1758 CAPTURE OF LOUISBOURG. 457 XXVII. Hardy sailed early in January with orders to blockade the CHAP. harbour. On February 28 Admiral Osborn off Carthagena dispersed and captured three French ships which had sailed from Toulon to reinforce the fleet under Admiral de La Clue destined for America, then lying in Carthagena harbour. Another squadron of seven ships of the line and three frigates under Hawke on April 4 attacked a fleet of transports fitted out for Louisbourg in Rochefort harbour, driving them ashore or rendering them unserviceable. Boscawen's force consisted of twenty-three ships of the line, eighteen frigates and fire-ships, as well as transports with 11,600 regulars and 500 provincial rangers. Louisbourg was defended by fewer than 4,000 French regular troops besides militia and Indians. The attacking force had been swollen by reinforcements from New England to a nominal 15,000 men much enfeebled by scurvy and want of fresh meat.1 Two feigned attacks were made near the town; but the actual disembarkation was about a third of a mile to the westward, under the orders of Brigadier Wolfe. This officer, now thirtyone years old, was one of the few, as he himself tells us, who regarded his profession as a serious business. His conduct at Laffeldt had won him the personal thanks of the Duke of Cumberland, and at twenty-two he was lieutenant-colonel of the 20th foot. His eagerness to attack Rochefort attracted the notice of Hawke who commended him to the king. "Mad, is he?" said George to Newcastle, "then I hope he will bite some others of my generals." The siege was pressed without intermission, and on July 27 the garrison surrendered as prisoners of war. The key of Canada was in British hands. Abercromby for his attack on Canada by way of Lake Champlain had collected an army of over 15,000 men, of whom 6,000 were regular and 9,000 provincial troops. Amply provided with boats by the foresight of Pitt, he embarked on Lake George on July 5 for the capture of Ticonderoga, a strong fort at the junction of the two lakes, with a garrison of 3,600 men. Without waiting for his artillery, which had been landed and would have swept away the newly constructed 1 Wolfe to Lord G. Sackville, Halifax, February 11, 1758, Hist. MSS. Comm., 9th Rep., App., p. 75. CHAP. abatis, he threw his troops against the fort. From noon XXVII. till nightfall successive assaults were repulsed, 1,944 being killed and wounded on the British side, while the garrison lost no more than 377. With so superior a force as Abercromby had, and with the assistance of artillery, it would have been easy to retrieve the defeat. But the general lost his head. On the following day, the 9th, he ordered a retreat and the combination of Pitt for the conquest of Canada was shattered. The one success of Abercromby's campaign was achieved by a New England officer, Bradstreet, who with a force of 3,000 men, nearly all provincials, took the important French post of Fort Frontenac on August 26. The last of the three campaigns by Pitt for this year, that against Fort Duquesne, was greatly forwarded by Bradstreet's success. At Fort Frontenac Bradstreet found the stores intended for Fort Duquesne, and by his capture there of nine armed vessels, the French naval force on Lake Ontario, he deprived the enemy of the means of reinforcing its garrison. The occupation by Forbes of Fort Duquesne, which was replaced in the following year by a newly constructed Fort Pitt, transferred "the key of the great west" to British hands, and by robbing the French of their prestige, insured the frontier population against the continuance of Indian attacks. After prolonged depression in England, broken in June by the news of the capture of Fort Louis on the Senegal, a reaction of enthusiasm set in when in the middle of August the surrenders of Louisbourg and Cherbourg became known. When parliament opened on November 23 it found Pitt in a position of supremacy never reached even by Walpole. He was free to carry out his plans on a grand scale, confident in the resources of his country and of the approaching exhaustion of France. The total sums voted rose from £10,486,000 to £12,749,000, of which £10,000,000 was for the war.1 Pitt's ascendancy, enforced as it was by his autocratic bearing, began to provoke the jealousy of his colleagues. On the other hand, the tories, having neither leader nor hopes of office, rallied to his support. Prominent in their ranks was Alderman William Beckford, a Jamaica planter of immense wealth, member for the city of London. Beckford urged a naval expedition against the 1 Sinclair, Hist. of the Revenue (3rd ed., 1803), ii., 76. 1759 PITT'S NAVAL PREPARATIONS. XXVII. 459 French colonies in the West Indies, especially the two queens CHAP. of the Antilles, Martinique and Guadeloupe. In October, the force which had lately suffered the disaster at St. Cast was ordered by Pitt upon this service. Six battalions of infantry, 800 marines, and some artillery were placed under the command of General Hopson, a veteran officer of infirm health. The descent on Martinique was repulsed, but after several months of fighting Guadeloupe surrendered on May 1, 1759.1 France had, at last, become alarmed by the situation across the Atlantic and by the destruction of its colonial trade. To Choiseul, leader of the war party, who had displaced Bernis as foreign minister, there remained but one chance of dealing the enemy a mortal blow. He determined to carry into effect the former project of Marshal Belleisle for an invasion of England. The mere threat, it was thought, would starve supplies and reinforcements to the British in Canada. At the beginning of 1759, flat-bottomed boats, each to carry 300 to 500 men, were built at Havre, Brest, Rochefort, and Dunkirk for the conveyance of 50,000 troops. Another expedition was to land 12,000 men in Scotland. Squadrons were fitted out at Toulon and Brest for the protection of the transports. Pitt did not flinch. He resolved to brave risk at home rather than to incur the sacrifice of his successes abroad. He hastened naval preparations to reinforce our troops in India and Canada, while blockading the French fleets in harbour. On February 17 fifteen ships of the line and ten frigates sailed under Admiral Charles Saunders for the St. Lawrence. To Boscawen was assigned the task of blockading Toulon with fourteen ships of the line, to prevent the junction of the fleet under Admiral de La Clue, lying in that harbour, with the fleet at Brest. The Brest fleet was to be watched by Hawke, who was given the command of the western fleet of twenty-four ships of the line with Torbay as their base. Hawke arranged 1 Great discrepancies exist as to the circumstances of the abandonment of the descent on Martinique. Cf. General Hopson's dispatch in Pitt's Correspondence with Colonial Governors (1906), ii., 20; Entick, Hist. of the Late War (1763), iv., 144; "Candid Reflections on the Expedition to Martinico," by J. J., a lieutenant in the navy, Gent. Mag., 1759, p. 206, and Ruville, William Pitt (1905), 1., 259, n. (Engl. transl., ii., 235, 236). This last version, which is from a French source, differs from the others and is not in accord with the account accepted by M. R. Waddington in his Guerre de Sept Ans, iii., 355. XXVII. CHAP. a chain of frigates which swept the Channel, ready to report any egress from Brest. A few first-raters guarded the mouth of the Thames. Means were even found for the dispatch to Bombay in May of four ships of the line under Rear-Admiral Cornish as convoy for the East India merchantmen and reinforcement for Vice-Admiral Pocock. Preparations were complete, yet still invasion tarried, and Anson advised Pitt to anticipate it by offensive movements. At the beginning of July Rear-Admiral George Brydges Rodney, with a squadron of four fifty-gun ships, five frigates, and six bomb vessels, bombarded Havre, where a large number of the flat-bottomed boats were assembled, but met with doubtful success. The first blow to the hope of invasion was dealt by Boscawen. La Clue's fleet of ten of the line and two fifties escaped from Toulon on August 17. Pursued by Boscawen, the rearmost was destroyed, and La Clue, with four ships, made for the waters of Lagos Bay where, in violation of the neutrality of Portugal, two of them were captured and two destroyed. Five which ran into Cadiz harbour were blockaded by a detached squadron under Vice-Admiral Brodrick; only two in all escaped to the open sea. This disaster destroyed the hope of a successful invasion of England upon a grand scale, though Choiseul still projected an invasion of Scotland with 15,000 or 20,000 men and of a minor attempt upon Ireland. The confidence felt in Prince Ferdinand's military capacity relieved the king and ministry from a sense of responsibility for the movements of the British contingent of his army. But there were irritating bickerings about relative rank. Upon the death of Marlborough on October 20, 1758, his command was transferred to Lord George Sackville. Defeated at Bergen in April, Ferdinand had cautiously retired before the French armies. But when on July 9, 1759, the French occupied Minden, no course remained, if Hanover were to be saved, but to risk an engagement. Ferdinand's force numbered 52,000, of whom 10,000 were British; that of the French, including Broglie's corps which joined Contades just as the allies appeared on the scene, 62,000 men "in a position too strong to 1Lord Holdernesse to Lord George Sackville, July 3, 1759, StopfordSackville MSS., p. 56. *Lord George Sackville to Lord Holdernesse, Oberstadt, July 18, 1759, Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 35,893, f. 208. 1759 THE BATTLE OF MINDEN. 461 be forced" to the south of Minden, with their right resting upon CHAP. the river Weser, their left protected by a morass, and a chain of XXVII. hills in their rear. To dislodge them, Ferdinand dispatched the hereditary Prince of Brunswick with 7,000 men to cut the enemy's communications, and on the 31st learnt that the prince was behind the French rear-guard. Contades was forced either to attack Ferdinand or to retreat towards his base at Cassel. He decided for attack and in the early morning his army advanced on to the plain before Minden. Ferdinand, adroitly invited the direction of the French assault. He had thrown forward his left wing under General Wangenheim, posting it in an intrenched camp at Todtenhausen, three miles from the main body of the army, from which position he could observe the French movements.1 The plan of Contades, as Ferdinand had anticipated, was to detach Broglie with a force sufficient to crush Wangenheim, to thrust his cavalry into the gap, and turn the left centre of the allies. Early on August 1, Ferdinand had moved his troops to the support of Wangenheim, and when the morning mist lifted, Broglie saw the main army marching to its positions in front of him. 2 The allies by taking the offensive disconcerted the plans of Contades. The Hanoverian general, Spörcken, advanced at the head of the six English battalions-the 12th, 20th, 23rd, 25th, 37th and 51st of the line, which still bear "Minden" on their colours, followed by three of Hanoverians. Marching steadily in two lines some 1,200 yards across the plain, they were swept by a cross-fire of thirty-six cannon on the one, and thirty on the other flank. Yet without even "paying the compliment of forming squares," as a French writer complains, they received the charges of three successive lines of French cavalry, numbering 7,560 sabres, with a fire at twenty-five yards' distance which turned the enemy into a mass of fugitives. As the infantry were first about to advance Ferdinand dispatched a German 1 This circumstance is overlooked by historians who insist on the boldness of the manœuvre. See "Estorp's Narrative" in Hardwicke Papers, Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 35,893, f. 210. 2 See R. Waddington, La Guerre de Sept Ans, iii., 53. 3" To sustain the infantry which was going to be engaged," is the evidence of Captain Winschingrode, the first aide-de-camp dispatched, taken before the court-martial. The Trial of Lord George Sackville, p. 11. Nevertheless, Stanhope, followed by all other writers I have consulted, represents the first order to have been sent after the first repulse of the French cavalry. |