The French government protested of course, and recalled its ambassador, but it did not proceed to formal hostilities.  A great stroke was in preparation at Toulon, which could be covered for a while by diplomatic correspondence, coupled with angry demonstrations on the Atlantic and Channel coasts.  On the 10th of April, 1756, twelve French ships-of-the-line and fifteen thousand troops sailed for Minorca, then a British possession, and in the absence of a hostile fleet effected a landing without opposition.  The British cabinet having taken alarm too late, Admiral Byng had sailed from Portsmouth, with ten ships, only three days before the French left Toulon; when he arrived off Port Mahon, six weeks later, a practicable breach in the works had already been made.  The French fleet was cruising outside in support of the siege, and Byng, whose force had been increased to thirteen ships, engaged it on May 20.  The action was in itself indecisive; but, upon the opinion of a council of war that nothing more could be done, Byng retired to Gibraltar.  The result to him personally is well known.  Port Mahon surrendered on June 28.  War had by this been declared; by Great Britain on the 17th of May, and by France June 20, 1756.

When the news of Byng’s retreat was received in England, Hawke was sent out to supersede him.  He went only personally, accompanied by a second in command, but with no fleet, and with sealed instructions.  Opening these when he reached Gibraltar, he found orders to send home Byng and his second in command, and to institute an inquiry into the conduct of the captains, suspending any one found “not to have acted with due spirit and vigor.”  An investigation of this kind would enable him to form an opinion of Byng’s own conduct even more exact and authentic than his other official opportunities for personal intercourse with the chief actors, but he must have refrained with much discretion from expressing his judgment on the affair in such way as to reach the public ear.  It was stated in the “Gentleman’s Magazine,” in 1766, that an inquiry was provoked in the House of Commons, shortly after these events, by Pitt, who took Byng’s side; but that Hawke, being a member of the House, denied some of Pitt’s allegations as to the inadequacy of Byng’s fleet, on the strength of his own personal observation after taking over the command.  Thereupon, so the account says, the categorical test question, the argumentum ad hominem, was put to him whether with Byng’s means he could have beat the enemy; and the manner of the first Pitt, in thus dealing with an opponent in debate, can be imagined from what we know of him otherwise.  Whether the story be true or not, Hawke was not a man to be so overborne, and the reply related is eminently characteristic, “By the grace of God, he would have given a good account of them.”  Whatever the reason, there seems little doubt that Pitt did not like Hawke; but the latter was at once too independent to care, and too necessary to be discarded.