faint-hearted governor, the nominee of the Spanish viceroy of the Netherlands, surrendered at discretion. Having accomplished, or rather having graciously condescended to witness the accomplishment of this feat of arms, Louis returned to Versailles, leaving his army under the command of Luxembourg. The fall of Namur was a severe blow to the hopes of William, but yet worse disasters were in store for him. He was now pitted against one who enjoyed the reputation of the greatest general of the age, and William, a fair but by no means brilliant strategist, was unequal to the contest with his accomplished adversary. Luxembourg lay at Steinkirk, and William approaching him from a place named Lambeque, opened his attack upon him by a well-conceived surprise which promised at first to throw the French army into complete disorder. Luxembourg's resource and energy, however, were equal to the emergency. He rallied and steadied his troops with astonishing speed, and the nature of the ground preventing the allies from advancing as rapidly as they had expected, they found the enemy in a posture to receive them. The British forces were in the front, commanded by Count Solmes, the division of Mackay, a name now honourable for many generations in the annals of continental, no less than of Scottish warfare, leading the way. These heroes, for so, though as yet untried soldiers, they approved themselves, were to have been supported by Count Solmes with a strong body of cavalry and infantry, but at the critical moment he failed them miserably, and his failure decided the fortunes of the day. After a desperate struggle, in which they long sustained the attack of the French household troops, the flower of Louis's army, Mackay's division began to give way. But no effective help arrived from Solmes. His cavalry could not act from the nature of the ground, and he refused to devote his infantry to what he declared was useless slaughter. The division was practically annihilated. Its five regiments, "Cutts's, Mackay's, Angus's, Graham's, and Leven's, all," as Corporal Trim relates pathetically, "cut to pieces, and so had the English Life-guards been too, had it not been for some regiments on the right, who marched up boldly to their relief, and received the enemy's fire in their faces, before any one of their own platoons discharged a musket." Bitter was the resentment in the English army at the desertion of these gallant troops by Count de Solmes, and William gave vent to one of his rare outbursts of anger at the sight. We have it indeed on the authority above quoted--unimpeachable as first-hand tradition, for Sterne had heard the story of these wars at the knees of an eye-witness of and actor in them--that the King "would not suffer the Count to come into his presence for many months after." The destruction of Mackay's division had indeed decided the issue of the struggle. Luxembourg's army was being rapidly strengthened by reinforcements from that of Boufflers,