Page 115 - A Jacobite Exile

want fibre. William of Orange may be, as you call him, a foreigner and a
usurper, but England has greater weight in the councils of Europe, in his

hands, than it has had since the death of Elizabeth."

This was rather a sore point with Captain Jervoise, who, thorough Jacobite
as he was, had smarted under the subservience of England to France during
the reigns of the two previous monarchs.

"You Englishmen and Scotchmen are fighting people," the king went on,

"and should have a military monarch. I do not mean a king like myself,
who likes to fight in the front ranks of his soldiers; but one like William,
who has certainly lofty aims, and is a statesman, and can join in European

combinations."

"William thinks and plans more for Holland than for England, sire. He
would join a league against France and Spain, not so much for the benefit
of England, which has not much to fear from these powers, but of Holland,

whose existence now, as of old is threatened by them."

"England's interest is similar to that of Holland," the king said. "I began this
war, nominally, in the interest of the Duke of Holstein, but really because it
was Sweden's interest that Denmark should not become too powerful.

"But we must not waste time in talking politics. I see the men have finished

their breakfast, and we are here to hunt. I shall keep twenty horse with me;
the rest will enter the forest with you. I have arranged for the peasants here
to guide you. You will march two miles along by the edge of the forest, and

then enter it and make a wide semicircle, leaving men as you go, until you
come down to the edge of the forest again, a mile to our left.

"As soon as you do so, you will sound a trumpet, and the men will then
move forward, shouting so as to drive the game before them. As the

peasants tell me there are many wolves and bears in the forest, I hope that
you will inclose some of them in your cordon, which will be about five

miles from end to end. With the horse you will have a hundred and thirty
men, so that there will be a man every sixty or seventy yards. That is too