The King set out on the 10th of May, 1692, with the ladies; and I performed the journey on horseback with the soldiers and all the attendants, like the other Musketeers, and continued to do so through the whole campaign.  I was accompanied by two gentlemen; the one had been my tutor, the other was my mother’s squire.  The King’s army was formed at the camp of Gevries; that of M. de Luxembourg almost joined it:  The ladies were at Mons, two leagues distant.  The King made them come into his camp, where he entertained them; and then showed them, perhaps; the most superb review which had ever been seen.  The two armies were ranged in two lines, the right of M. de Luxembourg’s touching the left of the King’s,—­the whole extending over three leagues of ground.

After stopping ten days at Gevries, the two armies separated and marched.  Two days afterwards the seige of Namur was declared.  The King arrived there in five days.  Monseigneur (son of the King); Monsieur (Duc d’Orleans, brother of the King); M. le Prince (de Conde) and Marechal d’Humieres; all four, the one under the other, commanded in the King’s army under the King himself.  The Duc de Luxembourg, sole general of his own army, covered the siege operations, and observed the enemy.  The ladies went away to Dinant.  On the third day of the march M. le Prince went forward to invest the place.

The celebrated Vauban, the life and soul of all the sieges the King made, was of opinion that the town should be attacked separately from the castle; and his advice was acted upon.  The Baron de Bresse, however, who had fortified the place, was for attacking town and castle together.  He was a humble down-looking man, whose physiognomy promised nothing, but who soon acquired the confidence of the King, and the esteem of the army.

The Prince de Conde, Marechal d’Humieres, and the Marquis de Boufflers each led an attack.  There was nothing worthy of note during the ten days the siege lasted.  On the eleventh day, after the trenches had been opened, a parley was beaten and a capitulation made almost as the besieged desired it.  They withdrew to the castle; and it was agreed that it should not be attacked from the town-side, and that the town was not to be battered by it.  During the siege the King was almost always in his tent; and the weather remained constantly warm and serene.  We lost scarcely anybody of consequence.  The Comte de Toulouse received a slight wound in the arm while quite close to the King, who from a prominent place was witnessing the attack of a half-moon, which was carried in broad daylight by a detachment of the oldest of the two companies of Musketeers.