"Remember, O Lord, what is come upon us! Consider and behold our reproach! _Our inheritance is returned to strangers--our houses to aliens!_"
He repeatedly smote himself upon the breast in an energetic fashion he had acquired among the Jesuits, who had been too much about him for his own fortune; and a long pause succeeded, until Lord Dunbarton gave for the last time the word of command. The Scottish officers resumed their aspect of steadiness and order, and marched past the King, whom nearly all of them were fated to behold no more; for death on the field, disease in the camp, poverty and despair, did their work surely and rapidly, and few of that brave but forlorn band ever returned from the frontiers of Spain.
From Versailles this company of unfortunate cavaliers received an order to join the army of Mareschal Noailles; and, next day, they set out from St. Germain, on their long and weary march of nine hundred miles, which they performed on foot, heavily accoutred, bearing their own camp-kettles and equipages, and accompanied by miseries and mortifications that baffle all description; but which, by the indomitable spirit and ardour that animated them, they seldom failed to surmount.
Louis of France was now plunged in a war, into which his mistaken policy had hurried him. In a long persecution of the unhappy Protestants, he had weakened his kingdom by the expatriation of thousands of his best and most industrious subjects, who wandered as refugees throughout other countries, and justly inflamed all Europe against him. To crush him, there had been formed at Augsburg a powerful league, to which the whole empire of Germany, Spain, Holland, Savoy, Sweden, and Denmark were parties; but, in no way daunted, he anticipated this great confederation by invading the empire and laying siege to Philipsburg. The recent revolution in England had given a new turn to this religious war, and Ireland became the theatre of a contest which ended on the banks of the Boyne, where William triumphed over his unfortunate father-in-law.
It may be that the great expenses of the war in which he was now involved prevented Louis XIV. from remunerating adequately to their merit the officers of Dundee's army; but when they joined the standard of Noailles on the Spanish frontier, they were in a state of lamentable destitution and misery. The coarse uniform in which they had marched from St. Germain was worn to rags; they were shoeless, shirtless, and emaciated by hardships, privations, and want of the most common necessaries of life; for by the selfishness and duplicity of individuals to whom their little commissariat was entrusted, they were cheated of their poor supplies, the few presents the generous had sent them, and even of a small pittance (a few pence daily) which James, amid all his own necessities, endeavoured to pay them; yet they were never known to utter a complaint, for the misfortunes of their sovereign pressed heavier on their hearts than their own.