The outworks captured, the trenches were opened against the town itself, and the next assault was directed against the counterguard of St. Nicholas gate. This again was carried by the British, with a loss of eight hundred men. Then came the famous attack on the counterscarp before the gate itself, where Captain Shandy received his memorable wound. This gave William the possession of the town. Then came the siege of the citadel, wherein the British had the honour of marching to the assault over half a mile of open ground, a trial which proved too much even for them. Nevertheless, it was they who eventually stormed a breach from which another of the assaulting columns had been repulsed, and ensured the surrender of the citadel a few days later. For their service on this occasion the Eighteenth Foot were made the Royal Irish; and a Latin inscription on their colours still records that this was the reward of their valour at Namur.
1697.
Thus William on his return to England could for the first time show his Parliament a solid success due to the British red-coats; and the House of Commons gladly voted once more a total force of eighty-seven thousand men. But the war need be followed no further. The campaign of 1696 was interrupted by a futile attempt of the French to invade England, and in 1697 France, reduced to utter exhaustion, gladly concluded the Peace of Ryswick. So ended, not without honour, the first stage of the great conflict with King Lewis the Fourteenth. The position of the two protagonists, England and France, was not wholly unlike that which they occupied a century later at the Peace of Amiens. The British, though they had not reaped great victories, had made their presence felt, and terribly felt, on the battlefield; and as the French in the Peninsula remembered that the British had fought them with a tenacity which they had not found in other nations, not only in Egypt but even earlier at Tournay and Lincelles, so, too, after Blenheim and Ramillies they looked back to the furious attack at Steenkirk and the indomitable defence of Neerwinden. "Without the concurrence of the valour and power of England," said William to the Parliament at the close of 1695, "it were impossible to put a stop to the ambition and greatness of France." So it was then, so it was a century later, and so it will be again, for though none know better the superlative qualities of the French as a fighting people, yet the English are the one nation that has never been afraid to meet them. With the Peace of Ryswick the 'prentice years of the standing Army are ended, and within five years the old spirit, which has carried it through the bitter schooling under King William, will break forth with overwhelming power under the guiding genius of Marlborough.
Authorities.—The leading authority for William's campaigns on the English side is D'Auvergne, and on the French side the compilation, with its superb series of maps, by Beaurain. Supplementary on one side are Tindal's History, Carleton's Memoirs, and Sterne's Tristram Shandy; and on the other the Mémoires of Berwick and St. Simon, Quincy's Histoire Militaire de Louis XIV., and in particular the Mémoires of Feuquières. Many details as to Steenkirk, in particular as to the casualties, are drawn from Present State of Europe, or Monthly Mercury, August 1692; and as to Landen from the official relation of the battle, published by authority, 1693. Beautiful plans of both actions are in Beaurain, rougher plans in Quincy and Feuquières. All details as to the establishment voted are from the Journals of the House of Commons. Very elaborate details of the operations are given in Colonel Clifford Walton's History of the British Standing Army.
[CHAPTER IV]
1697.
Peace having been signed, there arose the momentous question, what should be done with the Army. To understand aright the attitude of Parliament towards it, a brief sketch must be given of its relations therewith apart from the mere question of voting supplies. It has been seen that the scandals of Schomberg's first campaign had opened the eyes of Parliament to the iniquities that were then going forward; but, though a scape-goat had been made of the Commissary-General, the matter had not been sifted to the bottom.
The primary and principal difficulty was, of course, lack of money. In the case of the Irish war this had been overcome by grants of the Irish estates which had been forfeited after the conquest, the mere expectation and hope of which had sufficed to set the minds of many creditors at rest. For the war in Flanders, however, there was no such resource. The treasury was empty, and the funds voted by Parliament were so remote that they could only be assigned to creditors in security for payment at some future time. Many of these creditors, however, were tradesmen who could not afford to wait until tallies should be issued in course of payment, and were therefore compelled to dispose of these securities at a ruinous discount. The mischief naturally did not end there. Capitalists soon discovered that to buy tallies at huge discount was a much more profitable business than to lend money direct to the State at the rate of seven per cent, and accordingly devoted all their money to it. Thus the "tally-traffic," as it was called, grew so formidable that the Lord Treasurer, Godolphin, was obliged secretly to offer larger interest for loans than was authorised by Parliament.[269]