Note 121 — Chapter VII

The Duke of Grafton states in his MS. Memoirs that Lord Rochford’s instructions only stopped short of a declaration of war. “At one time Lord Rochford was confident that he should have succeeded, and wrote over that the Duc de Choiseul’s language had so much softened, that he had every hope that the French Ambassador would not risk the attempt. In the audience of the next week, he found to his great surprise the former tone taken up; and in a private letter to me, he attributed the strange change in the Duc to the imprudent declaration of a great law Lord (Lord Mansfield), then at Paris, at one of the Minister’s tables, that the English Ministry were too weak, and the nation too wise, to support them in entering into a war for the sake of Corsica.” The remonstrances thus made by Lord Rochford having failed, the Duke of Grafton dispatched Captain Dunant, a Genevese officer, who had served with distinction in the Swiss troops of the King of Sardinia, to Corsica, with the view of learning how far assistance could be surreptitiously afforded to Paoli by the English Government, and the result of the mission was, that the Corsicans obtained several thousand stand of arms from the stock at the Tower. Lord Camden seems to have been ready to have gone further. The Duke of Grafton saw no necessity for an immediate decision, being under the impression that the Corsicans might still hold out; and the events which followed, and will be mentioned hereafter, took him completely by surprise. (Duke of Grafton’s MS. Memoirs.)—E.