Louis, accompanied by individuals of the court, left Versailles for Flanders on 10 May. French cavalry invested the town on the night of 25–26 May; the main army arrived the following day. The French forces were even larger than Louis had gathered for the
Siege of Mons the previous year: the besieging army amounted some 60,000 men and 151 guns; the duc de Luxembourg's army of observation, designed to prevent William coming to Namur's assistance, also had about 60,000 men. Namur's garrison, under the command of
Octavius Ignatius, Prince of Arenberg and Barbançon, totalled approximately 6,000.
Fall of town The Siege of Namur in 1692 was a particularly notable operation of King Louis's reign. First, the action involved the two great military engineers of the day:
Vauban, who oversaw the siege, and the Dutch engineer,
Menno van Coehoorn, who directed the defences of the stronghold. Second, the location and topography of the position made the siege particularly challenging. The actual town of Namur sat on low flat land on the north bank of the
Sambre that was dominated by heights on all sides. However, by reason of the position of its citadel (a complex of fortifications occupying the height on the south bank between the confluence of the Sambre and Meuse), it was one of the strongest frontiers in Flanders. Vauban had secretly reconnoitred Namur the year before and managed to draw up plans of the town's defences. Guided by those drawings, the French constructed lines of
circumvallation, and positioned several large, well-equipped
batteries; trenches for three lines of advance opened on the night of 29–30 May. The garrison managed a small sortie to reinforce a battery covering the main town, but it met with limited success. Offering little resistance the town capitulated on 5 June, when it was agreed there would be a truce until the morning of 7 June. During that respite, the garrison crossed over to the citadel complex, and the French entered the town. It was also agreed that during the rest of the siege, the Allies would not fire down on the town from the heights, and the French would not attack the citadel from that direction. In his memoirs, Jean Martin de la Colonie, a participant of the siege wrote, "It was through ignorance of the true state of the fortifications that these articles were agreed to, as it is only from the town side that the fortress could be taken, the rest being almost impregnable". The key to the citadel, therefore, was Fort William (named after William of Orange, who had built it), positioned to the west of the other main strongpoints. It was in that direction that the French were obliged to attack (
see map). running south–north). The first task for the attackers was to take the outlying
redoubt of La Cachotte, which covered the approaches to Fort William. The trench was opened on 8 June; a major assault – consisting of seven battalions, accompanied by the King's Musketeers – followed on 12 June. French sappers approached from two directions, but the recent heavy rain had made the whole operation extremely difficult. In a dramatic gesture, Coehoorn ordered his own grave dug to symbolise his commitment to defend the position to the end, but although his grave was not needed, the Dutch engineer was wounded in the head by a shell that killed his valet. However, the surrounding country, much of it woodland, provided so little forage that the French were forced to feed their animals on leaves and branches, which resulted in many losses. Hampered in this way and lacking ammunition, Vauban had sought permission from the King to renege on their earlier treaty and to attack the citadel from the side of the town: an act that, in Vauban's opinion, would be less disgraceful than raising the siege. However, after Fort William fell, the other works did not hold out long. The final capitulation came on 30 June; the remainder of the garrison left on 1 July. To Saint-Simon, who was at the siege, that came none too soon for the besiegers, "whose strength and provisions were nearly exhausted on account of the continual rain that had turned everything to a quagmire". ==Aftermath==