A Plot to Assassinate Pitt
During the early months of 1794, writes Vera Watson, in the throes of the fierce struggle against revolutionary France, the British Government received dramatic information which it treated as a top-level secret—two assassins were on their way to London, entrusted with the task of eliminating both Pitt and his royal master.
In March 1794, Pitt received a warning that two men would shortly leave Paris, on the orders of the Committee of Public Safety, to assassinate George III and himself. This warning can have caused him no surprise. For several months he had known that the Committee contemplated such a step, and the British Government was in possession of a multiplicity of confirmatory evidence.
For instance, in November 1793, an intelligence bulletin reporting the assassination project in detail, and the views of the members of the Committee on its practicability, had reached Lord Grenville, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.1
This bulletin was one of a series that the British Government received throughout the Terror and for some time afterwards, and that purported to be the proceedings, or minutes, of the Committee of Public Safety. The history of these bulletins has already been related.2
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