Some few days ago it was my fortune to affirm, in a full assembly, that since the days of Charlemagne, France was never bless’d with so renown’d, so victorious, and so puissant a prince as your majesty. You lame, gouty coxcomb, says a sawcy butter-box of a Dutchman to me, don’t give yourself these airs in our company; Lewis, the greatest prince that France ever had! Why, I tell thee, he has no more title to that crown, than I have to the Great Mogul’s; and Lewis the thirteenth was no more his father than the Pope of Rome is thine. I bless’d myself to hear the fellow deliver this with so serious a mien, when a countryman of his taking up the cudgels; ’Tis true, says he, your mighty monarch has no right to the throne he possesses; the late king had no hand in the begetting of him, but a lusty proper young fellow, one le Grand by name, and an Apothecary by profession, was employ’d by cardinal Mazarine, who had prepar’d the queen’s conscience for the taking of such a dose, to strike an heir for France out of her majesty’s body; by the same token that this scarlet agent of hell, got him fairly poison’d as soon as he had done the work, for fear of telling tales. If you ever read Virgil’s life written by Donatus, cries a third to me, you’ll find that Augustus having rewarded that famous poet for some little services done him, with a parcel of loaves, had the curiosity once to enquire of him who he thought was his father? to which question of the emperor, Virgil fairly answer’d, that he believ’d him to be a Baker’s son, because he still paid him in a Baker’s manufacture, viz. bread. And thus, were there no other proofs to confirm it, yet any one would swear that Lewis le Grand is an Apothecary’s son, because he has acted all his life-time the part of an Apothecary.

Imprimis, He has given so many strong purges to his own kingdom, that he has empty’d it of half its people and money. Item, He apply’d costives to Genoa and Brussels, when he bombarded both those cities. Item, He gave a damn’d clyster to the Hollanders with a witness, when he fell upon the rear of their provinces, in the year 72. Item, He lull’d king Charles the second asleep with female opiates. Item, He forced Pope Innocent the eleventh, to swallow the unpalatable draught of the Franchises. Item, He administrated a restorative cordial to Mahumetanisme, when he enter’d into an alliance with the Grand Turk against the emperor. Item, He would have bubbled the prince of Orange with the gilded pill of sovereignty, but his little cousin was wiser than to take it. And lastly, If he had restor’d king James to his crown again, he would have brought the people of England a most conscientious Apothecary’s bill for his waiting and attending. In short, shake this mighty monarch in a bag, turn him this way, and that way, and t’other way, sursum, deorsum, quaquaversum, I’ll engage you’ll find him nothing but a meer Apothecary; and I hope the emperor and king of England will play the Apothecary too in their turn, and make him vomit up all those provinces and kingdoms he has so unrighteously usurp’d. Prince Eugene of Savoy has work’d him pretty well this last summer, and ’tis an infallible prognostic, that he’s reduced to the last extremities, when his spiritual physicians apply pigeons to the soles of his feet; I mean prayers and masses, and advise him to reconcile himself to that Heaven he has so often affronted with his most execrable perjuries.

’Tis impossible for me to tell your majesty, what a surprize I was in to hear this graceless Netherlander blaspheme your glorious name after this insufferable rate. But to see how one persecution treads upon the heels of another! I was hardly recover’d out of my astonishment, when a son of a whore of a German, advancing towards me, was pleas’d to explain himself as follows:

You keep a pother and noise here about your mighty monarch, says he to me, but what has this mighty monarch, and be damn’d to you, done to merit any body’s good word? I say, what one generous noble exploit has he been guilty of in his whole reign, as long as it is, to deserve so much incense and flattery, so many statues and triumphal arches, which a pack of mercenary, nauseous, fulsome slaves have bestow’d upon him? For my part, continues he, when I first heard his historians and poets, his priests and courtiers, talk such wonderful things of him, I fancy’d that another Cyrus or Alexander had appeared upon the stage; but when I observed him more narrowly, and by a truer light, I found this immortal man, as his inscriptions vainly stile him, to be a little, tricking, pilfering Fripon, that watch’d the critical minute of stealing towns, as nicely as your rogues of an inferior sphere do that of nimming cloaks; and tho’ he had the fairest opportunity of erecting a new western monarchy that ever any prince cou’d boast of, since the declension of the Roman empire; yet to his eternal disgrace be it said, no man could have made a worse use of all those wonderful advantages, that fortune, and the stupid security of his neighbours conspir’d to put into his hands. To convince you of the truth of this, let us only consider what posture the affairs of France were in at his accession to that crown, and several years after, as likewise how all the neighbouring princes and states about him stood affected: to begin then with the former, he found himself master of the best disciplin’d troops in the universe, commanded by the most experienced generals that any one age had produc’d, and spirited by a long train of victories, over a careless, desponding, lazy enemy. All the great men of his kingdom so depressed and humbled by the fortunate artifices of Richlieu and Mazarine, that they were not capable of giving him any uneasiness at home, the sole power of raising money entirely in his own hands, and his parliaments so far from giving a check to his daily encroachments upon their liberties, that they were made the most effectual instruments of his tyranny: In short, his clergy as much devoted, and the whole body of his people as subservient to him as a prince cou’d wish. As far his neighbours, he who was best able of any to put a stop to his growing greatness, I mean the king of England, either favour’d his designs clandestinely, or was so enervated by his pleasure, that provided he cou’d enjoy an inglorious effeminacy at home, he seem’d not to lay much to heart what became of the rest of Christendom.

The emperor was composing anthems for his chapel at Vienna, when he shou’d have appeared at the head of his troops on the Rhine. The princes of Germany were either divided from the common interest by the underhand management of France, or not at all concerned at the impending storm that threatned them. The Hollanders within an ace of losing their liberty by the preposterous care they took to secure it; I mean, by diverting that family of all power in their government, which, as it had formerly erected their republick, so now was the only one that cou’d help to protect it.

The little states and principalities of Italy, looking on at a distance, and not daring to declare themselves in so critical a conjuncture, when the two keys of their country, Pignerol and Casal hung at the girdle of France. In short, the dispeopl’d monarchy of Spain, governed by a soft unactive prince, equally unfit for the cabinet and the field; his counsellors, who manag’d all under him, taking no care to lay up magazines, and put their towns in a posture of defence, but wholly relying as for that, upon their neighbours; like some inconsiderate spend-thrift thrown into a jail by his creditors, that smoakes and drinks, and talks merrily all the while, but never advances one step to make his circumstances easy to him, leaving the burthen of that affair to his friends and relations, whom perhaps he never obliged so far in his prosperity, as to deserve it from their hands.

Here now, says he, was the fairest opportunity that ever presented itself for a prince of gallantry and resolution, for a Tamerlane and a Scanderbeg, to have done something eminently signal in his generation; and if in the last century, a little king of Sweden, with a handful of men, cou’d force his way from the Baltick to the Rhine, and fill all Germany with terror and consternation, what might we not have expected from a powerful king of France, in the flower of his youth, and at the head of two hundred thousand effective men, especially when there was no visible power to oppose him? But this wonderful monarch of yours, instead of carrying his arms beyond the Danube, and performing any one action worthy for his historians to record in the annals of his reign, has humbly contented himself, now and then, in the beginning of the year, when he knew his neighbours were unprepared for such a visit, to invest some little market-town in Flanders, with his invincible troops; and when a parcel of silly implicit fools had done the business for him; then, forsooth, he must appear at the head of his court harlots and minstrels, and make a magnificent entry thro’ the breach: And after this ridiculous piece of pageantry is over, return back again to Versailles, with the fame equipage, order’d new medals, operas, and sonnets to be made upon the occasion; and what ought by no means to be omitted, our most trusty and well-beloved counsellor and cousin, the archbishop of Paris, must immediately have a letter sent him, to repair forthwith, at the head of his ecclesiastick myrmidons, to Nôtre Dame, and there to thank God for the success of an infamous robbery, which an honest moral pagan would have blush’d at. So that when the next fit of his fistula in ano shall send this immortal town-stealer, this divine village-lifter, this heroic pilferer of poor hamlets and their dependancies, down to these subterranean dominions, don’t imagine that he’ll be allowed to keep company with the Pharamonds and Charlemagnes of France, the Edwards and Henries of England, the Williams of the Nassovian family, or the Alexanders and Cæsars of Greece and Rome. No, shou’d he have the impudence to shew his head among that illustrious assembly, they wou’d soon order their footmen to drub him into better manners: Neither, cries a surly Englishman, clapping his sides, and interrupting him, must he expect the favour to appear even among our holyday heroes, and custard stormers of Cheapside, those merry burlesques of the art military in Finsbury-fields, who, poor creatures! never meant the destruction of any mortal thing, but transitory roast-beaf and capon: no, friend, says he, Lewis le Grand must expect to take up his habitation in the most infamous quarter of Hell, among a parcel of house-breakers and shop-lifters, rogues burnt in the cheek for petty-larceny and burglary, brethren of the moon, gentlemen of the horn-thumb, pillagers of the hedges and henroosts, conveyers of silver spoons, and camblet cloaks, and such like enterprising heroes, whose famous actions are faithfully register’d in our sessions-papers and dying-speeches, transmitted to posterity by the Ordinary of Newgate; a much more impartial historian than your Pelissons and Boileaus. However, as I was inform’d last week by an understrapper at court; Pluto, in consideration of the singular services your royal master has done him, will allow him a brace of fiddlers to scrape and sing to him wherever he goes, since he takes such a delight to hear his own praises.

I must confess, says another leering rogue, a countryman of his, that since the grand monarch we have been speaking of, who has all along done more by his bribing and tricking, than by the conduct of his generals, or the bravery of his troops, who has plaid at fast and loose with his neighbours ever since he came to the crown, who has surprised abundance of towns in his time, and at the next treaty been forced to spue up those very places he ordered Te Deum to be sung for a few months before. I must confess, says he, that since in conjunction with a damn’d mercenary priest, he has forg’d a will for his brother-in-law of Spain, and plac’d his grandson upon that throne, I should think the rest of Christendom in a very bad condition indeed, if he should be suffered to go on quietly with his show a few years more: Then for all I know, he might bid fair to set up a new empire in the west, which he has been aiming at so long: But if the last advice from the other world don’t deceive us: If the parliament of England goes on as unanimously as they have begun, to support their prince in so pious and necessary a war; in short, if the emperor, the Dutch, and the other allies, act with that vigour and resolution as it becomes them upon this pressing occasion, I make no question to see this mighty hero plunder’d like the jay in the fable, of all the fine plumes he has borrow’d, and reduc’d to so low an ebb, that he shall not find it in his power, tho’ he has never so much in his will, to disturb the peace of the christian world any more. And this, continues he, is as favourable an opportunity as we could desire, to strip him of all his usurpations; for heaven be praised, Spain at present is a burthen to him, and by grasping at too much, he’s in a fair way to lose every farthing. Besides, this late forgery of the will has pluck’d off his old mask, and shews that ’tis an universal monarchy he intends, and not the repose of Europe, which has been so fortunate a sham to him in all his other treaties; so that the devil’s in the allies now, if they don’t see thro’ those thin pretences he so often bubbled them with formerly; or lay down their arms, till they have made this French bustard, who is all feathers, and no substance, as bare and naked as a skeleton; and effectually spoil his new trade of making wills for other people. And this they may easily bring about, continues he, if they lay hold on the present opportunity, for as I observed to you before, he has taken more business upon his hands than he’ll ever be able to manage, and by grasping at too much, is in the direct road to lose all. For my part, I never think of him, but he puts me in mind of a silly foolish fellow I knew once in London, who was a common knife-grinder about the streets, and having in this humble occupation gathered a few straggling pence, must needs take a great house in Fleetstreet, and set up for a sword-cutler; but before quarter-day came, finding the rent too bulky for him, he very fairly rubb’d off with all his effects, and left his landlord the key under the door. Without pretending to the spirit of Nostradamus, or Lilly, this I foresee, will be the fate of Lewis le Grand; therefore when you write next to your glorious monarch, pray give my respects to him, and bid him remember the sad destiny of the poor knife-grinder of London.

Thus you see, Sir, how I am daily plagu’d and harrass’d by a parcel of brawny impudent rascals, and all for espousing your quarrel, and crying up the justice of your arms. For Pluto’s sake let me conjure your majesty to lay your commands upon Boileau, Racine, or any of your panegyrists, to instruct me how I may stop the mouths of these impertinent babblers for the future, who make Hell ten times more insupportable than otherwise it would be, and threaten to toss me in a blanket the next time I come unprovided for your defence into their company. In the mean time, humbly desiring your majesty to present my love to the quondam wife of my bosom, I mean the virtuous madam Maintenon, who, in conjunction with your most christian majesty, now governs all France; and put her in mind of sending me a dozen of new shirts by the next pacquet, I remain,

Your Majesty’s
most obedient, and most obliged
Subject and Servant,