Mixed news for the Grand Alliance over the spring of 1691 did little to comfort the English Parliament in Westminster, who in the autumn of 1691 passed the Volunteer Militia Act, providing for the creation of a militia for the defence of England. Proposed by the influential opposition Whig Colonel Jacob Black, leader of the elusive "Augustan Whigs", the act was not without controversy, most notably coming under attack from Black's fellow opposition Whig, Thomas Milnes. Milnes led his supporters in their dissent on the grounds, fittingly, that the proposed militia was discriminatory to Dissenters, with the bill overseeing its formation allowing for only Anglicans to join its ranks. Milnes, a Welshman and therefore no stranger to Dissenters and other "occasional conformers", took issue with this and argued that the primary concern for a soldier's suitability to serve should be his loyalty to the Williamite regime, which could not be judged prima facie by religion. Other members, especially Tories, merely took exception to the idea that a new militia was required, with Lord Monmouth's detachment of 22,000 (only recently re-acclaimed as per the stipulations of its inception) more than sufficient to preserve England's freedom.
Nevertheless, the bill passed both houses of Parliament, navigating the Lords thanks to Lord Godolphin leading a significant portion of his Tories in abstention. The militia was raised over the autumn and winter of 1691, numbering about 10,000 by the New Year. This had the positive side effect of allowing Lord Monmouth's army to be deployed elsewhere, with French invasion seeming to be increasingly a worry of the past. His army was seconded to William's own force and saw action in the Spanish Netherlands during the spring of 1692, by which point the Grand Alliance was on the back foot after a French resurgence instigated by King Louis and prosecuted by his Marshal Luxembourg with a great efficiency.
Luxembourg's army had troubled the coalition forces throughout 1691. Waldeck's own force, retired at Brussels, had proven largely impotent against the French advance through much of the south-eastern portion of Spanish territory. Seeking to finally use this initiative to secure a significant victory over the Allies, which he had failed to do in the aftermath of the Battle of Fleurus, Louis devised a so-called "Grand Plan" with his ministers over the spring of 1691 for the swift defeat of his enemies. Namur, lying on a confluence of the Rivers Meuse and Sambre, was a vast and important fortress, both militarily and politically, and to capture it, it was decided, would be to strike a humiliating blow to the Allies – especially the Spanish, against whom Louis was suffering defeat in Catalonia.
Marshal Luxembourg: Louis' most brilliant commander.
In order to dissuade William from coming to the relief of the town during the planned attack, Louis and his ministers also set upon an invasion of England in favour of the Jacobite option, forcing the English army to retire from the Netherlandish theatre to defend the Williamite regime, though James envisaged that his arrival on English soil would be generally accompanied by defections and rejoicing.
Louis left Versailles for Namur in early May, reaching the citadel by the 25th, when the French cavalry invested the town. The next day, the main French army arrived. By counts of some contemporary observers, the Namur garrison was outnumbered by a factor of twenty. What cannot be questioned is that the force assembled by the French was the largest assembled for a siege of the war hitherto. Luxembourg, however, was dwarfed in importance during the encounter by the French engineer Vauban, one of the greatest of his day. Vauban was matched by the Dutch engineer Menno van Coehoorn, who had been charged with the defence of the town and its powerful citadel. The topography of the town also rendered the actions significant (amongst the most significant of Louis' reign,) comprising a mixture of flat areas sheltered by the two rivers and higher, rocky regions on which the fortress itself was largely situated – although, being a complex of many fortifications, the citadel occupied space on many levels.)
Vauban had secretly reconnoitred the town the previous year, and so was able to work with detailed plans of the area during his operations. Guided by this knowledge, he first instructed the besieging army to construct lines of circumvallation, also placing batteries of artillery at key strategic points along these lines. The army was able to begin the advance by the end of May, easily defeating the weak Spanish garrison and occupying the town of Namur by the 5th of June. Meanwhile, Luxembourg had relocated his army of observation between William, who was advancing from Brussels, and Namur. William, who had landed in the Netherlands in March with an additional 30,000 troops, bringing the Anglo–Dutch army in the area to around 54,000 men, was hopeful of meeting Luxembourg in battle, confident that he might be able to at least distract the French by engaging the Marshal's 60,000-strong force. The weather turned against him, however, as heavy rain in the summer made most manoeuvres extremely difficult. William was therefore frustrated in his efforts, and also rendered unable to relieve Namur.
The Siege of Namur proved one of the most important engagements of Louis' reign.
The French would also be frustrated by the elements, however, with the rain turning the riparian town into a quagmire and maiming it near-impossible to efficiently move artillery pieces from one place to another by the end of June. By this point, however, Vauban had already overcome Coehoorn and occupied several significant redoubts outside of the main citadel, including Fort William, constructed by William some years earlier. After this significant advance, the rest of the citadel capitulated; Namur was taken. According to Louis de Rouvroy, Vidame de Chartres and later Duke of Saint-Simon, who was present throughout the action, the French triumph came not a moment too soon for the attacking army, "[…] whose strength and provisions were nearly exhausted on account of the continual rain that had turned everything to a quagmire."
After the siege, William was afforded an opportunity by the fortunes of war to surprise the French army under Luxembourg outside the town of Steenkurque, which, desirous of a significant victory over a portion of Luxembourg's army in order to claim some success for that year's campaign, he took eagerly. A series of displays of mismanagement by William's Dutch commanders negated the advantage William had gained in surprising Luxembourg, who was able to defeat the Allied army put to battle and allow the French to retire in good order. Whilst William was also able to exit the field in a relatively good manner, the Allied detachment had sustained heavy losses, some 8,000 men, and had only managed an equitable blow to the larger French force. This allowed some Allies to claim Steenkerque as a victory, though the reality was such that Luxembourg still dominated the French-held Spanish Netherlands.
By mid-August 1691, the Netherlandish campaign for the year was effectively over and William retired to England, reportedly with the intention of impregnating Mary to shore up the Protestant succession, which was not under any immediate threat as things stood. Mary's sister Anne remained the heiress apparent, followed by her only surviving son William, Duke of Gloucester. Anne had been pregnant nine times by April 1692, with four ending in either stillbirths or miscarriages; no other child had survived more than 18 months. Mary apparently shared her sister's obstetric troubles, and had already miscarried three times. To compound this, evidence suggests that William himself was infertile, or otherwise grew impotent with age. Therefore, no pregnancy resulted from his brief return to England.
Princess Anne, shown here with her son Prince William of Gloucester.
William's plans, however, were not the only ones frustrated by failure. Louis' own ambitious Grand Plan had born fruit at Namur, but was otherwise floundering. The planned Jacobite invasion had been severely poorly handled. The invasion fleet had been furnished with instructions to assemble before the Anglo–Dutch fleet could unite, which it proved unable to do. English Admiral of the Fleet Edward Russell, a veteran of the Glorious Revolution and one of the Immortal Seven, had been maintaining the recovering Royal Navy as a "fleet-in-being" since assuming command of the Channel after Beachy Head. By May 1691, Russell, in cooperation with the Dutch Admiral Philips van Almonde, could count on 82 ships of the line (56 English and 26 Dutch). The French, still under the Count of Tourville, the victor of Beachy Head, had amassed only 44 in the Channel.
The two fleets first sighted each other on the 29th of May near the Cap Barfleur. Whilst Tourville was against action, he had been instructed by King Louis to enter battle "fort ou faible", and so was forced to engage. Calm conditions minimised any great action, but the battle was filled with notable incidents, with Russell's Red Squadron primarily engaged with Tourville's centre, which had been reinforced from other squadrons to be able to face the Red on parity. Russell held fire to allow Tourville to come as close as possible, using the French-held weathergauge, and began bombarding. Meanwhile, Almonde overlapped the French lines with his van squadron, with both sides sustaining significant damage. Only when the wind changed were the English able to break the deadlock, with Rear Admiral of the Red Sir Cloudesley Shovell breaking the French lines and the Dutch able to envelop the French van. In the evening, the tide turned and allowed for a French retreat down the coast towards Cherbourg, despite the lack of a safe haven. The same tide allowed Shovell to launch one last fireship attack.
Most ships on both sides had been damaged, though no losses had been sustained. Damage to Russell's flagship, the Royal William, had forced the Admiral to return to port, leaving Almonde to lead the pursuit of the French. Tourville too had sustained damage to his flagship, the Soleil Royal, though the vessel proved beyond repair and had to be beached. By the time Tourville reached Saint-Vaast-la-Hogue, where the Jacobite force was awaiting transport to England, thirteen of his ships had been beached. A further fifteen were burnt at either Cherbourg or La Hogue by Shovell's fireships, leaving the French navy in the Channel soundly beaten. Any Jacobite plans for invasion had to be scrapped for the year, and the Williamite regime remained untroubled by any serious challenges. Further, the reputation of the Anglo–Dutch navy, humbled at Beachy Head, had been restored. The Channel was now firmly under Allied control, and the French had to resort to using their army to win the war.
The Battles of Barfleur (above) and La Hogue did much to restore the confidence of the Anglo–Dutch navy after Beachy Head.
The overall victory at Barfleur and La Hogue rejuvenated calls for more attention to be paid to the navy as a means of strength and also helped to foster interest in its growth from diverse quarter. Most notably, the Duke of Norfolk, whose attentions since the termination of his brief political career hitherto had been focused, perhaps naturally for a man tired of English scheming, abroad. He had spent much of the year consumed by negotiations in the construction of a trading post on the eastern banks of the River Hooghly in Bengal, later to be christened Fort William in honour of the king upon its eventual completion in spring 1692. In June 1691, however, he commissioned the construction of a third rate ship of the line at Woolwich Dockyards, aspiring to honour the naval tradition of the Howard family, who had been represented by the Earl of Nottingham in defeating the Spanish Armada. The Sophia was put to sea in February.
The victory of a Whig (Russell) over the French fleet also coincided with a parliamentary victory for the Whigs as the controversial Poor Relief Bill was finally ratified by both houses in September 1691. William proved continually reluctant to create any new Whig peers to help steer the bill through the Lords, though creation was ultimately not required. Led by both Godolphin and Shaftesbury, the Lords conceded and passed the bill – with many expressing more concern at the possibility of more peers being created and the peerage diluted than the possibility of a French invasion, whose accompanying hysteria had previously driven some peers to decry the Poor Bill as distracting.
The act's architect, Thomas Milnes, enjoyed other contemporary successes away from Westminster in his home of Cardiff. A small town in the late 17th century, Milnes used money from his mining interests in Caerphilly to construct iron blast furnaces along the banks of the River Taff, also setting up a company dedicated to the shipping of this iron and coal from Cardiff to other south-western boom towns like Plymouth and Bristol, which in January 1692 became the site of a second bank owned by Lord Mulgrave. As with Mulgrave's endeavours in Plymouth, Milnes' investment in Cardiff helped to bring jobs and people to the area. Profits from the mining and shipping enterprises were re-invested into housing for many of these newcomers, with the newly-built Milnestown sitting at the heart of Cardiff's fortunes. Money also went into repairs to Llandaff Cathedral, which was sitting in a neglected condition by the close of the 17th century. It came as little surprise, therefore when Milnes was appointed High Sherrif of Glamorgan for the year of 1692.
By 1692, Llandaff Cathedral lay partly in ruins. Thomas Milnes used his wealth to help with its renovation.
Mulgrave himself, having come into great wealth thanks to his shrewd fiscal manoeuvres in Plymouth and Bristol, was not content to remain confined by the sea borders of Great Britain. In the autumn of 1691, he headed a consortium dedicated to the audacious task of reviving the fur trade in New England, which had dried up in the previous decades as the trade of rum and molasses from the West Indies increased. The Honourable Company of Fur Traders of New England were unsuccessful in fulfilling this ambition, though trade could not be too harshly faulted, with considerable amounts of money sank unsuccessfully into the foundation of a settlement in disputed territory east of New Hampshire. Sheffield, named in honour of Mulgrave (who was also the Earl of Sheffield) was beset by Québécois settlers and Abenaki Indians, and lay abandoned by April 1692.
At home, however, the situation was optimistic. Defeats in the Netherlands had been offset by the dramatic victory in the Channel, and with the resumption of campaigning in the spring and summer of 1692 the French were still plagued by heavy resistance in Catalonia and Savoy. Although Louis would have liked to have been safe in the knowledge of such, the war would not be won in Namur alone.
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