Part 32 (1/2)
[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]