Page:History of England (Macaulay) Vol 3.djvu/388

 trusted. The dislike with which the most zealous English Protestant regarded the House of Bourbon and the Church of Rome was a lukewarm feeling when compared with that inextinguishable hatred which glowed in the bosom of the persecuted, dragooned, expatriated Calvinist of Languedoc. The Irish had already remarked that the French heretic neither gave nor took quarter. Now, however, it was found that with those emigrants who had sacrificed every thing for the reformed religion were intermingled emigrants of a very different sort, deserters who had run away from their standards in the Low Countries, and had coloured their crime by pretending that they were Protestants, and that their conscience would not suffer them to fight for the persecutor of their Church. Some of these men, hoping that by a second treason they might obtain both pardon and reward, opened a correspondence with Avaux. The letters were intercepted; and a formidable plot was brought to light. It appeared that, if Schomberg had been weak enough to yield to the importunity of those who wished him to give battle, several French companies would, in the heat of the action, have fired on the English, and gone over to the enemy. Such a defection might well have produced a general panic in a better army than that which was encamped under Dundalk. It was necessary to be severe. Six of the conspirators were hanged. Two hundred of their accomplices were sent in irons to England. Even after this winnowing, the refugees were long regarded by the rest of the army with unjust but not unnatural suspicion. During some days indeed there was great reason to fear that the enemy would be entertained with a bloody fight between the English soldiers and their French allies.

A few hours before the execution of the chief conspirators, a general muster of the army was held; and it was observed