[CHAPTER II]
1748.
The conclusion of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was followed by the usual reduction of the forces in Britain. The ten new regiments and several other corps were disbanded, leaving for the cavalry all the regiments now in the Army List down to the Fourteenth Hussars, and in the infantry the Foot Guards and the First to the Forty-ninth Regiments of the Line. The strength of all corps was of course diminished and the British Establishment was fixed at thirty thousand men, two-thirds of them for service at home and one-third for colonial garrisons. The rest of the Army, thirty-seven regiments in all, but very weak in numbers, was as usual turned over to the Irish Establishment. Efforts were of course made in both Houses of Parliament to cut down the numbers of the Army to a still lower figure, and the antiquated arguments in favour of such a step were repeated as though they had not already done duty a thousand times within the past forty years. Nay, so vigorous is the old age of folly and of faction that men were still found, when the Mutiny Act was brought forward, to urge the needlessness of courts-martial in time of peace. These childish representations, however, received little notice or encouragement; while, on the other hand, divers projects for reform in the Army were brought forward which, even though they led to no result, received at least careful attention and intelligent debate. Of these matters it will be more convenient to speak when the narrative of the war is concluded. For although peace had been proclaimed, and estimates and establishment had been accordingly reduced, the struggle with France, far from being closed, was not even suspended abroad. It would seem that not a few members of both Houses were alive to the fact; while fugitive notices in the newspapers, announcing that "Mr. Clive, a volunteer, had the command given to him to attack a place called Arcourt," may have suggested it even to the gossips of the coffee-houses. The Government, however, was not one which could be expected to take thought for the morrow, or indeed for anything beyond the retention of power. It was that Administration which had been formed by Henry Pelham in 1744, and is generally identified with the name of his brother, the Duke of Newcastle, who is remembered chiefly through his ignorance of the fact that Cape Breton is an island. This deplorable person possessed no talent beyond an infinite capacity for such intrigue as lifts incompetence to high office, and was only less of a curse to England than Madame de Pompadour was to France. One able man, however, there was in the lower ranks of the Administration, William Pitt, who, after a vain effort to become Secretary at War, had accepted the post of Paymaster of the Forces. He now lay quiet, though not without occasional outbursts of mutiny, abiding his time and fulfilling the duties of his place with an integrity heretofore unknown in the Paymaster's Office.
1749.
One important military measure, meanwhile, the Government did take. The number of men disbanded from fleet and army was so large that it was deemed prudent, in the interests alike of humanity and of public security, to make some provision for them. Accordingly fifty acres of freehold land, with an additional ten acres for every child, were offered to all veterans who would emigrate as settlers to Nova Scotia; their passage outward being likewise paid, and immunity from taxation guaranteed to them for ten years. The system was copied from the model given by the French in Canada, and by them doubtless borrowed from ancient Rome; but it was successful. Four thousand persons, with their families, took advantage of the offer, embarked under the command of Colonel Cornwallis and landed at the harbour of Chebucto, from thenceforward called, in honour of the President of the Board of Trade and Plantations, by the name of Halifax. Three companies of rangers were formed for the defence of the settlement, in addition to which two battalions of regular troops were detailed for the garrisons of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. For it was intended that Halifax should be not only a refuge for disbanded soldiers, but a fortified station in counterpoise to the French fortress at Louisburg.
The French in Canada instantly took the alarm, and after their unscrupulous manner incited the Indians to murder the settlers, sparing no pains meanwhile to alienate the hearts of the Acadians from the British. The priests were their instruments in this treacherous policy, and their proceedings were fully approved at Versailles. What was called an Indian war was, in the plain words of Governor Hopson of Nova Scotia, no other than a pretence for the French to commit hostilities on British subjects. Yet through the trying years that followed, the British officials behaved always with exemplary patience and forbearance, though, owing to the incessant intrigues of the French, occasional skirmishes between French and English were unavoidable. But British settlers had touched French America elsewhere on a more tender point even than in Acadia. British traders had found their way across the Alleghanies to the Ohio, and had stolen the hearts of the Indians on the river from their French rivals. To Canada this was a serious matter, for the chain of French posts that was designed to shut off the British from the interior ran from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, and if the British should sever this chain at the Ohio French America would be parted in twain. In 1749 a French emissary was despatched from Montreal to vindicate French rights on the river and to bid the English traders depart from it. His reception by the Indians was not encouraging, and even while he was on the spot a company was formed by some capitalists in Virginia to settle the country about the Ohio. The Governors of Pennsylvania and Virginia quickly perceived the importance of the position on the fork of the river where Pittsburg now stands, and were anxious to secure it by a fortified station; but unfortunately the public spirit of the colonies was less intelligent than the private enterprise. The Provincial Assemblies quarrelled with their governors and with each other, and refused to vote a farthing either for building a fort or for presents to conciliate the Indians in the valley of the Ohio.
1752-1753.
Then, as usual, while the colonies debated and postponed the French took prompt and decisive action. In the summer of 1752 a new Governor, Duquêsne, had arrived in Canada, who, as soon as the spring of 1753 was come, sent an expedition of fifteen hundred men through Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, where they landed on the eastern shore and built a fort of logs at Presquile, the site of the present Erie. Thence cutting a road for several leagues southward to French Creek (then called Rivière aux Bœufs), they constructed there a second fort named Fort le Bœuf, from which, when the water was high, they could launch their canoes on the creek and follow the stream downward to the Alleghany and the Ohio. The expedition was to have built a third fort at the junction of French Creek and the Alleghany, and descended the Ohio in order to intimidate the Indians, but the project was defeated by the sickliness of the troops. Garrisons were therefore left at Fort le Bœuf and Presquile, and the remainder of the force returned to Montreal, having thus secured communications between the St. Lawrence and the Ohio.