The votes for foreign subsidies alone, in 1744, were £691,426, while the Hanoverian soldiers cost us £393,773. The King actually tried in addition, in the month of August, to get a further subsidy for his friend, the Elector of Saxony, and another for the King of Poland, and this when Englishmen and Irishmen were lacking bread. Nor was even a pretence made in some instances of earning the money. £150,000 was paid this year to keep Prince Charles in Alsace, and the moment Austria got the money, Prince Charles was withdrawn, and Henry Pelham, writing to the Duke of Newcastle, says, "The same will be the case with every sum of money we advance. The allies will take it, and then act as suits their convenience and security." In the four years from 1744 to 1747, both included, we paid £4,342,683 for foreign troops and subsidies, not including the Dutch and Hessians, whom we hired to put down the rebellion of 1745. In the case of the whole of this war, in which we subsidized all our allies except the Dutch, it is clear that the direct and sole blame rests upon the King, who cared nothing for English interests in the matter. When firmly remonstrated with by Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, his reply was what the Duke of Newcastle describes as "almost sullen silence."
For the rebellion of 1745—which came so near being successful, and which would have thoroughly succeeded had the Pretender's son possessed any sort of ability as a leader—there is little room to spare here. The attempt to suppress it in its early stages is thus described in a Jacobite ballad:—
"Horse, foot, and dragoons, from lost Flanders they call,
With Hessians and Danes, and the devil and all;
And hunters and rangers led by Oglethorpe;
And the Church, at the bum of the Bishop of York.
And pray, who so fit to lead forth this parade,
As the babe of Tangier, my old grandmother Wade?
Whose cunning's so quick, but whose motion's so slow,
That the rebels marched on, while he stuck in the snow."
The hideously disgusting cruelties and horrible excesses committed by the infamous Duke of Cumberland, and the Hessians and Hanoverians under his command, in suppressing the rebellion after the battle of Culloden, are, alas! too well known. Duncan Forbes, Lord President of the Court of Session, and a warm supporter of the Brunswicks, remonstrating with the Duke as to the latter's disregard of the laws of the country, his Royal Highness of Cumberland replied with an oath: "The laws of my country, my lord; I'll make a brigade give laws." Scotland has many reasons for loving the House of Brunswick. Lord Waldegrave, who strove hard to whitewash the Duke of Cumberland, says that "Frederick Prince of Wales gave too much credit to the most malignant and groundless accusations, by showing favor to every man who aspersed his brother's character."
In 1747, £456,733 was voted by Parliament for the payment of the King's debts.
In 1748, considerable difficulty arose in consequence of the King's intrigues to obtain, at the expense of England, the Bishopric of Osnaburg as a princely establishment for his favorite son, the Duke of Cumberland, that pious prince, much esteemed in Scotland as "the butcher." The most open hostility subsisted between the Duke of Cumberland and Prince Frederick, and pamphleteering attacks on the former, for his brutality and excesses, were supposed to be encouraged by the Leicester House party.
Amongst the curious scandals of 1749, it is stated that the King—being present at a masked ball, at which Elizabeth Chudleigh, afterwards Duchess of Kingston, figured as "La Belle Sauvage" in a close-fitting dress of flesh-colored silk, requested permission to place his hand on Miss Chudleigh's breast. The latter replied that she would put the King's hand on a still softer place, and immediately raised it to his own royal forehead.
On the 20th March, 1751, Frederick, Prince of Wales, died. The King, who received the news while playing cards with his mistress, Lady Yarmouth, and who had not spoken to his son for years, merely said, "Freddy is dead." On this subject Thackeray preserves for us the following epitaph:—
"Here lies Fred,
Who was alive, and is dead.
Had it been his father,
I had much rather.
Had it been his brother,
Still better than another.
Had it been his sister,
No one would have missed her.
Had it been the whole generation,
Still better for the nation.
But since 'tis only Fred,
Who was alive, and is dead,
There's no more to be said."
In 1755 there was the second war, estimated to have cost £111,271,996. In this George II. pursued exactly the opposite course of policy to that taken by him in the previous one. The war during the years following 1739 was for the humiliation of the King of Prussia; the policy in the last war was to prevent his humiliation. Mr. Baxter estimates the debt (exclusive of annuities) at £133,000,000; Dr. Colquhoun, adding the value of the annuities, makes it £146,682,843 at the conclusion of this war.