Rout of Braddock.
It was natural that at such a crisis the mother country should look to the united efforts of the colonies, and Halifax pressed for a joint arrangement which should provide a standing force and funds for its support. A plan for this purpose on the largest scale was drawn up by Benjamin Franklin, who, from a printer's boy, had risen to supreme influence in Pennsylvania; but in the way of such a union stood the jealousies which each state entertained of its neighbour, the disinclination of the colonists to be drawn into an expensive struggle, and, above all, suspicion of the motives of Halifax and his colleagues. The delay in furnishing any force for defence, the impossibility of bringing the colonies to any agreement, and the perpetual squabbles of their legislatures with the governors appointed by the Crown, may have been the motives which induced Halifax to introduce a Bill which would have made orders by the king in spite of the colonial charters law in America. The Bill was dropped in deference to the constitutional objections of wiser men; but the governors fed the fear in England of the "levelling principles" of the colonists, and every official in America wrote home to demand that Parliament should do what the colonial legislatures seemed unable to do, and establish a common fund for defence by a general taxation. Already plans were mooted for deriving a revenue from the colonies. But the prudence of Pelham clung to the policy of Walpole, and nothing was done; while the nearer approach of a struggle in Europe gave fresh vigour to the efforts of France. The Marquis of Montcalm, who was now governor of Canada, carried out with even greater zeal than his predecessor the plans of annexation; and the three forts of Duquesne on the Ohio, of Niagara on the St. Lawrence, and of Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain, were linked together by a chain of lesser forts, which cut off the English colonists from all access to the west. Montcalm was gifted with singular powers of administration; he had succeeded in attaching the bulk of the Indian tribes from Canada as far as the Mississippi to the cause of France; and the value of their aid was shown in 1755, when General Braddock led a force of English soldiers and American militia to a fresh attack upon fort Duquesne. The force was utterly routed and Braddock slain.
State of Europe.
The defeat woke England to its danger; for it was certain that war in America would soon be followed by war in Europe itself. Newcastle and his fellow-ministers were still true in the main to Walpole's policy. They looked on a league with Prussia as indispensable to the formation of any sound alliance which could check France. "If you gain Prussia," wrote the veteran Lord Chancellor, Hardwicke, to Newcastle in 1748, "the Confederacy will be restored and made whole, and become a real strength; if you do not, it will continue lame and weak, and much in the power of France." Frederick however held cautiously aloof from any engagement. The league between Prussia and the Queen of Hungary, which England desired, Frederick knew in fact to be impossible. He knew that the Queen's passionate resolve to recover Silesia must end in a contest in which England must take one part or the other; and as yet, if the choice had to be made, Austria seemed likely to be the favoured ally. The traditional friendship of the Whigs for that power combined with the tendencies of George the Second to make an Austrian alliance more probable than a Prussian one. The advances of England to Frederick only served therefore to alienate Maria Theresa, whose one desire was to regain Silesia, and whose hatred and jealousy of the new Protestant power which had so suddenly risen into rivalry with her house for the supremacy of Germany blinded her to the older rivalry between her house and France. The two powers of the House of Bourbon were still bound by the Family Compact, and eager for allies in the strife with England which the struggles in India and America were bringing hourly nearer. It was as early as 1752 that by a startling change of policy Maria Theresa drew to their alliance. The jealousy which Russia entertained of the growth of a strong power in North Germany brought the Czarina Elizabeth to promise aid to the schemes of the Queen of Hungary; and in 1755 the league of the four powers and of Saxony was practically completed. So secret were these negotiations that they remained unknown to Henry Pelham and to his brother the Duke of Newcastle, who succeeded him on his death in 1754 as the head of the ministry. But they were detected from the first by the keen eye of Frederick of Prussia, who saw himself fronted by a line of foes that stretched from Paris to St. Petersburg.
Alliance with Prussia.
The danger to England was hardly less; for France appeared again on the stage with a vigour and audacity which recalled the days of Lewis the Fourteenth. The weakness and corruption of the French government were screened for a time by the daring and scope of its plans, as by the ability of the agents it found to carry them out. In England, on the contrary, all was vagueness and indecision. The action of the king showed only his Hanoverian jealousy of the House of Brandenburg. It was certain that France, as soon as war broke out in the West, would attack his Electorate; and George sought help not at Berlin but at St. Petersburg. He concluded a treaty with Russia, which promised him the help of a Russian army on the Weser in return for a subsidy. Such a treaty meant war with Frederick, who had openly announced his refusal to allow the entry of Russian forces on German soil; and it was vehemently though fruitlessly opposed by William Pitt. But he had hardly withdrawn with Grenville and Charles Townshend from the Ministry when Newcastle himself recoiled from the king's policy. The Russian subsidy was refused, and Hanoverian interests subordinated to those of England by the conclusion of the treaty with Frederick of Prussia for which Pitt had pressed. The new compact simply provided for the neutrality of both Prussia and Hanover in any contest between England and France. But its results were far from being as peaceable as its provisions. Russia was outraged by Frederick's open opposition to her presence in Germany; France resented his compact with and advances towards England; and Maria Theresa eagerly seized on the temper of both those powers to draw them into common action against the Prussian king. With the treaty between England and Frederick indeed began the Seven Years' War.
The Seven Years' War.
No war has had greater results on the history of the world or brought greater triumphs to England: but few have had more disastrous beginnings. Newcastle was too weak and ignorant to rule without aid, and yet too greedy of power to purchase aid by sharing it with more capable men. His preparations for the gigantic struggle before him may be guessed from the fact that there were but three regiments fit for service in England at the opening of 1756. France on the other hand was quick in her attack. Port Mahon in Minorca, the key of the Mediterranean, was besieged by the Duke of Richelieu and forced to capitulate. To complete the shame of England, a fleet sent to its relief under Admiral Byng fell back before the French. In Germany Frederick seized Dresden at the outset of the war and forced the Saxon army to surrender; and in 1757 a victory at Prague made him master for a while of Bohemia; but his success was transient, and a defeat at Kolin drove him to retreat again into Saxony. In the same year the Duke of Cumberland, who had taken post on the Weser with an army of fifty thousand men for the defence of Hanover, fell back before a French army to the mouth of the Elbe, and engaged by the Convention of Closter-Seven to disband his forces. In America things went even worse than in Germany. The inactivity of the English generals was contrasted with the genius and activity of Montcalm. Already masters of the Ohio by the defeat of Braddock, the French drove the English garrison from the forts which commanded Lake Ontario and Lake Champlain, and their empire stretched without a break over the vast territory from Louisiana to the St. Lawrence.
William Pitt.
A despondency without parallel in our history took possession of our coolest statesmen, and even the impassive Chesterfield cried in despair, "We are no longer a nation." But the nation of which Chesterfield despaired was really on the eve of its greatest triumphs, and the incapacity of Newcastle only called to the front the genius of William Pitt. Pitt was the grandson of a wealthy governor of Madras, who had entered Parliament in 1735, as member for one of his father's pocket boroughs. A group of younger men, Lord Lyttelton, the Grenvilles, Wilkes, and others, gradually gathered round him, and formed a band of young "patriots," "the Boys," as Walpole called them, who added to the difficulties of that minister. Pitt was as yet a cornet of horse, and the restless activity of his genius was seen in the energy with which he threw himself into his military duties. He told Lord Shelburne long afterwards that "during the time he was cornet of horse there was not a military book he did not read through." But the dismissal from the army with which Walpole met his violent attacks threw this energy wholly into politics. His fiery spirit was hushed in office during the "broad-bottom administration" which followed Walpole's fall, and he soon attained great influence over Henry Pelham. "I think him," wrote Pelham to his brother, "the most able and useful man we have amongst us; truly honourable and strictly honest." He remained under Newcastle after Pelham's death, till the Duke's jealousy of power not only refused him the Secretaryship of State and admission to the Cabinet, but entrusted the lead of the House of Commons to a mere dependent. Pitt resisted the slight by an attitude of opposition; and his denunciation of the treaty with Russia served as a pretext for his dismissal. When the disasters of the war however drove Newcastle from office, in November 1756, Pitt became Secretary of State, bringing with him into office his relatives, George Grenville and Lord Temple, as well as Charles Townshend. But though his popularity had forced him into office, and though the grandeur of his policy at once showed itself by his rejection of all schemes for taxing America, and by his raising a couple of regiments amongst the Highlanders, he found himself politically powerless. The House was full of Newcastle's creatures, the king hated him, and only four months after taking office he was forced to resign. The Duke of Cumberland insisted on his dismissal in April 1757, before he would start to take the command in Germany. In July however it was necessary to recall him. The failure of Newcastle's attempt to construct an administration forced the Duke to a junction with his rival, and while Newcastle took the head of the Treasury, Pitt again became Secretary of State.
