In all the countries which were united against France the news of the fall of Namur was received with joy; but here the exultation was greatest.  During several generations our ancestors had achieved nothing considerable by land against foreign enemies.  We had indeed occasionally furnished to our allies small bands of auxiliaries who had well maintained the honour of the nation.  But from the day on which the two brave Talbots, father and son, had perished in the vain attempt to reconquer Guienne, till the Revolution, there had been on the Continent no campaign in which Englishmen had borne a principal part.  At length our ancestors had again, after an interval of near two centuries and a half, begun to dispute with the warriors of France the palm of military prowess.  The struggle had been hard.  The genius of Luxemburg and the consummate discipline of the household troops of Lewis had pervailed in two great battles; but the event of those battles had been long doubtful; the victory had been dearly purchased, and the victor had gained little more than the honour of remaining master of the field of slaughter.  Meanwhile he was himself training his adversaries.  The recruits who survived his severe tuition speedily became veterans.  Steinkirk and Landen had formed the volunteers who followed Cutts through the palisades of Namur.  The judgment of all the great warriors whom all the nations of Western Europe had sent to the confluence of the Sambre and the Meuse was that the English subaltern was inferior to no subaltern and the English private soldier to no private soldier in Christendom.  The English officers of higher rank were thought hardly worthy to command such an army.  Cutts, indeed, had distinguished himself by his intrepidity.  But those who most admired him acknowledged that he had neither the capacity nor the science necessary to a general.

The joy of the conquerors was heightened by the recollection of the discomfiture which they had suffered, three years before, on the same spot, and of the insolence with which their enemy had then triumphed over them.  They now triumphed in their turn.  The Dutch struck medals.  The Spaniards sang Te Deums.  Many poems, serious and sportive, appeared, of which one only has lived.  Prior burlesqued, with admirable spirit and pleasantry, the bombastic verses in which Boileau had celebrated the first taking of Namur.  The two odes, printed side by side, were read with delight in London; and the critics at Will’s pronounced that, in wit as in arms, England had been victorious.

The fall of Namur was the great military event of this year.  The Turkish war still kept a large part of the forces of the Emperor employed in indecisive operations on the Danube.  Nothing deserving to be mentioned took place either in Piedmont or on the Rhine.  In Catalonia the Spaniards obtained some slight advantages, advantages due to their English and Dutch allies, who seem to have done all that could