Note 48 — INTRODUCTION
Reading edition
That Fleury had proposed something is most probable. He had for some time been complaining of the ‘insults’—what to-day we call pin-pricks—with which the British Government had been annoying France in a time of peace. These pin-pricks culminated in June 1742 when a British army under Lord Stair landed in the Netherlands, with the intention of thwarting the French in their campaign against Austria.