fraud that had been practised upon him, he fainted, and was carried home, to exhibit during the small remainder of his days, an impaired intellect, and to die a broken-hearted idiot. Exactly a year after the battle of Plassey, a Commission arrived at Bengal from London, remodelling the Presidency, and not including Clive in the nomination of officers. The news of the great victory had not reached the India House when this Commission started. The members of the Presidency at Bengal had the good sense to request Clive to take the government upon himself. By his exertions, and through his example, the French were gradually driven from every stronghold.

Frederick of Prussia had commenced his second campaign at the end of April. Four hundred and thirty thousand men were gathered together to crush the prince of a small German State, who had only a hundred and fifty thousand men in the field to encounter this overwhelming force. At the opening of this campaign the Austrian marshal, Browne, was encamped before Prague, in a position almost impregnable. Frederick marched from Saxony into Bohemia by four different mountain passes, and, on the 6th of May, he fought one of the most sanguinary battles on record. The conflict lasted eleven hours; the Prussians losing eighteen thousand men, and the Austrians twenty-four thousand. The king displayed that personal intrepidity which never failed him after his first battle of Molwitz. His victory was complete. Prague was then bombarded, and for three weeks did its unfortunate inhabitants endure the horrors of war, with more than its usual calamities. The city resolutely held out. A great division of the Austrian army under marshal Daun was advancing for its relief. On the 17th of June, Frederick fought the battle of Kolin, with an inadequate force; and he was defeated with the loss of thirteen thousand men. The siege of Prague was raised; and the Prussians hastily marched out of Bohemia.

Under this great reverse of their one ally, the English government turned its attention to naval enterprises. An expedition was sent out in September, under the command of sir Edward Hawke and sir John Mordaunt. Sixteen ships of the line and ten regiments of foot were destined for an attack on the great arsenal of Rochefort. The fortified island of Aix was attacked by captain Howe, who anchored his ship within fifty yards of the fort, and after an hour silenced the French batteries. General Conway took possession of the citadel. After a week spent in councils of war, Mordaunt and Hawke being at issue, it was agreed that the expedition should return home. Mordaunt was acquitted by a Court-Martial. Other evil tidings had travelled to England. The English and Hanoverian army commanded by the duke of Cumberland, was relied upon to prevent the French attacking Prussia. The news now came that the duke de Richelieu had compelled the duke of Cumberland, after a series of retreats, to leave Hanover to the mercy of the French; and, being pursued to Stade, he had agreed to a capitulation, known as the Convention of Closter-Seven; under which all his Hessians and Brunswickers were to be disbanded, and all his Hanoverians were to be sent into various cantonments. The duke was insulted by his father when he came home, and he resigned his post as commander-in-chief. The indignation of the English people was extreme. The public discontent was at its height when the intelligence arrived that

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lord Loudoun, having the command of a force of twelve thousand men, furnished by large reinforcements from home, had shrunk from attacking Louisbourg; and that admiral Holbourne, the naval commander, hesitated about imperilling his squadron of eighteen ships of the line in an attack upon the French squadron of nineteen ships of the line.

The king of Prussia, surrounded by dangers on every side, still maintained his unshaken constancy. The Russians were desolating his eastern provinces. Silesia was filled with Austrians. He was under the ban of the Empire, every German State being forbidden to give him aid. The prince de Soubise, with an army of forty thousand French, and twenty thousand troops of the Empire, was encamped near Mucheln. Frederick, with twenty thousand of his Prussians, marched to encounter this unequal force. Soubise was suddenly attacked, when he thought that the king was retreating. Never was victory more complete than in this short battle of Rosbach. The French and the imperial troops vied with each other in the swiftness of their flight. They left seven thousand prisoners, guns, colours, baggage. By forced marches, Frederick reached the neighbourhood of Breslau. Here prince Charles of Lorraine was at the head of an army of Austrians, exceeding sixty thousand men. They met at the village of Leuthen, near the woods of Lissa, on the 5th of December. The Austrians fought bravely; but the genius of the Prussian leader gave him a mighty victory.

The defeat of the French at Rosbach led the king of England to refuse to ratify the Convention of Closter-Seven. Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, a distinguished officer in the Prussian army, was recommended by Frederick to assume the command of the Hanoverian troops, who were thus forced to take part in the campaign of 1758. The Session of the English Parliament was opened on the 1st of December. A subsidy of £670,000 was voted to the king of Prussia with only one dissentient voice, with a present payment of £100,000 for the army in the Electorate. The votes for supplies amounted to ten millions. On the 1st of June, an armament sailed for St. Maloes. The fleet was commanded by lord Anson; the troops by the duke of Marlborough. At St. Maloes a landing was effected without opposition. A number of small vessels were burnt, and then the soldiers re-embarked. On the 8th of August, Cherbourg was taken without opposition; its forts and basin were destroyed, with its hundred and seventy iron guns. From Cherbourg, the same expedition proceeded to make another attempt upon St. Maloes. The place was found too strong for assault; and the English troops, who were in a wretched state of discipline, disgraced themselves by excesses as they wandered about in the district. A large French force came down upon them; and the rearguard of fifteen hundred men was cut off, and a thousand were killed or made prisoners. As a set-off against these misfortunes, the French were dispossessed of their settlements on the African coast. An expedition was sent against Fort Louis, on the Senegal river, which was taken without slaughter. Goree surrendered to a stronger armament, but not without many broadsides from our ships. There were greater conquests in America. Early in the Session, Pitt had hurled his thunderbolts against lord Loudoun. He now recalled him, and chose in his place men who would not shrink

from difficulties. General Amherst was dispatched to take the command of the troops, with colonel Wolfe as his second in seniority, with the rank of brigadier-general. Admiral Boscawen commanded the fleet of a hundred and fifty ships, bearing twelve thousand troops, which appeared off Louisbourg on the 2nd of June. The defences were very strong; and it was almost the end of July before Louisbourg capitulated, with nearly six thousand prisoners of war. The French fleet in the harbour was utterly destroyed. Pitt proposed to general Abercrombie to reduce the French forts on the borders of Lake George, and Lake Champlain. An attack upon Ticonderago, a strong fort, was repulsed by the marquis de Montcalm, an experienced French general, with a loss to the British regiments and the American militia of two thousand men killed and wounded. The American campaign was concluded by the surrender to the British of Fort Duquesne, the original cause of the war. Its name was changed to Pittsburg.

In this year, whilst prince Ferdinand kept the French in check, Frederick, on the 25th of August, fought the great battle of Zorndorf, near Frankforton-the-Oder, in which he defeated the Russians with a fearful slaughter. This was in August. In October, Frederick was surprised by the Austrians in his camp. His presence of mind saved his troops from complete destruction; but after fighting five hours he was obliged to abandon his tents, his baggage and his artillery. In the following April, prince Ferdinand, after having been defeated at Bergen, was obliged to retreat before the duke de Broglie, and the mareschal de Contades, who commanded a force very superior to the Hanoverians and English. Cassel, Munster, and Minden were in the possession of the French. On the 1st of August a small detachment of Ferdinand's army appeared before Minden. De Broglie marched out from his strong position to surround them; when the whole allied army was seen, drawn up in order of battle. De Contades then joined De Broglie, and the two, with their cavalry, made repeated attacks upon the solid English and Hanoverian infantry. Again and again they were driven back; and at length the French general commanded a retreat. The opportunity for the entire rout of the enemy was lost through the misconduct of lord George Sackville, who had the command of the cavalry. But in spite of Sackville, Minden was a British triumph. Other triumphs succeeded. The French were preparing for our invasion. Pitt sent admiral Rodney to destroy their gunboats in the port of Havre, which service was effectually accomplished. Brest was blockaded. Admiral Boscawen on the 17th of August defeated a French fleet in the bay of Lagos. Guadaloupe had capitulated to an English armament in May.

The plans of Mr. Pitt for the campaign in America were of a wide but comprehensive character. In the middle of July, a body of the American militia, and of Indians in amity with them, commenced the siege of Niagara. The fall of this strong fort was numbered amongst the triumphs of that year. In the same month, general Amherst, who had succeeded to the command held by Abercrombie, reduced the fortress of Ticonderago, the French retreating to another fort on lake Champlain. This place was also secured. But at the upper end of the lake the French had taken up a strong position. The English general had to build boats before he could

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attempt to dislodge them. When he embarked on Lake Champlain, he was driven back by storms; and then came the winter. Wolfe had returned home in ill-health in 1758. He was then in his thirty-third year. Pitt promoted him to the rank of Major-general, and gave him the command of an expedition to Quebec. This small army of eight thousand men, having accomplished the difficult passage of the St. Lawrence, landed on the isle of Orleans, opposite Quebec, on the 17th of July, 1759. The marquis de Montcalm commanded the French troops in Canada. Montcalm, Wolfe wrote, "has a numerous body of armed men, and the strongest country, perhaps, in the world to rest the defence of the town and colony upon." Wolfe attacked the entrenchments on the 31st of July, without success. The English generals then determined that a corps of about three thousand six hundred men should be conveyed up the St. Lawrence, several miles above Quebec, where they disembarked. At one o'clock in the morning of the 13th of September, the little band were crowded into boats, to float down the broad river, with the flowing tide. They landed at a little inlet about two miles above Quebec, and with the aid of boughs and stumps of trees the men climbed up to the Heights of Abraham, which form a continuation of the steep ridge of rocks on which the city is built. A French picquet fired and fled. The boats went back to bring another detachment. When the day broke a compact army stood on the high ground at the back of Quebec. Wolfe had disposed his little force with admirable judgment. The left wing was commanded by brigadiergeneral Townshend, whilst Wolfe was with the right wing, where the hottest work was expected. He had ordered his men not to fire till tho enemy came within forty yards. Montcalm was advancing with French and Canadian regiments intermingled, whilst his Indian allies were detached to outflank the British on their left. Montcalm's troops fired as they advanced, and Wolfe received a shot in his wrist. The volley of the British stopped the advance. Wolfe headed his grenadiers to the charge, when another shot struck him in a vital part. Still he issued his orders and pressed on. A third ball hit him in the breast. He fell, and was carried to the rear. The second in command, general Monckton, had also fallen. General Townshend completed the victory. The brave Montcalm was mortally wounded, and being carried into the city died the next day. Quebec capitulated on the 18th of September. On the 20th of November, Pitt moved that a public monument should be erected to the memory of general Wolfe.

Admiral Hawke having been driven by the equinoctial gales from his blockade of Brest, Conflans, the French admiral, came out with twentyone ships of the line and four frigates. Admiral Duff was off Quiberon Bay with his squadron; and Conflans hoped to attack him before Hawke could come to the rescue. But Hawke did return; and then Conflans hurried to the mouth of the Vilaine-fancying himself secure amidst the rocks and shoals on that shore. Hawke's pilot pointed out the danger of a sea-fight in such a perilous navigation. "Lay me alongside the French admiral," was Hawke's reply. The fight went on till night whilst a tempest was raging. When the morning came, two British ships were found to be stranded, but their crews were saved. Four of the French

fleet had been sunk, amongst which was the admiral's ship. Two had struck. The rest had fled up the Vilaine. This final victory put an end to all apprehensions of a descent upon England.

The year 1760 was not a year of excitement to the English people. The defence of the conquests of 1759 required no great exertions. There was little domestic agitation. Parliament had little more to do than to consider the supplies, for which enormous sums were voted. The reign of George II. came suddenly to an end on the 25th of October, the right ventricle of the old man's heart having burst.

CHAPTER XLV.

THE policy systematically acted upon from the day of George III.'s accession was, as set forth by Doddington, "to recover monarchy from the inveterate usurpation of oligarchy;" and, further, to get rid of the necessary result of that domination, which was expressed in the lamentation of George II. to his Chancellor, "Ministers are the king in this country." These conceptions could not be realised without difficulty and danger. In these early struggles of his reign, the character of the young prince, as his governor, lord Waldegrave, described him in his twenty-first year, comes out with tolerable clearness :-an intellect not deficient, but not highly cultivated-honesty without frankness-resolution, approaching to obstinacy-indolence, soon overcome by a strong will-violent prejudices, liable to mistake wrong for right-sullen anger-enduring animosity. Lord Waldegrave, in assigning this character to the prince, adds, "Though I have mentioned his good and bad qualities, without flattery, and without aggravation, allowances should still be made, on account of his youth, and his bad education." Walpole says, "His majesty had learned nothing but what a man who knew nothing could teach him." The ". knew nothing" was lord Bute, whose influence had succeeded to the authority of the princess-dowager and the nursery, and by whom, for some time after his accession to the throne, the young king suffered himself to be led. The earl of Bute, the Groom of the Stole, was not only named as a member of the Privy Council, but also of the Cabinet. The earl of Bute prepared his majesty's first address to the Privy Council. Mr. Pitt was indignant at the tone in which the war was mentioned in this address, but, nevertheless, he and the duke of Newcastle continued their alliance as ministers under the new sovereign. When Parliament opened, on the 18th of November, the House of Commons voted a Civil List of £800,000 upon the king surrendering the hereditary revenue. The annual subsidy to the king of Prussia was renewed. Supplies were given to the extent of twenty millions. The enthusiasm with which the king was greeted by his subjects was in striking contrast with the coldness that had attended the appearance in public of George II. The few remaining Jacobites gave up

man who