PITT AND FREDERICK THE GREAT 477 crippled for the sake of Hanover.1 The nation, none the less, had already drawn from its bosom the key that was destined to unlock the gates of "Doubting Castle". Pitt was once more in office, and, as never hitherto, in power. Cowed by the fury of the towns, his would-be ministers had taught the King that this terrible servant was indispensable, while the concession of patronage to Newcastle and of opportunity for enrichment to Fox made it certain that Parliament would give no trouble. If Frederick was worth 30,000 men to Prussia, Pitt trebled the efficiency of Britain, for his presence meant unity of command, energy in execution and enthusiasm on the domestic front. Anson at the Admiralty guaranteed the efficiency of the Service upon which Britain must mainly rely for victory, and by a happy chance his relationship to Hardwicke, Newcastle's oracle and confidant, procured an unwonted harmony in the conduct of the war. Within two years of Pitt's reinstatement, Britain was harvesting laurels in every quarter of the globe. Frederick, however, was the first to stem the tide of enemy success. Having begun the campaign, he declared, as a general, he was ending it as a partisan.2 "We are destroyed", he wrote on 1 October, "but I fall sword in hand." Brilliant leadership and execution, however, enabled his little force to rout an army more than twice as numerous at Rossbach (5 November 1757). A single hour had changed much in the history of the world, for it was chiefly the forces of the French King that were put to open and memorable shame in the sight of both French and German peoples. The Protestant victor over persecuting Catholics became a hero even to his Protestant opponents, and religion cemented the close alliance with Britain which followed on the scornful rejection of his peace overtures by the French. Having saved Saxony from the Franco-Imperialist combination, Frederick hurried to check the reconquest of Silesia by the Austrians. After Leuthen (5 December) the Prussians boasted that with a watchparade their King had beaten an army 80,000 strong. The fall of Breslau crowned this amazing display of Prussian energy and skill. The effect of Rossbach upon Pitt was to prove little less than the salvation of Prussia. Hitherto he had regarded the German war as a side-issue to which the subjects of a Hanoverian King must accord only the inevitable minimum of support. Now he perceived in Frederick a power which, rightly used, might sway the FrancoBritish struggle. It was certain that, if Hanover remained in French hands, peace, when it came, would necessitate a ransom paid by Britain. It was certain also that if Frederick collapsed, or, as his custom was, deserted his ally, Hanover could never be reconquered. It was hardly less certain that in either case the French would secure their dreaded aggrandisement towards Ostend. America might yet be won in America and on the seas, but hardly Hanover or Flanders. To assist Frederick, therefore, was, after 1757, politic beyond all question, and Pitt gave no half-hearted contribution. "No treaty like it since the time of King John" sneered critics of the compact of April 1758.1 A British subsidy of £670,000 was promised, a sum which ranked with her own normal revenue and that wrung from Saxony as one of the three chief financial supports of Prussia. Frederick was bound to nothing save to exert himself and to abjure a separate peace. The Convention of Klosterzeven, unratified and almost as shocking to the French as to the British,2 had now been swept aside, and the British-paid Hanoverians re-enlisted. Ferdinand of Brunswick replaced Cumberland at their head, and Britain continued to support this German army, 55,000 strong, at a cost of £1,800,000. Leuthen had brought Austria near to impotence and despair, and Pitt might hope to see Frederick lead his Prussians against the French. Although courage returned to Vienna and Louis XV proved true, so long as Ferdinand showed skill and vigour Frederick's western flank was safe. 3 For a time, indeed, it seemed as if the Army of Observation might do more than safeguard Hanover and Berlin against the French. By midsummer 1758, Ferdinand had recovered the Electorate, crossed the Rhine, and won a signal victory at Crefeld. In August, it is true, the threat of a second French army to his communications forced him back, but with the aid of 12,000 British troops he manœuvred so that the two were unable to join forces and Hanover was left in peace. Thanks to Britain, therefore, Frederick could devote the year 1758 to making head against his remaining foes-Austrians, Russians, Imperialists and Swedes. To British eyes, this campaign, after the greatest fluctuations of fortune, seemed to leave her ally almost as it had found him. Exhorting Pitt to take a high tone about peace terms and abandoning Swedes and Russians chiefly to distance and their presumed incompetence, Frederick had striven first to crush the Austrians by a swift offensive in Moravia. He failed, but by paying a great price at Zorndorf (25 August) he drove off the tardy Russians. Early in October, his own rashness allowed the Austrians a second triumph at Hochkirch, but by Prussian mobility and skill, Silesia and Saxony were both preserved. Frederick and Ferdinand had thus given grounds for hope that in 1759 the Prussian and British cause might continue to maintain itself in Europe. The French and Austrians, however, closed the old year by a treaty which prolonged though it attenuated their alliance, while Frederick was forced to admit that his numbers no longer sufficed for an offensive. His ambition was now only to secure Turkish aid and to induce the Austrians, too formidable among ravines and woods, to tempt 1 1 Mauduit, Considerations, p. 47. 2 Charteris, pp. 307 seqq. * Koser, p. 167. 3 BRITISH VICTORIES IN 1758 479 fortune on the north Silesian plain. The shattering disasters of 1759 proved his forebodings true. Britain, on the other hand, was already tasting the joys of which that year of victory was full. The success of her stipendiaries at Crefeld, indeed, had brought neither the recovery of Frederick's Rhine fortress of Wesel nor the hoped-for participation of the Dutch. Raids on the coast from Cherbourg to the mouth of the Charente had done material damage and helped Ferdinand's offensive, but at the price of many casualties and no little discontent. Soldiers and sailors alike loathed this conjoint buccaneering and after 1758 it ceased. Pitt's decision to send troops to Germany broke his own repeated pledges, overrode the prejudices of the Prince of Wales and wounded the sentiment of the nation. But whereas in 1757 ten military or diplomatic disasters followed on Kolin, in 1758 the tide flowed strongly the other way. At Senegal, Fort Louis with 92 guns and a vast treasure fell easily into our hands. Goree followed, securing a gum very necessary for the manufacturers of silk. Ere the year closed, supremacy in the West Indies, perhaps the central object of Pitt's commercial policy,1 was being sought by the despatch of ships to Martinique. Although Minorca and Corsica were French, our colonies traded profitably in the Mediterranean and our privateers had reduced the Provençals to despair. The great design of the campaign, however, contemplated the expulsion of the enemy from North America. Louisbourg, "the darling object of the whole nation", must be conquered anew, and, with the aid of the colonists and the Navy, a triple attack must be launched against Montreal. The scheme was too grandiose, the agents perhaps too clumsy and the communications too rudimentary for a spectacular success. Naval victories, none the less, prevented French help from Toulon or from Rochefort, and Boscawen and Amherst reached Louisbourg with an immense superiority of force. On 26 July, the crucial fortress fell. Although this proved too late for an expedition to Quebec, the capture isolated Canada and brought Pitt an invaluable accession of prestige. The bloody repulse of the insensate Abercromby by Montcalm at Ticonderoga (July) could not ruin the strategic situation, and next month the seizure of Fort Frontenac cut off Canada from the French south-west. Before the year closed, Fort Duquesne had been rebaptised as Pittsburg, Indian allegiance secured, and Canada turned into a sick man to be kept alive with cordials, in the hope of cure after a happy peace.4 The grant of enormous power to the able and resolute Choiseul might reanimate France, but Pitt no longer feared invasion, and in November Britain declined the offer of a separate treaty. 1 Hotblack, p. 54, 3 Chesterfield, cf. Williams, 1, 136. 2 Ibid. pp. 122, 100. Corbett, J. S., England in the Seven Years' War, 1, 412. The world war had now passed through three costly and strenuous campaigns. In every land the easy hopes and lies which prompted its outbreak had been exposed, and in every land save two the appetite for peace might at any moment pass beyond control. If one of the bullets from which he never hid should strike down Frederick, or a deeper debauch than usual the Tsarina; if a second Damiens should rid the world of Louis XV or a new royal illness send back the Pompadour to her husband; if even some new convulsion should twist the steering-wheel in incalculable Sweden,1 then in a moment the war would change its character and might even end its course. Only to Austria and Britain it still appeared necessary and full of hope. Neither Austria nor Britain, however, could fight on without allies, while financially Austria remained dependent upon France. For Britain, although Bute's memorable optimism in August 17572 had been amply vindicated by events, the horizon was by no means free from cloud. Could the small island, which, eighteen months earlier, had seemed ruined and disgraced, command sufficient force for world conquest against a neighbour far superior in wealth and man-power? Anson, it is true, had in 1758 so vigorously schooled the Navy that its superiority to that of France in size could no longer be offset by any French superiority in tactics. It was possible, however, that the rough and sometimes almost piratical conduct of British cruisers and privateers might rouse other Powers against her, and that Swedish, Danish and Genoese warships might be added to those of France. A still more serious danger came from Spain. Thanks to Ferdinand the Pacific with his Portuguese consort and their foreign and pro-British minister, it had been possible for the astute Keene to prolong a neutrality which threatened Spain with lasting disadvantage overseas. Now, however, the Queen and the diplomatist were dead, the King deranged and dying, while at Naples a vigorous heir was determined to play a very different part. Don Carlos, indeed, with vivid memories of the British admiral who in 1742 had given him an hour to change his policy, and with a Saxon wife whose father Frederick had despoiled, was awaiting the moment to range Spain with her empire, ships and treasure by the side of his brother Bourbon. In Pitt, it is true, Britain possessed a leader unequalled save by Frederick, but even Pitt's position was not perfectly secure. His gout might lay him low; his royal master was past seventy-five; his own temperament made sudden explosions certain; even to his colleagues his rule was an offence. The view of the grandees as expressed by Lady Yarmouth, "Keep Mr Pitt till we have peace and then do what you like with him",4 was no less politic than selfrevealing, but the needful self-restraint was difficult. The homage which the City and the provincial towns paid to Pitt only increased 1 Hildebrand, Sveriges historia, VII, 262 seqq. 3 Ibid. 11, 78. 2 von Ruville, III, 3774 Williams, II, 39. PITT AND THE FRENCH INVASION 481 the resentment of the Whig dukes at the trespass upon their preserves which his virtual dictatorship implied, and that dictatorship he emphasised rather than disguised. His trembling colleagues cherished their own foreign policy, based on intelligence which they regarded as their private property.1 To be rid of Pitt, Newcastle, it was believed, was inciting a home demand for peace and even intriguing to lower the national credit and embarrass further loans.2 It was, therefore, mainly in reliance upon a mandate from the masses that Pitt marshalled the forces of Britain for the formidable task of 1759. In Choiseul he had now to contend with a virtual dictator like himself, but one to whom the accumulation of offices gave legal power where a Pitt must trust to mere ascendancy. Against this able and resolute soldier, bred to regard none save the King of France as his superior, and seconded by Belleisle in the War Office, and the vigorous Berryer in the marine, Pitt had a fourfold duty to perform. To save their colonies, to win Austria's battle, and to conquer peace the French must invade Great Britain. To this end Belleisle prepared a plan more menacing than that of Napoleon. Vast French forces from many ports sailing to the Clyde and to the Essex flats, Russians and Swedes assisting of all this the premonitory signs and the discovery of the actual scheme would have paralysed the aggressive activities of a lesser man than Pitt. Declining to be disturbed, he met it by diplomacy, by armament and by inspiration. The legitimate grievances of neutrals were palliated by courtesies wherever possible and especially by a Prize Bill which cancelled the commissions of the smaller privateers. No diplomatic exertion was spared which might prolong the neutrality of Spain with her (nominal) 90,000 soldiers and nearly a hundred ships. The Army and Navy were of course increased; a great camp in the Isle of Wight at once guarded Britain and threatened France; French coasts and shipping were attacked so as to destroy the danger at its source. In July Rodney showed at Havre what the light forces could do to paralyse a section of the would-be invaders, and greater ruin lay in store for them when they should tempt fortune on the open sea. But Pitt's greatest triumph lay in so rousing the spirit of the nation that it was willing to bear new taxation, furnish the necessary man-power? and confront not only the threatened invasion but an indebtedness mounting year by year to unprecedented heights. 6 If Britain remained undaunted and inviolate, the concentration of French energies on the invasion could only advantage her in the other theatres of war. But to keep what might be won elsewhere 1 Corbett, II, 14 seqq. 2 von Ruville, п, 235; Pol. Corresp. XVIII, 337. Corbett, II, 22; Walpole, Memoirs, III, 184. Hotblack, p. 160; F.O., Spain, 5 June 1759 et passim. • Ibid. 12 Dec. 1759, to Earl of Bristol. 7 Williams, I, 400 seqq. CHBEI • Choiseul, Mémoires, p. 2. 31 |