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BRITISH VICTORIES IN 1758

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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.2 The great design of the campaign, however, contemplated the expulsion of the enemy from North America. Louisbourg, "the darling object of the whole nation",3 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. 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.

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, vã, 262 seqq.

3 Ibid. 11, 78.

2 von Ruville, III, 377.
4 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,3 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.5 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.

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.

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

3 Choiseul, Mémoires, p. 2.

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Hanover must be defended by an army which only Britain could raise and pay. From Frederick, struggling for existence, no more could be expected than the gift of Ferdinand of Brunswick, of much advice and of a tiny troop for purposes of policy and moral.1 To meet this new situation, in which we had made conquests overseas, counted on making more, and knew that we must save Hanover to keep them, Pitt raised some 52,000 British troops and sent them to Germany. He was by no means without hope that a new Rossbach won by Ferdinand might subdue exhausted France.2

The need of supporting Frederick now rested at once upon simple and complex considerations. Elementary loyalty and good faith forbade the desertion of a partner in an enterprise which had brought profit to one member and to the other loss. The fact that Prussia was Protestant and her foes the great Catholic Powers was still significant and weighty. And although no member, save France, of the antiPrussian coalition was our enemy, no one could predict the combinations that would follow a Prussian collapse. While the Third Silesian War went on, the participation of France meant the diversion of French blood and treasure from her struggle with Hanover and Britain. If it ended with Frederick's defeat, he might even indemnify himself at Hanover's expense. Both as against her enemy and her ally the British subsidy of £670,000 was a wise premium of insurance.

Entrusting the defence of Britain to her own sons and to the Navy with its triple screen of cruisers, sending men to Ferdinand and money to Frederick, Pitt set about the conquest which was to be the main work of 1759. Filled with the national hatred of a Popish and absolutist natural enemy, and following the economic ideas of the time, he aimed at sweeping the flag of France from every continent and island, and at abolishing her commerce and marine. "The West Indies where all our wars must begin and end" formed naturally his first objective. Of the islands, Martinique and Guadeloupe were far superior even to Jamaica both in produce and in strategic strength, while on the mainland Quebec stood between us and the conquest of Canada, with all its profit to our colonies, fisheries, fur trade, revenue and naval power. Bitter experience, however, told against assaults either upon well-defended coasts within the tropics or upon the distant and difficult St Lawrence, which in 1711 had cost us eight ships and nearly a thousand men. Undeterred by memories of Cartagena or of the failures of amphibious expeditions nearer home, Pitt ordered both tasks to be attempted.

The plan for the conquest of Canada by converging attacks upon

1 Pol. Corresp. XVIII, II et passim.

2 Chatham MSS. Intelligence, Versailles, 21 Jan. 1761, no. 8.

3 Alderman Beckford (1753), cit. Walpole, Memoirs, 1, 307.

Corbett, 1, 401. Wolfe confirms to Pitt (Correspondence, I, 378) the "thorough aversion" of the Navy to that river.

VICTORIES OF 1759

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Montreal was in part safe and in part a dangerous speculation. Since the French garrison was small, the country vast, and the British invaders assured of reinforcements, the cautious Amherst might safely be expected to isolate the capital from the south and west, if given sufficient time. Wolfe, on the other hand, had to face unknown difficulties of navigation, with the certainty of finding himself, if successful, confronted at Quebec by strong positions, defended by forces which might even be superior to his own, and which knew that the approach of winter would compel him to raise the siege. It is, therefore, not surprising that despite the heroism of Wolfe and his followers Canada was not conquered in 1759, and that when the campaign closed Quebec was a most precarious possession.

The year none the less brought a harvest of victory unparalleled in British annals until the autumn of 1918. Six major triumphs and a host of minor were hardly discounted by defeat, and Choiseul's great scheme for the invasion of these realms was frustrated before it could be set in motion.1 Ferdinand, it is true, began with a failure at Bergen2 (13 April), and the French, now more than ever intent upon Hanover, captured Minden and Münster on their way. In May, however, the rich island of Guadeloupe was ours, and in July, after Rodney's telling blow at Havre, Wolfe made Quebec so hot that the defenders complained that there was only one place in which they could with safety pray. In the same month Amherst took Ticonderoga, and Fort Niagara fell to his men, while on 1 August the British infantry shared gloriously in the French defeat at Minden. Although Ferdinand achieved no superiority in force, Hanover was saved, Frederick's flank secured and the continental war made almost popular in England. The victory known as Lagos or Cape St Vincent followed (17 August), when Boscawen destroyed a confluent of Choiseul's torrent of invasion and at the same time powerfully influenced the new King of Spain in the direction of continued neutrality. On 13 September Quebec fell-"a peacebegetting conquest" as the hard-pressed Prussians thought. These dazzling tidings were swiftly followed by those of the desperate sea-fight off Quiberon (20 November), “the Trafalgar of this war", and a further warning to Charles III of Spain. The glories of 1759, "the greatest year England ever saw", were crowned by the triumph of Britons in India. Striking hard with a tiny force, Forde stormed Masulipatam in April, and next month the frustration of the French in Southern India was attested by the cession of the Northern Circars to the British.

1 See infra, chap. xvIII.

Waddington, R., La guerre de Sept ans, III, 13.

3 Knox, Capt., Journal of the Campaign of 1759, ed. Doughty, 1, 431 n.,
Mitchell from Torgau, 28 and 30 Oct., F.O., Prussia.

5 Mahan, A. T., The influence of sea-power upon history, p. 304.
Rigby to Pitt, 23 Dec. 1759 in Correspondence of Pitt, 1, 480.

436.

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