Throughout the first half of 1743, the vigorous press and pamphlet campaign against Hanoverian influence continued, but the parliamentary turmoil died down. Looking back over the period after Parliament rose on 21 April, Sir Benjamin Keene observed, ‘We had a very easy session under Mr Pelham. Pitt is the only opposition. Dodington is sleepy. Waller, who collects matters is called their Commissary of Stores. These are the chiefs that enter against us, so terror does not come from without.’ A far greater problem, Keene observed, was the difficulty of getting agreement within the ministry where no individual or group was clearly dominant.

Part of the reason for this quietness was the progress of the war. Prague finally surrendered to the Austrians on 13 December and the remains of the French army driven back into Bavaria. Sickness was raging within the French army and it was rumoured that it was falling back towards the Rhine. The United Provinces seemed close mobilising 20,000 troops.

The news from France was equally encouraging. Ten ships of the line and four frigates were said to be arming in Brest, but probably only for their own coastal defence. However, the agent supplying information from Brest was arrested shortly after this report and nothing more was heard from this port despite the best efforts of the British resident in Paris, Andrew Thompson. Fleury tried to put a defiant face on events, but the general reports were of confusion and depression at the French court. By the beginning of December 1742 Fleury was ill and had been desperately seeking peace since the late autumn, initiating secret discussions, which were discovered and only served to destroy the confidence of Prussia and Bavaria in the integrity of French declarations.

On 18 January 1743 Fleury died. One of the great statesmen of the age had gone. For years he had managed to keep French policy a mystery to the British and it was no clearer how it would now unfold. The war party, to which Fleury had cunningly presented himself as a counter balance, led by Marshal Belleisle had suffered with the humiliation of the retreat from Prague. Reports continued that Bavaria would be abandoned and the army withdrawn to defend Lorraine and Northern France.