THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COLONIAL EMPIRE OF BRITAIN.
1739-1760.
When the unwilling Walpole was driven into war with Spain in 1739 by
the clamours of the nation, he believed that he was about to become
responsible for a very dangerous struggle, for he had private knowledge
of the existence of the "Family Compact," and knew that France was
ready to back up Spain. England, on the other hand, was entirely
without allies, having gone to war in defence of her maritime commerce,
a subject in which no other power felt any interest. As a matter of
fact, however, the war was necessary and wise, for we were bound to
come into collision with France and Spain sooner or later on the matter
of trade. They could not endure to look upon the rapid expansion of
England's commercial and colonial power, which had been increasing
at a prodigious rate since the peace of Utrecht. Our merchants were
beginning to seize an ever-growing share of the trade of the world,
and to oust the French, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese from all the
more distant markets, especially those of Africa, India, and the
remoter East. In India the East India Company was making advances which
exasperated its French rivals. In South America the Spaniards felt that
their ancient monopoly was gradually slipping from their hands. In
North America the prodigious growth in strength and population of our
seaboard colonies threatened a speedy end to the French settlement in
Canada. Since the acquisition of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland by the
treaty of Utrecht, the English dominions seemed to shut out from the
sea the vast but sparsely peopled tracts along the St. Lawrence which
still belonged to King Lewis. In the West Indies, Jamaica and Barbados
were gradually drawing away the wealth of the Spanish colonies of
Cuba, Porto Rico, and Hispaniola, the old centres of the sugar and
tobacco trade.
[Sidenote: =Feeble conduct of the war.--Fall of Walpole.=]
The French and Spaniards, therefore, had good reason to fear and
hate England, and if we wished to keep our control of the commerce
of the world, we were bound to fight for it. It was a misfortune,
however, that we were committed to the struggle while Walpole was
still minister. Disliking the war, he would not throw himself heartily
into it, grudged spending money, and refused to undertake any serious
operations. A few expeditions to Spanish America were all that he
sent out. The first under Admiral Vernon, though composed of no more
than six ships of war, took Porto Bello, one of the chief harbours of
the Spanish Main (1739). But a second and much larger armament under
the same leader failed disastrously before Cartagena, partly owing to
mismanagement, partly to the marsh fever, which struck down the English
in their trenches (1741). Walpole bore the discredit of his sluggish
action and his failures; he was bitterly attacked in Parliament by all
the Whigs whom he had been excluding from office for the last twenty
years, and gradually saw the reins of power slipping from his hands. In
time of war all his bribery and jobbing could not avail to save him;
his bought majority dwindled away, and early in 1742 he was defeated
in the House of Commons, and forced to resign. He retired into private
life, and died three years later, making no further show in politics.
[Sidenote: =The Carteret-Pelham ministry.=]
He was succeeded by a coalition of all the Whig factions, under the
nominal premiership of Lord Wilmington, the greatest nonentity in the
whole cabinet. The real chiefs of the new ministry were Lord Carteret,
an able diplomatist with a vast knowledge of European politics, and the
two Pelhams--Thomas, Duke of Newcastle, and Henry, his younger brother.
These two kinsmen were a pair of busy and ambitious mediocrities, who
stuck like limpets to office. They had been reared in Walpole's school,
understood all his arts of management and corruption, and had served
under him to the last, though for a year or more they had been quietly
intriguing for his fall, in order that they might succeed to his power.
[Sidenote: =The "War of the Austrian Succession."=]
The Carteret-Pelham ministry had to face a much larger problem in
European politics than the mere struggle with Spain. During the
last year the whole continent had been set ablaze by the "War of
the Austrian Succession." In 1740 died the Emperor Charles VI., the
Archduke Charles who had been a claimant for the Spanish throne in the
days before the peace of Utrecht. He was the last male of the house
of Hapsburg, and his death opened a question somewhat resembling that
of the Spanish succession in 1702. Charles had determined that his
broad dominions--the Austrian archduchies, the kingdoms of Hungary
and Bohemia, the Austrian Netherlands, and the duchies of Milan and
Parma in Italy--should pass in a body to his daughter Maria Theresa.
He chose to ignore the fact that his own elder brother, Joseph I.,
had left two daughters, who on any principle of hereditary succession
had a better claim to the Hapsburg inheritance than their younger
cousin. The elder princess Maria Amelia was the wife of Charles, the
reigning Elector of Bavaria. Charles VI. spent the last twenty years
of his life in arranging for his daughter's quiet succession. He
drew up an instrument called the "Pragmatic Sanction," by which she
was recognized as his heiress, and got it ratified by the estates of
the various principalities of his realm. He also induced most of the
powers of Europe at one time and another to guarantee this settlement;
England, France, Spain, Prussia, and Russia had all been brought to
assent to it by concessions of some sort. Only the Elector of Bavaria,
the prince whose rights were infringed by the "Pragmatic Sanction,"
had consistently refused to accept any compensation for abandoning his
wife's claims.
[Sidenote: =Frederic II. seizes Silesia.=]
But when Charles died in 1740, it was seen how little the promises
of most of the European powers were worth. The accession to the
Hapsburg heritage of a young princess with a doubtful title was too
great an opportunity to be lost by the greedy neighbours of Austria.
When Charles of Bavaria laid claim to his uncle's dominions, and
presented himself as a candidate for the imperial throne, he got prompt
assistance from many quarters. The first to stir was Frederic II., the
able and unscrupulous King of Prussia. Frederic had some ancient claims
to certain parts of the duchy of Silesia. He had also a devouring
ambition and the best-disciplined army in Europe, an army which
his eccentric father Frederic William had spent a whole lifetime in
organizing. Without any formal declaration of war, Frederic II. threw
himself on Silesia and swept out of it the armies which Maria Theresa
hastily sent against him (1741).
[Sidenote: =France and Spain join the Elector of Bavaria.=]
Then France and Spain threw in their lot with the Elector of Bavaria.
Lewis XV. had his eye on the conquest of the Austrian Netherlands,
while the old Philip V. wanted the duchies of Parma and Milan for
his younger son. Thus beset by France, Spain, Prussia, and Bavaria,
it seemed certain that Maria Theresa must succumb. Her rival Charles
was chosen Emperor by a majority of the electors, and it seemed as if
the imperial sceptre was about to pass from the house of Hapsburg.
The Austrian Netherlands, Silesia, Bohemia, and the Milanese were all
invaded at once, and the armies of Maria Theresa could not make head
at so many points against the numerical superiority of their foes. The
only ally to whom she could look for aid was England, who was already
the open enemy of Spain, and who could not tolerate the conquest of the
Netherlands by France.
[Sidenote: =Policy of Carteret.--England joins Maria Theresa.=]
An appeal for aid to this quarter met with a ready response. George II.
was anxious to help the Queen of Hungary because he disliked his nephew
Frederic II., and did not wish to see a Bavarian Emperor. Carteret,
the leading spirit in the ministry, was even more eager for the fight.
He was a far-sighted man who had realized the fact that England must
inevitably come into collision with France from their rivalry in trade
and colonization, and he therefore held that France's enemies were our
friends. It was his wish to see England embark boldly in the strife,
and send a large army to Germany to aid the Austrians. If France were
involved in an exhausting continental war, he held that she would be
unable at the same time to keep up a maritime struggle with England.
Accordingly, the ministry promised the Austrians a large subsidy, took
16,000 Hanoverian troops into British pay, and sent all the available
strength of the national army to Germany. George II., who was burning
for the fray, placed himself at the head of the Anglo-Hanoverian forces
and moved rapidly down to the Main, to attack the flank of the French
army which was invading Austria.
The fortunes of Maria Theresa now began to look more prosperous.
Carteret got her to buy off the ablest of her assailants, the King of
Prussia, by ceding him Silesia. When Frederic had withdrawn from the
struggle, the French and Bavarians were driven back from Austria, and
retreated up the Danube. It was against their flank that George was
operating in 1743, when his rather rash advance into the midst of foes
very superior in numbers brought on the battle of Dettingen (July 27,
1743).
[Sidenote: =Battle of Dettingen.=]
Finding that he was beset by forces nearly double the strength of his
own 30,000 men, the king faced about, to retire up the banks of the
Main. But the van of the French army of the Duc de Noailles outmarched
him, and threw itself across his path at the village of Dettingen,
while the main body of the enemy was rapidly coming up on his flank.
George hastily formed up his troops as they arrived, and dashed forward
to cut his way through, leading the advance in person. He was entirely
successful, drove the French into the Main with great loss, and
completely extricated himself from his difficulties. This was the last
occasion on which a king of England has ever been under fire.
[Sidenote: =The Congress at Worms.=]
Further successes followed the victory of Dettingen. The Austrians
overran Bavaria, and the Emperor Charles was obliged to lay down his
arms and ask for peace. Carteret, who had followed the king to Germany,
called together a congress at Worms, at which the representatives
of England, Holland, Sardinia, and Saxony, guaranteed the Pragmatic
Sanction, and the integrity of the dominions of the house of Hapsburg.
Next spring the allies pledged themselves to invade France, and
Carteret, in his moment of triumph, drank to the restoration of Alsace
to Germany--a wish not to be fulfilled for another 127 years.
[Sidenote: =Renewal of the war.=]
But England and Austria were still far from their goal. The attack
on France had to be postponed, because the unscrupulous Frederic of
Prussia renewed the war in the North, and fell upon the rear of the
Austrians. They withdrew great bodies of troops to face him, and were
left comparatively weak on their western front.
[Sidenote: =Carteret driven from office.=]
Not long afterwards Carteret, the soul of the continental war, lost
his place at the head of the ministry. His jealous colleagues, the
two Pelhams, were anxious to get rid of him, and took a mean advantage
of his long absences in Germany. They allowed him to be attacked as
favouring a Hanoverian, not an English policy, and as consulting the
wishes of the king rather than those of the Parliament. Carteret was
violently assailed by a young politician named William Pitt, whose cry
was always that France should be assailed at sea and in her colonies,
not on her continental frontiers. The Pelhams would not defend him,
and suffered him to be loaded with many ungrounded accusations. The
opposition called his ministry "the drunken administration," because he
was somewhat flighty in his demeanour, and was known to love his bottle
of port over-well. They accused him of lavishing on German allies money
that should have gone to our own fleet, and raised such a storm of
words against him that the Pelhams had their excuse for throwing him
over--a feat which they accomplished in the end of 1744, to the great
detriment of England. William Pitt, when a minister himself in later
years, confessed that he had discovered in the course of time that
Carteret's plans were excellent, and that he had himself put them into
practice with success, after having so often denounced them as ruinous
and reckless.
[Sidenote: =Ministry of Henry Pelham and the Duke of Newcastle.=]
The Pelhams thus became supreme in the conduct of affairs, and stuck
to office as closely as their master Walpole. Henry, the younger
of the two--"a fretful, suspicious, industrious mediocrity"--was
prime minister till he died in 1754. His elder brother the duke then
succeeded him, and kept his feeble hand on the helm of state till he
lost office in 1756. English policy under these two narrow and shifty
borough-mongers soon lost the vigour that the guidance of Carteret had
imparted to it.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Fontenoy.=]
The war with France continued, but no longer with the same success as
before. In the spring of 1745 the armies of Lewis XV., under the able
Maurice of Saxony, the _Maréchal de Saxe_ as the French called him,
fell upon the Austrian Netherlands. Maria Theresa had so few troops in
this quarter that the defence of the Belgian provinces fell entirely
upon the English and Dutch. The allied armies did not act together with
much success, and the Dutch general, the Count of Waldeck, quarrelled
with his colleague, George Duke of Cumberland, the younger son of
George II. It was this want of co-operation which led to the loss
of the bloody battle of Fontenoy (May 11, 1745). The French army was
besieging Tournay, when Waldeck and Cumberland came up to relieve it,
and found the enemy drawn up along a line of woods strengthened with
redoubts on their flanks--a position much like the neighbouring field
of Malplaquet, where Marlborough had won his last fight thirty-six
years before.
While Waldeck skirmished feebly with the French wings, the stubborn and
reckless young duke pushed into the centre of the hostile army with a
solid column of English and Hanoverian infantry. He broke through two
lines of the French, and cut their host in twain, but failed for want
of support on the flanks. He was encompassed by the French reserves,
and forced back with fearful loss to his old position, but the enemy
were too maltreated to molest him further.
[Sidenote: =The rebellion of '45.=]
The campaign of 1745 was still undecided, when the greater part of the
English army was suddenly called home to face a new and unexpected
danger. The ministers of Lewis XV. had determined to try the effect of
stirring up a Jacobite rebellion, hoping to distract the strength of
England even if the house of Hanover could not be overthrown. James
Stuart, the "Old Pretender," was now elderly and had always been
apathetic, but his son Charles Edward Stuart was a young prince of a
very different character. Reckless, adventurous, and light-hearted, he
was the very man to lead a desperate venture. The French gathered an
army of 15,000 men at Dunkirk, and promised to put it at his disposal
if he would invade Scotland. But a storm scattered the transports, and
the troops were ultimately drawn off to the war in Flanders.
[Sidenote: =The Young Pretender lands in Scotland.=]
Nevertheless, Charles Edward resolved to persevere, and, on hearing
of the fight of Fontenoy, slipped off on a small privateer and landed
in Invernesshire with no more than seven companions, "the Seven Men
of Moidart," as the Jacobites called them. His arrival was quite
unexpected, and he had nothing more to rely upon than the traditional
attachment of the Highlanders to the house of Stuart. The chiefs of the
West were dismayed at the recklessness of the venture, and it was with
difficulty that the enthusiasm and personal charm of the young prince
induced them to take arms. At first only a few hundreds of the Camerons
and Macdonalds joined him, but the absolute imbecility displayed
by the English Government encouraged him more and more to make the
venture. The Marquis of Tullibardine, an exile since 1715, roused the
Perthshire clans, and the insurrection spread to South and East.
[Sidenote: =Sir John Cope marches northward.=]
The Pelham cabinet only got news of the prince's coming three weeks
after his landing in Moidart. They were in no small degree alarmed,
for well-nigh the whole army was over-sea in Flanders, and no one knew
how far disaffection might have extended in England and the Scottish
Lowlands. The only troops in the North were four battalions of foot and
two newly raised regiments of dragoons. This small army of 3000 men was
entrusted to Sir John Cope, one of the incompetent men whom the Pelhams
loved to employ, because they were pliant and docile. Cope hurried
north, hoping to relieve the two isolated military posts of Fort
William and Fort Augustus, the sole garrisons of the West Highlands.
But finding the insurgents in possession of the pass of Corry-Arrack,
over which his road ran, he swerved eastward to execute a long circular
march by way of Inverness. Thus he was no longer placed between the
enemy and the Lowlands, and left the way to Edinburgh open.
[Sidenote: =Charles Edward in Edinburgh.=]
The prince's generalship was always bold even to recklessness;
the moment that Cope had passed north of him, he dashed down into
Perthshire and struck at the capital of Scotland. He met with no
resistance till he was quite close to Edinburgh, when 600 dragoons, the
only force left in the Lowlands, fled before him at the skirmish of
Colt-Brig. The Scots of the South, Whigs and Presbyterians though they
were, showed an extraordinary apathy. They did not join the prince, but
they refused to take arms for King George. The militia of Edinburgh,
whom the half-hearted magistrates had called to arms, dispersed when
the Highlanders appeared at their gates. Thus Prince Charles was able
to seize the city, to proclaim his father king at the market cross, and
to hold his court at Holyrood.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Preston Pans.=]
Soon, however, he had to fight to preserve his conquest. Cope, on
hearing that the Highland army had passed southward, had hurried to the
coast and taken ship with his men, hoping to reach Edinburgh before the
prince. But on landing at Dunbar he found that he was three days late,
and that he must fight if he wished to recapture the city. Advancing to
Preston Pans, he camped there in a strong position covered by a marsh.
But the Highland army crossed the difficult ground in the dusk of dawn,
and fell upon him in the early morning. Cope threw his men into line,
and waited to be attacked. The result was a disgraceful rout; the
wild rush of the clansmen carried all before it. The bayonets of the
regulars proved no match for target and claymore, and the dragoons on
the flanks fled in wild panic. Cope left the field among the first, and
brought the news of his own defeat to Dunbar (September 21, 1745).
[Illustration: SCOTLAND
IN THE 18{TH} CENTURY.]
[Sidenote: =Panic in England.=]
The news of the fall of Edinburgh and the battle of Preston Pans
came like a thunderclap to the English Government. There was hardly
a soldier in the land save the royal guards in London; the militia
had not been called out, and the temper of the people was unknown.
The imbecile Pelhams were at their wits' end, and it is said that
Newcastle even made secret overtures to the Pretender. If Charles
Edward could have marched forward the morning after his victory, there
is no knowing where his success would have ended.
[Sidenote: =Inactivity of the prince.=]
But the prince halted for five weeks, to allow the Highlanders to stow
away their plunder, and to raise and arm new levies. This delay was
fatal to him; it gave the ministry time to summon over the English
troops from Flanders, and to call out the militia--a numerous if not a
very serviceable body.
[Sidenote: =Return of English troops from Flanders.=]
When Charles Edward moved forward again on November 3, his chance was
already gone. Marshal Wade lay at Newcastle with 10,000 veterans; the
Duke of Cumberland with the rest of the army of Flanders was ten days
behind him. The guards and the militia of the southern counties lay on
Finchley Common to protect London.
[Sidenote: =The advance to Derby.=]
The prince, ignorant of the fact that Jacobitism had almost disappeared
in England during Walpole's peaceful rule, imagined that Wales and
the North would rise in his favour, if only he were to show himself
beyond the Tweed with an army at his back. Leaving 4000 men to
garrison Scotland, he crossed the border with 6000 picked clansmen,
routed the Cumbrian militia at Carlisle, and pushed rapidly southward
into Lancashire. Before he had been ten days in England, he saw that
he had been deceived as to the temper of the country. Hardly a man
joined him--not 200 recruits were found for him in the Tory county of
Lancaster, which had put 2000 men in the field in the old days of "the
Fifteen." Hoping against hope, the prince pushed on still further,
skilfully eluding the armies of Wade and Cumberland, who tried in vain
to enclose him between them. But the Highlanders began to melt away
from him, to drive home the cattle they had lifted, and the Jacobite
chiefs were dismayed at the utter apathy of the English Tories. By
the time that Derby was reached the rebel army had dwindled down to
3000 men, and it seemed likely that if Charles Edward persisted in
advancing, he would arrive at London alone. Overborne by the arguments
of his followers, he gave the order to retreat (December 6, 1745).
He was ignorant of the effect that his advance had caused in the
South. Panic prevailed in London, and on the "Black Friday" when the
news of his arrival at Derby arrived, the timid ministers had been
preparing for the worst. The king's plate had been sent on shipboard,
the Bank of England had paid away every guinea in its reserve, and the
militia at Finchley were fully persuaded that they were to be attacked
on the next day by 10,000 wild clansmen.
[Sidenote: =The prince retreats to Scotland.--Battle of Falkirk.=]
The Highland army slipped back to Scotland with little difficulty,
evading both Wade and Cumberland, whose heavy regiments could make
no speed over the snowy December roads. On recrossing the Border
Charles called up his reserves, and was soon at the head of 10,000
men. He trusted to maintain his hold on Scotland, even if England was
unassailable. When the royal troops advanced, he inflicted a smart
check on their vanguard at the battle of Falkirk (January 17, 1746).
But the English came pouring northward in numbers which he could not
hope to resist; the fiery Duke of Cumberland had more than 30,000 men
on the march by the spring of the New Year, and fresh levies were
forming behind him. The Jacobite leaders saw that the day was lost,
though hitherto all the fighting had been in their favour. Their
undisciplined bands began to disperse once more, and the prince must
have known that, unless the French came to his aid, the ruin of his
cause was at hand. He was constrained to retire northward, first to
Perth, then to Inverness, with an ever-dwindling host. Cumberland
pushed on in his rear with 8000 picked men, resolved to revenge the
disgraceful days of Preston Pans and Falkirk; the rest of the English
army followed at leisure.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Culloden.=]
Charles Edward would not yield without one final blow. With the 5000
men who still followed his standard, he marched out from Inverness,
and attacked the Duke on Culloden Moor (April 16, 1746). Cumberland
was ready for the fight; he had warned his troops to receive the
Highland rush as if it were a cavalry charge, doubling the files and
presenting a triple line of bayonets by making the front ranks kneel,
while cannon were placed in the intervals between the regiments. The
clansmen charged with their usual fury, but were staggered by the
artillery fire, and almost blown to pieces by the triple volley of
three ranks of infantry delivered at a distance of only fifty paces.
The survivors straggled up only to perish on the bayonets. The prince's
left wing, where the Macdonald clan had held back on a foolish point
of tribal jealousy, was still intact; but when the English cavalry
advanced, Charles saw that the day was lost, and bade his followers
disperse. Cumberland tarnished the glory of his victory by the savage
cruelty which he displayed. He gave no quarter, shot 200 prisoners in
cold blood, and burnt every dwelling in the glens of the rebel clans.
A price of £30,000 was put upon the head of Charles Edward, who lurked
for five months in the West Highlands before he could find a ship to
take him to France. He passed through countless perils in safety, and
found no man among his unfortunate followers mean enough to betray him
in the day of adversity. The story of his romantic escape to Skye in
the disguise of the maidservant of Flora Macdonald is well known to all.
After this gallant if reckless expedition, Charles Edward never
appeared again in English politics. He did not at first despair of
striking another blow, and in 1750 paid a secret visit to Britain
to see if a second insurrection were possible. But in England the
Jacobites were almost extinct, while in Scotland they had been so
sorely crushed that they had no power to stir again. The prince had
to return, having accomplished nothing. Hope long deferred makes the
heart sick, and in middle life Charles Edward grew apathetic, took to
drinking, and became only the wreck of his old self. When his father
died in 1765, he proclaimed himself king as Charles III., but never
made another attempt to disturb the peace of England down to his death
in 1788. With his brother Henry, a cardinal of the Roman Church, the
male line of the Stuarts expired in 1807.
[Sidenote: =Suppression of Scottish Jacobitism.=]
The English Government dealt very hardly with the insurgents of 1745-6.
Three Scottish peers, the Lords Kilmarnock, Balmerino, and Lovat, were
beheaded, as was Colonel Townley, the only Englishman of rank who had
joined the prince. Many scores of men of less note were hanged or shot.
A series of bills was passed in Parliament for weakening the clans
and sapping their loyalty to their chiefs. One forbade the wearing
of the Highland dress with its tribal tartans. Another abolished the
feudal jurisdiction, which gave the chiefs power over their followers.
Another made the possession of arms a penal offence. Good roads were
pushed up into the remoter valleys, and an attempt was made to get
rid of the Gaelic language by making English compulsory in schools.
A few years later William Pitt took the wise step of endeavouring to
turn the restless military energy of the Highlanders into patriotic
channels, and raised several of the kilted regiments which have since
distinguished themselves on so many British battle-fields. By the end
of the century the Highlands were as quiet as any English shire, and
Jacobitism had faded away into a romantic sentiment.
[Sidenote: =Progress of the war in Europe.--1745-1747.=]
The war with France and Spain dragged on for three years more, under
very indifferent management on both sides. The withdrawal of the
English army from Flanders in 1745 had given the French an advantage
in the Netherlands, from which they had greatly profited. They had
overrun the whole of the Austrian provinces, and in 1746 threatened
the frontier of Holland. Cumberland and his army were recalled, after
the suppression of the Scottish rising, to check the advance of the
Maréchal de Saxe. But the duke suffered at Lawfeldt, in front of
Maestricht, a defeat of much the same character as that of Fontenoy
(July 2, 1747). Nevertheless, the French in the following winter
consented to treat for peace; they had fared badly along their frontier
on the Rhine and in Italy, and looked upon their successes in Belgium
as only sufficient to entitle them to ask for a mutual restitution
of all conquests. Moreover, their maritime trade had been completely
ruined by the war, and several of their colonies had fallen into
English hands.
[Sidenote: =The treaty of Aachen.=]
Hence came the treaty of Aachen (Aix la Chapelle), signed in the spring
of 1748, to which all the powers who had been engaged in the War of
the Austrian Succession gave their assent. Maria Theresa had finally
to acquiesce in the loss of Silesia to the King of Prussia, and to
make smaller territorial concessions in Italy to Spain and Sardinia,
giving Parma to one, and a long slip of the duchy of Milan to the
other. The remainder of her vast dominions she maintained intact, while
her husband, Francis of Lorraine, was acknowledged by all parties as
Emperor, in succession to the unfortunate Charles of Bavaria, who had
died in 1745.
[Sidenote: =The maritime contest.--Anson's voyage.=]
England, France, and Spain restored to each other all that each had
taken--no very considerable amount--and left the great question of
their colonial and commercial rivalry quite unsettled. Another and a
greater war was required to decide it. The results of the fighting
beyond the seas between 1739 and 1748 had not been very important.
We have already mentioned how the English had failed at Cartagena in
1741. On the other hand, they had captured the French island of Cape
Breton, off the mouth of the St. Lawrence, in 1744, and had maintained
with success a desultory struggle with the enemy along the inland
frontier of Canada. One hazardous expedition against the Pacific ports
of Spanish America had been carried to a brilliant end by Commodore
Anson, who followed in the steps of Drake by capturing the great
Acapulco galleon, with the yearly hoard of the mines of Mexico on board
(1743). Like Drake, too, Anson returned to Europe by the Cape route,
and brought his ship, the _Centurion_, back to Spithead in 1744, thus
completing the circumnavigation of the world in three years.
[Sidenote: =India.--Breakup of the Mogul Empire.=]
While these comparatively unimportant events had been happening on
the American side of the globe, the first war waged between England
and France in India had been giving promise of more serious results.
Down to the commencement of the eighteenth century the great empire
of the Moguls had dominated Hindostan, and the traders of the English
and French East India Companies had been no more than visitors to the
coast, allowed to build factories at convenient ports by the bounty of
the Great Mogul. But in 1707 had died Aurungzebe, the last powerful
monarch of that house, and since his death the vast Mohammedan empire
which his ancestors had built up was falling rapidly to pieces.
Everywhere the Mogul viceroys, or "nawabs," were making themselves
independent of their imperial master at Delhi. The native tribes of
India also, more especially the brave Mahrattas of the Western Deccan,
had been throwing off the Mussulman yoke and starting on a career
of conquest. The European settlers in the ports of Southern India
profited immensely by this relaxation of the central control which the
Mogul government had been wont to exercise, and assumed a much less
deferential tone when dealing with the revolted nawabs who now ruled
in the Carnatic, Bengal, and the Deccan.
[Sidenote: =Collision between the English and French settlers.=]
It was first during the War of the Austrian Succession that the English
and French ventured to engage in hostilities with each other, without
paying attention to the native powers, whose sovereign rights they were
thereby impugning. The factories of the two powers were scattered along
the Coromandel coast in curious alternation, and it was here that the
struggle took place. The English were based on their chief settlement
at Madras, the French on their stronghold of Pondicherry.
[Sidenote: =Successes of Dupleix.=]
Four years of fighting gave a decided superiority to the French, who
were headed by Dupleix, a man of great energy and far-reaching views.
He was the first to discover the part that might be played in Indian
politics by native troops officered and drilled by Europeans. These
Sepoys (_Sipahis_ is the more correct form) had originally been small
armed guards employed by the governors of the factories. Dupleix
discovered, from a chance encounter at St. Thomé (1746), that a small
body of these disciplined mercenaries could defeat whole hordes of
native cavalry, and used his discovery with skill and promptitude.
Raising large numbers of Sepoys, he built up the first regular army
that had been seen in India. In his struggle with the English he was
very successful. Madras and almost all the other English factories
fell into his hands, and it looked as if the French were to be the
sole power in Southern Hindostan. The complete triumph of Dupleix was
only prevented by his quarrels with his colleague Labourdonnais, the
governor of the Mauritius, who had come to his aid at the head of a
fleet. They were both energetic and arbitrary, refused to fall in with
each other's plans, and so failed to completely expel the English
from the Coromandel coast. The other settlements of the East India
Company--the island port of Bombay, the old dowry of Catherine of
Portugal, and the factory of Fort William at Calcutta in Bengal--were
not molested.
To the intense disgust of Dupleix, the treaty of Aachen stipulated the
mutual restoration of conquests, and the English settlements were all
given back in 1748. In India, as in America, all was left unsettled,
and the struggle for supremacy had to be deferred for a space.
[Sidenote: =The "Broad-Bottomed Administration."=]
Eight years of uneasy peace followed the indecisive and vague treaty of
Aachen (1748-1756). England, under the feeble rule of the two Pelhams,
seemed to have sunk back into the same condition of prosperous lethargy
which had been her lot in the uneventful days of Walpole. In her
political history there is nothing of moment to relate; the Pelhams had
almost silenced opposition by the simple expedient of finding places
in the cabinet or the public service for any one who might have made
himself dangerous to them. Even the eloquent and energetic William
Pitt, the consistent denouncer of all ministers, had been quieted for a
time by the gift of the lucrative post of Paymaster of the Forces. Room
was found for so many and diverse persons in the Pelham cabinet, that
it was known as the "Broad-Bottom Administration."
[Sidenote: =Conversion of the National Debt.--"Consols."=]
The Pelhams, though using the old Whig catchwords about liberty and
reform, were, like Walpole, only anxious to keep things quiet and
to preserve themselves in office. Hence there is little or nothing
to record of their doings. We may mention, however, the creation of
our celebrated 3 per cents. by Henry Pelham, who was somewhat of a
financier, his sole accomplishment. The National Debt, then a sum
of £78,000,000, was paying 4 per cent. at the time of the treaty of
Aachen. The premier, seeing that the public credit was good, and money
cheap, resolved to reduce the rate of interest. This he accomplished by
borrowing money at 3 per cent. to pay off all those national creditors
who would not accept the new scale. The conversion was accomplished
with ease, and relieved the revenue of some £500,000 a year of
expenses. The debt, thus reduced and simplified, received its new name
of "Consols," all the old loans having been consolidated into one
(1750).
[Sidenote: =The reform of the Calendar.=]
A word may be also given to the reform of the Calendar in 1752. England
up to this time had used the "Old Style," or Julian Calendar, invented
by Julius Cæsar eighteen centuries before. A slight error in the
calculation of the great Roman had made the year too short, and in the
lapse of the ages this error had grown by accumulation into as much as
eleven days. England, later than most nations, adopted the reformed or
Gregorian Calendar--named after Pope Gregory XIII.--during the Pelham
administration. Thus, the change being made on September 2, 1752, the
day that followed became the 14th instead of the 3rd. This bewildered
the multitude, and was made a serious charge against the minister by
many ignorant folks, who complained that they had been defrauded of
eleven days of their lives!
In such comparatively trifling events the middle years of the
eighteenth century passed away. The stagnant times of the old Whig
oligarchy were drawing towards their close, and the movements which
were to stir England so deeply in the next generation were beginning to
develop.
[Sidenote: =Beginning of the industrial revolution.=]
We have already spoken of the increasing commercial supremacy of
England in the period. This growth in foreign trade was now beginning
to be supplemented by an increased activity in manufacturing industry,
which was to be the distinguishing mark of the second half of the
century. But the first signs of it were already apparent before 1750.
The earliest attempt for the improvement of the inland communications
of the kingdom may be traced to 1720, when the Irwell canal was opened
to Manchester. As important a landmark is the discovery of the process
of smelting iron by means of coal in 1740. Up to this time iron had
always been worked with charcoal, and the manufacture of it had been
almost confined to the wooded districts of southern England, most
especially to the Sussex Weald. But the new process opened up the
Yorkshire iron mines, which were to completely supersede those of
the South, for in the North iron and coal are found together in most
convenient proximity. All this development, however, belongs to the
times of George III. rather than those of George II.
[Sidenote: =The Church under the Whig rule.=]
Even more important in the history of the social life of England than
the expansion of her commercial resources, was another change which
began about the middle of the eighteenth century, in the sphere of
spiritual things. The Whig supremacy in the State, which had begun
in 1714, had the most deplorable results on the Church. Walpole and
his disciples were men quite out of sympathy with any religious
impulse; their lives and morals would not bear looking into, and they
openly scoffed at religion. To them the Church was simply a field of
patronage for friends and dependents, and a machine for supplementing
the working of the State. Down to the time of Anne's death the Tory
party had been supreme within the bounds of the establishment, and the
Whigs therefore viewed the whole body of the clergy with suspicion.
They stopped in 1717 the meetings of Convocation, which had existed
from time immemorial, wishing to prevent the clerical body from
finding a mouthpiece. They systematically officered the Church with
Whig bishops, of whom nothing was asked but political orthodoxy. As
was likely, men chosen on this principle were often most unfit pastors
of the Church. A Walpole or a Pelham was not likely to select men
whose characteristics were fervour or enthusiasm. The Whig bishops
were generally of two classes--either they were prominent political
clergy, court chaplains and the like, who laid themselves out to win
preferment by their sermons, or they were "Greek-play bishops"--to use
an expressive phrase--mere scholars, whose title to promotion was to
have edited a classic author or ruled a public school. Both classes
were, as a rule, very inefficient; many were scandalous non-residents,
and seldom went near their dioceses, dwelling in London all the year
round and haunting the court. Remote sees like Bangor or Carlisle
hardly knew the face of their bishops. Some of these prelates were more
notable for their political than their religious orthodoxy; of these
"Latitudinarian" bishops perhaps the best known is Hoadley, whom the
Whigs promoted to four sees one after another, in spite of the fact
that his views on the Trinity were hardly consistent with his position
as a member of the Church.
[Sidenote: =Decline of religious feeling.=]
It was not to be expected that such prelates would be in touch with
their subordinates the country clergy, who still for the most part
remained Tory in their views, looked on the least measure for the
political emancipation of Dissenters or Romanists with horror, and
nourished a strong personal dislike for the two first Georges and their
ministers. Hence came such a breach in the unity and organization
of the Church as had never been seen before. The upper clergy were
careless and unspiritual, the lower clergy grew lethargic and apathetic
under the neglect of their superiors. There was a general tendency to
praise common sense and morality, and to sneer at theological learning
or evangelical fervour.
[Sidenote: =The Methodist movement.--John Wesley.=]
This general deadness in the Church could not long continue without
causing a reaction. The great feature in the second quarter of the
eighteenth century was the appearance of the "Methodist" movement, of
which John Wesley was the originator. Shocked by the want of energy
and enthusiasm among the clergy, Wesley, a Fellow of Lincoln College,
Oxford, devoted himself to active evangelical work, and especially to
public preaching. He is first heard of as preaching to the poor of
neglected Oxford parishes, and to the prisoners in the jail (1729). A
few years later he went out as a missionary to America, and laboured
in the backwoods of Georgia. Returning in 1738, he resumed his
work in England, passing from place to place, and addressing large
congregations of all sorts and conditions of men. His fervent eloquence
and enthusiasm came as a revelation to the neglected masses of the
cities, or to congregations condemned to many years of sermons on dry
morality. He spoke of sin and conversion with an earnestness which had
not been seen since the days of early Puritan enthusiasm. Wesley and
the numerous followers who sprang up to join him might have inspired
the Church with a new spirit of fervour, if they had but been permitted
to do so. But, unfortunately, the Latitudinarian bishops disliked his
emotional harangues and his clear-cut dogma, and the parish clergy
often treated him as an intruder when he appeared inside their cures.
Hence, though a strong Churchman at first, he was gradually driven into
schism, and became the founder of a new Nonconformist sect, instead of
the restorer of the spirituality of the Church from within. Towards the
end of his sixty years of labour (1729-91), he took the final step of
ordaining preachers and allowing them to celebrate the sacraments, thus
committing his followers to abandoning the national Church. His work,
however, was not without its effect inside the Church of England; many
who sympathized with him remained Churchmen, and from them came the
Evangelical, or newer Low-Church party, within the establishment.
[Sidenote: =Growth of a higher morality.=]
From Wesley and his contemporaries began a decided improvement in the
moral life of England. After remaining at its lowest ebb in the eighty
years that followed the Restoration, it began to mend about the middle
of the century. The change is marked in all the most characteristic
spheres of action, by an increased humanity to prisoners, paupers, and
slaves, an improved tone in literature and the drama, and a growing
demand for the observation of a higher standard of morals by public
men. Political corruption and ostentatious ill living, which had been
the rule in the beginning of the eighteenth century, had become the
exception at its end.
But if England was more serious and more moral by the end of the
century, no small share in that result must be attributed to the
sobering effect of three long and desperate wars, which more than once
seemed about to be the ruin of the realm. Between 1756 and 1815 there
were to be thirty-six years of war to twenty-three of peace, and two
whole generations were bred up in times of stress and trouble, which
developed the sterner virtues, and taught men no longer to sneer at
fervour, whether displayed in patriotism or in religion.
[Sidenote: =The Seven Years' War.=]
The "Seven Years' War" into which England was plunged in 1756, while
still under the imbecile guidance of the elder Pelham, was the most
important struggle in which she had engaged since the days of the
Spanish Armada. It definitely settled all the points which had been
left undetermined by the peace of Aachen, and gave her the empire of
the seas and the lion's share of the commerce of the world. Her hold on
these gains was to be shaken in later wars, but never lost.
The Seven Years' War, like the War of the Austrian Succession, had two
sides--the Colonial and the European. In 1756, as in 1742, England,
while contending for her own objects beyond seas, was also subsidizing
a powerful continental ally, who had his own interests to serve,
in order to distract the attention of France from the more distant
struggle. The new war resembled the old in another respect. In each
case it was the colonial quarrel which first came to the front; the
European strife was a later development. The causes which provoked the
Seven Years' War were to be found both in America and in India. In both
of these quarters the representatives of England and of France came
to blows before the mother countries had resolved on war. The quarrel
was the result of natural causes which made it inevitable, and not the
deliberate work of the timid Newcastle or the selfish Lewis XV.
[Sidenote: =Supremacy of Dupleix in Southern India.=]
It was in India that the first hostilities broke out, not very long
after the peace of Aachen had been signed. We have already mentioned
how the French governor Dupleix had raised an army of Sepoys, and
resolved to employ it for the furtherance of French interests in
Southern India. He was enabled to do this by the fact that a war of
succession had broken out in each of the two great native states which
were neighbours to the European settlements on the Coromandel coast. In
the Deccan two princes of the Nizam family, an uncle and a nephew, were
disputing for the throne of Hyderabad. In the Carnatic a rebellious
minister was trying to usurp his master's throne. Dupleix resolved to
sell the aid of his army to one pretender for use against the other.
The appearance of his disciplined battalions in the field settled
the fortune of war at once. He gained for his ally Mozuffer Jung the
whole of the Hyderabad dominions. Then he turned against the Carnatic,
slew the old nawab in battle, and drove his son, Mohammed Ali, into
Trichinopoly, his last stronghold. The rebel minister, Chunda Sahib,
was then saluted as ruler of the land. The two new nawabs soon became
the mere creatures of Dupleix, whose military strength completely
overawed their motley armies. They lavished millions of rupees upon
him, and Mozuffer Jung gave him the title of Supreme Vizier of all
India south of the river Kistnah, and appointed him permanent chief of
his army.
[Sidenote: =Clive seizes and holds Arcot.=]
Dupleix was in truth master of Southern India, a fact viewed with
dismay by the English settlers along the Coromandel coast. They had,
in rivalry with him, espoused the cause of the two nawabs whom he
had crushed. One of these princes was now dead, the other besieged
in his last stronghold. The rulers of Madras despaired, but a single
bold spirit persuaded them to venture a blow against the power of the
Frenchman. Robert Clive, the scapegrace son of a Shropshire squire, had
been sent out to Madras as a clerk in the East India Company's service
to keep him out of mischief. But he changed his pen for the sword,
and became a captain in the Company's army. Now he persuaded Governor
Saunders to entrust him with a few hundred men, to make a diversion in
favour of the besieged nawab, Mohammed Ali. To draw away the army which
was beleaguering Trichinopoly, Clive resolved to strike at the capital
of the Carnatic, the town of Arcot. Marching by night and with great
speed, he seized the place and fortified himself in its citadel. He was
at once attacked by the forces of the Chunda Sahib, aided by a division
of the army of Dupleix. But he contrived to inspire his 500 men with
such obstinate courage, that they repulsed all the assaults of 10,000
enemies, and finally compelled the nawab's army to withdraw foiled
(1751).
[Sidenote: =Further successes of Clive.--Dupleix recalled.=]
After thus winning Arcot, Clive was entrusted by the Madras Council
with all their disposable troops--200 Europeans and 700 English Sepoys.
With these reinforcements he took the field against Dupleix and Chunda
Sahib, routed a number of French detachments, and finally recovered the
whole of the Carnatic for Mohammed Ali, the _protégé_ of the English.
Chunda Sahib surrendered to his enemy, who had him murdered. Dupleix
played a losing game against his greater rival for two more years,
and was finally recalled in disgrace by the French Government (1754).
Thus the English carried out the lesson which the great Frenchman had
taught them, that India might be conquered with Indian arms, and that
its princes might be made the vassals of the mere traders who had paid
them humble tribute a few years before. With the establishment of the
English suzerainty over the nawab Mohammed Ali and his realm of the
Carnatic begins the English empire in Hindostan.
[Sidenote: =The struggle for the Mississippi valley.=]
Clive and Dupleix had posed as the mere auxiliaries of the nawabs,
and their struggle was not supposed to commit the mother country to
war. But a less disguised form of hostilities between England and
France commenced somewhat later in America. Its cause was the want
of any definite boundary between the settlements of the two nations.
It was the ambition of the English colonists to push westward from
Pennsylvania and Virginia, and gradually to colonize all the waste
lands, sparsely inhabited by savage Indian tribes, which lay between
them and the Mississippi. But the French had another and a no less
ambitious scheme. Besides their dominions in Canada, they possessed
another colony at the mouth of the Mississippi, round the town of New
Orleans. They claimed that this territory of Louisiana stretched up to
the head-waters of the great river, and it was their object to connect
it with Canada by a string of forts placed along the Mississippi and
its tributary the Ohio. If they could have carried out this gigantic
and wide-stretching plan, they would have shut in the English colonies
between the Alleghany mountains and the sea, and prevented them from
extending into the interior of the continent. The weak point of the
plan was that the French were far too few in numbers to execute any
such project. Though they counted among them many hardy backwoodsmen
and fur-traders, who had explored all the waterways of the West, they
could not back these pioneers up with solid masses of population. There
were not more than 180,000 French emigrants in America, while the
English colonies boasted at this time nearly 2,000,000 sturdy settlers.
[Illustration: ENGLAND
AND FRANCE IN AMERICA.
1706.]
[Sidenote: =Outbreak of hostilities.--Braddock's defeat.=]
In spite of this disparity of numbers, the French governors were set
on executing their venturous scheme. It was their active advance into
the wilderness that lay between Canada and the English colonies,
that brought about the first collisions with the English outposts.
The three northern links of the chain that was to join Canada with
Louisiana were Fort Ticonderoga, at the south end of Lake Champlain,
Fort Niagara, near the Great Falls between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario,
and Fort Duquesne, at the head-waters of the Ohio. The first and last
of these were a very few miles from the English back-settlements, and
their establishment in 1754-55 was looked upon as a direct challenge
by the inhabitants of Pennsylvania and Virginia. In 1754 a party of
Virginian militia, headed by Major George Washington, of whom we
shall hear much later on, made a dash on Fort Duquesne. But they were
beaten and forced to surrender after a fight at Great Meadows. This
provoked the colonies, and at their request General Braddock repeated
the attack in the next year with a force of 2200 men, part of whom
were British regulars. But he was drawn into an ambuscade by a very
inferior force of French and Indians, his force was disgracefully
routed, and he himself was slain. The fighting at once began to spread,
and both England and France sent out reinforcements to America. Yet the
two nations were still nominally at peace, and the French, who were
just about to engage in a great war in Germany, were not anxious to
commence hostilities with England at this particular moment. Newcastle,
however, precipitated the outbreak of the struggle by a characteristic
half-measure. He sent out Admiral Boscawen with orders not to attack
all French ships, but to intercept a particular squadron carrying
troops to Canada. Boscawen met it, and took two vessels after a fight;
this made war inevitable. It broke out in the spring of 1756, and
opened with a series of disasters for England, a fact which causes no
surprise when we remember that her forces were under the direction of
the imbecile Newcastle.
[Sidenote: =European coalition against Prussia.=]
Just at the same moment another struggle was commencing on the
Continent. The Empress Maria Theresa had never forgiven the King of
Prussia for robbing her of Silesia in the hour of her distress,
fourteen years before. She had devoted much time and trouble to forming
a great coalition for the purpose of punishing the plunderer, and had
secretly enlisted in her alliance France, Russia, Sweden, Saxony, and
most of the smaller German states. For the unscrupulous and rapacious
Frederic was not viewed with love by his neighbours, and it was easy
to combine them against him. His venomous pen had made enemies of two
vindictive women, Elizabeth Empress of Russia, and Madame de Pompadour,
the all-powerful mistress of Lewis XV., and though political expediency
did not prescribe war with Prussia to either Russia or France, yet
personal resentment brought it about.
[Sidenote: =Frederic II. overruns Saxony.=]
The open war between England and France had broken out in the spring of
1756. In the autumn of the same year the continental struggle began.
Getting secret intelligence of the plot that was maturing against him,
Frederic resolved to strike before his numerous adversaries were ready,
and invaded Saxony. He overran the whole electorate and annihilated
the Saxon army in a fortnight. But Austria, Russia, Sweden, and France
immediately fell upon him, and he had much ado to avoid being crushed
by brute force of numbers; for Prussia was but a small state of
5,000,000 souls, while the confederacy ranged against her counted half
Europe in its ranks.
[Sidenote: =Alliance between England and Prussia.=]
Alone among a host of foes, Frederic was desperately in need of an
ally. And only one ally was possible--England. For both England and
Prussia were now at war with France, and it was obvious that they ought
to aid each other against their common foe.
[Sidenote: =The loss of Minorca.=]
Moreover, the English Government was itself sadly in need of
assistance, for the war had opened with a series of disasters in
more than one quarter of the world. The most serious loss had been
suffered in the Mediterranean: a French fleet and army under the Duc de
Richelieu had slipped out of Toulon and fallen on Minorca, the Spanish
island which had formed part of England's plunder at the peace of
Utrecht. The English garrison was weak, for it had always been supposed
that we were strong enough at sea to prevent the enemy from approaching
this important possession, which was to us then what Malta is now.
But when the Mediterranean fleet under Admiral Byng came up to relieve
the troops beleaguered in the citadel of Port Mahon, a disgraceful
sight was seen. The English admiral, finding that the French squadron
was slightly superior to his own, refused to fight, and fled away
to Gibraltar, though his second in command urged him hotly to risk
everything in order to save the island. The deserted garrison held out
a month longer, and then was forced to surrender (June, 1756).
[Sidenote: =Successes of Montcalm in Canada.=]
Nor was this the only disaster with which the Seven Years' War opened.
Montcalm, the French commander in Canada, made a dash against the
frontier garrisons of the British colonists in America, and took Forts
Oswego and William Henry, our outposts on the North-West.
[Sidenote: =The Black Hole of Calcutta.=]
Still more shocking news was on its way home from India. The Nawab
of Bengal, a cruel and debauched tyrant named Suraj-ud-Dowlah, had
picked a quarrel with the governor of Calcutta, the English factory
near the mouth of the Ganges. Suddenly declaring war in June, 1756,
the same month that Minorca was lost, he captured Calcutta with ease.
In his hour of triumph, he bade his guards thrust all his captives
into the "Black Hole," a small dungeon not much more than twenty feet
square, which had been wont to serve as the prison of the factory.
No less than 146 persons--merchants, officials, soldiers, and
women--were driven into this confined space, and locked in for the
night. They were tightly wedged together, had no air save from two
narrow barred windows, and could not move. In the stifling heat of a
Bengal June, nearly the whole of them perished of suffocation. Only
twenty-three--one of whom was a woman--were found alive next morning.
The horrors of the Black Hole were soon to be revenged, but long ere
the news of the punishment which Clive wreaked on the nawab came home,
the Newcastle ministry had been driven from office.
[Sidenote: =Trial of Admiral Byng.--Fall of Newcastle.=]
The popular outcry at the mismanagement of the war, and above all at
the loss of Minorca, had been too great for the feeble Newcastle to
withstand. It was in vain that he arrested Byng and promised to try him
for cowardice. For Byng could not be made the scapegoat for disasters
in America or India, and the universal indignation against Newcastle's
administration of the war forced him to resign in November, 1756.
Shortly after the admiral was tried by court-martial, condemned, and
shot, for disobedience to orders and for criminal feebleness, though
he was acquitted of any treasonable intent or personal cowardice. His
death served, as Voltaire remarked at the time, "_pour encourager
les autres_," and English admirals since then have never shirked an
engagement with an enemy of only slightly superior force.
[Sidenote: =Pitt and Devonshire take office.=]
The king summoned the opposition Whigs to form a cabinet, and William
Pitt and the Duke of Devonshire took office. Pitt, as we have already
had occasion to remark, was the fighting man of the Whig party, and
the advocate of a vigorous colonial and commercial policy. He was the
one statesman of the day who commanded the confidence of the nation,
because he was the only one whose reputation was entirely free from
the stain of political corruption. He was an able, eloquent man,
whose scathing denunciations of the errors and feebleness of the late
ministry were convincing to all who heard them. It remained to be
seen if his own administration would prove more successful. At first,
however, it seemed likely that Pitt would have small opportunity of
trying his hand at the helm. Though he was trusted by the nation, he
was not trusted by the House of Commons. Newcastle set himself to
overthrow his successor, by bidding his hirelings in the Lower House
to vote consistently against the new ministers. Moreover, King George
disliked Pitt for his vehemence and his pompous language.
[Sidenote: =Pitt dismissed.--His compact with Newcastle.=]
Hence came a vexatious crisis in April, 1757, when Pitt found himself
in a minority in the House of Commons, and was dismissed from office
by the king. But the public outcry against the proposed resumption
of office by Newcastle was so loud, that a curious and not very
satisfactory compromise was arranged. The duke offered to take Pitt as
his colleague, and to give him a free hand in the management of the
war and all foreign policy, if he himself were permitted to retain the
direction of domestic affairs. Pitt believed himself to be necessary
to his country; he thought that he could bring the war to a successful
conclusion, and that no one else could do so. Hence, though he was
thoroughly acquainted with the mean and intriguing spirit of the duke,
he took his offer. Newcastle wanted no more than the power of managing
Parliament and dispensing patronage--his ideas of government went no
further. In return he placed his subservient parliamentary majority
at Pitt's disposal. The result was, as a shrewd contemporary observer
remarked, that "Mr. Pitt _does_ everything, and the Duke of Newcastle
_gives_ everything."
[Sidenote: =The Convention of Closter-Seven.=]
The Pitt-Newcastle ministry lasted nearly six years, and its excellent
results almost justified the ignominious compact on which it was
founded. Soon after Pitt got the control of affairs, the fortune of
war began to mend. His first attempts at launching expeditions against
France were, it is true, unsuccessful. The Duke of Cumberland was sent
to Hanover to defend the electorate against the French. But he suffered
the same misfortune as at Fontenoy and Lawfeldt, once more showing
himself a brave soldier, but a bad strategist. At Hastenbeck he was
defeated, and, retiring northward, was pressed back against the North
Sea near Stade, and forced to sign the Convention of Closter-Seven, by
which the Hanoverian army laid down its arms (June, 1757).
[Sidenote: _Battles of Rossbach and Leuthen._]
This disaster exposed the western frontier of Prussia to the French,
and might have proved the ruin of King Frederic. But that marvellous
general saved himself by the rapid blows which he dealt to West and
East. Flying into central Germany, he routed the French at Rossbach
(November 5); and then, returning to Silesia before the Austrians had
missed him, he defeated the troops of the Empress at Leuthen (December
5). Thus he won himself six months' respite, and during that time
Pitt raised another army for service in Germany, which was placed
under Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, a distant cousin of the royal
family, but a general of very different order from the unlucky George
of Cumberland. This force effectually protected the western borders
of Prussia and the electorate of Hanover from the French during the
remainder of the war.
[Sidenote: =War-policy of Pitt.=]
With the opening of the year 1758 began a succession of victories
all over the world, which effectually justified the claims of Pitt
to be the restorer of the greatness of Britain. He had everywhere
put new vigour into the struggle, by placing young generals, chosen
by himself, at the head of his expeditions, and by raising loans for
war expenses with a profusion which appalled more timid financiers.
Part of this wealth was lavished on the King of Prussia, whose aid
was invaluable in distracting the forces of France. "I am conquering
Canada on the plains of Germany," observed Pitt to those who reproached
him for the vast subsidies which he sent to Frederic. And the epigram
was true, for the reinforcements which were absolutely necessary if
France was to retain her American possessions, were being sent across
the Rhine to join in the great European struggle. Pitt, in fact, was
working out to a glorious end the policy which Carteret had sketched
nearly twenty years before.
[Sidenote: =The struggle for Canada.=]
While Ferdinand of Brunswick with his Anglo-Hanoverian army beat the
French at Crefeldt, and kept them back on the Rhine (June, 1758),
still more important things were being effected in America. A general
advance was made along the whole front of the French possessions in
America. In the north Admiral Boscawen and the young General Wolfe
captured Louisbourg, the strongly fortified capital of the island
of Cape Breton. In the south Fort Duquesne was occupied by a force
consisting mainly of colonial militia, and thus the line of French
communications between Canada and Louisiana was effectually cut. The
jubilant colonists changed the name of the place to Pittsburg in honour
of the great minister. Only in the centre of the advance was a reverse
sustained; there the French commander, the gallant Montcalm, had
collected the bulk of his forces behind the ramparts of Ticonderoga, to
bar the line of advance up the Hudson. General Abercrombie was repulsed
with fearful loss when he attempted to take the place by assault,
though his men did all that could be done, and Pitt's new Highland
regiments absolutely filled the ditch with their bodies ere they could
be forced to retire. But the fall of Canada was only delayed a few
months by this check to the British arms.
[Sidenote: =Battles of Lagos and Quiberon.=]
The next year, 1759, was even more fertile in successes. The naval
strength of France received its final blow in two decisive battles. The
French Mediterranean fleet ran out of Toulon and tried to escape into
the Atlantic, but Admiral Boscawen met them off Lagos in Portugal,
and took or destroyed most of the vessels. Some months later Admiral
Hawke attacked the French Atlantic fleet, which had come out of Brest
and was lying in Quiberon Bay. Though a fierce storm was raging, he ran
into the bay and forced the enemy to engage. In the heat of the fight
many of their ships were driven ashore and lost, while Hawke carried
off two prizes, and only a few out of the hostile fleet escaped into
the mouth of the river Vilaine. After the battles of Lagos and Quiberon
Bay, the enemy never attempted to appear at sea in any force during the
remaining four years of the war. Indeed, the French marine was almost
entirely destroyed, for sixty-four line-of-battle ships had been sunk
or taken in 1758-1759.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Minden.=]
In the same year a great victory had been gained in Germany. When the
French reinforced their army of the Rhine and again pushed forward
toward Hanover, Prince Ferdinand gave them battle at Minden, and
inflicted on them a defeat which sent them back in haste towards their
own borders. The chief honour of the fight fell to seven regiments of
English infantry, which received and repelled the fierce charges of
the whole of the cavalry of the French army; but a slur was cast on
the victory by the misconduct of Lord George Sackville, the general of
the English horse, who refused--out of temper or cowardice--to charge
the broken enemy and complete their rout. Nevertheless the fight did
its work, and proved the salvation of our ally, Frederic II., who was
just at this moment in the depths of despair. He had suffered a fearful
defeat at the hands of the Russians at Künersdorf, on the Oder, and was
only saved from complete destruction by being able to draw aid from the
victorious army of Prince Ferdinand.
[Illustration: QUEBEC 1759.]
[Sidenote: =Montcalm and Wolfe.--Battle of Quebec.=]
But events of far greater import had happened in America during this
summer. Pitt had sketched out a concentric attack on Canada from three
sides. General Amherst had taken Ticonderoga, the fort that had baffled
Abercrombie in the previous year, while another expedition captured
Fort Niagara and the other western strongholds of the French. But the
main blow was struck in the North. An English fleet appeared in the
St. Lawrence and put ashore General Wolfe, Pitt's favourite officer,
with an army of 8000 men. Montcalm hurried to the spot with all the
French regulars in the province, and a horde of Canadian militia, and
hastened to the defence of Quebec, the capital of the land. The place
was very strongly placed, being protected on two sides by the rivers
St. Lawrence and St. Charles, and watched by Montcalm's entrenched camp
at Beauport. After failing to break the French lines, Wolfe ventured on
a hazardous flank attack. The cliffs overhanging the St. Lawrence were
believed to be inaccessible, as there was only a single precipitous
goat-track which mounted them, and this was protected by a guard. But
Wolfe resolved to risk the danger of assaulting them. His men dropped
down the river in boats under cover of the night, reached the foot of
the crags, and crept up one after another on hands and knees, pulling
themselves up by the aid of trees and shrubs. The French picket at
the top was surprised and fled. Thus Wolfe had 4000 men in line on
the ground above the cliffs, "the Heights of Abraham," before the day
dawned. When they became visible to Montcalm, he was forced to come out
of his impregnable lines and fight in the open, under pain of losing
Quebec. There followed a short sharp conflict, in which the English had
from the first the advantage. The Canadian militia fled in panic, the
French regulars were cut to pieces, and Montcalm himself was mortally
wounded. But Wolfe had also been struck down in the moment of victory;
he lived just long enough to hear that the battle was won, and died
on the field (September 13, 1759). He was only thirty-three, and, had
he survived, would have had a long career of glory before him. But to
have conquered America for England was in itself a sufficient title
to immortality. For the battle of Quebec was the decisive day in the
history of the continent.
[Sidenote: =Canada surrenders to the English.=]
The wrecks of the French army evacuated the capital, and fell back on
Montreal. Thither they were followed in the next spring both by the
forces under Amherst, which had ascended the Hudson, and by Wolfe's
army from Quebec. Surrounded by vastly superior numbers, de Vaudreuil,
the viceroy of Canada, was forced to lay down his arms, and surrender
the remnant of the French possessions in the north. Thus ended in
ignominious failure the great scheme which Montcalm had formed for
securing inland America for his king, and penning the English colonists
between the ocean and the Alleghanies. The British flag now waved
without a rival from the North Pole to the boundary of Spanish America.
[Sidenote: =Clive retakes Calcutta.=]
Meanwhile events of importance had been happening in the far East.
While England was laying her hand on the Western Continent, she was
also winning her first territorial dominions in India. We have already
told the tale of the Black Hole and the fall of Calcutta. Its sequel
has yet to be related. Just when the news of Suraj-ud-Dowlah's wicked
doings reached Madras, Clive chanced to return from England, where
he had been for two years on leave. The task of chastising the nawab
was at once made over to him. He was entrusted with one regiment of
British troops, the 39th, which bears on its colours the honourable
legend _Primus in Indis_, and with 2000 Madras sepoys. With this small
force he did not hesitate to invade the vast but unwarlike province of
Bengal. He forced his way up the Hoogly and recovered Calcutta with
ease. But he hesitated some time before advancing into the interior, to
strike at the nawab's capital of Moorshedabad.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Plassey.--The English masters of Bengal.=]
Soon, however, he learnt that Suraj-ud-Dowlah was hated by his
subjects, and that his own ministers were ready to betray him. Armed
with this knowledge, Clive advanced from Calcutta as far as the village
of Plassey, where he found himself in face of the nawab's hordes,
50,000 irregular horse and foot of the worst quality. The English were
attacked but feebly and half-heartedly, for the enemy had no confidence
in their prince. Moreover, Mir Jaffar, who commanded one wing of his
army, had sold himself to Clive for the promise of his master's throne,
and held aloof all day, like Northumberland at Bosworth Field. At the
hour of noon Clive bade his men charge, and the contemptible soldiery
of Suraj-ud-Dowlah fled before the assault, though they outnumbered
the English by eighteen to one. Only the nawab's French artillerymen
stood firm, and were bayoneted at their guns. This battle, which gave
England the rich realm of Bengal, was won with a loss of only 72 men to
the victors. Clive soon seized Moorshedabad and installed Mir Jaffar
as nawab in his master's room. The deposed tyrant was caught by his
successor and promptly strangled. Mir Jaffar ruled for the future as
the dependent of England, paid the East India Company a tribute, and
acted as their vassal. Thus Bengal, though not annexed, was for all
practical purposes made a part of the British empire.
Clive sullied his laurels by two acts which show the unscrupulous
character that was allied with his great talents. Before Plassey, a
Bengali named Omichund discovered the intrigue with Mir Jaffar, and
threatened to reveal it to the nawab. Clive bought him off by a forged
promise of money signed with the name of Admiral Watson. When the
danger was over, he avowed his forgery to the traitor, who thereupon
went mad with rage and disappointed greed. After Plassey Clive
committed his second fault, by accepting for his private use huge sums
of gold which Mir Jaffar offered him. When taunted with this, he only
replied that "he was astonished at his own moderation, considering the
enormously larger amount that he might have asked and received" (1757).
After settling Bengal and defeating an attempt to reconquer it made by
Shah Alum, the heir of the Great Moguls, Clive returned to England in
1759, to be saluted as the conqueror of the East.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Wandewash. Capture of Pondicherry.=]
While Clive was overrunning Bengal, the English armies in the Carnatic
were making an end of the small remnants of the French power in India.
The operations were protracted, till in January, 1760, Sir Eyre Coote
routed the last French army at Wandewash, and, ere another year was
out, Pondicherry and all the other strongholds of the enemy were in his
hands.
[Sidenote: =Death of George II.=]
While England was thus triumphant alike in Europe, India, and America,
and Pitt was at the height of his glory, the old king, George II., died
suddenly in his seventy-eighth year (October 25, 1760). His death made
an instant change in the national politics both at home and abroad,
for his successor was not one of those sovereigns who were contented
to obey their ministers and meekly bear the yoke of the great Whig
oligarchy.