In November the English Parliament met, heartened indeed by the naval victory of La Hogue, but not a little grieved over the failure of Steenkirk. Again, the financial aspect was extremely discouraging; and Sir Stephen Fox announced that there was not another day’s subsistence for the Army in the treasury. The prevailing discontent found vent in furious denunciations of Count Solmes, and a cry that English soldiers ought to be commanded by English officers. The debate waxed hot. The hardest of hard words were used about the Dutch generals, and a vast deal of nonsense was talked about military matters. There were, however, a great number of officers in the House of Commons, many of whom had been present at the action. With much modesty and good sense they refused to join in the outcry against the Dutch, and contrived so to compose matters that the House committed itself to no very foolish resolution. The votes for the Army were passed; and no difficulty was made over the preparations for the next campaign. Finally, two new regiments of cavalry were raised—Lord Macclesfield’s Horse, which was disbanded twenty years later; and Conyngham’s Irish Dragoons, which still abides with us as the Eighth, King’s Royal Irish, Hussars. ◆1693.◆ Meanwhile the French military system had suffered an irreparable loss in Louvois’s death, the source of woes unnumbered to France in the years that were soon to come. Nevertheless, the traditions of his rule were strong, and the French once more were first in the field, with, as usual, a vast siege-train massed on the Meuse and on the Scheldt. But a late spring and incessant rain delayed the opening of the campaign till the beginning of May, when Luxemburg assembled seventy thousand men in rear of the Haine by Mons, and Boufflers forty-eight thousand more on the Scheldt at Tournay. The French king was with the troops in person; and the original design was, as usual, to carry on a war of sieges on the Meuse, Boufflers reducing the fortresses while Luxemburg shielded him with a covering army. Lewis, however, finding that the towns which he had intended to invest were likely to make an inconveniently stubborn defence, presently returned home, and after detaching thirty thousand men to the war in Germany, left Luxemburg to do as he would. It had been better for William if the Grand Monarch had remained in Flanders. The English king, on his side, assembled sixty thousand men at Brussels as soon as the French began to move, and led them with desperate haste to the Senne, where he took up an impregnable position at Park. Luxemburg marched up to a position over against him, and then came one of those deadlocks which were so common in the old campaigns. The two armies stood looking at each other for a whole month, neither venturing to move, neither daring to attack, both ill-supplied, both discontented, and as a natural consequence both losing scores, hundreds, and even thousands of men through desertion.