and there was nothing for it but retreat. The loss on both sides had been great, but the moral effect of the victory was still greater. William's reputation for generalship, perhaps unduly raised by his recent exploits in Ireland, underwent a serious decline. The French were exultant at the demonstration of his inferiority to Luxembourg, and the victory of Steinkirk inflamed the national pride to an overweening degree. William's popularity with his own army and people, however, was at this time about to receive one of those friendly "lifts" which his more unscrupulous enemies were continually giving it throughout his life. Grandval, a French officer, undertook, at the instigation it is said of Barbesieux, the French Minister, and with the connivance of James II., to assassinate him, and set out with that purpose, accompanied by two accomplices, for the camp of the allies. Both of these men, however, appear, with an originality and independence of initiative not often found among traitors, to have played him false simultaneously, yet without any collusion with each other. Grandval had not been long in the Netherlands before he was arrested, brought to trial before a court-martial, and, on his own confession, sentenced to death. His statement, attested by the officers constituting the court-martial, was published immediately after his execution, and the world then learnt that the dying man's meditated crime was, according to his solemn asseveration, suggested to him by a minister then, and after the exposure still retained, in the service of Louis XIV.; and that James had signified to him at an interview at St. Germains that he had been informed of the "business" on which he was setting out, and that if Grandval and his companions rendered him that service "they should never want." Neither the French king nor his Minister ever made any reply to Grandval's confession; but James, though he put forth no public disclaimer, denied on this as on other occasions that he had ever participated in any of the schemes for killing William. Probably the projectors of such schemes were careful never to mention the ugly word assassination in the royal ears, so that it might always be possible for his ex-Majesty to assume that nothing was contemplated but William's "taking-off" in a less serious than the Shakspearean sense. Plots to kidnap the "usurper" were almost as commonly broached as plots to assassinate him; and it was convenient that exalted personages should be able to persuade others, if not themselves, that they were thinking only of seizing William's person when their humbler instruments were in reality bent upon taking his life.