"I fear," William wrote, in an hour of deep dejection, to Heinsius, "I fear that the object of this Third Party is a peace which will bring in its train the slavery of Europe.

The day will come when Sweden and her confederates will know too late how great an error they have committed.

They are farther, no doubt, than we from the danger; and therefore it is that they are thus bent on working our ruin and their own.

That France will now consent to reasonable terms is not to be expected; and it were better to fall sword in hand than to submit to whatever she may dictate." [286] While the King was thus disquieted by the conduct of the Northern powers, ominous signs began to appear in a very different quarter.

It had, from the first, been no easy matter to induce sovereigns who hated, and who, in their own dominions, persecuted, the Protestant religion, to countenance the revolution which had saved that religion from a great peril.