Page:A Tour Through the Batavian Republic.djvu/149

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THE BATAVIAN REPUBLIC
137

rent is cheap, and the abodes which they have quitted are generally without tenants.

We visited, in an obscure street, a widow lady of an advanced age, whose fortune the revolution had dreadfully impaired. She remembered the Hague in its happiest days, and dilated on the magnificence and splendour she had formerly witnessed and enjoyed. Her husband had been tutor to the Prince of Orange, of whom she spoke in terms of almost idolatrous admiration; and therefore her partialities probably led her to exaggerate the former affluent and gay, the present decayed and impoverished, state of the Hague. But it is a general complaint that this beautiful place has suffered much by the revolution, and few believe that it will ever recover its pristine grandeur.

The French troops which are quartered in the Hague amount to about twelve hundred men; and are under the command of General Victor, who distinguished himself greatly at the battle of Marengo. General Victor is commander in chief of the French forces in the service of the Batavian republic,