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TWO Reviews more would have dismiss’d the Article of Sweden, but I am oblig’d to Halt in the middle of the Story, upon the occasion of the great Turn of Affairs in Europe, from the late Victory at Hochstetten.
The Objectors to our Arguments seem to Reply with some Advantage, that French Power appears to be less Formidable, than at the beginning of these Papers I represented it, and that all the Terrible things which I foretold of it, are dash’t at one blow; that we need not concern our selves in the Quarrel between the Swede and the Pole, for the Business is done, the Confederacy stands upon its own Legs again, the Swede can now do us no harm, the Ruin of the Pole cannot affect it, and so I ought to have done with it.
The Victory of the Duke of Marlborough, I allow to be a very great Action, the Greatest, most Glorious, and most compleat Victory that I can find in History for above 200 Years past; and as no Man in Europe more heartily rejoyces at it, than the Author of these Papers, so perhaps I am ready to own it Greater in its Consequences than every body imagines.
The Defeat of the Army, barely as such, tho’ it be allow’d to be the Flower of the French Troops, and to be a great thing, is not all; there is the Duke of Bavaria left to the Emperors Mercy; that Fatal Breach, made in the Heart of the Empire, in a fair way to be heal’d to all the Advantage imaginable — There is the Duke of Savoy, who was upon the point of being ruin’d, in a fair way to be deliver’d, and perhaps so Succour’d, as to be likely to dislodge the French out of Italy. Continue reading Saturday, August 19. 1704.