Battle of Kallo
The Battle of Kallo was a major field battle fought from 20 to 21 June 1638 in and around the forts of Kallo and Verrebroek, located on the left bank of the Scheldt river, near Antwerp, during the second phase of the Eighty Years' War.
Following the symbolic recovery of Breda during the 1637 campaign, the Dutch Republic agreed with the French Crown, with whom it had allied in 1635, to besiege a major city in the Spanish Netherlands during the 1638 campaign. The commander of the Dutch States Army, Frederick Henry of Orange, planned an approach over Antwerp from the two sides of the Scheldt. After marching the army, Frederick Henry transferred 50 barges to Count William of Nassau-Siegen and he was left entrusted to land in the Spanish-controlled Waasland region, west of Antwerp, to seize the forts of Kallo and Verrebroek, along with several other key fortifications, to invest Antwerp from the west. In the meantime, Frederick Henry would advance on the opposite bank to complete the blockade of the city while the armies of France invaded the Spanish Netherlands from the south to oblige the Spanish Army of Flanders to divide its forces.
The Dutch operation proceeded well at first since the force under Nassau-Siegen easily captured Kallo and Verrebroek. However, it was unable to gain further progress, so the count entrenched his troops and asked for reinforcements. The governor of the Spanish Netherlands and general, Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand, younger brother to Philip IV of Spain and victor of the Battle of Nördlingen, with an army consisting of tercios and other troops from several garrison duties, launched a counter-attack over the Dutch positions the night of 20–21 June. Advancing along three narrow fronts, the Spanish forces drove the States' soldiers from a series of outer works, but were unable to dislodge them from the two main forts. However, exhaustion and lack of supplies and reinforcements led Nassau-Siegen to order the re-embarkation during the next night. Ferdinand launched a second assault while the retreat was ongoing, and, as panic ensued among the Dutch ranks, the entire force was defeated. The Dutch commander escaped with a few hundred men, while many others drowned attempting to save themselves or were captured.
Along with the successful defense of Saint-Omer and Geldern that same year, the victory of Kallo proved that the Spanish tercios were still a formidable field force. Additionally, it was interpreted in terms of Catholic propaganda and became subject of paintings, poems and popular songs.
Background
In May 1635, France declared war on the Spanish Monarchy and invaded the Spanish Netherlands from the south in coordination with a Dutch army which descended from the north along the Meuse. The invasion ultimately collapsed because of its deficient logistics and the depleted allied armies had to retreat to the Republic. The Spanish forces, reinforced by an Imperial army under Ottavio Piccolomini, went on the offensive and took by surprise the Dutch fortress of Schenkenschans, strategically located at a tip of land where the Rhine once split into two separate branches, the Waal and the Nederrijn. While the States Army was able to recover it after an eleven-month siege, the losses and the economic burden that it sustained, coupled with political disagreements between the command of the Army and the States of Holland, meant that the Prince of Orange was unable to mount a campaign against the Spanish in 1636. This allowed the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand to launch a punitive campaign into northern France which caused panic at Paris.By 1637, the allies were ready again to go on the offensive. Unlike in 1635, they would operate separately in order to force the Spanish to divide their troops. Thanks to a subsidy of more than 1.1 million guilders paid by France, the States Army could align 24,000 soldiers for a campaign the main objective of which was the capture of the Spanish privateering base of Dunkirk. In face of a quick Spanish reaction, however, Frederick Henry looked for a more suitable goal and invested Breda on 21 July. In early 1637, the Spanish Army of Flanders had 55,000 men, but only 16,000 were available for field operations, the remaining 39,000 being assigned to garrison duties. Lacking of troops enough to relieve Breda while he waited for the return of the Imperial forces under Piccolomini from Germany, the Cardinal-Infante launched an offensive over the Dutch fortresses in the Meuse valley in August and quickly took Venlo and Roermond.
While the Dutch continued to besiege Breda, the French armies invaded the provinces of Artois, Hainaut and Luxemburg, where they made rapid gains. Only the arrival of Piccolomini's army of 11,000 men at Mons on 2 August stopped the French progression. Ferdinand then decided to join forces with the Imperial commander to push the French back, and recovered most of the lost ground over September, though Breda surrendered to the Prince of Orange on 10 October. At Madrid, Philip IV and the Count-Duke of Olivares met the news with great disappointment, since the capture of Breda by Spinola in 1625 had been hailed as one of the Monarchy's greatest triumphs, and just two years before, in 1635, Diego Velázquez's painting The Surrender of Breda had been installed at the Hall of Realms in the Buen Retiro Palace. From the military perspective, however, Breda was of limited value, while the capture of Venlo and Roermond bolstered the Spanish control over the Meuse and ended the threat of a Dutch attack from Maastricht, which meant that, from then on, the Army of Flanders could concentrate their forces against the States Army on the defense of Antwerp and Flanders.
In late 1637, Philip IV and Olivares decided to increase to size of the Army of Flanders to over 80,000, for which they intended to send 4,700,000 ducats to Brussels. Added to them the Imperial army under Piccolomini, the king and his valido expected to align about 100,000 men in the Netherlands, 60,000 to face the French and 40,000 against the Dutch. The Spanish court, Ferdinand and his advisors, and the Imperial command differed on the strategy to follow. Olivares wished to break the Franco-Dutch alliance by reaching a truce with the States General, but not before having pressed the Republic into make a series of concessions, which required action both on land and sea. On March, however, he changed his opinion and argued for an offensive against Louis XIII, 'being that king the heart of all the disturbances of the world'. Therefore, the Spanish forces would take an offensive stance on the French front, while staying on defensive against the Dutch, though Olivares encouraged surprise attacks over Dutch fortresses and the bribing their commanders to induce them do defect. In the end, these plans were frustrated because Ferdinand did not receive the planned reinforcements and by the fact that the French and Dutch armies took the field earlier than expected.
At The Hague, Frederick Henry of Orange had to face pressure by the States of Holland, that wished to reduce the size of the army to reduce its cost. The prince was able to prevent this by reminding that the French war subsidies depended on the deployment of a sizeable army, and pointed out that it was necessary for the Republic to capture Antwerp in order to render the alliance beneficial and open the way to the peace with Spain. On 17 December 1637, the States General and the French ambassador Jean d'Estampes de Valençay reached an agreement on how to invade the Spanish Netherlands. Each side would deploy 18,000 to 20,000 infantry and 4,500 to 5,000 cavalry, while France would contribute to the Dutch war effort with 1.2 million guilders. The Republic agreed to attack a major city —Dunkirk, Antwerp or Hulst—, while France promised to besiege Thionville, Namur or Mons, or launching a diversionary operation to allow the States Army to fulfill its plans.
Dutch preparations and landing
The Prince of Orange departed The Hague on 25 May and, on 1 June, the same day that the French Army laid siege to Saint-Omer, in Artois, he took command of the field army of the Dutch States, which had been assembled at a camp in the village of Lithoijen, in Brabant. A 3,000-men detachment under Count Henry Casimir of Nassau-Dietz was sent to Nijmegen to guard the southern border of the Republic, while Frederick Henry led the bulk of the army to Dordrecht, where it embarked aboard a fleet of 30 warships that convoyed it with its artillery, horses and baggage to Bergen op Zoom. Frederick Henry had planned at first to besiege Hulst, but, pressed by a deputation of the States General, he finally agreed to move upon Antwerp. To fully invest the city and prevent it from being relieved from Hulst and Ghent, the prince dispatched a force of 7,000 infantry and 300 cavalry under Count William of Nassau-Siegen aboard 53 large boats and many smaller ones —taken in 1631 from the Spanish at the Battle of the Slaak— to land at the Waasland, west of Antwerp. They embarked at Dordrecht a day before that the main army did it, though both forces reunited briefly at Bergen op Zoom before the landing operation was undertaken.The banks of the Scheldt were protected by a series of forts which made the Dutch operation difficult. A landing at the dike between the forts of Sint-Maria and Hooft van Vlaanderen was deemed too risky, since the approaching fleet would have been easily discovered. Instead, Frederick Henry instructed Count William to sail across the flooded country to the Doel island to land there and then to advance upon the dike of Kallo. Captain Hoemaker, governor of the fort of Liefkenshoek, at Doel, was to provide guides to ensure the quick arrival of the landing force at Kallo. Once there, the States troops had orders to seize the forts of Kallo and Verrebroek, which should be properly garrisoned, and to advance up to the Blokkersdijk and Burcht, which had to be seized too. Once the said positions had been taken, the dikes nearby were to be breached in order to flood the countryside and render any relief to Antwerp from the west impossible. If Blokkersdijk and Burch could not be taken, William should withdraw to the dike of Kallo and entrench his troops there. Meanwhile, Frederick Henry would advance on the other side of the Scheldt from Bergen op Zoom to Berchem ahead of the main army —four English infantry regiments, five French infantry regiments, the Solms and Beverweert regiments, 27 militia companies and all the cavalry–. There, once Antwerp had been invested from that flank, a pontoon bridge would be laid over the Scheldt to link with Count William's forces at Burcht.
Count William departed Bergen op Zoom with his army on the night of 13 to 14 June and landed at Doel after a brief crossing. From there, they moved across the flooded lands towards the dike of Kallo with the water up to the waist or even the armpits, despite Captain Hoemaker having said that it would not cover above the knee. Four artillery pieces were moved on sleds. The dike was unguarded, but, as the presence of the States Army at Bergen op Zoom was known to Felipe da Silva, governor of Antwerp, he had replaced the ordinary guard of the forts of Kallo, the Pearl and Blokkersdijk by three companies of Walloon infantry from the garrison of the citadel of Antwerp, which were shortly after reinforced by the German Regiment of Brion. The Dutch troops, however, took the defenders by surprise. They first captured the Steenland redoubt, over the dike that linked the forts of Kallo and Verrebroek, which was garrisoned by 15 soldiers. Count William's force then took a lock halfway between the Steenland and the fort of Kallo. This time they met some opposition by 300 German soldiers and 300 militia, who were nevertheless driven off and left behind two cannons. Panic spread among the German and Walloon troops, and the Dutch quickly seized Kallo. Verrebroek was also occupied with little resistance. William ordered then an assault over the nearby fort of Saint-Marie, but it was repelled by the garrison.