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340 perhaps it was fortunate for humanity that the campaign terminated otherwise. Had Amsterdam been taken, and the stadtholder restored to his offices, the patriots and the French would still have, remained in possession of the frontier places of the republic, from whence no force that the house of Orange could have raised, or the English supplied, would have expelled them; and France, rather than permit so important a conquest as Holland to be wrested from her hands, would, from these commanding points, have poured innumerable and irresistible bodies of troops into the country. The British army might again, at an inclement season of the year, have been obliged to make a disastrous retreat, through a dreary and inhospitable country, with an active and vigilant enemy in their rear, and the Prince of Orange might again have been compelled to seek his personal safety in a precipitate flight from his government.

The complete failure of the expedition, undertaken at their suggestion, and for their relief, extinguished the last hopes of the