England in the seven years' war; a study in combined strategy

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CHAP. PAGE

I. The French Counter- Attack of 1759 . . 1

II. The Second Phase of the War . . . .71

Chapter I The French Counter-attack Of 1759

A STRIKING feature of the operations against Quebec is that in spite of their extreme difficulty and the risk they involved, and in spite of the decisive importance of the objective, no direct attempt to interrupt or even to harass them was made from France. The conditions which produced this result have still to be dealt with, and are well worth study.

In the first place, they introduce us to a fresh principle of higher strategy which recurs in almost all great wars, and above all others tends to strategical confusion in their conduct. That law, or principle, is the tendency of limited wars to become unUmited in character. The process, as between two powerful and determined states, is almost inevitable. In a limited war, correctly conducted, a phase must be reached sooner or later in which one party begins to predominate in the limited area — that is, the area of the special object. The other party, as he feels himself unable to retain his hold in that area or shake that of his adversary, will seek to redress the balance by striking him at the centre of his power. In

VOL. II. A other words, the losing party will seek to destroy or cripple his enemy's resources for war at their base, and to inflict upon his home population suffering more intense than the attainment of the special object is worth. A war conducted on these lines is unlimited in character, since by acting thus we seek, through general pressure upon the national life of an adversary, to force him to do our will or to abandon his own.

It is this stage of a Hmited war which most severely tests the imperturbability of a government, and at the same time exhibits the highest function of the defensive. And here lies the second point, in which the home aspect of the campaign of 1759 is so significant. Pitt's success in the war, so far, had been due fundamentally to the cleareyed determination with which he had differentiated and co-ordinated the offensive and defensive parts of his scheme. The vigorous offensive in the limited area had been given its utmost attainable intensity, and nourished to the last available man and gun by a cool insistence upon a rigid defensive at home, so far, at least, as that defensive was compatible with diplomatic demands. Though France had for a while hung back from the truth, it had been her interest from the first to make the war unlimited in character. She was so much the weaker in the limited area and upon the common lines of passage and communication, that general coercion was her only real chance of fighting the war to a favourable peace. It was with this object in view, as we have seen, that she had attacked Hanover, but the connection between Hanover and England had not proved sufficiently intimate to convert the character of the war. In Europe Pitt stubbornly refused to go beyond the general defensive attitude which was necessary to cover his offensive in America ; and France had been provided by diplomatic

1759 A NEW PHASE OF THE WAR 3

means with preoccupations which as yet had made it impossible for her to break that defensive.

So far, the correct line for England to pursue had been comparatively clear and easy to follow ; but when France, finding her first design for expanding the war ineffective, went a step further and decided to make a direct attack upon the British Islands, the case became more complex. The question at once arose whether the time had not now come for abandoning the defensive attitude which had hitherto sufficed. Pitt above all men was a believer in the supreme efficacy of the offensive. In our history he may be taken to stand for that faith, as Napoleon stands for it in France ; and yet it was Napoleon who wrote, " The whole art of war consists in a well reasoned and strictly judicious defensive, followed by audacious and rapid attack." Such too was Pitt's faith. No man grasped more firmly than he the absolute dependence of the offensive upon a foundation of defence, and no one moreover knew better that where the offensive is not directed justly at the main object of the war, it is mere superstition and untutored instinct. To meet offence by quicker and more violent offence was the keynote of Pitt's method, but he never permitted the brilliance of the conception to blind him. He never forgot that to be tempted into taking the offensive in an area which was not the true area of the war, and in which the enemy was naturally the stronger, was not to show vigour, but to play stupidly into the enemy's hands. We have only to follow his handling of the new situation to see how true was his eye and how masterly his grasp of war.

That the French determined to resort in some form or other to their old deterrent device of an invasion, or at least a formidable demonstration, was known early in the year. Indeed they made no secret of it. Seeing

4 FRENCH CODNTER-ATTACK 1759

that the whole object of the design was to divert British attention from America and to attract her main forces within reach of French weapons, she had every reason to sound her trumpets as loudly as possible. What she had to keep secret was not her intention, but the manner in which it was to be carried out.^ Before ever Saunders and Wolfe had sailed for Quebec, our intelligence left no doubt that the French intention was at least serious enough to be reckoned with. Choiseul, who was now allpowerful at Versailles, had said they meant to play the Pretender again and make a serious descent upon England to ruin her credit, since in his opinion this was the only means France had left for maintaining the balance. It was English supplies that kept the war in Germany going, and they must be stopped. For it was only in Germany that France could secure the means of recovering the ground she had lost in America. There Frederick must be subdued, and the only way to subdue Frederick was to invade England, and so detach her from his alliance. Her eyes were not shut to the naval difficulties, but these she hoped to overcome by bringing in the other maritime powers, and particularly Sweden, who was as anxious as herself to see the horn of Frederick brought low.^ The fleet was already arming, and forty thousand men were cantoned along the Channel coasts. Threats so definite as these had never failed to impress the peculiar tenderness of British strategy. The device had been tried again and again, and had always had the effect of attracting to itself the mass of British effort. But, unlike his predecessors, Pitt was unmoved. He saw the old net being spread before his eyes, and refused to walk into it.

1 Choiseul to Havrincour, June 7, Newcastle Papers, 32,891. 3 Information from Paris, Newcastle Papers, Add. MSS, 32,888, f. 252, Jan. 20, 1769 ; Scheffer to Hbpken (intercepted), Ibid., Jan. 20, 32,887.

I7S9 DANGER FROM NEUTRALS 5

The orders for Canada stood, and Pitt gave no more heed to the French threat than, as we have seen, slightly to strengthen his naval defensive by ordering Saunders to detach two of the line to reinforce Brodrick in the Mediterranean.

There was, however, one factor in the situation which caused Pitt real anxiety, and that was the uncertain and even menacing attitude of the neutral sea powers — Spain, Holland, Denmark, and Sweden. It may be taken as a law of maritime warfare, which cannot be omitted from strategical calculation with impunity, that every step towards gaining command of the sea tends to turn neutral sea powers into enemies. The prolonged exercise of belligerent rights, even of the most undoubted kind, produces an interference with trade that becomes more and more oppressive. But the process is usually accelerated as the sense of power inclines the dominating belligerent to push its privileges beyond admitted limits. In the present case the atmosphere was very highly charged, owing to the fact that the Dutch and those that followed them still claimed immunity for enemy's goods in neutral ships ; while England asserted her traditional doctrine that enemy's goods were good prize everywhere upon the high seas. In the present war this old dispute received a special aggravation. For, as we have seen, France, in an effort to save her West Indian trade, had suspended her exclusive navigation laws, and had thrown open that trade to neutrals. Now, however willing England might be to relax the severity of her doctrine in order to keep well with her neighbours, this was a length to which she could not go. To permit neutrals, and above all the Dutch, to carry on for France her West Indian trade, was to render that trade almost invulnerable, and the islands themselves much more defensible. We argued that for a neutral in war time to carry on belligerent trade which was denied to her in peace was to better her position by the war, and to give illegitimate assistance to the belligerent. Our courts, therefore, had laid down from the first the famous "Rule of 1756" that during war neutrals may not engage in a trade with the colonies of a belligerent which is denied to foreign vessels in time of peace.

On this rule our courts acted with legitimate severity, to the especial annoyance of the Dutch, whose commercial position had always owed so much to their inveterate practice of fishing thus in troubled waters.^ Added to this was the further provocation that the Dutch were the most confirmed dealers in contraband of war, and the result was that their ships were seized ruthlessly and condemned in our prize courts without mercy, and often with a stretch of justice. Danes, Swedes, and Spaniards fared little better. What the King's cruisers did might possibly have been borne, but the action of our privateers was outrageous beyond endurance. Every year it had been growing worse, and it is not to be denied that at this time there was a swarm of smaller privateers in the Narrow Seas who were not to be distinguished from pirates. No matter from what innocent port the luckless vessels came, they seized them regardless of their papers, and in some cases went so far as to capture vessels which had just been released by our own prize-courts. To increase the danger of the situation, it happened that the Princess Royal, who had been regent in Holland, had recently

1 For the serious extent of this trade see Governor Thomas to Pitt Antigua. Nov. 20, 1750, Clmtham MSS., 98. He says three Dutch convoys under French escort had passed between Martinique and St. Eustatius in the last four months.

1579 DANGER FROM NEUTRALS 7

died, and we were deprived of her kindly influence. In Spain, too, the Anglophile King Ferdinand had sunk into imbecility. His end was obviously near, and the heirpresumptive was the Bourbon King of Naples, a strong partisan of France. Still General Wall maintained his ascendency over Spanish policy, but it was expected not to outlast the frail life of the King.

This, then, was the uncertain element in the situation, and it was the only one which caused Pitt any real anxiety. He was honestly doing his best to check the abuses, but the privateers were incorrigible. What oppressed his mind from the first was a vision of the three northern powers uniting to protect their trade. He saw how easily on such a pretence they might gather a powerful combined fleet to escort their convoys down Channel, and then, having seen them clear, it would be open to them to run into Brest, join hands with the French fleet, and declare war. We should then be unable to keep command of the Channel or the North Sea, and the threatened invasion would become a real danger.-^

The vision does credit to Pitt's long sight and acute perception. It was far from fanciful. France was doing all she could at this time to tempt Sweden into taking a hand in her invasion project, and Denmark was actually approaching Holland as to the possibility of forming a maritime union and taking common action for the assertion of neutral rights. Pitt, who knew how to make concessions as well as to be bold, met the danger by

1 Newcastle to Yorke, Dec. 19, 1758, and " Mem. for the King," Dec. 22. " Mr. Pitt's apprehensions that the Dutch and Danes may come into our channel without our having any certain knowledge of their object, and if the court of France should have any design to disturb us, these very ships may join and assist in it." — Add. MSS. 32,886.

bringing pressure to bear on the prize courts to release as many ships as possible, and by restraining the excesses of the privateers by administrative action. In May, as the complaints continued and the crisis became more acute, he went so far as to hurry a severe Act through Parliament to restrain and punish their abuses, and to facilitate the release of captured vessels, while licenses were almost entirely refused to small vessels, and the prize courts had a fresh hint to show every possible leniency. The resistance of the privateer owners was violent and formidable, but a few weeks after the Act came into operation means were found for reconciling them to the new measures, and at the same time of using their energy. The growing menace of invasion called, as it always did, for the formation of a defensive flotilla, and a number of them were taken into Government pay and attached to squadrons under the command of naval officers who could direct their energy into more profitable channels. By these means the air was cleared. The neutral powers were pacified, and the special danger passed.-^

Still in spite of these measures as the spring advanced the seriousness of the general outlook only increased. Week by week signs that the French were in earnest

1 Waddington, vol. iii. p. 425 ; Beatson, vol. ii. pp. 201-203. Beatson says : " Great numbers of these privateers were very small, and some of them were commanded by men remarkable only for brute courage and entirely devoid of every principle of honour or humanity, &c." They actually robbed the Marquis de Pignatelli, Spanish Ambassador to Denmark, on his way to Copenhagen in a Dutch ship. The new Act came into force on June 1, and was entitled, "An Act to explain and amend an Act of 29 George II. for the encouragement of seamen . . . and for the better prevention of piracies and robberies by private ships of war. " Commissions were limited to ships of over 100 tons and 10 guns, with a discretionary power to grant them to smaUer vessels made in favour of the Channel Islands, whose fishing craft had been doing real service against the French coastwise traflfic.

1759 PROSPECTS OF INVASION 9

grew in intensity. Troops were gathering about the Flemish ports, and a flotilla was being prepared in those of the Channel. Yorke, in Holland, assured the Government it meant nothing, but Newcastle's intelligence was too good, and he had no illusions. " The design," he wrote " of making an attempt here, and perhaps at the same time in Ireland and Scotland, goes on, but the particular time of its execution is not yet determined. These things are not given out to frighten us, but are under their serious consideration. You know, I suppose, that flatbottomed boats are preparing all along the French coasts."^ Yorke persisted in his scepticism, while at home the Government was acting on its convictions. The French were assuring all the allied courts that, owing to the great fleets which England had sent out to the West Indies and Canada, it would be impossible for them to be superior in European waters. But Anson's labour had never ceased. On April 5 th he was able to promise the King that he would have thirty of the line ready for the Channel Fleet in May, and that the French between Brest and Rochefort would have no more than twenty-seven. He proposed to send Boscawen, who was still at home, to look into Rochefort with ten sail, and to order a cruiser squadron to Bordeaux to destroy a convoy of victuallers which had gone thither for provisions.^ His cruisers upon the French coasts were supplying him with excellent information, and at the same time actively operating against the coastwise trade upon which the equipment of the French invading forces must principally depend. The effect of Anson's energy and Pitt's politic concessions to the neutral powers was that the control of the home waters was soon in little danger.

^ Newcastle to Yorke, April 3, Newcastle Papers, 32,889. 2 " Mem. for the King," April 5, ibid., 32,889

The more immediate anxiety was from Toulon, where the French preparations were more advanced. The probable intention of the squadron was to seek to join the Brest fleet, and if this were carried out the control of the Channel would become more difficult to secure. It was therefore decided to give Boscawen three of the line and send him down to join Brodrick before Toulon and take command. In accordance with this plan he sailed on April 14th.

So far, it will be observed, the measures taken to repel, or rather prevent, the threatened disturbance were purely naval. Pitt refused to take the invasion seriously. For him it was but a menace, intended to cover some ulterior action by the French fleet, possibly in the West Indies, Canada, or elsewhere. The situation, in his eyes, was met by confronting it with a fleet capable of dealing with the threatened attack. Everything else was courageously ignored. Formidable as was the display of military movement along the French coasts, there was no calling out of the militia, no raising of volunteers, no issue of orders for driving the coast country, nor indeed any of the traditional measures by which governments had been used on these occasions to further the enemy's object by creating a scare at home and disturbing the current of national life. It was Pitt's conviction to make the defence purely active, to picture the country to itself as only waiting eagerly for the tortoise to dare to show its head. The army must, therefore, take its part in the play beside the fleet, and be deprived of any appearance of waiting to be attacked. So of land defence there was no sign, nor any considerable movement of troops, except the formation of another carfip in the Isle of Wight.

It was his old device, and it had never failed him. With the Channel fleet getting rapidly ready for Hawke*s

1759 PITrS HOME DEFENCE ii

flag at Spithead, the Isle of Wight force became a violent threat, and its effect had been immediate. The Due d'Aiguillon, Governor of Brittany, had been pressing for leave to make an attempt to seize Jersey, but Marshal Belleisle, who was directing the whole of the operations^ would not consent. " We must not permit," he wrote, " a secondary expedition, however interesting, to turn our attention from an enterprise of far more importance, the great project against England, which is on the eve of being realised." In justification of his discouraging attitude, he informed the sanguine governor that they were expecting an attack upon Brest in March, and that he must devote all attention to placing it in a state of defence. " The English Ministers," he said, *' have learnt that all the batteries of the port, the haven, and the adjacent parts are unarmed, and a portion of the garrison withdrawn. . . . Success by the enemy at this point would give us a mortal blow." ^

Nor was it at Brest alone the disturbance was felt. From all quarters as before, where it was possible for an expedition to strike, the same anxiety clogged the French preparations.^ Even so, Pitt was not content. The threat must be made keener still, and once more Newcastle, whose nerves had already as much as they could bear with the risks that Pitt was calmly taking, was thrown in a flutter of despair. On the morning of April 17th, Anson received a note from Pitt, desiring him to receive the King's orders that very day for ten thousand tons of transport for five thousand men. Not a word was said of the objective, and Anson, who himself was still unreconciled to Pitt's fondness for combined expeditions

* Lacour-Gayet, pp. 302-3.

2 Intelligence from Sluys, Newcastle Papers^ 32,890, f. 70; Yorke to Newcastle, April 17, ihid.

went to Newcastle. The admiral assumed the King knew Pitt's mind. Newcastle went to the King ; but the King knew no more than he, and refused to issue the order. This was far from bringing comfort to Anson. When Newcastle came out of the closet and told the admiral, who was waiting in the antechamber, what had passed, Anson, to the Minister's surprise, expressed regret at the attitude the King had taken. Pitt, he said, would be outrageous and blame them ; and finally he persuaded Newcastle to go back and tell the King the thing had better go forward, and that he, as First Lord, personally wished it to. Upon this the King agreed to sign the order, on condition that Anson went to Pitt to find out what service he intended. Newcastle tried to console himself with the reflection that perhaps a mere alarm was intended, as we certainly could not spare troops for another expedition. But he was thoroughly upset, and told his friend Hardwicke it was " a most abominable and most unheard-of measure." ^ To make matters worse, Pitt was continuing to display a breezy disbelief in the reality of the invasion. Next day Newcastle tried to relieve his feelings by a long memorandum on home and foreign affairs. He despaired of England's being able to bear the expense of the war any longer, and lamented the disposition which existed to despise the notion that an invasion was really intended. It was certainly the French aim, though it would probably be deferred till the autumn. It would, of course, depend on the naval force they could gather and the state of the war in Germany. But in any case our policy, as he laid it down in italics, was not to waste our land and sea forces with useless and expensive expeditions, but to collect an organised army for home defence, and keep the home fleet superior to any-

* Newcastle to Hardwicke, April 17.

1759 PITT'S HOME DEFENCE 13

thing the French could brmg against it. There was no knowing how long Spanish neutrality would last, and it was indeed a question whether they should not inform Frederick at once that they could not support the war another year.^

Meanwhile Anson had been to Pitt. He found him too ill to be seen, but his secretary explained that no new expedition was intended. The purpose was only to increase the defensive activity of the kingdom by giving complete mobility to the Isle of Wight corps. The effect would be to increase the French apprehension of a counter-attack, and at the same time to secure that a force could be dropped in Scotland or Ireland wherever the French might land.^ Newcastle and his friends were quieted, but not for long. In the course of the next fortnight, intelligence came in, which made the prospect of invasion more formidable than ever. Newcastle had obtained information, which he regarded as certain, that the French corps in Flanders was intended for England, that it was to be reinforced by the Guards and a detachment from the army of the Rhine, and that Soubise himself was to command it.^ There was also an assurance from our spies that thirty thousand men were assembling within twenty-four hours' march of Brest, and that they were suddenly to be thrown upon the west coast of Ireland.

Consequently Newcastle's nervousness returned with increased force, and to do him justice it was not without excuse. As he had said, the offensive action of the French would depend upon how the war went in Germany, and it was going very badly. Ferdinand, who had wintered

2 Anson to Newcastle, ibid., April 18.

3 Newcastle to Yorke, April 27.

on the line of Miinster, Lippstadt, and Paderborn, found himself confronted by Marshal Contades in superior force. Added to this, his left rear was threatened by the French army of the Upper Rhine, which was based on Frankfort, and which, as Soubise had been called to command the army of England, was then in the far more capable hands of the Due de Broglie. To free himself from the impossible situation, Ferdinand, with characteristic energy, before the campaign had really opened, made a dash at Frankfort ; but his attack on Broglie's position failed, and he had to fall back with considerable loss and no relief of his awkward situation. A secondary effect of this operation was to relieve the French of one serious uncertainty. Till Ferdinand began to move towards Frankfort, that is, eastward and away from the coast, they had to face the possibility that Pitt's force in the Isle of Wight foreshadowed a combination with him in Flanders.^ This fear was removed, and though they were still anxious about Normandy and Havre, the army of Soubise in Flanders was left comparatively free for eccentric offensive action.

Still Pitt refused to believe in the reaHty of the French threat, while Newcastle's alarm grew in proportion to Pitt's assumption of confidence. Pitt was still confined to his room, and Newcastle was everywhere. The result was that by the first week in May he had worked the country into a regular scare, and on the 9th a Cabinet Council had to meet at Pitt's house to deal with it. Pitt was as contemptuous as ever. He told Newcastle that he and his friends had worked up the panic, and it was their business to allay it. The French, he affirmed, were in no condition to attack, and had made no preparation to do so. Newcastle and Hardwicke, whose information was

1 Yorke to Newcastle, April I7,

1759 PITT AND THE PANIC 15

often better than Pitt's, contradicted him. Holderness held his tongue. Bedford urged the unprotected condition of Ireland. But nothing could be got out of Pitt, except an order that in ten days' time Hawke was to repair to Torbay with eighteen of the line to watch Brest, and that a proclamation should be issued calling out some of the new militia.^ The force was still scarcely born, and Pitt seems to have relied for military defence upon his characteristic principle of giving the regular troops their extreme mobility by providing them with sea carriage. For at this time he ordered the ten thousand tons of transport he had called for to be victualled for three months, and a fortnight later he called for fifteen thousand tons more to assemble at the Nore for immediate service.^ What this last order meant is not known ; but in all probability the intention was to frighten Soubise and hold him in Flanders away from Ferdinand. From this point the whole situation turned upon the capacity of the home fleet to perform its defensive function. That function was to secure the lines of passage and communication in the Narrow Seas so as to make it impossible for any French invading force to get to sea — or if by the hazard of war any part of that force did get away and land, to ensure that we could quickly throw troops upon its back and prevent the French supporting it. It was in fact a problem as purely naval as any problem of war can be, and Pitt acted accordingly. We have seen that in the offensive areas of the war, where results depended upon the intimate co-ordination of naval and military action, the admirals were receiving

* For the Cabinet see " Mem. for the King," May 9, Newcastle Papers, 32,891, and for calling out the militia the correspondence from May 17 to 27, ibid.

* Admiralty Secretary^ In-letters {Secretary of State), 4123, May 16 and June 1.

1 6 FKENCH COUNTER-ATTACK 1759

their orders direct from him, but in this case it was different. Nothing is more eloquent of Pitt's grasp of war than his frank recognition that here his interference was uncalled for. Having determined the function of the navy in the home area he gave it a perfectly free hand, and the whole of the operations for discharging that function were left to the judgment of Lord Anson and his colleagues on the Board of Admiralty.

The energy which they had been displaying in turning what remained of the navy into a powerful home fleet fully justified Pitt's confidence. Hawke acted with equal promptitude. Three days after the decision of the Secret Committee he hoisted his flag at Spithead, where he was informed by the Admiralty that Bompart had left Martinique for San Domingo, and would probably be home shortly. He was therefore to try to intercept him by keeping a detachment down the Bay, and for this purpose he would shortly be reinforced.^ Within the ten days specified he was at Torbay with his eighteen of the line : on the morrow he was stretching over to Ushant, and before the week was out he had struck the note which was to dominate the idea of naval blockade for a century to come.