Battle of Ekeren

After taking Bonn on 15 May, Marlborough now wanted to conquer Ostend, Antwerp, or force the French to an open battle. He ordered the Dutch general, Coehoorn, to march to Ostend and lay siege to it. Dutch general Van Sparre would march south west of Antwerp, Dutch general Obdam would march south from Bergen op Zoom, and Marlborough himself would march on Lier.

Obdam had to send several of his battalions to join Coehoorn. Obdam's depleted force marched on 28 June from Bergen op Zoom to Antwerp. It arrived the next day at Ekeren, seven kilometres north of Antwerp, just south of Dutch held fort Lillo (top left of map).

After hearing about this, Villeroi sent a detachment force-marching from Diest to support the troops already around Antwerp to pounce on Obdam's force, before it could dig in or be reinforced.

Early in the morning of 30 June French dragoons marched from Merksem and Ekeren in the direction of Kapellen to cut off the escape route near Hoevenen for the Dutch to return to Breda and Bergen-op-Zoom. The Marquis of Bedmar and his Spanish troops were positioned near Wilmarsdonk. This ensured that the Dutch forces were surrounded on all sides by a force outnumbering them by at least two to one.[1][6][7][8]

Soon Dutch reconnaissance discovered the French dragoons and Obdam immediately sent his cavalry to Hoevenen, but it was too late, the village was packed with French troops. An attempt to conquer neighboring Muisbroek also failed. Then the French attacked, and Obdam tried to take Oorderen, an attack which was briefly successful before the French retook the village.

The fighting went on for the entire day. The engagement was long and bloody. Dutch drill and independently and quick thinking lower commanders made up for their lack in numbers. But by eight o'clock there was no more sign of Obdam. He and his companions had removed the Allied green from their hats and their Orange sashes so that the French mistook them for their own countrymen. Thinking his army was destroyed, he sent a letter reporting defeat to The Hague. Lord of Slangenburg, supported by Count of Tilly, François Nicolas Fagel and Jacob Hop took over command.[9]

The Battle of Ekeren by Constantijn Francken

Around this time, some Dutch troops ran out of ammunition and Fagel ordered the soldiers to use the tin buttons of their uniform coats as bullets. It now became very urgent to break the encirclement. Tilly ordered an attack on some 1,500 Franco-Spanish horseman crammed on a dyke. Hompesch gathered a number of cavalry squadrons and then charged the Franco-Spanish cavalry. The Franco-Spanish cavalry broke and Hompesch pursued them for a distance of more than a kilometre.[10][11] An attack by four fresh Spanish battalions approaching over the Scheldt embankment was subsequently repulsed.[12] These successes created the opportunity to free up troops for a final assault on Oorderen, to force a breakthrough to safety. If this failed, the army was still lost.[13]

Mérode-Westerloo commanded the French troops in Oorderen, but the quality of his troops left much to be desired. Some had even dived into the cellars and came out drunk. Also, a lack of pioneers had prevented the village from being substantially fortified. Around 9 o'clock, the Dutch attack began.[13] Johan Theodoor of Friesheim sent his men wading through the water, appearing where the French had not expected them to. Here too the fighting was long and hard, but after 10 o'clock Mérode-Westerloo was forced to retreat.[14] The French still held out at a sluice behind the village, where they had entrenched themselves; but this post was also overwhelmed.[15] The Dutch now occupied the village and the encirclement was broken. It enabled the Dutch to retire under cover of the night to Fort Lillo.[14]

Parade of Dutch soldiers with captured French and Bavarian banners after the battle of Ekeren, by Jan Hoynck van Papendrecht

The battle was undecided, but both sides claimed victory. The Dutch because they had forced the French from the battlefield, allowing the outnumbered Dutch to retire to safety and the French because they occupied the battlefield the next day. It may be considered an operational victory for the Two Crowns, because it stopped the Dutch move along the Scheldt. And it may be considered a tactical victory for the Dutch, because they managed to save most of their troops instead of losing them all.

Boufflers was blamed for letting a perfect chance slip through his fingers. Obdam had panicked in the afternoon and had managed to get through the enemy line with a handful of riders. His behaviour was not forgiven by the Dutch military, and his military career was destroyed. Slangenburg, for his part, was acclaimed as a Dutch hero. He was also furious at Marlborough, who had been outmanoeuvered by the French and had not come to the aid of the Dutch.

The Dutch officers and men had shown their best side while the French and Spanish troops, despite their superiority, had been unable to hold out. The Dutch infantry had once again proved to be the best in Europe.[16] Boufflers wrote that the Dutch had very-exercised troops whose strength is to fire well, which they certainly do to perfection and with a marvelous order.[7] But it was the performance of the Dutch cavalry that most impressed contemporaries. They had shown that they were no longer inferior to the French and Spanish cavalry.[16]

A large part of the battlefield, including the villages of Oorderen, Wilmarsdonk and Lillo, has disappeared under the Port of Antwerp expansion in the 1960s.

• Van Nimwegen, Olaf (2020). De Veertigjarige Oorlog 1672-1712. Prometheus. ISBN 978-90-446-3871-4.
• Bodart, Gaston (1908). Militär-historisches Kriegs-Lexikon (1618–1905). Retrieved 3 February 2023.
• Wijn, J.W. (1956). Het Staatsche Leger: Deel VIII Het tijdperk van de Spaanse Successieoorlog (The Dutch States Army: Part VIII The era of the War of the Spanish Succession) (in Dutch). Martinus Nijhoff.
• Knoop, Willem Jan (1861). "Coehoorn". De Gids. 25.
• Van Lennep, Jacob (1880). De geschiedenis van Nederland, aan het Nederlandsche Volk verteld [The history of the Netherlands, told to the Dutch nation] (in Dutch). Leiden; z.j.

• Detailed but inaccurate Flemish description of the battle