Chapter 28

THE WORLD CONFLICT OF FRANCE AND GREAT BRITAIN

FRENCH AND ENGLISH COLONIES IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

In the sixteenth century, while Spain and Portugal were carving out vast empires beyond the seas, the sovereigns of France and England, distracted by religious dissensions or absorbed in European politics, did little more than to send out a few privateers and explorers. But in the seventeenth century the England of the Stuarts and the France of the Bourbons found in colonies a refuge for their discontented or venturesome subjects, a source of profit for their merchants, a field for the exercise of religious zeal, or gratification for national pride. Everywhere were commerce and colonization growing apace, and especially were they beginning to play a large part in the national life of England and of France. We have already noticed how the Dutch, themselves the despoilers of Portugal [Footnote: See above, pp. 58f] in the first half of the seventeenth century, were in turn attacked by the English in a series of commercial wars [Footnote: The Dutch Wars of 1652-1654, 1665-1667, and 1672-1674. See above pp. 59, 243, 278.] during the second half of the seventeenth century. By 1688 the period of active growth was past for the colonial empires of Holland, Portugal, and Spain; but England and France, beginning to realize the possibilities for power in North America, in India, and on the high seas, were just on the verge of a world conflict, which, after raging intermittently for more than a hundred years, was to leave Great Britain the "mistress of the seas."

[Sidenote: Relative Position of the Rivals in 1688. In North America]

Before plunging into the struggle itself, let us review the position of the two rivals in 1688: first, their claims and possessions in the New World and in the Old; secondly, their comparative resources and policies. It will be remembered that the voyage of John Cabot (1497) gave England a claim to the mainland of North America. The Tudors (1485-1603), however, could not occupy so vast a territory, nor were there any fences for the exclusion of intruders. Consequently the actual English settlements in North America, made wholly under the Stuarts, [Footnote: However much modern Englishmen may condemn the efforts of the Stuart sovereigns to establish political absolutism at home, they can well afford to praise these same royal Stuarts for contributing powerfully to the foundations of England's commercial and colonial greatness abroad.] were confined to Newfoundland, to a few fur depots in the region of Hudson Bay, and to a strip of coastland from Maine to South Carolina; while the French not only had sent Verrazano (1524), who explored the coast of North America, and Cartier (1534- 1536), who sailed up the St. Lawrence, but by virtue of voyages of discovery and exploration, especially that of La Salle (1682), laid claim to the whole interior of the Continent.

Of all the North American colonies, the most populous were those which later became the United States. In the year 1688 there were ten of these colonies. The oldest one, Virginia, had been settled in 1607 by the London Company under a charter from King James I. Plymouth, founded in 1620 by the Pilgrims (Separatists or Independents driven from England by the enforcement of religious conformity to the Anglican Church), was presently to be merged with the neighboring Puritan colony of Massachusetts. Near these first, New England settlements had grown up the colonies of Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire: Maine was then a part of Massachusetts. Just as New England was the Puritans' refuge, so Maryland, granted to Lord Baltimore in 1632, was a haven for the persecuted Roman Catholics. A large tract south of Virginia, known as Carolina, had been granted to eight nobles in 1663; but it was prospering so poorly that its proprietors were willing to sell it to the king in 1729 for a mere £50,000. The capture of the Dutch colony of New Netherland [Footnote: Rechristened New York. It included New Jersey also.] in 1664, and the settlement of Pennsylvania (1681) by William Penn and his fellow Quakers [Footnote: The Swedish colony on the Delaware was temporarily merged with Pennsylvania.] at last filled up the gap between the North and the South.

Numerous causes had contributed to the growth of the British colonies in America. Religious intolerance had driven Puritans to New England and Roman Catholics to Maryland; the success of the Puritan Revolution had sent Cavaliers to Virginia; thousands of others had come merely to acquire wealth or to escape starvation. And America seemed a place wherein to mend broken fortunes. Upon the estates (plantations) of southern gentlemen negro slaves toiled without pay in the tobacco fields. [Footnote: Subsequently, rice and cotton became important products of Southern agriculture.] New England was less fertile, but shrewd Yankees found wealth in fish, lumber, and trade. No wonder, then, that the colonies grew in wealth and in population until in 1688 there were nearly three hundred thousand English subjects in the New World.

The French settlers were far less numerous [Footnote: Probably not more than 20,000 Frenchmen were residing in the New World in 1688. By 1750 their number had increased perhaps to 60,000.] but more widespread. From their first posts in Acadia (1604) and Quebec (1608) they had pushed on up the St. Lawrence. Jesuit and other Roman Catholic missionaries had led the way from Montreal westward to Lake Superior and southward to the Ohio River. In 1682 the Sieur de La Salle, after paddling down the Mississippi, laid claim to the whole basin of that mighty stream, and named the region Louisiana in honor of Louis XIV of France. Nominally, at least, this territory was claimed by the English, for in most of the colonial charters emanating from the English crown in the seventeenth century were clauses which granted lands "from sea to sea"--that is, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The heart of "New France" remained on the St. Lawrence, but, despite English claims, French forts were commencing to mark the trails of French fur-traders down into the "Louisiana," and it was clear that whenever the English colonists should cross the Appalachian Mountains to the westward they would have to fight the French.

[Sidenote: In West Indies]

French and English were neighbors also in the West Indies. Martinique and Guadeloupe acknowledged French sovereignty, while Jamaica, Barbados, and the Bahamas were English.[Footnote: The following West Indies were also English: Nevis, Montserrat, Antigua, Honduras, St. Lucia, Virgin Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands. St. Kitts was divided between England and France; and the western part of Haiti, already visited by French buccaneers, was definitely annexed to France in 1697. The Bermudas, lying outside the "West Indies," were already English.] These holdings in the West Indies were valuable not only for their sugar plantations, but for their convenience as stations for trade with Mexico and South America.

[Sidenote: In Africa]

In Africa the French had made settlements in Madagascar, at Gorée, and at the mouth of the Senegal River, and the English had established themselves in Gambia and on the Gold Coast, but as yet the African posts were mere stations for trade in gold-dust,[Footnote: Gold coins are still often called "guineas" in England, from the fact that a good deal of gold used to come from the Guinea coast of Africa. ] ivory, wax, or slaves. The real struggle for Africa was not to come until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

[Sidenote: In India]

Of far greater importance was Asiatic India, which, unlike America or even Africa, offered a field favorable for commerce rather than for conquest or for colonization. For it happened that the fertility and extent of India--its area was half as large as that of Europe--were taxed to their uttermost to support a population of probably two hundred millions; and all, therefore, which Europeans desired was an opportunity to buy Indian products, such as cotton, indigo, Spices, dyes, drugs, silk, precious stones, and peculiar manufactures.

In the seventeenth century India was ruled by a dynasty of Mohammedan emperors called Moguls,[Footnote: So called because racially they were falsely supposed to be Mongols or Moguls.] who had entered the peninsula as conquerors in the previous century and had established a splendid court in the city of Delhi on a branch of the Ganges. The bulk of the people, however, maintained their ancient "Hindu" religion with their social ranks or "castes" and preserved their distinctive speech and customs. Over a country like India, broken up into many sections by physical features, climate, industries, and language, the Mohammedan conquerors,--the "Great Mogul" and his viceroys, called nawabs, [Footnote: More popularly "nabobs."]--found it impossible to establish more than a loose sovereignty, many of the native princes or "rajas" still being allowed to rule with considerable independence, and the millions of Hindus feeling little love or loyalty for their emperor. It was this fatal weakness of the Great Mogul which enabled the European traders, who in the seventeenth century besought his favor and protection, to set themselves up in the eighteenth as his masters.

It will be remembered that after the voyage of Vasco da Gama the Portuguese had monopolized the trade with India and the East until they had been attacked by the Dutch toward the close of the sixteenth century. This was the very time when the English were making their first voyages [Footnote: Actually the first English voyage to the East Indies was made between 1591 and 1594, almost a century after the first Portuguese voyage.] to the East and were taking advantage of their own war with Philip II to attack his Portuguese possessions. The first English trading stations were opened at Masulipatam (1611) and at Surat (1612). In the latter year and again in 1615 Portuguese fleets were defeated, and in 1622 the Portuguese were driven out of the important Persian city of Ormuz. By 1688 the English had acquired three important points in India, (1) Calcutta in the delta of the Ganges had been occupied in 1686, but it was yet uncertain whether the English could hold it against the will of the Mogul emperor. (2) At Madras, further south, Sir Francis Day had built Fort St. George (1640). (3) On the western coast, the trading station of Surat was now surpassed in value by Bombay, the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, a Portuguese princess, who had married King Charles II (1662).

The first French Company for Eastern trade had been formed only four years [Footnote: Charters to French companies had been granted in 1604 and in 1615. The _Compagnie des Indes_ was formed in 1642, and reconstructed in 1664.] after the English East India Company, but the first French factory in India--at Surat--was not established until 1668 and the French did not seriously compete with the English and Dutch in India until the close of the seventeenth century. However, their post at Chandarnagar (1672), in dangerous proximity to Calcutta, and their thriving station at Pondicherry (1674), within a hundred miles of Madras, augured ill for the future harmony of French and English in India.

[Sidenote: Comparative Resources of France and England]

From the foregoing brief review of the respective colonial possessions of Great Britain and France in the year 1688, it must now be clear that although France had entered the colonial competition tardily, she had succeeded remarkably well in becoming a formidable rival of the English. The great struggle for supremacy was to be decided, nevertheless, not by priority of settlement or validity of claim, but by the fighting power of the contestants. Strange as it may seem, France, a larger, more populous, and richer country than England, able then single-handed to keep the rest of Europe at bay, was to prove the weaker of the two in the struggle for world empire.

In the first place, England's maritime power was increasing more irresistibly than that of France. Although Richelieu (1624-1642) had recognized the need for a French navy and had given a great impetus to ship-building, France had become inextricably entangled in European politics, and the navy was half forgotten in the ambitious land wars of Louis XIV. The English, on the other hand, were predisposed to the sea by the very fact of their insularity, and since the days of the great Armada, their most patriotic boast had been of the deeds of mariners. In the commercial wars with Holland, the first great English admiral-- Robert Blake--had won glorious victories.

Then, too, the Navigation Acts (1651, 1660), by excluding foreign ships from trade between Great Britain and the colonies, may have lessened the volume of trade, but they resulted in undoubted prosperity for English shippers. English shipbuilders, encouraged by bounties, learned to build stronger and more powerful vessels than those of other nations. Whether capturing galleons on the "Spanish main" or defeating Portuguese fleets in the Far East, English pirates, slavers, and merchantmen were not to be encountered without fear or envy. English commerce and industry, springing up under the protection and encouragement of the Tudors, had given birth, as we have seen, to a middle class powerful enough to secure special rights and privileges through Parliament.

The French, on the other hand, labored under most serious commercial handicaps. Local tolls and internal customs-duties hindered traffic; and the medieval gild system had retained in France its power to hamper industry with absurd regulations. The long civil and religious wars, which called workmen from their benches and endangered the property and lives of merchants, had resulted in reducing French commerce to a shadow before 1600. Under Henry IV prosperity revived, but the growth of royal power made it impossible for the Huguenot merchants in France to achieve political power comparable with that which the Puritans won in England. Consequently the mercantile classes were quite unable to prevent Louis XIV from ruining his country by foreign war,--they could not vote themselves privileges and bounties as in England, nor could they declare war on commercial rivals. True, Colbert (1662-1683), the great "mercantilist" minister, did his best to encourage new industries, such as silk production, to make rules for the better conduct of old industries, and to lay taxes on such imported goods as might compete with home products, but French industry could not be made to thrive like that of England. It is often said that Colbert's careful regulations did much harm by stifling the spirit of free enterprise; but far more destructive were the wars and taxes [Footnote: In order to obtain money for his court, diplomacy, and wars, Louis XIV not only increased taxes but debased the coinage. Particularly unfortunate, economically, was the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), as a result of which some 50,000 of the most industrious and thrifty citizens of France fled to increase the industry of England, Holland, and Brandenburg (Prussia).] of the Grand Monarch. The only wonder is that France bore the drain of men and money so well.

The English, then, had a more promising navy and a more prosperous trade than the French, and were therefore able to gain control of the seas and to bear the expense of war.

[Sidenote: Comparative Colonial Policies of France and England]

In general colonial policy France seemed decidedly superior. Louis XIV had taken over the whole of "New France" as a royal province, and the French could present a united front against the divided and discordant English colonies. Under Colbert the number of French colonists in America increased 300 per cent in twenty years. Moreover the French, both in India and in America, were almost uniformly successful in gaining the friendship and trust of the natives, whereas, at least with most of the redmen, the English were constantly at war.

The English, however, had a great advantage in the number of colonists. The population of France, held in check by wars, did not naturally overflow to America; and the Huguenots, persecuted in the mother country, were not allowed to emigrate to New France, lest their presence might impede the missionary labors of the Jesuits among the Indians. [Footnote: The statement is frequently made that the "paternalism" or fatherly care with which Richelieu and Colbert made regulations for the colonies was responsible for the paucity of colonists and the discouragement of colonial industry. This, however, will be taken with considerable reservation when it is remembered that England attempted to prevent the growth of such industries in her colonies as might compete with those at home.] England was more fortunate in that her Puritan, Quaker, and Catholic exiles went to her colonies rather than to foreign lands. The English colonists, less under the direct protection of the mother country, learned to defend themselves against the Indians, and were better able to help the mother country against their common foe, the French.

Taken all in all, the situation was favorable to Great Britain. As long as French monarchs wasted the resources of France in Europe, they could scarcely hope to cope with the superior navy, the thriving commerce, and the more populous colonies, of their ancient enemies.

PRELIMINARY ENCOUNTERS, 1689-1748

[Sidenote: War of the League of Augsburg]

Colonial and commercial rivalry could hardly bring France and Great Britain to blows while the Stuart kings looked to Louis XIV for friendly aid in the erection of absolutism and the reinstatement of Catholicism in England.

The Revolution of 1689, which we have already discussed [Footnote: See above, pp. 286 ff.] in its political significance, was important in its bearing on foreign relations, for it placed on the English throne the arch-enemy of France, William III, whose chief concern was the protection of his ancestral possessions--the Dutch Netherlands--against the encroachments of Louis XIV. The support given by the latter to the pretensions of James II was a second cause of war. In an earlier chapter [Footnote: See above, pp. 247 ff.] we have seen how international relations in 1689 led to the juncture of England and Holland with the League of Augsburg, which included the emperor, the kings of Spain and Sweden, and the electors of Bavaria, Saxony, and the Palatinate; and how the resulting War of the League of Augsburg was waged in Europe from 1689 to 1697. It was during that struggle, it will be remembered, that King William finally defeated James II and the latter's French and Irish allies in the battle of the Boyne (1690). It was also during that struggle that the French navy, though successful against combined Dutch and English squadrons off Beachy Head (1690), was decisively beaten by the English in a three-day battle near La Hogue (1692).

[Sidenote: King William's War, 1689-1697]

The War of the League of Augsburg had its counterpart in the American "King William's War," of which two aspects should be noted. In the first place, the New England colonists aided in the capture (1690) of the French fortress of Port Royal in Acadia (Nova Scotia) and in an inconsequential attack on Quebec. In the second place, we must notice the role of the Indians. As early as 1670, Roger Williams, a famous New England preacher, had declared, "the French and Romish Jesuits, the firebrands of the world, for their godbelly sake, are kindling at our back in this country their hellish fires with all the natives of this country." The outbreak of King William's War was a signal for the kindling of fires more to be feared than those imagined by the good divine; the burning of Dover (N. H.), Schenectady (N. Y.), and Groton (Mass.) by the red allies of the French governor, Count Frontenac, earned the latter the lasting hatred of the "Yankees."

[Sidenote: Treaty of Ryswick, 1697]

The contest was interrupted rather than settled by the colorless treaty of Ryswick (1697), according to which Louis XIV promised not to question William's right to the English throne, and all colonial conquests, including Port Royal, were restored.

[Sidenote: War of the Spanish Succession]

Only five years later Europe was plunged into the long War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713). King William and the Habsburg emperor with other European princes formed a Grand Alliance to prevent Louis' grandson Philip from inheriting the Spanish crowns. For if France and Spain were united under the Bourbon family, their armies would overawe Europe; their united colonial empires would surround and perhaps engulf the British colonies; their combined navies might drive the British from the seas. Furthermore, the English were angered when Louis XIV, upon the death of James II (1701), openly recognized the Catholic son of the exiled royal Stuart as "James III," king of Great Britain.

[Sidenote: Queen Anne's War, 1702-1713]

While the duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene were winning great victories in Europe, [Footnote: See above, pp. 249 ff.] the British colonists in America were fighting "Queen Anne's War" against the French. Again the French sent Indians to destroy New England villages, and again the English retaliated by attacking Port Royal and Quebec. After withstanding two unsuccessful assaults, Port Royal fell in 1710 and left Acadia open to the British. In the following year a fleet of nine war vessels and sixty transports carried twelve thousand Britishers to attack Quebec, while an army of 2300 moved on Montreal by way of Lake Champlain; but both expeditions failed of their object.

On the high seas, as well as in America and in Europe, the British won fresh laurels. It was during Queen Anne's War that the British navy, sometimes with the valuable aid of the Dutch, played an important part in defeating the French fleet in the Mediterranean and driving French privateers from the sea, in besieging and capturing Gibraltar, in seizing a rich squadron of Spanish treasure ships near Cartagena, and in terrorizing the French West Indies.

[Sidenote: Treaty of Utrecht, 1713]

The main provisions of the treaty of Utrecht, which terminated this stage of the conflict, in so far as they affected the colonial of situation, [Footnote: For the European settlement, see above, pp. 253 f.] were as follows: (1) The French Bourbons, were allowed to become the reigning family in Spain, and though the proviso was inserted that the crowns of France and Spain should never be united, nevertheless so long as Bourbons reigned in both countries, the colonies of Spain and France might almost be regarded as one immense Bourbon empire. (2) Great Britain was confirmed in possession of Acadia, [Footnote: A dispute later arose whether, as the British claimed, "Acadia" included Cape Breton Island.] which was rechristened Nova Scotia, and France abandoned her claims to Hudson Bay, Newfoundland, and the island of St. Kitts in the West Indies. (3) Great Britain secured from Spain the cession of the island of Minorca and the rocky stronghold of Gibraltar --bulwarks of Mediterranean commerce. (4) Of more immediate value to Great Britain was the trade concession, called the Asiento, made by Spain (1713). Prior to the Asiento, the British had been forbidden to trade with the Spanish possessions in America, and the French had monopolized the sale of slaves to the Spanish colonies.

[Sidenote: The Asiento, 1713]

The Asiento, however, allowed Great Britain exclusive right to supply Spanish America with negro slaves, at the rate of 4800 a year, for thirty years. They were still forbidden to sell other commodities in the domains of the Spanish king, except that once a year one British ship of five hundred tons burden might visit Porto Bello on the Isthmus of Panama for purposes of general trade. For almost three decades after the peace of Utrecht, the smoldering colonial jealousies were not allowed to break forth into the flame of open war.

[Sidenote: The Interlude of Peace, 1713-1739]

During the interval, however, British ambitions were coming more and more obviously into conflict with the claims of Spain and France in America, and with those of France in India.

[Sidenote: French Aggressiveness in America]

In spite of her losses by the treaty of Utrecht, France still held the St. Lawrence River, with Cape Breton Island defending its mouth; her fishermen still had special privileges on the Newfoundland banks; her islands in the West Indies flourished under greater freedom of trade than that enjoyed by the English; and her pioneers were occupying the vast valley of the Mississippi. Moreover, in preparing for the next stage of the conflict, France displayed astonishing energy. Fort Louisburg was erected on Cape Breton Island to command the entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. A long series of fortifications was constructed to stake out and guarantee the French claims. From Crown Point on Lake Champlain, the line was carried westward by Fort Niagara, Fort Detroit, Sault Sainte Marie, on to Lake Winnipeg and even beyond; other forts commanded the Wabash and Illinois rivers, and followed the Mississippi down to the Gulf. [Footnote: By the year 1750 there were over sixty French forts between Montreal and New Orleans.] Settlements were made at Mobile (1702) and at New Orleans (1718), and British sailors were given to understand that the Mississippi was French property. The governors of British colonies had ample cause for alarm.

[Sidenote: French Aggressiveness in India: Dupleix]

In India, likewise, the French were too enterprising to be good neighbors. Under the leadership of a wonderfully able governor-general, Dupleix, who was appointed in 1741, they were prospering and were extending their influence in the effete empire of the Great Mogul. Dupleix exhibited a restless ambition; he began to interfere in native politics and to assume the pompous bearing, gorgeous apparel, and proud titles of a native prince. He conceived the idea of augmenting his slender garrisons of Europeans with "sepoys," or carefully drilled natives, and fortified his capital, Pondicherry, as if for war.

[Sidenote: Trade Disputes between Spain and Great Britain]

To the dangerous rivalry between British and French colonists and traders in America and in India, during the thirty years which followed the treaty of Utrecht, was added the continuous bickering which grew out of the Asiento concluded in 1713 between Great Britain and Spain. Spaniards complained of British smugglers and protested with justice that the British outrageously abused their special privilege by keeping the single stipulated vessel in the harbor of Porto Bello and refilling it at night from other ships. On the other hand, British merchants resented their general exclusion from Spanish markets and recited to willing listeners at home the tale of their grievances against the Spanish authorities. Of such tales the most notorious was that of a certain Captain Robert Jenkins, who with dramatic detail told how the bloody Spaniards had attacked his good ship, plundered it, and in the fray cut off one of his ears, and to prove his story he is said to have produced a box containing what purported to be the ear in question. In the face of the popular excitement aroused in England by this and similar incidents, Sir Robert Walpole, the peace-loving prime minister, was unable to restrain his fellow-countrymen from declaring war against Spain.

[Sidenote: The "War of Jenkins's Ear," 1739]

It was in 1739 that the commercial and colonial warfare was thus resumed,--on this occasion involving at the outset only Spain and Great Britain,--in a curious struggle commonly referred to as the War of Jenkins's Ear. A British fleet captured Porto Bello, but failed to take Cartagena. In North America the war was carried on fruitlessly by James Oglethorpe, who had recently (1733) founded the English colony of "Georgia" [Footnote: So named in honor of the then reigning King George II (1727-1760)] to the south of the Carolinas, in territory claimed by the Spanish colony of Florida.

[Sidenote: War of the Austrian Succession. King George's War, 1744- 1748]

The War of Jenkins's Ear proved but an introduction to the resumption of hostilities on a large scale between France and Great Britain. In a later chapter [Footnote: See below, pp. 354 ff.] it is explained how in 1740 the War of the Austrian Succession broke out on the continent of Europe--a war stubbornly fought for eight years, and a war in which Great Britain entered the lists for Maria Theresa of Austria against France and Prussia and other states. And the European conflict was naturally reflected in "King George's War" (1744-1748) in America, and in simultaneous hostilities in India.

The only remarkable incident of King George's War was the capture of Louisburg (1745) by Colonel William Pepperell of New Hampshire with a force of British colonists, who were sorely disappointed when, in 1748, the captured fortress was returned to France by the treaty of Aix-la- Chapelle. The war in India was similarly indecisive. In 1746 a French squadron easily captured the British post at Madras; other British posts were attacked, and Dupleix defeated the nawab of the Carnatic, who would have punished him for violating Indian peace and neutrality.

[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 crushing 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 Bœuf (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 Washington by name, arrived on the scene with four hundred men, too late to reënforce 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 shipped 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 titles, 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 establishing 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 assailants. With the aid of native and British reënforcements, 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 protégé. 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: Plassey] [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 Plassey, a few miles south of the city of Murshidabad, and there attacked Suraj, who, with an army of 68,000 native troops and with French artillerymen to work his fifty- three cannon, anticipated 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 sparsely 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 Gorée 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 constitute the United States, and gained Canada and an ascendancy in India--empires wider, richer, and more diverse than those of a Cæsar or an Alexander. Henceforth Great Britain was indisputably the preëminent 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 ships 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 reënter 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, Mahé, 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, "levées"; 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. Bassett, _A Short History of the United States_ (1914), ch. iii-vii; A. L. Cross, _History of England and Greater Britain_ (1914), ch. xxxvi-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; Émile Levasseur, _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 résumés; 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 Régime 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 Régime, 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 Eugène Guénin (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.