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Home Foreign Affairs and the Empire, 1714-1763 Empire, 1714-1763; Part 5 |
Empire, 1714-1763; Part 5The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle settled nothing permanently. It was only a truce, and a few years later, in 1756, a mightier war was to break out-the Seven Years' War. The rival ambitions of Great Britain and France in America and in India had to be adjusted-and the sword alone could do that. Something has already been said about our colonies in North America. The British colonies-thirteen in number-stretched along the shores of the Atlantic To the north of them lay the French possession of Canada, to the south and west of them French Louisiana. The French ambitions were brilliant in conception. Just as in our own times the French desired a sphere of influence that would stretch from the east to the west of Africa, so in the eighteenth century they wished to join Louisiana and Canada by occupying the land behind and to the west of the British settlements. At first sight the French ambitions might seem absurd; for the French colonists in Canada only numbered some 60,000, and the English colonists were nearly a million and a half. But the French settlements were compact, whilst those of the English were scattered.The French colony was united, and autocratically governed by capable French officials. The thirteen English colonies, on the other hand, were entirely separate in government, and often ill-disposed to one another; and all attempts to combine them for joint action had hitherto been complete failures. Moreover river valleys favoured the French designs. Throw a cork into the River Alleghany at its source near Lake Erie, and it will eventually find its way-if it meets with no obstacles-by the River Ohio and the Mississippi, to the Gulf of Mexico. Mountains-the Alleghany Mountains- on the other hand, interposed a natural barrier to the British expansion westward. After the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle events moved fast in America. The French seemed likely to achieve their ambitions. South of Montreal they had already built, on the shores of Lake Champlain, two forts at Crown Point and at Ticonderoga. They now developed the building of a line of forts from north to south to secure the river valleys. Meantime the British, owing partly to the disunion of the colonies themselves and partly to the procrastination of the home government, had done nothing except the building of Oswego on the south side of Lake Ontario. Then in 1754 came the building by the French, near the western boundary of Pennsylvania and at the junction of three rivers, of Fort Duquesne; and the last link, it has been said, in the French chain of forts was forged. Its building at once led to war in America. Two attempts to capture it were made, the first under Washington in 1754, and the second under Braddock in 1755; and both were disastrous (Braddock, who had pushed forward with twelve hundred men, was caught in an ambush some seven miles from the fort, and lost nearly two-thirds of his force. He himself fought most bravely, and, after having five horses shot under him, was mortally wounded, an next day). The outlook for the French in America was bright, when in 1756 formal war was declared between Great Britain and France. |
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