Citadelpark

The curves of the paths follow the terrain of the former fortifications: on this rise between the Scheldt and the Leie stood a pentagonal fortress covering forty-three hectares. After the Napoleonic Wars, it was built as one link in a chain of fortresses against a possible French advance, and later it was used mainly as barracks for infantry and artillery. The city bought the land, dismantled the fortifications, and created a park; on the eastern side, the entrance gate from eighteen twenty-six survived. The barracks, parade ground, and wells are gone, but the gate and the changes in elevation remain from the fortress.

On October fifth, eighteen thirty, Major Gey van Pittius, a military engineer and the designer of the Citadel of Ghent, proposed sending the least reliable soldiers to unload a boat carrying straw. He expected that, once outside the gates without weapons, they would scatter. The next morning, only a lieutenant and several non-commissioned officers returned out of two hundred forty men.

The citadel had been built for a different war. After Napoleon's defeat, the Duke of Wellington pressed for a chain of fortresses in case of another French advance. Gey van Pittius chose a rise between the Scheldt and the Leie. The pentagonal fortification covered forty-three hectares and was considered one of the most modern in Europe. It gave present-day Citadelpark its name.

But by the autumn of eighteen thirty, the southern provinces of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands had risen up and declared the creation of Belgium. Army units were still mixed: an officer might be from the northern Netherlands, while most of his soldiers were natives of lands that already considered themselves Belgian. More than two and a half thousand military personnel withdrew into the unfinished fortress. Colonel Destombes, the citadel's commandant, tried to keep them in the service of King William the First.

The straw ruse reduced the number of rebels, but a few hours later about one thousand soldiers moved toward the main gate. Destombes ordered cannons rolled into the inner courtyard. When the artillerymen lit the fuses, the crowd retreated to the barracks. Another two hundred sixty men were led outside under the pretext of forming a second work detail; again, only an officer and non-commissioned officers came back.

Those who remained damaged the wells, throwing lime into them and cutting the bucket ropes. Officers had to draw water from the fortress moats, risking an ambush. The garrison lived on bread and poor-quality meat; livestock intended for provisions grazed directly in the dry moats. Then Belgian captains warned Destombes that, in the event of an assault, their soldiers would refuse to fire on the attackers and would turn their weapons against their own commanders and artillerymen.

Meanwhile, Belgian units and Franco-Belgian volunteers arrived at the citadel. On October seventeenth, Destombes met General Duvivier on the glacis—an open slope before the fortifications. Duvivier commanded the Belgian forces in the city and sought the withdrawal of the Dutch garrison. Destombes agreed to leave the fortress, but secured for his men the right to take their weapons, the regimental flag, four field guns, the baggage train, and the military archives.

On the night of October eighteenth to nineteenth, the remaining northern Dutch soldiers left the citadel and reached Antwerp a few days later. The southern units remained on duty here for another two weeks under the terms of the capitulation; soon afterward, men from the former garrison were accepted into the Belgian army and combined into the Ghent Regiment.

Belgian engineers completed the fortress, but the military used it mainly as infantry and artillery barracks. In eighteen seventy, the city council bought the site, began dismantling the fortifications, and five years later created a park here. The former slopes and earthworks were used for the winding paths. On the eastern side, the entrance gate from eighteen twenty-six has survived; the walls, parade ground, barracks, and wells around which the garrison split have disappeared.