The Toulon fleet’s share in the great invasion scheme had completely failed. Boscawen returned home with part of his fleet and a large convoy of merchant-ships. Admiral Brodrick remained to blockade the French, who had taken refuge in Cadiz. A storm drove him off in January 1760, and they were able to escape to Toulon. Though a combined operation was no longer possible, after the disaster of the 18th and 19th August, the French still clung to the hope that an invasion might be carried out from Brest, where M. de Conflans lay with the main fleet. All through the fine-weather months he was keenly watched by Hawke. The French force was of twenty-one sail of the line, the English of twenty-five, and the difference was enough to convince the ministers of Louis XV. that it was useless to expect a victory from the use of open force. Yet they would not renounce the hope of carrying out an invasion by means of a fleet confessedly unequal to the hazard of giving battle on the way to our shores. The situation must have arisen in any case, for even if La Clue had escaped Boscawen’s pursuit, it was to be supposed that the English admiral would follow him, and thereby bring his own ships to reinforce Hawke. The two would have formed a very superior force to the combined fleets of Conflans and La Clue, even if the second, after evading Boscawen, had also avoided running into Sir Edward’s much stronger fleet outside of Brest. If he had steered for Rochefort, the French admirals would still have been divided. When this combination was ruined by the defeat of La Clue, by the capture and destruction of five of his best ships and the imprisonment of most of the others at Cadiz, all hope of invading England ought to have been resigned. But the French king and his ministers could not reconcile themselves to failure. So they hit upon a scheme of folly such as would be incredible in other than men too ignorant to understand the task they had undertaken, too vain to allow themselves to be taught, and so reckless in their selfish frivolity that rather than allow themselves to be blamed for doing nothing they would do what in all probability would bring ruin to the officers and men at their orders.