82

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

CHAP,

XIX.

161 ) 2 .

Siege ofNamur.

events which it was his office to record.* In the neighbourhood■of Mons, Lewis entertained the ladies with the most magnifi-cent review that had ever been seen in modern Europe. A hun-dred and twenty thousand of the finest troops in the world weredrawn up in a line eight miles long. It may be doubted whethersuch an army had ever been brought together under the Romaneagles. The show began early in the morning, and was notover when the long summer day closed. Racine left the ground,astonished, deafened, dazzled, and tired to death. In aprivate letter he ventured to give utterance to an amiable wishwhich he probably took good care not to whisper in the courtlycircle: “Would to heaven that all these poor fellows werein their cottages again with their wives and their littleones!”**

After this superb pageant Lewis announced his intention ofattacking Namur. In five days he was under the walls of thatcity, at the head of more than thirty thousand men. Twentythousand peasants, pressed in those parts of the Netherlandswhich the French occupied, were compelled to act as pioneers.Luxemburg, with eighty thousand men, occupied a strongposition on the road between Namur and Brussels, and wasprepared to give battle to any force which might attempt toraise the siege.*** This partition of duties excited no surprise.It had long been known that the great Monarch loved sieges,and that he did not love battles. He professed to think thatthe real test of military skill was a siege. The event of an en-counter between two armies on an open plain was, in hisopinion, often determined by chance: but only science could

* Mtfmoires de Saint Simon; Dangeau; Racine’s Letters, and Narrativeentitled Relation de ce qui s’est passes au Sifege de Namur; Monthly Mer-cury, May 1692.

** Mtfmoires de Saint Simon; Racine to Boileau, May 21. 1692.

*** Monthly Mercury for June; William to Heinsius, 1692.