Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/479

] plenipotentiary at Nimeguen, he attacked the duke of Luxembourg before Mons. Luxembourg had reduced the city to great distress, and had not relaxed his siege during the armistice; William, therefore, affecting to know nothing of the signing of the peace—though at that time it was known in London, and mist be known to him—fell on the duke with all the forces he could muster, Dutch, English, and Spanish, and a desperate battle took place. William took the abbey of St. Denis in front of the French camp; Villahermosa, the Spanish general, took the ruined fortress of Casteau, but was driven out of it again before night. The English troops under lord Ossory did wonders. About five thousand men fell on one side or the other. At night the two armies resumed their places. It was expected that William the next day would utterly rout Luxembourg; and had the continuance of the war permitted, might have made his long-contemplated march into France. But the next day Luxembourg desired a conference, and informed William that the peace was concluded, and William retired towards Nivelles, and the French towards Ath. He had managed to prevent the important fortress of Mons falling into the hands of France.

Scarcely had these events taken place, when William was surprised by an overture from Charles, to unite with him, according to the treaty betwixt them, to compel Louis to grant the Spaniards the terms formerly offered at Nimeguen. The motive for this does not appear clear. If he knew of its conclusion, as he must have done, he could not expect William immediately to violate the peace just made. Probably he wished to appear to the Spaniards to be anxious to keep his engagement to them, for he made the same professions to them, and on the faith of that the Spaniards demanded better terms; but equally probable is the idea that he wanted an excuse for not disbanding the army. William is said, however, to have exclaimed to Hyde, who brought the message, "Was ever anything so hot and so cold as this court of yours? Will the king never learn a word that I shall never forget since my last passage to England, when, in a great storm, the captain all night was crying to the man at the helm, 'Steady! steady! steady! If this dispatch had come twenty days ago, it had changed the face of affairs in Christendom, and the war might have been carried on till France had yielded to the treaty of the Pyrenees, and left the world in quiet for the rest of our lives; as it comes now, it will have no effect at all." Louis resented the interference of Charles at this moment, and suspended the payment of his pension. He, however, receded from some of his terms, and referred the settlement of the differences with the Spaniards and the emperor of Germany to the Dutch. Before the end of October peace was concluded with all parties. Holland had recovered an she had lost, and obtained an advantageous treaty of commerce with France. Spain had lost Franche-Comté, and twelve fortresses in Flanders; Germany had regained Philipsburg in exchange for Friburg; Sweden recovered what it had lost to Denmark and the elector of Brandenburg; and Louis was left with a power and reputation that made him the arbitrator of Europe. Such was the end of the war which had agitated Europe from the Baltic to the Mediterranean for six years, and must have had a very different result had England had a real man on the throne.

We now come to one of the most extraordinary displays of a succession of plots, or pretended plots, which ever occurred in the history of any nation. From a small and most improbable beginning they spread and ramified themselves in all directions, involving the most distinguished persons of the state, ascending to the royal house, threatening the lives of the duke of York, of the queen, and even of the king. Though defeated in their highest aims, they yet brought to execution a considerable number of persons of various ranks, including several noblemen and commoners of distinction. When they appeared to be extinguished for a short period, they broke put again with fresh force, and struck down fresh victims; and whilst much of the machinery of these agitators remained in the deepest obscurity, the mind of the nation was wrought up to a condition of the most terrible suspicion, wonder, and alarm. In the half absurdity of the charges, the half development of ominous truths, the public was thrown into a long fever of terror and curiosity, and seemed to lose its judgment and discretion, and to be ready to destroy its noblest citizens on the evidence of the most despicable of mankind.

From the moment that some obscure indications of a secret league betwixt the king and Louis of France had emerged to the light, the people were haunted by fears and rumours of plots, and designs against the national liberty. Especially since the duke of York had avowed himself a catholic, and the king had a French catholic mistress, and spent much time with the French ambassador, Barillon, in her apartments, there were continual apprehensions of an attempt to introduce popery, and to suppress the public freedom by a standing army. The country was nearer the mark than it was aware of, and had it come by any chance to the knowledge of the full truth, that their monarch was the bond slave of France, to favour its ambitious designs of averting the balance of power on the continent, and extending the French empire, at the expense of its neighbours, to the widest boundary of the empire of Charlemagne, the immediate consequence would have been revolution, and the expulsion of the Stuarts a few years earlier. But as the real facts were kept in profound secrecy, all manner of vague rumours rose from the facts themselves, like smoke from a hidden fire.

There was a party, moreover, in the country, called the country party, or, in our modern phrase, the opposition, which now included several of the displaced statesmen of the cabal, especially Buckingham and Shaftesbury. These men had no scruples to withhold them from embarrassing the government, and in particular for anathematising their successful rival, the lord treasurer Danby. They knew well the secret which the public only suspected; but they had been too much mixed up with it to render it safe to reveal too much of it. But enough might be employed to destroy the prime minister, and to effect another defeat—the exclusion of the duke of York and a papist succession. Shaftesbury had a restless genius for plots and stratagems, which he had often employed when in office to the king's admiration, and which now, there can be little doubt, after surveying the whole of the extraordinary events which took