They were caught by surprise when the French captured Ghent in July, gaining control of the Flanders waterways, and making it impossible for the Alliance to leave Brussels undefended.

[4] The French, believing that the fighting had concluded for the winter, had broken their army up after the loss of Lille, but Marlborough decided to make one more push in an effort to retake Ghent.

The Governor of Ghent, the Count de la Mothe, sent out soldiers under a flag of truce, setting out terms of surrender unless a relieving force arrived by 2 January.

In a letter sent by Marlborough to the Secretary of State, Henry Boyle, he described it took the French defenders "from ten in the morning till seven at night" to evacuate the town.

[5] Only a few days after the capture of Ghent a harsh winter set in, described as "one of the most brutal in contemporary memory" by the historian Jamel Ostwald, and there was no further fighting in the Low Countries until the following June.