rst.
The French King, not content with assisting the Moslem against the
Christians, was himself treating Christians with a barbarity which would
have shocked the very Moslem. His infidel allies, to do them justice,
had not perpetrated on the Danube such outrages against the edifices
and the members of the Holy Catholic Church as he who called himself
the eldest son of that Church was perpetrating on the Rhine. On these
grounds, the princes to whom James had appealed replied by appealing,
with many professions of good will and compassion, to himself. He was
surely too just to blame them for thinking that it was their first
duty to defend their own people against such outrages as had turned
the Palatinate into a desert, or for calling in the aid of Protestants
against an enemy who had not scrupled to call in the aid of the Turks,
[108]

During the winter and the earlier part of the spring, the powers hostile
to France were gathering their strength for a great effort, and were
in constant communication with one another. As the season for military
operations approached, the solemn appeals of injured nations to the God
of battles came forth in rapid succession. The manifesto of the Germanic
body appeared in February; that of the States General in March; that of
the House of Brandenburg in April; and that of Spain in May, [109]

Here, as soon as the ceremony of the coronation was over, the House of
Commons determined to take into consideration the late proceedings
of the French king, [110] In the debate, that hatred of the powerful,
unscrupulous and imperious Lewis, which had, during twenty years of
vassalage, festered in the hearts of Englishmen, broke violently forth.
He was called the most Christian Turk, the most Christian ravager
of Christendom, the most Christian barbarian who had perpetrated on
Christians outrages of which his infidel allies would have been ashamed,
[111] A committee, consisting chiefly of ardent Whigs, was appointed to
prepare an address. John Hampden, the most ardent Whig among them,
was put into the chair; and he produced a composition too long, too
rhetorical, and too vituperative to suit the lips of the Speaker or the
ears of the King. Invectives against Lewis might perhaps, in the temper
in which the House then was, have passed without censure, if they
had not been accompanied by severe reflections on the character and
administration of Charles the Second, whose memory, in spite of all his
faul