Butler and Balhaldy returned to France in October. During their absence things had changed; the battle of Dettingen had been fought (June 27th, 1743), although Great Britain and France were technically at peace. King Louis was furious, and he took the matter up personally, and gave instructions to prepare an expeditionary force for the invasion of England. The main body was to consist of sixteen battalions of infantry and one regiment of dismounted dragoons, under Marshal Saxe, and was to land in the Thames. It was further suggested that two or three battalions should be sent to Scotland. Prince Charles Edward was invited to accompany the expedition, and was secretly brought from Rome, arriving in Paris at the end of January 1744. There was no affectation of altruism for the Stuart exile in King Louis’s mind, but the zeal of the Jacobites was to be exploited. He wrote his private views to his uncle, the King of Spain, communicating a project that he had formed, he said, in great secrecy, which was to destroy at one blow the foundations of the league of the enemies of the House of Bourbon. It might, perhaps, be hazardous, but from all that he could learn it was likely to be successful. He wished to act in concert with Spain. He sent a plan of campaign. Everything was ready for execution, and he proposed to begin the expedition on the 1st of January. It would be a very good thing that the British minister should see that the barrier of the sea did not entirely protect England from French enterprise.[50] It might be that the revolution to be promoted by the expedition would not be so quick as was expected, but in any case there would be a civil war which would necessitate the recall of the English troops in the Netherlands. The Courts of Vienna and Turin would no longer receive English subsidies, and these Courts, left to their own resources, would submit to terms provided they were not too rigorous.[51] [Sidenote: Collapse of French Expedition.]