About the end of March, France renewed the most pressing solicitations for peace. They frankly avowed the distress of their affairs; for they did not apprehend hard-heartedness in the new Court. Augsburgh they proposed for the place of congress, or any other town the King should name, professing they would treat _vis-à-vis du Roi de la Grande Brétagne_; for which purpose they offered to send a minister hither, where, too, might be one from the King of Prussia: the ministers of _their_ allies should assemble at Paris. The two Empresses, they said, were grown more moderate in their demands; and for their own part, they talked of yielding to us all Canada. So much ear was given to these overtures, that the Earl of Egremont[88] and Sir Joseph Yorke[89] were named to go to the Congress. But so little was this measure to the inclination of Mr. Pitt, that he prosecuted with unusual warmth an expedition he had meditated against Belleisle; a conquest of so little value, and so inadequate to the expense with which it was attended, that the plan was by many believed calculated solely to provoke the Court of France, and break off the negotiation. France was more surprised than concerned at this attack. Sir Edward Hawke had lain before it for two years, when there were not five hundred men on the island, without attempting it. Now they had had time to fortify it, we persisted in the conquest. Both Hawke and Boscawen[90] earnestly dissuaded the enterprise. Yet Pitt was obdurate; and the island was taken at last by the beginning of June, after an enormous waste of money, and the loss of some men. There fell Sir William Williams, a gallant and ambitious young man, who had devoted himself both to war and politics. The island is a barren rock; and it was only to humour Mr. Pitt, that France, in the succeeding negotiations, condescended to treat it as an object of the smallest importance.