SECTION III.-THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR (A. D. 1756–1763). AFTER the War of the Austrian Succession the nations of Europe enjoyed eight years of rest, which may be considered one of the most prosperous periods of European history. Commerce flourished and the arts of life reached a degree of elegance and refinement hitherto seldom attained. But, unhappily, causes of discord still existed. The Peace of Aix la Chapelle proved to be nothing more than a hollow truce. Many of the questions at issue between France and Great Britain were left unsettled, and thus grounds were furnished for a renewal of hostilities. The limits of the English colony of Nova Scotia, in North America; the right claimed by the French to connect their settlements in Louisiana and Canada by a line of forts in the rear of the English colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America, and the desire of both nations to obtain a political preponderance in India-all these led to protracted disputes which soon resulted in another war, fraught with results most momentous for the destiny of the human race in the Old World and in the New. Eight Years of European Peace. AngloFrench Colonial Rivalry in North America. East India Company and Its Stations The English East India Company-chartered by Queen Elizabeth, English December 31, 1600-was granted the exclusive privilege of trading to the East Indies. This great company of English merchants obtained valuable privileges from the native sovereigns of India, and succeeded in building up an immense trade between that Oriental land in India. and England. For a century the Company confined itself to legitimate acts of commerce and was satisfied simply with obtaining sites for its forts and warehouses, which it defended against the hostile Mahrattas by small military forces. The Company established a factory at Surat in 1612 and obtained Madras from its native sovereign in 1639, Bombay from the Portuguese in 1662 and Calcutta from Aurungzebe in 1699. Presidencies in India. By the close of the seventeenth century the territory of the English English East India Company had attained such dimensions that the three presidencies of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta were organized. Calcutta, the chief of these, was presented to the Company by Aurungzebe, and was then a small village; but under the Company it grew to be a splendid city, and ultimately became the capital of the British possessions in India. The success of the English encouraged the French to endeavor to secure a footing in India, under the auspices of the French East India Company, which during the seventeenth century acquired Pondicherry, Chandernagore and Mahé, and organized the two presidencies of Pondicherry and the Isle de France. The French in India. The Dutch in the East Indies. English and French in the in India. The Dutch had two posts on the mainland of India, and had exclusive possession of most of the island of Ceylon and of the Spice Islands, Java, Celebes, Borneo, Sumatra and the peninsula of Malaca. The English gradually absorbed the Dutch and Portuguese possessions in India, so that the French were left as their only European rivals in the East Indies. When the English East India Company had grown rich and powerful it became ambitious of extending its dominion in India, and Meddling participated in the quarrels of the Great Mogul Empire, the ruling Native race of which was Mohammedan, while the great mass of Hindoos Quarrels held fast to Brahmanism. This difference of religion caused increasing quarrels between the native Hindoo chiefs, who sought the alliance of the English and the French, who thus became involved in the quarrels of the Hindoo princes on opposite sides. Both English and French desired to profit by these alliances with the native princes, and the French conceived the design of conquering India by means of native Hindoo troops under French officers. These native troops were called Sipahis, or Sepoys. The English afterward adopted the same sysSepoys. tem. The English and French Hostil ities in India. Robert Defense Both English and French were obliged to employ these native troops, as it was impossible to transport to India large bodies of European troops or to maintain them there. During the War of the Austrian Succession the English and French colonists interfered on opposite sides in the quarrels of the native Hindoo princes, and in 1746 the Governor of the Isle de France captured Madras from the English. Although peace had been made between Great Britain and France in 1748, the English and French colonists in India continued hostilities; and the French under Dupleix, Governor of Pondicherry, besieged Trichinopoly after obtaining the Coromandel coast from the Viceroy of the Deccan, and were on the point of expelling the English from Hindoostan and founding a French empire in India, when Robert Clive, a poor clerk in the counting-house of the English East India Company at Madras, pushing of Arcot. forward in the midst of a severe thunder-storm, with only five hundred men, surprised Arcot, the capital of the Nabob of the Carnatic, in 1751, and defended that place against the French and their Hindoo allies, numbering ten thousand men, whom he defeated in two battles, thus establishing the British supremacy in India. Black Hole of Calcutta. Surajah Dowlah, the Viceroy of Bengal, attacked the English in 1756, took Calcutta and confined one hundred and forty-six English prisoners in the Black Hole of Calcutta-a small prison eighteen feet square-where all but twenty-three died before morning; but in 1757 the illustrious Colonel Clive retook Calcutta, and with only three thousand men, less than a third of whom were Englishmen, the rest being Sepoys, Clive defeated Surajah Dowlah, at the head of sixty-four Battle of thousand men, in the decisive battle of Plassey, June 23, 1757, which Plassey. established the British Empire in India. Bengal had been famous in European markets for its rice, its sugar, its silks and the products Capture of its looms. During the same year the rich city of Hoogly was taken and plundered by an expedition sent by Clive. of Hoogly. Clive as the of the British Empire in India. Thus the poor boy-clerk whom the English historian Green describes as "an idle dare-devil of a boy whom his friends had been glad to get Founder rid of by packing him off in the Company's service as a writer at Madras "this poor clerk who, in despair at his early poverty, tired of desk-work and afflicted with homesickness and despondency, twice attempted suicide with his pistol-became the founder of the British dominion in India, a dominion which now embraces almost all of Hindoostan and contains a population of two hundred and fifty millions, and is the brightest jewel in the British crown, being the most extensive territorial dominion ever established in India. Wars between the and French In the meantime, during the wars between Great Britain and France, the English and French colonies in North America became engaged in hostilities. During King William's War, A. D. 1689-1697—the English War of the Grand Alliance in Europe-the French and Indians committed dreadful massacres upon the New England and New York in North frontiers, destroying Dover, in New Hampshire, in July, 1689, and America. burning Schenectady, in New York, in February, 1690, and massacring sixty of its inhabitants; and in 1690 the New Englanders sent a land force under a son of Governor Winthrop of Connecticut against Montreal, and a naval expedition under Sir William Phipps against Quebec, both expeditions being failures. During Queen Anne's War, A. D. 1702–1713-the War of the Spanish Succession in Europethe French and Indians again spread desolation among the English frontier settlements, burning Deerfield, in Massachusetts, and massacring its inhabitants; but in 1710 an English fleet and a New England land force captured Port Royal, which was thereafter called Annapolis, after Queen Anne, and the French colony of Acadia became a British privince under the name of Nova Scotia, or New Scotland; and in 1711 a fleet and army from England under Sir Hovenden Walker, aided by New Englanders, the whole expedition consisting of seven thousand men, proceeded against Quebec, but the vessels were wrecked at the mouth of the St. Lawrence and one thousand men perished, whereupon the expedition was abandoned. During King George's War, A. D. 1744-1748-the War of the Austrian Succession in Europe-an English fleet under Admiral Warren and an English colonial land force under General William Pepperell captured Louisburg, in Nova Scotia, as already noticed. Fourth and Last Anglo The three wars between the English and the French in North America, the accounts of which we have just considered, had their origin in the European disputes of France and Great Britain. The Colonial fourth and last war-the one which ended in the overthrow of the War. French power in North America-originated in disputes about the boundaries between the French and English colonial possessions, After the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, the English built forts in the rear of the English colonies, for the purpose of confining the English to the country east of the Allegheny mountains. The French claimed the Ohio Valley as a part of Louisiana, while the English claimed it as a part of Virginia. Rival Claims. The Ohio Company. French In 1749 the King of Great Britain granted six hundred thousand acres of land on the south side of the Ohio river to an association of English and Virginia speculators, called the Ohio Company. The surveyors and traders sent out by the Company were made prisoners by the French. This aggressive conduct led to open hostilities. The French under St. Pierre built three forts in North-western Pennsylvania-one at Presque Isle, now Erie; another at La Bœuf, now Waterford, and a third at the site of the present town of Franklin. Wash- Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, sent George Washington, a young ington's Mission. Virginian, twenty-one years of age, with a remonstrance to St. Pierre, the French commander. St. Pierre, who said that he acted under the orders of Duquesne, Governor of Canada, refused to withdraw his troops from the domain of the Ohio Company, as requested by Dinwiddie. His Ex When it was known in Virginia that St. Pierre refused to withdraw pedition. his troops from the territory granted to the Ohio Company a body of Virginians under Major George Washington was sent to expel the invaders. Washington moved toward the Ohio; and in the present Battle of Fayette county, in Pennsylvania, he built Fort Necessity. At length, on May 28, 1754, he defeated the French and killed their leader, Jumonville, in the battle of the Great Meadows. This was the first bloodshed in the long and distressing French and Indian War. the Great Meadows. Fort Du tion of Already the French had seized a fort which the English had been quesne. engaged in building at the junction of the Allegheny and MononCapitula- gahela rivers, and named it Fort Duquesne, in honor of the Governor Fort of Canada. Washington was at length besieged by the French at Necessity. Fort Necessity. On the 4th of July, 1754, he surrendered to the French, who allowed him and all his troops to march back to Virginia. English On the day of the capitulation of Fort Necessity, July 4, 1754, a Congress congress composed of delegates from six of the Anglo-American at Albany. colonies convened at Albany, in the province of New York, for the purpose of devising measures for protection against the encroachments Colonial |