The anxious campaign in Italy in 1706 having ended in the saving of Turin, the occasion came at last to attempt Toulon. The Maritime Powers and the Duke of Savoy agreed upon a Project for this undertaking during the winter. England and the States General supplied the fleet, which eventually numbered thirty-one British and fifteen Dutch ships of the line and more than twenty lesser men-of-war under Sir Clowdisley Shovell and Vice-Admiraal Philips van der Goes (succeeded on his death in June by Kapitein Johan van Convent) with Vice-Admiral Sir George Byng and Rear-Admirals Sir Thomas Dilkes and Sir John Norris. Savoy and the Empire supplied the troops, some 30,000 or more, many of them in British or Dutch pay, led by the Duke of Savoy himself and Prince Eugene. Sir John Norris, who had been lately first captain to Shovell, went ahead of the fleet to Turin to serve as the Admiral's representative with the army. Among his papers in the British Museum is a copy of the Project, of which the following is a transcript:

Her Majesty the Queen, having seen with a great deal of satisfaction that his Royal Highness was entirely disposed to conform himself to the design which she has had a long time of executing the enterprise on Toulon as soon as the state of affairs in Italy might give leave, has ordered her Ministers to hold conference with those of his Royal Highness upon this expedition, in which conferences they have agreed and resolved as follows.