The death of Lally is the parallel in French history to the execution of Byng in the history of England, and, oddly enough, Voltaire was very actively occupied in trying to avert that crime of our government, as well as the crimes of his own. He had known Byng when he was in England.[303] Some one told him that a letter from Richelieu, who had been Byng’s opponent at Minorca, would be useful, and Voltaire instantly urged the Duke to allow him to forward a letter he had, stating Richelieu’s conviction of his defeated enemy’s bravery and good judgment. Voltaire insists that this letter turned four votes on the court-martial.[304] He informs a correspondent, moreover, of the fact that Byng had instructed his executor to express his deep obligation both to Voltaire and Richelieu.[305] Humanity is erroneously counted among commonplace virtues. If it deserved such a place, there would be less urgent need than, alas, there is, for its daily exercise among us. In its pale shape of kindly sentiment and bland pity it is common enough, and is always the portion of the cultivated. But humanity armed, aggressive, and alert, never slumbering and never wearying, moving like ancient hero over the land to slay monsters, is the rarest of virtues, and Voltaire is one of its master-types. His interest in public transactions in his latest years was keener than ever. That fruit of Polish anarchy, the war between Russia and Turkey which broke out in 1768, excited his imagination to a pitch of great heat, and the despatch in the spring of 1770 of a squadron from Cronstadt, for the so-called liberation of Greece, made him weep for joy. He implored Frederick not to leave to Catherine alone the burden of so glorious a task. Superstition had had seven crusades; was it not a noble thing to undertake one crusade to drive the barbarous Turks from the land of Socrates and Plato, Sophocles and Euripides? Frederick replied very sensibly that Dantzic was more to him than the Piræus, and that he is a little indifferent about the modern Greeks, who, if ever the arts should revive among them, would be jealous to find that a Gaul by his Henriade had surpassed their Homer; that this same Gaul had beaten Sophocles, equalled Thucydides, and left far behind him Plato, Aristotle, and the whole school of the Porch;[306]—which was, perhaps, not quite so sensibly said.