WASHINGTON AT FORT NECESSITY 467 local French to fresh endeavours to reduce the British power. Their clergy were conspicuous in persuading the inhabitants to quit the country rather than suffer British rule, and even in hounding on the Indians to make life near the disputed frontier impossible.1 If it was difficult for the French to explain away their own doings by land they could at least charge the British with illegalities by sea. In 1750 the Governor of Cape Breton Island declared that for the French there was no safety, since their ships, cargoes and sailors were constantly seized by the English. British ships were seized wholesale by way of reprisal, while each nation accused the other of building forts on ground which was not its own. In 1753 these local incidents were eclipsed by a conflict which was deliberately provoked and which pointed less obscurely towards war. In the summer of that year the new Governor of Canada, Duquesne, established two forts to the south of Lake Erie, with the plain intention of following exploration in the valley of the Ohio by effective occupation. In British eyes these forts stood on Virginian soil. Dinwiddie, the Governor of Virginia, was directed by the British Government to build forts on the Ohio and if necessary to remove the French by force. On 11 December, therefore, George Washington, a young Virginian surveyor in the public service, summoned the Commandant of Fort-le-Bœuf to depart. A firm refusal left him no alternative but a toilsome and perilous retreat. The local superiority of the French became apparent when Dinwiddie attempted to follow words by deeds. Of the remaining colonies, North Carolina alone consented to help Virginia. In 1754, however, Fort Necessity, a stockade nearly 150 miles south of Fort-le-Boeuf, was built as the preliminary to the expulsion of the French from their new position on the Ohio at Fort Duquesne. In May, at Great Meadows, a little expeditionary force under Washington killed a French lieutenant and ten of his men who were bringing a letter from the governor. On 3 July the brother of the slaughtered officer with 1500 men received from Washington the surrender of Fort Necessity. The French forward movement had triumphed in the face of merely local opposition. Would the British Government acquiesce, negotiate or fight? Acquiescence was plainly impossible. As Newcastle declared to Albemarle, our ambassador in Paris, the French were claiming "almost all N. America except a lisière to the sea to which they would confine all our Colonies and from whence they may drive us whenever they please". Such strangulation we could not suffer, even if the French had not clearly broken the agreement by moving while the commission still sat. Negotiation, on the other hand, might not seem hopeless. For a colonial struggle, indeed for any struggle against 1 Parkman, F., Montcalm and Wolfe, vol. 1, chaps. i-iv, and App. B. 2 Germiny, M. de., Les brigandages maritimes de l'Angleterre, 1, 88. 3 Newcastle to Albemarle, 5 Sept. 1754, cit. Charteris, Cumberland, p. 125. Britain, France must fit out a fleet, but early in 1754, Albemarle reported that no activity was visible at Brest, and at Rochefort and Toulon a palpable reduction.1 Louis, as usual, showed himself inert; Madame de Pompadour, conciliatory; the ministers, so pacific as to recall Dupleix from India. The crushing superiority of our Navy and the countenance of Austria, Holland, Russia, Sardinia and Spain, might well indispose the French Government to court disaster for the sake of far-distant acres of wilderness and snow. Considerations of higher statesmanship, however, seldom restrain the actions of remote consuls and pioneers. Boundaries in unknown regions based on speculations as to the rights of savage nomads simply invited disputes. Report after report of French encroachment reached Whitehall. Within two years of the peace our statesmen were convinced that for all her fine promises in Europe France sought to keep all she could overseas. "If that be the case, it must be seen who is the strongest and best able to defend their rights."2 Time and negotiation seemed to bring only an aggravation of the offence. On 26 June 1754 seven ministers, assembled at Newcastle House, resolved that, as the French had destroyed our fort on the Ohio, invaded our territory with a thousand regulars, and endangered all our northern colonies and their trade, most effectual measures should be forthwith taken. The most obvious effectual measure, since war was neither expected nor desired, would have been to organise a sufficient colonial defence force from the British American population. Fourteen years before, Sharpe, the Deputy-Governor of Maryland, had proposed to take one man in twenty-five, in all more than 20,000, and conquer the French possessions. Now with a contest for the future of America clearly ripening, men like Franklin turned to thoughts of voluntary union. American authorities, from Halifax downwards, advocated compulsion. British statesmen, however, alive to a "mobbish turn" across the ocean,' feared that colonial union might lead to thoughts of independence, while the remoter colonies shrank from any sacrifice for the good of those immediately concerned. 8 The British Government, however, was firmly resolved that if, as there seemed reason to believe, the French were negotiating only to gain time for naval preparations, they should not profit by their previous aggression. For 1755 it designed, according to the plan of the victor of Culloden, a fourfold offensive against the Canadian positions. In November 1754 Braddock, a stiff, rough, elderly MajorGeneral, was ordered overseas with a thousand men, to repel force by force, but to do nothing that might be construed as an infraction of the general peace. His mission was explained to the French by Albemarle, whom a love affair enchained to Paris, with such tact 1 F.O., France, 249, Jan and Feb. 3 Newcastle Papers, Brit. Mus., Add. MSS, 33029. Bancroft, Hist. of U.S., IV, 91, 123 seqq. 7 Shirley to the Board of Trade, cit. ibid. IV, 39. a Ibid. 1750. Ibid. 7 Nov. 1740. 6 Ibid. iv, 165 seqq 8 Charteris, pp. 127 seqq. TENSION BETWEEN FRANCE AND GREAT BRITAIN 469 that negotiations could continue. Frederick indeed sneered at the ministers of Louis as children who put their hands before their eyes and thought themselves invisible. A humbler or a weaker State than France, indeed, might well have refused to look on impassive while her rival thus filched away the power to defend her colonies. When, however, she in her turn prepared for larger reinforcements the risk of a rupture was necessarily much increased. At this moment Albemarle untimely died. The New Year's despatch of his lieutenant1 portrayed the natural indignation of the French at the King's mention of their "encroachments" in his speech to Parliament and at British warlike preparations. They were now arming by land and sea and as the time drew nearer when Canadian waters would be freed from ice, hope of a peaceful issue was clearly dwindling. On 14 February, Frederick declared that the odds on war were ten to one. They were not reduced when Paris learned that George II had pledged himself to neglect no means of securing British rights and possessions, and that Pitt had stated that if Britain would be just towards France, she had not thirty years to live. When both sides formulated their demands, moreover, a well-nigh impassable cleavage was disclosed. France declared herself unable to submit to negotiation either the south bank of the St Lawrence and its contributory lakes, or the belt of land twenty leagues wide on the Canadian side of the Bay of Fundy, or the land between the rivers Wabash and Ohio. These, Britain declared, were the very points regarding which negotiation was desirable.5 Not until mid-July, however, did diplomacy confess its failure. Paris then heard that the Canadian reinforcements had been attacked at sea by Marlborough's great-nephew, Boscawen, that many had been killed, and that two men-of-war, the Alcide and the Lys, with eight companies of soldiers and 200,000 livres, had been taken. The London merchants, scenting commerce and prizes, approved of this violence, but ministers realised that either too much or too little had been done. As Granville and Fox had falsely assured the French ambassador in May that Boscawen had no orders to attack, so now Newcastle protested that the attack was due to a misunderstanding. 8 The lie at least helped France to postpone a rupture for which she was not yet prepared, and to decline Frederick's proposal that she should attack Hanover while he hurled 140,000 men against Austria, Britain's supposed accomplice. Though the French talked wildly of piracy, they were certainly not taken by surprise. Boscawen's action, none the less, went far towards attaching to Albion the stigma of 1 Ruvigny de Cosne, F.O., France, 250. 3 To Michell, Pol. Corr. XI, 55. 2 14 Nov. 1754. 4 Germiny, Les brigandages, 1, 84. 5 F.O., France, 250, Rouillé to Mirepoix, 13 April 1755. Ibid. 23 July (from Compiègne). 7 Charteris, p. 168. • Bernis, Abbé, Mémoires, 1, 210 seqq. 8 Ibid. p. 153. "perfidious", nor was this attenuated when the captain of the Alcide reported that the order to fire upon him followed hard upon Captain Howe's assurance that the two countries were at peace. Despite Boscawen's action, the bulk of the French forces had reached their destination. Soon after came the news that Braddock's fourfold onslaught on French America had failed. The capture of Fort Beauséjour, indeed, cleansed British territory from an alleged encroachment and severed the French land route between Canada and their northern islands. To secure the position, the deportation of some 6000 French settlers from Nova Scotia was soon deemed indispensable. Their firm refusal to transfer their allegiance to Britain portended a renewal of the insecurity and wholesale murder that had marked the years preceding, at the instigation, as seemed clear, of the French. But the attacks on Crown Point and on Fort Niagara were destined to produce only an unfruitful victory in the field and the garrisoning of Fort Oswego. Braddock himself, on his way to Fort Duquesne, incurred a resounding disaster. The General perished; his mistress the Indians outraged, tortured and devoured; the second-in-command behaved disgracefully; the fleeing troops lost their moral; the British colonists were disheartened and disgusted, the French proportionately encouraged; while the Indians, as always, inclined towards the stronger side. The undeclared war of 1755 had not gone well for Britain. Not even the seizure of French ships by scores and French sailors by thousands could provoke their Government to declare war prematurely and thus play Britain's game. Although the French diplomatic representatives left Hanover and London, a captured British cruiser was actually released.2 All efforts to win outside support by denouncing Britain failed, however, to impress the Government of Spain. Newcastle, though dismayed when he thought of the expense of war, might still calculate that the French must be beaten at sea, and that his conventions, crowned by that of 30 September 1755 with Russia, made "the old system" secure in Europe. The necessary payments had indeed driven Pitt into opposition, but Pitt, it was said, could do anything with Parliament except win votes. The year 1756 saw the statesman's confidence raised high only to be shattered. While Britain dared France, patriots complained, the monarch trembled for his Hanover. In 1755, the ambiguous attitude of Austria had given frequent cause for alarm. It would have taxed an even more astute diplomatist than Kaunitz to reveal no trace of his sincere and long-standing preference for France. When, as occurred in August, his plan had been adopted by an Austrian conference at Vienna, the difficulty was increased. While 1 Germiny, I, 123. The English version runs quite differently; cf. Horace Walpole, Memoirs, II, 27. 3 Koser, 1, 586. 2 Germiny, 1, 139. THE CONVENTION OF WESTMINSTER 471 Austria was sounding France and quietly arming, he evaded our demands for a closer connection and for that strong garrison in the Netherlands which formed the best safeguard of Hanover against the French.1 His desire for a French alliance, however, was dictated by hostility to Prussia, not to Britain, and he unfeignedly desired to save the Continent from the contagion of a Franco-British war. Britain, after all, was reckoned anti-Prussian, and her anti-Prussian treaty with Russia gave Austria real pleasure. When the old year closed, the foes of Prussia might count upon the coming distraction of France, her ally, by a war in which none of them would necessarily be concerned. The King of Prussia, however, was the least likely person in the world to be caught at a disadvantage through inertia. Britain was in his eyes the indispensable paymaster of the Austro-Russian-Saxon combination against himself. Could he not buy his own security by providing that security for Hanover which seemed to dominate her desires? Superior to family hatreds or diplomatic traditions, the philosopher-king proposed a mutual covenant with Britain to keep Germany free of war. George and Newcastle, now faced with vast French armaments, eagerly accepted, and, on 16 January 1756, the Convention of Westminster sealed the bargain. Hanover, thought the self-centred British, is now safe, since both Prussia and Russia are pledged to its defence, while Austria cannot object to a British guarantee of Silesia which already enjoys an Austrian. "The old system" seemed thus to have triumphantly added Russia and Prussia to its ranks. Frederick, on the other hand, plumed himself on having transferred to his own side one of the two great Powers, France and Britain, whose command of money made war possible for those who had only men. Britain, as he calculated, would always dispose of Russia, while France could never uphold Austria, the Power which Richelieu had laboured to pull down. In these calculations, Newcastle and Frederick alike displayed the traditional failings of their race. While the Briton could not comprehend that Germans should think mere differences between Austrian and Prussian vital, Frederick attested the truth of the aphorism that of all nations the German is the least capable of adapting himself to the mentality of others. Frederick, moreover, could hardly be expected to realise that, in addition to the instinctive reaction of the European society against a member who had undermined its basic law, he was faced with a personal hatred passing the hate of men. By political concessions he had dispelled his uncle's seemingly invincible detestation. That of Maria Theresa, Elizabeth of Russia and Madame de Pompadour nothing could dispel save his destruction. Surmising that he might be attacked in 1 F.O., Germany, 1755, passim. 2 Count Czernin, cit. Haldane, Viscount, Before the war (1920), p. 154. |