animate the councils of England. Pitt was lord of the ascendant, and not only paramount over foreign diplo1 macy but over military and naval operations.

E

Con

tinental war, however, he disliked. He strenuously opposed the despatch of troops to the Elbe, to repair the disaster of Kloster-Seven, whilst he employed large sums and forces in futile attempts on the French coast and on French ports.* An attempt on Rochefort in 1757 failed, although there were few troops to defend it. At Cherbourg and St. Malo, in the following year, the English were more successful, being able to land and destroy works and shipping. Nevertheless, they were severely handled on relanding in the bay of St. Cast. Such bootless expeditions merely served to inflame the resistance of the French, and prompt them to retaliate by an invasion of England.

Far different in energy, in the choice of officers, and in consequent success, were the efforts of the great minister to found a great British colonial empire on the ruins of that of the French. This, indeed, became Pitt's dominant thought; and as it was also the aspiration of the most active and influential spirits in the nation, nothing could exceed the minister's popularity save, indeed, the success of his enterprise. In 1758 he directed an attack upon Cape Breton and its capital, Louisburg, a necessary prelude to the mastery of the St. Lawrence, and the reduction of Canada. The French made a gallant defence, but the English fleet under Boscawen and its artillery were too formidable, and Louisburg surrendered. The Fort Duquesne was reduced soon after; and although and although the French commander, Montcalm, repelled all attacks upon Canada, he was obliged to give up the intolerable pretension of shutting out the Anglo-American population south of the Lakes by an imaginary prohibitive line along the Ohio. In the same years the English deprived their * Chatham Correspondence, March 1758.

CHAP. XXXVI.

CHAP. enemies of the commerce of the west coast of Africa, and of the gum trade.

XXXVI.

The capture of Louisburg had been but the prelude to that of Quebec. Pitt had selected Amherst as the commander-in-chief, and Wolfe, who had distinguished himself at Rochefort, as the fittest leader of a daring expedition such as that against Quebec. Events fully responded to the minister's choice. Towards midsummer 1759, British vessels, with about 10,000 men, appeared on the St. Lawrence opposite the city. Its lofty and imposing position seemed, however, to defy assaults, several of which were tried in vain, and a bombardment resorted to. Wolfe then bethought himself of a stratagem. He ascended the river St. Lawrence with fleet and army, as if to lead it some distance westward. The Marquis of Montcalm, the governor, despatched one of his lieutenants and a considerable force to watch and oppose him, thus considerably weakening his own already insufficient garrison. Wolfe in the night dropped with his fleet down the stream, until within a short distance of Quebec, where precipices on that bank of the river above the city seemed to preclude all possibility of landing. Wolfe, however, did land, and his zeal and the efforts of his soldiers overcame the difficulty of climbing the precipitous ascent, 250 feet, up by a path where two could not go abreast, and at the top of which an enemy's guard awaited them. In the morning (September 13) Montcalm perceived that his enemy had possession of the heights of Abraham. He did not hesitate to march forth to attack them. whole force, he thought, might not have yet surmounted the declivity. He was mistaken. The English met the assault with their usual steadiness, and the French were driven back upon camp and city. In the action both Wolfe and Montcalm fell mortally wounded, the * Wright's Life of Wolfe.

Their

first not expiring till he was consoled with the shouts CHAP. of victory. The enemy retired; and Quebec became XXXVI. a British possession, which the French vainly endeavoured to re-capture in the following year. The result to them was the loss of all Canada. The remainder of their forces, un-reinforced and unsuccoured from home, succumbed at Montreal in the autumn of 1760. And French dominion ceased over what might have been a flourishing colony, had not the home government rushed into war to restore Silesia to Austria. In 1759 their West India islands were menaced with the same fate as Canada. And though Martinique successfully resisted, Guadeloupe was taken.

The superiority of English over French arms in the east was even greater than in America. To the ports of the latter some small reinforcements might creep, but India, removed by such an extent of sea from the contending powers in Europe, must necessarily fall to that which remained lord of the ocean. By the year 1757, Clive, sent out governor from England, had made himself master of Bengal by the victory of Plassy. The future Sir Eyre Coote was almost equally successful in the Carnatic over a more powerful enemy. As hostilities broke out in Europe, the French governor had despatched a considerable force, with an Irish refugee, Count Lally, at its head, to perform that task of conquering the south of India, in which Dupleix had been interrupted. Lally was a magniloquent person, who promised wonders, but who was as unfortunate as he was brave. There was a multitude of obstacles to his success, his inexperience of Indian affairs the greatest. Then his army was ill paid, and he himself insufficiently supplied. All these defects ended in the defeat of Lally, and the capture of Pondicherry by the English. The chief advantage which the French had promised themselves from the renewal of the war was

XXXVI.

СНАР. the recovery of India. The French East India Company was now blamed, as more incapable than even the French war-office. And Count Lally, on his return, had not the same indulgence shown him as Labourdonnais. He was placed upon his trial, condemned by the parliament, which proved as impassioned as the public, and the unfortunate Lally perished on the scaffold. Voltaire as eagerly exerted himself in his behalf as he had done for the family of Calas. Choiseul would have saved him. But Louis the Fifteenth was himself inexorable.*

Notwithstanding all these disasters, France possessed at the time a minister quite as spirited, and, as far as French requirements went, as talented as Chatham. Madame de Pompadour had discerned the feebleness of Cardinal de Bernis. Louis disliked him. The minister despaired finding resources for the war, and saw of that war sufficient to prognosticate its ill success. Instead of being more obsequious in consequence to Madame de Pompadour, he grew negligent, and even defiant. She accordingly summoned from Vienna a diplomatist who had shown himself zealous for the Austrian alliance, and who had on one occasion displayed his profound obsequiousness to her. The Count de Stainville was appointed minister of foreign affairs, and elevated to the rank of Duc de Choiseul (1758). His first idea, like Pitt's with regard to France, was to strike the enemy at home. It had been also the idea of the war minister, Belleisle. As was the case before and since, the necessary step to accomplish invasion of England was the junction of the French naval forces of the

* In these years the Abbé Morellet collected the rules of procedure established by the Inquisition, and their mode of conducting trials. He brought his book to the celebrated Malesherbes, who, after perusal, observed to the author, "All this tissue

of infamy deserves to be exposed; but, unfortunately, it does not inculpate the Inquisition only, for these are our own traditional French modes of conducting a criminal prosecution."

There were twelve ves

CHAP.

Mediterranean and the ocean. sels of the line at Toulon, observed by Boscawen with XXXVI. an equal number, not always able to blockade the port. The English admiral had Gibraltar to fall back upon, the true station for preventing the junction of the hostile fleets of the two seas. In the middle of August the twelve men-of-war from Toulon succeeded in passing the Straits into the ocean. Soon perceived by Boscawen, he came up with seven of them, the remainder having separated in the night. They were, of course, an easy prey to him, though one of the French captains made a heroic resistance. The government thought to punish the others, but they were found to belong to the influential families of Provence, and it was considered dangerous to offend them, it being a province governed by states in which the democracy prevailed.

The naval defeat of Lagos, as it was called, induced the French minister to abandon the scheme of invading England with a large army; but he still persisted in partial executions of this design, such as the despatch of an expedition to Ireland and to Scotland. Thurot sailed from the French coast with the troops that were at Dunkirk, and lost both them and himself after failing in a descent near Carrickfergus. The main army of succour, consisting of forty battalions under the Duke d'Aiguillon, were quartered at Vannes and at Nantes. Admiral Hawke's task was to watch the fleet, which lay at Brest, and which was destined to transport and carry D'Aiguillon to Scotland. A tempest drove off Hawke to the coast of England, which Conflans took hasty advantage of to sail out of harbour in order to embark the expedition. Hawke was soon back, and came up with the fleet of Conflans at the mouth of the Vilaine. The French admiral withdrew amidst the rocks and shallows, better known to his pilots than to the English, but Hawke followed him at all risks, losing, as it turned out, but two of his ships, which