Though the French army in the Netherlands had been weakened by the departure of the forces commanded by the Dauphin and Boufflers, and though the allied army was daily strengthened by the arrival of fresh troops, Luxemburg still had a superiority of force; and that superiority he increased by an adroit stratagem.  He marched towards Liege, and made as if he were about to form the siege of that city.  William was uneasy, and the more uneasy because he knew that there was a French party among the inhabitants.  He quitted his position near Louvain, advanced to Nether Hespen, and encamped there with the river Gette in his rear.  On his march he learned that Huy had opened its gates to the French.  The news increased his anxiety about Liege, and determined him to send thither a force sufficient to overawe malecontents within the city, and to repel any attack from without.445 This was exactly what Luxemburg had expected and desired.  His feint had served its purpose.  He turned his back on the fortress which had hitherto seemed to be his object, and hastened towards the Gette.  William, who had detached more than twenty thousand men, and who had but fifty thousand left in his camp, was alarmed by learning from his scouts, on the eighteenth of July, that the French General, with near eighty thousand, was close at hand.

It was still in the King’s power, by a hasty retreat, to put the narrow, but deep, waters of the Gette, which had lately been swollen by rains, between his army and the enemy.  But the site which he occupied was strong; and it could easily be made still stronger.  He set all his troops to work.  Ditches were dug, mounds thrown up, palisades fixed in the earth.  In a few hours the ground wore a new aspect; and the King trusted that he should be able to repel the attack even of a force greatly outnumbering his own.  Nor was it without much appearance of reason that he felt this confidence.  When the morning of the nineteenth of July broke, the bravest men of Lewis’s army looked gravely and anxiously on the fortress which had suddenly sprung up to arrest their progress.  The allies were protected by a breastwork.  Here and there along the entrenchments were formed little redoubts and half moons.  A hundred pieces of cannon were disposed along the ramparts.  On the left flank, the village of Romsdorff rose close to the little stream of Landen, from which the English have named the disastrous day.  On the right was the village of Neerwinden.  Both villages were, after the fashion of the Low Countries, surrounded by moats and fences; and, within these enclosures, the little plots of ground occupied by different families were separated by mud walls five feet in height and a foot in thickness.  All these barricades William had repaired and strengthened.  Saint Simon, who, after the battle, surveyed the ground, could hardly, he tells us, believe that defences so extensive and so formidable could have been created with such rapidity.