CHAPTER IITHE KING IS NEEDEDSunderland remained by the silent King, on whom he kept his clear, strong glance; Portland and the beautiful Romney went into the antechamber, where they could speak freely."What charlatan's trick is this?" said the Earl, in a low, angry voice. "Who is this officer from Flanders? It is strange to hear my Lord Sunderland mouth these godly sentiments—he, a man merely fighting for a place——""Yet he spoke," admitted Romney, "and we were silent. And he roused the King. If it be mere self-interest it had the effect of sincerity."Portland made no answer; he knew that he could not have spoken to William with the quiet tact and insinuating boldness that Sunderland had, but he knew also that he had served and loved the King in a way Sunderland could probably not even understand, and his heart swelled at what he considered calculated tricks to goad the King into filling a position where he might be useful to my lord; in this Portland's rigid honesty was unfair to Sunderland, who, though he was knavish sometimes in his means, was seldom knavish in his ends, and perhaps strove for as high an ideal as William Bentinck, though by different ways.Lord Romney spoke again."After all, what doth it matter—if the King could be drawn out of his sloth?"Portland's fair face was still dark and sombre; he rather despised the Englishman; he rather regretted the day when he had come to England to take up these perilous honours among a people who detested him. Romney glanced at him, gave a little shrug, and returned to the King's room; his love for William was of a different quality, his code was easier; he was thankful that the King should, under any circumstances, recover his balance, and he, Henry Sidney, could see no great dishonour in the public actions of my Lord Sunderland, and regarded him from no such stern standpoint as did William Bentinck.He found the King had moved and now sat beside the bureau piled with the untouched correspondence. Sunderland was still at the window looking out at the inky line of the river between the white banks and the slow progress of a barge with dull yellow sails that struggled with a sluggish wind past Whitehall stairs.Romney went over to him."You have done much, my lord," he whispered warmly; "we must all be grateful."Sunderland turned his faded, powdered face from the window."He will finish the campaign yet, I think," he answered.The Lord Keeper and Lord Portland re-entered the room, and with them was a third gentleman, who went at once to Lord Sunderland, like one waiting for directions; that nobleman took him gently by the arm and drew him towards the King, who had not yet looked up."Sire," he said, "Your Majesty knoweth M. van Keppel, who hath been some years in your service."The King raised his eyes and saw the splendid figure of a young Dutch officer standing before him with great humility and respect."Yes, I remember you, Mynheer," he murmured, with a faint animation, and speaking his own language.Sunderland stepped back and the young soldier went on one knee."Are you come from Flanders?" asked William."Yes, sire.""From my Cousin Vaudemont's force?""Yes, sire.""What is your business with us?" asked the King faintly.Joost van Keppel rose."My business is more than I dare broach," he said humbly.The King looked at him kindly."I shall not be angry." He exerted himself to graciousness, and his glance seemed to rest with a wistful kind of pleasure on the youth.Certainly Joost van Keppel had an appearance well calculated to win the hearts of those who looked upon him, for a mingled sweetness and ardour made a kind of radiance in his face, as if he gave forth the light of hope and courage. He was tall and robust, of a bright fairness, with dark brown eyes of an extraordinary power and gentleness, a smiling, strong mouth, and a fine carriage of nobility in his port; his rich-coloured brown hair hung in full curls over his gay and vivid uniform; there was a great quantity of gold on his sword belt and in his shoulder knots; in the firelight he glittered from head to foot with a changing light of gold; but despite his youthful strength and the magnificence of his appointments the prevailing impression of his person was that of a gentle, soft, and winning sweetness that sat very graciously on the unconscious demeanour of a noble soldier."Were you not a page to us?" asked the King."Yes, Your Majesty. I was with those who had the honour to come to England with Your Majesty," answered M. van Keppel. "Your Majesty showed me great kindness in promoting me."He had a gentle and charming address, an eager air of deference wholly pleasing."I had forgotten," said the King. "So you have come from Flanders?"He gave a little sigh."Oh, sire!" cried Joost van Keppel, "I am come to tell Your Majesty that we need you!"The King sat up and looked at Portland and the Englishmen."Ah!" he said, in an angry, broken voice. "What device is this you put upon me? No use, my lords, no use; this back will bear no more burdens.""Absolve me," cried Portland. "I know nothing of this——""A trick," continued the King—"a trick to spur me. What are you, Mynheer, to come and tell me of my duty?"van Keppel threw himself again on his knees."The King is needed," he repeated, with great passion. "I love Your Majesty enough to dare tell you so. Sire, the Republic crieth out to Your Majesty!""Who told you to speak thus?" asked William bitterly."M. Heinsius," answered the young soldier instantly.At that name the King changed countenance."M. Heinsius," he muttered; then he fixed M. van Keppel with a keen look and added—"Why did he choose you?""Because Your Majesty used to have some kindness for me," was the reply, given with a frank modesty; "because no man living could revere Your Majesty more than I do.""I am not used to be so courted," said William sternly. "You have too ready a tongue. M. Heinsius may find another messenger."He rose and would have turned away, but the young man, still on his knees, caught the King's stiff silk coat skirts."Will the Prince of Orange ever refuse to listen to the appeal of the United Provinces?" he asked, with singular sweetness and force.William looked down at him, hesitated, then said faintly—"Rise, Mynheer. I am not your King. As for the Republic"—he sank into the great wand-bottomed chair again and said abruptly—"how think they the campaign will go?"M. van Keppel got to his feet and stood his full splendid height."M. de Vaudemont saith, sire, that if Your Majesty would come to lead us there is no question that the allies might do more than they have ever done." He paused a moment, then continued, "M. de Boufflers is guarding the banks of the Sambre; a great army is collected from the Lys to the Scheldt. M. de Villeroy, they say, is to fix his headquarters at Tournay; but the allies are ready to take the field—operations could begin next month. M. de Vaudemont and M. Heinsius have written so to Your Majesty."William glanced at the pile of unopened correspondence; he flushed and looked again at M. van Keppel."Sire," said the young soldier proudly, "there is Fleurus, Steinkirk, and Landen to avenge. I rode past Namur a week ago and saw the Bourbon lilies flying above the keep.""Namur!" repeated William, and his eyes widened.The loss of Namur had been the worst disaster of all the disasters of the war. William had perhaps never known such humiliation as when the great fortress fell before his eyes."M. de Vauban," continued Joost van Keppel, "hath added to the fortifications of M. Kohorn and declared the town impregnable; they have fixed a vaunting notice over the gate defying us to retake it—but, sire, it could be done.""There spoke a soldier!" flashed the King. "That spirit in my men wrested back the three Provinces in '74.""That spirit is alive still, sire—they who drove back the French then could take Namur now."William looked at Sunderland."Would your English be pleased," he asked, "if we took Namur?""There is nothing would so delight the people as a great victory in the Low Countries," answered that nobleman."So they defy us," said the King. "And Namur is even more important than it was; it must be the strongest fortress in Europe. Certainly it is a prize worth while."van Keppel spoke again."M. de Maine is to be sent with M. de Villeroy.""So they send M. de Maine to fight us, do they?" exclaimed the King. "We should be the equal of M. de Maine."He looked kindly and steadily at M. van Keppel."My child," he said, "you are a good patriot, and that is the best thing in the world to be. We must give you a regiment. We hope to see you in Flanders."He smiled, and the young soldier, who had been taught all his life to regard him as the first of living men, bowed, overwhelmed, with tears of pleasure in his eyes.William gave him his hand and Joost van Keppel kissed it reverently, then, at a delicate sign from Sunderland, retired, followed by the Lord Keeper.The King sat very quiet, looking into the fire. Portland came and stood behind his chair."Will you go out to the war?" he asked."Yes," said William simply.Sunderland darted a sideway look at Portland, who flushed."I am indeed glad of that," he said sternly."That is a gallant youngster," said the King. "I ever liked him. I will keep him about me; he is a pleasant creature.""He is," replied Portland; "a rakehelly good-for-nought, as every one knows."William smiled faintly; he was the most tolerant of men, and had no interest in those faults that did not cross his designs."I have loved rakes before," he said, and looked at my Lord Romney.The two Englishmen laughed a little, but Portland answered, with some anger—"He is a young prodigal with more debts than wits; you should not have given him your hand."The King did not resent his friend's brusque address, he answered quietly, in his weak voice—"It would give me pleasure to pay some of those debts."Sunderland softly put in a remark."M. van Keppel is the most obliging, sweet-tempered gentleman in the world, and one most devoted to Your Majesty.""And a great friend of your lordship," said Portland, with a cold haughtiness. He perceived, as he thought, a design on the part of Sunderland and Somers, with perhaps Marlborough behind them, to put up a rival to share with him the King's affections, which had been wholly his for near their joint lives, and he could not contain his scorn and resentment, nor was he assuaged by the obvious unconsciousness of the King.Romney made some attempt to shift the subject; he came forward in the easy gracious way habitual to him."Your Majesty will be soon for Flanders, then?" he asked. "It is a noble resolution."William rose."I think it is my duty," he answered. He took up the plans of Greenwich Palace from the window-sill. "I think it is all there is for me to do. I thank you, my lords," he added, with dignity, "for having so long borne with me."He gave a little bow and left them to enter the inner room. As the door closed on him Sunderland smiled at the other two."Have I not succeeded?" he demanded. "He is roused, he will go out to the war, I even think that he will take Namur.""You are very clever, my lord," admitted Romney, "and surely you have done the King a great service."Portland broke in hotly—"You pulled the strings of your puppet very skilfully; you know how to deal with the weaknesses of men, but those who are the King his friends do not love to see him practised on for party purposes.""I stand for more than party purposes," answered Sunderland, with sudden haughtiness. "My cause is the King his cause—that is sufficient—and for the rest, my deeds are not answerable at the tribunal of your virtues, my lord."Portland came a step nearer to him."You scarce believe in God—you are little better than an atheist—yet all these terms are glib upon your tongue, and your tool, a shallow popinjay, can prate very nicely of sacred things. You are not sincere—you care for nothing—for no one."Romney made a little movement as if he would have stepped between the two earls, but Sunderland answered unmoved—"I have my policy too much at heart to jeopardize it by expounding it myself. I fear that my principles would suffer by my lack of eloquence.""Your principles!" cried Portland. "Your policy—what is it?""Too precious a thing for me to risk on a turn of the tongue, I repeat, my lord. I speak in actions. Watch them and know my answer."CHAPTER IIIATTAINMENTIt was the commencement of the campaign of 1695; as yet nothing had been done either side. The men at Versailles who managed the war had concentrated their forces in Flanders, and there the allies had gathered to meet them; the Elector of Bavaria and other princes of the Empire were encamped with the Germans guarding Brussels; the Brandenburghers and Spanish lay at Huy; the Dutch and British under the command of the King of England, at Ghent.The French waited. Villeroy was not Luxembourg; he had no genius for command, and he was hampered by the presence of the Duc de Maine, his pupil and his superior, who showed no aptitude for war, not even common courage. Boufflers watched the King of England, the meaning of whose marches he could not fathom; his oblique moves might cover a design on either Ypres or Dunkirk; for a month they continued, and neither Villeroy nor Boufflers suspected an attempt on Namur.But on June 28th, the King, the Elector, and the Brandenburghers advanced with a swift concerted movement straight on Namur with such suddenness and rapidity that M. de Boufflers had scarcely time to throw himself into the fortress before the three divisions of the allied army closed round the walls of the town.The Prince de Vaudemont had been left in Flanders to watch Villeroy. That general believed he could wipe out this force and then drive the allies from Namur—he said as much in his dispatches to Versailles; but M. de Vaudemont effected a masterly retreat into Ghent, and the easiness of the French Court was disturbed, especially as it was whispered that an action had been avoided owing to the poltroonery of M. de Maine.M. de Kohorn, the principal engineer of the allies, had set his heart on the capture of the fortress that he had seen taken by his great master and rival, M. de Vauban. The Frenchman had since added considerably to the fortifications, and rendered Namur the strongest fortress in the world, and M. de Kohorn was spurred by professional pride into a desperate attempt to make good his failure of three years ago.A week after the trenches were opened the English foot guards gained the outworks on the Brussels side; on the seventeenth the first counterscarp of the town was captured; on the twentieth the Germans gained Vauban's line of fortifications cut in the rock from the Sambre to the Meuse and the great sluice or waterworks; on the twenty-third the Dutch and English made conquest of the second counterscarp, and the town capitulated, Boufflers and the garrison retiring into the citadel, leaving behind them about fifteen hundred wounded men to be cared for by the allies.On the 6th of August the allies, led by the King of England, marched into Namur by the St. Nicolas Gate, and prepared for the last and terrible assault on the garrison.Villeroy, who had meantime taken the petty towns of Dixmuyde and Deynse, endeavoured to induce the King to raise the siege of Namur by menacing Brussels, which he shelled and greatly damaged; but in vain, for William was not to be lured into relinquishing his prey, and Villeroy, after two days, marched on to Enghien, and, having collected the greater number of the French troops in the Netherlands, amounting in all to over eighty thousand men, advanced to the relief of Namur.But the Prince de Vaudemont having now joined the allied forces it was considered that they were strong enough to face Villeroy, and at the same time continue the siege of the castle and hold the town.On the fifteenth the French host fired a salute of ninety guns as a haughty promise of relief to Boufflers; from then to the nineteenth the two mighty armies faced each other, neither making any movement. Europe held its breath, Paris and London, The Hague and Vienna, Brussels, still half prostrate from French fires, Rome and Madrid waited in almost unbearable suspense for the result of the promised and, it seemed, inevitable combat between the two finest and largest armies that had ever met on European soil.Boufflers burnt fire signals every night on his watch-towers, which urged haste to Villeroy, who still lay beyond the mighty ring of the confederate army who incessantly stormed the citadel.On the nineteenth the King rose at dawn, got his forces under arms, and rode from post to post surveying his troops and watching the enemy; he was in the saddle from four in the morning till nightfall, and tired out three horses. When he returned to his tent that had been pitched in the encampment on the west of the town near the Abbey of Salsines, there was no portion of his vast army that he had not personally inspected.He dined alone; the Elector of Bavaria and the other German princes being in immediate command of the troops that were actually storming Namur.He expected that Villeroy would attack him as soon as it was light, and his preparations were complete.He had an interview with M. Dyckfelt, who was with the army as representative of the States General, and was then alone, it being about ten of the clock and a hot summer night.All the light in the tent came from a silver lamp suspended from the cross-poles, which gave an uncertain and wavering illumination. The King sat in the shadows; on the little table beside him was his sword, his pistols, and a map of Namur.He was thinking of twenty-three years ago when, in his early youth, he had first led an army against France; his entire force then had numbered little more than the servants, footmen, and attendants in his retinue now. All Europe had been against him, half his country in the hands of the enemy, the home government in the control of the opposing factions. The man of forty-four looked back at the achievements of the youth of twenty-one with an extraordinary sense—almost of wonder.He recalled with painful vividness how Buckingham and Arlington had come to offer him the shameful terms of France and England, their scorn at his rejection of the bitter bargain, and how even William Bentinck, gay and thoughtless then, had despaired. Hopeless, indeed, it had seemed; there had not been one to believe in him; but he had never doubted his own destiny.And now he was justified in what he had undertaken, at least that, whatever sorrows, humiliations, and disappointments had darkened his way the outward semblance was of great and steady success.The Prince, who had been little better than a State prisoner and a pawn in the politics of Europe, heir to a ruined family and leader of a despairing nation, was now a King, directing half Europe, with one of the mightiest armies the world had seen behind him. Of the monarchs who had offered to silence his despised defiance with dishonourable terms one was now dead, and he held his kingdoms; and the other, who then had threatened to overrun the world, was now with difficulty holding his own against a coalition that included all the principal countries of Europe.Not without concession, infinite patience, endless trouble, and long waiting had William got these allies together. For the support and the millions of England he was paying a price none but himself could gauge the bitterness of. To Scandinavia he had had to sacrifice some of his cherished maritime privileges; Spain, the most provoking of the confederates, had been kept by much expenditure of art and money; the German princes had been held together by a title, a garter, a subsidy, an honour, a promise of a prospective dignity. Now, before the walls of Namur, the man whose genius and indomitable courage had, during twenty years, toiled towards this end, might feel that he was beginning to taste his reward.He was facing France, equal to equal; he was feared and respected throughout the world. The Protestant faith, threatened with extinction by Louis, he had placed on a basis from which, as long as any faith lasted, it could never be displaced. His country was free, and prosperous, and foremost among nations again; the power of France was already too crippled for there to be longer any fear of her upsetting the balance of power.The English fleet, useless since Elizabeth, again was mistress of the seas. Russell passed unmolested between Spain and Italy, defied the remnant of the French fleet imprisoned in Toulon port, and dared the whole of the Mediterranean seaboard. Berkeley passed unmolested along the French coast, burnt Granville, shelled Calais and Dunkirk, and kept the English flag high and undisputed above the Channel.The man who had been the boy who had once passionately resolved to do these things found the realization of them different indeed to those bright imaginings. Attainment of fame, honour, power, success could not give more than a faint remembrance of the throb of exultation the youthful Prince had felt when he, penniless, unsupported, hampered in every possible way, had first flung his challenge to overwhelming odds. Then there had been everything to do; but ardent courage and unspoilt faith had gilded difficulties, and the heroic pride of youth had smiled at obstacles; now the loss of a love the boy had never dreamt of had made all things else appear small to the man.Twenty years of toil, of acquaintance with treachery, deceit, smallness, weakness, twenty years of misunderstood endeavour, of constant strain, of constant fatigue had done their work. The fine spirit did not shrink from its task, but never again could it recapture the early glow of hope, the early ecstasy of labour, the early pride of achievement.What was his achievement, after all. He might well think that the God he had served so patiently had mocked him. He had loved but to lose his love; he had bartered his personal ease, almost his liberty, almost his pride for bitter honours held in exile; his health was utterly worn out, his days were a continual weariness and pain; he was again as lonely as he had been when he was the prisoner of the States; he had no heir, and the main branch of his family died with him; if he could not finish himself his task he must entrust it to strangers to complete. Surely all was utter vanity and vexation. The cold consolations of a sombre faith only supported him. He clung to those beliefs in which Mary had died, and faced the few years that at best remained to him with the same high courage with which she had met her fate.He rose presently, in the perfect stillness, and went to the entrance of his tent, lifted the flap, and looked out.The French red flares on the towers of Namur were visible across the great plain of the Sambre and Meuse; the starlight showed the huge encampment stretching out of sight under the clear sky: near by a sentry paced with his musket over his shoulder; it was very hot and not a blade of grass stirred in the absolute arrested stillness.Presently a surgeon passed through the tents carrying a lantern and followed by a servant leading a mule laden with his chest. The light flickered awhile amid the canvas then disappeared; a dog barked and a man whistled to it; the silence fell again as intense as before.The King went back and flung himself on his couch; he could not come near sleep, but lay watching the long, pale beams of light the lamp cast over the worn grass that formed the floor of the hastily constructed tent.His mind kept dwelling on his first campaign, his miserable army, his own ignorance of all but book tactics, his lack of money, of authority—yet that had been the first spark of that fire that now lit Europe. He had formed and trained his own armies—Dutch, Brandenburghers, Swedes, Germans, and lately the English—until they were equal to those consummate French troops who had laughed at him in '72; but they fought with no more devotion and courage than the handful of Hollanders who had rallied round him then, now incorporated into the famous Dutch Guards, the most beloved of all his beloved army.He thought of these Guards marching against Villeroy now, feared and honoured, and his heart fluttered faintly with a fleeting pleasure that they should ever face the French on these terms.He closed his eyes and instantly there spread before him a vision of the great banqueting hall at Whitehall hung with black, and the banners and armours of his family, while in the centre was a mighty catafalque of black velvet which bore an open coffin, at the foot of which lay a royal crown and sceptre. She who rested there was covered to the chin in gold stuff, and round her head was twisted her dark, curling, auburn hair.The King sprang up and walked up and down the uneven ground; he drew from under his shirt and cravat a long, black ribbon, to which was attached a gold wedding-ring and a long lock of that same rich hair that he had seen in his vision.He paused under the lamp and gazed at it; in that moment he prayed that he might find his death in to-morrow's battle with as much passion as any poor wretch ever prayed for hope of life. He was still standing so, forgetful of time and place, when he heard voices without, and hastily put the ribbon back over his heart.The flap was raised and the figure of a young officer showed against the paling sky."Is it M. van Keppel?" asked the King quietly."Yes, sire." The speaker entered. He had been sent with the King's commands to the Elector of Bavaria."M. de Bavaria understands everything?" inquired William."He is quite ready, sire.""So are we," said the King. "I should think M. de Villeroy would make the attack in an hour or so—the dawn is breaking, is it not?""The sun was just rising, sire, above the river, as I rode from the camp of His Highness.""Yet the light is very faint here. Will you, Mynheer, light the other lamp?" The King spoke gently, but he had quite regained that command of himself which rendered his demeanour so stately and impressive.M. van Keppel obeyed and was then retiring, but William, who was seated by the table, asked him to stay."I may have another message for you," he added.The officer bowed.William rang the little hand-bell near him and a valet instantly appeared from the curtained inner portion of the tent. The King lived very simply when at the camp. He now asked for wine, and when it was brought made M. van Keppel drink with him, which honour caused the young soldier to redden with pleasure."I hear," said William, "that the garrisons of Dixmuyde and Deynse have been sent prisoners to France. That breaketh the treaty we made for the exchange of captives—treachery and insolence, it seemeth, are the only methods of France.""Treachery and insolence will not for ever prevail," answered Joost van Keppel, in his sweet, ardent voice. "The fortunes of Your Majesty begin to overleap the arrogance of France.""There will be a great battle to-day," remarked the King quietly and irrelevantly.The powerful summer dawn, strengthening with every moment, penetrated the tent and mingled with the beams of the two lamps. The King sat in the crossed lights; his gentleman knelt before him, fastening the great gilt spurs to his close riding-boots. He looked at Joost van Keppel gravely and kindly; his face, pale in its proper complexion, was tanned darkly by the Lowland sun; his eyes were extraordinarily bright and flashing, but languid lidded and heavily shadowed beneath; his large, mobile mouth was set firmly; his long, thick curls hung over his black coat, across which showed the blue ribbon and star that he had not removed since he had reviewed his forces yesterday."Mynheer," he said to M. van Keppel. "Lift the flap and look out——"The young Dutchman obeyed and a full sunbeam struck across the dim artificial light."A fine day," remarked William; he was ever fond of sun and warmth.As M. van Keppel stood so, holding back the canvas and gazing over the tents that spread across the plain of the Meuse, a gentleman, armed on back and breast with a gold inlaid cuirass, wrapped in a black silk mantle and carrying a hat covered with white plumes, rode up, dismounted, and entered the King's tent without a word of ceremony.M. van Keppel bowed very respectfully; it was the Earl of Portland.On seeing the King alone with the young officer his face darkened; he answered the King's greeting of unconscious affection with stern brusqueness."There are letters from England—I met the messenger," he said, and laid the packet on the table by the wine-glasses.Joost van Keppel was quick to see the instant shock that William quivered under, and to perceive the cause of it. When last the King had been at the war not a post had arrived from London without a letter from the Queen. The young man thought Portland had acted with some harshness; he came forward and said impulsively—"Letters from England, my lord, are not of such importance that they cannot wait till after the battle."This was to Portland incredible impertinence; he stared at the flushed, generous face with bitterly angry eyes; but William seemed relieved."Yes, let the news wait," he said, and rose."If this was known in London what would they say?" broke out Portland."How can it be known in London when I have none here but friends?" answered the King."I thank Your Majesty for including me with M. van Keppel as your friend," flashed Portland.The King looked at him sharply, then from one man to another."Mynheer van Keppel," he said, "you will return to M. de Bavaria and tell him to be in readiness for a message from us."The officer bowed with great deference and sweetness to his master and the Earl, and instantly retired."Will you not read those letters?" asked Portland, in no way appeased.William gave him a glance between reproach and wonder, broke the seals, and looked over the letters."Nothing," he said, when he laid them down, "save that some sugar ships from Barbadoes have been taken by the French, that there is great uneasiness on the Stock Exchange.""Nothing of M. de Leeds?" asked Portland."No," said the King; he was standing up and his gentleman buckled him into his light cuirass; "but I will not have him touched—he is punished enough." He added, with some contempt, "Is Leeds so much worse than the herd that he should be hunted from it?""A corrupt man," answered Portland gloomily; "but you were always tender with him."William was silent. His obligation to Leeds consisted entirely of that nobleman's devotion to the Queen; he thought that Portland knew this and despised him for such sentiment in politics. Neither spoke any more on the subject."M. Montague is a clever man," remarked the King, after a little; "another pensioner of my Lord Dorset. How goeth the other, your secretary?""Ah, Prior," replied the Earl, "well enough, but I think him an atheist. His poetry is full of heathen gods, and when I probed him on the subject he was not satisfactory in his answers, but well enough.""Put my Lord Sarum on to converting him," said William drily; "but I should not take much account of his poetry."The King's gentleman went into the back part of the tent and Portland instantly addressed his master with great heat."Sir, I must tell you that it is a source of great wonder to all that you should so encourage, favour, and caress a worthless young rake like M. van Keppel—a mere hanger-on to court favour; your dignity suffers by it——"The King interrupted."Are you jealous—you—of him?" he asked mournfully."I have enough to make me jealous," was the hot answer, "when I see the creature of such as my Lord Sunderland creep into your affections."The King answered in gentle, dignified tones, without a touch of anger or resentment—"You are indeed wrong. I like M. van Keppel for himself—I find him sweet and intelligent, a willing servant—and I have not too many. But you know, even while you speak, that nothing could come between me and you.""I think he hath come between us," said Portland sternly; "during the whole campaign he hath hardly left your side. I believe you even consult him as to your actions—he!—why, the whole camp knoweth his reputation. I could tell some tales——"The King broke in."I'll hear no scandals. You know that of me. If we are to listen to tale-bearing there is not one of us safe. If I favoured any man do you not think there would be tales against him? But I did not think to find you leaning on gossip."He still spoke with an utter calm; but Portland took his words heavily."If you choose to reprimand me——" he began."Forgive me," said the King instantly. "I thought you would understand. Indeed, forgive me. I would do anything in the world not to vex you."The return of the gentleman with William's gloves and cloak cut short the conversation. The King fastened his sword-belt over his shoulder and adjusted the weapon; as he took up his hat with the long black feathers a magnificent Brandenburgher officer entered, followed by M. Dyckfelt."Your Majesty," said the Dutchman quietly, "M. de Villeroy hath retreated in the night—leaving M. de Boufflers to his fate."The Brandenburgher went on one knee and handed William a dispatch from the commander of the scouts, who had seen the last vanishing rearguard of the French.The King showed no emotion of any kind."Count," he said to the officer, "you will go to M. de Bavaria and request him to make an immediate assault on Namur."When the officer had withdrawn, with profound obeisance, William turned to Portland."I will ask you to go to M. de Boufflers and demand a surrender. Tell him that there is no further hope for him from M. de Villeroy, and that if he wisheth to spare his garrison he must capitulate to-day."Portland bowed gravely and turned away. William looked after him keenly, then took up his perspective glass, his gloves, and his baton, and left the tent.CHAPTER IVA MAN'S STRENGTHM. de Boufflers refused to surrender; he was a Maréchal de France, he had still many thousand men, including M. Megrigny, the engineer esteemed second only to M. de Vauban, and the castle was deemed impregnable. The assault was fixed for one in the afternoon. The King of England, the Elector of Bavaria, the Landgrave of Hesse, other German potentates and the officers of their staff gathered on the rocky promontory immediately below the ramparts of the citadel; before them rose the castle ringed with walls, batteries, palisades, fosses, dykes, and traverses, and set back two miles or more in elaborate ramparts and outworks.The allies had formed a complete circumvallation round the huge fortress, and had opened their trenches at the very foot of the rock which M. de Vauban had fortified with such deadly skill.The day was extraordinarily hot and cloudless; the sun, being now just overhead, blazed with equal light on the ruined town, the lofty castle, on counterscarp, glacis, and half-moon, on the trenches, the defences of wattled sticks lined with sandbags, on the distant spreading encampment of the allies, on the still more distant sparkle of the Meuse, which glittered across the great plain and on the walls of the Abbey of Salsines.It shone, too, on a thousand flags, a thousand squads of men moving with bayonets and matchlocks set to the attack, and gleamed in the armour of the little group of gentlemen who were directing the operations, and sometimes sent a long ray of burning light from their perspective glasses as they turned them on the castle or the approaching regiments of their own troop as they defiled through the town.It had been arranged that the assault was to be made in four places at once, by the Dutch, Brandenburghers, Bavarians, and English severally; the first three were tried and veteran troops, the fourth, however, consisted of recruits who were seeing their first campaign and had never been under fire before; the best English troops had marched to encounter Villeroy, and had not been summoned to the attack.The King turned his glasses on the trenches where these regiments waited; they were under the command of John Cutts, as brave and gallant an officer as ever breathed.William put down his glasses and looked up at the grim citadel."This is a severe test for them," he remarked.The Electoral Prince was taking a bet from the exultant Kohorn that they would enter Namur by the 31st of August. William laughed."I am sorry that Your Highness should put money on our failure," he said. "I hear that the betting in London is greatly in our favour.""This is a matter of dates, Your Majesty," answered M. de Bavaria. "I say 'No' only to August the 31st.""I am glad M. de Kohorn is so confident," said William graciously to the great engineer.M. de Hesse, who wore on his finger a watch in a great ring of brilliants, remarked that the time was near ten minutes to one; M. de Bavaria bowed profoundly and galloped off to direct his own men in person; the King looked keenly round to see that none of his servants were lurking in the line of fire. Interference was almost as unendurable to him as cowardice; more than once during the siege he had been exasperated into horsewhipping some daring footmen or valet out of the trenches. During the assault of July the 27th he had been considerably vexed to see M. Godfrey, one of the directors of the new Bank of England, among his officers, and had severely reprimanded him for his presence in so dangerous a position."But I run no more risk than you, sire," M. Godfrey had protested.The King's answer and the sequel were long remembered."I, sir," he replied, "may safely trust to God, since I am doing my duty in being here, while you——"The sentence remained unfinished, for a French cannon shot laid M. Godfrey dead at the King's side. William had hoped that this would prove a lesson to useless meddlers, but even since he had been provoked by various people who had business at the camp, and who strayed into the trenches to get a view of real fighting, often with no conception of the danger of the slow dropping bombs and bullets.But this afternoon the King's eagle eyes were satisfied that the works were clear of sightseers; it had been fairly well spread abroad that this assault would be, beyond experience, terrible, and those whose duty did not take them to the front were well in the rear.M. de Hesse and the other Germans having galloped off to their posts, the King remained alone with his staff, midway between the ramparts that were to be attacked and the English trenches, full in the cross-line of fire, and motionless and conspicuous as a target on the little jutting shelf of rock; his officers were a little way behind, and his figure was completely outlined against the blue gap of sun-filled air behind the rock slope.He rode a huge grey Flemish horse, dark as basalt and as smooth—very lightly trapped with red leather linked with silver gilt—that he managed as well as a man can. He had always been renowned for his consummate horsemanship, and this great beast, that had taken two footmen to hold in before he mounted, he held delicately with one hand on the reins with such a perfect control, that the creature was utterly motionless on the narrow ledge of slippery rock.The hot air was full of different distant and subdued sounds—the rattle of the guns, the clink of the matchlocks striking the cobbles of the town below, the tramp of feet, the neighing of horses, and, occasionally, the crowing of a cock on some farm outside Namur.The King sat with his reins loose, holding in his right hand his baton that he rested against his hip. He was intently watching the English trenches.The clocks of the churches in Namur struck one; instantly a loud report and a jet of flame came from the trenches below; two barrels of gunpowder had been blown up as a signal for the attack.Before the smoke had cleared, all the minor sounds were silenced by the steady beat of drums and kettledrums, and the King perceived the Grenadiers marching from behind their defences and earthworks steadily towards the ramparts of Namur—these were the men of Cutt's own regiment. They were immediately followed by the four new battalions. They came on steadily, in good order, with their bright, unspoilt colours in their midst, their colonels riding before them. The King could discern the slender figure of John Cutts marching on foot before the Grenadiers with his drawn sword in his hand.There was no sign from the castle. The English leapt, man after man, the last deep trench of their own earthworks, and suddenly, at a word from their leader, whose voice came faintly to the King's ears, broke into a run and dashed up the slope at the foot of the rock, and full at the first wall of the French fortifications.Instantly the batteries of the garrison opened a terrible fire, and a confused echo to their thunder told that the other three divisions of the confederates were meeting a like reception.The English kept on; the little body of the Grenadiers, with the four battalions supporting them and at the head of all John Cutts, climbed the face of the rock with no sign of disorder.The King wheeled his horse round to face them, and his brilliant eyes never left their ranks.The French commenced fire from the guns behind their first palisade, which swept the ranks of the advancing English with deadly effect.Almost every officer of the Grenadiers fell on the hot, bare rock. The drums began to give a disconnected sound, the colours wavered, but the men pressed on, with Cutts still running before them and the recruits doggedly behind them.The King sent one of his officers with orders for the English batteries to open fire as soon as the breach had been made.There was, in the space of a few seconds, hardly an officer left among the English, the colonels, captains, and lieutenants, who had dashed forward to encourage their men, were lying scattered about the hill-side—patches of scarlet and steel—with their riderless horses running frantically back towards the camp.Still Cutts came on. The smoke was thick about him, but the King could see him clearly as he came every moment nearer. The Grenadiers had gained a firm footing on the ledge of rock beneath the palisade, and were about to hurl themselves against it. The cannonade was now supplemented by a storm of bullets. Cutts gave a shout, raised his sword, and pitched to the ground, shot through the head, while the thinned ranks of the Grenadiers rolled backwards down the rocks.The King uttered a passionate exclamation; a bomb, cast from the castle, burst near him, and his horse reared frantically at the explosion. When he had quieted the animal and the smoke had cleared, he saw two of the Grenadiers coming towards him supporting John Cutts between them. As they reached a deep, natural gully that cleft the rock, one fell and rolled down the precipice; the other caught his officer by the arm and swung him across the chasm; the King galloped up to them."Is my lord slain?" he asked.The wounded man lifted his brown eyes and laughed. Blood blotched the left side of his face and ran through the bright brown English locks."Why, no, sir," he answered."I am glad of that," said the King. "But your men are being repulsed——""God help me—not for long!" cried my lord, and dashed the blood out of his eyes, and with that movement fainted."Call up my surgeon," commanded William to one of his officers. Lord Cutts was carried out of the firing line, and the King again directed his attention to the English, who, leaderless, were nevertheless dashing forward, though without order or method, sheer against the French fire."It is too much for them," muttered William.This wild charge was suddenly checked by a deep precipice blown in the rock by underground powder magazines; the raw soldiers stood helpless, baffled. The air was of a continuous redness; the half-naked French gunners could be seen, running in and out of their vaulted galleries and crouching, behind the black shape of the guns; flying fragments of shell, masonry, and rock fell among the leaderless English, who hesitated, gave way, and retreated down the bloody slope they had gained, each rank falling back on the other in confusion, while a shout of triumph rose from the fiery ramparts of Namur.The King urged his beautiful horse up the zigzag path. The bullets flattened themselves on the rocks about him with a dull, pattering sound; the horse laid back its ears and showed the scarlet of its nostrils; the King, with infinite skill and gentleness, brought it to a higher ridge where he could better survey the heights. The English, rolling back beneath him, looked up and saw him though the smoke, the sun darting broken rays off the star on his breast. He took off his hat covered with black plumes and waved it to them to encourage them to come on. A ragged cheer broke from them; they plunged forward again, but a terrific fire swept them back with half their number fallen. At this moment the King saw Lord Cutts, hatless and with a bandaged head, running up towards the glacis.William rode up to him. The red fire was about them as if it had been the colour of the atmosphere."My lord," said the King, reining up his horse, "they cannot do it."A young man in a splendid uniform came riding through the strong smelling smoke."Sire," he said, saluting, "the Bavarians are giving way—their general hath fallen——"William spoke swiftly to the Englishman."Can you rally your men to the assistance of the Bavarians, my lord? 'Tis hopeless to attempt to make a breach here."John Cutts smiled up at his master; he had to shout to make his voice heard through the rattle of the cannonade—"'Tis done, Your Majesty!"His gallant figure slipped, like a hound from the leash, into the smoke, towards where the English Footguards were retreating, and William, pointing with his baton to where he rode that his officers might follow him, swept round the ramparts to where the Bavarians wavered before the fire of the French. Regiment after regiment had hurled in vain against the palisades, the ditches and clefts were choked with corpses, and in every squad of men a great lane was torn every time the French gunners fired their pieces, while the Dragoons stood on the glacis, sword in hand, ready to cut down whoever should touch the palisade."They are very determined," remarked William calmly, glancing up at the red-hot line of fire bursting from the French batteries; "but so am I."As he spoke a bullet passed through his hair so close to his cheek that he felt the warm whizz of it; and another, almost simultaneously, tore through the ends of his scarf."For God's sake, sire," cried the officer near him, "this is certain death."But the King took no heed of him; his sparkling eyes were fastened on the faltering ranks of Bavaria, who were being borne, steadily but surely, down the slopes, leaving dead behind them, their commander, and most of their officers.At the very moment when it seemed that they had hopelessly lost ground, John Cutts came running up with the colours of the Grenadiers in one hand and his sword in the other, behind him two hundred of the English recruits whom he had rallied from the retreat.The Bavarians, encouraged by this help, took heart and came forward again and began climbing up the rock; but Cutts and his English dashed ahead of them right into the cannon fire, forced their way through the palisade, and engaged in a hand to hand fight with the gunners and Dragoons, who were driven back from their defences and hurled over their own ramparts on to the bayonets of the Bavarians below. In a few moments the English had captured the battery, swung the guns round and directed them at the Castle. With a shout the Bavarians dashed through the breach in the wall and, climbing over corpses of men and horses, poured into the enemy's lines.The King watched them as they scaled ditches and trenches and palisade, then made a detour round the fire-swept face of the rock to the point the Dutch had been ordered to attack. Splendid soldiers, splendidly commanded, they had already gained the position and with very little loss; the French gunners lay in torn and mangled heaps behind their pieces, which the Dutch were engaged in turning on the garrison.William now gave orders that his batteries were to be brought in play from every available position, both on the ramparts gained and from every rock and out-work in the possession of the allies. He himself rode through the broken wall and took up his position inside the French palisades, where his horse could scarcely find a footfall for the dead and dying. The air was so full of powder smoke that the walls and turrets of the castle appeared to hang as in a great fog with no visible foundations; the crack of musketry was incessant, and little threads of flame ran across the dark heavy vapour; fragments of rock and wall rolled continually down the slope—dislodged by bombs bursting or the explosion of barrels of gunpowder. But this was as nothing to the cannonade. When the combined batteries of the allies opened on Namur, the oldest soldier could remember no such fire—it was a bombardment such as had never been known in war. The French gunners dropped one after another before they could put their fuses to their pieces, and were obliged to take refuge in their underground galleries; the roar was unceasing, and the continual flames lit up the rocks, the chasms, the bastions with as steady and awful a glare as if the world was on fire.A body of Dragoons made a gallant sally out on to the glacis, but were swept down to a man before they had advanced a hundred yards. The Dutch, under cover of the French palisades, picked off with musket shot every Frenchman who appeared within range, portions of the walls and curtains began to fall in, the sacking and wattles, put up to catch the bullets, caught fire and flared up through the smoke.The King could scarcely see his own staff-officers for the glare and harsh blinding vapour. His ears were filled with the lamentations of the mangled and delirious wretches who lay scattered about the glacis, and the sharp screams of the wounded, riderless horses who galloped in their death agony across the ramparts and hurled themselves from the precipices beneath. The King caressed his own animal; the insensibility of his profession had not overcome his love of horses. He never could look with ease at the sufferings of these gallant creatures; for the rest, he was utterly unmoved. He turned his face towards the fires that made many a veteran wince, and there was not the slightest change in his composure save that he was more than ordinarily cheerful, and showed, perhaps, more animation than he had done since the death of his wife. Having satisfied himself that the Dutch had silenced all the French batteries at this point, he rode to the demi-bastion where the Brandenburghers fought the Dragoons in a terrible battle which was resulting in the French being driven back on to the fire of their own guns. Here he drew up his horse on the edge of a fosse that had a cuvette in the middle of it with a covered way along it, from which the French were still firing from platoons and muskets.The King thrust his baton through the folds of his scarf and laid his hand on the tasseled pistol in his holster; he guided his horse commonly and by choice with his left hand, for his right arm had been shot through twice, at St. Neff and the Boyne, and was less easily fatigued with the sword than the reins. He now looked about him and perceived that his way to the Brandenburghers was completely barred by some traverses to intercept fire, besides by the fosse from the gazons of which the soldiers were firing, and, on the glacis which slopes before it, several gunners were hauling a battery into place; not far behind them a fierce fire was being maintained from a projecting javelin.The French, lurking in the cuvette, saw the King, and, recognising him by his great star, proceeded to take deliberate aim. He looked round for his staff, whom his impetuous advance had completely out-distanced, then galloped his horse right along the counter-scarp in full range of the enemy's fire. A dozen muskets were aimed at him; he seemed not to notice them, but set his horse at a little fosse that crossed his path, and leapt over the dead French and bloody gazons that filled it. The ground on the other side was so cut, dissected, and strewn with boulders and fragments of rock, that the quivering horse paused, frightened by the shower of bullets, and, not perceiving a foothold, the King slipped out of the saddle without leaving go of the reins, ran along by the horse's head, guiding him through the debris, and mounted again without touching the saddle, a well-known feat of the riding school. He was now almost up to the Brandenburghers, who raised a great shout as they saw him galloping up through the smoke. He rode along the front of their ranks and glanced up at the French crouching on their earth-works waiting for the assault.The King drew his sword."We must get nearer than this," he said to the officer in command. He set spurs to his horse, and, wheeling round, charged straight at the lines of France, the Brandenburghers after him with an irresistible rush.An officer of Dragoons rose up from his comrades and struck up with his sword at the figure on the huge grey charger. The King leant out of the saddle, parried the thrust with his weapon. The Frenchman, hit by a bullet in the lungs, rolled over with his face towards the citadel; the last thing he saw on earth was the King of England high on the distant heights of Namur with the column of Brandenburghers behind him and before him, through the glare the tattered banner of the Bourbons waving from the keep.
CHAPTER II
THE KING IS NEEDED
Sunderland remained by the silent King, on whom he kept his clear, strong glance; Portland and the beautiful Romney went into the antechamber, where they could speak freely.
"What charlatan's trick is this?" said the Earl, in a low, angry voice. "Who is this officer from Flanders? It is strange to hear my Lord Sunderland mouth these godly sentiments—he, a man merely fighting for a place——"
"Yet he spoke," admitted Romney, "and we were silent. And he roused the King. If it be mere self-interest it had the effect of sincerity."
Portland made no answer; he knew that he could not have spoken to William with the quiet tact and insinuating boldness that Sunderland had, but he knew also that he had served and loved the King in a way Sunderland could probably not even understand, and his heart swelled at what he considered calculated tricks to goad the King into filling a position where he might be useful to my lord; in this Portland's rigid honesty was unfair to Sunderland, who, though he was knavish sometimes in his means, was seldom knavish in his ends, and perhaps strove for as high an ideal as William Bentinck, though by different ways.
Lord Romney spoke again.
"After all, what doth it matter—if the King could be drawn out of his sloth?"
Portland's fair face was still dark and sombre; he rather despised the Englishman; he rather regretted the day when he had come to England to take up these perilous honours among a people who detested him. Romney glanced at him, gave a little shrug, and returned to the King's room; his love for William was of a different quality, his code was easier; he was thankful that the King should, under any circumstances, recover his balance, and he, Henry Sidney, could see no great dishonour in the public actions of my Lord Sunderland, and regarded him from no such stern standpoint as did William Bentinck.
He found the King had moved and now sat beside the bureau piled with the untouched correspondence. Sunderland was still at the window looking out at the inky line of the river between the white banks and the slow progress of a barge with dull yellow sails that struggled with a sluggish wind past Whitehall stairs.
Romney went over to him.
"You have done much, my lord," he whispered warmly; "we must all be grateful."
Sunderland turned his faded, powdered face from the window.
"He will finish the campaign yet, I think," he answered.
The Lord Keeper and Lord Portland re-entered the room, and with them was a third gentleman, who went at once to Lord Sunderland, like one waiting for directions; that nobleman took him gently by the arm and drew him towards the King, who had not yet looked up.
"Sire," he said, "Your Majesty knoweth M. van Keppel, who hath been some years in your service."
The King raised his eyes and saw the splendid figure of a young Dutch officer standing before him with great humility and respect.
"Yes, I remember you, Mynheer," he murmured, with a faint animation, and speaking his own language.
Sunderland stepped back and the young soldier went on one knee.
"Are you come from Flanders?" asked William.
"Yes, sire."
"From my Cousin Vaudemont's force?"
"Yes, sire."
"What is your business with us?" asked the King faintly.
Joost van Keppel rose.
"My business is more than I dare broach," he said humbly.
The King looked at him kindly.
"I shall not be angry." He exerted himself to graciousness, and his glance seemed to rest with a wistful kind of pleasure on the youth.
Certainly Joost van Keppel had an appearance well calculated to win the hearts of those who looked upon him, for a mingled sweetness and ardour made a kind of radiance in his face, as if he gave forth the light of hope and courage. He was tall and robust, of a bright fairness, with dark brown eyes of an extraordinary power and gentleness, a smiling, strong mouth, and a fine carriage of nobility in his port; his rich-coloured brown hair hung in full curls over his gay and vivid uniform; there was a great quantity of gold on his sword belt and in his shoulder knots; in the firelight he glittered from head to foot with a changing light of gold; but despite his youthful strength and the magnificence of his appointments the prevailing impression of his person was that of a gentle, soft, and winning sweetness that sat very graciously on the unconscious demeanour of a noble soldier.
"Were you not a page to us?" asked the King.
"Yes, Your Majesty. I was with those who had the honour to come to England with Your Majesty," answered M. van Keppel. "Your Majesty showed me great kindness in promoting me."
He had a gentle and charming address, an eager air of deference wholly pleasing.
"I had forgotten," said the King. "So you have come from Flanders?"
He gave a little sigh.
"Oh, sire!" cried Joost van Keppel, "I am come to tell Your Majesty that we need you!"
The King sat up and looked at Portland and the Englishmen.
"Ah!" he said, in an angry, broken voice. "What device is this you put upon me? No use, my lords, no use; this back will bear no more burdens."
"Absolve me," cried Portland. "I know nothing of this——"
"A trick," continued the King—"a trick to spur me. What are you, Mynheer, to come and tell me of my duty?"
van Keppel threw himself again on his knees.
"The King is needed," he repeated, with great passion. "I love Your Majesty enough to dare tell you so. Sire, the Republic crieth out to Your Majesty!"
"Who told you to speak thus?" asked William bitterly.
"M. Heinsius," answered the young soldier instantly.
At that name the King changed countenance.
"M. Heinsius," he muttered; then he fixed M. van Keppel with a keen look and added—"Why did he choose you?"
"Because Your Majesty used to have some kindness for me," was the reply, given with a frank modesty; "because no man living could revere Your Majesty more than I do."
"I am not used to be so courted," said William sternly. "You have too ready a tongue. M. Heinsius may find another messenger."
He rose and would have turned away, but the young man, still on his knees, caught the King's stiff silk coat skirts.
"Will the Prince of Orange ever refuse to listen to the appeal of the United Provinces?" he asked, with singular sweetness and force.
William looked down at him, hesitated, then said faintly—
"Rise, Mynheer. I am not your King. As for the Republic"—he sank into the great wand-bottomed chair again and said abruptly—"how think they the campaign will go?"
M. van Keppel got to his feet and stood his full splendid height.
"M. de Vaudemont saith, sire, that if Your Majesty would come to lead us there is no question that the allies might do more than they have ever done." He paused a moment, then continued, "M. de Boufflers is guarding the banks of the Sambre; a great army is collected from the Lys to the Scheldt. M. de Villeroy, they say, is to fix his headquarters at Tournay; but the allies are ready to take the field—operations could begin next month. M. de Vaudemont and M. Heinsius have written so to Your Majesty."
William glanced at the pile of unopened correspondence; he flushed and looked again at M. van Keppel.
"Sire," said the young soldier proudly, "there is Fleurus, Steinkirk, and Landen to avenge. I rode past Namur a week ago and saw the Bourbon lilies flying above the keep."
"Namur!" repeated William, and his eyes widened.
The loss of Namur had been the worst disaster of all the disasters of the war. William had perhaps never known such humiliation as when the great fortress fell before his eyes.
"M. de Vauban," continued Joost van Keppel, "hath added to the fortifications of M. Kohorn and declared the town impregnable; they have fixed a vaunting notice over the gate defying us to retake it—but, sire, it could be done."
"There spoke a soldier!" flashed the King. "That spirit in my men wrested back the three Provinces in '74."
"That spirit is alive still, sire—they who drove back the French then could take Namur now."
William looked at Sunderland.
"Would your English be pleased," he asked, "if we took Namur?"
"There is nothing would so delight the people as a great victory in the Low Countries," answered that nobleman.
"So they defy us," said the King. "And Namur is even more important than it was; it must be the strongest fortress in Europe. Certainly it is a prize worth while."
van Keppel spoke again.
"M. de Maine is to be sent with M. de Villeroy."
"So they send M. de Maine to fight us, do they?" exclaimed the King. "We should be the equal of M. de Maine."
He looked kindly and steadily at M. van Keppel.
"My child," he said, "you are a good patriot, and that is the best thing in the world to be. We must give you a regiment. We hope to see you in Flanders."
He smiled, and the young soldier, who had been taught all his life to regard him as the first of living men, bowed, overwhelmed, with tears of pleasure in his eyes.
William gave him his hand and Joost van Keppel kissed it reverently, then, at a delicate sign from Sunderland, retired, followed by the Lord Keeper.
The King sat very quiet, looking into the fire. Portland came and stood behind his chair.
"Will you go out to the war?" he asked.
"Yes," said William simply.
Sunderland darted a sideway look at Portland, who flushed.
"I am indeed glad of that," he said sternly.
"That is a gallant youngster," said the King. "I ever liked him. I will keep him about me; he is a pleasant creature."
"He is," replied Portland; "a rakehelly good-for-nought, as every one knows."
William smiled faintly; he was the most tolerant of men, and had no interest in those faults that did not cross his designs.
"I have loved rakes before," he said, and looked at my Lord Romney.
The two Englishmen laughed a little, but Portland answered, with some anger—
"He is a young prodigal with more debts than wits; you should not have given him your hand."
The King did not resent his friend's brusque address, he answered quietly, in his weak voice—
"It would give me pleasure to pay some of those debts."
Sunderland softly put in a remark.
"M. van Keppel is the most obliging, sweet-tempered gentleman in the world, and one most devoted to Your Majesty."
"And a great friend of your lordship," said Portland, with a cold haughtiness. He perceived, as he thought, a design on the part of Sunderland and Somers, with perhaps Marlborough behind them, to put up a rival to share with him the King's affections, which had been wholly his for near their joint lives, and he could not contain his scorn and resentment, nor was he assuaged by the obvious unconsciousness of the King.
Romney made some attempt to shift the subject; he came forward in the easy gracious way habitual to him.
"Your Majesty will be soon for Flanders, then?" he asked. "It is a noble resolution."
William rose.
"I think it is my duty," he answered. He took up the plans of Greenwich Palace from the window-sill. "I think it is all there is for me to do. I thank you, my lords," he added, with dignity, "for having so long borne with me."
He gave a little bow and left them to enter the inner room. As the door closed on him Sunderland smiled at the other two.
"Have I not succeeded?" he demanded. "He is roused, he will go out to the war, I even think that he will take Namur."
"You are very clever, my lord," admitted Romney, "and surely you have done the King a great service."
Portland broke in hotly—
"You pulled the strings of your puppet very skilfully; you know how to deal with the weaknesses of men, but those who are the King his friends do not love to see him practised on for party purposes."
"I stand for more than party purposes," answered Sunderland, with sudden haughtiness. "My cause is the King his cause—that is sufficient—and for the rest, my deeds are not answerable at the tribunal of your virtues, my lord."
Portland came a step nearer to him.
"You scarce believe in God—you are little better than an atheist—yet all these terms are glib upon your tongue, and your tool, a shallow popinjay, can prate very nicely of sacred things. You are not sincere—you care for nothing—for no one."
Romney made a little movement as if he would have stepped between the two earls, but Sunderland answered unmoved—
"I have my policy too much at heart to jeopardize it by expounding it myself. I fear that my principles would suffer by my lack of eloquence."
"Your principles!" cried Portland. "Your policy—what is it?"
"Too precious a thing for me to risk on a turn of the tongue, I repeat, my lord. I speak in actions. Watch them and know my answer."
CHAPTER III
ATTAINMENT
It was the commencement of the campaign of 1695; as yet nothing had been done either side. The men at Versailles who managed the war had concentrated their forces in Flanders, and there the allies had gathered to meet them; the Elector of Bavaria and other princes of the Empire were encamped with the Germans guarding Brussels; the Brandenburghers and Spanish lay at Huy; the Dutch and British under the command of the King of England, at Ghent.
The French waited. Villeroy was not Luxembourg; he had no genius for command, and he was hampered by the presence of the Duc de Maine, his pupil and his superior, who showed no aptitude for war, not even common courage. Boufflers watched the King of England, the meaning of whose marches he could not fathom; his oblique moves might cover a design on either Ypres or Dunkirk; for a month they continued, and neither Villeroy nor Boufflers suspected an attempt on Namur.
But on June 28th, the King, the Elector, and the Brandenburghers advanced with a swift concerted movement straight on Namur with such suddenness and rapidity that M. de Boufflers had scarcely time to throw himself into the fortress before the three divisions of the allied army closed round the walls of the town.
The Prince de Vaudemont had been left in Flanders to watch Villeroy. That general believed he could wipe out this force and then drive the allies from Namur—he said as much in his dispatches to Versailles; but M. de Vaudemont effected a masterly retreat into Ghent, and the easiness of the French Court was disturbed, especially as it was whispered that an action had been avoided owing to the poltroonery of M. de Maine.
M. de Kohorn, the principal engineer of the allies, had set his heart on the capture of the fortress that he had seen taken by his great master and rival, M. de Vauban. The Frenchman had since added considerably to the fortifications, and rendered Namur the strongest fortress in the world, and M. de Kohorn was spurred by professional pride into a desperate attempt to make good his failure of three years ago.
A week after the trenches were opened the English foot guards gained the outworks on the Brussels side; on the seventeenth the first counterscarp of the town was captured; on the twentieth the Germans gained Vauban's line of fortifications cut in the rock from the Sambre to the Meuse and the great sluice or waterworks; on the twenty-third the Dutch and English made conquest of the second counterscarp, and the town capitulated, Boufflers and the garrison retiring into the citadel, leaving behind them about fifteen hundred wounded men to be cared for by the allies.
On the 6th of August the allies, led by the King of England, marched into Namur by the St. Nicolas Gate, and prepared for the last and terrible assault on the garrison.
Villeroy, who had meantime taken the petty towns of Dixmuyde and Deynse, endeavoured to induce the King to raise the siege of Namur by menacing Brussels, which he shelled and greatly damaged; but in vain, for William was not to be lured into relinquishing his prey, and Villeroy, after two days, marched on to Enghien, and, having collected the greater number of the French troops in the Netherlands, amounting in all to over eighty thousand men, advanced to the relief of Namur.
But the Prince de Vaudemont having now joined the allied forces it was considered that they were strong enough to face Villeroy, and at the same time continue the siege of the castle and hold the town.
On the fifteenth the French host fired a salute of ninety guns as a haughty promise of relief to Boufflers; from then to the nineteenth the two mighty armies faced each other, neither making any movement. Europe held its breath, Paris and London, The Hague and Vienna, Brussels, still half prostrate from French fires, Rome and Madrid waited in almost unbearable suspense for the result of the promised and, it seemed, inevitable combat between the two finest and largest armies that had ever met on European soil.
Boufflers burnt fire signals every night on his watch-towers, which urged haste to Villeroy, who still lay beyond the mighty ring of the confederate army who incessantly stormed the citadel.
On the nineteenth the King rose at dawn, got his forces under arms, and rode from post to post surveying his troops and watching the enemy; he was in the saddle from four in the morning till nightfall, and tired out three horses. When he returned to his tent that had been pitched in the encampment on the west of the town near the Abbey of Salsines, there was no portion of his vast army that he had not personally inspected.
He dined alone; the Elector of Bavaria and the other German princes being in immediate command of the troops that were actually storming Namur.
He expected that Villeroy would attack him as soon as it was light, and his preparations were complete.
He had an interview with M. Dyckfelt, who was with the army as representative of the States General, and was then alone, it being about ten of the clock and a hot summer night.
All the light in the tent came from a silver lamp suspended from the cross-poles, which gave an uncertain and wavering illumination. The King sat in the shadows; on the little table beside him was his sword, his pistols, and a map of Namur.
He was thinking of twenty-three years ago when, in his early youth, he had first led an army against France; his entire force then had numbered little more than the servants, footmen, and attendants in his retinue now. All Europe had been against him, half his country in the hands of the enemy, the home government in the control of the opposing factions. The man of forty-four looked back at the achievements of the youth of twenty-one with an extraordinary sense—almost of wonder.
He recalled with painful vividness how Buckingham and Arlington had come to offer him the shameful terms of France and England, their scorn at his rejection of the bitter bargain, and how even William Bentinck, gay and thoughtless then, had despaired. Hopeless, indeed, it had seemed; there had not been one to believe in him; but he had never doubted his own destiny.
And now he was justified in what he had undertaken, at least that, whatever sorrows, humiliations, and disappointments had darkened his way the outward semblance was of great and steady success.
The Prince, who had been little better than a State prisoner and a pawn in the politics of Europe, heir to a ruined family and leader of a despairing nation, was now a King, directing half Europe, with one of the mightiest armies the world had seen behind him. Of the monarchs who had offered to silence his despised defiance with dishonourable terms one was now dead, and he held his kingdoms; and the other, who then had threatened to overrun the world, was now with difficulty holding his own against a coalition that included all the principal countries of Europe.
Not without concession, infinite patience, endless trouble, and long waiting had William got these allies together. For the support and the millions of England he was paying a price none but himself could gauge the bitterness of. To Scandinavia he had had to sacrifice some of his cherished maritime privileges; Spain, the most provoking of the confederates, had been kept by much expenditure of art and money; the German princes had been held together by a title, a garter, a subsidy, an honour, a promise of a prospective dignity. Now, before the walls of Namur, the man whose genius and indomitable courage had, during twenty years, toiled towards this end, might feel that he was beginning to taste his reward.
He was facing France, equal to equal; he was feared and respected throughout the world. The Protestant faith, threatened with extinction by Louis, he had placed on a basis from which, as long as any faith lasted, it could never be displaced. His country was free, and prosperous, and foremost among nations again; the power of France was already too crippled for there to be longer any fear of her upsetting the balance of power.
The English fleet, useless since Elizabeth, again was mistress of the seas. Russell passed unmolested between Spain and Italy, defied the remnant of the French fleet imprisoned in Toulon port, and dared the whole of the Mediterranean seaboard. Berkeley passed unmolested along the French coast, burnt Granville, shelled Calais and Dunkirk, and kept the English flag high and undisputed above the Channel.
The man who had been the boy who had once passionately resolved to do these things found the realization of them different indeed to those bright imaginings. Attainment of fame, honour, power, success could not give more than a faint remembrance of the throb of exultation the youthful Prince had felt when he, penniless, unsupported, hampered in every possible way, had first flung his challenge to overwhelming odds. Then there had been everything to do; but ardent courage and unspoilt faith had gilded difficulties, and the heroic pride of youth had smiled at obstacles; now the loss of a love the boy had never dreamt of had made all things else appear small to the man.
Twenty years of toil, of acquaintance with treachery, deceit, smallness, weakness, twenty years of misunderstood endeavour, of constant strain, of constant fatigue had done their work. The fine spirit did not shrink from its task, but never again could it recapture the early glow of hope, the early ecstasy of labour, the early pride of achievement.
What was his achievement, after all. He might well think that the God he had served so patiently had mocked him. He had loved but to lose his love; he had bartered his personal ease, almost his liberty, almost his pride for bitter honours held in exile; his health was utterly worn out, his days were a continual weariness and pain; he was again as lonely as he had been when he was the prisoner of the States; he had no heir, and the main branch of his family died with him; if he could not finish himself his task he must entrust it to strangers to complete. Surely all was utter vanity and vexation. The cold consolations of a sombre faith only supported him. He clung to those beliefs in which Mary had died, and faced the few years that at best remained to him with the same high courage with which she had met her fate.
He rose presently, in the perfect stillness, and went to the entrance of his tent, lifted the flap, and looked out.
The French red flares on the towers of Namur were visible across the great plain of the Sambre and Meuse; the starlight showed the huge encampment stretching out of sight under the clear sky: near by a sentry paced with his musket over his shoulder; it was very hot and not a blade of grass stirred in the absolute arrested stillness.
Presently a surgeon passed through the tents carrying a lantern and followed by a servant leading a mule laden with his chest. The light flickered awhile amid the canvas then disappeared; a dog barked and a man whistled to it; the silence fell again as intense as before.
The King went back and flung himself on his couch; he could not come near sleep, but lay watching the long, pale beams of light the lamp cast over the worn grass that formed the floor of the hastily constructed tent.
His mind kept dwelling on his first campaign, his miserable army, his own ignorance of all but book tactics, his lack of money, of authority—yet that had been the first spark of that fire that now lit Europe. He had formed and trained his own armies—Dutch, Brandenburghers, Swedes, Germans, and lately the English—until they were equal to those consummate French troops who had laughed at him in '72; but they fought with no more devotion and courage than the handful of Hollanders who had rallied round him then, now incorporated into the famous Dutch Guards, the most beloved of all his beloved army.
He thought of these Guards marching against Villeroy now, feared and honoured, and his heart fluttered faintly with a fleeting pleasure that they should ever face the French on these terms.
He closed his eyes and instantly there spread before him a vision of the great banqueting hall at Whitehall hung with black, and the banners and armours of his family, while in the centre was a mighty catafalque of black velvet which bore an open coffin, at the foot of which lay a royal crown and sceptre. She who rested there was covered to the chin in gold stuff, and round her head was twisted her dark, curling, auburn hair.
The King sprang up and walked up and down the uneven ground; he drew from under his shirt and cravat a long, black ribbon, to which was attached a gold wedding-ring and a long lock of that same rich hair that he had seen in his vision.
He paused under the lamp and gazed at it; in that moment he prayed that he might find his death in to-morrow's battle with as much passion as any poor wretch ever prayed for hope of life. He was still standing so, forgetful of time and place, when he heard voices without, and hastily put the ribbon back over his heart.
The flap was raised and the figure of a young officer showed against the paling sky.
"Is it M. van Keppel?" asked the King quietly.
"Yes, sire." The speaker entered. He had been sent with the King's commands to the Elector of Bavaria.
"M. de Bavaria understands everything?" inquired William.
"He is quite ready, sire."
"So are we," said the King. "I should think M. de Villeroy would make the attack in an hour or so—the dawn is breaking, is it not?"
"The sun was just rising, sire, above the river, as I rode from the camp of His Highness."
"Yet the light is very faint here. Will you, Mynheer, light the other lamp?" The King spoke gently, but he had quite regained that command of himself which rendered his demeanour so stately and impressive.
M. van Keppel obeyed and was then retiring, but William, who was seated by the table, asked him to stay.
"I may have another message for you," he added.
The officer bowed.
William rang the little hand-bell near him and a valet instantly appeared from the curtained inner portion of the tent. The King lived very simply when at the camp. He now asked for wine, and when it was brought made M. van Keppel drink with him, which honour caused the young soldier to redden with pleasure.
"I hear," said William, "that the garrisons of Dixmuyde and Deynse have been sent prisoners to France. That breaketh the treaty we made for the exchange of captives—treachery and insolence, it seemeth, are the only methods of France."
"Treachery and insolence will not for ever prevail," answered Joost van Keppel, in his sweet, ardent voice. "The fortunes of Your Majesty begin to overleap the arrogance of France."
"There will be a great battle to-day," remarked the King quietly and irrelevantly.
The powerful summer dawn, strengthening with every moment, penetrated the tent and mingled with the beams of the two lamps. The King sat in the crossed lights; his gentleman knelt before him, fastening the great gilt spurs to his close riding-boots. He looked at Joost van Keppel gravely and kindly; his face, pale in its proper complexion, was tanned darkly by the Lowland sun; his eyes were extraordinarily bright and flashing, but languid lidded and heavily shadowed beneath; his large, mobile mouth was set firmly; his long, thick curls hung over his black coat, across which showed the blue ribbon and star that he had not removed since he had reviewed his forces yesterday.
"Mynheer," he said to M. van Keppel. "Lift the flap and look out——"
The young Dutchman obeyed and a full sunbeam struck across the dim artificial light.
"A fine day," remarked William; he was ever fond of sun and warmth.
As M. van Keppel stood so, holding back the canvas and gazing over the tents that spread across the plain of the Meuse, a gentleman, armed on back and breast with a gold inlaid cuirass, wrapped in a black silk mantle and carrying a hat covered with white plumes, rode up, dismounted, and entered the King's tent without a word of ceremony.
M. van Keppel bowed very respectfully; it was the Earl of Portland.
On seeing the King alone with the young officer his face darkened; he answered the King's greeting of unconscious affection with stern brusqueness.
"There are letters from England—I met the messenger," he said, and laid the packet on the table by the wine-glasses.
Joost van Keppel was quick to see the instant shock that William quivered under, and to perceive the cause of it. When last the King had been at the war not a post had arrived from London without a letter from the Queen. The young man thought Portland had acted with some harshness; he came forward and said impulsively—
"Letters from England, my lord, are not of such importance that they cannot wait till after the battle."
This was to Portland incredible impertinence; he stared at the flushed, generous face with bitterly angry eyes; but William seemed relieved.
"Yes, let the news wait," he said, and rose.
"If this was known in London what would they say?" broke out Portland.
"How can it be known in London when I have none here but friends?" answered the King.
"I thank Your Majesty for including me with M. van Keppel as your friend," flashed Portland.
The King looked at him sharply, then from one man to another.
"Mynheer van Keppel," he said, "you will return to M. de Bavaria and tell him to be in readiness for a message from us."
The officer bowed with great deference and sweetness to his master and the Earl, and instantly retired.
"Will you not read those letters?" asked Portland, in no way appeased.
William gave him a glance between reproach and wonder, broke the seals, and looked over the letters.
"Nothing," he said, when he laid them down, "save that some sugar ships from Barbadoes have been taken by the French, that there is great uneasiness on the Stock Exchange."
"Nothing of M. de Leeds?" asked Portland.
"No," said the King; he was standing up and his gentleman buckled him into his light cuirass; "but I will not have him touched—he is punished enough." He added, with some contempt, "Is Leeds so much worse than the herd that he should be hunted from it?"
"A corrupt man," answered Portland gloomily; "but you were always tender with him."
William was silent. His obligation to Leeds consisted entirely of that nobleman's devotion to the Queen; he thought that Portland knew this and despised him for such sentiment in politics. Neither spoke any more on the subject.
"M. Montague is a clever man," remarked the King, after a little; "another pensioner of my Lord Dorset. How goeth the other, your secretary?"
"Ah, Prior," replied the Earl, "well enough, but I think him an atheist. His poetry is full of heathen gods, and when I probed him on the subject he was not satisfactory in his answers, but well enough."
"Put my Lord Sarum on to converting him," said William drily; "but I should not take much account of his poetry."
The King's gentleman went into the back part of the tent and Portland instantly addressed his master with great heat.
"Sir, I must tell you that it is a source of great wonder to all that you should so encourage, favour, and caress a worthless young rake like M. van Keppel—a mere hanger-on to court favour; your dignity suffers by it——"
The King interrupted.
"Are you jealous—you—of him?" he asked mournfully.
"I have enough to make me jealous," was the hot answer, "when I see the creature of such as my Lord Sunderland creep into your affections."
The King answered in gentle, dignified tones, without a touch of anger or resentment—
"You are indeed wrong. I like M. van Keppel for himself—I find him sweet and intelligent, a willing servant—and I have not too many. But you know, even while you speak, that nothing could come between me and you."
"I think he hath come between us," said Portland sternly; "during the whole campaign he hath hardly left your side. I believe you even consult him as to your actions—he!—why, the whole camp knoweth his reputation. I could tell some tales——"
The King broke in.
"I'll hear no scandals. You know that of me. If we are to listen to tale-bearing there is not one of us safe. If I favoured any man do you not think there would be tales against him? But I did not think to find you leaning on gossip."
He still spoke with an utter calm; but Portland took his words heavily.
"If you choose to reprimand me——" he began.
"Forgive me," said the King instantly. "I thought you would understand. Indeed, forgive me. I would do anything in the world not to vex you."
The return of the gentleman with William's gloves and cloak cut short the conversation. The King fastened his sword-belt over his shoulder and adjusted the weapon; as he took up his hat with the long black feathers a magnificent Brandenburgher officer entered, followed by M. Dyckfelt.
"Your Majesty," said the Dutchman quietly, "M. de Villeroy hath retreated in the night—leaving M. de Boufflers to his fate."
The Brandenburgher went on one knee and handed William a dispatch from the commander of the scouts, who had seen the last vanishing rearguard of the French.
The King showed no emotion of any kind.
"Count," he said to the officer, "you will go to M. de Bavaria and request him to make an immediate assault on Namur."
When the officer had withdrawn, with profound obeisance, William turned to Portland.
"I will ask you to go to M. de Boufflers and demand a surrender. Tell him that there is no further hope for him from M. de Villeroy, and that if he wisheth to spare his garrison he must capitulate to-day."
Portland bowed gravely and turned away. William looked after him keenly, then took up his perspective glass, his gloves, and his baton, and left the tent.
CHAPTER IV
A MAN'S STRENGTH
M. de Boufflers refused to surrender; he was a Maréchal de France, he had still many thousand men, including M. Megrigny, the engineer esteemed second only to M. de Vauban, and the castle was deemed impregnable. The assault was fixed for one in the afternoon. The King of England, the Elector of Bavaria, the Landgrave of Hesse, other German potentates and the officers of their staff gathered on the rocky promontory immediately below the ramparts of the citadel; before them rose the castle ringed with walls, batteries, palisades, fosses, dykes, and traverses, and set back two miles or more in elaborate ramparts and outworks.
The allies had formed a complete circumvallation round the huge fortress, and had opened their trenches at the very foot of the rock which M. de Vauban had fortified with such deadly skill.
The day was extraordinarily hot and cloudless; the sun, being now just overhead, blazed with equal light on the ruined town, the lofty castle, on counterscarp, glacis, and half-moon, on the trenches, the defences of wattled sticks lined with sandbags, on the distant spreading encampment of the allies, on the still more distant sparkle of the Meuse, which glittered across the great plain and on the walls of the Abbey of Salsines.
It shone, too, on a thousand flags, a thousand squads of men moving with bayonets and matchlocks set to the attack, and gleamed in the armour of the little group of gentlemen who were directing the operations, and sometimes sent a long ray of burning light from their perspective glasses as they turned them on the castle or the approaching regiments of their own troop as they defiled through the town.
It had been arranged that the assault was to be made in four places at once, by the Dutch, Brandenburghers, Bavarians, and English severally; the first three were tried and veteran troops, the fourth, however, consisted of recruits who were seeing their first campaign and had never been under fire before; the best English troops had marched to encounter Villeroy, and had not been summoned to the attack.
The King turned his glasses on the trenches where these regiments waited; they were under the command of John Cutts, as brave and gallant an officer as ever breathed.
William put down his glasses and looked up at the grim citadel.
"This is a severe test for them," he remarked.
The Electoral Prince was taking a bet from the exultant Kohorn that they would enter Namur by the 31st of August. William laughed.
"I am sorry that Your Highness should put money on our failure," he said. "I hear that the betting in London is greatly in our favour."
"This is a matter of dates, Your Majesty," answered M. de Bavaria. "I say 'No' only to August the 31st."
"I am glad M. de Kohorn is so confident," said William graciously to the great engineer.
M. de Hesse, who wore on his finger a watch in a great ring of brilliants, remarked that the time was near ten minutes to one; M. de Bavaria bowed profoundly and galloped off to direct his own men in person; the King looked keenly round to see that none of his servants were lurking in the line of fire. Interference was almost as unendurable to him as cowardice; more than once during the siege he had been exasperated into horsewhipping some daring footmen or valet out of the trenches. During the assault of July the 27th he had been considerably vexed to see M. Godfrey, one of the directors of the new Bank of England, among his officers, and had severely reprimanded him for his presence in so dangerous a position.
"But I run no more risk than you, sire," M. Godfrey had protested.
The King's answer and the sequel were long remembered.
"I, sir," he replied, "may safely trust to God, since I am doing my duty in being here, while you——"
The sentence remained unfinished, for a French cannon shot laid M. Godfrey dead at the King's side. William had hoped that this would prove a lesson to useless meddlers, but even since he had been provoked by various people who had business at the camp, and who strayed into the trenches to get a view of real fighting, often with no conception of the danger of the slow dropping bombs and bullets.
But this afternoon the King's eagle eyes were satisfied that the works were clear of sightseers; it had been fairly well spread abroad that this assault would be, beyond experience, terrible, and those whose duty did not take them to the front were well in the rear.
M. de Hesse and the other Germans having galloped off to their posts, the King remained alone with his staff, midway between the ramparts that were to be attacked and the English trenches, full in the cross-line of fire, and motionless and conspicuous as a target on the little jutting shelf of rock; his officers were a little way behind, and his figure was completely outlined against the blue gap of sun-filled air behind the rock slope.
He rode a huge grey Flemish horse, dark as basalt and as smooth—very lightly trapped with red leather linked with silver gilt—that he managed as well as a man can. He had always been renowned for his consummate horsemanship, and this great beast, that had taken two footmen to hold in before he mounted, he held delicately with one hand on the reins with such a perfect control, that the creature was utterly motionless on the narrow ledge of slippery rock.
The hot air was full of different distant and subdued sounds—the rattle of the guns, the clink of the matchlocks striking the cobbles of the town below, the tramp of feet, the neighing of horses, and, occasionally, the crowing of a cock on some farm outside Namur.
The King sat with his reins loose, holding in his right hand his baton that he rested against his hip. He was intently watching the English trenches.
The clocks of the churches in Namur struck one; instantly a loud report and a jet of flame came from the trenches below; two barrels of gunpowder had been blown up as a signal for the attack.
Before the smoke had cleared, all the minor sounds were silenced by the steady beat of drums and kettledrums, and the King perceived the Grenadiers marching from behind their defences and earthworks steadily towards the ramparts of Namur—these were the men of Cutt's own regiment. They were immediately followed by the four new battalions. They came on steadily, in good order, with their bright, unspoilt colours in their midst, their colonels riding before them. The King could discern the slender figure of John Cutts marching on foot before the Grenadiers with his drawn sword in his hand.
There was no sign from the castle. The English leapt, man after man, the last deep trench of their own earthworks, and suddenly, at a word from their leader, whose voice came faintly to the King's ears, broke into a run and dashed up the slope at the foot of the rock, and full at the first wall of the French fortifications.
Instantly the batteries of the garrison opened a terrible fire, and a confused echo to their thunder told that the other three divisions of the confederates were meeting a like reception.
The English kept on; the little body of the Grenadiers, with the four battalions supporting them and at the head of all John Cutts, climbed the face of the rock with no sign of disorder.
The King wheeled his horse round to face them, and his brilliant eyes never left their ranks.
The French commenced fire from the guns behind their first palisade, which swept the ranks of the advancing English with deadly effect.
Almost every officer of the Grenadiers fell on the hot, bare rock. The drums began to give a disconnected sound, the colours wavered, but the men pressed on, with Cutts still running before them and the recruits doggedly behind them.
The King sent one of his officers with orders for the English batteries to open fire as soon as the breach had been made.
There was, in the space of a few seconds, hardly an officer left among the English, the colonels, captains, and lieutenants, who had dashed forward to encourage their men, were lying scattered about the hill-side—patches of scarlet and steel—with their riderless horses running frantically back towards the camp.
Still Cutts came on. The smoke was thick about him, but the King could see him clearly as he came every moment nearer. The Grenadiers had gained a firm footing on the ledge of rock beneath the palisade, and were about to hurl themselves against it. The cannonade was now supplemented by a storm of bullets. Cutts gave a shout, raised his sword, and pitched to the ground, shot through the head, while the thinned ranks of the Grenadiers rolled backwards down the rocks.
The King uttered a passionate exclamation; a bomb, cast from the castle, burst near him, and his horse reared frantically at the explosion. When he had quieted the animal and the smoke had cleared, he saw two of the Grenadiers coming towards him supporting John Cutts between them. As they reached a deep, natural gully that cleft the rock, one fell and rolled down the precipice; the other caught his officer by the arm and swung him across the chasm; the King galloped up to them.
"Is my lord slain?" he asked.
The wounded man lifted his brown eyes and laughed. Blood blotched the left side of his face and ran through the bright brown English locks.
"Why, no, sir," he answered.
"I am glad of that," said the King. "But your men are being repulsed——"
"God help me—not for long!" cried my lord, and dashed the blood out of his eyes, and with that movement fainted.
"Call up my surgeon," commanded William to one of his officers. Lord Cutts was carried out of the firing line, and the King again directed his attention to the English, who, leaderless, were nevertheless dashing forward, though without order or method, sheer against the French fire.
"It is too much for them," muttered William.
This wild charge was suddenly checked by a deep precipice blown in the rock by underground powder magazines; the raw soldiers stood helpless, baffled. The air was of a continuous redness; the half-naked French gunners could be seen, running in and out of their vaulted galleries and crouching, behind the black shape of the guns; flying fragments of shell, masonry, and rock fell among the leaderless English, who hesitated, gave way, and retreated down the bloody slope they had gained, each rank falling back on the other in confusion, while a shout of triumph rose from the fiery ramparts of Namur.
The King urged his beautiful horse up the zigzag path. The bullets flattened themselves on the rocks about him with a dull, pattering sound; the horse laid back its ears and showed the scarlet of its nostrils; the King, with infinite skill and gentleness, brought it to a higher ridge where he could better survey the heights. The English, rolling back beneath him, looked up and saw him though the smoke, the sun darting broken rays off the star on his breast. He took off his hat covered with black plumes and waved it to them to encourage them to come on. A ragged cheer broke from them; they plunged forward again, but a terrific fire swept them back with half their number fallen. At this moment the King saw Lord Cutts, hatless and with a bandaged head, running up towards the glacis.
William rode up to him. The red fire was about them as if it had been the colour of the atmosphere.
"My lord," said the King, reining up his horse, "they cannot do it."
A young man in a splendid uniform came riding through the strong smelling smoke.
"Sire," he said, saluting, "the Bavarians are giving way—their general hath fallen——"
William spoke swiftly to the Englishman.
"Can you rally your men to the assistance of the Bavarians, my lord? 'Tis hopeless to attempt to make a breach here."
John Cutts smiled up at his master; he had to shout to make his voice heard through the rattle of the cannonade—
"'Tis done, Your Majesty!"
His gallant figure slipped, like a hound from the leash, into the smoke, towards where the English Footguards were retreating, and William, pointing with his baton to where he rode that his officers might follow him, swept round the ramparts to where the Bavarians wavered before the fire of the French. Regiment after regiment had hurled in vain against the palisades, the ditches and clefts were choked with corpses, and in every squad of men a great lane was torn every time the French gunners fired their pieces, while the Dragoons stood on the glacis, sword in hand, ready to cut down whoever should touch the palisade.
"They are very determined," remarked William calmly, glancing up at the red-hot line of fire bursting from the French batteries; "but so am I."
As he spoke a bullet passed through his hair so close to his cheek that he felt the warm whizz of it; and another, almost simultaneously, tore through the ends of his scarf.
"For God's sake, sire," cried the officer near him, "this is certain death."
But the King took no heed of him; his sparkling eyes were fastened on the faltering ranks of Bavaria, who were being borne, steadily but surely, down the slopes, leaving dead behind them, their commander, and most of their officers.
At the very moment when it seemed that they had hopelessly lost ground, John Cutts came running up with the colours of the Grenadiers in one hand and his sword in the other, behind him two hundred of the English recruits whom he had rallied from the retreat.
The Bavarians, encouraged by this help, took heart and came forward again and began climbing up the rock; but Cutts and his English dashed ahead of them right into the cannon fire, forced their way through the palisade, and engaged in a hand to hand fight with the gunners and Dragoons, who were driven back from their defences and hurled over their own ramparts on to the bayonets of the Bavarians below. In a few moments the English had captured the battery, swung the guns round and directed them at the Castle. With a shout the Bavarians dashed through the breach in the wall and, climbing over corpses of men and horses, poured into the enemy's lines.
The King watched them as they scaled ditches and trenches and palisade, then made a detour round the fire-swept face of the rock to the point the Dutch had been ordered to attack. Splendid soldiers, splendidly commanded, they had already gained the position and with very little loss; the French gunners lay in torn and mangled heaps behind their pieces, which the Dutch were engaged in turning on the garrison.
William now gave orders that his batteries were to be brought in play from every available position, both on the ramparts gained and from every rock and out-work in the possession of the allies. He himself rode through the broken wall and took up his position inside the French palisades, where his horse could scarcely find a footfall for the dead and dying. The air was so full of powder smoke that the walls and turrets of the castle appeared to hang as in a great fog with no visible foundations; the crack of musketry was incessant, and little threads of flame ran across the dark heavy vapour; fragments of rock and wall rolled continually down the slope—dislodged by bombs bursting or the explosion of barrels of gunpowder. But this was as nothing to the cannonade. When the combined batteries of the allies opened on Namur, the oldest soldier could remember no such fire—it was a bombardment such as had never been known in war. The French gunners dropped one after another before they could put their fuses to their pieces, and were obliged to take refuge in their underground galleries; the roar was unceasing, and the continual flames lit up the rocks, the chasms, the bastions with as steady and awful a glare as if the world was on fire.
A body of Dragoons made a gallant sally out on to the glacis, but were swept down to a man before they had advanced a hundred yards. The Dutch, under cover of the French palisades, picked off with musket shot every Frenchman who appeared within range, portions of the walls and curtains began to fall in, the sacking and wattles, put up to catch the bullets, caught fire and flared up through the smoke.
The King could scarcely see his own staff-officers for the glare and harsh blinding vapour. His ears were filled with the lamentations of the mangled and delirious wretches who lay scattered about the glacis, and the sharp screams of the wounded, riderless horses who galloped in their death agony across the ramparts and hurled themselves from the precipices beneath. The King caressed his own animal; the insensibility of his profession had not overcome his love of horses. He never could look with ease at the sufferings of these gallant creatures; for the rest, he was utterly unmoved. He turned his face towards the fires that made many a veteran wince, and there was not the slightest change in his composure save that he was more than ordinarily cheerful, and showed, perhaps, more animation than he had done since the death of his wife. Having satisfied himself that the Dutch had silenced all the French batteries at this point, he rode to the demi-bastion where the Brandenburghers fought the Dragoons in a terrible battle which was resulting in the French being driven back on to the fire of their own guns. Here he drew up his horse on the edge of a fosse that had a cuvette in the middle of it with a covered way along it, from which the French were still firing from platoons and muskets.
The King thrust his baton through the folds of his scarf and laid his hand on the tasseled pistol in his holster; he guided his horse commonly and by choice with his left hand, for his right arm had been shot through twice, at St. Neff and the Boyne, and was less easily fatigued with the sword than the reins. He now looked about him and perceived that his way to the Brandenburghers was completely barred by some traverses to intercept fire, besides by the fosse from the gazons of which the soldiers were firing, and, on the glacis which slopes before it, several gunners were hauling a battery into place; not far behind them a fierce fire was being maintained from a projecting javelin.
The French, lurking in the cuvette, saw the King, and, recognising him by his great star, proceeded to take deliberate aim. He looked round for his staff, whom his impetuous advance had completely out-distanced, then galloped his horse right along the counter-scarp in full range of the enemy's fire. A dozen muskets were aimed at him; he seemed not to notice them, but set his horse at a little fosse that crossed his path, and leapt over the dead French and bloody gazons that filled it. The ground on the other side was so cut, dissected, and strewn with boulders and fragments of rock, that the quivering horse paused, frightened by the shower of bullets, and, not perceiving a foothold, the King slipped out of the saddle without leaving go of the reins, ran along by the horse's head, guiding him through the debris, and mounted again without touching the saddle, a well-known feat of the riding school. He was now almost up to the Brandenburghers, who raised a great shout as they saw him galloping up through the smoke. He rode along the front of their ranks and glanced up at the French crouching on their earth-works waiting for the assault.
The King drew his sword.
"We must get nearer than this," he said to the officer in command. He set spurs to his horse, and, wheeling round, charged straight at the lines of France, the Brandenburghers after him with an irresistible rush.
An officer of Dragoons rose up from his comrades and struck up with his sword at the figure on the huge grey charger. The King leant out of the saddle, parried the thrust with his weapon. The Frenchman, hit by a bullet in the lungs, rolled over with his face towards the citadel; the last thing he saw on earth was the King of England high on the distant heights of Namur with the column of Brandenburghers behind him and before him, through the glare the tattered banner of the Bourbons waving from the keep.