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HISTORY 03? EJTGIAHD.

ciiap. affronts. So wretched had, his education been that, when he—was told of the fall of Mons, the most important fortress in hisvast empire, he asked whether Mons was in England.* Amongthe ministers who were raised up and pulled down by his sicklycaprice, was none capable of applying a remedy to the dis-tempers of the State. In truth to brace aneiv the nerves of thatparalysed body would have been a hard task even for Ximenes.No servant of the Spanish Crown occupied a more importantpost, and none w’as more unfit for an important post, than theMarquess of Gastanaga. He was Governor of the Netherlands;and in the Netherlands it seemed probable that the fate ofChristendom would be decided. He had discharged his trustas every public trust was then discharged in every part of thatvast monarchy on which it was boastfully said that the sunnever set. Fertile and rich as W’as the country which he ruled,he threw on England and Holland the whole charge of de-fending it. He expected that arms, ammunition, waggons,provisions, every thing, w’ould be furnished by the heretics.It had never occurred to him that it w’as his business, and nottheirs, to put Mons in a condition to stand a siege. The publicvoice loudly accused him of having sold that celebrated strong-hold to France. But it is probable that he W’as guilty of nothingworse than the haughty apathy and sluggishness characteristicof his nation.

succeeds Such was the state of the coalition of which William was thein prc- head. There w’ere moments when he felt himself overwhelmed,

■venting . * 1

the disso- when his spirits sank, when his patience was wearied out, andthe coa- w'hen his constitutional irritability broke forth. “I cannot,” ho11 ’ wrote, “offer a suggestion without being met by a demand fora subsidy.”** “I have refused point blank,” he wrote on an-

* M&noires de Torcy.

** William to Ilcinsius, ~ 1G91.