REIGN OF GEORGE II.--(_concluded_).
Progress of the War on the Continent--Lethargic Condition of
Politics--Battle of Laufeldt--Capture of Bergen-op-Zoom--Disasters
of the French on the Sea and in Italy--Negotiations for
Peace--Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle--Conditions of Peace--Peace
at Home--Commercial Treaty with Spain--Death of the Prince
of Wales--Popular feeling against the Bill for Naturalising
the Jews--Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act--Foundation
of the British Museum--Death of Pelham--Newcastle's
Difficulties--Failure of Robinson--Approaching Danger from
America--A State of Undeclared War--The Battles of Boscawen
and Braddock--George's Anxiety for Hanover--Subsidiary
Treaties against Prussia--Pitt's Opposition--Debate in the
House of Commons--Danger of England--French Expedition against
Minorca--The Failure of Byng--Newcastle resigns--Attempts
to Form a Ministry--Devonshire Succeeds--Weakness of
the Ministry--Coalition against Prussia--Alliance with
England--Commencement of the Seven Years' War--Frederick
Conquers Saxony--Gloominess of Affairs--Court-Martial on Byng,
and his Death--Dismissal of Pitt--The Pitt and Newcastle
Coalition--Failure of the attack on Rochefort and of that on
Louisburg--Convention of Closter-Seven--Frederick's Campaign;
Kolin, Rosbach, and Lissa--Successes elsewhere--Wolfe and
Clive--Battle of Plassey--Capture of Louisburg--Ticonderoga
and Fort Duquesne--Attacks on St. Malo and Cherbourg--Victory
of Crefeld--Frederick's Campaign--Commencement of 1759;
Blockade of the French Coast--Pitt's Plans for the Conquest
of Canada--Amherst's and Prideaux's Columns--Wolfe before
Quebec--Position of the City--Wolfe fails to draw Montcalm from his
Position--Apparent Hopelessness of the Expedition--Wolfe Scales
the Heights of Abraham--The Battle--Successes in India--Battle
of Quiberon--Frederick's Fortunes--Campaign of Ferdinand of
Brunswick--Battle of Minden--Glorious Termination of the
Year--French Descent on Carrickfergus--Attempt of the French to
Recover Quebec--Their Expulsion from North America--Frederick's
Fourth Campaign--Successes of Ferdinand of Brunswick--Death of
George II.
The Scottish rebellion had been an auspicious circumstance for the arms
of France. Marshal Saxe had taken the field, to the surprise of the
Allies, in the very middle of winter, invested Brussels, and compelled
it to surrender on the 20th of February, 1746. One town fell after
another; Mons, Antwerp, Charleroi, and finally, Namur capitulated
on the 19th of September, after a siege of only six days. As soon
as Cumberland could leave Scotland after the battle of Culloden, he
returned to London, in the hope that he should be appointed, covered,
as he was, with his bloody laurels, to the supreme command of the
Allied forces in Flanders, where he flattered himself he could arrest
the progress of the French. But that command had been conferred on
Prince Charles of Lorraine, the Emperor's brother, much to the disgust
of both Cumberland and the king. On the 11th of October the Prince of
Lorraine engaged the French at Raucoux, on the Jaar, and was signally
defeated; the English cavalry, under General Ligonier, managing to
save his army from total destruction, but not being able to stem the
overthrow. At the close of the campaign the French remained almost
entire masters of the Austrian Netherlands.
In Italy, on the contrary, France sustained severe losses. The
Austrians, liberated from their Prussian foe by the peace of Dresden,
threw strong forces into Italy, and soon made themselves masters of
Milan, Guastalla, Parma, and Piacenza. On the 17th of June they gave
the united French and Spaniards a heavy defeat near the last-named
city, entered Genoa in September, and made preparations to pursue them
into Provence.
Philip V. of Spain died on the 9th of July, and his son and successor,
Ferdinand VI., showed himself far less anxious for the establishment
of Don Philip in Italy--a circumstance unfavourable to France. On
the contrary, he entered into separate negotiations with England.
A Congress was opened at Breda, but the backwardness of Prussia to
support the views of England, and the successes of the French in the
Netherlands, caused the Congress to prove abortive.
The year 1747 was opened by measures of restriction. The House of
Lords, offended at the publication of the proceedings of the trial
of Lord Lovat, summoned the parties to their bar, committed them to
prison, and refused to liberate them till they had pledged themselves
not to repeat the offence, and had paid very heavy fees. The
consequence of this was that the transactions of the Peers were almost
entirely suppressed for nearly thirty years from this time, and we draw
our knowledge of them chiefly from notes taken by Horace Walpole and
Lord Chancellor Hardwicke. What is still more remarkable, the reports
of the House of Commons, being taken by stealth, and on the merest
sufferance, are of the most meagre kind, sometimes altogether wanting,
and the speeches are given uniformly under fictitious names; for to
have attributed to Pitt or Pelham their speeches by name would have
brought down on the printers the summary vengeance of the House. Many
of the members complained bitterly of this breach of the privileges of
Parliament, and of "being put into print by low fellows"; but Pelham
had the sense to tolerate them, saying, "Let them alone; they make
better speeches for us than we can make for ourselves." Altogether,
the House of Commons exhibited the most deplorable aspect that can
be conceived. The Ministry had pursued Walpole's system of buying up
opponents by place, or pension, or secret service money, till there
was no life left in the House. Ministers passed their measures without
troubling themselves to say much in their behalf; and the opposition
dwindled to Sir John Hinde Cotton, now dismissed from office, and
a feeble remnant of Jacobites raised but miserable resistance. In
vain the Prince of Wales and the secret instigations of Bolingbroke
and Doddington stimulated the spirit of discontent; both Houses
had degenerated into most silent and insignificant arenas of very
commonplace business.
The campaign in Flanders commenced with the highest expectation on the
part of England. Cumberland had now obtained the great object of his
ambition--the command of the Allied army; and the conqueror of Culloden
was confidently expected to show himself the conqueror of Marshal Saxe
and of France. But Cumberland, who was no match for Marshal Saxe, found
the Dutch and Austrians, as usual, vastly deficient in their stipulated
quotas. The French, hoping to intimidate the sluggish and wavering
Dutch, threatened to send twenty thousand men into Dutch Flanders,
if the States did not choose to negotiate for a separate peace. The
menace, however, had the effect of rousing Holland to some degree
of action. When the vanguard of Saxe's army, under Count Löwendahl,
burst into Dutch Flanders, and reduced the frontier forts of Sluys,
Sas-van-Ghent, and Hulst, the Dutch rose against their dastardly
governors, and once more placed a prince of the House of Nassau in the
Stadtholdership. William of Nassau, who had married Anne, daughter
of George II. of England, was, unfortunately, not only nominated
Stadtholder, but Captain-General and Lord High Admiral; and, being
equally desirous of martial glory with his brother-in-law, the Duke of
Cumberland, he headed the Dutch army, and immediately began to contend
with Cumberland for dictation as to the movements of the army. In these
disastrous circumstances, the Allies came to blows with the French at
the village of Laufeldt, before Maestricht. The Dutch in the centre
gave way and fled; the Austrians on the right, under Marshal Batthyani,
would not advance out of their fortified position; the brunt of the
whole onset, therefore, fell upon the English. Cumberland found himself
engaged with the whole French army, directed by the masterly mind of
Saxe, and animated by the presence of Louis himself. The dispositions
of Cumberland were bad, but the bravery of the British troops was never
more remarkable. Though it was impossible for them to prevail against
such overwhelming numbers, they did not retreat before they had,
according to Saxe's own acknowledgment, killed or wounded nine thousand
of the French.
Saxe followed up his advantage by despatching Löwendahl against
Bergen-op-Zoom, the key of Holland, and the masterpiece of the
celebrated engineer, Cohorn. This was not only amazingly strong in its
fortifications, but had a powerful garrison, and was covered by an
entrenched camp of twelve thousand men. The trenches were opened in the
middle of July, and might have defied all the efforts of the French,
had not Baron Cronstrom, the commander, a man of eighty, suffered them
to take it by surprise on the 15th of September. The French had led
a vast number of men before this place, and its surrender ended the
campaign.
Most unexpectedly, however, the French were as desirous of peace as
the Allies ought to have been. At sea and in Italy they had not been
so successful as in Flanders. Admiral Anson had defeated them off Cape
Finisterre, and taken six ships of the line, several frigates, and a
great part of a numerous convoy; Admiral Hawke, off Belleisle, had
taken six other ships of the line; and Commodore Fox took forty French
merchantmen, richly laden, on their way from the West Indies. In fact,
in all quarters of the world our fleet had the advantage, and had made
such havoc with the French commerce as reduced the mercantile community
to great distress.
In Italy the French had been as unfortunate as they had been fortunate
in Flanders. In November of 1746 the Austrians and Sardinians, assisted
by a British fleet, had entered Provence and bombarded Antibes. They
were recalled, however, by the news that the Genoese had revolted, and
thrown off the Austrian yoke. In their retreat they were harassed by
Marshal de Belleisle, laid siege to Genoa in vain, and began to quarrel
amongst themselves. The French, to complete their own discomfiture,
marched another army into Italy under the brother of Belleisle; but
they were stopped in the Pass of Exilles, and defeated, with the loss
of four thousand men and of their commander, the Chevalier de Belleisle.
[Illustration: FLORA MACDONALD. (_After the Portrait by J. Markluin_,
1747.)]
There was grave discontent and suffering in France, and Marshal Saxe,
through General Ligonier, made proposals for peace. The news of these
overtures gave great delight in England, but the king and Cumberland
were bent on continuing the war. Pelham and Chesterfield advocated
acceptance of the terms, but Newcastle sided with the king, to gain
favour with him. As the terms, however, could not with decency be
bluntly rejected, Cumberland solicited and obtained the post of
negotiator in the matter for England; but the Ministers, desirous of
peace, foreseeing that the wishes or the hasty temper of Cumberland
would soon ruin every chance of accomplishing a treaty, the Earl of
Sandwich was sent over to act as assistant to the duke; this meant
that he was to overrule, if possible, the mischief Cumberland would be
sure to make. Sandwich accordingly hastened over to Holland, and had a
secret interview with the Marquis de Puisieulx, the French Minister for
Foreign Affairs, and, after much dodging on the part of the marquis, he
managed to have the discussion removed from military negotiators to a
congress at Aix-la-Chapelle.
The congress had opened at Aix-la-Chapelle early in the spring, but it
did not begin its sittings till the 11th of March, 1748, Sandwich being
sent thither as our Plenipotentiary. The campaign, however, opened
simultaneously, and, could Cumberland and the king have managed it,
war would soon have overturned the hopes of peace; but circumstances
were too much for them. The Prince of Nassau, ambitious as he was of
military renown, failed to bring into the field his Dutch levies; the
thirty thousand Prussians, as Pelham had expected, did not appear.
The Dutch, so far from furnishing the sums they had engaged for,
sent to London to raise the loan of a million sterling; but London
itself had ceased to be a money-lending place. The war had drained
the resources even of the British capital. To complete the deadlock,
Marshal Saxe advanced into the field, and showed to the world that,
though Cumberland might beat an army of famine-exhausted Highlanders,
he was no match for him. He completely out-generalled him, made false
demonstrations against Breda, where the Allied army lay, and then
suddenly concentrated his forces before Maestricht, which, it was
evident, must soon fall into his hands. Maestricht secured, the highway
into Holland was open.
The king and his war cabinet were now compelled to sue to France for
the peace which was so freely offered the year before. Newcastle
wrote to Sandwich in April, that the impossibility of arresting the
progress of the French army, the discordant pretensions of the Allies,
and their gross neglect of their engagements, rendered it absolutely
necessary to make peace. Sandwich was to communicate this necessity to
the Plenipotentiaries of the Allies, and if they declined to assent
to it, to sign the preliminaries without them. The Ministers of the
Allies still refused to join; it suited them very well to receive vast
subsidies to fight their own battles, and yet to leave England to fight
them. On the other hand, Count St. Severin, the Plenipotentiary of
France, now felt his vantage-ground, and offered far worse terms than
before, and, to force their acceptance, threatened that if they were
not agreed to without delay, the French would leave the fortifications
of Ypres, Namur, and Bergen-op-Zoom, and march directly into Holland.
The treaty was signed by England, France, and Holland on the 18th of
April. The general conditions were a mutual restoration of conquests.
All the nations were placed very much _in statu quo_, except that
Prussia had got Silesia, and Sardinia had lost Placentia and Finale. As
for England, she firmly established her maritime supremacy, which from
that date has remained unchallenged. The Young Pretender was compelled
to leave France, and thenceforward ceased to be of any political
importance.
From the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle for several years little of striking
interest occurred in the affairs of Britain. The public at first was
rejoiced at the return of peace; but the more it looked into the
results of so costly a war the more dissatisfied it grew, and the
complaints were loud and general that Ministers had sacrificed the
honour and interests of the nation. The Opposition, however, was at
so low an ebb, that little was heard of the public discontent in
Parliament; and Pitt, formerly so vociferous to denounce the war, now
as boldly vindicated both it and the peace, and silenced all criticisms
by his overmastering eloquence. The Government still went on granting
subsidies to the German princes, though the war was at an end.
During the year 1750 the French evinced a hostile disposition. They
laid claim to part of Nova Scotia, and refused to surrender the
islands of St. Lucia and St. Vincent, as they were bound to do by
the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. They continued to stir up bad feeling
towards us both in Spain and Germany. The Empress listened with
eagerness to the suggestions of France, and co-operated with that
country in endeavouring to influence Spain against us. Fortunately,
the good disposition of the Queen of Spain, and the able management
of Mr. Keene, our Ambassador, foiled all these efforts, and completed
a commercial treaty with that country. This treaty was signed on
the 5th of October, 1750, and placed us at once on the same footing
in commercial relations with Spain as the most favoured nations.
We abandoned the remaining term of the Assiento, and obtained one
hundred thousand pounds as compensation for the claims of the South
Sea Company. The right of search, however, was passed over in silence,
and we continued to cut logwood in Campeachy Bay and to smuggle on
the Spanish Main, winked at by the Spanish authorities, but liable to
interruption whenever jealousy or ill-will might be in the ascendant.
In various directions our commerce flourished at this time, and many
injurious restrictions were removed, such as those that hampered the
whale fishery of Spitzbergen, the white herring and coast fisheries,
the trade to the coast of Guinea, the import of iron from the American
plantations and of raw silk from China. Our manufactures also grew
apace, in spite of the internal jarrings of the Ministry and the
deadness of Parliament.
While affairs were in this state, the Prince of Wales died (March
20, 1751). He had been in indifferent health for some time, and had
injured his constitution by dissipated habits. He was forty-four
years of age, of a weak character, which had led him into excesses,
and the consequences of these were made worse by great neglect of his
health. The same weakness of character had made him very much the tool
of political faction, and placed him in an unnatural opposition to
his father. An attempt was made by Lord Egmont to keep together the
prince's party. He assembled a meeting of the Opposition at his house
on the morning of the prince's death, and hinted at taking the princess
and her family under their protection; and he recommended harmony among
themselves; but some one said, "Very likely, indeed, that there should
be harmony, when the prince could never bring it about;" and so every
one hastened away to look after themselves. It was no sooner seen that
there was an understanding between the Princess of Wales and the king
than numbers of the late prince's friends offered their adhesion to the
Pelhams, equally out of dread of the Duke of Cumberland and dislike
of the Duke of Bedford, who was opposed to the Pelhams, and, it was
feared, likely to support Cumberland, and thus place him at the head of
affairs.
The Session of 1753 was distinguished by two remarkable Acts of
Parliament. The one was for the naturalisation of the Jews, the
other for the prevention of clandestine marriages. The Jew Bill was
introduced into the Lords, and passed it with singular ease, scarcely
exciting an objection from the whole bench of bishops; Lord Lyttelton
declaring that "he who hated another man for not being a Christian was
not a Christian himself." But in the Commons it raised a fierce debate.
On the 7th of May, on the second reading, it was assailed by loud
assertions that to admit the Jews to such privileges was to dishonour
the Christian faith; that it would deluge the kingdom with usurers,
brokers, and beggars; that the Jews would buy up the advowsons, and
thus destroy the Church; that it was flying directly in the face of
God and of Prophecy, which had declared the Jews should be scattered
over the face of the earth, without any country or fixed abode. Pelham
ridiculed the fears about the Church, showing that, by their own rigid
tenets, the Jews could neither enter our Church nor marry our women,
and could therefore never touch our religion, nor amalgamate with us
as a people; that as to civil offices, unless they took the Sacrament,
they could not be even excisemen or custom-house officers. The Bill
passed by a majority of ninety-five to sixteen; but the storm was only
wafted from the Parliament to the public. Out-of-doors the members of
Parliament, and especially the bishops, were pursued with the fiercest
rancour and insult. Members of the Commons were threatened by their
constituents with the loss of their seats for voting in favour of
this Bill; and one of them, Mr. Sydenham, of Exeter, defended himself
by declaring that he was no Jew, but travelled on the Sabbath like a
Christian. The populace pursued the members and the bishops in the
streets, crying, "No Jews! No Jews! No wooden shoes!" In short, such
was the popular fury, that the Duke of Newcastle was glad to bring in a
Bill for the repeal of his Act of Naturalisation on the very first day
of the next Session, which passed rapidly through both Houses.
It was high time that some measures were taken for preventing
clandestine marriages. Nothing could be so loose as the marriage laws,
or so scandalous as the practice regarding marriages at this date. No
previous public notice or publication of banns was hitherto required,
nor was any license requisite. Any clergyman, though of the most
infamous character, could perform the ceremony at any time or place,
without consent of parents or guardians. The consequence was, that the
strangest and most scandalous unions took place, for which there was no
remedy, and the results of which were lives of misery and disgrace. The
merest children were inveigled into such connections, and the heirs of
noble estates were thus entrapped into the most repulsive alliances,
and made the victims of the most rapacious and unprincipled of mankind.
The Fleet Prison, where were many ruined parsons--ruined by their
crimes and low habits--was a grand mart for such marriages. A fellow
of the name of Keith had acquired great pre-eminence in this line. He
used to marry, on an average, six thousand couples every year; and on
the news of this Bill, which would stop his trade, he vowed vengeance
on the bishops, declaring that he would buy a piece of ground and
out-bury them all!
The Bill was prepared by the judges, and afterwards remodelled and
conducted through the Lords by Lord Chancellor Hardwicke. It provided
that banns should be published for every marriage in the parish
church for three successive Sundays; that no license to waive these
banns should be granted to any minor without consent of the parent
or guardian; and that special licenses, empowering the marriage to
be celebrated at any time or place, should only be granted by the
archbishop, and for a heavy sum. The Bill was opposed in the Lords
by the Duke of Bedford, and in the Commons by Henry Fox, Mr. Nugent,
Mr. Charles Townshend, and others. It was declared to be a scheme
for keeping together the wealth of the country in the hands of a few
grasping and ambitious families. Townshend denounced it as intended to
shut younger sons out of all chance of raising themselves by marriage.
Henry Fox had benefited especially by the looseness of the old marriage
law, for he had run away with Lady Caroline Lennox, the eldest daughter
of the Duke of Richmond. He was especially severe on Lord Hardwicke,
accusing him of seeking by the Bill to throw more power into the hands
of the Lord Chancellor, and Hardwicke retorted with still greater
acrimony. The Bill passed, and there was a strong inclination to extend
its operation to Scotland, but the Scottish lawyers and representative
peers defeated this attempt.
Another measure in this Session marks an epoch in the history of
literature and science in Great Britain. Parliament empowered the
Crown to raise money by lottery for the purchase of the fine library,
consisting of fifty thousand volumes, and the collection of articles
of vertu and antiquity, amounting to sixty-nine thousand three hundred
and fifty-two in number, bequeathed by Sir Hans Sloane to the nation
on the condition that twenty thousand pounds should be paid to his
daughters for what had cost himself fifty thousand pounds. The same
Bill also empowered Government to purchase of the Duchess of Portland,
for ten thousand pounds, the collection of MSS. and books, etc., made
by her grandfather, Harley, the Lord Treasurer Oxford, and also for the
purchase of Montagu House, which was offered for sale in consequence of
the death of the Duke of Montagu without heirs, in which to deposit
these valuable collections. The antiquarian and literary collections
of Sir Robert Cotton, purchased in the reign of Queen Anne, were also
removed to Montagu House; and thus was founded the now magnificent
institution, the British Museum. It is remarkable that whilst Horace
Walpole, professing himself a patron of letters, has recorded all the
gossip of his times, he has not deemed this great literary, scientific,
and artistic event worthy of the slightest mention.
The course of business was suddenly interrupted by the unexpected
death of Pelham, the Prime Minister, in 1754. Pelham was but sixty
years of age, of a florid and apparently healthy appearance, but at
once indolent and too fond of the table. He had been compelled to seek
sea-bathing at Scarborough, and on the 7th of January wrote to his
brother, the Duke of Newcastle, saying that he never was better; but
on the 3rd of March he was taken ill, and on the 6th was a corpse. The
king was startled at his death, for his moderation and quiet management
had long held together very jarring elements in the Ministry. "Now I
shall have no more peace!" exclaimed George, on hearing the news of
his decease, and he was only too correct in his prognostic. Pelham
was a respectable rather than a great minister. His abilities were by
no means shining, but experience had made him a good man of business.
Waldegrave gave him credit for being "a frugal steward of the public,
averse to Continental extravagances and useless subsidies;" and yet
never were more of each perpetrated than during his administration.
He had the merit, which he had acquired in the school of Walpole, of
preferring peace to war; and Horace Walpole admits that "he lived
without abusing his power, and died poor."
Newcastle, a man older than his brother Pelham, and of inferior
abilities, instead of strengthening himself by the promotion of Pitt
and Henry Fox, was only anxious to grasp all the power of the Cabinet,
and retain these far abler men as his obedient subordinates. He at
once got himself placed at the head of the Treasury, and selected
as Chancellor of the Exchequer Henry Legge, a son of the Earl of
Dartmouth, a quiet but ordinary man of business, by no means fitted to
take the leadership of the House of Commons. The three men calculated
for that post were Pitt, Fox, and Murray; but Pitt was still extremely
disliked by the king, who did not forget his many years' thunderings
against Hanoverian measures, and both George and Newcastle were no
little afraid of his towering ambition. Henry Fox was a man of amiable
character in private life, but in politics an adventurer.
[Illustration: WEDDING IN THE FLEET. (_From a Print of the Eighteenth
Century._)]
Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield, as we have said, of a decided
Jacobite house, was a rising young lawyer, who had won great fame
for his speech in a case of appeal before the House of Lords, was
now Solicitor-General--accomplished and learned in the law, a man
of pleasing person, and a fine orator, bold, persevering in his
profession, yet, with all the caution of a Scotsman, plodding his way
towards the bench--the real and almost the only object of his ambition.
Murray, indeed, let Newcastle know that such was his ambition;
and therefore, as Pitt was passed over from the royal dislike and
Newcastle's own jealousy, and Murray, too, for this reason, Henry Fox
alone was the man for the leadership of the Commons. Newcastle told
him that he proposed him for that post; but when they met, Fox soon
found that he was expected to play the rôle without the essential
power. Fox, of course, demanded to be informed of the disposal of the
secret-service money, but Newcastle replied that his brother never
disclosed that to any one, nor would he. Fox reminded him that Pelham
was at once First Lord of the Treasury and leader of the Commons, and
asked how he was to "talk to members when he did not know who was in
pay and who was not?" And next he wished to know who was to have the
nomination to places? Newcastle replied, Himself. Who was to recommend
the proper objects?--Still himself. Who to fill up the ministerial
boroughs at the coming elections?--Still Newcastle himself. Fox
withdrew in disgust, and Newcastle gave the seals of the Secretaryship
to a mere tool--Sir Thomas Robinson, a dull, uncouth man, who had been
some years ambassador at Vienna, and had won the favour of the king by
his compliance with all his German desires. Robinson, according to Lord
Waldegrave, was ignorant even of the language of the House of Commons,
and when he attempted to play the orator, threw the members into fits
of merriment. Newcastle, says Lord Stanhope, had succeeded in a very
difficult attempt--he "had found a Secretary of State with abilities
inferior to his own."
As to the other changes in the Ministry, Sir Dudley Ryder being
advanced to the bench, Murray succeeded him as Attorney-General. Lord
Chancellor Hardwicke was made an earl; Sir George Lyttelton and George
Grenville, friends of Pitt, had places--one as Treasurer of the Navy,
the other as cofferer. Pitt himself, who was suffering from his great
enemy, the gout, at Bath, was passed over. No sooner did he meet with
Fox in the House of Commons, than he said aloud, "Sir Thomas Robinson
lead us! Newcastle might as well send his jack-boot to lead us!" No
sooner did the unfortunate Sir Thomas open his mouth, than Pitt fell
with crushing sarcasm upon him; and Fox completed his confusion by
pretending to excuse him on account of his twenty years' absence
abroad, and his consequent utter ignorance of all matters before
the House. Soon after, Pitt made a most overwhelming speech, on the
occasion of a petition against the return of a Government candidate by
bribery, and called on Whigs of all sections to come forward and defend
the liberties of the country, unless, he said, "you will degenerate
into a little assembly, serving no other purpose than to register the
arbitrary edicts of one too powerful subject!" This was a blow at
Newcastle, which, coming from a colleague in office, made both him and
his puppets in the Commons, Legge and Robinson, tremble. Newcastle
saw clearly that he must soon dismount Robinson from his dangerous
altitude, and give the place to Fox.
The new Parliament reassembled on the 14th of November, and the king in
his speech, whilst pretending the differences which had arisen between
us, France, and Spain were by no means serious, yet called for enlarged
supplies to defend our American territories against the designs of
these Powers. In fact, matters were becoming very serious in our
American colonies; but the Government withheld the real facts from the
knowledge of the public, and it was not till the opening of Parliament,
in March, 1755, that they candidly avowed that war was inevitable. The
French and English were actually engaged in war both in the East Indies
and in America. In the East Indies there was just now an apparent pause
in hostilities, through an agreement between the two Companies; but in
North America matters daily grew worse. There were, and had been ever
since the Peace, violent disputes as to the boundary-lines both of Nova
Scotia--produce of the tax was seven hundred Acadia--and between Canada and
our colony of New England. The French, becoming more and more daring,
commenced the erection of forts in the valley of the Ohio, to connect
the settlements on the St. Lawrence with those on the Mississippi. They
had already erected one called Duquesne, greatly to the indignation of
the inhabitants of Pennsylvania and Virginia. In Nova Scotia, Major
Lawrence, with one thousand men, defeated the French and their Indian
allies; but, on the other hand, the French surprised and sacked Block's
Town, on the Ohio, belonging to the Virginians, who sent forward Major
George Washington to attack Fort Duquesne. Washington, destined to
acquire the greatest name in the New World, marched with four hundred
men, but was surprised at a place called Great Meadows, and was glad to
capitulate on condition of retiring with military honours (1754).
At this crisis, when an able diplomatist at Paris might have avoided
a great war, the Earl of Albemarle, who never had been an able or
attentive ambassador, but a mere man of pleasure, died; and though
George II. was so well aware of the gathering storm that he sent a
message to the House of Commons announcing the necessity for increased
forces, and, consequently, increased supplies, nothing could induce
him to forego his usual summer journey to Hanover. The Commons readily
voted a million and a half, but made an energetic protest against the
king quitting the country in the circumstances. Besides the state of
affairs in France and Spain, those of Ireland were very disturbed. The
Duke of Dorset, the Lord-Lieutenant, was recalled, and Lord Harrington
sent in his place to endeavour to restore order. Lord Poulett,
therefore, moved a resolution against George's journey; but it was
overruled, and the infatuated king set out in April, attended by Lord
Holderness.
The day before George embarked, Admiral Boscawen set sail, with
eleven ships of the line and two regiments of soldiers, to intercept
the French fleet, which had sailed from Rochefort and Brest to carry
reinforcements to the Canadians. Boscawen was to attack and destroy
the French, if possible. Boscawen came up with the French fleet on
the banks of Newfoundland, but a thick fog hid them from each other.
Captain Howe, afterwards Lord Howe, and Captain Andrews, however,
descried and captured two of the French men-of-war, containing eight
thousand pounds in money, and many officers and engineers; but the rest
of the fleet, under Admiral Bois de la Motte, warned by the firing,
got safe into the harbour of Louisburg.
On the arrival of this news the French Court complained bitterly of the
violation of the peace, to which the Court of St. James's replied that
the French had too prominently set the example, and the ambassadors
on both sides were recalled--an equivalent to a declaration of war,
though none on either side yet followed. We had soon a severe reverse
instead of a victory to record. General Braddock had been despatched
against Fort Duquesne, and had reached Great Meadows, the scene of
Washington's defeat in the preceding summer. Braddock was a general of
the Hawley school--brave enough, but, like him, brutal and careless.
His soldiers hated him for his severity. The Indians resented so much
the haughtiness with which he treated them, that they had most of
them deserted him; and, as was the fatal habit of English commanders
then and long afterwards, he had the utmost contempt for what were
called "Provincials" (that is, Colonists), supposing that all sense
and knowledge existed in England, and that the English, just arrived,
knew more about America than natives who had spent their lives in
it. He therefore marched on into the woods, utterly despising all
warnings against the Indians in alliance with the French. At Great
Meadows he found it necessary, from the nature of the woods and the
want of roads, to leave behind him all his heavy baggage, and part of
his troops to guard it, and he proceeded with only one thousand two
hundred men and ten pieces of artillery. On the 9th of July, 1755,
having arrived within ten miles of Fort Duqnesne, he still neglected
to send out scouts, and thus rashly entering the mouth of a deep woody
defile, he found himself assaulted by a murderous fire in front and
on both flanks. His enemies were Indians assisted by a few French,
who, accustomed to that mode of fighting, aimed from the thickets and
behind trees, and picked off his officers, whom they recognised by
their dress, without themselves being visible. Without attempting to
draw out of the ambush, and advance with proper precautions, Braddock
rushed deeper into it, and displayed a desperate but useless courage.
Now was the time for his Indians to have encountered his enemies in
their own mode of battle, had his pride not driven them away. After
having three horses killed under him, in the vain endeavour to come at
his foes, he was shot, and his troops retreated in all haste, leaving
behind them their artillery and seven hundred of their comrades on
the ground. Their retreat was protected by the "provincial" George
Washington--whose advice had been unheeded--or the slaughter would have
been greater.
The news of Braddock's defeat, reaching London whilst the king was
still absent, caused a great panic and want of decision. Sir Edward
Hawke had been despatched with a fleet of eighteen sail in July to
intercept the return of the French fleet from Canada, but, hampered by
contradictory orders, he only took prizes; and now Admiral Byng, in
October, was sent out with twenty-six more, but both failed in their
object. Our privateer cruisers had done more execution in the West
Indies. They had nearly annihilated the trade of the French in those
islands, and, according to Smollett, captured, before the end of the
year, three hundred French vessels, and brought into the English ports
eight thousand French seamen.
As the French now made vigorous preparations for war, George II. began
to tremble for Hanover, and put out all his energies to accomplish
fresh alliances--of course, at the cost of fresh subsidies to be paid
by England. Hesse-Cassel, the Empress of Russia, and even his old
enemy, Frederick of Prussia, were applied to, and engaged, by promises
of English money, in defence of Hanover. George was especially afraid
of Frederick, who was bound by no ties where his interest was at stake,
and who, if not retained at a high rate, might fall on Hanover as he
had done on Silesia. In gaining Frederick, however, George lost his old
ally, Austria, which, forgetting all past obligations, immediately made
alliance with France.
When the subsidy to Hesse-Cassel was sent home to receive the
signatures of the Cabinet, it was found to amount to an annual
payment by England of one hundred and fifty thousand crowns, besides
eighty crowns to every horseman, and thirty crowns to every foot
soldier, when they were really called out to service. That to Russia
was immensely greater; then came in prospective that to Saxony, to
Bavaria, etc. These latter States had been fed all through the last
few years for doing nothing, and now demanded vastly higher terms.
Yet when the Hessian Treaty was laid on the Council table by the
compliant Newcastle, Ministers signed it without reading it. Pitt and
Fox, however, protested against it; and when the Treasury warrants
for carrying the treaty into execution were sent down to Legge, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, he refused to sign them.
This was a thunderstroke to Newcastle--Legge, who had been so pliant,
thus to rebel. Newcastle, in his consternation, hastened to Pitt,
imploring him to use his influence with Legge, and promising him the
Seals as Secretary, engaging to remove all prejudice from the king's
mind. But not only Pitt, but the public, had been long asking whether,
in these critical times, everything was to be sacrificed for the
sake of this old grasping jobber at the Treasury? whether Newcastle
was to endanger the whole nation by keeping out of office all men of
talent? Pitt stood firm: no offers, no temptations, could move him.
Newcastle, finding Pitt unmanageable, flew to Fox, who accepted the
Seals on condition of having proper powers conceded to him, and agreed
to support the treaties, against which he had been equally as violent
as Pitt, having just before said to Dodington, "I am surprised you are
not against all subsidies." Robinson was consoled with a pension of two
thousand pounds a year and the post of Master of the Wardrobe. The king
had returned from Hanover, and Fox was not to receive the Seals till
two days after the meeting of Parliament, so that he might keep his
place and support the Address. By his accession to office he changed
the violence of the opposition of the Duke of Bedford, and brought the
support of the Russells to the Ministry. This strength, however, did
not prevent the certainty of a breakup of the Cabinet. Pitt was now
arrayed against his former colleagues.
Whilst things were in this position, Parliament met on the 13th of
November. The great question on which the fate of the Ministry depended
was that of the subsidies to Hesse and Russia. It was something new
to see not merely an ordinary opposition, but the Chancellor of the
Exchequer and the Paymaster of the Forces--Legge and Pitt--ranging
themselves against the king and their colleagues on this question. In
the House of Lords the Address in reply to the royal speech, which
implied approbation of these subsidies, was supported by Newcastle,
Hardwicke, and the Duke of Bedford, who hitherto, since quitting
office, had opposed everything, and was opposed by Lords Temple and
Halifax. But the great struggle was in the Commons. The debate began
at two in the afternoon, and continued till five the next morning--the
longest hitherto recorded, except the one on the Westminster election
in 1741. On this occasion William Gerard Hamilton made his first and
almost last speech, which acquired him promotion in the Government of
Ireland, and the cognomen of "Single-speech Hamilton." Murray spoke
splendidly in defence of the subsidies; but Pitt, rising at one o'clock
in the morning, after sitting eleven hours in that heated atmosphere,
burst out upon the whole system of German subsidies with a tempest of
eloquence which held the House in astonished awe. He denounced the
whole practice of feeing the little German potentates as monstrous,
useless, absurd, and desperate: an eternal drain on England for no
single atom of benefit. He compared the union of Newcastle and Fox to
the union of the Rhône and Saône--a boisterous and impetuous torrent,
with a shallow, languid, and muddy stream. But though Pitt's eloquence
dismayed and confounded Ministers, it could not prevent their majority.
The Address was carried by three hundred and eleven votes against
one hundred and five; and it was now clear that Pitt must quit the
Cabinet. In fact, in a very few days, not only he, but Legge and George
Grenville, were summarily dismissed, and James Grenville, the other
brother, resigned his seat at the Board of Trade.
The year 1756 opened with menaces to England of the most serious
nature. The imbecility of the Ministry was beginning to tell in the
neglect of its colonies and its defences. France threatened to invade
us, and a navy of fifty thousand men was suddenly voted, and an army
of thirty-four thousand two hundred and sixty-three of native troops;
but as these were not ready, it was agreed to bring over eight thousand
Hessians and Hanoverians. To pay for all this it was necessary to grant
excessive supplies, and lay on new duties and taxes. In presenting
the money bills in the month of May, Speaker Onslow could not avoid
remarking that there were two circumstances which tended to create
alarm--foreign subsidies and foreign troops introduced, and nothing
but their confidence in his Majesty could allay their fears, or give
them confidence that their burdens would be soon reduced. There was,
in fact, no chance for any such reduction, for wars, troubles, and
disgraces were gathering around from various quarters. The first
reverse came from the Mediterranean.
[Illustration: DEFEAT OF GENERAL BRADDOCK IN THE INDIAN AMBUSH. (_See
p._ 119.)]
The French had always beheld with jealousy our possession of the island
of Minorca, which had been won by General Stanhope in 1708, and secured
to us by the Peace of Utrecht. That England should possess the finest
port in the Mediterranean, and that so near their own shores, was a
subject of unceasing chagrin. The miserable administration of British
affairs, the constant attention to the interests of Hanover instead of
our own, now inspired France with the resolve to snatch the prize from
us. Great preparations were made for this object, and the report of
these as duly conveyed to the English Ministers by the consuls in both
Spain and Italy, but in vain. At length the certainty that the French
were about to sail for Minorca burst on the miserable Ministers; but
it was too late--they had nothing in readiness. The port of Mahon was
almost destitute of a garrison; the governor, Lord Tyrawley, was in
England; and the deputy-governor, General Blakeney, though brave, as he
had shown himself at the siege of Stirling, was old, nearly disabled
by his infirmities, and deficient in troops. What was still worse, all
the colonels were absent from the regiments stationed there, and other
officers also--altogether thirty-five!
The alarmed Ministers now mustered what ships they could, and
despatched Admiral Byng with them from Spithead on the 7th of April.
The whole of these ships amounted only to ten, in a half rotten
condition and badly manned; and they commenced their voyage only three
days before the French armament issued from Toulon, the English having
to cross the Bay of Biscay, and traverse two hundred leagues of the
Mediterranean, whilst the French had only seventy leagues to travel
altogether. The French armament consisted of twelve ships of the line,
and numerous transports, under Admiral La Galissonière, consisting
of sixteen thousand men, under the command of the Duke de Richelieu.
General Blakeney received news of the approach of this fleet by means
of a fast-sailing sloop, and began in all activity to prepare for
his defence. He collected his forces into the castle of St. Philip,
commanding the town and harbour of Mahon, calling in five companies
from Ciudadela. All his troops, however, amounted only to two thousand
eight hundred. He had large quantities of cattle driven into the fort,
flour and bakers were got in, the ports blocked up, and he sank a sloop
in the channel to obstruct the entrance to the harbour. The French
fleet appeared off port Ciudadela on the 18th of April, but Byng did
not come in sight till the 19th of May--a month after--and then he came
disappointed and dispirited. There was a mutual attempt made by Byng
and by Blakeney to effect communication, but it does not appear to have
been of a determined character, and it failed. La Galissonière was now
bearing down on Byng, and the next day, the 20th of May, the two fleets
confronted each other. Byng, about two o'clock, gave the signal to
Rear-Admiral West to engage, which West did with such impetuosity, that
he drove several of the French ships out of line. But Byng himself did
not follow the example of West; he hung back, and thereby prevented
West from following up his advantage. It was in vain that Byng's own
captain urged him to advance; he pretended that it could not be done
without throwing his ships out of regular line; and he kept at such a
distance that his vessel, a noble ship carrying ninety guns, never was
fairly in action at all, and had not a single man killed or wounded.
Thus deserted, West was compelled to fall back; and La Galissonière,
who showed no disposition to continue the fight, sailed away. Byng
retired to Gibraltar.
At the sight of Byng sailing away, the French fired a _feu de joie_
from all their lines, and Blakeney knew that he was left to his fate.
He determined still to defend the place, but Richelieu sent in haste to
Toulon for fresh reinforcements. The fort was soon surrounded by twenty
thousand men, with eighty-five pieces of artillery. In about a week
Richelieu carried one of the breaches by storm, though with great loss,
and Blakeney capitulated on condition that the English should march out
with all the honours of war, and should be conveyed in the French ships
to Gibraltar. Thus was Minorca lost to England through the shameful
neglect of a miserably incompetent Ministry and a faint-hearted admiral.
The tidings of this disaster roused the people of England to a pitch
of desperation. The Ministers were condemned for their gross neglect
and imbecile procrastination, and Byng was execrated as a coward and
a traitor. Meanwhile, the most culpable man of all, Newcastle, was
trembling with terror, and endeavouring to find a scapegoat somewhere.
Fox was equally trembling, lest Newcastle should make that scapegoat
of him. He declared to Dodington that he had urged Newcastle to send
succour to Minorca as early as Christmas, and that Cumberland had
joined him in urging this, to no purpose. He asserted that Newcastle
ought to answer for it. "Yes," replied Dodington, "unless he can find
some one to make a scapegoat of." This was the very fear that was
haunting Fox, and he hastened, in October, to the king, and resigned
the seals. This was a severe blow to Newcastle, and he immediately
thought of Murray to succeed him; but, unfortunately, Sir Dudley Ryder,
the Lord Chief Justice, just then having died, Murray had fixed his
ambition on occupying his seat on the bench. They were obliged to
give it to him, with the title of Mansfield, or make a mortal enemy
of him. Newcastle then thought of conciliating Pitt. Pitt refused to
belong to any Ministry at all in which Newcastle remained. Newcastle,
in his perplexity, next tried Lord Egmont, and even old Granville, but
both declined the honour; and not a man being to be found who would
serve under him, he was compelled most reluctantly to resign. He had
certainly presided over the destinies of the nation far too long.
The king now thought of placing Fox at the head of a new
administration; but when Fox asked Pitt to join, he refused, and the
king was obliged to send for Pitt, much as he hated him. Pitt replied
that he was laid up with the gout--a complaint which troubled him,
but which he frequently found it convenient to assume. George then
prevailed upon the Duke of Devonshire, a man of no commanding ability,
and averse from office, but of the highest integrity of character, to
accept the post of First Lord of the Treasury, and to form a Cabinet.
Though the friend of Fox, he felt that statesman to be too unpopular
for a colleague, and offered Pitt the seals of Secretary of State,
which he accepted; Legge was re-appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer;
Pitt's brother-in-law, Lord Temple, First Lord of the Admiralty;
Temple's brother, George Grenville, Treasurer of the Navy; another
brother, James Grenville, again was seated at the Treasury Board; Lord
Holderness was the second Secretary of State, to oblige the king;
Willes, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; the Duke of Bedford was made
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, it was said by Fox's suggestion, as a thorn
in the flesh to Pitt, and, as Horace Walpole sarcastically remarked,
Pitt had not Grenville cousins enough to fill the whole Administration;
Charles Townshend was made Treasurer of the Chamber, though his talents
and eloquence, in which he excited Pitt's jealousy, deserved a much
higher office.
The Ministry being complete, Parliament met on the 2nd of December.
It was found that the new Administration had not that influence in
the boroughs that Newcastle, who had cultivated it, had; and several
members of the Cabinet, Pitt amongst them, had difficulty in getting
returned, as was the case with Charles Townshend. In the king's
speech, his Majesty was made to speak of the militia, which he was
known by everybody to hold in sovereign contempt, as the best and most
constitutional means of national defence. He announced also that he
had ordered the return of the Hanoverian troops to their own country;
and the Duke of Devonshire inserted in the Address from the Lords an
expression of thanks for having brought these troops over. Pitt had
declared that he would quit the Cabinet if such a vote was passed, and
Temple came hurrying down to the House--Pitt being absent from the
Commons with the gout--and declared that he had quitted a sick bed
to protest against it. This was an unlucky beginning. It was clear
that there was want of unity in the Cabinet at its very birth, and
out-of-doors the people were loudly complaining of the scarcity of
food, and bread riots were frequent. The king himself could not help
ridiculing the speech his new Ministers had composed for him; and a
poor printer being arrested for putting another speech into his mouth,
George said he hoped the man might receive very lenient punishment,
for, as far as he could understand either of the speeches, he thought
the printer's the best. To abate the ferment out-of-doors, the Commons
passed two Bills: one prohibiting the export of grain, flour, or
biscuit; the other prohibiting, for several months, distillation from
wheat or barley.
But though Pitt protested against thanking the king for bringing over
Hanoverian troops, he found it necessary to support the king's German
treaties and alliances, which were avowedly for the defence of Hanover.
Fox reminded him of his favourite phrase, that Hanover was a millstone
round the neck of England; but it was not the first time that Pitt had
had to stand the taunt of eating his own words, and he braved it out,
especially voting two hundred thousand pounds to Frederick of Prussia.
A wonderful revolution in Continental politics had now converted this
long-hostile nephew of George II. into an ally, if not a friend.
The Empress Maria Theresa, never reconciling herself to the seizure of
Silesia by Frederick, and not finding England disposed to renew a war
for the object of recovering it, applied to her old enemy, France. It
required some ability to accomplish this object of detaching France
from its ancient policy of hostility to Austria, pursued ever since
the days of Henry IV., and in severing the alliance with Prussia; but
her Minister, Kaunitz, who had been her ambassador in Paris, contrived
to effect it. The temptation was thrown out of the surrender of Belgic
provinces to augment France, in return for assistance in recovering
German possessions from Prussia. To add fresh stimulus to this
change, the vengeance of offended woman was brought into play. Madame
Pompadour, Louis XV.'s all-powerful mistress, had sent flattering
compliments to Frederick by Voltaire; but the Prussian king only repaid
them with sneers. On the other hand, the virtuous Maria Theresa did
not blush to write, with her own hand, the most flattering epistles
to the Pompadour. By these means, the thirst of revenge raised in
the heart of the French mistress worked successfully the breach with
Prussia and the alliance with Austria. The same stimulus was tried,
and with equal effect, on the Czarina Elizabeth, on whose amorous
licence the cynical Prussian monarch had been equally jocose. Kaunitz
knew how to make the sting of these ungallant sallies felt at both
Paris and St. Petersburg, and the winter of 1755-6 saw the Russian
alliance with Prussia and England renounced, the English subsidy,
with far more than German probity, renounced too, and Russia pledged
to support Austria and France. The Elector of Saxony, Augustus, King
of Poland, who amused himself with low pot-house companions and tame
bears, and left his affairs to his minister, Count Brühl, was also
induced, by the promise of Prussian territory, to join the league; and
even Sweden, whose queen, Ulrica, was sister to Frederick, was drawn
over to take side against him, in the hope of recovering its ancient
province of Pomerania. This confederation of ninety millions of people,
leagued against five millions, was pronounced by Pitt "one of the most
powerful and malignant ones that ever yet threatened the independence
of mankind."
The confederates endeavoured to keep their plans profoundly secret till
they were ready to burst at once on the devoted King of Prussia; but
Frederick was the last man alive to be taken by surprise. The secret
was soon betrayed to him, and, at once waiving his dislike of the King
of England, he concluded a convention with him in January, 1756, and
bound himself, during the disturbances in America, not to allow any
foreign troops to pass through any part of Germany to those colonies,
where he could prevent it. Having his treasury well supplied, he put
his army in order, and in August of that year sent a peremptory demand
to Vienna as to the designs of Austria, stating, at the same time, that
he would not accept any evasive reply; but the reply being evasive, he
at once rushed into Saxony at the head of sixty thousand men, blockaded
the King of Saxony in Pirna, and secured the queen in Dresden. By this
decisive action Frederick commenced what the Germans style "The Seven
Years' War." In the palace of Dresden Frederick made himself master
of the secret correspondence and treaties with France, Russia, and
Austria, detailing all their designs, which he immediately published,
and thus fully justified his proceedings to the world.
The Austrians advanced under Marshal Braun, an officer of English
extraction, against Frederick, but after a hard-fought battle at
Lowositz, on the 1st of October, Frederick beat them, and soon after
compelled the Saxon army, seventeen thousand strong, to surrender at
Pirna. The King of Saxony, who had taken refuge in the lofty rock
fortress of Königstein, surrendered too, on condition of being allowed
to retire to Warsaw, and Frederick established his headquarters for the
winter at Dresden, levying heavy contributions throughout Saxony.
During this year little was done in America. General Bradstreet
defeated a body of the enemy on the River Onondaga, and, on the other
hand, the French took the two small forts of Ontario and Oswego.
The year 1757 opened amid very gloomy auspices. War, of a wide and
formidable character, was commencing in Europe, and the House of
Commons was called on to vote no less than eight million three hundred
thousand pounds for the supplies of the year, and to order fifty-five
thousand men for the sea service, and forty-five thousand for the
land. The National Debt had now reached seventy-two million pounds,
and was destined to a heavy and rapid increase. Pitt commenced the
admirable plan recommended years before by Duncan Forbes, of raising
Highland regiments from the lately disaffected clans. The militia
was remodelled, it was increased to thirty-four thousand, and it was
proposed to exercise the men on Sunday afternoons, to facilitate their
progress in discipline; but an outcry from the Dissenters put a stop
to this. Serious riots, moreover, were the consequences of forcing
such a number of men from their homes and occupations in the militia
ranks; and the public discontent was raised to a crisis by the voting
of two hundred thousand pounds, avowedly for the protection of Hanover.
A measure which the nation beheld with astonishment Pitt himself
introduced, notwithstanding his many thunderings against the Hanover
millstone.
Amid these angry feelings Admiral Byng was brought to trial. The
court-martial was held at Plymouth. It commenced in December, 1756, and
lasted the greater part of the month of January of the following year.
After a long and patient examination, the Court came to the decision
that Byng had not done his utmost to defeat the French fleet or relieve
the castle of St. Philip. The Court, however, sent to the Admiralty in
London to know whether they were at liberty to mitigate the twelfth
Article of War, which had been established by an Act of Parliament of
the twenty-second year of the present reign, making neglect of duty as
much deserving death as treason or cowardice. They were answered in
the negative, and therefore they passed sentence on Byng to be shot on
board such of his Majesty's ships of war and at such time as the Lords
of the Admiralty should decide.
[Illustration: LONDON BRIDGE IN 1760.]
No sooner was the sentence passed than his judges were seized with a
vehement desire to procure a pardon for the admiral. They made the
most urgent entreaties to the Admiralty for that purpose, and Captain
Augustus Keppel authorised Horace Walpole to say that he and four
others of the members of the Council had something of importance to
communicate, and desired to be relieved from their oath of secresy. The
House of Commons was quite ready to pass a Bill for the purpose, and
the king respited the admiral till all such inquiries had been made.
But when the Bill had been passed by one hundred and fifty-three to
twenty-three, it turned out that these five officers had nothing of
consequence to disclose. Still Lord Temple, who was at the head of the
Admiralty, was greatly averse from the carrying out of the sentence,
which, in fact, was much disproportioned to the crime. Pitt also
interceded with the king, and renewed applications were made to the
Admiralty; but, on the other hand, the people were smarting under the
loss of Minorca, and demanded the execution of the sentence. Hand-bills
were posted up, "_Hang Byng, or take care of the King._" The House of
Lords, when the Commons' Bill was carried up to them, however, settled
the matter. Murray and Lord Hardwicke demanded of every member of the
court-martial at the bar of the House whether they knew of any matter
which showed their sentence to be unjust, or to have been influenced by
any undue motive; and as all declared they did not, the Lords dismissed
the Bill. The sentence was therefore fixed for execution on the 14th
of March. Byng, both during the trial, and now when brought on board
the _Monarch_ in Portsmouth Harbour to be shot, showed no symptoms
of fear. When one of his friends, to prevent a man from coming in to
measure Byng for his coffin, said, standing up by him, "Which of us is
the taller?" Byng immediately replied, "Why this ceremony? I know what
it means; let the man measure me for a coffin." On the deck he wished
to have his eyes left unbound; but when told it might frighten the
soldiers and distract their aim, he said, "Let it be done, then; if it
would not frighten them, they would not frighten me." He fell dead at
the discharge (March 14, 1757).
Cumberland was now appointed to command the troops in Hanover
intended to co-operate with Prussia against France and Austria; but
he had an intuitive dread of Pitt, and was very unwilling to quit
the kingdom whilst that formidable man was Paymaster of the Forces.
He therefore never rested till the king dismissed him from office.
George himself required little urging. He had always hated Pitt for
his anti-Hanoverian spirit; nor had his conduct in office, however
respectful, done away with his dislike. George, therefore, was desirous
to get rid of the able Pitt and recall the imbecile Newcastle. He
complained that Pitt made harangues, even in the simplest matters
of business, which he could not comprehend; and as for Lord Temple,
his brother-in-law, he declared him to be pert and insolent. George
therefore sent Lord Waldegrave to Newcastle to invite him to return
to office, saying, "Tell him I do not look upon myself as king whilst
I am in the hands of these scoundrels, and am determined to be rid of
them at any rate." Newcastle longed to regain his favour, but he was
afraid of a notice made in the House of Commons for an inquiry into
the causes of the loss of Minorca. The king, nevertheless, dismissed
Temple and Pitt, and Legge and others resigned. Cumberland, in great
delight, then embarked for Hanover, thinking the main difficulty over;
but, in fact, it had only just begun. The inquiry into the Minorca
affair was, indeed, so managed that it did not absolutely condemn the
Ministry of Newcastle, neither did it fully acquit them; whilst, at the
same time, the public were highly incensed at the dismissal of Pitt,
whom they rightly deemed the only man in the two Houses with abilities
capable of conducting the affairs of the nation successfully. Addresses
and presentations of the freedom of their cities came pouring in on
Pitt from all the great towns of the kingdom. Horace Walpole said it
literally rained gold boxes. Legge, as the firm ally of Pitt, received
also his share of these honours.
But for Newcastle to form a Cabinet was no such easy matter. Pitt
refused to take office with him unless he had the whole management of
the war and foreign affairs. The king then agreed to send for Henry
Fox, who accepted the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer; but
Newcastle was so sensible of Fox's unpopularity that he was terrified
at undertaking an Administration with Fox and without Pitt, though he
was equally reluctant to let a Cabinet be formed without the former.
For three months the fruitless endeavours to accomplish a Ministry
went on, Parliament sitting all the time, and a great war commencing.
Finally, the king and Newcastle were compelled to submit to the terms
of "the Great Commoner," as they called Pitt, who became Secretary of
State, with the management of the war and foreign affairs. Newcastle
became again First Lord of the Treasury, but without one of his old
supporters, and Legge Chancellor of the Exchequer; Holderness, a mere
cipher, was the other Secretary of State; Anson was placed at the head
of the Admiralty; Lord Temple was made Lord Privy Seal; and Pratt, an
able lawyer and friend of Pitt, Attorney-General. Fox condescended to
take the office of Paymaster of the Forces; and thus, after a long and
severe struggle, the feeble aristocrats, who had so long managed and
disgraced the country, were compelled to admit fresh blood into the
Government in the person of Pitt. But they still entertained the idea
that they only were the men, and that wisdom would die with them. One
and all, even the otherwise sagacious Chesterfield, prognosticated only
dishonour and ruin for such a plebeian appointment. "We are no longer a
nation," said Chesterfield; "I never yet saw so dreadful a prospect."
And, for some time, events seemed to justify these apprehensions
by the old governing class. Not a plan of Pitt's but failed. His
first enterprise was one of that species that has almost universally
failed--a descent on the coast of France. Early in September a fleet
of sixteen ships of the line, attended by transports and frigates, was
despatched to Rochefort, carrying ten regiments of foot, under the
command of Sir John Mordaunt. Sir Edward Hawke commanded the fleet, and
the troops were landed on a small fortified island named Aix, at the
mouth of the Charente. There, in spite of strict orders, the English
soldiers and sailors became awfully drunk, and committed shocking
excesses and cruelties on the inhabitants. The rumour of this made the
forces in Rochefort furious for vengeance; and when the army was to
be landed within a few miles of the place in order to its attack, as
usual in such cases, the admiral and general came to an open quarrel.
Mordaunt betrayed great timidity, and demanded of Hawke how the troops,
in case of failure, were to be brought off again. Hawke replied, that
must depend on wind and tide--an answer which by no means reassured
Mordaunt. General Conway, next in command to Mordaunt, was eager for
advancing to the attack; and Colonel Wolfe--afterwards the conqueror
of Quebec--offered to make himself master of Rochefort with three
ships of war and five hundred men at his disposal. The brave offer
was rejected, but the report of it at once pointed out Wolfe to Pitt
as one of the men whom he was on the look-out to work with. Howe, the
next in command to Hawke, proposed to batter down the fort of Fouras
before advancing on Rochefort; but Mordaunt adopted the resort of all
timid commanders--a council of war--which wasted the time in which the
assault should have been made, and then it was declared useless to
attempt it; the fortifications of Aix were destroyed, and the fleet put
back. Mordaunt, like Byng, was brought before a court-martial, but with
very different results. He was honourably acquitted--perhaps, under the
atrocious 12th Article of War, the Court feared even to censure; and
it was said by the people that Byng was shot for not doing enough, and
Mordaunt acquitted for doing nothing at all.
In North America matters were still more unprosperous. Lord Loudon
had raised twelve thousand men for the purpose of taking Louisburg
and driving the French from our frontiers; but he did nothing, not
even preventing the attack of Marshal Montcalm, the Commander-in-Chief
in Canada, on Fort William Henry, which he destroyed, thus leaving
unprotected the position of New York. At the same time, Admiral
Holbourne, who was to have attacked the French squadron off Louisburg,
did not venture to do it, because he said they had eighteen ships to
his seventeen, and a greater weight of metal.
Such was the condition into which an army and navy, once illustrious
through the victories of Marlborough and Blake, were reduced by the
aristocratic imbecility of the Newcastles, Bedfords, and Cumberlands.
This last princely general had, in fact, put the climax to his career.
He had placed himself at the head of fifty thousand confederate
troops, in which there were no English, except the officers of his own
staff, to defend his father's Electorate of Hanover. But this ruthless
general, who never won a battle except the solitary one of Culloden,
against a handful of famished men, was found totally incompetent to
cope with the French general, d'Estrées. He allowed the French to cross
the deep and rapid Weser, and continued to fall back before them as
they entered the Electorate, until he was driven to the village of
Hastenbeck, near Hameln, where the enemy overtook and defeated him.
He then continued his retreat across the desolate Lüneburg Heath, to
cover Stade, near the mouth of the Elbe, where the archives and other
valuable effects of Hanover had been deposited for safety. At this time
Richelieu succeeded to the command of d'Estrées in this quarter, and
he continued to drive Cumberland before him, taking Hameln, Göttingen,
and Hanover itself, and soon after Bremen and Verden. Thus were Hanover
and Verden, which had cost England such millions to defend, seized by
France; nor did the disgrace end here. Cumberland was cooped up in
Stade, and compelled, on the 8th of December, to sign a convention at
Closter-Seven, by which he engaged to send home the Hesse and Brunswick
troops, and to disperse the Hanoverians into different quarters, not to
serve again during the war.
Meanwhile, Frederick of Prussia was waging a tremendous war with
France, Russia, and Austria. To disable Austria before her allies
could come up to her aid, he suddenly, in April, made an eruption
into Bohemia. His army threaded the defiles of the mountains of the
Bohemian frontier in different divisions, and united before Prague,
where Marshal Braun and Prince Charles of Lorraine met him with eighty
thousand men, his own forces amounting to about seventy thousand. A
most obstinate and sanguinary conflict took place, which continued from
nine in the morning till eight at night, in which twenty-four thousand
Austrians were killed, wounded, or taken prisoners, and eighteen
thousand Prussians. The Prussians were destitute of pontoons to cross
the Moldau, or their writers contend that not an Austrian would have
escaped. But Marshal Daun advancing out of Moravia with another strong
army, to which sixteen thousand of the fugitives from Prague had united
themselves, Frederick was compelled to abandon the siege of Prague, and
march to near Kolin, where he was thoroughly defeated by Daun, with a
loss of thirteen thousand of his bravest troops.
This was a blow which for a time completely prostrated the Prussian
monarch. Nothing but the most indomitable spirit and the highest
military talent could have saved any man under such circumstances. But
Frederick had disciplined both his generals and soldiers to despise
reverses, and he relied on their keeping at bay the host of enemies
with which he was surrounded till he had tried a last blow. On the
field of Rosbach, near the plain of Lützen, where Gustavus Adolphus
fell, after having relieved Marshal Keith at Leipsic, Frederick gave
battle to the united French and Austrians. The French numbered forty
thousand men, the Austrians twenty thousand; yet, with his twenty
thousand against sixty thousand, Frederick, on the 5th of November,
took the field. His inferior numbers favoured the stratagem which he
had planned. After fighting fiercely for awhile, his troops gave way,
and appeared to commence a hasty retreat. This, however, was continued
only till the French and Austrians were thrown off their guard, when
the Prussians suddenly turned, and received the headlong squadrons
with a murderous coolness and composure. The Austrians, confounded,
fled at once; and Soubise, a general of the princely House of Rohan,
who owed his appointment to Madame Pompadour, was totally incapable of
coping with the Prussian veterans. He saw his troops flying in wild
rout, and galloped off with them, leaving a vast number of slain, seven
thousand prisoners, and the greater part of his baggage, artillery, and
standards in the hands of the enemy.
The Battle of Rosbach raised the fame of Frederick wonderfully all
over Europe. He soon roused himself, however, for fresh efforts.
Whilst he had been thus engaged on the Saale, the Austrians had again
overrun Silesia, defeating the Prussians under the Duke of Bevern,
storming the great fortress of Schweidnitz, and making themselves
masters of Breslau, the capital. In spite of his reduced numbers and
the advancing winter, Frederick immediately directed his march towards
Silesia, gathering reinforcements as he went, so that by the 5th of
December, just one month from the Battle of Rosbach, he came up with
Prince Charles of Lorraine and Marshal Daun at Lissa, a small village
near Breslau, and with forty thousand men encountered and defeated
nearly seventy thousand Austrians, killing and wounding twenty-seven
thousand of them, taking above fifty standards, one hundred cannon,
four thousand waggons, and much other spoil. This battle at once freed
Silesia from the Austrians, who trooped over the mountains in all
haste, and left the victorious king to close this unexampled campaign.
To add to the fame of Frederick, news arrived that Marshal Lewald, with
twenty thousand Prussians, had beaten the great horde of Russians at
Jägerndorf, and driven them out of Prussia, with the single exception
of Memel; that Lewald and Manteuffel had swept the Swedes out of
Pomerania, taking three thousand prisoners; and that Prince Henry of
Prussia and Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, to whom Frederick, at the
urgent request of England, had entrusted the command of the Hanoverian
and Hessian troops which Cumberland had abandoned, had, with these
very troops, driven the French from Lüneburg, Zell, and Hanover. These
troops, it is true, were bound by the Convention of Closter-Seven
not to fight again during the war; but the generals pleaded that the
cruelties and rapacity of the French in Hanover were such as set aside
all compacts.
Pitt, though he remained determined against our continuing to send
soldiers to Germany, was so elated at the success of Frederick that,
on the meeting of Parliament, on the 1st of December, he supported
the vote of six hundred and seventy thousand pounds as a subsidy to
Prussia, George having entered into a new convention with Frederick
to defend his Electorate. Pitt, on the same occasion, pronounced a
glowing eulogium on Clive's proceedings in India. This great Minister
had, in fact, formed the most extensive designs for the colonial
aggrandisement of England, and the repulse of France in those quarters.
At his suggestion, Lord Loudon had been sent to North America, and
as he had failed to render any service, General Abercrombie had gone
out to supersede him. Pitt already, however, had his eye on a young
officer, Wolfe, whom he deemed the true hero for that service; whilst,
on the opposite side of the globe, he was watching the proceedings
of another young officer with immense pleasure--namely, Clive. These
two remarkable men, under the fostering genius of Pitt, were destined
to destroy the ascendency of France in those regions, and to lay
the foundations of British power on a scale of splendour beyond all
previous conception.
[Illustration: LORD CLIVE. (_After the Portrait by Gainsborough._)]
Clive, a young clerk of the Company's, at Madras, had deserted his
desk, taken a commission, and, as early as 1748, had distinguished
himself by baffling the French commanders Dupleix and Bussy, at
Pondicherry. In 1751 he had taken Arcot from Chunda Sahib, the Viceroy
of the Carnatic, and, aided by the Mahrattas, defeated Rajah Sahib,
the son of Chunda, in a splendid victory at Arnee. In 1752 he raised
the siege of Trichinopoly, where the Nabob of Arcot was besieged by
the French. In 1755, landing at Bombay from England, he, with Admiral
Watson, made an expedition to Gheriah, the stronghold of the celebrated
pirate Angria, demolished it, and seized the spoils, valued at one
hundred and twenty thousand pounds. In 1757 he took Calcutta from the
Nabob Surajah Dowlah, the ally of the French, who had captured it, and
shut up the English prisoners in the memorable Black Hole, where, in
one night (June 20, 1756), out of one hundred and forty-six persons,
one hundred and twenty-three perished. Clive also captured the city
of Hooghly, defeated Dowlah, and compelled him to cede the town and
vicinity. He then drove the French from their factory of Chandernagore;
marched forward on Moorshedabad, defeated Surajah Dowlah in a battle
extraordinary for the rout of an immense army by a mere handful of men,
at Plassey (1757); deposed him, and seated on his throne Meer Jaffier.
From this day dates British supremacy in India.
In America Lord Amherst took the chief command, with Wolfe as his
second; Abercrombie being despatched to reduce the French forts on
Lakes George and Champlain, and thus open the way into Canada. On
the 2nd of June the British fleet, commanded by Admiral Boscawen,
and carrying Lord Amherst and twelve thousand men, anchored before
Louisburg, the capital of Cape Breton. The French had six thousand
men, soldiers and marines, and five ships of the line were drawn up in
the harbour. The landing was therefore effected with difficulty; but
Wolfe, who led the way in person, showed such spirit and activity, and
the Admiral and General, unlike the usual conduct on such occasions,
acted together with such unanimity and zeal, that the French were
compelled, towards the end of July, to capitulate, and the soldiers of
the garrison were sent to England, prisoners of war. The whole island
of Cape Breton submitted to the conquerors, and the island of St. John
was also reduced by Colonel Lord Rollo. St. John's was afterwards named
Prince Edward's Island, in compliment to the royal family.
The events on land were very different. Abercrombie, like General
Braddock, advanced with all the careless presumption of a second-rate
general. The grand object was to reduce Fort Ticonderoga, built on
a neck of land between Lakes George and Champlain. At the landing,
Lord Howe, one of the best officers, was killed, but they drove back
the French, and advanced on the fort, which was of great strength,
defended by a garrison of four thousand men, commanded by the Marquis
de Montcalm, the Commander-in-Chief of the Canadians, himself. Montcalm
had raised a breastwork eight feet high, and made in front of it a
barricade of felled trees with their branches outwards. Abercrombie,
with a foolish confidence, advanced right upon this barricade, without
waiting for the coming up of his artillery, which was detained by the
badness of the roads. With a reckless disregard of the lives of his
men, he commanded them to attempt to storm these defences, and after
fighting with the usual courage of Englishmen for several hours, and
two thousand of them being slaughtered, it was found that their efforts
were useless, and they were ordered to retire. Brigadier Forbes, who
had been sent against Fort Dupuesne, an attempt so disastrous to both
Washington and Braddock, executed his task with the utmost promptitude
and success. Forbes took possession of it on the 25th of November, and,
in compliment to the great Minister under whose auspices they fought,
named it Fort Pitt, since grown from a solitary fort into Pittsburg.
In Europe, Pitt was still bent on those attacks on the coast of
France which long experience had shown were of little use as means of
successful war, but highly objectionable, as fraught with excessive
inhumanity to the innocent people of the seaboard. This, his second
expedition, was aimed at St. Malo. A fleet of eighteen ships of the
line, thirteen frigates, with sloops, fire-ships, and bomb-ketches,
was put under the command of Lord Howe; but as Sir Edward Hawke, his
senior, struck his flag, and refused to serve as second, Lord Anson,
to get rid of the difficulty, put himself nominally at the head of
the squadron. The command of the troops was given to the Duke of
Marlborough, a brave man, but destitute of the genius of his father,
and Lord George Sackville and Lord Granby were under him. There
were fourteen thousand troops of the line and six thousand marines.
With these went a number of aristocratic volunteers, amongst them
Lord Downe, Sir John Armitage, and Sir John Lowther, the possessor
of fourteen thousand pounds a-year. On the 5th of June, 1758, the
transports anchored in Cancale Bay, and next day the troops were landed
and led against St. Malo. This town, built on one of a cluster of
granite rocks which rise out of the sea on that iron-bound coast, they
found too strongly fortified to storm, but they burnt a hundred and
thirty privateers and a great quantity of small craft in the harbour,
and then returned to their ships. They then sailed for Le Hâvre, but
were prevented by the wind from doing the same damage, and so continued
their voyage to Granville and Cherbourg, whence they were driven by
storm; and thereupon coasting a considerable way farther, but to no
purpose, the fleet returned to Portsmouth, the main result being a
heavy expense. Fox and the Opposition in the Commons called it breaking
windows with guineas; and the old king, who had expressed his dislike
of this sort of warfare, said we should brag of having burnt the French
ships, and the French of having driven us away.
The next month Pitt despatched a smaller fleet and force to destroy
the port of Cherbourg, which the French had constructed under Cardinal
Fleury, and, as they stated by an inscription, "for all eternity." This
time the command was given to General Bligh. Howe was admiral, and on
board with him went Prince Edward, afterwards Duke of York. On the 8th
of August the troops were landed at Cherbourg, which was deserted by
the garrison, and they destroyed the forts and harbour, demolished a
hundred and seventy pieces of iron cannon, and carried off twenty-two
fine brass ones. After re-embarking and returning to Portsmouth, Bligh
was ordered to pay another visit to St. Malo, but still found it too
strong for him; yet he landed his men in the bay of St. Lunaire,
about two leagues westward of St. Malo; and the weather immediately
driving Howe to sea, the army was marched overland to St. Cast, some
leagues off. The soldiers were allowed to rove about and plunder, till
Bligh heard that the Duke of Aiguillon was advancing against them at
the head of a strong force. Bligh then, but in no hurry, marched for
the port of St. Cast, followed by Aiguillon, who waited till he had
embarked all but one thousand five hundred men, when he fell upon them,
and slaughtered a thousand of them in a hollow way amongst the rocks
leading down to the shore.
In Germany, Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, after driving the French
out of Hanover, had followed them across the Rhine this spring, and
on the 23rd of June defeated them at Crefeld, with a slaughter of six
thousand men. He then took Düsseldorf; but the French court recalling
the incapable Clermont, and sending Marshal De Contades with fresh
forces against him, and Prince Soubise defeating the Hessians, he was
obliged to fall back into Westphalia, where he was joined by the Duke
of Marlborough and Lord George Sackville with the English auxiliaries,
but too late to effect anything further. Shortly afterwards the Duke
of Marlborough died suddenly, under strong suspicions of having been
poisoned.
Frederick of Prussia, meanwhile, had been beset by Austrians, Russians,
and French, and had never been able to retire to winter quarters. He
had continued to blockade Schweidnitz amid frost and snow, and having
reduced it, at the very first symptoms of spring he suddenly burst into
Moravia, and invested Olmütz, its capital. There he had to contend
with the able and cautious Marshal Daun and General Laudohn, nearly as
efficient. Laudohn managed to seize three thousand waggons, bringing
from Silesia supplies for Frederick; and whilst the king was in this
state of destitution for food even for his army, a hundred thousand
Russians, under General Fermor, were marching steadily on Berlin. They
had taken Königsberg, laid waste the whole country beyond the Vistula,
and then pushed on for the Oder. They had arrived before Küstrin,
only a few marches from Berlin, when Frederick, leaving his brother,
Prince Henry, to keep Daun and Laudohn in check before Olmütz, marched
against them. A terrible battle took place on the plain of Zörndorf,
near Custrin, in which neither Prussians nor Russians gave quarter,
and which lasted from nine in the morning till seven at night. Twenty
thousand Russians were left killed or wounded on the field, and eleven
thousand Prussians. The Russians retired with reluctance, and did not
wholly evacuate the Prussian territory till the end of October. But
Frederick himself, long before that time, had been compelled to hurry
back to the support of his brother Henry, whom Daun had driven back
into Saxony. He fixed his camp at Hochkirch, near Bautzen, and close to
the Bohemian lines. But a few mornings after, before daybreak, Daun and
Laudohn burst into his camp by a combined movement, and threw the whole
into confusion before the troops could muster. When Frederick awoke at
the uproar and rushed from his tent, all around was one fearful scene
of slaughter and flight. The news of this defeat of the generally
victorious Prussians threw the court of Vienna into ecstacies, for
they thought that Frederick was ruined; and so he might have been
had Daun been as alert to follow him up as he had been successful in
surprising him. But Daun was naturally slow; a very few days sufficed
for Frederick to collect fresh forces around him, and he suddenly
darted away into Silesia. There he raised the siege of Neisse, which
was invested by another division of the Austrian army; then, falling
back on Dresden, threatened by Daun, he drove him back, and, marching
to Breslau, fixed there his winter quarters.
The year 1759 is one of the most glorious in our annals. Pitt, by his
own spirit, and by selecting brave and able men, had infused such
ardour into our service, that our officers no longer seemed the same
men. Still, France, stung by the reverses and insults which we had
heaped on her, but especially by our ravages of her coast, contemplated
a retaliatory descent on ours. Gunboats were accumulated at Le Hâvre
and other ports, and fleets were kept ready at Toulon and Brest, as
well as a squadron at Dunkirk, under Admiral Thurot, a brave seaman.
The king sent a message to the Commons, demanding the calling out of
the militia; and the twenty-four thousand French prisoners who had
been left in great destitution by their own Government on our hands,
were marched into the interior of the country. In July Admiral Rodney
anchored in the roads of Le Hâvre, bombarded the town, set it on fire
in several places, and destroyed many of the gunboats. In August the
Toulon fleet, commanded by Admiral De la Clue, on its way to operate
against our coast, was pursued by Boscawen, who had recently returned
from America, and overtaken off Lagos, in Algarve. De la Clue was
mortally wounded, and his ship--reckoned the finest in the French
navy--and three others were taken, whilst a fifth was run aground
and burnt. At the same time the blockades of Dunkirk and Brest were
vigorously kept up.
[Illustration: SURPRISE OF FREDERICK AT HOCHKIRCH. (_See p._ 131.)]
The enemy's fleets being thus destroyed or shut up, Pitt determined on
his great enterprise, the conquest of Canada. The idea was worthy of
his genius. His feeble predecessors had suffered the French from this
neighbouring colony to aspire to the conquest of our North American
territory. They had built strong forts on the lakes and down the valley
of the Ohio; they intended to connect them with the Mississippi, and
then to drive us out of the country. Had not Pitt come into office
they might probably have succeeded. But Pitt had already commenced the
driving in of the French outposts, and he now planned the complete
expulsion of that nation from their advanced posts and from Canada
itself. His scheme had three parts, which were all to concentrate
themselves into one grand effort--the taking of Quebec, the capital.
It was a daring enterprise, for Canada was ably governed and defended
by Marshal de Montcalm, a man of great military experience and talent,
and highly esteemed for his noble character by the colonists and the
Indians, vast tribes of whom he had won over to his interest by his
courtesy and conciliatory manner, whilst the English had as much
disgusted them by their haughty surliness. But Pitt had picked his men
for the occasion, and especially for the grand _coup-de-main_, the
taking of Quebec. He formed his whole plan himself, and though it was
not perfect, and was greatly criticised by military men, it succeeded
though not in effecting the combination which he contemplated, in all
its parts.
[Illustration: ADMIRAL RODNEY BOMBARDING LE HÂVRE. (_See p._ 132.)]
The left of his operations was entrusted to General Prideaux with
a body of colonial militia, and Sir William Johnson with another
of friendly Indians, over whom he had a wonderful ascendency. This
united force was to march against the fort of Niagara, reduce it,
and then, crossing Lake Ontario, advance on Montreal. The centre
of his operations was entrusted to General Amherst, who superseded
Abercrombie. With twelve thousand men he was again to attempt
Ticonderoga, open the navigation of Lake Champlain, and then, joining
Prideaux and Johnson at Montreal, descend the St. Lawrence to support
Wolfe, who was to be conveyed by sea to the St. Lawrence, and to
prepare for the storming of Quebec, it being hoped that, by the time of
his arrival, the two other divisions of the army would have come up.
In pursuance of this plan of the campaign, Prideaux and Johnson arrived
before the fort of Niagara in the middle of July, which they found very
strong, and garrisoned by six hundred men. Prideaux was soon killed by
the bursting of a shell, but Johnson continued the siege with great
ability, having to invest the fort on one hand, whilst he was menaced
on the other by a mixed body of French and Indians, one thousand seven
hundred in number, who came to relieve the fort. The attack upon him
commenced with a terrible war-whoop of the Indians, which, mingling
with the roar of the great cataract near, made the most horrible din
imaginable. But this did not disconcert the English and their savage
allies, who received them with such steady courage, that in less than
an hour they were put to the rout in sight of their own garrison, and
pursued for five miles with dreadful slaughter. The garrison thereupon
capitulated, remaining prisoners of war. There, however, Sir William
Johnson's career stopped. From various causes, not foreseen, he was not
able to advance beyond the Ontario to unite with Amherst. That general
had fully succeeded in taking Ticonderoga and Crown Point, but he found
the French so strongly posted on an island at the upper end of Lake
Champlain, that he was compelled to stop and build boats to enable his
army to reach and dislodge them; and it was not till October that he
was ready to proceed, when he was driven back repeatedly by tempests,
and compelled to go into winter quarters.
Wolfe, meanwhile, had reached the St. Lawrence in June, on board a
fleet commanded by Admiral Saunders. The navigation of that river was
considered very dangerous, but in ascending they captured two small
store-ships, and found on board some excellent charts of the river,
which enabled the admiral to ascend safely. On the 27th of June the
army was landed on the Isle of Orleans, in the middle of the St.
Lawrence, in front of Quebec.
The Canadas at that period contained only about sixty thousand souls,
Quebec about seven thousand. But the city occupies a most formidable
site. It stands on a steep and rocky promontory running into the left
bank of the St. Lawrence, about a hundred leagues from its mouth, and
where the river, from a breadth of from twelve to twenty miles, rapidly
narrows to about one mile. The city is built part on the rocky heights,
part on the slopes below. Up the river from the city rose still higher
and almost inaccessible steeps, called the Heights of Abraham, and, on
the other hand, the side of the city down the stream was bounded by the
river St. Charles, which there runs into the St. Lawrence. The stretch
of ground between the St. Charles and the stream of Montmorency, some
miles lower, called Beauport, was connected by a bridge with Quebec.
On this ground, as the most accessible side of the city, Montcalm
had encamped his army, consisting altogether of ten thousand French,
Canadians, and Indians.
Wolfe raised batteries at Point Levi and on the island, and bombarded
the town, but he could not draw the wary Montcalm from his strong
position. In his front lay the river and some unapproachable sandbanks,
behind and around him rocks and dense woods inaccessible. Once only
he made a rush across the river, and endeavoured, with a detachment
of one thousand six hundred men, to gain the batteries on Point Levi;
but his troops soon saw the attempt to be hopeless, and retired. No
measures were neglected by Wolfe, on his part, to draw Montcalm from
his position. He marched along the banks of the Montmorency opposite to
him, and made feints as if he would cross it somewhere above him, but
to no purpose--Montcalm knew his advantage. Wolfe wrote home, that if
Montcalm had but shut himself up in Quebec, he could have taken the
town very easily, but he could not readily force him from his admirable
position. Growing at length impatient, he determined to attack him
where he was, and he dispatched Admiral Holmes up the river with a
number of transports, as though he contemplated something in that
quarter. He then landed, on the 31st of July, a body of troops near the
mouth of the Montmorency, which there falls three hundred feet into the
St. Lawrence. He had discovered a ford at some distance up the river,
and dispatched Brigadier Townshend to cross there and attack Montcalm
in flank, whilst he himself, by means of the ships and their boats,
gained the beach and attacked in front. The _Centurion_ man-of-war was
placed to engage a battery which swept the place of landing, and then
the troops were conveyed in boats, which drew little water, towards
the shore. Some of these, however, got entangled amongst rocks, and
created a delay in getting them off. By this time the French were
hurrying down towards the landing-place with their artillery, and began
to fire murderously from the banks above upon them. Wolfe, seeing that
Townshend would cross the ford before they were ready to co-operate,
sent an officer to recall him. At this time, the Grenadiers having
reached the beach, rushed forward upon the entrenchments before the
rest of the troops could be got out of the boats to support them. They
were met by such a destructive fire that they were compelled to fall
back with much slaughter. By this time night was setting in, attended
by a storm, the roaring of which, mingling with the roar of the mighty
St. Lawrence as the tide fell, seemed to warn them to recover their
camp. The word was given to re-cross the river, and they made good
their retreat without the French attempting to pursue them, though the
Indians lurked in the rear to scalp such of the dead and such of the
wounded as could not be brought off.
Wolfe then held a council with his two next in command, the Brigadiers
Monckton and Townshend, and they resolved, as a desperate attempt,
to move up the river, and thus endeavour to draw Montcalm from his
unassailable position. Accordingly, leaving detachments to defend the
Isle of Orleans and Point Levi, the rest of the army ascended the St.
Lawrence for some miles, and pitched their camp on the right bank. To
attract still more attention, Admiral Holmes was ordered to put his
vessels in active motion for some days, as if seeking a landing-place
higher up the river. This stratagem, however, produced no other result
than that of Montcalm sending a detachment of one thousand five hundred
men to watch their proceedings. He himself maintained his old ground.
Completely disheartened by this result, Wolfe for a moment felt despair
of his object, and in that despairing mood, on the 9th of September, he
wrote to Pitt. He said that, "to the uncommon strength of the country,
the enemy had added, for the defence of the river, a great number
of floating batteries and boats; that the vigilance of the Indians
had prevented their effecting anything by surprise; that he had had
a choice of difficulties, and felt at a loss how to proceed; and he
concluded with the remark, that his constitution was entirely ruined,
without the consolation of having done any considerable service to the
State, or without any prospect of it."
But the despondency of Wolfe was but for a moment. Suddenly a new
idea--an inspiration, it seemed--burst upon him: he would scale the
Heights of Abraham--the point where no mortal ascent was dreamed of,
and which therefore was less defended, except by nature, than the rest
of the vicinity of the city. The ships were immediately ordered to make
a feint, under Admiral Saunders, opposite Montcalm's camp at Beauport,
and those under Holmes, at a point higher up the river. Attention being
thus drawn from himself, on the night of the 12th of September, when it
was pitch dark and the tide flowing, he put across the river to a small
inlet about two miles above Quebec, which ever since bears the name of
Wolfe's Cove.
They succeeded in landing unobserved by any of the sentinels posted
along the shore, where they had to wait for the boats fetching over the
second detachment, there not being boats enough. Before this arrived,
they began to climb the rocks by a narrow track, so steep and rugged
that they could only ascend by clinging to the bushes and projecting
crags. Directly above their heads was a watch-post of a captain and a
hundred and fifty men. There, as they drew near the summit, Colonel
Howe--a brother of Lord Howe, who fell at Ticonderoga--leading the van,
the watch became aware of a noise, and fired down the rocks, directed
by the sound. The English soldiers imprudently returned the volley
upwards, instead of reserving it until they had gained the ascent. They
continued their scramble up, however, with redoubled ardour, and the
French, on their sudden appearance, panic-struck, fled. The second
detachment soon followed them, and the whole little army stood on the
heights above the town before the break of day.
When Montcalm was informed of this wonderful feat, he thought it merely
some new feint to draw him from his lines; but when he had ascertained
with his own eyes the truth, he said, "I see them, indeed, where
they ought not to be; but, as we must fight, I shall crush them." He
immediately led his troops over the bridge of the St. Charles, and up
to the eminence above the town. There he found the English already
advanced in order of battle to within cannon-shot of Quebec. Wolfe
had drawn them up with much judgment. His left wing was formed in
what military men call _en potence_--that is, facing two ways, so as
to guard against being outflanked. In this wing, too, he had placed
a regiment of Highlanders, one of those which Pitt had formed, and
which had already shown its bravery. His right, extending towards the
St. Lawrence, had in the van the Grenadiers who had distinguished
themselves at the taking of Louisburg, supported by a regiment of the
line. Wolfe had taken his post on this wing. The sailors had managed
to drag up one cannon, and they had seized four other small guns at
the battery they had passed; that was all their artillery. But in
this respect Montcalm was no better off, for in his haste he had only
brought along with him two guns. He had ordered a cloud of Indians to
hover on the left of the English, and had lined the thickets and copses
with one thousand five hundred of his best marksmen. These concealed
skirmishers fired on the advancing pickets of the English with such
effect, that they fell back in confusion; but Wolfe hastened forward,
encouraged them to dash on, and ordered the first line to reserve their
fire till within forty yards of the enemy. The men well obeyed the
order, and marched briskly on without firing a shot, whilst the French
came hurrying forward, firing as they came. They killed many of the
English, but, as soon as these came within the forty yards' distance,
they poured a steady and well-directed a volley into the enemy that
did dreadful execution. Wolfe, with characteristic enthusiasm, was in
the front line, encouraging them by voice and action, and in less than
half an hour the French ranks broke, and many began to fly. Meanwhile
Wolfe, exposing himself to the very hottest fire, had been wounded in
the wrist by nearly the first discharge; and he had scarcely wrapped
his handkerchief around it, when another bullet hit him in the groin.
Still appearing to pay no attention to these serious wounds, he was
in the act of inciting his men to fresh efforts, when a ball pierced
his chest, and he fell. He was carried to the rear, and, whilst he
seemed to be in the very agony of death, one of those around him cried,
"See how they run!" "Who run?" exclaimed Wolfe, raising himself, with
sudden energy, on his elbow. "The enemy," replied the officer; "they
give way in all directions." "God be praised!" ejaculated Wolfe; "I
die happy!" and, falling back, he expired. Nearly at the same moment
Brigadier Monckton was severely wounded, and Brigadier Townshend took
the command, and completed the victory. Montcalm, also, had fallen. He
was struck by a musket-ball whilst endeavouring to rally his men, and
was carried into the city, where he died the next day. When told that
he could not live--"So much the better," replied this brave and able
man; "I shall not then live to see the surrender of Quebec." His second
in command was also mortally wounded, and being taken on board the
English ships, also died the next day. Of the French, one thousand five
hundred had fallen, and six hundred and forty of the English. On the
18th September, five days after the battle, the city capitulated, the
garrison marching out with the honours of war, and under engagement to
be conveyed to the nearest French port. Other fragments of the defeated
army retired to Montreal.
Whilst this glorious news came from the West, from the East arrived
tidings equally stirring. In India Colonel Coote, afterwards famous
as Sir Eyre Coote, defeated the French under Lally, and made himself
master of all Arcot. General Ford defeated the Marquis de Conflans, and
took Masulipatam, and afterwards defeated a detachment of Dutch, which
had landed from Java to aid our enemies in Bengal. Ford completely
routed them, and took the seven ships which had brought them over, and
which lay in the Hooghly.
At sea, Sir Edward Hawke attacked the French fleet under Admiral
Conflans at the mouth of the Vilaine in Quibéron Bay. The situation,
amid rocks and shoals, and with a sea running high, so late in the
year as the 20th of November, was most perilous, but Hawke scorned
all danger, attacked the French fleet close under their own shores,
took two men-of-war, sank four more, including the admiral's ship,
the _Soleil Royal_, and caused the rest, more or less damaged, to
take refuge up the river. Two of our own vessels were stranded in
the night, but their crews and stores were saved. For this brilliant
action, which crippled the French navy for the remainder of the war,
Hawke was thanked by Parliament, received from the king a pension of
one thousand five hundred pounds a-year for his own and his son's life,
and, in the next reign, was raised to the peerage. Thurot, meanwhile,
had escaped out of Dunkirk, but with only five ships, which kept out of
the way by seeking shelter in the ports of Sweden and Norway.
In Germany, Frederick of Prussia was hard put to it. A fresh army of
Russians, under General Soltikow, advanced to the Oder, and another
army of Austrians, under Laudohn, advanced to form a junction with
them. To prevent this, Frederick sent General Wedel to encounter the
Russians, but he was defeated by them on the 23rd of July, with heavy
loss. Frederick himself then hastened against them, but, before his
arrival, the Austrians had joined Soltikow, making a united force
of sixty thousand, which Frederick attacked, on the 12th of August,
with forty-eight thousand, at the village of Kunersdorf, close to
Frankfort-on-the-Oder. At first he was successful; but, attempting to
push his advantages, he was completely beaten, the whole of his army
being killed or scattered to three thousand men. So completely did his
ruin now seem accomplished, that, expecting the Russians, Austrians,
Poles, Swedes, and Saxons to come down on him on all sides, he once
more contemplated taking the poison that he still carried about him;
wrote a letter to that effect to his Prime Minister, and directed the
oath of allegiance to be taken to his nephew, and that his brother,
Prince Henry, should be regent; but finding that the Russians, who had
lost twenty thousand men, were actually drawing off, he again took
courage, was soon at the head of thirty thousand men, and with these
was hastening to the relief of Dresden, when he was paralysed by the
news that General Finck, with twelve thousand men, had suffered himself
to be surrounded at Maxen, and compelled to surrender. Despairing of
relieving Dresden during this campaign, Frederick eventually took up
his winter quarters at Freiberg, in Saxony, and employed himself in
raising and drilling fresh soldiers; compelled, however, to pay his
way by debasing both the Prussian coin, and the English gold which he
received in subsidy, by a very large alloy.
[Illustration: DEATH OF WOLFE. (After the Painting by Benjamin West,
P.R.A.)]
Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick was more successful. He was at the
head of an army of fifty-five thousand men, including ten or twelve
thousand English, under Lord George Sackville. As the French had
taken Frankfort-on-the-Main, he left the British and Hanoverian
troops, amounting to twenty-eight thousand men, to watch the French,
under Marshal de Contades, upon the Lippe, and set out to drive back
the other divisions of the French, under De Broglie. He found these
amounted to thirty-five thousand strong, but he did not hesitate
to engage them at Bergen, on the Nidda, near Frankfort. After a
hard-fought battle, he was defeated with a loss of two thousand men
and five pieces of cannon. De Broglie pushed rapidly after him, formed
a junction with Contades, and speedily reduced Cassel, Münster, and
Minden. There appeared every prospect of the whole Electorate of
Hanover being again overrun by them. The archives were once more sent
off to Stade, ready for embarkation. But Ferdinand now displayed
the superiority of his generalship. He left five thousand of his
troops, with an air of carelessness, in the way of the French, who,
unsuspicious of any stratagem, hastened forward to surprise them, when,
to their astonishment, they found the whole of Ferdinand's army had
been brought up in the night, and were drawn up behind a ridge near
Minden.
To approach Ferdinand's forces, the French were obliged to pass
a narrow ground between a river and a marsh, and were so cramped
that they committed the very error which cost them the battle of
Blenheim. They placed the cavalry in the centre, and made wings of
their infantry. The cavalry made a succession of furious charges on
Ferdinand's centre, but this stood compact and immovable, till the
French horse, being discouraged, the Allies charged in their turn, and
the centre of the army, the cavalry, being thus driven back, the whole
line gave way. At this moment Ferdinand sent orders to Lord George
Sackville to charge with the cavalry, which had been kept in reserve,
and thus complete the destruction of the flying French. But Lord
George, who had been constantly quarrelling with Ferdinand, as well as
his own second in command, the Marquis of Granby, now did not appear to
comprehend a succession of orders, and sat still. But Ferdinand, having
lost patience, sent word to the Marquis of Granby to advance, and he
promptly obeyed, but it was now too late; the French had got half an
hour's start. Thus the English cavalry was deprived of all share in
the victory; but the English foot had borne the chief brunt of the
attack, being in the centre. Six British regiments, in fact, for a time
maintained the whole shock of the French. Sackville was tried by court
martial, and dismissed from all his military appointments. The battle
of Minden was fought on the 1st of August, 1759.
The Parliament of England met on the 13th of October. Pitt, not without
cause, assumed much merit from the successes of the year; and, in
truth, so far as military matters went, rarely had this country reaped
such fame. We had triumphed in every quarter of the world. In January
came the news of the capture of Goree; in June, of Guadeloupe; in
August, that of the victory of Minden; in September, of the victory off
Lagos; in October, of the conquest of Quebec; in November, of Hawke's
victory off Quiberon. Horace Walpole said, "victories came so thick,
that every morning we were obliged to ask what victory there was, for
fear of missing one." At the same time, the condition of our trade
warranted the inscription afterwards placed on Chatham's monument in
the Guildhall, that he caused commerce to flourish with war.
The earliest martial event of the year 1760 was the landing of Thurot,
the French admiral, at Carrickfergus, on the 28th of February. He had
been beating about between Scandinavia and Ireland till he had only
three ships left, and but six hundred soldiers. But Carrickfergus being
negligently garrisoned, Thurot made his way into the town and plundered
it, but was soon obliged to abandon it. He was overtaken by Captain
Elliot and three frigates before he had got out to sea, his ships were
taken, he himself was killed, and his men were carried prisoners to
Ramsey, in the Isle of Man.
In April the French made an attempt to recover Quebec.
Brigadier-General Murray had been left in command of the troops, six
thousand in number, and the fleet had returned to England. The Marquis
de Vaudreuil, now the French governor at Montreal, formed a plan of
dropping down the St. Lawrence the moment the ice broke up, and before
the mouth of the river was clear for ships to ascend from England. He
therefore held in readiness five thousand regular troops, and as many
militia, and the moment the ice broke in April, though the ground was
still covered with snow, he embarked them in ships and boats under the
command of Chevalier de Levis, an officer of reputation. On the 28th of
that month they were within sight of Quebec. They had landed higher
up than where Wolfe did, and were now at the village of Sillery, not
far from Wolfe's place of ascent. Murray, who had only about three
thousand men available for such a purpose, the rest having been reduced
by sickness, or being needed to man the fortifications, yet ventured
to march out against them. He was emulous of the fame of Wolfe, and
attacked this overwhelming force with great impetuosity, but was
soon compelled to retire into Quebec with the loss of one thousand
men killed and wounded. This was a serious matter with their scanty
garrison, considering the numbers of the enemy, and the uncertainty of
the arrival of succour.
Levis, who knew that his success depended on forestalling any English
arrivals, lost no time in throwing up trenches and preparing batteries.
Had the river continued closed, Quebec must soon have reverted to the
French; but, on the 11th of May, the English were rejoiced to see a
frigate approaching, and this, only four days after, was followed
by another frigate and a ship of the line. These, commanded by Lord
Colville, immediately attacked and destroyed or drove on shore the
French flotilla, and at that sight Levis struck his tents and decamped
as rapidly as he came, leaving behind him his baggage and artillery.
Nor was the Marquis de Vaudreuil left long undisturbed at Montreal.
The three expeditions, which had failed to meet the preceding summer,
were now ordered to converge on Montreal--Amherst from Lake Ontario,
Haviland from Crown Point, and Murray from Quebec. Amherst had been
detained at Oswego by an outbreak of the Cherokees against us. This
native tribe had been friendly to us, and we had built a fort in
their country, and called it Fort Loudon, after Lord Loudon; but in
the autumn of 1759 they had been bought over by the French, and made
a terrible raid on our back settlements, murdering and scalping the
defenceless inhabitants. Mr. Lyttelton, the Governor of South Carolina,
marched against them with a thousand men, and compelled them to
submission; but no sooner had he retired than they recommenced their
hostilities, and Amherst sent against them Colonel Montgomery, with one
thousand two hundred men, who made a merciless retaliation, plundering
and burning their villages, so as to impress a sufficient terror upon
them.
Amherst had now ten thousand men; and though he had to carry all his
baggage and artillery over the Ontario in open boats, and to pass the
rapids of the upper St. Lawrence, he made a most able and prosperous
march, reducing the fort of Île Royale on the way, and reached the
isle of Montreal on the very same day as Murray, and a day before
Haviland. Vaudreuil saw that resistance was hopeless, and capitulated
on the 8th of September. The French were, according to contract, sent
home, under engagement not to come against us during the remainder of
the war. Besides this, Lord Byron chased a squadron of three frigates,
convoying twenty store-ships to Quebec, into the Bay of Chaleur, and
there destroyed them. Thus all the French possessions in North America,
excepting the recent and feeble settlement of New Orleans, remained in
our hands.
The war in Germany grew more and more bloody. Russia and Austria came
down upon Frederick this year with great forces. Daun entered Saxony;
Laudohn and Soltikow, Silesia. Laudohn defeated Fouqué at Landshut,
and took the fortress of Glatz, and compelled Frederick, though hard
pressed by Daun, to march for Silesia. The month was July, the weather
so hot that upwards of a hundred of his soldiers fell dead on the
march. Daun followed him, watching his opportunity to fall upon him
when engaged with other troops, but on the way Frederick heard of the
defeat of Fouqué and the fall of Glatz, and suddenly turned back to
reach Dresden before Daun, and take the city by storm; but as Daun was
too expeditious for him, and Maguire, the governor, an Irishman, paid
no heed to his demands for surrender, Frederick, who had lately been so
beautifully philosophising on the inhumanities of men, commenced a most
ferocious bombardment, not of the fortress but of the town. He burnt
and laid waste the suburbs, fired red-hot balls into the city to burn
it all down, demolished the finest churches and houses, and crushed
the innocent inhabitants in their flaming and falling dwellings, till
crowds rushed from the place in desperation, rather facing his ruthless
soldiers than the horrors of his bombardment.
Prevented by the arrival of Daun from utterly destroying Dresden,
though he had done enough to require thirty years of peace to restore
it, Frederick marched for Silesia. Laudohn, who was besieging Breslau,
quitted it at his approach; but the Prussian king, who found himself
surrounded by three armies, cut his way, on the 15th of August, at
Liegnitz, through Laudohn's division, which he denominated merely
"a scratch." He was instantly, however, called away to defend his
own capital from a combined army of Russians under Todleben, and of
Austrians under Lacy, another Irishman; but before he could reach them
they had forced an entrance, on the 9th of October. The Russians,
departing from their usual custom of plunder, touched nothing, but
levied a contribution of one million seven hundred thousand dollars on
the city. At Frederick's approach they withdrew.
But there was no rest for Frederick. Daun was overrunning Saxony; had
reduced Leipsic, Wittenberg, and Torgau. Frederick marched against him,
retook Leipsic, and came up with Daun at Torgau on the 3rd of November.
There a most sanguinary battle took place, which lasted all day and
late into the night. Within half an hour five thousand of Frederick's
grenadiers, the pride of his army, were killed by Daun's batteries of
four hundred cannon. Frederick was himself disabled and carried into
the rear, and altogether fourteen thousand Prussians were killed or
wounded, and twenty thousand of the Austrians. This scene of savage
slaughter closed the campaign. The Austrians evacuated Saxony, with the
exception of Dresden; the Russians re-passed the Oder, and Frederick
took up his winter quarters at Leipsic.
Prince Ferdinand this summer had to contend with numerous armies of the
French. De Broglie marched from Frankfort into Hesse with a hundred
thousand men. On the 10th of July they met the hereditary Prince of
Brunswick at Corbach, and defeated him, though he gained a decided
advantage over them a few days after at Emsdorf, taking the commander
of the division and five battalions prisoners. This was followed by
Ferdinand himself, who was at Warburg, where he took ten pieces of
artillery, killed one thousand five hundred of the French, and drove
them into the Dimel, where many were drowned. The British cavalry had
the greatest share in this victory. In fact, the Marquis of Granby led
them on all occasions with such spirit and bravery, that Ferdinand
placed them continually in the post of danger, where of course they
suffered more severely than the other troops.
Notwithstanding these checks at Emsdorf and Warburg, the French
obtained possession of Göttingen and Cassel. Ferdinand attempted, but
in vain, to dislodge them from Göttingen, and the hereditary Prince,
attempting to surprise the Marquis de Castries at Wesel, was repulsed
with a loss of one thousand two hundred men at Closter-Campen, near
that town, and was compelled to retreat. This closed the campaign, and
the French took up their winter quarters at Göttingen and Cassel.
Whilst these things were happening, and but two days before the mail
arrived bringing the news of the defeat at Closter-Campen, George II.
died. He had, till within the last two years, enjoyed robust health.
He had then a severe attack of gout, and from that time his eyes and
hearing had failed. On the morning of the 25th of October he rose at
his usual hour of six, drank his chocolate, inquired how the wind was,
being anxious for the arrival of the mails, and then suddenly fell,
uttered a groan, and expired. He was seventy-seven years of age.
[Illustration: MARTELLO TOWER ON THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM, QUEBEC.]
[Illustration: GEORGE WHITEFIELD PREACHING. (_See p._ 143.)]