Capitulation of Diksmuide

The Capitulation of Diksmuide or Dixmuide took place in 1695 during the Allied campaign to recapture the strategic city of Namur during the Nine Years' War.

Then part of the Spanish Netherlands, Diksmuide is now in the modern Belgian province of West Flanders. Its surrender to the French on 28 July, after only two days, resulted in the court martial of the garrison commander Major General Ellenberg and other senior officers, and Ellenberg's subsequent execution.

Background
By 1694, the war in Flanders was at a stalemate. France had failed to force the Dutch Republic out of the war, despite victories at Steinkirk and Landen, and the capture of fortresses like Namur, Mons, Huy and Charleroi. The enormous costs of these offensives exhausted the French economy, while crop failures in 1693 and 1694 caused widespread famine in France and Northern Italy; after 1693, Louis XIV assumed a largely defensive posture in Flanders.

Helped by William's role as head of state for the Netherlands, England and Scotland, the Alliance had held together through four years of war, with losses that were damaging but not critical. In 1694, they recaptured towns like Huy and Diksmuide, and for the first time had a numerical advantage in Flanders.

The 1690s marked the lowest point of the so-called Little Ice Age, a period of cold and wet weather affecting Europe in the second half of the 17th century. Famine in France and Italy was mirrored elsewhere, including Spain and Scotland, where the harvest failed in 1695, 1696, 1698 and 1699 and an estimated 5-15% of the population starved to death. The Allies had also reached the limit of their resources and retaking Namur became the key objective for 1695. This theatre is commonly referred to as Flanders but most campaigns took place in the Spanish Netherlands, a compact area 160 kilometres wide, the highest point only 100 metres above sea level, and dominated by canals and rivers. In the 17th century, goods and supplies were largely transported by water and the war was fought for control of rivers such as the Lys, Sambre and Meuse.

The Dutch viewed Namur as a vital link in the chain of fortresses needed to defend against French invasion and holding it would be extremely advantageous in peace negotiations. Due to the limited number of crossing points, even places like Deinze, little more than a large village but the site of a bridge across the Lys, were of greater significance than size indicates.

In April 1695, Louis ordered Boufflers to build entrenchments between the Scheldt and Lys, from Coutrai or Kortrijk to Avelgem. William marched on these in June, with the bulk of the Allied forces, but secretly detached Frederick of Prussia to Namur. Once Frederick was in place on 2 July, William joined him; the Allies were now split into a besieging force of 58,000 at Namur and a field army of 102,000 under Prince Vaudémont to cover Villeroi.

Siege
Vaudémont's task was to keep his army between Villeroy and Namur; Villeroy tried to tempt him out of position by attacking Allied-held towns like Knokke and Beselare, now Zonnebeke but he refused to respond. It was accepted that even places like Namur would fall given time and one reason for putting garrisons in places like Diksmuide was to absorb the attackers' attention for as long as possible.

Diksmuide sits on the Yser River, which begins in France, then runs through the town before entering the North Sea at Nieuwpoort. French defences followed the Yser via Ypres and Comines to Espierres and hardly changed between 1689-1694; its enduring strategic significance led to this line being fought over in both 1914 and 1940, while Diksmuide itself was attacked by the Germans in October 1914.

The garrison commander at Diksmuide was Major-General Ellenberg, an experienced Dane who served William in Ireland and elsewhere. The town was taken by the Allies in 1694, and although the defences were in a poor state, it was held by a strong garrison of eight battalions of infantry plus several squadrons from Lloyd's Dragoons.

Vaudémont's covering army had been reduced by the need to bolster the assault forces at Namur and by stripping garrisons from Ypres and Menin, Villeroi achieved local superiority of 90,000 men to 37,000. However, the French attack on 14 July failed to break the Allied line and Vaudémont was able to conduct an orderly retreat, using the bridge across the Lys at Deinze.

Shortly after this, a force under the Comte de Montal appeared before Diksmuide; Ellenberg opened the sluice gates, while the Allied commander at Nieuwpoort broke the dykes, flooding the area around the town. This meant Diksmuide could only be assaulted from the east and while this was the weakest part of the defences, the position was considered 'serious but not desperate.' Diksmuide was 'invested' or cut off on 25 July and Montal began firing on the town defences on the 26th.

Surrender
After only two days, Ellenberg held a council with his senior officers and proposed they surrender the town, arguing resistance was pointless. Eight others, including Sir Charles Graham, Colonel of a regiment in the Dutch Scots Brigade, signed the articles of surrender, the only exception being Major Robert Duncanson of Lorne's Regiment. On 29 July, Colonel O'Farrell, commander of the garrison at Deinze, also capitulated to a French force under Feuquières without a shot being fired.

By now, siege warfare was an exact art, the rules of which were so well understood that wagering on the outcome and duration of a siege became a popular craze; the then enormous sum of £200,000 was alleged to have been bet on the outcome of the Second Siege of Limerick in 1691. Experienced officers could estimate how long a siege should take and contemporaries felt Diksmuide should have been held for at least eight days. Professional honour demanded a defence but so long as they followed the convention of surrendering when 'a practicable breach' had been made, garrisons were given generous terms. Since sieges could be conducted with minimal risk to the defenders, Diksmuide's rapid capitulation was extremely unusual, especially as Ellenberg himself 'beat a parley' or opened negotiations with the besiegers.

The garrison's surrender without mounting an adequate defence meant they became prisoners, rather than being granted the 'honours of war,' which would have allowed them to keep their weapons and receive free passage to Allied lines. One suggestion is that Ellenberg was a capable and reliable subordinate who could not exercise command on his own. This seems unlikely for an experienced senior officer, since taking or holding fortifications was the dominant form of warfare in this period.

Graham and O'Farrell had served in the Scots Brigade since the 1670s and accompanied William to England in 1688; Deinze was held by O'Farrell's 'Fusiliers,' a designation reserved for elite units and fought at Walcourt, Steinkirk and Landen. While O'Farrell had better reasons for surrendering, since Deinze was simply a fortified village, William was furious that neither of the garrisons had 'done their duty.' In his Diary entry for 8 December, 1695, Constantijn Huygens, William's Secretary for Dutch affairs, wrote that Ellenberg had allegedly been bribed by the French.

Desertion and ill-discipline among enlisted men were ongoing issues in this period, due to poor conditions and irregular payment of wages; a lapse of commitment among senior officers was a much more serious problem. Evidence presented at the court martial indicates both Ellenberg and O'Farrell simply took the wrong decisions but the defection of a group of experienced senior officers might indicate a wider issue of general war weariness or morale.

Aftermath
Prisoners were normally exchanged as soon as possible but the French refused William's demand in August for the return of the 6,000 - 7,000 troops captured at Diksmuide and Deinze, due to a dispute over the terms of their surrender. All sides were short of manpower by this stage of the war; nearly 3,000 of the prisoners were persuaded to enlist in French regiments and sent to fight in Italy or Catalonia. Changing armies to receive a signing-on bonus was common, particularly as these were paid immediately while wages were often months in arrears and as the recruiters themselves were also paid also a bounty for each enlistee, the financial benefits to the French officers involved were considerable. In retaliation, despite the garrison of Namur being allowed to surrender on terms, its commander Boufflers was taken prisoner and released only after the remaining Allied prisoners were returned in September.

After their release, Duncanson was promoted for refusing to sign the surrender but the others were tried by a court martial held between 10th and 25th October and headed by Sir Henry Belasyse. Ellenberg was sentenced to death by beheading and executed in Ghent on 30 November; O'Farrell, Graham and the others were either dismissed or sanctioned. However, most were quickly reinstated, including O'Farrell, who ended his career as a Major-General; experienced officers were in short supply.

Satire
The July operations around Knokke and Dixsmuide are the topic of an anonymous poem dated 4 July 1695 written in the mock-heroic style of Cervantes and titled 'Knight Errantry; or Don Quixote encountering the Windmill, being a relation of the siege of Knokke.'