Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/343

 THE PRE-REVOLUTION ERA 331 power, and the foundations of British supremacy were securely laid. It only remained to administer the coup de grace to the French rivalry at the battle of Wandewash in 1760. Nearly four years before Wandewash the great Seven Years' War had broken out in Europe. While British and French colonists were quarrelling in America, Maria Theresa's minister Kaunitz was scheming for a coalition against Frederick of Prussia. Great Britain had no hostility towards The p owers Austria ; but though her King George II. might combine for as Elector of Hanover be inclined to support the War ' Imperial house against his dangerous Prussian neighbour, that was rather a reason for Great Britain refusing to join an anti- Prussian combination. Nothing was more certain to raise an outcry in England than a suspicion that the British nation was being dragged into a war in the interests of Hanover. Kaunitz was secure of the alliance of Saxony lying on the south of the Prussian kingdom j and also of Russia, whose Tsarina Elizabeth had taken mortal offence at sundry sarcasms which the Prussian king had uttered about her. But this did not satisfy Kaunitz, who wanted to secure French support j and for the recovery of Silesia he was willing to make concessions to France. Louis xv. was completely under the influence of Madame de Pompadour, whom Frederick had offended as he had Elizabeth of Russia. Spain was now under a peaceful sovereign Ferdinand vi., and would not be drawn into any warlike complications. Thus the circumstances drew the two necessarily hostile powers of Great Britain and France into alliance with Prussia and Austria respectively; reversing the old European position, in which the Bourbons had always been opposed to the Hapsburgs and Great Britain had been habitually on the side of the Hapsburgs. In the war which followed, breaking out in 1756, Great Britain after the first year devoted herself almost entirely to the maritime and colonial war with France. She 5. The Seven supplied contingents to the forces which held Years' Wax. Hanover against French invasion, but otherwise she abstained almost entirely from military operations, while she poured into the coffers of the Prussian king the subsidies which enabled him to maintain his resistance to the great circle of his foes.