Namur, sieges of (1692, 1695). The two sieges of Namur during the League of Augsburg war illustrate very well the clash between the fortification and siegecraft of the two great contemporaries Vauban and Coehoorn. The importance of Namur lay in the fact that it straddled the great waterways of the Sambre and the Meuse, thus controlling riverine access to the south and east of the Spanish Netherlands.
Namur was an immensely strong fortress overlooked by an extensive citadel that incorporated the natural waterways to complex man-made defences and obstacles. Outside the main defences lay large outworks such as the Terra Nova and Fort William. In 1692 some of the defences were under construction when the French army and siege train arrived on 25 May. Besiegers numbering 120, 000 led by Louis XIV and the Duke of Luxembourg confronted a mixed garrison of some 6, 000 Dutch, Spanish, German, and English troops. Coehoorn himself defended his own handiwork, Fort William.
Vauban constructed massive batteries and, under the watchful eye of the king, quickly established a lodgement on the enceinte around the town, which surrendered on 5 June. The remains of the garrison retreated to the citadel, while the French stormed the redoubt of La Cachotte that lay several hundred yards outside the main position. Then Vauban sapped forward toward Fort William in atrocious muddy conditions, and when the parallels were close enough to launch a storming, Coehoorn dug his own grave to show that he meant to fight and die there. An exploding bomb rendered him hors de combat and, deprived of their do or die commander, the garrison surrendered on 23 June. The two great engineers exchanged a few sharp words when Coehoorn was ushered into Vauban's presence. The remainder of the defenders in Terra Nova retreated to the old medieval castle, and were granted the honours of war on 30 June. Vauban had captured Namur with very light casualties by a patient, painstaking approach and liberal use of the shovel.
In 1695 the Allies attempted to retake Namur, which had been strengthened and improved, and was held by 13, 000 men commanded by the veteran Marshal Boufflers. On 2 July the Allied commander Athlone invested the town and by the 18th the lunettes protecting the south-eastern side had been stormed and taken. On 27 July English and Dutch grenadiers under the leadership of William of Orange himself gained a foothold on the defences proper, and by 2 August the French were induced to abandon the town and head for the Citadel which came under intense fire directed by Coehoorn from the town itself at the weakest part of the defence. However, things were progressing too slowly, and on 30 August English grenadiers and fusiliers launched a costly assault which barely managed to hang on to the outer edge of the Citadel by its fingernails. This act of derring-do persuaded Boufflers to capitulate rather than undergo another storming. Coehoorn had used the different strengths of the Allied army to their best advantage, undermined the defenders' morale with a fierce bombardment and a savage storm, and had taken the fortress faster than Vauban had confidently predicted. The latter was heard to sniff that the assault had been unnecessarily bloody. The siege formed the basis of Uncle Toby's rambling recollections in Lawrence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (see literature and drama, the military in).
— Toby McLeod
