King Edward's realm: Story of the making of the Empire

by C. S. Dawe

11. Hastings, indeed, had laid himself open to attack in his schemes for raising money to pay his troops. The means he adopted for this purpose has left a stain on his name, and an uncomfortable feeling upon the minds of his countrymen that our empire in India has not always been built on honourable lines. On Hastings' return to England he was brought to trial for the wrongs he had committed in the course of his government. The fact was clearly brought out at his trial that, whatever his measures for obtaining money, he had taken them with the object, not of enriching self, but of promoting the interests of his country. After the trial had drawn its weary length over a period of seven years, the accused was acquitted. The nation had by this time forgotten his faults and remembered only his great services, whereby he had preserved Britain from loss in the East whilst her fortunes underwent eclipse in the West.

(2) A GREAT LOSS TO THE EMPIRE.

1. The triumphs in the Seven Years' War had not been won without great cost. A long score had been run up by the nation, and to pay the interest on the National Debt heavy taxes had to be borne. If the money spent in the last war was not to be thrown away, it was necessary to spend still more in order to defend what British arms had won. The American colonies, also, were constantly exposed to Indian raids, and the savage use of the scalping-knife. It was, accordingly resolved by the British Government to keep a standing army in America of ten thousand men. And for the maintenance of such an army it was only just that the colonists should contribute.

2. A dispute now arose between the colonists and the Home Government, not about the amount which the former should pay, but upon the way in which the demand for payment was made. The British Parliament asserted its right to tax the colonists and insisted on levying a tax on tea. The colonists urged that they should be left free to tax themselves in their own colonial parliaments. "We will not allow," said they, "the British Parliament to thrust their hands into our pockets." The dispute ended in war. The thirteen American colonies banded together, and declared themselves free and independent states (1776).

3. In the war that followed the colonists gained the day. They owed their success, in no small measure, to George Washington, their Commander-in-chief. It was only as the weary fight went on that his countrymen learnt, little by little, the greatness of their leader—his silence under difficulties, his calmness in the hour of danger or defeat, the patience with which he waited for an opportunity, the quickness and vigour with which he struck home when it came.

4. But success was due still more to the help the colonists received from France and Spain. These two powers had been brought to their knees in the Seven Years' War, and now they resolved to take advantage of the family quarrel between Britain and her colonies to pay off old scores: "to avenge," as they said, "old injuries, and to put an end to that tyrannical empire which England has usurped, and claims to maintain, upon the ocean." The main object the French had in view was not, as we might suppose, the reconquest of Canada, but the transfer to herself of the British possessions in the West Indies. Spain's heart was set on the recovery of Gibraltar. Both nations made a solemn vow to grant neither peace nor truce until Gibraltar had fallen.

5. Spain set about the siege of Gibraltar the moment she had declared war (1779). The difficulty on our side was not to keep the enemy from landing, but to keep the garrison supplied with provisions and ammunition. Our fleets, however, proved equal to the task. They were led to victory by Admiral Rodney, one of the greatest of English seamen. He not only escorted his own provision ships into the harbour of Gibraltar, but on the way captured a Spanish squadron of seven ships-of-war and sixteen supply ships, which were added to his own for the victualling of Gibraltar. A week later, when off Cape St. Vincent, Rodney espied a Spanish fleet of eleven sail-of-the-line, gave chase, and cutting in between the enemy and his port, captured the Commander-in-chief, with six of his battle-ships, whilst a seventh was blown up.

6. The siege went on for three years. At last the allies, in September, 1782, resolved to bend all their energies to finish off the work. On the isthmus, joining the rock to the mainland, they planted 300 pieces of artillery, and in front of the rock ten floating batteries, which were supposed to be both shot and fire proof. War-ships, gun-boats, and bomb-vessels were to lend their aid. Thousands of French soldiers were brought to reinforce the Spaniards, all held in readiness for a grand assault as soon as the guns had made a breach large enough for troops to enter.

7. For four days the guns on the isthmus bombarded the fortress in vain. Then the floating-batteries were brought into action. A furious cannonade raged for hours between the batteries afloat and the batteries on the rock. General Eliott, who was in command of the fortress, served his guns with red-hot balls, and at last, in spite of the enemy's frantic efforts to extinguish the fire, one of the batteries was well ablaze, and soon the same fate overtook the others. In the end, nine of the ten blew up, and about two thousand poor fellows were blown into the sea. Our commander then showed that he was as humane as he was brave. The British guns ceased firing, and boats, rowed by willing British hands, rescued four hundred from death. Thus ended the last attempt to take Gibraltar by storm.

8. A few months before her triumph at Gibraltar, Britain won a signal victory over the French in the West Indies. A French fleet, under Admiral De Grasse, consisting of thirty-six war-ships, with five thousand troops on board, was ordered to join a Spanish fleet of fourteen men-of-war, carrying eight thousand troops, off Hayti, and then clear the British out of Jamaica and all their West India possessions. Had the junction taken place, the combined armada of fifty ships might have accomplished the task. But the scheme came to nought in consequence of a splendid victory over the French fleet by Admiral Rodney.