Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/119

] it advanced to the government two hundred thousand pounds on the 15th of August, and that in hard cash, for it was plainly told that its paper was of no use in Flanders. Yet to such extremities was the bank reduced that at the same time it was obliged to pay its demands by three-fourths the value of its notes in cash, marking that amount as paid on the notes, and returning them into circulation reduced to one-fourth of their original value. As the bank, however, so bravely supported the government, the government determined as firmly to support it; and the public confidence, which had never entirely failed it, from this moment grew stronger and stronger. As the year drew towards a close, the rapidly-increasing issue of the new coin began to reduce the intensity of the distress, and the forbearance of creditors of all kinds enabled the nation to bear up wonderfully, much to the chagrin of its enemies both at home and abroad, where the most wonderful stories of English poverty and ruin were circulated.

As there was no fighting to be done, William quitted his camp early, leaving the command to Athlone and the elector of Bavaria, and retired to Loo. There, however, he had no real quiet, for many things were going on in different parts of the continent to create the deepest anxiety. Louis, weary of the war, was trying on all sides to break up the alliance. He sent Caillières to Holland to tamper with the Louvestein faction, which had always been hostile to William, and offered through it certain mercantile advantages to induce Holland to demand a peace. To this the Dutch convention of estates listened favourably, but refused to treat without the concurrence of William and the rest of the allies. To render the allies more prompt to treat, Louis put his arms in motion in Catalonia to do all the damage they could. The duke of Vendome attacked the Spaniards at Ostalric, and defeated them, but was soon after compelled to retreat. In Germany the duke de Lorges again crossed the Rhine into Baden, but was again forced back. At this crisis Peter the Czar of Muscovy took the town and garrison of Azoph, and the Russians were now brought so much into the eye of Europe that the emperor of Germany entered into an alliance with them. The imperial army encountered the Turks on the river Breque, and defeated them, but with such loss to themselves that they did not pursue their success. These movements, however, tended to weaken the force of the allies in the Netherlands: and now came to light a grand defection of one of the allied powers which occasioned much chagrin and consternation. Savoy had fallen from the league. The duke had been wavering for some time. The French had persuaded him that England would be invaded and James unquestionably restored. He made a pretended pilgrimage to Loretto, and there met the agents of France disguised as monks. Louis engaged to give him four millions of livres in reparation of the damages sustained, and to defend him against all his enemies; that the duke of Burgundy, the son of the dauphin, should marry the princess of Savoy, when at a proper age, and the treaty was guaranteed by the pope and the Venetians, who were anxious to see the Germans driven out of Italy. News of this treaty being in agitation, William and the emperor no sooner heard of it than they sent emissaries to dissuade the duke. The emperor offered him the king of the Romans in marriage with the princess of Savoy, and an increase of his subsidy and the forces to defend him. The duke protested the rumours were totally groundless, till Catinat appeared in the plains of Turin at the head of fifty thousand men, when he threw off the mask, and excused himself by saying he was no longer able to maintain himself against the power of France. He wrote to all the allies except William, giving them his reasons for his change, and pressing them to follow his example. On the 23rd of August he signed in public the treaty he had already signed in private. Prince Eugene, the duke's kinsman, was highly incensed at this conduct, and the young prince de Commerci so much so that he challenged the duke, but the duel was prevented by their friends. One of the conditions of the treaty was that the allies should be compelled to quit Piedmont. The duke had waited till most of the allies had sent in their subsidies; but lord Galway managed to intercept that sent by William, and applied it to the payment of the British troops in the service of the Milanese. The duke then put himself at the head of a French force, and marched into the duchy of Milan and invested Valencia. The courts of Spain and of the emperor, believing themselves unable to resist France under these altered circumstances, joined the neutrality, and William saw himself left almost alone. The distresses of England owing to the change in the coin were mistaken both by friends and enemies abroad for exhaustion of her wealth, and Caillières assumed a higher tone at the Hague. He had been commissioned by Louis to offer to recognise William's right to the throne of England, but he now drew back, and evinced an arrogant indifference to the treaty. In fact, the necessity no longer existing of maintaining a large army in Savoy, and the engaged neutrality of the emperor, so elated Louis, that he again thought himself a match for England.

It was under such gloomy circumstances that William returned home. He landed at Margate on the 6th of October. During his absence little had been done by the fleet. Lord Berkeley had insulted the coast of France, pillaged and burnt several villages on the islands Grouais, Houat, and Heydie, made prize of about twenty vessels, bombarded St. Martin's, on the isle of Rhé, and set fire to the town Olonne. These ravages compelled the French to keep an army of sixty thousand men on those coasts, and to erect above a hundred batteries betwixt Brest and Goulet. Rear-admiral Benbow made an attempt to blockade the famous pirate Du Bart in Dunkirk, but he gave him the slip and attacked the Dutch fleet in the Baltic, and got back safe with fifteen captured vessels.

But, except the trouble arising from the coinage, the great event during William's absence had been the capture of Sir John Fenwick, and his examination, with the view of tracing the further ramifications of the conspiracy in which he had been engaged. Fenwick, if not engaged in the assassination scheme, was charged by Porter and the other king's evidence with being fully privy to it, and deep in the plot for the invasion. He was a man of high birth, high connections, being married to a sister of the earl of Carlisle, had held high office in the state, and was a most indefatigable and zealous traitor. During the king's absence, and when the Jacobites were in high spirits, hoping to drive out William, he had shown the most marked and unmanly disrespect to the queen.