The Rise and Fall of the British Empire

by Lawrence, James

  The Prime Minister was unduly pessimistic, but correct in his view of Britain’s total dependence on her navy for survival as a great power. Nearly sixty years of intermittent war against France had shown both the advantages and limitations of maritime supremacy; alone, it had not been the key to victory, but it had been the means of preventing defeat. Moreover, the general strategy which had been devised after 1745 showed that, properly used, command of the world’s seas offered Britain the means of expelling the French from North America and possibly India, endeavours that had been forestalled by events in Europe and the peace. Nevertheless, what had been achieved during the war bred a new and aggressive self-confidence within the navy which was spreading to the country at large despite the disappointments in the Caribbean. Anson and Hawke emerged from the war as heroes and their audacious fighting spirit enthused their subordinate captains, men like George Rodney and Edward Boscawen who succeeded them in high command during the next twenty years. The two admirals came to embody the superior qualities of the navy, which were celebrated in a popular patriotic ballad, written in the late 1770s to commemorate the commissioning of ships named after them:

  These two noble heroes, whose names our ships bear,

  Make the Spaniards to tremble, the Frenchmen to fear,

  Secure of success, then, your fortune ne’er balk,

  But enter on board the Lord Anson and Hawke.

  Let the wise politicians of France and of Spain

  Threat to take from Great Britain her rule of the main,

  Their plate ships shall pay for such arrogant talk

  If they come in sight of the Lord Anson and Hawke.

  2

  Tis to Glory we Steer: Gains and Losses, 1749–83

  The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle settled nothing: Anglo-French commercial and colonial rivalry persisted and deepened after 1748. The French remained convinced that their antagonist’s long-term aim was to stifle their trade and expropriate their colonies. Britain continued to fear a concert between the Bourbon Louis XV and his Spanish cousin which would bring their fleets into a dangerous conjunction. Despite the late war, Britain was becoming richer and more and more dependent on trade with her colonies. Exports to North America rose from a yearly average of £524,000 in the late 1720s to just over £1 million twenty years later. During the same period the annual total of exports to the West Indies increased from £473,000 to £732,000 and to India from £112,000 to £522,000.

  And yet as exports to the colonies spiralled, Britain’s economic future remained uncertain. The chief threat came from France and was most menacing in India and North America where fighting had hitherto been limited and inconclusive. The danger was greatest in North America where, by 1754, violent clashes had increased as the advance guards of British and French settlers collided in the Ohio valley. The French and their Indian allies had been penetrating the Ohio River for some years, moving southwards from Quebec. Far to the south, parties of Frenchmen were simultaneously edging north from their coastal settlements on the Gulf of Mexico along the Mississippi River. If uninterrupted, France would, in the near future, establish a title to the entire region around the Mississippi and its tributaries and so occupy a broad swathe of territory from New Orleans in the south to Quebec in the north, blocking the westwards expansion of Britain’s colonies.

  Skirmishes between French and Virginian frontiersmen along the upper Ohio, the demolition of a wooden fortalice and its replacement by Fort Duquesne, named in honour of the energetic and able governor of Quebec, set the alarm bells ringing in London during the summer of 1754. National prestige was at stake and possibly the future of British North America. Measures were immediately taken to draft regular troops to Virginia and additional warships to North American waters, and the French followed suit.

  Having struck a belligerent posture, the Duke of Newcastle’s government was beset by misgivings. It feared, with good reason, that a localised war in the North American backwoods would inevitably spread to Europe. Here, France, with its enormous resources of manpower, had two attractive options; the invasion of George II’s province of Hanover, or an amphibious cross-Channel attack on Britain. In either event, Britain would be compelled to detain soldiers and ships for home defence or detach them for service in northern Germany. The King naturally insisted that everything possible should be done to protect his territory, but for many of his subjects, including Pitt, its defence was an incubus. The country gained nothing from the possession of Hanover, which soaked up resources which should have been more advantageously deployed to secure colonies and new markets. Nevertheless, since 1714 Britain had been ruled according to the principles laid down by the Revolutionary Settlement of 1688-9, by the Hanoverian dynasty, and the dominant Whig party felt obliged to assist its kings to keep their German possessions, wherever possible at the smallest charge to the country. This goal was achieved in January 1756 with an alliance with Frederick II of Prussia which, in turn, led to the creation of a Franco-Austrian-Russian axis. Hemmed in, the Prussian king struck first, invading Saxony in September.

  Britain was now engaged in a general war on the Continent and obliged to dilute the forces she had originally intended to concentrate in America. With free use of the Austrian Netherlands, France could muster men along the Channel coast and force her opponent to divert men and material to counter an invasion threat. Moreover, subsidies to Prussia deprived Britain of cash that was needed elsewhere.

  * * *

  It was not the burden of Britain’s Continental commitment, but unpreparedness, ill-luck and operational problems which led to a dismal sequence of reverse during 1756 and 1757. The worst was the loss of Minorca after Admiral John Byng refused to risk a general engagement with the French Mediterranean fleet, and withdrew to Gibraltar. His prudence, based upon the fear that it was better to preserve his fleet rather than hazard a battle, was almost universally interpreted as cowardice by an indignant public. Byng was recalled in disgrace, court-martialled and executed in March 1757, according to the famous remark of Voltaire, ‘pour encourager les autres’. He was as much a scapegoat for a discredited ministry as a warning to faltering admirals who failed to manifest the expected pugnacious spirit whenever the French appeared.

  Elsewhere, the navy was in more difficulties. There had been a quick mobilisation, thanks to the direction of Anson, First Lord of the Admiralty, who revealed himself as capable an administrator as he had been a seaman. But it took time to build new ships and refit old and the naval dockyards and victualling services needed to adjust to the new, and often overwhelming, demands placed upon them. At the same time as support systems were moving into gear, the navy had to find and retain sailors to serve in its ships, many of which were forced to go to sea partially manned. The biggest problem was wastage; out of 70,000 men recruited between 1756 and 1759, 12,700 deserted and a slightly larger number died from disease. By contrast, 143 died as a result of enemy action between 1755 and 1757.1

  The immediate solution was the widespread use of the press gang, which was unpopular with its victims, their kinsfolk and with merchants and shipowners, who lost skilled seamen to the navy. In 1757, a highly efficient and probably ruthless press in New York rounded up 3,000 men, a quarter of the adult male population, of whom about 400 were later released.2 In the long term, the answer to wastage lay in the preservation of sailors on ship and shore. In this field, and contrary to the commonplace historical view of everyday life in the Georgian navy, considerable and often highly successful efforts were made to keep sailors in good health. Each man received daily a pound of biscuit, a gallon of beer, three-quarters of a pound of cheese or six pounds of preserved beef or pork a week. Whenever possible, crews were given rations of fresh meat and vegetables, the last as a preventative against scurvy, which still decimated crews despite the knowledge that regular eating of lemons or marmalade reduced the chances of catching it.3

  Naval pay in the 1750s compared well with that of sailors in the merchant service and was from time to
time augmented with prize money, although allocations to ordinary seamen were never more than a few pounds. A sailor could, therefore, find some satisfaction in his lot which compared favourably with that of the soldier. The difference was celebrated in a song sung by the girls of Gosport in 1780:

  Sailors, they get all the money,

  Soldiers they get none but brass;

  I do love a jolly sailor,

  Soldiers they may kiss my arse.

  There was little cash jingling in sailors’ pockets during the first three years of the Seven Years War. At first, hopes of swift victories and prize money had been high. As he sailed in pursuit of a French squadron bound for North America in May 1756, Boscawen was in optimistic mood when he wrote to his wife: ‘If these French gentry do not escape me this time, they will pay for the house and furniture too, beside something to save for our children.’4 Fanny Boscawen was disappointed; her husband took no prizes and the French reached their destination, as did another squadron of eighteen battleships and five frigates the following year.

  The blockade continued and measures were taken to construct new facilities at Halifax, Nova Scotia, including a careening dock where warships were rolled on their sides to caulk leaky seams and scrape off the seaweed and barnacles that clung to hulls and reduced speed. This was not ready until 1759, after which it was possible to keep a squadron of at least eight battleships in American waters without the need to send them back to Britain for repairs. Such preparations ultimately paid dividends, but they took time.

  In retrospect, the years 1756 and 1757 were a period of slow, methodical mobilisation for later offensives. Contemporaries, dismayed by the retirement from the Mediterranean, fears of invasion, the temporary loss of control over the Atlantic, reverses in Canada and India and the poor performance of the Prussians which opened the way for an invasion of Hanover, blamed a government which appeared confused and faltering. The war effort was subject to critical scrutiny inside parliament and outside by journalists and pamphleteers on the look out for evidence of ministerial incompetence.

  The most trenchant and influential attacks on Newcastle’s ministry came from William Pitt, who ascribed the government’s failures to its squandering cash on Prussian subsidies. America was the theatre of war where Britain’s real interests were at stake, not Europe, and resources needed to be distributed accordingly. Unable to survive without Pitt who, his allies claimed, enjoyed widespread popular support, Newcastle brought him into a coalition in June 1757. Pitt was given responsibility for the affairs of the army, navy and colonies, which made him to all intents and purposes the minister in charge of the war effort on all fronts.

  William Pitt’s father and grandfather had made their money in India. He was forty-nine in 1757, a victim to prolonged and excruciating attacks of gout which at times forced him to address the Commons seated, an indulgence seldom granted. To the world, he was a figure who, for all his private ambition, had always stood apart from the factional wrangling and heaving and shoving for government patronage which consumed so much of the energies of other politicians. To the public he was a man untainted by party, a patriot who wished to unite the country in the pursuit of national interests. Pitt was a compelling and unequalled parliamentary orator at a time when MPs’ minds were often decided by an individual speaker’s eloquence.

  Pitt the politician attracted adherents, largely Tory in sympathies, from the country gentry and a powerful and vociferous lobby from the City, led by Alderman Sir William Beckford, whose wealth from Jamaican plantations and sugar gave him the wherewithal to finance two Pittite journals. Around Beckford clustered a coterie of London merchants and financiers with overseas interests for whom the war could only be justified in terms of conquered colonies and foreign markets taken from France.

  For his supporters and later generations of patriots and imperialists, Pitt was a national saviour who, singlehanded, took over a flagging war effort and secured a series of spectacular victories on land and sea, which renewed British mastery of the seas and enlarged the empire. Such is the Pitt who stands, firm-visaged and robed as a Roman senator, above a seated, self-assured Britannia and proud lion on a statue erected by admirers in London’s Guildhall. Underneath, a fulsome inscription catalogues the virtues of a statesman who had been ‘the means by which Providence raises a Nation to Greatness’. This is, perhaps, somewhat overblown. Pitt inherited a war-machine and strategy that had been created by others, most notably Anson who continued to do valuable work as First Lord of the Admiralty. What Pitt did provide was a sense of vision, a steady nerve and iron willpower.

  Once in office, Pitt repudiated his former views. The policy of paying Frederick II to fight the French became the cornerstone of his strategy. ‘While we had France for an enemy,’ he told the Commons in August 1762, ‘Germany was the scene to employ and baffle her arms.’5 The flow of money continued and, at Frederick’s urging, a series of amphibious raids was undertaken against French ports during 1758. These expensive operations were mocked as breaking windows with guineas, but they forced the French to hold back men from the German front. Here, the tide was turning in Prussia’s favour. In November 1757 a Franco-Austrian army was resoundingly beaten at Rossbach; a month later Frederick defeated an Austrian army at Leuthen and, the following spring, won a victory over the Russians at Zorndorf. There was also heartening news from India where, in June 1757, Robert Clive had routed Siraj-ud-Daula’s army at Plassey and restored British power in Bengal.

  At sea, the French suffered two dire misfortunes. An epidemic of typhus broke out among the crews of the squadron which had protected Louisbourg and was carried back to Brest when the ships returned at the close of the year. Early in 1758 the Toulon squadron, under orders to sail to the West Indies and North America, were driven back to port by a combination of operational muddles, bad weather and a brief engagement with a British force off eastern Spain. In one fight, between the Monmouth and the more heavily-armed Foudroyant, the French gunners deserted their cannon, scared by the weight of the British broadsides. Morale throughout the French navy was sagging; low pay and thin rations drove men to desert in large numbers from ships which were unseaworthy thanks to inefficient dockyards.6 Meanwhile, the Royal Navy was steadily growing in strength. In 1757 there were ninety ships of line in commission and a further 149 frigates, sloops and bomb ketches. Two years later the fleet had grown to 300 ships of all kinds.

  Britain’s naval supremacy made possible Pitt’s grand strategy of the piecemeal conquest of France’s stranded colonies. In May and December 1758, the fortified slaving stations of Fort Louis and Gorée on the coast of Senegal were taken at little cost. The latter surrendered after a brief exchange of fire between warships and shore batteries in which the British casualties were dead and 68 wounded.7

  The heaviest blow was delivered in North America. Louisbourg was captured in 1758, and the following year a three-pronged land and sea offensive was launched against Quebec which was finally taken in September. In the West Indies, the reduction of the French sugar islands began with the capture of Guadeloupe in February 1759. As the year progressed and Pitt’s strategy unfolded, it seemed only a matter of time before the whole of France’s empire would be swallowed and her overseas trade extinguished. Unable to match the Royal Navy in North American, Indian and West Indian waters, France had no chance of reinforcing her outnumbered colonial garrisons. Her only hope lay in an invasion of Britain, a project advanced by Louis XV’s chief minister, Etienne-François, Duc de Choiseul, who believed it would force Pitt to pull back men and ships to defend his country’s shores.

  The first prerequisite of the 1759 invasion scheme was the amalgamation of France’s Brest and Toulon fleets. This was frustrated by Boscawen who intercepted and scattered the Mediterranean fleet off Lagos Bay in June. The 21-strong Brest fleet under the command of Hubert de Brienne, Baron Conflans, was discovered off Quiberon Bay in November by Hawke. The French admiral ordered his ships to run to port as Hawke’s slightly larger
force bore down on him. A storm was blowing up and both fleets were heading towards treacherous waters broken by reefs and rocky islets.

  Hawke was unperturbed by these hazards. After being warned about them by the master of his flagship, the Royal George, he calmly replied, ‘You have now done your duty in apprising me of the danger; let us see how well you can comply with my orders. I say, lay me alongside the French admiral.’ Given the sailing conditions and failing light, he was taking a desperate gamble, but the harsh calculus of seapower demanded that he snatch at any opportunity to sink or capture French men-o’-war. A general chase followed through rough seas which dramatically illustrated the superiority of British seamanship and gunnery. Two broadsides from the Royal George, aimed low into the waterline, were sufficient to sink the Superbe. Pummelled by the broadsides of each ship that passed her, the Formidable lowered her colours; Héros was driven ashore, and Thésée foundered after her captain foolishly ordered the opening of her lower gun ports in a heavy sea. By dusk, the French had been scattered and Hawke commanded his ships to cast anchor. Dawn revealed the French flagship, the Soleil Royal, in the middle of the British fleet. After slipping her cable, she was attacked, forced inshore and wrecked, the seventh French battleship to be lost.

  Quiberon Bay was a classic naval victory and elevated Hawke to the status of a national hero, possessed of all the virtues appropriate for a British naval commander. According to Smollett’s popular history of England, Hawke delivered his order to attack, ‘Steeled with the integrity and fortitude of his own land, animated by a warm love for his country, and well acquainted with the importance of the stake’.8 The battle that followed was the last in a gratifying tally of victories on land and sea during 1759. It joined Lagos Bay, Quebec, the fall of Guadeloupe and Minden, in which an Anglo-Hanoverian army defeated the French and guaranteed Hanover’s security. Together these triumphs were celebrated by the song ‘Hearts of Oak’, written by David Garrick for his impromptu entertainment Harlequin’s Invasion, first performed on the last day of the year.