Belgian government in Le Havre

On 13 October 1914 the Belgian government left Ostend and sailed for France. Ministers, officials and diplomats set out aboard the ferry Pieter de Coninck for Le Havre in Normandy. After a stay of a few days in Ostend, the Belgian authorities had to leave their own country. They were to remain on French soil until the end of the war.

Ostend under threat

The government of Prime Minister Charles de Broqueville had moved to Ostend on 7 October, as the field army was leaving Antwerp. A few days later the position of the seaside town became untenable. On 10 October Antwerp capitulated, on 12 October the Germans entered Ghent, and the Belgian Army was withdrawing to the Yser river. Ostend lay just in front of the line on which the Belgians intended to make a stand and could soon fall into German hands.

At the Belgians’ request, France agreed to take in their government. The choice fell on the area around Le Havre, a large port on the Channel that could be reached quickly by sea. The Belgian authorities sailed from Ostend on 13 October. According to local accounts, about 2,000 people arrived in Le Havre. Some sources say the ships put into port that same day, others speak of arrival on 14 October, after a whole day at sea.

Belgium in Sainte-Adresse

The government settled in Sainte-Adresse, a small resort on the outskirts of Le Havre. It had many hotels and villas in which ministers and officials could quickly be housed. Most of the ministries occupied an imposing, recently completed building put up by the Parisian businessman Georges Dufayel. The Prime Minister lived in one of the nearby villas, and the diplomatic corps in a hotel.

France granted extraterritorial status to the buildings occupied by the Belgian authorities. The commune of Sainte-Adresse remained French, but the Belgian offices operated there as if on their own territory, and the Belgian post office opened there used Belgian stamps. As a result the government could consider that it was not in exile but exercising power from a piece of its own territory. In time a whole Belgian community grew up around the administration, with a hospital, a school and workshops.

The King stays with the army

King Albert I did not go to Le Havre. As commander-in-chief he remained with the army in the last strip of free Belgium on the Yser. During the fighting in the second half of October his headquarters was in the town hall in Veurne. Together with Queen Elisabeth he lived in seaside De Panne and did not visit Sainte-Adresse throughout the war.

Broqueville, who was also in charge of the War Ministry, divided his time between Normandy and the front. He came to Sainte-Adresse mainly at weekends. The Belgian government remained in Sainte-Adresse for four years and returned home only after the liberation of Belgium at the end of 1918.