A Political and Social History of Modern Europe Part 32

[Sidenote: Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748]

The tables were turned by the arrival of a British fleet in 1748, which laid siege to Dupleix in Pondicherry. At this juncture, news arrived that Great Britain and France had concluded the treaty of Aix-la- Chapelle (1748), whereby all conquests, including Madras and Louisburg, were to be restored. So far as Spain was concerned. Great Britain in 1750 renounced the privileges of the Asiento in return for a money payment of 100,000.

THE TRIUMPH OF GREAT BRITAIN: THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR, 1756-1763

[Sidenote: Questions at Issue in 1750]

[Sidenote: World-wide Extent of the Seven Years' War]

Up to this point, the wars had been generally indecisive, although Great Britain had gained Hudson Bay, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia by the peace of Utrecht (1713). British naval power, too, was undoubtedly in the ascendancy. But two great questions were still unanswered.

Should France be allowed to make good her claim to the Mississippi valley and possibly to drive the British from their slender foothold on the coast of America? Should Dupleix, wily diplomat as he was, be allowed to make India a French empire? To these major disputes was added a minor quarrel over the boundary of Nova Scotia, which, it will be remembered, had been ceded to Great Britain in 1713. Such questions could be decided only by the crus.h.i.+ng defeat of one nation, and that defeat France was to suffer in the years between 1754 and 1763. Her loss was fourfold: (1) Her European armies were defeated in Germany by Frederick the Great, who was aided by English gold, in the Seven Years'

War (1756-1763). [Footnote: For an account of the European aspects of this struggle, see below, pp. 358 ff.] (2) At the same time her naval power was almost annihilated by the British, whose war vessels and privateers conquered most of the French West Indies and almost swept French commerce from the seas. (3) In India, the machinations of Dupleix were foiled by the equally astute but more martial Clive. (4) In America, the "French and Indian War" (1754-1763) dispelled the dream of a New France across the Atlantic. We shall first consider the war in the New World.

[Sidenote: The American Phase of the Seven Years' War: the "French and Indian" War, 1754-1763]

The immediate cause of the French and Indian War was a contest for the possession of the Ohio valley. The English had already organized an Ohio Company (1749) for colonization of the valley, but they did not fully realize the pressing need of action until the French had begun the construction of a line of forts in western Pennsylvania--Fort Presqu'Isle (Erie), Fort Le B?uf (Waterford), and Fort Venango (Franklin). The most important position--the junction of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers--being still unoccupied, the Ohio Company, early in 1754, sent a small force to seize and fortify it. The French, however, were not to be so easily outwitted; they captured the newly built fort with its handful of defenders, enlarged it, and christened it Fort Duquesne in honor of the governor of Canada. Soon afterward a young Virginian, George Was.h.i.+ngton by name, arrived on the scene with four hundred men, too late to reenforce the English fort- builders, and he also was defeated on 4 July, 1754.

Hope was revived, however, in 1755 when the British General Braddock arrived with a regular army and an ambitious plan to attack the French in three places--Crown Point (on Lake Champlain), Fort Niagara, and Fort Duquesne. Against the last-named fort he himself led a mixed force of British regulars and colonial militia, and so incautiously did he advance that presently he fell into an ambush. From behind trees and rocks the Frenchmen and redskins peppered the surprised redcoats. The "seasoned" veterans of European battlefields were defeated, and might have been annihilated but for the timely aid of a few "raw" colonial militiamen, who knew how to shoot straight from behind trees. The expedition against Niagara also failed of its object but entailed no such disaster. Failing to take Crown Point, the English built Forts Edward and William Henry on Lake George, while the French constructed the famous Fort Ticonderoga. [Footnote: This same year, 1755, so unfortunate for the English, was a cruel year for the French settlers in Nova Scotia; like so many cattle, seven thousand of them were packed into English vessels and s.h.i.+pped to various parts of North America. The English feared their possible disloyalty.]

[Sidenote: Montcalm]

The gloom which gathered about British fortunes seemed to increase during the years 1756 and 1757. Great Britain's most valuable ally, Frederick the Great of Prussia, was defeated in Europe; an English squadron had been sadly defeated in the Mediterranean; the French had captured the island of Minorca; and a British attack on the French fortress of Louisburg had failed. To the French in America, the year 1756 brought Montcalm and continued success. The Marquis de Montcalm (1712-1759) had learned the art of war on European battlefields, but he readily adapted himself to new conditions, and proved to be an able commander of the French and Indian forces in the New World. The English fort of Oswego on Lake Ontario, and Fort William Henry on Lake George, were captured, and all the campaigns projected by the English were foiled.

In 1757, however, new vigor was infused into the war on the part of the British, largely by reason of the entrance of William Pitt (the Elder) into the cabinet. Pitt was determined to arouse all British subjects to fight for their country. Stirred with martial enthusiasm, colonial volunteers now joined with British regulars to provide a force of about 50,000 men for simultaneous attacks on four important French posts in America--Louisburg, Ticonderoga, Niagara, and Duquesne. The success of the attack on Louisburg (1758) was insured by the support of a strong British squadron; Fort Duquesne was taken and renamed Fort Pitt [Footnote: Whence the name of the modern city of Pittsburgh.] (1758); Ticonderoga repulsed one expedition (1758) but surrendered on 26 July, 1759, one day after the capture of Fort Niagara by the British.

[Sidenote: Wolfe]

Not content with the capture of the menacing French frontier forts, the British next aimed at the central strongholds of the French. While one army marched up the Hudson valley to attack Montreal, General Wolfe, in command of another army of 7000, and accompanied by a strong fleet, moved up the St. Lawrence against Quebec. An inordinate thirst for military glory had been Wolfe's heritage from his father, himself a general. An ensign at fourteen, Wolfe had become an officer in active service while still in his teens, had commanded a detachment in the attack on Louisburg in 1758, and now at the age of thirty-three was charged with the capture of Quebec, a natural stronghold, defended by the redoubtable Montcalm. The task seemed impossible; weeks were wasted in futile efforts; sickness and apparent defeat weighed heavily on the young commander. With the energy of despair he fastened at last upon a daring idea. Thirty-six hundred of his men were ferried in the dead of night to a point above the city where his soldiers might scramble through bushes and over rocks up a precipitous path to a high plain-- the Plains of Abraham--commanding the town.

[Sidenote: British Victory at Quebec, 1759]

Wolfe's presence on the heights was revealed at daybreak on 13 September, 1759, and Montcalm hastened to repel the attack. For a time it seemed as if Wolfe's force would be over-powered, but a well- directed volley and an impetuous charge threw the French lines into disorder. In the moment of victory, General Wolfe, already twice wounded, received a musket-ball in the breast. His death was made happy by the news of success, but no such exultation filled the heart of the mortally wounded Montcalm, dying in the bitterness of defeat.

Quebec surrendered a few days later. It was the beginning of the end of the French colonial empire in America. All hope was lost when, in October, 1759, a great armada, ready to embark against England, was destroyed in Quiberon Bay by Admiral Hawke. In 1760 Montreal fell and the British completed the conquest of New France, at the very time when the last vestiges of French power were disappearing in India.

[Sidenote: Futile Intervention of Spain, 1762]

In his extremity, Louis XV of France secured the aid of his Bourbon kinsman, the king of Spain, against England, but Spain was a worthless ally, and in 1762 British squadrons captured Cuba and the Philippine Islands as well as the French possessions in the West Indies.

[Sidenote: Phase of the Seven Years' War in India]

[Sidenote: Continued Activity of Dupleix]

Let us now turn back and see how the loss of New France was paralleled by French defeat in the contest for the vastly more populous and opulent empire of India. The Mogul Empire, to which reference has already been made, had been rapidly falling to pieces throughout the first half of the eighteenth century. The rulers or nawabs (nabobs) of the Deccan, of Bengal, and of Oudh had become semi-independent princes.

In a time when conspiracy and intrigue were common avenues to power, the French governor, Dupleix, had conceived the idea of making himself the political leader of India, and in pursuit of his goal, as we have seen, he had affected Oriental magnificence and grandiloquent t.i.tles, had formed alliances with half the neighboring native magnates, had fortified Pondicherry, and begun the enrollment and organization of his sepoy army. In 1750 he succeeded in overthrowing the nawab of the Carnatic [Footnote: The province in India which includes Madras and Pondicherry and has its capital at Arcot.] and in establis.h.i.+ng a pretender whom he could dominate more easily.

[Sidenote: Robert Clive]

[Sidenote: French Failure in the Carnatic]

The hopes of the experienced and crafty Dupleix were frustrated, however, by a young man of twenty-seven--Robert Clive. At the age of eighteen, Clive had entered the employ of the English East India Company as a clerk at Madras. His restless and discontented spirit found relief, at times, in omnivorous reading; at other times he grew despondent. More than once he planned to take his own life. During the War of the Austrian Succession, he had resigned his civil post and entered the army. The hazards of military life were more to his liking, and he soon gave abundant evidence of ability. After the peace of 1748 he had returned to civil life, but in 1751 he came forward with a bold scheme for attacking Arcot, the capital of the Carnatic, and overthrowing the upstart nawab who was supported by Dupleix. Clive could muster only some two hundred Europeans and three hundred sepoys, but this slender force, infused with the daring and irresistible determination of the young leader, sufficed to seize and hold the citadel of Arcot against thousands of a.s.sailants. With the aid of native and British reenforcements, the hero of Arcot further defeated the pretender; and, in 1754, the French had to acknowledge their failure in the Carnatic and withdraw support from their vanquished protege. Dupleix was recalled to France in disgrace; and the British were left to enjoy the favor of the nawab who owed his throne to Clive.

[Sidenote: Pla.s.sey]

[Sidenote: British Success in India]

Clive's next work was in Bengal. In 1756 the young nawab of Bengal, Suraj-ud-Dowlah by name, seized the English fort at Calcutta and locked 146 Englishmen overnight in a stifling prison--the "Black Hole" of Calcutta--from which only twenty-three emerged alive the next morning.

Clive, hastening from Madras, chastised Suraj for this atrocity, and forced him to give up Calcutta. And since by this time Great Britain and France were openly at war, Clive did not hesitate to capture the near-by French post of Chandarnagar. His next move was to give active aid to a certain Mir Jafir, a pretender to the throne of the unfriendly Suraj-ud-Dowlah. The French naturally took sides with Suraj against Clive. In 1757 Clive drew up 1100 Europeans, 2100 sepoys, and nine cannon in a grove of mango trees at Pla.s.sey, a few miles south of the city of Murs.h.i.+dabad, and there attacked Suraj, who, with an army of 68,000 native troops and with French artillerymen to work his fifty- three cannon, antic.i.p.ated an easy victory. The outcome was a brilliant victory for Clive, as overwhelming as it was unexpected. The British candidate forthwith became nawab of Bengal and as token of his indebtedness he paid over 1,500,000 to the English East India Company, and made Clive a rich man. The British were henceforth dominant in Bengal. The capture of Masulipatam in 1758, the defeat of the French at Wandewash, between Madras and Pondicherry, and the successful siege of Pondicherry in 1761, finally established the British as masters of all the coveted eastern coast of India.

[Sidenote: The Treaty of Paris, 1763]

The fall of Quebec (1759) and of Pondicherry (1761) practically decided the issue of the colonial struggle, but the war dragged on until, in 1763, France, Spain, and Great Britain concluded the peace of Paris. Of her American possessions France retained only two insignificant islands on the Newfoundland coast, [Footnote: St. Pierre and Miquelon.] a few islands in the West Indies, [Footnote: Including Guadeloupe and Martinique.] and a foothold in Guiana in South America. Great Britain received from France the whole of the St. Lawrence valley and all the territory east of the Mississippi River, together with the island of Grenada in the West Indies; and from Spain, Great Britain secured Florida. Beyond the surrender of the spa.r.s.ely settled territory of Florida, Spain suffered no loss, for Cuba and the Philippines were restored to her, and France gave her western Louisiana, that is, the western half of the Mississippi valley. The French were allowed to return to their old posts in India, but were not to maintain troops in Bengal or to build any fort. In other words, the French returned to India as traders but not as empire builders. [Footnote: During the war, the French posts in Africa had been taken, and now Goree was returned while the mouth of the Senegal River was retained by the British.]

[Sidenote: Significance of the Seven Years' War to Great Britain and France]

Let us attempt to summarize the chief results of the war. In the first place, Great Britain preserved half of what was later to const.i.tute the United States, and gained Canada and an ascendancy in India--empires wider, richer, and more diverse than those of a Caesar or an Alexander.

Henceforth Great Britain was indisputably the preeminent colonizing country--a nation upon whose domains the sun never set. It meant that the English language was to spread as no other language, until to-day one hundred and sixty millions of people use the tongue which in the fifteenth century was spoken by hardly five millions.

Secondly, even more important than this vast land empire was the dominion of the sea which Great Britain acquired, for from the series of wars just considered, and especially from the last, dates the maritime supremacy of England. Since then her commerce, protected and advertised by the most powerful navy in the world, has mounted by leaps and bounds, so that now half the vessels which sail the seas bear at their masthead the Union Jack. From her dominions beyond the oceans and from her s.h.i.+ps upon the seas Great Britain drew power and prestige; British merchants acquired opulence with resulting social and political importance to themselves and to their country, and British manufactures received that stimulation which prepared the way for the Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Thirdly, the gains of Great Britain were at least the temporary ruin of her rival. Not without reluctance did France abandon her colonial ambitions, but nearly a century was to elapse after the treaty of Paris before the French should seriously reenter the race for the upbuilding of world empire. Nor was France without a desire for revenge, which was subsequently made manifest in her alliance with Britain's rebellious American colonies in 1778. But French naval power had suffered a blow from which it was difficult to recover, [Footnote: Yet between 1763 and 1778 the French made heroic and expensive efforts to rebuild their navy. And as we shall presently see in studying the general war which accompanied the American revolt, France attempted in vain to reverse the main result of the Seven Years' War.] and much of her commerce was irretrievably lost. If toward the close of the eighteenth century bankruptcy was to threaten the Bourbon court and government at Versailles, and if at the opening of the next century, British sea- power was to undermine Napoleon's empire, it was in no slight degree the result in either case of the Seven Years' disaster.

India and America were lost to France. Her trade in India soon dwindled into insignificance before the powerful and wealthy British East India Company. "French India" to-day consists of Pondicherry, Karikal, Yanaon, Mahe, and Chandarnagar--196 square miles in all,--while the Indian Empire of Britain spreads over an area of 1,800,000 square miles. French empire in America is now represented only by two puny islands off the coast of Newfoundland, two small islands in the West Indies, and an unimportant tract of tropical Guiana, but historic traces of its former greatness and promise have survived alike in Canada and in Louisiana. In Canada the French population has stubbornly held itself aloof from the British in language and in religion, and even to-day two of the seven millions of Canadians are Frenchmen, quite as intent on the preservation of their ancient nationality as upon their allegiance to the British rule. In the United States the French element is less in evidence; nevertheless in New Orleans sidewalks are called "banquettes," and embankments, "levees"; and still the names of St. Louis, Des Moines, Detroit, and Lake Champlain perpetuate the memory of a lost empire.

ADDITIONAL READING

GENERAL. Textbooks and brief treatises: J. S. Ba.s.sett, _A Short History of the United States_ (1914), ch. iii-vii; A. L. Cross, _History of England and Greater Britain_ (1914), ch. x.x.xvi-xlii; J. H. Robinson and C. A. Beard, _The Development of Modern Europe_, Vol. I (1907), ch. vi, vii; A. D. Innes, _History of England and the British Empire_, Vol. III (1914), ch. i-vi; W. H. Woodward, _A Short History of the Expansion of the British Empire, 1500-1911_, 3d ed. (1912), ch. i-v; A. T. Story, _The Building of the British Empire_ (1898), Part I, _1558-1688_; H. C.

Morris, _The History of Colonization_ (1900), Vol. I, Part III, ch. x- xii, Vol. II, ch. xvi-xviii. More detailed and specialized studies: John Fiske, _New France and New England_(1902), a delightful review of the development of the French empire in America, its struggle with the British, and its collapse, and, by the same author, _Colonization of the New World_, ch. vii-x, and _Independence of the New World_, ch. i- iii, the last two books being respectively Vols. XXI and XXII of the _History of All Nations; Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. V (1908), ch.

xxii, on the growth of the French and English empires, Vol. VI (1909), ch. xv, on the English and French in India, 1720-1763, and Vol. VII (1903), ch. i-iv, on the struggle in the New World; Pelham Edgar, _The Struggle for a Continent_ (1902), an excellent account of the conflict in North America, edited from the writings of Parkman; E. B. Greene, _Provincial America, 1690-1740_ (1905), being Vol. VI of the "American Nation" Series; emile Leva.s.seur, _Histoire du commerce de la France_, Vol. I (1911), the best treatment of French commercial and colonial policy prior to 1789; Sir J. R. Seeley, _Expansion of England_ (1895), stimulating and suggestive on the relations of general European history to the struggle for world dominion; A. W. Tilby, _The English People Overseas_, a great history of the British empire, projected in 8 vols., of which three (1912) are particularly important--Vol. I, _The American Colonies, 1583-1763_, Vol. II, _British India, 1600-1828_, and Vol. IV, _Britain in the Tropics, 1527-1910_; A. T. Mahan, _The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783_, 24th ed. (1914), an epoch-making work; Sir W. L. Clowes (editor), _The Royal Navy: a History_, 7 vols. (1897- 1903), ch. xx-xxviii; J. S. Corbett, _England in the Seven Years' War_, 2 vols. (1907), strongly British and concerned chiefly with naval warfare; J. W. Fortescue, _History of the British Army_, Vols. I and II (1899). See also the general histories of imperialism and of the British Empire listed in the bibliographies appended to Chapters XXVII and XXIX, of Volume II.

WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE BRITISH IN AMERICA. C. M. Andrews, _The Colonial Period_ (1912) in "Home University Library," and C. L. Becker, _Beginnings of the American People_ (1915) in "The Riverside History,"

able and stimulating resumes; L. G. Tyler, _England in America, 1580- 1652_ (1904), Vol. IV of "American Nation" Series; John Fiske, _Old Virginia and her Neighbors_ (1900), and, by the same author, in his usually accurate and captivating manner, _Beginnings of New England_ (1898), and _Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America_ (1903); H. L.

Osgood, _The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century_, 3 vols.

(1904-1907), the standard authority, together with J. A. Doyle, _English Colonies in America_, 5 vols. (1882-1907); Edward Channing, _A History of the United States_, Vol. II, _A Century of Colonial History, 1660-1760_ (1908), very favorable to New England.

WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE FRENCH IN AMERICA. R. G. Thwaites, _France in America, 1497-1763_ (1905), Vol. VII of the "American Nation" Series, is a clear and scholarly survey. For all concerning French Canada prior to the British conquest, the works of Francis Parkman occupy an almost unique position: they are well known for their attractive qualities, descriptive powers, and charm of style; on the whole, they are accurate, though occasionally Parkman seems to have misunderstood the Jesuit missionaries. The proper sequence of Parkman's writings is as follows: _Pioneers of France in the New World_ (1865), _The Jesuits in North America_ (1867), _La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West_ (1869), _The Old Regime in Canada_ (1874), _Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV_ (1877), _A Half Century of Conflict_, 2 vols. (1892), _Montcalm and Wolfe_, 2 vols. (1884), _The Conspiracy of Pontiac, and the Indian War after the Conquest of Canada_, 2 vols. (1851). Other useful studies: C. W. Colby, _Canadian Types of the Old Regime, 1608-1698_ (1908); G. M. Wrong, _The Fall of Canada: a Chapter in the History of the Seven Years' War_ (1914); Thomas Hughes, S.J., _History of the Society of Jesus in North America_, Vols. I, II (1907-1908), the authoritative work of a learned Jesuit; T. J. Campbell, S.J., _Pioneer Priests of North America, 1642- 1710_, 3 vols. (1911-1914); William Kingsford, _History of Canada_, 10 vols. (1887-1897), elaborate, moderately English in point of view, and covering the years from 1608 to 1841; F. X. Garneau, _Histoire du Canada_, 5th ed. of the famous work of a French Canadian, revised by his grandson Hector Garneau, Vol. I to 1713 (1913).

INDIA IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. A monumental _History of India_ in 6 bulky volumes is now (1916) in preparation by the Cambridge University Press on the model of the "Cambridge Modern History." Of brief accounts, the best are: A. C. Lyall, _The Rise and Expansion of British Dominion in India_, 5th ed. (1910); A. D.

Innes, _A Short History of the British in India_ (1902); and G. B.

Malleson, _History of the French in India, 1674-1761_, 2d ed.

reissued (1909). See also the English biography of _Dupleix_ by G.

B. Malleson (1895) and the French lives by Tibulle Hamont (1881) and Eugene Guenin (1908). An excellent brief biography of _Clive_ is that of G. B. Malleson (1895). Robert Orme (1728-1801), _History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan from 1745_ [to 1761], 2 vols. in 3, is an almost contemporaneous account by an agent of the English East India Company who had access to the company's records, and Beckles Willson, _Ledger and Sword_, 2 vols. (1903), deals with the economic and political policies of the English East India Company. For history of the natives during the period, see Sir H. M. Elliot, _History of India, as told by its own Historians: the Muhammadan Period_, 8 vols. (1867-1877); and J. G.

Duff, _History of the Mahrattas_, new ed., 3 vols. (1913).

WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. Of the character of the Elder Pitt, such an important factor in the British triumph over France, many different estimates have been made by historians. The two great biographies of the English statesman are those of Basil Williams, 2 vols. (1913), very favorable to Pitt, and Albert von Ruville, Eng. trans., 3 vols. (1907), hostile to Pitt. See also Lord Rosebery, _Lord Chatham, His Early Life and Connections_ (1910); D. A. Winstanley, _Lord Chatham and the Whig Opposition_ (1912); and the famous essay on Pitt by Lord Macaulay.