France was in sore need of peace. The infatuation that had turned her from her own true interest to serve the passions of Maria Theresa and the Czarina Elizabeth had brought military humiliation and financial ruin. Abbé de Bernis, Minister of Foreign Affairs, had lost the favor of Madame de Pompadour, and had been supplanted by the Duc de Choiseul. The new Minister had gained his place by pleasing the favorite; but he kept it through his own ability and the necessities of the time. The Englishman Stanley, whom Pitt sent to negotiate with him, drew this sketch of his character: "Though he may have his superiors, not only in experience of business, but in depth and refinement as a statesman, he is a person of as bold and daring a spirit as any man whatever in our country or in his own. Madame Pompadour has ever been looked upon by all preceding courtiers and ministers as their tutelary deity, under whose auspices only they could exist, and who was as much out of their reach as if she were of a superior class of beings; but this Minister is so far from being in subordination to her influence that he seized the first opportunity of depriving her not of an equality, but of any share of power, reducing her to the necessity of applying to him even for those favors that she wants for herself and her dependents. He has effected this great change, which every other man would have thought impossible, in the interior of the Court, not by plausibility, flattery, and address, but with a high hand, with frequent railleries and sarcasms which would have ruined any other, and, in short, by a clear superiority of spirit and resolution." [863]
[863] Stanley to Pitt, 6 Aug. 1761, in Grenville Correspondence, I. 367, note.
Choiseul was vivacious, brilliant, keen, penetrating; believing nothing, fearing nothing; an easy moralist, an uncertain ally, a hater of priests; light-minded, inconstant; yet a kind of patriot, eager to serve France and retrieve her fortunes.
He flattered himself with no illusions. "Since we do not know how to make war," he said, "we must make peace;" [864] and he proposed a congress of all the belligerent Powers at Augsburg. At the same time, since the war in Germany was distinct from the maritime and colonial war of France and England, he proposed a separate negotiation with the British Court in order to settle the questions between them as a preliminary to the general pacification. Pitt consented, and Stanley went as envoy to Versailles; while M. de Bussy came as envoy to London and, in behalf of Choiseul, offered terms of peace, the first of which was the entire abandonment of Canada to England. [865] But the offers were accompanied by the demand that Spain, which had complaints of its own against England, should be admitted as a party to the negotiation, and even hold in some measure the attitude of a mediator. Pitt spurned the idea with fierce contempt. "Time enough to treat of all that, sir, when the Tower of London is taken sword in hand." [866] He bore his part with the ability that never failed him, and with a supreme arrogance that rose to a climax in his demand that the fortress of Dunkirk should be demolished, not because it was any longer dangerous to England, but because the nation would regard its destruction "as an eternal monument of the yoke imposed on France." [867]
[864] Flassan, Diplomatie Française, V. 376 (Paris, 1809).
[865] See the proposals in Entick, V. 161.
[866] Beatson, Military Memoirs, II. 434. The Count de Fuentes to the Earl of Egremont, 25 Dec. 1761, in Entick, V. 264.
[867] On this negotiation, see Mémoire historique sur la Négociation de la France et de l'Angleterre (Paris, 1761), a French Government publication containing papers on both sides. The British Ministry also published such documents as they saw fit, under the title of Papers relating to the Rupture with Spain. Compare Adolphus, George III., I. 31-39.
Choiseul replied with counter-propositions less humiliating to his nation. When the question of accepting or rejecting them came before the Ministry, the views of Pitt prevailed by a majority of one, and, to the disappointment of Bute and the King, the conferences were broken off. Choiseul, launched again on the billows of a disastrous war, had seen and provided against the event. Ferdinand VI. of Spain had died, and Carlos III. had succeeded to his throne. Here, as in England, change of kings brought change of policy. While negotiating vainly with Pitt, the French Minister had negotiated secretly and successfully with Carlos; and the result was the treaty known as the Family Compact, having for its object the union of the various members of the House of Bourbon in common resistance to the growing power of England. It provided that in any future war the Kings of France and Spain should act as one towards foreign Powers, insomuch that the enemy of either should be the enemy of both; and the Bourbon princes of Italy were invited to join in the covenant. [868] What was more to the present purpose, a special agreement was concluded on the same day, by which Spain bound herself to declare war against England unless that Power should make peace with France before the first of May, 1762. For the safety of her colonies and her trade Spain felt it her interest to join her sister nation in putting a check on the vast expansion of British maritime power. She could bring a hundred ships of war to aid the dilapidated navy of France, and the wealth of the Indies to aid her ruined treasury.