but he kept it through his own ability and the necessities of the time.  The Englishman Stanley, whom Pitt sent to negotiate with him, drew this sketch of his character:  “Though he may have his superiors, not only in experience of business, but in depth and refinement as a statesman, he is a person of as bold and daring a spirit as any man whatever in our country or in his own.  Madame Pompadour has ever been looked upon by all preceding courtiers and ministers as their tutelary deity, under whose auspices only they could exist, and who was as much out of their reach as if she were of a superior class of beings; but this Minister is so far from being in subordination to her influence that he seized the first opportunity of depriving her not of an equality, but of any share of power, reducing her to the necessity of applying to him even for those favors that she wants for herself and her dependents.  He has effected this great change, which every other man would have thought impossible, in the interior of the Court, not by plausibility, flattery, and address, but with a high hand, with frequent railleries and sarcasms which would have ruined any other, and, in short, by a clear superiority of spirit and resolution."[862]

[Footnote 862:  Stanley to Pitt, 6 Aug. 1761, in Grenville Correspondence, I. 367, note.]

Choiseul was vivacious, brilliant, keen, penetrating; believing nothing, fearing nothing; an easy moralist, an uncertain ally, a hater of priests; light-minded, inconstant; yet a kind of patriot, eager to serve France and retrieve her fortunes.

He flattered himself with no illusions.  “Since we do not know how to make war,” he said, “we must make peace;"[863] and he proposed a congress of all the belligerent Powers at Augsburg.  At the same time, since the war in Germany was distinct from the maritime and colonial war of France and England, he proposed a separate negotiation with the British Court in order to settle the questions between them as a preliminary to the general pacification.  Pitt consented, and Stanley went as envoy to Versailles; while M. de Bussy came as envoy to London and, in behalf of Choiseul, offered terms of peace, the first of which was the entire abandonment of Canada to England.[864] But the offers were accompanied by the demand that Spain, which had complaints of its own against England, should be admitted as a party to the negotiation, and even hold in some measure the attitude of a mediator.  Pitt spurned the idea with fierce contempt.  “Time enough to treat of all that, sir, when the Tower of London is taken sword in hand."[865] He bore his part with the ability that never failed him, and with a supreme arrogance that rose to a climax in his demand that the fortress of Dunkirk should be demolished, not because it was any longer dangerous to England, but because the nation would regard its destruction “as an eternal monument of the yoke imposed on France."[866]