colonial power. It gave England the control of the seas and the mastery
of North America and India, made her the first of commercial nations,
and prepared that vast colonial system that has planted new Englands in
every quarter of the globe. And while it made England what she is, it
supplied to the United States the indispensable condition of their
greatness, if not of their national existence.

Before entering on the story of the great contest, we will look at the
parties to it on both sides of the Atlantic.

Montcalm and Wolfe




Chapter 1

1745-1755

The Combatants


The latter half of the reign of George II. was one of the most prosaic
periods in English history. The civil wars and the Restoration had had
their enthusiasms, religion and liberty on one side, and loyalty on the
other; but the old fires declined when William III. came to the throne,
and died to ashes under the House of Hanover. Loyalty lost half its
inspiration when it lost the tenet of the divine right of kings; and
nobody could now hold that tenet with any consistency except the
defeated and despairing Jacobites. Nor had anybody as yet proclaimed the