the expedition, and with plans to be tried among the English malcontents. From the start, this clever politician, familiar with complicated continental intrigues, foresaw the trouble that the fallen monarch, whose cause he was to plead, would occasion him. "It will not be an easy thing to keep any secret with the King of England," wrote Count d'Avaux to Louis XIV.; "he has told before the sailors of the St. Michel, what he ought to have reserved for his most confidential friends. Another thing which will give us trouble is his irresolution, for he often changes his mind and does not always settle on the best course. He frequently dwells upon little things, on which he employs his whole time, and passes lightly over most essential matters. Moreover he listens to everybody, and one has to spend as much time in removing the impressions which bad advice has produced on him, as in inspiring him with correct ones." "All the troops Tyrconnel had been able to raise, were occupied with the Protestant rising in Ulster," says King James in his Memoirs; "the Catholics of the country had no arms, while the Protestants had an abundance, and the best horses in the kingdom; there were only eight small field-pieces in condition to accompany the army; no provisions or ammunition in the magazine, little powder or balls, no money in the chest, and all the officers gone to England." To this gloomy picture of the condition of his forces in Ireland, James might have added the embarrassments about to be caused by an intractable Parliament, and the pretensions, as immoderate as they were absurd, of partisans, who thought they had a right to lay down the law for the sovereign they persisted in serving. {21} The indigenous Irish claimed the entire independence of their country, threatening, if James refused it, to appeal to France, and place themselves thenceforth under her protection. The English exiles who accompanied the king, despising Ireland and the Irish, only aspired to reseat their sovereign on the throne of England. "My Lord Melford is neither a good Frenchman nor a good Irishman," said Count d'Avaux; "he only thinks of England." Despite a proclamation of toleration by James, there was a general understanding to re-establish the absolute supremacy of Catholicism in Ireland; the act of establishment of Charles II. was repealed; the lands of Catholics, lately confiscated to the benefit of Protestants, returned to their original owners; one law of proscription embraced all the fugitive or refugee Protestants in the northern counties; the endowments of the Anglican Church were taken from it. The fanatics triumphed; the King was anxious and disgusted. He estimated better than his advisers, the strength of Protestantism, even in Ireland; he glanced at the effect of his measures in England. After long hesitation, which still followed him after starting and made him turn back for a moment, James set out to besiege the town of Londonderry in person.