But the winds, "the only unsubsidized allies of England," were strangely adverse. A week, two, three, four, five, passed heavily away, without affording a single day in which that mighty fleet could make an offing. Sometimes for an hour or two it shifted to the desired point, the sails were unclewed and the anchors shortened, but then, as if to torture the impatient exiles on board, it veered back again and settled steadily in the fatal south-west. At length, at the end of August, the provisions being nearly consumed, and the weather still unfavourable, the Dutch Directory resolved to land the troops and postpone the expedition. De Winter, as is known, subsequently found an opportunity to work out, and attack Lord Duncan, by whom he was badly beaten. Thus ended Irish hopes of aid from Holland. The indomitable Tone rejoined his chief on the Rhine, where, to his infinite regret, Hoche died the following month—September 18th, 1797—of a rapid consumption, accelerated by cold and carelessness. "Hoche," said Napoleon to Barry O'Meara at Saint Helena, "was one of the first generals France ever produced. He was brave, intelligent, abounding in talent, decisive and penetrating. Had he landed in Ireland, he would have succeeded. He was accustomed to civil war, had pacified La Vendee, and was well adapted for Ireland. He had a fine, handsome figure, a good address, was prepossessing and intriguing." The loss of such a patron, who felt himself, according to Tone's account, especially bound to follow up the object of separating Ireland from England, was a calamity greater and more irreparable than the detention of one fleet or the dispersion of the other.
The third expedition, in promoting which Tone and Lewines bore the principal part, was decided upon by the French Directory, immediately after the conclusion of peace with Austria, in October, 1797. The decree for the formation of "the Army of England," named Buonaparte Commander-in-Chief, with Desaix as his second. Buonaparte consulted Clarke as to who he most confided in among the numerous Irish refugees then in Paris—there were some twenty or thirty, all more or less known, and more or less in communication with the Directory—and Clarke answered at once, "Tone, of course." Tone, with Lewines, the one in a military, the other in an ambassadorial capacity, had frequent interviews with the young conqueror of Italy, whom they usually found silent and absorbed, always attentive, sometimes asking sudden questions betraying great want of knowledge of the British Islands, and occasionally, though rarely, breaking out into irresistible invectives against Jacobinism and the English system, both of which he so cordially detested. Every assurance was given by the General, by the Directors, by Merlin du Douai, Barras, and Talleyrand especially, that the expedition against England would never be abandoned. Tone, in high spirits as usual, joined the division under the command of his countryman, General Kilmaine, and took up his quarters at Havre, where he had landed without knowing a soul in France two years before.