m Sardinia and Naples, the former of those States
agreeing to furnish 20,000 troops in return for the annual subsidy of
L200,000.

Here, then, were the foundations of a Mediterranean policy on which Pitt
and his colleagues began to build in the years 1793-4, with the singular
and unforeseen results at Toulon and in Corsica. Everything favoured
some such design. The French marine was enfeebled by mutiny, and, as the
spring of 1793 merged into summer, there came ominous signs of revolt in
the South against the Jacobin faction supreme at Paris. Accordingly
Grenville urged the Hapsburg Court, in return for British help in
Flanders, to assist an expedition of the Allies to the coast of
Provence. The conduct of the Austrian Chancellor, Thugut, was
characteristic. Far from strengthening the Imperial forces in Italy, he
prepared to withdraw some of them for the Rhenish campaign, now that a
British fleet spread its covering wings over the Kingdom of
Sardinia.[238]

Nevertheless the British Ministers persevered with their scheme; but
whether they at first aimed at Corsica or Toulon is uncertain.[239]
Certain it is that Pitt on 19th July proposed to detach three line
regiments from the Duke of York's force in Flanders and send them to the
Mediterranean along with one brigade of the Hessian corps and a body of
Wuertembergers. He pointed out that the naval superiority of Hood and the
Spanish fleet in that sea would enable us to strike a telling blow at
Provence if we were helped by Sardinians, Neapolitans, and Austrians
from the Milanese. He admitted the strength of the arguments in favour
of our land forces acting together on one point; but he added: "What I
now mention seems to offer a fair chance of doing something material in
the South [of France], and, if we distress the enemy on more sides than
one, while their internal distraction continues, it seems hardly
possible that they can long oppose any effectual resistance."[240]

Pitt wrote thus at the time when Mainz and Valenciennes were on the
point of surrender, and the Bretons, together with nearly the whole of
the South of France, were in open revolt against the regicide Republic.
Equally characteristic of his sanguine temperament is his Memorandum of
23rd August 1793 as to the allied forces which ought to be available for
service against France in June 1794, namely, 30,000 in Flanders, while
50,000 marched thence on Paris; 50,000 to attack Brest, and as many more
to attac