THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR
It is likely that until the latter half of the eighteenth century the
people of Europe did not even begin to realise the full meaning of
the great New World which Columbus had discovered for them in the
West. Spain regarded it as a Tom Tiddler's ground where she would go
and pick up gold. France and possibly England too had their foolish
dreams. They expected enormous things from that vast continent of
which the western limits were only gradually revealed to them. They
expected enormous results which never were, nor ever could be
realised. But they had no idea whatever of the yet more enormous
effect which the finding of the new continent really was to have on
the story. All that was hidden from their eyes.
The settlement between the nations agreed at Aix-la-Chapelle was
called a "Peace," but it was a settlement that left one of the States
of Europe in a situation which did not promise that the peace would
last long. That State was Prussia. We have seen her establishing
herself and gaining strength. She had taken Silesia from Austria,
and Austria had agreed to that loss in the terms of the peace, but
yet longed for an opportunity to regain the loss. France and Spain
were knit together in an alliance known as the Family Compact,
because the rulers of both countries were of the Bourbon family.
Austria, under Maria Theresa, joined {128} their family alliance, and
brought in Saxony with her, for Saxony was no less jealous of the
power of Prussia than Austria herself. Russia, under the Tsarina
Elizabeth, was anxious about the growing strength of this Teutonic
State on her border; and on her side she brought Sweden into the
large conspiracy which had for its object the break up of the power
of Prussia and a partition between the conspirators of the Prussian
territories.
It was a conspiracy which came to the knowledge of Frederick, the
Prussian king.
For many years the interests of England and of France had been in
conflict both West and East, in America and in India. The opposition
was approaching the point at which war must result from it. Now, in
the European position just indicated, England saw the opportunity of
getting a strong helper against France. She allied herself with
Frederick, who had carried the States of Brunswick and of
Hesse-Cassel with him; and together they declared war upon nearly all
Europe. France, Austria, Spain, Russia, Sweden, and Saxony were
against them.
It has the sound of a combination of overwhelming force as opposed to
the English and the Prussian kings, even though the immense power of
Russia was then only in its infancy. England was not likely to send
very large armies to the Continent, and an English force of 50,000
retreated before the French and was disbanded very early in the war.
But Frederick had a genius for the creation and organisation of
armies, and had occupied it, during the eight years following the
Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in making the Prussian army the finest
military machine which the modern world had seen.
[Sidenote: The Seven Years' War]
The war which ensued, known as the Seven Years' War from the time
that it lasted, is most remarkable for its dramatic changes of
fortune. Frederick began {129} by a victory in Saxony, yet more than
once he was so heavily defeated that he almost gave up the fight in
despair. It is said that he thought of suicide. England, when the
elder Pitt was Prime Minister, gave assistance in form of large
subsidies of money rather than large forces of men or arms, and
without these subsidies Frederick must have given in. A mixed force
of English and Hanoverians did indeed fight under the Duke of
Brunswick and drove back the French from their attacks on Hanover in
1758 and again in 1759, but except for this last success everything
went heavily against Frederick in the fourth year of the war. In the
year following, contingents of Russian and Austrian armies were
actually occupying Berlin when he fell upon the main Austrian force
at Torgau on the Elbe. The victory that he there gained, over heavy
odds, turned the tide of the fighting in his favour when it was at
its lowest ebb.
Still the struggle continued, with Frederick and his war-weary troops
chiefly on the defensive, exhausted. And to that exhaustion and to
his encircling foes he would in all likelihood have been compelled to
own defeat, had it not been for the death at the beginning of 1762 of
one of his chief enemies, the Tsarina of Russia, and the accession of
a Tsar who was his friend. Russia, from a foe became an ally and
carried Sweden with her. England, however, had become tired of the
war and made alliance with France and Spain by the Peace of Paris in
1763, and in the same year the protagonists, or chief fighters,
Prussia and Austria, themselves came to terms. Prussia retained
Silesia. The final result of the seven years' fighting, with these
singular alternations of victories and defeats, was to leave the map
of Europe practically unchanged. From that point of view all the
bloodshed had been for nothing.
From another, a larger and more just point of view, {130} however, we
are obliged to realise that perhaps no other one war in the whole of
the story has made more difference to its future course. If we
consider its effect on the Continent alone, we must realise that it
laid the foundation on which the union of the German States into a
compact nation was later to be built. It established Prussia in far
greater strength than before, because, if she had not added to her
possessions, she had at least held her own while her enemies vainly
dashed themselves against her. Austria had perforce to acquiesce at
length in the loss of Silesia and also in the recognition of this
strong State of Northern Germany set up against her own strength in
the south. Prussia was to prove the nucleus round and under which
the unity of Germany should be built, and it was this war which set
firm the foundations of that building.
And as to who was the master mason in that building we can have no
doubt whatever.
We have come across many men in course of this Greatest Story to whom
the title of Great has been given, but surely to none more rightly
than to this great King of Prussia. His courage in the hour of
defeat has been indicated by the above very brief sketch of the war.
It was only by the most steadfast courage combined with rare military
genius that he came out of that seven years' fighting unshattered.
But his genius served his country in peaceful as well as warlike
interests. He was an absolute despot, yet he used himself and his
despotic power entirely for his country's good. He set the example,
in his own court, of a rigid, a scraping economy. He did all in his
power to develop the industries of the country, by road making, by
improved means of transport, and by every possible expedient. He
encouraged education and brought men of letters like Voltaire to the
Prussian court. He was rough and passionate, but a very hard worker,
and {131} all his work was given to the strengthening and
enlightening of his subjects.
Taken from this point of view, then, the Seven Years' War is seen to
have had a very great effect on our story.
But let us regard it also in its effects on the far larger stage upon
which the story is being enacted, now that the Old East and the New
West have begun to form part of it.
[Sidenote: The War overseas]
In the very same year, 1757, that Frederick gained two of his most
effective victories, those of Rosbach and of Leuthen, in the first of
which he broke up the French armies and in the second the armies of
Austria, England was gaining success no less important against France
far overseas. We have spoken of the East India Company of merchants
settled as traders in various places along the coasts of India. It
was thus, establishing stations on the coast, that the Portuguese,
first, had come; and so too the French and English after them.
Already, before the Seven Years' War, we have also noticed sundry
clashes of arms between the English and the French, in which the
advantage had gone heavily against the former. Both nations were
obliged to keep a certain force of troops under arms for their
protection in a country where the friendship of the natives was
uncertain. The natives were of various races; the land was divided
between many rulers of different States; and there was the one
outstanding division of religion between Hindus and Mahommedans.
It may seem a strange thing to say, but really it was the French
ambition to found a French Empire in India which led to the
foundation of the British Empire. Under their able and ambitious
leader, Dupleix, the French began to push inland from their coastal
stations and forcibly to claim authority in some of the native
States. It was, of course, an authority {132} which they exercised
in favour of their own people and against the English traders. When
the Seven Years' War broke out, English and French in India as
elsewhere were declared and open enemies. It was at this very moment
that the Nawab, the native ruler, of Bengal, began to quarrel with
the English. Naturally he was supported by the French. At first
things went badly for the English in some fighting which led to no
decisive result, but in the following year--the year of Rosbach and
of Leuthen--the British, under Clive, gained a victory of the
greatest importance over the troops of the Nawab, supported by the
French, at Plassey.
It seems to have been quite a revelation to the natives that the
British were able to fight at all, and from this time forward their
prestige was established in the East, The battle which mainly decided
the issue, as between English and French, was not fought until three
years later, for at Plassey there had been only a few French
supporting the native forces. But at Wandewash, in 1760, the battle
was between British and French almost wholly, and its result was a
decisive British victory. From that time forward Britain was always
regarded as the principal European power in India and on all the
eastern sea-coasts.
That was the mark made in the East on this greatest of all stories by
the Seven Years' War.
Its mark was planted no less deeply on the western side. Montreal
and Quebec were French towns at the beginning of the war. Moreover,
Montcalm, the French governor, had established the authority of the
French, supported by a chain of forts, right away west as far as the
Mississippi. Take out the atlas, and, remembering that the French
possession of Louisiana at that time stretched right up from New
Orleans at the Mississippi's mouth to the Great Lakes, you will
realise what this meant to the British people in America. {133} It
meant that they were completely hemmed in and shut off from all
access to the West.
[Sidenote: Canada gained by England]
Pitt seems to have realised it. He sent out a strong force, which
was ably helped by the militia called up from the British who were
settled in America. Montcalm appears to have shown much genius for
friendship with the Indians, and he had many of their tribes to aid
his French forces. But the British gained post after post, and the
crowning victory was won by Wolfe in 1759 on the Plains of Abraham,
which dominate Quebec. Canada was won for Great Britain. The way to
the almost boundless West was opened to men of British race.
France's dream of Western empire was broken as completely as her
dream of empire in the East. Florida, moreover, became British under
the terms of the Peace of Paris, being assigned to Great Britain in
return for Cuba and the Philippine Islands which had been taken from
the Spaniards during the war.
1760, the year of the Wandewash battle in India, saw two great
battles in Europe, one on land, at Minden, and one on sea, in
Quiberon Bay, in both of which the French were heavily beaten. They
happened at a moment when Frederick's fortunes were at low ebb, and
were sorely needed. In the land battles the French were broken by a
charge of the English line which seems to have been delivered
contrary to all then recognised rules of war. At sea the French
fleet was practically destroyed by the English under Admiral Hawke
just when it was actually preparing for an invasion of England.
And the rewards of these conquests, both East and West, were
confirmed to Britain by that Peace of Paris which terminated the
Seven Years' War.
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