QEOR 



:r. II. 



the following you-, itill further thmrpened the eagerness with which 

 tl> popular feeling had rushed into the contest. The operation* that 

 were subsequently attempted however were not equally successful; 

 repeated attacks upon Corthagena, iu particular, all signally failed. 

 The death of the emperor Cbftrlea VI. in October 1740, speedily pro- 

 duced a general European war ; Great Britain supporting the settle- 

 ment called the 1'ragmatir Sanction, by which the succession to the 

 Austrian dominions devolved upon the late emperor's eldest daughter, 

 Maria Theresa, queen of Hungary; France and Spain uniting to 

 maintain the claims of Charles Albert, elector of Bavaria (elected 

 emperor in 1742 under the title of Charles VII.) Meanwhile various 

 causes had been co-operating to shake Walpole'i power. The mere 

 length of bis tenure of office had tired the country and created 

 impatience for a change. The pacific policy in which he bad so 

 obstinately persevered had disgusted the general eagerness for a war 

 excited by a feeling that the national interest and honour alike 

 demanded recourse to arms, and the course he bad taken iu thin 

 respect had impaired bis reputation as much as his popularity. His 

 scheme for the extension of the excise, introduced iu 1733, had, 

 although abandoned, produced au unfavourable impression that sunk 

 deep into the popular mind, and an outcry agaiust him that never 

 subsided. The Iocs of his steady and influential protectress. Queen 

 Caroline, who died 20th of November 1732, deprived him of one of 

 his strongest supports in the favour of the king. Just before that 

 event also a violent quarrel bad broken out between the king and the 

 Prince of Wales, who now headed the opposition, and collected around 

 him at Leicester-House a court and party, one of the chief of whose 

 avowed object* was the removal of the premier. In these circum- 

 stances a new parliament met 4th of December 1741, in which Walpole 

 soon found himself so placed as to make it necessary to retire. He 

 resigned all his places in the end of January 1742, and was imme- 

 diately created Earl of Orford. So long as he lived however, which 

 was not more than three years, Walpole continued really the king's 

 chief adviser. The ministry that immediately succeeded was nominally 

 appointed by his great rival Pulteney, but it was in reality the result 

 of a compromise, and Pulteney himself was by Walpole's contrivance 

 annihilated in the very moment of his apparent triumph, by being 

 compelled to leave the House of Commons and to take a peerage : as 

 Earl of Bath he became at once nobody. A reconciliation at the 

 same time took place between the king and the prince; but neither 

 this nor any of the other arrangements lasted long. In a few months 

 the prince was again in opposition, and the new ministry was assailed 

 by an adverse force, composed in part of their ancient allies, as 

 formidable as that which had driven Walpole from power. 



Meanwhile the war against the Bavarians and their allies the French 

 had begun to be prosecuted with great vigour ; the kings of Denmark 

 and Sweden (the latter in his capacity of landgrave of Hesse Cassel) 

 having been subsidised, and a treaty of alliance concluded with 

 Frederick III. of Prussia, George II. joined his army on the Continent 

 in person in the beginning of June 1743, and on tho 26th of that 

 month shared in the great victory gained over the French at Det- 

 tingen. On this occasion tho English king behaved with distinguished 

 courage. This instance of success however was only followed by 

 inactivity and reverses ; one consequence of which was the expulsion 

 from the ministry, in November 1744, of Lord Granville (formerly 

 Lord Carteret), the great promoter of the war, and as such the 

 member of the cabinet who had the greatest influence with the king. 

 The ministry that was now formed was called the Broad-Bottom 

 mini-try : it contained a few Tories, but consisted principally of the 

 Newcastle and Grenville Whigs, the only parties wholly excluded 

 being the connections of lords Granville and Bath. Mr. Pelham, 

 brother of the Duke of Newcastle, was first lord of the treasury and 

 chancellor of the exchequer, and Mr. Pitt (afterwards so distinguished 

 both under that name and as Earl of Chatham) being promised a 

 place as soon as the king could be iuduced to admit him, gave his 

 support in the meantime to the administration. This change of men 

 however brought no change of measures. The king's German politics 

 continued to receive the same support from the new ministry as they 

 had from the old. Nor was the war carried on with better fortune. 

 The defeat of the allies at Fontenoy, 30th of April 1745, was the 

 great event of the next campaign. 



In August of the same year another Jacobite rebellion, instigated 

 by France and Spain, broke out in Scotland ; the towns of Dunkuld, 

 I', i tli, Dundee, Edinburgh, and Carlisle rapidly fell into the bauds of 

 tho insurgents; the king's troops were routed at Preston pans and 

 Falkirk ; and the Pretender, Charles Edward, had already advanced 

 as far as Derby iu bis bold march upon the metropolis of the empire 

 before any successful attempt WHS umdo to resist him. The rising 

 however which bad wore so threatening an aspect was completely put 

 down by the victory of Culloden, gained by the king's second sou, the 

 Duke of Cumberland, on tho 16th of April 1746. In the preceding 

 February, in the very midst of the public alarm, the king had made 

 a sudden attempt to reinstate lords Granville and Bath as tho heads 

 of the ministry ; but after being three days in office they saw that 

 the project was hopeless, on which Mr. Pulham, who had resigned, 

 was taken back, and continued at tho head of affairs till his death iu 

 1754. 



The treaty of Aix-la-Chapolle, the preliminary articles of which 



were signed on the 30th of April 1748, at last put an end to the war, 

 the latter yean of which were distinguished by some brilliant naval 

 successes on the part of Great Britain. The conditions of this peace 

 on the whole excited great dissatisfaction in England, especially the 

 restoration of Cape Breton, which had been taken from the French in 

 1745, and had been accounted the great acquisition of the war. <hi 

 the other hand, Madras, which a French fleet had reduced in 1746, 

 was recovered. The power of the ministry however was not shaken 

 by tho vigorous and persevering assaults upon the treaty by the oppo- 

 sition in parliament; and Mr. Pelham and his friends also triumph <1 

 in a division that broke out in the cabinet after the death of tho 

 Prince of Wales (20th of March 1751), on the subject of the Regency 

 Bill, rendered necessary by that event, when the Pclhams, to whom 

 Mr. Pitt attached himself, were opposed by the party of the (hikes of 

 Cumberland and Bedford, and their protegd, Mr. Fox the origin of a 

 long and in its issues very important rivalry. But the death of 

 Mr. Pelham (6th of March 1754) produced a succession of new con- 

 tentions, intriguea, and changes. At last, in November 1755, IV 

 bis friends were dismissed, and Fox, as secretary of state and man IVT 

 of the House of Commons, became, under the Duke of Newcastle, 

 who since his brother's death had held hU offices and nominal station, 

 the moving spirit of the ministry. 



Meanwhile however war had again broken out with Franco in tho 

 preceding June. In one quarter of the world indeed, iu India, tho 

 French and English, as allies of the conflicting native powers, can 

 scarcely be said to have ever laid down their arms. But tho new 

 quarrel of the two governments took its rise from a disagreement 

 about the boundaries of their respective possessions in N orth America, 

 which had been left unsettled by the late treaty. This war, in v. ht< h 

 all the principal European powers were eventually involved, is known 

 by the name of the Seven Years' War. Its commencement wild 

 extremely disastrous to the English Minorca and Calcutta having 

 both fallen to the French in the summer of 1756. The popular indig- 

 nation excited by these reverses overset the administration of the 

 Duke of Newcastle. Deserted by Mr. Fox, bis grace resigned iu the 

 beginning of November; and by the end of December, Pitt, who h:i 1 

 for some time past attached himself to the court of the young Prince 

 of Wales at Leicester-House, was secretary of state, with a cabinet 

 composed of his own friends and those of Lord Bute. The antipathies 

 of the king however, and the intrigues of the Duke of New 

 overthrew this arrangement in a few mouths. In April 1757, !' <rl 

 Temple, who held the office of first lord of the admiralty, having 

 been dismissed, Mr. Pitt immediately gave in his resignation. It was 

 some time before anybody could bo induced to accept the taak of con- 

 structing a new cabinet ; at last, in the beginning of June, after tho 

 country had been for nearly two months without a government, the 

 Earl of Waldegrave wa3 appointed first lord of the treasury, with 

 Mr. Fox as secretary of state. This administration lasted only for a 

 few days; tho king was then informed that he must seek for other 

 aid. After some further negociatiou, Mr. Pitt was before tho end of 

 the month recalled and appointed premier, with the office of Be, i 

 of state, the Duke of Newcastle being made first lord of the treasury, 

 and Mr. Fox paymaster of tho forces. This arrangement subsisted to 

 the end of the reign. From the moment in which the chief direction 

 of affairs was thus placed in the hands of Mr. Pitt the war was prose- 

 cuted with extraordinary vigour and success. In January 1 . 

 treaty of alliance had been contracted with Prussia, and an alliance 

 between Austria and France was concluded in May of tho same year. 

 The commencement of active hostilities between Austria and ' 

 Britain signalised Mr. Pitt's accession to power. In Germany the 

 enemy were early iu 1758 driven out of Bremen and Verden, which 

 they had overrun the preceding year ; soon after, Senegal, Gorce, and 

 other possessions of the French on the coast of Africa, were reduced ; 

 in 1759 the great victory of Minden, gained (August 1st) by Ferdinand, 

 tho hereditary prince of Brunswick, drove back the French to the 

 Uhino ; by a succession of brilliant successes at sea tho French navy 

 was almost annihilated ; the victory on the heights of Abraham, in 

 which Wolfo fell (September 13th) all but completed the conquest of 

 Canada ; Capo Breton, in the same quarter of the globe, ha I 

 already recovered; iu the east, Clive had recovered Calcutta (2nd of 

 January 1757), taken Chaudernagore (March 14th), overthrown the 

 Subahdar of Bengal at the great battle of Plossy (June 23rd), and 

 was now engaged in driving the French from every remaining pos- 

 session they had held iu India. In the midst of these successes 

 George II. expired suddenly at Kensington, from the extraordinary 

 circumstance of a rupture of the right ventricle of the heart, on the 

 25th of October 17t>0, in the seventy-seventh year of his age and the 

 thirty-fourth of his reigu. His children by his queen, besides tho-i: 

 that have been already mentioned, were, William Augu>;us, lioni 

 1721, created in 1726 duke of Cumberland; Mary, born 1723, married 

 1740 to Frederick, landgrave of Hesse Cassel ; aud Louisa, born 1721, 

 married 1743. to Frederick V., king of Denmark. He was succeeded 

 by his grandson, George III. 



In bis sentiments and politics George II. was as much a German as 

 his father, and he persevered throughout his reign in the same x 

 of interference iu the ail'airs of the continent, professedly with the 

 object of maintaining the balance of power, but really with nil 

 especial view to the preservation of the hereditary posnessions of his 



