text:  deemed their master's power secure when this English alliance was concluded; when the English monarch had become a state pensioner of the court of Versailles; when a secret treaty had united them by apparently indissoluble bonds; when the ministers equally and the patriots of England were corrupted by his bribes; when the dreaded fleets of Britain were to be seen in union with those of France to break down the squadrons of an inconsiderable republic; when the descendants of the conquerors of Cressy Poitiers and Azincour stood side by side with the successors of the vanquished in those disastrous fields to achieve the conquest of Flanders and Holland