was joking - you apparently believe your idiocy.
Your suggestion will remain a Mudcat classic while I am a member.
By the way - I see you have expanded your 3 points to 4 as you are now including blame for starting the war in your arguments, despite your "historians" (particularly Margaret McMillan's) attitude to the subject.
The war was carried out using a policy of simple butchery - show how this was not the case, and again, feel free to use as many historians as you wish
Jim Carroll