At a later stage, Pitt ironically described the plan for the Swiss auxiliaries as a fortuitous blessing, for had not Prevot, the adventurer who was to command the battalions, been taken prisoner by the French and found his way from Brest hither, and had he not then taken it into his head that he would like to command a regiment, nothing would have been heard of it. He hoped this Ulysses-like wanderer might be as wise as his prototype and so forth; one can imagine the sort of pleasantry. But it was Charles Townshend who, 'content with promoting confusion,' chiefly shone at this time. On the other hand, one of Pitt's speeches, urging that the Colonies should be heard on this Swiss scheme, is described as lasting an hour and a half without fire or force. Indeed, Walpole writes of this debate that 'the opposition neither increase in numbers or eloquence; the want of the former seems to have damped the fire of the latter,' and that 'the House of Commons has dwindled into a very dialogue between Pitt and Fox ... in which, though Pitt has attacked, Fox has generally had the better.' Pitt seemed to be becoming dull and diffuse. 'Mr. Pitt talks by Shrewsbury clock, and is grown almost as little heard as that is at Westminster.' Still one wishes that the chronicler had reported the speeches of either as faithfully as he reports his own. The apprehension of a French invasion, which had been present for months, became acute in March and April (1756). The Government asked for the troops which Holland was, it was held, bound to furnish, and they were refused. Thereupon Lord George Sackville, probably by concert with the Court or to gain its favour, suggested a preference for Hanoverians, whose soldierlike qualities he commended. The hint was acted upon with suspicious promptitude; and on March 29, Fox formally moved to address the King to send for his Electoral troops.[318]