this party;" and thereupon gives me orders to march back all night,
and in the morning, by break of day, to take post under the walls of
the fort of Oppenheim, and immediately to entrench myself as well as I
could. Grave Neels, the colonel of his guards, thought himself injured
by this command, but the king took the matter upon himself, and Grave
Neels told me very familiarly afterwards, "We have such a master,"
says he, "that no man can be affronted by. I thought myself wronged,"
says he, "when you commanded my men over my head; and for my life,"
says he, "I knew not which way to be angry."

I executed my commission so punctually that by break of day I was set
down within musket-shot of the fort, under covert of a little mount,
on which stood a windmill, and had indifferently fortified myself, and
at the same time had posted some of my men on two other passes, but
at farther distance from the fort, so that the fort was effectually
blocked up on the land side. In the afternoon the enemy sallied on my
first entrenchment, but being covered from their cannon, and defended
by a ditch which I had drawn across the road, they were so well
received by my musketeers that they retired with the loss of six or
seven men.

The next day Sir John Hepburn was sent with two brigades of foot to
carry on the work, and so my commission ended. The king expressed
himself very well pleased with what I had done, and when he was so
was never sparing of telling of it, for he used to say that public
commendations were a great encouragement to valour.

While Sir John Hepburn lay before the fort and was preparing to storm
it, the king's design was to get over the Rhine, but the Spaniards
which were in Oppenheim had sunk all the boats they could find. At