After all, a few towns more or less in Flanders are certainly not unimportant; but I am much mistaken in my speculation, if the business at Toulon is not decisive of the war. Only let your own mind follow up all the consequences of that event, and you will, I believe, agree with me that the expression I have used is not too sanguine. We have news that the people of Lyons have defeated Dubois Cranée, with a loss to the latter, as it is said, of four thousand men. Allow this to be exaggerated, as I suppose it is, but take the fact to be true that he has been defeated, and it is everything to us. The next month or six weeks will be an anxious period, and big with events.
You asked me some time ago about Parliament, and that with a view to your own motions. Nothing can, of course, be absolutely fixed on that subject; but I think it highly improbable that Parliament should meet before January. I heartily wish that we may arrange it so as to meet, though in the present moment I should be afraid even of such a distance as Stowe. At all events, when your camp breaks up, I trust you will take Dropmore in your way, as indeed I believe it will lay directly in your road, if you come by town, and not far out of it, if you go straight to Stowe.
My dear wife desires best love to you and Lady B. Lady Camelford is, I think, better than we could have hoped.
Ever most affectionately yours,
G.
16th.
This ought to have gone to-day, and I am sorry to find it this evening in one of my boxes here. We have nothing new to-day, except the account of the murder of the King of Poland, which is believed.
LORD GRENVILLE TO THE MARQUIS OF BUCKINGHAM.
Walmer Castle, Oct. 1st, 1793.
My dear Brother,
Your letter of the 27th followed me here yesterday, and I have just received that of the 29th. With respect to the first, I can only say that I have by this post sent your letters to Pitt, and am very sure that if it depends on him, what you wish will be done.
Lord Amherst's answer of the reduced state of the regiments at home is, however, surely not quite so much out of the way as you state it. It is a great pity that your protégé is in Canada, where no promotion can be going forward, and from whence, I conclude, he cannot be brought into regiments upon actual service. Sir C. Grey conveyed to me the other day a wish to know whether there was any officer in his army that I felt interested about; but I know of none that I should think it worth laying myself under an obligation for. If Talbot had happened to be in one of the regiments in Nova Scotia, he would probably have been in this predicament; but I suppose the force in Canada is little likely to be weakened, in the present state of America.