Briefwisseling en aantekeningen. Deel 1

CXXXIX.
Willem Bentinck aan de gravin van Portland.

[B.M., Eg. 1713]

Den Haag, 21 November 1745.

......I can write you no news from hence, because I dare not write what is true, and will not write what is not true. I most heartily wish that in all that is told, and spread about on the subject of our troupes, was accompany'd with the equity and fairness, which is so becoming everywhere, but especially between two nations who must stand or fall together. I cannot but own that at Fontenoi many of our men did ill and some did fling down their arms and run away. Others stood very well,

[p. 154]

and would have done as well as in the last last warr, if they had been, I don't say well led, but led at all. The English and Hannoverians did very well at Fontenoi, upon the whole: but pray consider they had at their head a Prince they love and esteem, born to command them, and not a stranger advanced and placed by a cabal. Now I ask whether those who complain of our troupes, were not the very same who, thro' views, which I shall pass in silence, were glad to see our army under the command of the Prince of Waldeck, and whether they would not have been sorry to see it with its natural chief......

Now the officers come back from the army, we hear every day such storys of this campain, that one must be surprised bon gré malgré. It is not only from officers of inferior rank, but even from our Generals. And Mr. de Ginkel, among others, talks of the P^ce of Waldeck as of a madman, incapable of learning or of mending by his own or by other's experience. And all he says agrees so perfectly with what one hears in detail from all others, that it gains great credit.

I must tell you en passant that everybody of all ranks speaks equally well of the Duke. And it is a very great pleasure to one who takes a sincere interest in the honour of the Royal Family to hear how everybody agrees in commending him.