After an easy victory at Dixmude, which the Governor surrendered without firing a shot, de Villeroi turned towards Brussels, where the wealth of the citizens promised much loot to his soldiers; but here he was again foiled by de Vaudemont, who out-marched him and took up a position which saved the city from capture, though not from a savage and unnecessary bombardment. After his artillery had devastated a large part of Brussels, de Villeroi drew off to await orders from Paris, thus giving the covering detachment the opportunity of joining hands with the main army before Namur, where William was assiduously battering the citadel with a hundred and thirty-six heavy guns and fifty-eight mortars, whose fire towards the end of the siege cost de Boufflers three hundred men a day. On the 10th of August, the XVIIIth and three other British regiments were transferred to the besieging force, to replace corps shattered in the earlier operations, and at once began duty in the trenches. A few days later de Villeroi advanced, hoping to defeat William in a pitched battle, and thus to relieve the garrison which he had so long neglected, but he found the King so well posted and the covering army so heavily reinforced by the besieging troops that he did not venture to attack. While the French Commander-in-Chief was beginning to realise that in leaving de Boufflers so long unrescued he had made an irreparable mistake, William gave orders for a general assault upon the citadel, where the works had been breached in several places. During the night of the 19th, six thousand men from the covering detachment filed into the trenches, where before daybreak they were joined by the greater part of the besiegers. Seven hundred British grenadiers and four regiments--the 17th,[20] the XVIIIth, and Buchan’s and Mackay’s, two corps which have long since disappeared from the Army List,--under the command of General Lord Cutts, were to assault the work called the Terra Nova; while the Bavarians, Hessians, Brandenburgers,[21] and Dutch were to make simultaneous attacks on the other breaches. As the trenches could not hold all the troops poured into them, the XVIIIth and Buchan’s were sent to conceal themselves in the abbey of Salsine, about half a mile from the foot of the Terra Nova breach.