ellor. [440]
But this was only one of a thousand causes of anxiety which during that
spring pressed on the King's mind. He was preparing for the opening of
the campaign, imploring his allies to be early in the field, rousing the
sluggish, haggling with the greedy, making up quarrels, adjusting points
of precedence. He had to prevail on the Cabinet of Vienna to send timely
succours into Piedmont. He had to keep a vigilant eye on those Northern
potentates who were trying to form a third party in Europe. He had to
act as tutor to the Elector of Bavaria in the Netherlands. He had to
provide for the defence of Liege, a matter which the authorities of
Liege coolly declared to be not at all their business, but the business
of England and Holland. He had to prevent the House of Brunswick
Wolfenbuttel from going to blows with the House of Brunswick Lunenburg;
he had to accommodate a dispute between the Prince of Baden and the
Elector of Saxony, each of whom wished to be at the head of an army on
the Rhine; and he had to manage the Landgrave of Hesse, who omitted to
furnish his own contingent, and yet wanted to command the contingents
furnished by other princes. [441]

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

Lewis was disappointed. He found that it would not be possible for him
to gratify his vanity so safely and so easily as in the two preceding
years, to sit down before a great town, to enter the gates in triumph,
and to receive the keys, without exposing himself to any risk greater
than that of a staghunt