While Clive was overrunning Bengal, the English armies in the Carnatic were making an end of the small remnants of the French power in India. The operations were protracted, till in January, 1760, Sir Eyre Coote routed the last French army at Wandewash, and, ere another year was out, Pondicherry and all the other strongholds of the enemy were in his hands.
Death of George II.
While England was thus triumphant alike in Europe, India, and America, and Pitt was at the height of his glory, the old king, George II., died suddenly in his seventy-eighth year (October 25, 1760). His death made an instant change in the national politics both at home and abroad, for his successor was not one of those sovereigns who were contented to obey their ministers and meekly bear the yoke of the great Whig oligarchy.
CHAPTER XXXV.
GEORGE III. AND THE WHIGS—THE AMERICAN WAR.
1760-1783.
In the last two centuries of English history the accession of a new king has not often caused a complete revolution in politics. The change of sovereigns often gives us an unfortunate and misleading cross-division, cutting periods in two that are really one, or making us dream that there is a unity in periods which are really divided in their interest and meaning.
This was not the case, however, when George III. succeeded his grandfather George II. For the last time in English history, the change of kings implied a real break in the continuity of the politics of the time. The new monarch was only twenty-two years of age, and was totally unversed in affairs of state. George II. had lived in bitter enmity with his feeble and factious son, Frederic Prince of Wales, the nonentity of whom the contemporary satirist wrote—
"Since it's only Fred who was alive and is dead,
There's no more to be said."