Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/626

 590 FRANCE [HISTORY. 1758-59. The Duke of Choiseul. The cam paign of my. The battle of Minden. The dis asters of France. withdrew to his bishopric of Aix, giving place to an abler statesman, the duke of Choiseul, one of the most unfortu nate of the noble ministers who have ever presided over the affairs of France. His first act was the signature of a second treaty of Versailles, in which he and Madame de Pompadour committed France to terms which plainly meant that France should bear the chief burdens of the war, while Austria should win all the fruit. For she promised to keep 100,000 men on foot, to support the whole Swedish contingent, to restore the elector of Saxony, to defend the Austrian Netherlands, and to support the candidature of Joseph, eldest son of Maria Theresa, for the title of Rex Romanorum, and the succession to his father in the em pire, and finally to make no peace with England till Prussia had restored Silesia to Austria. With this amazing treaty France again went stupidly down into the contest, as an ox to the shambles. In 1759 the old blunders were again repeated; all was abandoned for the sake of the German campaigns ; the Rhine army under Contades lay in the Cleves country; the Maine army near Frankfort was commanded by the duke of Broglie, who had already given sufficient proof of his incompetence at Rosbach. Between these armies, watching both, and purposing to hinder their junction, and, if he could, to beat them in detail, lay Ferdinand of Brunswick, now reinforced with twelve thousand English and Scottish soldiers, who had joined him in the last autumn. He thought himself strong enough to attack Broglie, but was repulsed with loss at the battle of Bergen on the Nidda, a few miles from Frankfort ; and Broglie, made a marshal for this success, succeeded in effecting a junction with Con tades at Giessen ; thence they advanced together to the Weser, occupying one place after another. At Minden they paused before pushing on to overrun Hanover, while Fer dinand, having gathered all his forces together, came down to observe and check them. Differences arose between Contades and Broglie ; the latter was successful, popular, incapable; the former a good officer, whom the fatality which had beset the French court since the later days of Louis XIV. had thrown into the cold shade ; the two were hardly likely to work well together. Ferdinand took ad vantage of their errors, and (1st August 1759) with much smaller numbers and the worse position, ventured on a great battle at Minden. The English regiments of foot, with unheard off audacity, charged and overthrew the French cavalry, which, with amazing ineptitude, had been placed in the centre, as if it were the most solid part of the army. Had Lord George Sackville, who commanded the English horse, done his duty also, the whole French army might have been destroyed or made prisoners. As it was, the exploit of the &quot; Mindeu regiments &quot; rang through Europe ; and the French army, hastily evacuating its posi tions, fell back to the Maine. Contades, the good general, was of course punished ; Broglie remained in command. Later on, lie showed his gratitude to the Bourbons by op posing the Revolution as an emigre&quot;. Henceforward Fer dinand was able to hold his own in western Germany, and England felt secure for Hanover. The French went on placing huge armies in the field for the rest of the war ; yet thanks to &quot; the most perfect incapacity,&quot; as Napoleon once said, of Broglie and Soubise, this great force achieved nothing, and succeeded only in still further discrediting the noblesse and the monarchy, while it exhausted with fearful speed the resources of the country. Nor did France pay the price here only ; her efforts in Germany still hindered her from attending to her interests elsewhere ; the disasters of her navy went on ; her influence in Canada and India declined day by day. An attempt to invade England in 1759 failed completely; the battle of Quiberon Bay, and the cowardice of Conflans who commanded there, ruined the French navy ; a squadron sent out to harass the coasts 1760- of Scotland and northern England, under Thurot, a real sailor, was attacked early in 1760 by a stronger force; Thurot was killed, the squadron captured, and so the French naval power came to an end. Henceforward, no help could pass from France to the outlying scenes of conflict. Point by point the English had advanced in Canada, until (September 13, 1759) the battle of Quebec, which proved fatal to both Wolfe and the brave Montcalm, finally decided the destinies of North America. That vic tory gave to England the ascendency over Canada, and secured to the sons of the Puritans the eventual mastery over the rest of that great continent. The fall of Montreal in 1760 was the close of the struggle. In India also French affairs had gone very ill in these days ; the quarrel between Lally and Admiral d Achd increased in bitterness ; the English finally captured even Pondicherry, the last remain ing stronghold of the French in India. This year 1759 is, on the whole, the most disastrous in all the annals of France. ; it proclaimed with a clear voice to all who would hear that the days of the ancient monarchy were numbered. The monarchy could not defend France abroad, it was dying of debt and corruption at home. It was little help to France that in 1760 the unhappy Lally, whom men in their vexation accused of treason, was brought home, tried, and shamefully executed at Paris. It was not on him that the eventual punishment would fall; in 1778 the generous voice of Voltaire made France confess her injustice, and restore to honour the name of the unfortunate and brilliant Irishman. His son Lally-Tollendal gave to the fallen monarchy a loyalty and support it surely little deserved from him. Changes now began which pointed towards peace. The accession of George III. shook the power of Pitt ; in Franco the subtle address of Choiseul had carried all before him, and he at last saw his way, too late, to reverse the direc tion which the efforts of France had hitherto taken. The war in Germany, always a blunder, should become of secondary importance ; the active friendship of Spain and other Bourbon princes should restore something of the old sea-power of France. The king of Spain had also found out his folly in remaining neutral, while England grew to be supreme on the water; and consequently in 1761 the famous &quot;Family Compact,&quot; the Bourbon league, was signed The by all the sovereigns of the house of Bourbon. By it they ^ an made alliance offensive and defensive, guaranteeing the c territories of one another, promising to support each other and to make no separate peace or war, throwing open re ciprocally all their harbours and frontiers, and declaring that for war or peace, for trade or pleasure, France, Spain, Naples and Sicily, Parma and Piacenza, should count as but one country, one land blessed by Bourbons, and led by their great chief Louis XV. Here was a splendid scheme for the reconstruction of European politics ! It was the Latin races clasped together by the Bourbon family, and determined to reassert their importance in Europe. Had the family compact been signed three years earlier, or had there been one man of real power among the Bourbons, its result might have been serious for the rest of the world; as it was, the chief effect of it was the resignation of Pitt, and the half burlesque ministry of Lord Bute. For Pitt got some ink ling of this secret compact, and, confirmed in his suspicions by the equivocal language of the Spanish court, urged on his colleagues the necessity of declaring instant war on Spain, so as to crush her fleets before France could come to her help. But George III. would none of it; the minis ters refused to take the bold step, not having the justi fication for it in their hands ; and Pitt threw up the seals of office. When the compact became known to the world in 1762, England justified Pitt s foresight by at once declar