King George II. was uneasy on account of Hanover--a point of attack naturally pointed out to the armies of King Louis XV. The English nation dreaded the landing so often and so vainly announced. "What I wish," exclaimed Pitt, "is to snatch this country from a state of enervation which makes it tremble before twenty thousand Frenchmen." Being a member of the administration, as well as paymaster-general of the forces, he violently attacked the treaties of subsidies and alliance, which the king had just concluded with Prussia and Hesse. For the first time, his eloquence swayed the House. "He has surpassed himself," wrote Horace Walpole. "Do I need to tell you that he has surpassed Demosthenes and Cicero? What figure would their solemn, elaborate, studied harangues have cut beside this manly vivacity and this impetuous eloquence which, all at once, at one o'clock in the morning, after eleven hours' session, pierced the stifling atmosphere." Legge, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had, like Pitt, refused his assent to the treaties. Both were replaced, and Pitt was thrown into the opposition, which rallied round the princess dowager and the young Prince of Wales. "This day will, I hope, give the key-note to my life," he had rightly said in his great speech.
The weakness of the English government became more apparent every day. "I say it with regret on account of my friend Fox," wrote Horace Walpole, "but the year 1756 was, perhaps, that of the worst government I have ever seen in England: the incapacity of Newcastle had fair play." In spite of their inadequate resources the Canadians defended themselves heroically and not unsuccessfully against the efforts of the American colonies backed by the mother-country. Acadia, a strip of neutral country between the English and French territories, the inhabitants of which had constantly refused to take the oath of allegiance to England, was invaded by the American troops, the population swept off, and the houses pillaged. General Braddock encountered more resistance in the valley of the Ohio. He proposed to surprise Fort Duquesne, and forced the march of his little corps. "I never saw a finer sight than that of the English troops on the 9th of July, 1755," wrote Colonel Washington, who was commanding under the orders of Braddock. But soon the English advance-guard was stopped by a heavy discharge of artillery; the enemy did not appear; the foremost ranks were disordered and recoiled on the body of the army. The confusion became extreme; the regular troops, little used to this sort of fighting, refused to rally round the general, who would have wished them to manœuvre as on the plains of Flanders. The Virginia militia alone, being scattered in the woods, answered the fire of the French or Indian sharpshooters without showing themselves. General Braddock soon received a mortal wound; Colonel Washington, reserved by God for other destinies, sought in vain to rally the soldiers. { 231} "I have been protected by the all-powerful intervention of Providence," he wrote to his brother after the action; "I received four bullets in my coat, and I have had two horses killed under me; however, I have got out of it safe and sound, while death swept off all our comrades around me. We have been beaten, shamefully beaten, by a handful of Frenchmen, who only anticipated hindering our march. A few moments before action we believed our forces almost equal to all those of Canada, and now, contrary to all probability, we have been completely defeated, and have lost everything." The little French corps, sent out from Fort Duquesne under the command of M. de Beaujeu, numbered but two hundred Canadians and six hundred Indians. It was only three years later, when Canada, exhausted and dying, succumbed beneath the burden of a war which it had sustained almost without aid, that Fort Duquesne, destroyed by its defenders themselves, fell into the hands of the English. They gave it the name of Pittsburg, in honor of the great minister who was in power--a name which a prosperous city bears even to-day.