The admiral and Mr. Clive sailed back to Madras in triumph, and there another plan was formed for restoring the company’s affairs upon the Ganges, recovering Calcutta, and taking vengeance on the cruel viceroy of Bengal. In October they set sail again for the bottom of the bay; and about the beginning of December arrived at Balasore, in the kingdom of Bengal. Having crossed the Braces, they proceeded up the river Ganges as far as Falta, where they found governor Drake, and the other persons who had escaped on board of the ships when Calcutta was invested. Colonel Clive was disembarked with his forces to attack the fort of Busbudgia by land, while the admiral battered it by sea; but the place being ill provided with cannon, did not hold out above an hour after the firing began. This conquest being achieved at a very easy purchase, two of the great ships anchored between Tanny fort and a battery on the other side of the river, which were abandoned before one shot was discharged against either; thus the passage was laid open to Calcutta, the reduction of which we shall record among the transactions of the ensuing year.
CHAPTER XII.
Motives of the War in Germany..... Conspiracy in Sweden..... Measures taken by the King of Prussia and Elector of Hanover..... Endeavours of the Court of Vienna to frustrate them..... His Prussian Majesty demands an Explanation from the Empress-Queen..... Her Answer..... The Prussian Army enters Saxony, and publishes a Manifesto..... Prince Ferdinand takes Leipsic..... King of Prussia takes Possession of Dresden, and blocks up the King of Poland at Pirna..... Prussian Army penetrates into Bohemia, and fights the Battle of Lowoschutz..... Saxon Army surrenders..... King of Poland’s Memorial to the States-General..... Imperial Decrees published against the King of Prussia..... Declarations of different Powers..... His Prussian Majesty’s Answer to the Saxon Memorial..... and Justification of his Conduct..... Remarks on both those Pieces...... Disputes between the Parliament of Paris and the Clergy..... Dearth of Corn in England..... Hanoverian Auxiliaries sent back..... Session opened..... Debates on the Address..... Bill passed for prohibiting the Exportation of Corn..... Message to the House concerning Admiral Byng..... Supplies granted..... Reflections on the Continental War...... Message from the King to the Parliament..... Measures taken to remove the Scarcity of Corn..... Militia Bill..... Petitions for and against it..... Altered by the Lords..... Bill for quartering the Foreign Troops, and for regulating the Marines while on Shore..... Bill for the more speedy recruiting the Land-Forces and Marines..... Act relating to Pawnbrokers and Gaming-Houses..... Laws relating to the Wages of Weavers, and to the Improvement of the British Fishery..... Act for importing American Iron Duty free..... Regulations with respect to the Importation of Silk..... Smugglers encouraged to enter into his Majesty’s Service..... Inquiry into the Scarcity of Corn..... Investigation of the Loss of Minorca..... Examination of the American Contract..... Inquiry into the Conduct of Admiral Snowies, as Governor of Jamaica..... Resolutions concerning Milford-Haven..... Session closed..... Trial of Admiral Byng..... Recommended to Mercy..... Message from the King to the Parliament respecting the Sentence..... Bill to release the Members of the Court-Martial from their Oath of Secrecy..... Execution of Admiral Byng..... Paper delivered by him to the Marshal of the Admiralty..... Remarks on his Fate
MOTIVES OF THE WAR IN GERMANY.
Having thus, to the best of our power, given a faithful and exact detail of every material event in which Great Britain was concerned, either at home, or in her settlements abroad, during the greatest part of the year one thousand seven hundred and fifty-six, we shall now return to Europe, and endeavour to explain the beginning of a bloody war in Germany, which then seemed to have become the chief object of the British councils. On the eve of a rupture between France and England, it was natural for his Britannic majesty to provide for the safety of his electoral dominions, the only quarter by which he was at all accessible to the efforts of the enemy, who he foresaw would not fail to annoy him through that avenue. He, at that time, stood upon indifferent terms with the king of Prussia, who was considered as a partisan and ally of France; and he knew that the house of Austria alone would not be sufficient to support him against two such powerful antagonists. In this emergency, he had recourse to the empress of Russia, who, in consequence of a large subsidy granted by England, engaged to furnish a strong body of forces for the defence of Hanover. His Prussian majesty, startled at the conditions of this treaty, took an opportunity to declare that he would not suffer foreign forces of any nation to enter the empire, either as principals or auxiliaries; a declaration which probably flowed from a jealousy and aversion he had conceived to the court of Petersburgh, as well as from a resolution he had formed of striking some great stroke in Germany, without any risk of being restricted or controlled. He knew he should give umbrage to the French king, who had already made preparations for penetrating into Westphalia; but he took it for granted he should be able to exchange his connexions with France for the alliance with Great Britain, which would be much less troublesome, and much more productive of advantage: indeed, such an alliance was the necessary consequence of his declaration. Had his Britannic majesty made a requisition of the Russian auxiliaries, he must have exposed himself to the resentment of a warlike monarch, who hovered on the skirts of his electorate at the head of one hundred and forty thousand men, and could have subdued the whole country in one week; and if he forbore to avail himself of the treaty with the czarina, he did not know how soon the king of Prussia might be reconciled to his most christian majesty’s design of invasion. As for the empress-queen, her attention was engrossed by schemes for her interest or preservation; and her hands so full, that she either could not, or would not, fulfil the engagements she had contracted with her former and firmest allies. In these circumstances the king of England sought and obtained the alliance of Prussia, which, to the best of our comprehension, entailed upon Great Britain the enormous burden of extravagant subsidies, together with the intolerable expense of a continental war, without being productive of one advantage, either positive or negative, to England or Hanover. On the contrary, this connexion threw the empress-queen into the arms of France, whose friendship she bought at the expense of the barrier in the Netherlands, acquired with infinite labour, by the blood and treasure of the maritime powers; it gave birth to a confederacy of despotic princes; sufficient, if their joint force was fully exerted, to overthrow the liberties of all the free states in Europe; and, after all, Hanover has been overrun, and subdued by the enemy; and the king of Prussia put to the ban of the empire. All these consequences are, we apprehend, fairly deducible from the resolution which his Prussian majesty took, at this juncture, to precipitate a war with the house of Austria. The apparent motives that prompted him to this measure we shall presently explain. In the meantime, the defensive treaty between the empress-queen and France was no sooner ratified, than the czarina was invited to accede to the alliance, and a private minister sent from Paris to Petersburgh, to negotiate the conditions of this accession, which the empress of Russia accordingly embraced: a circumstance so agreeable to the court of Versailles, that the marquis de l’Hôpital was immediately appointed ambassador-extraordinary and plenipotentiary to the court of Russia. Applications were likewise made to the courts of Madrid and Turin, soliciting their concurrence; but their catholic and Sardinian majesties wisely resolved to observe a neutrality. At the same time, intrigues were begun by the French emissaries in the senate of Sweden, in order to kindle up a war between that nation and Prussia; and their endeavours succeeded in the sequel, even contrary to the inclination of their sovereign. At present, a plot was discovered for altering the form of government, by increasing the power of the crown; and several persons of rank being convicted upon trial, were beheaded as principals in this conspiracy. Although it did not appear that the king or queen were at all concerned in the scheme, his Swedish majesty thought himself so hardly treated by the diet, that he threatened to resign his royalty, and retire into his own hereditary dominions. This design was extremely disagreeable to the people in general, who espoused his cause in opposition to the diet, by whom they conceived themselves more oppressed than they should have been under an unlimited monarchy.
MEASURES TAKEN BY THE KING OF PRUSSIA AND ELECTOR OF HANOVER.
The king of Prussia, alarmed at these formidable alliances, ordered all his forces to be completed, and held in readiness to march at the first notice; and a report was industriously circulated, that by a secret article in the late treaty between France and the house of Austria, these two powers had obliged themselves to destroy the protestant religion, and overturn the freedom of the empire, by a forced election of a king of the Romans. The cry of religion was no impolitic measure; but it no longer produced the same effect as in times past. Religion was made a pretence on both sides; for the partisans of the empress-queen insinuated, on all occasions, that the ruin of the catholic faith in Germany was the principal object of the new alliance between the kings of Great Britain and Prussia. It was in consequence of such suggestions, that his Britannic majesty ordered his electoral minister at the diet, to deliver a memorial to all the ministers at Ratisbon, expressing his surprise to find the treaty he had concluded with the king of Prussia industriously represented as a ground of apprehension and umbrage, especially for religion. He observed, that as France had made open dispositions for invading the electorate of Hanover, and disturbing the peace of the empire; that as he had been denied, by the empress-queen, the succours stipulated in treaties of alliance; and as he was refused assistance by certain states of the empire, who even seemed disposed to favour such a diversion: he had, in order to provide for the security of his own dominions, to establish peace and tranquillity in the empire, and maintain its system and privileges, without any prejudice to religion, concluded a defensive treaty with the king of Prussia; that, by this instance of patriotic zeal for the welfare of Germany, he had done an essential service to the empress-queen, and performed the part which the head of the empire, in dignity and duty, ought to have acted; that time would demonstrate how little it was the interest of the empress-queen to engage in a strict alliance with a foreign power, which, for upwards of two centuries, had ravaged the principal provinces of the empire, maintained repeated wars against the archducal house of Austria, and always endeavoured, as it suited her views, to excite distrust and dissension among the princes and states that compose the Germanic body.