Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 4.djvu/199

Rh to fight the French; and afterwards told him, "They were sure he had such orders; otherwise he could not answer what he had done." But the duke still waved the question; saying "He would be glad to have letters from England, before he entered upon action; and that he expected them daily."

Upon this incident, the ministers and generals of the allies immediately took the alarm; vented their fury in violent expressions against the queen, and those she employed in her councils; said, "They were betrayed by Britain;" and assumed the countenance of those who think they have received an injury, and are disposed to return it.

The duke of Ormond's army consisted of eighteen thousand of her majesty's subjects, and about thirty thousand hired from other princes, either wholly by the queen, or jointly by her and the States. The duke immediately informed the court of the dispositions he found among the foreign generals upon this occasion; and "that upon an exigency, he could only depend on the British troops adhering to him; those of Hanover having already determined to desert to the Dutch, and tempted the Danes to do the like; and that he had reason to suppose the same of the rest."

Upon the news arriving at Utrecht, that the duke of Ormond had refused to engage in any action against the enemy; the Dutch ministers there went immediately to make their complaints to the lord privy-seal: aggravating the strangeness of this proceeding, together with the consequence of it, in the loss of a most favourable opportunity of ruining the French army, and the discontent it must needs create in the whole body of the confederates; ing,