according to custom to execute the royal authority dur-
ing the King's absence on the Continent.

On the 3d of May Parliament was prorogued, and
on the 12th of the same month William set out for
Flanders to take command of the allied army for what
was destined to be the most successful of his campaigns.
Luxembourg was dead, and the command of the
French army in the Netherlands had devolved on
a far inferior general in the person of Marshal Villeroy.
William was now matched against a general to whom he
was as much superior as Luxembourg had been to him,
and this reversal of conditions told speedily and signally
on the fortunes of the year's campaign. The prime
object of William's operations was the retrieval of the
disastrous loss which the allies had suffered in 1692 by
the fall of Namur. On the recapture of this important
fortress he now bent his whole energies. His first move-
ment, however, was an unsuccessful one. Athlone, who
had been detached with a large force to invest the city,
was unable to prevent Boufflers from throwing himself
into it with a strong reinforcement. The garrison now
numbered 14,000 or 15,000 men, and as its works had
been planned by Vauban, the greatest military engineer
of his age, its defenders reckoned it impregnable. Leav-
ing the main body of his army under the Prince of
Vaudemont, who, when pressed by Villeroy, succeeded
in skilfully retiring to Ghent, William, at the head of a
division, effected a junction with the forces of the
Elector of Bavaria and the Brandenburg contingent
and marching to Namur proceeded rapidly to invest
it. Its siege was then vigorously prosecuted. Cohorn,
the pupil of Vauban, and next to him in scientific repu-

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