THE MOAT

It may be said now to England,Martha, Martha, thou art busy about many things, but one thing is necessary. To the Question, What shall we do to be saved in this World? there is no other Answer but this, Look to your Moat.

The first Article of anEnglishman'sPolitical Creed must be, That he believeth in the Sea.… We are in an Island, confined to it by God Almighty, not as a Penalty but a Grace, and one of the greatest that can be given to Mankind. Happy Confinement, that hath made us Free, Rich, and Quiet.

George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, 1633-95.

In Chapter VI we saw how French and English once fought a Hundred Years War to decide the French possession of all the land of France, and how the French, having the greater army, won. Now, in these next seven chapters we shall learn how they fought another Hundred Years War to decide the command of the sea, and how the English, grown into a British Empire and having the greater navy, won in their turn. Both victories proved to be for the best. France and England both gained by the first war; because the natural way for France to grow was all over the land that is France now, while the natural way for England to grow was not on the continent of Europe but in the British Isles. The British Empire gained more than the French by the second war; but as France could never have held an oversea Empire without a supreme navy, and as she could never have a supreme navy while she had two land frontiers to defend with great armies, she really lost nothing she then could have kept. Besides, in the nineteenth century she won a great empire in northern Africa, where her Mediterranean sea-power keeps it safe. The British Empire, on the other hand, being based on world-wide sea-power, is rightly placed as it is. So neither French nor British are tempted to envy each other now; while their Hundred Years Peace, followed by their glorious Alliance in the Great War, should make them friends for ever.

The Franco-British wars which began in 1689 and ended on the field of Waterloo in 1815 are not called the Second Hundred Years War in books. But that is what they were in fact. The British Navy was the chief cause of British victory all through, and, as French and British always took opposite sides, we may also call the whole of these seven wars by the one name of "The French War," just as we have called the other wars against our chief opponents "The Spanish War" and "Dutch War"; and just as we might call "The Great War" by the name of "The German War."

Two more points must be well understood, or else we shall miss the real meaning of our imperial history and the supreme importance of the Royal Navy.

First, there have been four attempts made in modern times by Great Powers on the continent of Europe to seize the overlordship of the World; and each time the Royal Navy has been the central force that foiled the attack upon the freedom of mankind. These four attempts have been made about a century apart from one another. The Spanish attempt was made at the end of the sixteenth century. The first French attempt was made by Louis XIV at the end of the seventeenth. The second French attempt was made by Napoleon at the beginning of the nineteenth. The German attempt was made at the beginning of the twentieth. Though alike in the ambitions of their makers, these attempts were most unlike in the way the wars were carried on; for, while the Spaniards and Germans were monsters of cruelty, the French were foemen worthy of the noblest steel.

Secondly, as we shall see in Chapter XVI, the middle of this long French War was marked by the marvellous growth of the British Empire under the elder Pitt; a man whose like the world had never seen before and may not see again; orator, statesman, founder of empire, champion of freedom, and one of the very few civilians who have ever wielded the united force of fleets and armies without weakening it by meddling with the things that warriors alone can do.

Louis XIV liked to be called the Sun King (Roi Soleil) and Great Monarch (Grand Monarque). His own France was easily the first Great Power in Europe. She was rich and populous. The French army was the most famous in the world. French became the language of diplomacy. Whenever two nations speaking different languages wrote to each other about affairs of state or made treaties they did so in French, as they do still. But all this was not enough for Louis. He wanted to be a conqueror in Europe and beyond the seas. His people did not need oversea trade and empire in the same way as the Dutch and British, did not desire it half so much, and were not nearly so well fitted for it when they had it. France was a kingdom of the land. But, no matter, Louis must make conquests wherever he could.

Hoping to get England under his thumb he befriended James II, the last Stuart king, whom the English drove out in 1688. James, less bad but less clever than his vile brother Charles, had a party called Jacobites, who wanted French help to set him on the throne again, but no French interference afterwards. Most of Great Britain favoured the new king, William III; most of Ireland the old one, James. This greatly endangered British sea-power; for the French fleet had been growing very strong, and an enemy fleet based on Ireland would threaten every harbour in Great Britain from Bristol to the Clyde. More than this, a strong enough fleet could close the Channel between the south of Ireland and the north of France. There would then be no way out of Great Britain on to the Seven Seas except round the north of Scotland. But an enemy fleet strong enough to shut off Great Britain from the short cuts north and south of Ireland would certainly be strong enough to command the roundabout way as well; for it would be close to its base on the west coast of Ireland, while ships coming round by the north of Scotland would be far from their own. Thus Ireland, then as now, was the key to the sea-door of Great Britain. Luckily for Great Britain then, and for our Empire and Allies throughout the Great War, keys are no good unless you have the hand to turn them. And, then as now, the strong right hand that holds the key of Ireland was and is the Royal Navy.

In 1689 William III had at last succeeded in forming the Grand Alliance against Louis XIV, who now had enemies all round him except in little Switzerland. But France was easily the strongest of all the Great Powers, and she was under a single command; while Spain and Austria were lukewarm and weak against her, the many little German countries could not act well together, and Great Britain had many Jacobites at home besides still more in Ireland. Thus the Dutch and British friends of King William were the only ones to be depended on through thick and thin.

Moreover, the Navy had grown dangerously weak under the last two Stuart kings; and some of its men were Jacobites who knew the French king wished to put the Stuarts on the British throne again. So, when the great French admiral, Tourville, defeated the Dutch and British fleets off Beachy Head in 1690, the British fought far more feebly than the Dutch, who did as well as the best of them had done when led by the immortal van Tromp. Luckily for the British, Louis XIV did not want to make them hate him more than he could help, because he hoped to use them for his own ends when he had brought them under James again. Better still, William beat James in Ireland about the same time. Best of all, the Royal Navy began to renew its strength; while it made up its mind to stop foreign invasions of every kind. Even Jacobite officers swore they would stop the French fleet, even if James himself was on board of it. Then the tide of fortune turned for good and all.

In the spring of 1692 Louis and James, with a French and a Jacobite-Irish army, were at La Hogue, in the north-west corner of the Normandy peninsula, ready for the invasion of England. They had to wait for Tourville to clear the Dutch and British fleets away. But they thought these fleets had not joined company and that the British fleet would be so full of Jacobites as to be easily defeated again. At the first streak of dawn on the 19th of May Admiral Russell was off Harfleur, at the north-east corner of the Normandy peninsula. His own British ships of the line (that is, the ships of the biggest and strongest kind) numbered sixty-three; while his Dutch allies had thirty-six. Against these ninety-nine Tourville had only forty-four. Yet, having been ordered to attack, and not getting the counter-order till after the battle was over, he made for the overwhelming Dutch and British with a skill and gallantry beyond all praise.

LA HOGUE, 1692.[Illustration: LA HOGUE, 1692.]

The fury of the fight centred round theSoleil Royal, Tourville's flagship, which at last had to be turned out of the line. Then, as at Jutland in the Great War, mist veiled the fleets, so that friend and foe were mixed together. But the battle went on here and there between different parts of the fleets; while a hot action was fought after dark by Admiral Carter, who, though a Jacobite, was determined that no foreign army should ever set foot in England. Mortally wounded, he called to his flag captain, "Fight the ship as long as she swims," and then fell dead. All through the foggy 20th the battle was continued whenever the French and Allies could see each other. Next morning theSoleil Royalbecame so disabled that she drifted ashore near Cherbourg. But Tourville had meanwhile shifted his flag to another ship and fought his way into La Hogue with twelve of his best men-of-war. Some of the other French ships escaped by reaching St. Malo through the dangerous channel between La Hogue and the island of Alderney. Five others escaped to the eastward, and four went so far that they rounded Scotland before getting home.

On the 23rd and 24th Admiral Rooke, the future hero of Gibraltar, sailed up the bay of La Hogue with his lighter vessels; then took to his boats and burnt Tourville's men-of-war, supply ships, and even rowboats, in full view of King Louis and King James and of their whole army of invasion. No other navy has seen so many strange sights, afloat and ashore, as have been seen by the British. Yet even the British never saw a stranger sight than when the French cavalry charged into the shallow water where the Dutch and British sailors were finishing their work. A soldier-and-sailor rough-and-tumble followed, sabres and cutlasses slashing like mad, and some of the horsemen being dragged off their saddles by well-handled boat-hooks.

La Hogue was not a glorious victory, like Trafalgar, because the odds were nine to four in favour of the Dutch and British. But it was one of the great decisive battles of the world, because, from that time on, the British Isles, though often threatened, were never again in really serious danger of invasion.

King Charles II of Spain, having no children, made a will leaving his throne to Philip V, a grandson of Louis XIV, whose wife was sister to Charles. Louis declared that "the Pyrenees had ceased to exist"; by which boast he meant that he would govern the Spanish Empire through his grandson, turn the Mediterranean into "a French lake," and work his will against British sea-power, both mercantile and naval.

The war that followed was mostly fought on land; and the great British hero of it was the famous Duke of Marlborough, who was a soldier, not a sailor. But the facts that England, as usual, could not be invaded, and that her armies, also as usual, fought victoriously on the continent of Europe, prove how well British sea-power worked: closing the sea to enemies, opening it for friends, moving armies to the best bases on the coast, and keeping them supplied with all they needed at the front—men, munitions, clothing, food, and everything else.

The great naval feat of this war was the daring attack Rooke made on Gibraltar in 1704 with the help of some very gallant Dutch. Landing all the Marines ("Soldier and Sailor too") on the narrow neck of ground joining the famous Rock of Gibraltar to the mainland of Spain, and ranging all his broadsides against the batteries on the seaward front, Rooke soon beat the Spaniards from their guns and forced them to surrender a place which, if properly defended, should have kept out a fleet ten times as strong. No sooner had Gibraltar fallen than a French fleet came to win it back. But, after a fierce battle off Malaga, with over fifty ships a side, the French gave up the idea; and from that day to this Gibraltar has been British.

British sea-power won many advantages by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. France and Spain agreed that one king should never rule both countries. The British kept Gibraltar and Minorca, which together made two splendid bases for their fleet in the Mediterranean; while France gave up all her claims to Newfoundland and the Territory of Hudson Bay, besides ceding Acadia (Nova Scotia), to the British Crown.

Though the same king did not reign over both countries the same family did. So the French and Spanish Bourbons made a Family Compact against British sea-power. Spain promised to take away from the British all the trading rights she had been forced to grant them in America, while France promised to help Spain to win Gibraltar back again.

When the secret began to leak out the feeling against the Bourbons ran high; and when a merchant skipper called Jenkins paraded London, showing the ear he said the Spaniards had cut off him in South America, the people clamoured for immediate war. Admiral Vernon became immensely popular when he took Porto Bello in the Spanish Main. But he was beaten before Cartagena. He was a good admiral; but the Navy had been shamefully neglected by the government during the long peace; and no neglected navy can send out good fleets in a hurry.

Still, the Navy and mercantile marine were good enough to enable British sea-power to turn the scale against Prince Charlie in Scotland and against the French in Canada. The French tried to help the last of the Stuarts by sending supply ships and men-of-war to Scotland. But the British fleet kept off the men-of-war, seized the supply ships, and advanced along the coast to support the army that was running the Jacobites down. Prince Charlie's Jacobites had to carry everything by land. The British army had most of its stores carried fen times better by sea. Therefore, when the two armies met for their last fight at Culloden, the Jacobites were worn out, while the British army was quite fresh. In Canada it was the same story when the French fortress of Louisbourg was entirely cut off from the sea by a British fleet and forced to surrender or starve. In both cases the fleets and armies worked together like the different parts of one body. At Louisbourg the British land force was entirely made up of American colonists, mostly from enlightened Massachusetts.

A fleet sent against the French in India failed to beat that excellent French admiral, La Bourdonnais. But Anson's famous four years voyage round the world (1740-44) was a wonderful success. The Navy having been so much neglected by the government for so many years before the war, Anson had to put up with some bad ships and worse men. Even poor old pensioners were sent on board at the last minute to make up the number required. Of course they soon died off like flies. But his famous flagship, theCenturion, got through, beat everything that stood up to her, and took vast quantities of Spanish gold and silver. Yet this is by no means the most wonderful fact about theCenturion. The most wonderful thing of all is, that, though she was only a one-thousand-tonner (smaller than many a destroyer of the present day) she had no fewer than eight officers who rose to high and well-won rank in after years, and three—Anson, Saunders, and Keppel—who all became First Lords of the Admiralty, and thus heads of the whole Navy.

H.M.S. Centurion engaged and took the Spanish Galleon Nuestra Senhora de Capadongo, from Acapulco bound to Manila, off Cape Espiritu Santo, Philippine Islands, June 20, 1743.[Illustration: H.M.S.Centurionengaged and took the Spanish GalleonNuestra Senhora de Capadongo, from Acapulco boundto Manila, off Cape Espiritu Santo,Philippine Islands, June 20, 1743.]

Three years after his return Anson won a victory over the French off Cape Finisterre, while Hawke won another near the same place a few months later. In both the French fought very well indeed; but, with less skill in handling fleets and smaller numbers than the British, they had no chance. One of Hawke's best captains was Saunders. Thus twelve years before Pitt's conquest of Canada the three great admirals most concerned with it had already been brought together.

The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, which ended the war in 1748, settled nothing and satisfied nobody. It was, in fact, only a truce to let the tired opponents get their breath and prepare for the world-wide struggle which was to settle the question of oversea empire.

The British in America were very angry with the Mother Country for giving back Louisbourg. But they were much too narrow in their views; for their own fate in America depended entirely on the strength of the Royal Navy, which itself depended on having a safe base in the Mother Country. Now, France had conquered those parts of the once Spanish but then Austrian Netherlands which included the present coast of Belgium; and Britain could no more allow the French to threaten her naval base from the coast of Belgium then than she could allow the Spaniards before or the Germans in our own time. Therefore both she and her colonists won many points in the game, when playing for safety, by

The British part of the Seven Years War was rightly known as The Maritime War, because Pitt, the greatest of British empire-builders, based it entirely on British sea-power, both mercantile and naval. Pitt had a four-fold plan. First, it is needless to say that he made the Navy strong enough to keep the seaways open to friends and closed to enemies; for once the seaways are cut the Empire will bleed to death just as surely as a man will if you cut his veins and arteries. This being always and everywhere the Navy's plainest duty it need not have been mentioned here unless each other part of Pitt's fourfold plan had not only depended on it but helped to make it work. The second part of his plan was this: not to send British armies into the middle of Europe, but to help Frederick the Great and other allies to pay their own armies—a thing made possible by the wealth brought into Britain by oversea trade. The third part was to attack the enemy wherever British fleets and armies, acting together in "joint expeditions," could strike the best blows from the sea. The fourth was to send joint expeditions to conquer the French dominions overseas.

But lesser men than Pitt were at the head of the Government when the fighting began; and it took some time to bring the ship of state on to her proper course even after his mighty hand began to steer.

In 1754 "the shot heard round the world" was fired by the French at Washington's American militiamen, who were building a fort on the spot where Pittsburg stands today. The Americans were determined to stop the French from "joining hands behind their backs" and thus closing every road to the West all the way from Canada to New Orleans. So they sent young George Washington to build a fort at the best junction of the western trails. But he was defeated and had to surrender. Then Braddock was sent out from England in 1755. But the French defeated him too. Then France sent out to Canada as great a master of the art of war on land as Drake had been by sea. This was the gallant and noble Montcalm, who, after taking Oswego in 1756 and Fort William Henry in 1757, utterly defeated a badly led British army, four times the size of his own, at Ticonderoga in 1758.

Meanwhile war had been declared in Europe on the 18th of May, 1756. On one side stood France, Austria, Saxony, Russia, and Sweden; on the other, Great Britain, Prussia, and a few smaller German states, among them Hanover and Hesse. Things went as badly here as overseas; for the meaner kind of party politicians had been long in power, and the Fleet and Army had both been neglected. There was almost a panic in England while the French were preparing a joint expedition against Minorca in the Mediterranean lest this might be turned against England herself. Minorca was taken, a British fleet having failed to help it. Hawke and Saunders were then sent to the Mediterranean as a "cargo of courage." But the fortunes of war could not be changed at once; and they became even worse next year (1757). The Austrians drove Frederick the Great out of Bohemia. The French took Hanover. And, though Frederick ended the year with two victories, Pitt's own first joint expedition failed to take Rochefort on the west coast of France. Clive's great victory at Plassey, which laid the foundation of our Indian Empire, was the only silver lining to the British clouds of war.

But in 1758 Pitt was at last managing the war in his own perfect way; and everything began to change for the better.

The enemy had already felt the force of British sea-power in three different ways. They had felt it by losing hundreds of merchant vessels on the outbreak of war. They had felt it in Hanover, where they were ready to grant the Hanoverians any terms if the surrender would only be made before a British fleet should appear on their flank. And they had felt it during the Rochefort expedition, because, though that was a wretched failure, they could not tell beforehand when or where the blow would fall, or whether the fleet and army might not be only feinting against Rochefort and then going on somewhere else.

There is no end to the advantages a joint fleet and army possesses over an army alone, even when the army alone has many more men. It is ten times easier to supply armies with what they need in the way of men, guns, munitions, food, clothes, and other stores, when these supplies can be carried by sea. It is ten times easier to keep your movements secret at sea, where nobody lives and where the weaker sea-power can never have the best of lookouts, than it is on land, where thousands of eyes are watching you and thousands of tongues are talking. So, if your army fights near a coast against an enemy who commands the sea, you can never tell when or where he may suddenly attack your line of supply by landing an army to cut it. The French generals, though they had the best army in the world, were always looking over their shoulders to see if some British joint expedition was not hovering round the flank exposed to the coast. The French Navy, though very gallant, could only help French shipping here and there, by fits and starts, and at the greatest risk. So, while the British forces used the highways of the sea the whole time, the French forces could only use them now and then by great good luck. Thus British sea-power hampered, spoilt, or ruined all the powers of the land.

The French wanted to save Louisbourg, the fall of which they knew would be the first step to the British conquest of Canada. But they could not send a fleet through the English Channel right under the eyes of the British naval headquarters, from which they were themselves expecting an attack. So they tried one from the Mediterranean. But Osborne and Saunders shut the door in their faces at Gibraltar and broke up their Toulon fleet as well. Then the French tried the Bay of Biscay. But Hawke swooped down on the big convoy of supply vessels sheltering at Aix and forced both them and their escorting men-of-war to run aground in order to save themselves from being burnt. Meanwhile large numbers of French farmers and fishermen had to be kept under arms to guard the shores along the Channel. This, of course, was bad for the harvest of both sea and land, on which the feeding of the men at the front so greatly depended. But there was no help for it, as the British fleet was watching its chance to pounce down on the first point left unguarded, and the French fleet was not strong enough to fight it out at sea. St. Malo and Cherbourg were successfully attacked. The only failure was at St. Cast, where a silly old general made mistakes of which a clever French one quickly took advantage.

Thus harassed, blockaded, and weakened on every coast, France could do nothing to save Louisbourg, the first link in the long, thin chain of French posts in America, where the fortunes of war were bound to follow the side that had the greater sea-power. No army could fight in America if cut off from Europe; because the powder and shot, muskets and bayonets, cannons and cannon-balls, swords and pistols, all came out from France and England. More than this, the backbone of both armies were the French and British regulars, who also came from France and England. Most of all, fleets were quite as important at Quebec and Montreal as at Louisbourg, for ocean navigation went all those hundreds of miles inland. Beyond these three great points, again, sea-power, of a wholly inland kind, was all-important; for the French lived along another line of waterways—from Montreal, across the Great Lakes, and down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. You might as well expect an army to march without legs as to carry on a war in America without fleets of sea-going ships and flotillas of inland small craft, even down to the birchbark canoe.

Pitt's plan for 1758 was to attack Canada on both flanks and work into place for attacking her centre the following year. Louisbourg on the coast of Cape Breton guarded her sea flank. Fort Duquesne (now Pittsburg) at the forks of the Ohio guarded her land flank and her door to the Golden West. Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain guarded her gateway into the St. Lawrence from the south. Here the British attack, though made with vastly superior numbers, was beaten back by the heroic and skilful Montcalm. But Fort Duquesne, where Washington and Braddock had been defeated, was taken by Forbes and re-named Pittshurg in honour of the mighty Minister of War. Louisbourg likewise fell. So Canada was beaten on both wings, though saved, for the moment, in the centre.

Louisbourg never had the slightest chance; for Boscawen's great fleet cut it off from the sea so completely that no help the French could spare could have forced its way in, even if it had been able to dodge past the British off the coast of France. The British army, being well supplied from the sea, not only cut Louisbourg off by land as well as the fleet had cut it off by sea but was able to press the siege home with such vigour that the French had to surrender after a brave defence of no more than eight weeks. The hero of the British army at Louisbourg was a young general of whom we shall soon hear more—Wolfe.

If we ever want to choose an Empire Year, then the one to choose, beyond all shadow of a doubt, is 1759; and the hero of it, also beyond all shadow of a doubt, is Pitt. Hardwicke, Pitt's chief civilian adviser, was a truly magnificent statesman for war. Anson was a great man at the head of the Navy. Ligonier was equally good at the head of the Army, with a commission as "Commander-in-Chief of all His Majesty's Forces in Great Britain and America," which showed how much Pitt thought of the Canadian campaigns. The silent Saunders was one of the best admirals that even England ever had. And when people drank to "the eye of a Hawke, and the heart of a Wolfe!" they showed they knew of other first-rate leaders too. But by far the greatest head and heart, by far the most inspiring soul, of this whole vast Empire War was Pitt. In many and many a war, down to our own day, the warriors who have led the fleets and armies have been greater and nobler than the statesmen who managed the government. But Pitt was greater, though even he could not be nobler, than any of the warriors who served the Empire under him; for he knew, better than any one else, how to make fleets and armies work together as a single United Service, and how to make the people who were not warriors work with the warriors for the welfare of the whole United Empire. Of course he had a wonderful head and a wonderful heart. But his crowning glory as an Empire-maker is that he could rise above all the petty strife of party politicians and give himself wholly to the Empire in the same spirit of self-sacrifice as warriors show upon the field of battle.

In choosing commanders by land and sea Pitt always took the best, no matter who or what their friends or parties were; and no commander left Pitt's inspiring presence without feeling the fitter for the work in hand. In planning the conquest of Canada, Pitt and Ligonier agreed that Amherst and Wolfe were the men for the army, while Pitt and Anson agreed that Saunders and Holmes were the men for the fleet. This was all settled at the beginning of Empire Year—1759.

But this was only a part, though the most important part, of Pitt's Imperial plan. No point of vantage, the whole world round, escaped his eagle eye. The French and Dutch were beaten in India; though both fought well, and though the French fleet fought a drawn battle with the British off Ceylon. On the continent of Europe our allies were helped by a British army at the decisive victory of Minden, which drove the French away from Hanover. And in the West Indies the island of Guadaloupe was taken by a joint expedition of the usual kind; but only after the French had made a splendid resistance of over three months.

Stung to the quick by these sudden blows from the sea France planned a great invasion of the British Isles. She did not hide it, hoping thereby to make the British keep their fleets at home in self-defence. But though, as always happens, there were people weak enough to want to keep the Navy close beside the coast and stupidly divided up, so that plenty of timid folk could see the ships in front of them, just where the enemy with one well handled fleet could beat them bit by bit, Pitt paid no attention at all to any silly nonsense of the kind. He and Anson knew, of course, that, when you have the stronger fleet, the only right way is to defend yourself by attacking the enemy before he can attack you. So, instead of wasting force at home, Pitt sent joint expeditions all over the seaboard world, wherever they were needed to guard or make the Empire overseas; while he sent fleets to beat or blockade the French fleets off their own, not off the British, coasts.

The dreaded invasion never came off; and the only two French fleets that did get out were destroyed: the one from the Mediterranean off Lagos in the south of Portugal, and the one from the west coast of France in Quiberon Bay.

Boscawen's fleet was refitting and taking in stores at Gibraltar when one of his look-out frigates signalled up to the Governor's house, where Boscawen was dining, that the French were slipping through the Strait by hugging the African shore under cover of the dark. The British flagship had her sails unbent (that is, unfastened altogether). Every vessel had her decks and hold lumbered up with stores. Half the crews were ashore; and if a spy had taken a look round he would have thought the enemy could never have been overhauled. But the Navy is never caught napping. In the twinkling of an eye Gibraltar was full of British blue-jackets racing down to their ships, leaping on board, and turning their skilful hands to the first job waiting to be done. Within two hours Boscawen was off hotfoot after the French, hoisting in boats, stowing the last of the lumbering stores, and clearing decks for action. Overhauling La Clue near Lagos, off the coast of Portugal, he ranged up alongside, flagship to flagship. But the French, fighting with equal skill and courage, beat him off. Falling astern he came abreast of the gallantCentaure, which had already fought four British men-of-war. Being now a mere battered hulk she surrendered. Then Boscawen, his damage repaired, pushed ahead again. La Clue, whose fleet was the smaller, seeing no chance of either victory or escape, chose shipwreck rather than surrender, and ran his flagship straight on the rocks, with every stitch of canvas drawing full and his flag kept flying.

The ROYAL GEORGE[Illustration: TheROYAL GEORGE]

Quiberon and Quebec go together, like "the eye of a Hawke and the heart of a Wolfe"; for Hawke's victory at Quiberon made it certain that Wolfe's victory at Quebec could not be undone. The French were trying to unite their west-coast fleets at Morbihan for an invasion of England or at least a fight to give some of their own shipping a breathing spell free from blockade. Their admiral, Conflans, was trying to work his way in under very great difficulties. He was short of trained men, short of proper stores, and had fewer ships than Hawke. Hawke's cruisers had driven some of Conflans' storeships into a harbour a hundred miles away from Brest, where Conflans was trying hard to get ready for the invasion of England. The result was that these stores had to be landed and carted across country, which not only took ten times longer than it would have taken to send them round by sea but also gave ten times as much trouble. At last Conflans managed to move out. But he had about as much chance of escape as a fly in a spider's web; for Hawke had cruisers watching everywhere and a battle fleet ready to pounce down anywhere. Conflans had been ordered to save his fleet by all possible means till he had joined the French fleet and army of invasion. So he is not to be blamed for what he tried to do at Quiberon.

On the 20th of November he was sailing toward Quiberon Bay when he saw the vanguard of Hawke's fleet coming up before a rising gale. With fewer ships, and with crews that had been blockaded so long that they were no match for the sea-living British, he knew he had no chance in a stand-up tight in the open, and more especially in the middle of a storm. So he made for Quiberon, where he thought he would be safe; because the whole of that intricate Bay is full of rocks, shoals, shallows, and all kinds of other dangers.

But Hawke came down on the wings of the wind, straight toward the terrific dangers of the Bay, and flying before a gale which in itself seemed to promise certain shipwreck; for it blew on-shore. Conflans ran for his life, got into the Bay, and had begun to form his line of battle when some distant shots told him that his rear was being overhauled. Then his last ships came racing in. But the leading British, like hounds in full cry, were closing on them so fast that before they could join his line they were caught in the fury of the fight. Within a few desperate minutes two French ships were so badly battered that they had to surrender, while three more were sent to the bottom. Then the gale shifted and blew Conflans' own line out of order. He at once tried to move into a better place. But this only made matters worse. So he anchored in utter confusion, with wrecking rocks on one side and Hawke's swooping fleet on the other. Once more, however, he tried a change—this time the bold one of charging out to sea. But Hawke was too quick for him, though the well-namedIntrépiderushed in between the two racing flagships, theRoyal GeorgeandSoleil Royal. This was the end. The gale rose to its height. Darkness closed in. And then, amid the roaring of the battle and the sea, the victorious British anchored beside all that was left of the French.

There were no such sea fights on the coasts of Canada, where the British were in overwhelming naval strength. But never was there a joint expedition which owed more to its fleet than the one that took Quebec this same year (1759). The fact that the battles were fought on the land, and that Wolfe and Montcalm both fell in the one which decided the fate of Quebec, has made us forget that sea-power had more to do with this and the other American campaigns than all the other forces put together. The army did magnificently; and without Wolfe's and the other armies the conquest could never have been made. But the point is this, that, while each little army was only a finger of the hand that drew the British sword in Canada, the fleet which brought the armies there and kept them going was part and parcel of the whole vast body of British sea-power united round the world.

Pitt planned to give French Canada the knockout blow in Empire Year. So, holding the extreme east and west at Louisbourg and Fort Duquesne, he sent a small force to cut the line of the Lakes at Niagara, a much larger one to cut into the line of the St. Lawrence from Lake Champlain, and the largest and strongest of all up the St. Lawrence to take Quebec, which, then as now, was the key of Canada. Niagara was taken; and the line of Lake Champlain was secured by Amherst, who, however, never got through to the St. Lawrence that year. But the great question was, who is to have the key? So we shall follow Saunders and Wolfe to Quebec.

Wolfe's little army of nine thousand men was really a landing party from Saunders' big fleet, which included nearly fifty men-of-war (almost a quarter of the whole Royal Navy) and well over two hundred transports and supply ships. The bluejackets on board the men-of-war and the merchant seamen on board the other ships each greatly outnumbered the men in Wolfe's army. In fact, the whole expedition was made up of three-quarters sea-power and only one-quarter land.

Admiral Durell, who had been left at Halifax over the winter, was too slow in getting the advance guard under way in time to cut off the twenty-three little vessels sent out from France to Montcalm in the spring. But this reinforcement was too small to make any real difference in the doom of Quebec when once British sea-power had sealed the St. Lawrence. Saunders took Wolfe's army and the main body of his own fleet up the great river in June: a hundred and forty-one vessels, all told, from the flagshipNeptuneof ninety guns down to the smallest craft that carried supplies. It was a brave sight off the mouth of the Saguenay, where the deep-water estuary ends, to see the whole fleet, together at sunset, with its thousand white sails, in a crescent twenty miles long, a-gleam on the blue St. Lawrence.

The French-Canadian pilots who had been taken prisoners swore that no fleet could ever get through the Traverse, a tricky bit of water thirty miles below Quebec. But, in the course of the summer, the British sailing masters, who had never been there before, themselves took two hundred and seventy-seven vessels right through it with greater ease in squadrons than any French-Canadian could when piloting a single ship. The famous Captain Cook, of whom we shall soon hear more, had gone up a month ahead with Durell, and, in only three days, had sounded, surveyed, and buoyed the Traverse to perfection.

When once the fleet had reached Quebec Montcalm was completely cut off from the outside world, except for the road and river up to Montreal. His French-Canadian militia more than equalled Wolfe's army in mere numbers. But his French regulars from France, the backbone of the whole defence, were not half so many. Vaudreuil, the French-Canadian Governor, was a fool. Bigot, the French Intendant, was a knave. They both hated the great and honest Montcalm and did all they could to spite him. The natural strength of Quebec, "the Gibraltar of America," was, with his own French regulars, the only defence on which he could always rely.

The bombardment of Quebec from across the narrows of the St. Lawrence ("Kebec" is the Indian for "narrows") went on without much result throughout July; and Wolfe's attempt to storm the Heights of Montmorency, five miles below Quebec, ended in defeat. During August a squadron under Holmes, third-in-command of the fleet, kept pushing up the St. Lawrence above Quebec, and thus alarming the French for the safety of their road and river lines of communication with Montreal, the only lines left. They sent troops up to watch the ships, and very wearing work it was; for while the ships carried Wolfe's landing parties up and down with the tide, the unfortunate Frenchmen had to scramble across country in a vain effort to be first at any threatened point.

From the 3rd of September to the famous 13th Wolfe worked out his own splendid plan with the help of the fleet. Three-fourths of the French were entrenched along the six miles of North Shore below Quebec, to please Vaudreuil, who, as Governor, had power to order Montcalm. The rest were in or above Quebec; and mostly between Cap Rouge, which was seven miles, and Pointe-aux-Trembles, which was twenty-two miles, above. Wolfe's plan was to make as big a show of force as possible, up to the very last minute, against the entrenchments below Quebec and also against the fifteen miles of North Shore between Cap Rouge and Pointe-aux-Trembles, while he would really land at what we now call Wolfe's Cove, which is little more than one mile above Quebec. If he could then hold the land line west to Montreal, while Holmes held the river line, Montcalm would be absolutely cut off in every direction and be forced to fight or starve. Montcalm's secret orders from the King being to keep any other foothold he possibly could if Quebec was taken, he had to leave stores of provisions at different points toward the West and South, as he intended to retire from point to point and make his last stand down by New Orleans.

Quebec was, however, to be held if possible; and everything that skill and courage could do was done by Montcalm to hold it. He even foresaw Wolfe's final plan and sent one of his best French battalions to guard the Plains of Abraham. But Vaudreuil withdrew it four days before the battle there. Again, on the very eve of battle, Montcalm ordered the same battalion to ramp for the night in defence of Wolfe's Cove. But Vaudreuil again counter-ordered, this time before the men had marched off, thus leaving that post in charge of one of his own friends, a contemptible officer called Vergor.

Wolfe knew all about Vergor and what went on in the French camp, where Vaudreuil could never keep a secret. So he and Saunders and Holmes set the plan going for the final blow. The unfortunate Frenchmen above Cap Rouge were now so worn out by trying to keep up with the ships that Wolfe knew they would take hours to get down to Quebec if decoyed overnight anywhere up near Pointe-aux-Trembles, more than twenty miles away. He also knew that the show of force to be made by Saunders the day before the battle would keep the French in their trenches along the six miles below Quebec. Besides this he knew that the fire of his batteries opposite Quebec would drown the noise of taking Vergor's post more than a mile above. Finally, the fleet kept him perfectly safe from counter-attack, hid his movements, and took his army to any given spot far better and faster than the French could go there by land.

With all this in his favour he then carried out his plan to perfection, holding the French close below and far above Quebec by threatening attacks from the ships, secretly bringing his best men together in boats off Cap Rouge after dark, dropping them down to Wolfe's Cove just before dawn, rushing Vergor's post with the greatest ease, and forming up across the Plains of Abraham, just west of Quebec, an hour before Montcalm could possibly attack him. Cut off by water and land Montcalm now had to starve or fight Wolfe's well-trained regulars with about equal numbers of men, half of whom were militia quite untrained for flat and open battlefields. Wolfe's perfect volleys then sealed the fate of Quebec; while British sea-power sealed the fate of Canada.

The rest of the war was simply reaping the victories Pitt had sown; though he left the Government in 1761, and Spain joined our enemies the following year. The jealous new king, George III, and his jealous new courtiers, with some of the jealous old politicians, made up a party that forced Pitt out of the Government. They then signed the Treaty of Versailles in 1763 without properly securing the fruit of all his victories.

But Canada had been won outright. The foundations of the Indian Empire had been well and truly laid. And the famous Captain Cook, who surveyed the Traverse for Saunders and made the first charts of British Canada, soon afterwards became one of the founders of that British Australasia whose Australian-New Zealand-Army-Corps became so justly famous as the fighting "Anzacs" throughout our recent war against the Germans.

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