As early as the 2d of February, 1793, negotiations were opened between the British government and the Dutch home and colonial authorities concerning a strengthening of the garrison at the Cape by a contingent of British troops from St. Helena. The States-General and the Dutch East India Company, in response to this proposal, signified their desire for aid in the form of warships to guard the coast of the Cape peninsula, and that in case such assistance could not be given they would accept the offered troops. While this correspondence was going on events were transpiring that occasioned ill-feeling between the Dutch and the English, although they were in alliance against the French. Being paralyzed by dissensions among their own people, the States-General made urgent appeals to the British government for more efficient aid in both men and money. To these appeals the answer of the English authorities was a bitter complaint that their troops were already bearing the brunt of the war in defense of the Netherlands, and that the Stadtholder and his government were not making proper exertions to raise men and money at home. In making such answer, the British ministers seemed to be willfully blind to the prostrate condition of the Dutch government. The French had put the army of invasion under the command of Pichegru, one of the ablest generals of his time. One after another the Dutch strongholds were falling before him. The province of Friesland was threatening to make a separate peace with France if the States-General did not hasten to act in that direction for all Holland. The patriot party felt such antipathy to their English allies that it was difficult to get hospital accommodation in Dutch towns for the wounded British soldiers. And notwithstanding all these circumstances the English authorities asserted that the Stadtholder’s failure to put in the field a large and well-equipped force was due to apathy in his own cause rather than to weakness. The one measure of additional help offered was that if the Dutch government would furnish five hundred to a thousand troops for the better defense of Cape Colony the English East India Company would transport them thither free of charge. It being impossible for the Dutch to furnish the men, the negotiations came to an end.