But Lauzun, among whose faults avarice had no place, refused to fill his own coffers from an almost empty treasury, [630] On him and on the Frenchmen who accompanied him the misery of the Irish people and the imbecility of the Irish government produced an effect which they found it difficult to describe.

Lauzun wrote to Louvois that the Court and the whole kingdom were in a state not to be imagined by a person who had always lived in well governed countries.

It was, he said, a chaos, such as he had read of in the book of Genesis.

The whole business of all the public functionaries was to quarrel with each other, and to plunder the government and the people.

After he had been about a month at the Castle, he declared that he would not go through such another month for all the world.