Commanders drew their own battle maps to flatter their forces’ order

Evidence

Graphically, this way of recounting battles is represented in the way the maps of the battles are drawn. Regiments are represented by neat and tidy geometric shapes: cavalry regiments, for example, are represented by rectangles and infantry ones by squares; troop movements are shown by straight dashed, broken lines; new positions are referred to by adding markers to the letters denoting old locations, A to A′ to A′′, for example. This manner of graphically representing battles is characteristic not only of some military historians recounting certain events decades or centuries later, but is often the manner chosen by the commanders themselves in describing the same events. In representing the minor skirmish that took place between the vanguards of the Egyptian and Turkish armies two days before the battle of Konia, for example, Kani Bey, assistant to Osman Nureddin, the Chief of Staff, followed the same simplistic procedure: the Egyptian units were drawn in nice and neat squares, red rectangles for the infantry, and yellow ones for the cavalry. The Turkish troops were represented by rectangles that were scattered with no order all over the map. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 903

Categorization

• XREF: Extends the ‘battle piece’ critique from written accounts to cartography.