by Tom Anderson
The fact that Fox, as Secretary of State for the Northern Department, had anything at all to do in the war reflected the number of enemies lining up to take a potshot at Britain and Prussia—both of which had acquitted themselves well in the Second War of Supremacy, and thus needed taking down a peg or two. As well as the Franco-Austrian alliance and their chief German ally Saxony, the usual enemies Sweden and Russia entered the war on the same side against Prussia. The Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania, although neutral, was by this point suffering bureaucratic deadlock from its elective monarchy and recent wars, and allowed Russian troops to pass through its territory and attack the Prussians.
Against this mighty alliance stood only Britain, Prussia, and their dependencies—Ireland, Hanover, the new Empire of North America, and two minor German states, the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel and the Duchy of Brunswick. However, the Anglo-Prussian alliance embodied the two states with the greatest navy and army, respectively, in Europe. Britain had the advantage of being an island, and thus was only vulnerable to invasion if the inferior French navy managed to gain control of the Channel—quite unlikely. Prussia had no such protection, but nevertheless fought off simultaneous French, Austrian, Swedish and Russian invasions under the dynamic generalship of Frederick II. As Voltaire remarked, Prussia was an army that happened to possess a country, not the other way around.
Valour, revolutionary army drills and Frederick’s leadership could not win the war alone for Prussia. The country was kept afloat by subsidies of five million pounds a year from Britain,[46] jealously guarded by the thrifty Grenville and Pitt. Britain herself avoided continental conflict as much as possible thanks to the tactical doctrines of Pulteney and Pitt, which confined British land attacks to a series of descents on the French coast, intending to tie up French troops without actually trying to seize or hold any territory. The one exception was the descent on the Isle d’Aix in September 1757, but the British rapidly found it was impossible to reinforce their occupying troops thanks to the shallow seas preventing any of their larger ships from approaching. The operation was an embarrassing washout, with Pitt being furious over the loss of a million pounds with nothing to show for it.
Frederick II, King in Prussia, continued to astound the world by defeating an Austrian army at Leuthen and a French one at Rossbach. Despite the fact that Maria Theresa had attempted to reform the Austrian army on Prussian lines, Frederick’s forces continued to excel. However, the Austrians did manage to break Frederick’s Siege of Prague in 1757.
The Mediterranean struggle focused on a French attack on Minorca (British since the First War of Supremacy) early in the war, in the year 1756. A British attempt under Admiral Edward Boscawen—a hero of Vernon’s attack on Cartagena in the previous war—failed with a shocking defeat of the Royal Navy by the French fleet. Boscawen was disgraced, though he escaped a court-martial on the grounds that witnesses swore he had fought as hard as any man could be expected, and was sent off with a ragtag fleet to try and take the French sugar islands in the West Indies. Meanwhile, the British occupied France’s African colony of Dakar in 1758.[47]
The North American theatre was astonishing in its activity. From the farthest north of Canada to the balmy sugar islands of the West Indies, Briton and American fought Frenchman, while the Indians were divided, some owing allegiance to one side, the rest to another. The French ostensibly laid claim to a vast territory called New France, from ‘Québec’ in Canada—one area which did have a large number of French settlers—throughout the entire Mississippi river region, enforced by scattered fortresses, and down to Nouvelle-Orléans at the swampy mouth of the river. The French Governors-General since 1749 had repeatedly tried to gain influence with the independent-minded Indian tribes of the Ohio Country, most of whom preferred to trade with the British. Despite the general lack of French success, this alarmed the Iroquois. Their leader, who went by the anglicised name ‘Chief Hendrick’, met with the then Governor of the Province of New York, the Duke of Portland (an appointment by Frederick), and appealed to the British to help block French expansion. Portland provisionally agreed to start trying to foil the French missions, though warned that for the moment the war must remain shadowy and unproveable. Frederick later concurred with his judgement when the matter came up.[48]
The Governor of Virginia, Robert Dinwiddie,[49] concurred and also worked to try and stop French expansion in the Ohio Country. American militiamen clashed with the French, and Indian allies on both sides. The French built forts in the land of Vandalia, claimed by Virginia, Fort Presque Isle and Fort Duquesne (named after the new Governor-General of New France, the Marquis de Duquesne). Dinwiddie attempted to take these forts in 1754, while Britain and France were technically at peace (although even more technically at war),[50] but his attacks were repulsed.[51] The Ohio Company, later merged with several other ventures into the Grand Ohio Company, continued to thwart French ambitions in the region up until the outbreak of war.
British, American, German and Iroquois troops fought together against French, Hurons (the hereditary enemies of the Iroquois) and Algonquins. There were also some attacks from opportunistic members of the more independently-minded tribes, including the Lenape and the Susquehanna. As the British controlled Fort Louisbourg, the French would have found it very hard to reinforce their troops by sending ships down the St Lawrence. This was an entirely hypothetical question because the government of Louis XV, led by the Duc de Choiseul and the Marquise de Pompadour, did not consider colonial conflicts to be that important and reserved troops for the European war. The French only did as well as they did in North America and India because they had some very able commanders capable of making a little go a long way. In North America, this was Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, while in India, Dupleix’s star once again rose.
Montcalm’s warfare in America was in some ways not unlike that of Frederick II in Europe; hopelessly outnumbered, he nonetheless astounded his foes by several early aggressive victories, but in the end the sheer numbers of his enemies wore him down. The French took several forts in New York in 1757, most notably Fort Frederick William, which eventually peacefully surrendered to Montcalm after its relief column failed to materialise. Montcalm was castigated for a ‘massacre’ of Britain’s troops, which was in fact perpetrated by his Indian allies, whose own rules of war required plunder and slaves from defeated enemies and did not recognise the European rules of warfare. It is probable in reality that Montcalm attempted to stop the massacre, but failed.
The massacre did galvanise American public opinion against the French. Prior to this, New England in particular had been lukewarm towards the war. Notably, the Bostonian writer Ben Franklin—already famous for his Almanac—had created a political cartoon “UNITE, OR DIE”, featuring a cut-up snake with the names of the colonies on each piece. At the time it was believed that a cut-up snake could come back to life if the pieces were rejoined. The cartoon captured the public imagination and Franklin is credited for the Empire of North America’s eventual national symbol being a rattlesnake. Another interesting point is that in his cartoon, the New England colonies are represented as ‘New England’, not separately as Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire, reflecting Franklin’s political beliefs that would become very important after the war.
The war in America was of course close to King Frederick’s heart, and Pitt too thought it an important theatre. When Pulteney died in 1758, Pitt became Prime Minister (Fox taking over the Southern Department) and moved the American front up to top priority. Despite Montcalm’s genius, Anglo-American and Iroquois armies, led by General James Wolfe (“he huffed and he puffed and he blew the French down”—Philip Bulkeley) drove the French from vital strategic points such as Fort Niagara, and soon the French were fighting on their own soil, in Québec. The cities of Québec and Montreal fell in 1759, the Americans’ annus mirabilis, and Montcalm was killed. British casualties in the operation were heavy, although Wolfe survived: wounded in the leg, he was carri
ed from the battlefield by a number of improntu stretcher-bearers. The scene is captured in Boudinot’s seminal painting “The Wolf Lies Down with the Lambs” (1811) which incorporates a story whose historical fact is disputed: that among the stretcher-bearers was a young Royal Navy surveyor called James Cook, who was shot at long range by a French rifleman and killed when the stretcher party was almost back to the Anglo-American lines. The story is considered romantic because Cook effectively inadvertently took the bullet for Wolfe and allowed the general to recover from his minor wound, and it is certainly true that a surveyor named James Cook was present at the battlefield and died there, but there is no direct evidence for this story. Of course this is irrelevant: the popularity of Boudinot’s painting means there is no question in the minds of the general public that the story happened.[52]
Most astonishingly of all, a Major Washington—the brother of General Lawrence Washington who commanded the American army now successfully driving the French from their Appalachian forts—came off the battlefield with a wounded comrade named Ralph Robinson, hit in the shoulder by a French musket ball. The world was astounded when this turned out to be none other than the Prince of Wales. Both Washington and the Prince had previously fought against the Hurons before being redeployed to Wolfe’s army.
It was also at this time that the New Englanders perpetrated what later generations would call a racial purge[53] against the Acadians in Nova Scotia. Refusing to fight the French and possibly even hindering the British forces stationed there, they were considered a threat. The British deported some of them back to France, but many of them—along with the Canadians later on—were deported to, or fled to, the remaining French holdouts on the southern Mississippi, swelling the population of Nouvelle-Orléans and its environs.[54]
In India, the British East India Company had been building up a vast army in Calcutta with which to finally retake Madras from the French. This might have worked, had it not been the fact that the Nawab of Bengal became convinced that the BEIC was plotting to seize his throne. Bengali forces took the British Fort William and the Nawab infamously locked hundreds of British troops in a tiny room, the ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’, in which most of them perished. Throughout the rest of the war, the British were forced to focus on fighting their former ally and reclaiming the territory they had already had. By 1759, the Nawab was dead and the BEIC had directly taken over Bengal through a half-dozen minor princes as their proxies, at the cost of the lives of many British (and Indian sepoy) troops. By contrast, the French under Dupleix had finally taken Cuddalore and Fort St David, and were beginning to expand their influence over the whole of South India—to the extent that it began to alarm Haidar Ali, effective King of Mysore. As well as grabbing back power in Bengal, the BEIC reverted to a more conservative policy, returning its focus to Bombay on the western coast and expanding power into the Peshwa-ruled hinterland. There were also suggestions that the BEIC ought to try once more to take the East Indies from the Dutch, which would cause friction later on.
Things began to turn against the Prussians in Europe in 1758 as the massive numerical advantage of Prussia’s foes began to turn against Frederick. No financial injection from Pitt could change that. The Austrians captured much of Prussia’s artillery corps at the Battle of Hochkirk, and the next year—while it brought some miracles for the British, with the fall of Quebec, Montreal, Calcutta, Guadaloupe and the naval victory at Quiberon in just twelve months—was a disaster for the Prussians. Count Saltykov of Russia defeated one of Frederick’s generals at Paltzig, while the Austrian General Daun forced an entire Prussian corps to surrender at Maxen. Furthermore, Hanover—whose army had been neglected by the policies of Frederick of Great Britain—failed to defeat a French invasion at Minden.
Even Pitt was beginning to consider a continental strategy at this point, as it seemed the only way to save Britain’s European interests. At the Battle of Kunersdorf on 12th August, Frederick of Prussia stood his ground against a superior Austro-Russian force and watched as his army was annihilated. No longer caring for life, the King drew his epée and stood on a hill, determined to hold the line against the enemy all by himself or die trying. In the event, he died trying, although it is recorded that he slew an absurd number of Austrians and Russians before succumbing.[55]
Prussia literally collapsed without Frederick’s leadership. The heir to the throne, Frederick William II, was only 15 years old and his father’s brother and old sparring partner, Prince Henry, took over as regent. Henry was also a great general, but he believed the war was lost and Prussia would face total annihilation if it continued fighting. He made one direct plea to Pitt to send British forces directly to Prussia to fight, which was refused due to Swedish control of the Baltic and the French contesting Hanover. Henry therefore approached the Franco-Austrians in November 1759 and sued for peace.
The peace was harsh, as might be expected. Silesia was returned to Austria, but also the southern half of the old Ducal Prussia was awarded to Poland-Lithuania (now firmly in the pocket of Tsaritsa Elizabeth’s Russia) and the northern half to Sweden. Saxony received the Prussian enclave of Cottbus, plus the town of Liegnitz and the surrounding area. Even more punishingly, the Hohenzollern possessions scattered throughout the rest of the Holy Roman Empire were stripped from Prussian control. Though the Hapsburgs would have liked to annex them directly, they recognised that this was not politically feasible and would anger too many potential allies, so Emperor Francis I instead had the idea of transferring these minor states to Saxony. Saxony was a reliable ally of the Hapsburgs, always under threat of invasion by Prussia, meaning this was almost as good as direct Hapsburg control over those German states. What could possibly go wrong?
Prussia, in fact, was no longer worthy of the name, and Austria began to officially refer to it as the Electorate of Brandenburg again—though the Kings in Prussia, obviously, rejected this. France had been promised the Austrian Netherlands in exchange for her help, but in the event this failed to materialise (angering the people of France against Louis XV once again). Prussia had been reduced from a major to a minor power again, while Russian influence in Poland was now contested only by Austria. And the Austrians were more concerned with exerting their will over a Holy Roman Empire that, with the dismemberment of Prussia, was now a lot easier to bring back under some semblance of centralised imperial control. For a time at least, the Empire had meaning once more, and Francis I and his successors attempted to pursue the idea of a powerful Germany under Austrian leadership, no longer divided and subject to infighting. The Hapsburgs’ efforts, though weak and lukewarm, would go on to inspire the German unificationists of almost a century later.
Britain’s own position was now divided. King Frederick had fallen ill with a lung infection[56] and now rarely left St. James’ Palace, leaving Pitt to make the decision. The Prime Minister had already been on the verge of abandoning Prussia even before Frederick II’s death. Now the only question was whether to continue with the war with France, given that it appeared that Portugal and Spain might enter the war sooner or later. Pitt decided to approach the French for a peace, and Choiseul was receptive.
The major provisions of the Treaty of Amsterdam (signed in the neutral Dutch Republic) were as follows:
India: French control of Madras and Cuddalore to be recognised by Britain.
North America: British control of Nova Scotia, Louisbourg, Quebec, Montreal and the Ohio Country to be recognised by France. The borders of the remaining French Louisiana to be defined and agreed upon.
West Indies: Guadaloupe to be returned to France.
Africa: British control of Dakar to be recognised by France.
Europe: Hanover to be evacuated by France and its pre-war status restored.
Generally: France recognises Frederick as legitimate King of Great Britain, and the status of the Empire of North America.
Britain concluded a separate peace with Austria, Russia and Sweden, against whom she had barely fought. The peace was
honourable, and relatively amicable, though tensions remained over the French massacre at Fort Frederick William and the Acadian Expulsion by the Americans.
Frederick had demanded that Prince George return to answer for his crimes. The young prince did indeed return, along with Washington, in 1760—by which time his father was on his deathbed with the infection. In a reportedly tearful scene (and certainly presented that way by countless historical films), the King made up with his son before passing away. King Frederick I, King of Great Britain, King of Ireland, Elector of Hanover and first Emperor of North America, passed away on February 19th 1760. The nations mourned, the Colonies more than any other.
George Augustine became King George III. For the most part, he retained his father’s ministers, but he nonetheless alarmed many British Parliamentarians. Far more so than his father had been, he was obsessed with American affairs, almost considered a colonial rustic (hence his nickname ‘Frontier George’[14]) and, while it would increase Parliament’s powers to once more have a monarch disinterested in British affairs, George was no less dynamic and active a king than his father.
