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Home Foreign Affairs and the Empire, 1714-1763 Empire, 1714-1763; Part 12 |
Empire, 1714-1763; Part 12The later years of the war saw further successes. In 1760- the year of George Ill's accession-Montreal was captured, and the conquest of Canada was completed. In 1761 the British captured Belleisle, off the west coast of France. In that same year Spain joined France. Pitt had secret intelligence of this alliance, and had wanted to declare war on Spain before it declared war on us, and to capture the annual •treasure fleet that came from Spanish America. The cabinet would not consent, and consequently Pitt resigned and Bute became head of the ministry. Spain, when the treasure fleet safely reached her harbours, declared war. But she was only to lose from her intervention. For in 1762 Great Britain captured Havana, the capital of Cuba, and Manila, the capital of the Philippine Islands; whilst, to her other captures from France. Great Britain added Martinique and St. Lucia. Meantime negotiations had been begun for peace, and in 1763 the peace came.Before giving the terms of peace, we must turn to the course of the war in India. There also it opened gloomily. In the north, in 1756, a new Nabob of Bengal, Surajah Dowlah, had, within two months of his accession, quarrelled with the British. He seized Calcutta, and there perpetrated the ghastly tragedy of the "Black Hole", putting one hundred and forty-six people-of whom only twenty-three survived- in a hot Indian night in a prison barely twenty feet square, and with only two small barred windows. Clive came up from Madras and retook Calcutta. In 1757-in the very same month that Pitt took office-he won on the field of Plassey with three thousand men, and with only eight guns, a victory over an army of fifty thousand men with forty guns. Clive was materially helped by the treachery of Meer Jaffier, one of the nabob's generals, and by the fact that a thunderstorm wetted the enemy's gunpowder, whilst tarpaulins protected his own; but even so, it was superb audacity on the part of Clive to risk a battle. That victory marks the beginning of the political ascendancy of the East India Company in Bengal; the Company put Meer Jaffier on the throne, and was given in return a substantial amount of land round Calcutta. |
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