Mordaunt solicited him with strange earnestness, either to abandon the project, or to undertake it as his own; Mordaunt offering to share the danger of the execution, not of the opinion. Conway at last said, if Mordaunt would call Wolfe and any other man, and they would advise him to advise the attack he would; or if they advised him to desist from proposing it, he would; but either Mordaunt declined--in truth, it was a contest to be pitied rather than blamed: both saw the rashness of the project, to which they were willing to sacrifice themselves and their soldiers. Mordaunt, from esteem of Conway’s abilities, hoped to be excused if he executed what the latter advised--and the latter was too happy in not being commanding officer, to take that charge upon himself in a hopeless bravado. Conway then proposed to submit to the same alternative from the opinions of Cornwallis and Howard; to which the General acquiesced; and they, as he foresaw, concurring with him, Conway submitted, but desired they would observe, he acquiesced against his opinion--and it was determined to return, Sir Edward Hawke having often pressed the Generals to come to some resolution, the bad season approaching so near that he could not venture to keep the great ships much longer at sea. Wolfe and Howe had borne the dilatoriness of the chief commanders with indignation; yet seeing the minute lost, made no objection to a retreat; and the Fleet arrived at Portsmouth October 3rd--in the meantime, many important events had happened. In the East Indies, the fleet under Admiral Watson retrieved the damages inflicted on our settlements by a new Nabob, of which we had received notice in the preceding June. That Viceroy had seized Cossimbuzar and Calcutta; the cruelties exercised on the factory in the latter place, where 170 persons were crammed into a dungeon, and stifled in the most shocking torments of heat, will not bear to be described to a good-natured reader. Watson was seconded by Captain Clive, one of those extraordinary men, whose great soul broke out under all the disadvantages of an ugly and contemptible person. In the north of Germany, affairs had taken a favourable turn for the King of Prussia. Lehwald, one of his Generals, defeated a mighty army of Russians, who, in the most barbarian style, were pouring into Prussia. The Germans, whatever they pretended, were not cheaply conquerors. But the consequences of the battle were decisive; the Muscovites disappeared from the campaign for the rest of the summer.