The Young Pretender: Uprising of 1745

Taking advantage of the war, the Jacobites made another and last attempt to obtain possession of the English throne. In 1744, Louis XV had promised to invade England, in behalf of the Stuarts ; but, after the victory of Fontenoy, he had abandoned the project, on the ground that Flanders was a better point of attack. The Young Pretender, Charles Edward, son of the Old Pretender, James, therefore determined to make the attempt on his own account, and to test once more the loyalty of the Highlanders. Setting out with a few followers, in a single vessel, he landed at Moidart in western Scotland. After gaining control of Scotland by winning the battle of Prestonpans, on July 25, 1745, he crossed the frontier and advanced into England.

His march to Derby aroused great apprehension in London, but his efforts were without success. Had a Stuart invaded England thirty years before, he might have involved the kingdom in a civil war; but the prosperity of the country under the management of Walpole, and the decrease in the number of Stuart sympathizers, made success impossible. The English Jacobites failed to support the prince; the people counted on to flock in crowds to his standard came only in small numbers; and, finally, Charles Edward was forced to retreat. Marching despondently back to Scotland, he was defeated at Culloden by a largely superior army under the duke of Cumberland on April 16, 1746. After many romantic adventures, he made his way to France, where he ended, in 1788, his inglorious career.

An Era of New Interests

England's half-hearted interest in the war of the Austrian Succession and her repudiation of the Stuarts were indicative of a new era that had been ushered in by the peace policy of Walpole. Questions larger than the Pragmatic Sanction or the claims of a pretender were arousing the British people to a new activity in the worlds beyond the seas, where lay the frontier posts of British empire. At the same time, at home a religious revival was already stirring the people to the depths, and was awakening a new spirit in the English democracy. The indifference and scepticism of the preceding half-century were to give way to an unprecedented outburst of military enthusiasm and religious fervor.

The English in India and America

France and England were already rivals for the great regions in the east and the west, in India and in America. But France had been the first in the field and had won control of the largest amount of territory. Before the time of Colbert, the great minister of Louis XIV, the French had made expeditions to the East; but the real beginnings of their influence in India dated from the founding of the French East India Company in 1665 and the establishment of trading factories at Surat. Their efforts were not, however, very successful ; and it was not until Labourdonnais became governor of Mauritius and Dupleix became governor of Pondicherry (1742) that the political influence and prestige of the French was established. The English had established themselves at Madras in 1639, at Bombay in 1661, and at Calcutta in 1698; but during the war of the Austrian Succession the French under Dupleix had won a number of victories and had become the real masters of the region in southeastern India known as the Carnatic. It was a bitter moment for Dupleix when the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle compelled him to return to England what he had so bravely won.

While the French and British were fighting for the leadership in India, they were also fighting for supremacy in America. In 1749 the Ohio Company had been formed for the purpose of founding a colony in the Ohio valley, already guarded by a French fort. For a century there had been occasional conflicts between the French and English along the northern frontiers; but the struggle for the first time became serious in the Ohio valley. The French, step by step, had advanced their outposts and were hemming in the English colonists on the seaboard. In 1754 a Virginian colonel, George Washington, at the head of a small colonial army, attacked a body of French troops near Fort Duquesne; but the English colonists did not support him, and he was obliged to withdraw. The British claimed that the French had not a shadow of right to the Ohio valley; while Duquesne, governor of Canada, sent word to the governors of New York and Pennsylvania that he would permit no settlements other than French in that region. The French under Duquesne, and afterward under Montcalm, were able to act quickly and effectively; but the English colonies, lacking common interest and a common army, moved slowly, while the home government, with Newcastle at its head and a body of insubordinate colleagues to thwart him, was inefficient and weak. The feeling in England was one of despondency, for Englishmen believed that the government was incompetent to meet the great dangers that were confronting them. The French seemed to be on the point of driving the English out of India; and when in America the British expedition organized under General Braddock suffered an overwhelming defeat in 1755, it began to look as if the French would remain masters of the Ohio valley, and would successfully connect their Canadian possessions with those on the Gulf of Mexico.

A Revolution in Continental Alliances

Although war between France and England had not been formally declared, yet war between the French and English had already begun, both in the Ohio valley and in India. On the ocean, too, during the year 1755, a running war was carried on between the British fleet and French merchantmen, and some three hundred French vessels and over seven thousand French sailors were captured and brought into British ports. Therefore France and Great Britain, knowing that a conflict could not be avoided, began to look about for Continental allies.

For forty years Great Britain had been on friendly terms with Austria, chiefly because the Georges, as electors of Hanover, were jealous of the house of Brandenburg (Prussia), the old-time rival of Hanover in Germany. Walpole had never favored this policy, because he believed that it was injurious to Great Britain's commercial development and sacrificed the interests of the British people to those of the house of Hanover. He had frequently urged an alliance with Prussia. After the conclusion of the war of the Austrian Succession, Great Britain and Austria drifted apart, each dissatisfied with the other.' On January 15,1756, England and Prussia signed a treaty of alliance at Westminster.

Following this alliance, Austria and France, after long negotiations, drew together, and in the treaty of Versailles, May 1, 1756, formed an alliance against Prussia and Great Britain. These two treaties effected a complete reversal of the traditional British and French policies, and was due, in the first place, to the sudden rise of Prussia under Frederick the Great, and in the second place, to the steady growth in commercial importance of the British nation.

Outbreak of the Seven Years' War: British Disasters

Frederick, subsidized by Great Britain, began the attack. Though victorious over Austria at Prague, May, 1757, he was defeated at Kollin by the Austrians; and his general, Lehwald, was beaten by the Russians at Grossjagersdorf in August. But with great courage he turned against the French, and on November 5, 1757, won a famous victory at Rossbach near Leipzig. This victory showed that Frederick II, the king of a young and rising kingdom, was also the head of a powerful army and one of the greatest generals in Europe.

England's share in the war was without glory. The duke of Cumberland was disgracefully defeated at Hastenbeck in Hanover, and forced to sign the treaty of Closter-Leven, leaving Hanover in the hands of the French. An expedition sent by sea against Rochefort on the French coast ended in failure;

and an expedition under Admiral Byng, sent to recover Minorca, which had been captured by the French in 1756, withdrew without firing a shot. In America, Lord Loudoun, attempting to take Louisburg, which had been returned to France by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, proved utterly incompetent and accomplished nothing. Men began to see that the trouble lay, not with the troops, but with the commanders; that favoritism and rank had been the causes of promotion, and that military experience had been but little considered when generals were to be selected.