[82] The plan was Marshal Belleisle’s. The author of La Vie Privée de Louis XV. says, that Thurot had orders not to commit hostilities on Scotland, but to invite the Jacobites to join him.—Vol. iii. That author has collected a great deal of curious matter, as far as he could be assisted by public materials; but his secret history is far from being equally authentic, nor does he seem to have been conversant with persons well informed, and near the scene of action. He thinks the first cause of the Dauphin’s illness and death proceeded from his vexation at the expulsion of the Jesuits. The Dauphin had been bred a bigot; but, before his death, was grown a free-thinker to a very great latitude, and gave very indubitable marks of it in the last days of his life. The author was as ignorant of the motives of the Duc de Choiseul’s opposition to Madame du Barri, and his consequential fall, which the author imputes to the Duchesse de Grammont, his sister, being provoked at not being the King’s mistress herself—a vulgar story. The author seems to be most versed in the marine, and the great object of his work, to show that all the successes of the English, in 1759 and 1760, were owing to the incapacity of all the Ministers and Commanders, and especially to the cowardice of their Admirals, to the King’s indolence, and to Madame de Pompadour’s ascendant.
[83] Hely Hutchinson, afterwards Provost of the college at Dublin; where his conduct was so violent as to draw on him a most acrimonious inquest, which he repelled by equal adulation to power.
1760.
Une noble hardiesse reveille l’enthousiasme national.
Siècle d’Alexandre, p. 177.
[CHAPTER X.]
The War in Germany at the commencement of the year 1760—Prince Ferdinand detaches 12,000 men to the assistance of the King of Prussia—Value of contemporary Memoirs—Lord Bath’s Letter—Macklyn’s Love à la Mode—Lord George Sackville demands a Court-Martial—Earl Ferrers murders his Steward—Smollett punished for a Libel—Thurot’s Expedition to Ireland—Takes Carrickfergus—Re-embarks, and is intercepted—He is killed, and his Vessels captured—Court-Martial on Lord George Sackville—Reference to the Judges—Sentence—Trial and Execution of Earl Ferrers—Qualification Bill—Militia Bills.