A School History of England/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X
WILLIAM III TO GEORGE II, 1688–1760, THE GROWTH OF EMPIRE
‘Brown Bess.’
Brown Bess was a partner whom none could despise—
An out-spoken, flinty-lipped, brazen-faced jade,
With a habit of looking men straight in the eyes—
At Blenheim and Ramillies fops would confess
They were pierced to the heart by the charms of Brown Bess.
Yet her actions were winning, her language was clear;
And everyone bowed as she opened the ball
On the arm of some high-gaitered, grim grenadier.
Half Europe admitted the striking success
Of the dances and routs that were given by Brown Bess.
And people wore pigtails instead of perukes
Brown Bess never altered her iron-grey locks,
She knew she was valued for more than her looks.
‘Oh, powder and patches was always my dress,
And I think I am killing enough,’ said Brown Bess.
From the heights of Quebec to the plains of Assaye,
From Gibraltar to Acre, Cape Town and Madrid,
And nothing about her was changed on the way;
(But most of the Empire which now we possess
Was won through those years by old-fashioned Brown Bess.)
From the Portugal coast to the cork-woods of Spain
She had puzzled some excellent Marshals of France
Till none of them wanted to meet her again:
But later, near Brussels, Napoleon, no less,
Arranged for a Waterloo ball with Brown Bess.
,_p.178.jpg)
She danced on till dusk of more terrible night,
And before her linked squares his battalions gave way
And her long fierce quadrilles put his lancers to flight.
And when his gilt carriage drove off in the press,
‘I have danced my last dance for the world!’ said Brown Bess.
Where old weapons are shown with their names writ beneath,
You will find her, upstanding, her back to the wall,
As stiff as a ramrod, the flint in her teeth.
And if ever we English have reason to bless
Any arm save our mothers, that arm is Brown Bess!
Reign of William III and Mary Il, 1689–94, of William III alone, 1694–1702.The Bill of Rights had said that ‘to keep an Army in time of peace was against Law’. Only the fact that England was at war for very long periods during the next hundred years saved the Army from being abolished; and at every interval of peace it was reduced far too much for the safety of the country. In 1689 war with France was certain, for, as I told you, William had come to England mainly to induce England to help Holland and other countries whom France was threatening. Also the French King at once took up the cause of James.
James seeks Catholic help in Ireland.James went to Ireland and called on the Catholic Irish to help him; French troops and money were sent after him. Ireland had now some real wrongs to avenge, for Cromwell's conquest had been cruel, and many old Irish families had lost their lands, to make room for English settlers; these Catholics, therefore, gave James a good army, with which, early in 1689, he advanced to try and subdue the most Protestant of the Irish Provinces, Ulster. Siege of Londonderry, 1689.But he failed to take the city of Londonderry, which held out against a most awful siege for three months and more. It was not till a year after this that William was able to muster enough English and Dutch troops to begin the reconquest of Ireland. Battle of the Boyne, 1690.He smashed James to pieces at the battle of the Boyne, and drove him once more into exile in 1690; a year later the war ended with the surrender of Limerick, which the Catholics had defended as bravely as the Protestants had defended Londonderry. Ireland was at last completely conquered.
Cruel laws against Irish Catholics, 1692–1710.William wanted to give, and promised to give, the defeated Irish Catholics peace and protection; but the English Parliament intended that those who provoked the war should pay the expenses of the war. A vast number of estates were therefore again taken from the Catholics and given to the Protestants, and a fresh set of grievances began for Ireland. Harsh laws were also passed in this and the next reign, both in the English and Irish Parliaments, with the intention of stamping out the Catholic religion altogether. The laws never enforced.They were hardly ever put in force, for the whole Irish people, Catholic and Protestant alike, hated them; and men, after what they had gone through, only wished to live at peace with their neighbours. Laws against Irish trade.Harsh laws were also passed and had been passed since 1660 In the English Parliament against Irish trade; for the jealous English merchants feared that Irishmen would make woollen goods, or grow fat bacon, beef or butter cheaper than England could do. These laws were put in force; and their result in the long run was to make Ireland ripe for rebellion.
Laws against Scottish trade.The same jealousy was displayed towards Scotland, which was just beginning to have a few small manufactures of its own, and which certainly grew excellent and cheap beef and mutton. Then, too, there was a large party which had clung to King James or was ready to rise for him, especially in the wild Highlands, north of the Forth and Clyde. The South and East of Scotland had accepted the Revolution of 1688, and the Presbyterian Church had again been established. The risings for King James were put down, though not without tough fighting. But, when Scotland asked to be allowed a share in the trade with our colonies, the English Parliament answered with a contemptuous ‘no’; and the result was that Scotland growled and growled more and more throughout the reign of William. The Union with Scotland, 1707.But in the next reign, after long and fierce debates, the old Scottish Parliament was induced to vote for a union with the English (1707); and henceforward there was one united Parliament of Great Britain, and trade was perfectly free between the two nations. Then began the great commercial prosperity of Modern Scotland. Within fifty years Glasgow had got an enormous share of the trade with the British colonies and India, and one of the most interesting tales of town history is the story how the grave merchants of Glasgow got together and set to work to deepen the river Clyde so as to make it carry the trade which they knew would come. The first Glasgow ship for tobacco sailed to America ten years after the union, and began what is still one of Glasgow's greatest industries.
Willam III paid far too little attention to these questions of Ireland and Scotland, but his excuse was that The war with France, 1689–97.he and his Dutch and German allies were engaged in a desperate struggle to save Flanders and the line of the river Rhine from King Louis of France. With great difficulty could he squeeze out of the English Parliament men and money for these wars. None of the English statesmen, Whigs or Tories, really liked the war, and the Tories in particular began to dislike the Revolution which they had helped to make. But wherever the English regiments fought they covered themselves with glory, especially at Steinkirk, 1692, and Landen, 1693, though they were defeated in both battles. Jealousy against the army in England.William was a fierce and dogged fighter, but he was not a first-rate general, and France still had the best of it when a sort of truce was concluded in 1697. Parliament, in which the Tories then had the upper hand, at once reduced the army to 7,000 men.
This was most foolish, as every one knew that old King Louis XIV was only preparing for a fresh war in order to put his own grandson on the throne of Spain, which fell vacant in 1700. The Austrians also claimed the Spanish crown, and it was the plain duty of England to help them. Many Englishmen, however, said, ‘No, let them fight it out. What does it matter to England?’ ‘This is what comes of your foreign king,’ and so on. William, foreigner as he was, knew better. The growing power of France threatened every nation in Europe. The time had gone by when England could afford to stand aside from the quarrels of her neighbours.
Death of James II in exile; a new war with France, 1702–13.William might, however, have failed altogether to convince Englishmen of this if Louis had not made one great mistake. Old King James II died in 1701, and Louis at once recognized his son (the same Prince of Wales who was born in 1688) as ‘James III’. This was the same as dictating to Englishmen who should be their King; and the whole nation voted for war at once. William would have led it to battle as bravely as ever but for his death in 1702. His good wife, Mary, had died childless seven years before, and her sister Anne now became Queen. Question of the succession again.But Anne, too, was now childless, and so, to find an heir of the old royal blood who was also a Protestant, England would have to go back a long way, in fact to the descendants of James I. James I’s daughter, Elizabeth, had married a German prince, and that Elizabeth's youngest child, Sophia of Hanover, a very old lady, was the best Protestant heir. She had already a son and a grandson, who were one day to be King George I and King George Il. No one liked the prospect of a petty German prince as our King; but most people thought anything was better than a Papist, and unfortunately our lawful King, James III, remained a Papist all his days. He could have bought his throne at any moment by turning Protestant, but he was far too honourable to do that.
Parliament becomes all-powerful.Before we leave King William we must notice an important change which took place during his reign, a change which really transferred the sovereignty of the country from King to Parliament. Taxes.To previous kings Parliament had usually voted, at the beginning of the reign, a certain sum of money to be paid each year out of taxes, which sum, they thought, should be enough to pay all the expenses of governing and defending the country. It never was enough, and extra money had always to be voted for wars. Now, however, William's Parliament voted him only a small sum for his life—enough for himself and his Court ‘to live on’; but the expenses of governing and defending the country, paying the Army and Navy and Civil Service, they only voted from year to year. So since his time the Kings have always been obliged to call a Parliament every year whether they wanted to or not—or else to leave army and navy without pay.
Loans and the National Debt.Further, as William's wars cost a great deal of money, and as Parliament shrank from laying on the heavy the taxes which were necessary to pay for them, it allowed the Crown to borrow money from any one who would lend it at interest. The interest had to be paid yearly till the loan was repaid. Few such loans ever were repaid, and so a perpetual debt was created called the ‘National Debt’, which has now increased to an enormous amount. But people are always glad to lend money to the Crown, because they know they will get the interest on it paid quite punctually. As long as we pay the interest on this National Debt we are still paying for some of King Willam’s wars and for those of all later sovereigns; but we need not grumble, because, if these great wars had not been fought, there would have been no British Colonies or Empire, and probably no independent Great Britain; our country would have been a province of France. So let King William sleep in peace.
Anne, 1702–14; her character.Queen Anne’s wars were going to be very successful indeed, though they continued till the last year of her reign. She herself was almost the stupidest woman in her dominions; but she was a good and kindly soul, devoted to the Church of England, and had generally the sense to leave affairs of State to her ministers. She called herself a Tory, and her ministers called themselves Tories; but they were going to fight a ‘Whig war’. By this I mean a war to maintain the Protestant Kings in England, and to increase the trade and Empire of England. The Duke of Marlborough.And so they really had to act as Whigs. The hero of that war was John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, the greatest soldier England ever produced. He was not only great in planning a Campaign and in fighting a battle, but also in his care for his soldiers, their food, their clothing, their comfort and their pay. Also he was very clever at keeping the allies of Great Britain united. These allies—Dutch, Austrians and Germans, were very difficult to manage; for each thought mainly of their own interests, and quarrelled with the others continually. The War of the Spanish Succession, 1702–15.But Marlborough thought of only one thing—how to beat the French, and very handsomely did he beat them. Battles of Blenheim, &c.At Blenheim, 1704, Ramillies, 1706, Oudenarde, 1708, Malplaquet, 1709, he won victories as complete as those of Edward III and Henry V. And our redcoats were foremost in all these battles and won immortal glory. By 1710 we had swept the French out of Germany and Flanders, and were well on the road to Paris. Our navy had been equally successful; The war in the Colonies.we had beaten a great French fleet off Malaga in Spain, and had taken Gibraltar and the Isle of Minorca. In America our colonists, with little aid from home, had begun to bite away the frontier of the French colony of Canada. All looked like ending in a Treaty of Peace of great glory for Great Britain.
Parties in Parliament.But in Great Britain itself things were not going so well. ‘Politics’ had now become a sort of unpleasant cheating game, between a lot of great families of the nobility, Whigs on one side, Tories on the other. Each party strove to control the House of Commons by getting its own friends elected to it, and thus to get itself into office. The Tories, who were also the ‘High Church’ men, hated, or pretended to hate, the war and the Duke of Marlborough. They said, ‘It is a Whig war, a war for the interests of the merchants, many of them Dissenters too, the brutes! It is a war for foreigners. It is all the fault of those who made that wicked Revolution of 1688 and turned out our natural King. Anne, of course, is a native, but who is to come after her?—a disgusting, fat German!’
Moreover, the war was expensive, and, whatever ministers may pretend, no one likes paying taxes. Tories in power, 1710.So these men got the ear of the electors, and a Tory Parliament came in determined to end the war at any price. The Peace of Utrecht, 1713.The Duke of Marlborough was accused of prolonging it for his own reasons, and being bribed by foreigners to do so. Of course this was ridiculous nonsense, but he was dismissed from the command, and in 1713 peace with France was concluded at the Treaty of Utrecht and Great Britain openly deserted her allies.
The British Empire.Yet so great had been our victories that this Treaty of Utrecht could not fail to be of great advantage to us. It was, in the eyes of all Europe, the foundation of the British Empire. It was like a notice-board:—
THERE IS A BRITISH EMPIRE:
FOREIGNERS
PLEASE TAKE NOTICE AND KEEP OFF IT.
For we kept not only Gibraltar and Minorca, which were the beginnings of the power of our fleet in the Mediterranean, but also Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, which had been the outworks of French Canada. Also we secured certain definite rights to trade with the Spanish colonies in South America. It was on trade the Empire was founded, and by trade it must be maintained. But, remember, a great trade needs a great defence by a great fleet and a great army. One gets nothing for nothing in this world.
France and Spain.Yet old King Louis XIV had won his point; his grandson kept the throne of Spain, to prevent which we had originally begun to fight. He did, indeed, give up ,_p.187.jpg)
Emery Walker sc.
The Succession Question in 1714.In Anne's last years, the question again came up—who was to succeed her? The Tories, who were in power, were almost inclined to say James III, in spite of his being a Papist. But ‘almost’ is not ‘quite’; and while the Tories talked the Whigs were ready to act, and, on Anne's death in 1714, A German king; George I, 1714–27.George I became King. A Scottish rising on behalf of James in 1715 was put down with some difficulty; and the result was, that both English and Scottish Tories remained sore and disloyal for many years, always with half an eye to the ‘King over the water’.
The Whigs all-powerful.The Whigs, however, got their King, a dull, honest, heavy fellow, and they allowed him no power whatever. All the offices of State were divided among a few great Whig families. George cared nothing for England, only for his native Hanover. The Churchmen growled, the country gentlemen growled; but the Dissenters and merchants rejoiced, and made haste to become very rich. Small influence of the German kings.Ordinary quiet persons agreed to accept King George, but without enthusiasm. Affection for King and Crown entirely died away until it was revived by the wonderful goodness and high spirit of the great Queen Victoria.
There is practically nothing to record of the reign of George I. The only important law passed was one The ‘Septennial Act,’ 1716.which said there shall be a new parliament every seven years, instead of every three years. Abroad there is nothing interesting either. France, which had been very hard hit by the war, only wanted peace. The new King of Spain occasionally growled at our holding Gibraltar, and twice tried to take it from us; which was unlucky for him, as we blew his fleet into the air.
George ll, 1727–60; his character.George I died in 1727, and the first few years of the reign of his son, George Il, were almost as quiet as the late reign had been. The new King was a shrewd, short, red-faced person, with great goggle-eyes. He cared as little for England and as much for Hanover as his father; but he had fought bravely in Marlborough's wars when he was young, and was always longing to fight somebody. He at least knew how to swear in English, and he was rather too fond of swearing. Sir Robert Walpole, Prime Minister, 1721–42; his neglect of army and navy.His Prime Minister, till 1742, was Sir Robert Walpole, who had ruled his father since 1721. This man, though he shockingly neglected the army and the navy, managed money matters remarkably well; and the result was that our trade increased enormously.
But the price of his neglect of the fighting services had soon to be paid. France, when she had recovered from Marlborough's wars, made a close alliance with Spain, and in 1737 Spain began to attack our trade in America. War with Spain, 1739, and France, 1740.Sorely against his will, Walpole had to declare war on Spain to defend that trade. France came to Spain's assistance and the war then grew much more serious. It was in fact a struggle for power and empire both in America and India and lasted for eight or nine years; and, as our old Austrian and Dutch allies were also attacked by France, we had to send soldiers to Germany and Flanders as well, though we could ill spare them, for it was quite possible that our own island might be invaded. We hire German soldiers.Unfortunately, we could hire, with our abundant British guineas, Dutch and German troops to fight our battles for us. I cannot imagine a worse plan than this for any country, but it remained a regular British habit down to our grandfathers’ days; and it still further increased the unwillingness of our own people to serve in their own army.
Party squabbles.Walpole was dreadfully badgered in Parliament over the badness of this plan, and over many other things; not so much by the few remaining Tory members as by those Whigs who were not actually in office, but wanted to get into office. And when they did come in, they had no better plans to propose. Walpole resigned in 1742, and his successor, Carteret, a far greater man than Walpole, was badgered almost worse, until he too resigned in 1744. Battles of Dettingen, 1743, and Fontenoy, 1745.Meanwhile King George himself had led British troops to a great victory at Dettingen in Germany, and his second son, the Duke of Cumberland, led them to a defeat almost as glorious at Fontenoy in Flanders, 1745. The French King had been seriously thinking of an invasion of Britain on behalf of the exiled King James Ill. But the French were justly afraid of risking their ships against the British Navy; Prince Charles Edward in Scotland.and so Prince Charles Edward, son of James III, resolved to strike for himself even without French help. He landed, with seven followers only, in the Western Highlands of Scotland in the summer of 1745.
Rising of the Scottish Highlanders for the exiled Stuart King, 1745.He called upon the well-known loyalty of the Highlanders to his family; they answered him as only Highlanders can. Without guns or cavalry, five or six thousand of these men made themselves masters of all Scotland. They could march two miles for every one that the heavily-laden English soldiers could march; and of course there were far too few of these regular soldiers in Great Britain. When the Highlanders met them, they would fire one volley from their muskets, throw them down, and charge with the ‘claymore’, the terrible Highland sword. The English soldiers, of whom, indeed, the best regiments were abroad when the rising began, seemed on this occasion to have forgotten all Marlborough’s lessons; their generals were old, slow men; and the rank and file were terrified by the ferocious Highland charges. So Charles was able, in the winter of 1745, with never more than six thousand men, to advance into England as far as Derby. The few great Tory families in England, who were supposed to favour the cause of King James Ill, ought now to have come forward and helped his son; but they did nothing. There was, indeed, a real panic in London; and, if no one rose for King James, very few people seemed anxious to fight for King George. If Charles had gone on then, he might have taken London, but he was persuaded to turn back from Derby, and, in the following spring, Battle of Culloden, 1746.was defeated by Cumberland at Culloden in Inverness-shire. That was the end of the Stuart cause in Britain. Cumberland swept the Highlands with fire and sword; and though he failed to catch Prince Charles, who, after five months’ wandering, escaped to France, he prevented any further outbreak. Fierce vengeance was taken on the gentlemen who had risen, and there were many cruel executions which might well have been spared.
The war of 1740–8 in America.The war with France had been fought in America and India as well as in Germany and Scotland. In the outlying parts of our Empire, there was hardly any peace between the rival colonists and traders, French and English, even though there might be peace in Europe. You must remember how vast were the spaces, how few the people, in the America of those days; how long, before the time of steamships and telegraphs, it took to get troops or even orders across the Atlantic. In bad weather two months was no uncommon time for a voyage from Bristol to New York; to Calcutta, six or seven months was quite usual. French Canada.The vast but empty French colony of Canada had not more than one-sixth of the population of the British colonies in North America, then thirteen in number; but it was much better governed, fortified and equipped for war. Our colonists were never united amongst themselves, and did not want to be. They were none too loyal to the Mother Country, while the French Canadians were thoroughly loyal to France. That is why, between 1740 and 1758, the French were able to press our people in America so hard. Their great object was to occupy the valleys of the great rivers of Ohio and Mississippi. These lay right behind our colonies; and if the French could have held them, the British colonists would have been prevented from expanding westwards, which was just what they were doing more and more every year.
The war in India, 1740–8.In India things were not quite so bad. France had an ‘East India Company’ like our own for trading with the native states, and the two Companies were natural rivals. Not far from our settlement of Madras lay the French settlement of Pondicherry; opposite to our Calcutta lay the French Chandernagore. Even when there was peace between France and England at home, the rival Companies out there used to send their few white soldiers to help some native prince, who happened to be at war with another native prince. They also took into their pay native Indians, whom we call Sepoys. They drilled and armed them with European weapons, and made them capital soldiers. An army of two or three hundred French or English soldiers, with perhaps two thousand sepoys, would beat any native army you liked to name, even if it were fifty thousand strong. In the war of 1740–8 the French did succeed in taking Madras; but, before that war was over, Major Stringer Lawrence and Robert Clive.Robert Clive turned the tide of victory again. Clive, who began life as a clerk, was the real founder of our Indian Empire. When peace was made in 1748 by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748.Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, Madras was restored to us.
In Europe nothing was settled by that peace; and in India and America there was hardly peace at all. We may cheerfully forget the dull and stupid Whig ministers who ruled England from 1744 to 1756, but in the latter year William Pitt took office. William Pitt in office, 1757–61.And in 1757 he became an all-powerful war minister, England was then in a very bad way.
Bad state of the country.The war had just begun again, and the late ministers had so obstinately refused to strengthen the army or navy, that the King was forced to hire six thousand Germans to defend the coast of Kent against an expected invasion! France had taken Minorca from us, and a very badly fitted out British fleet, under Admiral Byng, had failed to rescue it. The fault was the Ministers’ who had neglected the Navy, but the nation was angry with the Admiral, and, to save trouble to the Ministry, Byng was tried and shot on his own ship.
Pitt saves Great Britain.Pitt changed all this very quickly. He called upon the nation outside Parliament, upon Tory and Whig alike; and while he was War Minister, these evil party names seemed to have lost their meaning. The spirit of the nation, now united as it had never been since the days of Elizabeth, rose to his call. He terrified the quarrelsome House of Commons, until it voted him whatever he asked for in the way of men, money and ships; he put the militia for home defence on a new footing; he doubled the regular army, and enrolled whole regiments of those very Highlanders who, eleven or twelve years before, had been fighting against King George at home. He doubled the number of our ships of war. Our ally, Frederick of Prussia, 1756–62.As our old ally, Austria, had gone over to the French, Pitt made a warm friend of the new German power, the King of Prussia; and, instead of borrowing from Germany troops to defend Britain, he sent regiment after regiment of British troops to help Prussia in Germany against France and Austria.
The ‘Seven Years’ War’, 1756–63.The war that began in 1756 was called the ‘Seven Years’ War’. It was far more clearly a war for empire than any earlier one. ‘I will win America for us in Germany,’ was what Pitt said; and what he meant was that France, if thoroughly beaten in Germany, would be unable to spare troops to defend far-away Canada. But, being a thorough man, he also set about winning America in America itself. In America.He even persuaded the disloyal colonists to help us to fight their battles for them, and he paid them to do so. His huge and victorious fleet prevented the French from sending any help to Canada. That colony did, indeed, defend itself down to 1760 with true French gallantry. But when, by an amazing piece of daring, our General Wolfe took Quebec, the end was not far off. Winning of Canada, 1758–60.Three British armies, coming by different roads, gradually closed round the Canadian capital of Montreal, and in 1760 all was over, and North America was British from the Polar ice to Cape Florida; the one little French settlement on the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana, had lost all importance.
The French driven from India, 1757–60.In India there is a similar story of conquest to be told. There, the native princes had, on the whole, inclined to the French side. One of them—Surajah from Dowlah—took Calcutta in 1756, and allowed a number of English prisoners to be suffocated in a horrible dungeon called the ‘Black Hole’. Clive, with about two thousand Sepoys and Englishmen, came up from Madras to avenge this. He retook Calcutta, and won a victory, against odds of twenty-five to one, at Plassey in 1757. That victory extended the power of the East India Company far into Bengal. In the region of Madras our success was equally great; and in 1761 we took Pondicherry, and swept the French out of all India. All the native princes at once went over to our side.
The secret of sea power.What was it that gave us, a nation of less than eight millions of men, these amazing successes over a nation of at least twenty millions, more naturally warlike, quite as brave, and much cleverer than ourselves? It was mainly one thing, sea power. The nation that commands the sea by having the greatest number of ships and the best-trained sailors, will always beat its rivals in distant lands, simply because it commands the roads leading to those lands. If you look back to the beginnings of things you will see that it was Cromwell, it was Elizabeth, nay, it was Henry VIII and Henry VII, who, by their early and wise care for our Navy, won for us America and India. We might, and we usually did, neglect our Navy In time of peace; but in time of war, it had got a mysterious habit of doubling itself, and of discovering great fighting sailors. Battles of Quiberon and Lagos, 1759.In this war it had discovered three, Admiral Boscawen, who beat one great French fleet at Lagos, and Admiral Rodney, who played the same game in the West Indies. Perhaps the most daring of all was Sir Edward Hawke, who, as Mr. Newbolt sings, ‘came swooping from the West’ one wild November afternoon on to the French fleet off the rocky coast of Quiberon, and fought a night battle on a lee shore:—
Fiercely beat the storm wind, darkly fell the night,
But they took the foe for pilot and the cannons glare for light,
When Hawke came swooping from the West!
Death of George II, 1760. George III, 1760–1820.Meanwhile old King George Il had died in 1760; and his grandson, George Ill, aged twenty-two, had become king. And now, almost too late, the Spaniards came to the help of their French cousins. Pitt wanted to fly at them and smash them before they had time to declare war on us; but neither the new King nor the other ministers would agree to this; and Pitt, in a fit of anger, resigned his office. Resignation of Pitt, 1761. War with Spain, 1762.Yet even when Spain did declare war, at the opening of 1762, the spirit which Pitt had given to the fighting services carried all before it. We mopped up the remaining French West Indian Islands, and we took from the Spaniards their two richest colonies, Havana in the Isle of Cuba, and Manila in the far Eastern seas.
But when Pitt retired, the union of King, Ministers, Parliament and People, which had lasted for five out of the seven years of war, was at an end. George III resolved to put down Whigs.George III had his very valiant but obstinate mind set on only one thing, to raise the power of the Crown, and to get free from the government of the great Whig families. He meant to take as ministers whom he pleased. He knew that he could not keep such ministers in office if the House of Commons was always against them; and so he set himself to bribe the members of that House. He would distribute offices, pensions and favours to its members, until he had made a ‘Royal’ party, which should oppose the ‘Whig’ party. This Royal party would then vote with the ministers whom the King would choose. It took George nearly ten years to do this; but he had a good deal of success in the end. Popularity of George III; his character.And the nation outside Parliament felt some sympathy for him; for every one knew how these great Whig families had kept all the richest jobs of the Kingdom in their own hands. George was also very popular with the middle classes and the country gentlemen. In fact, he was a sort of Tory; and this new Royal party became a sort of new Tory party. George was at least a thorough Briton, brave, homely, dogged, and virtuous in his private life; but he was in such a hurry to carry out this political job, that he was quite ready to scuttle out of his glorious war, and desert his allies just as Anne's ministers had done in 1713.
Peace of Paris, 1763.Yet, like the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, the Treaty of Paris of 1763 could not fail to bring solid advantages to Great Britain. Though we gave back to Spain her rich colonies of Havana and Manila, and took from her only the useless American swamp, called Florida, we recovered Minorca. Though we gave back to France all her great and rich West Indian Islands, we retained several of the smaller ones; though we gave back to her her trading-stations in India, she had to promise never to fortify them again. And, finally, we kept our greatest conquest of all, Canada.