(Torroella, 5 m. above the mouth of the river), and in consequence
captured a number of walled towns.
In 1695 William found Marshal Villeroi a far less formidable opponent than Luxemburg had been, and easily succeeded in keeping him in Flanders while a corps of the Allies invested Namur. Coehoorn directed the siege-works, and Boufflers the defence. Gradually, as in 1692, the defenders were dislodged from the town, the citadelLater campaigns of the war. outworks and the citadel itself, the last being assaulted with success by the “British grenadiers,” as the song commemorates, on the 30th of August. Boufflers was rewarded for his sixty-seven days’ defence by the grade of marshal.
By 1696 necessity had compelled Louis to renounce his vague and indefinite offensive policy, and he now frankly restricted his efforts to the maintenance of what he had won in the preceding campaigns. In this new policy he met with much success. Boufflers, Lorge, Noailles and even the incompetent Villeroi held the field in their various spheres of operations without allowing the Allies to inflict any material injury, and also (by having recourse again to the policy of living by plunder) preserving French soil from the burden of their own maintenance. In this, as before, they were powerfully assisted by the disunion and divided counsels of their heterogeneous enemies. In Piedmont, Catinat crowned his work by making peace and alliance with the duke of Savoy, and the two late enemies having joined forces captured one of the fortresses of the Milanese. The last campaign was in 1697. Catinat and Vauban besieged Ath. This siege was perhaps the most regular and methodical of the great engineer’s career. It lasted 23 days and cost the assailants only 50 men. King William did not stir from his entrenched position at Brussels, nor did Villeroi dare to attack him there. Lastly, in August 1697 Vendôme, Noailles’ successor, captured Barcelona. The peace of Ryswijk, signed on the 30th of October, closed this war by practically restoring the status quo ante; but neither the ambitions of Louis nor the Grand Alliance that opposed them ceased to have force, and three years later the struggle began anew (see Spanish Succession, War of the).
Concurrently with these campaigns, the emperor had been engaged
in a much more serious war on his eastern marches against
the old enemy, the Turks. This war arose in 1682 out
of internal disturbances in Hungary. The campaign of
the following year is memorable for all time as the last
great wave of Turkish invasion. Mahommed IV. advanced fromAustro-Turkish wars,
1682–1699.
Belgrade in May, with 200,000 men, drove
back the small imperial army of Prince Charles of Lorraine,
and early in July invested Vienna itself. The two months’ defence
of Vienna by Count Rüdiger Starhemberg (1635–1701) and the
brilliant victory of the relieving army led by John Sobieski, king of
Poland, and Prince Charles on the 12th of September 1683, were
events which, besides their intrinsic importance, possess the romantic
interest of an old knightly crusade against the heathen.
But the course of the war, after the tide of invasion had ebbed, differed little from the wars of contemporary western Europe. Turkey figured rather as a factor in the balance of power than as the “infidel,” and although the battles and sieges in Hungary were characterized by the bitter personal hostility of Christian to Turk which had no counterpart in the West, the war as a whole was as methodical and tedious as any Rhine or Low Countries campaign. In 1684 Charles of Lorraine gained a victory at Waitzen on the 27th of June and another at Eperies on the 18th of September, and unsuccessfully besieged Budapest.
In 1685 the Germans were uniformly successful, though a victory at Gran (August 16th) and the storming of Neuhaüsel (August 19th) were the only outstanding incidents. In 1686 Charles, assisted by the elector Max Emanuel of Bavaria, besieged and stormed Budapest (Sept. 2nd). In 1687 they followed up their success by a great victory at Mohacz (Aug. 12th). In 1688 the Austrians advanced still further, took Belgrade, threatened Widin and entered Bosnia. The margrave Louis of Baden, who afterward became one of the most celebrated of the methodical generals of the day, won a victory at Derbent on the 5th of September 1688, and next year, in spite of the outbreak of a general European war, he managed to win another battle at Nisch (Sept. 24th), to capture Widin (Oct. 14th) and to advance to the Balkans, but in 1690, more troops having to be withdrawn for the European war, the imperialist generals lost Nisch, Widin and Belgrade one after the other. There was, however, no repetition of the scenes of 1683, for in 1691 Louis won the battle of Szlankamen (Aug. 19th). After two more desultory if successful campaigns he was called to serve in western Europe, and for three years more the war dragged on without result, until in 1697 the young Prince Eugene was appointed to command the imperialists and won a great and decisive victory at Zenta on the Theiss (Sept. 11th). This induced a last general advance of the Germans eastward, which was definitively successful and brought about the peace of Carlowitz (January 1699). (C. F. A.)
Naval Operations
The naval side of the war waged by the powers of western Europe from 1689 to 1697, to reduce the predominance of King Louis XIV., was not marked by any very conspicuous exhibition of energy or capacity, but it was singularly decisive in its results. At the beginning of the struggle the French fleet kept the sea in face of the united fleets of Great Britain and Holland. It displayed even in 1690 a marked superiority over them. Before the struggle ended it had been fairly driven into port, and though its failure was to a great extent due to the exhaustion of the French finances, yet the inability of the French admirals to make a proper use of their fleets, and the incapacity of the king’s ministers to direct the efforts of his naval officers to the most effective aims, were largely responsible for the result.
When the war began in 1689, the British Admiralty was still suffering from the disorders of the reign of King Charles II., which had been only in part corrected during the short reign of James II. The first squadrons were sent out late and in insufficient strength. The Dutch, crushed by the obligation to maintain a great army, found an increasing difficulty in preparing their fleet for action early. Louis XIV., a despotic monarch, with as yet unexhausted resources, had it within his power to strike first. The opportunity offered him was a very tempting one. Ireland was still loyal to King James II., and would therefore have afforded an admirable basis of operations to a French fleet. No serious attempt was made to profit by the advantage thus presented. In March 1689 King James was landed and reinforcements were prepared for him at Brest. A British squadron under the command of Arthur Herbert (afterwards Lord Torrington), sent to intercept them, reached the French port too late, and on returning to the coast of Ireland sighted the convoy off the Old Head of Kinsale on the 10th of May. The French admiral Chateaurenault held on to Bantry Bay, and an indecisive encounter took place on the 11th of May. The troops and stores for King James were successfully landed. Then both admirals, the British and the French, returned home, and neither in that nor in the following year was any serious effort made by the French to gain command of the sea between Ireland and England. On the contrary, a great French fleet entered the Channel, and gained a success over the combined British and Dutch fleets on the 10th of July 1690 (see Beachy Head, Battle of), which was not followed up by vigorous action. In the meantime King William III. passed over to Ireland and won the battle of the Boyne. During the following year, while the cause of King James was being finally ruined in Ireland, the main French fleet was cruising in the Bay of Biscay, principally for the purpose of avoiding battle. During the whole of 1689, 1690 and 1691, British squadrons were active on the Irish coast. One raised the siege of Londonderry in July 1689, and another convoyed the first British forces sent over under the duke of Schomberg. Immediately after Beachy Head in 1690, a part of the Channel fleet carried out an expedition under the earl (afterwards duke) of Marlborough, which took Cork and reduced a large part of the south of the island. In 1691 the French did little more than help to carry away the wreckage of their allies and their own detachments. In 1692 a vigorous but tardy attempt was made to employ their fleet to cover an invasion of England (see La Hogue, Battle of). It ended in defeat, and the allies remained masters of the Channel. The defeat of La Hogue did not do so much harm to the naval power of King Louis as has sometimes been supposed. In the next year, 1693, he was able to strike a severe blow at the Allies. The important Mediterranean trade of Great Britain and Holland, called for convenience the Smyrna convoy, having been delayed during the previous year, anxious measures were taken to see it safe on its road in 1693. But the arrangements of the allied governments and admirals were not good. They made no effort to blockade Brest, nor did they take effective steps to discover whether or not the French fleet had left the port. The convoy was seen beyond the Scilly Isles by the main fleet. But as the French admiral Tourville had left Brest for the Straits of Gibraltar with a powerful force and had been joined by a squadron from Toulon, the whole convoy was scattered or taken by him, in the latter days of June, near Lagos. But though this success was a very fair equivalent for the defeat at La
