Austria-Hungary declares war on Belgium

Contemporary British war chronicles record under 22 August 1914 that Austria-Hungary declared war on Belgium. The two states had no direct disputes, and Belgium had been resisting the German invasion for almost three weeks. Belgian documents and modern studies show, however, that Vienna’s formal step came a few days later, and that the declaration itself was more a gesture of loyalty to Germany than a military decision.

A guarantor of neutrality

Austria was one of the powers which, by the Treaty of London of 1839, had guaranteed Belgium’s independence and perpetual neutrality, alongside Britain, France, Prussia and Russia. In 1914 one of the guarantors, Germany, broke that undertaking: on 4 August it declared war on Belgium and entered its territory. Belgium then called on two other guarantors, France and Britain, for help. As the Belgian foreign minister Julien Davignon stressed, it did so only once German troops had crossed its frontier.

Austria-Hungary, busy with its war against Serbia and Russia, kept up normal relations with Belgium for several weeks. Its minister, Prince Siegfried von Clary-Aldringen, remained at his post in Brussels, as did the Belgian minister, Count Errembault de Dudzeele, in Vienna. The situation changed on 12 August, when Britain and France declared war on Austria-Hungary. The Austrian historian Manfried Rauchensteiner writes that Vienna hesitated for a long time and made several attempts to persuade the Belgians that the monarchy would remain neutral towards them. In the end, however, Clary had to notify the Belgian government of the state of war.

When was war declared?

The date of 22 August appears in British lists of the events of the war and in the press of the time. An Irish newspaper which on 28 August reported that the Belgians had received the declaration added that Austria had declared war as early as 22 August. No document of that date has been found, however. The Belgian “Grey Book”, a collection of diplomatic documents published by the government in 1915, contains Clary’s note dated at The Hague on 28 August and passed to the Belgian foreign minister through the Netherlands government. By then the Belgian government was sitting in Antwerp, and Brussels had been in German hands since 20 August. On the same 28 August the Belgian minister in Washington informed the State Department that Austria-Hungary had declared war on his country. Rauchensteiner also gives the date of 28 August.

In the note Vienna made two charges. Belgium, having refused the proposals repeatedly made to her by Germany, was giving military assistance to France and Britain, which had declared war on Austria-Hungary. Moreover, the monarchy’s subjects in Belgium had allegedly been treated, under the eyes of the authorities, in a manner contrary to “the most primitive demands of humanity”. Austria-Hungary was therefore breaking off relations and from that moment considered itself in a state of war with Belgium. The Belgians rejected both charges.

Austrian mortars on the Meuse

The declaration was above all a formality. The Austro-Hungarian army was fighting in Serbia and Galicia and sent none of its divisions to the Western Front. Austro-Hungarian gunners were, however, fighting in Belgium before their country formally broke with her. The monarchy’s high command lent the Germans heavy 305 mm Škoda mortars together with their crews. According to the British official history, four batteries of these mortars and one battery of German 420 mm howitzers were deployed at Namur. On 21 August they opened fire on the fortress’s forts. Before evening two of the main forts had been seriously damaged, and within another twenty-four hours practically destroyed. On 22 August two Belgian counter-attacks failed. Later the same mortars shelled the forts of Antwerp.

Significance

The declaration of war on Belgium was a further step in the widening of the conflict that had begun in July with Austria-Hungary’s war on Serbia. The monarchy, which more than seventy years earlier had itself guaranteed Belgian neutrality, took the side of the state that had violated it. The camps of the Central Powers and the Entente were by now almost fully formed. Belgium found itself at war with two great powers, although in reality it was fighting only one. Fighting was also already under way on the borders of its possessions in Africa: as the vice-governor of Katanga reported, on 22 August Germans from East Africa, continuing earlier skirmishes, attacked the port of Lukuga on Lake Tanganyika in the Belgian Congo, losing two African soldiers killed and two wounded. The conflict that had begun in the Balkans was drawing in ever more countries and continents.