hope, as it should seem, that, by menacing that beautiful capital, he might induce the allies to raise the siege of the castle of Namur.  During thirty-six hours he rained shells and redhot bullets on the city.  The Electress of Bavaria, who was within the walls, miscarried from terror.  Six convents perished.  Fifteen hundred houses were at once in flames.  The whole lower town would have been burned to the ground, had not the inhabitants stopped the conflagration by blowing up numerous buildings.  Immense quantities of the finest lace and tapestry were destroyed; for the industry and trade which made Brussels famous throughout the world had hitherto been little affected by the war.  Several of the stately piles which looked down on the market place were laid in ruins.  The Town Hall itself, the noblest of the many noble senate houses reared by the burghers of the Netherlands, was in imminent peril.  All this devastation, however, produced no effect except much private misery.  William was not to be intimidated or provoked into relaxing the firm grasp with which he held Namur.  The fire which his batteries kept up round the castle was such as had never been known in war.  The French gunners were fairly driven from their pieces by the hail of balls, and forced to take refuge in vaulted galleries under the ground.  Cohorn exultingly betted the Elector of Bavaria four hundred pistoles that the place would fall by the thirty-first of August, New Style.  The great engineer lost his wager indeed, but lost it only by a few hours.609

Boufflers now began to feel that his only hope was in Villeroy.  Villeroy had proceeded from Brussels to Enghien; he had there collected all the French troops that could be spared from the remotest fortresses of the Netherlands; and he now, at the head of more than eighty thousand men, marched towards Namur.  Vaudemont meanwhile joined the besiegers.  William therefore thought himself strong enough to offer battle to Villeroy, without intermitting for a moment the operations against Boufflers.  The Elector of Bavaria was entrusted with the immediate direction of the siege.  The King of England took up, on the west of the town, a strong position strongly intrenched, and there awaited the French, who were advancing from Enghien.  Every thing seemed to indicate that a great day was at hand.  Two of the most numerous and best ordered armies that Europe had ever seen were brought face to face.  On the fifteenth of August the defenders of the castle saw from their watchtowers the mighty host of their countrymen.  But between that host and the citadel was drawn up in battle order the not less mighty host of William.  Villeroy, by a salute of ninety guns, conveyed to Boufflers the promise of a speedy rescue; and at night Boufflers, by fire signals which were seen far over the vast plain of the Meuse and Sambre, urged Villeroy to fulfil that promise without delay.  In the capitals both of France and England the anxiety was intense.