Second Siege of Namur
This bloody encounter saw William III’S greatest victory on the European continent, against a heavily entrenched French garrison
A heavily fortified French garrison attempts to survive against a powerful coalition army
Although William III was king of England, Scotland and Ireland, he had also been prince of Orange from birth and was the stadtholder (steward) of the majority of provinces within the Dutch Republic. His Dutch identity and territories were therefore at the heart of his fighting policies against
Louis XIV, and Belgium (then known as the Spanish Netherlands) became a key buffer zone between the two kings’ forces.
The city of Namur lies on the confluence of the rivers Meuse and Sambre southwest of Brussels. It was a key position in the
Spanish Netherlands, and both William and Louis XIV knew its strategic importance.
The Dutch engineer Menno van Coehoorn had considerably strengthened Namur’s fortifications, and it was known to be a very strong citadel. Nonetheless, the French (under the rare personal command of Louis XIV) had besieged and taken the city in only 27 days in 1692.
Louis’s talented engineer Sébastien le Prestre de Vauban improved Namur’s defences once again, to the point where it was considered to be impregnable. Vauban’s defences included a strong bastioned trace around the city, which was dominated by the citadel that stood on a hill.
Defences and destructive diversions
By 1695 France was on the defensive, and an Allied army of 80,000 English, Dutch, Scots, Irish and Holy Roman Empire troops laid siege to Namur from 2 July 1695 under the command of William III and the electors of Bavaria and Brandenburg. A 13,000-strong French garrison commanded by Louisfrançois, Duc de Boufflers, opposed the Allies. This large garrison meant that the French could mount sorties against their attackers, but Coehoorn, who now had to destroy much of his own fortifications, led the Allied siege works.
Systems of trenches were dug around the city, and the garrison surrendered the town after 14 days, before retreating into the citadel. Coehoorn constructed batteries from inside of Namur to bombard the lower defences of the citadel. There was also intensive sapping, but Boufflers dug his own trenches to protect the defenders, which resulted in bloody
Allied assaults. Boufflers’s defences were so effective that the first Allied attack on the citadel was forced to retreat with heavy losses. A second attack did push the French out of the lower defences, but the citadel was not taken.
Meanwhile, François, Duc de Villeroy, attempted to draw the allies away from Namur by bombarding Brussels between 13-15
August 1695. The Belgian capital was militarily unimportant, and the artillery assault only succeeded in causing great destruction to the city. William and his commanders did not take the bait to divert any of their soldiers from Namur, and the siege continued unabated.
Allied attacks on the citadel were now beginning to be successful but at great cost, including at St Nicholas Gate, where 800
Allied soldiers were killed in one assault. The northern approach to the French defences was called Fort William, and the Allies managed to take its first line of defence and then breached its main walls. The fort was ultimately taken, but there were once again heavy casualties on both sides.
An early ‘British Army’ victory
The Allies were now close to the inner citadel, and more batteries were established to pound part of the southern defences known as the ‘hornwork’. English and Scottish troops managed to breach the hornwork and an Irish regiment successfully stormed the citadel. As a reward, William III officially named the regiment as the ‘Royal Regiment of Ireland’.
The garrison was now forced back into the medieval castle, which was the highest point of the citadel, and the French finally surrendered on 4 September 1695. Boufflers had lost 8,000 men out of his 13,000-strong garrison, but the Allies suffered more, with over 12,000 casualties. William subsequently detained Boufflers for his conduct in treating Allied prisoners of war poorly after previous battles.
Namur was arguably William’s greatest
(if extremely bloody) victory. 14 English and Scottish regiments participated, including the Grenadier, Coldstream and Scots Guards, and it became one of the earliest actions to be commemorated on British Army colours. Nevertheless, the regiments that fought at the siege did not receive ‘Namur’ as a battle honour until centuries later, in 1910.