In fact, the negotiation of Dresden resolved itself into a personal duel between Count Brühl and d'Argenson. It ended, as we know, in the triumph of the former, through the intervention of his great compatriot, Maurice de Saxe.[368] The victor of Raucoux had recognised a strong personal interest in the proposal to make his niece Dauphine of France; and unknown to d'Argenson, he had exerted his powerful influence in favour of it both at Versailles and Dresden. Having nothing further to gain from the war, he was easily persuaded to second Brühl's scheme for the mediation of Saxony; and being given to understand by the Saxon minister that the real obstacle in the way of an arrangement was the "faux système"[369] pursued by the d'Argensons, he resolved to do his best to compass their fall. On the 10th of December he wrote to Brühl: "People here are beginning to suspect that the d'Argensons have no sincere desire for peace. There is a shell planted; and if we apply the fuse, they will be blown into the air.... I have sounded the Marquis with regard to that question you spoke of last. He is unwilling to listen to any proposals on behalf of the Court of Vienna, and talks upon that matter in a very strange fashion."[370] Maurice proceeded to apply the fuse. He won over Madame de Pompadour, between whom and the Foreign Minister there was no love lost;[371] and he engaged his friend and d'Argenson's enemy, Noailles, to use his influence with the King. Accordingly on the 15th of December Noailles submitted to Louis XV. a famous memoir,[372] in which d'Argenson's ministry is elaborately represented as one long disaster: his portrait being drawn with a bitterness of party spirit and personal animosity but thinly disguised by an affectation of disinterestedness. D'Argenson was by no means unaware of the intrigues against him; but he would not stoop to defend himself. He thought that his position had been strengthened by the successful negotiation of the Saxon marriage, of which he imagined he had the sole honour; and he believed himself secure in the confidence of the King. The latter, who seems to have regarded d'Argenson with unusual esteem, succumbed to the importunities of the Favourite, the Courts of Saxony and Spain, the all-powerful Maurice de Saxe, the Council of ministers, and every one whom d'Argenson, to relieve his soul or to protect the public, had found it necessary to offend; and on the very day on which what seemed to be a brilliant diplomatic stroke was consummated at Dresden, the man who imagined himself the author of it was dismissed. The immediate cause of his fall was his obstinate refusal to traffic with Austria, or to sacrifice what generations of experience had taught him to regard as the interest of France to the fortuitous prepossessions of a foreign adventurer.[373]