From, Beautiful Buildings in France & Belgium, Including many which have been destroyed during the war. Reproductions in Colour and Monochrome from rare old Prints and Drawings, by and after Prout, Boys, Coney, W. Callow, David Roberts, C. Wild and others, with descriptive notes by C. Harrison Townsend, F.R.I.B.A.; New York: The Hubbell Publishing Co., 1916; pp. 140-143.
NAMUR : THE OLD CITADEL
(W. Clarkson Stanfield, R.A.)
HE ideal position, from the point of view of the strategist, occupied by Namur has meant that the town, thus unfortunately gifted, has been fated to see many of the horrors of warfare and siege, the bloodiest and most cruel of its pages being almost in writing at the present time. Cæsar’s “Unum oppidum egregie naturâ munitum” — his “one town wonderfully fortified by nature” — is situated at the junction of the Sambre and the Meuse, the rocky promontory between these views being crowned by the Citadel.
Namur has, in the past, sustained numerous sieges since Don John of Austria 142 made it his headquarters, and died here in 1578. It was captured by Louis XIV a hundred years later, and even Vauban’s would-be impregnable fortifications did not prevent its falling again into the hands of William III of Orange. A portion of the town escaped the rigours of the latter siege, as the surrender took place earlier than was expected. It was here and then that “my uncle Toby” received his memorable wound.
The Citadel, shown by Stanfield as occupying the summit of the cliff-like hill, ceased to exist as a military work when, in 1888, it was abandoned under the new scheme of Belgian defence. Great fortress-town as Namur was in the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries, it was even more strongly fortified in the XXth, but of the range of nine outlying forts of unprecedented strength then constructed from three to five miles round the town, none, alas! now remain.
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