And so I have every confidence that Captain Bart has conveyed you in safety, and even in comfort, to Hamburg; for what Navy in Christendom could stand against a fleet so well financed, so richly supplied with Baltic timber, and so brilliantly led? (Though I do hope he hurries back, as the British Navy is bombarding Dieppe.) I worry, though, that the posts will fail somewhere between Paris and Hamburg. For all is bankrupt. The spring breezes are redolent, not of tilled earth and burgeoning wildflowers, but the rotting flesh of all the livestock that froze to death during the winter. Rice— rice! —is coming in to Marseille from Alexandria, but no one has the means to buy it, for the wellsprings of our coinage have quite dried up. Our Army’s commanders slouch despondently around Versailles, wishing they’d had the foresight to join the Navy—as, owing to a want of specie, and even of credit, they cannot fight this year, but only squat in their fortresses, succumbing to disease, and beating back whatever assaults the English may mount against them, supposing that England has two pennies to rub together.