Supplies of fresh provisions had come to him from England all Summer; but were stopped latterly by the wild weather. Upon which, in the Fleet, arose this gravely pathetic Stave of Sea-Poetry, with a wrinkle of briny humor grinning in it:--Till Hawke did bang Monsieur Conflans [CONGFLANG], You sent us beef and beer;Now Monsieur's beat, we've nought to eat, Since you have nought to fear." [Beatson, ii. 342 n.]
The French mode of taking this catastrophe was rather peculiar.
Hear Barbier, an Eye-witness; dating PARIS, DECEMBER, 1759:
"Since the first days of December, there has been cried, and sold in the streets, a Printed Detail of all that concerns the GRANDINVASION projected this long while: to wit, the number of Ships of the Line, of Frigates, Galiots,--among others 500 Flat-bottomed Boats, which are to carry over, and land in England, more than 54,000 men;--with list of the Regiments, and number of the King's Guards, that are also to go: there are announced for Generals-in-Chief, M. le Prince de Conti [do readers remember him since the Broglio-Maillebois time, and how King Louis prophesied in autograph that he would be "the Grand Conti" one day?]--Prince de Conti, Prince de Soubise [left his Conquest of Frankfurt for this greater Enterprise], and Milord Thomont [Irish Jacobite, whom I don't know]. As sequel to this Detail, there is a lengthy Song on the DISEMBARKMENT IN ENGLAND, and the fear the English must have of it!" Calculated to astonish the practical forensic mind.
"It is inconceivable", continues he, "how they have permitted such a Piece to be printed; still more to be cried, and sold price one halfpenny (DEUX LIARDS). This Song is indecent, in the circumstances of the actual news from our Fleet at Brest (20th of last month);--in regard to which bad adventure M. le Marquis de Conflans has come to Versailles, to justify himself, and throw the blame on M. le Marquis de Beauffremont [his Rear-Admiral, now safe in the Charente, with eight of our poor ships]. Such things are the more out of place, as we are in a bad enough position,--no Flat-bottoms stirring from the ports, no Troops of the MAISON DU ROIsetting out; and have reason to believe that we are now to make no such attempt." [Barbier, iv. 336.]
Silhouette, the Controller-General, was thought to have a creative genius in finance: but in the eighth month of his gestation, what phenomena are these? October 26th, there came out Four Decrees of Council, setting forth, That, "as the expenses of the War exceed not only the King's ordinary revenues, but the extraordinaries he has had to lay on his people, there is nothing for it but," in fact, Suspension of Payment; actual Temporary Bankruptcy:--"Cannot pay you; part of you not for a year, others of you not till the War end; will give you 5 per cent interest instead." Coupled with which, by the same creative genius, is a Declaration in the King's name, "That the King compels nobody, but does invite all and sundry of loyal mind to send their Plate (on loan, of course, and with due receipt for it) to the Mint to be coined, lest Majesty come to have otherwise no money,"--his very valets, as is privately known, having had no wages from him for ten months past.
Whereupon the rich Princes of the Blood, Due d'Orleans foremost, and Official persons, Pompadour, Belleisle, Choiseul, do make an effort; and everybody that has Plate feels uneasily that he cannot use it, and that he ought to send it. And, November 5th, the King's own Plate, packed ostentatiously in carts, went to the Mint;--the Dauphiness, noble Saxon Lady, had already volunteered with a silver toilet-table of hers, brand-new and of exquisite costly pattern;but the King forbade her. On such examples, everybody had to make an effort, or uneasily try to make one. King Friedrich, eight days after Maxen, is somewhat amused at these proceedings in the distance:--"The kettles and spoons of the French seem to me a pleasant resource, for carrying on War!" writes he to D'Argens. ["Wilsdruf, 28th November, 1759," <italic> OEuvres de Frederic, <end italic>
xix. 108.] "A bit of mummery to act on the public feeling, Isuppose. The result of it will be small: but as the Belleisle LETTERS [taken in Contades's baggage, after Minden, and printed by Duke Ferdinand for public edification] make always such an outcry about poverty, those people are trying to impose on their enemies, and persuade them that the carved and chiselled silver of the Kingdom will suffice for ****** a vigorous Campaign. I see nothing else that can have set them on imagining the farce they are now at.
There is Munster taken from them by the English-Hanoverian people;it is affirmed that the French, on the 25th, quitted Giessen, to march on Friedberg and repass the Rhine [might possibly have done so;--but the Hereditary Prince and his 12,000 come to be needed elsewhere!]--Poor we are opposite our enemies here, cantoned in the Villages about; the last truss of straw, the last loaf of bread will decide which of us is to remain in Saxony. And as the Austrians are extremely squeezed together, and can get nothing out of Bohmen,"--one hopes it will not be they!