The "one more victory" so eagerly desired by Henry Adams was not forthcoming, and the attention, now all focused on McClellan's slow-moving campaign, waited in vain for the demonstration of another and more striking evidence of Northern power--the capture of the Confederate Capital, Richmond.
McClellan's delays coincided with a bruiting of the news at Washington that foreign Powers were about to offer mediation.

This was treated at some length in the semi-official _National Intelligencer_ of May 16 in an article which Lyons thought inspired by Seward, stating that mediation would be welcome if offered for the purpose of re-union, but would otherwise be resented, a view which Lyons thought fairly represented the situation[627].
There can be little doubt that this Washington rumour was largely the result of the very positive opinion held by Mercier of ultimate Southern success and his somewhat free private communications.

He may, indeed, have been talking more freely than usual exactly because of anxiety at Northern success, for McClellan, so far as was then known, was steadily, if slowly, progressing toward a victory.

Mercier's most recent instruction from Thouvenel gave him no authority to urge mediation, yet he thought the moment opportune for it and strongly urged this plan on Lyons.

The latter's summary of this and his own analysis of the situation were as follows: "M.