William now gave orders that his batteries were to be brought in play from every available position, both on the ramparts gained and from every rock and out-work in the possession of the allies. He himself rode through the broken wall and took up his position inside the French palisades, where his horse could scarcely find a footfall for the dead and dying. The air was so full of powder smoke that the walls and turrets of the castle appeared to hang as in a great fog with no visible foundations; the crack of musketry was incessant, and little threads of flame ran across the dark heavy vapour; fragments of rock and wall rolled continually down the slope—dislodged by bombs bursting or the explosion of barrels of gunpowder. But this was as nothing to the cannonade. When the combined batteries of the allies opened on Namur, the oldest soldier could remember no such fire—it was a bombardment such as had never been known in war. The French gunners dropped one after another before they could put their fuses to their pieces, and were obliged to take refuge in their underground galleries; the roar was unceasing, and the continual flames lit up the rocks, the chasms, the bastions with as steady and awful a glare as if the world was on fire.
A body of Dragoons made a gallant sally out on to the glacis, but were swept down to a man before they had advanced a hundred yards. The Dutch, under cover of the French palisades, picked off with musket shot every Frenchman who appeared within range, portions of the walls and curtains began to fall in, the sacking and wattles, put up to catch the bullets, caught fire and flared up through the smoke.
The King could scarcely see his own staff-officers for the glare and harsh blinding vapour. His ears were filled with the lamentations of the mangled and delirious wretches who lay scattered about the glacis, and the sharp screams of the wounded, riderless horses who galloped in their death agony across the ramparts and hurled themselves from the precipices beneath. The King caressed his own animal; the insensibility of his profession had not overcome his love of horses. He never could look with ease at the sufferings of these gallant creatures; for the rest, he was utterly unmoved. He turned his face towards the fires that made many a veteran wince, and there was not the slightest change in his composure save that he was more than ordinarily cheerful, and showed, perhaps, more animation than he had done since the death of his wife. Having satisfied himself that the Dutch had silenced all the French batteries at this point, he rode to the demi-bastion where the Brandenburghers fought the Dragoons in a terrible battle which was resulting in the French being driven back on to the fire of their own guns. Here he drew up his horse on the edge of a fosse that had a cuvette in the middle of it with a covered way along it, from which the French were still firing from platoons and muskets.
The King thrust his baton through the folds of his scarf and laid his hand on the tasseled pistol in his holster; he guided his horse commonly and by choice with his left hand, for his right arm had been shot through twice, at St. Neff and the Boyne, and was less easily fatigued with the sword than the reins. He now looked about him and perceived that his way to the Brandenburghers was completely barred by some traverses to intercept fire, besides by the fosse from the gazons of which the soldiers were firing, and, on the glacis which slopes before it, several gunners were hauling a battery into place; not far behind them a fierce fire was being maintained from a projecting javelin.
The French, lurking in the cuvette, saw the King, and, recognising him by his great star, proceeded to take deliberate aim. He looked round for his staff, whom his impetuous advance had completely out-distanced, then galloped his horse right along the counter-scarp in full range of the enemy's fire. A dozen muskets were aimed at him; he seemed not to notice them, but set his horse at a little fosse that crossed his path, and leapt over the dead French and bloody gazons that filled it. The ground on the other side was so cut, dissected, and strewn with boulders and fragments of rock, that the quivering horse paused, frightened by the shower of bullets, and, not perceiving a foothold, the King slipped out of the saddle without leaving go of the reins, ran along by the horse's head, guiding him through the debris, and mounted again without touching the saddle, a well-known feat of the riding school. He was now almost up to the Brandenburghers, who raised a great shout as they saw him galloping up through the smoke. He rode along the front of their ranks and glanced up at the French crouching on their earth-works waiting for the assault.
The King drew his sword.
"We must get nearer than this," he said to the officer in command. He set spurs to his horse, and, wheeling round, charged straight at the lines of France, the Brandenburghers after him with an irresistible rush.
An officer of Dragoons rose up from his comrades and struck up with his sword at the figure on the huge grey charger. The King leant out of the saddle, parried the thrust with his weapon. The Frenchman, hit by a bullet in the lungs, rolled over with his face towards the citadel; the last thing he saw on earth was the King of England high on the distant heights of Namur with the column of Brandenburghers behind him and before him, through the glare the tattered banner of the Bourbons waving from the keep.
CHAPTER V
A LEADER OF NATIONS