A.I, 1762.]

TREATY OF PEACE BETWEEN ENGLAND AND FRANCE.

invaders. The Indians fought with the utmost ferocity, though only armed with bows and spears, and, when pierced by the bayonets, turned and gnawed them with their teeth like wild beasts. These poor people had no chance against European artillery, and were mowed down or dispersed; and, on the 6th of October, the twelfth day after landing, Manilla was carried by storm. Admiral Parker, who was made a baronet for his services on this occasion, and became well known as Sir Hyde Parker, and captain Kempenfelt, who became rear-admiral Kempenfelt, and was lost in the Royal George," off Portsmouth, most ably supported the movements of the troops. Though the town was taken, the archbishop still held out in the citadel, and only surrendered on conditions. These were to pay a ransom of two millions of dollars for the lives and safety of the inhabitants and their property. This was a cheap purchase; for, though Draper agreed to accept an order on the treasury in Madrid for the same amount, there was very little prospect of this second sum ever being paid. The invaders had, however, helped themselves pretty freely to money's worth. They had seized all public property, several ships, the artillery and military stores, and they captured the "Santa Trinidad," a great Manilla and Acapulco galleon, valued at three millions of dollars. Another still richer galleon, the "Santa Philipina," escaped them, after a long chase. The whole of the Philippines submitted without further resistance; and Draper, besides being made a knight of the Bath, was, with the naval commanders, thanked by parliament, as well they might be.

Such were the ruinous results, in a single campaign, of Spain having listened to French counsels, and quarrelled with a power capable of stripping her of all her colonies. Besides the capture of Havanna, the Philippines, and the treasure ship there, we had, as already stated, captured the "Hermione," a very valuable prize, and many smaller ones. The whole mercantile navy of Spain was at our mercy; her resources were cut off, and France was in no condition to defend her at sea, and had really afforded her no aid on land. The only trifling piece of success was the seizure of the Portuguese colony of Sacramento, on the river La Plata; the capture of several British merchantmen there, and the repulse, by these means, of a private expedition of English and Portuguese adventurers against Buenos Ayres.

The brilliant successes of this campaign had clearly been the result of Pitt's plans before quitting office. Bute and his colleagues had no capacity for such masterly policy, and as little perception of the immense advantages which they gave them in making peace. Peace they were impatient for -less on the great grounds that peace was the noblest of national blessings, than because the people grumbled at the amount of taxation-and because, by peace, they diminished, or hoped to diminish, the prestige of the great minister, who had won such vast accessions to the national territory. Bute was eager to come to terms with France and Spain, regardless of the advantages he gave to prostrate enemies, by showing that impatience. Had he made a peace as honourable as the war had been, he would have deserved well of the country; but to accomplish such a peace required another stamp of mind.

21

of Sardinia. Louis XV. and his ministers caught at the very first whisper of such a thing with the eagerness of drowning men; a sufficient intimation to all able and cautious ministers, that he might safely name his own terms. The duke of Bedford was immediately sent to Paris as ambassador, and the gallant and graceful duke of Nivernoes was sent to London as the French envoy to arrange the terms of the treaty. The two ambassadors, however, soon found that the real business of the treaty was transacted betwixt Bute, on our part, and the duke de Choiseul, on that of France; and that not through the two ambassadors, but through Sardinian envoys.

The conditions first agreed upon were, that both England and France were to withdraw their support, either by men or money, to the war in Germany. France was to evacuate the few towns that she held there, as well as Cleves and Gueldres. Minorca was to be restored in exchange for Belleisle, which thus fully justified Pitt's capture of that little, otherwise useless island. The fortifications of Dunkirk were to be reduced to the state required by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.

France ceded Canada, Nova Scotia, and Cape Breton, stipulating for the free exercise of their religion by the inhabitants of Canada, and for their leaving the country if they preferred it, carrying away their effects, if done within eighteen months. Nova Scotia and Cape Breton were given up unconditionally. The boundaries of Louisiana were more clearly defined. The French retained the right to fish on part of the coast of Newfoundland and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and to retain the two little islets of St. Pierre and Miguelon, as places of shelter for their fishermen, on condition that no batteries should be raised on them, nor more than fifty soldiers should keep guard there. Their fishermen were not to approach within fifteen miles of Cape Breton.

In the West Indies it was decided that we should, of the French islands that we had taken, retain Tobago, Dominico, St. Vincent, and Grenada, but restore to France Guadaloupe, Martinico, St. Lucia, Marigalante, and Desiada.

In the East Indies France agreed to keep no troops, and raise no fortifications in Bengal, and on these conditions their settlements were restored, but merely as places of trade. Goree, on the coast of Africa, was restored, but Senegal was surrendered.

As for Spain, she abandoned all designs on Portugal, and restored the colony of Sacramento; and she surrendered every point on which her declaration of war against England was based-namely, the right to fish on the coast of Newfoundland; the refusal to allow us to cut logwood in Honduras; and to admit the settlement of questions of capture by our courts of law.

These certainly were large concessions, but it was to be remembered that we had not received these gratis; they had cost enormous sums, and the national debt had been doubled by this war, and now amounted to one hundred and twentytwo million six hundred thousand pounds. These territories had then, in fact, cost us upwards of sixty million pounds; and it is certain that Pitt would have exacted a more complete renunciation from France of the conquered countries. Bute made overtures to France through the neutral court There was a clause inserted which Pitt would never have

permitted-namely, that any conquests that should, after the manlike hurry to conclude the peace, aggravated by the signing of these conditions, be made, should be restored by all general opinion that he might with ease have secured Goree, parties. Now, Bute and the ministry knew that we had Porto Rico, as well as Florida, and some other of the expeditions out against Cuba and the Philippines, and that French West Indian Islands, he did not escape the violent the only conquests likely to be made were in those quarters. suspicion of having so readily sacrificed the interests of the To throw away without equivalent the blood and money country to a weighty bribe from France. This charge for expended in these important enterprises was a most unpa- years was loudly made without satisfactory refutation. In triotic act. Still, there was opportunity for more rational 1770 it was again brought forward in the house of commons, terms, for Grimaldi, the Spanish ambassador at Paris, held but was got rid of; but we still find in Wilberforce's Diary back from signing, in hope that we should be defeated at the of 1789 this entry:-"I dined with lord Camden. He is Havanna, and that then he could raise his terms. When sure that lord Bute got money from the peace of Paris. He the news of the loss of both Havanna and Manilla arrived, can account for his sinking near three hundred thousand Grimaldi was in great haste to sign, and Mr. Granville pounds in land and houses; and his paternal estate in the and lord Egremont very properly insisted that we should island which bears his name is not above one thousand five demand an equivalent for the conquest in Cuba. Pitt hundred pounds a year, and he is a life tenant only of would have stood firm for the retention of that conquest as Wortley, which may be eight thousand or ten thousand by far the most important to us, and as justly secured pounds." When we recollect the short tenure of office by

to us, by the refusal of the Spanish ambassador to sign at the proper time. But Bute would have signed without any equivalent at all. Fortunately, there was too strong an opposition to this in the cabinet, and the duke of Bedford was instructed to demand Florida or Porto Rico in lieu of the Havanna. Florida was yielded-a fatal, though at the moment it appeared a valuable concession, for it only added to the compactness of the American colonies, hastening the day of independence, whilst Cuba would have remained under the protection of our fleet, one of the most valuable possessions of the British empire.

lord Bute, and his previous poverty, there certainly were great grounds for the suspicion.

The violent discontent with the conduct of Bute and his ministry gave considerable strength to the opposition, at the head of which now stood Pitt, supported by lord Temple and the duke of Newcastle. Bubb Dodington, who had begun his career as the son of an apothecary, and made his way, by many wriggling manoeuvres, to a peerage, died about this time. Lord Anson, who had rendered more real services to his country, also died in the course of the summer, and the earl of Halifax succeeded him at the board of admiralty. George Grenville, not satisfied with the terms of the peace, resigned the post of secretary to Halifax, and took his new one at the head of the admiralty; and Mr. Fox, paymaster of the forces, became the leader of the The duke of Devonshire and the marquis of Besides the blame which Bute incurred by his unstates- Rockingham also resigned their places in the royal household;

This point settled, the preliminaries of peace were signed at Fontainebleau on the 3rd of November. To console Spain for her losses by her unlucky alliance with France, Louis XV. ceded Louisiana to that country by a private

convention.

commons.

A.D. 1763.]

END OF THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR.

and the king, in his vexation, striking Devonshire's name out of the list of privy councillors, his kinsmen, lords George Cavendish and Bessborough, also resigned.

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he had conquered in seven of them, and had repeatedly rescued himself from positions which appeared hopeless; but at what an awful cost of blood, and treasure, and popular misery had this success been purchased! According to Frederick's own calculation, he had lost in this seven years' war one hundred and eighty thousand soldiers; the Russians, one hundred and twenty thousand; the Austrians, one hundred and forty thousand; and France, two hundred thousand. Spackman's calculation is that England lost no less, in one quarter of the world or another, than two hundred and fifty thousand!-altogether, the massacre of eight hundred and ninety thousand men! For what?-To enable Frederick of Prussia to retain the territory which he had plundered Austria of in the former war! Nor was this all: the Russians, in their invasions of Prussia, are said to have destroyed thirty thousand of the unarmed inhabitants. Pestilence had followed, and swept away many thousands more. Thus, little less than a million of people had perished in this war. In Hesse and Westphalia whole villages stood depopulated. An officer relates that he rode through seven villages in Hesse, and

Such was the formidable opposition with which parliament came to the consideration of this peace. It met on the 25th of November, and the tone of the public out of doors was then seen. The king, as he went to the house of lords, was very coolly received by the crowds in the streets, and Bute was saluted with hisses, groans, and the flinging of mud and stones. On the 19th of December he moved in the lords an address in approbation of the terms of the peace. Lord Hardwicke opposed the motion with great warmth and ability, but there was no division. Very different was the reception of a similar address in the commons the same day, moved by Fox. There Pitt, who was suffering with the gout, denounced the whole treaty, as shamefully sacrificing the honour and interests of the country. When he rose he was obliged to be supported by two of his friends, and was at length compelled to beg to be allowed to address the house sitting. He yet made a vehement speech of three hours and a half against the conditions accepted. The ministry, how-found only one human being there-a clergyman, who was ever, had a large majority, three hundred and nineteen voting for them against sixty-five. With this brief triumph of Bute's unpopular party closed the year 1762.

The year 1763 opened with the signing of the definitive treaty at Paris on the 19th of February, whence it was called the Peace of Paris. Five days after, a peace was signed betwixt Prussia and Austria at Hubertsburg, in Saxony, to which Saxony, as the ally of Austria, was a party. Indeed, when England and France, Russia and Sweden, had withdrawn from the contest, there was little prospect of the continuance of the war. Both parties were exhausted, and yet, of the two, Frederick, in his dogged firmness, and in the almost unparalleled endurance of his people, was more than a match for Austria. If Maria Theresa could not cope with him when she had France, Russia, Saxony, and Poland, all united with her to put him down, the case was now hopeless. The English had stipulated that France should evacuate all the places in Germany and Flanders that belonged to those countries, and Frederick had easily induced the German states, under these circumstances, to a maintenance of neutrality. Austria, therefore, consented to this peace. She stood out the longest for the retention of Glatz, the only place won from Frederick, still in her hands, but she was compelled to yield that, too. Both parties returned to the same situations as before the commencement of this fatal Seven Years' War. It must be confessed that Frederick had made a brilliant resistance to the powerful combination against him to strip him of all his territories; but it must not be forgotten that through the greater part of the war he was vastly indebted to the subsidies and troops of England. These had enabled Ferdinand of Brunswick to maintain so brave a stand against France in Westphalia, Hanover, and Cassel, who would otherwise have borne down on that side unresistedly on Prussia. Neither need it be forgotten that the war was the direct consequence of Frederick's previous unprovoked and unwarrantable aggressions on Austria, his invasion and seizure of Silesia, which he still retained.

During the war Frederick had shown the powers of a great general. Of ten pitched battles which he had fought,

boiling horsebeans for his dinner! In Pomerania and Neumark the country was a desert, the towns heaps of ashes. There was no seed, even to sow, no cattle or horses to plough the ground. The most fertile regions were horrid wildernesses; and there were in vast districts only women left to cultivate the soil!

Such were the fruits of a war which historians call just and necessary; and which they call so only because they refuse to trace consequences to their original causes. Had Frederick of Prussia abstained from the seizure of Silesia, there would have been no seven years' war. In this war France, Spain, and Sweden became bankrupt; England acquired vast territories, but increased its national debt a hundred and twelve million pounds; Saxony, though she recovered her lands, was exhausted by the expenditure, and reckoned her losses at eighty million dollars. Everywhere, but especially in Germany and France, the people were subjected to the most frightful miseries.

Frederick entered Berlin, having with him Ferdinand of Brunswick; but he entered it only in the evening, and escaped by obscure ways to his palace to avoid the cheers of the assembled people. This suffering population of Berlin, which, in 1747—that is, just before the commencement of the war-numbered a hundred and seven thousand souls, now numbered only ninety-eight thousand, of whom thirty thousand were reduced to subsistence on alms! Yet, as the Prussians generally had most stanchly supported the king through the war, so these poor people were still ready, forgetting their misery, to receive with acclamation the man who had brought all their calamities upon them, but had done it bravely and unflinchingly himself-so wonderful are the fascinations of military enterprise!

Whilst the seven years' war was raging in Europe, and carrying its ramifications to the most distant regions of the world, Clive and Eyre Coote were extending our empire in India, and, in the case of Clive himself, with as much ability and as little principle as Frederick of Prussia in Europe. Clive, in 1757, put down Surajah Dowlah, the nabob of Bengal, and in June of that year defeated him at Plassy

expired.

Clive and his associates took care of themselves. They claimed from their tool, Meer Jaffier, two million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds as the claim of the company, the fleet, the army, and themselves for their services. Clive's own share was two hundred and fifty-four thousand pounds, and the shares of the members of the committee from twenty thousand to one hundred thousand pounds each. They and

with a mere handful of men against his enormous host. He monstrous treachery, sank down into idiotcy, and soon after set up Dowlah's general-in-chief, Meer Jaffier, and hailed him nabob of Bengal, Orissa, and Bahar. So far, the punishment of Dowlah for the atrocity committed on our countrymen in the Black Hole would have had an air of justice, had not this Black Hole been the English prison, where our countrymen in that hot climate had been in the habit of confining their prisoners. As Mr. Mill, their own historian, of the India House, very justly asks, "What had they to do with a Black Hole? Had no Black Hole existed, as none ought to exist anywhere, least of all in the sultry and unwholesome climate of Bengal, those who perished in the Black Hole of Calcutta would have experienced a different fate."

This was bad enough; but the means of accomplishing this whole treason were of the most infamous kind. Clive engaged one Omichund, a wealthy merchant, to betray Dowlah, for a reward of three hundred thousand pounds. Never intending to pay this reward, Clive had two treaties drawn up with Meer Jaffier-one on white paper, intended to be real, in which no mention was made of Omichund; and another on red paper, stating the reward to Omichund. All the members of the committee of the council of Calcutta, with Clive, signed both treaties, except admiral Watson, who,

MEDAL STRUCK IN COMMEMORATION OF THE BATTLE OF PLASSY,

the officers of the army and navy shared amongst them for this job one million two hundred and sixty-one thousand and seventy-five pounds. Besides this, it was stipulated that the French factories and effects should be given up to the English, and the French never again allowed to enter Bengal. The territory surrounding Calcutta, to the distance of six hundred yards beyond the Mahratta ditch, and all the land lying south of Calcutta as far as Calpee, should be granted them on zemindary tenure, the company paying the rent, like the other zemindars. Thus the English, who were before merely the tenants of a factory, became, in reality, the rulers of Bengal, for Meer Jaffier was a mere tool in their hands, as they, ere long, showed by deposing him.

At this moment poor Meer Jaffier found it impossible to retain his seat without the support of the English. Shah Alum, the eldest son of the great mogul, was coming against him with a large army. Clive met and defeated him, and for this service he received from his puppet a jaghire, or domain worth twenty-seven thousand pounds a year.

Some years after, when Clive was called to account for these gifts before a committee of the house of commons, so far from admitting that he had shown any culpable cupidity, he expressed his astonishment at his own moderation. "When I recollect," he said, "entering the nabob's treasury

MONUMENT ERECTED TO THE MEMORY OF THE SUFFERERS IN THE at Moorshedabad, with heaps of gold and silver to the right

with an Englishman's proper sense of honour, signed only the real one. But, lest the absence of the admiral's signature should excite Omichund's suspicion, the signature of the admiral was attached to the document without his consent. When the plot had succeeded, when the battle of Plassy was won, and Meer Jaffier acknowledged as nabob, or subadah, of Bengal, Omichund was coolly informed that the treaty which he had seen was a sham, and that he would not receive a single rupee! No more diabolical transaction ever took place in any country or in any age of the world, however dark and abandoned. Omichund, confounded at this example of

and left, and those crowned with jewels, I am amazed at nothing but my own forbearance."

At the same time, Clive sent expeditions under colonel Forde to drive the French from the Northern Circars-a tract of country stretching from the mouth of the Kistna to the pagoda of Juggernaut. Bussey had invaded it from the Deccan, and left the marquis de Conflans to hold it. Forde defeated Conflans, and made himself master of Masulipatam against a very superior force.

Scarcely had colonel Forde returned from this expedition, towards the end of the year 1759, when the Dutch, envious of the English success, sent an armament of seven men-of