CHAPTER IV
“WE HAVE CONQUERED CANADA IN GERMANY”
FREDERIC THE GREAT AND ENGLAND
William Pitt was one of the greatest statesmen that England ever produced, he was a man whom people never tire of praising for his noble-heartedness. Around the middle of the eighteenth century he expressed himself as follows: “France is chiefly ... to be dreaded by us in the light of a maritime and commercial power.... All that we gain on this system is fourfold to us by the loss which ensues to France.... Surrender (of St. Pierre and Miquelon) would enable her to recover her marine.” This was, therefore, the point of view of that noble-hearted statesman, in whose opinion not nearly enough loss and humiliation had been inflicted on France. What England considered to be most particularly advantageous was the loss suffered by her rival. This was after the war of the Austrian Succession, during which England had employed Austria against France, according to her usual methods. Whilst France was busy with the war on land, England captured enormous booty on sea. Mahan tells us that the commerce of all three nations—France, Holland, and England—had suffered enormously; “but,” he continues, “the balance of prizes in favor of Great Britain was estimated at £2,000,000.... France was forced to give up her conquests for want of a navy, and England saved her position by her sea power, though she had failed to use it to the best advantage.” Mahan’s last statement is correct, but this was more than compensated for by the fact that England possessed obliging Continental Allies, who took upon themselves to weaken France. As usual it was England’s chief partner, i. e., Austria, who did the worst business; she lost Silesia, and a large part of Northern Italy (which she surrendered to the King of Sardinia); and she was compelled, as the result of these losses, to enter into her alliance with France.
While these sudden and unforeseen changes were taking place in the political system of Europe, English ships were chasing the French ones, and finally forced, by their unceasing attacks and vexations, the King of France to declare war.
This brings us to the part played by England in the Seven Years’ War. In the opinion of the English statesmen, the moment had come to complete the theft of the French Colonial Empire. Too much had also remained of the French trading fleet. Six months before the declaration of war an English fleet sailed into the Bay of Biscay, and did not leave it before capturing 300 French trading ships, worth $6,000,000. Subsequently England blockaded the French coasts, and captured all the ships—belligerent or neutral—bound for French ports. Not only did the English recognise that the time of the harvest had come, but, with the unerring instinct of the bandit, they determined to reap the maximum. Frederic the Great waged with true heroism a long and desperate war on the Continent, in which he earned for himself immortal fame; only with great difficulty did he manage to safeguard the frontiers of his country, whereas England filled, thanks to him, the pockets of her shopkeepers. “Without the victories of the Prussian grenadiers there would be to-day no English world-trade”: such is the verdict of Schmoller.
Frederic the Great was obliged to ally himself with England, and to accept English subsidies. He was fighting for the existence of Prussia, England—as usual—for her own purse; she knew that the subsidies were in the nature of an investment yielding immense profits. The result of the war was that England received Canada and Florida, besides the whole of the United States east of the Mississippi. Spain received from France the territory west of that river. In India, France renounced the right of exerting political influence. England’s aim had been realised. Her booty on sea and oversea was colossal; whereas the Continental nations were exhausted by the loss of blood and money, and the distribution of territory in Europe remained almost the same as it had been previously. It is interesting to notice what Frederic the Great thought about his ally, England, during the Seven Years’ War. It was clear to him, from the beginning, that England, if she wanted to do so, could render him very efficacious assistance—all the more so as Frederic had recognised the great error committed by France in giving up the fundamental principle of the policy she had hitherto pursued: namely, the energetic carrying on of the maritime war with England. Under these circumstances it was much easier for the latter to come to Prussia’s help. “Nothing,” we read, “was of greater importance to the King of Prussia at this time, than the news of the English preparations for a Continental war.” History tells us what became of all these preparations.
Frederic’s verdict concerning the part played by England is well known, and he has himself put it on paper: “When she concluded peace with France, England sacrificed Prussia’s interests in the most shameless manner. She then committed an even more disgraceful breach of faith. She offered Austria the re-conquest of Silesia, and in return for this humiliation inflicted on Prussia the Court of Vienna was to be allowed to resume its former friendly relations with England. As if all this treachery were not yet enough, English diplomacy was busy in St. Petersburg trying to stir up a feud between the King of Prussia and Czar Peter III. So much malignity and so much open hostility destroyed all the links once uniting Prussia and England. The alliance, which common interests had concluded, was replaced by bitter enmity and intense hatred.” From the very beginning of the war Frederic had rightly desired that England should send a fleet into the Baltic and bombard the port of Cronstadt. He attached the greatest value to such a manœuvre. But “England ruled the ocean and all the other seas; she cared, consequently, nothing for the Baltic or the Sound. She attached little importance to the measures taken by the three Northern Powers, whose ships barred the entrance to the Baltic. The English Admirals had taken Cape Breton (at the entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence), and had occupied the island of Gorea (on the African coast). India offered them every opportunity for conquests; and they would have had none on the coasts of Denmark, Sweden, and Russia.
“The great successes of the English in no wise diminished the weight of the burden borne by the King of Prussia, any more than they safeguarded his throne. He asked them in vain for a fleet to protect his Baltic ports, which were menaced alike by Russia and Sweden. The overweeningly arrogant English nation, which has hitherto been uniformly favored by luck, and which considers exclusively its own business interests, despised its allies as if they were mercenaries. England was perfectly indifferent to everything outside trade. Neither Parliament nor people paid the smallest attention either to the war in Germany or to Prussian interests. Everything that was not English was looked down on. The English were, in fact, such unreliable allies that they even stood in the way of the King during the negotiations, when common decency would have required them to support him.” Frederic was here referring to his efforts to conclude an alliance with the Sublime Porte, in view of inducing Turkey to march against Austria. England obstructed these negotiations by all the means at her disposal, because she feared that an increase of Prussian influence in the Near East would entail an increase of Prussian trade.
Such was Frederic’s opinion of his English allies, whose help he had been forced to accept owing to the extremely unfavorable circumstances in which he was placed. We will ourselves complete the information imparted by the Prussian King: during the war, and especially towards its close, England endeavored to negotiate with all the enemies of Prussia—not only with Austria and Russia, but also with France. She informed the Czar of her readiness to obtain from Prussia any territorial concessions which the former might wish for, and exactly at the same time she offered Austria Silesia; she also proposed to the French Government that the latter should, after the conclusion of peace, enter into possession of Wesel, Geldern, and the surrounding districts. We unfortunately lack space to discuss in detail the perfidious game then played by English statesmen. But the spectacle teaches us once more the time-honored truth, which is still ignored by some to-day, and which Frederic expressed by saying that the English care for nothing outside their own trading interests, and that they despise their allies as mercenaries. One can go still further, and say that England never really espouses the cause of another country, even when she is allied with it; such a country merely appears to her as useful for the moment, in so far as it serves England’s mercantile interests. These interests are not always to be found on the surface; but they are always at the bottom of every political combination entered into by the politicians in London. As soon as England, during the Seven Years’ War, had reaped her own abundant harvest and was certain that the conclusion of peace could not in any way diminish her profits, she at once sacrificed without hesitation the interests of Prussia, and broke the treaty she had signed with Frederic. And yet, without Prussia and Frederic, England would never have been able to drive France either from North America or India! Had France not been weakened by the war with Prussia, the former would have been able to play a very different part on the seas. But all that counted for nothing. Prussia was not to be permitted to extend her boundaries, nor to increase her strength; France had been sufficiently weakened; as for Austria and Russia, they could, by means of skilful wire-pulling, be made to serve Great Britain’s interests usefully. Consequently did England desire the prompt conclusion of peace. No one was allowed to gain anything by such a peace, except England.
Pitt had spoken truly, when he said: “We have won Canada in Germany.” Although the Seven Years’ War, with its oversea expeditions and its subsidies, had cost England a good deal of money; it was very soon seen that one of its first results was to bring about an astonishing development of all the branches of England trade and industry. In other writings of his, Frederic the Great has noted down this rise of prosperity, not without surprise; he remarks that the national debt was enormous, but that, on the other hand, the general level of wealth was extraordinarily high. After the war it was all the easier to reduce progressively the national debt, as an ever-growing income of gigantic proportions was accruing, not only to individuals, but also to the state—especially from India. But treasures and products of all sorts arrived also from all the other colonies. The British trading fleet ruled the seas; for the Royal Navy had conscientiously done its duty, and thousands of foreign trading ships—the property of enemies, neutrals, friends, and allies alike (for England is always delightfully impartial in these matters)—had disappeared. As usual, after a Continental war, industry, commerce (with the exception of a little coasting trade), and the entire force of production, were ruined. Under the influence of peace, the wants of the population asserted themselves once more; but its strength did not allow it to satisfy those wants itself, to build up a new trading fleet, to develop a new industry. England’s industry did the work. It must also be observed that the capital wealth of Great Britain had immeasurably increased, and had assumed ever more and more the aspect of an octopus sucking the life-blood of the other European nations. The more numerous the wars which those nations were compelled to wage for England, the more crushing did England’s superiority in this respect become. Ever less and less grew the competition capable of exerting an influence either on the selling or on the purchasing prices of English industry. Gold and raw materials flowed free of cost, and in an uninterrupted stream, into England; they either came from England oversea possessions, or from Spanish and Portuguese colonies, the exploitation of which England had reserved by treaty to herself. Thus was business doubly profitable. We must also remember that the great majority of freights were shipped on board England vessels; and that in this way also money flowed into English purses.
During the Continental wars England acquired an immense colonial empire; that is to say, she robbed a quantity of territories belonging to other people, after having reduced the European nations to impotence on sea by stirring them up one against another. The same policy enabled England to acquire practically the whole of the shipping trade, and to establish herself as mistress of the seas.
France had lost many vitally important things, both in the shape of territory and in that of prestige. But the French only came to recognise the extent of their losses later on; and they soon forgot the lesson.
An interesting page in the history of the Seven Years’ War is that which deals with the attitude of England towards Spain. France had signed a convention with Spain, with a view to obtaining Spanish assistance. This assistance was to be rendered a year after the signing of the agreement; it was thus in the nature of a long-term bill. England seized the opportunity to attack Spain, and to pounce with her usual vulture-like rapacity on the Spanish colonies and on Spanish vessels; she likewise continued her piratical forays against the French coasts. It was especially the silver cargoes which excited the greed of the pious English heroes of the sea. English historians still regret that Pitt’s advice to attack Spain was not followed earlier. If it had been, many more “glorious” successes could have been obtained. Campbell wrote in his Lives of British Admirals the following exquisite passage: “Spain is just the country which England can always fight with the best chances of acquiring fame and success. Her immense empire is weak in its center-point; the sources from which help can be obtained are far away; and the Power which commands the sea will be able to obtain without difficulty the wealth and the commerce of Spain.” We are here told candidly that an attack on the weak Spanish empire offered every prospect of success, and of the acquisition of fame (!). For this reason was Spain attacked at every possible opportunity, and her still wealthy and immense empire perpetually plundered. The center-point of that empire was weak. Spain’s weakness resided in the fact that her sea power had been destroyed; she believed erroneously that local garrisons placed in the colonies would be able, by means of coast defences to maintain the cohesion of a great imperium. But between Spain and her colonies the British fleet had wedged itself in. In a similar manner was France separated from her oversea possessions. It was by means of robbery and piracy that England had developed into a world-Power at the expense of Europe.