and rapidity. The
states-general were overwhelmed with consternation. Notwithstanding the
pains they had taken to avoid a war, and the condescension with
which they had soothed and supplicated the French monarch in repeated
embassies and memorials, they saw themselves striped of their barrier,
and once mere in danger of being overwhelmed by that ambitious nation.
The city of Brussels had been reduced during the winter; so that the
enemy were in possession of all the Austrian Netherlands, except a few
fortresses. Great part of the forces belonging to the republic were
restricted from action by capitulations, to which they had subscribed.
The states were divided in their councils between the two factions which
had long subsisted. They trembled at the prospect of seeing Zealand
invaded in the spring. The Orange party loudly called for an
augmentation of their forces by sea and land, that they might prosecute
the war with vigour. The common people, fond of novelty, dazzled by the
splendour of greatness, and fully persuaded that nothing but a chief
was wanting to their security, demanded the prince of Orange as a
stadtholder; and even mingled menaces with their demands. The opposite
faction dreaded alike the power of a stadtholder, the neighbourhood of
a French army, and the seditious disposition of the populace. An
ambassador was sent to London with representations of the imminent
dangers which threatened the republic, and he was ordered to solicit in
the most pressing terms the assistance of his Britannic majesty, that
the allies might have a superiority in the Netherlands by the beginning
of the campaign. The king was very well disposed to comply with their
request; but the rebellion in his kingdom, and the dissensions in his
cabinet, had retailed the supplies and embarrassed him so much, that he
found it impossible to make those early preparations that were necessary
to check the career of the enemy.

COUNT SAXE SUBDUES ALL FLANDERS, BRABANT, AND HAINAULT.

The king of France, with his general the count de Saxe, took the field
in the latter end of April, at the head of one hundred and twenty
thousand men, and advanced towards the allies, who, to the number of
four-and-forty thousand, were intrenched behind the Demer under the
conduct of the Austrian general Bathiani, who retired before them, and
took post in the neighbourhood of Breda, the capital of Dutch Brabant.
Mareschal Saxe immediately invested Antwerp, whi