[562] “Dropmore P.,” iii, 418.
[563] “F. O.,” France, 25, 26. Eden to Carmarthen, 29th August and 11th September.
[564] The feuds in his Ministry, and his consistently peaceful attitude, seem to absolve him from the charge of duplicity. French troops, disguised as Free Corps, were afterwards captured in Holland and had on them orders and instructions written by de Ségur, the French War Minister, who resigned in August 1787 (“Auckland Journals,” i, 259). It seems probable therefore that some Ministers egged on the French agents and the Patriots, while Montmorin strove to hold them in check. Louis XVI also used his influence to prevent a war with Prussia, which he disliked (see Garden, “Traités,” v, 85 n.). The appointment of Loménie de Brienne to a kind of dictatorship seems also to have made for peace; it coincides with the resolve, formed about 20th August (see Barral de Montferrat, op. cit., 214), to recall Vérac from The Hague; and on 31st August Montmorin signed with Eden a convention for ending irritating disputes in East Indian affairs. I have no space to go into that question; but it had been reported (e.g., by Eden on 9th November 1786, Pitt MSS., 110) that the French were about to gain control over Dutch East India ports. Rumours to that effect had embittered the contest in Holland, and they were laid to rest by that convention.
[565] See the MSS. of P. V. Smith in the “Beaufort P.” (Hist. MSS. Commission) 357, for the parts of Pitt’s letter of 8th September, omitted, very strangely, by the editor of the “Auckland Journals” (i, 191–2), also ibid., i, 198.
[566] Luckwaldt, 71.
[567] “F. O.,” Holland, 17.
[568] “F. O.,” Prussia, 11. Carmarthen to Ewart, 24th August.
[569] Luckwaldt, 80 n., here corrects one of many mis-statements in P. de Witt’s “Une Invasion prussienne en Hollande,” 285, that the Prussians were ready to march by 20th July.
[570] Hertzberg, “Recueil des Traités,” ii, 428–30; “F. O.,” Prussia, 12. Ewart to Carmarthen, 4th and 8th September.
[571] Ibid. 8th September.