What meanwhile were George III.’s Ministers doing?  At this crisis English policy suffered a terrible blow.  Death struck down the “stately column” that held up the swaying fortunes of our race.  William Pitt, long failing in health, was sore-stricken by the news of Austerlitz and the defection of Austria.  But the popular version as to the cause of his death—­that Austerlitz killed Pitt—­is more melodramatic than correct.  Among the many causes that broke that unbending spirit, the news of the miserable result of the Hanoverian Expedition was the last and severest.  The files of our Foreign Office papers yield touching proof of the hopes which the Cabinet cherished, even after Vienna was in Napoleon’s hands.  Harrowby was urged to do everything in his power—­short of conceding Hanover—­to bring Prussia into the field, in which case “nearly 300,000 men will be available in North Germany at the beginning of the next campaign, which will include 70,000 British and Hanoverian troops employed there or in maritime enterprises."[59] To this hope Pitt clung, even after hearing the news of Austerlitz, and it was doubtless this which enabled him to bear that last journey from Bath to Putney Heath, with less fatigue and far more quickly than had been expected.  He arrived home on Saturday night, January 11th.  On the following Wednesday his friend, George Rose, called on him and found that a serious change for the worse had set in.

“On the Sunday he was better, and continued improving till Monday in the afternoon, when Lord Castlereagh insisted on seeing him, and, having obtained access to him, entered (Lord Hawkesbury being also present) on points of public business of the most serious importance (principally respecting the bringing home the British troops from the Continent), which affected him visibly that evening and the next day, and this morning the effect was more plainly observed:  ... his countenance is extremely changed, his voice weak, and his body almost wasted.”

It is clear also from the medical evidence which the diarist gives that the news from Hanover was the cause of this sudden change.  On the previous Sunday, that is, just after the fatigue of the three days’ journey, the physicians “thought there was a reasonable prospect of Mr. Pitt’s recovery, that the probability was in favour of it, and that, if his complaint should not take an unfavourable turn, he might be able to attend to business in about a month."[60] That unfavourable turn took place when the heroic spirit lost all hope under the distressing news from Berlin and Hanover.  Austerlitz, it is true, had depressed him.  Yet that, after all, did not concern British honour and the dearest interests of his master.