This demonstration of French military potency, combined with the successful storming of Barcelona the same year, convinced the Allies to come to terms with France in the treaty of Ryswick, thus ending the war.

The French armies of Louis XIV menaced the more important fortified towns of Brussels and Oudenarde, while leaving untouched the medium-sized Ath with its 6,000 inhabitants.

[4][5] Peace negotiations to end the war got underway in 1695 in Ryswick but the absence of a knockout blow on either side encouraged the participants to continue the struggle.

When the Duchy of Savoy defected from the Grand Alliance in late 1696, Louis XIV saw that the time had come decide the issue on the Spanish Netherlands front.

In mid-April 1697 French forces began the campaign and prepared to besiege the strong fortress of Ath to demonstrate France's military pre-eminence to the Allied negotiators.

Upon the French capture of the fort during the War of Devolution in June 1667 when the Spanish garrison fled the town without fighting, the walls were razed by Vauban in 1668.

In front of the outworks were huge, triangular ravelin islands with masonry fortifications that could house hundreds of soldiers and several small-caliber guns.

It presented the besiegers with murderous interlocking fields of fire from the defenders, who also had a double line of palisades at the top of the slope.

[6][9] A 12,000-man French cavalry force arrived before Ath on the morning of 16 May, securing all roads, river crossings, abbeys and buildings within a several-kilometer radius.

Catinat's main force left Helchin the same day, crossed the Scheldt river and established itself in three camps about 10 kilometers from the fortress.

The camps were separated by the Western and Eastern branches of the River Dender, which meet at Ath, and the French got to work setting up siege lines and regimental quarters and building bridges to facilitate communications.

By this time, the fortress was in a significantly neglected state by the Spaniards; they managed to restore, and only partially, only the counterscarps and glacis , and install palisades here and there .

The second parallel, 300 meters from the fortress, was successfully laid the following night, and also connected to the rear by approaches, along the capitals of the Namur and Limburg bastions and the ravelin between them.

In the following two nights, the eleventh and twelfth, two more breach batteries were added opposite the bastion faces and 21 mortars were installed to fire on the interior of the fortress.

By this time, the dam across the moat in front of the Namur bastion was completed, and the attacker was already preparing for a decisive assault, when the garrison of the fortress surrendered on the 14th day of the siege (on the night of 4-5 June).

Vauban himself wrote in his memoirs: “I do not think that another such correct siege has been found that would so quickly and with such little difficulty deliver into the hands of the besieger such an excellent fortress as the one we took.” By the Peace of Ryswick in 1697, Ath was returned to Spain.