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The other prisoners were equally well treated. It was in this expedition that the King of England first assumed the title of the Chevalier de Saint George, and that his enemies gave him that of the Pretender; both of which have remained to him. He asked to serve in the next campaign in Flanders, and wished to go there at once, or remain near Dunkerque.
Enthusiasm alone would not set the Holy Land free. Organisation was as necessary as good-will and courage. A year was spent in training and equipping an army of 200,000 men. They were placed under command of Godfrey of Bouillon, Robert, duke of Normandy, Robert, count of Flanders, and a number of other noblemen, all experienced in the art of war.
Next morning, long before daylight, it had gone about two bells in the middle watch, we made the coast of Flanders, and through the gloom discovered four large ships under the land. The wind, which had hitherto been fresh, now fell, and we lay becalmed for some hours in sight of Goree steeple, which bore south by east. We and the strangers all this time did not change our relative positions.
Instead of the timid, irregular exchange of goods as far as the Rhine, the Main, and the Danube, regular intercourse with Venice, Milan, Genoa, Bohemia, and Hungary, Flanders, Brabant, and the coast of the Baltic had commenced.
One man trips over an old haversack that is lying in his path God alone knows how many haversacks and how many sets of equipment have been swallowed up by the mud on the plain of Flanders, part of the equipment of the wounded that has been thrown aside to lighten the burden and when he scrambles to his feet again he is a mass of mud, his rifle barrel is choked with it, it is in his hair, down his neck, everywhere.
All these acquisitions were owing to the valour and conduct of the duke of Marlborough, who now returned to the Hague, and arrived in England about the middle of November. The queen had conferred the command of her forces in Spain upon the duke of Argyle, who was recalled from the service in Flanders for that purpose.
In this last war too, the same causes had the same effects: the Queen of Hungary in secret thought of nothing but recovering of Silesia, and what she had lost in Italy; and, therefore, never sent half that quota which she promised, and we paid for, into Flanders; but left that country to the maritime powers to defend as they could.
He then boldly proposed to them that they should at once cast off their allegiance to the count and bestow the vacant coronet upon the Prince of Wales, who, as Duke of Flanders, would undertake the defence and government of the country with the aid of a Flemish council. This wholly unexpected proposition took the Flemish burghers by surprise.
"But I think he will. The parson likes to hit from the pulpit when no one kin hit back." "Is that what brought you to church to-day? You seldom darken the door." "Sure! What else should I come fer? I'm not like you, Bill Flanders, wearin' out me shoes paddin' to church every Sunday. I kin be jist as good a Christian an' stay at home. I kin read me Bible an' say me prayers there."
The loss of these places within so short a period deprived Antwerp of all hope of succor from Brabant and Flanders, and limited all their expectations to the assistance which might be looked for from Zealand. But to deprive them also of this the Prince of Parma was now making the most energetic preparations.
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