Talk:Tirailleur

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Rene Riffaud[edit]

Carl Logan removed ". René Riffaud (1898-2007) was one of them" asking if there was any reason for him to include. Well, actually, apart of him having a Wiki article, yes. His advanced age, and the fact that he was not alone, and that there is a Wiki article on him, in English beside, shows you, who might not be aware of the current state of affairs in France, that tirailleurs from World War I are still a subject of interest for the medias and the people at large, that a new film concerning Algerian tirailleurs recently was made, and that this subject is still of actuality. So, yes, there is a reason, and honestly, I don't think this little sentence will ruin the article. We'll talk again about it in a year or so... Tazmaniacs 05:15, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with you that the last tirailleur to have served in World War I deserves to be named in this article. However Rene Riffaud may not necessarily be the correct choice. According to both the French language and Times obituaries to which his article is linked he served with the artillery and not the tirailleurs. The French website lists two other veterans: Abdoulaye N'Diaye of the Tirailleurs senegalais and Saci Ben Hocine Mahdi of the Tirailleurs algeriens as the last of the WWI tirailleurs. Both died in 1998. The new film Indigenes sounds very interesting - thanks for adding the link. Buistr 08:23, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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Rifles[edit]

The tirailleurs in this role are snipers. Nevertheless, in contrast to the British riflemen, it is often stated that Napoleon didn’t believe in rifles because they were slower to load than a musket. I am not aware of any reference to French rifles. Humphrey Tribble (talk) 10:40, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Humphrey Tribble: I have removed the unsourced section for now. I'm not sure if this primary source is worth using. M.Bitton (talk) 14:03, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

perhaps also of interest @Cukrakalnis: Elinruby (talk) 17:27, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly, although I really wonder about translations of French terminology on Wikipedia, e.g. there is an article called Tonkinese Rifles for the Tirailleurs Tonkinois, in contrast to Tirailleurs indochinois. That said, considering that at least some English-language RS directly use the French tirailleurs, I think it's probably best to go along with that. Cukrakalnis (talk) 19:57, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I always use tirailleurs because it has a very specific meaning that conveys more than just the weapons used; these are always colonial units, for one thing. It is probably not worth correcting Rifles to Tirailleurs at the moment though, since much more important things need correcting with these articles. One suggestion though: notice the language template I used above? This protects foreign language words from well-intentioned spell-check bots, and not many people seem to know about it. As for Tokin ve Indochina, I have not looked at the units in Southeast Asia as I learned about tirailleurs in terms of Operation Torch. Best guess: Quite possibly there was a colony with that name, smaller than Indochina. because the British had Burma, remember, and it was where the unit was first created. That is only a guess, though, based on how the Senegalese tirailleurs got *their* name. See Tonkin (French protectorate) though Elinruby (talk) 02:36, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Could I just intrude here? I have a large collection of books on French military history and tirailleurs is of course the term universally used by French writers. English-language writers are inventive on this point, coming up with "skirmishers", "snipers", "fusiliers", "riflemen", "sharpshooters", "light infantry" and other derivations from British military terminology. It is simply one of these words that do not translate easily. Having said that, tirailleurs is the most commonly used noun in recently published English or translated material. Good enough for Wikipedia? Buistr (talk) 05:51, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely. You and Cukrakalnis should chat. He expressed an interest in French military topics and I happened to know of a batch of articles on the French military that got bulk machine-translated and dumped onto en.wikipedia a while back. I put them into readable English (I think) but got pulled into a different rabbit hole before I looked at their references or anything else really except for regimental history. I don't think anyone but spellcheckers has done much in the area since, and the Senegalese tirailleurs in particular were actually quite important; probably some of the others too, if somebody digs. I think Cukrakalnis was proposing a list showing the overall hierarchy. I am around for translation questions like the one above but am currently mostly working on overall articles on the Ukraine war and aspects of World War II. Elinruby (talk) 07:03, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Buistr I see that you and Djwilms have previously discussed precisely this point, tirailleurs vs rifles. Your comment above about English-language sources makes me think you've done a literature review, so do tell... also pinging @Humphrey Tribble and M.Bitton: from the discussion above, who may want to comment. I think that M.Bitton was right to call that a primary source; a better one definitely exists among primary sources even, but on the other hand I'm absolutely positive that secondary sources do exist for the term.
My thought is that we should use tirailleur for precision and redirect from Rifles for English speakers. But again, do tell if you have looked into this. Least confusing for readers, if we are all working on related articles, would be if we could all agree on which term we should use, right? Elinruby (talk) 10:10, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I’m not going to dive back into this issue. My head already hurts from trying to extract history from the myth-filled canon of the American War of Independence! Nevertheless, I noted earlier in the year that The Oxford English Dictionary has the earliest occurrence of the word tirailleur as 1794, defining it as
“One of a body of skirmishers employed in the wars of the French Revolution of 1792, a skirmisher, a sharpshooter; a soldier (usually of infantry) trained for independent action.”
The OED is based on quotations, so it is definitely a secondary source.
The Spirit of the Modern System of War can be viewed via the Wikipedia Library (Cambridge University Press). The point I dug out was this:
“What, however, renders this war remarkable, in a military point of view, is, that the first use of Tirailleurs maybe dated from that period, and that the American soldiery were the first troops employed in that manner.”
The author is referring to the American War of Independence. The translator used the word Tirailleurs.
Finally, there are alternative illustrations on Commons, possibly better ones:
Napoleon Grenadier and Voltigeur of 1808 by Bellange.jpg
Napoleon Voltigeur and Carabinier by Bellange.jpg Humphrey Tribble (talk) 12:50, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for those points. Is there some sort of controversy about this? If we can't reach consensus, I suppose somebody could sort out the naming issues after the fact, but it would be better to avoid creating naming issues to begin with. In any event, here is a list of book sources for the use of "tirailleurs":

I looked at "rifles" but of course a lot of the hits are for weapons not soldiers. Maybe someone else can get better results there. I have lots else to do and don't what to argue the point. I already made a proposal and I guess I still propose it unless I hear a good reason why some other idea is better, but I also don't think we need to sort this out right now if that becomes a time sink. Going to unsubscribe from the thread now, but please ping me if consensus is being assessed and I'll catch up on any comments Elinruby (talk) 13:21, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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