[449]

Wharton afterwards boasted that he had sung a King out of three
kingdoms. But in truth the success of Lillibullero was the effect, and
not the cause, of that excited state of public feeling which produced
the Revolution.

While James was thus raising against himself all those national feelings
which, but for his own folly, might have saved his throne, Lewis was
in another way exerting himself not less effectually to facilitate the
enterprise which William meditated.

The party in Holland which was favourable to France was a minority, but
a minority strong enough, according to the constitution of the Batavian
federation, to prevent the Stadtholder from striking any great blow.
To keep that minority steady was an object to which, if the Court of
Versailles had been wise, every other object would at that conjuncture
have been postponed. Lewis however had, during some time, laboured,
as if of set purpose, to estrange his Dutch friends; and he at length,
though not without difficulty, succeeded in forcing them to become
his enemies at the precise moment at which their help would have been
invaluable to him.

There were two subjects on which the people of the United Provinces were
peculiarly sensitive, religion and trade; and both their religion and
their trade the French King assailed. The persecution of the Huguenots,
and the revocation of the edict of Nantes, had everywhere moved the
grief and indignation of Protestants. But in Holland these feelings were
stronger than in any other country; for many persons of Dutch birth,
confiding in the repeated and solemn declarations of Lewis that the
toleration granted by his grandfather should be maintained, had, for
commercial purposes, settled in France, and a large proportion of the
settlers had been naturalised there. Every post now brought to Holland
the tidings that these persons were treated with extreme rigour on
account of their religion. Dragoons, it was reported, were quartered on
one. Another had been held naked before a fire till he was half roasted.
All were forbidden, under the severest penalties, to celebrate the rites
of their religion, or to quit the country into which they had, under
false pretences, been decoyed. The partisans of the House of Orange
exclaimed against the cruelty and perfidy of the tyrant. The opposition
was abashed and dispirited. Even the town council of Amsterdam, though
strongly attached to the French interest and to the Arminian t