and empire-such found in Pitt a man whose passionate convictions made him the champion of their ideas. Unhappily for his hopes of power, his lack of fortune, his popular principles and his uncompliant personality long closed the Cabinet against him. In November 1755 when he, as Paymaster, opposed the payment of subsidies to foreigners to defend Hanover, he was dismissed. Within a year, however, the collapse of Newcastle's measures had brought the nation into a condition which some thought more critical than that of 1745.1 Newcastle himself was pelted by the Greenwich mob.2 Everything compelled recourse to the impressive reserve-force comprised in the personality of Pitt. Too regal to accept high office save on his own conditions, he demanded that Newcastle, notwithstanding his quarter of a century of office, should resign. In November he became Secretary of State with the Duke of Devonshire as a colleague and figurehead. Pitt's first administration lasted a little less than five months. The time was long enough to prove that his reverence for himself was not ill-founded, and to confirm him in the eyes of the public as indispensable. The Opposition orator turned minister showed amazing capacity for administration, a vision that embraced the globe, and an energy unquenchable by gout and toil. What statesman in that age save Pitt could declare the hearts of Bengal worth more than all the profits of monopolies?3 The minister of George II, he set Britain. above dynasty or party, and rallied to the national cause both the Tories and the camarilla of the future George III. His reluctant master was compelled to declare to Parliament that he relied with pleasure on the spirit and zeal of his people. For that spirit and zeal Pitt prescribed an outlet in a national militia, while striving to sustain them by measures to combat the painful rise in the price of corn. Highlanders, ten years before regarded as inveterate enemies, were to conquer America, and Americans to be enlisted as willing and equal co-operators in the common task. Eight thousand infantry and a powerful fleet might with local aid atone for Braddock's failure and the loss of Fort Oswego, while in India, Africa, the West Indies and the Mediterranean the French were to be steadfastly opposed. Pitt, as he proved later, had the courage to defy all threats of French invasion designed to check these plans. The weightiest among the problems which confronted him, however, was that of our attitude towards Prussia. Was it to the advantage of the nation that the war against France should be single, or that it should be compounded with a struggle on which Frederick, for his own ends, had embarked against the Habsburgs? Hanover, the obvious link between the wars, might declare neutrality as in 1741, and Frederick be abandoned to his fate. That fate, in spite of 2 von Ruville, п, 43. Hotblack, K., Chatham's colonial policy, p. 96. 1 Williams, 1, 262. ANGLO-PRUSSIAN CO-OPERATION 475 his unrivalled army and his conquest of Saxony, was likely to be hard, for a great Russian host was preparing to move against his rear, the Swedes and the German Empire were arming, and France, with her long list of recent victories and vast supplies of men, had pledged her co-operation. Nothing in the Convention of Westminster bound us to partnership in Frederick's aggression. That Pitt, recanting in the stress of war his most consistently upheld opinions, determined to engage Hanover in the fight for Prussia and Britain in protecting her from France, may well be ascribed less to calculation than to instinct-the national instinct to deal generously, at least in the early stages, with our associate in a struggle against France. Nothing was less expected from a proud and intractable statesman who had seemed to accept ruin rather than turn a single into a double war. When, in April 1757, the King, at the demand of Cumberland, drove from office a minister whom he detested, who was often inaccessible through sickness, who, besides commanding no majority in Parliament, had as yet secured no success in war, Frederick congratulated himself that in Pitt a mere spouter and an opponent of action in Hanover had been removed.1 As the campaign developed, however, Britain's need for Pitt and Frederick's amazing talents were both made clear. Three theatres of war stood out pre-eminent-Bohemia, Hanover and the American mainland. In these, it seemed at the outset, the chief issues must be determined. The Indian struggle, pregnant as it proved to be, was a distant affair of merchants which could not reverse the verdict nearer home. A Prussian conquest of Bohemia, however, might make the continental coalition harmless, unless a French conquest of Hanover should restore its offensive power. The mere defence of Hanover, on the other hand, could not save Frederick from the consequences of disaster in Bohemia, since the victorious Austrians would be assisted by both Swedes and Russians if not by an auxiliary army of the French. Failure in both Bohemia and Hanover would pave the way for the partition of Prussia and the extension of the French littoral to Ostend, perhaps to Antwerp. The American struggle and the European could affect each other only in so far as they exhausted in a greater or less degree the energy and resources of the sole American combatants, France and Britain. When winter was drawing near, the course of events in every theatre had proved such that the cause of Britain and Prussia might well seem lost. Frederick, after a costly victory at Prague, had been driven from Bohemia by a crushing disaster at Kolin. A lieutenant, striving to shield East Prussia, had discovered to his cost that the invading Russians were something more than the strong but headless body of Frederick's imagination. The Austrians were reconquering Silesia, while the French and Imperialists threatened to wrest 1 von Ruville, п, 112, 113. Saxony from his grasp, and without Saxon resources he could hardly continue to make war. In Hanover, meanwhile, Cumberland's prescribed defensive had for a time embarrassed the superior French, the more so as they were far from home, and 1757 a year of widespread dearth. After Kolin, however, Frederick could send him no assistance; Britain preferred to attack the coasts of France; and the French, using methodically their superiority of nearly two to one, drove him from Hastenbeck in flight towards the sea (26 July). When the news of Kolin and Hastenbeck reached England, Hardwicke, the wise Chancellor, thought that both Hanover and Prussia would come to terms.1 Kolin had indeed moved Frederick to make overtures to France; Hastenbeck increased his eagerness for "the old system"; on 6 September his envoy sought the victors' camp. Four days later, Cumberland did in fact sign the Convention of Klosterzeven, which saved his so-called Army of Observation, but resigned the Electorate to the victorious French. While five months of the campaign seemed thus to have brought Hanover and Prussia to ruin, news only less disastrous had been reaching Britain from overseas. In the subordinate theatre of India, it is true, Clive had already regained Calcutta, and, by the miracle of Plassey (23 June), had secured Bengal for Britain. That news, however, could not reach Britain for many months. Meanwhile all that could be known was that in 1756 Calcutta had been lost and the hideous tragedy of the Black Hole enacted. Tidings from America arrived more promptly and were uniformly bad. The capture of Minorca, setting free Toulon, and a gale which scattered our blockading force off Brest had enabled French fleets to win the Atlantic race, thus rendering Loudon's great attack on Louisbourg impossible (July 1757). Early in August, Montcalm took from us Fort William Henry, exposing Albany to French and Indian attack. French squadrons cruised securely off the coasts of Africa and the West Indies, while in September Pitt's great coastal attack upon Rochefort, the naval base for supplying Canada, merely alarmed the French. "We are no longer a nation", wrote Chesterfield in July. Nothing had since occurred to stem the tide of disaster. "The Empire", wrote Pitt in August, "is no more, the ports of the Netherlands betrayed, the Dutch Barrier treaty an empty sound, Minorca and with it the Mediterranean lost, and America itself precarious." To win over Spain and thus regain Minorca, he was ready to sacrifice Gibraltar and the logwood coast, but the offer was of no avail. In September the King declared that he was ruined, while the yokels of seven counties were opposing the Militia Act by force. From Bristol to the City men suspected that the national struggle with France was being 1 Charteris, p. 204. 2 Koser, II, 114 seqq. Miscellaneous Works, IV, 198. 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, 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 Mauduit, Considerations, p. 47. 2 Charteris, pp. 307 seqq. * Koser, p. 167. |