should alone be entered there?  Yet so it was.  Berwick was, in respect to England, like the Jews, who await the Messiah.  He coaxed himself always with the hope of a revolution in England, which should put the Stuarts on the throne again, and reinstate him in his wealth and honours.  He was son of the sister of the Duke of Marlborough, by which general he was much loved, and with whom, by permission of the King, and of King James, he kept up a secret intercourse, of which all three were the dupes, but which enabled Berwick to maintain other intercourses in England, and to establish his batteries there, hoping thus for his reinstatement even under the government established.  This explains his motive for the arrangement he made in the letters-patent.  He wished his eldest son to succeed to his English dukedom and his English estates; to make the second Duke and Peer of France, and the third Grandee of Spain.  Three sons hereditarily elevated to the three chief dignities of the three, chief realms in Europe, it must be agreed was not bad work for a man to have achieved at fifty years of age!  But Berwick failed in his English projects.  Do what he could all his life to court the various ministers who came from England, he never could succeed in reestablishing himself.

The scandal was great at the complaisance of the King in consenting to a family arrangement, by which a cadet was put over the head of his elder brother; but the time of the monsters had arrived.  Berwick bought an estate that he created under the name of Fitz-James.  The King, who allowed him to do so, was shocked by the name; and, in my presence, asked Berwick the meaning of it; he, without any embarrassment, thus explained it.

The Kings of England, in legitimatising their children gave them a name and arms, which pass to their posterity.  The name varies.  Thus the Duke of Richmond, bastard of Charles II., had the name of “Lennox;” the Dukes of Cleveland and of Grafton, by the same king, that of “Fitz-Roi,” which means “son of the king;” in fine, the Duke of Berwick had the name of “Fitz-James;” so that his family name for his posterity is thus “Son of James;” as a name, it is so ridiculous in French, that nobody could help laughing at it, or being astonished at the scandal of imposing it in English upon France.

Berwick having thus obtained his recompense beforehand, started off for Flanders, but not until he had seen everything signed and sealed and delivered in due form.  He found the enemy so advantageously placed, and so well prepared, that he had no difficulty in subscribing to the common opinion of the general officers, that an attack could no longer be thought of.  He gathered up all the opinions he could, and then returned to Court, having been only about three weeks absent.  His report dismayed the King, and those who penetrated it.  Letters from the army soon showed the fault of which Villars had been guilty, and everybody revolted against this wordy bully.