CONTEMPORARY PRINCES.

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POPES.—Benedict XIII., nbsp; 1724. Clement XII., 1730. nbsp; Benedict XIV., 1740. nbsp; Clement XIII., 1758.

The ascendancy of Walpole was in great jeopardy on the death of George I. Bolingbroke's intrigues against him, backed by all the influence of the Duchess of Kendal, had indeed been thwarted by the straightforward manner in which George I. had put all complaints against him into the minister's own hands—a striking instance of that love of justice and fidelity to old friends which were the redeeming traits of his otherwise uninteresting character. But Walpole had now to do with a sovereign whom as Prince of Wales he had always opposed, and who had been known to use strong expressions of disapprobation with regard to him. George II., a little, dry man, gifted with the hereditary bravery and obstinacy of his family, but with very limited abilities, and a mind far more easily touched by little things than by broad interests, could not be expected to forget Walpole's opposition, nor to appreciate his calm, tolerant wisdom. When Walpole brought him the news of his father's death, he was at once directed to apply to Sir Spencer Compton, a dull, orderly man, Speaker of the House of Commons and Treasurer to the Prince of Wales. Walpole was wise enough to profess friendship for the new favourite, who even employed the ability of his predecessor to draw up the speech which the King was to deliver to the Council. For some days it was believed that Walpole's power was gone. His usual throng of followers deserted him and crowded to Sir Spencer Compton's levÉe. But before any definite arrangements had been made, Sir Spencer unwisely gave Walpole opportunities for personally explaining himself to the King. He was thus able to remove the bad impression the King had received as to his foreign policy, and to outbid his rivals in the arrangements he proposed to make for the Civil List, a point very close to the King's heart. He completely succeeded in winning the Queen to his interests; and when she heard that Compton had had to appeal to his assistance in arranging the speech from the throne, she took the opportunity of impressing upon George the absurdity of employing a minister who was obliged to lean for support upon his rival. The Queen's influence, which was very great, turned the scale in his favour. The ministry continued unchanged. Compton, feeling his brief importance at an end, withdrew from the contest, and shortly afterwards accepted the position of President of the Council as Lord Wilmington.

The offer which had proved so effective a means for securing Walpole's power consisted of £130,000 to the Civil List, and a jointure of £100,000 to Queen Caroline. The Civil List, which had been settled after the Revolution at £700,000 a year from all sources, had proved insufficient, saddled as it then was with a variety of expenses, such as the judges' and ambassadors' salaries, beyond the mere expenses of the Court. Anne had been £1,200,000 in debt, George I. £1,000,000. Walpole now offered to induce the House to raise it to £800,000 a year, allowing the King to claim anything beyond that sum which should arise from the hereditary revenues.

Before long Walpole won the entire confidence of the King himself, but it was at first chiefly on the friendship of the Queen that he relied. She was a woman of very considerable ability. Her intellectual fault indeed was an attempt to know too much. She collected around her men of learning of all sorts, dabbled in divinity, dabbled in metaphysics, patronized poetry, and delighted in listening to theological discussions, in which she kept the part of strict neutrality, believing it is thought but little on either side. But her influence in bringing forward men of ability, especially in the Church, was very great. Her sense was excellent, and by means of it, in spite of the King's royal immorality, she contrived to rule him absolutely. She thoroughly appreciated Walpole, and together they pursued that policy, which was no doubt the right one Character of Walpole's ministry. for the maintenance of the Hanoverian succession. This consisted in the pursuit of peace in every direction—peace abroad, peace at home. If any point was strongly contested it was given up; if any abuse was unobserved it was suffered to rest untouched; and in general their object was to let the nation learn by its material prosperity the advantages of an orderly and settled Government. As a consequence of this policy the period of Walpole's government was uneventful, and was occupied rather with the great Parliamentary struggle between himself and the Opposition under Pulteney than by any great national affairs.

The chief strength of that Opposition consisted of the discontented Whigs, most of whom were driven to oppose Walpole by his insatiable love of power. We have already seen Pulteney and Carteret forced from the ranks of the Government, and all overtures with Bolingbroke rejected. In 1730, Walpole quarrelled with his old friend and brother-in-law Townshend, who was only restrained by his patriotism from joining the Opposition. In 1733, Lord Chesterfield was added to the list. These leaders had behind them a certain quantity of supporters who took the name of Patriots, and wished to be regarded as the true old Whigs, looking upon Walpole with his large majority as seceders from them. There was much plausibility in this view: for the Whig party under Walpole seemed to have become closely attached to the Crown, and was supported principally by Crown influence. As the original principle of the Whigs had been antagonism to the over-great power of the Crown, it could be plausibly urged that they had now assumed the position of their former enemies. The Hanoverian line had ascended the throne with a parliamentary as contrasted with a hereditary title; it had therefore naturally found its chief supporters among the Whigs. With the Hanoverians that party had entered upon power. But the Revolution, while practically subordinating the power of the King to that of Parliament, had constitutionally left it untouched. The Hanoverian kings did not indeed employ it to its full, but placed it in the hands of the minister, who, by means of the royal influence, practically ruled England with as unquestioned a sway as any great minister of the Stuarts. The difference lay in this, that the power of the Crown consisted in the immense influence it possessed by means of pensions, places, and the command of the public money, and worked through the House of Commons, and not in opposition to it. The patriot Whigs were conscious of the power of the Crown, and were true to their principles in opposing it. Their error lay in this, that they did not understand that that power was formidable only so long as there was a venal House of Commons. Eager as they thought for liberty, they formed a close connection with the High Tories and Jacobites, the greatest enemies of liberty; and in their eagerness for office did their best to oppose that Government, which for the present, at all events, was the only safeguard against the restoration of the Stuarts, for the events of 1745 render it plain that danger from the Jacobites was as yet by no means over. In fact, however, principle had little to do with the matter, it was personal animosity to the minister, and anger at exclusion from office, which inspired the Opposition. Even the party names "Whig" and "Tory" were beginning to lose their meaning. By far the greater portion of the House was thoroughly attached to the Hanoverian succession. Some fifty Jacobites sat in it under the guidance of Shippen, and a certain number of country gentlemen, with Wyndham at their head, still retained the title of Hanoverian Tories. But the Parliamentary struggle lay in fact between different sections of the Whigs, either of which, whatever their pretensions may have been when out of office, would probably have acted in much the same way had they succeeded in obtaining it. It was not till the close of this reign and the beginning of the next that the old party names began again to acquire significance. It had become evident that the power and influence of the Crown, but little diminished, as has been said, at the Revolution, had as it were been placed in commission in the hands of the great leaders of the Whig party, who by means of their own Parliamentary influence, added to the King's power which they wielded, had assumed a monopoly of the Government antagonistic at once to the Crown and to the people. Those who regarded this condition of things as a disturbance of the old balance of the Constitution began to rally round the King, and when George III. resumed into his own hands the power of the Crown and broke with the Whig oligarchy, he found his support in this new Tory party.

To oppose the many able men whom enmity to the ministers had driven into the ranks of the Patriots, the Government had little more than the inert strength of an unfailing majority to show. Besides Walpole himself, whose talents were unquestioned, the Government consisted of somewhat second-rate men, such as Newcastle, whose fussy silliness was a constant theme of jest, Stanhope, Lord Harrington, an excellent diplomatist but no politician, and Lord Harvey, a clever but bitter and effeminate courtier. But the Government was supported on almost every question of importance by a vast majority of the House, whose votes the surpassing skill of Walpole as a manager secured—many of them by small places and pensions, or other "considerations," as bribes were then called. That Walpole reduced the purchase of a majority, a practice by no means unknown, to a system must be allowed. It may be urged in his favour, that he used, but did not cause, the venality prevalent among all public men of the time, and employed it so as to secure what was upon the whole the government most advantageous for England at the time.

The folly of the Pretender spared the minister all trouble with regard to the Jacobites, for James had succeeded in alienating his ablest partisans. He had quarrelled with Atterbury as he quarrelled with Bolingbroke, he had excited scandal by his quarrel with his wife, and had suffered an unworthy favourite, Colonel Hay, or Lord Inverness as he called himself, to supplant all his better partisans in his favour. And when the death of Lord Mar was followed by that of the Duke of Wharton and of Atterbury in 1732, the Jacobite cause fell into the hands of very inferior agents, whose intrigues, insignificant as they were, seem to have been thoroughly known by Walpole.

It was thus with one source of danger practically removed that Walpole resumed the threads of foreign policy. The last reign had European complications. closed before peace had been concluded with Spain, and while there were still unsettled difficulties with the court of Vienna, although preliminaries had been signed both in Paris and in Spain by what is known as the Convention of the Pardo. It must indeed have been obvious that the Treaty of Vienna, plausible as it seemed, could not have been a lasting treaty. The Bourbons were upon the throne of Spain, and the close junction of the houses of Bourbon and Hapsburg was an impossible contradiction of all history, especially as the desire which was really the moving passion of the Spanish court, the establishment, namely, of a Spanish kingdom in Italy, was fundamentally opposed to the interests of Austria. At the same time the shadow of the approaching dissolution of his kingdom at his death was constantly overhanging the Emperor. No ideas of present greatness, not even the hope of restoring the Empire to the position it had held under Charles V., appeared in his eyes so important as to secure the reversion of his own estates for his daughter, according to the Pragmatic Sanction, by which, in 1713, he had arranged the succession to his hereditary kingdoms. It was impossible for him to hurry into a general war, which must of necessity prevent the acceptance of that arrangement. There was already a strongly expressed feeling in Germany against the marriages on which the Vienna Treaty rested, and which might have the effect of placing a Spaniard on the Imperial throne. The threatened secession of his chief allies, and the fear of postponing the acceptance of the Pragmatic Sanction, were sufficient reasons to induce the Emperor to withdraw from his bargain. He therefore accepted the mediation of France, where Fleury, though he probably never forgot the old policy of the country which he governed, always apparently exhibited a love of peace; and it was agreed that disputed points should be referred to a general Congress to be held at Aix-la-Chapelle, but subsequently moved to Soissons.

At the Congress the Emperor, afraid of exciting the national prejudices of the Germans, entirely deserted his Spanish allies, and instead of hastening a favourable negotiation, perpetually threw obstacles in the way. As far as England was concerned, the great point at issue was Gibraltar, which Spain had already besieged in vain. The ministry, both before and now, seem to have regarded the surrender of it as neither impossible nor very injurious; the view of the nation was very different. But as is so often the case, the Congress came to very little. Spain, finding herself deserted by Austria, and observing that the Congress was falling Treaty of Seville. Nov. 9, 1729. to pieces by constant delays, had recourse to a direct treaty; and on the 9th of November 1729 the celebrated Treaty of Seville was signed. It was a defensive alliance between England, Spain and France, to which Holland subsequently acceded. Spain revoked all the privileges granted to Austrian subjects by the treaties of Vienna, re-established English trade in America on its former footing, and restored all captures. The Assiento was confirmed to the South Sea Company, and arrangements made for securing the succession of Parma and Tuscany to the Infant Don Carlos, by substituting Spanish troops for the neutral forces, which since the Preliminaries had been occupying those countries.

The Emperor now found that he had outwitted himself. He had clung to the Treaty of Vienna just long enough to irritate two of the Disappointment of the Emperor. great countries of Europe, he had put difficulties in the way of its completion, and hesitated about fulfilling it, just long enough to irritate the third. Old friends and old foes had made common cause. His hopes for the Pragmatic Sanction seemed entirely gone. It was not likely that he would sit down quietly while Spanish troops occupied fortresses in what he considered his dominions. He broke off all diplomatic relations with Spain, sent troops into Italy, and on the death of the Duke of Parma seized his duchy. But all men really knew that the bribe was ready, if they would only give it, to put an end to all his opposition. And the impatient Queen of Spain—angry with the shilly-shally policy of her new allies (who would not insist with sufficient rapidity on the completion of the Seville treaty), throwing over France, which she regarded as the chief delinquent in the matter—joined with England and Holland to offer the long wished for guarantee. Thus at length by the second Treaty of Vienna all the much vexed questions were decided. Austria was glad to accept the Second Treaty of Vienna. March 16, 1731. terms proposed at Seville, agreed to destroy the Ostend Company, to establish Don Carlos in his duchies, and not again to threaten the balance of European power. And in 1732, under the escort of English ships, the Spanish troops took possession of the disputed fortresses.

Both these treaties were arranged in accordance with the pacific views of Walpole. When the second was concluded he was absolute master of affairs in England; for almost immediately after the Treaty of Seville the old jealousy which had long smouldered between him and Townshend burst out, and Townshend had found it necessary to withdraw. Townshend was a proud, rough man, ill fitted to play the subordinate part which Walpole was determined to thrust upon his colleagues. Besides general ill-feeling, several specific grounds of difference existed between them. The first Treaty of Vienna had greatly irritated Townshend, who would have wished to avoid all compromise and to proceed to extremities with the Emperor. The link which had bound the brothers-in-law together had been broken by the death of Lady Townshend, Walpole's sister; and Walpole's conduct with regard to the Pension Bill supplied a fresh ground of quarrel. The Opposition had discovered, without exactly tracing it to its constitutional The Pension Bill. source, the power of the royal influence, and early in 1730 Mr. Sandys introduced the first of those Bills for restraining it which became from this time onwards one of the regular weapons of attack against the ministry. He moved for leave to bring in a Bill to disable all persons from sitting in Parliament who had any pension direct or indirect from the Crown, and proposed that every member as he took his seat should swear that he held no such pension. The attack was exceedingly well judged, for it gave expression to a very general feeling, and Walpole, who studiously avoided shocking the feelings of any large section of the nation, was at some loss how to meet it. But he knew that he could rely upon his great Whig supporters in the Upper House, and of that House Townshend was the leader. Walpole therefore suffered the Bill to pass the Lower House without opposition, so that it was upon Townshend and the Lords that the whole odium fell when, as a matter of course, they rejected it. On these and various other grounds such ill blood sprang up between the brothers, that it is told, though upon doubtful authority, that they nearly came to blows at an entertainment in the house of Mrs. Retirement of Townshend. 1731. Selwyn. It was impossible that both the ministers should remain in office; the influence of the Queen turned the scale in favour of Walpole, and Townshend resigned, withdrawing with unusual patriotism from political life, and devoting himself at Reynham, his house in Norfolk, to the improvement of agriculture. It is to him that we chiefly owe the cultivation of turnips. This change, by allowing a proper rotation of crops, and thus avoiding the necessity of leaving fields to lie fallow, added nearly a third to the cultivable area of England, while by supplying large quantities of cattle-food from a comparatively small space of ground, it enormously increased the food-producing resources of the country.

For two years the ascendancy of Walpole was unquestioned. He was enabled to turn his thoughts to domestic improvements. English was substituted, certainly most reasonably, for the ancient Law Latin in all legal proceedings, to the grief it is said of some conservative lawyers, and against the opposition of most of the judges. There was a Committee of Inquiry also into the condition of public prisons, which brought many revolting horrors to light. Both in the Fleet and Marshalsea torture by thumbscrew and otherwise was constant, and the condition of poor prisoners who could not bribe the gaolers was inconceivably horrid. Forty or fifty of them, for instance, were locked up for the night in a cell not sixteen feet square. Gaol-fever and famine were constantly destroying them, so that the deaths at one prison were frequently eight or ten a day.

But it was as a financier that Walpole was most favourably known, and somewhat strangely it was a great financial reform in the year 1733 that almost brought him to ruin. Walpole was desirous of lessening even the weak opposition by which he was confronted in Parliament; and in the hope of attracting to himself the country gentlemen, he appealed, in accordance with his usual principle, to their love of money, and sought some way to lessen the Land Tax. For this purpose he suggested an excise upon salt. This must have been contrary to his own convictions. He could not have been ignorant how important an article salt is in many manufactures, how necessary an article of purchase even among the poorest. He was in fact taxing the poor and the manufacturing classes for the sake of winning the landed interest, which would be called upon to pay a land tax of one instead of two shillings. The new duty was carried, but by no large majority. The chief argument against it was that it was a step towards a general excise, which, because it seemed to infringe on the rights of the subject by giving revenue officers the right of entering houses, was much detested, and regarded as a badge of servitude. Although the tax upon salt was not really intended as a beginning of a general excise, it was nevertheless true that Walpole had a scheme of that nature in his mind: for it was found after a year's experience that the new tax upon salt fell short by two-thirds of the sum required to admit of the reduction of the Land Tax to one shilling. It was to a new measure of excise that Walpole looked to supply the deficiency. The excisable articles at that time were malt, salt, and distilleries, and the produce of the tax in 1733 was about £3,200,000. When Walpole's project of extending the excise got wind it proved most repugnant to the people. Numerous meetings were held, and many members were instructed to vote against any such attempt. But when the project was brought before the House, then in Committee, it appeared that Walpole, disowning all intention of establishing a general excise, confined himself solely to the duties on wine and tobacco; and even on those commodities designed no increase of the present duties, but merely a change in the manner of collecting them. In future the dues were to be collected after the manner of an excise from the retailers, and not as heretofore in the form of customs at the ports. Fraud and smuggling were so prevalent that in tobacco alone the customs, which ought to have produced £750,000 a year, produced in fact only £160,000. As these frauds took place chiefly at the ports or along the seaboard, Walpole hoped by taxing the retail trade, and not the importation, much to lessen them. In addition to this, he would have established a system of warehousing without tax for re-exportation, thus making London a free port. It was undoubtedly an excellent plan. As he pointed out, it was the shops and warehouses alone which were under supervision, not the houses of the retailers; liberty was in no way infringed; it enabled him to remit the Land Tax to the advantage of the country gentlemen; the scheme was advantageous to the importer, who could re-export free of duty; the price of the commodity was not raised. But none the less did it meet with the most violent opposition. Wyndham likened it to the unjust imposts of Empson and Dudley, and Pulteney derided it as a vast plan to cure an almost imaginary evil. The people beset the doors of the House during the debate in great crowds, irritating Walpole till he let fall the unhappy words—"It may be said that they came hither as humble suppliants, but I know whom the law calls sturdy beggars;" an expression which was never forgiven. The resolution was carried, but by an unusually small majority. On this and subsequent motions a Bill was founded, and in the course of many discussions a new cry was raised by Pulteney, that, as most of the seaport boroughs were already in the hands of one or the other branch of the administration, this was a plan for bringing inland towns under the same influences; and before the Bill came to a second reading, the ministerial majority of sixty had dwindled to sixteen. The excitement became dangerous; even the army was infected, and Walpole, according to his usual principle, yielded to the violence of the storm and withdrew the Bill. But though thus thwarted, he did not forego his revenge on the defaulters of his own party. Chesterfield, the ablest man in the ministry, Lord-Steward of the Household, was somewhat rudely dismissed. Lord Clinton, the Earl of Burlington, the Duke of Montrose, the Earls of Marchmont and Stair, and by a questionable exercise of prerogative the Duke of Bolton and Lord Cobham, were deprived of their commission in the army,—an arbitrary act not lost sight of by the Opposition.

As Walpole, true to his principles, had purchased peace at home by concession, we find him the next year for the same object keeping entirely aloof from a new war which had broken out in Europe. The Peaces of Seville and Vienna had apparently completed the arrangements of the Treaty of Utrecht, and settled all differences between the courts of Spain and Vienna; but treaties based upon arbitrary territorial arrangements for the purpose of preserving the balance of power are always very liable to be broken. Neither Fresh European war. party considers itself quite fairly treated, and is ever on the look-out for some opening to regain its lost power or to acquire some new influence. The Peace of Utrecht had closed the War of Succession, undertaken solely to establish the balance of power in Europe, and had been exactly such a treaty as has been described. The Peaces of Seville and Vienna had been necessary to modify in some degree its arrangements. A quarrel as to the election of a new King of Poland was sufficient to render for the time all three of them useless. It will be remembered that the French King had married the daughter of Stanislaus, ex-King of Poland. All French influence therefore was now employed to secure his re-election, while the Czarina Anne of Russia and the Emperor strongly upheld the claims of Augustus, son of the late King. A Russian and a Saxon army were sufficient to secure the throne for Augustus; but the Emperor's interference, although indirect, had enabled Fleury to show himself in his true colours, to listen to that great section of his countrymen who were weary of the lengthened peace, and to bring on a war which promised to be far more advantageous to France than any success in Poland could have been. In his attack upon Austria he was joined at once by Spain: for the Queen, the real ruler of the Peninsula, was still discontented with the losses Spain had suffered by the late treaties, and was besides very anxious to secure a crown for her son Don Carlos, who was already Duke of Parma. There was a short campaign upon the Rhine, where Berwick commanded the French, Eugene the Imperial army. Though the French lost their general before Philipsburg, they were everywhere successful, and when the united armies of Spain and Sardinia threw themselves on the kingdom of Naples, they found no great difficulty in conquering the Austrians, and completing the conquest of that country and of Sicily by the victory of Bitonto. Don Carlos assumed the kingdom as Charles III.

Nothing could induce Walpole to side with either party in this war, although he suffered much obloquy for refraining from it; and the Emperor, unable to secure his assistance, allowed the pacific mediation of France and England to have its weight. Preliminaries of peace were set on foot (Oct. 1735), which ripened in three years into the great treaty called the Definitive Peace of Vienna, by which the Spanish house was allowed to retain Naples and Sicily. Sardinia was rewarded with some frontier towns, among others Novara and Tortona, Lorraine was ceded to France, and the young Duke of Lorraine, Francis, the affianced husband of Maria Theresa (heiress to the Austrian Empire), was persuaded to accept Tuscany in exchange. France and Sardinia again ratified the Pragmatic Sanction. This somewhat trivial war thus completed the incorporation of France, established the Bourbons in Naples, and was the cause of the connection between Tuscany and the Austrian house.

Walpole had been more than usually anxious to keep clear of European wars, because the time for the dissolution of the Parliament under the Septennial Act was rapidly approaching, and there seemed every reason to believe that the struggle at the coming election would be a very fierce one. The Opposition were already supplied with several very effective cries. The Excise scheme, the arbitrary punishment of his opponents, and his determination to keep up a standing army, would all powerfully excite the people against the minister. Before the dissolution they added one more cry against him by making a strong attack upon the Septennial Act. As most of the Opposition Whigs had voted for this Act, they had always shrunk from demanding its repeal. It required all the skill of Bolingbroke, the wire-puller of the Opposition, to induce the two parties to unite in the assault. The debate is interesting, as showing in a great speech of Wyndham the temper of the Opposition and the sort of charges to which Walpole was exposed. "Let us suppose," said Wyndham, "a man abandoned to all notions of virtue and honour, of no great family, and of but a mean fortune, raised to Wyndham's speech against Walpole. be chief Minister of State by the concurrence of many whimsical events, afraid or unwilling to trust any but creatures of his own making, and most of them equally abandoned to all notions of virtue or honour, a man ignorant of the true history of his country, and consulting nothing but that of enriching and aggrandizing himself and his favourites; in foreign affairs trusting none but those whose education makes it impossible for them to have such knowledge or such qualifications as can either be of service to their country or give weight or credit to their negotiations. Let us suppose the true interest of the nation by such means neglected or misunderstood, her honour and credit lost, her trade insulted, her merchants plundered, her sailors murdered; and all these things overlooked only for fear his administration should be endangered. Suppose him next possessed of great wealth, the plunder of the nation, with a Parliament of his own choosing, most of their seats purchased, and their votes bought at the public expense. Let us suppose attempts made to inquire into his conduct, and the reasonable request rejected by a corrupt majority of his creatures.... Upon this scandalous victory let us suppose this chief minister pluming himself in defiances, because he finds he has a Parliament, like a packed jury, ready to acquit him at all adventures. Let us suppose him arrived to that degree of insolence as to domineer over all the men of ancient families, all the men of sense, figure, or fortune in the nation, and as he has no virtue of his own, ridiculing it in others, and endeavouring to destroy or corrupt it in all.... Then let us suppose a prince, ignorant and unacquainted with the inclinations and interests of his people.... Could there any greater curse happen to a nation than such a prince on the throne, advised and solely advised by such a minister, supported by such a Parliament?" Walpole replied in a speech scarcely less vigorous, unveiling the secret influence of Bolingbroke, attributing to him the whole management of the Opposition, and pointing out his vast ambition and unequalled faithlessness.

The election, after a severe struggle, ended by giving Walpole a large majority, although considerably smaller than he had hitherto commanded. The depression of the Opposition was great, especially as Bolingbroke, weary of all exclusion from power, and involved in quarrels with Pulteney, withdrew to France.

The leadership which Bolingbroke thus resigned fell in some degree into the hands of the Prince of Wales, not indeed that he possessed any of the talents of a leader, but that he formed a rallying-point for all sections of the Opposition. From his first arrival in England, in 1728, there had been the usual differences between him and his father. He had thought himself ill-used in the matter of his intended marriage with Wilhelmina of Prussia, whom, though he had never seen, he pretended to adore. The mutual dislike of the fathers of the proposed bride and bridegroom had broken off that match. He had since married a sensible wife, Augusta of Saxe-Gotha. But it was the parsimony of his father which had principally excited his displeasure. He held his income of £50,000 a year entirely at his father's will, whereas his father when Prince of Wales had £100,000 secured to him. But parsimony was the ruling passion of George II., and nothing could persuade him to increase his son's income. Round the Prince had collected all the great leaders of the Opposition; Pulteney, Chesterfield, Carteret, Wyndham and Cobham were intimate with him, and Bolingbroke was his political instructor. Nor was this all. Although the Queen had a love of literature, and in some ways patronized clever men (especially in the matter of Church preferment), Walpole had always refused to show them the least favour; and as a natural consequence, all the better writers allied themselves closely with the clever men of the Opposition, especially with Bolingbroke, who had always been their friend. Swift, Pope, Gay, and Arbuthnot, were constantly writing vigorously against Walpole. "Gulliver's Travels" are full of strokes of satire against the conduct of affairs. Some of Pope's sharpest lines refer to the Queen's implacability towards her son. The "Beggars' Opera" of Gay was regarded as being directed almost entirely against the Government. The "Quarrels between Peacham and Lockit" were by some thought to allude to the quarrel between Townshend and Walpole;[4] and in the Craftsman, the organ of the Opposition, letters of the most virulent description were constantly published against Walpole. To this brilliant Court it was natural that the younger men rising to notoriety should ally themselves. The intellect of the political world seemed there to be centred, and the specious name of Patriot was apt to attract enthusiastic youth. Pitt and Lyttelton began their political career as members of this Opposition.

It was not till the year 1737 that a public outbreak between the King and Prince took place. In the preceding year an event had happened, which, though of little historical importance, has been rendered interesting by Sir Walter Scott in his "Heart of Midlothian." During the King's absence in Hanover the Queen was left Regent. Two smugglers, Wilson and Robertson, were imprisoned in the Tolbooth, and tried to escape. Wilson went first, but being a big man, could not get through the aperture they had made. Feeling that he had injured Robertson, on the following Sunday in church he succeeded in grasping one of his guards in each hand, and a third with his teeth, thus giving Robertson an opportunity of escape, of which he availed himself. A strong sympathy was excited for Wilson, and after his execution the soldiers were attacked with stones. Porteous, who commanded the guard, fired upon the crowd. For this he was tried and condemned to death, but, in consideration of the provocation, was reprieved by Queen Caroline. The people, enraged at this, organized a riot, and though notice was given to the magistrates, no efficient means were taken for suppressing it. The gates were locked, and the commander of the troops, frightened by Porteous' example, refused to act. The Tolbooth was broken open, and Porteous hanged to a barber's pole, all with the greatest order and regularity. Having done this, and paid for the rope with which they hanged Porteous, the crowd dispersed, nor could any of the rioters be detected. The Queen, regarding the disturbance as a personal insult to her authority, was extremely angry. It was proposed to abolish the Edinburgh city guard and the city charter, level the gates, and declare the provost incapable of holding any office. The opposition of the Scotch members and of the Scotch nobles was however too great to be disregarded, and ultimately the city being fined £2000, and the provost declared incapable of office, no further punishment was inflicted.

During this year the Prince of Wales had married. But this by no means tended, as it was hoped, to the union of the Royal Family, for the Prince at once renewed his demands for an increase of income. He determined at length to follow Bolingbroke's advice, and demand that the sum he received should not depend on the King's will, but be permanent and fixed by the Parliament. This threat induced the King to make some overtures, with a promise to give the Princess a jointure. They were rejected, however, and the battle fought out. The great flaw in the organization of the Opposition was then made manifest, for the Tories (forty-five in number) refused to vote in favour of a Hanoverian prince, and the ministers were victorious. This dispute was followed by a still more scandalous squabble, the Prince hurried his wife from the King's residence at Hampton Court to the empty palace of St. James's when she was on the point of giving birth to her first child, who would be in the direct line of succession to the throne. This insult was never forgiven, and the King gave his son a peremptory order to leave the Court. He withdrew at once to Norfolk House in St. James's Square, Death of the Queen. which became the centre of the Opposition. The Queen remained implacable, refusing to see him even on her deathbed. Her death happened within a few weeks of this unhappy quarrel, to the great loss of the King, whose want of intellect she had chiefly supplied, of Walpole, whose staunch friend she had always been, and indeed of all England, for by seconding Sir Robert's views she had been mainly instrumental in securing for it that period of comparative rest which was so much wanted to re-establish its wellbeing after the troublous time of revolution it had passed through. It was believed that Walpole's power had rested chiefly on her influence, and there was a general expectation that her death would be followed by his downfall. The Opposition were much disappointed when they found his influence with the King as great as ever. It is Walpole retains his influence with the King. said that with her parting words she had recommended the King to continue to trust in her favourite minister; and her advice was then as always followed by him. For though he was not a faithful husband, having had Lady Suffolk for his mistress during the first years of his reign, and now allying himself with Sophia de Walmoden, created Countess of Yarmouth, his mistresses never had any great political influence over him—no influence at all events comparable to that exercised by the Queen.

The Opposition, though disappointed, by no means relaxed its efforts, and found a favourable point of attack in Walpole's pacific tendencies. There were still several points of dispute unsettled with Spain. The limits between Georgia and Florida were undetermined. By the Treaty of Seville trade was established on its former footing between the two countries, and the commercial relations between them were therefore regulated by the somewhat indefinite treaties of 1667 and 1670. By these the right of search and the right of seizure of contraband goods was allowed to the respective nations. This right was exercised with varying severity by the Spaniards according to their relation with England at the time. But the trade of English America had very much increased, and would not be restrained from seeking legally or illegally the trade of South America. There was no doubt abundant smuggling. Even the South Sea Company, which was allowed to send one ship a year, contrived in fact much to increase that number by sending tenders with her, which secretly replenished her cargo as she parted with it. On the other hand, it is equally certain that the Spanish Guarda-Costas had exercised their authority roughly, and many tales of the ill-usage of British subjects were current. These stories were collected and brought up in Parliament by the Opposition, the best known being that of Jenkin's ear. Jenkin was a captain, who asserted that his ear had been torn from him, and that he had been bidden to take it to his king. "Then," said he, "I recommended my soul to God and my cause to my country." The George desires war. ear, wrapped in cotton, he was in the habit of showing to his listeners. This claptrap story was most effective in rousing the popular indignation. Walpole resisted the clamour, but met with great difficulties. The King, who was at heart a soldier, now freed from the peaceful influence of his wife, was urgent for war; and in the Cabinet itself Newcastle began to bid for increased power by favouring this desire of the King.

In this eagerness for war, which is frequently represented as a folly on the part of the nation, the people were probably really wiser than their rulers. The state of Europe was becoming such that war was necessary for England, if she was to uphold her position, and to obtain that paramount situation in commerce and on the sea which her people then as now regarded as her due. Walpole's peace policy was certainly directed rather to the aggrandizement of his party than to the general interest of the nation, and in pursuit of it he had allowed himself to be duped by the pacific language of Cardinal Fleury. His attention had been distracted from the broader lines of European politics to the details of the constantly shifting diplomacy of the time. It is now known that, as early as 1733, the Family Compact had been entered into between the two branches of the House of Bourbon, for the express purpose of hampering the trade of England, and with a stipulation for mutual assistance both in war-ships and privateers in case of any encroachment on the part of England. Nor was the agreement a dead letter. M. de Maurepas had been busily and successfully employed in reorganizing the French navy.

Walpole attempted at first to pursue his established policy of peace. He opened negotiations with Spain, supported by such signs of coming hostilities as induced that Court to agree to a convention. Many English prisoners and some English prizes were restored, and Negotiations with Spain. 1739. compensation was promised to the amount of £200,000. Against this, however, was set £60,000 to be paid by England for the destruction of Spanish ships by Admiral Byng in 1718, and in his eagerness for prompt payment Walpole suffered it to be further reduced to £95,000. The disputed points were left for further negotiation. No mention was made of the right of search; the limits of Georgia were not defined. When this convention became known the popular indignation was great. It was regarded as a resignation of our rights. The ridiculously small sum given for compensation was pointed out, and the payment of £60,000 for what the people regarded as a glorious victory was naturally much resented. It was in opposing this convention that Pitt seems first to have shown his great powers of oratory. The ministerial majority was only twenty-eight. Believing that they could now safely proceed to extremities, the Opposition determined upon seceding from the House. With the arguments all on one side, and the votes upon the other, it was impossible, they said, for them to continue to do their duty there. It was a foolish manoeuvre, which, though tried more than once, has never been successful. To the public it invariably appears factious, and as no Opposition has been found determined enough to keep it up for any length of time, it has always been made ridiculous by the speedy return of the seceders. In the present instance Walpole sarcastically thanked the Opposition for their withdrawal, and proceeded at once to pass several measures which would otherwise have been sharply opposed; among others, a subsidy to Denmark for a palpably Hanoverian object—the security, namely, of the little castle of Steinhorst in Holstein.

But though he had carried his convention, and although the Opposition had withdrawn, and Cardinal Fleury had offered the mediation of France, it became obvious to Walpole that he must either declare war or resign. His love of power prevented Walpole declares war rather than resign. him from taking the latter and more honourable course, and, to the loss of both power and fame, he suffered himself to be dragged against his convictions into war, which was declared on the 19th of October. The joy of England was very great, although Walpole was full of gloomy forebodings, for, as he himself said, "no man can prudently give his advice for declaring war without knowing the whole system of the affairs of Europe as they stand at present.... It is not the power of Spain and the power of this nation only that we ought in such a case to know and to compare. We ought also to know what allies our enemies may have, and what assistance we may expect from our friends." He felt certain that the area of the war would soon be extended, for, although he had successfully used his efforts to maintain friendship with France, he knew that there was an intimate connection between France and Spain which must sooner or later bring the former into the field. Moreover, his information as to the plans of the Jacobites was exceedingly accurate, and while the Opposition were constantly deriding the notion of any formidable organization of that party, he never ceased to be on his guard against it. The justice of his views was at once shown, when the declaration of war called to life the slumbering energy of the Jacobites. Intrigues were immediately set on foot; a Committee was appointed in England; overtures were addressed to Spain; and, as Fleury gradually grew colder and more estranged from England, proposals were made to him also, to which he listened, and promised that he would send a body of troops, probably the Irish Brigade, to support any attempt in favour of the Stuarts; thus would be fulfilled the condition without which the English Jacobites had always refused to rise. It was hoped that the Duke of Ormond and the Earl Marischal might make a simultaneous expedition from Spain.

Meanwhile, Walpole, having once yielded, seemed conscious that he no longer possessed the absolute dominion over Parliament he had so long enjoyed. Wyndham, his chief enemy, indeed had died: but in the ranks of the Opposition were still to be found all those men of ability whom twenty years of exclusive and jealous power had made his enemies; and to his old foes was now added the exciting eloquence and uncompromising energy of Pitt. To oppose this formidable body Walpole stood almost alone in the Commons, supported only by such men as Henry Pelham, a conscientious and sensible but not first-rate man, Wilmington, and Sir William Young, whose ready ability scarcely atoned for his damaged character. In the House of Lords he still counted the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Hervey, and Lord Hardwicke among his party. But Hardwicke and Newcastle were both opposed to his peaceful views, and the latter was already intriguing against his chief. The Duke of Argyle had lately become hostile to the ministry, and had been deprived of all his employments. Walpole thus became the single object of all the Opposition invectives. Every measure for the last twenty years which had either failed or been unpopular was brought against him. The quarrel had become personal between him and the Opposition. His efforts to retain his power were unceasing. He yielded in the Cabinet as to the manner in which the war was to be carried on; he gave the chief command of the expedition in the West Indies to his political enemy Vernon; to secure the Jacobite votes at the next election he even went so far as to enter into correspondence with the Pretender, although probably without serious intentions. But this conduct did but encourage his enemies, and in the last session of Parliament (1741) Mr. Sandys brought forward a motion, which was repeated in the Upper House, for his removal from the King's councils. Walpole so far rebutted the charges brought against him, that, after a defence of great eloquence, he succeeded in throwing out the motion by a very large majority.

Walpole's forebodings were speedily fulfilled. Not only, as we have seen, was the Jacobite party at once again called to life, but his expeditions against Spain were by no means great successes. Anson indeed, although all his other ships were lost, made several successful attacks upon treasure-ships, captured Paita, and succeeded in bringing 'The Centurion' safe home after a circumnavigation of the globe. But Vernon, though successful in taking Porto Bello (when his conduct was vociferously contrasted by the Opposition with that of Hozier in 1726),[5] was repulsed with heavy loss in an assault on Carthagena. France had become thoroughly hostile, and when, on the 20th of October 1740, the Emperor Charles VI. died, it became evident that the war would shortly become European. In spite, however, of these proofs of Walpole's foresight, in spite of his success against Mr. Sandys' motion, the charges which had been brought against him had such an effect at the next election that the Opposition found themselves with much increased strength, and it became pretty plain that the Government would have but a very small majority. The session opened with a series of close divisions. The Opposition succeeded in carrying their Chairman of Committees against the Government candidate, and when he found Walpole resigns. 1742. himself at last defeated on the Chippenham election petition, Walpole took the resolution of resigning. A few days later he gave up all his places, and was made Lord Orford.

Thus closed the career of the statesman who for twenty years had been the sole guide of English politics. It is remarkable how few great measures can be traced to him; but he probably displayed true wisdom in allowing all reforms, however much they may have been required, to remain for a time in abeyance. The one thing which England required was rest. The last hundred years had been one continual scene of political turmoil. During the whole of that period the Revolution had been slowly working itself out, and the English Constitution had been changing. The power had gradually shifted from the King to the House of Commons. The ministry had ceased to be a body of secretaries, to whom was indeed intrusted the chief management of all national affairs, but who, inasmuch as they were still in theory, and in a great degree in practice, merely called upon to execute the King's commands, might be chosen indiscriminately from all parties. Instead of this it had become, what it has practically ever since been, a Committee of the majority in the House of Commons. In a social point of view, during much of the same period, England had been perplexed by a choice of masters, and in some degree by a choice of religions. Walpole seems thoroughly to have understood this position, and to have set himself steadily to work to complete and give stability to the changes which had been going on. He had seen, that far more important than any further improvements to the Constitution was the establishment on a firm footing of what had already been done. His chief object was therefore to make himself absolute master of the House of Commons. For this purpose he used means which we should now consider disgraceful. He is reported to have acted on the principle that every man had his price. He steadily opposed all efforts for the exclusion of pensioners, not from a wish to increase the power of the Crown, but because he wanted to secure the power of the minister, who he saw must henceforward be the real governor of England. He opposed the Peerage Bill because it threatened to increase the power of the Lords as against the Commons. He persistently refused all attempts at coalition (such as had been contemplated by Stanhope and subsequently proposed by Bolingbroke), because he wanted the ministry to be the representatives of the party which had the majority in the House, and of that party only. He kept a tight hand throughout his administration upon the Jacobites, conscious that the security of the reigning house was the only way of calming the uneasiness which all classes felt while they had any choice of rulers offered them. For similar reasons, with regard to religion, he refused to listen to any propositions for the relief of Roman Catholics, which Stanhope had also contemplated; and still further to calm religious discords by the sense of one strong paramount Church of England, he also refused all concessions to the Dissenters, although they systematically supported him. In saying, however, that the power had passed to the House of Commons, we must be careful not to regard the House of Commons as a popular assembly. The next phase of our history, the complement to that part of the Revolution which we have now passed, is the struggle of the people to get possession of their own House. At the time of which we are speaking the House of Commons was so filled with nominees of great lords, the electoral body was so limited, and the distribution of seats so arbitrary, that the House of Commons could in no way be regarded as a fair representation of the people, and the great Whig majority rested not on the liberal feeling of the nation, but upon an oligarchy of great Whig nobles. In his foreign policy Walpole was influenced by similar principles. Though the Peace of Utrecht was a Tory peace, its maintenance, and that of the balance of power it had established, was his chief object. Anything was better than that England should be engaged in war. War at once opened the door for Jacobite hopes. War at once touched that material prosperity which was to be the surest claim of gratitude to the reigning house. Moreover, as a financier, Walpole hated war. It was in this capacity, if we set aside his general ability and skill in management, that Walpole was greatest. We have seen how prudently he re-established credit after the bursting of the South Sea bubble, and how wise was his plan in his ill-fated Excise Bill. If some of his measures (as the Salt Tax) were dictated by political rather than economical necessities, it is yet certain that he inspired universal confidence, and owed much of his power to the support of the moneyed interest. His personal character, like that of most of his contemporaries, was not good. A large, coarse-looking person did not belie the coarseness of his tastes. He drank freely, joked coarsely, and had more than one natural child. Although in one of his speeches he plumes himself on having never been charged with corruption, his private fortune was certainly much increased by his ministry, and if we except his collection of pictures at Houghton, there is no sign that he had any appreciation of literature or of the arts. His ignorance of literature, and his contempt for it, is indeed notorious. He spent vast sums of money in purchasing the services of pamphleteers; scarcely one of them was worth anything. He seems to have regarded writing like any other trade, as being capable of being purchased by the piece. Patronage to literary men he systematically refused; we therefore find all the able writers of the time ranged on the side of the Opposition; and it is for the same reason perhaps that the worst points of his character are those which are more commonly known.

The chief fault of Walpole had been his jealousy of talent; on his fall there was no one in the ministry of sufficient influence to take up the reins which had fallen from his hands. Had there been any The new ministry under Wilmington. great difference of principle between him and the Opposition, a complete change of ministry would naturally have resulted. But both the Government and the Opposition had been in the main Whigs. Any man of commanding intellect might have kept the late ministry together. As it was, a sort of coalition was made. Pulteney, it is difficult to say why, avoided the responsibility of the Premiership, and withdrew into insignificance in the Upper House as Lord Bath. The nominal head of the new Government was Wilmington, that same dull man who had for a moment thought to supersede Walpole at the beginning of the reign. Under him many of the old Cabinet were retained; Newcastle, Hardwicke, and Young keeping their offices. The new element was represented by Argyle, who was reinstated as Master of the Ordnance, Carteret, who succeeded Lord Harrington as Secretary, and Sandys, who became Chancellor of the Exchequer. Of Tories there appeared none, and Chesterfield and Pitt were excluded from the arrangement.

So slight a change in the construction of the Government seemed but a poor termination to the fierce opposition to which Walpole had been subjected. In fact, the rivalry had been one of persons Character of the new ministry. and not of principles. The ministry were compelled indeed, by pressure from without excited by their own clamours, to institute a Committee to inquire into the conduct of the great Prime Minister. But though it consisted principally of his personal enemies, too many interests were at stake to render their task easy; and when their report came, it appeared so trumpery, when compared with the charges which had been lavished upon the minister in Parliament, that it was a mere object of ridicule. It seemed as though the system of Walpole was after all to be continued. Many of his followers still remained in the Cabinet, as the Pelhams (Newcastle and his brother Henry Pelham), and Yorke, Lord Hardwicke, and even the virtual Prime Minister, his enemy Carteret, was obliged by stress of circumstances to adopt that very Hanoverian policy which had so often been laid to the charge of the late minister. Carteret was a man of genius, but of irregular life, and so capricious, and sudden in his actions, that his administration has been called the drunken administration. Disregarding home patronage for the higher and more exciting work of foreign diplomacy, he found his influence gradually and surely passing into the hands of the Pelhams. It was necessary for him at all hazards to secure the King's friendship; he therefore allowed 16,000 Hanoverians to be taken into English pay, and it was strange to hear Lord Bath, and Sandys, the accuser of Walpole, upholding the Hanoverian connection.

A ministry which showed itself thus inconsistent with its assertions when out of office, and in which the elements of disunion were so evident, could not last long. The death of Wilmington (1743), the nominal Prime Minister, was the signal for its dissolution. The candidates for the Premiership were Pulteney on the one hand, supported by the talents of Carteret, and by the favour which this minister's newly-found interest for Hanover had given him with the King; and on the other hand Pelham, as representative of the party of Walpole, and backed by the influence which he still possessed. The question was settled in favour of Pelham, who, though without commanding abilities and constitutionally timid, possessed much of his late leader's love of quiet and power of management. Carteret continued for some time in power under his new chief; but their union could never be cordial, and before the close of 1744, Carteret—who had by continual flattery of the King's weakness so ingratiated himself with his master that the Pelhams thought their legitimate influence damaged by it—was dismissed. But before the confusion which arose on Walpole's fall had settled down one great point in his policy had at all events been reversed—England had thrown itself vigorously into the Continental war.

Such indeed was the position of Europe that it was impossible that England should hold aloof. But Walpole had at least tried, and with some effect, the power of diplomacy. The death of the Emperor Charles VI. of Germany had opened two great questions for which Europe had been long preparing. One of these was the succession to the Austrian dominions, which Charles Question of the Austrian succession. had attempted to secure for his daughter by means of the Pragmatic Sanction, and the other was the succession to the Empire. The questions were closely connected. The most dangerous claimant for the succession to the Austrian dominions was the Elector of Bavaria, who alone of the powers of Europe had refused the acceptance of the Pragmatic Sanction; he was also the most influential candidate for the Imperial dignity. The Elector rested his claim to the Austrian succession upon an arrangement by which, as long ago as the middle of the sixteenth century, Ferdinand I. was said to have substituted the heir of his daughter Anne, from whom the Elector was descended, in the place of any other female heir. A second claimant was the King of Spain, who regarded himself as the heir of all the rights of a descendant of Charles V., who, when he divided his empire with his brother, reserved the right of succession to his own immediate posterity should the direct male line of Ferdinand become extinct. Both Bavaria and Spain were close allies of France, and the possession of the Empire by the Elector, or of the Austrian dominions either by the Elector or the Spanish King, would render the influence of France paramount in Europe. It was necessary for England to oppose such an increase of the power of the Bourbons. For this purpose it had appeared necessary to Walpole to re-establish something resembling the Grand Alliance, a union at all events which should include the maritime powers, Hanover, Prussia (rapidly rising to a first-rate power), and Austria.

But Prussia had just fallen into the hands of the ambitious Frederick II., supplied by his father's care with a magnificent army and with a full treasury. He saw that the opportunity had arrived for making good certain long pending claims upon a portion of Silesia, and without declaration of war, occupied the disputed territory, and marching into Bohemia, entirely defeated the Austrian troops at Molwitz. He was however yet so far German at heart, that he was willing to guarantee the election of Maria Theresa's husband to the Empire, and to support the Pragmatic Sanction, if his claims in Silesia were satisfied. To induce the Austrian princess to accept these terms became the object of English diplomacy. It was thwarted by Maria Theresa herself. A strange infatuation had taken possession of the Austrian ministers during the close of the late Emperor's reign; in spite of his action in the Polish war, they believed in the pacific tendencies of Fleury, and relied upon the friendship of France. All overtures on the part of Frederick were therefore disregarded, all appeals from England set at naught. The foolish dreams of Austria were dispelled when Frederick, thus repulsed, threw away his last remnant of German feeling and entered into close alliance with France, offering to renounce the claims which he had upon the Duchy of Berg, and to give his vote for the election of the Bavarian Elector to the Empire if his claims on Silesia were guaranteed.

Thus Maria Theresa found herself standing alone in Europe, supported by England only, which indeed supplied her willingly with subsidies, but still directed its chief efforts to persuading her to purchase Frederick's friendship by the cession of Silesia. In accordance with the convention with Prussia, in August 1741, two French armies were poured across the Rhine, one passing through Swabia to assist the Elector in a direct advance on Vienna, the second through Westphalia. So little was England prepared for war, that the King, as Elector of Hanover, was obliged to declare the neutrality of his Continental dominions for a year, a step which excited great anger in England, where the war spirit ran high, and which was a fresh source of complaint against Walpole. At this crisis of her danger Maria Theresa found assistance in that part of her dominions where she had least right to expect it. The hand of the Hapsburgs had been heavy upon Hungary, yet thither she betook herself, and yielding back to them almost the whole of their constitution, excited the warlike magnates to enthusiasm by confiding to their charge her person and that of her child. As they crowded round to kiss the infant's hand, the hall rang with the shouts, "We will die for our king, Maria Theresa!" A moment's breathing space would allow time to bring the levÉe en masse of Hungary into the field: the opportunity was afforded by the diplomacy of England, which induced Frederick, who saw with jealousy the advancing power of France and Germany, to check his victorious march and sign a secret treaty at Kleinschnellendorf. The gathering forces of Hungary, the withdrawal of Frederick, and the errors of the Elector and of the French, who were jealous of each other, changed the face of the war. The march to Vienna was postponed for the capture of Prague. The withdrawal of the invaders to Bohemia allowed the Austrians to make a counter blow. As the Elector Charles Albert hastened to Frankfort to secure his election as Emperor, KhevenhÜller, with the Austrian troops, was approaching his capital of Munich. Again, at the earnest entreaties of France, Frederick deserted his late engagements and renewed the war, but, unable to hold his advanced position at Olmutz in Moravia, he too fell back upon Bohemia, where the war was now centred.

The changed aspect of affairs was completed by the conduct of England: the pride of the country had been touched by Vernon's failure at Carthagena; the neutrality of Hanover had caused great discontent; and when, in February 1742, Walpole had been driven from the ministry, the first act of his successors had been to increase both army and navy, to vote large subsidies to Maria Theresa, to induce the States-General to follow the lead of England, and to send an army of 30,000 English and Hanoverians into the Low Countries. It was understood that, although as yet but auxiliaries in the main quarrel, it was the rivalry of France and England which was again to be decided in arms. Both the arms and diplomacy of England were successful. In the Mediterranean the fleet under Commodore Matthews forced King Charles of Naples to neutrality, and allowed Sardinia, driven by the ambition of Spain to side with Austria, to defeat all the projects of the Bourbons in that country; while the urgent instances of the ambassador at Vienna at length prevailed, and Maria Theresa was induced to give the price which Prussia demanded,—Silesia was conceded by the Treaties of Breslau and Berlin in June 1742. Frederick once more threw over his allies, and the French and Bavarians stood alone in Germany. They were unable to make head against their enemies, their troops were shut up in Prague, and only after a brilliant but disastrous retreat did a shattered remnant of 14,000 men reach a place of safety in January 1743.

The tide of victory was then already turned when the English made their first appearance in Europe, acting in conjunction with some 18,000 subsidized Hanoverians. The command of the English army, which to the number of 16,000 had been all the last year lying inactive in Flanders, was given to Lord Stair, and the object of the allies was to drive the French entirely out of Germany, and if possible invade Alsace and Lorraine, on which the eyes of the Austrians, who had but lately lost them, were constantly fixed. To oppose the movement an army under the Duke de Noailles entered Franconia, and the various divisions of the British army and their allies from Hanover were set in motion towards the Maine. With characteristic slowness, Stair proceeded to collect upon the Maine an army of 40,000 men. Towards the Maine also on the south De Noailles betook himself with about 60,000. Stair lay idly awaiting his 12,000 Hanoverians and Hessians who had not yet appeared, and thus gave De Noailles opportunity of securing the south of the river and holding most of the passages across it. Having waited long enough to be thus Battle of Dettingen. outgeneralled, Stair suddenly changed his plan, and, without receiving his reinforcements, marched up the river towards Franconia. He passed Hanau, where he established his chief magazines, and moved towards Aschaffenberg. Between these two towns branches of the Spessart mountains approach the Maine, and about half way between the two is the large village of Dettingen. From Dettingen to Aschaffenberg extends a narrow plain, entered by a somewhat difficult passage between the mountains and river at Dettingen. On reaching this plain the English found themselves outmarched by De Noailles, and thus cut off from Aschaffenberg. It was while thus entangled that they were joined by the King and the Duke of Cumberland. The King found the army cut off from the supplies it had hoped to draw from Franconia, and in danger of being separated from its magazines at Hanau also. Thither it was determined if possible to secure a retreat. As the English believed that the enemy was higher up the river than they were, and that they should be closely pursued, the King took command of the rear as the post of danger, but De Noailles had already forestalled them. He had at once moved down the river so as to put himself between the English and Hanau, taking up his position at Seligenstadt. He sent some 23,000 men, under his nephew the Duc de Grammont, across the river to occupy Dettingen. These troops occupied a very strong position behind a swamp and a ravine made by a watercourse. De Noailles' main army lay on the southern bank, but bridges of communication were made between the two divisions, and cannon placed on the south bank to play upon the flank of the retreating English. Escape seemed almost impossible, especially as the English were in entire ignorance of these movements. On finding his advance checked at Dettingen, George at once left the rear and put himself at the head of the army. There seemed no course but to cut a way through De Grammont's forces. This commander, however, believing himself engaged with the advanced troops of the English army only, and thinking to crush them, rashly left his strong position and crossed the ravine. He found himself in front of the whole English army. The King's horse had run away with him, and he had dismounted and put himself at the head of his troops, and addressing them a few inspiriting words, led them to the attack with much gallantry. De Noailles saw the destruction of his plans and hastened to retrieve the error of his nephew. His efforts however were useless. The mass of infantry, led by his Majesty in person, broke through the enemy, whose loss was so great that De Noailles recalled them beyond the Maine. The retreat towards the bridges became a rout, and they left more than 6000 dead and wounded upon the field. The King wisely determined to get out of his dangerous position as soon as possible, and pushed on that night to Hanau, leaving his wounded to the mercy of the French commander, who treated them exceedingly well. Stair, as hasty in the moment of victory as slow in his preliminary movements, urged immediate pursuit, but was overruled by the King. On receiving the expected reinforcements he again urged advance, but jealousies had sprung up between him and the German commanders. He was disgusted at the rejection of his advice, and talking loudly of Hanoverian influence, sent in his resignation, which was accepted.

The objects of a further advance however were obtained without bloodshed. The French army in Bavaria had been beaten backwards Effect of the victory. by Charles of Loraine,[6] and had retired behind the Lauter into Alsace, whither De Noailles, finding himself unsupported between two enemies, also withdrew. The victorious allies pushed on after them, the King to Worms and Prince Charles to beyond the Rhine opposite Alt Brisach. The new Emperor was thus left without allies, and concluded (July 1743) a convention of neutrality with the Austrians, and withdrew to Philipsburg.

A favourable opportunity for peaceful arrangements seemed to have arrived. Prussia had gained its object; French intervention had failed; the Austrian succession was secured; the only open question was what was to be done with the expelled Emperor. George and his favourite minister Carteret, who were at Hanover, undertook the negotiations. George, as Elector of Hanover, and Carteret, from his general interest in foreign politics, took a German and not an English view of the situation. It was George's object, as Elector of Hanover, to appear as a paramount power among the other electors, and to form a strong alliance in the Empire entirely in his own interests. For this purpose he had naturally,—considering the antecedents of his second kingdom England, regarded a close alliance with Austria as of the utmost importance. At the same time, as a Prince of the Empire, he had no strong wish that the Imperial dignity should be constantly in Austrian hands, and was quite willing to allow the validity of the election of the Emperor Charles. In conjunction with Carteret, he therefore agreed that Charles should retain the Imperial title upon condition of renouncing all claims on Austria, of allowing the validity of the vote of Bohemia in all affairs of the Empire, and of dismissing the French from the fortified places they still held within the Empire. He even consented to insist upon the restoration by Austria of Charles's hereditary dominions, Bavaria (now to be erected into a kingdom), and upon the payment of a large sum to the Emperor to support his dignity. Had this treaty been completed, George would have appeared as the mediator of the peace of the Empire, as the champion of the rights of the princes, as the defender of the Austrian dominions, and altogether as the chief power in Germany. To a certain point the interests of the people of England had been the same as that of their King. But their real enmity was against France, and under the guidance of a Whig aristocracy, they would have wished to pursue their traditional policy of opposing the Bourbons chiefly at sea. The arrangements of the proposed treaty by no means suited them. They had long been clamouring against the German tendencies of the King, they had seen with extreme dislike the employment of subsidized Hanoverian troops, and now positively refused to pay a subsidy to the Emperor—a Bavarian prince and the hereditary friend of France.

To the astonishment of the negotiating Powers and the shame of Carteret, the proposed treaty was suddenly broken off. England wanted war with France, and considered it could be best carried on by close alliance with Austria, which was only too glad to continue the war, with the hope of retaining its hold on Bavaria and rewinning Silesia. A treaty known as the Treaty of Worms therefore took the place of the former pacific arrangements. England, Holland, Austria, Saxony, and Sardinia, agreed to assure the Pragmatic Sanction and the European balance, while Sardinia undertook the armed defence of the Austrian dominions in Italy. It was met by a counter treaty known as the League of Frankfort, the most important members of League of Frankfort. April 5, 1744. which were France and Prussia; for the elevation of Hanover implied the degradation of Prussia, and the promise of the King of Sardinia set free Austrian troops which the Prussian King believed would be used only for the purpose of reconquering Silesia. The European contest was thus assuming a more general and intelligible form; England and France, hitherto auxiliaries, appeared each at the head of a great league, and it was their interests, and indirectly the supremacy of the sea, which were now at issue.

Even yet no declaration of war between England and France had been issued, but it was natural that the French, aware of the real character of the war, should use every means for distressing England. Early in the year it set on foot an attempted invasion of England in favour of the Stuarts. An army of 15,000 was collected at Dunkirk, and placed under the command of the best French general, Marshal Saxe, while fleets were collected at Toulon and Brest for the invasion of England and to support a Jacobite rising. The Brest fleet came out of harbour and approached the English coast. The English fleet was drawn into pursuit; and for the moment the coast of Kent was unguarded. A considerable portion of the French army was on board the transports and had sailed. Once again England owed its safety to the weather. A violent storm blowing direct upon Dunkirk, prevented the movement of the rest of the transports, scattered those already at sea, and the loss was such that the French ministry abandoned their design, and Marshal Saxe was appointed to command the army in Flanders. The naval armaments and this open support of the Pretender gave rise to warm complaints of breach of treaty on the part of our envoy at Paris; as his complaints were listened to with disdain, a formal declaration of war was at length made.

On the Continent the selfish policy of the French, who could think of nothing but the extension of their own boundaries, ruined the success of the war. The Netherlands were invaded and rapidly overrun; Savoy and Piedmont conquered; but these successes on the extremity of the scene of action did not tend to the conclusion of the war. Frederick of Prussia advanced through Bohemia and took Prague, and thus saved France from a threatened invasion of Alsace; but, unsupported by his allies, he fell back from the Austrian dominions, and upon the death of the Emperor (Jan. 20, 1745) was unable to prevent the election of the Prince of Tuscany, husband of Maria Theresa, who ascended the Imperial throne as Francis I. Maximilian, the son of the late Emperor, had shown himself willing to accept the views of Austria; by the Treaty of Fuessen (April 22, 1745) he renounced all claims to the Austrian succession, promising to recall his troops from the French armies, and to give his vote to Francis, husband of Maria Theresa, who on her side recognized the election of his late father, and restored all her Bavarian conquests. Again it appeared that general negotiations might have been possible. But Carteret had been Changes in the ministry. Nov. 1744. driven from office, and the Whigs under Pelham were bent on carrying on their hostility with France. His unpopular Hanoverian tendencies, and the offhand manner in which he had treated the Pelhams, secured Carteret's fall. His place was taken by Walpole's old colleague Harrington. With Carteret withdrew Lord Winchelsea and several others, thus affording Mr. Pelham an opportunity for carrying out that form of administration to which his timidity urged him. In exact contrast to Walpole, he dreaded opposition, and sought to make friends of all parties, and to establish his ministry on what was then called a broad bottom. He persuaded Chesterfield and Pitt to give up their opposition, and the former to accept the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland. To the Tory Lord Gower he gave the Privy Seal, and even Sir John Hind Cotton, an undoubted Jacobite, was given a place about the Court. This was not done without great opposition from the King, who disliked Chesterfield and Pitt for their opposition to his Hanoverian schemes, and had a natural mistrust of Tories and Jacobites. The effect of these changes was almost to suppress opposition in the House. The ministry, now including most of the leaders of the Opposition, satisfied with a change of principles, made but little change in practice. The reunited Whig party felt that, as they were engaged in an open war with France, they were, even while subsidizing Germans, carrying out their true policy. Pitt openly declared that he no longer opposed subsidies in face of the present state of affairs abroad. He pointed out that the object of the war was somewhat changed, that, the minister who rested wholly on his foreign influence being removed, they were no longer fighting German subsidies granted. 1745. solely in the interests of Austria, but to secure an equitable peace for themselves and their allies. However this may have been, the system of German subsidies went further and further. The Hanoverian troops were for the present dismissed, but their pay was added to the Austrian subsidy. Saxony was bought, the Elector of Cologne was bought, and so was the Elector of Mayence; and next year (1746) 18,000 Hanoverians were again taken into English pay. Robert Walpole lived just long enough to see the dangers he had kept aloof for twenty years gathering round England. He died in March 1745, leaving England plunged deep in a Continental war, with constantly increasing grants for military service, and consequently increased financial difficulties, and on the eve of the most determined and dangerous effort which the exiled family ever made for the recovery of their crown.

The war still continued under the mistaken conduct of the French. But neither their successes against England at Fontenoy, nor the invasion of the young Pretender which they supported, nor their victory over the Sardinians at Basignano, were the least decisive. As Frederick, who felt himself deserted, bitterly said, the victories might as well have been won on the banks of the Scamander. What he could do singlehanded the Prussian King did. He defeated the Austrians at Friedberg, and again upon the Sohr. He conquered the Saxons at Kesseldorf and occupied Dresden. But seeing clearly that his allies were bent upon their own ends, he again listened to the anti-Bourbon diplomacy of England, made a separate peace with Austria, and the Treaty of Dresden (Dec. 25, 1745) closed the second Silesian war. But, in spite of the withdrawal of Prussia, the general war continued. Early in the spring a French army under Marshal Saxe invested Tournay. The Netherlands were occupied by an allied army of English and Dutch. There Campaign in Flanders. should have been 28,000 English and 50,000 Dutch, but, although it was their own country that was threatened, the Dutch were so dilatory that the allied army numbered little more than 50,000. These were under the Duke of Cumberland and the Dutch general the Prince of Waldeck. The Duke, who was young, was somewhat controlled by the Austrian Marshal Konigsegg, and had with him as his military guide General Ligonier. With these troops the Duke advanced to the relief of Tournay. Marshal Saxe, whose forces were much superior in numbers, could afford to leave 15,000 men to continue the siege, while, marching southward along the river, he occupied a very strong position to cover his operations. The position was rendered almost unassailable. The French faced southward; on their right was the river Scheldt, with the fortified bridge securing their communication and retreat, and the village Antoing. A narrow and difficult valley ran along their front from Antoing to Fontenoy, and their left was covered by the wood of BarrÉ, on the right of which a redoubt had been constructed. The whole of this position was fortified with field-works and abattis, with the exception of a gap between Fontenoy and the wood of BarrÉ, where the difficulties of the approach were held to be of themselves sufficient. It was resolved to assault this terribly strong position. To the Dutch was intrusted the attack of the French right, with the villages Antoing and Fontenoy; to the English the attack on their left. The attack of the Dutch was without energy, and failed, and the Prince of Waldeck, withdrawing his troops to a safe distance, kept them unemployed the remainder of the day. A Battle of Fontenoy. May 11, 1745. similar want of energy was exhibited by General Ingoldsby, who had been instructed to assault a redoubt on the left of the French and to clear the wood of BarrÉ. Finding more opposition than he expected, he withdrew when the enemy were on the point of abandoning their redoubt, and demanded further orders. The English and Hanoverians, on the other hand, energetically assaulted the unfortified gap between Fontenoy and the wood. Regardless of the flanking fire by which they were decimated, they pushed across the ravine and up the opposite hill. The space was narrow, and they advanced, without deploying, in a solid column 10,000 strong with a face of about forty men. The ground was too rough for their cavalry, which therefore advanced in their rear. In this solid formation, with astonishing heroism and determination, they pushed on, crushing all opposition, and unchecked by frequent cavalry charges. They won the crown of the position, cut the enemy's centre, and were moving onwards towards the bridge of Calonne, threatening thus to cut off all retreat from the broken army. The victory seemed decided, and Voltaire allows that, had the Dutch only moved, the French must have been inevitably routed and destroyed. But the Prince of Waldeck never stirred. Fresh troops could therefore be brought from Antoing and Fontenoy to repel the victorious column. In this work it was the Irish Brigade which chiefly distinguished itself, and at last when, by the advice of the Duc de Richelieu, four cannon were placed right in front of the column so as to fire down its whole length, finding itself wholly unsupported, the heroic body began to give ground. It retired as it had come, slowly, disputing every yard, and entirely without confusion. When it reached ground where cavalry could act, that arm, hitherto useless, covered the retreat, and the whole army fell back to Ath. Tournay was treacherously surrendered, and the allies had to content themselves with covering Brussels and Antwerp. This wonderful unsupported advance, though useless for the battle, and purchased with immense loss of life, was for long a just source of pride to the English soldier.

It was the necessity of withdrawing troops for the defence of England which had rendered the campaign in Flanders after the partial defeat of Fontenoy so disastrous. Prince Charles Edward, though bitterly disappointed by the failure of the expedition in the preceding year, did not leave France; and as the French ministry, occupied with their continental affairs, refused him further assistance, he determined to go alone and unsupported to Scotland, and throw Prince Charles Edward lands in Scotland. himself on the loyalty of his friends there, although in all his previous negotiations with them they had refused to think of a rising unsupported by foreign troops and arms. Scraping together what little money he could, and purchasing a small supply of firearms, the Prince embarked at Nantes in a privateer. He was escorted, without the knowledge of the Government, by a French man-of-war, in which his stores were placed. On the passage to England they encountered an English vessel, which, though unable to capture the French man-of-war engaged it so vigorously that it had to withdraw to France to refit, and it was in the little privateer, 'La Doutelle,' thus stripped of his supplies and with only seven companions, that the Prince reached the Hebrides. In this plight he met but a cold reception, and it was not without considerable persuasion that Macdonald of Clanranald and other gentlemen of that tribe joined him. Their chief, Sir Alexander Macdonald, and the head of the Macleods, on whose assistance he had relied, kept aloof. Of more importance even than the Macdonalds was the adhesion of Cameron of Lochiel. This chief seems to have been won, against his better judgment, by the persuasive power of Charles, who undoubtedly had in an unusual degree the art of attracting adherents. While still in the extreme west of the mainland Charles was joined by Murray of Broughton, who had been his chief agent, and whom he appointed his Secretary of State. The Prince had reached the mainland on the 25th of July; it was not till the 30th that information was received by the Government that he had left Nantes, and he had been three weeks in Scotland before it was known in London. On the 19th of August the insurrectionary standard was raised in the solitary valley of Glen Finnan, where the aged Marquis of Tullibardine, the rightful heir to the dukedom of Athol, read Prince Charles's Commission of Regency. This ceremony was graced by the presence of a considerable number of English prisoners, who had been captured a few days previously by Lochiel's followers as they were marching to reinforce Fort William.

Scotland is cleft in sunder by a great valley running from the Beauley Firth in the north-east in a south-westerly direction to the salt-water lake Loch Eil. This valley, at present occupied by the Caledonian Canal, forms the basin of a chain of lakes, by far the largest of which is Loch Ness, occupying nearly half of the north-east end of the valley. Between its northern extremity and the sea lies the town of Inverness; at its southern end was Fort Augustus, one of the forts established to keep the Highlands in check, while, where the valley reaches Loch Eil, there was the still more lonely post of Fort William immediately under Ben Nevis. It was in the close neighbourhood of this fort that Charles's followers were first collected, and it was while trying to strengthen it that the royal troops had first come into collision with the insurgents. The tribes to the north of Inverness, as well as Sir Alexander Macdonald and Macleod, were either well-affected or held in neutrality chiefly by the influence of Duncan Forbes of Culloden, Lord President, who had also contrived for the present to attach Lord Lovat, head of the Frasers, to the Government interest, so that it was with the western clans only that Charles began his expedition.

The English military commander in Scotland was Sir John Cope, who had altogether about 3000 men under his command. All this time the King was absent from England, and orders had to be issued by the Lords Justices. They approved however of Cope's plan for immediately marching into the Highlands and crushing the insurgents if possible among the mountains. With this intention, leaving his dragoons behind him, Cope set out from Stirling along the direct north road towards Inverness. At Dalwhinnie, which is now a posting-station on the great north road, the military road made by Marshal Wade branched off to Fort Augustus, which it was Cope's object to reach and relieve; the main road passed onwards to Inverness. The mountain which forms the south-east side of the great valley in which Fort Augustus lies has to be crossed. It is called in this place Corrie-Arrack, and to cross it the road winds in steep zigzags. The Highlanders had got possession of this difficult pass, and intended to destroy Cope's army while ascending the zigzags. Their disappointment was great when they found that he had turned aside at Dalwhinnie, and was in hasty march for Inverness. By this means he probably hoped to strengthen the loyal clans of the north and to draw the Prince's army in pursuit. He however left the road towards the capital quite unguarded. Charles at once pushed on and crossed the Badenoch mountains to Blair Athol, from whence the great road runs, without any obstacle, through the Pass of Killiecrankie Charles avoids him, and gains Edinburgh. into the plains of Perthshire. He rested a few days at Perth, where he was joined by Drummond, Duke of Perth, and by Lord George Murray, the Duke of Athol's brother, a man of considerable military experience and capacity. He then crossed the Forth a little above Stirling, the dragoon regiments which had been left there retiring before him, and advanced rapidly towards Edinburgh. The Castle of Edinburgh was secure, but the town had no adequate fortifications, and the inhabitants doubted long and painfully as to whether they should open their gates or not. The news that Cope, on learning his mistake, had taken ship and had already reached Dunbar, encouraged them to think of resistance, but their determination vanished away after a skirmish called "the canter of Colt-Brig," when two regiments of dragoons ran away, and did not stop till they reached Dunbar. Negotiations were set on foot, but were cut short by the surprise of the town by the Highlanders. On the 17th of September Charles took possession of Holyrood House, and it seemed as if the inhabitants of Edinburgh were by no means sorry to Cope lands at Dunbar. receive him. He could not rest long, however, as Cope was marching along the Firth from Dunbar. He expected to meet his enemy between that town and Edinburgh, but the Prince marched along the hills to the south of the Firth, and Cope was surprised to find his enemy again beyond him. He was then near Prestonpans. He changed his face at once, and lay with his back to the Firth and his face to the hills, as he believed in an unassailable position, separated from the Highlanders by a morass. But Charles was bent on fighting, and a narrow pathway through the morass to the eastward was pointed out to him. Down this he led his forces so as to gain a position eastward of the English, who had again to change their face, looking now directly eastward, with their backs to Edinburgh. Their infantry were in the centre, their cavalry on Is defeated at Prestonpans. Sept. 21. either flank. The battle is said to have been decided in six minutes. The rush of the Highlanders renewed the panic among the dragoons, who all took to their heels. The infantry stood with their flanks exposed, and as their fire did not check the Highlanders, they were soon engaged at close quarters, where the Highland target parried the bayonet thrust, while the right hand was free to use the claymore. The line was soon broken, and it is said that not more than 170 escaped death or capture. The cavalry, taking Cope with them, did not draw bridle till they reached Berwick.

Some preparations had been made in England to withstand the advance of the rebels. Marshal Wade was at Newcastle with such troops as he could collect, the Dutch were called upon to supply, in accordance with their treaty, 6000 men, and some regiments were recalled from Flanders. But throughout the population of England there was now, and through the whole campaign, a strange carelessness as to which side should prove victorious. The Revolution had been, comparatively speaking, an aristocratic movement. It had moved the power from the Crown only to put it in the hands of the nobles. Parliament was so far from being an adequate representative body, that the disputes carried on in it excited no very warm interest in the nation at large. At times indeed it was necessary for the Opposition to excite the people by some national cry; but that Opposition had uniformly employed the most violent language against the Hanoverian influence and the minister of the Hanoverian King. Such partial views therefore as the people had been allowed of what was going on among their governors had all tended rather to direct the loyalty, which was then so inherent a characteristic of the English, towards the exiled house. Except in the matter of religion, the people at large were able to discover but little difference whether their king was a Stuart or a Guelph; and on this occasion the assurance had been carefully spread that the privileges of the Church of England would not be touched; indeed one of Charles's difficulties arose from the jealousy of his Protestant followers. The class who had gained by the Revolution was that class which Walpole and Walpole's policy had chiefly favoured—the middle class; but as usual the middle class was apathetic and slow to risk anything unless for some personal object. At first therefore it was the Government, unaided by the people, which had to check the insurrection. It will be seen that afterwards the aristocracy offered, though in a very selfish manner, to come forward, and that some towns, especially in Scotland, awoke to their responsibilities, but on the whole it was the Government alone which had to act by means of its soldiers, and England had been stripped of soldiers for its foreign wars. On the other hand, the Jacobites had seen the insurrection of 1715 so thoroughly futile, and had during Walpole's long administration so settled down under the existing Government, that only a few of the more enthusiastic took a real interest in the quarrel.

Had Prince Charles advanced immediately after the battle of Prestonpans he would have found himself almost unopposed; but by the time he had collected some money, gathered in his reinforcements, organized his army, and persuaded the Highlanders to cross the border, Marshal Wade's army had increased to 10,000; the Dutch and English troops had come from abroad; there was a second army under the Duke of Cumberland formed in the centre of England; the guards and trained bands had marched out to Finchley and formed a third body, which the King declared he would himself lead. To turn the position of Wade at Newcastle it was determined, as in 1715, to march along behind the Cheviots and enter England by Carlisle; and the clans (about 6000 strong) crossed the Border on the 8th of November. Carlisle yielded without much difficulty, and on the recommendation of Lord George Murray, who now assumed the military command of the army, it was determined to advance into the heart of England. In two bodies they marched up the Eden over Shap Fell to Lancaster and to Preston; the Prince winning the heart of the Highlanders by wearing their dress and marching at the head of the second division, as strong and unwearied as the best among them, for he was gifted with a fine athletic body, which he had further trained by constant exercise. His carriage he insisted upon offering to the aged Lord Pitsligo. His care for his followers, of which this is an instance, tended much to endear him to them; he was at this part of his life adorned with many of the best graces of a king; his clemency was the constant complaint of his sterner counsellors. It is said indeed to have encouraged more than one attempt at assassination. Towards his enemy, the Elector as he called him, he was also studiously merciful and dignified. In all negotiations with his followers or with the French the safety of the Hanoverian Elector and his family was bargained for; and even when £30,000 was put upon his head, dead or alive, after entirely refusing to make a counter proclamation, he insisted on offering only £30. This was indeed afterwards overruled, and a larger reward offered, but he even then said he felt sure no follower of his was capable of winning it, and the proclamation ended: "Should any fatal accident happen from hence let the blame lie entirely at the door of those who first set the infamous example."

The army passed Preston, that ill-omened town to the Stuart cause, in all haste, entered Manchester, where they met with more recruits than usual, skilfully deceived the Duke of Cumberland into the idea that they were marching towards Wales, got past his army, and had nothing between them and London except the camp at Finchley. They reached Derby, but there Lord George Murray and all the commanders unanimously advised retreat. It was true that they had eluded both Wade and Cumberland, but those commanders with their armies were following them close; the slightest check before reaching London, and their little army of 5000 would be enveloped by 30,000 men; it would surely be better to fall back upon their supports in Scotland, where Lord Strathallan had a force of some 3000 or 4000 men. Charles was unable to hold out against these arguments, backed by all the men of military weight in his army, and very sullenly and unwillingly at length gave his consent to a retreat. It is plain that the Scotch chiefs had been thoroughly disappointed in the neutrality of the English population, were beginning to fear for their own heads, and thought it more prudent as well as more practicable to separate the two kingdoms, and establish but retreats, to the relief of the government. Charles at all events at first as King of Scotland. This determination was an immense relief to the Government. Whether a further march would have been successful or not, it is certain that the Government regarded its chances of success as very great, and London was stricken with panic; the Bank was reduced to pay in sixpences; the Duke of Newcastle is said to have seriously thought of declaring for the Pretender; the King sent some of his valuables to the river ready for embarkation. The camp at Finchley was by no means completed; Wade and Cumberland were so far behind that they scarcely hoped to come up with the Highlanders; the occupation of London would have been the signal for a French invasion, and probably for a great Jacobite rising in England. The day on which the news of the advance to Derby was known was called Black Friday.

The retreat was very rapid, and, as was natural, now that the soldiers were in bad humour, by no means orderly. The insurgents were closely pursued by the Duke of Cumberland, who came up with them, but was checked in a skirmish near Penrith, and passing through Carlisle, which was speedily recaptured by the English, reached Glasgow, where they established themselves, and by means of large requisitions succeeded in refreshing and reorganizing themselves Charles besieges Stirling. Jan. 3, 1746. after their rapid march. They had marched 580 miles in 56 days. After a week's rest they advanced to besiege the Castle of Stirling, which was defended by General Blakeney. Being joined by the Scotch army under Strathallan, with whom were some French soldiers, and Lord John Drummond, a general in the French service, the Pretender's army reached the number of 9000, the largest he ever commanded. Wade, who had grown slow from age, was superseded by General Hawley by the advice of the Duke of Cumberland. He was an officer of some experience, but little talent, and of a ferocious disposition. He was nicknamed the Lord Chief Justice, and as Horace Walpole tells us, "was brave and able, with no small bias to the brutal." He profoundly despised his enemies, and advancing to relieve Stirling Castle, took up his position at Falkirk without even ordinary military precaution. He was not even present with his army, but was enjoying, with some of his officers, the civilities of Callendar House, where the Countess of Wins the battle of Falkirk. Jan. 17. Kilmarnock, whose husband was with the Pretender, was entertaining and delaying them. There are two roads between Stirling and Falkirk; some troops were sent forward by the straight road to deceive the English, while the main body under Charles swept round to the south. They were then separated from the English by a high rugged heath called Falkirk Muir. When the news of their approach was brought to Hawley, he hastened to the field, and led his cavalry rapidly forward to try and secure the crest of this hill. It was a race between him and the Highlanders, and they succeeded in winning it. Hawley fell back to lower ground, and arranged his troops, with their right upon a broken ravine which descended to the plain. His artillery got hopelessly jammed in a morass. The battle began with a charge of the royal cavalry on the left, which was met by a steady fire from the Highlanders, from which the dragoons as usual fled, all but one regiment. The Highlanders, then rushing forward, entirely broke the centre and left of the royal army, but their rush was checked by the ravine on the right; the royal troops there held their own, and being joined by the one steady regiment of cavalry, were enabled to make an orderly retreat. One of the flying regiments had fought well at Fontenoy, and Lord John Drummond, who had been present at that battle, believed that their retreat was a feint, and by his advice further attack was suspended. Charles had shown considerable skill in bringing his troops with their back to the wind, so that the driving storm and cold January wind might beat full in the faces of the English troops.

The Duke of Cumberland, who had been detained in the south of England in expectation of a French invasion, was indignant at this defeat, and declaring that he would himself willingly lead the broken remains of Hawley's army against the Highlanders, got himself appointed commander. He was a young man of great energy, with the hereditary bravery of his family, and an active if not a very able general; he had, moreover, won the confidence of the army at Fontenoy. He was a man however of violent passions, and at present roused almost to ferocity by the success of the Highlanders, which touched his pride both as a military man and a prince of the Hanoverian house. The Pretender did not follow up his success, but persisted, from a false sense of honour, in the siege of Stirling, and allowed the broken English army to be reconstituted. He was however obliged to desist from this project by a memorial signed by all his chiefs, and presented by Lord George Murray. Some coldness had arisen between the Prince and his followers ever since the retreat from Derby, and the present prudent counsel tended still further to widen the breach. The army was divided into two bodies, and marched rapidly towards Inverness, where they were to unite. Cumberland hastened in pursuit. Inverness was easily mastered, and the neighbouring clan, the Mackintoshes, joined the Prince. But the English, now fully on the alert, prevented the arrival of any supplies from France, and the army was suffering from want of provisions and money. Cumberland's army was meanwhile well supplied from the sea, and marched towards Inverness along the coast from Aberdeen. The passages of the rivers, Spey, Findhorn, and Nairn, were but weakly disputed, and on the 14th of April the royal army entered the town of Nairn. That night Charles slept at Culloden House, the seat of President Forbes, who had fled on his approach. Want of provisions, and the habit of the Highlanders of returning at times to their homes, had reduced his army to about 5000, and of these many were absent from the standards in Inverness and He defeats Charles at Culloden, April 16, elsewhere searching for food. It was determined, at the suggestion of Charles and Lord George Murray, to attempt a night surprise, but the darkness of the night and the weariness of the men prevented its success, and the hour proposed for the attack still found them four miles from the English posts. They fell back to Culloden Moor. Murray and some others wanted to retire, but Charles and some of his more reckless followers from France, in overweening trust in the dash of the Highlanders, insisted upon fighting. The men of Athol, the Camerons and the Stuarts, had the right of the line under Lord George Murray, while the Macdonalds, who claimed that position ever since the battle of Bannockburn, sulkily received orders to occupy the left. Taught by former experience, the Duke of Cumberland ranged his army in three lines, with cannon between every two regiments, the second line being drawn up three deep, and arranged as men now are when forming square to receive cavalry. The opening cannonade was wholly in favour of the English, and observing the loss of his followers, Murray advanced with the right. Wearied and harassed as they were, the Highlanders broke through the first line, and captured two cannon, but the firm formation and scathing fire of the second line threw them into hopeless confusion. On the left of the Highland line the Macdonalds, aggrieved at their position, remained immoveable, in spite of the urgent entreaties of their commander, in spite even of the touching words of Macdonald of Keppoch, who cried as he fell, "My God, have the children of my tribe forsaken me!" They afterwards fell back and joined the second line. They were however now outflanked, and their retreat threatened, and though there were some thoughts of trying to retrieve the fortunes of the day with the unbroken left, the more prudent officers regarded the battle as lost, and compelled Charles to fly. He went first of all to Lord Lovat's residence, but, finding but a cold reception from that scheming villain, who was trying to keep well with the Government, while he had sent his son and clan to join the Prince, he fled onwards till he reached the Castle of Glengarry, beyond Fort Augustus. The broken fragments of his army were collected, about 1200 in number, by the skill of Lord George Murray at Ruthven in Badenoch. But Charles gave up the struggle, and sent orders that they should look to their own safety. The insurrection was over: vengeance began. The cruelty with which that vengeance was executed gained Cumberland and cruelly suppresses the rebellion. the nickname of "The Butcher." In the pursuit after Culloden but little quarter was given, and acts of brutal ferocity stained the glory of the day. Some wounded Highlanders who had crawled to a farm building were deliberately burnt to death in it. The prisoners were kept in want of the necessaries of life, and many of the wounded put to death in cold blood. Cumberland fixed his headquarters at Fort Augustus, and harried the neighbouring country with every species of military execution. Acts of cruelty and of wild license were done chiefly at the instigation of General Hawley, but not without Cumberland's knowledge. The Duke was however, and rightly, hailed as the saviour of England.

For five months Charles was a solitary fugitive in the Highlands and Hebrides. He frequently had to trust his secret to the poorest Highlanders, but the high price set on his head never induced them for a moment to break their faith. His best known escape took place in South Uist, whither he had been tracked very shortly after the battle of Culloden, and where he was surrounded by upwards of 2000 men. Flora Macdonald, a young lady visiting Clanranald's family, succeeded in bringing him safely through this difficulty by procuring from her stepfather, who was an officer in the King's army, a passport for herself and a female servant. In this disguise she took Charles with her into Skye, where, making his secret known to the wife of Sir Alexander Macdonald, who was in the King's interest, she by her means got him put under the charge of Macdonald of Kingsburgh, who brought him to a place of safety. We are told that his height and want of grace in the management of his petticoats, especially in passing the watercourses, very nearly betrayed him. Flora Macdonald afterwards married the son of Macdonald of Kingsburgh. At last, on the 20th September, attended by Lochiel and a considerable number of other fugitives, he set sail for France from Loch-na-Nuagh, the very spot where he had landed fourteen months before.

Thus terminated a most romantic piece of military history, astonishing both in the success which the small body of Highlanders were able to gain and the rapidity with which their successes were brought to an end. Had Lord George Murray been a worse general, and had the Scotch chiefs had less at heart the separation of Scotland from England, the success of the enterprise might have been different.

At the two critical periods of the war, at Derby and after the battle of Falkirk, Charles was probably right in disliking any retrograde movements. No doubt, on purely military grounds, his opinion was wrong; but a body of half-trained enthusiastic Highlanders are nothing unless victorious. The marked change visible in their retreat both from Derby and from Stirling, on both of which occasions great disorder and want of discipline arose, shows that the moral side of the movement was not sufficiently considered by the generals. On the other hand, Lord George Murray showed great skill in hoodwinking and passing the armies both of Wade and Cumberland, and much good judgment in refusing to introduce regular drill or arms among the Highland regiments. The Lords Balmerino and Kilmarnock were beheaded for their share in the conspiracy, and Lord Lovat, wily though he had been, was convicted on the evidence of the Prince's Secretary of State, Murray of Broughton, who turned King's evidence, and executed. Many stringent measures against the Highlanders were at once passed, such as the Disarming Act, the Act to forbid the wearing of the Highland dress, and more important, an Act for the abolition of heritable jurisdictions, by which the arbitrary power of the chiefs of the clans was destroyed, and regular tribunals under responsible judges established.

At the very time that the Highlanders were still in the country England had passed through a ministerial crisis. The Pelhams had found themselves thwarted and in danger of being supplanted by Granville (Carteret); for although they had succeeded in driving him from the ministry, he was still the King's favourite—a position which he had earned by constantly seconding the royal wishes with regard to foreign politics. The chief opponents of these views were Pitt and Chesterfield, and the Pelhams now determined upon bringing matters to a crisis by demanding the admission of Pitt into the ministry. The King, influenced by Lord Granville and Lord Bath, refused to admit him, and the Pelhams, their friend Lord Harrington (Stanhope), and their whole party resigned. The King at once instructed Lord Granville to form a new Government. He undertook the task, but three days sufficed to show that the King's favour was no match for the Parliamentary influence of the great Whig party, of which Newcastle was the acknowledged leader. Much against his will, the King had to receive back his old ministry upon any terms they chose to propose, and Pitt became first Vice-Treasurer of Ireland, and shortly afterwards Paymaster of the Forces. In this position he was enabled much to increase his popularity, by rejecting the vast profits which it had been the habit hitherto for the Paymaster to make. That officer had been in the habit of receiving a large percentage upon all foreign subsidies, and of using as his own the interest accruing from the large balance of public money he had constantly in hand. These profits Pitt rejected, and at once established a reputation for disinterestedness.

The insurrection in Scotland had had considerable effect upon the continental war. The campaign in Flanders, where the Austrians had been deprived of English succour, had been very unfavourable, and after the battle of Raucoux, the French, under Marshal Saxe, had mastered nearly the whole of the Austrian Netherlands. But, deprived of their Bavarian allies by the Treaty of Fuessen, of the Prussians by the Treaty of Dresden, and all hearty support from Spain by the death of Philip V., they began to think of peace, and negotiations were opened at Breda. Lord Harrington, having fallen under the King's displeasure for his conduct in the ministerial crisis, had resigned, and Chesterfield was called from the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland to become Secretary of State. He at once began to use his influence, which was very great, both from his social gifts and from his eloquence, in favour of peace, so that there seemed some hopes of a cessation of the war. It was pursued however without check during the whole of the next year. In Holland the appearance of 20,000 French within the frontier roused the national spirit, and the people, disgusted with the dilatory conduct of their republican chiefs, rose in revolution; they again looked for safety to the house of Nassau, and the young Prince of Orange, a son-in-law of George II., was made hereditary Stadtholder. In conjunction with the Duke of Cumberland he took command of the army in Flanders, but was defeated with much loss to the English at the battle of Laufeldt. The great fortress of Bergen-op-Zoom was taken, and at length Maestricht, on the safety of which Holland depended, was itself besieged. To balance these disasters, the course of the war in Italy had been constantly disastrous to France. The Austrians, freed from the pressure of Frederick on the north, were able to act with vigour. They were so successful that Genoa was taken, and Provence itself invaded; and though in the following year the Austrians were driven from France and Genoa regained, the war in that direction closed with a complete victory over the French at Exiles, and the French troops withdrew to their own country, not to appear in Italy again till the renewed vigour of the Revolution plunged them afresh into a career of conquest. Meanwhile, however, in spite of these disasters upon land, England had been steadily gaining its real object. Holland, whose political importance had almost disappeared, and which had become a faithful follower of England, was still more closely joined to that country by its late revolution. Upon the sea disaster everywhere met the French. Their colonial empire was attacked, Cape Breton Island was captured, and the St. Lawrence and Canada thus laid open to the English. Their navy gradually dwindled away, till it was represented by three or four ships only. They were wearied of the war, and alarmed at the immense addition to their debt. The Dutch were disappointed at the want of success which had attended their revolution; and the English were satisfied with the destruction of the French marine. All parties were thus at length ready to listen to a reasonable peace.

It was therefore determined to hold a congress at Aix-la-Chapelle. Moreover, the Pelhams had now resumed in some degree the pacific policy of Walpole, and the apparent certainty of the fall of Maestricht brought matters to a crisis. On the 30th of April the preliminaries were signed between France, England and Holland, Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. Oct. 1748. without waiting for the agreement of Austria and Spain. The terms of those preliminaries befitted the causeless war which they terminated. The chief condition was the complete mutual restoration of all conquests, and the return of each party to its position before the war. There were, however, some slight changes; Parma was to be given to the Infant Don Philip; the cessions of Austria to both Prussia and Sardinia were to be secured, and Spain was to restore the Assiento Treaty and the right of a periodical vessel in the South Seas to the English, while the fortifications of Dunkirk towards the sea were to be destroyed; in exchange for its losses Austria received the complete guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction and the acknowledgment of the Emperor. The restoration of conquests Results of the war. touched even India, where the conquest of Madras and the resistance of Pondicherry to the English arms had raised in the minds of the French well-grounded hopes of founding a colonial empire. Taking the war as a whole its results were these: Holland had disappeared from the rank of great nations; it was evident that it could not defend itself against France. Austria, though it had lost Silesia, had learnt the strength to be derived from the military resources of its eastern provinces. Prussia had proved itself a predominant power in Europe. England had secured its maritime supremacy. France had exhibited its growing weakness, had lost its best opportunity of re-establishing itself upon the sea, and under a show of magnanimous generosity had made plain to the world its total absence of good government, of good administration, or good diplomacy.

The period of the premiership of Henry Pelham is marked by the absence of parliamentary contest. Taught by the stormy close of Walpole's career, he so far deviated from his master's precepts, that, instead of wishing to stand alone in his government, his chief object was to conciliate all parties, and the broad ministry over which he presided included nearly all the men of striking talent in Parliament. There was no opposition worth mentioning, except a little clique who gathered round the Prince of Wales, and at whose head was Doddington. It was not till the death of Mr. Pelham in 1754 that the strife of parties again began.

Meanwhile the system of subsidies to foreign powers was quietly carried on, even Pitt ceasing to raise his voice against them. The lull of party strife, and the strength of his position, enabled the minister, who was a good financier, to alleviate what was then considered a very threatening danger to the country, and at the same time to demonstrate the firm and constant increase of the national wealth. He determined to introduce a measure (1750) for the reduction of the debt, which was at that time about £78,000,000, paying an interest of £3,000,000 a year. This sum was at that time regarded as very formidable. But Pelham, rightly thinking that the country could well bear the amount of debt, directed his attention not to diminishing the capital but to lowering the rate of interest. This plan had indeed been carried out constantly since the time of William III., and as the operation had been always successful, it marks the increased confidence of the nation in the Government, and the increased wealth of the nation, since money could be procured at gradually cheapening rates. Under William III. eight per cent. had been given: under Queen Anne the interest had been reduced to six: under George I. to five and to four; Pelham now proposed to reduce it to three per cent. In spite of some natural opposition the Bill was carried. Those who were unwilling to receive the reduced interest, and there were few such, received their capital from money borrowed at three per cent. The rest accepted the terms, which were three and a half, for the next eight years, and three per cent. after 1758. The annual saving was more than half a million, and Smollett says that Europe saw with wonder England reducing the national obligations immediately after a war which had almost ruined Europe. Three millions was indeed a considerable charge upon a revenue amounting to about £8,523,540. This was derived from four principal sources;—more than £3,800,000 from Excise and Malt Tax, £1,900,000 and over from the customs; £1,637,608 from the Land Tax, and the rest from the stamp duties and other small sources. The late war had cost the nation upwards of £30,000,000, and many financiers, not foreseeing the enormous development of the national resources which the next half century would produce, took a gloomy view of the financial position of England. But, as we have seen, the ease with which Pelham completed the reduction of the interest proved that there was considerable wealth in the country.

Indeed, although the great industrial period had not yet quite arrived, both commerce and manufactures were making considerable strides, and that wealth was accumulating which was to find its employment in the next decade. Several branches of foreign trade had been relieved from restrictions—whale and herring fisheries, the African trade and the silk trade had all been relieved, while manufactures had been steadily increasing. As early as 1715 silk spinning had been introduced at Derby; and the woollen manufactures, which, with the silk, were heavily protected, were of great and increasing importance. The use of cotton, which was to change the whole face of Lancashire, was regarded most unwisely as injurious, and but little use was made of it except for mixing with silk and wool, and in a small degree for exportation. Protection of silk and wool even went so far that penalties were laid on the wearing and selling of calico goods. Both in Birmingham and Sheffield metal works were largely established, and silver plated upon other metals, which was introduced at Sheffield in 1742, was soon widely used under the title of Sheffield plate. Improvements, too, had also been made in the stocking-frame, and, in 1738, John Kaye had invented his shuttle, which doubled the amount of work which could be done. But while cotton was as yet scarcely thought of, and improvements in the old manufactures were only introduced by degrees, the second great source of English wealth was discovered and set to work. The quantity of iron in the United Kingdom is very large, but keen observers complained that, while there was plenty for our own supply and for exportation, we still imported largely from America, where it could be worked cheaper. This was because it had been thought necessary that iron should be smelted with charcoal, and as carriage was as yet wholly by land and expensive, it was only when iron occurred in woody districts, such as Surrey and Sussex, that it could be worked with advantage. The occurrence of the termination Hammer in the name of several villages in Surrey marks this old state of things. The railings round St. Paul's Cathedral were regarded as the great achievement of the southern ironworks. In 1740 means were discovered of working iron with pit-coal, which at once opened an almost unbounded sphere for industry. The discovery is attributed to Dr. John Roebuck of Birmingham, who, in the year 1759, established the great Carron ironworks in Stirlingshire. It is curious that a similar plan should have been regarded as one of the bubbles of the South Sea year. Agriculture was still in a backward condition, especially with regard to implements. The plough was still a rude machine, chiefly of wood. Turnips were still crushed with the beetle. Cultivators, and other means of assisting or saving the trouble of ploughing, were unknown. But in the east of England, at all events, the value of frequent manuring was understood;—turnips and other root-crops had taken the place of fallow, and a limited rotation of crops was in vogue. The use of the drill, although invented in 1732, was little known. All these improvements were however gradually getting introduced, as the waste lands or great common fields were by degrees enclosed. Suffolk, where this had been early done, was at the head of agricultural improvement.

During the period of parliamentary quiet which preceded Pelham's death, two or three measures of permanent interest were passed. In 1751 the reform of the Calendar was proposed and carried triumphantly through Parliament, chiefly by the exertions of Chesterfield, Lord Macclesfield, and Bradley the astronomer. The Julian Calendar, in which the length of year was slightly miscalculated, had been reformed by Pope Gregory XIII. in 1582, and this reform had been gradually adopted in all countries in Europe except England, Russia, and Sweden. England is said to have rejected it from hatred of the Papacy. The effect was, that while the year in every other country began upon the 1st of January, in England it began on the 25th of March; while, as compared with other countries, there was a difference of eleven days in computing the days of the month. The change proposed was, that the year 1752 should begin upon the 1st of January, and that eleven days should be suppressed between the 2nd and 14th of September, so that the third of that month should be called the 14th, and that henceforward such changes should be introduced as would make the solar and legal year coincident. The chief practical difficulty was in the matter of payments. It was settled that these should not be put forward. It is thus that the 5th of April, the 5th of July, the 10th of October, and the 5th of January, still remain the days on which the dividends of the public funds are paid. This change met with a good deal of ignorant opposition. The common Opposition election cry was, "Give us back our eleven days."

In 1753 a Marriage Act, usually known as Lord Hardwicke's Act, was brought in, to decrease the number of the formal acts which constituted a pre-engagement, in which a man might be entangled by carelessness and against his own will, and, secondly, to check very rapid marriages. At this time the facilities given to marriage enabled heirs and heiresses to marry without consent of their natural guardians—a practice still further supported by a quantity of broken and disreputable parsons who hung about the Fleet Prison, and were known as Fleet Parsons, whose performance of the ceremony was binding, and who could of course always be procured for money. By the new Act marriages must be performed in the parish church, after publication of banns, or by special licenses granted by the Archbishop, and on payment of a heavy sum. Any clergyman solemnizing a marriage in contravention of these restrictions is liable to seven years' transportation. A Bill for the naturalization of Jews, although carried, had to be repealed before the popular uproar. The Bishops, who had supported the measure, drew upon themselves the larger share of the popular indignation. They Decay of the Church. were indeed at this time unusually liberal in their views. In the earlier part of the reign Queen Caroline, in whose hands the appointments had chiefly been, had carefully selected men of good repute and of liberal tendencies; in opposition to the general feeling of the clergy, she confined her appointments almost exclusively to Whigs. It is possible that this conduct, however praiseworthy in itself, may have tended to increase the general laxity among Churchmen and Dissenters, which had already begun to be visible before the death of Bishop Burnet. Since that time a variety of causes had combined to increase it. Thus, the separation of the Church from the State in their political views, the Church being chiefly Jacobite while the State was Whig; a similar division between the Bishops and their clergy, and between the Universities, and the Government, and the Bishops, all tended, by loosening the bonds of authority, to the decay of the Church. The falling away of the Dissenters, and the entire defeat of the Roman Catholics, had also removed all competition; and while thus unnerved, the Church had been called upon to answer the requirements of an increasing population and of growing towns. It had, moreover, to combat the very general growth of that scepticism which was so rife in France, and which was one of the remarkable symptoms of the coming revolution.

It was this state of public morality which induced the Wesleys to begin their effort at a revival of religion, and to establish and organize the great body of Wesleyan Methodists. They began their career at Oxford, where they collected a small band of followers, deeply impressed with the necessity of heartfelt religion. The most prominent among them was Whitfield, who, after a youth passed in the humble avocations of a waiter in the "Bell Inn" at Gloucester, was now struggling to educate himself for the Church as a servitor at Pembroke College. In his zeal for religion, Wesley went as a missionary to Georgia. He met with no great success there; but on his return, in 1738, he found that his society had grown, and had reached even London. Whitfield had been ordained, and had become renowned for his eloquence. He it was who, while working at first among the colliers at Kingswood near Bristol, introduced that field preaching which became the main instrument in the spread of Methodism. It was some time before Wesley could bring himself to adopt this custom; but it afterwards became his constant practice. A separation soon occurred between Whitfield, who was extreme in his views, and Wesley, who had separated himself from the Moravians, with whom he had at first worked, but who in England at least were guilty of many extravagances. The withdrawal of Whitfield made Wesley undisputed chief of the new sect, and to him was left its organization. His agents were for the most part energetic, half-educated laymen, who all looked to Wesley as their absolute chief. His object was not to separate from the Church, he himself said, "Our service is not such as supersedes the Church service: we never designed it should;" and only a very little while before his death, he said, "I declare once more that I live and die a member of the Church of England, and that none who regard my judgment or advice will ever separate from it." What he tried to do was to bring religion within the reach of those who, either by character or by the line of life they pursued, were unlikely to be reached by the ordinary apparatus of the Church, and to excite among his hearers a more true and enthusiastic religion than the formalism at that time prevalent. His society was to be not the enemy, but the handmaid of the Church. Its organization was strict and admirable. The preachers moved on in constant succession from district to district, so that neither preacher nor hearer should grow weary of monotonous work. A conference, consisting of preachers whom he selected, was held every year. The Methodists were divided into classes, with a leader to each class, and a weekly class-meeting was held. Love-feasts were also established, and any grave sin was visited by exclusion from the society. The effect of this earnest and well-arranged effort at reform was very great; not only on the Methodists themselves, who were principally among the poorer classes, especially miners and people out of reach of ordinary Church influences, and who at his death in England and America numbered nearly 110,000, but also on the Church, by exciting that warmth and emulation which we have seen was at the time so much wanted. Although its influence was thus great and excellent, it must not be concealed that, as was natural, enthusiasm produced some eccentricities which will explain a good deal of the opposition which Wesley undoubtedly met with among the higher classes and among careless Churchmen.

As in wealth and religion, so in its political tendencies, this period was one of growth and of preparation for the more important half century which was to follow. In that period was to begin the second phase of the political change introduced at the Revolution:—the gradual assertion by the nation of their right to proper representation in Parliament. There were signs that the people at large were already growing weary of the influence of a few great nobles, of the squabbles of aristocratic parties for their own personal aggrandizement, and of the secresy in which the conduct of their nominal representatives was veiled. It is thus that the Opposition could generally rouse an almost irresistible expression of feeling by appealing from the overwhelming majority of Parliament to the passions of the nation. It was thus that Pitt, regarded as a disinterested and patriotic man, without any of the usual sources of influence, became the most popular and powerful statesman in the country; and thus when, in 1752, Mr. Murray charged with interrupting the high bailiff at a Westminster election, refused to kneel to the House, and was consequently imprisoned during the session, he was led in triumphal procession by the sheriffs of London and Middlesex. Indeed, the privileges claimed for the members of the House might alone have sufficed to excite opposition. We hear that the very rabbits, fish, and footmen of the members were taken under the august protection of the House.

The term of the existing Parliament was just over, and it seemed as if the same quiet course would be pursued in the following one, when all such ideas were overthrown by the unexpected death of Henry Pelham. His death broke the tie which connected so many Pelham's death gives the Government to Newcastle. 1754. able men of varying opinions, and it became evident that parliamentary and party struggles would again occur. The King is said to have exclaimed, "Now I shall have no more peace." Upon the Duke of Newcastle fell the task of attempting to continue the existing Government. He himself took his brother's place at the head of the Treasury; he appointed Henry Legge as his Chancellor of the Exchequer. But it was not easy to supply Pelham's place as leader of the House of Commons. The choice seemed to lie between Henry Fox, who was Secretary at War, a friend and protÉgÉ of the Duke of Cumberland, Pitt, who was Paymaster, and Murray, who was Attorney-General. Pitt, personally disagreeable to the King, and moreover at this time in ill health, was not to be thought of; Murray's ambition was confined to the law; the Duke therefore applied to Fox. But they quarrelled about the arrangement of patronage, of which Newcastle was very jealous; and ultimately Sir Thomas Robinson, a man of no mark, was made Secretary, and given the management of the House. Pitt and Fox combined to render his position ridiculous and miserable. "The Duke might as well send his jackboot to lead us," said Pitt to Fox. Before the new Parliament had been assembled a month it was found necessary to make terms with Fox, who was given a seat in the Cabinet, although remaining in his subordinate place. This caused a permanent estrangement between the two statesmen. With Fox's assistance Newcastle got through the year.

But Newcastle was not the man to uphold a ministry during a time of such difficulty as was evidently approaching. Everything pointed to a speedy renewal of war. At the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle the limits of our American colonies had been left undefined; while in India, where Dupleix and Labourdonnais had inflicted heavy blows on the English during the war, although the nations were at peace, the French and English contrived to continue their rivalry by allying themselves with native princes, and Clive had already rendered his name famous by the defence of Arcot and the restoration of English power in the and America. Carnatic.[7] Thus there were dangers both in the East and in the West. In America the main object of the French was to secure the valley of the Mississippi, to connect by this channel their Canadian colonies with those upon the Gulf of Mexico, and thus to confine the English to the strip of country between the Alleghany mountains and the sea. The English would thus be constantly threatened on all sides, cut off from direct intercourse with the Indians, and from all hope of any extension of their settlements towards the west. The French began their encroachments by erecting forts on the Ohio river, which were to secure the connection between the Mississippi valley and Canada. A colonial war, in which the name of Washington first becomes prominent, arose from these encroachments. And this local warfare continued, till it became necessary for the Government to take the matter up. A force under General Braddock was therefore despatched against Fort Duquesne on the Ohio; but his careless stupidity led him into an ambush, where he himself and a great number of his troops were killed.

In spite of these hostilities, and although the existence of unsettled questions had caused a very uneasy feeling between them, France and England were as yet nominally at peace. And Newcastle, wholly unfit to conduct a great war, and eager to temporize as long as possible, seems to have tried to confine the war to matters affecting the prosperity of the American colonies. Thus Admiral Boscawen was sent out with orders to watch the French fleet, and attack it if it appeared bound for the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The consequence was an engagement, in which the French lost two ships. The rest of the fleet, to the disappointment of the English people, reached its destination. So again, Hawke's fleet in the Channel received strange and contradictory orders. One party in the Council wished to act openly and declare war. Newcastle suggested that no orders should be given to Hawke, but that he should be sent out to cruise, and that he should be ordered not to attack the French fleet unless he thought it worth while. Finally, instructions were given him to attack line of battle ships, but nothing smaller, and to spare trading vessels. He had not been gone a week when orders reached him to destroy everything large and small between Cape Ortegal and Cape Clear. The consequence was a large capture of prizes, and a not unfair outcry from France and the rest of Europe against the strange conduct of the English in seizing vessels without a declaration of war.

It was plain that war could not much longer be delayed; and the King's thoughts turned as usual to his continental dominions. Although the importance of the crisis was universally felt, he was content to leave England in the hands of a regency; and as soon as Parliament was over, just before Boscawen sailed, he hurried to Hanover. Next to France, the object of George's dread was Prussia. More than one cause of quarrel had arisen with that country. Frederick had refused to assist in securing the election of the Archduke Joseph (afterwards Joseph II.) as King of the Romans, a project which Newcastle and George had deeply at heart, believing that it would preserve the European balance and strengthen Austria against the French. Deprived of Frederick's assistance, the plan came to nothing. In 1753, again, a dispute had arisen about some ships captured in the late war, and condemned, as Frederick asserted, unjustly by the English Admiralty courts. To such an extent had the irritation against Prussia increased, that it He makes subsidiary treaties against Prussia. 1755. was confidently believed that Frederick intended to assist the Pretender in another attack upon England, taking advantage of the disturbance to secure Hanover for himself. Against Prussia, therefore, George began contracting great subsidiary treaties with the continental princes. The most important of these were with Hesse and with the Czarina of Russia. A factory, says Horace Walpole, was opened at Herrnhausen, where every prince that could muster and clothe a regiment might traffic with it to advantage.

It became Newcastle's duty to carry these contracts through Parliament. He knew the opposition they were certain to meet They are opposed by Pitt. with, and the necessity of finding some strong support in the Lower House; but his Cabinet was there represented by no man of mark. He had recourse to Pitt, who held the office of Paymaster, but he positively refused to support the subsidies. His colleague Legge went further, and refused to sign the warrants which were to open the Treasury. Newcastle had then recourse to Fox, and succeeded in securing his services by removing Robinson, and making Fox Secretary of State. But the introduction of the address at the opening of Parliament in the autumn, when the Russian and Hessian subsidies were recommended, was the signal for an open mutiny in the ministerial camp. It was attacked in vehement words by Pitt, who, in a well-known passage, likened the new coalition to the junction he had once seen of the Rhone and the SaÔne; the one a gentle, feeble, languid stream of no depth, and the other a boisterous, impetuous torrent. Newcastle had no alternative but to discharge both Pitt and Legge from their offices.

Meanwhile the courage of the nation had sunk very low. There was a dread of an immediate French invasion; and the Government so thoroughly lost heart as to request the King to garrison England with Hanoverian troops. This dread was kept alive by a simulated collection of French troops in the north. But, under cover of this threat, a fleet was being collected at Toulon, with the real design of capturing Minorca. The ministry were at last roused to this danger, and Byng was despatched with ten sail of the line to prevent it. Three days after he set sail the Duke de Richelieu, with 16,000 men, slipped across into the island, and compelled General Blakeney, who was somewhat old and infirm, to withdraw into the castle of St. Philip, which was at once besieged. On the 19th of May—much too late to prevent the landing of Richelieu—Byng arrived within view of St. Philip, which was still in the possession of the English. The French Admiral, La GalissonniÈre, sailed out to cover the siege, and Byng, who apparently felt himself unequally matched—although West, his second in command, behaved with gallantry and success—called a council of war, and withdrew. Blakeney, who had defended his position with great bravery, had to surrender.

The failure of Byng, and the general weakness and incapacity of the ministry, roused the temper of the people to rage; and Newcastle, trembling for himself, threw all the blame upon the Admiral, hoping by this means to satisfy the popular cry. But Fox, his chief supporter, was in no mood to risk anything by fidelity to so weak a chief. He therefore resigned the Seals; and as Murray insisted upon either resigning or being made Lord Chief Justice (which office was given him), Newcastle, without support in the Commons, found himself obliged to resign also.

It was hoped that Fox and Pitt might come in together, but their quarrel was irreconcilable. After some negotiations, therefore, the Duke of Devonshire was made First Lord of the Treasury, and Pitt First Secretary of State and real Prime Minister. The measures Pitt's vigorous government. 1757. of the new Government were in strict accordance with the principles of the party which Pitt represented. The Hessians were dismissed, a Bill was passed for increasing the militia, by which 32,000 men were to be called out; reinforcements were sent to America; the enterprising and warlike character of the Highlanders was enlisted on the side of order by the formation of Highland regiments, a step which did more towards the pacification of the country than any measures of coercion. Pitt also did what he could to dissociate himself from the conduct of Newcastle with regard to Admiral Byng. A court martial held upon that officer had been bound by strict instructions, and had found itself obliged to bring in a verdict of guilty, though without casting any imputation on the personal courage of the Admiral. On his accession to power Pitt was courageous enough, although he rested on the popular favour, to do his best to get Byng pardoned, and urged on the King that the House of Commons seemed to wish the sentence to be mitigated. The King is said to have answered in words that fairly describe Pitt's position, "Sir, you have taught me to look for the sense of my subjects in another place than the House of Commons." The sentence was carried out, and Byng was shot on the quarter-deck of the 'Monarque' at Portsmouth (March 14, 1757). But the new ministry was of short duration. Pitt found himself unable to stand up against the dislike of the King, and the want of that Parliamentary influence which Newcastle's position as head of the Whigs, and his long course of corruption, had gained him. He was summarily dismissed. The King tried to get back Newcastle and his subservient ministry (whom he used to speak of as "Newcastle's footmen"), and, after a period of intrigue, Pitt had to consent to a compromise, giving his own talents and popularity, and accepting in exchange the great Parliamentary support of Newcastle. To this ministry Fox was persuaded to give his adhesion, and to accept the lucrative post of Paymaster-General. Thus was formed that strong Government so gloriously known as Pitt's ministry.

While these ministerial changes had been going on in England, our dispute with France as to the limits of our American colonies had become blended with a quarrel of quite a different origin, which was to plunge Europe into a general war for several years. As early as 1745, before the signature of the Treaty of Dresden, the Courts of Berlin and Dresden had entered into some sort of arrangement for curtailing what they regarded as the undue pre-eminence of Prussia. After that treaty the Empress Queen seems to have been still more anxious for some similar plan, and almost immediately after the termination of the War of Succession, had entered into relations with the Czarina Elizabeth of Russia; a treaty had been agreed to, to which there were added secret clauses, providing that any movement on the part of Prussia against either Russia, Austria, or Poland, should be held wholly to invalidate the Treaty of Dresden; and in the result of a success of their arms, it was arranged that Prussia should be divided between the three countries. These arrangements are sometimes spoken of as the Treaties of Warsaw and of St. Petersburg. To this treaty the Elector of Saxony, who was also King of Poland, was a party, though without signing. In 1754, magazines and armies were prepared in Bohemia and Moravia; the Saxon army was collected at Europe prepares for war. Pirna; and finally, in 1756, adroit flattery addressed to Madame de Pampadour, the reigning mistress at the French Court, induced France to join in the alliance. Louis and his ministry, ignoring the really vital question which was then at issue with England, reversed the traditional policy of France, rejected the proffered alliance with Prussia, and threw the country headlong into a European war, in close alliance with its old enemy the Austrian House.In accordance with the traditions of European policy it was England, not France, who should have appeared as the ally of Austria. But a coldness had been gradually springing up between the Courts. The Barrier Treaty of Utrecht, by which the Austrian Netherlands Alliance between England and Prussia. were debarred from the Indian trade, was a constant cause of uneasiness. The part which England had taken in mediating the Treaties of Breslau and Dresden, which ceded Silesia to Prussia, had been mistaken by the Austrian Court; although in fact both wise and friendly, it had excited deep displeasure. Thus, when an alliance was mentioned, the terms proposed by Austria were so high that the English Government had no choice but to refuse them. Under these circumstances, as Hanover could not be left exposed wholly without friends, England turned to the opposite party and allied itself with Prussia.

Frederick had already entered upon the war. The appearance of hostile preparations had aroused his suspicions. He demanded a plain answer as to the intentions of the Empress Queen, and on Frederick's first campaign. receiving an evasive reply, he determined upon striking the first blow, although he knew that his nation numbered but 5,000,000, while the number of the allies could not be estimated at less than 90,000,000. He passed rapidly through Saxony, blockaded the Saxon army in Pirna, and, collecting all his forces, defeated the Austrians under Marshal Braun at Lowositz (Oct. 1, 1756). After this victory he rendered the relief of the Saxons impossible, and the whole army surrendered at Pirna. Frederick occupied Dresden, and there found and published copies of the secret treaties, which fully justified his conduct. The French had made a false step in plunging into the continental war. They were already successful in the Mediterranean; already the overbearing conduct of the English, in laying a nominal blockade on all the ports of France, had excited the general indignation of the Continent. The real policy of that country was to direct all their energies to the colonial and maritime war with England. It is probable that they thought to wring from George concessions in the colonies in exchange for the security of Hanover, which lay exactly between the contending parties. But Pitt at once apprehended the error they had made, and saw a great opportunity for raising the power of England. He knew that when France was busied in the endless difficulties of the European war, England, while subsidizing foreign troops, could employ her real power in completing her Supported by Pitt. colonial empire. He therefore braved the charge of inconsistency, and threw himself heart and soul into the defence of Hanover and the support of Frederick. To understand how complete his apparent change of views was, and his courage in openly avowing them, the principles of the party which he had hitherto represented must be remembered. Though a section of the great Whig party, they differed in their views both as to foreign and domestic policy from the main body of the Whigs. To both the power of France was an object of dread. But,—while the official Whigs desired to check it by the preservation of the balance of power in Europe, by close connection with the continental powers, by money subsidies, and by occasional assistance of troops,—Pitt Foreign policy of the various parties in England. and his friends thought that, as England was an island, its natural policy was to depend upon the navy; that as trade was our proper business, so the navy was our proper strength; that we did but weaken ourselves by entangling ourselves with foreign politics; that our army should be entirely defensive, and that we need have no fear of invasion while we commanded the sea. Thus while one party upheld the necessity of subsidies and a considerable standing army, the other wished for no subsidies, a strong militia, and a powerful navy. The differences were not less in their respective views of home policy. The main body of the Whigs were desirous of retaining quite unchanged the Constitution as settled by the Revolution, and held that power must be secured by parliamentary influence and the distribution of patronage. In Pitt's more liberal view, parliamentary influence should have been unnecessary—a Government pleasing to the people, which a good Government would naturally be, would want no other support. Pitt's alliance with Newcastle and his acceptance of his parliamentary influence was as entirely opposed to this view as his maintenance of subsidies to the European powers was to all appearance opposed to his former views of foreign politics. But circumstances had arisen which to his mind entirely altered the position of England, and he frankly declared that it was for the sake of England that Hanover was threatened, and that he would win America for them in Germany.

The object Pitt set before him in his new ministry was to raise the national spirit. For this purpose he threw himself with all his vehemence into the war, and his energy became visible in every department. He at once assumed the whole conduct of foreign affairs, leaving to Newcastle the jobbery he so much liked; it is even said Disasters of the year 1757. that the Admiralty had orders to sign his despatches and instructions without reading them. But he was met with difficulties arising from the bad Government and the bad appointments which he found on entering office. It was thus, with wholly inefficient generals, that he set to work to do what he could in the year 1757. True to his general view of employing England chiefly on the sea, it was to expeditions to the French coast that he at first looked for success. Before he was well seated in the ministry such an expedition had been despatched against Rochefort under Admiral Hawke and General Mordaunt. The fleet acted well enough, but Mordaunt and his soldiers brought the expedition to ruin, though Wolfe volunteered to capture the town if he might be intrusted with 500 men. In America the same want of success met the English. Lord Loudon was there commanding in chief, a man who was incessantly busy and never did anything; he was graphically described by Franklin as resembling a St. George and the dragon on the sign of an inn, always mounted on a galloping horse, but never advancing a step. Under such leadership the attack on Louisburg failed. Worse than this was the disaster which attended our troops in Germany. The Duke of Cumberland, bold and active, but no general, allowed himself to be outmanoeuvred by Marshal D'EstrÉes, suffered the French to cross the Weser unopposed, was beaten at Hastenbach, and while attempting to cover the fortress of Stade, was surrounded by the French and compelled to sign the Convention of Klosterseven, by which it was agreed that his army should be entirely broken up, the auxiliaries sent to their homes, and the Hanoverian troops go into cantonments. To complete the misery of the situation, Frederick had himself suffered a disastrous defeat at Kolin, in Bohemia, while covering the siege of Prague. The extraordinary campaign which saved Prussia does not belong to our history; it is enough to understand, that with extreme rapidity he threw himself towards the western extremity of his widespread dominions, and filled the gap which Cumberland had left open. The great victory of Rosbach, in the neighbourhood of the Saale, over the French and Imperialists, rendered that flank secure for the present. Suddenly darting back again into Silesia, where his affairs had not been going prosperously in his absence, he completely defeated the Austrians at the battle of Lissa, north of the river Schneidwitz, and thus rendered that flank secure also.

This year, so disastrous in Europe, had been marked by the signal success of our arms in India, whither Clive, who had come home after his brilliant successes in the Carnatic, had again returned as Governor of Fort St. David. He had been summoned to Bengal to revenge the horrors of the Black Hole of Calcutta, and had there laid the foundation of the English power by the brilliant victory of Plassy.[8]

The disasters which had met the English arms in all directions moved the anger of Pitt, and he determined on a thorough change of generals. In the place of Cumberland, who had shown his inefficiency in the last campaign, Ferdinand of Brunswick, a worthy disciple of Frederick's, was appointed to command the army of Hanover; and as the Convention of Klosterseven was repudiated by the English, he found the defeated army at Stade ready to receive him. Loudon gave place to Amherst and Wolfe. It was in America that the English troops were chiefly employed. The mouth of the St. Lawrence was guarded by Cape Breton Island and Louisburg. At New York the Hudson falls into Success in America. the sea, and from its mouth there runs northward, nearly into the valley of the St. Lawrence, a valley and chain of lakes, of which the first is Lake Champlain. The fortress which holds the road is Ticonderoga. On the Ohio, as already mentioned, was Fort Duquesne, where Fort Pittsburg now is. The French possessions were to be attacked by each of these three points. Amherst and Wolfe, with a fleet under Boscawen, were to capture Louisburg. Abercrombie was to push up the Hudson and take Ticonderoga, while to Forbes was intrusted the capture of Fort Duquesne. Working hand in hand, without jealousy, Amherst and Boscawen succeeded at once in capturing Louisburg, which had last year been supposed unassailable. Fort Duquesne was also taken. Ticonderoga, strong from its situation in the midst of water and marshes, resisted all efforts, but the line of junction between Canada and the Mississippi was effectually cut.

In Europe the same energy was visible. The army of Ferdinand was reinforced by a considerable number of English troops. Prince Ferdinand was opposed by the Count of Clermont, an unusually incapable general, who had in fact never before seen troops in the field. He succeeded in clearing Hanover and driving the French behind the Rhine at Creveld. He there Victory of Creveld. June 23, 1758. defeated them with a loss of some 6000 men, but found himself unable to retain his advanced position, and recrossed the river. Pitt had often asserted that, much as he wished to uphold the cause of Frederick, nothing would induce him to send British blood to "the Elbe, to be lost in that ocean of gore." But this successful campaign induced him to change his view, and a considerable body of troops, about 12,000 in number, under the Duke of Marlborough and Lord George Sackville, were sent to join Prince Ferdinand. These same officers had just been employed in executing one of those joint military and naval expeditions which Pitt seems at first to have thought the proper means by which England should assist in a continental war. Like all such isolated expeditions, it was of little value. St. Malo, against which it was directed, Expeditions to Cherbourg and St. Malo. was found too strong to be taken, but a large quantity of shipping and naval stores was destroyed. The fleet also approached Cherbourg, but although the troops were actually in their boats ready to land, they were ordered to re-embark, and the fleet came home. Another somewhat similar expedition was sent out later in the year. In July General Bligh and Commodore Howe took and destroyed Cherbourg, but on attempting a similar assault on St. Malo, they found it too strong for them. The army had been landed in the Bay of St. Cast, and, while engaged in re-embarkation, it was attacked by some French troops which had been hastily collected, and severely handled. In spite of this slight check it was plain that the tide of victory had Campaign of Frederick. changed. The campaign of King Frederick had been marked by chequered fortune. He had found the siege of Olmutz, in Moravia, beyond his strength, but upon the east of his dominions had won a great victory over the Russians, under General Fermor, at ZÖrndorf (August 25); and though he suffered a heavy defeat by a night surprise at Hofkirchen, he managed his retreat so ably, that before the end of the year he had rid Saxony of the Austrians and again secured Silesia.

The success which had marked the course of the British arms in all parts of the world continued to attend them, and this year (1759) is one of the most glorious in our military annals. Horace Walpole remarks, that "it was necessary to ask every morning what new victory there was for fear of missing one." In January came the news of the capture of Goree in Africa, in June the news of the capture of Guadaloupe, in August of the victory of Minden, in September of Lagos, in October of Quebec, and in November of Quiberon. The contrast between the England of 1757, crouching in fear within its own limits and crying for help to Hanover and Hesse, and the England of 1759 is indeed striking. There was again a threatened descent of the French upon England, but there was now no craven fear of such an event. Pitt had raised the temper of the people. The threat was regarded not only with indifference, but as a means of acquiring further triumph. England could well defend itself. The militia was called out and mobilized; the fleet was so large and in such order that it could efficiently watch all the French ports. Boats for the expedition were building at Havre; Rodney anchored in the harbour and bombarded it for fifty hours, destroying most of the boats; Boscawen was watching De la Clue at Toulon; Hawke was watching Conflans at Brest. Thurot, in Dunkirk, was also blockaded. This arrangement of fleets produced in the course of the year two great naval victories.

The French desired to connect their scattered squadrons. For this purpose De la Clue attempted to come out of Toulon and to join the fleets in the north of France. As he passed round Spain, Boscawen, Naval victories of Lagos and Quiberon. whose duty it had been to watch him, fell upon his fleet off Lagos. Three of his ships were taken and two destroyed, while eight vessels, which had been separated from him, were lost as they came through the straits; so that, with the exception of two ships, the whole of his squadron was annihilated. This was in September. In the following month a still greater success met the English navy. Sir Edward Hawke attacked the Brest fleet under Conflans off the point of Quiberon. He had been driven from his watch by stress of weather, and Conflans had taken the opportunity to come out of harbour, hoping to destroy a detached squadron which was off the coast. But Hawke's return was too quick for him. He made a junction with the detached squadron, and thus, superior in force to the French, drove them back towards the coast. The French withdrew among the rocky islets near the mouth of the Vilaine. It was blowing a gale, and the rocky coast was full of danger. But Hawke replied to the representations of his pilot by giving him peremptory orders, that whatever the risk might be, he was to lay his ship alongside of the French admiral's. "You have done your duty in showing me the danger, now you are to obey my orders and lay me alongside the Soleil Royal." The victory was complete: two French ships struck, four were sunk, and the rest, all damaged, ran for shelter to the Vilaine. This blow, together with the complete destruction of Thurot's squadron, which had come out of Dunkirk and made a landing in Ireland, completed the practical annihilation of the French fleet. The total loss up to this time of the French navy was sixty-four ships, without counting Thurot's squadron. During the same time the English had lost but nine.

But the great victory of the year was the capture of Quebec. To secure Canada was one of Pitt's chief objects. Louisburg and Duquesne had already fallen, and the country itself was thus open to his attack. The French army was under the command of an excellent general, the Marquis de Montcalm, who had his headquarters at Quebec. General Amherst was the English commander-in-chief, but subordinates of more than usual vigour were necessary for him, and Pitt, who had kept his eye on Wolfe since the attack on Rochefort, and had seen his energy at the siege of Louisburg, disregarding all claims of seniority, intrusted to him the attack on Quebec. This was originally to be a combined movement. Amherst was to march up by Lakes Champlain and George, take Ticonderoga and Crown Point, where Abercrombie had failed last year, and thus reach the St. Lawrence. Generals Prideaux and Johnson were to take Fort Niagara, and then, passing down Lake Ontario into the St. Lawrence, to join in the attack on Quebec, securing Montreal on the way. Though both these latter expeditions were successful, the difficulties met with rendered them so slow that the combination failed. The plan was Pitt's own, and was probably too extensive; it may be doubted whether he had sufficient knowledge of what it is possible for an army to do. Wolfe, with 8000 men, embarked in the squadron of Admiral Saunders, and reached the Isle of Orleans in the St. Lawrence river on the 13th of June. The expedition experienced no disasters in the way, having fortunately captured a vessel with some excellent charts of the river.

Quebec lies on and below the rocky edge of a plateau on the left or northern bank of the St. Lawrence, just above the junction of the St. Charles river, which thus covers its eastern side. On the other side of the St. Charles the ground again rises and continues in a rugged and difficult mass, till it sinks where the river Montmorency falls into the St. Lawrence in a lofty waterfall. The ridge between the Montmorency and the St. Charles is called Beauport. On this Montcalm's army was in position, precluding the possibility of investing Quebec, to which he had access by a bridge across the St. Charles. On the other or Quebec side of the St. Charles, the heights on the edge of which the town is built extend up the St. Lawrence, and are called the Heights of Abraham. They were believed to be inaccessible to an army. The Isle of Orleans lies in the St. Lawrence from the mouth of the Montmorency till almost opposite Quebec harbour. As long as Montcalm's army occupied the line of Beauport Quebec could not be invested. In that position the army was unassailable. To draw him from it therefore was Wolfe's great object. For this purpose frequent feints were made, but were all unavailing. One assault indeed near the mouth of the Montmorency was attempted, but the English were beaten off. Nor were the defenders of the town idle; again and again were fire-ships sent down, but the skilful vigilance of Saunders rendered all such efforts unavailing. A battery or two were erected and the town was bombarded, but this did little or no good. It seemed plain that from the Isle of Orleans nothing could be done. The army was moved in succession to two points higher up the river and above Quebec. But Montcalm would not move; he was content to send an army of observation up the river, and the besiegers lost all hope of the succours they had expected from Amherst and Johnson. On the 9th of September, Wolfe wrote a despatch in which he seemed quite to despair of success. Within a week Quebec was taken. The bold design occurred to him of surprising the Heights of Abraham, and thus compelling Montcalm to fight. He ordered feints to be made both up and down the river while he quietly collected boats. As it was, they were so few in number that his army had to cross in two divisions. Very early in the morning of the 13th of September he began his attempt. With immense toil, up a passage so narrow that at times only one could pass, his soldiers forced their way, and even dragged up one piece of artillery, and when the morning came Montcalm found between three and four thousand men in position opposite to him upon the heights. To cover Quebec it was necessary for him to withdraw his troops from Beauport and to cross the St. Charles. This he at once proceeded to do, and the battle began. Early in the day Wolfe, who was on the right wing, was wounded and carried to the rear, but before he died he had the gratification of knowing that the victory was secured. Both armies lost their first and second in command. Five days afterwards Quebec was surrendered. Wolfe was but thirty-three when he died; he entered the army at fourteen, and had seen much service; a shy, retiring, domestic man, of unprepossessing exterior and weak frame, he owed his promotion entirely to the feeling of confidence which his sound sense and chivalrous energy inspired. It is much to the credit of Pitt that he should have found out his merits, and having found them out have ventured to place so great a responsibility upon so young and unprepossessing a person.

While all the efforts in which the English were engaged singlehanded had thus been successfully carried out, they had also, in conjunction Victory of Minden. with their German allies, won on the 1st of August the great battle of Minden. The French had early in the year taken possession of Frankfort. Their army, strongly reinforced—for the new ministry of the Duc de Choiseul began by being very energetic,—was divided into two; the northern corps under Marshal Contades, the southern army about Frankfort under De Broglie. An attempt of Ferdinand to regain Frankfort was frustrated by De Broglie, who beat him at the battle of Bergen. The two French armies then joined, and pressed upon the Prince till they drove him behind Minden, a town on the left or French side of the river Weser. It became clear to Ferdinand that a battle must be fought to save Hanover. He therefore advanced southwards up the Weser, carefully keeping his communications with that river open, while the object of the French seems to have been chiefly to separate him from it. By spreading his army so as to give it the appearance of weakness, though it was in reality capable of rapid concentration, he induced the French to leave an extremely strong position they had taken up upon Minden Heath, with their right covered by the town, which was in their possession. A body of troops, apparently detached, upon the extreme left of the allies, and close to the Weser, was the bait by which the French were attracted. They hoped by destroying this ill-supported detachment to cut the Prince off from the river. But as De Broglie approached what he believed to be the weak point, he was surprised to find the whole allied army in array before him. Ferdinand by this clever trap brought his enemy to an engagement upon his own ground. The battle consisted in great part of a series of charges of French cavalry on compact bodies of the English and Hanoverian infantry. Weary with their futile exertions, the cavalry, who formed the centre of the French line, gave way. The line was broken, and a charge of cavalry alone was wanted to complete the destruction of the army. Three aide-de-camps were sent in succession to Lord George Sackville, bidding him charge. He pretended not to understand the order, and said he must consult the Prince in person. The same order was given to the Marquis of Granby, who commanded in the second line, and a vigorous charge made, but time had been wasted, and it was too late. The victory was however rendered tolerably complete by a body of 10,000 men, whom Prince Ferdinand had had the courage and foresight to detach from his army, although he was already numerically weaker than his enemy, for the purpose of cutting the enemy's communications. Lord George Sackville was tried by court martial and dismissed from all his military appointments.

The story of the British victories of the year is completed by the success of their arms in India, where the siege of Madras was raised, much of the Carnatic secured, and Wandewash taken by Colonel Coote.

It is necessary to say a few words about the war carried on under Frederick's own eye. The plan of the campaign was much the same as the last. The Russians advanced to gain the Oder, and fought Frederick's fourth campaign. and won the battle of Zullichau over General Wedel, after which they were joined by an Austrian army under Loudon. Against this united force the King advanced, leaving Daun's army already threatening Berlin. He met Saltikow and Loudon at Kunersdorf. The Russian position was forced, seventy cannon taken, and the victory appeared complete, when suddenly Loudon advanced with his troops and altered the fate of the day. In these two last battles the Prussian forces had been weakened by 30,000 men, and the King, feeling certain that he was at the end of his resources, made every arrangement for committing suicide. Unaccountably the enemy did not advance, and he had time to collect a few troops. But fortune was still against him; his general, Fink, with 12,000 men, was surrounded, and had to surrender at Maxen; Dresden had fallen into the hands of Daun. After this reinforcements from the army of Prince Ferdinand enabled the King to continue the campaign, till the extreme cold of winter made it necessary to go into winter quarters. The following year Frederick still made head against his gathering enemies. He was unable indeed to save Berlin from the hands of the Russians, but he rescued Silesia by the victory which he gained over Loudon Battle of Torgau. 1760. at Liegnitz, and at his approach the Russians fled from his capital. He then turned his arms against Daun, who was still master of Saxony. The fearful battle of Torgau was fought, where the victory was secured to the Prussians, but at the cost of 14,000 men; the Austrians are said to have lost 20,000. This was the last pitched battle of the war.

The constant success of his schemes raised Pitt to the highest eminence of power. His ministry was unopposed. Year by year he was enabled, without difficulty, to carry through the House a subsidy of £670,000 to the Prussian King, and to set his estimates at from twelve to twenty millions, a sum before this unheard of. His power over the House was absolute; members were actually afraid of replying to him, and the only difficulty which met him was the temper of his relative Temple, who insisted upon receiving the Garter, and almost shipwrecked the ministry by The King dies. Oct. 25, 1760. his selfish claims. It was at this moment of prosperity that the King suddenly died, and, as had long been expected, a change took place in the counsels of the Sovereign.

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