friends and sharers in our enterprize, we also obtained gradually more resources, and perhaps, defeated thereby many secret machinations of the confederates.
Yet all these favourable circumstances did not, at bottom, bring us much nearer to the mark; for all our power consisted, as yet, in nothing else than in firmness, and in a calculated opposition against probable future events. We had not fixed upon a plan of attack, but left the regulation of our proceedings to the direction of circumstances; yet nothing happened that could have guided us. The Count was inclined to return to Spain; and I would have faithfully followed him, if it had not been for Don Bernhard, and our associated friends, without whose assistance we could not expect to succeed in our undertaking, which, to confess the truth, promised very little, as the centre of the confederacy could easily be shifted; and we had already been convinced that it could exist any where. Thus our prepa-rations
