Prince Eugene of Savoy, the Toulon Expedition of 1707, and the English Historians-- A Dissenting View

In: The journal of military history, Volume 70, Issue 4, p. 939-962

Abstract

This article uses recent English-language historical accounts of the 1707 siege of the French naval base of Toulon by the army of Prince Eugene of Savoy as a case study of the distortions that can occur when the authors of these accounts have not made full use of works written at the time of the events they treat and, in particular, are ignorant of the historical literature on the subject in languages other than their own (in this case, works in French, German, and Italian). The author believes that these shortcomings in the English-language literature on the military history of the 1688–1748 period, which currently dominates the field, demonstrate how much work remains to be done on every aspect of this crucial period, addressing once again problems that everyone believed had been closed for good.