Talk:Battle of the Yser

German Fourth Army
The WL directs to the following: "The 4th Army (German: 4. Armee Oberkommando) was a field army that fought in World War II." I'm afraid I don't have enough knowledge as to whether there was or wasn't a German 4th Army in WWI but there appears to be a discrepancy here. Anyone able to help please? Scoop100 (talk) 20:51, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

CE
Tidied the references and layout, added citations and sources.Keith-264 (talk) 21:10, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Added a bit more and revised a few typos.Keith-264 (talk) 22:26, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Expansion
Cut 'n' pasted material from the Siege of Antwerp and Race to the Sea pages to remedy the redundant sub-heading. It needs ce which I will attempt later.Keith-264 (talk) 09:20, 3 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Tidied the material parachuted in from other pages. There's more to add to the prelude and battle sections.Keith-264 (talk) 10:23, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Headers
I prefer not to write under level 2 headers, hence the level 3s which will make more sense when I get round to adding to the narrative (eventually, er, honest).Keith-264 (talk) 16:35, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Summary section
I don't think this adds anything to the article beyond repetition and obsolete narrative; I'd get rid.Keith-264 (talk) 12:03, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090614091756/http://www.wo1.be:80/ned/geschiedenis/veldslagen/ijzer-25oktober.htm to http://www.wo1.be/ned/geschiedenis/veldslagen/ijzer-25oktober.htm
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New map
Keith-264 (talk) 12:34, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Numbers of French troops
The infobox says there were 4,000 French troops, according to Benoît Amez.

However, in La brigade de Jean le Gouin, histoire documentaire et anecdotique des Fusiliers-Marins de Dixmude; d'après des documents originaux et les récits des combattants by Georges Le Bail, p. 58, the author, who fought in the battle, says that there were 6,000 Fusiliers marins: "During this struggle, the 6,000 of Ronarc'h held on without softening up. Like their great ancestor, Jean Bart, they fought desperately." Also on p. 66, a marine relates how he witnessed a conversation between the French commander and a captured senior German officer, who reacted with anger on being told that there were only 6,000 French marines against 40 or 50,000 Germans. The French commandant says that "even if you had 200,000 men to sacrifice, you wouldn't have got through."

In addition to the Fusiliers-marins it also says there was a battalion of (French) Senegalese troops and a battalion of Chasseurs. (p. 63) In Dixmuide there wasn't a house left standing, with holes 9 metres in diameter and 3 metres deep.

There is a map of the battle around Dixmuide on p. 57. >MinorProphet (talk) 02:13, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Local testimony can look like a primary source or hearsay or both; a later source like the French OH would be better. Keith-264 (talk) 05:46, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Have you had sight of the source we are discussing? If so, can you quote exactly what Amez wrote? Or, failing that, can you remember what he had to say? >MinorProphet (talk) 22:39, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Sadly not. Keith-264 (talk) 00:18, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
 * The official French government Marine site has this:
 * "Août 1914, le contre-amiral Ronarc’h chargé de maintenir l’ordre dans Paris et de défendre ses environs forme «une brigade de fortune». Il rassemble 6 585 marins originaires majoritairement de Bretagne dont un quart de fusiliers brevetés."


 * My attempt at translation: "In August 1914, Admiral Ronarc'h, charged with maintaining order in Paris and defending its surroundings, formed a "brigade of fortune". He assembled 6,585 marines, the majority coming from Brittany, a quarter of whom were qualified infantry." Not entirely sure about 'qualified' for 'breveté', but I'm not sure it matters that much. MinorProphet (talk) 06:57, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
 * "In August 1914, Rear-Admiral Ronarc'h, charged with maintaining order in Paris and defending his surroundings, formed a \"makeshift brigade\". It brings together 6,585 sailors mainly from Brittany, including a quarter of patented riflemen."

"August, 1914, the rear admiral Ronarc h made responsible for supporting order in Paris and to defend its vicinity form « a brigade of destiny ». It gathers 6 585 native sailors predominantly of Brittany of which a quarter of patented riflemen."

"August 1914, Rear Admiral Ronarc'h responsible for maintaining order in Paris and defend its surroundings form \"a brigade of fortune\". It brings together 6 585 sailors from mainly Britain including a quarter of patented fusiliers." Qualified or trained would suit me. I'm much happier with that source and I'm grateful that you've taken the trouble. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 08:59, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I found something in Edmonds 1925; Clayton Paths of Glory (2003) p. 59 mentions 6,000 fm and four companies of Tiralleurs Senegalais. Keith-264 (talk) 16:45, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Ramskapelle
I'm posting here because of NPOV

The only high land across the Yser plain was the railway embankment between Nieuwpoourt and Veurnes/Furnes, which was chosen as the last line of resistance by the Belgians. It was placed under the field command of two Captains, my great-grandfather Louis Nestor Guiot of the 6th Regiment of the Line being charged with the Western (Neiuwpoort) half. In the battle which ensued, he was awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre de Léopold, with Oak Leaves, twice, by direct order of the King: it's the top Belgian military honour, the equivalent of the VC, for actions at Ramskappelle. His records are in the Belgian Army records at the Queen Elizabeth barracks in Evere, Brussels: the citations read like the script of Rambo, taking down 12 German machine guns.

Desperately wounded as a result, he was medevaced to Sussex, and as a convalescent in the Country House set personified Gallant Little Belgium. Agatha Christie's Poirrot slightly predates his arrival, thankfully! After the War, he became Mayor (Bourgmeester) of Oostende, where his tomb has been adopted as a National Monument. In that role, he used his UK society contacts to promote the Casino as a rival to le Touquet as a holiday destination, at the start of modern tourism: the King was a frequent guest, leaving the Princes to play with Louis' children and grandchildren on the beach!

While he was convalescent, Louis' second daughter, Thérèse, worked on Jules Bordet's team in Brussels, winning the 1919 Nobel Prize for Medicine. As a result, having married into the top Belgian scientific family the Massaerts, the couple became Natural Science tutors to the Royal Family. After the German invasion in 1940, they took on the publication of La Libre Belgique ("Free Belgium"), until the shortage of paper stopped publication. As a result, Thérèse' husband Ferdinand Massaert moved into politics as a Catholic Senator: she's remembered as the dowager ruler of the congregation of the society chapel of St Jacques sur Coydenberg. His role was critical in the Language Wars of the 1960s. In this, his father-in-law's military career was cardinal.

The Flemish identity flourished in the Burgundian era at the start of the Renaissance in the first half of the 15th Century, as part of a thriving wool trade with England. John of Gaunt, for example, was actually of Ghent. This reached a peak under the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in the first half of the 16th Century, as the Emperor identified as Flemish, but came crashing down under his son Felipe II, who was not only overtly Spanish, but hated the Flemish with a will, unleashing the Duke of Alba on them in what was barely short of genocide. The Dutch, turning Prorestant, won their independence, but the Walloons became almost as obstinately catholic. The cockpit of Europe in the Wars of Religion which ensued reduced the area to a peasant farming subsistance level until the Revolutionary French occupied it in 1792. During the general redistribution of boundaries which followed the fall of Napoleon, the Belgians sought independence at the Congress of Vienna, but were refused by Viscount Castlereigh on economic grounds. That would soon change when the discovery of coal and iron in the area between Charleroi and Lens sparked an Industrial Revolution immortalised in Les Misérables, leaving agricultural Flanders even more impoverished. The religious diversity left the areas under Dutch administration oppressed, and the French impoverished: the new middle class, ignored. The resulting Revolution on this day, the 21st July in 1830, was pretty much welcome on all sides: it had even been diarised in the Society columns of the Press. Monday, Coltillon. Tuesday, Dance. Wednesday, Revolution. After the exchange of some shots for the sake of honour, the Revolutionaries woke to the reality that the Civil Service salaries were due at the end of the month and the exchequer was in the Hague and Paris! They had just one financier, Frederick Meeus, at the head of the Société Générale, and he held their Masonic liberalism in contempt: his price was control of the economy and a Monarchy. This turned out to be good news for the UK, because the succession lay between the teenage Victoria and the widower of George III's only legitimate offspring, Princess Charlotte, who had died in childbirth. Her husband had distinguished himself as a Colonel on Wellington's Staff, and was frankly a far mlore likely candidate: he evidently considered the new Count de Meeus (!)'s offer more attractive as a bird in the hand. That left Flanders feeling even more neglected.

The outbreak of WWI saw the weight of German oppression land on the Flanders plain, and has been used by the Flemish Independence movement as a causus belli, claiming very superficially that it was all a Walloon plot from an Officer class which spoke no Flemish. My great-grandfather puts a lie to that: born in Wallonia, he was orphaned in childhood and raised by the Parish, leaving him no options but to join the army in adolescence. Rising through the non-Commissioned ranks, there was less prejudice than in the British, and so he was commissioned, and a Captain at the outbreak of war. He'd been in the Army twenty years and more, and very evidently spoke Flemish as an ordinary soldier. Indeed, I'll never know how I do, as I've never studied the language. It's not that far from Geordie, and the moment a Flemish staffer needed some Petty Cash utterly befuddles me: I dealt with him in his own language, which I've never studied! Apparently it was perfect.

The years since Independence have proven Castlemaine right: Belgium is too small to be economically autonomous. Initially it survived at the cutting edge of the Industrial Revolution, at the cost of the destitution of the working class, then off the back of the Heart of Darkness, the Belgian Congo, and finally, as the home of the European State, both NATO and the EU. And a single region, even more so.