334 THE BOURBON AGE Quebec, which was the key to the French dominions in America 5 and the French fleet was annihilated by the English admirals French Boscawen and Hawke off Lagos on the Portuguese Disasters. coast and at Quiberon Bay on the coast of Brittany. In the first month of the next year France suffered the decisive defeat of Wandewash in India. Nevertheless, though France was so far paralysed, it was as much as Frederick could do to save him- self from complete destruction during 1760, his operations ending with the battle of Torgau, which left him still in occupation of the greater part of Silesia and Saxony. All the combatants were becoming exhausted except Great Britain, whose fleets were completely irresistible. France The War succeeded in dragging a new King of Spain, wears out. Charles m., into the war, with no other result than to provide more prey for the British. But Pitt's supremacy in England was over ; and the ministry, appalled by the huge war expenditure, desired nothing so much as to make peace even at the price of deserting its Prussian ally. Relief came to Frederick when his enemy the Tsarina died, and his enthusiastic admirer Peter ascended the Russian throne. Six months later Peter was deposed by his wife Catharine, who assumed the government and ruled with vigour, but refused to take any further part in the Seven Years' War. Prussia and Austria were left both of them without an effective ally ; and Frederick, exhausted as he was, could still hold his own The Peace, against a single opponent. The war was brought 1 763. finally to an end at the beginning of 1763 by the treaties of Paris and Hubertsburg. The total results of the war were that France was shut out of America and India; and except for a few islands, Great Britain, Spain, Holland and Portugal were the only colonial powers. There were no territorial changes in Europe, but Frederick had definitely raised Prussia to a position of equality among the powers with France and Austria. But Frederick was left bitterly hostile to England on account of her desertion of him at the close of the war ; while France was thirsting for an opportunity to humiliate the island power which had humbled her, and to win back what she had lost.
