FOOTNOTES:
[1] A card was published representing Pitt and Legge, like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, in a triumphal car, with this motto,
—— Et sibi Consul
Ne placeat, serves curru portatur eodem.—Juv.
[2] Vienna, June 4.—Marshal Daun has detached from his Army a regiment of Hussars and some light troops, in order to cover the western side of Bohemia from the incursions of the Prussians. The Empress Queen has communicated to several of the Courts with whom she is in friendship, the conditions that were proposed for bringing about a neutrality in favour of the Electorate of Hanover. According to the overtures made on this occasion, the King of Great Britain, in quality of Elector of Hanover, would have been considered as a party not concerned in the present war, in consequence of which neither his troops nor those of his Allies were to act against those of the Empress Queen and her Allies. He would likewise have engaged not to assist the King of Prussia either with troops or money. The passage through that part of his Electorate which lies on the left of the Aller was to have been granted to the troops of her Imperial Majesty and her Allies, they paying for provisions, forage, and waggons; besides which, they were to be allowed to establish magazines and hospitals in such places as should be assigned them in the Electorate. The town of Hamelen was to be given up as a security, either into the hands of the Empress or of some of her Allies, or to the guarantees of the Convention, which were proposed to be the Empress of Russia and the King of Denmark. Besides all this, it was to be stipulated in this Convention, that the Hanoverian troops should be quartered in such places only as should be agreed upon, and their number not augmented. (Extract from printed journal.)
[3] When he found another designation of that office, he demanded that Lord Edgecumbe should be removed, and the Duchy of Lancaster given to himself for life—yet he had said on the inquiries, on which he pretended to date his new merit, that it would be ungrateful in any man not to defend Newcastle; in him it would be infamous.
[CHAPTER II.]
The Duke of Newcastle’s difficulties in forming a new Government—Prince of Wales interferes to facilitate arrangements—Lord Waldegrave appointed first Lord of the Treasury—Resignation of the Duke of Newcastle’s friends—The Author’s advice to Fox—The King reluctantly acquiesces in the abandonment of Lord Waldegrave’s projected Ministry—The new Ministry settled—Charge on the Public—Lord Waldegrave has the Garter—King of Prussia repulsed by Daun—Battle of Hastenbecke—Duke of Cumberland defeated—The King overwhelmed with the misfortunes of Hanover—Proceedings at Leicester House—Disturbances on the Militia Bill—France—Expedition to Rochfort.
June 3rd.—His Grace returned to Kensington, but still fluctuating; and begged to defer declaring his last resolution till the Tuesday following: this was on the Friday. Preposterous as this suspense of Government was, it occasioned no disturbance, scarce a murmur. The people, hating Fox, neglected by Pitt, and despising Newcastle, waited with patience to see which of them was to be their master.
The next day was the Birthday of the Prince of Wales. His Royal Highness was told, that it would have a gracious air with the people, if he took upon himself to facilitate measures for his grandfather’s ease; that he must command Pitt to give up the point of George Grenville being Chancellor of the Exchequer. Pitt, who had heard how much he was loaded by the other factions with the accusation of impracticable haughtiness, yielded; and had a conference at the Prince’s drawing-room with Newcastle and Lord Bute, who acted as mediator. Newcastle persisted that the King would retain Lord Winchelsea; and to balance the authority that he saw must fall to Pitt, said to him, “But you will not act with Fox.”—Pitt replied, “My lord, I never said so—but does your Grace say you would? When you have said you will, I will consult my friends.” Newcastle, not the most intelligible even when he was explicit, took care not to be understood sooner than he was determined; and the conversation ended abruptly:—however, on the 7th, though not agreed with Pitt, he went to Kensington, and declared to the King, that he could not come in, unless Mr. Pitt’s whole plan was accepted. The King reproached him bitterly with all his shifts and evasions, and falsehoods; and demanded his assistance for Fox, if he would not himself undertake the service. He waved any such promise, and the King dismissed him in wrath.
Fox now took the merit of venturing all to support his Majesty, and declared he would accept the Ministry—but it seemed almost impossible to form one, if Pitt was not to be of it, and Newcastle withheld his assistance. It was difficult even to know whom they should place at the head of the Treasury. In this distress the King (probably by the suggestion of Mr. Fox,) sent for Lord Waldegrave, and commanded him to accept that high and dangerous post. The public was not more astonished at that designation, than the Earl himself. Though no man knew the secrets of Government better, no man knew the manœuvre of business less. He was no speaker in Parliament, had no interest there, and though universally beloved and respected where known, was by no means familiarized to the eyes of the nation. He declined as long as modesty became him; engaged with spirit, the moment he felt the abandoned state in which his master and benefactor stood.
A trifling incident showed the ridiculous light in which the new establishment appeared: it was the 8th of June when Fox’s Administration was notified: the House of Commons was very thin; Ellis came with an air of mysterious importance, and desired the House to adjourn to the 13th following. Lord George Sackville and George Townshend opposed this in joke, the latter saying that a Bill of great consequence relating to Milbourn-port was to be considered that day; yet if Ellis would say that a Ministry was to be formed during the proposed recess, he would consent to it. Ellis would say nothing; the House divided, Ellis with ten more against fifty-seven; and thus Fox lost a question even before he was Minister.
The next day Lord Holderness went to Kensington and resigned the Seals, as a declaration of the Newcastle squadron against Fox. The King received him with the cool scorn he deserved.[4] Lord Rockingham and many others[5] notified their intention of resigning upon the same foot. Newcastle took pains to promote these resignations, and told Lord Northumberland that they caught like wildfire. The latter replied artfully, “I have great obligations to your Grace, but should think I repaid them very ill by resigning, as it would be contributing to make your Grace distress his Majesty.” Indeed, to the King and others, the Duke solemnly forswore any knowledge of that measure; and while he enjoined or inculcated it to his friends, he prohibited it to Lord Lincoln and the Duke of Leeds, his relations, that he might tell the King that his own family had stood by his Majesty—a silly finesse, and blown up even by himself, he bragging to Lord Waldegrave of the display of his power in that measure, the very instant after he had denied it with oaths.
One resignation was made on the other hand; Sir George Lee quitted the Princess, not brooking the influence of Pitt with her, and finding himself a cypher at that Court, since Lord Bute had become more than Minister there. Sir George had even once determined to make such a remonstrance to her on her conduct, as the Fathers of the Church had formerly assumed the impertinent familiarity of making to Princes, in ages when insolence was reckoned a primitive virtue.
Horace Walpole saw the precipice on which Fox stood, and wished to save him from it. He saw, too, an opening for delivering the nation from that disgraceful man (Newcastle), who had so long perplexed all its Councils, and been a principal cause of its misfortunes. He sounded Lord George Sackville, and thinking him not ill-disposed to Fox, and by no means amicable to Newcastle, he proposed his plan to the former. It was, that the King should send carte blanche to Pitt, to place the Duke of Dorset at the head of the Treasury, with Lord George for Secretary at War, and, by dissolving the Parliament, dissipate at once Newcastle’s influence. Fox, who feared a popular election, disapproved the latter part, and did not relish Lord George in the War Office—too sharp-sighted, and who, to the desertion of Fox, had added a refusal of making Calcraft agent to his regiment. However, he permitted Walpole to propose all this to Lord George, adding that he would take Paymaster (which seemed to be his nearest wish), under Pitt, or would even act under him without an employment, with the sole privilege reserved of abusing Newcastle as much as he pleased.
Lord George Sackville owned he should have liked the plan, but was now too far engaged. He confessed he had taken his part, as the contest lay between Leicester House and the Duke; and the rather, as he had long observed that the Duke loved none but men totally detached from all other connexions, and had even been less kind to Conway since his marriage; and, as an insurmountable objection, said, that Lord Bute, who was of scrupulous honour, would now reckon their party bound by these resignations. Thus this plan failed, though the King, whose aversion was diverted from Pitt to Newcastle, would have consented to anything, that might make the treacheries of the latter fall on his own head.
Fox’s junto met two or three times: Lord Granville would have infused his jovial intrepidity into them: Bedford wanted no inspired ardour; but Fox himself desponded, and Bedford reproached him with it.
June 11th.—Lord Mansfield went to Kensington with the Exchequer Seals, which Fox was to receive. The King asked the former his opinion; Lord Mansfield told him fairly it could not do for Fox; then, said the King, “Let them make an Administration.” Fox and Lord Waldegrave both told him the impossibilities they found, yet would proceed if his Majesty insisted. He said, “No, he did not desire his friends should suffer for him: he found he was to be prisoner for the rest of his life: he hoped, whatever he might be made to do, his friends would not impute to him, for he should not be a free agent: he had not thought that he had so many of Newcastle’s footmen[6] about him: soon, he supposed, he should not be able to make a Page of the Back-stairs. For Hanover, he must give it up, it cost an hundred and twenty thousand pounds a month for forage alone: he found he must lose his Electoral dominions for an English quarrel: while at the same time he lost all authority in England!”
Leicester House took advantage of these difficulties: they engaged Lord Chesterfield to negotiate between Newcastle and Pitt. The Earl, who had lived for some time retired from business, undertook the Embassy. It seemed a marvellous office for him, who had long broken with the latter, and had even, in very cutting terms, acquainted the world with his reasons for breaking with the former. But it seems he had still stronger prejudices to the Duke of Cumberland: he undertook the employ[7] with cheerfulness and success.
On the 15th, the King wrote a note to Lord Hardwicke, desiring him, in consideration of the state of affairs both at home and abroad, to hasten some Administration that might not be changed again in five months. He mentioned his promise of the Pay-Office to Fox, and his obligations to Lord Winchelsea. Lord Hardwicke promised to wait on his Majesty on the 17th with some plan; but the next day desired a day longer.
At last, after an interval of above eleven weeks, the Ministry was settled, and kissed hands on the 29th. The Duke of Newcastle returned to the Treasury, with Legge for his Chancellor of the Exchequer. Pitt and Lord Holderness were Secretaries of State. Lord Temple had the Privy Seal in the room of Lord Gower, who was made Master of the Horse, the Duke of Dorset being set aside, but with a pension of 3000l. a-year, added to his Wardenship of the Cinque Ports. On Lord George Sackville the King put a flat negative. Fox accepted the Pay-Office, professing great content, and that he should offend neither in thought, word, nor deed. Both Newcastle and Pitt acted wisely in permitting him to enjoy this place: he was tied up from giving them any trouble—and while serving for interest under Pitt, how much did it exalt the latter! Yet the latter, too, took care to deserve his share of reproach.
Adjusting their list with Lord Hardwicke, Pitt said, he missed a very respectable name there, which he hoped would be placed greatly—it was Lord Anson’s—and he was restored to the Admiralty—whether with more opprobrium to himself, who returned to that Board with Pitt’s set, abandoning his own, who had been disgraced with him; or to Pitt, who restored so incapable an object to a trust so wretchedly executed, I am in doubt to determine. Who did act with honour and noble spirit, was Lord Winchelsea; he refused a pension, disdaining to accept any emolument, when his associates were excluded. At that Board he always acted with capacity, everywhere with firmness; and was the only man who, in all these changes, acquired credit, both by his rise and by his fall.
Lord Cholmondeley got a pension to make way for Potter: Lord Thomond had Lord Bateman’s White Stick, who, the Duke of Newcastle said arrogantly enough, should not carry his messages. Tennison was removed with a pension from the Buck-Hounds, ceding them to Lord Bateman. Pitt insisted that Pratt, a favourite lawyer at the bar of the House of Commons, should be Attorney-General. Sir Robert Henley, who could not decently be disgraced without any reason, was so lucky to find that that reason (and certainly there could be no other) was sufficient to promote him: he was made Lord Keeper. The Seals had been offered to Murray, and to the Master of the Rolls, who refused them, and to Willes, who proposed to be bribed by a Peerage, to be at the head of his profession, but could not obtain it. Henley, however, who saw it was the mode of the times to be paid by one favour for receiving another, demanded a Tellership of the Exchequer for his son, which was granted, with a pension of 1500l. a-year till it should drop; and, as if heaping rewards on him would disguise his slender pretensions, Lord Hardwicke told him he must be Speaker of the House of Lords too, for Westminster-Hall would never forgive him (Lord Hardwicke) if he suffered those offices to be disjoined. Sandys and his son were both laid aside. Hardwicke himself took no employment; the Seals, which it was plain from his not resuming them, he had not resigned from mere friendship to Newcastle, were too great a fatigue; and no other of the great offices was vacant.
It was no small mischief flowing from these disgraceful revolutions, the additional charge entailed on the public. Here were new pensions, of 3000l. a-year to Dorset, near as much to Cholmondeley, 1500l. to Henley, 1200l. to Tennison; besides others more secret. Yet all this profusion of grants and concessions could not satisfy everybody. The Townshends were furious: George, at any amnesty for Fox; Charles, at not being promoted himself. Lord Halifax, who demanded to be Secretary of State for the West Indies, a theatre on which Pitt meditated to shine himself, threw up on being refused; but, having outlived his income, was forced to re-accept, what, unless he had persisted, he had done more wisely to retain. The Duke of Bedford was warm against the new system, but was soon composed. The City, too, was indignant at the re-establishment of Lord Anson: but when the chiefs are accorded, the mob of a faction are little regarded. Men could not but smile observing Pitt return to Court, the moment he had been made free of so many cities for quitting it, exactly as he accepted an employment there before old Marlborough was scarce cold, who had left him 10,000l. as a reward for his patriotism.
The King gave the Garter to Lord Waldegrave, an almost unprecedented favour, as it was given alone—but he deserved it—and this act of royalty, almost the only flower of the Crown unviolated, gave the King double satisfaction, for he had before given hopes of it to Lord Holderness, who being, like Lord Harrington, the mere creature of his Majesty’s bounty, had, like Lord Harrington, been the first to insult his master with an offensive resignation.
I here close the scene on these Court squabbles; and perhaps have described them too minutely. Passages, in which one has been conversant, often appear too interesting. I can only say, that I have preferred offending in this extreme to the contrary. Nothing is more easy than to pass over what is too diffuse—but, as many men love these details, their curiosity would be unsatisfied with abridgments. Probably these anecdotes will amuse for some years, till they are lost in the mass of books, and when the affairs of this little spot, which we call Britain, shall appear of no more importance than our island itself in a geographic picture. To be read for a few years is immortality enough for such a writer as me!
A greater field was now opened. That formidable confederacy of France, Austria, Russia, and Sweden, seemed determined to enclose and crush the King of Prussia. The Duke of Cumberland, with the forlorn Hanoverian army, was a slight barrier against such alarming advances. Coloredo, the Austrian Minister at London, was ordered to retire without taking leave; and as a further earnest of their hostile intentions to England, Ostend and Nieuport were resigned into the hands of France. Count Daun, the Austrian Fabius, was sent with 45,000 men to raise the siege of Prague. The King of Prussia, too impetuous to await their cautious approach, flew with about 30,000 men to meet them; and finding Daun strongly entrenched on a hill, thought ardour and his name sufficient to dislodge them. He returned seven times to the attack after as many repulses, performed actions of extravagant bravery himself; and when forced at last, by an impregnable situation, by superior numbers, and by equal valour, to abandon his purpose, he crowned the splendour of the enterprise by modestly confessing how unadvisedly he had undertaken it. He raised the siege of Prague, and retired to Leutmeritz. Daun had the good sense to know that his country was not to be saved by the rules of romance. Rashness might immortalize a Monarch whose crown and life were at stake, and were at the same time less objects than his glory: a subject would be unpardonable, and of all subjects an Austrian had the least chance of pardon, who should suffer his fame to weigh one moment against his duty.
The French in the meantime advanced in such formidable numbers, that the Duke of Cumberland was obliged to retire and leave Hanover at their mercy. However, they came up with him at Hastenbecke, and a battle ensued. The Duke never showed himself so able a General, and though exceedingly inferior in force, disputed his ground till the French, who had great difficulty to carry up their men to the charge, despaired of the victory. But fresh squadrons pouring in upon him, and more approaching, his Royal Highness, apprehensive of being enclosed, resigned the success, though not the glory, of the day to D’Etrées, who was happy to find his enemy take a step that he was deliberating whether it would not be prudent for him to take himself. The Hanoverian statesmen, in the wildness of their despair for the destruction of their country and of their fortunes, not caring whom they charged, accused that Prince of timidity, whom all England had all his life accused of rash and German appetite for fighting; and the French with no less injustice decried their own victorious General, till Madame Pompadour and the Courtiers took advantage to supplant him; and Richelieu was sent to become those laurels which had been earned by the best officer in their service.
The King almost sunk under this weight of misfortunes. That country, which with so much patriotism and so little prudence he had made the point in which his whole policy centred—that country now felt all the bitterness of desolation! Hanover, which so long had tasted the felicity of being conjoined to England, was now ravaged in an English quarrel. And unless we will suppose that his Majesty hoped to hire out his Electoral troops to his Crown in a contest which he flattered himself would never be agitated in Germany, one cannot conceive why with such improvident facility he had permitted the Chancellor and Newcastle to bound into a war with France; a war undertaken from some provocation, with no preparation; and discussed with no more solidity, than the mob, whom it was made to captivate, could have employed. The French had aimed at and proceeded to invade our settlements. We returned hostilities with as slight a force as if we had only sent a herald to denounce war. We then seized their ships—and did nothing more; yes, we engaged some German mercenaries, as if the Duke of Newcastle had thought that the Rhine and the Ohio were the same river. Had we, like the French, waved expressions of war, till we had mustered a mighty force in America, where our superiority is exceedingly great; had we increased our Navy before we seized theirs; had we at least imitated their arts as well as their invasions, we might have dictated in the new world, and lived without hostilities in the old. No wonder the King was overwhelmed with the explosion of such calamities and blunders—still he had deserved compassion; had he not shown that, whatever his reflection suggested, his heart had no generous feelings—But of this anon.
The Court at Leicester House was very differently employed during these serious transactions. Hanover was lost; in North America our affairs went ill; England itself was in no flourishing condition. How did the Princess occupy the heir of all these domains? She was not Spartan enough to buckle on his armour with her own hands, and send him to save or reconquer what he was to govern. The light of the Gospel has emancipated mothers from such robust sensations. The Prince was instructed to commit the care of the temporal concerns of his subjects to Providence; and therefore, instead of sending men, arms, ammunition to the invaded frontiers of our colonies,[8] with more patriarchal vigilance his Royal Highness sent them an hundred pounds’ worth of Leland’s polemic writings against the Deists. The Princess herself bestowed an annuity of one hundred pounds on a young Scotch[9] clergyman, who having been persecuted by the kirk for writing a tragedy called Douglas, threw himself and his piece on the protection of the Earl of Bute.
I have said our affairs in North America went ill; it is very true. About this time came letters from the Earl of Loudun, the Commander-in-Chief there, who said, he found the French were 21,000 strong; he had not so many; could not attack Louisbourg; should return to Halifax. Admiral Holbourn, one of the sternest condemners of Byng, wrote at the same time, that he having but seventeen ships, and the French nineteen, he dared not attack them. These disappointments gave great disgust. Lord Loudun had been selected by the Duke and Fox for this command, and our expectations had been raised high of what he would perform. Here was another summer lost! Pitt expressed himself with great vehemence against the Earl—and we naturally have too lofty ideas of our naval strength to suppose that seventeen of our ships are not a match for any nineteen others.
At home there were great disturbances on the new Militia Bill. Lord Hardwicke and the Lords, meaning to defeat it, had clogged it with impracticabilities, absurdities, and hardships; particularly by obliging every poor man to pay ten pounds, or find a substitute, or go for a soldier; and yet he would be liable to serve again at the end of three years. This was a tax of above three pounds a year. Nor was any fund provided for the expenses of carrying the Act into execution. These objections gave sufficient handle to the disaffected to decry the system. The Tory gentlemen in particular, apprehending that the Whigs would acquire influence in their counties by the articles of clothing, &c., used their utmost endeavours to prepossess the country against the Bill. They inculcated into the people a belief that they would be trepanned to Gibraltar, like the two Somersetshire regiments that I formerly mentioned; and that whoever should give in his name, would to all intents and purposes become a soldier for life.
This misrepresentation had too fatal effect. The peasants became refractory beyond measure; riots were raised in several counties, as Surrey, Kent, Leicester, Hertford, Bedford, Nottingham, and York shires. The lists were forced by violence from the magistrates; Lord Robert Sutton was in danger of his life at Nottingham; the Duke of Bedford’s house, near Bedford, was threatened to be demolished, as he had been the first to advertise for a meeting. The Blues were ordered down to his defence; and it was worth observation, that the standing Army was employed to impose upon the people a constitutional force. His Grace threatened to carry the act into execution with a high hand, but on the day of the meeting he adjourned it to December, when he knew he should be in Ireland. The Duke of Dorset was attacked at Knowle, but saved by a young officer, who sallied out, and seized two-and-twenty of the rioters. The Speaker himself was insulted at Guildford, and menaced in his own house at Ember-court, and could not disperse the insurrection but by promising no further steps should be taken till the next session of Parliament. But the greatest indecencies were committed by the family of Townshend. George, the author of the Militia, was on very ill terms with his father, who was as wrong-headed as his son, and more mad. They wrote abusive pamphlets against one another; and the father, attended by a parson and a few low people, began a mob on the day the meeting for the Militia was to be held, and pasted up one of his own libels on the doors of four churches nearest to his seat.
Under these difficulties, Mr. Pitt began to exert his new-acquired power, and to give symptoms of more vigorous government. France, notwithstanding her imposing airs, and our feeble and spiritless conduct, had carried no great point against us. Her finances were in disorder, her marine not respectable, the flower of her armies transported to Germany. Their King threw a damp on all operations. Melancholic, apprehensive of assassination, desirous of resigning his Crown, averse to the war from principles of humanity, perplexed by factions, and still resigned to the influence of his mistress, every measure was confirmed by him with reluctance or obtained by intrigues; yet they had imprinted such terrors of invasion upon us, that Mr. Pitt, concluding their own coasts might be ill-provided, while they menaced ours, determined to strike a hardy stroke, that should at once invert the system of fear, and restore our reputation by carrying the war into the quarters of the enemy.
There was a young Scot, by name Clarke, ill-favoured in his person, with a cast in his eyes, of intellects not very sound, but quick, bold, adventurous. At the siege of Berg-op-zoom, being pursued into a house where the enemies fired at him through a door, he opened it and told them he was related to Marshal Lowendahl, who would reward them for saving him. Being conducted to the Marshal, with the same readiness he avowed the deceit, urging that he had no other method of saving his life. Lowendahl was pleased with the man, and gave him money. Not rising in England to his expectation, he attempted to advance himself in Ireland under the Duke of Devonshire; where miscarrying too, he imputed his disappointment to Mr. Conway, who equally incapable of disserving any man, or of enduring a false imputation, took Clarke to task, and convinced him of his error. Clarke, in the interval of some of these adventures, had rambled into France, and passing through Rochfort, observed a bank to which there was no ditch, and one part of the fortification left quite open. The adjacent country, called Little Holland, was flat, and cut with dykes, but which he persuaded himself were easily passable. Four years had passed since he made these remarks, and that in a time of profound peace. He did not pretend to know the strength of the garrison, nor what troops were stationed on the coast since the declaration of war—and unfortunately a plan of the place procured by the late Lord Albemarle from the King’s closet, since Clarke’s survey, differed from his description. Yet communicating these observations to Mr. Pitt, the latter was captivated with the idea. The man and the project struck his notions of performing some action of éclat, that might revive our sinking affairs, and throw a lustre on the dawn of his own Administration.
Rochfort lies ten miles from the sea. Of late years, we had dealt exceeding scantily in intelligence. No measures were, possibly could not in time be, taken to obtain better information of the dispositions in and near the place. Pitt indeed was a Minister to execute daringly; there wanted some men of deeper cast to deliberate wisely. He would not lose time on taking advice; the secret might evaporate; and its fairest chance for success lay in the improbability that the French should suspect an attempt on one of the most important and strongest towns in France. But did not that very improbability intimate, that they, so provident about their frontier towns, could not have neglected Rochfort, one of their principal naval magazines? Objections to a genius are but spurs. The Cabinet Council was called. Pitt proposed his conception of surprising Rochfort, and of burning the ships that lay in the river leading to it. The procrastinators in the Cabinet had but too lately felt his fire, to oppose what they saw was a favourite plan. It was determined to be executed forthwith; and the execution offered to Lord George Sackville, who, too sagacious not to feel the impracticability, excused himself, pleading the averseness of the Duke to him, and therefore that he should not be supported. The excuse was flimsy. The persons who offered him the command, would have supported him the more for his disfavour with the Duke. Lord George was still more blameable in talking of the design to several persons after he had refused to undertake it; and yet though a large number were acquainted with it, the secret was kept from the public with uncommon fidelity.
Sir John Mordaunt and General Conway, then encamped in Dorsetshire, were summoned to town, and acquainted by the Cabinet Council with the service on which they were to be sent. They should take ten old battalions, a strong Fleet should be ready in a fortnight to convoy them; they were to attempt Rochfort, or any other place on the coast to which they should find an opening. The Generals felt the difficulty of the commission, saw the crowd of impediments that must arise, and the ignorance of those that foresaw none. Conway, as he told me himself, was satisfied he had given such indisputable proofs of his courage, that it could not be imputed to fear, if he discovered repugnance to the service—whatever might be imputed to him, he was determined honestly to speak his opinion. He asked if they would venture ten of our best battalions on so rash a hazard? If they should perish, would it not draw the French hither, where we had few other veteran troops? He asked, on being told the ramparts were to be scaled, if their height was known? Ligonier, who was present, replied, No; but they never were above twenty-five feet; and they should have ladders high enough. Pitt said, in case they failed, they might go to Bourdeaux. Lord Anson informed him how far that city lay up the river—and it was information, for he knew not. Was it probable, Conway asked, that a place of that high importance should be neglected? and he showed them the contradictions in their own reasoning, for they pretended that it was a measure calculated to disembarrass the Duke, by drawing off the troops of France to its own coast, and yet all the hope of the enterprise depended on the French being taken unprepared. Pitt was too sanguine to desist for a little confutation. The instructions were drawn, the transports prepared.
At first, Conway had been designed to command alone, but the King said he was too young, and insisted on joining Mordaunt with him. Mordaunt had been remarkable for alertness and bravery, but was much broken both in spirit and constitution, and fallen into a nervous disorder, which had made him entreat last year not to be sent to America, lest it should affect his head, and bring on disorders too familiar to his family. But though he and Conway had ill conceit of the service in question, they had both too much honour to decline it. When their representations failed, all they could was to demand specific orders; and not obtaining them, they drew up queries, which if the Ministry could not answer, the Generals hoped they should be justified in not performing what they foresaw impracticable. But neither in this did they receive satisfaction.