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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.

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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. 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.

To Michell, Pol. Corr. XI, 55.

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14 Nov. 1754.

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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.1

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. 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, 1, 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. 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.2 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.

1757, conscious of perfect readiness for war and unconscious of the deeper realities of the position, Frederick reckoned that a swift offensive would overwhelm the Austrians and perhaps leave Polish Prussia or Saxony within his hands. The seeming climax of British good fortune was therefore swiftly followed by collapse. In January 1756 Newcastle could pride himself upon the triumphant convention with Prussia and upon the rise of our land and sea forces to some 80,000 and some 50,000 men.1 February brought the news that Vienna had received the convention with a displeasure which offers of British and Russian protection against Frederick could not remove. Their court, said the Austrian public, might soon engage with France. In March, while the French continued to threaten invasion, they were reported to be preparing a great expedition against Minorca and to be hopeful of winning Spanish help against Gibraltar.3 In May, when at last open war was declared against France, and ominous convulsions were reported in Sweden, it became apparent that the greatest diplomatic revolution in history had been effected. Protesting that the Convention of Westminster had smitten her like a stroke of apoplexy, Maria Theresa declared that she must seek to secure herself from the risk of war, and the Franco-Austrian Treaties of Versailles followed. June brought the alarming news that Russia was declaring that she was bound only to resist an attack upon Hanover by Prussia, while it became clear that Byng's inexplicable failure had lost Minorca to the French and that the nation would not condone it. "Shoot Byng or look out for your King"5 was a cry to cowe Newcastle if not his master. "We are not able to carry on the war", lamented old Horace Walpole, "nor can we tell how to make peace." In August, despite all British admonitions, Frederick invaded Saxony, and a war of incalculable dimensions had begun.

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In September, therefore, when news arrived that Oswego, "of ten times more importance than Minorca", had fallen to Montcalm, Newcastle's system had almost everywhere collapsed. Spain, indeed, disillusioned by French co-operation in the last war, and governed by friendly hands, refused French offers to return Minorca, and for the time being bore with those practices at sea by which Britain always irritated neutrals. But Austria, by tradition our principal ally, was now engaged in a life or death struggle with her successor, the most faithless of princes and the enemy of all Europe. Far from defending Hanover, it was not long before Frederick was explaining to Britain the necessity for evacuating his own western possessions which lay between Hanover and France, and bidding her send a 1 Charteris, pp. 203, 237. 2 F.O., Germany, 4 and 11 Feb. 1756.

3 Ibid. Spain, 150, 17 March 1756 (Keene).
Ibid. Germany, 17 May 1756.

5 Besant, Sir W., London in the eighteenth century, p. 22.
Coxe, p. 456 (to the Archbishop of Canterbury).
"Horace Walpole, Memoirs, III, 41.

8 Politische Correspondenz, xiv, 4 Nov. 1756.

THE ADVENT OF WILLIAM PITT

473 large and vigorous army to oppose the French. Thus the old cleavage between George II, with whom Hanover stood first, and his subjects, who cried, "Sea war, no continent, no subsidies", seemed likely to return, and with it the half-paralysis of Britain. Byng's failure had aroused suspicions that the Navy, however large, lacked spirit, while the American campaign proved that the colonists were disunited, and suggested that neither they nor the regulars were of much account in border warfare. The bad beginning and worse prospects of the struggle made a change of ministry inevitable.

During the two-and-forty years of Georgian rule, no real transfer of power from one party to another had yet been made. The Whigs remained the only servants whom a Hanoverian King could trust. Even the fall of a Walpole or a Carteret had changed the tempo of policy rather than its direction. Such changes caused little more than a reshuffling of high offices among those members of the great Whig families of whom, as likely to do his business, the King could be persuaded to approve. Such persuasion might come from a premier, a relative or a mistress, but the candidate must not be too distasteful to the Commons, placemen though half the members were. An aspirant upon whom the invincible load of royal displeasure fell could in normal times hope only for a change of King.

Such a man, at this time nearly forty-seven years of age, was William Pitt. Conscious of powers incomparably greater than his rivals', he was far from concealing his superiority from them or from the public. "When he was angry or speaking very much in earnest", said his granddaughter, "nobody could look him in the face." The Duke of Bedford was perhaps the only man in England whom an eye as terrible as Frederick's failed entirely to subdue. Newcastle confessed that he dared not approach him on distasteful business. His voice, his glance, his biting wit, his lofty and passionate appeal electrified the House of Commons. An actor of majesty in an age to which majesty appealed, his influence came from his power to regard men and causes, himself by no means least, in their nobler aspects and from the loftiest point of view. Where many saw a stupid and pretentious little old man in George II, Pitt always recognised the incarnate majesty of Britain. But he also learned to reverence the British people, invested by the Revolution with the ultimate supremacy over their own affairs. He indeed personified the better Britain of his age, that which to sense added sensibility in no small degree, and which contemptuously rejected the place-hunter's advice, "Strive thy little bark to steer With the tide but near the shore". Britons who instinctively desired a purer administration, wider opportunity for merit as compared with birth, a bolder confrontation of corrupt and reactionary France in the struggle for trade * Dodington, Diary, p. 397.

1 Williams, I, 20.

3 Dodington, cit. Williams, 1, 210.

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