without exciting suspicions, or provoking an anticipatory attack. That he managed matters with much address is evident from the result, but it is no less clear that luck was on his side. A quarrel of the French king with the Pope, on a question of diplomatic extra-territorial rights in the papal city, and his arrogant interference in the election of the Elector of Cologne, had arrayed against Louis the spiritual and temporal forces of Catholicism, represented respectively by the Papacy and the Empire; his ill-timed persecutions of Protestants, and certain prohibitive measures adopted by him against Dutch trade, had the effect of alienating his partisans in the States-General. In the meanwhile the combined blindness and obstinacy of James permitted William to prosecute his military preparations unmolested, if not unsuspected. These preparations were very extensive and conspicuous, and seem to have had their commencement at an earlier date than is consistent with Burnet's theory referred to in the note on a previous page. It was not, however, till the summer was beginning to give place to autumn that they began to excite any very distinct suspicions as to their object. The Cologne quarrel formed a plausible excuse enough for them; for if Louis, as events seemed to threaten, were to occupy the Rhine provinces with an army, it would be obviously necessary for Holland to stand on guard. By the middle of August the French king had become uneasy, and despatched a special envoy in the person of M. Bonrepos to awaken James to a sense of his danger. He had authority, according to Burnet (whom, however, Macaulay, who mostly follows him, on this point contradicts[3]), to offer James not only naval but military assistance to repel the invasion with which he believed him to be threatened. Bonrepos was directed by his master to promise the King of England that ten or fifteen thousand (others, according to Ralph, say thirty thousand) men should be landed at Portsmouth if required, and asked that that place should be put into his hands to keep the communication between the two kingdoms. Sunderland, acting perhaps _bona fide_, but more probably not, most earnestly counselled James to reject the offer, and it was rejected accordingly, the King's characteristic imbecility of judgment being never more characteristically shown than in his unwillingness to offend the patriotic prejudices of his subjects by accepting an offer which, had he been aware of their true feelings towards him, he would have recognised as his last chance of saving his crown and kingdom. At this juncture Ronquillo, the Spanish ambassador, went out of his way to assure James of what he probably knew to be false, and certainly had no reason to believe true--namely, that no descent upon England was in contemplation on the part of William. On an early day in September, however, Albeville was despatched to the Hague with instructions to present a memorandum of complaint on the subject of the Dutch