Now Namur was in a sense the key to France, so you can understand how very very serious a matter for the Allies, as the French and British forces were henceforth to be called, was the fall of this great fortress. In these days it is rather curious to remember that fourteen British regiments, including the Grenadier Guards, the Scots Guards, the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, the Coldstreams, the Royal Irish, and the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, bear the honorary distinction, “Namur, 1695,” upon their colours, for having captured this stronghold two hundred and nineteen years ago.
Through the town of Namur flows the Meuse, a lovely river, shared by France and Belgium, which has already seen some of the hardest fighting of this war.
On the banks of the Meuse, Joan of Arc, as a little girl, must often have played, for in France it laves the village of Domrémy. When it reaches Belgium, this storied river flows by the grave of an extraordinary man who in some ways had certain affinities with Joan of Arc—I mean Peter the Hermit, who is buried in the gardens of the old Abbey of Neufmoustier.
The most beautiful description of the Meuse at Namur was written by William Wordsworth:
“Is this the stream whose cities, heights, and plains,
War’s favourite playground are, with crimson stains
Familiar as the morn with pearly dews?
The morn, that now, along the silver Meuse,
Spreading her peaceful ensigns, calls the swains
To tend their silent boats and ringing wains,