On 16 July 1789, two days after the Storming of the Bastille, Dorset reported to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Francis Osborne, 5th Duke of Leeds: "Thus, my Lord, the greatest revolution that we know anything of has been effected with, comparatively speaking—if the magnitude of the event is considered—the loss of very few lives. From this moment we may consider France as a free country, the King a very limited monarch, and the nobility as reduced to a level with the rest of the nation".