'Just the sort of tidy plan that Bob would come up with,' Jack shouted at the waves, still annoyed, six or seven years later. Turk was becoming edgy. Jack decided to talk to him, as long as he was speaking out loud anyway. Did horses understand what was going on, when you spoke to people who weren't there? 'So far, simple enough – but here it becomes very deep,' he began. 'John Churchill was in the Hague – then he was in Brussels – why? Even a horse can see the contradiction in that – but I forget you're an Ottoman horse. All right, then: all of this land – ' (stomping the dune for emphasis) 'was part of Spain – you heard me – Spain! Then these fucking Dutchmen turned Calvinist and revolted, and drove the Spanish away, down south of the Maas and a bunch of other rivers with hard-to-remember names – past Zeeland, anyway – we'll be seeing more than we want to of those rivers soon. Leaving only a wedge of Papist Spain trapped between the Dutch Republic on its north, and France on its south. This Spain-wedge contains Brussels and Antwerp and a large number of battlefields, basically – it is like the jousting-ground where Europe goes to have its wars. Sometimes the Dutch and the English ally against France, and they have battles in the Spanish Netherlands. Sometimes England and France ally against the Dutch, and they have battles in the Spanish Netherlands. Anyway – at this particular time, I believe, it was England and the Dutch against France, for the reason that all England was up in arms against Popery. Importation of French goods had been outlawed – that's why I was in Dunkirk – obvious opportunities for smuggling. And that's also why John Churchill was raising new armies. He went to Holland to parley with William of Orange, who was thought to know more'n anyone about staving off the Catholic hordes, as he'd stopped King Looie at the cost of turning half his country into a moat.