THE DUKE INVADES DAUPHINE.

The prospect of affairs in Piedmont was favourable for the allies; but the court of France had brought the pope to an accommodation, and began to tamper with the duke of Savoy. M. Chanlais was sent to Turin with advantageous proposals, which however the duke would not accept, because he thought himself entitled to better terms, considering that the allied army in Piedmont amounted to fifty thousand effective men, while Catinat’s forces were not sufficient to defend his conquests in that country. In the month of July the duke marched into Dauphiné, where he plundered a number of villages, and reduced the fortress of Guillestre; then passing the river Darance, he invested Ambrun, which, after a siege of nine days, surrendered on capitulation: he afterwards laid all the neighbouring J towns under contribution. Here duke Schomberg, who commanded the auxiliaries in the English pay, published a declaration in the name of king William, inviting the people to join his standard, assuring them that his master had no other design in ordering his troops to invade France, but that of restoring the noblesse to their ancient splendour, their parliaments to their former authority, and the people to their just privileges. He even offered his protection to the clergy, and promised to use his endeavours for reviving the edict of Nantes, which had been guaranteed by the kings of England. These offers, however, produced little effect; and the Germans ravaged the whole country in revenge for the cruelties which the French had committed in the Palatinate. The allied army advanced from Ambrun to Gap, on the frontiers of Provence, and this place submitted without opposition. The inhabitants of Grenoble, the capital of Dauphiné, and even of Lyons, were overwhelmed with consternation; and a fairer opportunity of humbling France could never occur, as that part of the kingdom had been left almost quite defenceless; but this was fatally neglected, either from the spirit of dissension which began to prevail in the allied army, or from the indisposition of the duke of Savoy, who was seized with the small-pox in the midst of this expedition; or, lastly, from his want of sincerity, which was shrewdly suspected. He is said to have maintained a constant correspondence with the court of Versailles, in complaisance to which he retarded the operations of the confederates. Certain it is, he evacuated all his conquests, and about the middle of September quitted the French territories, after having pillaged and laid waste the country through which he had penetrated.* In Catalonia the French attempted nothing of importance during this campaign, and the Spaniards were wholly inactive in that province.

* At this period queen Mary, understanding that the
protestant Vaudois were destitute of ministers to preach or
teach the gospel, established a fund from her own privy
purse to maintain ten preachers, and as many schoolmasters,
in the valleys of Piedmont.