To his friend D"Argens he wrote soon after his defeat: "Death is sweet in comparison to such a life as mine. Have pity on me and it; believe that I still keep to myself a great many evil things, not wishing to afflict or disgust anybody with them, and that I would not counsel you to fly these unlucky countries if I had any ray of hope; Adieu, mon cher!" It was well for him and for Prussia that he had strong allies in the dissensions and delays of his enemies. But his cup was not yet full. Dresden was taken from him, eight of his remaining generals and twelve thousand men were defeated and captured at Maxen, and "this infernal campaign," as he calls it, closed in thick darkness.
"I wrap myself in my stoicism as best I can," he writes to Voltaire. "If you saw me you would hardly know me: I am old, broken, gray-headed, wrinkled. If this goes on there will be nothing left of me but the mania of making verses and an inviolable attachment to my duties and to the few virtuous men I know. But you will not get a peace signed by my hand except on conditions honorable to my nation. Your people, blown up with conceit and folly, may depend on this."
The same stubborn conflict with overmastering odds, the same intrepid resolution, the same subtle strategy, the same skill in eluding the blow and lightning-like quickness in retorting it, marked Frederic"s campaign of 1760. At Liegnitz three armies, each equal to his own, closed round him, and he put them all to flight. While he was fighting in Silesia, the Allies marched upon Berlin, took it, and held it three days, but withdrew on his approach. For him there was no peace. "Why weary you with the details of my labors and my sorrows?"
he wrote again to his faithful D"Argens. "My spirits have forsaken me; all gayety is buried with the loved n.o.ble ones to whom my heart was bound." He had lost his mother and his devoted sister Wilhelmina. "You as a follower of Epicurus put a value upon life; as for me, I regard death from the Stoic point of view. I have told you, and I repeat it, never shall my hand sign a humiliating peace. Finish this campaign I will, resolved to dare all, to succeed, or find a glorious end." Then came the victory of Torgau, the last and one of the most desperate of his battles: a success dearly bought, and bringing neither rest nor safety. Once more he wrote to D"Argens: "Adieu, dear Marquis; write to me sometimes. Don"t forget a poor devil who curses his fatal existence ten times a day."
"I live like a military monk. Endless business, and a little consolation from my books. I don"t know if I shall outlive this war, but if I do I am firmly resolved to pa.s.s the rest of my life in solitude in the bosom of philosophy and friendship. Your nation, you see, is blinder than you thought. These fools will lose their Canada and Pondicherry to please the Queen of Hungary and the Czarina."
The campaign of 1761 was mainly defensive on the part of Frederic. In the exhaustion of his resources he could see no means of continuing the struggle. "It is only Fortune," says the royal sceptic, "that can extricate me from the situation I am in. I escape out of it by looking at the universe on the great scale like an observer from some distant planet. All then seems to be so infinitely small that I could almost pity my enemies for giving themselves so much trouble about so very little. I read a great deal, I devour my books. But for them I think hypochondria would have had me in Bedlam before now. In fine, dear Marquis, we live in troublous times and desperate situations. I have all the properties of a stage hero; always in danger, always on the point of perishing."[861] And in another mood: "I begin to feel that, as the Italians say, revenge is a pleasure for the G.o.ds. My philosophy is worn out by suffering. I am no saint, and I will own that I should die content if only I could first inflict a part of the misery that I endure."
[Footnote 861: The above extracts are as translated by Carlyle in his _History of Frederick II. of Prussia_.]
While Frederic was fighting for life and crown, an event took place in England that was to have great influence on the war. Walpole recounts it thus, writing to George Montagu on the twenty-fifth of October, 1760: "My man Harry tells me all the amusing news. He first told me of the late Prince of Wales"s death, and to-day of the King"s; so I must tell you all I know of departed majesty. He went to bed well last night, rose at six this morning as usual, looked, I suppose, if all his money was in his purse, and called for his chocolate. A little after seven he went into the closet; the German _valet-de-chambre_ heard a noise, listened, heard something like a groan, ran in, and found the hero of Oudenarde and Dettingen on the floor with a gash on his right temple by falling against the corner of a bureau. He tried to speak, could not, and expired. The great ventricle of the heart had burst. What an enviable death!"
The old King was succeeded by his grandson, George III., a mirror of domestic virtues, conscientious, obstinate, narrow.
His accession produced political changes that had been preparing for some time. His grandfather was German at heart, loved his Continental kingdom of Hanover, and was eager for all measures that looked to its defence and preservation. Pitt, too, had of late vigorously supported the Continental war, saying that he would conquer America in Germany. Thus with different views the King and the Minister had concurred in the same measures. But George III. was English by birth, language, and inclination. His ruling pa.s.sion was the establishment and increase of his own authority. He disliked Pitt, the representative of the people. He was at heart averse to a war, the continuance of which would make the Great Commoner necessary, and therefore powerful, and he wished for a peace that would give free scope to his schemes for strengthening the prerogative. He was not alone in his pacific inclinations. The enemies of the haughty Minister, who had ridden roughshod over men far above him in rank, were tired of his ascendency, and saw no hope of ending it but by ending the war. Thus a peace party grew up, and the young King became its real, though not at first its declared, supporter.
The Tory party, long buried, showed signs of resurrection.
There were those among its members who, even in a king of the hated line of Hanover, could recognize and admire the same spirit of arbitrary domination that had marked their fallen idols, the Stuarts; and they now joined hands with the discontented Whigs in opposition to Pitt. The horrors of war, the blessings of peace, the weight of taxation, the growth of the national debt, were the rallying cries of the new party; but the mainspring of their zeal was hostility to the great Minister.
Even his own colleagues chafed under his spirit of mastery; the chiefs of the Opposition longed to inherit his power; and the King had begun to hate him as a lion in his path. Pitt held to his purpose regardless of the gathering storm. That purpose, as proclaimed by his adherents, was to secure a solid and lasting peace, which meant the reduction of France to so low an estate that she could no more be a danger to her rival. In this he had the sympathy of the great body of the nation.
Early in 1761 the King, a fanatic for prerogative, set his enginery in motion. The elections for the new Parliament were manipulated in his interest. If he disliked Pitt as the representative of the popular will, he also disliked his colleague, the shuffling and uncertain Newcastle, as the representative of a too powerful n.o.bility. Elements hostile to both were introduced into the Cabinet and the great offices. The King"sfavorite, the Earl of Bute, supplanted Holdernesse as Secretary of State for the Northern Department; Charles Townshend, an opponent of Pitt, was made Secretary of War; Legge, Chancellor of the Exchequer, was replaced by Viscount Barrington, who was sure for the King; while a place in the Cabinet was also given to the Duke of Bedford, one of the few men who dared face the formidable Minister.
It was the policy of the King and his following to abandon Prussia, hitherto supported by British subsidies, make friends with Austria and Russia at her expense, and conclude a separate peace with France.
France was in sore need of peace. The infatuation that had turned her from her own true interest to serve the pa.s.sions of Maria Theresa and the Czarina Elizabeth had brought military humiliation and financial ruin. Abbe de Bernis, Minister of Foreign Affairs, had lost the favor of Madame de Pompadour, and had been supplanted by the Duc de Choiseul. The new Minister had gained his place by pleasing the favorite; but he kept it through his own ability and the necessities of the time. The Englishman Stanley, whom Pitt sent to negotiate with him, drew this sketch of his character: "Though he may have his superiors, not only in experience of business, but in depth and refinement as a statesman, he is a person of as bold and daring a spirit as any man whatever in our country or in his own. Madame Pompadour has ever been looked upon by all preceding courtiers and ministers as their tutelary deity, under whose auspices only they could exist, and who was as much out of their reach as if she were of a superior cla.s.s of beings; but this Minister is so far from being in subordination to her influence that he seized the first opportunity of depriving her not of an equality, but of any share of power, reducing her to the necessity of applying to him even for those favors that she wants for herself and her dependents.
He has effected this great change, which every other man would have thought impossible, in the interior of the Court, not by plausibility, flattery, and address, but with a high hand, with frequent railleries and sarcasms which would have ruined any other, and, in short, by a clear superiority of spirit and resolution."[862]
[Footnote 862: _Stanley to Pitt, 6 Aug. 1761_, in _Grenville Correspondence_, I. 367, _note_.]
Choiseul was vivacious, brilliant, keen, penetrating; believing nothing, fearing nothing; an easy moralist, an uncertain ally, a hater of priests; light-minded, inconstant; yet a kind of patriot, eager to serve France and retrieve her fortunes.
He flattered himself with no illusions. "Since we do not know how to make war," he said, "we must make peace;"[863]
and he proposed a congress of all the belligerent Powers at Augsburg. At the same time, since the war in Germany was distinct from the maritime and colonial war of France and England, he proposed a separate negotiation with the British Court in order to settle the questions between them as a preliminary to the general pacification. Pitt consented, and Stanley went as envoy to Versailles; while M. de Bussy came as envoy to London and, in behalf of Choiseul, offered terms of peace, the first of which was the entire abandonment of Canada to England.[864] But the offers were accompanied by the demand that Spain, which had complaints of its own against England, should be admitted as a party to the negotiation, and even hold in some measure the att.i.tude of a mediator. Pitt spurned the idea with fierce contempt. "Time enough to treat of all that, sir, when the Tower of London is taken sword in hand."[865] He bore his part with the ability that never failed him, and with a supreme arrogance that rose to a climax in his demand that the fortress of Dunkirk should be demolished, not because it was any longer dangerous to England, but because the nation would regard its destruction "as an eternal monument of the yoke imposed on France."[866]
[Footnote 863: Fla.s.san, _Diplomatie Francaise_, V. 376 (Paris, 1809).]
[Footnote 864: See the proposals in Entick, V. 161.]
[Footnote 865: Beatson, _Military Memoirs_, II. 434. _The Count de Fuentes to the Earl of Egremont, 25 Dec. 1761_, in Entick, V. 264.]
[Footnote 866: On this negotiation, see _Memoire historique sur la Negociation de la France et de l"Angleterre_ (Paris, 1761), a French Government publication containing papers on both sides. The British Ministry also published such doc.u.ments as they saw fit, under the t.i.tle of _Papers relating to the Rupture with Spain_. Compare Adolphus, _George III._, I. 31-39.]
Choiseul replied with counter-propositions less humiliating to his nation. When the question of accepting or rejecting them came before the Ministry, the views of Pitt prevailed by a majority of one, and, to the disappointment of Bute and the King, the conferences were broken off. Choiseul, launched again on the billows of a disastrous war, had seen and provided against the event. Ferdinand VI. of Spain had died, and Carlos III. had succeeded to his throne. Here, as in England, change of kings brought change of policy. While negotiating vainly with Pitt, the French Minister had negotiated secretly and successfully with Carlos; and the result was the treaty known as the Family Compact, having for its object the union of the various members of the House of Bourbon in common resistance to the growing power of England. It provided that in any future war the Kings of France and Spain should act as one towards foreign Powers, insomuch that the enemy of either should be the enemy of both; and the Bourbon princes of Italy were invited to join in the covenant.[867] What was more to the present purpose, a special agreement was concluded on the same day, by which Spain bound herself to declare war against England unless that Power should make peace with France before the first of May, 1762. For the safety of her colonies and her trade Spain felt it her interest to join her sister nation in putting a check on the vast expansion of British maritime power. She could bring a hundred ships of war to aid the dilapidated navy of France, and the wealth of the Indies to aid her ruined treasury.
[Footnote 867: Fla.s.san, _Diplomatie Francaise_, V. 317 (Paris, 1809).]
Pitt divined the secret treaty, and soon found evidence of it. He resolved to demand at once full explanation from Spain; and, failing to receive a satisfactory reply, attack her at home and abroad before she was prepared. On the second of October he laid his plan before a Cabinet Council held at a house in St. James Street. There were present the Earl of Bute, the Duke of Newcastle, Earl Granville, Earl Temple, and others of the Ministry. Pitt urged his views with great warmth. "This," he exclaimed, "is the time for humbling the whole House of Bourbon!"[868] His brother-in-law, Temple, supported him. Newcastle kept silent. Bute denounced the proposal, and the rest were of his mind. "If these views are to be followed,"
said Pitt, "this is the last time I can sit at this board. I was called to the administration of affairs by the voice of the people; to them I have always considered myself as accountable for my conduct; and therefore cannot remain in a situation which makes me responsible for measures I am no longer allowed to guide." Nothing could be more offensive to George III. and his adherents.
[Footnote 868: Beatson, II. 438.]
The veteran Carteret, Earl Granville, replied angrily: "I find the gentleman is determined to leave us; nor can I say I am sorry for it, since otherwise he would certainly have compelled us to leave him. But if he is resolved to a.s.sume the office of exclusively advising His Majesty and directing the operations of the war, to what purpose are we called to this council? When he talks of being responsible to the people, he talks the language of the House of Commons, and forgets that at this board he is responsible only to the King. However, though he may possibly have convinced himself of his infallibility, still it remains that we should be equally convinced before we can resign our understandings to his direction, or join with him in the measure he proposes."[869]
[Footnote 869: _Annual Register, 1761_, p. 44. Adolphus, _George III._, I. 40. Thackeray, _Life of Chatham_, I. 592.]
Pitt resigned, and his colleagues rejoiced.[870] Power fell to Bute and the Tories; and great was the fall. The ma.s.s of the nation was with the defeated Minister. On Lord Mayor"s Day Bute and Barrington were pa.s.sing St. Paul"s in a coach, which the crowd mistook for that of Pitt, and cheered l.u.s.tily; till one man, looking in at the window, shouted to the rest: "This isn"t Pitt; it"s Bute, and be d.a.m.ned to him!" The cheers turned forthwith to hisses, mixed with cries of "No Bute!"
"No Newcastle salmon!" "Pitt forever!" Handfuls of mud were showered against the coach, and Barrington"s ruffles were besmirched with it.[871]
[Footnote 870: Walpole, _George III._, I. 80, and note by Sir Denis Le Marchant, 80-82.]
[Footnote 871: _Nuthall to Lady Chatham, 12 Nov. 1761_, in _Chatham Correspondence_, II. 166.]
The fall of Pitt was like the knell of doom to Frederic of Prussia. It meant abandonment by his only ally, and the loss of the subsidy which was his chief resource. The darkness around him grew darker yet, and not a hope seemed left; when as by miracle the clouds broke, and light streamed out of the blackness. The bitterest of his foes, the Czarina Elizabeth, she whom he had called _infame catin du Nord_, died, and was succeeded by her nephew, Peter III. Here again, as in England and Spain, a new sovereign brought new measures. The young Czar, simple and enthusiastic, admired the King of Prussia, thought him the paragon of heroes, and proclaimed himself his friend. No sooner was he on the throne than Russia changed front. From the foe of Frederic she became his ally; and in the opening campaign of 1762 the army that was to have aided in crushing him was ranged on his side. It was a turn of fortune too sharp and sudden to endure.
Ill-balanced and extreme in all things, Peter plunged into headlong reforms, exasperated the clergy and the army, and alienated his wife, Catherine, who had hoped to rule in his name, and who now saw herself supplanted by his mistress.
Within six months he was deposed and strangled. Catherine, one of whose lovers had borne part in the murder, reigned in his stead, conspicuous by the unbridled disorders of her life, and by powers of mind that mark her as the ablest of female sovereigns. If she did not share her husband"s enthusiasm for Frederic, neither did she share Elizabeth"s hatred of him.
He, on his part, taught by hard experience, conciliated instead of insulting her, and she let him alone.
Peace with Russia brought peace with Sweden, and Austria with the Germanic Empire stood alone against him. France needed all her strength to hold her own against the mixed English and German force under Ferdinand of Brunswick in the Rhine countries. She made spasmodic efforts to seize upon Hanover, but the result was humiliating defeat.
In England George III. pursued his policy of strengthening the prerogative, and, jealous of the Whig aristocracy, attacked it in the person of Newcastle. In vain the old politician had played false with Pitt, and trimmed to please his young master. He was worried into resigning his place in the Cabinet, and Bute, the obsequious agent of the royal will, succeeded him as First Lord of the Treasury. Into his weak and unwilling hands now fell the task of carrying on the war; for the nation, elated with triumphs and full of fight, still called on its rulers for fresh efforts and fresh victories. Pitt had proved a true prophet, and his enemies were put to shame; for the att.i.tude of Spain forced Bute and his colleagues to the open rupture with her which the great Minister had vainly urged upon them; and a new and formidable war was now added to the old.[872] Their counsels were weak and half-hearted; but the armies and navies of England still felt the impulsion that the imperial hand of Pitt had given and the unconquerable spirit that he had roused.
[Footnote 872: _Declaration of War against the King of Spain, 4 Jan. 1762._]
This spirit had borne them from victory to victory. In Asia they had driven the French from Pondicherry and all their Indian possessions; in Africa they had wrested from them Goree and the Senegal country; in the West Indies they had taken Guadeloupe and Dominica; in the European seas they had captured ship after ship, routed and crippled the great fleet of Admiral Conflans, seized Belleisle, and defeated a bold attempt to invade Ireland. The navy of France was reduced to helplessness. Pitt, before his resignation, had planned a series of new operations, including an attack on Martinique, with other West Indian islands still left to France, and then in turn on the Spanish possessions of Havana, Panama, Manila, and the Philippines. Now, more than ever before, the war appeared in its true character. It was a contest for maritime and colonial ascendency; and England saw herself confronted by both her great rivals at once.
Admiral Rodney sailed for Martinique, and Brigadier Monckton joined him with troops from America. Before the middle of February the whole island was in their hands; and Grenada, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent soon shared its fate. The Earl of Albemarle and Admiral Sir George Poc.o.c.ke sailed in early spring on a more important errand, landed in June near Havana with eleven thousand soldiers, and attacked Moro Castle, the key of the city. The pitiless sun of the tropic midsummer poured its fierce light and heat on the parched rocks where the men toiled at the trenches. Earth was so scarce that hardly enough could be had to keep the fascines in place. The siege works were little else than a ma.s.s of dry f.a.ggots; and when, after exhausting toil, the grand battery opened on the Spanish defences, it presently took fire, was consumed, and had to be made anew. Fresh water failed, and the troops died by scores from thirst; fevers set in, killed many, and disabled nearly half the army. The sea was strewn with floating corpses, and carrion-birds in clouds hovered over the populous graveyards and infected camps. Yet the siege went on: a formidable sally was repulsed; Moro Castle was carried by storm; till at length, two months and eight days after the troops landed, Havana fell into their hands.[873] At the same time Spain was attacked at the antipodes, and the loss of Manila and the Philippines gave her fresh cause to repent her rash compact with France. She was hardly more fortunate near home; for having sent an army to invade Portugal, whichwas in the interest of England, a small British force, under Brigadier Burgoyne, foiled it, and forced it to retire.
[Footnote 873: _Journal of the Siege, by the Chief Engineer, in Beatson_, II. 544. Mante, 398-465. Entick, V. 363-383.]
The tide of British success was checked for an instant in Newfoundland, where a French squadron attacked St. John"s and took it, with its garrison of sixty men. The news reached Amherst at New York; his brother, Lieutenant-Colonel Amherst, was sent to the scene of the mishap. St. John"s was retaken, and its late conquerers were made prisoners of war.
The financial condition of France was desperate. Her people were crushed with taxation; her debt grew apace; and her yearly expenditure was nearly double her revenue. Choiseul felt the need of immediate peace; and George III. and Bute were hardly less eager for it, to avert the danger of Pitt"s return to power and give free scope to their schemes for strengthening the prerogative. Therefore, in September, 1762, negotiations were resumed.
The Duke of Bedford was sent to Paris to settle the preliminaries, and the Duc de Nivernois came to London on the same errand. The populace were still for war. Bedford was hissed as he pa.s.sed through the streets of London, and a mob hooted at the puny figure of Nivernois as he landed at Dover.
The great question was, Should Canada be restored? Should France still be permitted to keep a foothold on the North American continent? Ever since the capitulation of Montreal a swarm of pamphlets had discussed the momentous subject.
Some maintained that the acquisition of Canada was not an original object of the war; that the colony was of little value and ought to be given back to its old masters; that Guadeloupe should be kept instead, the sugar trade of that island being worth far more than the Canadian fur trade; and, lastly, that the British colonists, if no longer held in check by France, would spread themselves over the continent, learn to supply all their own wants, grow independent, and become dangerous. Nor were these views confined to Englishmen.
There were foreign observers who clearly saw that the adhesion of her colonies to Great Britain would be jeopardized by the extinction of French power in America. Choiseul warned Stanley that they "would not fail to shake off their dependence the moment Canada should be ceded;" while thirteen years before, the Swedish traveller Kalm declared that the presence of the French in America gave the best a.s.surance to Great Britain that its own colonies would remain in due subjection.[874]
[Footnote 874: Kalm, _Travels in North America_, I. 207.]
The most noteworthy argument on the other side was that of Franklin, whose words find a strange commentary in the events of the next few years. He affirmed that the colonies were so jealous of each other that they would never unite against England. "If they could not agree to unite against the French and Indians, can it reasonably be supposed that there is any danger of their uniting against their own nation, which it is well known they all love much more than they love one another? I will venture to say union amongst them for such a purpose is not merely improbable, it is impossible;"
that is, he prudently adds, without "the most grievous tyranny and oppression," like the b.l.o.o.d.y rule of "Alva in the Netherlands."[875]
[Footnote 875: _Interest of Great Britain in regard to her Colonies_ (London, 1760)
Lord Bath argues for retaining Canada in _A Letter addressed to Two Great Men on the Prospect of Peace_ (1759). He is answered by another pamphlet called _Remarks on the Letter to Two Great Men_ (1760). The _Gentleman"s Magazine_ for 1759 has an ironical article styled _Reasons for restoring Canada to the French_; and in 1761 a pamphlet against the rest.i.tution appeared under the t.i.tle, _Importance of Canada considered in Two Letters to a n.o.ble Lord_. These are but a part of the writings on the question.]
If Pitt had been in office he would have demanded terms that must ruin past redemption the maritime and colonial power of France; but Bute was less exacting. In November the plenipotentiaries of England, France, and Spain agreed on preliminaries of peace, in which the following were the essential points. France ceded to Great Britain Canada and all her possessions on the North American continent east of the River Mississippi, except the city of New Orleans and a small adjacent district. She renounced her claims to Acadia, and gave up to the conqueror the Island of Cape Breton, with all other islands in the Gulf and River of St. Lawrence. Spain received back Havana, and paid for it by the cession of Florida, with all her other possessions east of the Mississippi. France, subject to certain restrictions, was left free to fish in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and off a part of the coast of Newfoundland; and the two little islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon were given her as fishing stations on condition that she should not fortify or garrison them. In the West Indies, England restored the captured islands of Guadeloupe, Marigalante, Desirade, and Martinique, and France ceded Grenada and the Grenadines; while it was agreed that of the so-called neutral islands, St. Vincent, Dominica, and Tobago should belong to England, and St. Lucia to France.
In Europe, each side promised to give no more help to its allies in the German war. France restored Minorca, and England restored Belleisle; France gave up such parts of Hanoverian territory as she had occupied, and evacuated certain fortresses belonging to Prussia, pledging herself at the same time to demolish, under the inspection of English engineers, her own maritime fortress of Dunkirk. In Africa France ceded Senegal, and received back the small Island of Goree. In India she lost everything she had gained since the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle; recovered certain trading stations, but renounced the right of building forts or maintaining troops in Bengal.