d family, were yet forced to
confess that, on the day of Oudenarde, the young Electoral Prince, then
making his first campaign, conducted himself with the spirit and courage
of an approved soldier. On this occasion his Electoral Highness had
better luck than the King of England, who was with his cousins in the
enemy's camp, and had to run with them at the ignominious end of the
day. With the most consummate generals in the world before them, and
an admirable commander on their own side, they chose to neglect the
councils, and to rush into a combat with the former, which would have
ended in the utter annihilation of their army but for the great skill
and bravery of the Duke of Vendosme, who remedied, as far as courage and
genius might, the disasters occasioned by the squabbles and follies of
his kinsmen, the legitimate princes of the blood royal.

"If the Duke of Berwick had but been in the army, the fate of the day
would have been very different," was all that poor Mr. von Holtz could
say; "and you would have seen that the hero of Almanza was fit to
measure swords with the conqueror of Blenheim."

The business relative to the exchange of prisoners was always going on,
and was at least that ostensible one which kept Mr. Holtz perpetually on
the move between the forces of the French and the Allies. I can answer
for it, that he was once very near hanged as a spy by Major-General
Wayne, when he was released and sent on to head-quarters by a special
order of the Commander-in-Chief. He came and went, always favored,
wherever he was, by some high though occult protection. He carried
messages between the Duke of Berwick and his uncle, our Duke. He seemed
to know as well what was taking place in the Prince's quarter as our
own: he brought the compliments of the King of England to some of our
officers, the gentlemen of Webb's among the rest, for their behavior on
that great day; and after Wynendael, when our General was chafing at the
neglect of our Commander-in-Chief, he said he knew how that action
was regarded by the chiefs of the French army, and that the stand made
before Wynendael wood was the passage by which the Allies entered Lille.

"Ah!" says Holtz (and some folks were very willing to listen to him),
"if the king came by his own, how changed the conduct of affairs would
be! His Majesty's very exile has this advantage, that he is enabled to
read England impartially, and to judge honestly of all the eminent men.
His si