The defeat of the Franco-Spanish fleet at Cape Trafalgar in 1805 blasted remaining hopes of a French invasion. (It was left to Walter Cox, in 1811, to imagine what might have been: his "Proposed Speech of Bonaparte to [the Irish] Parliament" "). A French Irish Legion (reinforced by 200 former United Irishmen sold by the British government as indentured mine labourers to Prussia, and joined for a time by William Dowdall and Arthur O'Connor) was redeployed to counter-insurgency in Spain. The United network unwound. McCabe, and other exiles, started seeking terms with the British government for a political surrender and return.