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Siege of Antwerp, 1914: the fall of Belgium's National Redoubt

World War I · 28 September to 10 October 1914 · Belgium and Britain vs Germany · ~11 min read · Updated October 2026

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Painting of a crowd of Belgian refugees on a tree-lined road outside a city, with a white horse and a loaded cart, women carrying children and bundles, dogs at their feet, and a long column of people and wagons stretching across the plain toward a distant church spire.

Louis van Engelen, The Flight of the Citizens of Antwerp, 8 October 1914 (1915), via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

At a glance

Belgium and BritainKing Albert I; General Victor Deguise; Royal Naval Division; Winston Churchill
vs
GermanyGeneral Hans von Beseler
Date
28 September to 10 October 1914 (bombardment of the forts from 28 September)
Location
Antwerp and its ring of forts, the National Redoubt, Belgium
War
World War I, Western Front
Strength
Belgium: about 145,000 in the National Redoubt (Royal Marines History), a field army of 65,000 and a fortress garrison of some 80,000 (British official history); Britain: the Royal Naval Division, about 8,600 men (VRT); Germany: General von Beseler with the equivalent of six divisions and the super-heavy siege artillery (British official history)
Outcome
German victory; Antwerp surrenders on 10 October, but the Belgian field army escapes west to the Yser
Civilians
A mass flight by boat, pontoon bridge and road toward Ghent, Bruges and the neutral Netherlands; estimates vary widely, up to half a million people in Erik Sass's account
Quick answer

What happened at the Siege of Antwerp in 1914?

In August 1914 the Belgian army fell back into Antwerp, the fortified port it called the National Redoubt. At the end of September the Germans brought up the super-heavy siege guns that had smashed Liège and Namur and began destroying the outer forts one by one. A British force, the Royal Naval Division, arrived to help, but on 6 October King Albert ordered his army to leave. The field army escaped west to the Yser, and the city surrendered on 10 October after a bombardment that drove a vast number of its people from their homes.1

Antwerp was the last refuge of a small country that had refused to let an invader pass. Its forts could not stand up to the new German artillery, and the city fell in less than two weeks of siege. But the Belgian army slipped away to fight on, and the delay it bought helped decide where the Western Front would end: on the Yser, with a strip of Belgium still free.2

Background: the National Redoubt

When the Germans invaded neutral Belgium in August 1914, King Albert did not try to defend Brussels, which had no fortifications. He withdrew his outnumbered field army to Antwerp, Belgium's great commercial port, which was protected by rings of forts and could in principle be supplied from the sea. The Royal Marines History society counts over 40 forts and several lines of defenses around the port, and some 145,000 Belgian troops inside them.3

The forts were old in design. The British official history describes an outer ring of forts seven to nine miles from the city, an inner line of older forts and a continuous rampart around the town, and judges the whole obsolete in design and construction; Rickard notes that the inner redoubts, built from 1859, could not stand up to modern artillery. The Belgian gunners could not even find the German batteries, VRT notes, while the Germans had measured the positions of the forts before the war, and the official history adds that only one German battery was within range of the Belgian guns.4

Even shut in, the Belgians were a threat. The Germans had to leave the III Reserve Corps and a Naval Division to watch them, and Albert launched sorties to pull still more troops away from the advance into France: on 25 and 26 August toward Malines and on 9 September as far as Vilvoorde, with a last attempt late in the month. The Belgian General Staff's own report of 1915 explains the aim: to force the Germans to recall troops sent to France, or else to beat the weaker force left in front of Antwerp.5

Black and white map of the country around Antwerp in 1914, showing the river Scheldt winding north to Holland, the city ringed by stars marking forts and redoubts, and Malines, Lierre, Termonde and Brussels to the south
The fortress of Antwerp in 1914, from The Times History of the War. Stars mark the forts and redoubts of the outer ring, seven to nine miles from the city; the German attack came from the south, past Malines, against Forts Walem (Waelhem on the map) and Sint-Katelijne-Waver (Wavre-Sainte-Catherine) and the line of the Nethe near Lier. Antwerp area, 1914, map in The Times History of the War, vol. 2 (London: The Times, 1915). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Armies and commanders

King Albert commanded the Belgian army in person. In the city itself the fortress governor was Lieutenant General Victor Deguise. The British official history counts the field army at only 65,000 and the fortress garrison at some 80,000, together close to the 145,000 that Royal Marines History gives for the whole redoubt.6

The German commander, General Hans von Beseler, was an engineer. Besides the III Reserve Corps he had the Marine Division, Landwehr brigades and a siege train of super-heavy pieces, German 42-centimeter howitzers and Austrian 30.5-centimeter Skoda mortars, the guns that had broken Liège and Namur.7

The battle in phases

The forts fall, 28 September to 3 October. By late September the Battle of the Marne had turned the German advance back, and both sides were racing to outflank each other toward the sea. An Allied force based on Antwerp could strike the German armies in Flanders from behind, so the city had to fall. On 28 September the siege guns opened fire on Fort Walem, south of the city, and on Fort Sint-Katelijne-Waver, with more than ten hits a minute and now and then a 42-centimeter shell. On 29 September a shell struck the powder magazine at Sint-Katelijne-Waver, burying dozens of men; the fort was abandoned that evening and occupied by German infantry on 1 October. Walem fell on 2 October, and the forts of Lier and Koningshooikt had to be given up. The Belgians fell back behind the river Nethe and flooded the ground in front of it.8

Painting of a domed steel gun turret on a ruined concrete fort, pierced by a large shell hole with cracks spreading from it, under a pale evening sky over flat country
A steel howitzer turret at Fort Kessel, east of Lierre, pierced by a direct hit, painted on the spot after the siege by an Austrian artist for a portfolio showing the work of the Austro-Hungarian 30.5-centimeter mortars. Alexander Demetrius Goltz, 12-cm howitzer turret with a direct hit, Fort Kessel, from Belagerung von Antwerpen 1914 (Vienna, 1915). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Churchill and the Royal Naval Division, 3 to 5 October. On 2 October the Belgian government warned London that it might have to leave Antwerp. The British cabinet, for which keeping the Scheldt out of hostile hands had long been a fixed aim, sent Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, who arrived on 3 October and persuaded the Belgians to hold on while help came. A brigade of more than 2,000 Royal Marines reached the city on 4 October and went straight to the line at Lier, followed by the division's two naval brigades. In what John Rickard calls one of the more bizarre episodes of the war, Churchill took virtual command for two crucial days.9

Bigger help was promised but came too late. London promised the new 7th Division and the 3rd Cavalry Division, under General Henry Rawlinson, and France a territorial division and a brigade of naval fusiliers. The 7th Division began landing at Zeebrugge only on 6 October, the day the Belgian army was ordered out, and VRT describes some 6,000 French fusiliers-marins fighting at Melle near Ghent instead. In the end the relief forces helped to cover the Belgian army's retreat rather than to save the city.10

Turning point: the Nethe is crossed

It was not enough. On 5 October German engineers bridged the Nethe south of Lier in a sector no longer defended, and two regiments crossed to form a bridgehead. The defenders fell back toward the old inner ring of forts. Meanwhile the corridor to the west, between the Scheldt and the Dutch frontier, through which the field army would have to escape, was growing narrower by the day.11

On 6 October King Albert ordered the field army to leave. The British official history describes the operation: Ostend was chosen as the new base, the wounded, recruits and supplies went first by night trains, and the divisions followed by the pontoon bridges across the Scheldt and the roads west. Rickard judges that Churchill's intervention, often criticized as foolhardy, probably prolonged the defense by a couple of days, while the main British and French armies moved closer to the coast.12 › Battle of the Scheldt, 1944

The city burns

From midnight on 7 to 8 October the Germans shelled the city itself, which, Erik Sass writes, made Antwerp the first great Western European city since the Franco-Prussian War to suffer a deliberate, prolonged bombardment by heavy artillery. Inhabitants who had ignored the warnings to leave crowded the docks to board ferries, barges and trawlers, or crossed the pontoon bridge and headed west for Ghent and Bruges, while others fled to the neutral Netherlands. The British official history describes the roads beyond the river jammed with refugees, vehicles three abreast and cattle, so thick that troops could hardly keep together.13

Dense crowd of refugees in hats and coats with bundles, baskets and furniture vans packed on the Antwerp quay beside the Scheldt, October 1914, in black and white
Refugees crowd the Antwerp waterfront in October 1914, trying to get onto boats or across the pontoon bridge over the Scheldt as the bombardment of the city began. Photographer unknown, Refugees leaving Antwerp, 1914, Spaarnestad photo collection, Nationaal Archief (detail). Public domain (CC0), via Wikimedia Commons

On the night of 8 October the oil tanks on the southern quays went up in flames, and black smoke hung over the river. Both the British official history and VRT say that Belgian engineers set them alight to keep them from the Germans; Sass notes that each side blamed the other.14

Surrender and escape

By 9 October almost all the Belgian and British troops had gone. Part of the 1st Naval Brigade, cut off in the confusion, crossed into the Netherlands and was interned for the rest of the war: about 1,500 men, The Long, Long Trail writes, and 37 officers and 1,442 men in the British official history's count. On 9 and 10 October German troops marched into the burning, largely deserted city.15

Antwerp formally surrendered on 10 October. General Deguise gave himself up at the small Fort Sint-Marie on the left bank, where the Germans found him with only a handful of men; most of the remaining fortress troops had fled to the Netherlands.16

Aftermath

That escape was what mattered. The Belgian field army got away along the coast to the southwest, covered on the way by British and French troops sent to Ghent, and took up a new line on the river Yser, where it formed the far left of the Allied front from the North Sea to Switzerland. Within days the armies were fighting at La Bassée, Messines and Armentières, the prelude to the First Battle of Ypres.17

Map of northern France and Belgium in 1914 with the front line from the Swiss border to the sea
Antwerp in the wider war: the German withdrawal to the Aisne after the Marne and the race to the sea in September and October 1914. At the top, the Belgian army leaves Antwerp on 6 October and the city falls on 9 October, as the front runs north to Ypres and the coast. Department of History, U.S. Military Academy, Northwest Europe, 1914. Public domain

Rickard notes the argument that Antwerp might have been held had the British relief moved faster, and answers it: with the main Allied line already forming more than fifty miles to the west, a held Antwerp would have been an isolated camp. The British official history draws a harder lesson, that fortresses had been left to second-line troops who could not stand the strain of heavy shelling and the departure of the field army.18

Legacy and memory

For the Belgians the fall of Antwerp ended the idea of the National Redoubt. The army that escaped dug in on the Yser, in Sass's words in the remaining sliver of free Belgian territory. For the British it was the first action of the Royal Naval Division and the start of a long argument about Churchill's judgment, which Rickard sums up as often criticized but probably useful.19 › First Battle of Ypres, 1914

Notes

A number in the text points to a note; each note names the works that paragraph draws on, listed in full under Sources.

  1. John Rickard, “Third Battle of Antwerp, 1-10 October 1914”; Erik Sass, “The Fall of Antwerp”; J. E. Edmonds, “Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1914, vol. 2”; VRT NWS, “8 tot 14 oktober 1914: Antwerpen capituleert, Belgisch leger trekt zich terug achter de IJzer”. ↩
  2. John Rickard, “Third Battle of Antwerp, 1-10 October 1914”; J. E. Edmonds, “Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1914, vol. 2”; Erik Sass, “The Fall of Antwerp”. ↩
  3. Erik Sass, “Siege of Antwerp”; Royal Marines History, “Defence of Antwerp 1914”; John Rickard, “Third Battle of Antwerp, 1-10 October 1914”. ↩
  4. J. E. Edmonds, “Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1914, vol. 2”; John Rickard, “Third Battle of Antwerp, 1-10 October 1914”; VRT NWS, “24 tot 30 september 1914: Duitsers zetten aanval in op Antwerpen”. ↩
  5. John Rickard, “Third Battle of Antwerp, 1-10 October 1914”; Belgian General Staff, “The War of 1914: Military Operations of Belgium”; Erik Sass, “Siege of Antwerp”. ↩
  6. J. E. Edmonds, “Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1914, vol. 2”; John Rickard, “Third Battle of Antwerp, 1-10 October 1914”; VRT NWS, “8 tot 14 oktober 1914: Antwerpen capituleert, Belgisch leger trekt zich terug achter de IJzer”; Royal Marines History, “Defence of Antwerp 1914”. ↩
  7. J. E. Edmonds, “Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1914, vol. 2”; John Rickard, “Third Battle of Antwerp, 1-10 October 1914”; Erik Sass, “Siege of Antwerp”; VRT NWS, “24 tot 30 september 1914: Duitsers zetten aanval in op Antwerpen”. ↩
  8. J. E. Edmonds, “Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1914, vol. 2”; VRT NWS, “24 tot 30 september 1914: Duitsers zetten aanval in op Antwerpen”; VRT NWS, “1 tot 7 oktober 1914: verdediging Antwerpen wankelt, koning Albert en veldleger verlaten de stad”; John Rickard, “Third Battle of Antwerp, 1-10 October 1914”. ↩
  9. J. E. Edmonds, “Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1914, vol. 2”; VRT NWS, “1 tot 7 oktober 1914: verdediging Antwerpen wankelt, koning Albert en veldleger verlaten de stad”; Royal Marines History, “Defence of Antwerp 1914”; Chris Baker, “The history of 63rd (Royal Naval) Division”; John Rickard, “Third Battle of Antwerp, 1-10 October 1914”. ↩
  10. J. E. Edmonds, “Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1914, vol. 2”; John Rickard, “Third Battle of Antwerp, 1-10 October 1914”; VRT NWS, “8 tot 14 oktober 1914: Antwerpen capituleert, Belgisch leger trekt zich terug achter de IJzer”. ↩
  11. VRT NWS, “1 tot 7 oktober 1914: verdediging Antwerpen wankelt, koning Albert en veldleger verlaten de stad”; John Rickard, “Third Battle of Antwerp, 1-10 October 1914”; J. E. Edmonds, “Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1914, vol. 2”; Erik Sass, “The Fall of Antwerp”. ↩
  12. J. E. Edmonds, “Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1914, vol. 2”; John Rickard, “Third Battle of Antwerp, 1-10 October 1914”; VRT NWS, “1 tot 7 oktober 1914: verdediging Antwerpen wankelt, koning Albert en veldleger verlaten de stad”. ↩
  13. Erik Sass, “The Fall of Antwerp”; VRT NWS, “8 tot 14 oktober 1914: Antwerpen capituleert, Belgisch leger trekt zich terug achter de IJzer”; J. E. Edmonds, “Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1914, vol. 2”. ↩
  14. J. E. Edmonds, “Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1914, vol. 2”; VRT NWS, “8 tot 14 oktober 1914: Antwerpen capituleert, Belgisch leger trekt zich terug achter de IJzer”; Erik Sass, “The Fall of Antwerp”. ↩
  15. J. E. Edmonds, “Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1914, vol. 2”; Chris Baker, “The history of 63rd (Royal Naval) Division”; VRT NWS, “8 tot 14 oktober 1914: Antwerpen capituleert, Belgisch leger trekt zich terug achter de IJzer”. ↩
  16. VRT NWS, “8 tot 14 oktober 1914: Antwerpen capituleert, Belgisch leger trekt zich terug achter de IJzer”; John Rickard, “Third Battle of Antwerp, 1-10 October 1914”; Erik Sass, “The Fall of Antwerp”. ↩
  17. John Rickard, “Third Battle of Antwerp, 1-10 October 1914”; VRT NWS, “8 tot 14 oktober 1914: Antwerpen capituleert, Belgisch leger trekt zich terug achter de IJzer”; J. E. Edmonds, “Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1914, vol. 2”; Erik Sass, “The Fall of Antwerp”. ↩
  18. John Rickard, “Third Battle of Antwerp, 1-10 October 1914”; J. E. Edmonds, “Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1914, vol. 2”. ↩
  19. Erik Sass, “The Fall of Antwerp”; John Rickard, “Third Battle of Antwerp, 1-10 October 1914”; Chris Baker, “The history of 63rd (Royal Naval) Division”. ↩

Sources

Frequently asked questions

When was the Siege of Antwerp?

The Belgian army fell back into Antwerp in August 1914. The German siege proper began with the bombardment of the outer forts on 28 September, and the city surrendered on 10 October 1914.

Why did Antwerp matter in 1914?

It sheltered the Belgian field army, threatened German supply lines through Belgium and could have served as an Allied base on the flank of the German armies during the race to the sea. Britain had long sought to keep Antwerp and the Scheldt out of hostile hands.

Why did the forts fall so quickly?

They were built for an earlier age. German 42-centimeter howitzers and Austrian 30.5-centimeter mortars, firing from beyond the range of the Belgian guns, wrecked them one after another, as they had at Liège and Namur.

What did Churchill do at Antwerp?

As First Lord of the Admiralty he went to Antwerp on 3 October 1914, persuaded the Belgians to hold on and sent the Royal Naval Division. He took virtual command for two days; his intervention was criticized as foolhardy but probably prolonged the defense by a couple of days.

What happened to the Royal Naval Division?

It fought in the line near Lier and then withdrew. In the confusion of the retreat part of the 1st Naval Brigade crossed into the neutral Netherlands, where about 1,500 men were interned for the rest of the war.

What happened to the people of Antwerp?

When the Germans began shelling the city on the night of 7 to 8 October, a great crowd of civilians fled by boat, over the pontoon bridge across the Scheldt and by road toward Ghent, Bruges and the Netherlands.

What did the fall of Antwerp change?

The city fell, but the Belgian field army escaped intact and took up the line of the Yser, the northern end of the Western Front.

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