By 1786 Vergennes had retrieved his political position to a remarkable extent, but had been unable to prevent a widening split in the ministry and the parlement of Paris. Most worrying of all, by this time it had become clear that these divisions, far from being contained, had begun to affect foreign policy as well. This was the significance of the Dutch affair of 1784–7. Increasing ties between France and the United Provinces led to a formal alliance in 1785, but this promising beginning developed into a major disaster when Prussia invaded Holland in the autumn of 1787 without France being able to lift a finger to help her ally. Although Vergennes was dead by the time this happened, in the last months of his life events in this area had been rapidly slipping from his control.

It may seem paradoxical that French diplomacy, which had seemingly acquired a new consistency after 1774 and had just been triumphantly vindicated by the Peace of Paris, should so soon afterwards have taken such an almighty fall. The answer is provided by Sir James Harris, the shrewd British envoy to The Hague, who played a major part in removing the Dutch Republic from the French sphere of influence in these years. Throughout the period, Harris claimed, the French ministers and their agents in Holland were ‘more preoccupied with intriguing and caballing against each other, both here and at Versailles, than attending to the main object of their mission.’

Harris' insight provides the main justification for discussing an aspect of Vergennes' foreign policy in a book otherwise devoted to his domestic policy.