THE WORLD CONFLICT OF FRANCE AND GREAT BRITAIN
FRENCH AND ENGLISH COLONIES IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
In the sixteenth century, while Spain and Portugal were carving out
vast empires beyond the seas, the sovereigns of France and England,
distracted by religious dissensions or absorbed in European politics,
did little more than to send out a few privateers and explorers. But in
the seventeenth century the England of the Stuarts and the France of
the Bourbons found in colonies a refuge for their discontented or
venturesome subjects, a source of profit for their merchants, a field
for the exercise of religious zeal, or gratification for national
pride. Everywhere were commerce and colonization growing apace, and
especially were they beginning to play a large part in the national
life of England and of France. We have already noticed how the Dutch,
themselves the despoilers of Portugal [Footnote: See above, pp. 58f] in
the first half of the seventeenth century, were in turn attacked by the
English in a series of commercial wars [Footnote: The Dutch Wars of
1652-1654, 1665-1667, and 1672-1674. See above pp. 59, 243, 278.]
during the second half of the seventeenth century. By 1688 the period
of active growth was past for the colonial empires of Holland,
Portugal, and Spain; but England and France, beginning to realize the
possibilities for power in North America, in India, and on the high
seas, were just on the verge of a world conflict, which, after raging
intermittently for more than a hundred years, was to leave Great
Britain the "mistress of the seas."
[Sidenote: Relative Position of the Rivals in 1688. In North America]
Before plunging into the struggle itself, let us review the position of
the two rivals in 1688: first, their claims and possessions in the New
World and in the Old; secondly, their comparative resources and
policies. It will be remembered that the voyage of John Cabot (1497)
gave England a claim to the mainland of North America. The Tudors
(1485-1603), however, could not occupy so vast a territory, nor were
there any fences for the exclusion of intruders. Consequently the
actual English settlements in North America, made wholly under the
Stuarts, [Footnote: However much modern Englishmen may condemn the
efforts of the Stuart sovereigns to establish political absolutism at
home, they can well afford to praise these same royal Stuarts for
contributing powerfully to the foundations of England's commercial and
colonial greatness abroad.] were confined to Newfoundland, to a few fur
depots in the region of Hudson Bay, and to a strip of coastland from
Maine to South Carolina; while the French not only had sent Verrazano
(1524), who explored the coast of North America, and Cartier (1534-
1536), who sailed up the St. Lawrence, but by virtue of voyages of
discovery and exploration, especially that of La Salle (1682), laid
claim to the whole interior of the Continent.
Of all the North American colonies, the most populous were those which
later became the United States. In the year 1688 there were ten of
these colonies. The oldest one, Virginia, had been settled in 1607 by
the London Company under a charter from King James I. Plymouth, founded
in 1620 by the Pilgrims (Separatists or Independents driven from
England by the enforcement of religious conformity to the Anglican
Church), was presently to be merged with the neighboring Puritan colony
of Massachusetts. Near these first, New England settlements had grown
up the colonies of Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire: Maine
was then a part of Massachusetts. Just as New England was the Puritans'
refuge, so Maryland, granted to Lord Baltimore in 1632, was a haven for
the persecuted Roman Catholics. A large tract south of Virginia, known
as Carolina, had been granted to eight nobles in 1663; but it was
prospering so poorly that its proprietors were willing to sell it to
the king in 1729 for a mere £50,000. The capture of the Dutch colony of
New Netherland [Footnote: Rechristened New York. It included New Jersey
also.] in 1664, and the settlement of Pennsylvania (1681) by William
Penn and his fellow Quakers [Footnote: The Swedish colony on the
Delaware was temporarily merged with Pennsylvania.] at last filled up
the gap between the North and the South.
Numerous causes had contributed to the growth of the British colonies
in America. Religious intolerance had driven Puritans to New England
and Roman Catholics to Maryland; the success of the Puritan Revolution
had sent Cavaliers to Virginia; thousands of others had come merely to
acquire wealth or to escape starvation. And America seemed a place
wherein to mend broken fortunes. Upon the estates (plantations) of
southern gentlemen negro slaves toiled without pay in the tobacco
fields. [Footnote: Subsequently, rice and cotton became important
products of Southern agriculture.] New England was less fertile, but
shrewd Yankees found wealth in fish, lumber, and trade. No wonder,
then, that the colonies grew in wealth and in population until in 1688
there were nearly three hundred thousand English subjects in the New
World.
The French settlers were far less numerous [Footnote: Probably not more
than 20,000 Frenchmen were residing in the New World in 1688. By 1750
their number had increased perhaps to 60,000.] but more widespread.
From their first posts in Acadia (1604) and Quebec (1608) they had
pushed on up the St. Lawrence. Jesuit and other Roman Catholic
missionaries had led the way from Montreal westward to Lake Superior
and southward to the Ohio River. In 1682 the Sieur de La Salle, after
paddling down the Mississippi, laid claim to the whole basin of that
mighty stream, and named the region Louisiana in honor of Louis XIV of
France. Nominally, at least, this territory was claimed by the English,
for in most of the colonial charters emanating from the English crown
in the seventeenth century were clauses which granted lands "from sea
to sea"--that is, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The heart of "New
France" remained on the St. Lawrence, but, despite English claims,
French forts were commencing to mark the trails of French fur-traders
down into the "Louisiana," and it was clear that whenever the English
colonists should cross the Appalachian Mountains to the westward they
would have to fight the French.
[Sidenote: In West Indies]
French and English were neighbors also in the West Indies. Martinique
and Guadeloupe acknowledged French sovereignty, while Jamaica,
Barbados, and the Bahamas were English.[Footnote: The following West
Indies were also English: Nevis, Montserrat, Antigua, Honduras, St.
Lucia, Virgin Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands. St. Kitts was
divided between England and France; and the western part of Haiti,
already visited by French buccaneers, was definitely annexed to France
in 1697. The Bermudas, lying outside the "West Indies," were already
English.] These holdings in the West Indies were valuable not only for
their sugar plantations, but for their convenience as stations for
trade with Mexico and South America.
[Sidenote: In Africa]
In Africa the French had made settlements in Madagascar, at Gorée, and
at the mouth of the Senegal River, and the English had established
themselves in Gambia and on the Gold Coast, but as yet the African
posts were mere stations for trade in gold-dust,[Footnote: Gold coins
are still often called "guineas" in England, from the fact that a good
deal of gold used to come from the Guinea coast of Africa. ] ivory,
wax, or slaves. The real struggle for Africa was not to come until the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
[Sidenote: In India]
Of far greater importance was Asiatic India, which, unlike America or
even Africa, offered a field favorable for commerce rather than for
conquest or for colonization. For it happened that the fertility and
extent of India--its area was half as large as that of Europe--were
taxed to their uttermost to support a population of probably two
hundred millions; and all, therefore, which Europeans desired was an
opportunity to buy Indian products, such as cotton, indigo, Spices,
dyes, drugs, silk, precious stones, and peculiar manufactures.
In the seventeenth century India was ruled by a dynasty of Mohammedan
emperors called Moguls,[Footnote: So called because racially they were
falsely supposed to be Mongols or Moguls.] who had entered the
peninsula as conquerors in the previous century and had established a
splendid court in the city of Delhi on a branch of the Ganges. The bulk
of the people, however, maintained their ancient "Hindu" religion with
their social ranks or "castes" and preserved their distinctive speech
and customs. Over a country like India, broken up into many sections by
physical features, climate, industries, and language, the Mohammedan
conquerors,--the "Great Mogul" and his viceroys, called nawabs,
[Footnote: More popularly "nabobs."]--found it impossible to establish
more than a loose sovereignty, many of the native princes or "rajas"
still being allowed to rule with considerable independence, and the
millions of Hindus feeling little love or loyalty for their emperor. It
was this fatal weakness of the Great Mogul which enabled the European
traders, who in the seventeenth century besought his favor and
protection, to set themselves up in the eighteenth as his masters.
It will be remembered that after the voyage of Vasco da Gama the
Portuguese had monopolized the trade with India and the East until they
had been attacked by the Dutch toward the close of the sixteenth
century. This was the very time when the English were making their
first voyages [Footnote: Actually the first English voyage to the East
Indies was made between 1591 and 1594, almost a century after the first
Portuguese voyage.] to the East and were taking advantage of their own
war with Philip II to attack his Portuguese possessions. The first
English trading stations were opened at Masulipatam (1611) and at Surat
(1612). In the latter year and again in 1615 Portuguese fleets were
defeated, and in 1622 the Portuguese were driven out of the important
Persian city of Ormuz. By 1688 the English had acquired three important
points in India, (1) Calcutta in the delta of the Ganges had been
occupied in 1686, but it was yet uncertain whether the English could
hold it against the will of the Mogul emperor. (2) At Madras, further
south, Sir Francis Day had built Fort St. George (1640). (3) On the
western coast, the trading station of Surat was now surpassed in value
by Bombay, the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, a Portuguese princess,
who had married King Charles II (1662).
The first French Company for Eastern trade had been formed only four
years [Footnote: Charters to French companies had been granted in 1604
and in 1615. The _Compagnie des Indes_ was formed in 1642, and
reconstructed in 1664.] after the English East India Company, but the
first French factory in India--at Surat--was not established until 1668
and the French did not seriously compete with the English and Dutch in
India until the close of the seventeenth century. However, their post
at Chandarnagar (1672), in dangerous proximity to Calcutta, and their
thriving station at Pondicherry (1674), within a hundred miles of
Madras, augured ill for the future harmony of French and English in
India.
[Sidenote: Comparative Resources of France and England]
From the foregoing brief review of the respective colonial possessions
of Great Britain and France in the year 1688, it must now be clear that
although France had entered the colonial competition tardily, she had
succeeded remarkably well in becoming a formidable rival of the
English. The great struggle for supremacy was to be decided,
nevertheless, not by priority of settlement or validity of claim, but
by the fighting power of the contestants. Strange as it may seem,
France, a larger, more populous, and richer country than England, able
then single-handed to keep the rest of Europe at bay, was to prove the
weaker of the two in the struggle for world empire.
In the first place, England's maritime power was increasing more
irresistibly than that of France. Although Richelieu (1624-1642) had
recognized the need for a French navy and had given a great impetus to
ship-building, France had become inextricably entangled in European
politics, and the navy was half forgotten in the ambitious land wars of
Louis XIV. The English, on the other hand, were predisposed to the sea
by the very fact of their insularity, and since the days of the great
Armada, their most patriotic boast had been of the deeds of mariners.
In the commercial wars with Holland, the first great English admiral--
Robert Blake--had won glorious victories.
Then, too, the Navigation Acts (1651, 1660), by excluding foreign ships
from trade between Great Britain and the colonies, may have lessened
the volume of trade, but they resulted in undoubted prosperity for
English shippers. English shipbuilders, encouraged by bounties, learned
to build stronger and more powerful vessels than those of other
nations. Whether capturing galleons on the "Spanish main" or defeating
Portuguese fleets in the Far East, English pirates, slavers, and
merchantmen were not to be encountered without fear or envy. English
commerce and industry, springing up under the protection and
encouragement of the Tudors, had given birth, as we have seen, to a
middle class powerful enough to secure special rights and privileges
through Parliament.
The French, on the other hand, labored under most serious commercial
handicaps. Local tolls and internal customs-duties hindered traffic;
and the medieval gild system had retained in France its power to hamper
industry with absurd regulations. The long civil and religious wars,
which called workmen from their benches and endangered the property and
lives of merchants, had resulted in reducing French commerce to a
shadow before 1600. Under Henry IV prosperity revived, but the growth
of royal power made it impossible for the Huguenot merchants in France
to achieve political power comparable with that which the Puritans won
in England. Consequently the mercantile classes were quite unable to
prevent Louis XIV from ruining his country by foreign war,--they could
not vote themselves privileges and bounties as in England, nor could
they declare war on commercial rivals. True, Colbert (1662-1683), the
great "mercantilist" minister, did his best to encourage new
industries, such as silk production, to make rules for the better
conduct of old industries, and to lay taxes on such imported goods as
might compete with home products, but French industry could not be made
to thrive like that of England. It is often said that Colbert's careful
regulations did much harm by stifling the spirit of free enterprise;
but far more destructive were the wars and taxes [Footnote: In order to
obtain money for his court, diplomacy, and wars, Louis XIV not only
increased taxes but debased the coinage. Particularly unfortunate,
economically, was the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), as a
result of which some 50,000 of the most industrious and thrifty
citizens of France fled to increase the industry of England, Holland,
and Brandenburg (Prussia).] of the Grand Monarch. The only wonder is
that France bore the drain of men and money so well.
The English, then, had a more promising navy and a more prosperous
trade than the French, and were therefore able to gain control of the
seas and to bear the expense of war.
[Sidenote: Comparative Colonial Policies of France and England]
In general colonial policy France seemed decidedly superior. Louis XIV
had taken over the whole of "New France" as a royal province, and the
French could present a united front against the divided and discordant
English colonies. Under Colbert the number of French colonists in
America increased 300 per cent in twenty years. Moreover the French,
both in India and in America, were almost uniformly successful in
gaining the friendship and trust of the natives, whereas, at least with
most of the redmen, the English were constantly at war.
The English, however, had a great advantage in the number of colonists.
The population of France, held in check by wars, did not naturally
overflow to America; and the Huguenots, persecuted in the mother
country, were not allowed to emigrate to New France, lest their
presence might impede the missionary labors of the Jesuits among the
Indians. [Footnote: The statement is frequently made that the
"paternalism" or fatherly care with which Richelieu and Colbert made
regulations for the colonies was responsible for the paucity of
colonists and the discouragement of colonial industry. This, however,
will be taken with considerable reservation when it is remembered that
England attempted to prevent the growth of such industries in her
colonies as might compete with those at home.] England was more
fortunate in that her Puritan, Quaker, and Catholic exiles went to her
colonies rather than to foreign lands. The English colonists, less
under the direct protection of the mother country, learned to defend
themselves against the Indians, and were better able to help the mother
country against their common foe, the French.
Taken all in all, the situation was favorable to Great Britain. As long
as French monarchs wasted the resources of France in Europe, they could
scarcely hope to cope with the superior navy, the thriving commerce,
and the more populous colonies, of their ancient enemies.
PRELIMINARY ENCOUNTERS, 1689-1748
[Sidenote: War of the League of Augsburg]
Colonial and commercial rivalry could hardly bring France and Great
Britain to blows while the Stuart kings looked to Louis XIV for
friendly aid in the erection of absolutism and the reinstatement of
Catholicism in England.
The Revolution of 1689, which we have already discussed [Footnote: See
above, pp. 286 ff.] in its political significance, was important in its
bearing on foreign relations, for it placed on the English throne the
arch-enemy of France, William III, whose chief concern was the
protection of his ancestral possessions--the Dutch Netherlands--against
the encroachments of Louis XIV. The support given by the latter to the
pretensions of James II was a second cause of war. In an earlier
chapter [Footnote: See above, pp. 247 ff.] we have seen how
international relations in 1689 led to the juncture of England and
Holland with the League of Augsburg, which included the emperor, the
kings of Spain and Sweden, and the electors of Bavaria, Saxony, and the
Palatinate; and how the resulting War of the League of Augsburg was
waged in Europe from 1689 to 1697. It was during that struggle, it will
be remembered, that King William finally defeated James II and the
latter's French and Irish allies in the battle of the Boyne (1690). It
was also during that struggle that the French navy, though successful
against combined Dutch and English squadrons off Beachy Head (1690),
was decisively beaten by the English in a three-day battle near La
Hogue (1692).
[Sidenote: King William's War, 1689-1697]
The War of the League of Augsburg had its counterpart in the American
"King William's War," of which two aspects should be noted. In the
first place, the New England colonists aided in the capture (1690) of
the French fortress of Port Royal in Acadia (Nova Scotia) and in an
inconsequential attack on Quebec. In the second place, we must notice
the role of the Indians. As early as 1670, Roger Williams, a famous New
England preacher, had declared, "the French and Romish Jesuits, the
firebrands of the world, for their godbelly sake, are kindling at our
back in this country their hellish fires with all the natives of this
country." The outbreak of King William's War was a signal for the
kindling of fires more to be feared than those imagined by the good
divine; the burning of Dover (N. H.), Schenectady (N. Y.), and Groton
(Mass.) by the red allies of the French governor, Count Frontenac,
earned the latter the lasting hatred of the "Yankees."
[Sidenote: Treaty of Ryswick, 1697]
The contest was interrupted rather than settled by the colorless treaty
of Ryswick (1697), according to which Louis XIV promised not to
question William's right to the English throne, and all colonial
conquests, including Port Royal, were restored.
[Sidenote: War of the Spanish Succession]
Only five years later Europe was plunged into the long War of the
Spanish Succession (1702-1713). King William and the Habsburg emperor
with other European princes formed a Grand Alliance to prevent Louis'
grandson Philip from inheriting the Spanish crowns. For if France and
Spain were united under the Bourbon family, their armies would overawe
Europe; their united colonial empires would surround and perhaps engulf
the British colonies; their combined navies might drive the British
from the seas. Furthermore, the English were angered when Louis XIV,
upon the death of James II (1701), openly recognized the Catholic son
of the exiled royal Stuart as "James III," king of Great Britain.
[Sidenote: Queen Anne's War, 1702-1713]
While the duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene were winning great
victories in Europe, [Footnote: See above, pp. 249 ff.] the British
colonists in America were fighting "Queen Anne's War" against the
French. Again the French sent Indians to destroy New England villages,
and again the English retaliated by attacking Port Royal and Quebec.
After withstanding two unsuccessful assaults, Port Royal fell in 1710
and left Acadia open to the British. In the following year a fleet of
nine war vessels and sixty transports carried twelve thousand
Britishers to attack Quebec, while an army of 2300 moved on Montreal by
way of Lake Champlain; but both expeditions failed of their object.
On the high seas, as well as in America and in Europe, the British won
fresh laurels. It was during Queen Anne's War that the British navy,
sometimes with the valuable aid of the Dutch, played an important part
in defeating the French fleet in the Mediterranean and driving French
privateers from the sea, in besieging and capturing Gibraltar, in
seizing a rich squadron of Spanish treasure ships near Cartagena, and
in terrorizing the French West Indies.
[Sidenote: Treaty of Utrecht, 1713]
The main provisions of the treaty of Utrecht, which terminated this
stage of the conflict, in so far as they affected the colonial of
situation, [Footnote: For the European settlement, see above, pp. 253
f.] were as follows: (1) The French Bourbons, were allowed to become
the reigning family in Spain, and though the proviso was inserted that
the crowns of France and Spain should never be united, nevertheless so
long as Bourbons reigned in both countries, the colonies of Spain and
France might almost be regarded as one immense Bourbon empire. (2)
Great Britain was confirmed in possession of Acadia, [Footnote: A
dispute later arose whether, as the British claimed, "Acadia" included
Cape Breton Island.] which was rechristened Nova Scotia, and France
abandoned her claims to Hudson Bay, Newfoundland, and the island of St.
Kitts in the West Indies. (3) Great Britain secured from Spain the
cession of the island of Minorca and the rocky stronghold of Gibraltar
--bulwarks of Mediterranean commerce. (4) Of more immediate value to
Great Britain was the trade concession, called the Asiento, made by
Spain (1713). Prior to the Asiento, the British had been forbidden to
trade with the Spanish possessions in America, and the French had
monopolized the sale of slaves to the Spanish colonies.
[Sidenote: The Asiento, 1713]
The Asiento, however, allowed Great Britain exclusive right to supply
Spanish America with negro slaves, at the rate of 4800 a year, for
thirty years. They were still forbidden to sell other commodities in
the domains of the Spanish king, except that once a year one British
ship of five hundred tons burden might visit Porto Bello on the Isthmus
of Panama for purposes of general trade. For almost three decades after
the peace of Utrecht, the smoldering colonial jealousies were not
allowed to break forth into the flame of open war.
[Sidenote: The Interlude of Peace, 1713-1739]
During the interval, however, British ambitions were coming more and
more obviously into conflict with the claims of Spain and France in
America, and with those of France in India.
[Sidenote: French Aggressiveness in America]
In spite of her losses by the treaty of Utrecht, France still held the
St. Lawrence River, with Cape Breton Island defending its mouth; her
fishermen still had special privileges on the Newfoundland banks; her
islands in the West Indies flourished under greater freedom of trade
than that enjoyed by the English; and her pioneers were occupying the
vast valley of the Mississippi. Moreover, in preparing for the next
stage of the conflict, France displayed astonishing energy. Fort
Louisburg was erected on Cape Breton Island to command the entrance to
the Gulf of St. Lawrence. A long series of fortifications was
constructed to stake out and guarantee the French claims. From Crown
Point on Lake Champlain, the line was carried westward by Fort Niagara,
Fort Detroit, Sault Sainte Marie, on to Lake Winnipeg and even beyond;
other forts commanded the Wabash and Illinois rivers, and followed the
Mississippi down to the Gulf. [Footnote: By the year 1750 there were
over sixty French forts between Montreal and New Orleans.] Settlements
were made at Mobile (1702) and at New Orleans (1718), and British
sailors were given to understand that the Mississippi was French
property. The governors of British colonies had ample cause for alarm.
[Sidenote: French Aggressiveness in India: Dupleix]
In India, likewise, the French were too enterprising to be good
neighbors. Under the leadership of a wonderfully able governor-general,
Dupleix, who was appointed in 1741, they were prospering and were
extending their influence in the effete empire of the Great Mogul.
Dupleix exhibited a restless ambition; he began to interfere in native
politics and to assume the pompous bearing, gorgeous apparel, and proud
titles of a native prince. He conceived the idea of augmenting his
slender garrisons of Europeans with "sepoys," or carefully drilled
natives, and fortified his capital, Pondicherry, as if for war.
[Sidenote: Trade Disputes between Spain and Great Britain]
To the dangerous rivalry between British and French colonists and
traders in America and in India, during the thirty years which followed
the treaty of Utrecht, was added the continuous bickering which grew
out of the Asiento concluded in 1713 between Great Britain and Spain.
Spaniards complained of British smugglers and protested with justice
that the British outrageously abused their special privilege by keeping
the single stipulated vessel in the harbor of Porto Bello and refilling
it at night from other ships. On the other hand, British merchants
resented their general exclusion from Spanish markets and recited to
willing listeners at home the tale of their grievances against the
Spanish authorities. Of such tales the most notorious was that of a
certain Captain Robert Jenkins, who with dramatic detail told how the
bloody Spaniards had attacked his good ship, plundered it, and in the
fray cut off one of his ears, and to prove his story he is said to have
produced a box containing what purported to be the ear in question. In
the face of the popular excitement aroused in England by this and
similar incidents, Sir Robert Walpole, the peace-loving prime minister,
was unable to restrain his fellow-countrymen from declaring war against
Spain.
[Sidenote: The "War of Jenkins's Ear," 1739]
It was in 1739 that the commercial and colonial warfare was thus
resumed,--on this occasion involving at the outset only Spain and Great
Britain,--in a curious struggle commonly referred to as the War of
Jenkins's Ear. A British fleet captured Porto Bello, but failed to take
Cartagena. In North America the war was carried on fruitlessly by James
Oglethorpe, who had recently (1733) founded the English colony of
"Georgia" [Footnote: So named in honor of the then reigning King George
II (1727-1760)] to the south of the Carolinas, in territory claimed by
the Spanish colony of Florida.
[Sidenote: War of the Austrian Succession. King George's War, 1744-
1748]
The War of Jenkins's Ear proved but an introduction to the resumption
of hostilities on a large scale between France and Great Britain. In a
later chapter [Footnote: See below, pp. 354 ff.] it is explained how in
1740 the War of the Austrian Succession broke out on the continent of
Europe--a war stubbornly fought for eight years, and a war in which
Great Britain entered the lists for Maria Theresa of Austria against
France and Prussia and other states. And the European conflict was
naturally reflected in "King George's War" (1744-1748) in America, and
in simultaneous hostilities in India.
The only remarkable incident of King George's War was the capture of
Louisburg (1745) by Colonel William Pepperell of New Hampshire with a
force of British colonists, who were sorely disappointed when, in 1748,
the captured fortress was returned to France by the treaty of Aix-la-
Chapelle. The war in India was similarly indecisive. In 1746 a French
squadron easily captured the British post at Madras; other British
posts were attacked, and Dupleix defeated the nawab of the Carnatic,
who would have punished him for violating Indian peace and neutrality.
[Sidenote: Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748]
The tables were turned by the arrival of a British fleet in 1748, which
laid siege to Dupleix in Pondicherry. At this juncture, news arrived
that Great Britain and France had concluded the treaty of Aix-la-
Chapelle (1748), whereby all conquests, including Madras and Louisburg,
were to be restored. So far as Spain was concerned. Great Britain in
1750 renounced the privileges of the Asiento in return for a money
payment of £100,000.
THE TRIUMPH OF GREAT BRITAIN: THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR, 1756-1763
[Sidenote: Questions at Issue in 1750]
[Sidenote: World-wide Extent of the Seven Years' War]
Up to this point, the wars had been generally indecisive, although
Great Britain had gained Hudson Bay, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia by
the peace of Utrecht (1713). British naval power, too, was undoubtedly
in the ascendancy. But two great questions were still unanswered.
Should France be allowed to make good her claim to the Mississippi
valley and possibly to drive the British from their slender foothold on
the coast of America? Should Dupleix, wily diplomat as he was, be
allowed to make India a French empire? To these major disputes was
added a minor quarrel over the boundary of Nova Scotia, which, it will
be remembered, had been ceded to Great Britain in 1713. Such questions
could be decided only by the crushing defeat of one nation, and that
defeat France was to suffer in the years between 1754 and 1763. Her
loss was fourfold: (1) Her European armies were defeated in Germany by
Frederick the Great, who was aided by English gold, in the Seven Years'
War (1756-1763). [Footnote: For an account of the European aspects of
this struggle, see below, pp. 358 ff.] (2) At the same time her naval
power was almost annihilated by the British, whose war vessels and
privateers conquered most of the French West Indies and almost swept
French commerce from the seas. (3) In India, the machinations of
Dupleix were foiled by the equally astute but more martial Clive. (4)
In America, the "French and Indian War" (1754-1763) dispelled the dream
of a New France across the Atlantic. We shall first consider the war in
the New World.
[Sidenote: The American Phase of the Seven Years' War: the "French and
Indian" War, 1754-1763]
The immediate cause of the French and Indian War was a contest for the
possession of the Ohio valley. The English had already organized an
Ohio Company (1749) for colonization of the valley, but they did not
fully realize the pressing need of action until the French had begun
the construction of a line of forts in western Pennsylvania--Fort
Presqu'Isle (Erie), Fort Le Buf (Waterford), and Fort Venango
(Franklin). The most important position--the junction of the
Monongahela and Allegheny rivers--being still unoccupied, the Ohio
Company, early in 1754, sent a small force to seize and fortify it. The
French, however, were not to be so easily outwitted; they captured the
newly built fort with its handful of defenders, enlarged it, and
christened it Fort Duquesne in honor of the governor of Canada. Soon
afterward a young Virginian, George Washington by name, arrived on the
scene with four hundred men, too late to reënforce the English fort-
builders, and he also was defeated on 4 July, 1754.
Hope was revived, however, in 1755 when the British General Braddock
arrived with a regular army and an ambitious plan to attack the French
in three places--Crown Point (on Lake Champlain), Fort Niagara, and
Fort Duquesne. Against the last-named fort he himself led a mixed force
of British regulars and colonial militia, and so incautiously did he
advance that presently he fell into an ambush. From behind trees and
rocks the Frenchmen and redskins peppered the surprised redcoats. The
"seasoned" veterans of European battlefields were defeated, and might
have been annihilated but for the timely aid of a few "raw" colonial
militiamen, who knew how to shoot straight from behind trees. The
expedition against Niagara also failed of its object but entailed no
such disaster. Failing to take Crown Point, the English built Forts
Edward and William Henry on Lake George, while the French constructed
the famous Fort Ticonderoga. [Footnote: This same year, 1755, so
unfortunate for the English, was a cruel year for the French settlers
in Nova Scotia; like so many cattle, seven thousand of them were packed
into English vessels and shipped to various parts of North America. The
English feared their possible disloyalty.]
[Sidenote: Montcalm]
The gloom which gathered about British fortunes seemed to increase
during the years 1756 and 1757. Great Britain's most valuable ally,
Frederick the Great of Prussia, was defeated in Europe; an English
squadron had been sadly defeated in the Mediterranean; the French had
captured the island of Minorca; and a British attack on the French
fortress of Louisburg had failed. To the French in America, the year
1756 brought Montcalm and continued success. The Marquis de Montcalm
(1712-1759) had learned the art of war on European battlefields, but he
readily adapted himself to new conditions, and proved to be an able
commander of the French and Indian forces in the New World. The English
fort of Oswego on Lake Ontario, and Fort William Henry on Lake George,
were captured, and all the campaigns projected by the English were
foiled.
In 1757, however, new vigor was infused into the war on the part of the
British, largely by reason of the entrance of William Pitt (the Elder)
into the cabinet. Pitt was determined to arouse all British subjects to
fight for their country. Stirred with martial enthusiasm, colonial
volunteers now joined with British regulars to provide a force of about
50,000 men for simultaneous attacks on four important French posts in
America--Louisburg, Ticonderoga, Niagara, and Duquesne. The success of
the attack on Louisburg (1758) was insured by the support of a strong
British squadron; Fort Duquesne was taken and renamed Fort Pitt
[Footnote: Whence the name of the modern city of Pittsburgh.] (1758);
Ticonderoga repulsed one expedition (1758) but surrendered on 26 July,
1759, one day after the capture of Fort Niagara by the British.
[Sidenote: Wolfe]
Not content with the capture of the menacing French frontier forts, the
British next aimed at the central strongholds of the French. While one
army marched up the Hudson valley to attack Montreal, General Wolfe, in
command of another army of 7000, and accompanied by a strong fleet,
moved up the St. Lawrence against Quebec. An inordinate thirst for
military glory had been Wolfe's heritage from his father, himself a
general. An ensign at fourteen, Wolfe had become an officer in active
service while still in his teens, had commanded a detachment in the
attack on Louisburg in 1758, and now at the age of thirty-three was
charged with the capture of Quebec, a natural stronghold, defended by
the redoubtable Montcalm. The task seemed impossible; weeks were wasted
in futile efforts; sickness and apparent defeat weighed heavily on the
young commander. With the energy of despair he fastened at last upon a
daring idea. Thirty-six hundred of his men were ferried in the dead of
night to a point above the city where his soldiers might scramble
through bushes and over rocks up a precipitous path to a high plain--
the Plains of Abraham--commanding the town.
[Sidenote: British Victory at Quebec, 1759]
Wolfe's presence on the heights was revealed at daybreak on 13
September, 1759, and Montcalm hastened to repel the attack. For a time
it seemed as if Wolfe's force would be over-powered, but a well-
directed volley and an impetuous charge threw the French lines into
disorder. In the moment of victory, General Wolfe, already twice
wounded, received a musket-ball in the breast. His death was made happy
by the news of success, but no such exultation filled the heart of the
mortally wounded Montcalm, dying in the bitterness of defeat.
Quebec surrendered a few days later. It was the beginning of the end of
the French colonial empire in America. All hope was lost when, in
October, 1759, a great armada, ready to embark against England, was
destroyed in Quiberon Bay by Admiral Hawke. In 1760 Montreal fell and
the British completed the conquest of New France, at the very time when
the last vestiges of French power were disappearing in India.
[Sidenote: Futile Intervention of Spain, 1762]
In his extremity, Louis XV of France secured the aid of his Bourbon
kinsman, the king of Spain, against England, but Spain was a worthless
ally, and in 1762 British squadrons captured Cuba and the Philippine
Islands as well as the French possessions in the West Indies.
[Sidenote: Phase of the Seven Years' War in India]
[Sidenote: Continued Activity of Dupleix]
Let us now turn back and see how the loss of New France was paralleled
by French defeat in the contest for the vastly more populous and
opulent empire of India. The Mogul Empire, to which reference has
already been made, had been rapidly falling to pieces throughout the
first half of the eighteenth century. The rulers or nawabs (nabobs) of
the Deccan, of Bengal, and of Oudh had become semi-independent princes.
In a time when conspiracy and intrigue were common avenues to power,
the French governor, Dupleix, had conceived the idea of making himself
the political leader of India, and in pursuit of his goal, as we have
seen, he had affected Oriental magnificence and grandiloquent titles,
had formed alliances with half the neighboring native magnates, had
fortified Pondicherry, and begun the enrollment and organization of his
sepoy army. In 1750 he succeeded in overthrowing the nawab of the
Carnatic [Footnote: The province in India which includes Madras and
Pondicherry and has its capital at Arcot.] and in establishing a
pretender whom he could dominate more easily.
[Sidenote: Robert Clive]
[Sidenote: French Failure in the Carnatic]
The hopes of the experienced and crafty Dupleix were frustrated,
however, by a young man of twenty-seven--Robert Clive. At the age of
eighteen, Clive had entered the employ of the English East India
Company as a clerk at Madras. His restless and discontented spirit
found relief, at times, in omnivorous reading; at other times he grew
despondent. More than once he planned to take his own life. During the
War of the Austrian Succession, he had resigned his civil post and
entered the army. The hazards of military life were more to his liking,
and he soon gave abundant evidence of ability. After the peace of 1748
he had returned to civil life, but in 1751 he came forward with a bold
scheme for attacking Arcot, the capital of the Carnatic, and
overthrowing the upstart nawab who was supported by Dupleix. Clive
could muster only some two hundred Europeans and three hundred sepoys,
but this slender force, infused with the daring and irresistible
determination of the young leader, sufficed to seize and hold the
citadel of Arcot against thousands of assailants. With the aid of
native and British reënforcements, the hero of Arcot further defeated
the pretender; and, in 1754, the French had to acknowledge their
failure in the Carnatic and withdraw support from their vanquished
protégé. Dupleix was recalled to France in disgrace; and the British
were left to enjoy the favor of the nawab who owed his throne to Clive.
[Sidenote: Plassey]
[Sidenote: British Success in India]
Clive's next work was in Bengal. In 1756 the young nawab of Bengal,
Suraj-ud-Dowlah by name, seized the English fort at Calcutta and locked
146 Englishmen overnight in a stifling prison--the "Black Hole" of
Calcutta--from which only twenty-three emerged alive the next morning.
Clive, hastening from Madras, chastised Suraj for this atrocity, and
forced him to give up Calcutta. And since by this time Great Britain
and France were openly at war, Clive did not hesitate to capture the
near-by French post of Chandarnagar. His next move was to give active
aid to a certain Mir Jafir, a pretender to the throne of the unfriendly
Suraj-ud-Dowlah. The French naturally took sides with Suraj against
Clive. In 1757 Clive drew up 1100 Europeans, 2100 sepoys, and nine
cannon in a grove of mango trees at Plassey, a few miles south of the
city of Murshidabad, and there attacked Suraj, who, with an army of
68,000 native troops and with French artillerymen to work his fifty-
three cannon, anticipated an easy victory. The outcome was a brilliant
victory for Clive, as overwhelming as it was unexpected. The British
candidate forthwith became nawab of Bengal and as token of his
indebtedness he paid over £1,500,000 to the English East India Company,
and made Clive a rich man. The British were henceforth dominant in
Bengal. The capture of Masulipatam in 1758, the defeat of the French at
Wandewash, between Madras and Pondicherry, and the successful siege of
Pondicherry in 1761, finally established the British as masters of all
the coveted eastern coast of India.
[Sidenote: The Treaty of Paris, 1763]
The fall of Quebec (1759) and of Pondicherry (1761) practically decided
the issue of the colonial struggle, but the war dragged on until, in
1763, France, Spain, and Great Britain concluded the peace of Paris. Of
her American possessions France retained only two insignificant islands
on the Newfoundland coast, [Footnote: St. Pierre and Miquelon.] a few
islands in the West Indies, [Footnote: Including Guadeloupe and
Martinique.] and a foothold in Guiana in South America. Great Britain
received from France the whole of the St. Lawrence valley and all the
territory east of the Mississippi River, together with the island of
Grenada in the West Indies; and from Spain, Great Britain secured
Florida. Beyond the surrender of the sparsely settled territory of
Florida, Spain suffered no loss, for Cuba and the Philippines were
restored to her, and France gave her western Louisiana, that is, the
western half of the Mississippi valley. The French were allowed to
return to their old posts in India, but were not to maintain troops in
Bengal or to build any fort. In other words, the French returned to
India as traders but not as empire builders. [Footnote: During the war,
the French posts in Africa had been taken, and now Gorée was returned
while the mouth of the Senegal River was retained by the British.]
[Sidenote: Significance of the Seven Years' War to Great Britain and
France]
Let us attempt to summarize the chief results of the war. In the first
place, Great Britain preserved half of what was later to constitute the
United States, and gained Canada and an ascendancy in India--empires
wider, richer, and more diverse than those of a Cæsar or an Alexander.
Henceforth Great Britain was indisputably the preëminent colonizing
country--a nation upon whose domains the sun never set. It meant that
the English language was to spread as no other language, until to-day
one hundred and sixty millions of people use the tongue which in the
fifteenth century was spoken by hardly five millions.
Secondly, even more important than this vast land empire was the
dominion of the sea which Great Britain acquired, for from the series
of wars just considered, and especially from the last, dates the
maritime supremacy of England. Since then her commerce, protected and
advertised by the most powerful navy in the world, has mounted by leaps
and bounds, so that now half the vessels which sail the seas bear at
their masthead the Union Jack. From her dominions beyond the oceans and
from her ships upon the seas Great Britain drew power and prestige;
British merchants acquired opulence with resulting social and political
importance to themselves and to their country, and British manufactures
received that stimulation which prepared the way for the Industrial
Revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Thirdly, the gains of Great Britain were at least the temporary ruin of
her rival. Not without reluctance did France abandon her colonial
ambitions, but nearly a century was to elapse after the treaty of Paris
before the French should seriously reënter the race for the upbuilding
of world empire. Nor was France without a desire for revenge, which was
subsequently made manifest in her alliance with Britain's rebellious
American colonies in 1778. But French naval power had suffered a blow
from which it was difficult to recover, [Footnote: Yet between 1763 and
1778 the French made heroic and expensive efforts to rebuild their
navy. And as we shall presently see in studying the general war which
accompanied the American revolt, France attempted in vain to reverse
the main result of the Seven Years' War.] and much of her commerce was
irretrievably lost. If toward the close of the eighteenth century
bankruptcy was to threaten the Bourbon court and government at
Versailles, and if at the opening of the next century, British sea-
power was to undermine Napoleon's empire, it was in no slight degree
the result in either case of the Seven Years' disaster.
India and America were lost to France. Her trade in India soon dwindled
into insignificance before the powerful and wealthy British East India
Company. "French India" to-day consists of Pondicherry, Karikal,
Yanaon, Mahé, and Chandarnagar--196 square miles in all,--while the
Indian Empire of Britain spreads over an area of 1,800,000 square
miles. French empire in America is now represented only by two puny
islands off the coast of Newfoundland, two small islands in the West
Indies, and an unimportant tract of tropical Guiana, but historic
traces of its former greatness and promise have survived alike in
Canada and in Louisiana. In Canada the French population has stubbornly
held itself aloof from the British in language and in religion, and
even to-day two of the seven millions of Canadians are Frenchmen, quite
as intent on the preservation of their ancient nationality as upon
their allegiance to the British rule. In the United States the French
element is less in evidence; nevertheless in New Orleans sidewalks are
called "banquettes," and embankments, "levées"; and still the names of
St. Louis, Des Moines, Detroit, and Lake Champlain perpetuate the
memory of a lost empire.
ADDITIONAL READING
GENERAL. Textbooks and brief treatises: J. S. Bassett, _A Short History
of the United States_ (1914), ch. iii-vii; A. L. Cross, _History of
England and Greater Britain_ (1914), ch. xxxvi-xlii; J. H. Robinson and
C. A. Beard, _The Development of Modern Europe_, Vol. I (1907), ch. vi,
vii; A. D. Innes, _History of England and the British Empire_, Vol. III
(1914), ch. i-vi; W. H. Woodward, _A Short History of the Expansion of
the British Empire, 1500-1911_, 3d ed. (1912), ch. i-v; A. T. Story,
_The Building of the British Empire_ (1898), Part I, _1558-1688_; H. C.
Morris, _The History of Colonization_ (1900), Vol. I, Part III, ch. x-
xii, Vol. II, ch. xvi-xviii. More detailed and specialized studies:
John Fiske, _New France and New England_(1902), a delightful review of
the development of the French empire in America, its struggle with the
British, and its collapse, and, by the same author, _Colonization of
the New World_, ch. vii-x, and _Independence of the New World_, ch. i-
iii, the last two books being respectively Vols. XXI and XXII of the
_History of All Nations; Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. V (1908), ch.
xxii, on the growth of the French and English empires, Vol. VI (1909),
ch. xv, on the English and French in India, 1720-1763, and Vol. VII
(1903), ch. i-iv, on the struggle in the New World; Pelham Edgar, _The
Struggle for a Continent_ (1902), an excellent account of the conflict
in North America, edited from the writings of Parkman; E. B. Greene,
_Provincial America, 1690-1740_ (1905), being Vol. VI of the "American
Nation" Series; Émile Levasseur, _Histoire du commerce de la France_,
Vol. I (1911), the best treatment of French commercial and colonial
policy prior to 1789; Sir J. R. Seeley, _Expansion of England_ (1895),
stimulating and suggestive on the relations of general European history
to the struggle for world dominion; A. W. Tilby, _The English People
Overseas_, a great history of the British empire, projected in 8 vols.,
of which three (1912) are particularly important--Vol. I, _The American
Colonies, 1583-1763_, Vol. II, _British India, 1600-1828_, and Vol. IV,
_Britain in the Tropics, 1527-1910_; A. T. Mahan, _The Influence of Sea
Power upon History, 1660-1783_, 24th ed. (1914), an epoch-making work;
Sir W. L. Clowes (editor), _The Royal Navy: a History_, 7 vols. (1897-
1903), ch. xx-xxviii; J. S. Corbett, _England in the Seven Years' War_,
2 vols. (1907), strongly British and concerned chiefly with naval
warfare; J. W. Fortescue, _History of the British Army_, Vols. I and II
(1899). See also the general histories of imperialism and of the
British Empire listed in the bibliographies appended to Chapters XXVII
and XXIX, of Volume II.
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE BRITISH IN AMERICA. C. M. Andrews, _The
Colonial Period_ (1912) in "Home University Library," and C. L. Becker,
_Beginnings of the American People_ (1915) in "The Riverside History,"
able and stimulating résumés; L. G. Tyler, _England in America, 1580-
1652_ (1904), Vol. IV of "American Nation" Series; John Fiske, _Old
Virginia and her Neighbors_ (1900), and, by the same author, in his
usually accurate and captivating manner, _Beginnings of New England_
(1898), and _Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America_ (1903); H. L.
Osgood, _The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century_, 3 vols.
(1904-1907), the standard authority, together with J. A. Doyle,
_English Colonies in America_, 5 vols. (1882-1907); Edward Channing, _A
History of the United States_, Vol. II, _A Century of Colonial History,
1660-1760_ (1908), very favorable to New England.
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE FRENCH IN AMERICA. R. G. Thwaites,
_France in America, 1497-1763_ (1905), Vol. VII of the "American
Nation" Series, is a clear and scholarly survey. For all concerning
French Canada prior to the British conquest, the works of Francis
Parkman occupy an almost unique position: they are well known for their
attractive qualities, descriptive powers, and charm of style; on the
whole, they are accurate, though occasionally Parkman seems to have
misunderstood the Jesuit missionaries. The proper sequence of Parkman's
writings is as follows: _Pioneers of France in the New World_ (1865),
_The Jesuits in North America_ (1867), _La Salle and the Discovery of
the Great West_ (1869), _The Old Régime in Canada_ (1874), _Count
Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV_ (1877), _A Half Century of
Conflict_, 2 vols. (1892), _Montcalm and Wolfe_, 2 vols. (1884), _The
Conspiracy of Pontiac, and the Indian War after the Conquest of
Canada_, 2 vols. (1851). Other useful studies: C. W. Colby, _Canadian
Types of the Old Régime, 1608-1698_ (1908); G. M. Wrong, _The Fall of
Canada: a Chapter in the History of the Seven Years' War_ (1914);
Thomas Hughes, S.J., _History of the Society of Jesus in North
America_, Vols. I, II (1907-1908), the authoritative work of a learned
Jesuit; T. J. Campbell, S.J., _Pioneer Priests of North America, 1642-
1710_, 3 vols. (1911-1914); William Kingsford, _History of Canada_, 10
vols. (1887-1897), elaborate, moderately English in point of view, and
covering the years from 1608 to 1841; F. X. Garneau, _Histoire du
Canada_, 5th ed. of the famous work of a French Canadian, revised by
his grandson Hector Garneau, Vol. I to 1713 (1913).
INDIA IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. A monumental
_History of India_ in 6 bulky volumes is now (1916) in preparation
by the Cambridge University Press on the model of the "Cambridge Modern
History." Of brief accounts, the best are: A. C. Lyall, _The Rise and
Expansion of British Dominion in India_, 5th ed. (1910); A. D.
Innes, _A Short History of the British in India_ (1902); and G. B.
Malleson, _History of the French in India, 1674-1761_, 2d ed.
reissued (1909). See also the English biography of _Dupleix_ by G.
B. Malleson (1895) and the French lives by Tibulle Hamont (1881) and
Eugène Guénin (1908). An excellent brief biography of _Clive_ is
that of G. B. Malleson (1895). Robert Orme (1728-1801), _History of
the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan from
1745_ [to 1761], 2 vols. in 3, is an almost contemporaneous account
by an agent of the English East India Company who had access to the
company's records, and Beckles Willson, _Ledger and Sword_, 2
vols. (1903), deals with the economic and political policies of the
English East India Company. For history of the natives during the
period, see Sir H. M. Elliot, _History of India, as told by its own
Historians: the Muhammadan Period_, 8 vols. (1867-1877); and J. G.
Duff, _History of the Mahrattas_, new ed., 3 vols. (1913).
WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. Of the character of the Elder Pitt, such
an important factor in the British triumph over France, many different
estimates have been made by historians. The two great biographies of
the English statesman are those of Basil Williams, 2 vols. (1913), very
favorable to Pitt, and Albert von Ruville, Eng. trans., 3 vols. (1907),
hostile to Pitt. See also Lord Rosebery, _Lord Chatham, His Early
Life and Connections_ (1910); D. A. Winstanley, _Lord Chatham and
the Whig Opposition_ (1912); and the famous essay on Pitt by Lord
Macaulay.