one man, the nation rose in protest. No person could be found to form a new cabinet, and in June, Pitt was again called by the king to form a cabinet. The new cabinet comprised all the political powers. While Pitt's remark to the Duke of Devonshire, "I believe I can save the country and that no one else can," may cause a smile, yet it was perfectly true. At once the star of England began to rise again. The Duke of Cumberland, after his disaster in Hanover, was so angered at his reception by his father that he resigned as captain-general and Pitt was free to handle the army as he pleased.
From the time of his first appointment, in December, Pitt had been planning for a vigorous prosecution of the war. He had Parliament make provision for financing the campaigns which he intended to conduct in 1758, which it did with a lavish hand. For America, he planned three campaigns—one against Ticonderoga, another against Louisburg and a third against Fort Duquesne; and as commander of the last expedition, he appointed Brigadier-General John Forbes.
This last, while not the most difficult of the three campaigns, was yet directed against a post whose possession was of more material as well as strategic importance than the possession of all the other places combined, against which armies were to be sent. North America, as far south as the Spanish possessions, was at this time divided between the English and the French. The English settlements extended along the Atlantic coast from the Bay of Fundy to the Gulf of Mexico and were almost entirely east of the Alleghany Mountains. The country in the occupancy of the French consisted of widely-separated colonies scattered from Cape Breton to the Great Lakes, and all the way to New Orleans. The British numbered, perhaps, a million two hundred thousand souls, exclusive of the Indians and negroes, and the French less than a hundred thousand, so that when the clash came the inevitable result could be easily foreseen.
The French claimed all the country south of the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers, by right of discovery—their greatest explorer, Robert Cavelier, better known as LaSalle, after the family estate, having found these rivers some time between the years 1669 and 1671. In addition to the right by discovery, the French also asserted that they had obtained the title of the Shawanese, their allies who occupied the land at the time of LaSalle's visit. The English title was still more vague; the best that could be said in its favor was that in 1744, at Lancaster, the lands had been ceded to England by the Six Nations.
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