Barry Lyndon

" It would require a greater philosopher and historian than I am to
explain the causes of the famous Seven Years' War in which Europe
was engaged; and, indeed, its origin has always appeared to me to be
so complicated, and the books written about it so amazingly hard to
understand, that I have seldom been much wiser at the end of a
chapter than at the beginning, and so shall not trouble my reader
with any personal disquisitions concerning the matter. All I know
is, that after His Majesty's love of his Hanoverian dominions had
rendered him most unpopular in his English kingdom, with Mr. Pitt at
the head of the anti-German war-party, all of a sudden, Mr. Pitt
becoming Minister, the rest of the empire applauded the war as much
as they had hated it before. The victories of Dettingen and Crefeld
were in every-body's mouths, and 'the Protestant hero,' as we used
to call the godless old Frederick of Prussia, was adored by us as a
saint, a very short time after we had been about to make war against
him in alliance with the Empress-queen. Now, somehow, we were on
Frederick's side: the Empress, the French, the Swedes, and the
Russians, were leagued against us; and I remember, when the news of
the battle of Lissa came even to our remote quarter of Ireland, we
considered it as a triumph for the cause of Protestantism, and
illuminated and bonfired, and had a sermon at church, and kept the
Prussian king's birthday; on which my uncle would get drunk: as
indeed on any other occasion. Most of the low fellows enlisted with
myself were, of course, Papists (the English army was filled with
such, out of that never-failing country of ours), and these,
forsooth, were fighting the battles of Protestantism with Frederick;
who was belabouring the Protestant Swedes and the Protestant Saxons,
as well as the Russians of the Greek Church, and the Papist troops
of the Emperor and the King of France. It was against these latter
that the English auxiliaries were employed, and we know that, be the
quarrel what it may, an Englishman and a Frenchman are pretty
willing to make a fight of it."
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