In substance it was that M. de Conflans was to wait till bad weather drove Sir Edward Hawke away from Brest. Then he was to slip out, pick up the transports and troops collected for the invasion at Vannes, and convoy them to some point on the coast of Great Britain. The calculation was that even if Conflans was intercepted by Hawke, he would be able to cover the transports, which could go on to their destination, or at the worst could come back safe. Yet the French ministers had the means of knowing that there was a British squadron in reserve behind Hawke in the Downs, and that the events at Lagos had set free Boscawen. We still hear of invasion schemes no wiser than this, and it is no waste of space or time to insist on the folly of this historical plan. Conflans, who was visibly unequal to the duty of giving Hawke battle, was to go to sea hampered by a convoy and there run the hazard of being brought to action. The convoy, notoriously incapable of defending itself, was to be supposed to go on even when its protecting ships were assailed, though there were other British ships than Hawke’s, and he could have spared part of his fleet for the purpose of pursuing the transports, and yet have left himself equal to Conflans. If Napoleon had not laid plans equally fantastic, if projects for the invasion of England every whit as absurd were not elaborated by soldiers of the kind called “scientific” to-day, we should be tempted to think that the plan of campaign drafted at Paris in 1759 could only have been the work of the feather-headed harlot who managed the languid debauchee on the French throne, and of the men who got office by her favour.