The Duke himself was personally brave, and was eager to land on the first possibility; but he had neither experience nor information, nor probability on his side adequate to such a bravado. However, it was well for him that his miscarriage happened under the auspices of Pitt, not of Fox. Here, it was said, his Grace and his troops remarked that Lord George Sackville was not among the first to court danger: and Howe, who never made friendship but at the mouth of a cannon, had conceived and expressed a strong aversion to him.[24] It is certain that both the Duke and Lord George were so sick of naval expeditions, that, after parading before Granvelle and Cherbourg, they returned with the Fleet to St. Helen’s, and set out for the Army in Germany, where the Duke took the command of the English forces. General Blighe had been fetched from Ireland on that intent, but was obliged to cede to the superior influence of Marlborough;[25] and more cruelly was appointed to resume the thread of our silly expeditions, from which Mr. Pitt and the mob still expected I don’t know what of glory. Blighe was an elderly man, of no talents, brave, but in every other shape unfit for the destined service, supposing there was such a thing as fitness for that service. The armament sailed again, and Prince Edward embarked with them: and that some utility might at least be pretended from this vain expense, Prince Ferdinand, to flatter Pitt, wrote letter after letter to declare the great benefits he reaped from our expeditions, by which the attention and troops of France were divided: an affirmation of so little truth, that the Duke of Marlborough, in the hurry of their retreat, having left his silver tea-spoons behind him, the Duc d’Aiguillon, politely to mark contempt, sent them home by a cartel-ship. But Prince Ferdinand who thus complimented the English Ministry on the wisdom of these idle measures, showed it was not from want of knowing how to perform realities. Having pushed the French beyond the Rhine, he passed it himself at Herven in sight of their whole Army, and soon eclipsed the glory of that passage by defeating them at Crevelt, where they lost seven thousand men, and the Duc de Gisors, the only son of Marshal Belleisle, an amiable and accomplished young man. The King had Knyphausen thank the King of Prussia for giving him so able a General. The Princess Gouvernante wrote to Prince Ferdinand to complain of his passing over part of the territories of the States. He replied, “He was sorry; it had been over a very small part, and he should not have violated even that, had he had the same Dutch guides that led the French to Hanover in the preceding year.”