Unable to cope with Great Britain on the seas, the Duke de Choiseul formed a plan of invasion, in which he sought the co-operation of Russia and Sweden, whose spheres of action would be the Scottish coast. ‘Should fifty thousand men perish in the first expedition,’ he wrote to Count Bernstorff, ‘the King has signed the determination to send other fifty thousand, and we shall not be discouraged so long as we have men in France.’[47] The hesitations of those Powers, the destruction of the French fleets in the East Indies, off Cape Lagos, and in Quiberon Bay, and of the flotilla prepared for the invasion of England, upset the whole of the duke’s schemes, and gave him good cause to change his tactics. He would now hail peace if he could. He turned to de l’Hôpital (July 8, 1759), and desired him to seize an early opportunity for feeling his way with the Grand Chancellor, and suggesting to that minister, as a private opinion of his own, the desirability of Russia’s mediation between Austria and Prussia, whereby she would secure to herself the gratitude of Europe. De Choiseul believed that if the Germanic Powers could but arrange their differences, Russia might become useful in bringing about an understanding between France and England. [Sidenote: THE DUKE DE CHOISEUL AT FAULT.] De l’Hôpital—gouty, good-natured, and easy-going—had made it a practice never to act without first consulting his confidential secretary. That secretary, at the present time, was D’Eon, who recommended that no notice whatever should be taken of the minister’s letter. De l’Hôpital agreed. At the expiration of a couple of months de Choiseul again wrote, this time impatiently and reproachfully.