“Well, sir, in the spring of 1711 the great duke arrived in the Low Countries--and glad enough were all to see him--for not only, we knew, we could lick the French and Bavarians if we were under him--but the army was always paid when the great duke commanded, and fed and clothed, too. I remember when he came back that time he brought us forty thousand woollen shirts. The kings and queens thought that we, the common soldiers, did not know what was going on, but we knew the stay-at-homes were trying to ruin the duke at court, and that he had hardly been treated civilly when he got to England, and that three colonels--Meredith, Macartney, and Heywood--had been cashiered for drinking ‘confusion to the enemies of the Duke of Marlborough.’ It was while he was away that the allied army--as ours and our allies was called--had got a handsome drubbing at Almanza, in Spain, and I can’t say that any of us cried over it; only we thought we might get drubbed ourselves if the duke didn’t come back. So you may be sure, Mr. Washington, that when the news came that the whole army was to rendezvous at Orchies, and the duke had landed in Holland on his way to us, we felt better. The queen and the ministry and the parliament might look coldly on him, but on that bleak April day, when he rode into our cantonments at Orchies, every British soldier raised his voice in a huzza for the great duke.