Historic Battles On Belgian Soil Quiz

Answer: John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough

Bladon is where Sir Winston was buried in January 1965.
Blenheim Castle was the Duke of Marlborough's reward for his victory at Blenheim.
William Cadogan was one of John Churchill's aides.

Answer: hot-air observation balloons

The uniforms worn by the French army were blue, not khaki.
Blue had been the colour since the creation of a Revolutionary Army of conscripts. It is still the colour of French teams in sports such as soccer. "Un bleu" also became the term for a young recruit. The name was given by the older professional soldiers who saw the new recruits as very inexperienced baby-soldiers.
The socket bayonet had already been introduced by the French at the end of the seventeenth century.
The matchlock musket was used already during first half of seventeenth century. Musket drill was a very complicated matter.
The British Brown Besses used at Waterloo were muskets, not rifles.

Answer: Marshall Ney

On 6 July 1794 there already had been a "battle of Waterloo". The outcome had been a French victory over the Allied Troops of the Austrians and the Dutch. In the ranks of the French there was a young French cavalry captain named Michel Ney. When Napoleon escaped from Elba, Ney, now a Marshall of France, though morally and legally tied to the French King Louis XVIII- who had replaced Napoleon -, broke his oath of allegiance and "followed his heart". He knew that if captured he would be court-martialled and condemned to death for treason - which indeed was what happened.
Napoleon was at Ligny while Ney fought at Quatre Bras. Napoleon was victorious but let Bluecher escape.
The Battle at Quatre Bras remained undecided. Wellington called his troops back to another line of defence.

Answer: Jerome Bonaparte

Jerome Bonaparte seems to have thought he had a rendez-vous with Fame, and tried to win the Battle of Waterloo all by himself. He sent in many more troops than he was supposed to do. He might indeed have won the day, but as Wellington later said: the big doors of the farm of Hougoumont had been shut just in time for the French attack to fail.

Answer: Karl von Clausewitz

Von Clausewitz - who later became a famous strategist - was chief of staff of the Prussian troops that were defeated by Grouchy at Wavres on same day as the battle of Waterloo.
The next day, Grouchy managed to lead back to France his own army and all that was left of Napoleon's.
Bluecher was the commander-in-chief of the Prussians who fought at Waterloo. His nickname was "General Vorwaerts". He wanted to name the battle after the farm (La Belle-Alliance) where his troops and Wellington's had met. Wellington seems to have felt that Waterloo was much easier to pronounce for the British.
Gneisenau and Scharnhorst had from 1806 till 1808 reformed the Prussian army. The Prussian vanguard under von Zieten, and von Buelows cavalry ,were the first Prussian troops to reach the battlefield at Waterloo.
Von Schlieffen was not involved in all this. He was the great strategist whose thinking influenced German warfare during first World War.Alfred von Schlieffen and Helmuth von Moltke intended to crush the French army somewhere between the Jura and the Vosges mountains.
Von Clausewitz is the author of a handbook of military theory: "Vom Kriege".

Answer: Lord Uxbridge

It was the Dutch general Baron de Constant-Rebecque, the Prince of Orange's chief of staff, who first intervened after noticing the unexpected approach of Napoleon's troops towards Brussels. It was indeed only near Charleroi that Napoleon's secret crossing of the Sambre river and his imminent attack had been discovered. Of his own initiative he sent troops to Quatre Bras where they interrupted the smooth progress of Napoleon's vanguard.
Ney was unwise enough to slow down his progress and to wait for more instructions from his boss, Napoleon.
Napoleon himself made a very bad blunder too by delaying far too long the pursuit of Bluecher's troops whom he had defeated at Ligny on 16th of June. Finally he sent Grouchy to catch up with Bluecher, but the Germans cleverly misled the French general. He did not notice he was pursuing only part of Bluecher's troops, who moreover seemed to be moving back towards Germany. In the meantime the main force had cleverly slipped away and had started returning to the Charleroi- Brussels road for a second and decisive meeting with Napoleon.
Picton fought in "mufti" as he had been called away from a ball, and had preferred not to waste time by putting on his military uniform.
Did it make him more conspicuous and was he easily singled out by the French, or was it sheer bad luck: anyway he fell under enemy fire during the first charge his Scottish cavalry made.

Answer: Dutch troops under the Prince of Orange

There were some 22,000 Dutch troops. Some of them were of Belgian origin.
The Germans from Nassau were under the authority of the Prince of Orange, Nassau being a dependency of the House of Orange. There were some 7,000 of them.
The number of Hanoverians has been estimated at some 13,000; the Brunswickians had some 6,000 troops.
Bluecher's troops were Prussians mostly.There were some 50,000 of them.

Answer: the inundation of part of the frontline by Belgian engineers opening the locks of the river Yser

Gallant "Little Belgium" was apparently no match for the German invader.
Yet with a bit of luck and some trickery, the Belgians managed to hold their sector: the area north-west of the Ypres Salient.
British troops took over from them for the defence of the Ypres area itself.
The River Yser would not have been enough of an obstacle for the German
army, but the flooding of the area between a railway bank and the river did just what was required: it created a defensive barrier.
The battle for the Ypres Salient was a matter of occupying strategic hills: the so-called West-Flemish "Mountains". Very low wooded hills in fact, but offering enough shelter and overview to control the area.

Answer: SS-colonel Otto von Skorzeny

Skorzeny was the guy who had liberated Mussolini. During the Bastogne-fights he was in charge of a.o. the 150th SS "Panzerbrigade".
Von Rundstedt had been re-nominated Supreme Commander of the Western front.
Model was in charge of the 6th SS- Panzer Army.
Von Manteuffel commanded the 5th Panzerarmy.

Answer: day after Christmas

Various other U.S.A. generals played an important role in the Battle of the Bulge and in the stopping of the von Rundstedt counteroffensive.
Among them Courtney Hodges, Commander of the First American Army; James Gavin (82nd Airborne Division); General Anthony Mc Auliffe the defender of Bastogne ( of "Nuts" -reputation); colonel William Roberts (in charge of Combat Command B) ; general Troy Middleton (8th Armycorps).
A decisive role was played by various "minor commanders": captain Lawrence Rose; Major William Desobry; lieutenant-colonel Ralph Harper; captain William Ryerson; lieutenant-colonel Julian Ewell;
lieutenant-colonel James la Prade ;Henry Cherry; James O'Hara etc.
Some important commanders of the troops fighting in the Ardennes happened to be absent at the moment of the surprise-attack: General Omar Bradley who had gone to Versailles for talks with Eisenhower; Maxwell Taylor who had returned to States for talks with U.S. Government; Matthew Ridgway was in Britain.
The encirclement was broken at 16:50 26 December 1944.
The von Rundstedt or German Ardens offensive was completely over by 17 January 1945.
On 12 January of the same year the Russians had already started their offensive against Berlin.
The Allied failure to prevent the German counter-offensive cost the Americans and the British a lot of prestige at Jalta and may have boosted the self-confidence of Joseph Stalin in acting as the real winner of the war.