France and The Low Countries
From the middle of the 19th century until 1914 the fortress city of Antwerp was the official National Redoubt of Antwerp in Belgium, and until 1940, the "Fortress Holland" was that of the Netherlands, although in neither case did the "redoubt" prove defensible — even though the same area of Holland proper did manage to stop the advances of the French troops in the Rampjaar 1672, providing the Dutch with much-needed time to eventually gain the upper hand. In 1940 Brittany was briefly considered as such in the last stages of the Fall of France, but again proved impractical.
Read more about this topic: National Redoubt
Famous quotes containing the words france and/or countries:
“In France a woman will not go to sleep until she has talked over affairs of state with her lover or her husband.”
—Jules Mazarin (1602–1661)
“The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife.”
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)