Depicts shows the town of Armentières, now on the border between France and Belgium, with the river Lys running through its centre. The town had, like Diksmuide, been a contested site between French and Habsburg troops during the Thirty Years War. Under Hapsburg control at the start of the war, the town was surrendered to French forces on 8 September 1645. As the French army approached, the town’s Habsburg governor, the Lord de Maugré, had shrewdly recognised that his garrison would not be able to hold out against the strength of the encroaching army. Thus, he had capitulated to the French troops, negotiating an honourable, and peaceful, surrender of the town. Much like at Diksmuide, however, the French possession of the town was short lived. Perhaps exacerbated by the outbreak of a plague epidemic in the city in 1646, the town’s strength became increasingly fragile. The following year, in 1647, after fourteen days of siege, the town fell once more under the Habsburg’s power. Snayers’ monumental canvas of the Habsburg siege, as with that depicting Diksmuide, shows a panoramic view of the city and its defences, with gathering troops and soldiers bustling in the foreground. In a slightly more dramatic passage, Snayers here shows a brigade of cavalrymen riding down the hill at the left towards the town. Amongst the throng, he again includes a portrait of the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, wearing the same simple grey coat, a red feather in his hat and mounted on a rearing bay horse. He turns back towards the viewer, as his troops gather about him, riding forward to the siege beyond.
Commissioned from the artist in August 1649 by Ottavio Piccolomini (1599-1656), Commander in Chief of the army of the Holy Roman Empire.