“. . . Your details, which I had received from no other person, have left no doubt upon my mind. Of the delay of fresh intelligence I think nothing. I remember the same thing happened after the battle of Ulm, when the same inferences were drawn from it, and the opportunity taken to circulate the same reports of the defeat of the French. It seems Robert Ward sent to all the newspapers the paragraphs which you wd. see, asserting the Russian capitulation and Count Palfy’s letters to be forgeries; and this, I am assured, without the least authority for doing so, except his own foolish belief. All this, I agree with you, is as much calculated to hurt Pitt, when it is completely exposed, as the disasters themselves, and the folly of doing it is inconceivable. If the defeat of the 2nd* was as calamitous as I believe it to have been, it is nonsense to talk any more of Continental confederacies. The game is too desperate even for Pitt himself, desperate as he is; and the King of Prussia certainly would not expose himself alone, which in the first instance he must do, to all the power and vengeance of France. I am more inclined to think that they [Pitt’s Cabinet] really do flatter themselves against all evidence into a belief in these renewed battles and consequent changes of fortune. There is nothing too absurd for them in a military view. They are naturally confident and sanguine, and this is their last hope.”
