СНАР.
XX.

William's preparations for the campaign.

Guienne. A succession of generals and diplomatists of emi-
nent ability had been opposed to him. A powerful faction
in his native country had pertinaciously crossed his designs.
He had undergone defeats in the field and defeats in the
senate but his wisdom and firmness had turned defeats into
victories. Notwithstanding all that could be done to keep
him down, his influence and fame had been almost constantly
rising and spreading. The most important and arduous
enterprise in the history of modern Europe had been planned
and had been conducted to a prosperous termination by him
alone. The most extensive coalition that the world had seen
for ages had been formed by him, and would be instantly
dissolved if his superintending care were withdrawn.
had gained two kingdoms by statecraft, and a third by con-
quest; and he was still maintaining himself in the possession
of all three in spite of both foreign and domestic foes. That
these things had been effected by a poor creature, a man of
the most ordinary capacity, was an assertion which might
easily find credence among the nonjuring parsons who con-
gregated at Sam's Coffeehouse, but which moved the laughter
of the veteran politicians of Versailles.

He

While Middleton was in vain trying to convince the French that William was a greatly overrated man, William, who did full justice to Middleton's merit, felt much uneasiness at learning that the Court of Saint Germains had called in the help of so able a counsellor.* But this was only one of a thousand causes of anxiety which during that spring pressed on the King's mind. He was preparing for the opening of the campaign, imploring his allies to be early in the field, rousing the sluggish, haggling with the greedy, making up quarrels, adjusting points of precedence. He had to prevail on the Imperial Cabinet to send timely succours into Piedmont. He had to keep a vigilant eye on those Northern potentates who were trying to form a third party in Europe. He had to act as tutor to the Elector of Bavaria in the Netherlands. He had to provide for the defence of Liege, a matter which the authorities of Liege coolly declared to be not at all their business, but the business of England and Holland. He had to prevent the House of Brunswick Wolfenbuttel from going to blows with the House of Bruns

"Il ne me plait nullement que M. Middleton est allé en France. Ce n'est pas un homme qui voudroit faire un tel pas sans quelque chose d'importance, et de bien concerté, sur quoy j'ay fait beau

coup de reflections que je reserve à vous dire à vostre heureuse arrivée."-William to Portland from Loo, April 1

1693.

18

wick Lunenburg: he had to accommodate a dispute between the Prince of Baden and the Elector of Saxony, each of whom wished to be at the head of an army on the Rhine; and he had to manage the Landgrave of Hesse, who omitted to furnish his own contingent, and yet wanted to command the contingents furnished by other princes. But of all the quarrels which at this time distracted the coalition the most serious was one which had sprung up between the Courts of Vienna and Dresden. Schoening, the first minister of Saxony, had put himself up to auction. In the summer of 1691 he had been the tool of France. Early in 1692 the Allies had bid high for him, and had, it was thought, secured him: but, during the campaign which followed, they had found good reason to suspect that France had again outbid them. While their resentment was at the height, the perfidious statesman was rash enough to visit a watering place in the territories of the House of Austria. He was arrested, conveyed to a fortress in Moravia, and kept close prisoner. His master, the Elector, complained loudly: the Emperor maintained that the arrest and the detention were in strict conformity with the law of nations, and with the constitution of the Germanic body; and it was, during some time, apprehended that the controversy might end in a violent rupture.*

On the

Meanwhile the time for action had arrived. eighteenth of May Lewis left Versailles. Early in June he was under the walls of Namur. The Princesses, who had accompanied him, held their court within the fortress. He took under his immediate command the army of Boufflers, which was encamped at Gembloux. Little more than a mile off lay the army of Luxemburg. The force collected in that neighbourhood under the French lilies did not amount to less than a hundred and twenty thousand men. Lewis had flattered himself that he should be able to repeat in 1693 the stratagem by which Mons had been taken in 1691 and Namur in 1692; and he had determined that either Liege or Brussels should be his prey. But William had this year been able to assemble in good time a force, inferior indeed to that which was opposed to him, but still formidable. With this force he took his post near Louvain, on the road between the two threatened cities, and watched every movement of the enemy.

Lewis was disappointed. He found that it would not be

*The best account of William's labours and anxieties at this time is con

tained in his letters to Heinsius from
November 1692 to May 1693.

CHAP.

XX.

Lewis takes the field.

XX.

Lewis returns to Versailles.

CHAP. possible for him to gratify his vanity so safely and so easily as in the two preceding years, to sit down before a great town, to enter the gates in triumph, and to receive the keys, without exposing himself to any risk greater than that of a staghunt at Fontainebleau. Before he could lay siege either to Liege or to Brussels he must fight and win a battle. The chances were indeed greatly in his favour: for his army was more numerous, better officered, and better disciplined than that of the allies. Luxemburg strongly advised him to march against William. The aristocracy of France anticipated with intrepid gaiety a bloody but a glorious day, followed by a large distribution of the crosses of the new order. William himself was perfectly aware of his danger, and prepared to meet it with calm but mournful fortitude.* Just at this conjuncture Lewis announced his intention to return instantly to Versailles, and to send the Dauphin and Boufflers, with part of the army which was assembled near Namur, to join Marshal Lorges who commanded in the Palatinate. Luxemburg was thunderstruck. He expostulated boldly and earnestly. Never, he said, was such an opportunity thrown away. If His Majesty would march against the Prince of Orange, victory was almost certain. Could any advantage which it was possible to obtain on the Rhine be set against the advantage of a victory gained in the heart of Brabant over the principal army and the principal captain of the coalition? The Marshal reasoned: he implored he went on his knees: but all was vain; and he quitted the royal presence in the deepest dejection. Lewis left the camp a week after he had joined it, and never afterwards made war in person.

The astonishment was great throughout his army. All the awe which he inspired could not prevent his old generals from grumbling and looking sullen, his young nobles from venting their spleen, sometimes in curses, and sometimes in sarcasms, and even his common soldiers from holding irreverent language round their watchfires. His enemies rejoiced with vindictive and insulting joy. Was it not strange, they asked, that this great prince should have gone in state to the theatre of war, and then in a week have gone in the same state back again? Was it necessary that all that vast

He speaks very despondingly in his letter to Heinsius of the 30th of May. Saint Simon says: "On a su depuis que le Prince d'Orange écrivit plusieurs fois

au prince de Vaudmont, son ami intime, qu'il était perdu et qu'il n'y avait que par un miracle qu'il pût échapper."

XX.

retinue, princesses, dames of honour, tirewomen, equerries CHAP. and gentlemen of the bedchamber, cooks, confectioners and musicians, long trains of waggons, droves of led horses and sumpter mules, piles of plate, bales of tapestry, should travel four hundred miles merely in order that the most Christian King might look at his soldiers and might then return ? The ignominious truth was too evident to be concealed. He had gone to the Netherlands in the hope that he might again be able to snatch some military glory without any hazard to his person, and had hastened back rather than expose himself to the chances of a pitched field.* This was not the first time that His Most Christian Majesty had shown the same kind of prudence. Seventeen years before he had been opposed under the walls of Bouchain to the same antagonist. William, with the ardour of a very young commander, had most imprudently offered battle. The opinion of the ablest generals was that, if Lewis had seized the opportunity, the war might have been ended in a day. The French army had eagerly demanded to be led to the onset. The King had called his lieutenants round him and had collected their opinions. Some courtly officers, to whom a hint of his wishes had been dexterously conveyed, had, blushing and stammering with shame, voted against fighting. It was to no purpose that bold and honest men, who prized his honour more than his life, had proved to him that, on all principles of the military art, he ought to accept the challenge rashly given by the enemy. His Majesty had gravely expressed his sorrow that he could not, consistently with his public duty, obey the impetuous movement of his blood, had turned his rein, and had galloped back to his quarters.† Was it not frightful to think what rivers of the best blood of France, of Spain, of Germany, and of England, had flowed, and were destined still to flow, for the gratification of a man who wanted the vulgar courage which was found in the meanest of the hundreds of thousands whom he had sacrificed to his vainglorious ambition?

burg.

Though the French army in the Netherlands had been Manoeuvres weakened by the departure of the forces commanded by the Dauphin and Boufflers, and though the allied army was daily strengthened by the arrival of fresh troops, Luxemburg still had a superiority of force; and that superiority he increased by an adroit stratagem. He marched towards

* Saint Simon; Monthly Mercury, June 1693; Burnet, ii. 111.

+ Mémoires de Saint Simon; Burnet, i. 404.

СНАР.

XX.

Battle of
Landen.

Liege, and made as if he were about to form the siege of
that city. William was uneasy, and the more uneasy be-
cause he knew that there was a French party among the
inhabitants. He quitted his position near Louvain, advanced
to Nether Hespen, and encamped there with the river Gette
in his rear. On his march he learned that Huy had opened
its gates to the French. The news increased his anxiety
about Liege, and determined him to send thither a force
sufficient to overawe malecontents within the city, and to
repel any attack from without.* This was exactly what
Luxemburg had expected and desired. His feint had served
its purpose.
He turned his back on the fortress which had
hitherto seemed to be his object, and hastened towards the
Gette. William, who had detached more than twenty
thousand men, and who had but fifty thousand left in his
camp, was alarmed by learning from his scouts, on the
eighteenth of July, that the French General, with near
eighty thousand, was close at hand.

It was still in the King's power, by a hasty retreat, to put between his army and the enemy the narrow, but deep, waters of the Gette, which had lately been swollen by rains. But the site which he occupied was strong; and it could easily be made still stronger. He set all his troops to work. Ditches were dug, mounds thrown up, palisades fixed in the earth. In a few hours the ground wore a new aspect; and the King trusted that he should be able to repel the attack even of a force greatly outnumbering his own. Nor was it without much appearance of reason that he felt this confidence. When the morning of the nineteenth of July broke, the bravest men of Lewis's army looked gravely and anxiously on the fortress which had suddenly sprung up to arrest their progress. The allies were protected by a breastwork. Here and there along the entrenchments were formed little redoubts and half moons. A hundred pieces of cannon were disposed on the ramparts. On the left flank, the village of Romsdorff rose close to the little stream of Landen, from which the English have named the disastrous day. On the right was the village of Neerwinden. Both villages were, after the fashion of the Low Countries, surrounded by moats and fences; and, within these enclosures, the little plots of ground occupied by different families were separated by mud walls five feet in height and a foot in thickness. All these barricades William had repaired and strengthened. Saint Simon,

William to Heinsius, July. 1693.