20 20 FRENCH INVASION MENACED. [1761. CHAPTER II. - HANS MENACED INVASION OF 1759. -FRANCE SUES FOR PEACE. -LETTERS FROM DR. BIRCH AND SOAME JENYNS. - EARLY in 1759, France declared her intention of making a descent upon the British coast. This was but the repetition of a menace which, uttered three years before, had caused consternation, disaster, and disgrace throughout the land, and led to the judicial murder of Admiral Byng. But in the interval between the first and second threat, the helm of state passed from the trembling hands of Newcastle into the firm grasp of the elder Pitt. The change soon became manifest; a few months after France had made the boastful announcement, her troops had been beaten, her fleets annihilated, her commerce destroyed, her colonies rendered valueless, and her credit reduced to so low an ebb that her government was obliged to declare itself bankrupt in no less than eleven descriptions of stock. In this desperate state of affairs, Choiseul sued for peace. But Pitt, who thought the prosperity of a country depended upon conquests, rather than commerce, and who fully partook of the vulgar prejudice, that "France is our natural enemy," turned a deaf ear to every offer of accommodation. "Some time be fore, he would," he said, "have been content to bring that country on her knees, now he would not rest till he had laid her on her back."* All further attempts at negociation were, in consequence, for a time abandoned; but, in the spring of 1761, Choiseul, encouraged by the pacific declaration of George the Third, made another effort to bring hostilities to a close. His overtures were favourably received by the pacific section of the Cabinet,† who were all agreed as to the expediency of closing a war which had outlived its original objects, and who so far prevailed, as to appoint three commissioners for a general congress, to arrange that ministers should be sent from the respective Courts of London and France, to settle the preliminaries of peace. Augsburgh was the proposed place of meeting for the commissioners. Hans Stanley, of Paulton's Park, New Forest, the negociator on the part of England, was grandson of Sir Hans Sloane, the founder of the British Museum. He was a man of awkward appearance, ungracious * Walpole. + The Dukes of Newcastle, Bedford, and Devonshire, Lords Hardwicke, Mansfield, and Granville, &c. Mr. William Sloane Stanley, the present possessor of Paulton's Park, is great nephew of Mr. Hans Stanley. 22 ABBÉ DE BUSSY. [1761. manners, irascible temper, and eccentric habits. Yet he possessed considerable talents and acquirements. Lady Hervey describes him as "a very ingenious, sensible, knowing, conversable person, and what is still better, a worthy, honest, valuable man." In the Chatham administration he was appointed Ambassador to St. Petersburgh. He continued to hold some office or other till 1780, when he was displaced. This treatment so preyed upon his mind that he put a period to his existence. The French minister, the Abbé de Bussy, was one of the senior clerks of the French Foreign Office. He had, on a former occasion, been sent by his court on a mission to George the Second, whom he greatly disgusted by the impertinence of his manners. The King once asking him "Is there anything new in Paris?" Bussy flippantly replied, "Yes! Sire, there is a frost." The Abbé was adroit, persuasive, and thoroughly conversant with business. He had formerly been private secretary to the Duc de Richelieu. He was a short, thickset, deformed little man, and had the nickname of Bussy Ragotin, to distinguish him from Dupleix's coadjutor in the Carnatic, who was called Bussy Butin, and from Madame de Sévigné's agreeable cousin and correspondent, the Comte de Bussy Rabutin. Beyond the appointment of these negociators, the peace party in the cabinet were unable to make any advance. Two days before the bearer of the French olive-branch arrived in London, Pitt dispatched a large armament under the joint command of Major-General Hodgson and Commodore Keppel, to Belleisle, in order to effect the reduction of that island. "The plan," says Walpole, "was by many believed calculated solely to provoke the Court of France, and to break off the negociation." The language of the great war-minister breathed the same spirit in the Cabinet and in the royal closet, as in his public acts and demonstrations. In a letter to Lord Hardwicke, dated the 15th of April, 1761, the Duke of Newcastle gives an account of a long audience of Mr. Pitt with the King. After stating that his great rival's conduct was "as bad, as unjust, as hostile, and as impracticable as ever came even from him," the Duke thus proceeds: "When he (Pitt) came out he told me part of it, and his Majesty told me the rest. Mr. Pitt said he had laid his thoughts fully before the King; that he had told his Majesty that he did by no means think ill of the state of the war; that he was far from doing it with regard to the war in Germany; that he thought the total destruction of the French in the East Indies, the probability of taking Martinico, and the effect this expedition to Belleisle might have; as well as the probable events of this campaign, would enable us to get a peace which should secure to us all Canada, Cape Breton, the islands, the harbours, the fisheries, and particularly the exclusive fishery of Newfoundland; that if he was even capable of signing a treaty without it, "Geo. III. i. 56." 24 NEGOCIATIONS [1761. he should be sorry he had ever got again the use of his right hand, which use he had but just recovered; and went on railing at the Commissariat as the occasion of all our misfortune. "The King said, he was sure I had done my part, and when Mr. Pitt talked of an inquiry, the King said he knew I had given strict orders for a strict inquiry to be made. He then told the King his scheme of peace. His Majesty understood him, as I did, to mean that he should at first acquaint the French Minister, who is expected here, that these are the terms from which we will not depart. His Majesty reasoned strongly with him against making any such declaration... I withdrew fully satisfied with the King and myself, but more sensible of the injustice and ingratitude of Mr. Pitt than ever man was. I told the King, whenever any measure of his own (Pitt's) miscarried he would fling the blame upon anybody to get off himself - King of Prussia, Elector of Hanover, or any other person whatever. Mr. Pitt talked strange stuff to me. Upon the whole, I look upon all he said to me for a menace, in which he will be greatly disappointed; but at the same time I see what I am to expect from him and his bloodhounds." In the course of the negociations, France proposed to guarantee Canada to England, and, in return for this concession, desired a confirmation of the same privilege of fishing on the coast of Newfoundland, that had been enjoyed by her subjects under the treaty of Utrecht; that Cape Breton should be restored as an abri or point |