•WILLIAM AND M AllY.

213

And now the time for action had arrived. On the eighteenth chap.of May Lewis left Versailles: early in June he was under the ■ , 693walls of Namur. The Princesses, who had accompanied him, Lewisheld their court within the fortress. He took under his im- is e id.mediate command the army of Boufflers, wdrieh was encampedat Gembloux. Little more than a mile off lay the army ofLuxemburg. The force collected in that neighbourhood underthe French lilies did not amount to less than a hundred andtwenty thousand men. Lewis had flattered himself that heshould be able to repeat in 1693 the stratagem by which Monshad been taken in 1691 and Namur in 1692; and he had de-termined that either Liege or Brussels should be his prey. ButWilliam had this year been able to assemble in good time aforce, inferior indeed to that which was opposed to him, butstill formidable. With this force he took his post near Louvain,on the road between the two threatened cities, and watchedevery movement of the enemy.

Lewis was disappointed. He fount} that it w'ould not be Lewispossible for him to gratify his vanity so safely and so easily as in ver-the two preceding years, to sit down before a great town, to sallIes -enter the gates in triumph, and to receive the keys, withoutexposing himself to any risk greater than that of a staghunt atFontainebleau. Before he could lay siege either to Liege or toBrussels he must fight and win a battle. The chances were in-deed 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 abloody but a glorious day, followed by a large distributionof the crosses of the new order. William himself was perfectlyaw’are of his danger, and prepared to meet it with calm butmournful fortitude.* Just at this conjuncture Lewis announced

* He speaks very dospondingly in his letter to Heinsius of the 30th of