strances were unheeded; the motion, which indeed could scarcely be reconciled either with respect or with precedents, was set aside at the interposition of Chesterfield *; and thus the King at the close of the Session in April, attended by Lord Holderness, embarked for his Electoral dominions.

Only the day before King George embarked at Harwich Admiral Boscawen, with eleven ships of the line and two regiments on board, set sail from Portsmouth. His orders were to follow a large French armament which had recently been equipped at Brest, and to attack it, if designed for the Bay of St. Lawrence. A thick fog off Newfoundland concealed the rival fleets from each other; but two English ships, the first commanded by Captain (afterwards Lord) Howe, came within speech of two French. The foreign Commandant inquired if it was war or peace. Howe replied that he must wait for his Admiral's signal, but that he advised the Frenchman to prepare for war. Ere long appeared Boscawen's signal for engaging; Howe attacked, and after an engagement, in which he displayed equal skill and intrepidity, succeeded in taking the two French ships, -the Alcide and the Lys. The rest of the French armament - eight or nine ships of the line-got safe into the harbour of Louisburg; and their safety caused as great disappointment in England, as the capture of their consorts irritation in France. The French Ambassador in London, M. de Mirepoix, was recalled at these tidings, yet still there was not on either side a formal declaration of war.

Other important tidings followed. In the preceding January General Braddock, with some troops, had been dispatched to the relief of Virginia. Braddock was a man cast in the same mould as Hawley, of a brave but brutal temper, and like Hawley also a personal favourite of the Duke of Cumberland. His rigorous ideas of discipline had made him hateful to his soldiers, and from the same cause he held in great contempt the American

* Lord Chesterfield to Mr. Dayrolles, May 2. 1755, and H. Walpole to Mr. Bentley, May 6. 1755. Lord Poulett afterwards advertised for the notes of his own speech as lost; and Legge, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said, in his punning style, "My Lord P. has "had a stroke of apoplexy; he has lost both his speech and motion!"

1755.

DEFEAT OF GENERAL BRADDOCK.

47

Militia, seeing that they could not go through their exercise with the same dexterity and regularity which he had so often admired and enforced in Hyde Park. As to the Indians, the allies of France, he treated with disdain all the warnings he received against an ambush or surprise from them; and the Indians of his own party, who would have been his surest guards against this particular peril, were so disgusted by the haughtiness of his demeanour that most of them forsook his banners. Aiming his operations against Fort Duquesne, the principal of the new French encroachments on the Ohio, he first reached Great Meadows, the scene of Washington's reverse in the preceding summer. Here he found it necessary to leave a part of his troops and all his heavy baggage, but pursued his march with twelve hundred men and ten pieces of artillery. On the 9th of July he had arrived within ten miles of Fort Duquesne, when about noon he entered a hollow vale between two thick woods. He had neglected all precautions of scouts or vedettes, when suddenly his men were assailed in front and in flank by a murderous fire from unseen enemies. These were the native Indians, assisted by a handful of French. They continued their fire from the covert, singling out especially the officers, whom they distinguished by their dress, and brought down with unerring aim. In this emergency Braddock's courage could not be exceeded; he had several horses killed under him, but at length was mortally wounded by a ball through his breast, and was borne off the field by some soldiers whom his aide-decamp had bribed to that service by a guinea and a bottle of rum to each. He lingered a few hours more, having first dictated a despatch in which he did justice to the good conduct of his officers. Seeing him fall, his troops sought safety in headlong flight, leaving behind them their artillery and 700 dead or dying men.

This disaster was scarcely balanced, later in the year, by a victory of another officer, General Johnson, over a body of French and Indians near Lake George, or by the capture of Beau-sejour in Nova Scotia by Colonel Monckton.

At home in the King's absence our councils were most feeble and wavering. Another powerful fleet was ready

to sail under the command of Sir Edward Hawke. But when the question arose as to Hawke's instructions, a great difference appeared amongst the Members of the Regency. The Duke of Cumberland, always inclined to vigorous measures, wished to declare war at once, and to strike the first blow. Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, though a man of undaunted courage, took a view, says Lord Waldegrave, agreeable to the usual practice of his Court, and was against bringing the cause to an immediate decision. The Duke of Newcastle, trimming and trembling, as was ever his wont, thought only of keeping off the storm as long as possible, and of shifting its responsibility from himself. Thus he gave his opinion that Hawke should for the present have no instructions at all, and merely take a turn in the Channel to exercise the fleet. Another time he said, that the Admiral might be ordered "not to attack the enemy, unless he thought it "worth while."- "Be assured," says Fox, "that Hawke "is too wise a man to do anything at all, which others, "when done, are to pronounce he ought to be hanged "for."† At length, as a kind of compromise, it was agreed that there should be no declaration of war, — that our fleet should attack the French ships of the line, if it fell in with any, but by no means disturb any smaller men of war, or any vessels engaged in trade. When at the Board of Regency these instructions came round to the bottom of the table to be signed by Fox, he turned to Lord Anson, the First Lord of the Admiralty, to whom he sat next, and asked if there were no objections to them? "Yes," answered Anson, a hundred; but it "pleases those at the upper end of the table, and will "signify nothing, for the French will declare war next "week, if they have not done it already." But only a few days later counter-instructions were sent in all haste to Hawke, directing him to seize and destroy every thing French, trade or men of war, between Cape Ortegal and Cape Clear. These last orders produced a large number of lucrative captures; but as they were still unaccom* Memoirs, p. 47.

See Dodington's Diary, July 21. 1755.

66

This was related to Dodington by Fox himself. Diary, August 18. 1755.

1755.

TREATIES OF SUBSIDY.

49

panied with any notice or declaration of war they gave some handle to the French Government for inveighing against the perfidy and Punic faith of our's, and calling us robbers and pirates. Nay, so eager were the Court of Versailles to avail themselves of this outcry against us, and to push it as far as possible, that their fleet having in the month of August captured one English man-of-war, the Blandford, orders were immediately despatched to release both the ship and the crew.*

While the prospects of peace grew darker and darker, there was also gathering a cloud of popular distrust and resentment against the Minister. It was often asked whether these were times when all power could be safely monopolised by the Duke of Newcastle? Was every thing to be risked-perhaps every thing lost-for the sake of one hoary jobber at the Treasury? Was he never to choose his colleagues for knowledge or capacity, but only for subservience?- Questions such as these in the public made Newcastle himself consider some effort for gaining strength in the House of Commons as desirable; and what made it almost inevitable was the news of negotiations at Hanover.

On the approach or apprehension of war the King had, as usual, thought first of his Electorate. Next to the French, his nephew of Prussia was the potentate whom he chiefly dreaded. Hanover might prove as tempting a conquest to Frederick in this war as Silesia in the last; and he would be just as little restrained by honour or good faith from seizing it. For its defence George the Second relied on his Subsidiary Treaties. Those with Saxony and with Bavaria were expired or expiring, and there seemed no readiness on their part to renew them without greatly enhancing the terms. Here then had been the whole result, an annual payment to these states of English money during several years of peace, when they neither were nor could be of the slightest service. No wonder then if the very name of Subsidiary Treaties had become a scoff and by-word to the people. Nevertheless the King, being fully assured of Newcastle's passive obedience to whatever he might desire, now signed Smollett's Hist., book iii. ch. iv. sect. 28.

another such compact with the Elector of Hesse. It provided an annual payment of 150,000 crowns from England with 80 crowns for every horseman, and 30 crowns for every foot soldier, as levy money, should the troops be actually required. Another treaty of the same kind, but much larger scale, was negotiating with the Empress of Russia, but not finally concluded until after His Majesty's return. The mere rumour of such engagements raised no small ferment even amongst the holders of office. “I am "surprised," said Fox to Dodington, "that you are not against all subsidies." With more vehemence Pitt inveighed against the King's ill-timed journey to Hanover, "which all persons," he added, “should have pre"vented even with their bodies!—A King abroad at this "time without one man about him that has one English "sentiment, and to bring home a whole nest of sub"sidies!"†

Still more effectual was the disapprobation of Legge. For some time past he had smarted under the mean domination of Newcastle, and the popular reports of his own subservience. From both he determined to free himself by one bold stroke. At the Council of Regency the Duke of Newcastle had merely produced the Hessian Treaty as concluded, and announced the King's commands, -upon which the Chancellor bowed, and "their Lord"ships signed the paper without reading it, as a thing of 99 course." But when the Treasury Warrants requisite to carry that Treaty into execution were laid before Legge, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he peremptorily refused to sign them.

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This refusal from one hitherto found so unresisting came like a thunderbolt on Newcastle. Sorely perplexed, he had now recourse to Pitt. Having first endeavoured to soften and prepare the rising statesman through the Chancellor, he requested a personal meeting. When Pitt accordingly came the Duke received him most warmly, pressing him to his heart with his usual profusion of

*Dodington's Diary, August 18. 1755. "Fox had dropped "intimations of his dislike to the treaties." (Lord Orford's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 400.)

† Dodington's Diary, Sept. 3. 1755.