page_title: Siege of Saint-Omer
section_title: First relief
hierarchical_section_title: Siege of Saint-Omer / Siege / First relief
caption_attribution_description: English: A portrait of the english royalist Sir Henry Gage (1597-1645)
context_page_description: The Siege of Saint-Omer was a siege in the Thirty Years' War in which a French army under Gaspard III de Coligny, Maréchal de Châtillon, laid siege to the Flemish city of Saint-Omer, defended by a small garrison in command of Lancelot II Schetz, count of Grobbendonck. Despite several initial successes in the capture of the minor forts around Saint-Omer, on the night of 8/9 June a Spanish relief army under Thomas Francis, Prince of Carignano surprised Châtillon's troops and established a small fort in the middle of the French lines. An entire army corps under Maréchal de La Force was ordered to move towards Saint-Omer to support Châtillon siege, but on July 12 a further Imperial-Spanish force commanded by Ottavio Piccolomini entered Saint-Omer, resolving the French marshals to withdraw.
context_section_description: Count Ernest von Isenburg-Grenzau, having been ordered move to Flanders diligently, departed Arleux with the Tercios of Carlo Guasco and Francesco Toralto, an artillery Lieutenant General with several artillery pieces, Don Juan de Vivero with some cavalry, and three companies of Wezemaal's tercio. He passed Béthune and arrived at Chocques, joining forces during the march with José de Saavedra's Tercio and its cavalry. They crossed the Lys river at Merville, and a day later reached Poperinge, where the Prince Thomas of Carignano took the command of the Spanish army. Most of his troops were quartered in Bourbourg and other nearby villages while himself and his staff discussed how relieve Saint-Omer, a difficult task, as the majority of the forts around the town were occupied by the French, whose army was twice as large as the Spanish. Châtillon's soldiers, however, had not begun to dug trenches around the town yet because his commander was awaiting to give orders to do it when the Dutch States Army had launched its offensive against Antwerp. Despite his passive attitude, Saint-Omer's reduced garrison was need of supplies and gunpowder.
  Thomas of Carignano, seeing that the Imperial army under Ottavio Piccolomini could not arrive on time, resolved to relieve the town alone to enable its garrison to keep the resistance for longer. With this aim he disposed four flying squadrons, each one on 1,000 men, commanded respectively by Maestre de Campo Alfonso Pérez de Vivero, Count of Fuensaldaña, Maestre de Campo Owen Roe O'Neill, Sargento Mayor Dionisio de Guzmán of Fuensaldaña's tercio; and Maestro de Campo Francesco de Toralto. They were accompanied by the Neapolitan Tercio of Toralto, the tercio of Marquis de Velada under Sargento Mayor Juan Porcel, the German Regiments of Colonels Spinola and Rouveroy, the English Tercios of William Tresham and Henry Gage, Owen Roe O'Neill's Irish tercio under his Sargento mayor, José de Saavedra's Tercio divided in two squadrons, one of them under Saavadera himself and the other under'Sargento Mayor Diego López de Zúñiga, and 2,000 cavalrymen under Johann von Nassau-Siegen, who was accompanied by Juan de Vivero, Lieutenant General of Cavalry of the Army of the French Frontier and Fuensaldaña's brother, and a Croatian regiment under Colonel Ludovico. Count of Forjaz was sent across the Neufossé to attack the French troops at their quarters while Francisco de Pardo, Commissar General of the Cavalry of the Army of the French Frontier, remained in the rear with several battalions.
  At the same time that the relief force marched to Saint-Omer, Thomas of Carignano sent Paolo Fanfanelli, Sargento Mayor of Carlo Guasco's tercio, and his soldiers, to occupy the tower of the Abbey of Watten, located on top of a hill and guarded by 50 French soldiers under an officer since Count Paul Bernard de Fontaine had abandoned the village. Lacking of supplies and discouraged by the size of the Spanish army, they promptly surrendered. Châtillon, thinking that Watten was a crucial position to control the riverside of the Neufossé, had dispatched the Regiments d'Espagni and de Fouquerolles over the village, but they arrived after the tower had surrendered.
  Colonels Espagni and Fouquerolles, seeing the difficulty of withdraw, formed their regiments in a meadow surrounded by hedges, disposed to negotiate with the Spanish. Fanfanelli, nevertheless, attacked them. The Spanish cavalry, alerted by the shots, made soon appearance led by Francisco Pardo and overran the French troops, who threw their weapons down asking for mercy. Fanfanelli and Pardo accepted their surrender. After that, Guasco's Tercio and the cavalry took all the spoils and the baggage, leaving naked most of the French soldiers. The loss on the Spanish side was light and consisted of 2 captains, Marco Antonio Felice and Count Evandro Piccolomini, nephew of the Imperial marshall, and 5 soldiers killed. The French lost Colonel Fouquerolles, 5 captains and 22 soldiers killed being also 16 captains, 20 lieutenants, 17 second lieutenants, 13 seargents and 1,220 
caption: Portrait of Sir Henry Gage by John Weesop.
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "616", "Image ImageLength": "800", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS5 Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2012:03:30 18:14:12", "Image Artist": "National Portrait Gallery London", "Image ExifOffset": "5078", "Thumbnail ImageWidth": "154", "Thumbnail ImageLength": "200", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "108", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4844", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "616", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "800"}