Qualla: Siege of Gravelines (1644)

Siege of Gravelines (1644): Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Florent van Langren, Public domain. After two months of trenches dug through marsh and four repulsed assaults and a stubborn Spanish defence that held up the entire French campaigning season, the gates of Gravelines opened on 28 July 1644. The defenders marched out under the rules of war, weapons shouldered, free to walk to Dunkirk. And on the French side, the two senior officers - La Meilleraye, Master of Artillery, and Jean de Gassion, Conde's deputy at Rocroi - very nearly drew swords on each other over who would have the honour of riding through the breach first. La Meilleraye stormed off to Paris in disgust. De Gassion withdrew to Watten. The siege had been won; the partnership had failed.

Image: Michael Florent van Langren | Public domain

Siege of Gravelines (1644): An Orleans Whim

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Gaba (Sting - fr:Sting), CC BY-SA 3.0. The Habsburg-Valois rivalry had matured by 1644 into something more grinding and bureaucratic than the dynastic dramas of a century before. France had been at war with Spain since 1635, picking off Habsburg fortresses along its borders. Conde had shattered the Spanish Army of Fla...

Image: Eric Gaba (Sting - fr:Sting) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Siege of Gravelines (1644): A Marsh and an Army of Twenty Thousand

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Snayers, Public domain. The ground around Gravelines was the problem. Marsh, dyke, polder, and tidal creek - the kind of country where a besieging army drowned its own siegeworks if it was careless. Around 20,000 French troops arrived on 28 May 1644. Orleans held nominal command, but actual operations f...

Image: Peter Snayers | Public domain

Siege of Gravelines (1644): Fort Saint-Philippe Falls

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Snayers, Public domain. Every fortress had outer works. Gravelines had Fort Saint-Philippe, an isolated bastion that had to be taken before the town itself could be invested. It fell on 13 June after a hard local fight, and only then could the main siege begin. The trenches crept forward. A combined bat...

Image: Peter Snayers | Public domain

Siege of Gravelines (1644): Four Repulses

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Snayers, Public domain. Four separate French assaults bounced off the Gravelines fortifications. The garrison was small but it was professional, and the seventeenth-century rules of war gave them a clear incentive to keep fighting: if they surrendered before the besiegers established themselves on the m...

Image: Peter Snayers | Public domain

Siege of Gravelines (1644): Won, Then Lost, Then Won Again

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Snayers, Public domain. The town was barely French. Gravelines was retaken by the Spanish in 1652 during the Fronde rebellions, when France's energies were turned inward. It changed hands again in 1658, after Turenne's victory at the Battle of the Dunes opened the whole Flemish coast to the French. Only...

Image: Peter Snayers | Public domain