The story
As you walk along this wide, busy stretch of Brussels, you might feel the sheer scale of the city moving around you. This is the Boulevard Général Jacques, or Generaal Jacqueslaan, and it functions like a great artery, pumping traffic and life between the university campuses and the bustling intersections of the eastern suburbs. It is a place of transit, but if you look up at the facades or feel the width of the pavement, you can sense a history that was built to be grand, and a name that carries the weight of a very different era.
The man behind the name is Jules Marie Alphonse Jacques, born in 1858. Long before this street became a route for commuters and students, Jacques was a career soldier. His path took him from the forests of the Ardennes to the Congo, and eventually to the muddy, desperate trenches of the First World War. It was during that conflict, specifically in 1914, that he became a national figure. He was the commander who held the line at the town of Diksmuide during the Battle of the Yser. History records him as a man of iron will who was wounded during the fighting but famously refused to leave his post while his troops struggled to hold back the German advance across the flooded plains.
When the war ended, Belgium was a country looking for heroes to anchor its identity. Jacques was eventually given the title of Baron and allowed to add "de Dixmude" to his name, forever linking him to the town he defended. This boulevard was originally part of a path known simply as the Boulevard Militaire, or Military Boulevard. While the exact day the name was officially swapped for General Jacques isn’t widely cited, the change happened in the years following the Great War as the city sought to honor its military commanders.
Today, the street has shed much of its martial atmosphere, though the architecture still tells the story. If you look toward the Etterbeek side, you will see the imposing red-brick walls of the old cavalry barracks. For over a century, this was a place of soldiers and horses. Now, those buildings are being reborn as Usquare, a space for students, researchers, and sustainable living. It is a striking transition for a street that sits between the VUB and the ULB, the city’s two great free universities. The boulevard has evolved from a path for the military into a corridor for education and the future.
As you continue your walk, take a moment to look at the trees lining the central path or the tram tracks cutting through the middle. You are walking on a piece of the Greater Ring, a grand urban plan designed to give the city air and movement. Before you reach the next crossing, see if you can spot a small detail on one of the older houses, perhaps a stone carving or an iron balcony. These quiet, domestic touches are the backdrop to a road named for a general, reminding us how the city eventually softens even the hardest history into the rhythm of daily life.