Dunkirk in the context of "Siege of Dunkirk (1658)"

The Dunkirk evacuation, codenamed Operation Dynamo and also known as the Miracle of Dunkirk, or just Dunkirk, was the evacuation of more than 338,000 Allied soldiers during the Second World War from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk, in the north of France, between 26 May and 4 June 1940. The operation began after large numbers of Belgian, British, and French troops were cut off and surrounded by German troops during the six-week Battle of France.

After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, France and the British Empire declared war on Germany and imposed an economic blockade. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was sent to help defend France. After the Phoney War of October 1939 to April 1940, Germany invaded Belgium, the Netherlands, and France on 10 May 1940. Three panzer corps attacked through the Ardennes and drove northwest to the English Channel. By 21 May, German forces had trapped the BEF, the remains of the Belgian forces, and three French field armies along the northern coast of France. BEF commander General Viscount Gort immediately saw evacuation across the Channel as the best course of action, and began planning a withdrawal to Dunkirk, the closest good port.

The Battle of Boulogne in 1940 was the defence of the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer by French, British and Belgian troops in the Battle of France during the Second World War. The battle was fought at the same time as the Siege of Calais, just before Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from Dunkirk. After the Franco-British counter-attack at the Battle of Arras on 21 May, German units were held ready to resist a resumption of the attack on 22 May. General der Panzertruppe (Lieutenant-General) Heinz Guderian, the commander of XIX Corps, protested that he wanted to rush north up the Channel coast to capture Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk. An attack by part of XIX Corps was not ordered until 12:40 p.m. on 22 May, by which time the Allied troops at Boulogne had been reinforced from England by most of the 20th Guards Brigade.

The Guards had time to dig in around the port before the 2nd Panzer Division, which had been delayed by French troops at Samer, attacked the perimeter held by the Irish Guards at around 5:00 p.m. and were driven off after an hour of fighting. The Welsh Guards front was attacked at 8:00 p.m. and again at dusk, cutting off a party of the Irish at 10:00 p.m. At dawn on 23 May, the German attacks resumed, eventually pushing the defenders back into the town. About eighty light bombers of the Royal Air Force (RAF) flew sorties in support of the defenders of the port.

The Battle of Dunkirk (french: Bataille de Dunkerque) was fought around the French port of Dunkirk (Dunkerque) during the Second World War, between the Allies and Nazi Germany. As the Allies were losing the Battle of France on the Western Front, the Battle of Dunkirk was the defence and evacuation of British and other Allied forces to Britain from 26 May to 4 June 1940.

After the Phoney War, the Battle of France began in earnest on 10 May 1940. To the east, the German Army Group B invaded the Netherlands and advanced westward. In response, the Supreme Allied Commander, French General Maurice Gamelin, initiated "Plan D" and British and French troops entered Belgium to engage the Germans in the Netherlands. French planning for war relied on the Maginot Line fortifications along the German–French border protecting the region of Lorraine but the line did not cover the Belgian border. German forces had already crossed most of the Netherlands before the French forces had arrived. Gamelin instead committed the forces under his command – three mechanized forces, the French First and Seventh Armies and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) – to the River Dyle. On 14 May, German Army Group A burst through the Ardennes and advanced rapidly westward toward Sedan, turning northward to the English Channel, using Generalfeldmarschall Erich von Manstein's plan Sichelschnitt (under the German strategy Fall Gelb), effectively flanking the Allied forces.

The French Revolutionary Wars re-escalated as 1793 began. New powers entered the First Coalition days after the execution of King Louis XVI on 21 January. Spain and Portugal were among these. Then, on 1 February France declared war on Great Britain and the Netherlands.

Three other powers made inroads into overwhelmingly French-speaking territory in the following months prompting France to amass, domestically, an army of 1,200,000 soldiers. The very ascendant Jacobins executed thousands of proven and suspected dissenters, in the final, climactic phase of the Reign of Terror. Counter-revolutionary forces turned Toulon over to Britain and Spain on 29 August, capturing much of the French navy, a port not retaken by Dugommier (with the assistance of the young Napoleon Bonaparte) until 19 December. Between these months a battle on the northern frontier, in September, was won by France, which saw the mainly British siege of Dunkirk lifted. The year ended with the First French Republic's government, the National Convention, having rebuffed attacks from the south and south-east but having made an unsuccessful counter into Piedmont (toward Turin).

The Battle of the Dunes (French: La Bataille des Dunes) is an 1837 history painting by the French artist Charles-Philippe Larivière. It depicts the Battle of the Dunes, fought on 21 June 1658 outside Dunkirk. It was one of the final actions of the long-running Franco-Spanish War, ending in a decisive victory for the French and their English Republican allies. As British Royalist exiles fought alongside the defeated Spanish, it also functioned as one of the final clashes of the War of the Three Kingdoms. The painting portrays the Anglo-French commander, the Viscount of Turenne, leading a charge. In the distance is the besieged Dunkrik.

The painting was ordered in 1836 by Louis Philippe I for the newly restored Palace of Versailles. Louis Philippe commissioned a number of works glorifying French history. It was exhibited at the Salon of 1837 at the Louvre in Paris. Today it hangs in the Galerie des Batailles at Versailles.

The 6 arrondissements of the Nord department are:

1. Arrondissement of Avesnes-sur-Helpe, (subprefecture: Avesnes-sur-Helpe) with 151 communes. Its population was 225,391 in 2021.
2. Arrondissement of Cambrai, (subprefecture: Cambrai) with 116 communes. Its population was 158,753 in 2021.
3. Arrondissement of Douai, (subprefecture: Douai) with 64 communes. Its population was 244,710 in 2021.
4. Arrondissement of Dunkirk (Dunkerque), (subprefecture: Dunkirk) with 111 communes. Its population was 371,736 in 2021.
5. Arrondissement of Lille, (prefecture of the Nord department: Lille) with 124 communes. Its population was 1,260,060 in 2021.
6. Arrondissement of Valenciennes, (subprefecture: Valenciennes) with 82 communes. Its population was 350,643 in 2021.

Rosslare Europort (Irish: Europort Ros Láir) is a modern seaport located at Rosslare Harbour in County Wexford, Ireland, near the southeasternmost point of the island of Ireland. It is the primary Irish port serving the European Continent with 36 direct services to the Continent weekly. It handles passenger and freight ferries to and from Cherbourg, Dunkirk, St Malo and Roscoff, in France, Bilbao in Spain and Fishguard and Pembroke Dock in the United Kingdom. Since July 2022, a new freight route between Rosslare and Zeebrugge, Belgium was introduced by Finnlines (Grimaldi Group) for a twice weekly ro-ro service between the two ports.

As a result of Brexit, the port is expanding rapidly, providing new or increased direct sailings with extra capacity from Ireland to mainland Europe. The direct routes between Ireland and the continent allow freight transport firms to bypass the UK land bridge, in case there is severe congestion at British ports.

In May 1940, during the Second World War, the British war cabinet was split over whether to discuss peace terms with Germany or to continue fighting. Opinion on the side of continuing with the war was led by the prime minister, Winston Churchill, while the side preferring negotiation was led by the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax. The disagreement escalated to crisis point and threatened to bring down the Churchill government.

With the British Expeditionary Force in retreat to Dunkirk and the Fall of France seemingly imminent, Halifax believed that the government should explore the possibility of a negotiated peace settlement. His hope was that Hitler's ally, the still-neutral Italian dictator Mussolini, would broker an agreement. When a memorandum proposing this approach was discussed at the War Cabinet on 27 May, Churchill opposed it and urged his colleagues to fight on without negotiations. He was supported in the war cabinet by its two Labour Party members, Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood, and also by the Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair, who as leader of the Liberal Party was co-opted to the war cabinet for its meetings about the proposed negotiations. Churchill's biggest problem was that he was not the leader of the Conservative Party and he needed to win the support of ex-Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, without which he could have been forced to resign by the large Conservative majority in the House of Commons.