Mary is Macaulay’s heroine, yet to make a point he cannot help relating her untimely glee, running from room to room in the palace of Whitehall, delighted to find herself the mistress of so fine a house from which she had just expelled her own father. James fled to France, and Berwick went with him. Among other devoted friends who left their country and joined their fortunes to those of the banished king, was an Irish gentleman named MacMahon. From him was descended Marie Edmée Patrice Maurice MacMahon whilom president of the Republic of France. A few years later Berwick accompanied his father in his expedition to Ireland which had remained faithful to him. That expedition came to grief, as you know, at the battle of the Boyne, in which Berwick took part. In another action during that campaign, he had two horses killed under him, and was himself wounded. He says in his memoirs, that that was the only wound he ever received; but he did receive one besides, and we shall see by and by why he never mentions it. On his return to France, Berwick became a French subject, and entered the French army for the rest of his life. Under the last two kings, Charles and James, England had been the ally of France. Louis XIV. was their first cousin, all three being grand-children of Henry IV. William’s mother a sister of Charles and James, was equally of course cousin to Louis; but there was nobody on earth that William hated as he did the French king. Nor was this hatred without a cause: Louis had invaded and desolated William’s native country, Holland, chiefly because a Dutch envoy who had not been brought up in refined society, had told a French envoy to go to--well, it is not polite to say where--and William succeeded in dragging England into a war with France. England had nothing to gain in that war, and gained nothing but defeat. William himself took the command. In person William III. was thin, pale, dyspeptic and unwholesome, which accounts for his bad temper. He was brave and obstinate, and no series of defeats could take the conceit out of him. A good statesman, he was a bad general: it has even been said of him that he lost more battles than any other commander in history. He was now opposed in the field by a genius of high order, François de Montmorenci, Duke of Luxembourg, Marshal of France. Luxembourg like Marlborough had learnt the art of war under Condé and Turenne and would have equalled those leaders, if he had had their bodily vigor; but he was a ricketty hunchback.