Siege of Dunkirk (1793)

Part of the French Revolutionary Wars

Date	24 August to 8 September 1793
Location	Dunkirk, Nord, France
Result	French victory

Belligerents

France

Great Britain

Austria

Hanover

Hesse-Kassel

Commanders and leaders

Joseph Souham

Duke of York

Strength

10,000

35,100

Casualties and losses

1,000, 14 guns, 2 mortars

2,000, 32 heavy guns

See also the Battle of Hondschoote

The Siege of Dunkirk took place in 1793 when British, Hanoverian, Austrian, and Hesse-Kassel troops under the command of Prince Frederick, Duke of York besieged the fortified French border port of Dunkirk as part as the Flanders campaign of the French Revolutionary Wars. Following a Coalition defeat at the Battle of Hondshoote they were forced to raise the siege and withdraw northeast.

The plan to besiege Dunkirk was taken not by military commanders, but by the British government, chiefly by William Pitt's closest advisor, War Minister Henry Dundas. Right from the beginning of the campaign Dundas had considered the possession of Dunkirk as desirable, both as a bargaining counter in peace negotiations and as a potential British base in Europe. As a military objective towards winning the war however its value was far less significant, as it arguably prevented Prince Frederick, Duke of York from supporting the main Allied thrust further inland.

Nevertheless, York obediently followed instructions and through the latter days of August 1793 moved rapidly north-west, the French remaining mystified as to his objective. On 22 August he marched from Veurne (Furnes) to invest Dunkirk at the head of 20,000 British, Austrians and Hessians, driving the French advance posts in confusion from the left bank of the Yser River to an entrenched camp at Ghyvelde and capturing 11 guns in the process. The Advance Guard consisting of the Austrian Sztáray Infantry Regiment Nr. 33 and O'Donnell's Freikorps lost 50 men in killed and wounded. The commander of the Army of the North, Jean Nicolas Houchard was disgusted when he heard of the flight, writing to the Minister "The soldiers are good, but the cowardice and crass ignorance of the officers make them learn cowardice, and to fly before the enemy is nothing to them". To protect York's left flank Heinrich Wilhelm von Freytag commanded a corps of 14,500 Hessian and Hanoverian troops which he spread across surrounding villages in a broad military cordon along the Yser to the south of Dunkirk.

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Wikipedia