CHAPTER IX

THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR

It is likely that until the latter half of the eighteenth century the people of Europe did not even begin to realise the full meaning of the great New World which Columbus had discovered for them in the West. Spain regarded it as a Tom Tiddler's ground where she would go and pick up gold. France and possibly England too had their foolish dreams. They expected enormous things from that vast continent of which the western limits were only gradually revealed to them. They expected enormous results which never were, nor ever could be realised. But they had no idea whatever of the yet more enormous effect which the finding of the new continent really was to have on the story. All that was hidden from their eyes.

The settlement between the nations agreed at Aix-la-Chapelle was called a "Peace," but it was a settlement that left one of the States of Europe in a situation which did not promise that the peace would last long. That State was Prussia. We have seen her establishing herself and gaining strength. She had taken Silesia from Austria, and Austria had agreed to that loss in the terms of the peace, but yet longed for an opportunity to regain the loss. France and Spain were knit together in an alliance known as the Family Compact, because the rulers of both countries were of the Bourbon family. Austria, under Maria Theresa, joined {128} their family alliance, and brought in Saxony with her, for Saxony was no less jealous of the power of Prussia than Austria herself. Russia, under the Tsarina Elizabeth, was anxious about the growing strength of this Teutonic State on her border; and on her side she brought Sweden into the large conspiracy which had for its object the break up of the power of Prussia and a partition between the conspirators of the Prussian territories.

It was a conspiracy which came to the knowledge of Frederick, the Prussian king.

For many years the interests of England and of France had been in conflict both West and East, in America and in India. The opposition was approaching the point at which war must result from it. Now, in the European position just indicated, England saw the opportunity of getting a strong helper against France. She allied herself with Frederick, who had carried the States of Brunswick and of Hesse-Cassel with him; and together they declared war upon nearly all Europe. France, Austria, Spain, Russia, Sweden, and Saxony were against them.

It has the sound of a combination of overwhelming force as opposed to the English and the Prussian kings, even though the immense power of Russia was then only in its infancy. England was not likely to send very large armies to the Continent, and an English force of 50,000 retreated before the French and was disbanded very early in the war. But Frederick had a genius for the creation and organisation of armies, and had occupied it, during the eight years following the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in making the Prussian army the finest military machine which the modern world had seen.

[Sidenote: The Seven Years' War]

The war which ensued, known as the Seven Years' War from the time that it lasted, is most remarkable for its dramatic changes of fortune. Frederick began {129} by a victory in Saxony, yet more than once he was so heavily defeated that he almost gave up the fight in despair. It is said that he thought of suicide. England, when the elder Pitt was Prime Minister, gave assistance in form of large subsidies of money rather than large forces of men or arms, and without these subsidies Frederick must have given in. A mixed force of English and Hanoverians did indeed fight under the Duke of Brunswick and drove back the French from their attacks on Hanover in 1758 and again in 1759, but except for this last success everything went heavily against Frederick in the fourth year of the war. In the year following, contingents of Russian and Austrian armies were actually occupying Berlin when he fell upon the main Austrian force at Torgau on the Elbe. The victory that he there gained, over heavy odds, turned the tide of the fighting in his favour when it was at its lowest ebb.

Still the struggle continued, with Frederick and his war-weary troops chiefly on the defensive, exhausted. And to that exhaustion and to his encircling foes he would in all likelihood have been compelled to own defeat, had it not been for the death at the beginning of 1762 of one of his chief enemies, the Tsarina of Russia, and the accession of a Tsar who was his friend. Russia, from a foe became an ally and carried Sweden with her. England, however, had become tired of the war and made alliance with France and Spain by the Peace of Paris in 1763, and in the same year the protagonists, or chief fighters, Prussia and Austria, themselves came to terms. Prussia retained Silesia. The final result of the seven years' fighting, with these singular alternations of victories and defeats, was to leave the map of Europe practically unchanged. From that point of view all the bloodshed had been for nothing.

From another, a larger and more just point of view, {130} however, we are obliged to realise that perhaps no other one war in the whole of the story has made more difference to its future course. If we consider its effect on the Continent alone, we must realise that it laid the foundation on which the union of the German States into a compact nation was later to be built. It established Prussia in far greater strength than before, because, if she had not added to her possessions, she had at least held her own while her enemies vainly dashed themselves against her. Austria had perforce to acquiesce at length in the loss of Silesia and also in the recognition of this strong State of Northern Germany set up against her own strength in the south. Prussia was to prove the nucleus round and under which the unity of Germany should be built, and it was this war which set firm the foundations of that building.

And as to who was the master mason in that building we can have no doubt whatever.

We have come across many men in course of this Greatest Story to whom the title of Great has been given, but surely to none more rightly than to this great King of Prussia. His courage in the hour of defeat has been indicated by the above very brief sketch of the war. It was only by the most steadfast courage combined with rare military genius that he came out of that seven years' fighting unshattered. But his genius served his country in peaceful as well as warlike interests. He was an absolute despot, yet he used himself and his despotic power entirely for his country's good. He set the example, in his own court, of a rigid, a scraping economy. He did all in his power to develop the industries of the country, by road making, by improved means of transport, and by every possible expedient. He encouraged education and brought men of letters like Voltaire to the Prussian court. He was rough and passionate, but a very hard worker, and {131} all his work was given to the strengthening and enlightening of his subjects.

Taken from this point of view, then, the Seven Years' War is seen to have had a very great effect on our story.

But let us regard it also in its effects on the far larger stage upon which the story is being enacted, now that the Old East and the New West have begun to form part of it.

[Sidenote: The War overseas]

In the very same year, 1757, that Frederick gained two of his most effective victories, those of Rosbach and of Leuthen, in the first of which he broke up the French armies and in the second the armies of Austria, England was gaining success no less important against France far overseas. We have spoken of the East India Company of merchants settled as traders in various places along the coasts of India. It was thus, establishing stations on the coast, that the Portuguese, first, had come; and so too the French and English after them. Already, before the Seven Years' War, we have also noticed sundry clashes of arms between the English and the French, in which the advantage had gone heavily against the former. Both nations were obliged to keep a certain force of troops under arms for their protection in a country where the friendship of the natives was uncertain. The natives were of various races; the land was divided between many rulers of different States; and there was the one outstanding division of religion between Hindus and Mahommedans.

It may seem a strange thing to say, but really it was the French ambition to found a French Empire in India which led to the foundation of the British Empire. Under their able and ambitious leader, Dupleix, the French began to push inland from their coastal stations and forcibly to claim authority in some of the native States. It was, of course, an authority {132} which they exercised in favour of their own people and against the English traders. When the Seven Years' War broke out, English and French in India as elsewhere were declared and open enemies. It was at this very moment that the Nawab, the native ruler, of Bengal, began to quarrel with the English. Naturally he was supported by the French. At first things went badly for the English in some fighting which led to no decisive result, but in the following year--the year of Rosbach and of Leuthen--the British, under Clive, gained a victory of the greatest importance over the troops of the Nawab, supported by the French, at Plassey.

It seems to have been quite a revelation to the natives that the British were able to fight at all, and from this time forward their prestige was established in the East, The battle which mainly decided the issue, as between English and French, was not fought until three years later, for at Plassey there had been only a few French supporting the native forces. But at Wandewash, in 1760, the battle was between British and French almost wholly, and its result was a decisive British victory. From that time forward Britain was always regarded as the principal European power in India and on all the eastern sea-coasts.

That was the mark made in the East on this greatest of all stories by the Seven Years' War.

Its mark was planted no less deeply on the western side. Montreal and Quebec were French towns at the beginning of the war. Moreover, Montcalm, the French governor, had established the authority of the French, supported by a chain of forts, right away west as far as the Mississippi. Take out the atlas, and, remembering that the French possession of Louisiana at that time stretched right up from New Orleans at the Mississippi's mouth to the Great Lakes, you will realise what this meant to the British people in America. {133} It meant that they were completely hemmed in and shut off from all access to the West.

[Sidenote: Canada gained by England]

Pitt seems to have realised it. He sent out a strong force, which was ably helped by the militia called up from the British who were settled in America. Montcalm appears to have shown much genius for friendship with the Indians, and he had many of their tribes to aid his French forces. But the British gained post after post, and the crowning victory was won by Wolfe in 1759 on the Plains of Abraham, which dominate Quebec. Canada was won for Great Britain. The way to the almost boundless West was opened to men of British race. France's dream of Western empire was broken as completely as her dream of empire in the East. Florida, moreover, became British under the terms of the Peace of Paris, being assigned to Great Britain in return for Cuba and the Philippine Islands which had been taken from the Spaniards during the war.

1760, the year of the Wandewash battle in India, saw two great battles in Europe, one on land, at Minden, and one on sea, in Quiberon Bay, in both of which the French were heavily beaten. They happened at a moment when Frederick's fortunes were at low ebb, and were sorely needed. In the land battles the French were broken by a charge of the English line which seems to have been delivered contrary to all then recognised rules of war. At sea the French fleet was practically destroyed by the English under Admiral Hawke just when it was actually preparing for an invasion of England.

And the rewards of these conquests, both East and West, were confirmed to Britain by that Peace of Paris which terminated the Seven Years' War.

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