Though I knew how ill-disposed Francés was to this country, and that Monsieur du Châtelet was suspected of having incited the King to the seizure of the Falkland Islands, and that the Duc de Choiseul but waited for the means, and would then have found an opportunity of attacking us; yet I was and am persuaded, that Francés at that moment acted with sincerity. Nothing could be more opposite to Choiseul’s interest than a war between France and England at that juncture, in which he was vehemently pressed by the King of Spain to take a part. He had proved in council, to the confusion and confession of his enemies, that the finances of France could not possibly support a war; and his own master’s aversion to war would expose him to still greater dangers, as the mistress and her Cabal could not fail to avail themselves of the Monarch’s disgust to a Minister already tottering, should the least disadvantage attend their arms. The crisis, however, of Choiseul’s fate advanced so rapidly, that I am persuaded, however strong Choiseul’s instructions to Francés had been, he himself by this time had taken another resolution. He had found that his disgrace was determined; he had no support but the King of Spain, who pushed him to declare, and with whose Prime Minister, Grimaldi,[138] he was intimately leagued. Despair decided. Could he obtain his master’s consent to declare war, he himself might be necessary; and he secured the protection of Spain. He marched forty thousand men to the coast opposite to England, under the command of his brother Stainville; and by that rash step brought on his own fall. His enemies, gained by our Court, wrested from their temporising King, who abhorred change, the sentence of Choiseul’s banishment, and a deluge of blood was saved by his disgrace,--a merit which our Court soon effaced by planning a war on our American colonies, hoping to enslave them--and by treating them with as much arrogance and obduracy as they betrayed pusillanimity towards Spain and France, with whom, by such blundering policy, they drew on a war too; till, by misplacing haughtiness, and by a series of wretched measures, they lost at once our colonies in America, and the empire of the ocean everywhere. I return to Lord Weymouth’s resignation, who, Lord Chatham’s friends asserted, had advised making reprisals on Spain: whether authorised or prompted by Wood, and whether to drive the resigner into opposition, I know not. Certain it is, that he had advised recalling Mr. Harris, our Minister, from Madrid. Francés told me, that when Lord Weymouth demanded restitution of the island, he had promised to negotiate on the title; but when Spain consented to the first point, Lord Weymouth affirmed, he had only said that _then_ we should be _en état de négocier_. The Spanish Ambassador maintained that his Lordship had three times made the same promise to him as to Francés.