The Confusion

By now you must have heard from a hundred different sources that an invasion of your Realm is being readied on the Cotentin Peninsula. You may even know that it is to set sail from Cherbourg during the third or fourth week in May. I shall not waste your time, then, belaboring these facts. I write to you, not as a spy for England, but as a champion of France. This invasion must never be allowed to go forward. It is a ruinously stupid plan. Its defeat will neither improve the security of England (since it is doomed in any case) nor bring England glory (since it is so feeble and ill-conceived). The French have convinced themselves otherwise. Somehow they have made themselves believe that all England is against your majesty, and that your majesty’s Army and Navy are so riddled with secret Jacobites that they will declare their allegiance to James Stuart as soon as the signal is given; that the Royal Navy will suffer the French to cross the Channel in force, English regiments will make themselves scarce while a French beach-head is established in Wessex, and English people will welcome French and Irish invaders on their territory. Perhaps all of this is true; but to my ear it sounds absurd. I suspect that your spies and emissaries in France have been making a pretense of hostility to your majesty and whispering, into the ears of their French counterparts, all sorts of flattering and seductive nonsense about how England is poised for a Jacobite rebellion. If so, your majesty, the deception has worked all too well, and made the French so cocksure that they have laid plans, devised stratagems, and formulated resolves that seem to your humble and obedient servant like utter lunacy.

I pray that you will write a letter, or send an emissary, to King Louis XIV; announce that you know of the invasion plans; and make le Roi understand that the project is doomed. If French troops and sailors must be sacrificed on the fields of Mars, then let it happen in fair and honourable clashes of arms. It is more than I can bear to see them go down to David Jones’s Locker in pursuit of a folly.

Eliza, Duchess of Qwghlm, Duchess of Arcachon

P.S. I have sent three copies of this letter in the holds of three different smugglers’ boats. If you have received redundant copies, please accept my apologies for so making a pest of myself; but the matter is important to me.

Eliza to Monsieur le Chevalier d’Erquy 13 APRIL 1692

Monsieur,

Thank you for your assistance in despatching those letters to England. I could never have made the necessary contacts without the assistance of one such as you, a Breton born and bred, who knows his way around the little coves and harbors of the Golfe de St.-Malo. I pray that you will forgive me for having laughed at the look on your face. It was entirely proper and prudent for you to open and examine those letters before you became complicit in sending them across the Channel, for who knows what they might have contained. Many times it has happened that a woman, well-meaning but foolish, allowed herself to be duped, by some conniving wretch of more wit and less virtue, into carrying letters that contain damaging information. Far from being angry with you, I am indebted to you for having had the prudence to examine the letters before turning them over to those smugglers. In return, I pray you will forgive me for the way I laughed out loud when you were confronted with page after page of gibberish. As you must have collected by now, I dabble in the stocks that are traded at the bourses of London and Amsterdam. Because of the state of war that now exists between France and Holland/England, it is difficult for me to communicate with my brokers there through the channels that are customary in peacetime. That is why I put you to so much bother in sending those letters. But such communications, by their nature, consist predominantly of numbers and financial jargon. You should not be surprised that you were unable to make any sense of them.

This brings my subject around to business. You should know that my resources are limited and, for the most part, illiquid. However, many of the assets of the Lavardac family naturally produce revenue. Farms, for example, generate rents, which are delivered to our coffers. Those coffers are also drained by countless expenses, but if the affairs of the family are well managed, some surplus may from time to time result. It then becomes my responsibility to see to it that the surplus is put to productive use. Many opportunities for investment present themselves to me every day; I try to distribute the available capital among these in a rational way.

So the rumors that you have evidently been hearing are correct. I have, on several occasions, purchased distressed loans from persons who have lent money to the King’s treasury and who have found that the interest payments on those loans are insufficient for their needs.