It is sometimes the good fortune and glory of great men, under the hand of God, to baffle the doleful prognostications of their contemporaries. As a constitutional minister, the first William Pitt should occupy a lower position than the noble career of his son. He was overbearing, whimsical, personal, and theatrical. Abroad he could push national pride as far as the most impolitic insolence. He sacrificed his country's interests for the sake of humiliating her enemies. He made England feared, but he isolated her in Europe and in the world by a proud and obdurate policy, for which he was to pay cruelly later. At home he was unbalanced and violent, carried away by opposing and always extreme passions, without limit and without foresight. The greatness of his mind, ability, and character, however, overcame all his defects. He governed his country through a long and difficult war in stormy times which demanded painful sacrifices, making constant appeals to the most noble passions of the human soul by the prestige of eloquence, rectitude, patriotism, and glory. It is his honor to have re-established the fortune of England in the war; it is no less a service to have lifted hearts to the level of fortune in order to sustain a great cause.
Pitt's first warlike efforts were not happy. An expedition attempted against Rochefort was unsuccessful. The King of Prussia, lately victorious in Saxony, whence he had driven the elector, the King of Poland, found himself in turn closely pressed by the Austrian Marshal Daun, who had conquered him at Cologne. Marshal d'Estrèes, slowly occupying Westphalia, had entrapped the Duke of Cumberland on the Weser. On the morning of the 23d of July, 1757, the marshal summoned his lieutenant-generals. "Gentlemen," said he, "I do not assemble you to-day to ask you whether we must fight M. de Cumberland and invest Hameln. The honor of the king's arms, his wish, his express orders, the interest of a common cause, bind us to take the firmest resolutions. I only seek, therefore, to profit by your light, and to concoct with you the best means of successful attack." The Duke of Cumberland's troops were of various races. He had not under his command any English regiment. His warlike spirit was not sufficient to compensate for the defects of his military organization. On the 26th of July Marshal d'Estrèes forced him into the intrenchment at Hastenbeck. He retreated, without being pursued, to the marshes at the mouth of the Elbe, under the protection of English vessels. Marshal d'Estrèes was recalled by a court intrigue. Marshal Richelieu and the Duke de Soubise divided the command. Richelieu systematically pillaged Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, and Brunswick. He threatened the position of the Duke of Cumberland, and the latter asked to capitulate. On the 8th of September, by the intervention of the Count de Lynar, the minister of the King of Denmark, who remained neutral between the belligerents, the Duke of Cumberland and Marshal Richelieu signed, at the advance posts of the French army, the famous capitulation of Closter-Severn. The troops of King Louis XV. occupied all the conquered country; those of Hesse, Brunswick, and Saxe-Gotha were to return to their quarters. The great Frederick had already recalled the Prussians; the Hanoverians were to remain fortified in the neighborhood of Stade. In his presumptuous levity the marshal had not even thought of exacting their disarming.
However incomplete as was this convention, which was severely judged by the Emperor Napoleon I. in his memoirs, it excited great anger in England as well as in Prussia. When the Duke of Cumberland presented himself before his father, the old king greeted him with this startling sentence: "There is my son who has dishonored himself whilst ruining me." Wounded and discouraged, the duke officially renounced his command and handed in his resignation of all his offices, to linger yet some years in obscurity, and finally die in 1765, at the age of forty-six years. Pitt alone of the ministers had defended him. When the king repeated that he had never authorized his son's conduct, the prince's constant antagonist replied in an honest spirit of justice: "It is true, Sire; but his powers were extensive, very extensive!"
The King of Prussia remained alone opposing the allies. Every day his force diminished, affected by desertion as much as by death. The Russian army had invaded the Prussian provinces and beaten General Schouvaloff near Memel; twenty-five thousand Swedes had just landed in Pomerania. For a moment Frederick II. thought of killing himself, but the indomitable strength of his soul, a strange mingling of corruption and heroism, constantly drew him back to battle with fresh efforts of ability and resolve. The favor of Madame de Pompadour had reserved for the Prince Soubise the honor of crushing the King of Prussia. The two armies met on the 5th of November, 1757, on the banks of the Saale, near Rosbach. That evening the French army, utterly defeated, fled to Erfurt. It left on the field of battle eight thousand prisoners and three thousand dead. A month later the Austrians were in turn vanquished at Lissa. The glory of the great Frederick, obscure for a time, shone forth anew in all its splendor; he became the national hero of Germany. The Protestant powers, lately engaged against him, made approaches to the conqueror. In England enthusiasm was at its height; Pitt concluded a new agreement with Prussia. Parliament, without difficulty, voted a subsidy of sixty-seven thousand pounds sterling. King George II., as Elector of Hanover, had refused to ratify the capitulation of Cloister-Severn, and his troops were already renewing the campaign under the command of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. Being clever and honest, he had soon gained possession of the country of Luneberg, of Zell, of a part of Brunswick and of Bremen. In order to maintain the struggle in Germany, King Louis XV. and Madame de Pompadour had just put the Count de Clermont at the head of the French troops.
The Zaporogue Cossacks inundated Prussia, and Frederick II. had scarcely beaten the Russians on the bloody day of Zorndorff when he was himself conquered at Hochkirch by Marshal Daun and forced to evacuate Saxony. Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick had just won the important victory of Crevelt over the new French general. The Count de Clermont had given evidence of the most distressing incapacity; his army escaped every day more and more from under the yoke of discipline. It was discontented, humiliated, and without confidence in the chiefs who successively headed it, being exalted to the command by court intrigues or manœuvres. The Marquis de Contades had succeeded M. de Clermont. At Versailles the Count de Stainville, created Duke de Choiseul, had become Minister of Foreign Affairs in place of Cardinal de Bernis, who was always inclined to pacific counsels. The second treaty of Versailles had united France to Maria Theresa more firmly than ever. The English had on two occasions unsuccessfully attempted an attack on the coasts of Normandy and Brittany. The Duke d'Aiguillon, governor of that province, had taken to himself the honor of having repulsed the invasion; a single unimportant battle had taken place, and this formed the pretext for a grand project of descent on the English coasts. The Prince de Soubise was recalled from Germany in order to direct the invading army. The expedition was ready, and only awaited the signal to issue from the port, but Admiral Hawke was cruising in front of Brest, Admiral Rodney had just bombarded Havre, and it was only in the month of November, 1759, that the Marquis de Conflaus, who commanded the fleet, was able to put to sea with twenty-one vessels of the line and four frigates. The English forces were superior to his, and immediately set out in pursuit. M. de Conflaus thought he would find refuge in the tortuous passages at the mouth of the Vilaine.
The English penetrated there after him. Sir Edward Hawke engaged the Soleil Royal, which was commanded by the French admiral. His pilot represented to him the danger of navigating. The brave seaman let him talk. "Very well," he answered; "you have done your duty, now you have only to obey me; manage so as to place me alongside the Soleil Royal." The battle thus waged in the various narrow passages became disastrous to the French vessels. The commander of the rear guard, M. Saint-André du Verger, let it be raked by the enemy's cannon in order to cover the retreat. The admiral ran aground in the Bay of Croisic, and himself burned his vessel. Seven French and two English ships remained engaged in the Vilaine. M. de Conflaus' day, as the sailors named the episode, dealt a fatal blow to the unfortunate remnant of the French navy. The English triumphed everywhere on the sea, and even in our own waters.
They also triumphed at a distance in our colonies, entirely abandoned to their forces, which prolonged in a heroic struggle the throes of their agony. Pitt had determined to achieve the conquest of Canada. Already the outposts of Louisburg and Cape Breton had succumbed beneath the attacks of the English. The Anglo-American forces were increased during the campaign of 1758 to sixty thousand men. The entire population of Canada was not more numerous. In 1759, three armies invaded the French territory at once. On the 29th of June, a considerable fleet carried to the Island of Orleans, fronting Quebec, General Wolfe, a young officer of great promise who had distinguished himself at the siege of Louisburg. Pitt believed that he discerned in him the elements of superior merit. In spite of the blundering— sometimes presuming, and again depressed—of Wolfe, he had resolved to confide to him the direction of the great expedition he contemplated. "If the Marquis de Montcalm succeeds again this year in deceiving our hopes," said the new general, "he can pass for a clever man: either the colony has resources that are unknown, or our generals are worse than ordinary."
Quebec occupied an advantageous position, but the fortifications were bad; the loss of the place involved that of Canada. "If the Marquis were shut up there," said Wolfe, "we should soon have triumphed; our artillery would have made short work of the walls." An intrenched camp stretched before Quebec. The Indian tribes, hitherto ardently attached to France by the habitual kindness of its commerce, were decimated by the war, or had silently withdrawn, gained over by the money as well as the success of England. The two great European nations did not hesitate to wage war by means of the cruel or perfidious proceedings of their Indian allies.
For more than a month the town had borne the enemy's fire. The churches and convents were in ruins, and the French had not stirred from their camp of l'Ange-Gardien. Skirmishes were frequent. "Old men of seventy and children of fifteen years fire on our detachments," wrote Wolfe. "Our men are wounded at every border of the forest." The anger of the English soldiers had little by little reduced to a desert both banks of the St. Lawrence. In every direction villages and scattered dwellings were given to the flames.
Generals Amherst and Johnson, who had been charged with distant expeditions against Niagara and Ticonderoga, had succeeded in their enterprises, but had not rejoined Wolfe according to Pitt's plan. The latter bore on his shoulders all the responsibility of final success. Being repulsed before the French camp on the 31st of July, Wolfe fell sick from vexation and spite. "There only remains to me the choice of difficulties," he wrote to the English cabinet. "I have regained sufficient health to do my work, but my constitution is destroyed without my having the consolation of having rendered, or being able to render, considerable service to the state." Three days after the date of this letter. General Wolfe suddenly advanced on the banks of the St. Lawrence. On the night of the 12th of September he landed on the creek of the Foulon. The officers had responded in French to the "Qui vive?" of the sentinels, who believed that they beheld a long expected convoy of provisions passing. Twice did the boats, which were insufficient in number, silently cross the stream. Wolfe alone repeated in an undertone the poet Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard." He was touching land, when he turned to say to his lieutenants, "I would prefer to be the author of that poem than to take Quebec."
Day was scarcely breaking when the English army occupied the Heights of Abraham. A skirmish had sufficed to put to flight the French detachment charged with guarding them. The Marquis de Montcalm viewed his enemies from afar. "I see them plainly where they ought not to be," said he, "but if we fight with them I shall crush them." The English were already on the march; before the break of day the French were routed, Montcalm was dying, and Quebec was lost.
General Wolfe had murmured the last of Gray's lines—"The path of glory leads but to the grave." He had received three mortal wounds as he was encouraging his grenadiers to charge. Already his eyes were veiled by the eternal shadows, when an officer who was attending him exclaimed, "See, they fly!" "Who?" asked Wolfe, raising himself up painfully. "The enemy; they yield at all points." The hero let himself fall back on his couch. "God be praised," said he; "I die content." He was not yet thirty-four years of age.
Montcalm died also, eager even to the last moment to give his orders and arouse the courage of his soldiers. "All is not lost," he repeated. When the surgeons announced to him that he had only some hours to live, "So much the better," said he; "I shall not see the surrender of Quebec." He was buried in the hole scooped by a ball in the middle of the Ursuline church. It is there he still sleeps. On one of the squares of the town, which became English without the effacement of the tender memory of France, Lord Dalhousie had a marble obelisk erected bearing the names of Wolfe and Montcalm, with this inscription: "Mortem virtus communem, famam historia, momumentum posteritas dedit." Their courage has given them a common death; history, renown; posterity, a monument.
Parliament decreed a magnificent tomb in Westminster Abbey to the great conqueror of Quebec. The whole of England wore mourning. With Quebec France had lost Canada. The impotent despair of M. de Vaudreuil and the Duke de Levis, who were incapable of defending Montreal, led them vainly to attempt to again seize the capital. For a second time the Heights of Abraham were witnesses of a bloody combat. The French troops blockaded the place. On both sides, the arrival of reinforcements asked from Europe was being awaited. The invincible hopefulness of our nation deluded the Canadians. The English vessels entered the river. On the night of the 16th to the 17th of May, the little French army raised the siege; on the 8th of September, Montreal, in its turn, fell into the hands of the conquerors.
At the same period, after long alternations of success and reverse, England achieved a conquest in India which assured to her forever the European empire of the East. An entire people, passionately attached to the mother-country, had struggled in Canada. In India, some eminent men had dreamed of establishing the French power on the most solid foundations. They had prosecuted their aims at the cost of all sacrifices, and one after another they had fallen victim to their devotion as well as to their reciprocal jealousy. Mahé de la Bourdonnais, governor of the Isle of France, a clever, enterprising, honest man, and the conqueror of Madras in 1746, had unfortunately engaged in a rivalry with Dupleix, then governor-general of Pondicherry, which had led both into grave errors.
Death Of Wolfe.
The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle gave Madras to the English, but La Bourdonnais, destitute, suspected, and consigned to the Bastile, finally died of vexation, having used the last remnants of his energy to disseminate suspicions against Dupleix, which were soon to bear fruits fatal to that French greatness in India to which M. de la Bourdonnais had formerly consecrated his life.
Joseph Dupleix, born of a Gascon family, the son of the controller-general of Hainant, had settled in India from his youth. He had married there, and had learned to know all the tortuous policy of the Indian princes, whose language his wife, the princess Jeanne, as she was called, knew, and whose secrets she divined. Not over-scrupulous, ambitious and daring for his country's sake even more than his own, he had foreseen and prosecuted this European empire of India which was soon to fall into more fortunate if not more clever hands. In 1748 he had defended Pondicherry against Admiral Boscawen. The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, while changing the name of the belligerents, had not put an end to hostilities. The two commercial companies, the French and the English, had continued the war hitherto sustained in the name of their sovereigns. Dupleix entered more and more into the internal intrigues of India. In the Dekhan he had supported Murzapha Jung against Nazir Jung, and in the Carnatic, Tchunda Sahib against Anaverdy Khan. His adroit patronage had brought good fortune to his proteges. In their solicitous gratitude they had conceded vast territories to France. A third of India was already obedient to Dupleix, and the Great Mogul, the invisible sovereign who silently granted degrees of investiture, had just recognized his supremacy. Dupleix thought that he had arrived at the goal of all his dreams. He had taken no account of the improvident weakness of the French government.
Already Dupleix's success had alarmed King Louis XV. and his ministers, who were more uneasy in respect of new embarrassments which might be created for them than solicitous for the greatness of France in India. England was irritated and perturbed. Her affairs had been for a long time badly managed in India, but she remained there vital, active, and sustained by the indomitable ardor of a free people. At Versailles Dupleix was refused the help he asked; the confirmation of his conquests was delayed. The man who was to establish for England the empire of India over the ruins of Dupleix's work, had just arisen. Robert Clive, born in 1725, of a family of small Shropshire landholders, had been placed while very young in the offices of the India Company. His nature was turbulent. The assiduous work of a copying clerk did not admit of any title for him: he was a born general, and already his counsels were listened to by the chiefs of the company. In the peril which menaced it in consequence of Dupleix's triumphs, young Clive was placed at the head of an expedition which he had planned against Arcatan, the capital of the Carnatic. Having become master of the place by a bold stroke in the month of September, 1751, he was soon attacked there by Tchunda Sahib. During fifty days he withstood in the fortress the efforts of the Indians and the French. Provisions gave out, the rations became more insufficient every day; but Clive knew how to inspire in those who surrounded him the heroic resolution which animated himself. "Give the rice to the English," the sepoys came and said to him; "we will content ourselves with the water in which it has been boiled." A body of Mahrattas, allies of the English, caused the siege to be raised. Clive pursued the French in their retreat; he twice defeated Tchunda Sahib and razed the town and the monument that Dupleix had erected in remembrance of his victories. When he had effected his junction with Governor-General Lawrence he broke the blockades of Trichinapolis and delivered Mahomet Ali, the son and successor of Anaverdy Khan. Tchunda Sahib, for his part, being confined at Tcheringham, was given up to his rival by a chief of Tanjore to whom he had trusted himself His throat was cut. The French commandant, a nephew of Law, gave himself up to the English. Clive had destroyed two French corps and was pressing the third army hard. Bussy-Castelnau, the faithful lieutenant of Dupleix, was fighting on the Dekhan and could not come to its aid. In vain did the indomitable energy of the governor-general triumph over all obstacles. Dupleix had found troops and money, and was resisting Clive, whose health was shaken when the news of his dismissal arrived from Europe. His temporary reverses of fortune had achieved the work begun by the suspicions which M. de la Bourdonnais had sown; the ministers of Louis XV. had taken fright. M. Godehen, one of the directors of the company, had been accused of treating with the English. Dupleix re-entered France, sad and irritated, but filled even yet with dreams and hopes. Since the time of his landing from the East he was hailed by the acclamations of the crowd, but the government was opposed to him. He had embarked his entire personal fortune in the service of his great patriotic designs; his claims were not listened to; his wife died of vexation, and he finally, in poverty and despair, succumbed in 1763. "I have sacrificed my youth, my fortune, my life," he exclaimed, with just bitterness; "I have wished to load my nation with honors and riches in Asia. Unfortunate friends, too confiding relatives, virtuous citizens, have consecrated their wealth to make my projects succeed; they are now in misery. … I demand what is due me as the last of the creditors. My services are fables; my demands are ridiculous; I am treated as the vilest of men. The little property that remains to me is seized. I have been obliged to apply for writs of suspension, so as not to be dragged to prison." History has avenged Dupleix by doing justice to his services. He was the most illustrious victim of those mighty French ambitions in India, without being the last or the most tragical of them.
After being detained some time in England by the care of his health. Clive returned to India in 1755, strong in his past glory and freed henceforth from the indomitable energy and clever intrigues of Dupleix. He cast his glances at Bengal, the sovereign of which, Surajah Dowlah, was hostile to the English rule. The Indian prince had just taken the initiative in hostilities by attacking Fort William, which formed the defence of the rising town of Calcutta. The governor took fright, and the place fell into the hands of Surajah Dowlah, who shut up the English prisoners in the dungeon of the garrison;—a terrible "black hole," scarcely sufficient to contain two or three delinquents. One hundred and forty-six unfortunates were crammed there in a stifling heat. In the morning when the door was opened, the cries of suffering, the rending appeals, had ceased. Twenty-three survivors, panting and dying, had scarcely strength to drag themselves out of the horrible place, the witness of their punishment. The nabob, indifferent and triumphant, gave Calcutta the name of Alinagore, or Port of God. He returned to his capital of Moorshedabad, occupied in torturing men, as in his childhood he had taken pleasure in torturing birds.
The anger of the English had placed Clive at the head of a little army. Surajah Dowlah called to his aid the French established at Chaudernagore. Dupleix was no longer there, busy to profit by all military or political complications. The French merchants refused to take part in the hostilities, although the Seven Years' War had just broken out in Europe. Everywhere the arms of France were opposed to those of England. Chaudernagore did not escape the common lot. The English seized it after Clive had repaired Calcutta and Fort William. The decadence of France in India was marching with rapid steps; the treaty concluded by Godehen had dealt a death-blow to its empire, and all the conquests of Dupleix had been abandoned.
Upright and sincere in his relations with Europeans, Clive had contracted the fatal habit of different morality in regard to the Hindoos. Treaties concluded and violated, conspiracies encouraged in all directions, shameful and flagrant perfidies, mark with a black stain, in the life of the great general, his relations with the cruel nabob of Bengal. The victory of Plassey, which he finally gained on the 23d of June, 1757, terminated brilliantly a campaign of mingled heroism and crimes. Henceforth Bengal belonged to England. Bussy, summoned too late by Surajah Dowlah, had not been able to arrest Clive's success. He revenged himself for it by sweeping off all the English factories on the coast of Orissa, and closing to them the road between the coast of Coromandel and Bengal.
On the day after Clive's triumph in India, a bold and improvident soldier, of indomitable courage and will, passionately attached to France, which had received him and his cause—M. Lally-Tollendal, of Irish origin, and already known by his conduct, first in England and then in Scotland, during the expedition of Prince Charles Edward—proposed to the ministers of Louis XV. a new attempt to re-establish France's situation in the East. The directors of the India Company sustained his proposal. The king had promised troops. M. d'Argenson knew Lally's character, and hesitated. The representations of the company won him. When M. de Lally landed at Pondicherry in 1757, the treasury was empty, the arsenals unprovided with arms and munitions, and the English were pressing on the French possessions at all points. The ardor of the general sufficed to remove all obstacles. Lally marched on Gondalem, which he razed on the sixteenth day. Shortly afterward he invested Fort St. David, the most notable of the English fortresses in India. The first assault was repulsed. The count had neither cannons nor beasts of burden to bring them. He hastened to Pondicherry and attached the Hindoos to the trains of artillery, taking indiscriminately the men who came to hand, without troubling himself as to rank or caste, thus imprudently wounding the dearest prejudices of the country that he came to govern. Fort St. David was taken and razed. Devicotch, hardly besieged, opened its gates. Lally had been scarcely a month in India, and already he had chased the English from the south coast of Coromandel. "My whole policy is contained in these five words, but they are sacramental: 'No English in the peninsula,'" wrote the general. He had sent orders to Bussy to rejoin him at Madras.
The ardent heroism of M. de Lally had for a time troubled the English by restoring courage to the remnants of the French colony. The grave defects of his character soon seconded the efforts of his adversaries by surrounding him with enemies, secret or declared, among his compatriots themselves. Being badly backed by M. d'Aché, who was in command of the French fleet, and who was twice beaten by the English, he attacked Madras in the month of September, 1758, with an undisciplined army, addicted to the most frightful debauchery, and commanded by chiefs who were either angry or discontented. Bussy could not console himself for having been obliged to abandon the Dekhan to the feeble hands of the Marquis de Conflaus. The black town had been stormed; the white town resisted valiantly. On the 18th of February, 1759, Lally was obliged to raise the siege; Colonel Coote had just taken possession of the fortress of Wandewash. The general wished to regain it. The battle which was fought on the 22d of January, 1760, was fatal to the French; M. de Bussy was made prisoner and immediately sent to Europe. "To him alone did the capacity belong to have continued the war for ten years," said the Hindoos. Karikal was in the hands of the English. They were marching on Pondicherry.
M. de Lally was shut up there, resolved to hold out to the last in a place which was badly defended, and where he was generally hated. The siege commenced in the month of March, 1760; on the 27th of November it was changed to a blockade. It was only on the 16th of January, 1761, that the directors of the French Company at last forced the hand of the general, indomitable in the midst of ruins. "No person can have a higher opinion of General Lally than I," wrote Colonel Coote, who had just razed the ramparts and magazines of Pondicherry. "He has striven against obstacles that I believed insurmountable, and he has triumphed over them. There is not in India another man who could have kept on foot so long an army without pay and without resources on any hand." No aid had come from France to the last general who still defended her power and glory in the Indies; the cause was forever lost, and no one would ever more attempt to revive it. The fate of M. de la Bourdonnais and that of Dupleix remained as a gloomy proof of the ingratitude of corrupt and feeble governments; that of M. de Lally frightened the most courageous hearts and disgusted the most far-sighted spirits. Shut up in the Bastile of his own will at the end of the year 1763, he remained there nineteen months without being examined. When his trial finally began, the animosities which he had imprudently engendered in India rose up against him with an irresistible violence. Accused of treason in regard to the interest of the king and the company, he was condemned to death on the 6th of May, 1766. Three days later he expired on the scaffold in the Placede Greve, being gagged like the worst of criminals. At the same moment. Lord Clive, rich, powerful, and a brilliant member of Parliament, was returning to the Indies as Governor-General of Bengal, charged with reforming its entire administration. The contrast is sorrowful, and explains the frequent checks received by France in distant enterprises, which, grandly conceived and courageously pursued by the patriotic devotion of citizens, were yet through laxity and cowardice abandoned by the government.
Success so great and so sustained beyond the bounds of Europe lent new force and zeal to the struggles of England on the continent. In Germany, the Duke de Broglie had successfully repulsed the attacks of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick on his intrenchments at Bergher, on the 13th of April, 1759. The united armies under M. de Coutades had invaded Hesse and advanced on the Weser. They were occupying Minden when Prince Ferdinand attacked them on the 1st of August. The action of the two French generals was badly concerted, and the rout was complete. The English infantry played a glorious part in the victory. The cavalry was commanded by Lord George Sackville, son of the Duke, of Dorset. Prince Ferdinand gave him orders to advance. Some contradiction in the terms produced a momentary hesitation on the part of the English commander, and he resisted the representations of his aides-de-camp. "The orders are positive," said young Fitzroy; "the French are flying, and the opportunity is glorious." Lord Granby put himself in motion; the voice of his superior officer compelled him to stop. When the scruples of Lord George were finally satisfied, the battle was won, the enemy in retreat, and the reputation of the English commander so seriously compromised that he was obliged to resign from his rank and ask to undergo a court-martial. The sentence was, like public opinion, severe. Lord George Sackville was declared unworthy to serve in his Majesty's armies. He already belonged to the court opposition which was thronging around the heir to the throne, the princess dowager, and the Marquis of Bute, the acknowledged favorite of mother and son. King George II. intimated to his grandson that he had prohibited Lord George from presenting himself before him. The day was not far from dawning in which the memories of Minden, despite their abiding bitterness, could not impede the proud career of Lord George Sackville.
Mr. Pitt was triumphant at home as abroad. In spite of the king's small predilection for his minister, the latter had obtained the garter for his brother-in-law, Lord Temple. Enormous subsidies were voted by the House without demur. "It is the wisest economy to spare nothing in the expenses of war," he had said, without circumlocution, when he was presenting the budget to Parliament. His animosity against France was on the increase. "Formerly I would have been content to see her on her knees," he said, in privacy; "to-day I wish to see her overturned in the dust." Notwithstanding the persistent bravery of the French nobles, who are always ready to die on the battle-field, the disorder of the troops and the inferiority of the generals who commanded in opposition to Frederick II. and Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, sadly subserved the hatred of the great English minister.
The victories of England in both worlds and the triumphant supremacy of Pitt in the Houses were not sufficient to assure the success of their allies on the continent. At one time the great Frederick thought he saw all Germany rallied round him. Now, defeated and fortified in Saxony during the winter of 1760, he sought alliances everywhere, and everywhere saw himself repelled. "There remain to me but two allies," said he; "valor and perseverance." Repeated victories, earned at the sword's point by dint of boldness and at extreme danger, could not even protect Berlin. The capital of Prussia saw itself compelled to open its gates to the foe, on the sole condition that the Cossacks should not go beyond its precincts. When the regular troops withdrew, the generals had not been able to prevent the pillage of the town. The heroic efforts of the King of Prussia only ended in his keeping one foot still in Saxony. On the 10th of March he wrote to Count Algarotti, "It is certain that we have only experienced disasters during the last campaign, and that we have found ourselves nearly in the same situation as the Romans after Cannes. Unfortunately, toward the end I had an attack of gout. My left hand and my feet were disabled, and I could only let myself be carried from place to place, a witness to my own reverses. Happily, the speech of Barca to Hannibal can be applied to our enemies, 'You know how to conquer, but you do not know how to profit by victory.'" The cruel bombardment of Dresden in the month of August, 1760, was like an overflowing of the long pent-up rage of Frederick II. He had lately said, "Miserable fools that we are, we have only an instant to live, and we make that instant as sorrowful as we can. We take pleasure in destroying the masterpieces of art that time has spared us; we seemed resolved to leave behind us the odious memories of our ravages and of the calamities we have caused." The monuments and the palaces of Dresden fell beneath the fire of the Prussian cannon in the face of the flames which devoured the suburbs.
It is a relief in the midst of the horrors of war and the ferocious courage there displayed, to recall an act of disinterested bravery and a devotion which has no other recompense than glory. Marshall de Broglie, who had become general-in-chief of the French armies, had detailed M. de Castries to succor Wesel, which was besieged by the hereditary Prince of Brunswick. The French corps had just arrived, and was still in bivouac. On the night between the 15th and 16th of October, the Chevalier d'Assas, captain in the regiment of Auvergne, was sent to reconnoitre. He was marching in front of his men when he just fell into the midst of a body of the enemy. The Prince of Brunswick was preparing to attack. All the guns were levelled on the young captain. "If you stir, you are a dead man," muttered threatening voices. Without answering, M. d'Assas collected all his energies. "A moi Auvergne; voila les ennemis," he cried. He fell immediately, pierced by twenty bullets; but the action of Klostercamp, thus begun, was glorious for France. The hereditary prince was obliged to abandon the siege of Wesel and to recross the Rhine. The French corps maintained their positions.
The war still continued, bloody, monotonous, and fruitless; but a great event had just taken place, which was speedily to change the face of Europe. On the morning of the 25th of October, King George II. had risen as usual, being as regular and methodical at seventy-six as he had been in his youth. He asked for the foreign dispatches, when his servants heard the noise of a fall. They rushed in. The king was on the ground, and already breathing his last. When his daughter, the Princess Amelia, was summoned, she being deaf and very near-sighted bent towards her father in order to catch his last words. In alarm she started back. King George II. was dead.
George III.
Chapter XXXVI.
George III.
The American War
(1760-1783).
The House of Hanover reigned without further contest. The Stuarts had disappeared, borne forever by their misdeeds and misfortunes far from the throne of their ancestors, and the young King George III. peaceably succeeded his grandfather. Europe now, as well as England, understood the importance of the change which had just been accomplished. William III., called to the throne by the English nation, had delivered it from an odious yoke and had assured to it its religious and political liberties. He had constantly remained a foreigner in the England which he served gloriously and effectively without loving it. George I. and George II. were Germans, elevated to the throne by the national will, which was strong and wise, without sympathy and without pleasure. They had remained Germans in manners and in speech. England had grown under their rule; her institutions were strengthened and developed. At the death of George II., thanks to the illustrious man who, as an absolute master, had governed her in freedom, she had become the arbiter of Europe, predominant in America as well as in Asia. However, the English people's loyalty of feeling had never been satisfied since the downfall of the Stuarts, and the most obstinate of the Whigs, although passionately opposed to all the attempts of the Jacobite restoration, yet excused, in the depths of their heart, those who had sacrificed all to their attachment towards the hereditary monarch. George III. was at last reigning, loved and respected beforehand, and the painful trials of his life and his long reign never caused him to lose the confidence and sympathy of his people. It was the feeling of the whole nation as well as his own that the young monarch expressed when he spontaneously said, in his first speech from the throne: "Born and brought up in this country, I glory in the name of Englishman, and it will be the pleasure of my life to give happiness to a people whose fidelity and attachment to myself I regard as the security and lasting honor of my throne."
New counsels already began to spread, less violent against France than those of Mr. Pitt. The young king had cordially received his grandfather's ministers, asking them to continue in their duties under him; but he had also admitted Lord Bute to the Privy Council, and the favorite's intrigues already came in contact with those of the Duke of Newcastle. Some weeks later, at the moment of the dissolution of Parliament, Bute succeeded Lord Holderness as secretary of state. Pitt, it is said, was not consulted.
The haughty displeasure of the great minister had its influence upon the tone of the negotiations then begun with France. The Duke de Choiseul, burning to serve his country, although active, restless, and courageous, still felt the necessity of peace. He had proposed a congress. While Pitt delayed his answer, an English squadron had blockaded Bellisle. A first assault, made on the 8th of April by General Hodgson, was repulsed. The governor, M. de St. Croix, had received no assistance, and, despite an heroic resistance, he was forced to capitulate on June 7th, 1761. It was almost at the same time that news was received of the check of De Broglie and De Soubise at Minden, and of the disastrous surrender of Pondicherry. England's answer to the proposals of peace at last arrived. The Duke de Choiseul had proposed to evacuate Hesse and Hanover, demanding the restoration of Guadaloupe and Marie Galante, and of Bellisle in exchange for Minorca. He accepted the conquest of Canada and of Cape Breton, but in return he laid claim to all the captures made at sea of the French merchant ships before the declaration of war, and required an engagement that the English troops, under the orders of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, should not proceed to reinforce the Prussian army. The ultimatum was modest, and was a bitter trial to the patriotic pride of M. de Choiseul. Pitt's answer left no hope of peace. All the conquests, all the captures, full liberty to aid the King of Prussia—such was the language of the English minister. Dunkerque must be razed, as a lasting monument of the yoke imposed on France. "So long as I hold the reins of government," said Pitt, "another Peace of Utrecht shall never sully the annals of England."
Pitt had well estimated the exhaustion and the fatigue of France. He had not foreseen the influence which the accession of a new monarch to the throne of Spain would exert upon her alliances. Ferdinand VI. had died childless. His brother, Charles III. King of Naples, had succeeded him. He brought to his hereditary kingdom a quicker intelligence than that of the dead king, a great aversion to England (of which he had lately reason to complain), and the traditional attachment of his race for the interests and glory of France. The Duke de Choiseul was adroit enough to avail himself of these tendencies. In the distress in which the war had thrown King Louis XV., at the moment when Pitt rejected his ultimatum, insulting him by inacceptable proposals, Spain generously entered the list. The treaty, known under the name of the Family Compact, was signed at Paris on the 15th of April, 1761. Pitt immediately proposed to George III. to make sure of the Isthmus of Panama, and to attack immediately the Philippine Islands.
It was the last straw for the tottering empire of the minister who had been so long absolute in the council as well as in the Houses. The cabinet had hardly accepted the harshness of the conditions which he exacted from France. A declaration of war with Spain was rejected by a large majority. Pitt arose. "I thank you, gentlemen," said he, "for the support which you have often given me, but it is the voice of the people which has called me to public affairs. I have always considered myself as accountable to it for my conduct. I cannot then remain in a position where I shall be responsible for measures of which I have no longer the direction." Several days later Pitt placed in the king's hands the seals of office. George III. received him kindly. "Sad," he said, "to part from so illustrious a servant." The haughty minister burst into tears. "I confess, your Majesty," he said, "that I expected the signs of your displeasure. Your Majesty's kindness confounds and overwhelms me." Against the advice of his friends, Pitt accepted a pension of three thousand pounds sterling and a peerage for his wife, who became Lady Chatham. His popularity in consequence suffered a slight blow, yet it remained so great that at the annual lord mayor's dinner on the 9th of November, all looks were turned toward the fallen minister, all the applause was reserved for him, at the expense of the king and of his young wife, Charlotte de Mecklenberg-Streglitz. This popular triumph became insulting to the royal personages. "At each step," said an eye-witness, "the crowd pressed around the simple carriage where were to be found Pitt and Lord Temple. They laid hold of the wheels; they embraced the servants, and even the horses."
"Mr. Pitt will not make peace because he cannot make that which he has given the nation reason to hope for," an acute observer of the court, Bubb Doddington, had already said. On succeeding to power, Lord Bute and the tories found themselves still driven by public opinion to measures more violent than their tastes or their intentions. France had made a supreme effort to reorganize its army. In the month of January, 1762, the English government declared war on Spain, striking from the first the most disastrous blows at our faithful ally. The year had not gone by before Cuba was already in the hands of the English, the Philippine Islands ravaged, and galleons laden with Spanish gold captured by British vessels. The campaign undertaken against Portugal, always friendly to England, was productive of no result. Martinique had followed the lot of Guadaloupe, which had already been conquered by the English after an heroic resistance. The war dragged on slowly in Germany. The death of the Czarina Elizabeth and the brief occupation of the throne by the young Czar Peter III., a passionate admirer of Frederick the Great, had freed the King of Prussia from a dangerous enemy, and promised him an ally faithful as well as powerful. The hope that the Family Compact had for a time given to France was deceived. The negotiations began again. On the 3d of November, 1762, the preliminaries of peace were signed at Fontainebleau. France abandoned all her possessions in America. Louisiana, which had taken no part in the war, was ceded to Spain in exchange for Florida, which was given over to the English. Only the small islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon were reserved for the French fisheries. A special stipulation guaranteed to the Canadians freedom in Catholic worship. In exchange for engaging not to introduce troops into Bengal, France recovered Chaudernagore and the ruins of Pondicherry. Guadaloupe and Martinique became again French. The English kept Tobago, Dominique, St. Vincent, and Grenada. In Germany the places and country occupied by France were to be evacuated. Like his illustrious rival. Lord Bute insisted upon the demolition of Dunkerque.
England's success had been great, and France's humiliation profound, and yet it was not enough for the persistent hatred of Pitt, now freed from the shackles of power, and at liberty to allow full reign to his rancor against Lord Bute as well as to his animosity toward our nation. He was disabled by gout, the persistent scourge of his life; he had himself carried, wrapped in flannel, to the House of Commons. Two of his friends led him to his seat, and supported him during the first part of his speech. Exhausted, he ended by sitting down, contrary to all parliamentary usage. "I have come here at the risk of my life," he exclaimed, "to raise my voice, my hand, my arm against the preliminary articles of a peace which tarnishes the glory of the war, which betrays the dearest interests of the nation, and which sacrifices public faith while deserting our allies. France is chiefly, if not entirely, formidable to us as a maritime and commercial power. What we gain in this respect is doubly precious from the loss which results to her. America, gentlemen, has been conquered in Germany; to-day you leave to France the possibility of re-establishing her navy."