Belgian government moves to Ostend

On 7 October 1914 the Belgian government left besieged Antwerp and moved to Ostend on the North Sea coast. On the same day King Albert I left the city, and the field army was crossing the Scheldt to the west. Antwerp, since August the refuge of the army, the King and the state authorities, was left to its own resources. Its evacuation began.

The end of hopes of a defence

The government had been in Antwerp since 17 August, when it left Brussels ahead of the advancing Germans. At the end of September German troops began the siege of the fortress and within a few days destroyed some of the forts of the outer ring with the fire of heavy mortars. As early as 2 October the supreme defence council, meeting under the King’s chairmanship, decided that the government and the diplomatic corps would leave the following day. The departure was halted on the arrival of Winston Churchill, who promised the Belgians British help and brought marines into the city.

The reinforcements did not, however, change the fate of the defence. On the night of 5–6 October the Germans forced the river Nete and approached the inner ring of forts, from where their guns could already reach the city itself. The British divisions that were just landing on the coast could not arrive in time to relieve it. On the evening of 6 October the Belgian authorities decided that the field army would leave the fortress before the Germans cut its road to the west. The defence of the city was to remain in the hands of the fortress garrison and the British Naval Division.

The departure of the government and the King

Early in the morning of 7 October the members of Prime Minister Charles de Broqueville’s government, the representatives of foreign states and the officials of the central administration sailed from Antwerp to Ostend. Some English-language accounts state that the government left as early as 3 October, in line with the original decision. Belgian sources indicate, however, that the departure was postponed after Churchill’s arrival and did not take place until 7 October.

King Albert I left the city in the afternoon of the same day. He drove across a pontoon bridge over the Scheldt and joined the retreating army. Its divisions had been crossing to the left bank of the river since the night of 6–7 October and were marching towards Ghent. Further to the south-west, at Schoonaarde, the Germans crossed the Scheldt that day, but were unable to cut off the Belgians’ line of retreat.

The flight of the inhabitants

The departure of the authorities and the march of the troops caused panic in the city. Since the end of September the wounded and supplies had been taken out of Antwerp. Now civilians began to flee. Tens of thousands, and over the following days hundreds of thousands, of people set off by train, by ship, by cart and on foot to the west and to the north, to the neighbouring neutral Netherlands. Late in the evening of 7 October, before midnight, the Germans began to shell the city itself. Over the following days thousands of shells fell on Antwerp, and fires consumed many buildings.

From Ostend to Le Havre

The government’s stay in Ostend lasted only a few days. After the fall of Antwerp the Belgian army withdrew to the river Yser, and Ostend found itself just behind the front line. On 13 October the ministers and officials sailed aboard the ferry Pieter de Coninck to Le Havre in France. The Belgian government settled in nearby Sainte-Adresse, where it remained until the end of the war. King Albert I did not leave the country. He stayed with the army in the last strip of free Belgium on the Yser.