The capture of Preston, and the disclosure of the Jacobite plot, allowed William to go abroad, leaving the complete investigation of the treason to his ministers in England. On the Continent his diplomacy had been singularly successful. He had brought together a great coalition, and had succeeded in winning the Duke of Savoy, whom the King of France had reckoned among his allies, and whose territory closed the passage of the French to the Spanish dominions in Italy. Success would have cemented the coalition, and induced Denmark and Sweden, which were still wavering, to join it. But in rapidity of action a coalition is seldom a match for a single power, and Louis was able to forestall the action of the allies, and capture the important fortress of Mons, in spite of all William's efforts to relieve it. But this first success, though damaging to the coalition, produced no very important military events; the advantages of the French both in Spain and Italy were counterbalanced by the disasters which befell their allies the Turks in Hungary, and the main armies in Flanders under William and Luxemburg were content merely to watch each other. The first crisis of the war was in fact over. The centre of the coalition was William; his strength was derived from his position as King of England; deprived of that position, he would have lost most of his influence, and the only chance of depriving him of it had been the success of the Irish. It was in Ireland, therefore, that the real crisis of the war had arrived. The defeat of James at the Boyne in 1690, and of St. Ruth at Aghrim almost exactly a year after, had thus rendered all hopes of destroying William's position futile. Once again, in the following year, the same critical situation of affairs arose. With the battle of La Hogue the success of James became hopeless, and though the war continued for many years, there is no other point in it which can really be called critical. [Sidenote: James's hopes upheld by the treason of the ministry] [Sidenote: and of Marlborough.]