where was the battle of Waterloo?
A recent effort to measure the ignorance of college seniors included the question, “In what country was the Battle of Waterloo fought?” The ‘correct’ answer is Belgium, a state created 16 years later.
Waterloo is in Brabant, which at the time was (? or recently had been) part of the French Empire; before Boney’s conquests it was in the Austrian (and before that Spanish, and before that Burgundian) Netherlands.
Another question in the survey is “Do you have a favorite author?” I guess you’re illiterate if you can’t pick out just one. Among those listed was Christopher Stashass; I wonder whether it was the student or a clerk who misspelled Stasheff.
At the time of the battle, all of Belgium was part of either the new Kingdom of the Netherlands or the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, both of which were partitioned in 1831.
Before Napoleon, I think I worked out once that Waterloo was in the Bishopric of Liege – unless I’m thinking of some other place that I looked up with a similar question.