King James considered his cause desperate. "The confederates remained allied to the usurper they had aided to ascend the throne," he wrote in his Memoirs, "and his very Christian Majesty himself so desired peace that he forgot his first resolutions and recognized him as King of England, like the rest. His Majesty, then, had no longer aught to do, but to protest publicly and formally against every compact or agreement made to his disadvantage or without his participation, in whatever manner it might be made." James II. had not foreseen into what blunders royal pride and a mistaken generosity toward his son would lead King Louis, or what misfortunes this mistake would bring upon France.
The joy was great in England. When King William made his entry into London, on the 16th of November, an immense crowd blocked the streets, making the air resound with its shouts. "I have never seen so large a concourse of well-dressed people," wrote William, next day, to his friend Heinsius; "you cannot imagine the satisfaction which prevails here on account of the re-establishment of peace."
The public rest and prosperity, founded on the liberties of the nation, the defeat of domestic enemies and the check at last imposed upon the continual successes of the great foe of European peace, plots strangled, religious dissensions pacified, and the king, who had procured all these benefits for his adopted country, placed, by general consent, at the head of the great continental coalition—such were the legitimate causes of the satisfaction of England. William III. rejoiced with it, but not without fears and forebodings. "I trust to God," he had said, some months earlier, "that the news they have told you about the death of the King of Spain and the proclamation of his heir will not be confirmed; otherwise everything will relapse into the most inextricable confusion, and every hope of peace will vanish." Charles II. was still living, but was on the brink of death, and the question of the succession remained unsettled.
This was not the first time that the King of England painfully experienced the inconveniences of a free government: the nation did not share the uneasiness with which the future inspired him, and the first care of Parliament was to propose the reduction of the army. The adroitness of the ministers secured the maintenance of more considerable forces than had been at first desired; but this was at the price of Lord Sunderland's resignation, whose courage did not rise to the height of the tempest excited against him.
The new elections introduced into Parliament a fluctuating set of men, numerous, ignorant, free from all party engagements, but deeply imbued with the popular prejudices against standing armies and foreigners. Assured of the continuation of peace by the apportioning treaty which had just been signed at Loo, on the 4th of September, the Commons replied to the speech from the throne which recommended the increase of the military forces by a vote reducing the army to seven thousand men, all of English birth and race. The motion had been made by Robert Harley, who, though still young, had already been placed at the head of the opposition by his Parliamentary talents. "We could have obtained ten thousand men," the minister had said, "but his Majesty replied that such a number would amount to disbanding the army."
"I apprehend trouble." William had written to Heinsius on the 4th of September, 1698, "for I cannot suffer them to disband the greater part of the army; and the members of Parliament are imbued with such mistaken opinions that one can hardly form an idea of them."
The king's anger and indignation were extreme. His foresight as a politician, his experience as a general, his pride as a Dutchman, were equally offended. A disarmament was forced upon him in presence of the European complications which he presaged; he was being deprived of countrymen whose faith he had tested, and of the valor of heroic Huguenot refugees to whom he had given a country. He was tired of struggling against prejudices which he had succeeded sometimes in lulling to sleep, never in subduing; he was wounded in his patriotism and in the deep sense of the services he had rendered to the ungrateful nation which trampled upon his counsels and desires. He determined to lay down the burden that he had carried for so many years. A hope of rest among his devoted friends, in his native country, diminished in his eyes the charms of the great power and supreme rank which he had enjoyed. He wrote to Heinsius on the 30th of December: "I am so grieved at the conduct of the House of Commons in regard to the troops, that I cannot attend to anything else. I foresee that I shall have to come to an extreme resolution, and that I shall see you in Holland sooner than I had thought." And on the 6th of January, he wrote: "Affairs in Parliament are in a desperate state; so much so that I foresee that, in a short time, I shall be forced to a step which will create a great sensation in the world." When he was speaking thus confidentially to his most faithful friend, William III. had already written the draught of a speech which he purposed delivering before the two houses, announcing to them his intention of retiring to Holland for the future: