he deliberately allowed William to sail. The French army was moved from the frontiers of the Low Countries to the Rhine, and occupied the Palatinate. [Sidenote: =James driven out of England by William III., 1688.=] In the midst of his triumph came the astounding news that James II. was a fugitive at Versailles, and the strength of England was added to the formidable coalition which threatened France from all sides. [Sidenote: =The war of the League of Augsburg, 1688–1698.=] The war of the League of Augsburg, which lasted from 1688 to 1698, is one of the most exhausting and most uninteresting wars of which history makes mention. Louis found himself alone against the world. Literally he had not a single ally. By the force of circumstances the war on his side was largely defensive. Thanks to his prevision and Vauban’s skill, his frontier was defended by a string of fortresses, which in those days of bad roads and worse artillery were only conquerable by the wearisome method of blockade, a method which often, owing to disease and exposure, was more fatal to the besiegers than the besieged. Using these fortresses as a base of operations his generals could advance to deal a blow at the enemy or retire behind them to recruit as occasion demanded. The allies, seeing the immense defensive strength which this gave to the French operations, in their turn fortified fortress against fortress, and Namur and Mons became under the hands of Coëhorn the equals of Lille and Charleroi. The generals too on both sides were well fitted for playing the game of war on such conditions. No strategist worth the name appeared in Europe between the days of Turenne and Marlborough. Luxemburg was a brilliant tactician. On the field of battle he had not an equal. But no one knew less how to win a campaign or utilise a victory. William III. was an excellent war minister, indefatigable in preparation, indomitable under reverses, but his commonplace leadership was never relieved by one spark of genius or even brilliance. In the Low Countries the tide of battle ebbed and flowed about the fortresses of Mons and Namur. The capture of them by the French in 1691 and 1692 and the defeats inflicted by Luxemburg upon William at Steinkirk and Neerwinden, after his efforts to save Namur in 1692, mark the highest point of French military success. The recapture of Namur by William in 1695 is his chief title to military renown, and the evidence of the increasing exhaustion of France. On the Rhine there was no great event which calls for notice, while in Italy the French, though much weakened by constant drafts for the Netherlands, managed to hold their own through the fine fighting qualities of Catinat, who completely defeated the duke Victor Amadeus at Staffarda in 1689, and drove prince Eugene out of Piedmont after the bayonet fight of Civita in 1693. [Sidenote: =Importance of the naval operations.=]