s, errors committed in defiance of repeated warnings, and, as it
should seem, in the mere wantonness of selfwill, was that now, when the
voice of a single powerful member of the Batavian federation might have
averted an event fatal to all the politics of Lewis, no such voice was
raised. The Envoy, with all his skill, vainly endeavoured to rally
the party by the help of which he had, during several years, held
the Stadtholder in check. The arrogance and obstinacy of the master
counteracted all the efforts of the servant. At length Avaux was
compelled to send to Versailles the alarming tidings that no reliance
could be placed on Amsterdam, so long devoted to the French cause, that
some of the well intentioned were alarmed for their religion, and that
the few whose inclinations were unchanged could not venture to utter
what they thought. The fervid eloquence of preachers who declaimed
against the horrors of the French persecution, and the lamentations of
bankrupts who ascribed their ruin to the French decrees, had wrought
up the people to such a temper, that no citizen could declare himself
favourable to France without imminent risk of being flung into the
nearest canal. Men remembered that, only fifteen years before, the most
illustrious chief of the party adverse to the House of Orange had been
torn to pieces by an infuriated mob in the very precinct of the palace
of the States General. A similar fate might not improbably befall those
who should, at this crisis, be accused of serving the purposes of France
against their native land, and against the reformed religion. [450]

While Lewis was thus forcing his friends in Holland to become, or to
pretend to become, his enemies, he was labouring with not less success
to remove all the scruples which might have prevented the Roman Catholic
princes of the Continent from countenancing William's designs. A new
quarrel had arisen between the Court of Versailles and the Vatican, a
quarrel in which the injustice and insolence of the French King were
perhaps more offensively displayed than in any other transaction of his
reign.

It had long been the rule at Rome that no officer of justice or finance
could enter the dwelling inhabited by the minister who represented a
Catholic state. In process of time not only the dwelling, but a large
precinct round it, was held inviolable. It was a point of honour with
every Ambassador to extend as widely as possible the limits of the
region which