Flight of the Eagle: The Grand Strategies That Brought America From Colonial Dependence to World Leadership by Conrad Black Read Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Conrad Black
Le Marchand de Lignery, and the Frenchman evacuated Fort Duquesne, blew it up on November 23, and withdrew his diminished garrison up the Allegheny for the winter. Pittsburgh would arise on the ashes of Fort Duquesne, Ligonier would be its most prosperous suburb, Duquesne a distinguished university, and for many years Forbes Field would be Duquesne’s baseball stadium. The route was clear from Philadelphia into the Ohio country, and the French presence in North America had been eradicated except for Montreal, Quebec, a few lesser towns along the St. Lawrence and St. Maurice Rivers, and partially, New Orleans.
7. THE WAR IN THE WEST INDIES AND AFRICA, 1759
On the heels of his successful seizure of the Senegalese slave trade, Pitt followed the advice of a Jamaican sugar plantation owner, William Beckford (who was also a London alderman), and seized the French island of Guadeloupe, which had a sugar production equivalent to Jamaica’s (20,000 tons a year), and was a staging port for attacks by French privateers against British sea commerce in the Caribbean. Possession of it would give Britain control of the sugar market and pricing procedure opposite most of Europe, and a bargaining chip to trade for Minorca, a valued base for the British fleet in the Mediterranean. (The British would take Martinique, too, in 1761.) A financial bonanza followed, as Martinique and Guadeloupe provided Britain with great quantities not only of sugar but of coffee, rum, molasses, and tropical fruit, and the wealth generated by these activities transformed the City doubters about Britain’s rising debt to purring tabbies, financing these exotic industries. The cautious and envious Newcastle periodically advised Pitt that the London City financial community, which bought British bonds, had to believe in the war for it to be paid for; in fact, Pitt, as long as his military operations were successful, could have forced the country’s bonds on the City, though it would have been a huge inconvenience. Pitt had sold his ability to deliver much of the world to British rule and profit, and to push France back into her own country, and he was delivering on his promise. There were 71,000 men in the Royal Navy and 91,000 in the army and it was proposed to add 10,000 to the army. Britain’s capacity to build ships was at its outer limits. With the activities of Britain in America, the Caribbean, West Africa, and India, as well as Hanover, there were only about 10,000 troops, strengthened by the flabby and almost untrained home guard of 32,000, to protect the home islands in case of need.
For once, Montcalm would not be looking forward to the end of the Quebec winter. In Paris, it had been a dismal military year, and all Louis XV had to show for his exertions was to have thrown the paltry Hanoverians back across the Rhine. The Duke de Choiseul was named chief minister to go head-to-head with Pitt. His strategy would be the familiar one to mass the French navy to facilitate an invasion of England by the main French army, and leave it to Austria and Russia and the Swedes to give Frederick of Prussia a well-deserved thrashing, and give up the overseas campaigns as an improvident beau geste where France had little interest and less chance of success against the maritime-focused British. Of course, the problems with this were that Choiseul had no short-term ability to devote the forces necessary to build a fleet that could seriously threaten the British Isles; Pitt could always bribe Europeans into tearing scraps out of the frontiers of France; and the long-term strategic future was in vast continents and subcontinents, such as North America and India, and not in the cordons sanglants, slivers of territory between the Great Powers of Europe such as Flanders, Alsace-Lorraine, Silesia, and the trackless political wasteland of the Balkans, which changed hands back and forth at intervals for centuries.
Choiseul’s impatience with the overseas operations was
7. THE WAR IN THE WEST INDIES AND AFRICA, 1759
On the heels of his successful seizure of the Senegalese slave trade, Pitt followed the advice of a Jamaican sugar plantation owner, William Beckford (who was also a London alderman), and seized the French island of Guadeloupe, which had a sugar production equivalent to Jamaica’s (20,000 tons a year), and was a staging port for attacks by French privateers against British sea commerce in the Caribbean. Possession of it would give Britain control of the sugar market and pricing procedure opposite most of Europe, and a bargaining chip to trade for Minorca, a valued base for the British fleet in the Mediterranean. (The British would take Martinique, too, in 1761.) A financial bonanza followed, as Martinique and Guadeloupe provided Britain with great quantities not only of sugar but of coffee, rum, molasses, and tropical fruit, and the wealth generated by these activities transformed the City doubters about Britain’s rising debt to purring tabbies, financing these exotic industries. The cautious and envious Newcastle periodically advised Pitt that the London City financial community, which bought British bonds, had to believe in the war for it to be paid for; in fact, Pitt, as long as his military operations were successful, could have forced the country’s bonds on the City, though it would have been a huge inconvenience. Pitt had sold his ability to deliver much of the world to British rule and profit, and to push France back into her own country, and he was delivering on his promise. There were 71,000 men in the Royal Navy and 91,000 in the army and it was proposed to add 10,000 to the army. Britain’s capacity to build ships was at its outer limits. With the activities of Britain in America, the Caribbean, West Africa, and India, as well as Hanover, there were only about 10,000 troops, strengthened by the flabby and almost untrained home guard of 32,000, to protect the home islands in case of need.
For once, Montcalm would not be looking forward to the end of the Quebec winter. In Paris, it had been a dismal military year, and all Louis XV had to show for his exertions was to have thrown the paltry Hanoverians back across the Rhine. The Duke de Choiseul was named chief minister to go head-to-head with Pitt. His strategy would be the familiar one to mass the French navy to facilitate an invasion of England by the main French army, and leave it to Austria and Russia and the Swedes to give Frederick of Prussia a well-deserved thrashing, and give up the overseas campaigns as an improvident beau geste where France had little interest and less chance of success against the maritime-focused British. Of course, the problems with this were that Choiseul had no short-term ability to devote the forces necessary to build a fleet that could seriously threaten the British Isles; Pitt could always bribe Europeans into tearing scraps out of the frontiers of France; and the long-term strategic future was in vast continents and subcontinents, such as North America and India, and not in the cordons sanglants, slivers of territory between the Great Powers of Europe such as Flanders, Alsace-Lorraine, Silesia, and the trackless political wasteland of the Balkans, which changed hands back and forth at intervals for centuries.
Choiseul’s impatience with the overseas operations was
Similar Books
My Texas Sweetheart (book one)
Pauliena Acheson
Charmed by His Love
Janet Chapman
Cheri Red (sWet)
Charisma Knight
Through the Fire
Donna Hill
The Hen of the Baskervilles
Donna Andrews
Can't Shake You
Molly McLain
A Cast of Vultures
Judith Flanders
Wings of Lomay
Devri Walls
Five Parts Dead
Tim Pegler
Angel Stations
Gary Gibson