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New England the new treaty of alliance with the Iroquois secured the frontier except in New Hampshire and Maine, now reduced to misery by border outrages. The coast and the fisheries suffering almost as much from the raids of Quebec, Placentia and Port Royal privateers (the last "is become another Dunkirk"), Governor Dudley of Massachusetts besought Great Britain for 3000 troops and adequate shipping to strike at the root of the evil.1

Equally insistent was a Bostonian, Captain Vetch, who, in July 1708, presented to Mr Secretary Boyle a memorial, "Canada Surveyed", describing the hardships of the Plantations, which spent £97,000 a year on defence, yet lost much of their shipping. For the half of one year's losses, they could conquer Nova Scotia and Canada -the only way of ending their ills. England should supply eight warships and two battalions of regulars, the colonists furnishing 1000 militia and transports for the blow at Quebec, also 1500 militia and Iroquois for that at Montreal. The New England attempts on Canada in 1707 had failed "only through want of officers and conduct". After the conquest the Indians will soon be loyal subjects "when they have no priests to poison them"; and Canada, with a climate far better than Darien, will become "a noble colony, exactly calculated for the constitutions and genius of the most northern of North Britons".2

The French reinforced his arguments by raiding St John's at Christmas 1708; but, apart from sending a small force to recover it, the Whig ministers sent little or no help. Their preoccupation in continental campaigns caused increasing annoyance, not only in the colonies but at home, Swift bidding them remember that for the Maritime Powers the true way to get at Spain was, not through Flanders, but the West Indies3. Other reasons for neglect of the colonies were bad naval administration and the failure of the Dutch to supply the stipulated naval quotas, the deficiencies in 1708–10 amounting to eighteen, thirty-one and twenty-four sail of the line respectively. An undue strain was, therefore, thrown upon the British Navy, many of our ships having to remain "in remote seas and at unseasonable times, to the great damage and decay of the British Navy". For these reasons, apparently, only three British warships with a regiment on board and several vessels with local levies sailed from Boston. They easily captured Port Royal, now renamed Annapolis Royal (September 1710); but, as the hold on Acadia was precarious while Canada remained French, requests were sent to London for an expedition to expel the enemy. Late in 1710 the Tories, recently come to power, prepared an expeditionary force of some 5000 troops in fifteen warships and forty-six transports, under the 1 Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1706-8, pp. 31, 260, 438, 587-91:

2 Ibid. pp. 41-51.

3 See infra, chapter xx.

C.J. 1711, pp. 49, 120, which correct Mahan, pp. 61-2.

THE PEACE OF UTRECHT

523 command of Rear-Admiral Sir Hovenden Walker and General Hill. Picking up 2000 New Englanders under Vetch at Boston in July 1711, the force proceeded up the St Lawrence, where Walker and his pilots during gales and mist neglected the most rudimentary precautions, and ran eight transports on the reefs of Egg Island, some thirty miles out of the course. Hill and he then resolved to return home, without attacking the petty forts of Placentia.1 This disgraceful failure scarcely affected the main issue, which was determined in Europe. Already, in 1709, the first overtures for peace came from exhausted France.2 They elicited from colonial circles various petitions, e.g. from Jamaica merchants for the removal of the French settlements from Hispaniola, "a sad and grievous thorn in our side"; a general demand for the annexation of St Lucia, Dominica and Tobago, to which we had good claim, and the retention of the whole of St Christopher; also for the expulsion of the French from Newfoundland and Hudson Bay. Massachusetts urged the retention of Nova Scotia, whose privateers had ruined New England trade and fisheries.3

Though the French and Spanish Navies had been reduced to impotence, yet the losses of British merchants contributed to the war weariness and partisan intrigues which led to the Peace of Utrecht (1713). France had to cede Nova Scotia ("the key of all the eastern colonies"4) and her settlements in Newfoundland, Hudson Bay and St Christopher. But the Tory ministry made no effort either to secure the cession of Cape Breton Island or to delimit the southern and eastern limits of Canada. Both omissions soon bred constant strifes. From distracted Spain ministers extorted only Gibraltar and Minorca (already in our hands), and they abandoned the cause of "Charles III" and the Catalans, besides leaving Spain to Philip V, that is, to the French connection. Discontent with this compromise was general; it appears in the protest of North American merchants against leaving to France Cape Breton Island, a certain menace to Nova Scotia and British shipping. The criticism was soon to be justified; for from its port, Louisbourg, as base, France pressed forward her schemes for the conquest of North America. Yet at Utrecht trade interests had been protected, especially in the Asiento clause of the treaty.5

Such was the profitable but inglorious ending to a war waged at sea neither with foresight nor efficiency. Marlborough it was who prompted the nearly successful conjoint expedition against Toulon in 1707 and the capture of Minorca in 1708. In naval strategy and tactics the war was singularly barren: but the plodding ways of British seamen, the exhaustion of France and the inevitable pre

1 Morgan, W. T., Art. in Trans. R. Hist. Soc. 1927.
2 Torcy, Journal de 1709-11 (ed. Masson), pp. 86-168.
3 Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1708-9, pp. 304-39.

4 Corresp. of William Shirley (ed. Lincoln, C. H.), II, 149.
5 Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1711-12, p. 256.

occupation of the Dutch in land defence, now yielded to the islanders undisputed maritime and therefore commercial supremacy. Further, a struggle originating in the maintenance of the balance of power in Europe became in its course markedly colonial, and determined largely the future of the British nation. Canada was now outflanked by our new acquisitions, Nova Scotia and Hudson Bay; in Europe our trade communications with the Levant were safeguarded, and in Africa the hunt for slaves received a portentous stimulus. Above all, the Empire was strengthened strategically by naval bases in the Mediterranean, the first of those far-spread links which knit together the whole. Accordingly, commerce now leaped ahead, the shipping of London being double that of Amsterdam by 1739.1 Colonies, wilting in nearly a quarter of a century of semi-piratical strife, now filled out rapidly in the almost unbroken time of peace (1713-39); and wealth rapidly increased in Georgian England, prompting the will to break through the irksome restraints of Spain on West India trade.

Walpole, the champion of our mercantilist and colonial policy, winked at the illicit trade in the Caribbean but sought to keep at peace with Spain until the clamour of mercantile circles compelled him reluctantly to declare war (October 1739). The First Lord, Admiral Sir Charles Wager, stated in the House of Commons that England was ill prepared for it. That was true. Naval construction lagged behind that of France and Spain both in quality and quantity, and the feeble attempts to fortify some of the West Indies left them in a weak, naked and miserable condition. Therefore, apart from Vernon's brilliant dash at Portobello and Anson's semi-predatory voyage in the Pacific, the British Navy cut a poor figure until Anson's influence at the Admiralty in and after 1745 gradually worked a salutary change. It was high time; for in March 1744 (a month after the indecisive battle off Toulon), France exchanged her guileful neutrality for open war; she had already pledged herself secretly to Spain by the second Family Compact to win back for her Gibraltar and Minorca, and blot out the new English colony of Georgia, Spain transferring to the French the Asiento and other trading privileges.

Thus the trade war with Spain was linked with a complicated European war, which overtaxed the activities of mid-Georgian England and the finances of Pompadour-ridden France. In 1745 the throne of George II shook under the defeats inflicted by the Maréchal de Saxe in the Netherlands and by Prince Charles in Scotland. Yet even in that dark year, when our hold on the Mediterranean and both the Indies was weakened, a well-concerted effort wrested from the French their chief stronghold and naval base in North America. On 1 Anderson, Origins of Commerce, III, 224.

2 Temperley, H. W. V., arts. in Trans. R. Hist. Soc. Ser. ш, vol. I, and in Annual Report of the American Hist. Assoc. for 1911; Hertz, G. B., Brit. Imperialism in 18th century, pp. 1-59; Parl. Hist. x, 720, XI, 223-33.

THE FIRST CAPTURE OF LOUISBOURG

525 Louisbourg the French had spent about £1,000,000; that fortress guarded the St Lawrence, dominated the fisheries of the Bank and the trade route to New England, besides threatening Nova Scotia, where the British barely held Annapolis against French and Indian raids. The plan of capturing Louisbourg was suggested early in 1743 by Commodore Sir Peter Warren,1 and later by William Shirley, an English lawyer who had come to the front at Boston. Now Governor of Massachusetts, he urged the Duke of Newcastle to send naval support for a New England attack on Louisbourg, the capture of which would entail "the destruction of Canada". With praiseworthy energy he succeeded in inducing the New England Assemblies to raise some 4000 troops who were led by Lieut.-General Pepperell; but he failed to stir New York and other colonies to action. Meanwhile Warren, commanding the Leeward Islands squadron, received from home discretionary powers to proceed with all available ships to Nova Scotia, and despite local protests he did so with four sail, meeting later two sent from England, the most that could be spared at that crisis. Before joining the New England force off Canso in Nova Scotia, he heard of the arrival of a strong French squadron in the West Indies, but resolved to settle with Louisbourg first. That place was sealed up by thirteen New England privateers until the whole force appeared and covered the landing in a cove two miles to the south-west. The garrison being small, ill-provisioned and half mutinous, surrender was certain unless succours came. Ten French storeships and, finally, a sail of the line with powerful succours were taken by Warren's ships. The land attacks made little impression, but on the threat of forcing the harbour, the governor surrendered (16 June)3. A large French squadron, sent to recover the place in 1746, was shattered by storm and decimated by plague. The French squadron sent out to the West Indies did comparatively little harm.5 Meanwhile a rupture had occurred between the British and French East India Companies. Rivals in trade, they for financial reasons abstained from hostilities until after the arrival of decisive news from Europe. Already competition for a good naval base en route had produced acute tension. As a retort to the British base at Bombay, La Bourdonnais, an enterprising adventurer of St Malo, had worked hard to fortify and construct a dock at Port Louis in Île de France (now Mauritius), which became a centre of French power and commerce. After a visit to France in 1741 he returned with sealed orders in case of war. In 1742 Dupleix, formerly Governor of Chandernagore on the Hooghly, became Governor of Pondicherry and of other French settlements in India. Cherishing designs of supremacy,

1 Richmond, H. W., The Navy in the War of 1739–48, 11, 202.

2 Corresp. of Shirley, 1, 161-77.

3 Ibid. 1, 215-79; Richmond, II, 200-16; Wood, W., The Great Fortress, pp. 1-66; Beatson, R., Naval and Mil. Memoirs (1790), 1, 260–6.

Troude, Batailles navales de la France, 1, 310.

5 Richmond, vol. п, chap. x.

he proceeded to fortify that city, while Fort St George at Madras was almost indefensible apart from naval support. Alarmed at its weakness the English Company sought that support from home.1 Thus, competition for a naval base and the need of naval protection helped to embroil two Companies hitherto concerned with rupees and local intrigues. In 1745 Commodore Barnett arrived off the Coromandel coast with a small squadron, which made several prizes, and was soon opposed by that of La Bourdonnais, with no decisive result. On Barnett's death, Captain Peyton took command and administered a check to the French, who withdrew under the guns of Pondicherry (June 1746). Reinforced there, they offered battle to Peyton, who, probably owing to former damages, sheered off and made for Ceylon, there hoping to guard an expected British convoy. This withdrawal enabled La Bourdonnais to take on board troops and a siege-train for a long-projected attack upon Madras, which surrendered on 10 September. A subsequent attack on Cuddalore failed; but Boscawen's powerful fleet from England could not retrieve the situation in the Carnatic before news of peace arrived. Sea power had there turned the scales in favour of France. Already it was clear that victory would lie with that side which possessed the better naval base near at hand.

This advantage to France was far outweighed by her false strategy pursued in home waters. There the French and Spaniards had failed, even in 1745, to combine their fleets either for the invasion of England, the capture of Minorca and Gibraltar, or for triumph in the New World. Parcelling out their squadrons for secondary objects, they yielded the initiative to the Island Power. At Whitehall the initial failures were taken to heart, and in August 1746 Anson went to sea in command of a powerful Channel Fleet, which through the winter gales held the Channel Soundings and threatened Brest. A new spirit now animated the crews:

The fleet was always there, tho' sometimes our poles were bare,
All that winter the French were in a fix;

For we always were prepared, and that was all we cared,
When Anson ruled the fleet in '46.

The superiority of Spartan-trained crews over harbour-staled crews appeared in the two victories of Anson and Hawke in the Bay of Biscay (May, October 1747), which together led to the capture of twelve sail of the line, besides many merchantmen, and cut off the reinforcements destined for Canada and India. Yet, just as Madras balanced Louisbourg, so French land power, paramount in the Netherlands, balanced British naval power. Exhaustion therefore brought both sides to negotiations for peace; for the French Finance Minister said he saw hell open before him if the war lasted; and our Cabinet quailed before the financial and military crises then 1 Dodwell, H., Dupleix and Clive, pp. 6-9. 2 Richmond, II, 190–201. Ibid. m, 82-112; Hannay, D., Short Hist. of Brit. Navy. II, 124-32.

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