Siege of Brussels 1746
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Year | 1746 | Wikidata P585 (point in time) |
|---|---|---|
| Era | Early modern (1500–1799) | derived from year |
| Location | Belgium | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Europe | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | War of the Austrian Succession | Wikidata P361 |
| Participants | Habsburg monarchy, Kingdom of France, Maurice de Saxe, Wenzel Anton, Prince of Kaunitz-Rietberg | Wikidata P710 |
| Coordinates | 50.8500, 4.3500 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The siege of Brussels took place between January and February 1746 during the War of the Austrian Succession. A French army under the overall command of Maurice de Saxe, in a bold and innovative winter campaign besieged and captured the city of Brussels, which was then the capital of the Austrian Netherlands, from its Austrian garrison.
The French were boosted by the fact that a large part of the Allied army was forced to return to Britain where a Jacobite Rising of 1745 had broken out and Bonnie Prince Charlie had won a stunning victory at the Battle of Prestonpans. This left very few troops to actively oppose the French forces. After the French made two breaches in the walls of Brussels, the Austrian defenders were compelled to surrender on 22 February in a siege that lasted just three weeks.
The governor of the Austrian Netherlands, Count Kaunitz, was forced to withdraw his administration north to Antwerp. The siege severely damaged his view of Austria's allies, principally Britain and the Dutch Republic, who he considered had done virtually nothing to protect Brussels from the French. A decade later Kaunitz would be one of the architects of the Franco-Austrian Alliance in which Austria abandoned its former alliance with Britain and joined with its traditional enemy France.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Siege of Brussels (revision 1370739816), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
Nearby battles
- Assault on Brussels (1708) 1708 · 0 km
- Battle of Anderlecht 1792 · 4 km
- Battle of Waterloo 1815 · 20 km
- Battle of Buggenhout 1914 · 20 km
- Spanish Fury at Mechelen 1572 · 20 km
- Battle of Wavre 1815 · 23 km
Other battles of the War of the Austrian Succession
- Battle of Melle 1745
- Battle of Soor 1745
- Fall of Ghent 1745
- Siege of Louisbourg (1745) 1745
- Siege of Tournai (1745) 1745
- Action of 6 July 1746 1746
- Battle of Piacenza 1746
- Battle of Rocoux 1746
- Raid on Lorient 1746
- Siege of Antibes 1746
All 32 battles of the War of the Austrian Succession →
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