[369] Grimaldi was a Genoese. He had been educated for the church, and always retained the soft and insinuating manners of an Italian ecclesiastic. It was to his address, rather than to his talents, that he was indebted for high situations he filled. In negotiating the celebrated treaty of Paris, he appears to have been overmatched by Choiseul, and the loss of the Havannah, and the other misfortunes of the war, were the immediate fruits of his eagerness for a French alliance. His administration in Spain was neither popular nor successful. It ended with the failure of the expedition to Algiers. His chief merit lay in the encouragement he gave to literature, his patronage of the arts, his love of justice, and the mildness and generosity of his disposition. On his resignation, in 1777, he was created a Duke, and a Grandee of Spain. Having been allowed to nominate his successor, he was at his own request appointed Ambassador at Rome. Coxe’s Spain, vol. v. c. 63; and Memoirs of a Traveller now in Retirement, vol. iv. p. 109.—E.
[370] He had particularly distinguished himself in the command of his regiment at Fontenoy, where his valour and good fortune are noticed by Voltaire:—
“Guerchy n’est pas blessé, la vertu peut te plaire.”—E.
[371] See an account of him in the notes, infra.—E.
[372] This Vergy was a French spy. In 1771, I heard Mr. Phelps, secretary to Lord Sandwich, relate that Vergy had offered him to act, too, as a spy on Guerchy, of which Mr. Phelps gave the ambassador warning. Vergy remained here several years, and wrote pamphlets and novels for a livelihood.
[373] When they talked to D’Eon of a breach of the peace, he understood English so imperfectly, that he thought Lord Halifax threatened to break the peace between the two nations, of which he, D’Eon, had been the messenger, and that inflamed his madness.
[374] Augustus the Third, a weak and unfortunate monarch, whose reign forms one of the most melancholy epochs in the annals of Saxony. His incapacity was more remarkable from his being opposed to Frederick the Great and Catherine the Second. He died in 1763, and with him ended the independence of Poland—his successor Stanislaus being merely the nominee of Russia.—E.
[375] Count Bruhl.—[This worthless courtier, who exercised for many years an arbitrary sway over Saxony and Poland, and inflicted irreparable injuries on both countries, died in October, 1764.—E.]
[376] Rezzonico, Pope by the name of Clement the Thirteenth, [filled the Papal Chair from 1758 to 1769, when he died, in his 76th year. His life was decent, and his intentions appear to have been honest, but his policy was unenlightened and vacillating, and is strikingly contrasted by that of his illustrious successor.—E.]
[377] Sir Hugh Smithson, who assumed the name of Percy on marrying Lady Elizabeth Seymour, daughter of Algernon Duke of Somerset, and heiress of the house of Percy by her grandmother. They were created Earl and Countess of Northumberland.