necessary, and therefore powerful, and he wished for a peace that would give free scope to his schemes for strengthening the prerogative.  He was not alone in his pacific inclinations.  The enemies of the haughty Minister, who had ridden roughshod over men far above him in rank, were tired of his ascendency, and saw no hope of ending it but by ending the war.  Thus a peace party grew up, and the young King became its real, though not at first its declared, supporter.

The Tory party, long buried, showed signs of resurrection.  There were those among its members who, even in a king of the hated line of Hanover, could recognize and admire the same spirit of arbitrary domination that had marked their fallen idols, the Stuarts; and they now joined hands with the discontented Whigs in opposition to Pitt.  The horrors of war, the blessings of peace, the weight of taxation, the growth of the national debt, were the rallying cries of the new party; but the mainspring of their zeal was hostility to the great Minister.  Even his own colleagues chafed under his spirit of mastery; the chiefs of the Opposition longed to inherit his power; and the King had begun to hate him as a lion in his path.  Pitt held to his purpose regardless of the gathering storm.  That purpose, as proclaimed by his adherents, was to secure a solid and lasting peace, which meant the reduction of France to so low an estate that she could no more be a danger to her rival.  In this he had the sympathy of the great body of the nation.

Early in 1761 the King, a fanatic for prerogative, set his enginery in motion.  The elections for the new Parliament were manipulated in his interest.  If he disliked Pitt as the representative of the popular will, he also disliked his colleague, the shuffling and uncertain Newcastle, as the representative of a too powerful nobility.  Elements hostile to both were introduced into the Cabinet and the great offices.  The King’sfavorite, the Earl of Bute, supplanted Holdernesse as Secretary of State for the Northern Department; Charles Townshend, an opponent of Pitt, was made Secretary of War; Legge, Chancellor of the Exchequer, was replaced by Viscount Barrington, who was sure for the King; while a place in the Cabinet was also given to the Duke of Bedford, one of the few men who dared face the formidable Minister.  It was the policy of the King and his following to abandon Prussia, hitherto supported by British subsidies, make friends with Austria and Russia at her expense, and conclude a separate peace with France.

France was in sore need of peace.  The infatuation that had turned her from her own true interest to serve the passions of Maria Theresa and the Czarina Elizabeth had brought military humiliation and financial ruin.  Abbe de Bernis, Minister of Foreign Affairs, had lost the favor of Madame de Pompadour, and had been supplanted by the Duc de Choiseul.  The new Minister had gained his place by pleasing the favorite;