Henri Alexis Brialmont

Belgian army officer, politician and writer of the 19th century, best known as a military architect and designer of fortifications, and nicknamed The Belgian Vauban after the French architect Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban.

Brialmont qualified as an officer in the Belgian army engineers in 1843 and quickly rose up the ranks. He served as a staff officer, and later was given command of the district of the key port of Antwerp. He finished his careers as Inspector-General of the Army. Brialmont was also an active pamphleteer and political campaigner and lobbied through his career for reform and expansion of the Belgian military and was also involved in the foundation of the Congo Free State.

Today, Brialmont is best known for the fortifications which he designed in Belgium and Romania and would influence another in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The fortifications he designed in Belgium at the end of the 1880s around the towns of Liège, Namur and Antwerp would play an important role during the early stages of the German invasion of Belgium during World War I.

He died on 21 July 1903, aged 82, in Brussels, Belgium.