"You are still King of England, and I will aid you in securing your throne," said Louis XIV.
It was not simply a generous act on the part of Louis to a fellow-sovereign who was in trouble, but there were ideas behind it. Louis XIV. believed with James in the absolute right of kings to do just as they pleased: that the people must do their bidding.
"The state—it is me!" said Louis, striking his hand upon his breast, to indicate that there was nobody else who had a right to say or do anything in regard to law and government.
The people of England, on the other hand, believed that they had the right to make their own laws through a Parliament of their own choosing, and that it was the duty of the King to obey and execute those laws.
James had done what he could to crush out the Protestant religion in England; Louis had driven the Huguenots, who were Protestants, from France, waging a cruel war upon them. Thousands had been killed. More than eight hundred thousand had been compelled to flee to other countries. The war was waged not merely that James might regain his crown, but it was a great struggle for civil and religious freedom. It extended to other countries: battles were fought on the banks of the Rhine, the Danube, the Po; in the meadows of Holland; on the plains of Germany; amid the vineyards of Italy; in the wilderness of North America; on the Penobscot, Piscataqua, Merrimac, and Mohawk.
All through the years Jesuit priests had been laboring to convert the Indians of Canada to Christianity, and had made them the allies of France. When the war broke out, all the Indians in Maine and New Hampshire sided with the French.
The English, especially the men who bought furs of the Indians, had not always treated them justly.
The traders cheated them when buying their beaver skins. They would put the furs on one side of the balance, and bear down the other with their hands, saying a man's hand weighed a pound. The Dutch fur-traders on the Hudson used their feet instead of their hands. The simple-hearted red men, knowing nothing of balances and weights, could only look on in astonishment, wondering at the lightness of the skins. The Indians of Maine and New Hampshire had a grudge against Major Waldron, who lived at Dover, New Hampshire.
"His hand weighs too much," they said.
But they had another and greater grievance. To understand it we must go back a little.