Note 7 — Chapter XXVII · PROCEEDINGS IN FRANCE AND IN THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT.

Burnet says of the wars in the reign of William III. “The late king told me that in these campaigns the Spaniards were both so ignorant and so backward, so proud and yet so weak, that they would never own their feebleness or their wants to him. They pretended they had stores when they had none; and thousands when they scarce had hundreds. He had in their councils often desired that they would give him only a true state of their garrisons and magazines; but they always gave it false; so that for some campaigns all was lost, merely because they deceived him in the strength they pretended they had. At last he believed nothing they said, but sent his own officers to examine every thing.” Vol. ii. p. 7.