After his victory in the Battle of Hondschoote, the French commander Jean Nicolas Houchard decided to fall on the Dutch forces defending Menen.

In the Summer of 1793 the Coalition forces had split, with the British army besieging Dunkirk under the Duke of York, and the Austrians under the Prince of Coburg investing Le Quesnoy.

After the Battle of Hondschoote from 6 to 8 September 1793 the British were forced to raise the Siege of Dunkirk, and to fall back upon Veurne (Furnes), thereby exposing the Dutch right flank, which was in danger of being turned at Ypres.

[6]: 137 Early the next morning, 13 September, Houchard started a three-pronged attack by launching columns under generals Hédouville, Béru, and Dumesny toward the Dutch[8] positions.

Informed about the attack, the Hereditary Prince asked Beaulieu personally to send reinforcements to the Dutch, who were already pressed by the French assault.

However, he detached four squadrons of cavalry (about 400 men) under general Kray to support Prince Frederick at Wervik, who with 5,000 Dutch troops was holding off a French attack of the division-Hédouville that had started at 5 AM.

[2]: 208 [10]: 63–64 When general Kray arrived at Wervik, he assured Prince Frederick that Beaulieu's main force would follow, and convinced the inexperienced Dutchman that it was safe to start a counterattack.

This loss of the Dutch commander prompted so much confusion on the Allied side that a general retreat started, led by Frederick's second-in-command major-general Count Golowkin.

[11] The retreat was bravely covered by the Swiss, who held off pursuing French cavalry, but in the rearguard action the battalion of major Hohenlohe was destroyed with great loss of life.

French troops under general Dumonceau managed to reach the fortified,[12] but lightly defended, town of Menen, thereby splitting the Dutch forces.

[6]: 137  Dutch cavalry, and a Prussian corps under Von Reitzenstein that had observed the battle with interest near Gheluvelt, but not engaged in it, managed to break through the French lines and retreat to the vicinity of Ypres.

[2]: 209 [14] The next day the Hereditary Prince started the Dutch troops on an orderly strategic retreat (and therefore not in disarray, as some sources[15] claim without any basis) toward Ghent.

[3]: 101  Historian Ramsay Weston Phipps gave Dutch losses as 88 officers and 3,000 rank and file, including 1,200 men and 40 guns captured.

[4] Ironically, after the battle the city of Menen was occupied by troops of the Légion franche étrangère (Batavian Legion), a brigade formed by exiled Dutch Patriots and commanded by lieutenant-colonel Daendels.

[6]: 139 Three days later Houchard met Beaulieu and was defeated by the well-rested Austrians at the Battle of Courtrai (1793), and the Dutch revolutionaries were chased out of Menen again, but they returned in October with the division Souham, where they distinguished themselves at the recapture of the city on the 25th.