Siege of Antwerp begins

On 27 September 1914 the German troops of General Hans von Beseler began the siege of Antwerp, Belgium’s last fortress and the refuge of its army. After taking Liège, Namur and Maubeuge, the Germans intended to smash the fortifications of Belgium’s largest port in the same way, with the fire of their heaviest artillery. The siege lasted until 10 October and ended in the fall of the city, but the Belgian army managed to slip out of it.

The National Redoubt

From the second half of the 19th century the Belgians regarded Antwerp as their National Redoubt. The plan for the defence of the country assumed that in the event of invasion the army, the government and the king would take refuge in this fortress and hold out until help arrived from the powers that guaranteed Belgian neutrality. The city was surrounded by two rings of forts. The older one, built in the 1860s to the design of General Henri Alexis Brialmont, ran a few kilometres from the centre. The outer ring, built at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, consisted of more than a dozen newer forts and smaller redoubts, 10–15 kilometres from the city. Part of the approaches could be flooded.

Even the newer forts, however, were not prepared for 305 mm and 420 mm shells, as the fortresses of Liège and Namur had painfully shown in August. The modernisation of Antwerp had in any case not been completed before the war.

An army in the fortress

After the battle on the Gete the Belgian army withdrew to Antwerp and from 20 August based itself on its forts. It was commanded in person by King Albert I, and the fortress by its military governor, General Victor Deguise. Figures for the strength of the defenders vary from source to source. The British website greatwar.co.uk gives about 65,000 soldiers of the field army and 80,000 of the fortress garrison, while other studies put the field army higher, at over 80,000. Many of the soldiers, however, were poorly trained reservists and older classes.

The Belgians did not sit passively behind their forts. From the end of August the field army sortied from the fortress several times and struck at the German units watching Antwerp, among others in the Battle of Mechelen. These sorties unsettled the Germans and tied down their troops in Belgium. In September, when the German armies withdrew from the Marne, the threat from Antwerp to their communications became intolerable for the high command. The new chief of the General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, decided to take the fortress.

Beseler’s forces

The task went to General von Beseler, a military engineer and expert in fortifications, who since August had commanded III Reserve Corps outside Antwerp. His forces, made up of reserve divisions, a naval division, replacement units and Landwehr brigades, numbered about 66,000 men according to some studies, although estimates vary. In infantry, therefore, the Germans had no clear superiority over the defenders. Their trump card was artillery.

After the capitulation of Maubeuge on 7 September the Germans were able to move a heavy siege train to Antwerp. It included Krupp’s 420 mm mortars, known as Big Bertha, and Austro-Hungarian 305 mm Škoda mortars, as well as dozens of smaller heavy guns. These were the same guns that had destroyed the forts of Liège and Namur in August.

The blow against the southern sector

Beseler did not intend to surround the whole fortress. He decided to strike at its south-eastern sector, between Mechelen and Lier, break through the ring of forts there, force the river Nete and come within range from which his guns could reach the city itself. On 27 September German units moved forward, pushing back the Belgian outposts in front of the line of forts, while the gunners set up the heavy guns in their positions.

On 28 September the bombardment began. The first targets were the forts of Walem and Sint-Katelijne-Waver and the neighbouring redoubts. The heavy shells pierced vaults and destroyed armoured cupolas and ammunition magazines. Within a few days one fort after another of the outer ring was reduced to ruins, and their garrisons had to abandon them.

Significance

The start of the siege of Antwerp was one of the turning points of the autumn of 1914. For the Belgians it was a matter of the survival of the army and the state. For the Germans, taking the fortress meant removing a threat from their rear and opening the way to the Channel coast. For the British, Antwerp was the key to a coast from which an enemy fleet could threaten England. That is why at the beginning of October Winston Churchill arrived in the city, followed by the British Royal Naval Division.

The fortress, however, could not withstand the fire of the German guns. On 10 October Antwerp capitulated. The Belgian army nevertheless managed to withdraw westwards, behind the river Yser, where later that same month it stopped the Germans and for four years defended the last scrap of free Belgium.