Navy, won for us America and India. We might, and we usually did, neglect our Navy In time of peace; but in time of war, it had got a mysterious habit of doubling itself, and of discovering great fighting sailors. Battles of Quiberon and Lagos, 1759.In this war it had discovered three, Admiral Boscawen, who beat one great French fleet at Lagos, and Admiral Rodney, who played the same game in the West Indies. Perhaps the most daring of all was Sir Edward Hawke, who, as Mr. Newbolt sings, ‘came swooping from the West’ one wild November afternoon on to the French fleet off the rocky coast of Quiberon, and fought a night battle on a lee shore:—
Fiercely beat the storm wind, darkly fell the night,
But they took the foe for pilot and the cannons glare for light,
When Hawke came swooping from the West!
Death of George II, 1760. George III, 1760–1820.Meanwhile old King George Il had died in 1760; and his grandson, George Ill, aged twenty-two, had become king. And now, almost too late, the Spaniards came to the help of their French cousins. Pitt wanted to fly at them and smash them before they had time to declare war on us; but neither the new King nor the other ministers would agree to this; and Pitt, in a fit of anger, resigned his office. Resignation of Pitt, 1761. War with Spain, 1762.Yet even when Spain did declare war, at the opening of 1762, the spirit which Pitt had given to the fighting services carried all before it. We mopped up the remaining French West Indian Islands, and we took from the Spaniards their two richest colonies, Havana in the Isle of Cuba, and Manila in the far Eastern seas.
But when Pitt retired, the union of King, Ministers,