Comments by "TheEvertw" (@TheEvertw) on "History Hit" channel.

  1. 4:36 The force at Quatre Bras was mixed, with a large if not largest Dutch contingent. It was commanded by the Prince of Orange himself, who, unlike the portrayal in Sharpe, did very well and was commended by Wellington for the action.
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  2. While the Schiltron formation did work as depicted, no horse will charge into a row of spikes. They have brains of their own, they tend not to run into things that will kill them. For an accurate depiction of what would happen, see how the French cavalry flows around the British squares in the old movie Waterloo (1970)
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  3. ​ @2adamast  "that design doesn't work against mortars" Yes it does. That is what those "bomb-proof shelters" are for. A mortar doesn't penetrate several meters of topsoil. Those administrative buildings have no defensive value, they are only for convenience. "polygonal forts -- are cheaper" Polygonal forts require additional forts within a kilometer or two to give fire support. That makes them anything but cheaper. Polygonal forts could be overrun due to the limited depth of defense, and the other forts were required to shoot any attackers that got on top of it, off. The lack of this support is what doomed Eben-Emael, for example. It was done right in the Nieuwe Hollandse Waterlinie and the Fortress Amsterdam, where dozens of forts are placed at regular intervals of 1 to 2 kilometers -- at astonishing expense. But neither has ever been taken by an enemy, and they prevented the invasion of the Netherlands in WW1 because the Germans knew they could not overcome them.
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  4. Amazing that people trained themselves to draw 160 Lbs and more. I couldn't bear the pain of the string cutting in my fingers, let alone that massive force.
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  5. In the 18th century, I would use deceit to capture this fort. A siege would have been problematic, with its open access to the sea and the British navy being the greatest in the world at the time... Bypassing the fort would also be problematic, as it allowed the Brits a staging area for counter-offensives. One way would be to make the lives of the Brits there so miserable they would abandon the place, by e.g. adding slow-acting poison to the water supply and the foodstuffs that came in, introducing sickness & disease, things like that.
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  6. The Atlantic wall in the Netherlands did see some use in their defense of the Schelde. By failing to overrun Zeeland when Antwerp was liberated (attacking the wall from the rear), the use of a deep-sea port was denied to the Allies a lot longer than necessary. Any ship trying to approach Antwerp was simply blown out of the water by the Wall defenses.
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  7. I hate this movie. It is a propaganda piece that created a lot of hate in Scotland. I lived there at the time this came out, and the anger was palpable.
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  8. Question: What is a kist? English -- eeeeeh, something to do with ancient burial? Dutch -- A box, usually of wood but really made from any material.
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  9. So, as with most people's sex lives, Roman sex was not as spectacular as purported.
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  10. 4:15 You use the wrong flag for the Dutch forces. The prince's flag you show had not been in use since 1663, i.e. for 150 years. This is particularly salient because the Dutch flag (i.e. the flag of the first European republic) was the origin of the French flag, rotated 90 degrees. Your picture hides this historical detail. Destroying first the French Republic, and then the Dutch Republic, was one of the major crimes of Napoleon against the public.
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  11. I never realised this about the Normany invasion. The Germans hadn't just relied on the Atlantik Wal, but had counted on the Allies not being able to logistically support the invasion effort without taking Cherbourg. But the Brits had out-smarted them with the Mulberry harbours. We give Brits too little credit for their contributions to WW2.
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  12. Funny how disparagingly they were about the recurve bow, which is superior to the longbow in many ways.
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  13. About the secrecy: I don't think that was to do with the fact that they were making arrows. All the guilds had their trade secrets, because that is what guilds were about: educating their own, exchanging innovations & experiences within the guild, regulating the numbers of people exercising the craft, controlling quality etc. They also had a system of taxation and some social welfare for those inside the guild and e.g. their widows. That gave guilds quite a lot of power, and they were keen to keep it. Elements of the guild system are still used today, e.g. calling a well-educated person a "Master" or a "Bachelor". Those titles are from the guild system.
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  14. I wonder when Johnson is going to put a huge statue of himself in the Abbey...
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  15. Not all Europeans start the war at September 1939. France and the Low Countries start the war at 10 May 1940, the start of Fall Gelb, the invasion of western Europe. And I bet that Russia and other former Soviet Union states start it at 22 June 1941, the start of Operation Barbarossa.
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  16. Bloody forinners invading our lands! Never mind that the angle-saxons were originally invaders, as were the Britons.
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  17. Love this movie. Such a shame there were no sequels. Great to see Dan have such fun pointing out where the movie was spot-on, instead of inaccuracies.
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  18. Nope, Cherbourg was properly destroyed by the Germans. The first deep sea port that got operational was Antwerp. But Montgomery failed to make the liberation of the shipping lane towards Antwerp a priority, allowing the Germans fortified that region. It was taken months later and at a very heavy cost to the Canadians. That is the second major blunder by Montgomery that lengthened the war by months. A man who is given much more credit than he is due.
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  19.  @2adamast  True, the lack of covered close-defence kazemats is a severe weakness of this fort. The Dutch lines did have one additional feature: the land in front of the fortresses could be flooded, making the approach of (heavy) artillery very difficult. However by 1940 they had become obsolete. They were placed to protect the main cities, but by 1940 these cities were no longer out of range of an attacker. Especially if that attacker had bombers... Ever since WW2, fortifications have become futile, as any attacker is able to quickly concentrate so much force on a specific location that no fortification can withstand it. Defence-in-depth, mobile reserves and counter-offensives are how armies defend themselves nowadays.
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  20. The 4th crusade was the worst own-goal ever. Because of it, Constantinople was so weakened it could no longer resist the Muslim conquest. It is groaning under Muslim rule even today, after a brief period of secular rule.
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