The weakness of the English government became more apparent every day. "I say it with regret on account of my friend Fox," wrote Horace Walpole, "but the year 1756 was, perhaps, that of the worst government I have ever seen in England: the incapacity of Newcastle had fair play." In spite of their inadequate resources the Canadians defended themselves heroically and not unsuccessfully against the efforts of the American colonies backed by the mother-country. Acadia, a strip of neutral country between the English and French territories, the inhabitants of which had constantly refused to take the oath of allegiance to England, was invaded by the American troops, the population swept off, and the houses pillaged. General Braddock encountered more resistance in the valley of the Ohio. He proposed to surprise Fort Duquesne, and forced the march of his little corps. "I never saw a finer sight than that of the English troops on the 9th of July, 1755," wrote Colonel Washington, who was commanding under the orders of Braddock. But soon the English advance-guard was stopped by a heavy discharge of artillery; the enemy did not appear; the foremost ranks were disordered and recoiled on the body of the army. The confusion became extreme; the regular troops, little used to this sort of fighting, refused to rally round the general, who would have wished them to manœuvre as on the plains of Flanders. The Virginia militia alone, being scattered in the woods, answered the fire of the French or Indian sharpshooters without showing themselves. General Braddock soon received a mortal wound; Colonel Washington, reserved by God for other destinies, sought in vain to rally the soldiers. "I have been protected by the all-powerful intervention of Providence," he wrote to his brother after the action; "I received four bullets in my coat, and I have had two horses killed under me; however, I have got out of it safe and sound, while death swept off all our comrades around me. We have been beaten, shamefully beaten, by a handful of Frenchmen, who only anticipated hindering our march. A few moments before action we believed our forces almost equal to all those of Canada, and now, contrary to all probability, we have been completely defeated, and have lost everything." The little French corps, sent out from Fort Duquesne under the command of M. de Beaujeu, numbered but two hundred Canadians and six hundred Indians. It was only three years later, when Canada, exhausted and dying, succumbed beneath the burden of a war which it had sustained almost without aid, that Fort Duquesne, destroyed by its defenders themselves, fell into the hands of the English. They gave it the name of Pittsburg, in honor of the great minister who was in power—a name which a prosperous city bears even to-day.
While the Marquis de Montcalm was successfully sustaining the war against the English in America, Marshal Richelieu, a clever, prodigal, and corrupt courtier, had the good luck to achieve the only happy stroke of the Seven Years' War, the remembrance of which should remain firm in the mind of posterity. On the 17th of April, 1756; a French squadron under the command of M. de la Galissonière attacked the Island of Minorca, an important military point in the Mediterranean to which the English attached a high Value. Chased from Ciudadela and Port Mahon, the garrisons had taken refuge in Fort St. Philip. They relied on the help of the English fleet. The Admiral who commanded it attacked M. de la Galissonière on the 10th of May. The English were repulsed and could not effect a landing. The ships had suffered a good deal, and the English forces were inferior to those of France. Byng feared defeat; he consulted his council of war and fell back on Gibraltar. General Blakeney, shut up in the fortress, sick, and without hope of aid, defended himself weakly against the impetuous assault of the French. Fort St. Philip was taken, and the Duke de Fronsac, eldest son of the Duke de Richelieu, hastened to Paris to convey the news to King Louis XV.
The rage and humiliation, like the joy and pride of France, exceeded the extent and importance of the success. Admiral Byng, peremptorily recalled, was with great difficulty brought safe and sound to London, so strong was the anger of the mob. The government made no effort to protect him. On the first representations being made to him against the admiral, who was honest and brave, but a blind slave of rule and badly provided alike with ships and sailors, the Duke of Newcastle hastily replied, "Oh! certainly, certainly; he will be judged immediately; he will be hanged immediately." In spite of the efforts made in his favor in the Houses, as well as by Marshal Richelieu and Voltaire, Byng expiated with his life the check he had sustained and the wounded pride of his country. The Duke of Newcastle was at last overcome by his notorious incapacity. William Pitt seized the reins of power for a short time, of which the aversion of the king was not long in depriving him. The great orator had refused to come to an understanding with Mr. Fox, who bitterly reproached him with afterwards sustaining the treaties of subsidies and alliances which he had lately attacked so passionately. France had just entered into an alliance with Maria Theresa; the houses of Bourbon and Austria were making common cause; all the available forces of England were engaged in the struggle, and Pitt did not hesitate to recruit in the highlands. "Men are never wanting to a good cause," he said afterwards. "I have lately employed the very rebels in the service and defence of the country. Being thus brought back to us, they have fought for us, and have gladly shed their blood to protect those liberties which in the past they wished to destroy."
It was in vain that George II. still strove against the minister, who imposed the national will on him as the favor of heaven. In vain, making use of the royal prerogative against him, did he force him to yield up the seals of office from the beginning of April, and involve in his disgrace Lord Temple, his brother-in-law. In vain did he seek to form a new cabinet, with the insatiable thirst of the Duke of Newcastle for the nominal side of power, and the desire which Fox felt to actually govern. Parliament as well as the people demanded the powerful hand which could guide them through the bursting storm. On the 29th of June, 1757, Pitt was named secretary of state, and rallied around him some illustrious names, but he was the sole efficient master of the government, and was resolved to bear alone the whole burden of it. The most sagacious observers interchanged gloomy forebodings. "England has no longer any course but to cut her cables and set sail towards an unknown ocean," wrote Horace Walpole. "It matters little who may be in power," said Lord Chesterfield; "we are lost at home and abroad—at home by our debts and our growing expenses; abroad by our incapacity and bad luck. … We are no longer even a nation."
It is sometimes the good fortune and glory of great men, under the hand of God, to baffle the doleful prognostications of their contemporaries. As a constitutional minister, the first William Pitt should occupy a lower position than the noble career of his son. He was overbearing, whimsical, personal, and theatrical. Abroad he could push national pride as far as the most impolitic insolence. He sacrificed his country's interests for the sake of humiliating her enemies. He made England feared, but he isolated her in Europe and in the world by a proud and obdurate policy, for which he was to pay cruelly later. At home he was unbalanced and violent, carried away by opposing and always extreme passions, without limit and without foresight. The greatness of his mind, ability, and character, however, overcame all his defects. He governed his country through a long and difficult war in stormy times which demanded painful sacrifices, making constant appeals to the most noble passions of the human soul by the prestige of eloquence, rectitude, patriotism, and glory. It is his honor to have re-established the fortune of England in the war; it is no less a service to have lifted hearts to the level of fortune in order to sustain a great cause.
Pitt's first warlike efforts were not happy. An expedition attempted against Rochefort was unsuccessful. The King of Prussia, lately victorious in Saxony, whence he had driven the elector, the King of Poland, found himself in turn closely pressed by the Austrian Marshal Daun, who had conquered him at Cologne. Marshal d'Estrèes, slowly occupying Westphalia, had entrapped the Duke of Cumberland on the Weser. On the morning of the 23d of July, 1757, the marshal summoned his lieutenant-generals. "Gentlemen," said he, "I do not assemble you to-day to ask you whether we must fight M. de Cumberland and invest Hameln. The honor of the king's arms, his wish, his express orders, the interest of a common cause, bind us to take the firmest resolutions. I only seek, therefore, to profit by your light, and to concoct with you the best means of successful attack." The Duke of Cumberland's troops were of various races. He had not under his command any English regiment. His warlike spirit was not sufficient to compensate for the defects of his military organization. On the 26th of July Marshal d'Estrèes forced him into the intrenchment at Hastenbeck. He retreated, without being pursued, to the marshes at the mouth of the Elbe, under the protection of English vessels. Marshal d'Estrèes was recalled by a court intrigue. Marshal Richelieu and the Duke de Soubise divided the command. Richelieu systematically pillaged Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, and Brunswick. He threatened the position of the Duke of Cumberland, and the latter asked to capitulate. On the 8th of September, by the intervention of the Count de Lynar, the minister of the King of Denmark, who remained neutral between the belligerents, the Duke of Cumberland and Marshal Richelieu signed, at the advance posts of the French army, the famous capitulation of Closter-Severn. The troops of King Louis XV. occupied all the conquered country; those of Hesse, Brunswick, and Saxe-Gotha were to return to their quarters. The great Frederick had already recalled the Prussians; the Hanoverians were to remain fortified in the neighborhood of Stade. In his presumptuous levity the marshal had not even thought of exacting their disarming.
However incomplete as was this convention, which was severely judged by the Emperor Napoleon I. in his memoirs, it excited great anger in England as well as in Prussia. When the Duke of Cumberland presented himself before his father, the old king greeted him with this startling sentence: "There is my son who has dishonored himself whilst ruining me." Wounded and discouraged, the duke officially renounced his command and handed in his resignation of all his offices, to linger yet some years in obscurity, and finally die in 1765, at the age of forty-six years. Pitt alone of the ministers had defended him. When the king repeated that he had never authorized his son's conduct, the prince's constant antagonist replied in an honest spirit of justice: "It is true, Sire; but his powers were extensive, very extensive!"