The Leading Facts of English History Part 53

On the death of Charles VI, of the House of Austria, Emperor of Germany, his daughter Maria Theresa succeeded to the Austrian dominions. France now united with Spain, Prussia, and other European powers to overturn this arrangement, partly out of jealousy of the Austrian power, and partly from desire to get control of portions of the Austrian possessions. England and Holland, however, both desired to maintain Austria as a check against their old enemy France, and declared war, 1741.

During this war George II went over to the Continent to lead the English forces in person. He was not a man of commanding appearance, but he was every inch a soldier, and nothing exhilarated him like the smell of gunpowder. At the battle of Dettingen, in Bavaria, he got down from his horse, and drawing his sword, cried: "Come, boys, now behave like men, and the French will soon run."

With that, followed by his troops, he rused upon the enemy with such impetuosity that they turned and fled. This was the last battle in which an English king took part in person. It was followed by that of Fontenoy, in the Netherlands (Belgium), in which the French gained the victory. After nearly eight years fighting the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748, secured a peace advantageous for England.

543. Invasion by the "Young Pretender"; "The Forty-Five."[1]

[1] "The Forty-Five": so called from the Scotch rising of 1745.

While the War of the Austrian Succession was in progress, the French encouraged James II's grandson, Princle Charles Edward, the "Young Pretender" (S535), to make an attempt on the English crown. He landed (1745) on the northern coast of Scotland with only seven followers, but with the aid of the Scotch Jacobites (SS495, 535) of the Highlands he gained a battle over the English at Prestonpans, near Edinburgh.

Emboldened by his success, he now marched into Derbys.h.i.+re, England, on his way to London. He hoped that as he advanced the country would rise in his favor; but finding no support, he retreated to Scotland.

The next year he and his adherents were defeated, with great slaughter by "Butcher" c.u.mberland, as the Scotch called him, at Culloden, near Iverness (1746). (See map facing p. 120.) The "Young Pretender" fled from the battlefield to the Hebrides. After wandering in those islands for many months he escaped to France through the devotion and courage of the Scottish heroine, Flora Macdonald. When he left the country his Highland sympathizers lost all hope. There were no more ringing Jacobite songs, sung over bowls of steaming punch, of "Wha'll be king but Charlie?" "Over the Water to Charlie," and "Wae's me for Prince Charlie"; and when (1788) Prince Charles Edward died in Rome, the unfortunate House of Stuart, which began with James I (1603), disappeared from English history.[2]

[2] Devoted loyalty to a hopeless cause was never more truly or pathetically expressed than in some of these Jacobite songs, notably in those of Scotland, in honor of Prince Charles Edward, the "Young Pretender," of which the following lines from "Over the Water to Charlie" are an example: "Over the water, and over the sea, And over the water to Charlie; Come weal, come woe, we'll gather and go, And live or die with Charlie."

Scott, "Redgauntlet"

544. War in the East; the Black Hole of Calcutta; Clive's Victories; English Empire of India, 1751-1757.

The English acquired Madras, their first trading post in India, in the reign of Charles I (1639). Later, they obtained possession of Bombay, Calcutta, and other points, but they had not got control of the country, which was still governed by native princes. The French also had established an important trading post at Pondicherry, south of Madras, and were now secretly planning through alliance with the native rulers to get possession of the entire country. They had met with some success in their efforts, and the times seemed to favor their gaining still greater influence unless some decided measures should be taken to prevent them.

At this juncture Robert Clive, a young man who had been employed as clerk in the service of the English East India Company, but who had obtained a humble position in the army, obtained permission to try his hand at driving back the enemy. It was a work for which he was fitted. He met with success from the first, and he followed it up by the splendid victory of Arcot, 1751, which practically gave the English control of southern India. Shortly after that, Clive returned to England.

During his absence the native prince of Bengal undertook an expedition against Calcutta, a wealthy British trading post. He captured the fort which protected it (1756), and seizing the princ.i.p.al English residents, one hundred and forty-six in number, drove them at the point of the sword into a prison called the "Black Hole," a dungeon less than twenty feet square, and having but two small windows.

In such a climate, in the fierce heat of midsummer, that dungeon would have been too close for a single European captive; to crowd it with more than sevenscore persons for a night meant death by all the agonies of heat, thirst, and suffocation. In vain they endeavored to bribe the guard to transfer part of them to another room, in vain they begged for mercy, in vain they tried to burst the door. Their jailers only mocked them and would do nothing.

When daylight came the floor was heaped with corpses. Out of the hundred and forty-six prisoners only twenty-three were alive and they were so changed "that their own mothers would not have known them."[1]

[1] Macaulay's "Essay on Clive."

When Clive returned he was met with a cry for vengeance. He gathered his troops, recovered Calcutta, and ended by fighting that great battle of Pla.s.sey, 1757, which was the means of permanently establis.h.i.+ng the English empire in India on a firm foundation. (See map opposite.)

545. The Seven Years' War in Europe and America, 1756-1763.

Before the contest had closed by which England won her Asiatic dominions, a new war had broken out. In the fifth year, 1756, of the New Style[2] of reckoning time, the aggressive designs of Frederick the Great of Prussia caused such alarm that a grand alliance was formed by France, Russia, Austria, and Poland to check his further advance. Great Britain, however, gave her support to Frederick, in hope of humbling her old enemy France, who, in addition to her attempts to oust the English from India, was also making preparations on a grand scale to get possession of America.

[2] The New Style was introduced into Great Britain in 1752. Owing to a slight error in the calendar, the year had, in the course of centuries, been gradually losing, so that in 1752 it was eleven days short of what the true computation would make it. Pope Gregory corrected the error in 1582, and his calendar was adopted in nearly every country of Europe except Great Britain and Russia, both of which regarded the change as a "popish measure." But in 1751, notwithstanding the popular outcry, September 3, 1752, was made September 14, by an act of Parliament, and by the same act the beginning of the legal year was altered from March 25 to January 1.

The popular clamor against the reform is ill.u.s.trated in Hogarth's picture of an Election Feast, in which the People's party carry a banner, with the inscription, "Give us back our eleven days."

Every victory, therefore, which the British forces could gain in Europe would, by crippling the French, make the ultimate victory of the English in America so much the more certain; for this reason we may look upon the alliance with Frederick as an indirect means employed by England to protect her colonies on the other side of the Atlantic. These colonies now extended along the entire coast, from the Kennebec Riber, in Maine, to the borders of Florida.

The French, on the other hand, had planted colonies at Quebec and Montreal, on the St. Lawrence; at Detroit, on the Great Lakes; at New Orleans and other points on the Mississippi. They had also begun to build a line of forts along the Ohio River, which, when completed, would connect their northern and southern colonies, and thus secure to them the whole country west of the Alleghenies. They expected to conquer the East as well, to erase Virginia, New England, and all other English colonial t.i.tles from the map, and in their place to put the name New France.

During the first part of the war, the English were unsuccessful. In an attempt to take Fort Duquesne, General Braddock met with a crus.h.i.+ng defeat (1756) from the combined French and Indian forces, which would indeed have proved his utter destruction had not a young Virginian named George Was.h.i.+ngton saved a remnant of Braddock's troops by his calmness and courage. Not long afterwards, a second expedition was sent out against the French fort, in which Was.h.i.+ngton led the advance. The garrison fled at his approach, the English colors were run up, and the place was named Pittsburg, in honor of William Pitt, later, Lord Chatham, Secretary of State, but virtually Prime Minister (S534) of England.

About the same time, the English took the forts on the Bay of Fundy, and drove out several thousand French settlers from Acadia, or Nova Scotia. Other successes followed, by which they obtained possession of important points. Finally, Canada was won from the French by Wolfe's victory over Montcalm, at Quebec, 1759.[1] where both gallant soldiers verified the truth of the words, "The paths of glory lead but to the grave,"[2] which the English general had quoted to some brother officers the vening before the attack. This ended the war.

[1] See "Leading Facts of American History," in this series, S142.

[2] "The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike the inevitable hour; The paths of glory lead but to the grave."

Gray, "Elegy" (1750) "I would rather be the author of that poem," said Wolfe, "than to have the glory of beating the French to-morrow." Wolfe and Montcalm were both mortally wounded and died within a few hours of each other.

Spain now ceded Florida to Great Britain, so that, when peace was made in 1763, the English flag waved over the whole eastern half of the American continent, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. Thus, within a comparatively few years, England had gained an empire in the east (India) (S544) and another in the west (America).

Six years later (1769) Captain Cook explored and mapped the coast of New Zealand, and next the eastern coast of the island continent of Australia. Before the middle of the following century both these countries were added to the possessions of Great Britain. Then, as Daniel Webster said, her "morning drum beat, following the sun and keeping company with the hours," literally circled "the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England."

546. Moral Condition of England; Intemperance; Rise of the Methodists, 1738.

But grand as were the military successes of the British arms, the reign of George II was morally torpid. With the exception of a few public men like Pitt, the majority of the Whig party (S479) seemed animated by no higher motive than self-interest. It was an age whose want of faith, coa.r.s.eness, and brutality were well protrayed by Hogarth's pencil and Fielding's pen.

For a long time intemperance had been steadily on the increase; strong drink had taken the place of beer, and every attempt to restrict the traffic was met at the elections by the popular cry, "No gin, no king." The London taverns were thronged day and night, and in the windows of those frequented by the lowest cla.s.s placards were exhibited with the tempting announcement, "Drunk for a penny; dead drunk for twopence; clean straw for nothing." On the straw lay men and women in beastly helplessness.

Among the upper cla.s.ses matters were hardly better. It was a common thing for great statesmen to drink at public dinners until one by one they slid out of their seats and disappeared under the table; and Sir Robert Walpole, the late Prime Minister of England (S534, 538), said that when he was a young man his father would say to him as he poured out the wine, "Come, Robert, you shall drink twice while I drink once, for I will not permit the son in his sober senses to be witness of the intoxication of his father."[1]

[1] c.o.xe's "Memoirs of Walpole" and Lecky's "England."

Such was the condition of England when a great religious revival began, 1738. Its leader was John Wesley. A number of years earlier, while a tutor at Oxford, he and his brother Charles, with a few others, were accustomed to meet at certain hours for devotional exercises. The regularity of their meetings, and of their habits generally, got for them the name of "Methodists," which, like "Quaker"

and many another nickname of the kind, was destined to become a t.i.tle of respect and honor.

At first Wesley had no intention of separating from the Church of England, but labored only to quicken it to new life; eventually, however, he found it best to begin a more extended and independent movement. The revival swept over England with its regenerating influence, and was carried by Whitefield, Wesley's lifelong friend, across the sea to America. It was especially powerful among those who had hitherto scoffed at both Church and Bible. Rough and hardened men were touched and melted to tears of repentance by the fervor of this Oxford graduate, whom neither threats nor ridicule could turn aside from his one great purpose of saving souls.

Unlike the Church, Wesley did not ask the mult.i.tude to come to him; he went to them. In this respect his work recalls that of the "Begging Friars" of the thirteenth century (S208), and of Wycliffe's "Poor Priests" in the fourteenth (S254). For more than thirty years he rode on horseback from one end of England to the other, making known the glad tidings of Christian hope. He preached in the fields, under trees which are still known by the expressive name of "Gospel Oaks"; he spoke in the abandoned mining pits of Cornwall, at the corners of the streets in cities, on the docks, in the slums; in fact, wherever he could find listening ears and responsive hearts.

The power of Wesley's appeal was like that of the great Puritan movement of the seventeenth century (SS378, 417). Nothing more effective had been heard since the days when Augustine and his band of monks set forth on their mission among the barbarous Saxons (S42).

The results answered fully to the zeal that awakened them. Better than the growing prosperity of extending commerce, better than all the conquests made by the British flag in the east or west, was the new religious spirit which stirred the people of both England and America. It provoked the National Church to emulation in good works; it planted schools, checked intemperance, and brought into vigorous activity whatever was best and bravest in a race that when true to itself is excelled by none.

547. Summary.

The history of the reign may be summed up in the great Religious Movement begun by John Wesley, which has just been described, and in the Asiatic, Continental, and American wars with France, which ended in the extension of the power of Great Britain in both hemispheres,-- in India in the Old World and in North America in the New.

George III--1760-1820

548. Accession and Character; the King's Struggle with the Whigs.

By the death of George II his grandson,[1] George III, now came to the throne. The new King was a man of excellent character, who prided himself on having been born an Englishman. He had the best interests of his country at heart, but he lacked many of the qualities necessary to be a great ruler. He was thoroughly conscientious, but he was narrow and stubborn to the last degree and he was at times insane.

[1] Frederick, Prince of Wales, George II's son, died before his father, leaving his son George heir to the throne. See Genealogical Table, p. 323.

His mother, who had seen how ministers and parties ruled in England (S534), resolved that her son should have the control. Her constant injunction to the young Prince was, "Be King, George, be King!" so that when he came to power George was determined to be King if self-will could make him one.[2]

[2] See Summary of Const.i.tutional History in the Appendix, p.xxv, S28.

But beneath this spirit of self-will there was a moral principle. In being King, George III intended to carry out a reform such as neither George I nor George II could have accomplished, supposing that either one had possessed the desire to undertake it.

The great Whig (SS479, 507) families of rank and wealth had now held uninterrupted possession of the government for nearly half a century.

Their influence was so supreme that the sovereign had practically become a mere cipher, dependent for his authority on the political support which he received. The King was resolved that this state of things should continue no longer. He was determined to rea.s.sert the royal authority, secure a government which should reflect his principles, and have a ministry to whom he could dictate, instead of one that dictated to him.

For a long time he struggled in vain, but at last succeeded, and found in Lord North a Prime Minister (S534) who bowed to the royal will, and endeavored to carry out George III's favorite policy of "governing for, but never by, the people." That policy finally called forth Mr. Dunning's famous resolution in the House of Commons (1780). It boldly declared the King's influence "had increased, was increasing, and ought to be diminished." But his Majesty's measures had other consequences, which were more far-reaching and disastrous than any one in the House of Commons then imagined.