William of Orange was doubtless the greatest statesman and warrior of his age, and one of the ablest men who ever wore a crown. He was at the head of the great Protestant party in Europe, and was the inveterate foe of Louis XIV. When a youth, his country had been invaded by Louis, and desolated and abandoned to pillage and cruelty. It was amid unexampled calamities, when the population were every where flying before triumphant armies, and the dikes of Holland had been opened for the ravages of the sea in order to avoid the more cruel ravages of war, that William was called to be at the head of affairs. He had scarcely emerged from boyhood; but his boyhood was passed in scenes of danger and trial, and his extraordinary talents were most precociously developed. His tastes were warlike; but he was a warrior who fought, not for the love of fighting, not for military glory, but to rescue his country from a degrading yoke, and to secure the liberties of Europe from the encroachments of a most ambitious monarch. Zeal for those liberties was the animating principle of his existence; and this led him to oppose so perseveringly the policy and enterprises of the French king, even to the disadvantage of his native country and the country which adopted him.
William was ambitious, and did not disdain the overtures which the discontented nobles of England made to him. Besides, his wife, the Princess Mary, was presumptive heir to the crown before the birth of the Prince of Wales. The eyes of the English nation had long been fixed upon him as their deliverer from the tyranny of James. He was a sincere Protestant, a bold and enterprising genius, and a consummate statesman. But he delayed taking any decisive measures until affairs were ripe for his projects--until the misgovernment and encroachments of James drove the nation to the borders of frenzy. He then obtained the consent of the States General for the meditated invasion of England, and made immense preparations, which, however, were carefully concealed from the spies and agents of James. They did not escape, however, the scrutinizing and jealous eye of Louis XIV., who remonstrated with James on his blindness and self-confidence, and offered to lend him assistance. But the infatuated monarch would not believe his danger, and rejected the proffered aid of Louis with a spirit which ill accorded with his former servility and dependence. Nor was he aroused to a sense of his danger until the Declaration of William appeared, setting forth the tyrannical acts of James, and supposed to be written by Bishop Burnet, the intimate friend of the Prince of Orange. Then he made haste to fit out a fleet; and thirty ships of the line were put under the command of Lord Dartmouth. An army of forty thousand men--the largest that any king of England had ever commanded--was also sent to the seaboard; a force more than sufficient to repel a Dutch invasion.