The Pelhams thus became supreme in the conduct of affairs, and stuck to office as closely as their master Walpole. Henry, the younger of the two—"a fretful, suspicious, industrious mediocrity"—was prime minister till he died in 1754. His elder brother the duke then succeeded him, and kept his feeble hand on the helm of state till he lost office in 1756. English policy under these two narrow and shifty borough-mongers soon lost the vigour that the guidance of Carteret had imparted to it.
Battle of Fontenoy.
The war with France continued, but no longer with the same success as before. In the spring of 1745 the armies of Lewis XV., under the able Maurice of Saxony, the Maréchal de Saxe as the French called him, fell upon the Austrian Netherlands. Maria Theresa had so few troops in this quarter that the defence of the Belgian provinces fell entirely upon the English and Dutch. The allied armies did not act together with much success, and the Dutch general, the Count of Waldeck, quarrelled with his colleague, George Duke of Cumberland, the younger son of George II. It was this want of co-operation which led to the loss of the bloody battle of Fontenoy (May 11, 1745). The French army was besieging Tournay, when Waldeck and Cumberland came up to relieve it, and found the enemy drawn up along a line of woods strengthened with redoubts on their flanks—a position much like the neighbouring field of Malplaquet, where Marlborough had won his last fight thirty-six years before.
While Waldeck skirmished feebly with the French wings, the stubborn and reckless young duke pushed into the centre of the hostile army with a solid column of English and Hanoverian infantry. He broke through two lines of the French, and cut their host in twain, but failed for want of support on the flanks. He was encompassed by the French reserves, and forced back with fearful loss to his old position, but the enemy were too maltreated to molest him further.
The rebellion of '45.
The campaign of 1745 was still undecided, when the greater part of the English army was suddenly called home to face a new and unexpected danger. The ministers of Lewis XV. had determined to try the effect of stirring up a Jacobite rebellion, hoping to distract the strength of England even if the house of Hanover could not be overthrown. James Stuart, the "Old Pretender," was now elderly and had always been apathetic, but his son Charles Edward Stuart was a young prince of a very different character. Reckless, adventurous, and light-hearted, he was the very man to lead a desperate venture. The French gathered an army of 15,000 men at Dunkirk, and promised to put it at his disposal if he would invade Scotland. But a storm scattered the transports, and the troops were ultimately drawn off to the war in Flanders.
The Young Pretender lands in Scotland.
Nevertheless, Charles Edward resolved to persevere, and, on hearing of the fight of Fontenoy, slipped off on a small privateer and landed in Invernesshire with no more than seven companions, "the Seven Men of Moidart," as the Jacobites called them. His arrival was quite unexpected, and he had nothing more to rely upon than the traditional attachment of the Highlanders to the house of Stuart. The chiefs of the West were dismayed at the recklessness of the venture, and it was with difficulty that the enthusiasm and personal charm of the young prince induced them to take arms. At first only a few hundreds of the Camerons and Macdonalds joined him, but the absolute imbecility displayed by the English Government encouraged him more and more to make the venture. The Marquis of Tullibardine, an exile since 1715, roused the Perthshire clans, and the insurrection spread to South and East.
Sir John Cope marches northward.
The Pelham cabinet only got news of the prince's coming three weeks after his landing in Moidart. They were in no small degree alarmed, for well-nigh the whole army was over-sea in Flanders, and no one knew how far disaffection might have extended in England and the Scottish Lowlands. The only troops in the North were four battalions of foot and two newly raised regiments of dragoons. This small army of 3000 men was entrusted to Sir John Cope, one of the incompetent men whom the Pelhams loved to employ, because they were pliant and docile. Cope hurried north, hoping to relieve the two isolated military posts of Fort William and Fort Augustus, the sole garrisons of the West Highlands. But finding the insurgents in possession of the pass of Corry-Arrack, over which his road ran, he swerved eastward to execute a long circular march by way of Inverness. Thus he was no longer placed between the enemy and the Lowlands, and left the way to Edinburgh open.