Note 113 — Chapter IX

Mr. N. W. Wraxall's informant did not mince matters when alluding to Rantzau, for he said: "He is a most infamous man, a liar, a coward, a man capable, from the meanest motives, of betraying his longest and best friends." Cautious Sir R. M. Keith also judged Rantzau correctly, and wrote about him in a letter to his father: "Count Rantzau, at this moment Lieutenant-General, Confidential Councillor, Knight of the Queen's Order, &c., would, if he had lived within reach of Justice Fielding, have furnished matter for an Old Bailey trial any one year of the last twenty of his life."